Transcript of #2441 - Paul Rosolie

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Hello, jungle man.

What's happening?

Good to see you, my brother.

What's going on?

You got books, you got notes?

I got books.

I got this here with us.

I got this for you. Yeah, a little. Little note in there. You can read later. Yeah, the brand new. That's what. Back from the Amazon with that.

Nice. Marcy, say hi to everybody.

I love that you bring Marsh. Have you. Has Marshall come on other podcasts, or.

Is it just a good boy.

You good boy. We should.

I just have to keep him from going under the water. Nobody. Yeah, I gotta keep him from getting under the. Come on up here. Come on up here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's the best.

He is the best. He's a sweetie. He's soft, man. He's got. He's got amazing coat.

Big sweetie. Well, he gets groomed. Oh, thank you. Thank you for the kisses. Okay, lie down, please.

Lie down.

Lie down, please. So.

Oh, my God.

You. You released that video. I saw the video of the Uncontacted tribe.

Yeah. Hitting send on that was scary because. Yeah.

Wild.

I sent you. I sent you a message that day.

Yeah.

When that happened.

Yeah, you did. That is crazy. I've showed it to a few people, but we never showed it live. But it is so. Marcia, you gotta lie down, buddy. You can't be climbing under the wires. Lie down, bubba. That experience has to be so insane to contact, like, legitimately uncontacted people. There they are.

Yeah. Yes.

Gentlemen, do not look at their dongs.

Do not. Well, I mean, you know, but also, maybe take a style tip from them and tie them up.

Weird how they got their waist wrapped up, but they don't have their dongs wrapped up or their butthole.

Well, it seems like they're. They're trying to protect or they're trying to keep lots of rope. I think rope is, like, their main thing. So that's how they carry all their rope.

Interesting. And. And carry the rope around their waist.

They carry their rope around their waist and they just want rope. They want rope. And bananas is.

Do bananas grow in the Amazon?

So bananas don't grow unless people plant them. So there's certain human settlements where, you know, you can find old bananas growing, but these, you plant plantains, really, is what this is. And they were requesting them. And what you see happening here is they request them. Yes. They come out and, I mean, these are people coming out a thousand years late to society. And they're out on the beach holding up their hands, saying, nomole, we are the brothers. Nomole means brothers. And so now we actually think that they call themselves the brothers.

Whoa.

And their first thing was, we want bananas. And so the local anthropologists that we were with, we were just there to work with the communities that we work with. And these guys came out across the beach and you see them, they're holding, they're holding their bows. And those bows are six foot bows, seven foot arrows. And we were said, you know, the anthropologist was saying, put down your weapons, Put down your bows before you talk to us. This does not need to be violent. Because their first instinct is to defend themselves. And so there's maybe 20, 30 of us. And the local guys had a couple of shotguns just in case for protection because we were not initiating contact. That's the thing I've been explaining to everybody. We were just there working in the community. They came out to us.

So they knew you were there and they came out to you. And how does someone speak their language?

There's one guy in the community that kind of speaks a little bit. They speak in the community. They speak yine. The Mashco Piros speak a derivation of that. And so they're speaking in broken terms across the river. So they were sort of shirts versus skins. We were on this side of the river, they were on that side of the river. And then, I mean, the courage of this guy to get in the river and go, you know, 10ft from them and push the canoe. There was no contact, no physical contact made. But he gave them these plantains. And then you notice when they take them, it's not like, oh, yes, take the plantains. We'll go back in the jungle and divvy them up. It's like, what I get, I get they're fighting over them. And they were all screaming and fighting over them. So there's desperation there.

Yeah, like, I mean, I guess food is fucking hard to come by, right? I mean, the jungle is filled with life, but it's still. It's got to be difficult to source. And you got to do it every single day.

Every single day.

There's no refrigeration, there's no preservation.

No. So everything is instantaneous. You shoot a monkey, you got to cook it and eat it. You know, you get a turtle, you got to. You got to eat it. You got to open it and eat it. And so there's you. I mean, you can see there's more. There's that, that Questioning look on their face. They don't understand who really, who we are. And really the only communications that we got was we need more food and stop cutting down our trees. They wanted to, they said, who are the bad ones? They said of you, who are the bad ones? Why are you cutting down our biggest trees?

Well, not just cutting down the trees, but also killing the indigenous people that protest it, that get in the way of it if their tribe is centrally located in an area where they're chopping down the trees that kill those people.

Yeah, yeah. And so right now what we have is we have the loggers and the gold miners coming in. And so since like the last time I saw you, it was, it was, we were, we were nailing all these successes, adding acres to the reserve. Because what we're doing is trying to create this corridor which is going to become a national park. We're trying to save this one river in the headwaters of the Amazon. And we had been on this success run, you know, from people hearing the stories from things like this, people coming in and helping us do that. And then it started to change where we realized, okay, we're protecting so much land that the logging mafias and the narco traffickers started pushing back. And so now it's getting more serious as we're getting closer to the finish line. It's getting harder because they're going, we want this to remain wild. And we're going, we're trying to protect this. And the local communities are going, this is our forest. And the loggers and the narcos and the miners, miners are coming from other places and they're cutting down this forest. And so it's just, you know, I mean, everyone knows the Amazon is the lungs of the Earth.

Everyone knows it's got a, it produces a fifth of our oxygen on our planet. It contains a fifth of the oxygen of the fresh water on our planet. So it's vital to global planetary stability. But we've already destroyed 20% of it. And so we're seeing the moisture cycle get broken. 20% of the whole Amazon rainforest.

That's insane.

And that thing is so big. 2.7 million square miles. And I think the lower 48 is 3 point something million square miles.

Wow.

It's gigantic.

Wow. And they've already killed off 20% of it.

20% of it's already gone.

Is it mostly cattle running? Like, what is, what are they, what are they doing it for?

Cattle ranching accounts for 60% of Amazon deforestation. And then it's just development, roads China has a new shipping port in Peru that they want to, you know, create a, I think a railroad over the Andes mountains or through the Andes mountains so they can start getting access to the Amazon for Asian markets.

Is it true they carved out a giant pathway through the Amazon for a climate change conference?

You know, I've been trying to figure out if that's true. I saw that go all over the Internet.

But it's one of those things like, who knows if that's real, that.

And then the other one is they're like, you know, Swedish billionaire bought this much of the Amazon. And it's like, but what's his name? They keep saying that. And I'm like, I don't.

Well, let's put it into perplexity and find out that's true. The whether or not they carved out a pathway through the Amazon for a climate change summit. Because that sounds like horseshit.

That just sounds too, too ridiculous.

There's no way they would do something that stupid.

I don't know, but I did see.

Also, why would they have a climate change summit in the Amazon? You're gonna do it in a tent?

No, I think they did it in Manaus. I mean, there are cities in the Amazon. There's Iquitos, there's Manaus, but you can.

Fly into those cities. You don't need to carve out a fucking pathway.

But I remember seeing a video of this guy and he was saying like, this is where the jungle used to be and now it's just this big road. And I was like, but again, who in charge of the climate unless they were going to have a climate conference. And just local administrators and politicians said, well, we better get ready and clear this area. And like, maybe it wasn't intentional, I don't know. I mean, if they have pictures of.

Wow, perfect. Nice. Whoa. It's on the BBC. Amazon forest fell to build road for climate summit there you go. Oh my God, it's real. Oh my God. A new four lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belem. Oh my God. That is so crazy. It aims to ease traffic to the city, which will help climate.

It's easier to drive when there's no trees.

More than 50,000 people, including world leaders, at the conference in November, the state government touts the highway Highway Sustainable. I love how they use that term. Sustainable is one of those wonderful terms. You can just throw on things. Sustainable credentials but lacks local and conservation. But some Local and locals and conservationists are outraged at the environmental impact. Yeah, duh. That's crazy.

Look at that.

You're chopping down trees to protest chopping down trees. That's fucking insane.

Sounds amazing.

I just, you know, at what point in time people gonna wake up?

At one point in time people are gonna wake up. And I think that that's, you know, that's sort of as I've been. I've just started this book tour and everything else and it's the thing I'm trying to impress, I was just talking about this the other night is like we've had world wars, we've had great famines, we had the, the dust bowls. Like there's never been a time in history though before where we're looking at is there going to be ecological collapse. The thing that I'm talking about with where they've cut 20% of the Amazon, scientists are warning that if we cut too much of the Amazon, that moisture cycle, I think the thing was that 20 trillion liters of water every day are pumped into the air from the Amazon and that becomes the cloud system that rains back down and creates the Amazon rainforest. If you cut too much of that, you break the cycle. And that forest has been growing for something like 55 million years. I believe it formed in the Eocene. And so we are the generation that's going to decide do we find a sustainable way to keep the animal, the Amazon rainforest functioning or are we going to break that cycle and once we lose it, it's not going to come back.

It's so crazy. It's so crazy that people are so short sighted. Like we want them have cattle ranches.

It is disorganization and apathy. It's like we have the ability to organize. Incredible. If you can organize an, you can figure out a way to protect a forest. But the fact that it's in numerous Latin American countries, Brazil wants to develop in Peru you have the illegal gold miners coming in and now you have the pressure from the Asian markets. And you know, we found that if you just, I mean that's what we've been doing over the last 20 years is going to these gold miners and loggers and going how much do you make? And they go $20 a day. You go, do you want to make 60? And you get a cool shirt and you get health benefits and you get to ride a boat and you get a team. And they're like yeah, that sounds so much better. And they're happy to come over, but.

They need the opportunity We've talked about you doing that, and I think that is really amazing. It's just crazy that it takes a person like you and your organization to, like, put some sort of a dent in this. This isn't some sort of a gigantic global effort, that there's not a lot of people that are recognizing this issue and saying, hey, this is a huge problem if this goes away.

I think, though, that there I see in the world that I exist in, I see that all over the world there's people doing conservation project, that we are at this point where there's enough happening, where, I mean, you had E.O. wilson advocating for the half Earth policy, where it's, you know, at least half of the Earth has to remain ecosystems. If you break too much down, if you ruin our ocean fisheries, if you cut the rainforests in the forest, you're going to ruin the weather. The stuff that comes standard with life on Earth is going to be depleted, right? And so I think, you know, you see tiger numbers going up in India. You see that there's actually been an increase in forest cover globally. But in some of the most important areas, areas like the Amazon, it's just wild. And I mean, that's what we're doing is, you know, the guy JJ that I work with, who's local, he's been trying to. He's been saying this for years. I mean, since we saw each other. He got. Which I don't know how this happened. I don't know how some of this stuff happens, but we got an email one day from Time, and they were like, we're selecting our hundred climate leaders of 20, 24.

And they're like, jj's one of them. And I have no idea how the people at times select this, but they chose this. I mean, JJ grew up in an indigenous community barefoot. He didn't have shoes until he was 13. And it was because he saw his forest get destroyed and because he saw the fish vanish from the rivers as nets came in and then as chainsaws came to the region. He saw the trees go down. He went, we got to protect the next river. And so he's the one that, you know, when I went down there at 18 years old, he's the one that was like, look, you gotta help me protect this. And of course, at 18 years old, I was like, how? How do I do that? How on earth is that possible? And then when we started seeing the smoke on the horizon and we started hearing the chainsaws and it got more urgent, I started telling these stories and then the Anaconda stories and everything else. The first book that I wrote, and little by little, Jane Goodall people helped along the way. Joe Rogan helped along the way.

Well, I'm happy to get the word out because, I mean, it's kind of insane that it's happening, but it's also. That place is such a magical place and it has such an insane history that we're just starting to understand the history of the people that live there. I mean, through the use of LiDAR, they're just starting to understand that the entire place was massively populated and that a lot of the plants that exist in the Amazon are actually agriculture plants that went, you know, went rogue when the people were depopulated because people brought in smallpox.

I gotta push back on that. I feel like that's a theory that's been becoming prevalent as a theory.

Well, sure, there was a jungle before, because even in the lost city of Z, what is it? Percy Fawcett the people that went, they talked about the Amazon being a lush rainforest and these enormous cities that were incredibly complex before the jungle swallowed them up. So it's clear that there was some form of jungle there already, 100%, but that these plants that they grew for agriculture were the ones that had. Once people stopped tending them and taking care of them, they overwhelmed the rest of the forest.

Yeah, a friend sent me a clip and I think you were talking to Tom Segura and. And the crazy thing about the Amazon and you went, it's largely man made. And I was like, threw something and.

I was like, no, let's find out why we said that. Let's pull that up, run that into perplexity and see what articles we get. Because what they're saying is that these plants, the number, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, the numbers that they exist in are not natural.

But that's only around these ancient sites. And so I went and did a deep dive into this. And the sites that they've studied are along the watersheds. And so in the Amazon you have terra firma, which is sort of dry forest, and then it dips into the river basin and you have flood plain. Most of these cities existed on floodplains. And so where the scientists are able to go is up the rivers and they go to the edges of these floodplains where they find ancient human settlements. And that's where you find terra preta soil, which is human engineered. And that's where you find. There'll be like a higher incidence of certain trees or certain plants.

What are these trees?

And so like bananas for example, or sometimes they'll plant a higher amount of Brazil nut trees.

So here it is our sponsor Perplexity, which is always accurate. Estimates suggest that roughly 10 to 15% of the Amazon standing forest shows clear signs of being man made or strongly shaped by long term indigenous management. Not planted as uniform tree farms, but modified over thousands of years. Much of the Amazon that looks wild has been influenced by pre Columbian indigenous agroforestry, soil enrichment, Amazon dark earth, that's Terra preta and species selection. Rather than being a purely untouched wilderness, these systems differ from modern plantations. They are diverse semi natural forests enriched with useful trees and crops rather than rows of single commercial species. So the the idea of the Terra preta was that a lot of the Amazon soil is not good for agriculture. Agriculture, is that correct?

It's barren.

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It used to be a vast inland sea.

Crazy.

Yes. When it separated from Africa, the Congo and the Amazon used to be joined in some sort of proto Congo system. And then when they separated, the Amazon South America hit up against the Nazca plate, the Andes Mountains shot up and then the salinated water drained out. And that's why we still have inland freshwater stingrays Manatees, Pink river dolphins.

Oh, that makes sense.

And so that happened over millions of years as those salinated waters, the saltwater.

Dolphins, adapted to fresh water.

Exactly.

And is that why they became pink?

They became pink I think because they've lost their pigmentation, they have terrible eyesight. They almost don't need to see because you don't in that sediment rich water they're using, they're using sonar.

Whoa, that's crazy.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow. So they've become almost blind.

All the fish you pull out, these giant catfish, they hardly have eyes. They have like light sensing organs you can't see. I mean there's, there are clear rivers in the Amazon, which I would love to, I've never been to one. And like the streams are clear, but the Amazon river itself is nothing. Everyone's like, oh, you should bring a GoPro in the river with you. And I'm like, for what? You're not going to see anything.

It's just sediment.

Yeah, but the thing that this theory about the Amazon is, even human engineered is wrong. Because when you look at the size of the Amazon, you look at that 2.7 million miles, it's that they've said that what they're not getting is that in the areas that these people have been studying with lidar and through this anthropological digging, they're saying it's more than we thought. There's certainly more human settlements than we previously thought. There maybe were a few million people there before Pizarro and the explorers came. But what you don't realize is that between the rivers, between each river, which is the majority of the Amazon, is this terra firma, giant jungle with hundreds of miles between the rivers. Nobody's been there. And so I just was reading a scientific paper, it was saying they went out and sampled those areas and it showed absolutely no sign of human engineering. And so most of the forest in.

Terms of the growth of the plants, but did they do lidar to see if there's previous structures?

Well, the good thing with the lidar is that they fly over. And so lidar confirmed that over those human areas, like you get like a river confluence where two rivers are coming together. There'll be a human settlement there. And in those areas they find that the terra preta, they'll find that the plants occur in different abundance and diversity than in the other places. But that the, this, this message that the Amazon itself was engineered by ancient humans or prehistoric humans is not actually accurate. It was a wild jungle.

Clickbait.

Did they think it because people build their Careers on. You know, if you come out and say, I have a new theory about how this formed, it gets attention. There's even a. And nothing against. What's his name? Graham Hancock. Mm. For a while, everyone's like, oh, Paul, Rosie needs to debate Graham. I got nothing against Graham Hancock. He's great. But it's just the messaging is becoming that the Amazon was kind of man made. And so what happens is you get leaders like in Brazil going, well, if the Amazon was really man made, then we can manage it now. And it's just not accurate. If you look at the. And even Smithsonian did an article where they said, these are the current things that are coming out. These are the theories. And then it went, yeah, but these theories discount the fact that 95% of the Amazon rainforest has not been surveyed in this way. And most of it shows that these are just wild ecosystems that have been growing since the dawn of time for the last 55, 30 million years. And it's just been speciating and growing and evolving on its own. And it's only in these tiny areas that humans have done this sort of engineering.

Where there were tribes, the first one to come down the Amazon, he mentioned that there were tribes that had sectioned off parts of the river and they were growing the giant river turtles. And that was their prime source of protein. So they figured out how to get protein.

They're a giant river turtle.

Oh, tremendous. They're like three or four feet across from the carapace.

Show me a giant river turtle, Jamie.

Oh, they're huge. They're monstrous. Absolutely. We don't have them all bigger than sea turtles.

Like those sea turtles, sea turtle size.

They're huge. They're absolutely monstrous. And then we found fossils. We were on a beach, we found fossils of an eight foot river turtle. Yeah, but see, like that.

So just like the ones you find in Hawaii, those sea turtles are like, if you go to the big island.

Yeah.

You could swim with them. It's pretty dope.

Yeah. These guys don't have flippers, though. They still have. They still have claws. Okay. Those are monster turtles.

Masses.

And so.

And so they were growing them, farming them.

They were farming them. And so in areas like that, you're gonna see agriculture, you're gonna see pottery, you're gonna see terra preta. You're gonna see things where there was a small civilization by the edge of the river. And then in the other 98% of the Amazon, no one's ever been there.

Have you had sea turtle before? Have you? This kind of turtle Whatever it is, have you eaten it yet?

Oh, sea turtle. No, this. Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

What is it like?

It's kind of slimy. It's not like anything. It's very strange because they cook it and just, you know, everyone always. How could you be a conservationist and eat the animal? Because when you go to someone's house and they live on the side of a river and they go, we're having dinner. That's what they're serving.

You gotta eat with them. Yeah, I wouldn't do that, man. You're ruining.

Yeah. How could you let me throw paint on it?

Let me glue myself to the shell.

Yes, that's what I'm gonna do next time. And I showed you that video where I'm sharing the monkey head with the girl. Yeah. I was like, I was babysitting a six year old and she was like, it's lunchtime. And I was like, well, what did your parents leave you for lunch? And she like opens this pot and pulls out a monkey head. And she was like this. So we put it on the fire, warmed it up, and then we both sat there, just like rip it. I would like rip off a piece for her because I was stronger and give it to her. And then she was like, no, no, I want the ear. And she like, she would rip off the ear. Like we just sat there eating a monkey face. And so the turtle, they cook it in the shell. They'll just like, you know, they'll just like slit its throat, throw it on the fire. And so it cooks in the shell, then they part the shell. And then you kind of just like, it's like a slow cooked, like yolk when the meat falls off the bone.

Oh, wow.

You just throw a little salt on.

There and it's kind of. How do they get their salt? Is that something they trade?

They trade for it. They trade for it. I mean, the people I'm dealing with have access to the outside. Even the really remote communities that are two days upriver, they, they, they trade with the outside world, they have some interaction with money. And so that's one of the things that we're doing as an organization is saying, okay, what do you want your future to look like? Because right now you have a couple shotguns, you got a couple chainsaws, you got a couple boats. And those things make you want money, but you also want to eat fish out of the river every day.

Right?

You also want to eat monkeys every day. And these are your staples. And they're like, you know, if, if you cut down more of these trees. There will be less monkeys if you shoot too many. Like, it's not like they have deer tags where it's like a monitored thing. They just, they, they're not understanding this. You know, when it was a bow and arrow, it was kind of a fair game. Now the shotgun, it's like you can go shoot whatever you want.

Yeah, Every time you point at a monkey, it's dead.

Yes.

It's not a tricky hunt.

And so we're word. These guys are, you know, working with us as rangers and we're building this devout, developing this relationship with the local communities of saying, how do you. Do you want to continue living this way? Do you want your kids to live this way? And the answer usually is yes, but with better health and education. So we want to.

Yes, but that's interesting. So they like that way of life. They want. They want to continue that way of life because it's the only thing they've known. I mean, have any of these people ever gone to, like, any of these other cities that are fairly close or that they could reach and see what that life is like?

Yeah, we brought one of the communities. They were having trouble with the Peruvian government getting recognized as an indigenous community. And they were having this trouble for 15 years. And we used, you know, now we have lawyers and people and we have an office and all this stuff in Peru. And so we went and sat down with them. We said, okay, why are you having this trouble? I mean, you clearly are an indigenous community. What's the holdup? And the holdup was that it takes two days for them to get to the nearest town. When they get to the nearest town, they're scared of the traffic. They have no idea what to do with paperwork. They have to sit in an office. I mean, these are people, they're like, putting their bows and arrows and guns down and walking into an office and sitting there in the air conditioning. And they're like, next. And they're like, sit. And they're like, do you have form like I2 27B? And they're like, I2 what? Buh, buh. And they're like, what's your Social Security number? And they're like, ah, you know, they got some, like, fish shells in there.

And so what we realized was that they were just having trouble with the administrative part. And so we put our lawyers on it and we got them their indigenous titled land. And so now no one can take that away from them. And so for that, we brought them all to the city. We had A big conference, and we had a big celebration about it. And they all had the feathers on their head and they were all celebrating, and now they're safe.

Is there any pushback? Like, is there any, like, political influence by whatever it is, miners, ranchers, anyone who tries to stop that from happening? Bribe people to try to take over the land of these people?

Absolutely. I mean, the Amazon is a war zone of influence. And so you have. I mean, the miners. If anybody tries to protest the gold mining, they kill you. So one of the lawyers that I was working with, his father, had come out and said, look, as a local Peruvian person in the jungle, I want this to stop. They can't. They're destroying. There's a. Jamie, there's a photo in the folder that says. I think it says sandstorm or something, but it's just. It's not even. Again, deserts are actually ecosystems. This is a wasteland. They've destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres in the Peruvian Amazon. You can see it from space. It's this horrible scar. And they've cut the trees, burned the forest, and then they've sucked the land up. And then they take the bottom of the sediment and they use mercury to bind the gold out of the sediment, and then they burn the mercury off the gold, releasing it into the air.

Oh, great.

Oh, yeah. So that then in the rain, it comes down as mercury rain, which gets into the fish, which gets into the.

People, and then also the miners must be getting mercury poisoning.

The miners all have mercury poisoning. Birth defects, health problems, respiratory issues. I mean, it's. Yeah, that's some of the fires. That is me. That is me running out there with me right there. Yeah. I mean, as soon as we see forest burning, we run towards it.

And it rains there a lot. Right. So, like, how long does this forest fire last?

Well, they do it in September when the, like, it's like July through September when the forest is at its driest. They come in and they cut the forest and they leave it down.

What was that picture you just showed me, Jamie?

That's a horrible picture.

Is that animals burned alive on a tree?

Two baby jaguars that were burned alive.

Oh, God.

Yeah. And so people.

And they just stuck on the tree burned alive. That's crazy.

People talk about, you know, we're losing ecosystems, and it's like, it's not just about us. These animals live there. They have nowhere else to go. And so there's massive individual suffering for animals. Millions of animals on a single tree. And so then when you have this, These. These fires where they cut the forest and just burn everything. This, I mean, those trees would have been filled with monkeys and birds and. And the snakes, you know, they get scared. They burrow deeper into their hole, and then it burns.

And so this is all for gold mining.

This was for cattle ranching. This one. This was invaders on our river that come in from other places. They set up cows, they set up papaya. And, I mean, this is what it's supposed to look like. It's supposed to be this lush, verdant, ancient rainforest filled with wildlife. I mean, the cacophony of sound when you.

When you're.

When you're going to sleep in your tent at night and you're out in a place like that, it's just this throbbing, pulsing symphony. It's incredible. The magic of that place, of real wilderness is wild. I mean, this is. That particular shot was. It's. We had to go for days to reach that spot. You know, all day on the river camp, all day on the river camp. You know, you're going up rapids, you're going up the waterfalls to get to these places that nobody can go. And there's a. There's an example of. It's. That was specifically a location where they've studied and they've found that there's never been a human settlement there. It's just a corner of the Amazon.

Ever have they done lidar in these areas where they say the people have died?

I don't know for sure.

That's where it gets weird, right? Because they've done lidar in some of these places that were very lush and tropical. And then they find these structures underneath it. They find these areas that clearly had some sort of pathways and like geometric patterns that indicate foundations of buildings.

Yeah, those are there. I just think that right now the problem is that it's getting grossly overstated. How much of the Amazon, if you take it as a football field and you go, man, I thought it was only in this much of the football field, in a few inches of it. And then you find out there's actually 10ft of the football field that was still. The rest of the football field is still wild.

Right?

And so what I think that's the message that's getting lost is they're going, there's a lot more here than we thought. That doesn't mean the whole thing.

I watched a documentary once on. This guy was losing his mind. He was a scientist who was a biologist who's convinced that the giant sloth still existed in the Amazon. And they Couldn't find it. And that these people who lived there were telling him, we see them. We know what they are. We have a name for them. And this guy had been there for years, and he was losing his mind because he couldn't find it. And he sort of staked his academic reputation on the idea that this sloth existed. Couldn't find anything. But it doesn't mean it's not there.

It doesn't mean it's not there.

There's so much.

There's so much. And the. The locals are never wrong.

Like, imagine if you were looking for a coyote and you had to look through the entire. Like, there was a thousand coyotes in the center of the United States. And you started in Pennsylvania and you were hiking your way. Like, I don't see any coyotes, but there's a thousand of them that are in North Dakota. And you've got a fine. Like, that's actually.

That's a great way of thinking of it. It's the same thing with rattlesnakes. When I was a teenager, I was exploring the mountains of New York, and I was going, it says, there's rattlesnakes here. So I was just walking around, finding every kind of snake. I'd be like, well, where are the rattlesnakes? And you don't realize that wildlife occurs in populations. And so the rattlesnakes were all near rattlesnake dens. And so then I started making friends with other guys that were into snakes, and they're like, yeah, we know where they are. It's only. You see that mountain right there? It's like, it's on the side of that. Go to that in the morning when there's sun, and you'll see them basking. It's like, you got to go to where they live.

Right. And you have to talk to the people that actually know. Well, this guy was trying to do that, but there was this. This one scene of exasperation where he was, like, sitting down, saying, did I stake my entire reputation on horseshit? You know, did he?

Did he.

But did you have to pee? He keeps getting up, which is unusual for him. Can you tell Jeff to come and get him? See if he can. He might have to pee. He's generally. He's happy to chill.

Yeah, I'll just lay down.

He keeps getting up, and he's huffing.

Yeah.

Which is like. He communicates that way. Like, when he wants to eat, he comes up to me and he huffs, you know.

But I think that that's. That's that's the truth is that it's, it's people think it's like you can just go find this stuff and it's that the secrets in this world are hidden for a reason. And even if there is a tribe that knows about the giant ground sloths, they're not going to tell us, right? They're not going to tell someone from the outside. So it might be like one, one valley between two mountains where there's still a population.

Bathroom. Bring him back in here. I'm pretty sure he has to go. Thanks, Jeff.

I wouldn't, you know, I mean there's.

Got to be a bunch. Well, there's so many plants that they find there that this is an interesting statistic. Find out what percentage of pharmaceutical drugs the compounds emanate from the Amazon. It's an enormous percentage. Yeah.

A lot of the base drugs, quinine, came from the Amazon. The first cure for malaria. I know Captopril, which was a blood pressure medication, came from Bushmaster venom. That was in the 90s. There's so much. I mean, I just got whacked by a stingray. Hard.

I saw that. It got your foot right. What was that like? What happened?

That was brutal. I mean that in.

Bro, you've been hit by everything.

I had to, dude. My body is a Jackson Pollock painting of scars.

Do you ever get checked for parasites? Because you must have all of them.

I do.

Estimates typically say that about 25% of modern pharmaceutical drugs are derived from rainforest plants. And many of those known examples come from the Amazon. But there's no precise peer reviewed percentage just for the Amazon alone. Most popular figures you see, like 25% of medicines come from the Amazon actually refer to all tropical rainforests, not specifically the Amazon. But the thing is like how much of the Amazon has not been explored and how many potential pharmaceutical drugs, or you know, here's that's the term, right? Pharmaceutical drugs. What about natural remedies exist in the Amazon that aren't. You don't need to patent them and sell them at a fucking pharmacy.

And yeah, I mean, look, so we have, you know, we have, we have Neosporin. You get a cut, it looks a little infected. You put Neosporin on it, it might work. Down there we have a tree that if you get, we, we tested this and it, it murders bacteria. It's like a hundred times more potent than Neosporin.

What's it called?

The Sangre de Drago. It's not even a big secret. Like people know about this every time I post about it. Everyone's like, yeah, we know about that. We use it.

No kidding.

But no one's ever turned it into a cream.

Can it grow in Austin?

Probably.

Can I get some? Sandra. How do you say it?

Sangre de drago. The dragon.

Sandra de Drago.

Sangre de drago.

Sangre de drago.

Yes. Dragons.

I'm watching Game of Thrones again. That sounds like something Khaleesi would say.

The mother of dragons.

And by the way, Khal Drago could have used that as he died of an.

I mean, right. The thing that took him down.

That didn't make any sense to me. I thought that was a plot hole.

No, there it is.

That's dragon's blood. Sangre de drago.

Yeah, but is it good? Is it sourced well?

Right. It's probably made by some asshole. It's probably like 1%. The rest of it's corn syrup.

Because we just go. We just hit the tree with the machete and then you have a spoon and then you put it on your thing and actually exactly that. When I saw that, I thought the opposite. I was like, oh, this great warrior. I was like, that's such a great plot twist that just a nick killed him. I mean, I just had a staph infection in my leg from one mosquito bite that just got itchy. And then it spread and it spread and it spread until I had to be on double antibiotics. They cultured it and it was mrsa. And it's like I would have died.

I was in the Amazon.

Well, I got MRSA years ago at. I had dengue and I had gone to a clinic in the city, which MRSA usually lives, like in the hospitals in the human areas.

Right. Because it's a medication resistant staph infection. That's what MRSA stands for, right?

Yep. And so I had gotten it. And so I have a tendency now I've been a little bit compromised in terms of infections because living 20 years in the jungle, and so I had already gotten it. So chances are that's where it doesn't exist. And that's the thing you see, in the. In the wild jungle, you don't have malaria, you don't have rabies, you don't have dengue. Because the human population is so low that it doesn't spread. A mosquito bites you here, the next person that's going to bite is me or Jamie. Mosquito bites me in the city and then I go out into the rainforest. There's no one else for it to bite. It's gonna bite an anteater Right. And so it's not gonna spread like that. Whereas if we have a town of loggers, that's why when you go to these, like, logging and mining camps, the diseases, they're just. I mean, there's this thing called, this type of flea called a piki that burrows into your feet and lays eggs. There's leishmaniasis, there's malaria, dengue. What's the bird? Zika virus. There's all these crazy things, but we don't have that out in the jungle because, I mean, the ecosystem, the frogs eat most of the mosquito larva.

The mosquito larva, like bromeliad cups or puddles. Well, bromeliad cups and puddles are filled with tadpoles. And then, of course, there's turtles in the puddles eating the tadpoles. And then there's other things eating the turtles. Everything's eating everything.

Ecosystem.

Ecosystem regulates it when you ruin that. So then you cut down the forest. Now you have puddles sitting in the sun, and they're all twitching with mosquito larva. So you have tons of mosquitoes. And so that's how nature. They say, you know, mangrove forests will stop tsunamis from destroying a town because they'll stop the rush of the water. Well, forests will keep you safe by not only producing rainfall that'll come down on your crops, but also making sure that the ecosystem's not out of balance so you're not covered in mosquitoes and parasites.

When I lived in la, I moved into a house in Encino that I was renting, and the no one had lived there in quite a while, and they had left the water in the pool. And when I was going out to look at the pool, the pool was completely green, and there was things swimming in it. Like, I mean, like, school swimming. And I go, what is that? The guy goes, that's mosquito larva. Like, no way. And he's like, yeah, we have to kill them. We have to drain the pool. And we're like, I was just thinking about how many times I was going to get bitten once these things hatched. It was crazy. Like, it was like watching little fish swim around. Little hatchlings.

Yep. And then thank God for dragonflies, because they'll lay their. Their young in the same thing and dragonfly larva will go murk. Those things. They're savage. And then you get tadpoles.

Wild kingdom. Right in your pool.

Right in your pool. Right in your little cup. But. But when I got stung by the stingray, it was crazy because so the. The. I had been walking, I'VE been walking with shoes in this stream. I took my shoes off because I was like, oh, I'm at a waterfall. I know this waterfall. I love this waterfall. Playing in the waterfall. And, man, it's the one thing. Bullet ants, caiman bites, snake bites. I've had it all. The stingray bite was the one thing.

Worse than bullet ants.

A hundred thousand times worse.

Really?

Yes. And I'd seen one guy get. Get stung by a stingray, and he had nerve damage, a systemic infection up his leg and his whole body, and he didn't walk for months. So when I got hit, I felt. This is what I felt. I felt in the flash of a second, I felt the stingray barb go into my foot, and it wagged its tail under my skin. So it flayed the skin off the arch of my foot and came out.

And it has venom.

Yeah. So there. All the skin is, man. Yeah.

Nasty. Did you put the skin of the dragon or whatever the hell it is?

Better. So I sat. And of course, my first thing was, I was like, okay, I gotta document. Oh, man, I'm unconscious. I'm unconscious.

At this point, you're in that much pain?

Yes. I was blacking out.

He's like, what?

Yeah, I mean, I was literally. I knew. I knew people were filming, and I was like, I didn't. You know, you want to be tough. You want to be like, all right, I just got bit by a stingray. It's going to be fine. I was not tough.

It says, I don't remember any of this.

Yeah. So that first thing right there, I started taking a video. My friend comes up to me, and he was like, hey, man. He's like, we gotta. You gotta stop. He's like, because in a minute, you're gonna go under. I was like, what do you mean I'm gonna go under? And he's like, once the venom hits your system, he's. He goes, you're not going to be able to walk. And we're. We're still a few miles from the river. And he's like, we got to get you to the boat, and we can't carry you.

Whoa.

And so they got me back to the station. I don't remember any of it. They had me laying on my back, and I was in so much pain, I couldn't put my foot down. I mean, I was making deals with God. I was going, if I. If you. If you just make the pain go away. I was like, I'll go to church every day. I was like, I'll never smoke a.

Cigarette again on your foot.

So that's the plant medicine. That's where I'm going with this cigarette every day.

That's fine.

That pack there, they went to two different trees and they removed compounds from the tree. One was the bark and one was the fiber. And they put it into a leaf pack and they cook it on a pan and they heat it, and it makes this plant poultice. And they put this boiling hot piece of plant material. It's like a fish cake. And they put it against the wound, and even that burned, but it felt better than the venom. And it starts to suck out the venom. And so when they took it off my foot after, like, this is them getting the. Getting the plant material where they know the medicines, and that's been handed down through the generations.

So they're just shaving it off with a knife.

Yes. You see this few different colors, cake.

Of all this stuff.

And then they heat that up until it's scalding, press it against your foot.

And you've been in the Amazon for a long time. This is the first time that's ever happened to you. You've been stung by a stingray.

This is the first time.

Now, how does it happen? You just. You step in the wrong place.

JJ's nephew, so he knows, he's got the indigenous training. He knew exactly what to do.

Wow.

Yeah. And so that's all the venom. So now all that black stuff is all the. All the denatured blood that came out of my foot. And so for about four hours, I was in this state of just level 10 pain, just white hot pain. I couldn't talk to anybody. I couldn't do anything. People were coming to me, and they were like, what can we do? And I was like, just leave me alone. I was like, I don't want you to look at my face. You know, I was coming in and out, and then. And then by nighttime, it had. It had gotten. This was at night where I was like, okay, the pain had subsided, but I didn't get nerve damage and I didn't get a huge infection because they had this indigenous plant medicine to save me.

Wow.

The last guy that I knew that got it, he'd went straight to the hospital. And they had no idea how to deal with it. The locals know how to deal with this stuff.

Wow.

Look at that.

That's crazy.

That's tree medicine.

That's crazy. So what happens? You just stepped in the wrong spot. That's all it is.

I mean, I've stepped On stingrays before and you feel them flutter. And I. One time I even felt the barb go like past my foot, but it didn't penetrate. I do not know how. I mean, it must have been a small one or something, but it just right up through the. Through the arch of my foot. And what's funny is that just.

I would never walk barefoot ever.

I walk barefoot all the time. But, but, but just days before, not days before that. About a month before that, I'd fallen off of something like a 50 or 60 foot cliff and just rolled down and bruised ribs and gotten all banged up. I'd climbed up this cliff thinking I could. I was like, I see this root up there. I can get up to the top. And at the top my strength just ran out and my feet were pedaling and I had no footholds and I just went tumbling down this thing and I just went, you know what I said? I've had infections, I've had crocodile bites, I've had dengue. I said, I got a week left in the Amazon. I'd been in the Amazon for six months. I was like, I'm doing nothing dangerous. No tree climbing, no anaconda hunting, no croc diving, none of that stuff. And I was just swimming in a waterfall. Bam.

Just, just how long ago put me.

Out of the game? That was actually in April. I waited to post it until now, but everyone's, everyone's messaging me going, how's your foot? And I'm like, it was months ago. But I was like, it is better.

How long did it take before it was better?

Honestly, two days. I was on my feet in two days. Yeah.

And if you went to the hospital.

I did not go to the hospital.

But if you did go to the.

Hospital, I mean, the guy that. The guy that went to the hospital didn't walk for two months, had the necrosis and had a huge infection that he had to go get treatments for. I mean, he went back to his home country and had to continue being treated for months. I felt terrible and him too. Watching someone roll back and forth in that type of agonizing pain, like Braveheart pain, like when they're just like opening him up. I mean, I just didn't know there was pain like that. You know, I mean, I've ripped open every part of my body and. And I just. This was. It's from the inside and it's pulsating and you just go. The other thing is, you go, how much, how much of my year did I just miss? You know? Am I gonna. It's like the one time I almost chopped my knee. I almost cut the tendon that holds your kneecap on. And I was just like, man, did I just take myself out of the game for a year? You know, just like, come on. And so when that happened, I was like, this is going to be so bad.

And meanwhile, a couple days later, you're walking around because understood the medicine well.

Because the local guys know. Yeah. Wow, that was awesome.

Did you ask them how they know this stuff?

Yeah, their father taught them and their mother taught them, and their grandparents know. And so that's the thing with knowledge, Indigenous knowledge all over the world. If you listen to authors like Wade Davis, who writes a lot about indigenous wisdom, you know, this is stuff that's been one at a time gleaned from nature and, you know, you know better than most. You know, you're living out there. Who's the first person that figured out ayahuasca? You know, if we take this and this, we take this vine and then we take this and we boil them together. How many trials and errors, how many dead guys were there before one worked?

Right. And what was the motivation?

And what was the motivation?

They said the jungle taught them how to do it.

They did. The prevailing thing is that science and sort of like the statistics of trial and error are incomprehensible given 40,000 plant species and all the different flowering and orchids and trees. And so it would take millennia if you did trial and error, and the cost to human life to any civilization would make it too high. And so when they say that the gods gave us ayahuasca, that's the prevailing, best thing we got is that it's a link between our world and the spirit world that the jungle gave us.

Right? And the other thing is how much of our senses have atrophied by modern civilization? Like, what kind of communication do you actually get from the forest? Like, is there. Is it instincts, intuition? Are there senses? Does. Is there a feeling that you get where you get an understanding of combining two things? Because the jungle's actually got a way of communicating with you that's a non verbal way.

I think the. The jungle, I mean, I view it as almost a. You know, it's like, it's godlike, it's. It's almost like a giant, complex sentient being. And so you. If you listen to, if you watch, you know, if you walk the jungle with jj, an indigenous tracker, he'll tell you, you listen to the birds, they'll tell you how Fast. You're allowed to walk. And what he. What he means is you're walking through the forest on a sunny day. It's the afternoon, and everybody's chirping and making tons of noise, and all of a sudden everything goes quiet. And then you got to figure out, you know, is that because there's a weather system coming in and we're about to be in a thunderstorm, or is there a jaguar right over there? And everything around me knows, and it's like the birds are the messengers of the forest. And so you even. That you start to become attuned to the frequency of the forest. And I notice when I bring people in that, you know, never been in the wild before, they walk loud. They're talking the whole time. They're not paying attention to that sort of holistic view of where you are.

You know, modern civilized life has made us so clunky when it comes to the woods.

Yeah.

You know, just when I take people in the woods, if people have never hunted before, they're stepping on branches, snap, snap. Kicking rocks over. You're, like, talking loud.

My favorite is walking in front of you. And then when the stick snaps back, like, having the sensitivity to, like, they.

Don'T catch it, like. Yeah.

Just get smacked in the face. Thanks.

Well, it's just a lack of awareness. You know, it's like if you've never been, you don't understand. But, I mean, I would imagine it's that times a million in the Amazon and then all the different things that are communicating. One of the things that they found out with. With monkeys is that monkeys have some sort of a language where they can say a sound that means an eagle is there.

Yes.

And that they will play tricks on other monkeys so they can get to fruit. Yeah. So they will say that an eagle is there when an eagle's not there, and then they'll go and steal the fruit. Yeah. So they will lie about an eagle being there and get access to fruit.

Lying monkeys does not surprise me. It's African vervet monkeys that I. That I've read about, that they have different calls, different words for land, predator, lion, eagle, and they can communicate these things. So, I mean, they're speaking.

Yeah, they're speaking as are crows, I'm sure.

Oh, God, yes.

Yeah.

Oh, yes.

They're super intelligent.

Yeah. Oh, I don't know how we pull this up. I have it on YouTube. But there is this thing where we were coming down river. It was like seven in the morning. We'd been up at our. This Is a communication with monkeys theme. As. As we're coming down river, it's like seven in the morning, and I'm always cold. So I'm sitting on the boat and I'm cold. I'm just, like, listening to music or something. And JJ's like, look, look, look. He's like, there's a spider monkey in the river. And I was like, there's always a. You know, spider monkeys cross rivers. That's okay. And he's like, no, no. The river's high right now, and there's all these whirlpools and currents, and so, yeah, I jump into the river to save the monkey. To save the monkey. She couldn't get to the side, so I give her my paddle, and she looks at me and she goes, no. She's like, I'm scared of you. And then I spoke to her in spider monkey.

What did you say? Like, that she thinks you're gonna eat her.

She thinks I'm gonna eat her. But as soon as I started going, look, look, she's looking at me because I'm making the sound. And all of a sudden, she goes, wait, wait, wait. You speak me language.

Whoa.

And then do it like you would do it. See, I'm making it right there, and she's looking at me, talking right to her. No, no, no, no, no. And then I'm like, look, it's okay. And they like their tail to be supported.

Wow. That's crazy.

Dude.

She let you hold on to her.

So now she's relaxed.

That's crazy. Dude, you saved a month.

Only because I spoke her language, and I learned her language from some of the orphans that I've rescued.

That's crazy.

And then she. She was like, well, if you let. Because I could have grabbed her, like, you know, like animal control that grabbed her by the neck. And I was like, you know what? Look, she's looking at me because I keep talking to her.

And then you got her over to the shore?

Yeah, got her over to the side, and she kept looking at me. Like, what is. What.

What happened when you put her down?

I put her down. She ran away.

She just ran away?

Yeah.

Yeah, but not fast. She didn't run away. Like, she was in terror.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That. I. When I. When I first did, I went. And she looked at me. She went. She looked at me, and she, like, responded. She was like, what?

That's crazy.

You speak. You know that's crazy. It was.

Why?

And that's one of those stories where if it wasn't on Video. And I said, I spoke to a spider monkey. And she responded, people, yeah, bullshit, right?

I saved a spider monkey, bitch. That was your pet?

Yeah.

Yeah. That looks like a pet. It looked like you had a relationship with it. Like, as you're holding onto the tail, like it knew you.

When she was looking back, I mean, she was like, hey, thanks for the branch. You know, because she was drowning, we saw her head go under a few times. She was really struggling. She was exhausted. And I know that the spider monkey, their tail is their fifth limb. They have this incredible finger pad that's like 12 inches long, and so it just wraps. They always had their tail anchored on a branch. And so I held her tail, and I was like, I got you now. Hold on to the stick. I was, like, explaining it to her, and she's looking at me going, how the hell are you?

That is so wild.

It was really cool. That was a. Originally, I was like, jj. I was like, I don't want to get wet. She'll be fine. He was like, go get it. Go catch it. I was like, okay.

Wow, you've eaten spider monkey, haven't you?

Well, sure. That doesn't mean I don't want to save him.

Right. I would save a deer, but it. Does it feel. It must feel really weird eating a primate.

I wish I could say it did. I don't care.

Really?

No, I mean, we've become very callous to certain things. But, I mean, when people serve turtle now, I'm like, well, which one is it? You know, it's like, I don't. I don't really. You know, it's like rib eye or T bone? Like, what are we. What are we eating?

It's like, is turtle good? Like, would you, like, order it at a restaurant?

All right, so the problem is that. But the way they. The way they cook it down there, these are people that live hand to mouth, right? And so when they cook a turtle, if you get salt, you're lucky. It's not like they're sprinkling some cilantro on it and, like, marinating it. It's. You know. So if you just, like, took a chicken and threw it on a fire and then, like, ate a piece of it, it's not great. And so a lot of times that you eat this. This food way out there in the bush. I mean, I've been there where they've shot a spider monkey, grilled it up, and I've been like, you know, I'll just eat rice. And then I'm like, I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be tired tomorrow. There's no protein. I haven't had protein in a week. And I'm like, give me an arm. You know, you just, like, eat the hand. All right. And it just tastes awful.

Just tastes like my friend Steve Rinella. He was in the Amazon with the Yanomame.

Yeah.

And he said that that's their preferred food, that they like that above everything.

Yeah. Yeah. And I. But. And I see. No, I see no conflict between. You know, we're trying to protect the ecosystem and save the monkeys. And I love the monkeys, and I've rescued a lot of them personally. But again, when you're. When you're in Rome, right. You know, if you don't eat with them, they go. That gringo, you know, they think that they're.

Yeah.

Whereas they're like, oh, you're one of us.

Right.

You have to, you know, you show them, you know how, you know, little. Little things or reflect.

Chewy as fuck, right? Not.

It's kind of smooth. It's kind of like. If it's well cooked, it's kind of like mutton.

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Ideally, yes, but a lot of times it's just. They tie it to a cross like it's little monkey Jesus, and they throw it on the fire.

Yeah. When I saw them cook it, they singed the outside. They singed all the hair off. And then they cooked it. I think they cooked it inside banana. See if you can find Steve Ranella eats a monkey. I think they. And then they boiled some of it in, like a soup.

I don't enjoy boiled meat. I'm never excited by boiled meat.

But stew, right? Isn't stew.

Barley stew is good.

Yeah. I mean, if you. If you sear it first and then you. I mean, it's kind of.

If you sear it first. Yeah. Right. Because like, just boiled chicken, to me, just like you think a white, like, yeah.

So here he's just eating.

Yes. You, like, they're, like, having a really good time.

Yeah. Initially he was like, I'm not doing that. And then once they started doing. He was like, okay. He said, it's. It tasted like smoked turkey. Yeah. My boy Giannis. Yeah, it is. It's interesting because if you live there, like my friend David Choir, he was in Africa and he hunted with the hadza and they baboons. And he said one of the craziest things is when you hit the baboon with an arrow, they grab it like a person.

Yeah.

Like, if a person goes shot with an arrow and he's like, dude, it's fucked.

Yikes.

Yeah, but that's what they eat. They don't have a lot of food. And, you know, it's like you were saying also, when they don't have a sense of wildlife conservation, it's not like, hey, we have an accurate assessment of how many baboons are here or how many deer are here, duikers, or whatever the animal is that they're hunting. They just eat whatever they can. And sometimes they eat them almost to extinction, and then they have to move on to baboons. And baboons were, like, the only thing that was left. And there's also, like, other people have encroached in settlements, and, you know, that's.

The way my guys, because we have a lot of wildlife in our region, and people from other regions will come as loggers and they'll go, oh, my God. My dad told me that it used to be like this where we were, and now we have people from other watersheds in the Amazon, like, you know, 150 miles away coming to us. And they're going, can you guys bring jungle keepers over? And they don't understand, you know, we're killing ourselves just to protect this river. And they're going, can you do this? Where we are? They're like, we have no more food because they don't have any regulation on this. And so what we're doing with the tribes in our area is just teaching this basic thing of, like, you know, don't hunt, you know, at these times of year when they're having their babies.

Right.

Don't over hunt. Monitor how many monkeys you're bringing into the village. And so we're trying to develop this with them where if you're going to keep eating monkeys, do it in a way that they keep being monkeys, especially.

Once they've gotten firearms, especially once they've gotten Firearms.

One of the older guys said to me, he goes, man, it's so sad. He goes, we grew up. He goes, you could just pull fish out of the river. And there was monkeys in the trees and there was turtles. He goes, you could eat whatever you wanted out of the forest. He goes, now. He goes, we're eating food. Sparrows. And he was like, we've just. We've eaten everything down to the smallest birds. He was like, it's just destroyed. And it was. Where he is is like something was like Cormac McCarthy's nightmare. If Cormac McCarthy was still alive, I would show him the. I went to a part of the Amazon that really no one goes to up this horrible river. And they were recently contacted, uncontacted people. Just this tribe that had just come out of the forest and they still had their bows and they had no idea. Me and JJ went for like a three week expedition, plane to plane to plane to three days on a boat, to two days on a boat, to finally reaching this last settlement. And the missionaries had pulled this tribe out of the forest. They had tricked them.

They said, just come with us for a ride. Pulled them out. But then they said, well, if you want to go back, you got to pay for your gasoline. And the tribe was like, how do we pay? With what? And they were like, money. And the tribe was like, what's that and where do we get it? And so these little people were standing. These were not tall people like the Mashco Piro. These were little tiny people, and they were standing there with their bows. And so we showed up with our tents and our gear, and we were trying to go up this river in our boat and these little people came up to us and they were like, they were making the gesture for food. And so there's some loggers over there. And so J.J. just didn't. Didn't think. And he was like, you want some food, you got to go pay for it. He was like, money. And you know, he's through a guy, he was translating. And these people are going, but we don't have any money. And JJ took some coins out of his pocket and was like, just go buy some bread.

And he gave him some coins and they went and they tried it and they got some bread. And then all of a sudden there was 50 of them coming at us. And they were surrounding JJ and they were grabbing at him and they were like, he's the guy with these tokens that allow us to eat. And we had to get out of there because it was causing a problem.

Oh, wow.

But I mean, these people think they're with their bows and arrows and there's no more animals to hunt and no one's gonna give them money. And they live at the edge of.

The world and they're probably tiny because they don't have any protein.

Yeah.

Wow.

It was horrifying. It was one of the worst things I've ever. I've seen poverty all over the world. This was.

Again, a hunter gatherer tribe with no food.

With no food and no way of getting back to forest where they could be a hunter gatherer tribe. Now they were in this. This wasteland where the loggers and the gold miners and the oil companies. There was even a barge with oil. And it was like, this is where the Amazon is being eaten. And it was out of sight. You have to go for days just to get there. There's no foreigners there. Actually, they did say. We were talking to one logger and he said a few years ago, he goes, there was a. We saw some rafts coming down river and then they stopped at this beach upriver and they made camp. And he's like. So we all talked about it and we said, well, we have a feeling they're organ harvesters. And they thought they were scared of these incomers. Right?

Did the organ harvesters visit the Amazon?

No. And so, but that's what they were. They're sitting around the campfire and someone was like, what if they're organ harvesters?

Why would they think that?

I don't know.

That must be a thing that gets.

I don't know. But the dude I was sitting with told me, he goes, you know, we got real scared sitting around the campfire. Everyone was telling these stories and he's like, so we figured this out. Safest thing would be to go kill them. So they went and they killed them. And they were a couple of European, like, hikers on a mega expedition in the Amazon. And they just got murdered by the locals preemptively in case they were dangerous. And this dude was like, yeah, we up. Oh, man, I'm talking to him. I was like, so who did the killing? Was it. You know, I was like, man. But I mean, this place was dark, you know, like, you know, I. In the next book I write, I'm gonna have to do a deep dive into this one because it was just. It was. It was heavy. And we also. We knew. We. For the first time, you know, when you're in the jungle, we're like, we're safe. This place it was like, people are looking at you, and they're like, that's a jacket and a watch, you know, like a camera and a tent and a pack raft.

They're like, you. Like, if we killed him, we get all kinds of stuff. They're looking at you like, man, that's a. That's a lot of opportunity. And you could just see them being like, well, let's separate him from the herd. Oh, yeah, it was rough. It's like, you think like the cowboy days, like, when it was really wild. Blood meridian.

Well, not only. That was probably a ton of stories about people that have come down and done horrible things. So it's not like you're thinking, like, these are wonderful people that come to give us plantains.

No, no.

You're thinking, these are the type of people that would do horrible things to us.

Yeah.

So we have an opportunity to get something from them. And pure desperation.

Pure desperation. And so, like, the. The communities that I've worked with in my region of the Amazon, they're all, you know, you show. I've showed up on a pack raft and been like, hey. And they're like, where'd you come from? And I'm like, I'm just this foreigner who does work here, and I talk to them, and they're like, oh, camp here. You'll be safe. They're really nice. They're caring. They're families. This place that we were at was this outpost, and it was all extractors. It was all gold miners, petroleum people, loggers. And it was like, all the men who were in the dark, the. The black market people were all in the same place. So there was, like, a brothel. There was these displaced natives, and then there was, like, this one really scary missionary. This man looked insane. He had crazy eyes. And he wouldn't come anywhere near us.

From where? Where is he from? I couldn't.

I couldn't tell where he was from. But he was dressed in the robes. It was like the mission, except he was evil. Like, you could tell. He. You could tell. He looked at us and just vanished. And he had this little settlement that he had cleared, and he was bringing his children in and pulling them out of the forest.

Was he a white guy?

He looked like a white guy, but it was hard to tell. He had, you know, like, a beer. He looked like Rasputin.

Oh, wow.

And these poor people are sitting there, and you could see them. Like, they were all, like, breastfeeding their babies and like. Like trying to eat rats. And, like, it was just. We stayed there for One night, and we all. We didn't sleep. We slept back to back. We were just in our tent, just awake all night. And then the next day, we got in the boat and we kept going further upriver, and we finally made it into the. Into past the edge of human civilization, into. Into just uncharted jungle. But it was really dark. And so at least where we are, it's like we're. We're working with these tribes to make their lives better, to educate them. And there's this. There's this good feeling. We have jungle keeper shirts. I mean, now we're on the river, and we see jungle keepers boats going by. We had gold miners. Just a few. Just a few weeks ago, we had gold miners. Everyone, the whole team was calling each other. We sent our ranger team out there. We brought the police. They arrested the gold miners. They brought them to town. They offered them jobs, and they said, you just can't be doing that here.

And so they only cleared, like, half an acre of forest. And then we got them. So they didn't destroy anything. And so that's how we're keeping their.

But someone hired them to mine gold, right?

So that's the thing. No one hires them. They get it in their head. They go, hey, to their cousin. They'll go, why don't we go make some money? Let's go up there and see if there's gold. And they'll launch a little expedition. They'll bring, like, a 16 horsepower motor and go for three days, and they'll sneak past us. I mean, now the government's getting involved because we've been having this success. We're going to get a park guard station on our river. So we're not going to have this problem. But they'll go up the river and they'll just set up, and they'll start panning, and they'll go, I see this little flake here. And they're like, cool, let's burn some forest. And then we'll start sucking it up. We'll run it through the big motor, and they'll bring their wives and their kids, and it's artisanal. They're very. And so what they do is they get the gold, and then they have to take it in their little boat back to the town. And then here's the problem. There's one store where you go to sell the gold, and guess who's waiting outside that store? The people that rob you at gunpoint and take your gold and then give it to the actual people.

And so it's really sad, artisanal gold mining. They're not organized. And it's the same with the narcos. We've been having problem with narcos, and everyone's like, dude, you can't mess with the narcos. Like, you're gonna lose the fight. And it's like, yeah, but these are people that are like, we're just gonna grow a little bit and then just sell it. Coca. I mean, we busted. We helped the police bust a. A. We saw a clearing on deep, deep, deep, deep way up river days up river, there's a clearing out in the jungle. And so we sent our rangers. The rangers came back and were like, we can't deal with this. There's something scary going on up there. And so we told the police, and the police were like, yeah, we'll try and get up there now. At the same time, I'm with JJ one day. And we always do the same thing when there's. There was a. There was a bad patch of deforestation along the river. And we said, how the hell did this happen? They did it so quick. And so I put up the drone and I flew it over. And I'm going, you know, who are these people?

Are they loggers? We're just trying to get a sense of what's going on, fly the drone down. And usually when we see loggers, they'll run into these little palm thatched huts. They'll run into them to hide from the drone.

That's crazy. They know what a drone is.

Well, these people came running out, and they had guns, and we had already on the river. We had passed their settlement and flown the drone back. Their boat came out after us, and we started going, and I was like, jj, you could just talk to them like normal. And he looked at me, and he went, not this time. And we had a 60 horsepower, and they had a 40. And we were just blazing ahead of them. And I had the drone in the air. And so this is $5,000 drone. And so I'm driving the drone. And I was like, can we. Can we? Like, I gotta get this drone. And they're like, we. JJ looked at me. He's like, we're not stopping. And it dawned on me that it was like, if we get caught, we're getting killed.

Oh, man.

And we arrived at this point, nobody on the boat had a gun. And so we arrived at a place where the police were camped out, where the guard. They had been dispatched to go check out that other site. And so we arrived and the police force that we work with was there. And we pulled up, and we're like, yo, we got bad guys coming in, and they. They massed up, loaded up. They got on our boat. We turned around, and then as soon as they saw us coming back at them, they. They left. And then days later, they went to that same police force and assassinated one of the guys.

Oh, man.

So the narcos are different. The narcos are scary. And that clearing that we originally found, they were actually Prada's sacks of white powder. The Peruvian military went in and actually raided that camp, arrested everybody. It was so big that the American DEA knew about it. They were notified. And so this is now what's happening on this river where it's. Because it's the last wilderness. They're coming. And so we're trying to. You know, we're relying on the Peruvian authorities to stop this from happening so that we can create this park before it's too late. Because they're also blazing roads. They're bringing in loggers. They're smart. They bring people, and they'll send the loggers ahead of them, and then when the loggers clear the land, they'll just start growing coca. And so it's gotten. It's gotten scary. I texted you when it was at its. When I first started having to travel with security. I remember texting you because I was like, this is. This is a different game. You know, it used to be like, we're counting the butterflies, and we're.

Yeah, you wanted to learn where to train. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because it's scary walking around. Well, the thing is, the police intercept off to one of the people that they arrested on the phone. It said, if you see JJ or that gringo that flies the drone, they said, if you kill them, we'll reward you.

Oh, man.

So they found this message on WhatsApp. They showed it to us, and they were like, you guys have a hit on you? And then a few days later, they. They. JJ was supposed to get in the car at the side. You know, you take the boat down river to the car. And he was supposed to get in the car and go back to the town. He actually came down river in the boat and then went. I forgot. I forgot that I wanted to finish up something at the station. Take me back. He went back to the station. So our driver, Percy, started driving back along this little dirt logging road by himself. And they had trees across the road, masked guys with guns. They put the guns in the windows. They pulled him out. And our Windows are tinted. And they said, take JJ and Paul out. They were gonna do it. And so it just so happened that JJ wasn't in the car. Just by pure luck, he was not in the car that day. And they roughed up our driver. They took his driver's license. They took his cell phone, and they just said, just let them know we missed him today, but we'll get him soon.

Oh, man.

And so we went. Of course, we went to the police, and we're like, look, we're gonna need a lot more protection. They're like, it's getting. I mean, we're just trying to save the rainforest, man. Like, we're not trying to. And these people are going, well, we're just trying to grow drugs. And we want to do that where there's no police. And the wilderness is only. The wilderness is becoming a finite thing now. So it's becoming this battleground. Jamie, on there is a map. I'm wondering if you could pull up the map, because I could explain to.

You what's the status of this right now. Are they still after you guys?

They are still after us, but it's been for about eight months. It was really bad. It was really scary. It was horrible. Like, every day, anytime JJ called me, I'd have a panic attack. But you see the yellow on the right is the Trans Amazon highway. That's the big. That's the big artery. That's what the Chinese in Brazil built. But then that smaller thing going up, that's the roads that the loggers and the narcos are making. So that big red arrow, they're trying to make a road that goes in through there. And so the white line outlines what we're trying to protect. And that light greenish blue is the area that we have protected. That's that 130,000 acres that we have protected. And so that's what we're doing right now. It's a race against time. If we can fill in that area, if we can fill that whole thing in, we save the land. And once it's ours, once it's under jungle keepers protection, it's indigenous protected.

All right, we're back.

Yeah.

So where are they growing the drugs in this map?

So right at the upper tip of that arrow, sort of the outside, they had cut a little. A little road filament into there. And again these little tiny trail roads, they go under the forest. The forest is 160ft tall.

Is there a way you can communicate with these guys saying, you're not trying.

To stop this I mean, right now what we're doing is putting signs on all of these little tiny. I mean, these are jungle roads where just to go on the road you're going out to, where you know, if anybody finds you out there, they'll just kill you. And your body will be decomposed and recycled within 48 hours by the jungle. So you're past where there's police. This is just Earth.

It's the Wild west more than the Wild West. Right, because the Wild west was never this dense.

Well, it's the Wild west and you can't see 10ft in front of you.

Right, that's what I'm talking about. This is more wild than the Wild West, I guess.

So you still have, you have Indians with arrows, and now you have these narcos that are straight up evil that are coming. I mean, they're taking girls from indigenous communities to work in their brothels. They're growing cocaine brothels up there. You got men working out in the jungle. And so they go to the communities and they tell them, hey, your daughter is very pretty, she'd be a great waitress. You know, we can educate her while she trains and helps people. And they never see him again. And so it's all that darkness. And at the same time, what we're doing is bettering the lives of the community, making friends with these people. We have these amazing rangers and I mean, we have different ranger stations along the river. And if we make this into a park, like Teddy Roosevelt. No, John Muir took Teddy Roosevelt on a three day camping trip and showed him Yosemite and like Sequoia and all this stuff. And he was like, we gotta protect this, like, it's special here. Look at the size of these trees. Look at the beauty of this valley. And then they protected it. There's nothing as wild as this river on earth today.

And so if we protect this now, the 200 indigenous people that live on this river get protected from the narcos. They continue having abundant fish and resources. And then they'll work as park guards and educators and chefs and boat drivers to maintain this gigantic protected area. And then Peru will have this crown jewel of the Amazon. So they love it.

But how can you protect them from the narcos? It's the amount of money that's involved in trapped trafficking cocaine would make it a real problem.

But the good thing is that these are the little artisanal ones. These are the guys that go. These are not like mafia bosses, this isn't like the Mexican cartel. These are like, these Little clans of people that go, you know what? We could just grow some cocaine and then we'll sell it to the big guys. And so they're just. They're like mom and pop cocaine growers and stuff.

But they're also murderers.

Well, of course. And so when the cops go out there, the cops just arrest them and take them straight to jail. And so the cops have been. Everyone assumes that Latin American police, no matter what, are going to be corrupt. And like, the police force we've been working with has been keeping us alive. And they want this park protected as much as the indigenous people do. It's amazing how many good people are out there.

They're actually helping and how many narco organizations, artisanal narco organizations are out there.

Peru has become. It's not great. Peru, I think, has become, if not on the same level as Colombia, I think they might have surpassed Colombia in terms of cocaine production. They're not doing great with that right now. And so we're at this very, very crucial juncture there. But you know, it's funny because in doing all this, even with the book coming out and I've been talking to people and people go, well, you have narcos now. They're like, so you're going to fail. And it's like, man, you're not even the one on the ground. Like, I'm the one on the ground. I'm telling you, we're not going to fail. And the police have been successful at clearing them out. And it's getting better. Just like the whole thing with, yeah, the Amazon's disappearing, but we can still stop it. It's like, you gotta. You think like before D Day, if Churchill was like, I will probably lose. Like, you can't have that mentality. And so it's very, very encouraging seeing the local people stand up for what they believe in. And the job is dangerous. There's a. There's a video on there that I think it says, Sandra, Tree Crush.

But we. I got. Woke up a few. A few weeks ago and one of my managers came running at like 3am I see a flashlight coming through the jungle. And so I'm thinking the worst. And then he comes, he's going, paul. He goes, a tree. And I was. I told you the last time I was on here, I said the most dangerous thing in the rainforest is the trees falling. He said, a tree fell on the ranger station and it's raining and I'm talking about rain. You know when you're at the airport and you hear that Sound where It's like, there's no sound. Louder. Your ears can't handle it. It was raining so loud. And he's screaming into my ear that this tree fell on the ranger station. He goes, and one of the rangers was. Was crushed. And I'm going, but dead or alive? And he goes, we don't know yet. And so it's 3am and we get in this boat and we're going upriver, and there's lightning flashing and there's rain falling. And I'm looking with the flashlight, and I'm navigating by the crocodile eyes because we don't know where the edges of the river are, because they, you know, the eye shine.

And so we have footage of this. And we arrive at the ranger station, and sure enough, this tree had fallen, crushed the roof, all the beams and all the. All the scaffolding under the roof, and fallen on this woman's face while she was in bed. And so she was crushed under this. And she couldn't even scream because it was raining so loud. And so we get there, and I stick my hand into the rubble, and I hold her hand, and I'm like, are you okay? And she was like, hey, Paul. She's like, I have no idea. And she was amazingly, like, buoyant. She was like, I have no idea if I'm okay. She's like, but I'm alive. I was like, we're gonna get you out of here. We started chainsawing, I mean, like, 16ft of tree debris over her and all this gnarled roof material. And we had to pull her out of there, and she had a scratch on her ankle. Wow. Got this great video for sitting in the hammock at, like, 6am and she's smoking a cigarette, and she's like, I'm alive. She's going, I'm alive. And she didn't quit. She's still a ranger.

And it's like she's out there right now driving up and down because she wants that forest protected for her kids. And it's like, these people care.

It sounds like the adventure of this is very addictive to you. This is what I'm getting. I think you love it. I think you love the forest. I think you love protecting it. But I think there's something about the danger of it and the chaos and the wildness of it all that seems to me. I'm looking in your eyes. You're smiling, because you know I'm right.

I know. Yeah. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna Deny that. That's. When I was a kid, I remember sitting in school and being like, why did like you read about like Roosevelt and Jane Goodall and like these people had these amazingly adventurous lives and I was sitting in school, getting detention after detention and getting yelled at and being like, can I go to the bathroom? And I was like, why do they get to do that? And I have to do this. And then like my, you know, everyone around me was like, you know, when you get a job, then you're really going to love your desk. One of my friend's mom said that to me. She goes, you think. She goes, you think you hate your school desk? She goes, wait till you get your real desk. And I was like, oh man. And so yeah, riding on the, on the, on the boat at 4am with the Lightning is incredible. Showering in the river.

Crocodile eyes.

Yeah, man. I mean, with the wind in your hair and the, I mean, you know, the magic of the mountains and the jungle has its own vibe. You watch that mist snarling up off the canopy and it's like, it's so wild that you just, you feel better, you feel healthier. And again, you know, that whole thing of, what's that thing? They say, like a sacrament is an outward sign of an inward grace. And it's like the beauty of that, you know, you drink from the river and then you sweat it out and you watch your sweat join the steam and rain back down onto the jungle. You are connected to your environment and every single day you don't know what's going to happen. You know, I opened. There was one day where I was like, okay, I'm going to stay on the station. I'm not going to do anything. I've been hammering myself in the swamps for a week. And I was like, I'm just going to like drink coffee and like do office work on my computer. And so I was like, at the station and my team comes running and they're like, anaconda.

And I was like, where? I was actually like annoyed. I was like, where? How big of an anaconda? And they're like, no, it's a pretty big anaconda. As we go down to the thing and sure enough, this big ass anaconda on a log, like 11ft, you know, not, not a monster. But so then I started doing this thing where I was like. Because they were all like, be careful. And I was like, of what? And they're like, it's, it could bite you. And I was like, it's, it's asleep. I was like, she's just trying to get the sun. So I started, I took out my phone, I started doing this thing. I was like, people are scared of snakes. And I was like. I was like, if you're scared of snakes. I was like, there's an 11 foot anaconda. I was like, do I appear to be in danger yet? And then I kept getting closer and I was like, how about now? How about now? And then I was like, she's not waking up. So I get on the log with her and the anaconda still doesn't get up. And so I turned around and her coil is here.

And her head's like, you know, 10ft over there. And I just put my head on her. Now I'm laying on the snake and I'm still taking a video. And I'm going, see, this snake doesn't care that I'm here. And even if she wakes up, you know what she's gonna do? She's gonna jump in the water. She's not gonna bite me. And she never woke up. And I figured, you know what, why bother her?

She never woke up. When you rested, she woke up.

She moved her tongue, but she never freaked out.

Well, they're the king. It sounds like they don't really have any natural predators.

Right?

Do they?

When they're small? When they're small, Crocodiles, Right? The crocodiles, the herons, the piranha. You forget that pelicans and herons can eat like a baby alligator. They'll just like throw it back.

Sure.

Just. Just take it down their throat. And the heroes are crazy. Herons are. They're amazing hunters. Pelicans are disgusting. The way they'll take like a whole bullfrog and just glut it down. So you know that things, like alive in their chest.

I've seen videos of them doing it to pigeons or seagulls.

Yes. The one where he swallows the seagull whole. The seagull's like getting smaller as it goes down.

Yeah. And the. You realize like that crazy mouth that they have is just so they can swallow things alive.

Yeah.

I mean, this weird looking funky thing like, oh, that's a monster. That's a monster that just swallows things alive.

Yeah. You don't think of birds as, as. As savage as they are.

What are you laughing at, Jamie? Pictures of pelicans trying to eat on the screen. I'm trying to eat a dog. Oh, oh, oh.

Come on.

Marshall. Marshall trying to get a cat.

He's trying to get a cat.

Oh, my God. Yeah, they. They basically can eat almost anything that's near their size.

Good Lord. That one just fly out.

Wow. It's too late.

Oh, man.

Yeah, they're monsters.

Trying to eat another. God, that's, that's. I call bullshit on that one. There's no way his pelican was trying to eat a bear. I believe that though. I've seen that video.

What are those things called?

Baby capybaras.

Capybaras, right. Those are, They've. Are those the things that have made their way into. No, it's a different animal that's made their way into like Louisiana and they have to go out and shoot them.

Javelinas?

No, no, no, no, no, no. It's a type of large rodent because David Tell used to have a TV show called Insomniac and he went out at night one time with them in Louisiana and they're hunting these things that they're. They're an invasive rodent, a giant rodent. And it was like Dave would do his shows and then after. It was a Comedy Central show, it was a really good show. And then he would find things to do in the town because he can't sleep because he's up all night. And so he went out with these people that were kind of can't remember what the animal was. But it's a large invasive rodent that exists in the South. I mean, nutria. That's right. Yeah. And people eat them.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the rodent.

I mean, Cassie find that video because it's kind of crazy because they're out there hunting them. With 22s.

With 22s?

Yeah. I mean, they have to. There's. They've. They're completely invasive species and they're huge. They're like a small dog.

That's something I let. Yeah, I left off the list. We eat those all the time. Like they. We have something called a paca. It's like a small capybara with spots and those. I mean, you know, it's like squirrels, but they're big. They're like, you know, cat sized and fat. People eat them all the time now. Those are delicious.

What's your favorite thing to eat in the jungle?

Piranha.

Piranha?

Yeah.

Really?

Oh, my God. They're delicious. And when you fry a piranha, you know, you slit, you know, make the slits along it. You just fry the whole thing. You just pull it right off of its skeleton and the fins become like chips, like little salty chips. Oh, they're so good.

You just put Salt on it. And we just.

A little bit of salt and then fry it up. And then better than the piranha is the paco, the big vegetarian.

The piranha species. Yeah, those are invasives of invasive species in America as well. Yeah, people catch them all the time. Yeah, they catch them and they're like £40.

They're huge.

Yeah. Someone caught a world record powerful, really powerful pacu. P, A C U.

Right? Yeah.

I want to say in Georgia. Georgia or Florida, somewhere in there. And huge.

Yeah, no, they're powerful. We. We fish for them. You have a. You have like a 10 foot pole with a rope on it.

Yeah, there's a paco.

Yeah.

Yeah. Look at the size of that thing, man. That's crazy. 50 pounds. World record size pacu caught in Florida. There it is. £50. That's nuts.

Dude. Those are so. They're so nutritious. When you eat them, you feel like you're just gaining muscle.

Really?

Yeah, like you used to. You still eat a lot of elk?

Oh, yeah.

Like, don't you feel like it's like a superfood? Yeah, this is how I feel.

I live on these things.

I feel like I just.

You live on piranha? Yeah, piranha and pacu.

Yeah.

Wow. How do you catch the PACU?

10 foot pole. You have a piece of rope and you put like a piece of like last night's dinner. You like a piece. You tie a bunch of rancid chicken, you leave it out in the sun, make it smell bad. You go out six in the morning.

So they're not vegetarians.

Well, they'll eat anything. They specialize on the nuts. That's why they have the human teeth. Those are the ones that have the human teeth. When you open their mouth, they have like molars and then like a few like front teeth. And so we go with this 10 foot pole and nobody can make a sound on the boat. You're just floating with the river. You're like invisible. And you wait for a feature in the river, like a, like a rock or a place where the water's rushing and you smack it against. Because they. Like that falling, falling fruit or falling seeds. And when they hit. I'm talking about like a 4 inch hook. When they hit that hook. This is the thing. Because you're doing this for. You're doing it for an hour and you're like, all right, there's no. There's no Paco in here. Well, guess what? When they do hit it, they'll pull you right out of the Boat. I've been dragged straight across the boat where like you got to use one hand to stop yourself and the other hand's holding this pole. And then your friend's got to pull you back. You get this fish on the thing and it's going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

How flying are they?

You saw they're big.

You're catching them that big?

Yeah, they're huge. And then you got to have a hammer because you got to shut them off somehow. You got to crack them right on, you know, between the eyes. Because otherwise they'll just either jump out of the boat or injure someone, destroy everything. That was the other thing. We were going up river a few months ago. We're at night, we're all just quiet in the boat and we're going to go up to this tributary to explore it. And I had a group of tourists with me and this girl was sitting on the front. And all of a sudden I feel something go past me. There's something. And all of a sudden I got wet. And then all of a sudden I hear ba bang, ba bang, ba bang, ba bang. In the boat I'm going, what the fuck is going on? Turn on my headlamp and there's a Paco in the boat. And the girl that was sitting on the front, her head is bleeding. One of those huge ass Pacos jumped out of the river in the night, hit this girl in the head and then fell into the boat.

Whoa.

And so we just grabbed. Yeah, we just ate it. But I mean, that Paco was in the middle of the Amazon at night, just jumping around, enjoying itself and it just jumped in the wrong boat. Boat. Wow.

Wow.

Two foot fish flying through the air.

And that's your favorite? That's your favorite thing to eat?

Absolutely.

What else is really good to eat?

There's these little cup mushrooms that are really good. You fry them up with garlic. You do that. And Paco, that's, that's. Now you're talking good. My friend Roy is a chef. He's. He's really. He's one of the jungle. He's the president of jungle Keepers right now. He's a local guy and he's. He focuses on Amazonian cuisine. And so he goes and he picks all the right flowers and funguses and. And he'll take Paco and then he'll. He'll flavor it with a type of orchid thing. And like all of a sudden you have this amazing food and like Lima, they have. You know, Peru's become this amazing place. For food. Peru is great food. Wow. He does the jungle version.

Wow.

So it's not like nasty monkey soup.

It's not turtle.

It's the. It's the curated, you know, five star version of Jungle Cuisine.

So that's number one.

Paco's number 100%. I mean even crocodile. I think I tried alligator ones but it didn't leave an impression on me. I haven't really. Also, I feel like they're my friends. Really? Yeah. I like them just because they're cool. Well, I mean, I work with them a lot. I'm always catching Cayman. I always see them on the side of the river. You know, nobody's serving me. If they were serving me caiman, then it would be just like the monkey where it's like, alright, I gotta eat it. But nobody's serving me Cayman.

So I'm not a staple of their diet.

No. In the north, in Iquitos, they eat a lot more Cayman. Cayman. So you don't see Cayman on our river. There's still. There's a cayman on every beach. There's. There's jabby roost dorks, there's kokoi herons, there's just macaws everywhere. It's just. There's just so much life. It's Avatar. It's just. Just pulsing life.

Wow.

It's incredible.

Did you find that video of Davitel? No. It weirdly is like not online. I found a picture of the episode but not a video of it. Yeah.

And they're just.

Shoot nutria. Yeah. I think they eat them too, but I can't find it.

Yeah, he was actually on the episode. Just.

Yeah. Yeah. This is a long time ago. This is back when Dave was drinking. So this is like Dave's been sober for, I want to say 15 years at least. Somewhere in that range.

Yeah.

And this is back when, you know, he would just drink at the comedy club and then stay up all night, smoke cigarettes, drink coffee.

Never end.

Yeah. I mean he's the most unhealthy and also the most hilarious guy alive.

You've stopped drinking, right?

I drink a little every now and then. Now I went like eight months with no drinking and I started having like a glass of wine with dinner and a cocktail or two. But I have not had more than like two drinks in a night.

Feels good.

Doesn't was a good break. Yeah. The eight months I felt really good and I was convinced I was never gonna drink again. And then I drank a glass of wine. I was like, oh, I like this. I miss this.

Well, the wine. That's the one thing. The wine is good.

Yeah. Wine with a steak. Yeah, a little. I think it was important to just recognize that I was doing it and it wasn't an alcoholic. I was just. I have a club.

Yeah.

I'm there all the time. And, you know, you're out with friends. You want to drink? Yeah, sure. Let's have a drink.

Yeah.

Go to dinner, have a drink, have another drink. It just got to a point where I was like. I was feeling like. And I'm too healthy. I work out all the time. And I was like, why am I doing this to myself?

Yeah.

You know, but now I realize, you know, it's a little moderation, but drinking is essentially fun poison.

Fun poison. It's weird. After Lex ruined drinking for me, Lex gets saucy. Well, this is the thing. When he came. When he came to the end, when he came to the Amazon, he. He goes, I want to do ayahuasca. And so we called. You know, JJ's oldest brother is 70 something. We called this shaman in, and he's like, you know, with the Lex voice, he's like, brother, you have to do this with me. And I was like, I am not drinking ayahuasca. There's a chapter in the book about when I did it with the old master, and he overboiled it. And we all, like, saw God in the unit. We were there for the big bang. It was awful. It was hard. No, it was not. No, no. It's like taking a mega dose. It was. Sure. It was awful. It was traumatic.

You don't like to get scared.

I was terrified, man. No. So I was like, I have retired. I was like, I'm not doing it. And Lex was walking around in circles for two hours. And he comes up to me, and he puts his hand on my shoulder, and he goes, I came all the way here for you. He goes, now you do this for me? He goes, don't leave me alone in the dark. And I went, God, I said, all right, I'll do it. And we drank right next to each other, and the guy's smoking his pipe, and, you know, he has the feathers on, and he's singing to us, and you're drinking and you're going deeper, deeper into the hole. And. God, it was interesting, though. We both. The shaman said that, you know, he was talking about what Lex was going afterwards. He was talking about what Lex was going through on his journey. And he just goes in and does this deep work of the things he sees coming off of you. And this is a guy the shaman I've known for 20 years. He's like my uncle. And so he would come up to me and he'd go.

I'd be laying down. You can't get up. And he'd come up to me and he'd go, one more cup. And I'd be like, sure. Like, why not? And he'd, like, give me, like, a kiss on the forehead and throw it down my throat. And then he'd go to Lex and go, one more cup. And Lex would be like, yes, and then give it to Lex. And he said that. He said that he wasn't worried about my spirit. He said I was there to protect Lex. And he said Lex was there to do some real work. And so what's interesting is that we both reached this sort of. We both reached the pinnacle of what was happening at the same time, where I felt myself about. I felt it coming. I was like, oh, no, I'm gonna throw up. I'm going to throw up. And all of a sudden, my consciousness lifted six feet above my body, and I was looking down at me and Lexington. And I got this overwhelmingly calm sensation. And without speaking, the shaman said to me, he said, you're not going to feel this. I know you don't like it. He said, you're just here to support him so you can vomit now.

And so Lex started vomiting, and I started vomiting, but I was watching myself and I was watching him, and I was just like, this is fine. It doesn't hurt a bit. And it was very, very comforting. And then he came and he started with the, you know, shaking the leaves and singing louder and really cultivating, making sure we gave everything, that we purged, all of it. And then. And then he brought the crescendo down, and then he calmed. And then he began singing. And then we settled back into the symphonic throb of the night. And then the trip went on for some time. But it was interesting that things heightened at that moment and that we went through it together.

Wow. So why did he think that you were there to protect Lex? It was just like something he said.

That's what he said. That's what he said to me. And then it was very interesting watching Lex go through his journey, because by the end of it, he just got happier and happier. He just liked it more and more. And around, I think, Cup 6, I tapped. After the vomiting, after that thing, it was sort of. Again, there's energies floating around, and he's singing. It's great understanding A little bit of the language because he's singing to his grandfather. He's singing to the spirit of Santiago and the spirit of the anaconda and using the old words, words for them, you know, not even saying anaconda. He's, he's saying the other things. Amaru mayo and you know he's saying shihua wako and he's talking about the. So he's doing this and shaking his thing and you hear the frogs throbbing and it's all moving through your skin. And so I, yeah, I, I tapped out after a while and Lex kept going. He's got an amazing constitution. I think that's the Russian thing. But since then I can't drink. Really, I can't drink. I could have a cup of wine maybe if I have more than that.

I feel sick, like I feel damaged. I have not been able to drink. I haven't had a beer since, since two years ago.

So what do you think it is just like let you know what it's doing to you?

I have no idea. It's just a weird side effect. I keep trying it. I'll like sm. I used to love whiskey. I like, I like smell some whiskey and I'm like really?

So we cracked the bottle right now.

You turned off.

You would it, would it just.

I mean I could take a sip of it but my body would be like no red light. Red light. No.

Yeah, well that's. Your body's correct.

Yeah, but it made me suit, made me hypersensitive. I noticed from that moment onwards.

Did it have the effect with Lex? No, I don't think so. You can still booze it up. I don't think so. I'm sure Lex goes hard.

I'm sure.

We went to Andrew Schultz's wedding with Lex.

Yeah.

And then we had a flow. We flew with Whitney Cummings was doing a gig in Vegas and we said we'll go with you. So it was me, my wife and Whitney and Lex. We flew to Vegas.

Yeah.

And then we hung out with David Goggins. I called him up, come meet us at the hotel.

Does he party?

No, no, no, no. Him and Lex were doing push ups. They were doing drunk. Lex was drunk and David wasn't. And Lex wanted to have a push up competition.

Goggins, that's amazing. I mean, but that's why he's Lex, right?

He's the encore.

Because he's, because he's willing to try everything. Yeah.

Oh, he's an animal.

I mean the fact push up competition with David Goggins he's just silly. That's hysterical.

He's quite a character, that Lex. He told me he's going to Dagestan to train. He's gonna go to Dagestan and train with, like, Khabib's team?

Yeah.

Good Lord. Dude, you're like, 42. Like, what? How old is he, Lex?

Gotta be in his 40s, but early 40s, I think. He's still very young.

Yeah, but, like, yeah, you're gonna go there and train with savages.

How old is Khabib?

Well, Khabib's retired, but he's probably 35, if I had a guess, you know, Somewhere around there.

Yeah.

You know, but it's a different thing.

He's the one. Let's talk now.

Yeah, let's talk now. Well, he's training those guys now. He's training, you know, Islam, Makhachev and Umargamera, his cousin. He's trained some of the best guys alive. So he's running a camp down Dagestan.

Because he's kind of like. So. So did he. It seemed like. At least, I don't. Like, I wasn't really following his career, but it seemed like he came in like an assassin, did some big stuff.

Well, his dad died. His dad died during COVID Okay. And after his dad died, he promised his mother that he was gonna stop fighting.

Got it. Yeah.

His dad was his trainer. You know, his dad was legendary. Legendary trainer and trained Islam, trained Khabib. And when he died, Khabib made a promise to his mother. He fought Justin Gaethje, beat him, defended his title, and that was it done.

But, I mean, he's. He's very well regarded now for his accomplishments in fighting. Right.

One of the greatest of all time.

Yeah.

I mean, there's an argument of who the greatest of all time is. It's very subjective.

Sure.

But he's certainly in the conversation.

Yeah.

You know, of. He's one of. I don't think there is a. It may be. Jon Jones is the greatest of all time, just based on his accomplishments and also undefeated, but also the time that he's been. I mean, John won a world title at 23 and is still, like, up until he. He relinquished his heavyweight title recently. He's 36, 37 now. No one's beaten him. Crazy. No one's had a run like that. No one's had a run like that.

That's insane. How big is it? How big is he?

John's a heavyweight.

Yeah.

John, I think, is 6:3 or 6:4, you know, and now he's about 240ish. But he used to fight at 205. That was his main weight class.

Some crazy.

Yeah. And so, you know, the conversation of who is the greatest of all time in my, my book, Mighty Mouse is in that conversation too.

Mighty Mouse.

Mighty Mouse is Demetrius Johnson. He's a flyweight. The problem is he was a very small guy and so a lot of people disregard the smaller guys in that conversation. But skill wise, in terms of the expression of mixed martial arts excellence, I put Mighty Mouse in his prime right up there with everybody.

Do you think that now you, your arms are significantly bigger than mine? And I feel like, like the guys who are good at striking have smaller arms.

Mike Tyson, giant arms.

Giant arms. There you go.

Yeah.

Don't you feel like you're swinging around some weight? Like.

Well, you are, but you also have a lot more power behind it.

Yeah, yeah. So when you do connect. That's true.

It's, it's conditioning, you know, like the whole thing of swinging. It's like, did you develop those arms just doing bicep curls?

Yeah.

Or did you develop those arms doing functional things like constant, constant training that gives you muscle endurance? You know, it all depends. But if you see like a big, bulky bodybuilder guy. Yeah, that's not good. No.

For like our level where we're still athletic and stuff, I'm going, man, I don't want, I don't want to put on more. I want to get stronger, but I don't want to put on.

Yeah, I don't do really anything to try to put weight on. Yeah, I don't lift anything heavier than 70 pounds.

So many dudes just walk.

Yeah. They just want to look big. Yeah, I don't do anything like that.

No, I don't.

Like I said, the heaviest thing I lift is my body weight. You know, I do a lot of body weight stuff. I do a lot of chin ups and dips and sometimes I do it with a vest, you know, and I do, you know, but with kettlebells, like the heavy. Occasionally I'll throw around a 90 pound kettlebell. But the heaviest I really train with is 70. Yeah, but that's plenty. But I don't, like I said, I don't train for size. I just train for function.

Strength and function.

Yeah, yeah. It has to me, it's silly. If I don't have range of motion, function, like, what am I doing? I don't have to, like, yeah, I'm a martial artist. Like my, my whole thing is to being able to use my body.

Yeah.

It's not to make it look like I can use it. I'd rather be smaller and. And more functional than bigger and just look like a big, goofy toad.

Yeah. I. I bulk too easily. I actually. I actually try to put on this. Only do.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, we're Italian. Irish.

I mean, come on, you get thick.

Yeah. You get thick quick.

Yeah.

You gotta watch the pasta people.

Long line of thick people.

Yeah. Huh. Can I take a quick.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll be right back, ladies and gentlemen.

You've been. You've been murdering it. Like, you've been having just tons and tons of people. You just. Do you do them every day.

I just keep. I mean, it's not any different pace than before. It's usually four a week, it seems.

It's just. I feel like maybe it's because I'm in the jungle for a few weeks, and then I'll, like, come back and. And look, and I'm like, whoa, yeah. Johnny Knoxville, Matt Damon, and like, bang, bang, bang, bang.

The key is just keep going.

Yeah.

You know, like, you've run a thousand miles. Right. But you didn't run a thousand miles in a day.

Yeah.

You know, you run 10 a day, and then days go on.

Incredible, though. You get to meet everybody.

You meet a lot of people. Yeah. You definitely develop a better understanding of human beings, because, you know, you're limited by the amount of human beings you interact with. Your scope, your understanding of people.

Yeah.

More you can talk to. The more different people, the more you get a different sense.

And. Yeah, well, you're in a very. You're in a very unique. I mean, again, I always go back to the bee lady. Remember that? The. The. She relocates the bees.

She's cool.

Yeah. And then you have people like Knoxville on, and you guys are talking. I just heard you guys talking about, you know, when he gets. When he got hit by the bull. I was always wondering if that was real. And then I remember the first time I came in here, I was asking you and Jamie, I was going, the one question was the David Blaine thing, because he had you shove that thing through.

I was like, oh, I shoved it through. Yeah, that was real.

I was going, come on, they got it. That can't be.

Nope. That was real.

Yeah.

I mean, because I did it once, I hit a nerve and he had.

To restart it, right?

Yeah. Maybe back out and shove it right through. But it's not a trick, you know, it's just pain. Like, I could do that if I wanted.

To do that.

I could do that. I could shove a needle through my arm.

How bad do you want it?

I don't want to do that.

Yeah.

I don't understand why I would do that.

And I feel like that's a little bit of what Knoxville was saying, where he was like, look, he's like, I got a response. And he's like, this is what I started doing, you know? And it's like, one way or the other, how are you going to get the attention?

I mean, that's what brought him to the dance, is just getting hurt all the time. But when he told me he had been knocked unconscious 16 times, and then the last one, that's really bad. And then the last one was the bull one that landed on his head, and he was depressed for months, and he had to get on medication. I am very averse to head injuries, which is kind of hypocritical because I'm a combat sports commentator. You know, it's weird. And I've also been hit in the head a bunch of times, but I just think it's really bad for you overall. I stopped sparring when I was in my late 20s.

Really?

Yeah. Kickboxing, Sparring.

Yeah.

And then I did it a little bit when I was supposed to fight Wesley Snipes. I went back, started sparring again.

Did you fight?

No. Wesley Snipes was hysterical. It was in. I was in my mid-30s, and I was like, this is the last chance I get to do something like this. And then I got contacted by Campbell McLaren, who was one of the producers of the early UFC. He's like, this is gonna sound crazy, but Wesley, he was in tax problems. He wound up going to jail for tax evasion. Apparently, he had some crazy guy who was telling him, you know, you don't have to pay taxes. You know, there's. There's those guys that are like. What do they call them? Sovereign citizens? Is that what they call them? There's a lot of people that give really bad advice, you know, and they.

Got in with someone like Wesley Snipes.

Huh. And, you know, they tell you, like, they can't prosecute you. It's not in the country.

And he believed it because he didn't have.

I don't know. I never talked to Wesley. I don't know. I don't have anything against him.

You sure he just wasn't scared of fighting you, so he made up this whole story?

No. I think Wesley also might have been embarking on a journey of cocaine.

Oh.

Which gives you a Very distorted idea of what you can and can't do.

Everything. Yeah.

You think you can do everything. I don't know if that's the case. I think it might have been just. Well, he's a very legitimate martial artist. I mean, Wesley, if you look at his, like, skills, like from the movie Blade and. Yeah, like, he's a really good martial artist. He knows how to fight.

Yeah. You kind of have to be to do those movies.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But my thought was just, I'm gonna grab him and choke the life out of him. Like, how's he gonna stop me?

Yeah.

Like, also, I know how to stand up. Like, I was awesome as a kickboxer.

That would have been awesome if you could. If you could fight one person, dead or alive, full fight.

I don't want to do that. I wouldn't eat. No, the problem with it, it really.

No, but, like, theoretically not you as Joe Rogan, the dad, and, like, just Joe Rogan.

It would not be one person. What it would be is start fighting. Fighting again. It would be fight whoever it was. The whole thing would be competing. But I'm 58. That's never happened now.

I'm saying, like. But like, Wesley Snipes, it's like, you know, you say, like, oh, I'd want to fight.

Well, I just thought it would be an adventure.

Yeah.

And I. I trained for, like, six months. I was training with Rob Kamen, who's a. Like a legendary kickboxing. A Dutch kickboxing champion. So he was my kickboxing coach.

Yeah.

And so I was training with him in the mornings, and I was training jiu jitsu at night. It was hard. It was really hard. I was doing it for six months. I was trained twice a day for six months. Yeah. It was really brutal. And I was so tired. I was tired all the time.

And that's where you got those leg kicks that you were teaching George St. Pierre?

Nah, I learned how to do that when I was a kid.

Now my question is, now he's such a legendary MMA guy. Like, he was. Did he not have.

Well, I was a Taekwondo specialist.

Okay.

You know, and I was multiple time state champion in taekwondo, and I won a bunch of national tournaments. I. And I. I was really good. I was really good at Taekwondo. Like, I fought at a very high level, and I have a lot of really good instruction that I got from. I got very lucky, and I stumbled upon a school in Boston called the Jaehun Kim Taekwondo Institute. Just randomly walked in the door one day, and it turned out to be one of the best Taekwondo schools in the world. And so I had trained with some of the very best people in the world, just by fortune.

Yeah.

And I was physically gifted. I was very lucky in a lot of ways. A lot of natural power. And I learned technique and, you know, which is the most important thing, like, perfect technique. And so when it was funny, it was because it came about because of John Donahue. I had a conversation with John Donaher, who's George's jiu jitsu coach, who's maybe the greatest martial arts coach in the world, maybe of all time, really legitimately, like, a brilliant man. He was a philosophy major from Columbia who got. I think he was a professor for a bit, but then he got obsessed with jiu jitsu and was just teaching jiu jitsu and training jiu jitsu and sleeping on the mats and like, literally, literally, literally teaching all day, training all day and sleeping on the mats. But. But a brilliant man. And we were having dinner one night, and he's like, george needs some help with the finer points of the spinning back kick. Do you know anyone who can help him? And I said, this is gonna sound crazy.

Yeah.

I go, but I have, like, the best spinning back kick you're ever gonna see in your life. I go, I know it sounds crazy because I'm a comedian. I go find a bag. I could show you. Yeah, I can show you what I could do. And then I brought. There's a video of me.

Oh, I saw it.

Okay.

It was. The sound is imprinted in my mind, George.

This is when we're at Legends Legends MMA in la, which. Where I trained, it was where Eddie Bravo had 10th planet Jiu Jitsu. And, you know, I go, okay, let's go downstairs to the Muay Thai part, and I'll show you. And then I kick the bag, and he's like, man, what the. Can I film this melt? And, like, it's. He's filming with a FL. Flip phone, which is crazy. Like, that's how long ago this was.

That's crazy.

I know. It's probably 2005 or something like that. I had hair and. And it was. It was funny because it was like this thing. It's like. Because I don't do it. It was. Even back then, it wasn't like I was training in kickboxing.

Yeah.

I wasn't training in Taekwondo. It was just. I just. It's just still had it in me.

Yeah. Yeah, you still do. Still do. You keep it.

Did it today.

You did it today.

Yeah. Nice.

Yeah, that was an impressive video. And you just go, jesus. He's. He's. If he's showing this to George St. Pierre, how good is he at this thing?

It's like, I used to be really good.

Yeah.

But I realized when I was like, 21. Well, I realized when I was 19 that I was going to have to stop because I fought in California. I was living in Boston at the time, was traveling all over the country and fighting, and I fought in the nationals in California against this guy who is the Illinois state champion. And I knocked him out really bad. It was really bad. I hit him with a wheel kick in the head, and my heel was sore for days afterwards. Like, I had a hard time walking from his fucking head.

Yeah.

And he never got up. He. He went down face first, was snoring. And back then, my thing was, if I knocked anybody out, I would just act like it was no big deal. I would just turn around and walk away. No celebration. I just walk away like that. That's. I'm do that to all you guys.

Yeah.

And so I walked away. And then I turned to my friend Jung Sik, who was my corner guy. I said, is he getting up? Because, like, he's not getting up. He's not going to get up. He's out. And. And then they took him and they put him in a. They. They took him and they put him in a stretcher, and then they were taking care of him, and for like a half hour. He was still unconscious.

Yeah.

And then they took him to the hospital. I have no idea what happened to him, but I realized it was so bad. It was because he came forward. So what happened was he. Did you know what a switch kick is?

No.

Switch kick is you're standing with your left leg forward and you switch legs and you come, like, with the left kick.

So you think he's repositioning and then he's moving forward.

Telegraphed it. And it's his left leg. So I saw that his left leg was coming this way, so I spun with my right heel and I hit him in the head as he was running forward. So it's like multiple foot. The force itself of a wheel kick is so powerful.

Yeah.

And then when you're running into a wheel kick, it's crazy.

Like two cars driving it.

It's like getting hit with a baseball bat that fucking, you know, Mark McGuire swinging. It's crazy how much power there, isn't it? Because it's your leg. Legs, your legs carry you around all day. And the torque of your whole body you're whipping around, and. And you're hitting with the heel, and you. You know, there's no padding on your heel, and it's not right. I hit him right on the cheek, like, right on the side of his head. He went out, and then I came back to my instructor, and I. And he wasn't there at the tournament. I went back to Boston. He's like. He goes, I heard you had a really good knockout. And I said, yeah. I said, I was. It was scary. I go, I thought he was dead. He goes, sometimes they die. And then he walked away from me, and I was like, man, yeah, sometimes they die. I'm like, that's me. I'm like, I'm. And I had no health insurance. I was 19. I was broke. I was training for the. I wanted to be on the Olympic team. And that was two years from there. And I lost a lot of my steam at that moment because I was like, what am I doing?

I'm fighting for free. Yeah. I don't have any money. I have no insurance, and I'm doing this thing, and I'm. I knew back then I was getting some brain damage. For sure.

Yeah.

And then I. Then I started kickboxing, like, right after that, and then I really kind of lost my feeling for Taekwondo because I realized it was so limited, you know, that, like, when I was sparring with kickboxers, I was really. My hands are so limited. So then I started working with this guy, Joe Lake, who was a boxing coach, and that's when I was doing a lot of boxing and a lot of. A lot of kickboxing. And I was like, man, I'm getting my brains beat in, and I don't know why I'm doing this. And I'm like, there's no professional. It wasn't like the UFC existed at the time.

Yeah.

I got offered a kickboxing fight for 500 bucks, and I was like, 500 bucks? So for 500 bucks, I lose my amateur status. I can never fight in the Olympics, and there's no money in it as a. A professional. I'm like, what is my future? Am I going to be one of the. And then I'm. New guys in the gym that I used to train with, like, when I was 19. And then by the time I was, like, 21, I was seeing brain damage in these guys.

Yeah.

I was seeing them slurring their words, forgetting what they were saying, repeating themselves. The weird thing is they. They'll tell you a story.

Yeah.

And then they tell you the same story, like, two minutes later. And like, you just told me that story. Like, they don't remember. They don't remember anything.

And. And now. But now. Now, George St. Pierre is a good example of someone. I feel like he made it out of fighting before.

Yes.

Like, he looks very healthy.

He's fine.

He looks like he's fine.

He's fine. But he's, you know, he's a very intelligent guy. He does also does a lot of things to keep his mind very active. He plays chess.

Yeah.

You know, and he's very, like, proactive.

He seems like, even. Like, I've just seen him on social media where he's like, hey, guys, this is how I do. Like, he's just like a very.

Oh, yeah.

Seems like a very positive fun.

You know, he's the best case scenario for both. Another guy in the argument. For the all time great.

Yeah.

For an all time great MMA champion who has a successful and happy life outside of it.

Didn't end up with the.

No.

The shakes.

No, no, he's fine. I mean, I've hung out with him a bunch. I've hung out with him recently. Yeah, he was great. We came to the comedy club. He's actually playing my friend James McCann. They were playing chess in the green room at the Comedy Mothership. It was so cool. We're filming it.

The last time I came, I think he had been in there the night before, and I was like, I would have been. That would have been a trip to meet him.

He's amazing. He's. But he's such a sweetheart of a guy. You would never imagine that he's this killer inside the octagon. Yeah, he's such a sweet guy, but it's just like, for him, it was just this incredible challenge, and he was really good at it, and he just figured out a way to express himself that way. And, you know, as a legend, like.

I don't imagine that he was, like, big on, like, the trash talk before fights and everything. Right. He was probably just like, look, we're just gonna.

No, there was no trash talk. He's very respectful unless someone was disrespectful to him. And. And, you know, and even then, it wasn't trash talking.

No, he always seemed like he was cool. Yeah, he was just doing his thing.

No, he was a. One of the best representatives of the sport of all time, if not the best. No, I, like, never got into trouble outside the Octagon. Yeah, never, you know, was never drunk driving or beating people up and, you know, Just a great guy. And if I would have to tell people who he is, like, he would. He was like, who's your friend? I was like, what do you think he does? Yeah, what do you think my friend does? And like, I don't know. He seems cool.

How big is he?

He's one of the. He's about 5, 9, 5, 10 maybe. And now he probably weighs 180 pounds. 185 pounds, maybe. Fought at 170.

Okay.

You know, he's not like a scary looking person. I'm like, that's one of the greatest fighters.

Yeah.

It's ever walked the face of the earth. Like, no way. I'm like, yeah. I mean, he's like, hey, how you doing, man? What's going on? He doesn't seem.

He's like, jovial.

No, he's a sweetheart.

No, he's not trying to intimidate. Like, you know, Khabib looks like he's really smart.

I mean, he's really. He's always, like, watching. Watching documentaries and reading books.

Yeah.

He's fascinated by ancient history and interesting dinosaurs and really into aliens.

Dinosaurs. No, it's just. It's crazy, man. You. You've gotten to this. You've. You've met everyone. Did you ever have Jane Goodall on here?

No, I did not, unfortunately.

I wanted to make that.

Wanted to and I wanted. She's gone, right?

She just died.

I wanted to talk to her about Bigfoot because she was convinced that Bigfoot was real.

What?

Yeah, yeah.

She was convinced that.

Yeah, yeah. She did this interview. She said she's certain of it. Yeah, yeah. We'll find it. Jamie C. I.

Not that I don't believe you, but I just don't find Jane Goodall.

I know, I know, I know. I was stunned. I was like, what? And this is. By the time I had been convinced that Bigfoot was fake.

Yeah. I'm in that camp, but I.

There's camera traps, but this is the camp. There was an animal that coexisted with human beings for sure. That was called Gigantopithecus. Yes. You know the whole story.

Yeah.

So gigantic Gigantopithecus. They found bones in an apothecary shop in China in the 1920s or 30s. And an anthropologist found these molars and said, where did you get this? These are primate molars and they're fucking enormous.

Yeah.

Like whatever this thing was was absolutely huge. So they went to the site where they got it. They found mandible bones that indicated it was bipedal. So it was an upright walking chimp, walking primate that was 8 to 10ft tall. Like, what the fuck is this? And so I'm sure you've seen the images of what a Gigantopithecus looked like in comparison to a human being. Yeah, it's in the orangutan family. And so that thing existed and also existed in Asia. Right. So you look at the Bering Strait and you look at the Bering land bridge that we know existed during the Ice age. And so we know that humans migrated from Siberia into North America. We know that for a fact. You know one of the reasons we know that for a fact, because Mormons were convinced that Native Americans were part of the lost tribe of Israel. Yeah. So some rich Mormon guy did a DNA test on Native Americans and found out that they emanated from Siberia. And so it was incorrect. So we know humans came down from there. Why wouldn't other animals. Sure, we know they did. We know short faced bear, a bunch of different animals that they find their bones in Alaska and they know that they probably made their way down through North America.

It just stands, it just makes logical sense that if you have a variety of different megafauna, probably one of those primates or a bunch of those primates lived in the Pacific Northwest, which is the area where they would be.

Right.

And then you have incredibly dense forest. Right.

Yeah.

So Jane Goodall won't rule out the existence, but. No, no, find the video where she says, I'm convinced.

I'm convinced.

Yeah, because she was talking. Oh, no, no. Okay, just find it because it exists. I can't listen to the videos. No, no, go, go to video.

Dude, she would have been awesome. You should, I'm sorry.

Get all on how Bigfoot might be real. That's it right there. Put the headphones on.

Listen, headphones.

Here we go. I climbed into the hills.

Oh, there's Jane.

This was where I was meant to, to be. I wanted to talk to you about something that some would say is fictional, but you would say, hold up, we, we don't know for certain. And that's Bigfoot. You everybody talks to me about. I, I would, I'm romantic. I would like Bigfoot to exist. I've met people who swear they've seen Bigfoot. And I think the interesting thing is every single continent there is an equivalent of Bigfoot or Sasquatch. There's the Yeti, there's the Yowri in Australia. There's the Chinese wild man, and on.

And on and on.

And you know, I've had stories from people who. You have to believe them. So there's something, I don't know what it is. I'm always open minded. What about other mythological creatures? Pause for a second. So they're saying that to her. He's saying that to her. And she said that in reaction to a previous interview that she did. The previous interview that she did. She said I'm convinced that it exists.

I don't know.

Well, you know, you gotta realize this is a lady that lived with primates in an inaccessible area where there's very few human beings and she had these interactions with them. I don't agree with her, but I think that it existed at one point in time. One of the other reasons why I think it exists is that different Native American tribes put this into perplexity. How many different Native American terms were there for a hairy wild man or Bigfoot? And I believe there's more than 80 that's wild. Now. They don't have a lot of mythological creatures in Native American culture. Right. And so in different tribes. Right. But they have a name for this hairy wild giant man that lives in the woods. Yeah. They also have. The other thing that's really fascinating is giants. There is a lot of ancient cultures have stories about giants and Native American tribes have ancient stories of giant red haired men which, you know, God, they're in. It's in the Bible. It's in a bunch of, okay, 40 to 50 separate terms across different languages and regions. Hairy wild giant man. No single agreed upon count, but dozens of distinct Native American names for hairy wild giant man beings.

Easily over 40 to 50 separate terms across different languages and regions. Interesting.

I still, I would love to see the clip eventually of Jane Goyle saying I believe in Bigfoot. Because she's saying there, she's like, I'm open to the idea of it.

She's saying that, that. And as the reason why styling it back is because he had exactly seen the, he had seen the previous interview. See if we can find another interview with her talking about Bigfoot.

She was, she was awesome, you know, she was awesome. She, she's the reason I have a career really, her being awesome. I always, I there two stories I tell people. If I go first of all, because everyone goes, what's Joe Rogan like? And I no, it's true. Cuz everyone wants to know. And you're controversial and so I'm like oh, the nicest fucking guy in the world. I said the first time I came in, you sent me a message and you said something about like, hey, don't worry about a thing. Like, I'm even gonna bring my dog. Like, you're. It was very nice. It was a little pat on the back because you go, jane Goodall. I went to a talk when I was like, 22 something, and I was just writing chapters of my first book, Mother of God, which didn't even have a name yet. And I had chapters in a manila envelope. And I went to a talk that Goodall was giving. And, I mean, I'd been read stories and seen the black and white pictures. So this was like, you know, like Einstein, Abe Lincoln. Jane Goodall, it's like a living historical figure.

And so now she's talking in front of me, and I had brought these chapters, and I wanted to ask her because I'd already sent the chapters to publishers, and they'd all been like, kid, none of this is true. You know, no way did you jump on a giant anaconda. No way did you raise an anteater. They just didn't believe me. And then when it was my turn, after hundreds of people, I get to her and, you know, she goes, hello. She takes a little picture with you. And I said, would you read these chapters? I said, I would love it because I loved your stories as a kid. And she goes, thank you. And she puts it to the side. 48 hours later, her staff gets in touch and they go, jane, actually read what you gave her. Loved it, and said, finish the book, get a publisher, and I will write you an endorsement.

Whoa.

She waved her magical wand in my direction and gave me a career.

That's so cool.

And what's really great is that earlier this year, I emailed her, and it was because this book was coming out. And I, you know, I said, it would be amazing to have. I mean, I said, at this point, no one's, you know, the conservation, the voice of Mother Earth. And she just, you know, she was just. She just said, you know, just keep protecting the Amazon. That's your mission. She was always very. It was like, you know, Luke, believe in yourself. It was like, you know, she was just like, you. Your job is to protect this forest. And it was incredible.

That's amazing.

And so. Yeah, right, right. You know, about six months ago, I got to tell her. I was like, look, because the last time I'd spoken to her, we were protecting, I think it was like a hundred thousand acres. And then in the last year, we added 30,000 acres to the reserve. And so I said, you know, we're making strides forward. And she would Just, it was good that I got to tell her that. And then, and then, you know, recently we found out that, that she died. But what a legacy.

What a legacy.

What a legacy.

Yeah. I mean, we know so much about primate behavior because of that woman we.

Know so much about. I mean, man, the toolmaker. Before her, we said there was humans that use tools, and now we know that, you know, capuchin monkeys use rocks. We know that otters use rocks. I mean, I've seen elephants use a stick to scratch. I've seen camera chat footage of an elephant using a tree to knock over an electrical fence. Like animals use tools. Oh, she was the first one. I mean, she went out there when she was, what, 20 something years old, Middle Africa blonde girl crazy. And then spent the whole rest of her life. But the lesson that I take away from that is that even as famous as she was, that she was traveling 300 days a year. I mean, she'd been, you know, an icon for decades, and that she still took the time to actually read something that some kid handed to her. That's unfathomable, Grace, to do that. And then literally, if that didn't happen, I never would have published Mother of God. I never would have started Jungle Keepers. I never would have been protecting the rainforest. She empowered that. She did that with her magic. It was.

And I think that that's incredible.

That's so cool.

Absolutely incredible.

Did you find any other? No. I guarantee it exists. But it's okay. You have to trust me. I don't think she's correct, but I do think. Not Bigfoot, but I do think that it's entirely possible that there is a small hairy primate, like human, like primate that exists still. That's like the Hobbit people from the island of Flores. Yeah. You know, there's. There's the thing called the Orang Pendek. Have you heard of that?

No.

The Orang Pandek, I think. Indonesia, perhaps Vietnam. There's a bunch of places that have this creature that gets sighted on multiple occasions. And they used to think of it as like just silly legend, but now because of the discovery which was. Was it in the 90s that they discovered the Hobbit people on the island of Flores? You know about that, right?

I've heard of them, yeah.

Yeah, those are real siensis.

Yes, those are real real. We have their bones.

Very real. Very real. It was a very small, like, Hobbit like creature. Yeah, that was a type of primate that was bipedal. That was like a little tiny hairy human being that Lived at least on the island of Flores, but most likely lived in many other places as well. And there's a possibility that it still exists. And it's not me saying this. It's like some actual anthropologists that believe that this thing might still be alive because you're dealing with incredibly small population.

But are those. I mean, are those islands so small that. No. Like, unlike the Amazon, how could there be a population.

Incredibly dense. Incredibly dense forest. And no one's going down in their bushes.

Right.

It's like the Tasmanian tiger.

I was just gonna say thylacine, where it's like. They're just.

They're just exactly, exactly. Small population. Like, there's a lot of sightings of the thylacine, you know?

Yeah. But somehow all these sightings, it's never on a. It's never clear.

No, no, that was. It's also. There's no one there. Yeah, here's the thing. I mean, let's pretend that you saw wolverine in the Montana woods. Like, Montana woods, and it's a hundred yards away. You see it briefly for a second. Get your phone. You're not gonna. You might have seen it. You might have seen it travel trees. But, like, how are you gonna get it off your phone? You're gonna have to. Unless you have a Samsung, where you have a really good zoom, you're not going to be able to zoom in enough. You know, like, you'd have to have, like, there's only a few phones that are. Yeah, you're not going to get good footage. But we know that wolverines are real. But finding a wolverine in the woods, I've talked to God. I've talked to hundreds of men who spend a giant portion of their life in the woods, and only a few have seen wolverines.

I would love to see.

How about mountain lions? They're everywhere. I've only seen three of them in my entire life.

That's why.

But I've probably been around a hundred of them and not known it, you know, that's what.

That's the reaction we got with the. The tribes was that if you look at uncontacted tribes my whole life, you look at photos of uncontacted tribes, it was like blurry, crappy. Because who was out there is like a logger, Right? Right. Or it was somebody running.

Right.

And even when I saw them the first time when I was out on a solo, it was 10 days deep in the jungle. I saw them and I ran for my life, and everyone went, you didn't see him. I mean, I'm a. I don't mind that if I have Pixar. It didn't happen.

Right, right.

And so with this, when we started, started actually showing people what we had, it was like, this has never been. It's like. It's like a vision into the. Into the Stone Age.

Right. I mean. I mean, like, really, not even the Stone Age.

Like, they're not even the Stone Age stone tools.

They sharpen sticks.

Yeah. I showed it to an anthropologist and he was saying, you know, Stone Age isn't necessarily accurate here. He said, because they're not using stone. They don't have clay pots. He goes, this is something, this is. But I mean, it. Then think about. It's actually like a time machine because you're, you're, you're. I mean, we were standing across the river, look, talking to these people, and it's like, you guys are a couple thousand years back. And so it's like, this is such a strange aperture into history.

It's not even a couple. Maybe like 30, 40, maybe.

I feel like. I feel like. I feel like somehow to me, the number seems like two, but it's like, you know, we wouldn't be two. We were like little tribes.

Yeah. But 2000 years ago, the Egyptian pyramids were already 2500 years old.

That's true, that's true. But I mean, again, the civilization isn't homogenous. Right. Like, different, of course, you know.

Well, obviously there's uncontacted tribes still right now.

Yes.

That's what's crazy.

Yeah.

It's like a man with a cell phone from the future.

Yeah.

Filmed people.

That's what I'm saying. It felt like that. It felt like this was like a back to the future moment where it's like, you know, this is. They have no idea. And. And my people thinking of everyone else back home, I was like, don't realize that these people are still out there in the jungle living like this.

Right. And probably in the dense, dense, dense forest. There's probably many more of them.

There are many more of them, in fact. Well, we. Yeah, well, we were watching them out front. There was this terrifying moment where the. We heard something behind us and it was. Which we never saw them, but the women came lightfoot in behind, and they pulled up all the yucca and the bananas and they were raiding. And so for a second we were like, there's an ambush. And everyone was like turning the shotguns away from the river and they were like. We thought there was going to be arrows flying. So, like My guy Ignacio grabs me and, like, put me down. And we were hiding behind trees waiting for it. And it was like, no, no, no. They're just stealing all of the fruit and all of the crops. And they just raided our. Our. Our whole village. Wow. But I really. I really did feel like, you know, like you. You go, imagine what it would be like to go back and see the Comanches, watch them riding across the plains after the buffalo. And it's like, we can't. But in this case, they were right there.

Right, right.

And now. And now, now that these videos are going out across the world, it's like, look, we're trying to explain to people, you know, first of all, there's a lot of those, you know. You know, exactly what kind of prayer people. They're like, leave them alone. And it's like, literally where the people trying to make sure that they get left alone, like, that's our job.

Yeah, you gotta ignore those folks.

Yeah, you.

Especially you. You're not the type of person that's interfering with their life at all.

No.

By giving them the bananas, you're help. You're literally helping them.

Well, and again, I was a witness, right? That was happening between the tribes and the tribes.

Right, right.

And so. And so. But. But for all the indigenous cultures that have been destroyed in the last few centuries, we can do it, right? For once, we can actually respect these people. If they want to come out, they can come out. If they want to adapt, they can. But they need to have forests to live in in order to make that decision. And so that's where it's like, how.

Can they make an informed decision? How can they adapt? I mean.

Well, I think it would be very slow.

It's so crazy.

I think it'd be slow. I think it'd be a few more banana exchanges, maybe without the arrow shot afterwards. And then maybe it starts to be like, okay, you guys can come here. Maybe the communities teach them how to grow bananas. Maybe they don't want to come, but they want a few things.

Right?

You know, maybe they want a couple of machetes because it'll just help, you know, and they want to keep to themselves. Maybe.

But I mean, other than them, the thought of the most uncontacted people is North Sentinel Island.

Yeah.

And North Sentinel Island. The interesting part of that is one of the reasons why they're so distrustful people is because they had been contacted in the 1800s.

Bad. Yeah.

By a fucking pervert. There was a guy named Commander Maurice Vidal Portman who Was a like explorer, slash pervert. And the reason why I say that.

Is like job title.

This guy had like weird journal logs where he's like, this one has testicles the size of a sparrow's egg. Like you dress them up like Roman soldiers and take pictures of them. They kidnapped a few of them and then they gave a bunch of people the flu and a bunch of people died. And so they had this immense distrust for people because of this guy and his explorations onto that island, that island and other islands like it. So they, they don't have a written language, right. These people, there's no evidence they have fire. So there's this story of these because, you know, it's incredibly wet environment.

Yeah.

So they, they have the stories that, they probably have these oral traditions of these white people that come and fuck up everything. So when someone shows up on a boat, like there's been a few instances where people were killed. Missionary a few years back.

Yeah.

But not just him there, there's a boat that sank there. So it washed ashore and sank. And they were headed to go kill those people when they were rescued. And now we've spotted them, we people have spotted them with metal. And they believe the metal they got was salvaged from the boat.

Yeah.

So they got pieces of metal. Yeah. So this, this is the boat that, that shipwrecked. In 1981, a cargo ship named the Primrose ran aground on the coral reef surrounding North Sentinel. The crew radioed for assistance and settled for a long wait. But in the morning they saw 50 men with bows on the beach building makeshift boats to swim out to them and fuck them up. Yeah, I mean they have a severe distrust obviously of people.

So I was on the Andaman Islands, which is right next to these.

That guy, respectable lawyer on Twitter, he's the one I got the information from. He documented the whole story of. If you scroll all the way up, he'll talk about that guy Maurice Vidal. See, look at he dressed. That's the guy. So that fucking creep. Look at him. He looks like a pervert. So he's hanging out.

They should have known he was a pervert.

Look at him, look at him. Louie's dress, they probably wonderful testicles.

Probably didn't want to profile.

Yeah. So that's the dude. Yeah. He's from the English Royal Navy.

Yeah.

Portman, Maurice Vidal. Portman, yeah. Dude, those guys, look at these guys. Fucking thrown.

Those guys be doing some sit ups.

Well, they're out there. Hustle one.

You know, I went to the Andaman Islands, which is right out there.

That's where the he originally landed.

Yeah. And if you want to feel like you fell off the face of the earth, you go to the and islands. First of all, beautiful. You can only, I think, if you still like this, you can only get there from the Indian city of Chennai or Calcutta because it's an Indian territory. They don't. They limit who can travel there. And there's, I mean, there's, They've brought elephants there because they didn't used to have bulldozers and stuff. So the British brought elephants by boat. And there's these old archival footage photos of them lifting off of, like, pirate ships, lifting elephants on the rigging and then putting them and the island. Now the Andaman Islands have elephants.

Whoa.

And there's still people riding around on the elephants, you know, like moving trees off the road and doing things.

That's crazy.

But when you go from one place to the other place. Exactly what you said. Because they don't want human safaris because they want to protect these indigenous people. You have to go with a police escort to cross the island because you have to go through. And I meant the police watch you like a hawk. And I, you know, I take a picture of everything. I take 300 pictures a day on my phone. And no, see, if you can see elephants being lifted off of ships, it's.

There's a bunch of pictures here that are crazy. They're pulling logs.

I mean, but this is, this is, you know, elephants moving logs. Happens all the time. But there's literally a picture of the elephants up on the riggings.

Wow.

And, but, man, you drive through areas where there's just these tiny little people with bows and arrows, and they're still out there. I, I, I got to go swimming with an elephant there. Yeah.

Wow.

You got to.

That's so dope. Look at the elephant swimming. How cool is that?

Yeah. Wow.

That's awesome.

There you go. Look at that. That's them nuts lifting the elephants.

Like, what the am I doing in the air?

Yeah, look at that.

You have to blindfold them. No, he's not blindfolded. I mean, just painted.

You know, they probably should have, but back then.

Well, maybe the elephant would freak out elephants. It takes so much for an elephant to freak out and kill people. There's a horrible video of this guy's abusing an elephant. Like, he's a trainer, and he's like, keeps whacking the elephant. And the elephant goes, that's enough.

Yeah.

And just stomps him Into a pancake. Yep.

Or.

Or that.

That video I sent you with the tiger. That. The one through the tiger.

Which one?

That's where the tiger mauls the guy. And you're like, that's terrible. He kills him. And then the second shot is they show the guy and he's still alive, but he's got slashes down to his skull. Like, just don't just. I mean, these animals are. You just don't push them down. Especially not an elephant.

Well, human beings just want to fuck with everything. That's part of why we're on every fucking square inch of the Earth, practically. We want to fuck with everything. You know, it's. We're the weirdest animal ever because we're on every fucking continent. We're everywhere. There's not another animal like us.

No.

And, you know, all of us came from Africa, which is even nuttier, right? So we emanated from Africa and just spread out all over the world. As soon as we figured out how to float, hike, and how to wear warm clothes, we just kept moving.

And now are we going to figure out how to not destroy the systems that keep us alive? Right?

And now we're talking about doing the same thing on other planets.

We're talking about it, but way before we start worrying about other planets, I want to make sure that this planet works. I mean, I'm just, I'm so. I'm just. I'm. It drives me crazy how quickly everyone's going. I just. In. In the. In the. When I come back to society so quickly, we're like, it's on people's minds. They're talking about this stuff. And I'm going, guys, the ocean is filled with trash. Like, the Amazon is burning. I'm like, can we just fix this? And there's areas where we have. I mean, you know, this. Like, they brought wolves back to Yellowstone. Like, New York's waters are getting cleaner. The humpbacks are coming back. But. But everyone's so. I mean, but we haven't actually, when we get to Mars, talk about it all day. But it's like, until then, right? I just feel like we are so overwhelmed with serious problems here and the last chance in history to fix those problems. So there's an amazing opportunity. And I feel like people are so. Like this, this modern nothingness that people feel where it's like, oh, it's the end of times. And it's like, dude, this is the most exciting time.

You can fly everywhere. You got information at your fingertips. There's more people than ever before. Working to make good in the world, to help people, to save animals, to restore ecosystems. And it's like. So I get confused when I come back from what I feel is like battle. And I'm on this mission for 20 years to do this one thing, and people are like, I'm just scrambled and delirious and I'm like, go outside. Yeah, get off your phone, put your phone down. Go to the mountains. That John Muir thing. I'm, you know, to the mountains. The mountains are calling. And I must go like, go close your phone. Go touch grass for a while. Actually, that was one of the favorite. I forget what I. I posted a video of me with this huge anaconda around me and I'm holding her head. It was a 20 foot anaconda. One of the comments was this guy, he was like, dude, you've touched enough grass.

Go back inside, go watch Netflix.

Yeah. He's like, that's.

The opposite. You've gone too far. You've gone too far.

Interesting use of free will.

What was fascinating to me when people were trying to save things, and by saving things, they don't realize that they're actually fucking things up far worse than saving them. Well, there's a good example. I think it's the Mojave Desert where they just now, California and all their infinite wisdom decided to build this immense solar farm out in the desert. I saved it. I'll send it to you, Jamie. It is so crazy. So they decided to build this immense solar farm. It turns out this solar farm because it's got mirrors that like, point towards these solar panels. It's incinerating 6,000 birds a year. Incinerating 6,000 birds a fucking year. Which is like. What does that even mean? Like, how. How is that even so?

It's a death ray.

A fucking death ray. God. I know I saved it. Where did I save it? Oh, you got it. It's okay. Pull up any. Any of the articles. But I mean that when you look at it, it's. It heats up to a thousand fucking degrees. The Mojave Desert. Yeah. Well, they just shut it down so it's concentrated sunlight. Solar power towers use mirrors to focus sunlight onto a receiver, creating extremely high temperature. The problem is they're fucking killing birds like a motherfucker. Just like those ugly windmill farms. Those things are a blight on the face of the earth. When you drive to South Texas.

Yeah.

A buddy of mine has a ranch down there. Solar. Plenty. Look at that. Mojave Desert solar plant kills 6,000 birds a year.

I think that.

That's in 2016. They just recently shut it down. They've spent billions on this fucking thing. And it's not generating nearly an amount of solar power that they were hoping. It turns birds into fucking fireballs instantly. But when you drive down to South Texas, they have these. That's what it looks like. Isn't that crazy? Look at that. Isn't that nuts?

Yeah. We got to stop spreading out.

We're so stupid.

We got to stop.

But that's, like. Who said that's a good idea? And counterintuitively, nuclear power is, like, the best for the environment.

Yeah.

Which is. People think. No. Three Mile Island. No.

They gotta. You know what? They just call it something else. If you just. If you just rebrand it.

Well, you have to realize that the old new, like the Fukushima plants, they fuck the whole area up forever. Those are old. That's a plant that I think went live in the 1970s. Like you. The new technology. You can have solar power and it's. Or, excuse me, nuclear power, and it's clean.

But I think people are scared of the word nuclear. I'm saying if you came out and you called it, like something. Something plant.

We gotta get over it. We gotta get over that. That hump, you know? But that's. It's just human beings. But there's this constant battle, right? There's a battle of good and evil.

Yes, there is.

And there's also a battle of ignorance and information, and it goes back and forth. And the only way to educate people is sometimes you have these brave people that are responding to this intense amount of ignorance, and they. They have to go out there and say, no, that's not it. It's this. And there's this huge societal narrative, this huge cultural narrative that they have to fight against, which is almost impossible to undo.

I mean, when you realize there's something that everybody has wrong, right? Or you realize that there's something that. I mean, the amount. Because then you gotta. You gotta. You gotta get the message to everybody, right? How do you do that?

Right?

Then you gotta make them care about it.

Right?

And I mean, it's just.

It's.

It's wild, too.

But that's us. That's. That's the battle. There's always this, like. I think you need those things in order for us to push progress. You need something to fight against. Like, think about where you would be if you didn't have this thing to push against. Like, there's. It's not that. The thing is Good, but it is bad. But it creates good people that push against it. And this is the constant battle of the human spirit. We're always engaged in this battle to right wrongs and to figure things out and to make things better that are bad. And then to realize that, oh, we're making it way worse. Someone has to come along and course. Correct.

Yeah.

And then, you know, it's usually a few brave people that are pushing back against this tidal wave of negativity and ignorance.

The tidal wave of negativity is wild. The, the. The grief is. Is just. It's like. It's like a poison peddled by the darkness. It's like they want you sad and disoriented. And I just feel like so many people now when I come back, they're downtrodden by the. Just the buzz of the news and everything. And I'm like, listen, choose something that you care about and work on it, or just pick that one.

Be the good you want to see in the world.

Be the good you want to see in the world. And it's like, I'm in this unique position because I'm contacted now all day long by people that want to help us protect the rainforest, people who want to use that blueprint to do it somewhere else. And we're on the cusp of doing this. So I'm surrounded by. I get a lot of positive people with innovations, people with ideas, people. I mean, even, you know, everyone says, oh, why can't the billionaires? And it's like, we get people who have money and they come in and they're like, I'll help you get that piece of land that'll be protected. I get, I get reinforced all the time. People go, the world's going to shit. And I'm like, the world's amazing people are helping.

Yeah.

You know, and it's like, I've seen so much good done.

It really is all what you're focusing on, if you're focusing on. That's the very thing unique thing about today is that you're inundated with so much information. And we generally tend to gravitate towards the things that are terrifying and the things that are dangerous that scare us. And so you're paying attention to the news of literally 8 billion people, which is not natural, it's not normal.

We're supposed to know about our village and maybe the next village, right? And so, like, that's one thing I, you know, I had a friend, you know, did you hear about the flood that happened in Bangladesh? I was like, what do you, you know, my sympathy. But like, there's. There's always a flood happened. The world is gigantic. There's 8 billion people.

Right.

And so, like, you know, there's only.

So much you can pay attention to.

So much you can pay attention to.

But if you have a phone, all the bad stuff is coming into your pocket.

Yeah. And I think a lot of the. It's funny because a lot of the people, like the adults are. People are worried about the kids. I think the adults are worse.

Yeah, a lot of them. Yeah. And a lot of them, they're searching for meaning. And so they find meaning in activism or in pseudo activism and yelling about things online and then maybe going out into the street and screaming at people. And they think that that gives meaning to their life. You know, there's a lot of people that just feel like really lost. And this strange concrete culture, concrete and electronic culture that we've created, it doesn't give you the fulfillment that the natural world does. I mean, I'm sure it's one of the draws that you have to the jungle is that living out there in nature is wildly fun, fulfilling because it's normal. It's like it fills in all the slots that you have evolved to have. Like, as a human being, we have always lived in coordination with nature up until fairly recently. You know, if human beings have been alive in this form for half a million years, how long have we been in cities? How long have we been in even agriculture? A few thousand years. Temperature controlled rooms, crazy.

With a little noise box constantly stressing us out.

Also wifi and EMF signals. I was just reading this fucking crazy thing. Have you paid attention to this, Jamie, about the 49ers, about San Francisco? Isn't that fucking nuts? They think it's real. So there's a disproportionate amount of severe catastrophic injuries that come out of San Francisco. And their training facility is right outside this power station. Oh, yeah, Yeah. I mean, way more Achilles tendon blown out, way more knees blown out. Way more like catastrophic ligament and tendon ruptures. And they've been talking about it since, like, the players started talking about it in like 2012, I believe. And people like, oh, that's nonsense. And now the stats are in and you're looking at the amount of injuries that come from this area. It's like, it's not normal.

And so you think, what if they're getting weakened by the water, by the electricity?

Electricity, yeah, by the EMF signal. I mean, it's look EMF signals we know disrupt human beings. But to what extent, like to what extent does LED lights and to what extent is it minimal? Do you feel it? Is it not? Is it, is it, does it have a long term effect? Does it take forever until it actually compounds? But they, they're looking at the data from this one training facility so you could find some, something on it. There's a lot, a lot of stories have come out this week about it where people are starting to gather up all the data and they're like, hey, this is not normal. This is a much higher percentage of severe injuries from this one camp. Which doesn't make any sense.

Well, it's like that Aaron Brockovich thing where it's like you find a place where a lot of people are getting the same kind of cancer and it's like there's a reason.

So what does it say here at the top of the article? What's the article, sir? Just about, it's about the whole thing. It explains. So is it true? What is this from how long ago is this? Two weeks? Yes, two days ago. Okay. The injury conspiracy theory. And is it true? So what, what is this is USA Today. You know, just skipped ahead to the so called mechanisms have not been established. Many of the experiments are contradictory. Many of the experience of exposures either don't relate specifically to 50-60 Hz magnetic fields. It's a topic that will likely resurface or any major injuries during the super bowl at Levi's Stadium February 8th in Santa Clara. Is Santa Clara near there? That's where they play the game. That's where they play the game. But is that the training facility? The idea is that it's near the training facility.

Right.

And I don't. That's again, that's, this is. So that's where the electrical substation is and there's the field. I mean caught the bow. That's. That can.

It's literally radiating onto them.

That can't be good. But I don't think it's gonna affect the game. You know I'm saying I think it's like being there all the time. Practicing there all the time is what's gonna weaken their body without checking?

I don't know.

I don't. Unless that's where they practice. I don't see a large practice facility. Look at the multi use field. I know they don't practice on those fields generally. Right, but they use the fields. I mean they must practice there. It could be, this could just be a park. That's why I gotta look up where they practice. Right, right, right. LA Rams don't practice next to Sofi Stadium. I can't imagine it's good for you. I mean, there's also. Okay, we'll find this out. Is there any truth to power lines and people living under power lines having increased rates of cancer? Because I've heard that that's true.

Yeah. I mean, in environmental college that was. There's numerous giant class action lawsuits for people that were living under high tension power lines. And I mean, I actually, I knew someone who. I mean, I've been to the places where I did. For my senior project, I was doing where we went to the areas where they were fracking. Remember that? Remember that documentary where they were lighting the wall on fire?

Oh, yeah, yeah. Gasland. Great documentary. Yeah.

And those people were screaming. They're trying to get the attention to say, this is not good. And of course the companies come in and they go, we'll give you $2 million if we let us drill on your land. And these are people that could need the money.

Right.

And then a few years later, all of their kids have cancer.

Pull that back up again, please. So we put it into our sponsor, Perplexity. There's some limited evidence, a small increase in childhood leukemia risk. Very close high voltage power lines. But overall the link is weak, not clearly causal. And typically residential exposures are considered within safety guidelines. See, the thing is like, who is. One of the things about Perplexity or any large language model is you've got to get the information from online and who's publishing this information? So it's like there's only so much of it that's available. But possibly carcinogenic is a weak category. So it says. International Agency for Research in Cancer classifies extremely low frequency magnetic fields like those from power lines as possibly carcinogenic to humans, mainly because of the childhood leukemia data. That.

That's wild.

Yeah, just. Fuck that. I would never buy a house near them. What are you looking for? I'm just. I just realized it's a molar.

Yep.

Yeah. This is from my buddy John Reese from Alaska.

That's that guy? Yeah, yeah. That's incredible.

Actually, no, this one is from Colossal.

So that's a.

This is a company that's bringing the wooly mammoth back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, those guys.

This piece is from my buddy John Rees. That's a more.

That's cool.

Yeah, That's a tooth. That's how many of them they have that they could.

That they're just starting to make it. Into art.

Yeah, Yeah. I have a pool cue that has wooly mammoth ivory in it.

Dude, look at that. Look at that.

Nuts. And that is so beautiful. Something 10,000 years ago use that to mash down vegetables.

Wow. That. That is gorgeous.

You know about the boneyard, right?

Yes. No, you were the first time you told me all about it.

Incredible place. Shout out to my boy, John Reeves.

Yeah, that, that. I. I would love to go there.

Oh, you should, dude.

I would love to.

That's pretty incredible.

So fascinating.

Yeah, the Colossal guys have been up there. Quite a few people have been up there to explore. I think either. Grant. No. Randall. Did Randall Carlson go up there? I think he's either gone there or is going there.

Yeah, you got to make the intro for me.

I would 100% to go see. I'll set that up. He's always trying to get me to go out there too. I just don't have the time. But what a phenomenal play, by the way. He's found a new site. He's found a new site up there that has more bones. Yeah, I mean it's.

He's.

You're talking about an area that's only about four to six acres.

Yeah.

That he's been exploring. And he's got other deposits.

Right.

It's like massive deposits. Thousands of animals, including animals that weren't even supposed to be there.

Yeah. That's so cool.

Crazy. And a thick layer of carbon that indicates that fucking place was on fire.

Yeah, yeah. I mean that when you find fossils in the wild, there's nothing like finding fossils. I remember the first time I found like a little shell. And then like I said, we, not that long ago we found like a seven foot turtle shell. Thick, thick, thick, like black. Fossilized in the river basin in the Amazon. The river was especially low and it was just, you know, it was half out like a crashed alien spaceship. Like it was just this huge thing and it was like you get this sense, you get that, that tactile, visceral sense of like, whoa. These used to be here.

You know what they found in China recently?

What'd they find?

They found dinosaur eggs. That the inside of them is all crystals now. Oh, it's crystallized.

Is it like crystallized baby Velociraptor?

No, it's just basically all crystals.

Just crystals. Like a geo.

Yeah, but it's a dinosaur egg. It's just over millions and millions of.

Years, probably making art out of that right now.

I don't know what they're doing with it. Yeah, I Think it's fairly recent that this discovery at least the article that I read was fairly recent about it. But it's just crazy. Oh, so much cool shit.

We're on such a cool planet.

So here it is.

Yeah.

70 million year old dinosaur egg contains surprising a sparkling crystal. Surprise. Isn't that nuts? Turned into crystals.

That was a dinosaur egg.

Grapefruit sized dinosaur egg from a fossil bed in China gave paleontologists huge sprite rather than a dinosaur embryo or sediment. It was filled with sparkling crystals of calcite lining the inner shell. A natural dinosaur geode a rare occurrence provides researchers with unique information on the structure of the shell. In this case a never before seen. Ooh species OOS species species of egg named. Oh boy. Good luck pronouncing that identified in 22 paper led by paleontologist Qinghe of Anhui University in China. Not only that, it's among the first dinosaur eggs or evidence of any dinosaurs for that matter, found in the roughly 70 million year old Upper Cretaceous Christian formation of the Quishan basin.

Wow. That's insane.

Fucking A man. Dinosaur eggs that are filled with. Look at that. Crystals.

Beautiful. I mean it looks like a geode. It's a dinosaur egg.

Nuts.

That's insane.

Nuts.

That's wild.

Yeah, the world's a wild place. My brother was a really, you know, more than anybody.

Well, that's what I've been. I've been trying to see as much of it as I can and save as much of it as I can can. It's been. It's been.

Well, I'm glad you're out there and I'm glad you're still alive because you freak me out every now and then when you send me messages that I'm worried about your safety and I need someone to train me to use a gun. I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, we're dealing with the narco people. Oh, Jesus Christ.

Well, we're closer than we've ever have been. Thank you for how much you've been able to help us get that message out. This book is 20 years of the Wildest Shit. It's the story of Jane and how we. I went, how I met jj, how he found the anacondas, all the. All the. Everything that led to this. I mean, how, how? I mean, you talked about it when you started out. I mean, just being a kid and you have a dream and. I mean, I went to the Amazon. I just wanted to see the Amazon. That was the dream. I never in a million years imagined that I'd get to go on these adventures, see these animals. And then now that we're on the cusp of protecting an entire river, I mean, the wildest dreams that me as a kid had couldn't even touch this. And so it's a fun book to.

Be sharing with you, dope, my brother. And the book is Jungle Keeper, what it Takes to Change the World. Paul Rosolie, available now.

Thank you. In there. Thank you.

Always great to see you.

It's the best.

Let's do it again.

Thank you, brother.

Thank you. All right. Bye, everybody.

Sa.