Lex Fridman Podcast
#369 – Paul Rosolie: Amazon Jungle, Uncontacted Tribes, Anacondas, and Ayahuasca
04 Apr 2023
Paul Rosolie is a conservationist, explorer, author, filmmaker, real life Tarzan, and founder of Junglekeepers which today protects over 50,000 acres of threatened habitat. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex to get special savings - BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/lex to get 10% off - Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex to get 1 month of fish oil EPISODE LINKS: Paul's Instagram: https://instagram.com/paulrosolie Paul's Twitter: https://twitter.com/PaulRosolie Junglekeepers: https://www.junglekeepers.com VETPAW: https://vetpaw.org PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (06:09) - Amazon rainforest (17:24) - Discovery of the Amazon (22:00) - Werner Herzog (28:06) - Jane Goodall (41:55) - Anacondas (1:05:44) - Eaten Alive (1:18:08) - Joe Rogan (1:26:28) - Surviving in the Amazon (1:53:39) - Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon (2:03:34) - Surrounded by black caiman crocodiles (2:21:11) - Graham Hancock and ancient civilizations (2:26:43) - Aliens (2:56:44) - Climate change (3:01:55) - Jordan Peterson (3:19:17) - Hunting (3:26:33) - Ayahuasca (3:35:00) - Meaning of life
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
The following is a conversation with Paul Rosli, a conservationist, explorer, author, filmmaker, and real-life Tarzan. Since for much of the past 17 years, Paul has lived deep in the Amazon rainforest, protecting endangered species and trees from poachers, loggers, and foreign nations funding them. He is the founder of Jungle Keepers, which today protects over 50,000 acres of threatened habitat.
And Paul is one of the most incredible human beings I've ever met. I hope to travel with him in the Amazon jungle one day, because in his eyes, I saw a truth that can only be discovered directly by spending time among the immensity and power of nature at its purest. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast.
We got Eight Sleep for naps, BetterHelp for mental health and Athletic Greens for a great nutritional basis for your health. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our team, we're always hiring. Go to lexfriedman.com slash hiring. And now, on to the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle.
I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep and its new Pod 3 mattress. There's few things I enjoy in life more than a great power nap. I take a sip of coffee, I get some caffeine in my body.
And then when the feeling of just kind of jadedness, of tiredness, if you think of motivation as an ocean, the thing that covers that motivation are the surface waves. I think of the desire to nap with the surface waves. And the nap itself is a way to bring calm to the waters. It's a way to let the storm pass.
I just took a nap before this, and you perhaps can tell in my voice the energy of a thousand butterflies. I don't know why I chose butterflies, but I did. I don't know why I chose a thousand, but it's a distributed system with emergent behavior, I'm sure. Although the flocking behavior I'm aware of is mostly for birds. I wonder if butterflies flock. They seem more independent.
They seem too beautiful to flock. Does beauty prevent you from cooperating? Is there a threshold beyond which you're too beautiful to cooperate with others? And the definition of beauty, of course, is species dependent, unless we're talking about butterflies, in which case they're just beautiful, beautiful to other species as well, at least to humans.
Anyway, check out 8sleep and get special savings when you go to 8sleep.com slash Lex. This episode is also brought to you by BetterHelp, spelled H-E-L-P, help. I've been going through some rough times mentally. I just took a nap, so I'm feeling pretty good. But this last year, and I just tweeted about this, has been really rough. I had some really low points.
It's probably not the right place to talk about such low points here as I sit alone in a dark hotel room, all the lights off, because you know how hotel rooms are. There's no overhead lights. It's just a lamp. And nobody knows how to turn that lamp on. So it's mostly darkness with little hints of light from a lamp that's just around the corner.
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Chapter 2: How does Paul Rosolie describe his journey to the Amazon?
I find there's so many times where I'll find people be like, do you think that animals can show compassion? And you hear a bunch of people that have never left the pavement talking about like, wow, this one animal helped another animal. It's like, go ask Jane Goodall if animals can show compassion. Go talk to anybody that works on a daily basis with animals and they'll
And so, like, to me, there's always a little bit of frustration in hearing people sort of, like, pleasantly surprised that animals aren't just, you know, these automatons of, you know, just, what's the word, like, programmed, you know, nothingness.
First of all, what have you learned about life from Jane Goodall? Because she spoke highly of your book, and you list her as one of the mentors. But what kind of wisdom about animals do you draw from her?
wisdom from jane is so diverse it's i mean she first of all she's someone that you know the work that she did at the time she did it was so incredible because i mean she she was out there at a very young age doing that field work she was naming her subjects which everyone said you shouldn't do she broke every rule she broke every rule she was assigning and everyone said you know you're anthropomorphizing these animals by saying that they're doing this and that and
She was like, no, they're interacting. They're showing love. They're showing compassion. They're showing hate. They're showing fear. And she broke straight through all of those things. And it paid off in dividends for her.
Do you see the animals as having all those human-like emotions of anger, of compassion, of longing, of loneliness, from what you've seen, especially with mammals, but with different species out there?
Do they have all that? It depends on the animal. If you're talking on the scale of a cockroach to an elephant, it's like a lot of these things. And I wonder about this stuff all the time. I'll have a praying mantis on my hand and just go, what is going through your mind? Or you'll see a spider make a complex decision and go, I'm gonna make my web there. And you go, how?
how are you how are you doing this how are you because he made a calculation there you know it's smart i was in the jungle not that long ago and i'm i was walking and all of a sudden this dove comes flying through the jungle right up to my face lands on a branch like right here right next to me i look at the dove dove looks at me and she's like hey and she's clearly like panting and i'm like i'm like why why are you why are you so close to this is weird and she's like i know
And then an ornate hawk eagle flies up 10 feet away, looks at both of us and just like scowls and like sticks up its head feathers and then just like flies off. And the dove was like, sweet, thanks. And then flew in the other direction. And I was like, dude, you just used me to save your life. The dove knew.
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Chapter 3: What insights does Paul gain from his experiences in the jungle?
So he'll say, oh, the jaguar, she never likes to let you see her. And so he'll come back from the jungle and he'll go, oh, I was watching monkeys. And this jaguar was also watching the monkeys, but I was being so quiet. She didn't see me. And then when she see me, she feels so embarrassed and she go. And he'll tell you this story, like as if he had this interaction with like his neighbor.
And he'll be like, oh, the puka kunga, it never does that. You won't see it do that. And so one time he caught a fish and I was such a big fish. It was this big, beautiful pseudoplatystoma, this tiger catfish, this amazing old fish. And they're all excited to eat it. And I felt so bad watching this thing gasp on the sand. And I went, you know what? We don't need this. This is for fun.
I threw it back. And then I took my hand and I went, And I made like drag marks, like, so I could say, oh, it snuck back in the water. And so he walks up, he looks at it and he was like, I hate you. And I went, what? No, I said, I must've, it must've just, he went, that's not what happens. He goes, it goes like this when it goes, he knew the track of a fish. And I was like, oh yeah.
I was like, all right, JJ, I'm sorry. I'll catch you another fish. So stepping back to that way you open mother of God and Who was Santiago Duran and what secret did he tell you?
JJ's father was, at some point he was a policeman. At some point when he was a teenager, he was working on the boats that, before this little gold mining city of Puerto Maldonado, The only way to get supplies in was to take canoes up the Tembopata River up to the next state, which is Puno, and where mules would come down from the mountains with supplies.
And then he'd pilot the boats down, but they didn't have motors at that time, so he would be pulling the boat. So he became this physically terrifying man. And I met him when he was in his 80s and he was still living out in the jungle by himself. And I mean, he's seen an anaconda eat a tapir, which is a cow-sized mammal in the Amazon. He'd seen uncontacted tribes face to face.
He once killed an 11-foot electric eel opened the back of the thing's neck, removed the nerve that he says was the source of the electric.
Then he cut his forearm, placed that nerve into his forearm, wrapped it with a dead toad and claimed that it would give him strength through the rest of his life and continued to be a jungle badass until the day he quietly leaned back at a barbecue and ceased to be alive. The man was incredible. But the secret that he told us was
that if you want to find big anacondas, you know, if you want to see the Yakumama, he was like, you have to go to the Boayo, the place of boas, the place that we came to call the floating forest. And so he sent us there and it became like this, this pilgrimage.
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Chapter 4: How does Paul Rosolie connect with the indigenous people and the jungle?
Nobody wants to see it. And it's like, with the rainforest, we know. We know. We know. And I'm going... I could give data all day long. I could show photos of burning forest. And so I was looking for what would do it. And so the eaten alive thing without spending too much time on a, on a massive misstep was I agreed to do it.
They paid me at the time more money than I had made before, which I very much needed because nobody pays you to be a conservationist. Um, so I was a very poor 23 year old that was like, yes, I would love that please. And I thought, you know what, this is the start of a TV career. Um, and, we got shafted so bad. I mean, they used, somehow they changed our voices. They changed the things we said.
They changed the message of the film. There was one point where we had caught a 19 foot snake and I was holding her head and I said, this is such a beautiful animal, the queen of the Amazon. This is such a great moment for me. I kissed her on the head. I said, she's made so many babies. Look at the scars. I was talking about just the poetry of this incredible dragon.
And then the producer goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. Listen, if that was to bite you, what would happen? And I was like, oh, well, if it bit you, you know, you'd bleed out because it would lacerate down to the, that's what they put in the film. And so day of, they didn't show me the film until the night before I went on Matt Lauer's show. And I said, I am not endorsing this film.
And they had called it Expedition on the call sheet. They'd called it Expedition EA, Expedition Amazon. All of a sudden they changed it to Eaten Alive. And I went, wait, guys, wait, wait, wait. I said, you're gonna make people think that it actually happened, not that we're attempting it. And I say, I'm not. And then they called me and they said, you better, you're going on live TV tomorrow.
They said, you let us know what level of control we need to show for you, right? It was a very threatening phone call. And so I had to go out and smile for the cameras and endorse something that was a train wreck. And the scientific community was like, you're an idiot. We don't want to ever see you again. I lost a lot of opportunities. PETA came, which, you know, PETA, whatever.
But PETA came out. People were like, you were trying to hurt a snake, which I would never do. And then the American public was like, you know, you said you were going to get eaten by a snake and you didn't. And so everyone was pissed. I basically had to exile myself to India for like six months and just, I mean, I had death threats coming through all my messages. People were furious with me.
What gave you strength to that? How difficult was that psychologically? Just everything you care about being completely kind of flipped upside down.
I've spent so much time on the ground with the local people learning from the wildlife. It's such a devout and important thing to me. And it got turned into a sideshow. It got turned into a joke. And then not just a joke, it got turned into that I'm somehow...
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Chapter 5: What insights does Paul Rosolie share about the dangers posed by humans in the Amazon?
It's certainly involved in who has mating rights. Oh, who wins in the competition. Who wins. I mean, if you got the big tusks, and there are elephants out there like the mammoth big tuskers that have tusks down to the ground, like huge. And when you see them, it's like seeing something unique on earth, unique in history, because we're at a point where we might lose those.
There are only a few of them left. And they're so prized by hunters.
Yeah, it's interesting because I forget what the actual conclusion on that is. Because there's some studies of the use of the value of beauty in evolution. Like birds and peacocks and so on. There's no actual...
value to it but it plays a role in in sexual selection meaning value like it's much easier to understand competition like a tusk helps you defeat sure the competitor tool but i bet you there's a component to the tusk where the ladies go god damn that's a nice Like there's a visual beautiful component. Maybe not. I don't know.
But what if beauty though, as we're defining it though, is symmetry and the absence of yellow spots on your face and healthy looking hair. And so like, I think to us, beauty is sexually appealing traits that look good to mate with.
And so. So that 19 year old with Marissa, everybody in the world would swipe left on that. Yeah.
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Chapter 6: What experiences does Paul have with uncontacted tribes and their reactions?
the least actually desirable object in the universe. Okay. What, I mean, speaking of elephant intelligence, it's something I think and work quite a bit on as with artificial intelligence is what the philosophical question that comes up is what is intelligence? What is intelligent? Humans, homo sapiens are often thought to be highly intelligent. That's the reason they stand out.
In your understanding of different species, like the elephant, what stands out to you about humans? Or are they just another animal with different kinds of intelligence?
Well, we're certainly unique because we have altered the entire planet.
Chapter 7: How does Paul describe the impact of climate change on biodiversity?
Yeah.
You know, the term the Anthropocene. I mean, it's like we've literally created a geological layer of us, whereas other animals don't. And going back to elephants, it's like they also engineer their environment.
If you're in a forest, like if you drop me in a forest on Earth, I could tell you in two seconds if there's elephants there because there's twisted branches and excavated Earth, and they're constantly gardening. Mm-hmm. Um, but I mean, look, look at us.
I mean, there's, we're, we're clearly unique in nature, which, which makes me not understand the, the, the anti-human sentiment that, that so much of environmentalism has about like, you know, like we were, we're bad, we're damned, we ruin everything. And it's like, I've seen the worst, I've seen the burning Amazon and I'm still like, I'm
I love being able to share ideas with you and travel to places and FaceTime my family when I'm not around them. And it's like, I celebrate a lot of what makes us human. And it's almost like reality is this crazy video game. And it's like, if we could just figure out the right keys, we can pretty much do anything we can think of. And it's like, I mean, poetry, art.
I mean, you know, I'm the biggest animal lover in the world, but we are different. We really are.
Yeah, the ability to puzzle solve, create tools. What do you think is the coolest invention humans have come up with? Is it fire? What's the most impactful?
I feel like fire is kind of a gimme. I feel like the- They didn't really invent it. They probably- Like the wheel. Flying. I mean, flying. I mean, think if you could go back in time to someone that never flew. Yeah. You know, a sultan, an Egyptian king, a- George Washington, you know, and be like, you can fly. I mean, just on my way here.
And I fly way too much, but I was looking out the window at the clouds and going, this is unbelievably spectacular. It's just stunning. You know, as a kid, you look at a cloudy day and you go, the world is like this today. And then you get in a plane and you fly above the clouds and it's sunny up there and you go, oh. It changes your perspective.
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Chapter 8: What philosophical reflections does Paul Rosolie offer on the meaning of life?
this century, a child born, no, not this century, maybe this century, a child born on another planet that looks up, that looks back at Earth, and has to be educated by his, her parents, that like, there's another place. There's another place where life is way easier. Oh, God. It's so easy. There's water everywhere. Yeah, exactly. People complain about Earth.
Man, Earth is really, really nice. It's really, really good. It's really, really good here. Water everywhere. Anything. Oh, man. I wouldn't even leave. Given right now, if somebody said, oh, you could go to the moon, I'd be like, no, I'm good. If I died in space, I'd be so pissed. I love it here.
Yeah, but you're still, there's a longing to explore for you.
There's a longing to explore, but I really think I'm such a, like my longing to explore is like rivers, streams, oceans, jungles. Like to me, yeah, I would watch the hell out of the live stream of Elon touching down on Mars. Like I'd be like, this is incredible. It's amazing that I get to be around to see this. I'm staying where I'll be right here.
Yeah. But it's good that the human spirit pushes us. Oh, it's amazing. It was possible. And it does that for you. Just out there questions. What's the most dangerous animal in the Amazon, would you say? Mammal. Let's go with mammal. Dangerous mammal. Like dangerous in terms of you walking around, doing the solo hike.
I'm going to disappoint everybody with this, but it's humans. If I'm out in the Amazon, there's nothing that's going to attack me. And in India, you might have an old leopard or a tiger that's missing a tooth that decides your prey. Or you might have an angry elephant that's in must that just decides to flatten you. In the Amazon, you're not. Jaguars won't even let you see them.
And there's really nothing else. One of my friends, a brilliant scientist friend of mine, Pat, got attacked by a rabid ocelot once, but that's like a diesel house cat just having a fit. It wasn't the worst thing in the world.
It's just the assholes of the animal kingdom. Okay, in terms of humans, you've said that the tribes, some of them uncontacted, can be exceptionally dangerous. What's your experience with them? What should people learn? It's such a fascinating part of life here on Earth that there's tribes that don't have much or any contact with the quote-unquote civilized world.
Most of the people that I meet don't actually really understand how isolated these people are or how weird it is that we're sitting here and that we have iPhones and airplanes and all this stuff, and these people are living naked in the forest at this moment.
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