#2441 - Paul Rosolie

25:21They 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 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 you cut down more of these trees, there will be less monkeys.

25:57If you shoot too many, like it's not like they have deer tags where it's like a monitored thing. They just, they're not understanding. You know, when it was a bow and arrow, it was kind of a fair game. All right. 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 these guys are working with us as rangers and we're building this – 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.

26:30So we want to – So yes, but – Yes, but. So they like that way of life. Oh, yeah. 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.

27:02And so we went and sat down with them. We said, OK, 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 that are, 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, I-227B?

27:31And they're, like, I-2-a-b-b-b. And they're, like, what's your social security number? And they're, like, ah. 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 title 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?

28:02Is there any 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. 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.

28:39But it's just it's not even again. Deserts are actually ecosystems. This is a wasteland. They've 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 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.

29:12And 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 some of the fires. Is that you? That is me. That is me running out there with my— So you're 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. 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?

29:50That's a horrible picture. Was that animals burned alive on a tree? That's two baby jaguars that were burned alive. Oh, God. Yeah. And so people— And they're 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 millions of animals on a single tree. And so then when you have these fires where they cut the forest and just burn everything, this, I mean, those trees would have been filled with monkeys and birds.

30:23And 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. 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'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.

31:03I mean, that particular shot was, 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 an example of, 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 that people have never been? 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.

31:38Absolutely. They find these areas that clearly had some sort of pathways and geometric patterns that indicate foundations of buildings. Yeah. No, I mean, 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, you know, in a few inches of it. And then you find out there's actually 10 feet of the football field that was still the rest of the football field is still wild. Right, right. And so I think that's the message that's getting lost is they're going, there's a lot more here than we thought.

32:16That doesn't mean the whole thing. I watched a documentary once on this guy who was losing his mind. He was a scientist who was a biologist who was 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.

32:48Because there's so much. There's so much. And 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 fucking coyotes. I don't see any. But there's a thousand of them that are in North Dakota. And you've got to find, like that's essentially. 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.

33:24So 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 were like, yeah, we know where they are. 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.

33:52But there was this one scene of exasperation where he was like sitting down saying, did I stake my entire reputation on horse shit? You know? Did he? Did he? Buddy, do 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 he keeps getting up and he's huffing which is like he communicates that way like when he wants to eat he comes up to me and he huffs my buddy he's the best no but I think that's the truth people think it's like you can just go find this stuff and 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.

34:42Right. They're not going to tell someone from the outside. So it might be like one valley between two mountains where there's still a population. Just take them to go to the bathroom and bring them back in here. I'm pretty sure he has to go. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. March is here and Uber Eats is delivering deals all month long. Each game day, score big savings on all the delicious food you need to turn your couch into center court and fuel your fandom. Whether you're ordering in or hosting the whole crew, Uber Eats is serving up deals on wings, burgers, pizza from your favorite restaurant, plus game day snacks from top stores.

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36:02Available at participating locations only. 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. This is an interesting statistic. Find out what percentage of pharmaceutical drugs the compounds emanate from the Amazon. It's an enormous percentage. Yeah, yeah, 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?

36:43It was brutal. What was that? What happened? That was brutal. I mean, that in - Bro, you've been hit by everything. I had this. 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.

37:21But 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 you don't need to patent them and sell them at a fucking pharmacy? Yeah, I mean, look, so 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 we tested this, and it murders bacteria. It's like 100 times more potent than neosporin. What's it called? The sangre de drago. It's not even a big secret.

38:01Like 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 sangre? How do you say it? Sangre de Drago. The dragon's blood. Sangre de Drago. Sangre de Drago. Sangre de Drago. Yes. Dragon's blood trade. I'm watching Game of Thrones again. That sounds like something Khaleesi would say. The mother of dragons. I mean, and by the way, Khal Drago could have used that. He died of an addiction. I mean, right? the thing that took him down. That didn't make any sense to me.

38:33I thought that was a plot hole. No, see, I think that's... There it is, Dragon's Blood. Sangre de Drago. Wow. 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 kills him. I mean, I just had a staph infection in my leg from one mosquito bite that just got itchy.

39:05And 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. MRSA in the Amazon. Well, I got MRSA years ago at, I had dengue and I'd 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. Exactly. 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.

39:43And that's the thing. You see 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. me 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 going to bite a an anteater right and so it's not going to 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 pinky that go burrows into your feet and lays eggs there's leishmaniasis there's malaria dengue um what's the bird Zika virus.

40:24There'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.

40:58And 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 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.

41:34Like, I mean, like school swimming. And I go, what is that? And the guy goes, that's mosquito larva. I'm like, no way. And he's like, yeah, we have to kill them. We have to drain the pool. Like, I was just thinking about how many times I was going to get bit once these things hatched. It was crazy. Like, it was like watching little fish swim around, little hatchlings. And then thank God for dragonflies because they'll lay there. They're young in the same thing. And dragonfly larva will go merc those things. They're savage. And then you get tadpoles. You got a wild kingdom right in your pool. Right in your pool, right in your little cup.

42:09But when I got stung by the stingray, it was crazy because I had been walking. Oh, you're back, buddy. 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? 100 ,000 times worse. Really? Yes. And I'd seen one guy 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.

42:43so 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 oh and it has venom yeah so there all the skin is oh man that's 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 like okay I got a document. Oh, man. I'm unconscious. I'm unconscious at this point. You're in that much pain. Yes, I was blacking out. Marshall's freaking out. He's like, what is happening? Yeah, I mean, I was literally, I knew people were filming, and I was like, I didn't, you know, you want to be tough.

43:25You 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 the video, and my friend comes up to me, and he was like, hey, man, he's like, we got to, you got to stop. He's like, because in a minute, you're going to go under. And I was like, what do you mean I'm going to go under? And he's like, once the venom hits your system, he goes, you're not going to be able to walk. And we're still a few miles from the river. And he's like, we've got to get you to the boat and we can't carry you.

43:51Whoa. 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 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. What is that thing on your foot? So that's the plant medicine. That's where I'm going with this. I never smoke a cigarette every day. That's funny. 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.

44:21And 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 twizzes 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 of all this stuff huh and then they heat that up until it's scalding press it against your foot and you've been the Amazon for a long time is this is the first time that's ever happened to you you've been stung by stingray this is the first time now how does it happen you You just step in the wrong place?

45:06JJ'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 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 by nighttime, it had gotten—this was at night where I was like, okay, the pain had subsided.

45:40But 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 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 arch of my foot.

46:17And what's funny is it just. I would never walk barefoot ever. I walk barefoot all the time. 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.

46:48I've had dengue. I said, I got a week left in the Amazon. I'd been in the Amazon for six months. And 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 put me out of the game. That was actually in April. I waited to post it until now. But 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. It was fun. Yeah. And if you went to the hospital?

47:21I did not go to the hospital. But if you did go to the hospital, how long would it take? 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 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 I just, this was, it's from the inside and it's pulsating.

47:56And you just go, the other thing is you go, how much of my year did I just miss? You know, am I going to, 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 of days later, you're walking around because they understood the medicine 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 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 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 they the the prevailing thing is that science and and sort of uh the like the statistics of of trial and error are incomprehensible given 40 ,000 plant species and all the different flowering and orchids and trees.

49:17And 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, you know, the other thing is like 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?

50:06I think the jungle, I mean, I view it as almost a, you know, it's like it's godlike. It's almost like a giant, complex, sentient being. And so 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. What? And 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?

50:40Or 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 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. You know, just when I take people in the woods, people have never hunted before. They're stepping on branches.

51:14Snap! Snap. Kicking rocks over. You're like, do-do-do-do-do-do. 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. They don't catch it. Like, come on. Just get smacked in the face. Yeah. 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 monkeys is that monkeys have some sort of a language where they can say a sound that means an eagle is there.

51:52And that they will play tricks on other monkeys so that 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 so they can get access to fruit. Lying monkeys does not surprise me. It's African vervet monkeys 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. I mean, yeah, they're super intelligent.

52:28Yeah. Oh, I don't know how we pull this up. I have it on YouTube, but there was this thing where we were coming down river. It was like 7 in the morning. We'd been up at our – this is a communication with monkeys theme. As we're coming down river, it's like 7 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 this, you know, spider monkeys cross rivers. That's okay. And he's like, no, no, no, the river's high right now, There's all these whirlpools and currents.

52:57So, 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 going to eat her. She thinks I'm going to eat her, but as soon as I started going, look, look. She was 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. You would do it like you would do it. See? I'm making it right there. And she's looking at me.

53:29She didn't try to bite you or nothing? We're 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. And so now she's relaxed. That's crazy, dude. You saved a monkey. Only because I spoke her language. And I learned her language from some of the orphans that I've rescued. That's crazy, man. Look at that. And then 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.

53:56And 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, yeah. But not fast. She didn't run away like she was in terror. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that, when I first did it, I went, and she looked at me and she went, she looked at me and she like responded. She was like, what? That's crazy. You speak it. Crazy. That's crazy. It was wild. 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 were like, bullshit.

54:30Right. I saved a spider monkey. Like, bitch, that was your pet. Yeah. Yeah. That looked like a pet. That 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.

55:04Now 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. Yeah, it was really cool. Originally I was like, JJ, 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. Meanwhile, 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. There you go. But 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?

55:45You know, it's like I don't I don't really you know, it's like ribeye or T-bone. Like, what are we what are we eating? Is turtle good? Like, would you like order it at a restaurant? All right. So the problem is that 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 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.

56:25And I'm like, I'm going to 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. And I'm like, all right. And it just tastes awful. It just tastes like charred. My friend Steve Rinella, he was in the Amazon with the Yanomami. Yeah. And he said that that's their preferred food, that they like that above everything. Yeah. Yeah. And 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 in Rome.

56:59Right. 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. Mm-hmm. You know, little things or. Must be chewy as fuck, right? No, it's kind of smooth. It's kind of like if it's well cooked, it's kind of like mutton. This episode is brought to you by Armra. Every week there's some new wellness hack that people swear by. And after a while, you start thinking, why do we think we can just outsmart our bodies? That's why Armra colostrum caught my attention.

57:30It's something the body already recognizes and has hundreds of these specialized nutrients for gut stuff, immunity, metabolism, etc. I first noticed it working around training, especially workout recovery. Most stuff falls off, but I am still taking this. If you want to try, Armra is offering my listeners 30 % off plus two free gifts. Go to armra.com slash Rogan. It's gamey. So you have to slow cook it, long cook it? Is that what it is? 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.

58:09They 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.

58:23I 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? Beef barley stew is good. Yeah, I mean, if you sear it first and then you, I mean, it's kind of a boil. I hear it first, right? Because like just boiled chicken to me, just like a white like... Just eating it. Yeah, so here he's just eating chunks of it. Yeah, so they're like having a really good time. Yeah, initially he was like, I'm not doing that. And then once they started doing it, he was like, okay. He said it tasted like smoked turkey. Yeah. My boy Giannis.

59:00Yeah, it's interesting because if you live there, like my friend David Cho, he was in Africa and he hunted with the Hadza. And they eat 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, 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 or dikers or whatever the animal is that they're hunting.

59:42They 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 150 miles away, coming to us. And they're going, can you guys bring jungle keepers over?

1:00:13And 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 overhunt. 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.

1:00:42Especially 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 sparrows. And he was like, we've eaten everything down to the smallest birds. He was like, it's just destroyed. 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 the I went to a part of the Amazon that that really no one goes to up this horrible river and and the they were recently contacted uncontacted people just just this tribe that had just come out of the forest 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'd tricked them they said just come with us for a ride they 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 Mashko Piro.

1:01:58These 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 JJ 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. JJ took some coins out of his pocket and was like, just go buy some bread.

1:02:26And 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 going to 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.

1:02:54Wow. 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 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, he goes, you know, a few years ago, he goes, there was a, we saw some rafts coming downriver, and then they stopped at this beach upriver, and they made camp.

1:03:35And he's like, so we all talked about it, and we said, well, we have a feeling they're organ harvesters. What? They were scared of these incomers, right? 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 the safest thing would be to go kill them.

1:04:08So 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. oh and this dude was like yeah we fucked up oh and i'm talking him i was like so who did the killing because it was it you know i was like shit man but i mean this place was dark you're 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 they're 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 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 like blood meridian well not only that there's 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.

1:05:16No. 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 communities that I've worked with in my region of the Amazon, they're all, you know, I've showed up on a pack raft and been like, hey, and they're like, where did 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. their families. This place that we were at was this outpost and it was all extractors.

1:05:49It was all gold miners, petroleum people, loggers. And it was like all the men who were in the dark, 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 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 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.

1:06:28Was he a white guy? He looked like a white guy, but it was hard to tell. 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 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 past the edge of human civilization into just uncharted jungle. But it was really dark. And so at least where we are, it's like we're working with these tribes to make their lives better, to educate them.

1:07:07And there's this feeling, there's this good feeling. We have Jungle Keeper shirts. I mean, now we're on the river and we see Jungle Keeper's boats going by. We had gold miners 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 the river safe.

1:07:36But someone hired them to mine gold, right? So that's the thing. No one hires them. They get it in their head. They go, you know, 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.

1:08:10And 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 it's really sad artisanal gold mining they're not organized and it's the same with the narcos we've been having a 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 these are people that are like we're just going to grow a little bit and then try and sell it coca there i mean we busted we helped the police bust a a we saw a clearing uh 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 we're 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?

1:09:25They did it so quick And so I put up the drone And I flew it over and I'm so going who you know, who are these people 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 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 you know it's a five thousand dollar drone and so i'm driving the drone and i was like can we can we like i got to 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 was like we're we're if we get caught we're getting killed oh man and we arrived at armed 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 masked up loaded up they got on our boat we turned around and as soon as they saw us coming back at them 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 per day 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.

1:11:14They 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 – 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 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 a different game.

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1:13:14Oh, 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, JJ was supposed to get in the car at the side. You take the boat downriver 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 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 uh 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 you 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.

1:14:31And we want to do that where there's no police. And 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 artery. That's what the Chinese in Brazil built.

1:15:09But 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 Keeper's protection, it's indigenous protected. All right, we're back.

1:15:44Yeah. 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 road filament into there. And again, these little tiny trail roads, they go under the forest. The forest is 160 feet 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 – But 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.

1:16:19So 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 10 feet in front of you. Right. That's what I'm talking about. This is more wild than the Wild West. I guess so. Yeah. You still 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. They have brothels up there? You got men working out in the jungle.

1:16:51And so they go to the communities and they tell them, hey, your daughter is very pretty. She'd be a great waitress. We can educate her while she trains and helps people. And then they never see them 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.

1:17:35And 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? I mean, it seems like the amount of money that's involved in 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.

1:18:11These 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. 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.

1:18:46It'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 it's it's not great peru i think has become if not on the same level as colombia i think they might have surpassed colombia's in terms of cocaine production they're they're not doing great with that right now and so we're at this very very uh crucial juncture there but you know it's funny because in in doing all this you know with 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.

1:19:25And 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 got it. 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, the, uh, the local people stand up for what they believe in and 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 my one of my managers came running at like 3 a.m 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 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 3 a.m and we get in this boat and we're going up river and there's lightning flashing and there's rain falling and i'm looking with the flashlight and i'm navigating by the crocodile allies 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 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 i stick my hand into the rubble and I hold her hand and I'm like, are you okay?

1:21:20And 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 going to get you out of here. And we started chainsawing, I mean, like 16 feet 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. We got this great video of her sitting in a hammock at like 6 a.m. and she's smoking a cigarette. 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.

1:21:55And 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 going to I'm not going to 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.

1:22:33And I was sitting in school getting detention after detention and getting yelled at me 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 everyone around me was like, 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 you hate your school desk? She goes, wait until you get your real desk. And I was like, oh, man. And so, yeah, riding on the boat at 4 a.m. with the lightning is incredible. Navigating by crocodile eyes. Yeah, man. I mean, with the wind in your hair and the field.

1:23:06I mean, you know the magic of the mountains. Yeah. 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.

1:23:39You 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 it's sure enough, this big ass anaconda on a log. Like 11 feet, you know, not a monster.

1:24:11But 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 could bite you. And I was like, it's asleep. I was like, she's just trying to get the sun. So when I started, I took out my phone. I started doing this thing. I was like, people are scared of snakes. And 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.

1:24:38and the anaconda still doesn't get up. And so I turned around, and her coil is here, and her head's like 10 feet over there. And I just put my head on her. And 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 going to do? She's going to jump in the water. She's not going to bite me. And she never woke up, and I figured, you know what? Why bother her? She never woke up when you rested your head? She woke up. She moved her tongue, but she never freaked out. Well, they're the king. No.

1:25:12It sounds like they don't really have any natural predators, right? Do they? When they're small. Crocodiles, right? The crocodiles, the herons, the piranha. Oh, right. You forget that pelicans and herons can eat a baby alligator. They'll just throw it back. Just take it down their throat. Herons are crazy. Herons are amazing hunters. Pelicans are disgusting. They'll take a whole bullfrog and just glut it down. So you know that thing's 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. And the seagull's getting smaller as it goes down.

1:25:53And you realize that crazy mouth that they have is just so they can swallow things alive. Yeah. I mean, this weird-looking, funky thing. You're like, oh, that's a monster. That's a monster that just swallows things alive. Yeah, you don't think of birds as savage as they are. What are you laughing at, Jamie? Pictures of pelicans trying to eat shit on the screen. I'm trying to eat a dog. Oh, God. Oh, come on. Marshall. Marshall, look out. Oh, wow, trying to get a cat. He's trying to eat a cat. Oh, my God. Yeah, they basically can eat almost anything that's near their size. Good Lord. That one, just fly out.

1:26:31Wow, it's too late. Oh, man. Yeah, they're monsters. He's trying to eat another. God, 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 again? Those are baby capybaras. Capybaras, right. Those are 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.

1:27:08And they're hunting these things that they're an invasive rodent, a giant rodent. And it was like Dave would do his shows. And then 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 – God, I can't remember what the animal was. but it's a large invasive rodent that exists in the south. I mean, nutria. Nutria, that's right. Yeah, and people eat them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the rodent, I mean, can't be bare those. See if you can find that video because it's kind of crazy.

1:27:43Nutria. Because they're out there hunting them with 22s. With 22s? Yeah, I mean, they have to. They're a completely invasive species, and they're huge. They're like a small dog. That's something I left off the list. We eat those all the time. We have something called a paca. It's like a small capybara with spots. And those, I mean, it's like squirrels. But they're big. They're cat-sized and fat. People eat them all the time. Those are delicious. What's your favorite thing to eat in the jungle? Piranha. Piranha? Fuck yeah. Really? Oh my God, they're delicious. And when you fry a piranha, you make the slits along it.

1:28:21You 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. Oh, they're so good. You just put salt on it and fry it? We just, just a little bit of salt and then fry it up. And then better than the piranha is the paco, the big vegetarian. And the piranha species, yeah. Those are invasive species in America as well. Yeah. People catch them all the time. Oh, they're so good. Yeah, they catch them and they're like 40 pounds. They're huge. Yeah, someone caught a world record paco. Powerful. Really powerful. Paco, P-A-C-U, right?

1:28:54I want to say in Georgia Georgia or Florida somewhere in there and fucking huge they're powerful we fish for them you have like a 10 foot pole with a rope on it yeah there's a paku look at the size of that thing man that's crazy 50 pounds world record size paku caught in Florida there it is 50 pounds that's nuts they're so nutritious when you eat them you feel like you're just gaining muscle Really? Yeah. You still eat a lot of elk? Oh, yeah. Don't you feel like it's a superfood? Uh-huh. Yeah. This is how I feel. I live on these things. I feel like I just - You live on piranha. Yeah. Piranha and paku.

1:29:35Yeah. Wow. How do you catch the paku? 10-foot pole. You have a piece of rope, and you put a piece of last night's dinner. You tie a bunch of rancid chicken. You leave it out in the sun, make it smell bad. You go out at 6 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.

1:30:06You're like invisible. And you wait for a feature in the river, like a rock or a place where the water's rushing. And you smack it against it because they like that falling fruit or falling seeds. And when they hit – I'm talking about like a four-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 alright there's no Paco in here well guess what when they do hit it they'll pull you right out of the boat I mean I've been dragged straight across the boat where like you gotta use one hand to stop yourself and the other hand's holding this pole and then your friend's gotta pull you back you get this fish on the thing and it's going boom boom boom boom boom boom boom how big are they that you're catching well you saw they're big you're catching them that big yeah they're huge and then you gotta you gotta have a hammer because you got to shut them off somehow.

1:30:50Right. You got to crack them right between the eyes because otherwise they'll just either jump out of the boat or injure someone. Or destroy everything. That was the other thing. We were going upriver 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 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?

1:31:17turn 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. Wow. Wow. Two-foot fish flying through the air. And 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.

1:31:51You fry them up with garlic. You do that and Paco. Now you're talking good. My friend Roy is a chef. 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 focuses on Amazonian cuisine. And so he goes and he picks all the right flowers and funguses and he'll take Paco and then he'll flavor it with a type of orchid thing. And like all of a sudden you have this amazing food. And like Lima, 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. Not turtle. It's the curated five-star version of jungle cuisine.

1:32:29So that's number one. Paco's number one, 100%. I mean, even right now. You're a big 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. How so? I like them. Just because they're cool? Well, I mean, I work with them a lot. I'm always catching caiman. 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, all right, I got to eat it. But nobody's serving me caiman. So that's not a staple of their diet?

1:33:00No. In the north, in Iquitos, they eat a lot more caiman, so you don't see caiman. On our river, there's still caiman on every beach. There's jabby roost dorks. There's kakoi herons. There's just macaws everywhere. where there's just so much life. It's Avatar. It's just pulsing life. Wow. It's incredible. Did you find that video of Dave Attell? 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... Shooting Nutria. Yeah, I think... This episode is brought to you by White Claw Surge. Nice choice hitting up this podcast. No surprises.

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1:34:13Valid at participating locations for dine-in or denny's.com. Limited time offer. Additional restrictions may apply at some locations. They eat them, too. But I can't find it. Yeah. He was actually on the episode. Yeah. Yeah, 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. And this is back when 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.

1:34:52You'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 it? It was the, it was a good break. Yeah. The eight months I felt really good. And I was convinced I was never going to drink again. And then I drank a glass of wine. I was like, Ooh, I like this. I miss this. But the wine, that's the one thing. The wine is good. Yeah. Wine with a steak. Oh, so nice. Um, yeah, a little, I think it was important to just recognize that I was doing it and it wasn't an alcoholic.

1:35:28I was just, I have a club. 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 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 it's not bad but uh drinking is essentially fun poison fun poison it's weird after um 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 the 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 I there's a chapter in the book about when I did it with the old master and he he 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 like sure it was awful it was traumatic you don't like to get scared i was terrified man yeah 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's the feathers on and he's singing to us and you're drinking and you're going deeper and deeper into the hole and god um it was interesting though we both um the shaman said that um 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 and so he would come up to me and he'd go I'd be laying down you can't 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 you know give it to Lex and he said that he said that he wasn't worried about my spirit he said I was I was there to protect Lex and he said Lex was there to do some real work.

1:37:56And 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 going to 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 Lex. 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.

1:38:33It 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? Is it just like something he felt?

1:39:08That'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 he just liked it more and more and around around i think cup six i i tapped after the after the vomiting after that thing it was sort of again there's there's energies floating around and he's singing it's great you know understanding a little bit of the language because you know 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 for them you know not even saying anaconda he's he's saying the other things.

1:39:46Amaru Mayu, and you know, he's saying shiwawako, 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, yeah, 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. Interesting. 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? Did it just, like, let you know what it's doing to you?

1:40:21I have no idea. It's just a weird side effect. I keep trying it. I'll, like, smell. I used to love whiskey. I'll, like, smell some whiskey, and I'm like, blah. Really? So we cracked the bottle right now? Turned off. I don't have any in here. I wouldn't. You would, it would make you feel sick? I mean, I could take a sip of it, but my body would be like, no. Red light, red light, no. Yeah, well, your body's correct. Yeah. But it 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. Lex goes hard.

1:40:54I'm sure he's... We went to Andrew Schultz's wedding with Lex. Yeah. And then we flew with Whitney Cummings, who's doing a gig in Vegas. Yeah. And we said, we'll go with you. So it was me and my wife and Whitney and Lex. We flew to Vegas. Yeah. And then we hung out with David Goggins. I called him up. I was like, 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. Lex wanted to have a push-up competition. With Goggins. With Goggins. That's amazing. I mean, but that's why he's Lex, right? At the encore.

1:41:27Because he's willing to try everything. Yeah. Oh, he's an animal. I mean, the fact that the push-up competition with David Goggins. He's just silly. That's hysterical. He's quite a character, 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 how old is he? Lex's gotta be in his 40s but early 40s I think he's still very young yeah but like 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 to guess you know somewhere around there you know But it's a different thing.

1:42:10He's the one, let's talk now. Yeah, let's talk now. Well, he's training those guys now. He's training Islam Makachev and Umar Nurmagomedov, his cousin. He's training some of the best guys alive. So he's running a camp down in Dagestan. Because he's kind of like, so did he, it seemed like, at least 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 okay his dad died during covid okay and um after his dad died he promised his mother that he was going to stop fighting got it yeah his dad was his trainer you know his dad his dad uh was a legendary legendary trainer and trained islam trained khabib and uh when he died uh khabib made a promise to his mother he fought justin gaichi beat him defended his title and that was it done but i mean he's he's very well regarded now for oh 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's maybe john jones is the greatest of all time just based on his accomplishments and also undefeated but But also the time that he's been, I mean, John won a world title at 23 and is still, like, up until he relinquished his heavyweight title recently.

1:43:44He'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 he? John's a heavyweight. Yeah. John, I think, is 6 '3 or 6 '4. And now he's about 240-ish. But he used to fight at 205. That was his main weight class. That's some crazy. Yeah. And so the conversation of who is the greatest of all time. In my book, Mighty Mouse is in that conversation, too. Who's Mighty Mouse? Mighty Mouse is Demetrius Johnson. He was a flyweight. The problem is he was a very small guy. And so a lot of people disregard the smaller guys in that conversation.

1:44:26But 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 your arms are significantly bigger than mine? And I feel like the guys who are good at striking have smaller arms. Mike Tyson. Giant arms. Giant arms. There you go. Yeah, that's not it. Don't you feel like you're swinging around some weight? 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 conditioning, you know, like the whole thing of swing. It's like, did you develop those arms just doing bicep curls?

1:45:00Yeah. Or did you develop those arms doing functional things? Like 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, but for like our level where we're still athletic and stuff, I'm going, But, man, I don't want to put on more. I want to get stronger, but I don't want to put on more mass. Yeah, I don't do really anything to try to put weight on. I don't lift anything heavier than 70 pounds. So many dudes just want to. Yeah, they just want to lift big. Yeah, I don't do anything like that. Like I said, the heaviest thing I lift is my body weight.

1:45:32I do a lot of body weight stuff. I do a lot of chin-ups and dips, and sometimes I do it with a vest. 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, to me, it's silly. If I don't have range of motion and function, like, what am I doing? No, you have to try to stretch. Yeah, I'm a martial artist. Like, my whole thing is to being able to use my body. It's not to make it look like I can use it.

1:46:06I'd rather be smaller and more functional than bigger and just look like a big, goofy toad. Yeah. I bulk too easily. I actually try to put on this. I only do – I mean, we're Italian-Irish. I mean, come on. You get thick. Yeah, you get thick quick. Yeah. You got to wash the pasta. Long line of people. Long line of thick people. Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh-huh. Can I take a quick period? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's take a leak. 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 you just do them every day i just keep i mean it's not any different pace than before yeah 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 like 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 run 10 a day and then days go on it's 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 the 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.

1:47:31Remember that? Yeah, sure, sure, sure. 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 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, come on. 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 and I hit a nerve.

1:47:58And he had to restart it, right? Yeah, he made me 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. Yeah. 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.

1:48:28But 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 fucking bad for you overall. I stopped sparring when I was in my late 20s, really, kickboxing sparring. Yeah. And then I did it a little bit when I was supposed to fight Wesley Snipes.

1:49:06I went back and started sparring again. Did you fight Wesley Snipes? No. Wesley Snipes was hysterical. I was in my mid-30s. I was like, this is the last chance I get to do something like this. Yeah. And then I got contacted by Campbell McLaren, who was one of the producers of the early UFC. He's like, this is going to 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 those guys that are like, what do they call them? Sovereign citizens? Is that what they call them?

1:49:41There's a lot of people that give really bad advice, you know. And they got in with someone like Wesley Snipes. Uh-huh. And, you know, they tell you, like, they can't prosecute you. It's not in the Constitution. And he believed it because he didn't have access to other people? 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.

1:50:14I 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, um, but my thought was just I'm gonna grab him and choke the life out of him Like he's gonna stop me. Yeah, like also I know how to stand up like I was awesome It was a kickboxer that would have been awesome if you could uh if you could fight one person dead or alive full fight I don't want to do that.

1:50:44I wouldn't eat. No the problem with it But it really – No, but like theoretically. Not you as Joe Rogan the dad and like just Joe Rogan. No, it would not be one person. What it would be is start fighting again. It would be fight whoever. The whole thing would be competing. But obviously I'm 58. That's never going to happen again now. I'm saying like – but like Wesley Snipes, it's like you say like, oh, I'd want to fight. Well, I just thought it would be an adventure. Yeah. And I trained for like six months. I was training with Rob Kamen who's like a legendary kickboxing, a Dutch kickboxing champion.

1:51:15So he was my kickboxing coach. 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 training 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, you know, and I was multiple times 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 had fought at a very high level and i have uh a lot of uh really good instruction that i got from i i got very lucky and i stumbled upon a school in boston called the jay hun 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 uh 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 um i learned technique and you know which is the most important thing like perfect technique and so uh when it was funny it was because it came about because of John Donaher.

1:52:41I 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. Like literally. Literally? Literally teaching all day and training all day and sleeping on the mats, 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.

1:53:19Do you know anyone who can help him? And I said, this is going to sound crazy. I go, but I have the best spinning back kick you're ever going to see in your fucking life. I go, I know it sounds crazy because I'm a comedian. I go, find a bag I could show you. I could show you what I could do. and then I brought, there's a video of me. Oh, I saw it. Okay, it was me. The sound is imprinted in my mind. George, this is when we were at Legends, Legends MMA in L.A., which is 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.

1:53:58And then I kick the bag and he's like, man, what the fuck, can I film this? and like he's filming with a flip phone which is crazy like that's how long ago this was this is i don't know it was probably 2005 or something like that i had hair and uh and it was uh 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 still had it in me yeah yeah um do you 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 georgest 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 gonna have to stop because i 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 yeah 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 just turn away and walk away no celebration I just walk away like that that's I'm gonna do that to all you guys yeah and so I walked away and then I turned to my friend junk sick who was my corner guy I said is he getting up because like he's not getting up he's not gonna 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.

1:55:58So 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. He 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 for 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 yeah it's crazy how much power there is in it because it's your 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 fucking 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 uh 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.

1:57:18And then he walked away from me. And I was like, fuck, man. Sometimes they die. I'm like, that's me. I'm like, 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 I 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. I don't have any money. I have no insurance. And I'm doing this thing. And I knew back then I was getting some brain damage for sure. And 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.

1:57:58You know, that like when I was sparring with kickboxers, I was really like, man, 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 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. 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 professional.

1:58:33I'm like, what is my future? Am I gonna 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'll tell you the same story. Yeah, like two minutes later And like you just fucking 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.

1:59:06He's fine. He looks like he's fine He's fine. But he's a very intelligent guy. He also does a lot of things to keep his mind very active. He plays chess. And he's very proactive about it. Yeah, but he seems like even like I've just seen him on social media where he's like, hey, guys, this is how I do. He's just like a very – seems like a very positive, fun, does not seem – 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 shakes. No. No, he's fine.

1:59:43I mean, I've hung out with him a bunch. I've hung out with him recently. He was great. He came to the comedy club. He was actually playing my friend James McCann. They were playing chess in the green room at the Comedy Mothership. It was so cool. We were filming it. The last time I came, I think he had been in there the night before, and I was like, ah, that would have been a trip to meet him. He's amazing. But he's such a sweetheart of a guy, you would never imagine that he's this fucking killer inside the octagon. 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.

2:00:13And he just figured out a way to express himself that way. And, you know, he's 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 going to. No, there was no trash talk. He was very respectful. Unless someone was disrespectful to him. and even then he wasn't trash talking. No, he always seemed like he was cool. He was just doing his thing. No, he was one of the best representatives of the sport of all time if not the best. No, I like that. He's classy. Never got into trouble outside the octagon.

2:00:45Yeah. Never, you know, was never drunk driving or beating people up and, you know, just a great guy and 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 uh he's about five nine five ten 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 i'm like no way i'm like yeah i mean He's like, hey, how you doing, man?

2:01:25What's going on? He doesn't seem rough. He's like jovial. No. Yeah, he's a sweetheart. No, he's not trying to intimidate. Khabib looks like he's, you know. He's really smart. I mean, he's really, he's always like watching documentaries and reading books. Yeah. He's fascinated by ancient history and dinosaurs and really into aliens. Plus dinosaurs. No, it's just crazy, man. You've gotten to this. You've met everyone. Did you ever have Jane Goodall on here? No, I did not, unfortunately. I wanted to make that happen. I wanted to. I wanted to make that happen. She's gone, right? She just died. I wanted to talk to her about Bigfoot because she was convinced that Bigfoot was real.

2:02:02What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was convinced that Bigfoot was real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She did this interview where she said she's certain of it. Yeah, yeah. We'll find it. Jamie, see if we find that. 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 this is the camp. There was an animal that co-existed with human beings for sure that was called Gigantopithecus. Yes. You know the whole story. Yeah. So Gigantopithecus, they found bones in an apothecary shop in China in the 1920s or 30s.

2:02:42And 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 primate that was 8 to 10 feet 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. 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.

2:03:29And 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.

2:04:10It just stands – it just makes logical sense that if you have a variety of different megafauna – Of different primates. That 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 of – But no, no, no. Find the video where she says, I'm convinced. I'm convinced. Yeah, because she was talking – I didn't see her say that. Oh, no, no. I've heard it. Come on. Okay, just find it. Because it exists. It doesn't exist. I can't listen to the videos.

2:04:47No, no, no. Go to video. Dude, she would have been awesome. You should. I'm so sad. Jane, get all on how Bigfoot might be real. That's it right there. Put the headphones on. Listen to this. Headphones. Here we go. I climbed into the hills. Oh, there's Jane.

2:05:08this was where i was meant to be i wanted to talk to you about something that uh 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 Yari 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.

2:05:54I'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've got to 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.

2:06:36How 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. A Wookiee. 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.

2:07:24It's in a bunch of. OK, 40 to 50 separate terms across different languages and regions. Harry, wild, giant man. No single agreed upon count, but dozens of distinct Native American names for Harry, wild, giant man. Beings easily over 40 to 50 separate terms across different languages and regions. Interesting. I would love to see the clip eventually of Jane Goodall saying, I believe in Bigfoot. I'm convinced. She's like, I'm open to the idea of it. She's saying that. And the reason why he's asking that is because he had seen the previous interview. See if you can find another interview with her talking about Bigfoot.

2:08:01Yeah, she was awesome. She was awesome. She's the reason I have a career. Really? Her being awesome. There's two stories I tell people. First of all, because everyone goes, what's Joe Rogan like? No, it's true, because everyone wants to know, and you're controversial. So I'm always going, he's 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, hey, don't worry about a thing. I'm even going to bring my dog. It was very nice. It was a little pat on the back. Like, because you go, Jane Goodall, I went to a talk when I was like 22 something.

2:08:34And 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 is 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. No way did you jump on a giant anaconda.

2:09:05No 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 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. 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 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 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.

2:09:59And she just, you know, she was just, she just said, you know, just keep protecting the Amazon. That's, 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 100 ,000 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.

2:10:30And she just, it was good that I got to tell her that. And then, you know, recently we found out 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 still know so much about, I mean, man the toolmaker. or before her, we said that it was humans that used 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.

2:11:07Oh, yeah. 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.

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2:12:20With her magic, and I think that that's incredible. That's so cool. Absolutely incredible. Did you find any other? No? I guarantee it exists. Yeah. 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, human-like primate that exists still. That's like the Hobbit people from the island of Flores. Yeah. You know, 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.

2:13:12And 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, homo. And those are real. Lorisensis, yes. Those are real, real. We have their bones. Very real, very real. It was a very small, like, hobbit-like creature 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.

2:13:58and 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 populations but are those i mean are those islands so small that no like unlike the amazon is gigantic but like how could there be a population incredibly dense incredibly dense forest and no one's going down in the bushes right it's like the tasmanian tiger i was just gonna say that like the thylacine where It's like they're just hidden. 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 clear.

2:14:36No. No. It's also, there's no one there. Yeah. Here's the thing. I mean, let's pretend that you saw a wolverine in the Montana woods, like dense Montana woods. And it's 100 yards away. You see it briefly for a second, get your phone. You might have seen it. You might have seen it traveling between trees. But how are you going to get it off your phone? Unless you have a Samsung where you have a really good zoom, you're not going to be able to zoom in enough. There's only a few phones. 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.

2:15:20And only a few have seen Wolverines. I would love to see a Wolverine. Oh, how about mountain lions? They're everywhere. I've only seen three of them in my entire life. That's wild. But I've probably been around 100 of them and not known it. You know, that's the reaction we got with 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 was like a logger, right? Or it was somebody running. right and even when I saw them the first time when I was out on a solo's 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 pics or it didn't happen right right um and so with this when we started when we 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 They're not even using stone tools.

2:16:19They're using sharpened 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. But, I mean, then think about it. It's actually like a time machine because you're – and we were standing across the river 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. Maybe not even a couple. Maybe like 30, 40. Maybe. I feel like somehow to me the number seems like two.

2:16:54But it's like, you know, we were like little tribes. Yeah, but 2 ,000 years ago, the Egyptian pyramids were already 2 ,500 years old at least. That's true. That's true. But, I mean, again, civilization isn't homogenous, right? Like different, 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 filmed people that lived in the past. 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 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.

2:17:35Right. And probably in the dense, dense, dense forest, there's probably many more of them. There are many more of them. In fact, while we were watching them out front, there was a terrifying moment where we heard something behind us, 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 turning the shotguns away from the river. And they were like, we thought there was going to be arrows flying. So my guy Ignacio grabbed me and put me down. And we were hiding behind trees waiting for it.

2:18:09And it was like, no, no, no, they're just stealing all of the fruit and all of the crops. And they just raided our whole village. Wow. But I really did feel like, you know, like you go, imagine what it would be like to go back and see the Comanjis. 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 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 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 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 and they 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 you know for all the indigenous cultures that have been destroyed in the last few centuries, we can do it right for once.

2:19:12We 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. Right. 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. The gap is so crazy. I think it would be slow. I think it would 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.

2:19:46Maybe they want a couple of machetes because it will just help. 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 to people is because they had been contacted in the 1800s. And it was bad. Yeah, by a fucking pervert. There was a guy named Commander Maurice Vidal Portman who was a explorer slash pervert. And the reason why I say that is like – Good job title. This guy had like weird journal logs where he was like, this one has testicles the size of a sparrow's egg.

2:20:26Like you would 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 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 have these stories that they probably have these oral traditions of these white people that come and fuck up everything.

2:21:03So when someone shows up on a boat, there's been a few instances where people were killed. Obviously that missionary a few years back. But not just him. There was a boat that sank there. So it washed the shore 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 boats. 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.

2:21:42The 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, you know people so I was on the Undemann 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 poor see look at he like a dress. That's the guy. Yeah, so that fucking creep So he's hanging out. They should have known he was a pervert look at him Look at the way he's dressed.

2:22:23Wonderful testicles. They probably didn't want to profile him. Yeah. So that's the dude. Yeah. He's from the English Royal Navy. Yeah. Portman. Maurice Vidal Portman. Yeah. Dude, those guys look built. Look at these guys fucking thrown. Those guys be doing some sit-ups. Well, they're out there hustling, you know. I went to the Andaman Islands, which is right out there. That's where he originally landed. Yeah. And if you want to feel like you fell off the face of the earth, you go to the Andaman Islands. First of all, beautiful. 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.

2:22:56They limit who can travel there. And 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 photos of them lifting off of like pirate ships, lifting elephants on the rigging and then putting them. And 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.

2:23:37Because you have to go through and the police watch you like a hawk. And I take a picture of everything. I take 300 pictures a day on my phone. Look at that. See if you can see elephants being lifted off of ships. there's a bunch of pictures here that are crazy they're pulling logs elephants moving logs happens all the time but there's literally a picture of the elephants up on the riggings 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 got to go swimming with an elephant there wow that's so dope look at the elephant swimming how cool is that there you go Whoa, that's nuts.

2:24:21Lifting the elephants. The elephant's probably like, what the fuck am I doing in the air? Yeah, look at that. They have to blindfold him. No, he's not blindfolded. He's just painted. You know, they probably should have. But back then. Well, maybe the elephant would freak out. Elephants, boy, it takes so much for an elephant to freak out and fucking kill people. Wow. There's a horrible video of this guy abusing an elephant. Like he's a trainer and he keeps whacking the elephant. And then the elephant goes, that's enough. And just stomps him into a pancake. Yeah, or that video I sent you with the tiger.

2:24:53Which one? 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. I mean, these animals are, you just don't push them. Yeah. 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. Practically. We want to fuck with everything. You know, we're the weirdest animal ever because we're on every fucking continent. We're everywhere. There's not another animal like us.

2:25:28No. You know? No. And, you know, all of us came from Africa, which is even nuttier, right? Yeah. So we emanated from Africa and just spread out all over the world. Yeah. As soon as we figured out how to float. As soon as we figured out how to float. How to 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, it drives me crazy how quickly everyone's going.

2:26:03I just, 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 bulls back to Yellowstone. Like New York's waters are getting cleaner. The humpbacks are coming back. 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, I just feel like we are so overwhelmed with serious problems here and the last chance in history to fix those problems.

2:26:40So there's an amazing opportunity. and I feel like people are so like 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.

2:27:14Yeah, 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 enough. You're the opposite. You've gone too far. You've gone too far. Interesting use of free will.

2:27:47It's fascinating to me when people are trying to save things, and by saving things, they don't realize that they're actually fucking things up far worse than they're 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 point towards these solar panels, it's incinerating 6 ,000 birds a year.

2:28:29Incinerating 6 ,000 birds a fucking year. Which is like, what does that even mean? 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? I got it, though. Oh, you got it? I mean, I don't know which article you got. It's okay. Pull up any of the articles. But, I mean, when you look at it, it heats up to 1 ,000 fucking degrees. The Mojave Desert. Yeah. Well, they just shut it down. So it's concentrated sunlight. Solar-powered towers use mirrors to focus sunlight onto a receiver, creating extremely high temperature. The problem is they're fucking killing birds like a motherfucker.

2:29:11Just like those ugly windmill farms. Those things are a blight on the face of the earth. When you drive to South Texas, a buddy of mine has a ranch down there. Look at that. Mojave Desert solar plant kills 6 ,000 birds a year. That's from 2016. They just recently shut it down. They've spent billions on this fucking thing. And it's not generating nearly the 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.

2:29:47We're so stupid. We got to stop spreading out. 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 got to just, you know what, they just call it something else. if you just if you just rebrand it well they just have to realize that the old new like the fukushima plants and they fucked the whole area up forever those are old that's a plant that i think went live in the 1970s like you know 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 a something something plant we gotta get over it we gotta get over that hump, you know.

2:30:30But 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 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.

2:31:08Right. Or you realize that there's something that, I mean, the amount, because then you got to get the message to everybody. Right. How do you do that? Right. Then you got to make them care about it. Right. And I mean, it's just, it's wild to. But that's us. 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.

2:31:39And 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 grief is just, 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 just the buzz of the news and everything.

2:32:20And I'm like, listen, like choose something that you care about and work on it. Yeah. Or just pick that one thing. 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 it. 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 so yeah 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 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 eight 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 you know i had a friend you know did you hear about the flood that happened in banglid i was like what do you you know my sympathy but like there's there's always a flood happen the world is gigantic there's eight billion people right and so like you know there's only so much you can pay attention so much you can pay attention to but if you have a phone all the bad stuff is coming into your pocket oh yeah and i think a lot of the it's funny because a lot of the people like the adults are are the people are worried about the kids i think the adults are worse.

2:34:07Yeah, 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 fulfilling because it's normal.

2:34:56It'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? In cities. How long have we been in even agriculture? A few thousand years. Temperature controlled rooms. Yeah, it's crazy. With a little noise box constantly stressing us out. Also Wi-Fi and EMF signals. I was just reading this fucking crazy thing. Have you paid attention to this, Jamie, about the 49ers? About San Francisco?

2:35:33Isn't that fucking nuts? It could be. Go ahead. 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 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 are 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.

2:36:15It's like it's not normal. No. And so you think what? They're getting weakened by the water, by the electricity? Yeah, by the EMF signal. I mean, it's like 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 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 can find something on it. Because a lot of stories have come out this week about it where people are starting to gather up all the data.

2:36:51And they're like, hey, this is not normal. This is like a much higher percentage of severe injuries from this one camp, which doesn't make any sense. Well, it's like that Erin 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 say? Just about the whole thing. It explains. So is it true? What is this from? How long ago was this? Two weeks ago. Yes, two days ago. Okay. The injury conspiracy theory, and is it true? So what is this? This is USA Today, which is like, eh.

2:37:30I just skipped ahead to the... The so-called mechanisms have not been established. Many of the experiments are contradictory. Many of the experiments have exposures to either don't relate specifically to 50 to 60 hertz 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 but is that the training facility? the idea is that it's near the training facility so that's where the electrical substation is and there's the field I mean cut the shit that can't be good so it's literally radiating onto them that can't be good But I don't think it's going to affect the game.

2:38:13You know what I'm saying? I think it's like being there all the time, practicing there all the time, is what's going to weaken their bodies. Without checking, I don't know. Unless that's where they practice, I don't see a large practice facility here. Well, look at the fucking multi-use fields right there. I know. They don't practice on those fields generally. They practice inside. Right, but they use the fields. I mean, they must practice there. It could just be a park. That's why I've got to look up where they practice. Right, right, right. The LA Rams don't practice next to SoFi Stadium. I can't imagine it's good for you.

2:38:40I 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 water on fire oh yeah yeah Gasland yeah great documentary yes 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 two million dollars if we let us drill on your land and these are people that could right need the money right And then a few years later, all of their kids have cancer.

2:39:31Pull 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 lick is weak, not clearly causal. And typically, residential exposures are considered within safety guidelines. See, the thing is, it's 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.

2:40:11category so partially so it says international agency for research and cancer classifies extremely low frequency magnetic fields like those from power lines as possibly carcinogenic to humans mainly because of the childhood leukemia data fuck 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 yeah yeah This is from my buddy John Reese from Alaska. That's that guy? Yeah. That's incredible. Actually, no, this one is from Colossal. So that's a... This is the company that's bringing the woolly mammoth back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, those guys.

2:40:49This piece is from my buddy John Reese. That's a molar. That's cool. Yeah, that's a tooth. That's gorgeous. But that's how many of them they have that they can turn into art. That they're just starting to make it into art. Yeah. I have a pool cue that has woolly mammoth ivory in it. Dude, look at that. Look at that texture. That's nuts. That is so beautiful. something 10 ,000 years ago, use that to mash down vegetables. Wow, that is a gorgeous piece. You know about the Boneyard, right? Yeah, no, you were the first time you told me all about it. Incredible place. Shout out to my boy, John Reeves.

2:41:20Yeah, that, I would love to go there. Oh, you should, dude. I would love to. That's just 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 love to go see that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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 place. By the way, he's found a new site. He's found a new site up there that has more bones.

2:41:50Yeah, I mean, you're talking about an area that's only about four to six acres that he's been exploring. And he's got other deposits, right? Massive deposits. Thousands of animals, including animals that weren't even supposed to be there. Yeah. That's so cool. Crazy. It's so incredible. And a thick layer of carbon that indicates that fucking place was on fire. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when you find fossils in the water, there's nothing like finding fossils. I remember the first time I found like a little shell. And then, like I said, not that long ago, we found like a seven-foot turtle shell. Thick, thick, thick.

2:42:25Like 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 tactile, visceral sense of like, whoa, these used to be here. You know what they found in China recently? What did they find? They found dinosaur eggs that the inside of them is all crystals now. Oh. It's crystallized. Is it like a crystallized baby velociraptor? No, it's just basically all crystal. Just crystal, like a geode. Yeah. But it's a dinosaur egg.

2:43:02It's just over millions and millions of years. They're probably making art out of that right now. I don't know what they're doing with it. 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 shit, man. So much cool shit. Oh, so much cool shit in the world. We're on such a cool planet. So here it is. A 70-million-year-old dinosaur egg contains a sparkling crystal. Surprise. Isn't that nuts? It's turned into crystals. How do you even know that was a dinosaur egg? Grapefruit-sized dinosaur egg from a fossil bed in China.

2:43:34Gave paleontologists huge surprise. 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 O-species? O-O-S-O-O-O species. Species of egg named... Oh, boy. Good luck pronouncing that. identified in 22 paper led by paleontologist Qinghei 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.

2:44:24Wow. That's insane. Fucking A, man. 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. The world is a really, really wild place. And you know more than anybody. Well, that's what. I've been trying to see as much of it as I can and save as much of it as I can. It's been a dream. 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. Don't someone to train me to use a gun.

2:44:58I'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 I met JJ, how he found the anacondas, everything that led to this. I mean, you talked about it when you started out. I mean, just being a kid and you have a dream. 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.

2:45:47So it's a fun book to be sharing with people. Pretty fucking dope, my brother. And the book is Jungle Keeper, What It Takes to Change the World. Paul Rosalie. Available now. Thank you, my friend. I think you're 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. Bye, everybody.