Paul Rosolie on Surviving Tribal Warriors & Amazon Cartels

What's up everybody. At 18 years old, our guests went into the Amazon rainforest and basically never came back. Since Danny's wrestled Anaconda's wider than tree trunks, but attacked by uncontacted tribes, nearly killed himself a thousand times and dedicated his life to protecting over 100,000 acres of one of the last truly wild places on earth. Most conservatives want you to care about the rainforest. This motherfucker makes you want to move there. Ladies and gentlemen, a warm flagrant welcome straight from the Amazon hours away. The real life tarzan from Brooklyn, New York. Paul Rosalie's in the building. Good to get here. You're off the plane off the plane. Off the plane off the plane. Look, I like I still got dirt from the Amazon on my shoes. In your timbulins, that's crazy. It's people's people's. Sponsored in trouble. Yeah, no, I just got off. It's like culture shock getting back here. I mean, I'm living in a place where I'm like care chopping wood, carrying water, looking for fish. I mean, you come back here and you're like, shit, so easy. You're like, I can use my thumb to get most things done. I'm like trying to figure out how to, you know, it's just very different. We offered you a coffee. You're like, I'm okay. We offered you a water. It's like, I'm okay. And then we said diet Coke. We just threw it out there. Oh, no, no. You said the DC is the one thing you missed in the day. The fridge. The fridge. In the Amazon, you know, you're 4,000 miles away from the nearest diet Coke. They got Coke zero. Yeah. And you know, most of the time we don't have refrigeration out there. Yeah. And if you have a Coke, a sad Coke, it'll be warm. Yeah. We'll get there later. But when Lex came down, I know he loves Coke zero. And so I put two in my bag secretly. And I was like, at our lowest moment. Did he have an emotional response? So was he Lex? We were almost dead. We were almost dead at that point. So I pulled him out and he just went, fuck it. It was the only liquid we had for days. So it was like, we were surviving on it. It wasn't like a celebratory moment. We were, we had to live on Coke for one. Why the only liquid you had for days, I thought you could go straight out of the river. Yes. And so the problem is, okay, okay. So there's a, you know, the kid into the wild. Yeah. So that guy, right? Huh? He got eaten by a bear. No, no, no, that's crazy. That's different. That's the Verna Herzog documentary. Into the wilds, the kid who burns his security card and goes, lives in the bus. Okay. He crossed over, I believe, if I remember, he crossed over a river and got into the wilderness where he lived in the bus. And then it's from what I know is that then he wanted to cross, when he was like starving, he wanted to cross back over the river. And it had changed volumes. And like one day you can wait across the river and one day it's not possible. Okay. And that's what happened to us in Lex. And the reaction I got, because I told the story on Joe, the reaction I got was people like, you'll fuck you for almost killing Lex Friedman. Everybody loves Lex. And they're like, you know, how could you be a survival expert and never claim to be a survival expert? You could survive. I could survive. Oh, no, but like, you know, we walked through the jungle and the streams everywhere. Right? Lex wanted to go into a part of the jungle that no one had ever explored. And so we said, there'll be streams, right? No. Topographically, it was totally different. It was very elevation and drop. And so we were at a part where we had to, we had to go this way, right? We'd take a straight bearing north. Yeah. We weren't finding streams, mountain valley, mountain valley. But we were too high up in the watershed. So the streams weren't starting until later. And after a few days and you're sweating picture being in a sauna all day long, all day long, carry any water with you. We drank all of our water in like three hours. You can only carry so much fucking water. And Lex is about to die. You've been holding two cups. I guess you remember we were going to bed. We were going to bed. We were going to, we were getting into our tents. It was me, Lex and JJ. And we're like, yo, we're kind of, we're kind of fucked. And like, Lex was like looking at a puddle. And he goes, can I drink that? And I was like, no, don't drink that puddle. Yeah. And he was like, you know, like we're all like splashing a little bit of water, like gross water, like puddle water on ourselves. Just because we're so hot. And we were like, okay, we'll just get in our tents with like no food, no water. And then I was like, I do have these coaks. And it was like, we just like drank them. It wasn't like, yeah, we got there. It was just like, drink the coaks. Like, fuck, you know, they're plus like warm coke, actually tastes like gasoline. Yeah. Yeah. It's delicious when it's cold. And then when you, when you drink it when it's warm, you go, no. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Okay. I love survival content, which is hilarious. I've never camped. I grew up in the city my whole life. I've seen very few animals. We're like, you grew up in the city. In these village. East Village. Yeah. Text me to him. I'm like, why are you awake? He's like, I'm in the Arctic. I'm surviving. He's watching an Arctic video. I go to, I go to sleep to somebody surviving in the snow every night. There's no bullshit. Okay. I put it on. I wait for them to do their little hot tent. And they usually make something. Maybe it's outdoor boys. Once he starts making the bread and he puts in a honey butter, I can go to bed. Okay. That's my bed. That's incredible. I love it. I'm obsessed with it. Okay. Okay. So my question, but I've never done it. My question is, of the three of us, what are the chances of us surviving in the Amazon? Like if I left you there. Yeah. Like I drive you on a boat into a deep part of the Amazon, walk you out five miles away from the river and then leave you there and say, I'll come back in a week. Yeah. Are we together in this hypothetical? Yeah. All three of us are together. Okay. Yeah. If you had headlamps and machetes, you might be able to, you might be able to like make it a week on pure starvation. But if you don't know how to hunt food, which if you don't have someone native, like I did to teach you, you're not going to make it far. Yeah. It's like being dropped in them. And I know people that are so native that I've had to explain this to them. But you know, if you get dropped in the city, and let's say you got dropped with no cell phone, no credit cards, no cash, and no like prior knowledge of like stores will give you food. There's like crosswalks. Yeah. You wouldn't get very far. You'd be on the street. You'd be sleeping on the street. Yeah. You know, you wouldn't even be able to take a shit in New York City. You're like, it's an emergency please. Yeah. Like, no. Yeah. They're like, no. Yeah. Like sorry. It's probably easier to take a shit than Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You've never been camping. Yeah. Cause so you've never taken a shit in the woods. Never. Never. I think it's in the ocean before it comes out easy. You just go. Yeah. It is a room except for you jerk off on carpets at a hotel. That's inside. Yeah. That's how it gets there. Yeah. The black lights. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I know. So, so, so. Okay. So you, first of all, I'd be happy to share this experience with you. Yes. If you ever want to learn how to shit in the woods, you just call me up. I'll take you upstate New York. Yes. We could do we, we could do this. We could do this. Yeah. This spring. Yeah. I know. What are we doing for the fall? Um, shooting in the woods is one thing. You got to learn how to, you know, eat some people or pants off. Some people are pants around your ankles. Um, you know, you get there. You just got to not pee on your shoes and not, not, not, not, you know, sometimes you, you get a log that falls. Oh, and it falls on your ankle or something. Exactly. Cause what you want is for it to fall backwards or forwards. You don't want it to fall on a shoe. Is that a strategy for that ball? You got a wig backwards a little bit. Yes. So you got to do that. But now the Amazon, like most things, the Amazon is extreme environments on earth. So when you're shooting in the Amazon, all right, we shouldn't what you shouldn't what you're like, all right, I got a balance. So you're like, I'm going to balance. All right. So you're like, cool. I mean, feet are wide enough apart. And you're like, I got this. And you're just, you can like chill. You don't want a tree, maybe I've done that. I'll tell you about that later. I can't just pick those up. So you chill dead in the woods. You're like, you're like, oh, there's a deer and there's a chipmunk. You look behind you, whatever. Some people lean against the tree. Some people hold the tree. Jungle is different. First of all, you probably have jungle gut, right? So you're, you're like, I got to go now, you know, like you're sweating. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're like, all right, this got to happen. Yeah. You're not, you're not going to worry about this because it's coming out. Oh, you're worried about spray. Now you're worried about, right? Yeah. The other thing is, human poop is some of the most nutrient rich poop in planet. Right. We're like a very dice. Do want it, man. There was. That's just delicious. Not want my scale. They're like, that's the best shit in the world. And so, so first of all, it's very, very tall. All of them. Okay. So I can't, I've got to get back in that position in a second, but it's so you have sand flies. You have sand flies. You have mosquitoes. Yeah. You have a variety of other types of like red flies, green flies, other flies. You got wasps. Now wasps are carnivorous. They land on you and they want to eat your skin. Now that doesn't really hurt, but the problem is if the wasp goes up your sleeve and it stings you, it's a pain in the ass. So the moment you pull down your pants, now your, your arms are sunburned and a little bit banged up. And so your skin is thicker, right? You got great arms by the way. Thank you. As soon as you pull down your pants and expose that white white ass with all that, they're like, y'all not to mention. Now, let me explain this. You're balls. Oh, they're just laying out there in the truck. Copic cool Fuck land like there are there are mosquitoes now all coming and they're like lots of blood Mmm, and so they're going for it. So what you got to do is break off a stick Okay, and you've got to be doing this All you're going yes because the flies and the mosquitoes and everything they're coming for you Right and some of them like they'll like the the flies have no respect They'll fly like up your butthole like they will do anything Oh, wow and so you really have to have this game good which means you have to have your balance game good And you can't do this because it could be spikes on the ground or venomous snakes, so you can't just just relax Then assuming you have brought toilet paper. Let's just assume that right like it's a big assumption It's a big assumption, but let's say like you know you have a headlamp you have a machete You don't you bring some toilet paper because if you start talking about jungle leaves You can you think poison ivy's bad you could wipe your ass or something you never get better from oh, you know and something It's a turntary to explain Skin on my ass Every time I shit, I get a life-threatening infection And so so as you're doing this right and then you got a this is where it gets complicated because you got a two-handed because you have to be Guarding the jewels, right? Okay, and you got to do a quick wipe Because now you've been we're doing this work long enough that there's an army of mosquitoes And they're big big mosquitoes going around you and so they're hitting you wherever you're not paying attention It's like fighting a pack of dogs if you're over here. They're biting you over here And so the mosquitoes are all over you so as you slap you're also throwing weight So you might fall off all yeah, and so the worst part though then is that the dung beetles dung beetles the size of a golf ball picture of minivan That's bright purple and can open its wings and fly it makes no sense Size of a golf ball and they're they're really awkward flyers and they come in and they'll like smack you And if my friend got a scratch cornea because one day had those like rhinoceros things on the front and hit them in the eyeball And so they stole us that the purple one right there. You see that big spike so they want your poop Right, really bad. They're gonna roll it up into a ball and they carry it away. Okay, they roll it up into a ball They're like got it and they take it away And so you got the flies and the mosquitoes and the things and you got to manage to to squat and wipe and defend yourself from a whole army It's it's a big deal So you just don't want to do that the guys in Amazon really don't understand the joy of taking a shot At home and just avoiding your responsibilities. Yeah scrolling reading a book Reading a book get a hammer Yeah, why not just wear like an adult pamper. Yeah Yeah, I don't know man, and then you know the squeeze went out in the river down there I feel like again something something's gonna take that opportunity Well, what about the people that pee and then they get like a thing that flies in there? And the the Candero fish, but that I think it's been like three people in all the human history. I'll take my odds I'm not risking that's three too many. That's three too many. Yeah, three too many. What do you do with toilet paper? What do you do? You just kind of bundle up and leave it there and let the struggle stick in the ground It'll be gone in 20 20 gone in 10 hours. I mean if you put a dead body in the jungle. It's it's gone in 48 hours Completely to the bone. Yeah, how do you know this? I told you I told you to come for a while I told you that stop doing man and stop thinking too much So when did that happen? Don't pinch it on me. They did try to kill you though. All right, so the tons of people down there have tried to kill you It's not just the animals Because you ever thought it was you Sort of like looking in the mirror type of shit. Yeah, who am I? No, I mean, that's look the Most of the people I work with down there. We make friends with yeah, I'm friends with the natives Yeah, we've started jungle keepers together. We protect all this jungle. That's why I do what I do this is you and JJ famously, right? Yes, I met Jay when I was 18 Yeah, and he sort of took me under his wing and he was like I know everything about the jungle I know the medicines. I know tracking I know the animals and I was like I know how to catch snakes That's the only thing I know that you don't know and he was afraid of snakes I'm not going to verify the snakes and he was like you can teach me snakes and I was like yeah I could teach you snakes and he was like fuck off He's like you're gonna touch that snake and he's like none of us have touched that snake I'm like you pick it up and let it bite me I feel like this is a harmless snake and he'd be like how do you know? So all of them are afraid of snakes all of them are afraid of snakes because they're Interaction with the jungle is very much based on like a you tell utilitarian sort of view like you know Can I eat that that or that is that wood good and it's like if you find a wood that's like pulpy and not very strong They're like oh that that's crap, but mahogany and kalba and kinea they're like these woods. They know everything They know what the sap does if there's medicinal uses, you know how to age it you know crazy shit that we could never know they're like There's one time we cut down a tree Huge tree this huge tree. I saw these guys cut down this tree Because they needed to build a bridge and this tree goes down I want them to cut this tree down and they cut it down and and I cry when trees go down and You're talking about a centuries old tree It's laying on the floor and the logger looks at it and he goes oh Shit, he goes I didn't realize what day it is he goes we can't use this wood this tree's fucked So they start cutting out the tree and I went crazy. I like grabbed his chainsaw. I was like fuck you You just took down a centuries old tree What do you mean you can't use the wood you use that wood and he goes it will not work? You can't build it that wood now. Why not and he goes to new moon? I was like what the fuck does a new moon have to do with it I was like I don't do mumbo jumbo. I'm from Brooklyn. I was like Western science like the wood is there build with the wood and JJ saw me fight with the guy it takes me aside and he goes listen because you're not from here. You don't understand Every moon cycle this is one insect that reproduces and if you happen to cut down a tree When they reproduce their their larva will go into the wood at that perfect moment because you you've destroyed the tree's defenses And then in like a year that wood's gonna be destroyed So if you go build like the scaffolding for a roof you're done to lap it done So like that's where like if you're not a local well if you don't know the jungle secrets of the jungle You're not doing shit. What percentage do you think you know now like if you compare yourself to a JJ And this is like a vocabulary or a fluency like the jungle's a language. Where are you at with fluency? If JJ's like Novak joke of it. I'm like a female tennis player JJ was like Novak joke of it you're the best female player I'm like the best guy in like your hometown Wow, it's that's massive like he grew up he grew up without shoes till he was 13 years old Like he grew up where they had to get a howler monkey or a fish for dinner or they starve like I've been doing this for 20 years And I've learned as much as I can and it's a privilege But but there's things in there that you can't even like we'll be walking Now I'll give you a better one one day we're sitting there, and I was like JJ. Let's go fishing And he goes yeah, yeah, we should go fishing and like you know, he's got a couple of gray hair You got like glasses on now. He's sitting there reading the birds of Peru as you do And he's like oh the tannagers and the fly catchers and I'm like JJ Can we go fishing before it's like nighttime and he goes I don't know the we need bait, and I went yeah And he goes find some bait and so I start looking on the ground whatever else like looking for a worm There's no the sense just sand under the leaves in the Amazon So I'm looking for bait and you can't find any, you know, you find like a big Katie did is something you try and grab and it'll bite you And so I hear JJ and he's just sitting there going I'm like this motherfucker's just sitting here killing time Uh-uh, all of a sudden then I hear on the other side of the other side of the deck I hear And I look and it's this grasshopper making the sound with its wings and JJ then makes the sound again And the grasshopper keeps coming closer looking for its mate. No, and she's tricking the grasshopper and I look and there's like three of the grasshoppers And they're all coming because he's making this sound and then at some point he was like okay We go and he takes this one takes this one takes this one goes good. We got bait and he's like And I'm like and then we go down to the river and he's like got three hooks He's got a small hook medium hook large hook takes a small hook takes a dumb fish out quick puts it on a larger hook pulls out a piranha this big cuts the tail off it puts it on a large hook throws that in the river and ties it to a tree And I was like why don't you tie to the boat and he's like because the boat has a solid beam there He's like if that pulls on the fishing line it'll break it. He's like he tied to a tree The tree will do this and it'll like it'll tire the fish out and sure enough this tree is like You got to fish this big. So he like worked his way from grasshopper to piranha to giant catfish That fed 10 people in the span of a couple hours So that's the type of shit where like it's literally the language If you were to get like is there an age cutoff like if you were to move there when you're five years old Like you could become a local, but if you move there at 25 it might be harder for you to become like a native in the sort of It's also how much time you spend there. You know, I know a lot of People who have spent significant time in the jungle And like you know when I was starting out like I as a kid that had terrible grades. I'm severely dyslexic Didn't do well in school dropped out of high school after sophomore year and just went to the Amazon and like I started learning from JJ And and like the rate that which a person can absorb like the people that come down and do research and they're wearing like big boots and they're wearing long sleeves and they have like a bugnet over and they're learning from other researchers that they're learning academic facts about the jungle. And with him we'd be like, I'd be like, "Changing. You think his anaconda isn't that swamp? You'd be like, "I don't know. I'm like, pop his shirt off and be like, "Let's go find out though." We'd be off to our next and I remember the first time I did it and I was like, "18." And I was like, "Are you sure this is okay?" And he was like, "I think so. It's like I never went looking for anacondas before." And I was like, "I'm like, what in this nightmare soup is going to crawl up our pants?" Because like, are you certain that there's not like some sort of water bug that's going to borrow into our skin? I mean, there is. Whoa. But just no fear? He doesn't have fear. I mean, he's pretty fearless. Even when we've dealt with people that are dangerous, one of the first times I saw him defending land. People had come to cut some trees. And I just remember him. I was like, 18 and brand new there. So I was like, I'm not going to say shit, right? I'm just going to stand there. Is this his cool property? He was his property at the time. So before we started jungle keepers, he just was like, I'm going to protect this. And I was like, with what? And he was like, yeah, he's like, I just have a dream of protecting the wildest place on earth. Because my home, my village, they killed all the animals. They cut all the big trees. He's like, so now I've gone out to the wildest place and we're going to protect it. And that's where I met him. But when people came, you know, it's like a boat of like vagrant, migrant hunters. And they walked down this trail and he was like, let's go. He's like, we got to go get these guys. I was like, get these guys. And we show up on these guys and they all got fucking shotguns. And JJ, no, no gun walks up to these guys and goes, get off my land. And English, no, in Spanish. Okay. And they're like, you know, click, clack, fuck yourself. No. And he's like, get off my land now. And then like as they advanced on us, I just was like, I was like, what, you know, how do we fight them? Yeah. Like we have, we have two machetes against like five guys with shotguns. And I was just kind of like standing there. I was like, you know, whatever, whatever happens next, you know, and he put up such a, such a such a, you're just like back my land. They bitched out. They turned around. I mean, what do they got to shoot them? Most people don't want to shoot them. For them, it's not worth the hassle. Exactly. They're getting paid to do that job. They're like, we'll go find a different trail. Yeah. But still out there, if they did shoot us, they could drag us into the jungle, leave us there. And in two days, nobody'd ever know we existed. How much should that happen? So you think, how many people are killed out there? And this just, do you just get devoured by the jungle? Well, first of all, I mean, a native people, there's lots of people that die in the Amazon and all kinds of creative ways. But, but in terms of like the narco trafficking is happening right now. And or the tree harvest thing or any of the other tree harvest thing. I mean, I, we've heard, I've heard all the stories down there in 20 years. I mean, somebody gets cut down, but you know, landed on by a tree. And I'm talking about trees three times as thick as this room, like huge trees. You know, like they'll cut it and they'll be looking up at the tree they cut. And as it gets going down, they don't realize that it's tied by a vine to the next tree back. And so that tree comes and just mouse traps an entire group of people. It takes down an acre or a forest on top of some people and you just don't know. You're like, oh, yeah, we cut the tree. It's going to, it's going that way timber. And you're like, damn, this is wild. And then like an acre comes out. Wow. It's not a dead guy. You're somebody like 10 guys talking about everybody dead. I was just climbing on a tree two nights ago with my guys. And like the branches, you know, you're talking about like six foot thick branches. And this tree had fallen and we were exploring the canopy of a tree on the ground at night. But there's all these orchids that grow nowhere else, but in the canopy 160 feet off the jungle floor and they don't exist down here. And so there's different species up there. 50% of the life in a rainforest is in the canopy, not on the ground. And so it's one of the least explored things on our planet. And since the Amazon has so much biodiversity in it, this is like undiscovered species, undiscovered medicines. And when you're walking down there, you're this big, you're on the ground and the canopy's up here. So like if you get lost, it's not like you're going to a, it's not like, you know, you're lost in the Rockies, you go to a mountain top and you're like, should I go north or should I go west? Now you're at the bottom of a green ocean. So you're like, where the fuck is the sun? You know, you're like looking around for it and it's like, there's no way out. Is that what it feels like being underwater? It can. It feels like you're under the ocean in a sort of magical way. There's these giant trees over you. It's a very cathedral-like experience, right? This is giant, beautiful trees, you know, and there's sort of like light hitting the tops of them. And you see like spider monkeys up there. And then these tremendous trunks coming down and you can interact with them, but just like a skyscraper, you can't climb up that. It's sheer. Yeah. And then if you're in true old jungle, the, the, the over story is so big that the understory can be pretty open. And so you can kind of walk around because it's not much light. Less than not much can grow. Exactly. Like less than 3% of the light that hits the jungle makes it to the jungle floor. Oh, wow. So what can even exist on the bottom? Well, like you see that picture, like that's the bottom of a tree. And, you know, there's trees, but you see it's not dense, dense, dense. Yeah. And I hate that picture on the lower left. See that, that makes me, that makes me sick. Where's this? That's probably Brazil. Yeah, you mentioned Brazil a lot in terms of, I work in Peru, but Brazil has 60% of the Amazon within their territory. It seems to be that they're a little bit more, how do I say it? They're less strict about conservation over there. This is what it feels like from listening to you. It seems like it seems like there's, you know, it depends who's in charge of fluctuation based on administration. I mean, but that's everything, you know, in the, in the U.S. they're like, we're going to drill in the Arctic wildlife refuge. And then the regime changes and they go, we're not going to drill in the Arctic wildlife refuge. Yeah. And then they're like, we're going to drill. And they're like, all right, shit. Yeah. Like, can somebody please just hold some continuity? Like when we make it a national park, just put it off, like Teddy Roosevelt will be rolling in his fucking grave. Yeah. He would come out and wreck shit. You're like, you're going to touch your semity. Yeah. Yeah. He would come out. The rough rider. Yeah. You know, I mean, you think you protect this stuff forever. And that's why in conservation, they always say the victories are temporary and the losses that are final because you go, great, we protected this, this group of rhinos in Africa. 10 years later. And then like some poachers get in there and clean out half of them in the night. And you're like, we thought we protected them. And then they got through the fence. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. What's in the tech you're using to like not get lost or stay in communication with people like, well, we have now the old days, it was, that's a great question. The old days we used to go, so you see, this is windy, windy river right there. This one. So in the old days, we used to go up that for two whole days, two days of just that. Let me let me understand. So up that means you're in a boat. You're in a boat. You're in like a 30-foot long canoe with a with a sometimes of the roof, sometimes not. Okay. And you got a motor on the back. And you're just trudging along. We're just going up that. Okay. So you do 10 hours. Stop on the side. You make camp in the jungle. You do another 10 hours. Then we get to our research station where JJ had set up this this this project. It's out there. We didn't even have a generator. We'd have to bring AA batteries for our headlamp. And every night it gets dark at six o'clock. And every morning, it gets light at six o'clock. It's equator, right? So you have 12 hours. And so you basically stay in the jungle as long as your food lasted and as long as your battery is lasted. Because if it gets dark and you don't have light, you got a problem. Especially out there. Because if you get lost in the middle of that, you literally can't take one step. Like I've had a headlamp when I was my first year down there. I was like, JJ, I'm going out. You know, you go up in school with rules. And I got to the jungle. And I was like, this is like Pirates of the Caribbean. I was like, I'm going out. I was like, I'm going to go on some adventures. I want to risk my life. You know, you're 18 years old and you're like, fuck yeah. And so I went out there and I was like, I'm going to discover some ship by myself. I went out. And then at like two in the morning, my headlamp dies. And I'm going like this. You can't see your hand. And if you take a step, you could step on a venomous snake. You could step on spikes. The noise you're hearing is. Of all the frogs. And so I had to just sit down and like curl into a ball and like pull some palm funds and just sit there like this and like put my shirt over me and the mosquitoes are biting you through the shirt. But at least they can't get to your face because you like turtle up. And I sat there like that until morning. And I was so messed up. I was really messed up after that. And so I never let that happen again. Now it's different. Now we have a major organization. We have 160,000 acres. One of the verge of making a national park. So now we're professionals. So now we have like Starlink and we're able to communicate. Now I have 80 something rangers that I need that we need to coordinate. And so we have to have Starlink at the different bases. So that we can communicate through the jungle. And but how didn't that experience early on? You're just like, you know, fuck this. Go back home. Like because there's a scene in the Shawshank redemption when they're sitting on the roof and like the guards and the deer just crack the beers and you're like, I want to be there. And you're like, I don't, but I kind of do. Yeah. And it's like when you're suffering and you've been in the rain for six hours and then the tropical sun bakes you until your skin's peeling off and all you have to eat is the head of a wild boar that you shot yesterday. There's something where you just go, man, this is so fucking wild. Especially in today's world where it's like minority report like big brother terminator beginnings out there still the real world. It's still the real world, and it reminds you that, and like the mountains and the ocean are these constant things that you can return to, and the jungle is like this giant organism, this god-like force, and it's like, you just go, you know what? Civilization is rise and fall, whatever's on the news cycle right now, this ecosystem has been speculating for 55 million years, it holds medicines, it's the heartbeat of our planet, it's the lungs of our planet. And you go, man, everything's going to be okay. Like even if I die and I get digested by this giant machine, you're like, but it's so beautiful. And so for that wild vibration where you feel completely at heightened awareness with this wild thing around you, I'll carry a motor, I'll, you know, I'll get my skin ripped open. And I've had every injury, I've had, I've suffered for days, I'm like, you know, you see like that little, that little bit of sand on the side of the river, like that, you get to one of those things and let them mosquitoes tear you apart, but you're waiting for a boat. And there are no boats from decade to decade, and so you're like, I got to cut down a tree, and I'm going to float on this tree all the way back to civilization. That, the only thing I said wrong there is, you can't cut down a whole last tree with a machete. So what you do is you wait for it to rain, and then the rain pulls a few of the closest trees to the river into the river, and then when you get the flood, you swim out, you jump on a log, and then you take that motherfucker back to civilization. So you've taken a floating log back to civilization? I've covered, I've covered hundreds of miles on a log, yeah. I'm talking logs, I'm not talking about like a little log, I'm talking about like a, like a school bus size log that's like 90 feet long, and what's cool is at the, at the canopy side, the half of the thing is down, half the thing is up, right? So you can actually climb up onto the upper branches and like stand up there, like you're on a pirate ship, and the thing is so big, like a small log you do this, right? Like it'll let it rotate. Now these logs are so big that it's like, it's like an ant on a log, like you don't influence its role or tilt, and so you could just walk around on this log. How deep is it though? I mean, these are like turns that you have to make. Yeah, that's the scary part, because if you hit into something, your ass goes flying forward. So you've got to be very vigilant, and then the scariest shit ever is when you're riding a log, and it hits a shallow spot, and it goes like, that was not a log one time I went. And then start lifting it, and so you're like, oh, just terrifying. Like, is someone mannier throughout the night? Like, what happened? Are you dark? No, no, I've never, I've never, you can't, I've never logged through the night. I feel like you'd fall in the river. And the other thing is, if there's one log, there's more logs, and I'm very, very scared of being held underwater, or even worse, like if you have a leg hanging on, and a log or one pinch, I don't want that. That's why it's important information, Street Fighter, October 16th. Okay. You're all buying tickets right now, stopping the pod, going to buy tickets, selling every single showtime out, opening weekend and weekend after the end weekend after that. Also, back in the lab, on tour this fall, Indianapolis, October 23rd through 24th, Alabama, November 6th through 7th, Cleveland, November 13th and 14th. Raleigh, I think that's sold out December 4th and 5th. Columbus, December 11th and 12th. We will see you guys there at the injuries.com. Also, guys, I'm coming to a bunch of cities as well. At the end of this year, this weekend, I'll be in Dallas, Texas, the weekend after that, or two weekends, I'll be in chair in the Arizona, and then I'm going to be in Pasadena, California, San Diego, California, Detroit, Michigan, and then saw Lake City in the new year. You can get tickets right now at Mark Agdon live, Alex. And guys, cancel comedy is back October 29th at Chelsea Table. We have a full night, happy hour, show, and after party. It's all included. One ticket costumes are encouraged, but you will be giving the comics material. See you guys there. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewey hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Okay, sleeping because I'm curious about survival and most of my survival videos are around sleeping. You've yet to describe a way where sleeping feels comfortable at all. And you're out in the Amazon for, you're out of the Amazon for months at a time, whatever. But I imagine there's a place that's a little less Amazonie, where you sleep more comfortably, and then there's a version where you're like deep in the bush, and then that's less comfortable, right? So what's the most comfortable sleeping situation? So I built the world's tallest tree house, because it's the ALTA sanctuary tree house. You know, I used to make it to the top of these trees, and you see, there's this thing called the Invisible Mist River that's above the Amazon. 20 trillion liters of water a day get pumped off the canopy, and that's the whole lungs of our planet thing. And I would see it every day. Get the fuck out of here. Is this real? This is real. You can stay there. Like you can book that. Like people come and stay there. That's why I built it was to share this with the world. My whole thing is I want to share this all with the world. How many stories up is this? It's 110 feet at the deck. So you're 11 story, 11 stories up. Yeah. So when you wake up, you're like I level with spider monkeys and heartbeat, goals, and howling monkeys. It's great because it 4 a.m. when it gets purple in the east and the east is that way where it's blue in that picture. Yeah. At about 4 a.m. it starts getting purple, and you hear the last of the night frogs start to like peter out, and then it's it's like God goes to the switch in the universe and just goes and becomes morning. And the whole jungle just starts tuning its instruments and everything starts going and the howling monkey start going and you're like the day is coming. The sun is coming out and you're standing up there and you're like I'm here for the first day on earth. And it's like the universe is being created. And when you see them a cause flying across the golden mist that's rising in the east off of the greatest display of life on our planet in the universe. You just sit there and you're like every morning, every morning. And so being able to share that with people. So there's a bathroom, a bedroom, you got toilet, Wi-Fi, everything you need up there. That's comfortable. Yeah, he had glib in for it. Yeah. Yeah. Good night. Who's saying what's the most good night? If this is one of those years, have I not learned the good night? The other one right now is not even half. Like where we're sitting right now. Really? Is I mean this is probably what 40 feet? Yeah. If you're standing on the fire escape, you look at us 40 feet. Yeah, we're only 40 feet up. Scroll down a little. I want to see if there's one picture. See that, the stairs. That's people like how do you get up there? That. And then the bed, if you zoom out again, the bed. See like there's a comfortable right there. Down, down, down. That like you're comfortable up there. And so you've got a tail on it. It's like a wedding night. Well, that's a, that's a mosquito net. I wouldn't say that in the marketing. Say, say, "Vail." Say wedding suite. Yeah, it's a wedding veil. That's beautiful. Okay. So this is, that's the comfortable. This is the most comfortable that you can be. Yeah. Now take me to, you're just camping. You pull over the side of a, this is what you like. Yeah. This is the stuff I live for. Okay. This, we're camping. All four of us. You're taking us. Please pull up David. It is a, bring relief cutter ants, eat my tent. I'll tell you the story. I get my tent, brand new tent. Okay. When Lex left the Amazon, he's like, "I'm never going to camp again. Take my tent." So this is a tent that's been used like once. Take this tent and we're on this like little, little mini thing. We just go out to, yeah, this, let's just, let's just wash this and I'll tell you about it. There's a 10 million leaf cutters and an island. Holy shit. It's cutting leaf size holes out of my tent. It means everything else in the Amazon is coming into my tent. I just woke up because there's a leaf cutter ant using its pincher jaws to bite my ear to try and carry off a piece. This is what camping in the wild is. Sometimes you put your tent in the wrong place and it'll leave. Wait for it, wait for the jungle to slide. It's going to be the worst night ever. This is one of those nightmare nights, man. Yeah, don't fuck out of here, tarantula. Like everything in the jungle decided to come into the tent that night. Nah, bro. So that was not fun because you're trying to just sleep and usually you zip your tent. And the jungle's out there and you're like kind of clean and a little bit of sand gets in. That night it was raining and the leaf cutter ants decided. Like I had like 10,000, probably 300,000 because they go in lines. They actually will clear highways through the jungle to push the leaves to the side so they make a trail. And they just, I was in the way. And they were like, we got to, we got to move this tent. So they started taking a part piece by piece. Yeah, and then when they got to me, they started trying, like they literally woke up and I was like, Oh, it was chomping, like they can cut your ear, they can cut you. So is there no way to have a night's sleep when you're. No, that's, I mean, again, that's the, you said what's the best, what's the worst. In between that is a lot of nights where you're like, you know, you hike all day, you're super sweaty. It's not especially fun getting an attempt if you can't jump in water a lot of times or is water to jump in. It's great. Well, because the water will cool you down. Yeah, you cool down and get the sweat off your body. It's probably 90 degrees at night, most of the time. So you cool down, get in your tent, try and fall asleep quick. That's fine. It's not that bad. Camping's not that bad. I hope you experience it soon. Yeah. I hope to be the person that can give this to you. I don't know if I let anybody else do it. Especially camping like upstate. It's like, you know, you go up to the cat skills with the Adirondacks and you can get beautiful spots. And because it's a little chilly, there's no bugs. Yeah. Right. There's nothing that there's no jaguars. There's no one contacted tribes. There's no poachers that are going to, you know, no one's going to show up. You're good. You're good. Take, take us to the un-contacted tribes. Because I think this is something that like, maybe it just taps into the colonizer and me. What, sorry. No, no, no, no, not all of that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But like, the idea that there's a group of people that it lives somewhere and has no clue about external existence, is that what the un-contacted tribe is? Or are they aware of us and they are just operating completely off the grid? The government doesn't really pay them any attention. What does definitionally un-contacted tribe mean? Great question because it's actually the complete sort of like wrong term. When people say, I like, it came out as like, you know, we had an encounter with an un-contacted tribe. This is a, I can't think of another example of this, but it's like, that's what they've been called. So that's what we got to call them so people know what I'm talking about. -Indian. -Indian, that are actually-- -Yeah, Americans. -As an anthropologist, like, stop calling them un-contacted tribes. He always bothers me. This guy, he'll like DM me. And he'll be like, stop calling them un-contacted tribes. And I'm like, what do you want me to call them? And he's like, people living in voluntary isolation. And I'm like, get out of here. -Uncontacted tribes. -They're un-contacted tribes. And they're people that we think, right? 'Cause you have tribes in the Amazon, like, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where they've become very modern, but maintained their native culture, and that they're business owners. They have great ecotourism things, so they're protecting their jungle, but in collaboration with the modern economy. -Kind of fire? -Right, yeah. Like, we still wear feathers at times. We can still walk barefoot in the jungle, but we're also pulling in a few million a year to protect the land that is ours. -If our kid wants to go get educated, they can take advantage of that. Maybe they'll come back here, help us protect this area. -Exactly. -Is that kind of best-case scenario? -That is the best-case scenario, 'cause they use their natural heritage and they continue their way of life. -You can't replace that knowledge, right? Thousands of years of knowledge that's coming down. You know, I can show you how to log in to Instagram in two seconds. For us to understand what JJ was doing about calling in the insects, or for them to know the difference between 5,000 different leaves that all look the same, and they're like, "Hey, but this one will make your mouth numb so we could pull a tooth out." And then I go, "How does it look different than this one? Show me." And they're like, "Oh, come on, you got to taste it." And I'm like, "So you know the taste of all the leaves?" And they're like, "Yes." -What? -And they're like, "You don't?" They're like, "Silly Gringo." And you're like, "Okay, you guys are just beyond me." You have these tribes that are modernizing in a controlled way. You have communities and tribes of people that are getting obliterated, which is unfortunately the norm. You know, the outside world comes in. A road comes in, you know, disease, alcohol. An inability to sort of learn this abstract concept that money gets you food, and that you can no longer just go to the river and get your food. You got to get this other shit and give it to someone to get your food, but then you got to find a way to get more of that shit. It doesn't actually make that much sense in the jungle. And so there's that, it's very difficult to transition. We think that we think that what happens, at least my belief with the own contacted tribes, is that around the turn of the century, rubber boom, there's this horrible period of. -I'm pretty sure it's a little bit of that, but yeah. -Yeah. And so there were tribes that said, "Look, we're not going to be burned at the stake. We're not going to be your slaves." -Yeah. -We're going to go out there and we're going to defend ourselves. They were like the command cheese. They were just like, "You ain't going to get us." And so they went out there and they got their six-foot bow and arrows and they're, you know, anybody that comes in, so they're telling their kids, any of the outsiders show up, kill them first. -Yeah. -Yeah, they're going to kill you. Fair. -I imagine the first introduction was not that bad. The first introduction was. -Meeting like when the rubber, whatever people came over, the un-contacted tribes meet them and they're like, "Hey, this is pretty sick. I've never seen other people before." And then all of a sudden, the rubber people came and they're like, "Well, we're going to need you guys to get the fuck out of the way. We're probably going to kill you all anyway." And then you change your energy when someone comes around again. Like, Margaret's in front of the pot. He's like, "When aliens first come, if they're chill, we're pretty excited about it." If they act crazy, the next time aliens come. -Then we don't contact the tribe. To me, that seems pretty reasonable. -Yeah, it seems pretty reasonable. -Bose the North Sentinel thing that you said? Yeah, like North Sentinel Island is like they're known for being violent, very territorial and very defensive to us. But there was originally contact in like the late 1800s where British explorers went down. I'm sure you know the story better than I do. But basically, they went down there and they kidnapped like five or six of them, brought them back to England, a bunch of them died from disease, and then they repatriated one or two of them. And then from that point forward, they were like, "Hey, these people come in, they abduct our people, they kill our people, they kill our people." -Anybody comes just on a site. -So we just kill sight. -That's the thing when this shows up. -Yeah, which is a very human thing. We can understand that. -I understand that. And that's why they're still alive, by the way. The only reason they're still alive. And so a few years ago, the Sentinel Island people, some dipshit with a little boat, little robo, he got over there and he was like, "I got a Bible," and they were like, "We fell for that one before." -Yeah, they were like, "You don't think the last people came with a Bible?" Having that, that's hilarious in my body. I mean, he just thought, you thought. And so these uncontested, so you're saying like, "Oh, the first time. If you read Columbus or Pizarro's journals, they showed up and the native people were like, you're a textile, like you're a feather." -I'd be stoked. -They were like, "You guys are amazing. Look at your ships." -They were like, "You want to talk?" -They were like, "Yeah." -They're like, "You got women. We got women." -Yeah. -We could talk. -Or as long tits. -Yeah, like we got different types. -Yeah, blue eyes. And so the reception from the native people always seems to be rather friendly until it's the fucking conquistadors that are like, wrap 'em up, burn a few of them, and it's like, "Dude, what were you doing?" -Yeah. -Immediately. I think Columbus even wrote in his journal, he's like, "The people are very friendly, they're very nice, and they're easy to enslave." -Yeah, I think it's like basically what he writes. -Yeah, like bro. -Yeah, it's horrible. It's actually horrible because you could have made friends easily. -They could have helped you because their whole colony fell apart in the Caribbean. And how they had the native people there, they probably would have done way better. -Oh, interesting. -Mm-hmm. -And so the rubber boom, these rubber barons went down, and here's the thing, the only way to get latex out of the jungle, which we needed now, for the industrial revolution, hoses, gaskets, tires, everything. The latex was only in the Amazon, in the jungle, in the rubber trees. And Henry Ford tried, he was like, "I'm just going to plant Ford Landia. I'm just going to make a plantation, a giant one of rubber, so I'm going to get it all, wouldn't grow." And that leaf light killed it all. So then they were like, "The only way to do this is to get the native people to do it." And so they would go down there and be like, "You all are going to go get latex all day." And they were like, "For what?" Oh, that's my boy right there, top left. He got shot in the head by one of those arrows. And so anyway, what they would do is they would burn these people and then be like, "You'll do it because we're going to game it thrones you. We're going to like flay you." And so the uncontacted tribes were like, "That is not going to happen to us." And so they went out there. "We're going deep and if you come, it's on." Then it's on. Yes, she's not on the list. Oh, so this person got shot in the head. Yeah, he's alive. He's very alive. What's that all the time? Wait a minute, but he's one of my rangers, yes. He was trying to communicate with an uncontacted tribe. Whoa, what was that? Yeah. And major distractions. Huge distractions. What did you bring up the milk for? He's talking about the rubber trees. I'm trying to find out what was that. He's trying to go, just trying to take time. He's having Paul Rosy Ignacio. I don't know. I'm sure like I'm sure he comes up. He's a local guy who was in charge of managing an interaction. And I read the detailed stories in the book. And he was trying to keep her, by the way, available. Everywhere books are available. New York Times best seller, no big deal, continue. Yeah, a lot of blood required to make that book. Yeah, the conquistador. I don't know. A lot of my blood got spilled to be able to tell those stories, but Ignacio was trying to peacefully interact with these uncontacted tribes, and they shot him in the head, and he almost died. With what? With the arrow that he's holding in that picture, they have six foot arrows. We would call them spears. Yep. Right. And they can hit a spider monkey at 120 feet straight up. So hitting a guy who's standing there is pretty easy. You're not going to miss. So they hit him in the head. He was trying to get away from them because they were, you know, they're getting more and more agitated. And they dove under the river as they're going for them. And he came up and looked back. And he said he saw it coming straight into his eyeball. And he said, you know, an electron hyperspeed of them all. He like moved his head. and it just went, "Oh, hit him on the side of the head." And the bamboo ripped him and it like took off, like made a big flap on his scalp. And so he blacked out and then he had to get helicopter evact. They were able to like CB radio back to the government, even though there were four days from the nearest court. And somehow he lived. Bless you. - I mean, you could have bled out he was easily. - He was, I have a picture of him in the book. - Wait, you're with him when this happens? - No, no, no, no, this happened in 2019. But then me and him were together when we ran into the tribe and he was the one that was keeping us safe from getting shot. He was the one like telling us. - All right, when you look, that's him shot in the head. I mean, bleed out, man, that's him on the stretcher. - Yeah, it's just a puddle. - Yeah, that's the scar right there. - And that's the scar, exactly. - Okay, so you meet the uncontacted tribe for the first time. - Yeah. - Are you aware that you're in their territory? Are you like, yeah. - This is great. - This is great. - Please. - I need you to, I need this, I need this because I need this, okay. (laughing) - No, 'cause in January, we sort of like came out and told the world, we were like, hey, we saw this 'cause it was a year before that that we saw them. And you have to understand. So jungle keepers is trying to protect the whole watershed because JJ told us too, right? - Can you tell me what a watershed is? - A watershed is like, you know, think of a basin of a, well, the Amazon basin is a giant watershed. The Hudson Valley is a watershed. So all the little streams that are flowing into the Hudson are part of this watershed. - Is that watershed from the Andes in the Amazon? - Yeah, the one where you guys see it's perfect. So you see, basically all roads lead to the Amazon. All rivers lead to the Amazon. So everything that's coming off the Andes there is coming down and eventually traveling thousands of miles across the continent to lead to the Amazon, which flows out into the Atlantic Ocean. - Holy shit, so it all starts over here. - Yeah, so through a tennis ball in the river. - It likes in Rio, I mean, wherever the frickin' is present. - But hypothetically, it doesn't get stuck. - It looks like lungs, that is crazy. - It does, it looks like the inside of our lungs and it is the lungs of our planet. - Okay, so take us there. So you're on contact to tribe. - So we're trying to protect this whole watershed, right? So this is an important part of what I do. The reason I write these books, the reason I come up here and talk to everybody is 'cause we're trying to save a part of the Amazon. - Can you show us real quick where it is by, like where the watershed is? - My watershed, yeah. - Yeah, type in Madre Didio's Peru. - Okay, well he does that. - So you're trying to save this watershed because JJ, when I got there, said, this is the wildest place, we started exploring it. It is, and that's again, this is what I'm right around the book. The first few years I was there, it was just like, it was pure avatar. It was just green from horizon to horizon and you could explore this jungle that was packed with wildlife. And it's like Earth before humans messed it up. It's like Earth the day God made it. It's just left there, growing for 55 million years. And I love animals and it's filled with animals. That's gotta be the worst map on the internet. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's on juggledkeepers.com. - No, that's very bad. - There, right there, I see it. - Oh no, that's the second worst map. - We just go to satellite areas on maps. - That's easier. - Yeah. Okay, so you see right above where it says in the red Madrididios, there's a long river. Right there. - That line. - That line says Alta Sanctuary Treehouse right there. - Oh, that's you. - There we go. - That's where you go. So we're trying to protect that whole watershed. Now the very head waters are already in a national park, which is great. - So you don't have to worry about it. We don't have to worry about it. - Ideally. Now we're trying to protect the lower part so you see that yellow line? - Yep. - Trans-Amazon Highway. That's the IMF and the World Bank in Brazil and trying to come together and go on. Let's get the resources out of the heart of the Amazon. - Fuck. - That's the parasite. That's like that's the death metastasizing into the jungle to try and draw it out. And so that's come right past us. And so there's all these logging off-shoot roads that are coming towards us. And so the land that JJ and I used to explore, that used to just be jungle, just green. You see it looks like it has smallpox now. You see that on either side of the road, you start getting these people clear stuff. - Oh wow. - And so, man, that's the cutest way of saying, we're trying to protect this river and the uncontacted tribes live in the upper reaches of this river. And the reason I said I need you to ask me this question is because when I told people that we were working on this river and we didn't contact the uncontacted tribes, we were there one day and they came out. And they said, you know, we don't know about World War II or Jesus or civilization, we never even heard the name of the country we live in. But they're like, we do want bananas. (laughing) And they're like urgently. - And we're killing people. (laughing) - Like it was a problem. Like it was there. - There are machines. - Banana emergency. - Is there a native tone, or are they speaking Spanish? - Oh. - They're speaking a language that nobody speaks. - So they're just describing banana. - Nobody's describing it. (laughing) - They're like, I'm mad at you, you gotta handle that one. - These tribes are terrifying. - Get the fuck out of here. - They're like, you must have been at it for a year or all times. So the people, the communities that we do work with speak the Yine language. - Yeah. - And the Yine language is similar enough to what the Moscow pure or nomolo people speak. That it's a rough transition. - You can get there. - And I always make the comparison that I've been in Italy and I speak enough Spanish. And I'm like, I don't really speak Italian, even though I'm Italian American. And I'm like, I speak Spanish and they're like, I know what you're saying. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - They're like, goodbye. - Yeah, yeah, you need a bathroom. - Yeah. - And so they need bananas bad. - They need bananas bad because they're still hunter-gatherers. They're living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. - How many people roughly show up? - Fuck me. - That day, I don't want to get the numbers wrong 'cause you know what happens? People watch my shit more closely than I do in the. - It's like a hundred or like five. - I want to say like a hundred 'cause there was numerous people out on the beach and the anthropologist was like, put down your bows, put down your weapons and they're like walking in on us. Like, I mean, they came from up the beach. And I'll never forget it 'cause I got chills down my spine 'cause it's like the thing you never think could happen. - Do you worry about jaguars? - It's like aliens landing or like seeing a dinosaur. It's like, we're looking down the beach and there were dogs barking and people running and we're all on the side of this community and you just see these figures coming and they're like stalking across the beach like this. Like they're moving the way you think they would move and they got their bows and arrows out and they're like, you're like moving back and you're like, holy shit. And you're like, am I? - Am I still safe? - No. - Are they about to come in here and just wreck the village? Like, we don't know what's gonna happen. And there's, you're two days from police, right? So you're not in society anymore. You're out in the jungle. So you're out past the boundary of civilization. So you're whatever happens happens. It's the Wild West. So if they decide to start shooting, it's like, you start going, how many shotguns do we have? How many working, should we start going? How many working shotguns do we have right now? Right here, right now. And they're like six, and you're like, holy shit. You cross the beach and you're like, there's 55 visible people with six foot arrows and they're carrying packets of more of them. And you're like, we are out guns, like 30 to one. And so, you know, the anthropologist gone, please put down your bows. We are not enemies, no more brothers, no more they kept saying no more brothers. And so then they indicated that they were like, we want food, we want bananas, like no joke. They want bananas and we pushed a boat across, which is exactly what Ignacio was doing when he got shot in 2019. And so they very carefully piled up a boat with bananas and pushed it across, and they like jump on it. You might be able to find this video type in Polaro's Young Contact. It tries to, I don't know if it's just up there. I don't know, but to either YouTube or something, but there might be a clip of it, but there's a moment that they all hit this boat. And it was, I mean, it was so surreal. I remember that day trying to, trying to be super present. And it's weird, you get into that meditation thing where you go, how do I be super present? Like, how do I, I was like, looking at it and I was like, rubbing my eyes and I'm going, I am looking at these, these people are right there. But it felt like historic, there it is. I said, I'm coming across the beach. Yep. And they're pointing at us. They're like, look at this. So they're wearing rope around their waist. It's like haircuts, it look like hipsters. Yeah. I think they had like one machete in the whole group. So they would grab the front of their hair and just cut the bangs. Oh. So these were the guys that had put down their bows. There you go. That's the spot right there. It's coming. Wow. And so when they get them, what you're seeing here is this sort of, it's not like they're grabbing the bananas and they're like, cool, we'll divvy them up later. And we all got bananas. They're, they're like, my bananas, my banana. You're banana, you're banana. Oh, wow. Notice they're not sharing this. Look at the urgency. Otherwise, they could just grab the boat and chill. What are they? Why are they grabbing them like that? That's, that was, that's like changes your heart when you see that. You go, what are they doing? And then you go, I hope to get the boat back. Do they? They did, because they wanted more bananas. Oh, wow. And do you have any more? Well, we gave them all the bananas. And then the scariest part was like, you know, We're all focused very very, very forward. We're looking at all this. Yeah, that guy, he got his hands on a jungle keeper shirt. So these naked people have been in the jungle for centuries. No clothes. That dude gets a first shirt and he's got a jungle keeper's logo right on here. So he's walking off into the jungle and I was like, man, he has no idea. And the reason I said I need to tell this story is because since then, you had these people come out and they're like, how could you exploit these people by publishing their images without their permission, you know what, since the book came out and since that footage came out, we were able to protect 20,000 acres of pristine rainforest where they live. And they'll never know about it, but they're safe now because we protect them. And because people all over the world saw that footage and so we got to keep them safe. Like let them keep living like that. And if they want to come in, they can come in. That's their choice. But if they want to stay out, they should be able to stay out. And the problem is that the loggers, the gold miners, the narco trafficers will come in and kill them. You know, the bows and arrows are scary until you have an AK47 and it'll be like, I guess the biggest threat to them is loggers coming in and just actively murdering them to take the land. So the loggers, interestingly enough, loggers are mostly really chill. It's interesting. You know, it's like your parents are like, watch out for drug dealers and then you're like, they're my friends, I don't know any drug dealers, but my buddy Steve sells weed. Exactly. I've never met a scary one, they're just my dolom. And like so like loggers tend to be local guys that are working for their families and that's who we turn into the rangers because like JJ will be like, yo, my brother Pico was a logger. Like let's have him drive boat. Great. You want a better job and then you realize, wait, they're not bad guys. They're friends. They haven't hired you. Yeah. And that's, and that's sort of that thing is sort of the higher message here is like, there's a way to fix all this. Like, you know, the world doesn't have to be ending like we're smart enough to fix a lot of these problems. But like the biggest threats of them, narco traffickers, why what happens with the narco traffickers? Because the narco traffickers are going out into the jungle into the wildest places and so this is an interesting problem that we never anticipated because when I went out there, it was the wildest place on earth, it took days to get there, nobody could get there. And then, you know, about a two years ago, the narcos showed up and they, they, they, they, you know, we always heard, you know, the stuff comes in legend first, then it comes real. You hear these uncontacted tribes out there and you go, that's bull, it's got to be bullshitting. There's no way that's real. And then they walk out of the jungle, you're like, holy shit. And then they were like, you know, now there's narcos, you're like, how was there narcos? Where are there narcos? You're like, they wait for that bend in the river. They cut the trees back into an airstrip and so they get, they get a long bend in the river and then a turn as they cut an airstrip back so they lower the plane, fly right over the river and fly under the jungle. So then you have the trees at 150 feet and so no one's able to surveil down. Otherwise, you'll be able to see it through the airstrip. You can't see through the trees. Hold on. Yeah. The airstrip that they're cutting is under the trees is under the tree line. Yeah. So the plane uses the river as like the beginning of the landing strip as the entry point. This is on some like- Yeah, so that's fine. Starke shit. Where the- This smart. I got some rings. Okay. So the plane lands, but the plane also has to exit. Right? There's definitely no pictures of this. No, no, the plane does not have to exit because you go down, you fly under the trees and then you have a hallway. Exactly. You go to the end. Turn around and then fly back out. Back out. And so, you know, the problem with this is the narcos go in and they are not local loggers who are trying to feed their family. These are professional drug traffickers killers. And they know if anybody messes with their business, they put them down. And so when they, you know, they'll hear about the tribes and they're like, that's- Because they're usually coming from other parts of the Amazon and they're like, wow, you look at all that green jungle, they're like, no cops are going out there. Yep. So like, so we'll go out there. So they do the work to get out there. And then they find out there's these naked people out there and they're like, well, we're just killing. And nobody's going to know. And no one's going to know. And so that's a horrific thing. And we've been working with Peruvian authorities to stop that. But the most significant thing that we've done is just get, you know, we're- we're- do things. People go, I'll get these questions or people go, I say like, we're just protected. We just bought 20,000 acres of the Amazon that's now protected and people go, you can't buy the Amazon. It's just the Amazon. And listen, the proving government's cut it up into logging concessions. So what I figured out with JJ is we buy it before it's destroyed and add it to what we're trying to make is this national park that saves the whole- You're never going to make everybody happy, Paul. It's always going to be so- You could literally be a mother Teresa trying to save the Amazon with the- with rainbows surrounding you and angels and they'd be like, fuck you. You're the same mother Teresa. Yeah. Like literally. They're like, she's terrible. Yeah. Oh, there you go. Say literally. That's the thing. It's like, it's almost like you just kind of convince the people that you can convince and get the support that you want and then just accept it. You also got to understand what the internet now so much is not even real, some of those criticisms could be coming from cartel groups that are lobbying against you and protecting territory that they would like to exploit. Same thing with the logging, same thing. I would be shocked if billion dollar corporations are not spending hundreds of thousand dollars in bots and fake accounts just to put out hit pieces against anybody getting in their way. It happens all the time in every other industry while they're happening. I agree with you except for that the guys that we're dealing with on this level, I think they're the guys that sell it to the guys that sell it to the guys. Oh, these are the- They aren't doing anything. They aren't doing anything. I'm talking to people building the highways in Amazon. Yeah. You're really lobbying. You're the government because you're like, hey, I'm going to protect the thing you were supposed to protect. Yeah, yeah. And the government doesn't love it. Yeah. So interestingly, I was talking to the Peruvian minister of interior, forget what it was. We're sitting there and he was like, I love goldmine and he's like, because it makes a lot of money. And I was like, you realize goldmine destroys the forest and he's like, he looks at me and he goes, yeah, but what do you want my people to do? He's like, they got to eat. And I was like, listen, if you destroy that forest, your people are going to eat for three years while they wreck everything you can see and turn it into a, like, the wasteland, like, dune. You keep that forest. You establish eco-tourism. You do carbon credits. You make European countries pay you to keep this habitat up. You have water now. And you have rain and you can do agriculture. Your country continues to have resources as the rest of the world falls apart. Yeah. It's almost like long-term. It's like investing. You don't have it today. But later, you got to incentivize them with capitalism. Which is fine. Yeah. No, if it works for it, then why not? Like, your ultimate goal is to protect this resource. But it can't be sold to them like, hey, this is really important and beautiful. We have to protect it. You have to almost like appease their greed. But it's not even greed. It's the way things work. If there's land, people are going to build on it. Yeah. Yeah. I see this in the US. People in Harret land. And then they're like, well, if I make subdivisions on it, I can make a couple million. And then like, I'm out. Yeah. And it's like, well, then the capitalist entropy is always to destroy the nature. Also, if you're like a democratically elected politician, you've got to prove that you've done something good. And if the economy looks good for two years because you've been selling goldmining rights all of a sudden, people are like, well, no, most people don't live in the Amazon. So the people in the country are going, that's been pretty good. The economy's coming. They don't realize it. What's happening? Exactly. Now, as far as the narco economy goes, like, why are they choosing this place? It seems so difficult to survive. Not completely. No cops are going to show up. But what are they doing? Are they growing up? They're growing and turning it into cocaine. And then they take it down the rivers and they take it out. They figure it out. They're probably the inspiration, like, as far as like the other. It's a small operation. Growth and processing is all done out there. Yes. And then once it leaves the Amazon, it's already packaged ready to go. Oh, once it hits that highway. Forget it. Have you ever come across these, like, packaging and growth sites? So I have not come across a packaging. I've come across growth sites. I've never come across. We're actually making it like a lab. I've come across them transporting it. And I've seen the guys with guns on the boats. But at the time, I was coming down river after a multi-day solo and I was just in this little yellow raft, a pack raft, you know, my backpack. And they pulled up on me and they were like, what are you doing out here? And I was like, I picked up my camera. I was like, I'm a photographer. And they were like, where's your guide? They were like, what are you doing? If you, yeah, you're a gringo farmer. Where's your guide? You look like special ops, bro. I'm not in the lab. Well, this is the problem. They were like, fuck you. You're innocent. Where are you? And I was like, what could I, I was literally, Spanish was good enough at the time. I was like, what could I possibly do to you? I was like, I'm going that way. You're going this way. I was like, I got no problems. I was like, also, I've been out here for a week. You guys got any cigarettes. And they were like, we got you. They threw me some cigarettes. I was like, yeah, cool. Yeah. It was like, we're good. Yeah. You know, but they, they're, the first reaction is like, we'll just, we'll just turn you to juice. Yeah. But you said that Narcos is new like within the last once to two years. So what's to stop them from attacking you guys? Well, they, they have, they've, they've me and JJ and really, really now the, the rest of the team. Like two years ago, not two years ago, a year and a half ago, they actually tried. They actually had people on a road stop our pickup truck. And they came in with guns and just happened to be a day that I wasn't there. there and GG wasn't there and pulled the car over, they pulled their driver out of gun point. They took his cell phone and wallet and they literally like, yo, just tell them we didn't get him today, but we're going to get him next time. So hit out on you full hit, full hit. And so, you know, now when we're down there, you know, the old days it would be like me on a boat with a motor looking for frogs and snakes. And now when I go down there, there's 10 security guards waiting at the airport to escort me to wherever I got to go. And I can't go anywhere alone. Like unless I'm really in the interior, anytime I'm on a road, like there's no more like going to a cafe in town. There's no more driving my boat on the river none of that. There's got to be three guys, at least three guys of me at all times that aren't. No fuck because they would do a hit even in town on you, especially in town. Just sitting there and there's more concentration of people. So then, you know, someone goes, yo, aren't you looking to that, you know, that bearded Italian guy with the fucking nose? And they're like, yeah, there's not that many of them here. And they're like, yo, get down, go right. And then they just, you know, what does it take for them to walk up behind you while you're sipping an espresso and just you're done. They're on a motorcycle. They're out. Yeah. I think it's time to work from home. Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a way to negotiate with them. Like, we can't put a, we can't take like our legal system and apply it to the beginning of time. So is there a way to just be like, Hey, guys, like I'm not going to interfere with you guys are doing I'm just in conservation. Yeah. I'm not looking to your direction to look at mine. There's a, there's a problem I have with that is, you know how Batman doesn't use guns, negotiating with people that are selling drugs to, to people and, and bringing human trafficking girls into prostitution. Yeah. And murdering the uncontacted tribes, me being like, will be cool as long as you don't shoot me. Yeah. They're bad guys. Yeah. And like, we're not, we're not, they're not going to operate good faith. No. And what we're trying to do is build this national park that protects the indigenous people that are earning an honest living. And, and there's really, there's no, like, inclusivity stops at murder drug. I'm not saying I'm just saying you getting killed. Yeah. Would ultimately hurt this region. Yeah. Far more. Yeah. But, working with the proven authorities to find a way to bring the law out there. Like part of what Jungle Keepers does now is we work with the proven, because the people call their South America, they're probably, they're on board, huh? They're on board. They're like, look, we want to make our country better. Yeah. And they're like, we want to go out there, but that's two days. We don't, our department doesn't give us the gasoline. And we don't have the ammunition and we don't have enough handcuffs to get 50 different narcos. And so what we come in as we go, look, you guys got everything you need. Go out there and get them. And so they pull the narcos off the land. They do it however they do it. And then we go get that land at it to the reserve. And then that's more land that's safe for millions of animal heartbeats, ancient trees, the uncontacted tribes, everything. And what's cool about this project is that, you know, a lot of organizations are trying to protect the environment. We're like, the ocean. Yeah. Yeah. And I like, where does that starter end? Yeah. And so with this, we're trying to protect this watershed, right? And so there's a start and a finish. If we, there's a success line, there's a finish line. And so if we can protect the watershed and the proving government agrees, they said, okay, you did all the hard work. We sign an intellectual, the legislation. This is protected. I protected it. It had a success. So you get them off the land. You take that land and then we take the bad guys. What do you do with the agriculture? It's medicinal. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm seeing stuff start to happen. I don't know if you've been to any of the Indigenous peoples like homes. Yeah. Like have you pulled up to like their village? I don't know what you call it. There's like a town. Indigenous or uncontacted. I guess. Uncontacted. I'd be dead. But the Indigenous villages. Yeah. What does it look like? They usually do a platform. And it's a lot of times a fast route. Very simple. No walls. And so when I'm down there, I live the way they do. Like an a frame, no walls. So even when I'm living comfortably at base, I'm living in a situation where like when I sleep at night, birds, bats, jaguars, whatever, it can all come in my room. What about mosquitoes? How are they handling mosquitoes? They a lot of times make a make a fire at night. I mean, people have. But you can't make fire over there. It's difficult, but they know how to do it. Got it. Yeah. I haven't figured out some type of pace you can make to. There's mosquito repelling. But half of the mosquito repellent that we use, they just like it better. Oh, really? Yeah. This picture of the mosquitoes like they prefer. They put the picture a little girl eating a monkey head because I had to babysit for this little girl and we were living in an outskirts of an indigenous community. And it was like time for her to eat, you know? And I was like, what do you got? And she opens the pot and there was a monkey head. Whoa. And she just starts pulling pulling there. She is dire. She's adorable. Yeah. And so she just started eating. Oh, wow. She started in a monkey face. And she was like, I can't get the ear off. And I was like, well, do it for you. And it's like now we're both sharing this monkey head. You know, and she's, well, as she's eating a turtle, she dug into that turtle, man. She loved that thing. What's the wildest shit that you've eaten that we would be surprised by? None of the public shocks you. A monkey head. I would say that's monkey head. That takes the cake. That's Indiana Jones shit. I never, I never anticipated that, you know, and again. Yeah. Oh, my God. What is the audio? It's a unique song that this woman was singing while she was so. Oh, no. She was getting in there. Wow, that's beautiful. Yeah, sure thing. She's getting in there. Oh, yeah. Look at that girl. Yeah, yeah. She's not even eating like the nose or the, she's getting into like the under side, pulling out the good part. Yeah, she is. She's getting the good. I'm not hurt that. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. She's adorable. Get it. But she's tough to, because she'll take like a giant grub this big. What's a grub? Like a grub, a larva of a beetle. Interesting line. That's like line king with a succumbed like poop in to moan with a sucking down the grub. It's under a tree line. It's a big old slob thing. What's he been? A grub in the city, guys. A dick too. We don't like that. That's where the line comes from. Yeah. Grub in the city. Yeah. We don't have a city in the city. We don't like it, grub. Didn't make it. Mulan. I was watching Mulan, gosh. All right, guys. 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That means. I mean, I, you know, some might say some might say. I mean, let's check the standing. Oh, there's the number one in the primary league right now. That's convenient. For me to root for whoever's on top. That's what I'm saying. I'm a fan at my soul and you're going to go for Arsenal. The number one. It's hard. My point is the next would never do a man city did rad up. But if you've root for man city now, you're going to be able to ride them all the way from the bottom. Yeah, but they were rats. I'm in New York. Or I can't be a rat. No, you can't be a rat. Come on. That's like rooting for Brooklyn. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. You're thinking me and that's been yo, yo, that's so true right here. If you're New Yorker still rock, actually, I respect you if you're New Yorker still rocking with the nets. Because you were a Nick van your whole life and you had to watch the greatest somewhere. Oh, okay. They got KD and they were like, oh, I love the net. You were loyal little bitch. Okay. Yeah, man city is probably going to get relegated. So what are the chances? Well, this is just total from Calche's like their general EPL relegation market, which had been running since the beginning of the season. And man city jumped up 30%. Not again, relegated. They're second in the table right now. You got to relegate the rats, man. You can't rat yourself. What do they do wrong? No, they've used their money smart and one. They aren't. Do you even know what the allegation is? Is that what they're accused of? They're accused of being super good with money. I'm I thought I thought that was time. I thought that was time. It does that. They don't know. But why do you think them? Is that the the army? The Spurs. The Spurs on me. Are they good at that? That's what people said on to me. Oh, okay. Yeah. If you use their just spending their money wisely, then I might have to jump on board. Yeah. I guess you have to check it out. But it looks like they're going to get relegated. They're relegated. They're going to be a 60s and 66% of man cities at 35%. Man, shout out Coventry City, man. We rock with you, bro. We rock with you. 100%. Not a set of braces in that city. You know, that feels north, right? Yeah. What part of England is that? I think their crest actually has teeth on it. No way. I mean, that would be a fire cross. Yeah. Also, ip switch. Yeah. ip switch in whole city. Man. Yeah, dude. Anyway, respect, man. We got to get we got to get back to the pot. Meet new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Jelly mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all day comfy grip. No tightness. No stickiness. No residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Maybe it's Maybelline. And from New York, why the jungle like usually you do bad in school, you go to the military. Yeah. Why the jungle? That is a great question. Nature versus nurture. I don't know. I, I just remember from being about three and my parents, we moved out of Bay Ridge, went to Jersey. And I think they, part of them, they both wanted trees and nature. And on the weekends, I was like, take me to the stream. You know, I would be lifting rocks looking for salamanders. I've always been very connected to animals, peep. I mean, the Anaconda's, the monkeys out of the river, the, the, I tend to have elephants. I tend to have animal encounters, whether or not I want them. And they, like, I've rescued so many animals. And so even as a kid, this, this thing was there where we'd be walking and I'd be like, my parents are from Brooklyn. And I'd be like, do you see that snake in the tree? And there'd be a six foot black snake in a tree. And like, they'd never seen anything like that in their lives. And they're like, what is this kid? You know, I'd be like, look, there's a red-tailed hawk, you know, and just spotting things. Yeah. And that was, I think that, that's what happens with kids though, then you see what gets a reaction out of people. Yeah. And so part of it was my innate love for it. And part of it was I was like, all right, I think I'm good at this. Did they nurtured it? They thought it was cool. And then they nurtured it. And then they were like, look, my mom was a big, like, no, no TV. Get out of the house. Yeah. And also just you're not allowed to watch junk. Like, they're like, you can watch like David Attenborough's, Steve Irwin or like old black and white movies. Yeah. The classy stuff. And so I grew up on Steve Irwin. He's someone that I don't think anybody can really criticize Steve Irwin Jane Goodall. Those are two people you've never seen. They'll find the way, bro. They'll find the way. I hope not. Is that about, what is it, what they criticize Steve that he's like handling the animals rough for something like that? This is. These are bunny hoggers. These are the people. These are the people that I was on a. Bunny hogger. They're bunny hoggers. I was on a podcast called a meteor podcast a couple weeks ago. And they're like, they're hunters, right? These are the guys out west at hunt as their primary interaction. But I didn't realize like all of the conservation area in the U.S., they're the ones managing it. The people you know eating drinking green juice on the coasts and advocating for the rights of turkeys, they're not the ones making sure that like BLM lands are, this is Bureau of Land Management probably. You don't have to tell him that. Different stickers. Yeah, yeah. But like you realize, you know, these guys, yeah, they're taking a deer or an elk, but they're also hyper vigilant about how those populations are doing. Hyper vigilant about making sure that the politicians don't put roads through those areas. Yeah. And that those ecosystems continue and that there are trout in the streams. Yeah. And so there's that juxtaposition of like, yeah, we hunt, yeah, we fish because we care. Yeah. And actually those, those, those ecosystem services that come standard with life on earth, they only get messed up when people stop relying on them. Like if we all were eating salmon out of the river, we'd be like, do not fuck with the river. There was a, I think you were talking to Lex about it, but it was about a some sort of like ranch, I'm not exactly sure it was where they had rehabilitated and like started to breed like rhinos or something like that. But you could also hunt on the ranch. But it was done in a way like you couldn't do with rhinos, it was done with certain species where if you didn't hunt enough of them, they might cause problems in the ecosystem, etc. I think that seems like hard for some people to conceptualize when like if their brain, their brain almost goes to an unnatural place with animal life where they're like, no animals will be killed ever and nothing should happen about it. And like once you probably have experience in these actual ecosystems as you do, you understand that like death is a very unbearably natural process in this place. It's kind of all death. >> I mean, everything's death. Life is a momentary stasis. The jungle is just a meat grinder, it's just, and so then you come to treasure life. And so let's go back to the spider monkey on that, but the thing that like when I have students come, we have student groups come to the Amazon and I'll, one of the tricks I'll play on them is we'll be like, guys, we're all eating vegetarian for a few days because we don't care about nature. And after like two days, you'll get, usually it's one of the guys for us, we'll be like, yo man, he's like, I need some meat, you know, like, yeah, you do. Yeah, I know you do. And like, how do you, you know, you're like, I'll be like, well, I eat lots of meat. And I'm like, you guys want meat, you're going to have to kill a chicken. And most of the kids are like, we're not doing that. I'm like, do you eat chicken every day? Yeah, you want someone else to go? You bring in a chicken, like, oh, he's cute. There's one girl, she was like, I can't, I can't watch this. And I said, what are you studying? And she goes, I'm a veterinary student. I said, you know what you're going to do? You know, how many dogs are you going to have to put down as a veterinary student? I was like, you watch me kill this chicken. And she was like, I can't. I was like, you're going to have to change majors. Yeah. You know, and it's so quick. You know, you put a chicken's head on the log, you calm them down, you're going to drink a water, and then you just take a machete and go, whack. There's no suffering. There's no period of discomfort, it lights out. And so as long as it's done really ethically, and learn that that's how you eat, or you have a condo's rest of your life. Whatever you want to do, but even those, you know, I don't know. I just think that dire over here eating a monkey, as shocking as it is to eat a primate, it's not super appealing that face. But I do think that there is almost a sacred beauty about being connected to our ecosystems and we become so disconnected to the point that people think that it's bad to like, to hunt an elk. You know, and in this country, we're going to have a part of the ecosystem, we're eat. We have ecologists working with the government to say, we're going to make sure that these, that we're not depleting this population. And in fact, what we're going to do is keep it at the carrying capacity where it's doing good. And then your people will be like, that's terrible as a shut up. I just, I don't do bunny huggers. I got, I got a journal to protect. I have one mission in life. I don't concern myself with anything else, and if they have a problem with it, they should come out. I think they want to go talk to the un-contacted tribes about not eating turtles. Like, I understand like hunting if you're going to actually consume the animals, but what about just game hunting? So I don't like trophy hunting at all, but in Africa right now, there's a lot of land. This is like one of those truths that whether you like it or not, a lot of the land, like you're saying, that is protected for wildlife is either phototourism or game hunting sometimes both. And so the places that I've worked in Africa have been hunting reserves where they don't hunt the rhinos or the elephants. Yeah. But things like zebra's and water buffalo and things you're talking about, people paying 80 grand to hunt a buffalo. No one's going to pay 80 grand to take a picture of a buffalo. And so you make 80 grand on an old buffalo who's messing up the younger buffaloes. But that's an important distinction, because at least I. you said, it is like the ecosystem isn't exactly balanced because there's security and safety there. So you have served populations that start to like fluctuate an age, older buffalos hanging around, not giving the younger buffalos the opportunity to like create their prides or whatever of families they're just they're over the hill they're on their way out. They would be taken out by a predator that might not exist in that capacity there. So there's a version where you can make the argument that you are ethically game hunting these animals. The other thing is high powered rifle is going to kill an animal like that, right? Hard shot. A team of hyenas is going to rip them apart. You know, when you see the animal like looking backwards as they're pulling, it's guts out. It's like, dude, you know what? I'll take the 357, I'm like, I'm cool, like, yeah, I, and so, and so look, that one's complicated. You know, I think this is way above the pay grade of bunny huggers, you know, like, understanding, like eating a trout is like where we start the one on one level, the complexities of like big game hunting and other one. And so what like you mentioned this before, and I don't want to miss it because it's important. But when I pulled that spider monkey out of the river, people said two things. They said, A, there's no way you were speaking spider monkey. And I said, I sure as hell was, you didn't trust me until I spoke spider monkey. And next people are saying, well, why, most people are like, thank you, right? Save the spider monkey. Some people are going, why didn't you? How could one just let it die? Bro, you gotta get a dating app just to put that picture up, bro. The damage that that picture would do when a dating app, go back to that, that's mad, Mark, that's mad, Mark. I know you married, but God, Henry Cavill, he held it a monkey out of the river. So that's better than a fish pick. I feel like that's what a lot of guys go in for a new fish drink. He's dragging a monkey out of the fucking river. Yeah, of course. Can't get that wet, can't get that sure wet. We got to save the answer before I get to that. Let's walk it through the monkey in like two seconds before I get to that. A big game, Mark made a great point. Which is like, sometimes you'll see these, you should say, but about the nature docs where they're like, you can't. Oh, yeah, yeah. Where do we go? I thought there's a great point. There's nature docs, I think there's one I can think of specifically where there's a big like pit in the Arctic and a penguin fell in and got stuck and the penguins trying to climb up and slides back down, tries to climb up, slides back down and film crews up above and they're filming it. And then the narrator comes on, he's like, due to all contract with nature, we down in a vein and we leave this penguin to die, cut to black and I'm at home with my wife and my son. I'm like, what? Yeah. Die of starvation and exposure in the middle of a pinch like how is and it's like, we're a part of nature in a to an extent, like, we are in my mind if I'm there and I would like to believe this film crew did not let the penguin die and that they're like, okay, technically because we're filming permits, we have to say this and that they went in there and launched them out of the pit. But there was one where they did that. There was a whole column. I saw that one. There's a whole comic column. There's like several hundred penguins and then whatever reason, like the way that they got down to this area was too steep to get back up and they just made a decision and they filmed it all and they carved steps into this thing and they saved the whole colony far. But like, again, this could be AI videos that I watched, but is it not abnormal that like if a certain animal sees like a baby version of prey that they won't kill it? Yeah. That's just weird. That's a weird like, you were like found a feather glitch and he's back. He's kind of burst and you kill him. Do you have any chickens? That's a weird one. There's a few examples of that where like a lion will kill a gazelle and the baby will be left over and then it's like, maybe this baby's okay and then it'll kind of take care of it for a few days. But I think that the thing of leaving animals, here's the thing. If you're interrupting a predation event, for example, if there's let it go, let it go. Then don't do not. Of course. What you're saying is like, if some hyenas are attacking a zebra, no matter how brutal it is. It is what it is. Yeah. I watched a cheetah and her cubs rip apart an Impala and she was pregnant so she couldn't get away. And what they did, the cheetah caught the Impala and then she let her cubs practice on it to kill it. Wow. And so they didn't kill her quick. They stretched it out. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then they went for the soft bits inside. It was like, we were sitting there watching it and it was like, you're getting drunk watching it. It was rough. But with a spider monkey, I said to people like, dude, it was just going to die for no reason. Yeah. What you can't see in the video is it's all like back currents and whirlpools and I lifted her up. I could have just like animal-controlled her and grabbed her by the head. But I was like, she's a spider monkey. So I lifted her up by the kayak paddle and she was like, you know, at first she was like, no, and jumps back in the river. And then when I lifted her up and I started going, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, which is kind of their little language. You could see she looks at me. She went, oh, really? She goes, all right. Cool. And she was like, hang on. You could see that part where she looks back at me. Yeah. She was like, what? And so I had this amazing moment with her. Just like right there, right there, right there, where she looks backwards, right there. Right there. She grabs it with her tail as well. Well, her tail is the coolest part of a spider monkey. Yeah. And so at this point, I'm going, just kind of, and I'm going, it's okay, it's okay. And then she looks, where she looks back at me, she's like, what, like what's happening here? Like, how did I get out of this river? It's like, what? What are you doing? And she's like, I, this is worth this is better than drowning. Yeah. Yeah. No, are they any threat? Like a spider monkey? No, no, no. They're good. Okay. So right here gets off and then she's back up. She goes back up into the tree. Is there any recognition? It's nasty. Well, yeah. Is there like a thing? Thank you. It's not a thing. Let's see. Spider monkeys. Yeah. Spider-Man's got a crazy story though. You're not going to fucking believe. What just happened? Yeah. Yeah. So I was drowning. This naked ripped monkey jump. Okay. You got to tell us about Dana Connvis, man. So that was the thing. JJ, JJ was like, look, I know everything about the jungle. I'll teach you about the jungle. He's like, you got to explain a bit of snakes. Yeah. And so I started showing them snakes. And I started showing them bigger snakes. And then I started going, but where are the anacondas? So you're aware going into the Amazon, obviously, that the biggest snakes in the world are the anaconda. Yeah. And they exist in the Amazon. And they're kind of like things of myth and legends at a certain point, right? Yeah. Like we've seen anacondas. Yeah. You can see anacondas. But then there's anacondas. And how big are the anacondas? A normal male, I'd say, is like nine feet, nine to 11 feet, you know, big snake, okay? Not going to break the, you know, a big female. You see that picture of me right there with the. Jesus. There. And that's like a 15-foot snake. That's not that big, though, that's AI. And then some of these female reptiles have indeterminate growth. Like we grow to a certain height, and that's it, like we usually just get fatter. Snakes and crocodiles will just keep growing, as long as you keep feeding them, as long as they keep living. And so fishermen know this. You'll get like this giant catfish that'll find this perfect spot, and it'll live there forever. Crocodiles will do the same thing, or they'll find a backwater that just. There's a good prey source, and they won't move. They'll get shrewd. They'll stay alive because they're careful. And the big anacondas that go far from people on a swamp, that's the floating forest that we found with this floating vegetation over this deep swamp, and the trees growing from the bottom of it. See if you type in a floating forest. And yeah, see the down, down, down, right through the drawing, yeah. So that's. I tried to draw what it was like when we, when we caught, tried to catch one of these snakes, and it was so big, and so the trees are coming up from the bottom of this lake. Can you stand on them? Not on the trees, but there's floating grass. Floating grass on top of the lake. And it can support you. Yeah. So we're good enough. Yeah. Now, the interesting thing is if you're a snake, it supports you perfectly, because you're weight is distributed. Yeah. As a human, you walk in like this, and you're like straight down, nightmare soup. Stingray is piranha, crocodiles, diatoms, it's all kinds of stuff swimming in there. Black water down there. But they're big anacondas there, real big anacondas there. And so the biggest ones that we've caught get like oil drum size. And the thing that we're. You know, at first it started out as us just going looking for anacondas. And then it became us realizing that there's not a lot of scientific data on how many anacondas are there. Are we losing anacondas there? And they, in endangered species, we have no idea. There's no one's going through the swamps to do this. You know, birds, you can sit on the side of a river with binoculars and you're like, they're 14 parrots. Yeah. That's very good. Anacondas is like, yo, let's get in swamps, up to our necks at two in the morning and go looking for dragons. And it's like, you've got to be out of your fucking mind. I mean, and I say that that some of the times that we're out there, we look at each other and we're like, we shouldn't be here. You said two in the morning? Yeah. So you're going, when it's pitch black, that's the only chance. You have was not the only chance or you could go at like 9am when the sun gets over the trees because then they're, you're walking through this tall grass and what you look for is bees and butterflies really like salt. also when there's when there's snakes shed, they just, they, they, they, they, they have a scent and the insects like it and butterflies especially will go. So you're walking through the grass and you'll see like butterflies going to this one spot in the grass and you're like, and there'll be an anaconda just, you know, curled up crazy poetry, dinner table sized anaconda. You see these crony butterflies, you're like, this is gorgeous. Next to the apex predator. You see the dragon on the grass. And you know what the crazy thing is? I've caught 90 something anaconda's seen double that and even a snake this big you go up to it. And you're like, we got to get this snake. We're going to be on the front cover of National Geographic if we get this one. And we're on all this floating vegetation and you're like, if this thing turns around, we're all going to die. And we go to try and restrain it so we can measure it and, and, and study it. And the thing just dives down. Just dives down. That picture I was showing you, I once jumped on the back of one that, that carried me over the floating grass and she was just trying to swim. She was just getting to the edge and going down. Never even turned around. Could have, you know, with a head this big, like a great dane. She could have turned around and done anything she wanted to. But they're, they're, they're, they're pretty peaceful. We're learning that they're not ambush predators the way we thought they were. They actually do travel through streams through the jungle to hunt other animals. We found, we found one, we began butterflies an anacondis. This is weird thing. You know the blue, the blue morphos. Me and JJ were tracking peckery, which is like the, the pigs through the jungle. And at this point, he's just teaching me to track. And so we're just running around barefoot through the jungle. And we get to this stream. And he's like, you know what? We lost him. Here's the tracks in the mud. This is where they cross. And he's like, there's so far ahead of us. He's like, we should go back. And I was like, yeah, and there's this really beautiful blue morpho butterfly just on the ground doing this. And I was like, oh, that's cool. And I like took my camera. I'm waiting for this morpho to open so I could get a picture of it. And I just here. I was like, oh, it's like, you know, like bone breaking sound. I was like, what's thick snapping? Oh, no. And this anaconda has one of the pigs. He got it by the jaw bent in half. And the sound I was hearing was the spine breaking. As this anaconda just constricted the life out of this wild boar. And I'm standing right there. And we got one picture of it. And it's just, I just, and it's like, you don't think you're ever going to see this shit in real life. Have you had them attack you anaconda? Yeah. No. They don't attack. We're not attacked, but like wrap around you or yeah, the first one I ever caught around that time. The first one that I ever got I clamped hands on. It's because we, you know, if you want to get control over a snake's head, you grab it like this. And then it can't, you know, the, I'm talking big, big snakes. They can't. You got to get them right behind the head. You got them too far back. They got all you got. So I got this big snake. I'm like, I got it. This is great. And JJ's running full steam from like a hundred yards down. And I'm like, I got this snake and then it wraps my arms, clamps them together. And I'm like, whoa, change. And then it went over my shoulders. And now it pulls me to the ground. And so I made this mistake. I, I went after the anaconda grabbed her by the neck. And she went, well, I'm going to remove the threat. Come here. Like someone doing your jitsu. It's like, come here. I'll get in my guard position and invite you in here. And then she just started crushing. And so it was hands. And I was like, I want to, I want to get, get rid of this snake. Couldn't do it. Now I'm in the handcuffs. And then she goes around my shoulders. And then she's pulling me like this. And the sensation of just being crushed. I just went holy shit. This is how I die. I was like, my mother would fucking hate me for dying this way. Like voluntarily jumping on a dangerous animal. And, and every time you breathe out, you can't breathe in again. And so I had this sudden thing of like, I mean, we've been breathing since the moment we left our mothers. And so you breathe all day long, all night long. And then you suddenly denied breath. And the finality of going, am I, I'm a, like, I know I'm about to die. And I'm about to die. And right as I had my kind of clavicle is just about the, I was hearing it go. And then JJ comes and just like tackles me down and pulls the tail off. And then his brother's kind of unwound me. And I was holding on. Yeah, I said, they saved my life. And I never made that mistake again. We do this with a bigger team now. The mistake was you going along. The mistake was me going in alone. That was stupid. I was like 19. And my defense, but then you like, I've tried to get swallowed by an account. Yeah. And, and, and, voluntarily, voluntarily. And, and the reason was I went to, at the time, most, you know, I don't know how to say it was like 25 and it's getting a little bit of attention for this shit. And, and living out in the jungle. And then, and then you get these emails or phone calls from like producers. And they be like, yo, jungle guy, like you want to, you want to do something like a show? Oh, careful. And that's the thing though. At that age, at that age, you've got, you've got stars in your eyes and you go, I want this. Yeah. And you go, I want that. I want, I could, I could do like what Steve Irwin did. Yeah. And you start going, I could do this. You know, and then you get in rooms with people and they're like, man, we've never seen anybody like you like shake my hand. Sign this contract. And pretty soon, they're you done a ring or more. They said, if you dress up in this suit, they were going to make and try and get swallowed by an anaconda, you'll have a platform on Discovery channel to tell everyone about this jungle that you want to protect. And so it's not worth going into more than there was bullshit. It was fake. I got Hollywood. It really hard. It was a disaster. Probably took five years off in my career. It knocks me down, which was great because I learned those people would say like get make friends with failure. This was a great one. Yeah. I got a little bit stary. I tried too hard too fast. Got smack down for it. Yeah. And then I spent years back in the Amazon, back to basics. I kind of had to exile to India for a while. I ended up, I got to live with a herd of elephants for a while. Like I had to really re-enter and sort of re-ask myself the question of like, what do you want to be? You're trying to be a TV guy that shows people animals or you're trying to save a river and do something meaningful. Is it really about the heartbeats or is it about you being a famous wildlife guy? And what makes that change? And when do you realize that change? This is in India? No, no, no. This is when when when when it's back in the Amazon, it's like the first time, you know, you can run around and and have adventures and jump in the water and climb the trees and that's great. Who's it helping? You know, it's you got to decide what character are you? And I always think this when you get when you get someone that's like following the rules and they're like, you got here five minutes late, you can't come in and it's like, what character did you want to be? Well, at my cousins wedding, we were at Fordham University and I remember they wanted to take pictures in this one building. And security guard comes in and he goes, you guys can't be in here. Get out. And they were like, yo, it's our wedding. He was like, I don't care. Get out and your car's and he was yelling at them. And my one friend went over to the guy, he goes, buddy, buddy, buddy, come here for a second. He goes, it's their wedding. He goes, they're going to be out of here in five minutes. He goes, who do you want to be? He goes, did you want to be this guy as a kid? And the guy just went, no. And when I'm sorry, he goes, guys, finish up. He goes, but, you know, in like five minutes to get out of here. And so I don't got to deal with it. And it took him down a notch. But it's like, you know, do you want to be the guy that's polluting the river? Do you want to be the guy that's killing the nice bright? Do you want to be the people on which side of the avatar movie do you want to be? Do you want to be with the blue people? Do you want to be with the people shooting them? Yeah. And we get to decide that. And so the first time that I saw my jungle that I'd come to love with my monkeys and my jaguar, these animals that I've come to love and see as almost like neighbors, you wake up in the morning, you're like, oh, the mucaws are out, you know, there is a spider monkeys and like, you know, you wave to them and they like pee at you and stuff. And it's like, you have a relationship with them. And the first time you see jungle just leveled. And the old trees that you walked under are smoking on the ground. Like Fern Gully. Remember that movie? I don't know. Same concept. It's just, it rips your heart out. It rips your heart out. And then you go, I don't really have a choice. It's not, it's not a choice anymore. You go, no one is going to do this if we don't do it. At that point, we were the only people out there. And so I said to JJ, one day when we were standing there, just with tears in our eyes and black ashes all over us, we've been trying to save whatever animals we could from what had been a beautiful pristine area. And I said, there has to be someone we can call who can do something about this. Like this, isn't there? Someone has to stop this. And he looked at me and he goes, he goes, look up over here. I look up over here. He goes, look down there. He goes, you see anybody else? And he really meant it. He was, he said, no one's going to do anything else because we do it. No help is coming. So we made jungle keepers. And we started, and this is why I said, it's great that I got smack down. It's great that I didn't have a television career because at that age, I would have ruined it. I would have been such an asshole. And so it's, you know, this forced us back into the Amazon to make us, you know, make this basically, you know, rubbing sticks together. We said, okay, how do we get our first ranger? And he was like, let's just go talk to some loggers. We went and talked to the loggers. And we said, who owns this land that you guys are cutting down all these trees on? And they're like, so and so. And we're like, cool. We went and talked to so and so. And we said, you look, how long, you know, how much money? How long? How much land? And the guy's like, you know, 7,000 acres, you know, I don't know, like 100 grand, whatever you want. He's like, but it's going to be, we said, we'll pay it tomorrow. And I'd been raising money from doing this stuff, doing publicity books, and we paid the guy. And then we went back to the loggers on the grounds. Now we own the land, we went back to the loggers on the ground and we go, "So you guys, how long have you been out here?" And they're like, "Dude, we've been out here for three months, and I got a leg infection, and my kid is sick, and there's nothing to eat, and the trees are dangerous." And we're like, "Yeah, you want a better job?" They're like, "We'll give you jungle keeper shirts, and you get a boat, and you're gonna be part of an organization, we're actually gonna start protecting the forest." And you know what the first question they asked us was, they go, "Do we have to leave?" And I said, "What do you mean?" They go, "We don't really want to leave." They're like, "We love it here." I said, "You're cutting down the trees, but you love it." And they're like, "We got to feed our kids." And we were like, "Let's get you guys signed up." And that's how jungle keeper started. And then once 2019 came, and the Amazon was burning, and then I sort of got another shot when I released this video where I was screaming in the Amazon, being like, "You fucking people don't realize "every day with this, just lost my mind on my phone." And I posted it, and it went mega viral. 'Cause I just lost it. I just lost it. I'd never sworn on Instagram. I'd never, I was like crying and sweating, and there was animals dying behind me with 70 foot flames. And I was just like, "Welcome to the fucking Anthropocene." 'Cause it's like, dude, we're losing the Amazon rainforest. They're talking about life on earth being in danger. All you have to do is not cut down trees. All you people have to do is nothing. And everything will be okay. - This is the fire right in the best video. - And why is it burning? Because people set it on fire. The Amazon doesn't burn. - Look at that, look at that. That's the shit that I can't stand. That's the shit that breaks my heart. - Yeah, you were saying that. - Like why does that come from space? - Oh, just for formally. - So they're wasting, some of those trees are worth like a hundred grand, a hundred grand of trees, some of the Mahogany trees. - Yeah. - And they waste it. They cut it down so that they can like form papaya. They're people from other parts of the Amazon. These aren't the local people doing it. - Is it like foreign investors? Are there people from other countries buying this and be like, "Hey, burn it down. "Plan papaya is growing." - There's that as well. - Where we are, it's a lot of just like migrant people coming in from Venezuela, Brazil, other parts of Peru. And they'll just burn 10 acres. Now again, do you have a highway that was never there before? You have new roads that were never there before. And I'm talking about human history. And now they're coming in and they're burning parts of the jungle that were never accessible to humans. And so this is what I keep telling everybody. We have the chance to save the crown jewel of nature on our planet. Just like Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir, they went in and they saved your semity and Sequoia. And now Sequoia trees are the most incredible thing. The largest trees on earth and they're safe. And we all get to enjoy them. We can protect one of the greatest natural treasures we have on this planet right now if we can do it. And we've been asking everybody for help. We need about $20 million to protect the rest of the river. That's it. - That's not crazy. - That's not crazy. - No, to protect 500,000 acres of forest. No, it's not that much. - I'm shocked with some like billionaire that has a boner for nature. It doesn't just cough up that 20 to you. - Yeah, and what's been more effective is what we eventually, we had more people come and me and JJ are really good at catching fish with our feet and navigating the jungle. We needed people that knew how to make an organization, how to do the website of it. And like, I've never used a spreadsheet. Like, I don't know what that is. And so the guy Stefan, who became part of our organization, he figured out, okay, and this was interesting before the first time. So 2019, I got this big hit of publicity. And so I had to discover everything got knocked down. 2019, I'm still on my own. But now I got really like viral famous for this video. And I was like, you gotta help me. And like millions of people contacted me. I had no way of doing anything. I didn't have any way of taking their donations. I didn't know who was good, who was bad. There was a lot of bad people coming out of the woodwork to try and take advantage of me. People want in JJ's number. People trying to ask me if I, and you know, do you want to be on naked and afraid? And all this kind of shit. And all I wanted to do was protect the forest. And I said, the analogy is like I put out 10,000 fishing lines with 10,000 hooks and everything bit, boat capsizes. Yeah. So interestingly, then we get a few more years to build. And now it's like 2023. And at a nowhere, Lex messages me and he goes, you want to be on this podcast they do. And I was like, the Lex fucking frequent podcast. And so we kind of knew that this was going to be a big moment, a big moment and we got the website ready. And we made donor portals and we'd become a 501c3 in the US. And so now we started, we did the podcast and people loved it. Yeah. And all of a sudden we got donations. And then we started protecting acres. And then as you get momentum, everybody routes for the Yankees. Once you start doing well, no one was there when you were barefoot machete days. Yeah. Like we're protecting 50,000 acres. We are the jungle keepers. We're not faking it till we make it anymore. We're really doing it. Yeah. And so now we have this organization. And I tell people, this is the most crucial moment in history in world history. Because we've had World War I and World War II. There's, you know, civilizations rise and fall. There's never been a time when the entire environment is being attacked. And we can survive this. It's not like the hope is lost. But if this is like civilizational global society had a lesson where it's like technology's gone here. Our understanding is still trying to catch up. And it's like, hey, if we don't kill the polar bears, melt the ice caps and ruin the Amazon in the next 10 years, you do realize we could kind of, we could stabilize out. The tourism helpful. In the way that like you talk about these like safaris and things like that, this in Central Africa, it helps the economy. Is it helpful for someone to like get on a plane and fly here to experience it? Very much so. And so when I met JJ, he was trying this. And it wasn't working. And now with the exposure we've gotten, what we do is, for instance, that tree house, the Alta tree house, Alta sanctuary tree house. We built it to share the canopy with people. What we didn't realize was how magical it was. And so like families were going to come up there. And that then, along with providing conservation rangers, do we be like, hey, do you not have a cook jump in the kitchen? And we're going to send you to chef school. And then you can come back and cook professionally. Bo driver, boat driver, boat driver. You guys can guide who's good at birds. And all of a sudden, you're employing 35 people to run this tiny little lodge. And if the jungle we're saving is an entire football field, I'm talking about like a dime sized area that we use for tourism. So people, like, how could you bring people to the wildest place? That's terrible. You're ruining the shut up. We're doing using this much of it. A dime size on a football field. And we're bringing people to show them how beautiful it is, employing all these people. And so then the indigenous communities, the ones that we were in contact with, they go, oh, wait, we don't want to road. Like, we don't want like a McDonald's. We don't want to become narco traffickers. We want to be with those guys. And we're all having fun showing people beautiful blue butterflies watching the sunrise over the thing in sipping coffee. And suddenly, you come up with a sustainable future where the local people win. The wildlife continues to thrive. The ancient trees grow higher and everything's OK. And it's like, we just need people to-- we're so close, $20 million. What we do right now is we have people come up to me. They give $5, $10 a month. Some people give $100 a month. People all over the world. And so I'll help you in the airport on my way here. And somebody stops and they're like, yo, I'm a jungle keeper. And I was like, no, shit. That's fine. Because she's like, yeah, she's like, I've been giving $5 a month for the last two years. And I was like, well, we're halfway to making-- we're going to make a donation on behalf of this market. We got that 100%. But also, we're going to put the link there so anybody else watch it. If they feel motivated, that'd be absolutely awesome. Yo, $20, you can do. $20, you could do it with just a billion dollars, bro. You kind of got to leave with $20. $20 is very doable. $20 million to protect the wildest, most species diverse place on Earth. It's not that much to ask. People spend $20 million on a new cafeteria. It's like not that much money and with social media, with podcasts. If you reach-- I mean, you get $20 million people to give $1. That's the thing. Forget if you get people to donate, you know, a mocha chino Starbucks with people get, you know. I drink river water. I don't know. Orange mocha frappuccino, whatever they call it, I don't know. Again, it's possible. No, it is possible. I think we're going to do it. And you're going to do it. I'm working very-- we're risking our lives to do it. All right, guys, let's take a break for a second. Once one money, less than you wish you learned earlier in life. And how are you trying to pass that knowledge down to the next generation? For all of the parents out there with teenagers, we know you're already trying to keep a million different things under control. Cash app is here to help you make sure your team's money. And their spending isn't adding to that craziness. Perennial oversight and no hidden fees with the cash app card available to teens, 13 to 17, with sponsorship by an eligible parent to guard in every transaction triggers a real-time notification for you to see. Empowering your teens to practice independence while giving you peace of mind by keeping track of their spending. 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That's promo code Flagrant. You will also receive an additional 10% offering overnight shipping on your first order. Visit Blushu.com for more details and important safety information. We thank Blushu for sponsoring the pod and the bedroom. Let's get back to the show. Speaking of risking your lives. Can you take us through this? Okay. How fucked are you? This is the Paul Rosley scale. We're all in the Amazon. We come across a Jaguar 1 to 10. How fucked are we? You can also elaborate on the 1 to 10, but how fucked are we? All right. The answer is going to shock you. There's a Jaguar right there. You are 0% fucked. Really? Jaguar is going to sit there and look at you. Jaguar going to give a shit. Yo, I was checking it. This is a camera trap. This is a remote camera that takes pictures, right? I'm on the trail and I'm setting this camera trap up and I'm doing my thing and I'm opening it, checking the batteries, checking the settings. And I hear footsteps behind me, right? It's good that you guys got plants here for this reenacting. This is perfect, okay? I'm sitting right there where I just was. A Jaguar walks by like this, just goes, "So, he's walking." I was within five feet of a Jaguar. Do they not see you as prey? No, they don't care. Plus they smell like shit. We smell like shampoo and deodorant and all this stuff. Toothpaste, not all of us. Not all of us. I got natural. I got natural. I got natural. Glad to know. He'll be in first. I'm waiting in the Gawannas. So they wouldn't eat us at all. In my entire. In the region, in the Madre de Dios. I have never once heard of a Jaguar attacking a person. Now, what if we fuck up crazy? We're all out there and Alex goes, "Guys, look what I found. Holds up a baby Jaguar. Where'd you get that?" He goes, "Oh, I found it." And then I'll send you here. I would do something like that. 100% fucked. 100%. That's one thing Jaguar did because you said we're good. No, no, no. You're watching from a distance not touching their babies. We're good. You pick up a comb as soon as mother figures out where as soon as that thing goes, "Mom, she's going to take her claws and she's going to open you in ways that would horrify us." Damn. All right. Okay. But you would have deserved it. So just fun. You had a comment. Black Cayman. Black Cayman. What is that? Black Cayman. Again, in the middle of the day, it's the biggest Cayman. We have smooth fronted Cayman. We have. We have a spectacle Cayman. That's what I meant. I'm black and you can go to that. Picture the butterflies, bottom center, bottom center. Look at that. I love this picture. Look at that. That's the Amazon. I'm going to tell you the butterflies. They want the salt. That comes in the corners of your eyes. Yeah. And like look, they're by the nostrils and by the eyes and they're fighting for position. Crazy. Yeah. We fucked. We're swimming. Okay. So you're swimming in a lake at night. Yep. And there's a 15-foot black Cayman. You're toast. Okay. 10 out of 10. Okay. Green anaconda. Again, the 50-50. If you're walking or you're in a boat and you see a green anaconda, sitting there and this green anaconda is taking in the sun and she just did a big cappy bearer. And it's a normal day. 10 out of 10 safe. If you're messing around in a swamp, filling a pot and washing it and you're a little drunk and you do this regularly and you're in a deep part of the Amazon and that snake is hungry, she's going to grab you by the face, drag you down to hell and all your bones are going to be broken. And then she's going to swallow you and you're going to decompose inside of her. Right. I heard stories where people get eaten by. Yeah. My friends, my friends father got swallowed by one. Also cool side quest with this is that anacondas will try to eat turtles, like big land turtles, like tortoises. And we found the bones of a 16-foot anaconda and in the center of the ribs was a huge tortoise shell with nothing in it. And I don't, I wasn't this forensic with it, but JJ was like, "You realize what happened here?" And I was like, "What?" And he was like the anacondas swallowed the giant tortoise. And then the tortoise, it wasn't crushed to death because it's a tortoise. And then it just sat there just digging inside the anaconda and until tore up its stomach and the anaconda died. And I was like, "How did you even think of that?" And JJ was like, "This is obvious." Just like he did this thing and I write about this in the book because one of my earliest lessons we're walking and he sees some sand and there's jaguar footprints. And he stops. And this beautiful day is butterflies flying through these cathedral-sealing emerald green. And JJ goes, "Tell me what happened here." And go, "What do you mean?" He goes, it's like the morning newspaper. He goes, "Tell me what happened here." He goes, "Read the ground." I said, "Okay." I said, "Well, there's jaguar footprints." And he's like, "Great." And there's jaguar footprints with the toes down right by the edge of the water. So the jaguar drink. I know the jaguar drink. He goes, "Very good." And he goes, "Keep looking." And then I was like, "Look at this." And it's like a big log of jaguar shit, a big one. And then we pick it up. It's a hard log. It looked like it heard coming out. And so he picked the hair out and he goes, "What kind of hair is this?" And I was like, red-brocket deer. And he's like, "Yes." And I was like, "I got it right." That's pretty good. Yeah. We're like level four now. I'm doing good. Yeah. And so, but then I'm about to fail. Because he's like, "So what else?" I'm like, "What do you mean what else?" I'm like the jaguar drink after eating a red-brocket deer. And he's like, "What else?" And I was like, "I don't know." Long story short, he shows me that there's two different places where the jaguar drink. And one of them has like bits of leaves in it. And one of them has little bits of water still in it. Which means it just put those impressions and just left. You know, it's like somebody leaves a teacup and it's still smoking. And we were like, "Whoa." So I was like, "You're saying he was just here." And I said, "Wait, they walk." So why would the jaguar be here yesterday and today? And he was like, "Think." And I was like, "He killed a deer." And he's eating the deer. And then he came here to drink and he took a shit. And then he came back. And he's still right here. And he was like, "Yeah." And he's like, "Look at that." And there's these vultures right there. And they're not looking at us. They're looking at us that way. And he's like, "So the jaguar is right over there. Some dog and lower." Wow. And I was like, "You." And that's what he would do. He would sit there. You know, he'd sit there and just be like, "Tell me what's going on?" I love these. I love Bushmaster's storage. Just like a guy. Just like a Bushman out there. It's like finding, it's my favorite thing. But it's like like reading the jungle. Yeah, like reading the jungle. It was like, "You hear dumb things." They were like, "I mean, the Native Americans can see where the moss grows." And they know, like, it's true. It's really. Well, I mean, look, the story I just told you, you know, any of us would walk by, not see the jaguar prints, maybe see the poop, not know what it was from. Whereas he sees a whole story. And it's evident to him. So as he's walking, you know, you think of like the Terminator vision where it's downloaded, all this information. I'm like green tree, water, rock. And he's like, that's a capidona tree. He's like those are, you know, and he's going through all of this stuff with all this indigenous thing. He's like, there's an ayahuasca vine. And he was like, there's the type of plant that does this. And we're over there getting 2% of that information. I'm like, oh, that's a blue morpho. Like, that's a, you know, whipsnake. Do you have other specific stories of like things that we would all miss that they are able just to say, I know exactly what this isn't. It actually was useful. Well, I mean, there's so many things like, like I was on a trail with Ignacio on a horrible long expedition. And he saved us from actually, these are not the, the uncontacted tribe on our river. We'd gone to another part. And he just, he just put his hand on my chest one day. And he's like, we're done. We're going back. And I was like, what do you mean? What are we doing? What are we going back for? And he was like, he like, I never would have noticed it. But there's, there was an ex of sticks on the trail. And he goes, that's their way of saying, don't go further. And I was like, come on, those are two sticks that fell and he goes, yeah. And he picks up the edges of the stick. And you can see that it's cut. And he's like, yeah, because these break like this, right? And again, to them, they're like, you're stupid. To like, how can you not see? It's like having a gate on your property. It's like a stop sign. What's farther? What's farther? Yeah. What was over there? They're territory. Oh, yeah. That was like there. Yeah. Yeah. That's their friend. They were gently saying you go past here. It's on and fair game. Second amendment. Castle doctor. Castle doctor. What about the indigenous people? Like any spirituality, brew hot stuff. Yes. Now we're talking. Now we're talking. That's what we want to hear. But this is Peru, you know, it is Peru. Yeah, everybody, you know, I don't know what's going on in the last two years. I'm like, I work in the Amazon trying to protect the Peruvian jungle. I did I was getting Brooklyn last week. Paul, Paul, Paul. Funny you mentioned that. Alex did I wasca in some guy's house in New Jersey. Was he a shaman? No, actually, they were from South America. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You described your husband. That's the, I don't want to assess his experience. I'll tell you about it. I'd like to hear about Mark said that he did I wasca the way you should have done I wasca in a house in New Jersey. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, nah. She's a medicine woman. She's been doing it from, she's from Columbia. Like she's been doing it going her family to do it for like decades and decades. And so she like travels and does this and spreads the medicine as they say. I think that's, I mean, that sounds like you're doing it with someone that's legit. And that's important. My only assessment of that, if not that I, not that I have any right to assess anything, is that my guys, my shaman's in the jungle would say if you're not doing a wasca in the jungle, you're not really doing a wasca because it's from the jungle. And because they still can't out of the way, I think it's 15,000th just tree species and then all the other vines and, and lianas and plants, that if you calculate, you know, they say every time you mix a deck of cards, that combination has never existed before, which I find mind bending. But if you look at the combinations of all the plants in the Amazon coming up with the two plants that you have to mix together to make I wasca, they can't figure out how it happened. You would need many more centuries and Millenniums for that to happen. So they say that it really is a gift from the gods of the jungle to us so that we can blend into the spirit realm. And that's why my guys are, I mean, these are indigenous because they're very, very hardlined on that. If you're going to do I wasca, you must be in the jungle so that you can feel it move through you. And when you listen to them sing, they're singing about the anaconda, the great anaconda carving the rippers. And they're singing about the the stars becoming butterflies and they're singing about the ancient trees and the life cycle going back. And so it does move through you in a very interesting way where you can almost feel the jungle. So I can't speak to not doing it in the jungle because I can't imagine it. But I'm sure it's still a powerful experience. How many times have you said would I've done four and I'm retired now? Oh, really what? I'm good. Yeah, I met God. And I wanted to say the next time I do it, I'd like to be dead. It's our number of times God's like you again. You didn't get the message. Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. It's kind of like New Yorkers with pizza. Right. They're always like hop in New York because it's the only place we never stop being a pizza. No, New Yorkers are like you only pizza in New York. If you go anywhere else, it's not a real New York pizza. It's kind of like I wasca in the jungle. It's like you can only get real I wasca. I'm still on the god. No, no, I mean, we can eat outside of your, but yeah, we judge it, but we judge it. There's no, yeah, it's kind of like you guys down there being, you know, the territorial dialogue. You know what? It's like it's, yeah, you're right. It's exactly like that. Where they're like anything else isn't the real deal. And like I get it. I really do get it. Put, you know, for us, we usually do it outdoors in, you know, in the jungle. And like the first, you drink it, you go, I'm fine. I'm fine. It's not working. I think I'm fine. And like they're singing and there's candles and the jungles. And then all of a sudden, you're like, and you're, when the sounds get really loud or it's just, it's just, it's, look, it's exciting, but it's a roller coaster that I think I'm good on. I think I've explored everything I need to explore. And now I really want to stay up here. Yeah. I don't really utilize it culturally. Is it like, oh, once a month, we do this. Is this once a year? Is it around certain holidays? It's definitely around healing. It's definitely around making it through hard times. For outsiders, the shamans that I've, that I know that I work with, they help people addicted to drugs they can't get off of. Oh, really? Yes. Because they'll, they'll put them down for like a week. They'll be like, you're gonna be drinking dieting. They call it for a week. And they'll just keep, you just keep, as a detox, essentially, as a detox. And also, apparently, you know, the, the spiritual implications of being on something that's that powerful can help you to beat addiction in ways that nothing else can. Oh, yeah. Yeah. For this was I began, I knew a guy that was addicted to a heroin. Yeah. Went to Amsterdam because it was like medicinal illegal for this specific treatment. Did I begin and never relapse on a heroin again? Wow. Yeah. He's a super horrendous experience, but save his life because he was like, I'm going to go try this thing if it doesn't work. I will come back and then my life. Well, I'm saved his life. All right. So, little shift. And did just people living in these ruse with no walls. How are they like, how are they fucking like, where is everybody here? It was a great question. Yeah. And is it kind of like, it's the sounds of the jungle. Yeah, it's all good. Do you try to mimic the frog? So it blends in. Well, you want to find a girl that makes frog noises. Yeah. There's Sally again. No, but like, is it more is it more like accepted? Because everybody sees everybody kind of naked. Yeah. So, so one thing is, you know, every now and then you'll hear that thing. Like, oh, there's a woman breastfeeding on a plane and passengers got upset. And it's like, that's the cornea shit. It's a stupid thing I've ever heard of my life. And down there, like, breasts are not there's nothing to let it special. We got to make out. We got a pie as you don't. That's it. Yeah. We they're used for children. They're hardly. And so, yeah, what I know about communal living in indigenous situations is like, there's a lot of like, easy hammock sex and like, like, like, like, like, I think it's a lot of like, spooning, you know, in the middle of the night. And so I do think they keep it toned down. I think if you're going to go, if you're going to slap cheeks, like, you've got to go, you've got to go deep. So much of our, like, version of sex is probably been formed by porn. But like, if they don't have porn, then, well, I think most people, like, yeah, that's an expectation fact. Absolutely. I think it, like, absolutely infiltrates like the Western mind and America, at least. And like, you're exposed with so young that it becomes the normalized and, whereas out there, if they've never seen porn, I wonder what their, their relationship with is probably so different. And then the way they conducted is probably different. Yeah. That's my assumption. I don't know. But it's definitely, it's not a big deal. Yeah. It's not a big deal. But did you hear at the first time, were you like, were you kind of giggling? Like, oh shit, they get after. You know, I've always kind of been happy that, you know, you hear somebody get in some and you're like, we got it. You know, you're like, good, good. You fall asleep, listen to the frogs. You're like, yeah, you guys get it. Are the dudes, they're wearing like, kind of like, like, just like, like, just like, what does he want to ask? He doesn't know if they hang it. Is it hanging? Yeah. No, no, they tie it up. I have the video you found. Really? The video you found on my phone. There was a sensor version. It was the sensor version. But if you find the unsensory version anywhere, or I could show you on my phone, they, they tie it up to their stomach. That's why they were in the rope around. And I think, so it doesn't get caught on something or does it? I mean, I don't like to get caught on a lot of thorns in the Amazon. And again, this thing, of the mosquitoes, I think that the closer to you it is, the more-- Protect it. Yeah. I mean, that's like easy blood for them. They're going to go where the most blood is. And that's why they like ears. And mosquitoes always go for your ears. Yeah. And I think like a penis is just too much for mosquitoes to take. You're going to be constantly inundated. Hmm. I mean, I think this one's still a little bit blurred because I think it's a little blurred. Yeah, so a little bit blurred. But it's just-- So the shafts they tie up, but the balls they let go. The balls are out. Which I, you know, again, I don't, I don't, I don't aspire to a-- I'm going to be doing the waistband from time to time. Oh, yeah. We've all done a waistband. I mean, I think we should try it. I think we should just have a day where you go, you tie it up and just walk around. I mean, certainly, you know, not hitting into branches and sticks and thorns make sense. Yeah. What about like jokes? Oh, jokes. Yeah. What is their sense of humor? Like all cultures have their own sense of humor, right? Like there's certain things that are uncomfortable, certain things that are naughty, like how are they making each other laugh? Me and JJ are in a stream one day and he goes, ah, and I was like, what is it? And he's like, I know something's wrong and I was like, what is it? And I was like, he's like, I don't know. I think I'll be okay. Okay. Ten minutes passes. And then he's like, dude, dude, dude, dude. And he's like holding his dick and I'm like, what? What? And he's like, yo, something's wrong. Like I got a huge boner and I was like, now in a stream with me, I was like, what? What's going on? He shows me the bananas and he shows me and it's like, and he's got this. I was like, JJ. First of all, well done. Yeah. It was like second of all. That's a problem. And he's like, no, it feels like it's going to burst and I was like, JJ, and he's like, no, no, no, he's like, feel it. It's like dangerous. And I was like, and I was like, that's like a rock. Come on. And he starts laughing and he like pulls this huge fish out of his pants. And it's like, so big jokes, and it's like, so big jokes, and it's like, so big jokes. And it's like, so big jokes. (audience laughing) - I heard it, Linda. (laughing) - That's not what he meant. (laughing) - Wait, go to the Bronx Zoo. - Yeah. - When you fall in love with animals, that's your first experience with them? - It's one of the things, so I always loved animals. I went to the Bronx Zoo, and so you get to jungle world. - Yeah. - You open the door. - And no matter what time of year it is, just like steam and it's hot. And you're like, oh, whatever I'm wearing, I gotta take it off. 'Cause you're like, it's different in here. And you hear, like, whoop, and you just all this mess. Bird sounds, and they have, they have, like, frogs. And you're like, wait a second, like, what's that? And you're like, you're looking, and there's like, and then there's like, an orange tree kangaroo in there. And you're like, and then there's a Malaysian taper. And there's a, they have one thing where there's, you know, there's a blood python. And you're like, hold on, hold on, hold on. There's all these incredible animals out there in the jungle. And you're like, this feeling of jungle, like sort of jungle core. And then they have the wall of butterflies. And they have all these, you know, dollies too. And you go, it's all these colors and arrow frogs that are bright blue and orange and anacondas. And I just went, man, whatever this is, I want more of this. Whatever this feeling is, I want it. And then at the end of jungle world, what they do is, to get you all hopped up on this beautiful stuff and they're like, the life is everywhere. Everywhere you look, there's colorful life and medicines and animals, more species and anywhere else. And then you walk into, like, the end of the exhibit, or might have been right before the gorilla exhibit. And that the sound changes from frogs to rain. You hear chainsaws. And then you, they have a video of trees going down. Oh, wow. And as a kid, I just remember, like, you hold, you know, you're like, don't cry, don't cry. Don't cry in front of my parents. And you're like, and they're showing you this going down. And they're like, but the rainforest is dying. And they have like, oh, you know, British lady being like, in soon, you know, 80,000 football fields a year are like leaving and all the animals are dying. And you're like, what? And then they, they like, show you the gorillas and they're like, they still hear, but they don't have long. And like, you could help them. And I was like, we gotta sign me the fuck up. And I was like, I want to go see them before they're gone. And so I literally got charged with, I was like, yeah, I love animals, but I got charged with this urgency of like, wait, so you tell me if we don't protect elephants could go extinct in our lifetime. Gorillas could go extinct in our lifetime. And so that's, you know, and then my mom would read us, you know, Gene Goodall stories. And you'd be like, you know, so this woman went to Africa and said, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna learn chimpanzee dialect and social structures and break all the rules of science and become this living legend of a, you know, and it's like, so she started off as a person who just went to the jungle. And I was like, well, she could go to the jungle as a 20 year old girl. Back then, I was like, shouldn't I be able to go to the jungle? I'd be like sitting in like seventh period English class, like reading about Teddy Roosevelt and they'd be like, Rosalie, detention, put down the book. And I was like, yeah, I got to go to the jungle. I was like, I can't do this. I was like, I want my life to be, I felt like there's people you hear about that have had a life where that meant something that was an adventure that benefited other people and creatures. And I was like, why do I feel like everyone's just like, talking about, like I just, I wasn't, I wasn't feeling it. I was like, why is my life so different from those narratives? And so I'd look at these people that had these epic lives and I was like, I want to do that. At the very least, I want to have some adventures where I learn what I'm made of. You know, as a kid, you're like, what am I? Who am I? Which character in the story am I? And I was like, I want to find out. You know, like you can't find out certain things. There's certain things you can't fake. And, and, you know, the first time I in Brazil that I had one night, I got an altercation. Some people, I got to go and put it like this and like, in my face. And what's the first thing I did was go, whoa, please, no, right? Like this. Now, I knew somebody and I happened to watch another altercation and I watched someone, this man was known for being a tough, tough man and somebody stuck on in his face. He goes, what are you gonna do? Didn't even move. Didn't get red. Ears stayed the same color. He didn't move because he goes, what are you gonna do? Either do it or don't do it. And you can't fake that. You have to learn that. And so when you're a kid, you go, when the shit hits the fan and the river's flooding and the boat flips and everybody's gonna die, do I scramble on top of the boat and save myself? Because you don't know yet. Or do I go help somebody else and risk my own life first? And you have to be in those situations. Because we all think. >> We would be the hero. You go, I would be the hero. And it's like, yeah, tell me that. Tell me that when you're on the side of the mountain and the lightning is pounding the side of the mountain. And you have people over there that are still exposed. You're gonna go across the open part. You're gonna go be a lightning rod. >> Fuck. >> Yeah. Like, talk to me when you're in the river and there's all these swirling whirlpools. You jumping in after that person. Can you swim that good? Or you just, you know, it's, it's so, and I think that that was a major. I wanted to know which, you know, what are you made of? What do you have in you? And so then meeting people like JJ and you go, okay, so man's not scared or anything. Man goes, he ain't, he ain't gonna have a prayer. He goes, I'm gonna go out to the wildest place on earth and I'm gonna protect it with no plan. That's the other thing. I think that the people that get things done are kind of missing the screw that keeps us all in line. >> Of course. You go like, oh, you know, reasonably, I mean, I could say the same thing for myself. When I started out as a kid who's born in Brooklyn, grew up in New Jersey, went to the Amazon. I saw, I remember I came back from the jungle and like, everywhere I went, I was wearing this two-thread on my neck that JJ had given me. And everywhere I went, I was like, I work in the Amazon rainforest. My dad goes, you don't work in the Amazon rainforest. You went there once. It was like, calm down, shut. And it was like, but it changed me so much. It was like, I'm going back. And I just told everyone, like, I'm going to save the Amazon. And I was like, you know what, though? You're 19 years old and you work at the YMCA for 13.50 an hour. You're not gonna save the Amazon. So it's like, you do have to be stupid enough to think you can do it. - Absolutely. - And then sort of. - Dillusional optimism. And then with the grit to hang in there until you figure it out. And that's, I've watched a lot of people join our team. And it's sort of like, we, me and JJ started it, being like, we're just going to save this thing and just started yelling at it. It's like when you go, I'm going to run a marathon. You just start telling everybody you're going to do it. And then you're like, my fucking hell. - I'm going to have people that join, that fade out. And can you tell when someone isn't built for it? - Yeah, I mean, I, some of the people that were there in the beginning that were like, hey kid, we'll help you start the organization. You realize they're not people that necessarily should be involved. And so we, you know, you cycle through those. Now at this point, like who's managing our field teams? 'Cause we're the directors and founders. And I have to be doing this a lot of the time. You know, and JJ is the only, so it's interesting. What we do is we got down to the core team. And that's, that's necessity of operations. Like, you know, Stefan is running all the different departments keeping track of finances, all of the outreach. When we get contacted for podcasts or when we have a new opportunity, a new donor. And a lot of times he's pointing me in the right direction. He's going, yo, go talk to these people or he'll get on the phone and go, these people, they want your time and they shouldn't get it. They're not, they're not. JJ is the only person who knows how to walk into the logging camps. And he could even do narco camps, I'm sure, if he wanted to. He walks, so I watched JJ, so there's JJ with his chest out. And then there's JJ, he did another thing that, talk about the gun to the face. We had guys pull out guns and they were, there were loggers that, and this meeting didn't go well. And we were like, yo, you guys can't be here. And again, they're like, click clack, you sure? And we were like, all right, look, we're not trying to bless you. We're like, we're not trying to start shit. We're just telling you you can't be here. And then there was like this sort of moment where I was like, are they gonna let us leave? And JJ, JJ did this thing where he, he's instead of being like, yo, you can't be here, he sat down. He relaxed against the log and goes, guys, I'm not fighting with you. They have guns, he's laying down now, he's fully exposed. Then he goes, I'm not fighting with you. He's like, I'm just telling you that you can't be here. He goes, honestly, he goes, I'll cook you lunch. He's like, I'm just, I'm just letting you know. And so he like brought the temperature in the room down. - That's smart. - He's like, we're not trying to fight. And he's like, seriously, he's like, why don't you guys, why don't you guys come down? He's like, I'm just gonna tell you about why we're here. And it was like his, his brilliant, so only he can do that. And he knows the local dialect. And then I'm, you know, I apparently have the ability to speak and tell stories to the degree that it'll get people to pay somewhat attention. And even though I couldn't make it through school, I can't read good, but I can write. I learned how to tell a story 'cause I was read to when I was a child. And so the book has actually been a huge tool in terms of getting us people who understand the story. So there's all this random stuff. Somebody could watch this whole conversation and go, okay, so this guy rescues monkeys and follows JJ. And it's like, but in the book it makes sense. In the book, it's like, okay, why did I end up in the jungle? How did I end up in the jungle? And then it goes through sort of all those moments of like, maybe something starting fail. Maybe something starting failed. They just, they just destroyed 10 new acres of forest. We failed. There's narcos, we're all gonna die. We gotta figure that out. And it's like, how did we go from two guys with bare feet in a machete and just a log to ride? It used to be me and JJ, for a while, we didn't have a bow. So we'd be out in the field station, we'd get dropped off. And then we'd like, when your tomatoes start to turn black And your rice starts to go moldy. And you run out of cooking fuel because we'd go up with one thing of propane and he'd be like, "We got to go back to town." We'd be like, "Oh shit, we're going to have a boat." And then we'd sit by the side of the river for like two days, like there's no boats. No boats going to come by this, like this time of year when the river's high. And then we'd get a big log coming by and he'd like, "Yo, let's go." And we'd throw all of our shit in the bag, swim out to the log and we both get on the log. And we'd just be sitting there for hours, sitting on a log just going down the Amazon. It's like those two dudes thought they could start a major organization to protect an entire watershed and reach people all over the world. And one of my goals was aside from protecting the biodiversity and the watershed was I suffered when I was a kid thinking that the world is ending. Like I was so depressed and like I used to cry at night. I'm not even kidding, I used to cry. My mother used to have to sit on the bed and I would be weeping because I'd just read about the fact that this one species of Galapagos tortoise was going to go extinct. Where that the Congo was being ripped apart and gorillas were surrounded on all sides and soon the mountain gorillas were going to go extinct. And it just drove me crazy to think that we were willing to let the other organisms that we share this world with just die. Those penguins just let them die. And so now as the director of Jungle Keepers, the ability that parents reach out to me and get DMs all the time where parents go, "Hey, we give five dollars a month to Jungle Keepers and I show my kids your feet all the time." And I tell them we're saving the Amazon because they are. We found a way for those people to directly help JJ on his crusade to protect the Amazon. And I didn't have that as a kid. I would always be sitting there on the rug, on my elbows watching and then David Attenberg would go, "Everything you just saw was about to die." He go, "Fuck, man." And so we're just trying to undo all that and it's super, super exciting. Did JJ have sage advice? When you talk to him about life and interpersonal stuff, does he ever give you just wisdom that you're like, "Whoa." No, more so. He's like me. He likes to learn through experience. While he is such an expert at the jungle, he's still very, very much human. When I was 18 and he was 32, so that's like our age gap. We've seen each other go through all the phases. And so I think that life-wise, it's not like he's some sort of a wizard. Do you just go on like Yoda? I know, but he's like Yoda of the jungle who's still very much a human. Yes, he has this knowledge. And I guess you could make that comparison to so many other things. You could be like, "Oh, this guy was a great president, but you know, went through all of these struggles as a human." And it's like, you're describing one part of, yes. He is. There's a chapter in the book called "The Rarist of Species." Because how many local people learn to speak really good English? Not that many. How many local people learn to speak really good English and work with scientists for years and years? And so become naturalist scientists with an indigenous background. There's no what else. He's a unicorn. There's the only one. You mentioned a guy that passed away. I think it was Santiago. JJ's dad. That was JJ's dad. And he was like the OG. He was a really OG. That dude. That dude. He lived out in the Amazon until he was like 86. He was still, he'd still come in with the ax in his hand. He'd be like, "Yeah, I just killed the pig. You guys want to have a barbecue?" And he'd be like, "Yes. The first time I met him, we were all sitting around. And JJ had brought me to his mom's house. He's got like 19 brothers. He brought me with mom's house Santiago. Santiago was a busy man. And we found out why. We were all sitting around and it was like a cold day in the jungle. So everyone was like huddled up. It was a Sunday morning. We're all like drinking soup and stuff. And JJ's mom comes in and gives his slap on the head. And JJ's like, so we're thinking of taking Paul to the Anaconda place in his brother's like, "Oh, shit, we should. But we should ask dad if it's okay." Because we're going to, and JJ goes, "So you're going to meet my dad?" And I said, "Great." Goes, "No, no, no. You're going to meet my dad." And I said, "Great. What a bag." He goes, "No, no, no. He's got a big dick." And I was like, "How does this matter?" He's like, "No, no. Like, you're not ready for it." And I was like, "But how is this?" He goes, "No, no, no. He walks around naked." And I was like, "And he's coming." Because no, he's coming right now. JJ's dad walks in with this fucking cannon hanging to his knees. And he's like, "Hey, he's like, go ahead. Mucha gusto." And I was like, "Hey, good to meet you." And like, the man just hangs. He wasn't even his hand, do you sure? It wasn't even his hand, you should. He wasn't even his hand. But it was like, this dude was such a jungle swagger, dude. He's like, "What clothes?" Yeah. You know, and then he's the guy that said, "Yeah, you can go take him to his sons." He was like, "Take him." And he was also the guy that said, "Take him to the floating forest." Because then we came back and we had pictures of snakes this big, and we were like, "Look at us. We caught these giant anacondas." And he goes, "Yes, anaconditas." He was a little fucking anaconda. Nothing you did was tougher. We saw a peckery getting eaten. He goes, "I have seen tapers getting eaten." They're like, "Triple the size of a peckery." And you'd be like, "Oh, we saw the young, contacted tribes." And he would say, "He told the stories of he'd be like, I negotiated with them. I gave them a hat and they gave me an arrow on the same beach." You know, this was a guy that had lived in a different era. And so everything that we thought was tough, he'd be like, "Come on, get the fuck out of here." He once cut open his arm, and then they killed an electric eel, and they removed the nerve that they say makes the electric and the electric eel, and they put it into his arm, and then they sew it up with armions. They have the huge pincers, so you let the armions bite the wound, and then you twist the body off the armion, and it sutures the wound. And so they took the magic nerve out of the electric eel, put it into Santiago's arm, and then sutured it with armions. And so he would always show me his arm, and he would go, "This arm, he'd go, it's harder than ironwood, he'd go, "S.S, she will let go." And so he lived out in the Amazon on his own, even like at the end, he was like, "He'd just be out there. We'd go out into the jungle, and he'd be like, go, what's up? We'd be working on something." He'd be there already. He lived out there in a shack. And he had been a police officer, he had organized the communities, he'd done major social work, he'd worked against the drug cartels, but he was a jungleman, and he was made out of pure sinew. And he died at a family like barbecue, basically, they were having a family day, and they got on the boat, and then they were like, "Let's go back to the shack," which was like 30 minutes up river, and he was on the boat with his grandchildren and the whole family, and he was just like, watching the sunset, and just laid his head back. Get the fuck out. And they were like, "Abuelo." Wow. And so he went out. He went from healthy to asleep. Strong, never sick. Did you go to the funeral? No, I showed up the day after the funeral. I didn't know he died. JJ, I think they had gone into, I think the paste things went, I didn't even know. I showed up. I went, "Where is everybody?" And he went, "Santiago died." I went, "You know, you get this news, we don't think they had time to be notifying people." It was such a shock, nobody expected it to go. And what is their relationship with death like? Like, do they have anything locally like a customer philosophy that helps with that transition? I don't know. I don't know. All I can tell you is, they're way more, it's way more part of life. I just feel like, you know, some of the people we've lost over the years to various things, you know, Santiago was a different thing because he was this figurehead. He was the Godfather. But when you lose someone in a tragic sense, the rate at which they sort of go, "That's really sad. We'll miss him." And then, like, kind of move on. It's like, "We don't do that." I come from Italian Catholic people. We're going to make more really. We're going to mourn. This is a problem, especially if it was a young person. And we take it very differently than they do. Whereas, like, sometimes we'll lose someone down there and they're like, "Hey, life's dangerous. Is it more common than we would deal with?" Well, I mean, working with narco traffickers and falling trees and rivers, it's a little more common. You know, if anything goes wrong here, you have an ambulance show up in two minutes. Like, your safest you can be living in society here. I come here and, you know, sometimes I actually feel like I'm like, you know, in the jungle, you feel your calluses getting thicker and your skin getting tighter and your feet get, you know, harder against the ground and your senses get sharper. And then, like, when I come back, aside from the shock of landing in JFK, which is always horrific. But then, after a while, I start to go like, "Man, I woke up today and I walked from bed to the card to the thing to the thing." And I'm like, "I didn't, you hardly use my body." Like, you start to feel the atrophy. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. And I'm like, "I didn't have to carry a motor today. I didn't have to swim across a river." Because I feel unnatural. It does. It does. And I mean, I told you, I still have the dirt on my boots. I just got in the other day. And I mean, I was sweating all day long. You know, you, I was jumping in the river because you do morning work back to the station trying to eat something. And then I was like, "I'm so drenched. Jump in the river." Which, by the way, you know, popping the shirt off to go for the monkey, I get that a lot where people like, "Oh, how come you always got your shirt off?" And I'm like, "Because you know how inconvenient it is to just sweat through a shirt." And then we're you wash it. And so I'm like, yeah, I'd rather just not have a shirt on. Yeah. And then put it on after 5 p.m. when it gets a little bit less hot. That's it. And so I'll take the. I'll take the. None of us would wear a shirt if we look like that, Paul. None of us would. Come to the Amazon with me. Shirts were made because we don't like it. Is that why we wear a shirt? It's not a weather thing. Yeah. She's got a fish. She's a logger right now. That's what it is. It's just unbelievable, man. You've had a remarkable life. I'm sure you get told this every single time you've had a conversation with someone. I really hope you achieve this dream. I'm so curious what you will dream up next is not often the people with grandiose dreams get to achieve them. But like, what happens when your life's work gets accomplished? If this works, if we create this National Park, when we create this National Park, we're getting. Yeah. We're happening there. It really is. Enough people know about this. 20 million is not that much to ask. You got to run the final stretch. You got this. And when we do this, this blueprint of where the local people, the wildlife, where we're giving a logger a better life, you're solving the problem. You spread that. So then you take that blueprint and you export it to the Congo, to Indonesia. And you start saving rivers all over the world and empowering people and becoming like a conservation consultant. And by that point, I do find it hard to believe that someone won't come out of the woodwork and go, here's a $15 million endowment, go help. Like, we just got, so right now, the main thing, this is important. Right now, the reason I was down there is that we have a road right now. They're coming up from the north because we have a lot of the corridor established. We're protecting 160,000 acres of land. We're about halfway. They have a road coming down from the north. And so they have bulldozers and they have chain saws and they have surveyors and they're coming down into towards where we're protecting. They're not there yet. And there's a few parcels of land there that we could get. And it's about 40,000 acres right there that we could just protect. And so we're calling out now for funding to try and get that. Someone reached out who had read the book and she said, how much do you need? We said about $4 million to buy all of this land immediately. Like, this is like by the end of the year, emergency state. And she goes, I'll give you a million, she was, but I want to do matching. She goes, it'll be more powerful. I can give you a million, but I'm only doing it if it's matching. And at first, I was like, what's the logic there? Like why wouldn't you just give it to us? And she's like, I don't know. If you tell your audience that if they give dollar for dollar, I'll match. Then you get two million dollars and you're halfway to stopping the road. And we've already talked to the land owners. We can get that land. And then the road has to stop. And it protects everything we've done. Whereas if the road comes through all the work we've done over the last 20 years, I just came over. And so that's what we're dealing with is that I have to raise two million dollars by the end of the year. We have a million dollars. So there are good people out there with the checkbook that are willing to help. And then they're like, yeah, but now now see if the people actually care. Yeah. And that's my job. And so the stressful part of this is like, when you fail the losses are devastating. Because you lose parts of the jungle that are irreplaceable. Millennium trees, thousand year old trees with species sometimes that have never been described. And then the victories are so exciting because the people come through people from all over the world making these little donations and a lot of raindrops makes a flood. And then you go, wait a second, my faith in humanity is restored because all these people want to save the monkeys and then the butterflies in the ancient trees. But it's like, we got to keep doing miracle after miracle. And it's like, now we're running for the end of the year. And it's like watching mission impossible and be like, holy shit, he just jumped a bike onto the train, that killed the bad guys. And it's like, yeah, but he can't wake up and do it again tomorrow. And that's the problem with what we're doing right now. And that's why I'm like, I just, I'm hoping that someone with the right resources comes in and goes for 20 million. Let's just get this done. Save it now. So you don't have to keep. It's like, what we're doing right now, what I'm doing by writing the books and by doing the social media and all this stuff. I'm begging for the tools to do my job. And I want to do is just do my job. There's enough work of surveying this land and working with the locals and managing the team and then living on the Amazon. And then it's like, we have to be like, guys, can we please have bullets so we can win the war? Yeah. And the beautiful thing is that so many people have come forward that now there's thousands of people in the jungle keeper network. And they can give to us, support the local people who are protecting the jungle. I'm just the, the American mouthpiece. And the cool part is with the people that those kids at home that are donating to us. And then when they grow up, we say, come to the treehouse and see what you protected. Well, Paul Rosalie, ladies and gentlemen, make sure you check out the book. We'll put the link in the bio where you guys can donate. Man, thank you so much. That was fucking amazing. This is what a life is awesome. That was fun. That was awesome. That was awesome.