This Burmese python wants to know what

is inside the diary of a CEO.

>> Oh my god.

>> Beautiful. Now, what are you feeling

right now?

>> Wondering why I do this for a living.

>> Have you ever done a podcast with a

10-ft snake across the table before?

>> No, this is my first.

>> Awesome. And then we'll bring out the

next friend.

>> Don't bring it over here.

>> Just don't move.

>> Paul, what have you spent the last 20

years of your life doing? living out of

a backpack in the Amazon rainforest

barefoot with a machete to help the

indigenous people save the Amazon

whatever it takes which means crocodile

bites snake very rare diseases hunted by

the narot traffickers with a picture of

that guy that scar is because he was

shot in the head by a 7ft arrow while he

was trying to make peaceful contact with

the unconted tribes and this is actually

a very important story I think I have a

video of this

>> yeah this is world first footage so

tribe isolated so deep in the jungle

that they've never heard of a spoon or

the wheel or Jesus was coming out to

make contact. So, we do a 2-day boat

journey in one night through the worst

thunderstorm I've ever seen. They were

scared. We were scared because these

tribes kill people all the time. And

they had one question. How do we tell

the bad guys from the good guys? You

see, these people are being hunted by

traffickers and gold miners and loggers

and boxed in by deforestation. But if

our oceans of rainforests are vanishing,

life on Earth is not possible. Now, it's

not too late, but we're the last

generation that can save it. Paul, young

kids are growing up attached to screens

and loneliness is at an all-time high.

Is there anything that you learned in

those 15 years that a westerner like me

would find useful?

>> 100%. So, let's start with purpose.

>> Listen, my my team gave me a script that

they asked me to read, but I'm just

going to ask you um in the nicest way I

possibly can. Thank you first and

foremost for choosing to subscribe to

this channel. It is um it's been one of

the most incredible crazy years of my

life. I never could have imagined. had

so many dreams in my life, but this was

not one of them. And the very fact that

these conversations have resonated with

you and you've given me so much feedback

is something I will always be

appreciative of. And I almost carry away

a sort of burden of uh responsibility to

pay you back. And the favor I would like

to ask from you today is to subscribe to

the channel if you um would be so

obliged. It's completely free to do

that. Roughly about 47% of you that

listen to this channel frequently

currently don't subscribe to the

channel. So if you're one of those

people, please come and join us. Hit the

subscribe button. It's the single free

thing you can do to make this channel

better. And every subscriber sort of

pays into this show and allows us to do

things bigger and better and to push

ourselves even more. And I will not let

you down if you hit the subscribe

button. I promise you. And if I do,

please do unsubscribe, but I promise I

won't. Thank you.

Paul, you live an extraordinary life. A

very atypical extraordinary life. What

have you spent the last 20 years of your

life doing? trying to find a way to

explore the wildest parts of the Amazon

and figure out a way to save them.

>> The Amazon, for a lot of people that

don't know anything about this part of

the world, they'll they'll think of it

as a bunch of trees where lots of wild

animals live. What is the sort of

central misunderstanding of the true

nature of the Amazon?

>> I think it's a it's a problem of scale.

People don't understand the importance

of the Amazon. This is one of the most

crucial things on our planet. It's one

of the most physically defining features

of our planet. If you look at Earth from

space, you see this giant green belt

over most of South America. That's the

Amazon rainforest, and that's where

1ifth of our fresh water is contained,

and another fifth of our oxygen is

produced. This system is irreplaceably

valuable to all life on Earth.

>> And you live in the Amazon.

>> For the last 20 years, I've lived mostly

in the Amazon. I've slept more nights

outdoors than I have in in my adult life

because I befriended the indigenous

people of the upper Amazon rainforest.

And that's that's what the book is

about. It's I went down there at 18

years old because I needed adventure.

And then the quest for adventure led for

this call to meaning. And then that led

to the discovery that we were the only

ones who could do anything to stop the

bulldozers and the chainsaws from

destroying the thing that we loved.

A lot of people have clicked on this

conversation for whatever reason. What

are we going to talk about today that

you think might be interesting to them

in their lives and what is the wide

variety of things from the conversations

you have every single day that compels

people cuz I want to give them a bit of

a tlddr before we get into the detail.

>> I think that what people are going to

find and this is what I tried to write

about was that I didn't know where I was

going at first. I just knew what I

loved. And so over the last 20 years,

it's been following a dream in a

direction. And that dream was finding a

way to relieve the the incredible stress

that I felt over the the state of the

environment. We live in these times

where people feel like the world is

ending. There's nothing we can do. Our

oceans are collapsing. The rainforests

are vanishing. Elephants are being

hunted to extinction. And I wanted to

know, are there solutions to these

problems? Is there a way to change the

narrative of conservation and come up

with an alternative reality where

everything's okay? And do you think your

message is more timely now than ever

with everything that's going on with

technology and AI and this sort of great

transition we're in?

>> I think that this message is timely now

because whether we like it or not, we're

alive at the most important moment in

history. And the reason that that's true

is because never before as a global

society have we been all faced with the

same problem. If our ecosystems

collapse, life on Earth is not possible.

And we are the last generation in

history that's going to have a chance to

restore those ecosystems. and those

sacred cycles before it's too late.

>> And as it relates to mental health,

young kids are growing up attached to

physical to screens and to technology

and all these things. You've lived

almost the opposite life. It appears for

the last 20 years. I'm wondering if

there's anything, you know, cuz you said

today on your way here that you like

didn't know how to get out of the Uber

and

>> Yeah. No, it was a it was a mess getting

here. I almost got run over by a guy who

recognized me and said and said, "Get

out of the road, Anaconda guy." And then

I'd never opened uh I guess I'd never

opened a door with a button before, but

I couldn't figure out how to get out of

out of the Uber. And then uh I had I had

a whole adventure in the bathroom that

should have been filmed. Um but no, I

mean I have lived uh we used to we call

it the barefoot machete days. You know,

a lot of my early learning in the Amazon

took place under the toutelage of

indigenous experts. And these are people

that like JJ, who I meet when I first go

down to the Amazon, he didn't have shoes

until he was 13 years old. So he lived a

life where if you want to fish, you have

to go to the river.

>> And if you want to eat, you have to go

out into the forest, not to the

supermarket. And so when you see kids

today that are only using their thumbs,

it's not too surprising when people are

disconnected and disoriented and sort of

don't know what's real and what's not

real anymore. Because you go to the

mountains and the rain and the sky and

the rocks, we'll teach you what's real

real quick and you all have to agree on

it or else you'll die. And the jungle is

the same thing. It's sort of when you

find yourself with these chemical

physical boundaries,

life makes a lot more sense.

>> Have you been able to make sense of the

life that someone like me lives

more because you've spent time in the

Amazon?

>> Like, do you look at us differently? I

know that sounds like a crazy thing to

say,

>> but in the same way that people might

look at the way you choose to live your

life and say, "This is very, very

strange." Do you look at people that,

you know, like me that work seven days a

week behind a screen and think that's a

very strange life?

>> I just know that I couldn't do it. I I I

depend almost almost

I'm so reliant on nature. I have to be

around trees. I fall asleep to frogs. I

I mean even even being in a city, I go

seek out a place where there's a lot of

trees. I am like a forest creature. If

you take me out of my environment, I

start to stress and die. And there's a

part of me that yes, that starts to die

if you keep me locked in concrete or if

you were to if you were to relegate me

to a a I was just in a hotel last week

on the book tour and I realized nothing

in the room with me was natural. The

carpet, the table, the windows, the

television, everything that was in this

room with me was composite materials.

And I couldn't even open the window to

get to the outside air. And I it did

occur to me. I said, I wonder if other

people feel this type of of of societal

claustrophobia where to me it's I have

to have my feet in a river at some

point. I have to I have to every night

before I fall asleep, I have to look up.

It's a ritual. I have to look up and and

look at the stars. How else can you

pray?

And so for me, being in a city has

become a very different reality to what

I'm used I mean, just taking a shower. I

mean, trust me, it's not as much fun

standing in a cold tile box and spraying

water on yourself as it is running

through the jungle, diving into the

river and swimming and the whole river

rushing around you. It's a whole

different experience. And so, when I

come back, I get a little bit, you know,

I miss my I miss the frogs and the birds

and and sort of my neighbors of of of

the jungle.

>> Do you think there's like a collective

delusion in terms of the way we live our

lives? Do do you think we're we've gone

a bit crazy? Kind of like the frog in

the frying pan. It's happened so

gradually, the sort of technological

>> creep of our lives that,

>> you know, and we're looking at young

kids that are more anxious and depressed

than ever before. Loneliness is at an

all-time high.

>> More people are taking anti-depressant

medications than ever before.

>> I think that yes is the simple answer to

your question. That that that sort of

we're a species perpet we're a fish

perpetually out of water. that as humans

because we've taken ourselves away from

forests and away from deserts and away

from mountains and the ocean. I mean, we

used to be fishermen and we used to be

farmers and and now the life that we

live is so incredibly different than

that. If you ask kids where does their

meat come from, there are kids that will

say the grocery store. You know, they

don't know that chickens exist before

it's in the package. And and so, you

know, for for there was that generation,

which I think that you and I are both a

part of, where it was like we were the

bicycle generation. We might be the last

one where it was like you went out in

the morning and you were on your bicycle

or you were running around with your

friends and you would come home for

dinner and I was incredibly lucky to

have, you know, on the weekends I would

go to the woods. I would take a steak

and I would take one match and I'd take

my golden retriever and we would go get

lost up the side of a mountain and uh

we' just go camping. My rule was no

shelter, one match, one stake dog. So

you couldn't mess up the match.

>> At what age?

>> Uh I would say 12 or 14. I was doing

this. I had a little, you know, hello

hunting knife on my side.

>> Not typical for a 12-year-old,

>> but I needed it.

>> Why?

>> I don't know. I needed adventure. I

think because being being stuck in a

desk and being told you can't get up and

you can't even go to the bathroom, and

you you look down, do what we say, just

being controlled was so counterintuitive

to my essence. And so, I grew up with

this need for adventure. And then

somewhere along the way, the fact that I

couldn't drink the streams that I was

exploring or the fact that even when I

was deep, deep, deep in the forest, I

knew that if I really hiked for another

4 hours, I'll come out the other side. I

wanted to experience wilderness. I

wanted to experience wilderness where it

never ended. I wanted to see the really

wild places on the planet. And for some

reason, that was inside me since I was

very young.

>> So, how did you go from there? from

being that 13 year old to setting off at

what 17 years old with your Amazon

research in Peru.

>> You did go to university. You

>> you were actually really really smart. I

I hear

>> I was smart enough that they had me both

suspended and in in detention and in

American Mensa. I was I was I was really

all over the place. And and the thing is

they make you feel stupid when you can't

do the assignments. So I'd say, 'Why are

you failing math and why can't you read

this book and you didn't do your

homework? But I was like, I know I'm

smart and in the forest I was good at

tracking and I could survive and I could

make it through a weekend and I could

build shelter. And so I always just

gravitated towards that. And so I spoke

to my parents. I dropped out of high

school. You can take your GED and get

out two years early with a with a with a

with a one-day test. And I did that. The

rule was I did have to go to university.

So, I had to start taking semesters, but

in between semesters, I was free to go

to the Amazon rainforest. And so, I

booked the most remote position that I

could at a place where it took 2 days by

boat from the nearest city to get to

this tiny little research station. And

it was run by this Peruvian guy and his

partner. And his name was JJ.

And that's the guy that opened the

Amazon for me.

>> He opened the Amazon for you?

>> Well, JJ grew up in the Amazon as an

indigenous person. And so what he was

learning, he the the first chapter in

this book is called the rarest of

species because he's the only unicorn in

the Amazon rainforest.

He's an indigenous person. So he's been

learning from his grandfathers,

grandfathers, grandfathers, grandfathers

all the way back.

>> And indigenous means

>> indigenous means his family is from the

jungle. Their heritage, their lineage

going back, they are jungle people.

They're from the Seaha tribe. And so his

father, Don Santiago, there they knew

the medicinal plants. They knew how to

fish for piranha. Then he can cut a

piece of callus off of his foot and put

it on a hook using himself as bait to

catch a bait fish. He can mash up a

barbasco route and put it in a stream

and then all the fish float to the

surface. He can track a deer. He could

track a jaguar. He could track a person.

So these people know everything about

the forest and they're the people that I

came in with. And because I knew about

snakes, he knew every He knew everything

about the forest, the medicines, the

habits of the animals, the systems. The

only thing I knew was I said, "I know

how to handle snakes." And he said, "I'm

scared of snakes." And I said, "I could

teach you snakes." I said, "You teach me

everything else." And he goes, "You like

snakes?" He goes, "Come with us." He

said, "We go on a family hunting trip

once a year where we go on this

expedition 10 days into the jungle where

no one's allowed to go, only people with

indigenous status." He said, "You're our

guest. You come with us." And so there I

was going up the river into parts of the

world that have yet to be named into the

wildest places in the Amazon rainforest

and learning from these guys through

experience how to catch fish out of the

river, how to navigate through difficult

parts of the of the stream when the

storms are coming, how to survive them.

And then we found anacondas. And so it

was like this I had this very very in

unorthodox training and introduction

into the jungle. How big is the Amazon

rainforest? Trying to get my head around

the scale of it.

>> I'm bad with numbers. What I do know is

that it's larger than the lower 48

states.

>> Wow.

>> It's it's absolutely tremendous. It's

the largest contiguous rainforest on

Earth.

>> And are there parts of it that people

have never been to?

>> 100%. There are still parts of the

Amazon rainforest that are unexplored.

There's parts of the Amazon rainforest

that no one's ever been to. And if you

really want to blow your own mind, the

canopy of the Amazon rainforest is about

150 160 ft up above our heads, which is

far.

>> And half of the life in a rainforest

exists in the canopy. So you're talking

about the most mega biodiverse biome

that has ever existed. There's never

been more terrestrial wildlife anywhere

on Earth than in the Amazon rainforest.

And right now in the entire fossil

record, we we're at the apex, the climax

community of the Amazon rainforest. It's

that brilliant. Where the Andes,

rainforest, cloud forests meet the

lowland tropical Amazon. There it is.

That's the most life we know of in the

entire universe.

>> And in terms of human life,

>> Mhm.

>> I hear there's lots of human life there

that we've never contacted.

>> There are various tribes living through

the Western Amazon. And you have the

Seaha and the Machenga and you have the

Yin and and then further out beyond all

of these there were always rumors that

there were uncontacted tribes

and and for the first many years that I

was there, it was always someone's

uncle, someone's brother, someone's

cousin would would come back with these

crazy stories that someone had seen the

tribes and that they were that they were

tall and naked and they still hunted

with bows and arrows and they would and

then every now and And somebody would

come back with a 7ft arrow, a spear

tipped with bamboo, huge bamboo tip this

big, razor sharp, like a machete. And

that was the only proof we had that they

existed

until the day we met them.

>> When did you meet them for the first

time?

So, in order to explain how we met them,

we should probably explain why what

where we got to in how the how the

18-year-old researcher became the

director of of of a major organization.

But,

>> please

>> Okay. Well, some somewhere along the way

as we as we

as we did these expeditions through the

Amazon and I became closer and closer

with the indigenous people, you know, JJ

as a teacher kept telling me and that's

and that's what the the first chapter of

the book is about is, you know, him just

teaching me the incredible

interconnectedness. There's this there's

this moment that I write about where

he's going, "Look at this beach and tell

me the news." And I said, "What?" And he

said, "Yeah." He said, "Every day the

ground is like last night's newspaper.

It tells you what happened." So, I look

at the beach and there's jaguar tracks

and there's like a mess of jaguar tracks

and some Jaguar scat and I made no sense

of it. And he was like, "This is where

she came yesterday to drink.

That's where she pooped. This is where

she came today to drink. You can see the

newer tracks." And then he's like, "And

what you didn't notice, you didn't see

the vultures above us." And I look up

and there's vultures above us. And he

goes, "Notice they're not looking at us.

They're looking at the jaguar." And so

they're looking that way. Jaguar had a

fresh deer kill. and had continually

been eating and then coming to the river

to drink. And so he can decipher all of

these incredible things. And so as he's

taking me through these worlds of

butterflies and interconnected species

where there's a mist river flowing over

the rainforest, this this avatar on

Earth

and then we then they burned it down.

>> Who burned it down?

>> The loggers.

And so the first time I saw ancient

forest,

a place that I love with trees

significantly bigger than this room,

vanished. There's this cacophony of

life, this orchestra, this symphonic

roar of life that you get in the mo,

especially in the morning in the Amazon.

And then at night, there's the night

chorus. And when you hear that silenced,

it's one of the most horrific things

that you can experience because places

that we loved, trees that had been

standing for a thousand years, species

that had never been described by science

were all incinerated.

And I said to JJ, I said, "How do we

this this this can't be allowed? This

can't this can't possibly be something

that's permitted." And I said, "Isn't

there somebody that we can call?" We

were standing on the side of the river,

and he he leaned forward. And he looked

this way and he looked that way and he

goes, "Do you see anybody?" He goes,

"Cuz I don't see anybody." He goes, "You

have to do something." I said, "I have

to do something." I said, "I'm 19, 20

years old." I said, "What am I going to

do?" I said, "I don't have a PhD. I

don't have a trust fund. I don't have a

media presence. I don't have anything."

I had a machete and I had bare feet. We

both had machetes and bare feet. And so

that was the start of the journey where

we said, "The thing we love is being

destroyed." We could see the smoke on

the horizon. The trees that we had

explored and become to love were laying

smoldering on the ground in front of us.

And we said, "Okay, now we have to

figure out a way to change the

narrative. The wildest place on earth is

about to be destroyed, bulldozed, and

burned. How do we save it?" And so

that's where when you ask the question

of how does life in the jungle sort of

translate to what your listeners are

going to find interesting, it's taking

on a task that's so gigantic that at the

start of it, we couldn't even come up

with we couldn't even conceptualize how

it could be possible even with the right

tools

>> to save the Amazon

>> to save the Amazon rainforest, let alone

for two guys with zero qualifications,

bare feet and machetes. And so we

started behind zero and today we're at

the point where we've turned loggers and

gold miners into conservation rangers.

We're protecting 130,000 acres of the

river. We're on the cusp of creating a

national park. Me and JJ are the

directors of Jungle Keepers and we're

about to make history because we're

going to save the entire watershed and

all the trees and animals and heartbeats

that are left. And that's the story that

I'm trying to tell. That's the whole

reason for my existence. That's why I

that's what I wake up and do every day.

>> And you've really taken on that

responsibility in a very personal way. I

can tell.

>> Yeah. Yeah. There's a there's a point

where, you know, I remember cuz you grow

up I was born in Brooklyn and then we

you know, I grew up in Jersey for a

while and then we moved to the Hudson

Valley. But when you start you start

going to the Amazon for months and

months and months out of the year and

you come back with scars and stories

where a jaguar is breathing on your neck

and you you go out on a solo and you

come back and then suddenly standing and

making conversation at a barbecue feels

different.

It's it's almost like I imagine I have a

lot of veteran friends and sort of you

you almost get addicted to the action

and then you also get addicted to the

the the the team, you know. Uh Sebastian

Younger writes about this about the the

addict the the the the need for

community the tribe and sort of the the

mission and I think that that's one

thing that people are missing today

where they they they don't know you know

we've been disassociated from religion

and community and and and immediate sort

of connection with other humans. And so

then well then what else is there? How

do how do you where where to what do you

more your existence? What do you what's

your what's your purpose? What do you

wake up and do every day? And so I

think, you know, in the old days it was

like, you know, we have to we have to

defend ourselves from the outside world,

from waring communities, you know, or

even just providing for your family. We

have to bring water every day. We have

to chop wood every day. We have to

figure out how to survive. And like

today, I mean, when I'm here, I wake up

and I go, "Well, there's there's water

in the fridge, so I don't have to do

that." And I'm like, "The air

conditioner is on and the I'm like, I

guess I'll check my phone, you know."

And so I, you know, I think we have,

like you said, become somehow we've gone

really far away from what we are built

for.

And one of the beautiful things that

happens when you go into the wild, and

this can be any wild, is that it starts

to change you. And so you go into the

wild and you start picking up logs and

throwing them. You start splitting

firewood, and the first day you're going

to have calluses on your hands, but then

after a few weeks, you're going to have

tough hands. You start walking barefoot,

same thing. The sun starts to make your

skin thicker and tanner and more

resilient and then the rain will hammer

that home and you start to get your eyes

start to get sharper and you start to

pay more attention to what you're

hearing. And so you start going through

this whole transformation where you

start to be almost become a different

animal. You become the jungle version of

yourself. You become the mountain

version of yourself. Your legs start to

get strong again. And so so the wild

puts you through this gauntlet of

transformation and you become connected

to your environment. And then that

feeling of disassociation tends to

alleviate a little bit.

>> I heard about this particular part of

the brain that changes as well. You

talked about transformation.

>> Yeah.

>> Um they discovered something not so many

years ago called the anterior midsulate

cortex.

>> Mhm.

>> Andrew Hubman and I heard him say that

he thinks it was one of the most

important discoveries in neuroscience of

the last

>> century. The anterior mid-s singular

cortex is a part of the brain sitting

between your emotional brain and your

executive control center that

essentially grows when you do hard

things.

>> Not when you do things that um

specifically when you do things that you

don't want to do but you do them anyway.

So not running a marathon because you

enjoy it. Things you don't want to do

and you do it anyway. And it went

through some of the studies I saw said

that younger people that have been

brought into this sort of doom scrolling

generation have smaller ones. If you are

um obese, it's smaller. Um athletes have

bigger ones and people who live longer

have even bigger ones. And it's they

kind of call it like the muscle of the

brain of doing hard things. And so when

you were talking about that physical

transformation, I weirdly thought about

I think it was Roosevelt who

>> after losing his mom and his wife on the

same day.

>> Yes.

>> After his baby girl was born, he went

out to the Badlands and spent two years

doing pretty much what you said,

>> putting himself in intentional

discomfort.

>> Yeah. and he came back and all of his

friends described him as being

transformed. He went on to become the

youngest president in American history.

He got shot and carried on doing the

speech. He led the charge um uh I think

it was the Spanish crusades or something

like the Spanish war.

>> And the Rough Riders.

>> Yeah, the Rough Riders. And they all

pointed at the moment when he went out

to the Badlands. They said it shaped him

into becoming a completely different

man. That that discomfort.

>> Yeah, 100%. And and that's that's why

Native American cultures for the

initiation of their young men would have

vision quests where they would send them

out into the wilderness. And there's

still different there's all different

types. Aboriginal cultures have similar

things. And I wanted to put myself

through that. And so I went out on

that's what I described in my first book

is going out on that's where JJ taught

me enough to survive in the jungle. And

then I started going out on 10day solos

into place. I'd have people bring me to

the last place that had a name. Like I'm

talking about poachers. And then I would

start hiking and I would go so deep in

the Amazon rainforest that I was just

off the map and I would try and survive

out there. And so I had a lot of

adventures that I should not have

survived. But it was very important to

me to put myself through that because I

grew up with that discomfort. I grew up

with the overwhelming crushing stress of

being told that we're at the end of

days. We are losing I mean I saw it at

the Bronx Zoo. They said, you know,

we're losing our rainforests. And they

had the sound of the chainsaws and you

see the trees going over and they said

we're losing elephants. You'd see

somebody shoot and the elephant goes

over and they just said everything that

you for me everything you love is being

destroyed and pretty soon we're not

going to be able to drink and

everything's going to be polluted and

our fisheries are being destroyed. And I

said wait so wait a second. I said I

have to know if it's really that bad. So

when I got old enough don't it's not

just that I was inspired to go out on a

mission. And it was that I wanted to

find out for myself cuz I'm I don't like

finding out through a screen. I don't I

don't want other people filtering my

information. I wanted to find out for

myself. Is it really that bad? And so I

was going out on a quest to understand

what the reality was.

>> If I sat 18-year-old you at this table,

he sat there

>> and you know this version of you at what

37

>> 38

>> 38 you were sat there. So 20 years

difference.

>> What would the notable differences be

between these two men?

Um, well, he didn't know how to fish

with his feet. Um, that's for sure. His

machete skills would be terrible. But

the the noticeable difference would be

that that 18-year-old, his greatest

dream was to alleviate the environmental

stress that he grew up with, escape the

world of rules, find purpose in life,

and to just have adventures. My my

greatest dream was to see the Amazon

rainforest. I looked at people like

Teddy Roosevelt and Jane Goodall and I

said, "Man, they had such incredibly

like extraordinary lives." And I said,

"How come my life can't be like that?

I'm over here in detention." You know,

I'm over here being told I didn't do my

homework. And I'm like, "I want to chop

wood and carry water. I want to go to

war. I want to be scared. I want to be

challenged." And so for me it was I I

was that would be the difference is that

I would be hungry for all of that.

Whereas the person sitting across from

you today, my body is a Jackson Pollock

painting of scars,

crocodile bites, tiger bites,

infections, times that I've been almost

crushed to death by elephants. I've been

hunted by the narot terrorists. And at

this point, the responsibility at that

kid got to see all the things he wanted

to see. We found the biggest anacondas.

I lived through the amazing adventures

and that's great.

The person sitting across from you today

is responsible for protecting millions

of animal lives. And my job is to

explain to people that we that everyone

reading this message or listening to

this message has the chance to help the

indigenous people save the Amazon before

we lose it forever. And so that's the

main difference is that at that age I

was just I just wanted some

swashbuckling adventure. And now I found

that adventure became meaning. I found

it along the way. And then now I'm on a

whole other journey. Now it's now it's

can we bring it home? Now it's can we

achieve something that we thought was

impossible and change the narrative of

how it's done.

>> And I guess this kind of brings us back

to this question about the unconted

tribes. You said you and JJ were talking

about how you might go about saving the

Amazon.

Was highlighting the unconted tribes in

the Amazon part of the mission there?

>> No. Very much no. That's a great

question because what we started doing

was we looked at this river basin and we

said, "Okay, we we we love this this one

really wild river and now we said why

why has this river been so wild?" You

know, so you think of the Amazon as a

tree of rivers. You have the main Amazon

channel and then all these millions of

branches. And so the upper Amazon, the

uppermost branches of the Amazon

rainforest, those tip tip tops, people

are only just getting to them now. You

know, the main Amazon channel is a

shipping port and then you have these

huge tributaries going off of it. And

you can get in as far as Aquitos with a

steam ship. Like you can go all the way

through Brazil thousands of miles and

get all the way to Aikitos, Peru

>> to the almost the back end of the

Amazon.

>> I've been there.

>> And and it's beautiful.

>> We are at the southern edge in the

tributaries down there. There's one

tributary.

>> What's a tributary?

>> A tributary is is an offshoot from a

larger river.

>> So a stream is a tributary of a larger

stream which goes into, you know, then

eventually you reach the Hudson River.

>> And so this is a tiny little tributary.

And the we what we discovered is that

the reason people hadn't developed this

tributary, the reason other indigenous

communities hadn't formed was that for

hundreds and hundreds of years, this

particular river had been protected by

the violent, mysterious, Mashkopiro,

nomadic, uncontacted tribes. And that

had kept it wild. They were the original

jungle keepers, but by the time I got

there, there was sort of just a myth.

And so they were something that they

said they lived really far up river past

the last indigenous community. And I

when I say indigenous community I mean

people that we can talk to, people that

we can interface with that I can speak a

little Spanish to and they'll understand

me.

>> I think that's an important distinction.

>> Yes.

>> Because can you make that distinction

between indigenous and these tribes?

>> Yes. So within Peru, you have Lima and

and you know Michelin star restaurants

and all this amazing food and then you

travel down to Cusco where you have

Machu Picchu and you have the Andes and

all of that incredible culture and then

you go down to the jungle and it's a

little bit like going to the back end of

Alaska. That's where it's like you are

very far away from LA or New York like

but it's the same country and out there

you'll reach these communities where

they are indigenous and so in the

reserve that we currently protect as

jungle keepers there's two indigenous

communities there and we work with them

to sort of support them because as these

loggers and narot traffickers and gold

miners come in they see them as as a

mark they'll go in and say oh there's

these helpless indigenous people how can

we exploit them

>> how can we get their trees, their fish,

they'll go and take those things from

them or they'll or they'll sell them

something that's not worth what what

they think it is. And so we've been

working with these indigenous

communities to say, "Do you want the

loggers to come in and cut down all of

your trees?" And they go, "No." And they

go, "But at the same time, we need a

little bit of gasoline because what if

we're having a baby and we have to get

our daughter to a hospital in town?" And

so we've been working with them to

provide sustainable jobs as rangers

protecting their own land. And it's such

a simple solution whereas otherwise they

would go and be loggers to get that

cash. And so we were working with these

communities and now they're rangers and

boat drivers and guides and handymen.

And they called us about a year ago and

they said something incredible is

happening and it's going to be

dangerous, but you are the directors and

you're part of this family and you're

part of this story and we need you here

for this, but the tribes are about to

come out of the forest.

And we were in town and where what you

know what we do now is you know we and

we can explain this later but we raise

money and we bring it to the Amazon

where we the local people have the

opportunity to set aside huge acreage of

of the Amazon to protect it. We're we're

changing the narrative of destruction

where we just protect it before they get

to it. And so we were in town with JJ

who's now the director of this major

organization and we're talking to our

lawyers and we're in the office and we

get this call that the tribe is out.

>> The tribe is out.

>> The tribe is out.

>> What does that mean? It means the

mythical unconted tribe that when I

arrived in Peru, the president of Peru

had been saying these are a myth. They

don't exist and it's just it's the

boogeyman. It's been made up as a story

to scare the loggers. So, their

existence was contested. They were

almost on the fringes of imagination.

>> Could we not have flown a plane over

there or something? Is that you know,

this sounds like a dumb question, but

presumably we have satellites and we can

zoom in.

The BBC did do a piece where they were

flying a plane and they were looking at

an unconted

tribe from miles away and they said,

"We're being very careful not to disturb

them, but there is a tribe in the

rainforest that has no contact with the

outside world." And you could see these

people bending and they're looking at

the plane, but the plane's not close

enough to really scare them or to cause

them any distress. And so, we have done

that. But then on our river out in the

middle of nowhere where no one's heard

of the BBC,

you just hear stories from loggers

who've come down river from three weeks

up river. You can go for three weeks up

the river and hit nothing. There's

nothing human. It's like the last

endless forest. And so when the

community called and they said there's

arrows on the beach, the tribe is coming

out. It's the first time in 10 years

that the tribe seems to be coming out of

the jungle to make contact. And so they

got they got the directors of Jungle

Keepers up there. We had to we had to

rush to be there. They begged us to be

there so that we could see it because

they were worried that we wouldn't

believe them.

And so we got there and we went all

night. And when you go up a river at

night, we do a two-day boat journey in

one night.

And so the guy right there, the picture

with the guy who has the scar on his

forehead, that's Ignasio. He that scar

is because he was shot in the head by a

7-ft arrow while he was trying to make

peaceful contact with the unconted

tribes. He was trying to give them a

gift and they got spooked and they

scared and they shot him in the head and

he almost died from that when we heard

that this was happening and he's now one

of our best jungle keepers rangers. We

said, "Can you do a two-day boat journey

in one night?" And he went, "Yes, sir."

and he put on a headlamp and he got in

the back of the boat and we took an open

top canoe and we drove from 6:00 p.m.

until 9:00 a.m. the next day through the

worst thunderstorm I've ever seen. I was

on the front of the boat with a

flashlight using the crocodile eyes, the

Cayman eyes on the side of the river to

navigate cuz they shine. The eyes shine

comes back. The the the storm was so bad

that I we couldn't see anything. We

couldn't see the side of the river and

because of the light igniting the

raindrops, you can't you can't even see

what's in front of you. So we were using

the the croc eyes to to navigate where

the edges of the river was. So I was

spotting and telling him which way to go

and he drove and we did that all night

long. Got to the indigenous community

and said, "Okay, so what's going on?"

And they said, "Oh yeah, they left.

Tribe's gone."

The only thing that they had was that

one guy the previous day had been shot

by an arrow

and he had been fishing and he had seen

the tribes. So he said, "And they had

shot an arrow at him." The first thing

they had done was shot one of these 7-ft

arrows at him and the way it had hit the

boat ricocheted and then hit his thick

leather belt and blunted the tip of the

arrow and he had the arrow.

And so he says, "So there are there are

people here." And then a native

anthropologist from another region

showed up and he said, "I they know me

as the grandfather. I can speak to these

people. I speak a little bit of their

language." And so we stayed another

night, two days deep in the jungle. And

the following morning we said, "Okay,

we're getting out of here. There's

obviously nothing here but, you know,

stories and footprints and arrows and we

have important work to do back in town."

>> And did you believe them?

>> I've learned one thing working in the

Amazon. Always believe the locals.

Always. There's there's if they say it's

there, they're not wrong. And that's

part of the reason that I've gotten to

go on these adventures. You know, when

JJ Tell told me there's places you can

go that are so wild that it's like the

Galopagos. the animals don't know a

human, but you have to go for days on

foot to the topmost reaches of the

rivers to find this. Well, that's why I

went on these these solos. And so I

write that's what that's as a writer

that's what I do is try and take people

on these adventures through the Amazon.

And so when they said the tribe is

coming, Ignasio, the guy who'd been shot

in the head, he said, "Listen to me." He

said, "You're" He said, "You're my boss,

right?" I said, "Yeah." He goes, "I need

to speak to you like a friend." I said,

"Speak, speak, speak." And he said,

"They're coming. You'd be an idiot to

leave." And so we posted up, we waited.

How he knew?

>> Yeah, I'm wondering how he knew.

>> He just knew, man. They just know. It's

like they can they can tell. And then,

you know, I mean, these are guys who

know when there's a jaguar close by the

sound of the birds. They know when a

storm's coming before the storm is

audible. You know, they they have higher

tuned senses than we do. And and so he

said, "Look, the tribe is coming.

There's the arrow. They're in the

region." And he goes, "And when they

come this close, they generally they

want to talk." And I said, "But this is"

and sure enough, you hear Mosk go and

everyone starts screaming. And it was

just this moment of absolute panic where

women were lifting babies and chickens

are flying around and dogs and we're in

this tiny little indigenous community on

the side of a river with hundreds and

hundreds of miles of jungle around. And

we run to the edge of this, you know,

the edge of the river where this cliff

is. And across the river, we see them

coming towards us. and they're walking

out of the jungle and they're naked from

head to toe. They just have some string

tied around their waists, penises tied

up to their bellies. They all have seven

foot long bows and arrows and they're

crouched over and they're looking at us

and we're standing there and you go

you sort of like you go I I just I I

wanted I wanted to see this and now I'm

not so sure I want to be here cuz there

are warriors coming out of the jungle

and they're from a thousand years ago.

So I asked the anthropologist, I said,

"They're like stone age people." And he

goes, "They don't have stones." He said,

"They're still in the bamboo age." He

said, "These people are living such a

primitive lifestyle. They're hunter

gatherers.

And they've been isolated so deep in the

jungle for so many centuries that it's

like a time capsule. So there was a

thousand years between us. We're

standing on either side of the river

with a thousand years between us. And

this aperture into the history of what

humankind used to look like. And these

people came out holding their bows and

arrows that they had made out of the

jungle and they held up their hands and

they were talking to us across a river.

And it was sort of shirts versus skins.

We were just two tribes separated by a

little bit of water and they wanted to

communicate.

>> With what language?

>> With their language. They I mean it's we

don't even know really what to call

them. For a while they were calling them

the Mashkapiro, which means the wild

piro people. And then um more more

recently and partly because of our

encounter they held up their hands and

the first thing they said was no mole.

We are the brothers. Brothers and so

then our side said the same thing. The

anthropologist said no mole brothers.

And then this this this exchange began

and it's like you know I as a Spanish

speaker when I've been in Italy I can

use my Spanish to kind of get through in

in Italian. And I feel like it's like

that the Yin people can speak to the

Mashkapiro and it is an approximate

translation.

And the first thing that they said after

coming out of the jungle a thousand

years late to civilization was

send us bananas. They said send us food.

And they demanded that we send them

plantains as an offering. And our side

said you put down your weapons. We will

talk to you but we do not want this to

end violently. We want this to be

peaceful. If you want to talk to us, put

down your bow and arrows because a

shotgun, a shotgun only goes how many

meters? You know, it's not even going to

go 100 meters, 50 m, maybe buckshot.

A longbowow arrow is going to go 300 m.

It's going to go far

>> and they're needless to say, they're

very good with those arrows.

>> They are very good with those arrows.

These things will fly. Um, and so even

standing on the other side of the river,

we were not safe. And so we were all

standing behind trees. We were watching.

Ignasio, who'd been shot before, was

watching with the binoculars. And he's

going, "Whenever you see them walking,"

he said, "they let you see them, and

then they clever girl you in the forest

where there's one watching you from the

shadows." And he he would grab me by the

shoulder and go, "Look, there's one."

And you would just see this, you know,

red face paint in the shadows of the

forest. And he'd have the bow trained on

us. And so while some of them in the

front were putting the bows down, there

was others of them in the shadows that

were making sure that they still had

support. But we asked the guys in the

front to put down their arrows. The

anthropologists got in the river and

gave them an offering of bananas.

>> I think I have a video here of this.

>> Yeah, this is world first footage.

>> I'll let you um You know how to use an

iPad, right?

Um, there we go. Yeah. So, this is this

was this is just a random moment from

the earlier days, but this is that

moment where everyone starts screaming,

"Mosh, go and we're all running." And

this is what I was talking about where

they are moving across the beach. And

you can see the sort of the posture

they're using there. I mean, he's got

they have their bows and arrows in hand

and then they showed up and see they're

pointing. They were worried that our

cameras were guns and so they were

asking to put down the cameras. They

were curious about various members of

our tribe and they were all talking at

the same time and so it was very

difficult to understand what they

wanted.

>> What's he doing with his finger there?

He's doing

>> this.

>> Yeah.

>> I don't know. This is the moment that we

gave them the bananas. And what's

haunting about this is the desperation

that you see on them where they're all

rushing to get the bananas and they're

not necessarily taking them like they're

going to share later. They're taking

them like I get my bananas, you get your

bananas. You see this? They're all

rushing

to get this little boatload. And these

are people that don't have boats. And as

they're doing this, they're all talking

at the same time. It was like a flock of

parrots. It was just a cacophony of of

sound.

And they're all fighting over these

plantains. And and then once they get

them, each person held their own. They

have rope and plantains. And this

interaction went on for several hours.

And we negotiated with them. And this is

just the footage. This is the footage

that we're allowed to release right now.

And this is them moving back off into

the jungle. There's a lot more that

happened. And again, that's where that's

why that's why we're releasing this now.

I should say that that's why we waited a

while to release this footage because

footage like this is incredibly

sensitive for a number of reasons.

A, you don't want people to think that

we went out and contacted these people

that want to be left alone. You also

don't want to encourage other people to

indulge their misconceptions. People go,

"Oh, these are the last free people on

earth. They live perfectly in balance

with nature." No, people will go looking

for them. Whereas, for hundreds of

years, these people have asked for one

thing and one thing only, to be left

alone. And they've enforced that kind of

like the Comanches with arrows. And on

this day, they said, "Please give us

food. Please give us rope." And they had

one other question.

They said, "How do we tell the bad guys

from the good guys?" And we said, "What

do you mean? Who are the bad guys?" And

they said, "Some of you shooted us with

the jiu-jitsu, with the fire sticks,

the guns." And we were going, "Who who

does that?" We said, "We are not the bad

guys." And they said, "No, you also,"

they said, "We know you cut down our

trees." They were speaking to all of us.

It was not there's no like, you know,

white guy, brown guy, Peruvian,

foreigners, none of that. It was just

all of you outsiders,

stop cutting down our trees. Our trees

are our gods. It was sort of like, you

don't do that.

And then when they left just a few weeks

ago, we learned that the narcot

traffickers view them as a threat. And

there was actually a mass grave found of

a similar clan. And so these people are

being boxed in by deforestation and

hunted by narot traffickers and gold

miners and loggers. And so I think that

them coming out of the forest was their

way of saying, "Hey, we're trying to get

a read on what's going on in the outside

world. Who is it? Who are the good guys?

Who are the bad guys? They don't know

that Jungle Keepers is protecting the

land that they live on.

>> They've never heard of a spoon or the

wheel or Jesus or World War II or the

country of Peru. And so so they're

coming out with so many questions. And

the only way to care for these people

and to give them the the the rights that

they deserve is to protect the forest

they live in.

>> Do you know why some of them seem to be

touching their nose?

>> It's funny. I didn't notice that. I

think this is this is this is going to

be your discovery to anthropology. I did

not notice that, but it does. You see

this a lot of them are doing this.

>> Yeah.

>> And the the outfit um

>> the outfit

>> What is this outfit? This it looks like

there's kind of rope tied around their

midrift with their penises out.

>> Mhm. Yeah. The the the head of the penis

is covered by rope.

>> Oh, they've got the penis up into the

rope.

>> No, the head of the penis is up and

protected. And and that makes sense

given the jungle where there's

mosquitoes and bot flies and sand flies.

That that's a smart move. And then rope

seems to be I mean what is it goes like

fire rope ladders like I think it's like

man's second invention.

>> They are obsessed with rope. That's how

they make their bow strings. That's how

they make their arrows. That's how they

lash things together to make the the the

limited structures that they make. And

some of what we know about them is, you

know, we find their camps after they

leave. So we know what they eat. They

eat primarily turtles and monkeys. They

don't fish. They don't have fish hooks.

>> They They don't eat humans, do they?

>> They do not eat humans. They are not

cannibal tribes.

>> That's a rumor people have talked about

before. People have said,

>> "Yeah, there's even a couple versions of

my voice in AI saying that on the

internet, but it is not true."

>> And their haircuts, they all seem to be

have the sort of mullet style haircut

from

>> It seems like they all grab the front

and just find a way to cut it. There

might be like one guy with a machete who

just does the haircuts.

>> And for a lot of them, this is the first

time they've seen a human.

>> So, actually, this was first contact.

The anthropologist who came to the

scene, who managed this interaction,

he said he had met an unconted tribe

before in the region. He said none of

these were men that he'd met. And the

other thing, notice they're all men.

>> Yeah.

>> The women were hidden hidden in the

forest. And while the men were making a

distraction in front of us, the women

were raiding the farm behind us.

>> Raiding

>> raiding the farm.

>> Your farm?

>> The indigenous people's farm. Our

community's farm.

>> So the women went to steal while they

were distracting you.

>> That's right.

>> And did you catch the women on tape?

>> No. No. No. No. No. No. Everyone was We

were all huddled up very, very close. I

mean, this was an incredible encounter.

But let me explain. The prevailing

emotion during this entire thing was

fear on both sides. They were scared. We

were scared. The indigenous people

naturally have shotguns anyway. Everyone

had their shotguns out. They all had

some of them had put their bows on the

beach, but they had other they had

archers waiting. And so everyone was

sort of, you know, it was like, "Put

down your guns and we can talk." But

nobody really wanted to put down their

guns.

>> And how do you know the women were

stealing from your farm?

Because after this was all over and we

went to the farm, everything had been

pulled up. All the yuka, all the

plantains, all the sugarcane, the entire

farm was ruined.

>> How'd you know it was the women?

>> The women in the village told me it was

the women. They was the women. Also, you

see the smaller footprints. These men

have wide big men. They're from walking

barefoot their whole lives. Their feet

get ancho. They get really thick. And

so, and I have jungle feet like that

now, but these guys have almost duck

feet at this point. Like big, fat,

calloused feet that get wider. You ever

see a farmer's hands?

>> Yeah.

>> But they just they just grow.

>> Yeah.

>> Like that.

>> They're all young as well.

>> Where's Where are the older people?

>> We'd love to know.

We don't know. There's some tribes in

the Amazon where the elderly people have

more permanent settlements. There's been

rumors of some extreme tribes where the

elderly people if they can't keep up are

just left to perish. Uh but we saw

people between the ages of probably 12

and 45. I don't think anybody looks like

they're in their 50s.

So we left with more questions than

answers. They on that day they did get a

pot that they they stole from a from you

know the community you know they have

their their farm and so there there was

also a machete at the farm. Somebody

just whacked it into a log. And so as

they were leaving, one of the best

things that we caught on video that we

have we're not able to share yet is that

one of these guys, and this was at the

end after while everybody was going

home, the anthropologist held up his

hands and he said, you know, no mole

brothers, go in peace. And these guys

actually asked about me. I was the only

person there with a big beard. And they

said,

they said that one. They said, show us

that one. And so I came forward. I stood

at the edge of the river, which my heart

was pounding. And the anthropologist

said, he said, hold up your hands. Show

them that you don't mean any harm. I

held hel held up my hands like this and

they held up their hands and they sang.

They said no more. They knew that I

wasn't from the indigenous community.

And that was an incredible moment of we

couldn't communicate but it was just

sort of that basic I acknowledge you and

they said I acknowledge you and we just

had this thing across the river in about

a thousand years and just and then that

was it. And as they left, you know, one

of the guys had a machete and he was he

showed it to us over his shoulder like

this. And one of my friends was going,

"Oh," you know, in the local language he

was saying, "Put down the machete. Leave

the machete." And the guy just smiled

and looked at us like, "Yeah, come and

get it. Come and get it." And then at

just as they left, one of the warriors

walked out to the beach, put an arrow on

the string, smiled at us, and just shot

it. Was like, "Ha!"

>> Up into the air,

>> just at us in general, just to spook us.

And then they all turned left and left,

you know. So they have a sense of humor.

We saw them smile, you know. We

exchanged a little bit of that with them

as well.

>> They look cold.

They are cold. I mean, it's it's it's

95° on that day. The other thing is it

was cool as they're coming. If you go to

the part where they're coming across the

beach, there was millions of

butterflies. That beach was covered in

just millions of butterflies. And so as

these people are walking out, the

butterflies are just swarming around

them. Go back to the beginning. The that

right there. If you just notice, we

don't notice it at first, but as they're

moving, look at that. The world is

swirling with leapid lepodopter in

colors. Just just absolute

>> insanity how how beautiful this scene

was. And I mean, when you see this, you

know, if a if a Tyrannosaurus Rex walked

out behind them, I wouldn't have been

surprised. It was such a strange

literally unbelievable thing to see

because

you know these these literally are the

last people on Earth that are still

living in this way where society we have

planes, trains, automobiles, iPhones,

all of this technology. We're talking

about going to other planets.

They don't have metal,

even a knife, unless they get it from

someone else. And so it's just it's just

an incredible, you know, the other thing

is they do have medicinal technologies.

They're able to stay infection-free

living in the tropical wet jungle.

That's pretty incredible

>> cuz they're they're virtually naked.

>> I mean, essentially naked. I think

that's that's how they carry their rope.

I don't think that's so much of clothing

as we need rope and that's how we carry

it. It's very it's very very complicated

because the loggers

shoot at them, the narcos shoot at them.

People shouldn't be getting into the

places that they live. And if you think

about in the last few centuries, how

many indigenous cultures have been

annihilated by the outside world coming

in these there's no shortage of these

stories. And in this particular case, in

2026, when we have the communication and

people are able to hear this story, this

is why we're releasing this footage

because the only hope these people have

is if we protect them. They can't come

on a podcast. They can't address the

United Nations. They can't write a pet

petition. The only hope they have is if

we are able to protect the forest that

they live in. That's it. And that's why

we released this footage now. Cuz for a

long time we said we can't release it.

We said, "What if what if crazy hippie

people go down there thinking that these

are the last free people and they want

to go live with them? That will kill

them. The outside pathogens that you and

I carry on us every day, the common cold

that we have immunity to, could wipe out

an entire tribe." And how many tribes

like this do we believe are in the

Amazon rainforest?

>> Several thousand little tribes, little

clans that move nomatically through the

Amazon.

>> Were they tall?

>> They looked like they were at least, you

know, 5'9, 510. They were pretty tall,

especially because the the Peruvians and

the indigenous communities that we work

with tend to be on the smaller side.

>> They they they are taller than the

average uh some of the other tribes.

There's another tribe that we ran into

down there called the Nawa. And those

people were were absolutely tiny. They

were s like below five feet. All of

them. Um

these guys were tall. Yeah.

And is there a leader here? Is someone

in charge?

>> Another great question. It seems to be

that there's two, they look like

brothers. There seems to be two guys who

do most of the talking. One in

particular who seems to be doing the

most gesticulating and he was

communicating more forcefully. He He had

a smile. That guy, he had a smile on his

face at certain times.

>> This one?

>> Yeah, I think so. And And he was the one

that would walk the furthest out into

the river.

Yeah. And he seems well muscled,

healthy.

>> He's the biggest as well in size by the

looks of it.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay.

These tribes have been known to kill

people.

>> These tribes kill people all the time.

The the day after this happened, we went

down river and one of the people who had

been maintaining the peace during this

negotiation across the river was my

friend George. And George kept saying,

"Don't worry, it's going to be okay.

Don't worry, no mole." And he would say,

"Let's get them more bananas." And he

said, "You stay behind the tree. Say,

hey, please put down your camera. They

don't understand that it's not a gun."

He was making sure that everyone was

calm. Well, George was driving the day

after this in the river as he does every

day and he rounded one riverbend and the

tribe was out again. They were further

up river and usually when they leave

they go deep into the jungle but on this

day they had been walking up the river

which nobody expected and so when his

boat came around the river they hadn't

expected it and they open fired.

Everybody else on the boat was able to

get down under the the benches which is

made out of heavy thick wood. As he was

driving, he caught an arrow over the

scapula,

came out by his belly button.

So, it collapsed his right lung and cut

through his whole body

and he had to be helicopter evacuated

out of the indigenous community. And

somehow he lived.

But he's never going to be the same. And

there's there's a hundred stories I

could tell you of people that have been

killed by them.

But now and more and more there's

stories of that they are also being

exterminated. So their violence is in

response to the fact that the outside

world has been cruel to them. And the

only way that they can ensure that they

survive is by keeping the outside world

out.

>> This is a might be a bit of a dumb

question, but there's no consequence to

that is there from the Peruvian

government or anything. the proving

government aren't trying to um you know

if they if this uncontacted tribe kills

somebody they're not necessarily going

to go there and try and

enforce any kind of like law. That's

actually a great question because it

illustrates something that I think a lot

of people fundamentally don't understand

about this is that you know if this

banana is the last town

and then you imagine just our river is

the size of a football field.

>> Mhm.

>> Right.

How are you going to get to the other

side of it in the jungle? It takes you

about about an hour to cover half a mile

through through dense jungle. If me and

you were going with machetes right now

through dense dense jungle, about an

hour for every half mile. That's with no

trail. With trail, you can go a little

faster. With a boat, you can go a little

faster. But the police have no

jurisdiction outside of the city. The

only reason the police have power is

because everyone has agreed that there's

a government and that they have power

and that there's a but it's all made up.

And when you go out in the jungle, you

realize that there is no law in the

wild. It's just whatever happens. It's

who has a bigger stick.

And so they're still playing by that

game. They've never heard of a law. And

so they they've been known to find

something interesting just the way and

you know today if we're interested in a

bird, we take a picture of it and then

we study it or we can capture it. We can

study it. You know, sometimes people

will criticize Teddy Roosevelt for being

a hunter, but a lot of the species, if

he saw a new species, he would shoot it

so that he could study it. That was what

they did back then. But they do this

with humans. They'll be like, "That's an

interesting pair of pants."

They seem to think about life and death

very differently.

>> And I was watching something um a

podcast that you did where you said that

they also speak the same language. some

of these unconted tribes is the monkeys.

>> Yes. Um so what they do is they will

emulate capacin calls, bird calls, the

unrelated tinn tinimu goes.

Um the capachens I can't do their call

but these guys have it down perfectly.

>> Capagins being

>> capagin monkeys

and they'll use those sounds. And JJ's

father Don Santiago had told us years

and years ago he said we thought he was

just trying to scare us. He said, "If

you're ever in the forest and you hear

the animals sound a little off, if you

ever just feel like something's not

right about the way the He" He said,

"They've surrounded you and they're all

watching with their bows and arrows."

>> The tribes have.

>> Yeah. And so they'll go

and you'll go and he'll go and you go,

"Wait, wait a sec." You don't hear three

tinus in a row. That's not how it works.

That one tineu talks to the other tineu

and all of a sudden I got five tinus

around me. Uh-uh. And then you know you

got the tribe around you. And so this is

where the local people know how this

stuff works. And to anyone from the

outside that goes, there's no such thing

as unconted tribes and they don't

communicate. Yeah, they do. And one of

my friends was in that exact situation

where they were communicating with

animal calls in a circle while he was in

a stream with his father

and unfortunately they shot his father

in the stomach and his father died. And

then he ran for it and he lived to tell

the tale. And the next day the his

community, our friends came back and

they found

this guy who had just bled out through

his stomach. And why they killed him, we

do not know.

>> So they pretend they're animals. Um but

well, they they use animal sounds to

communicate with each other.

>> Yes.

>> Because then the prey, which in this

case might be a human,

>> Yeah.

>> won't know that it's

>> exactly.

>> Okay. So, if I'm going if we go, okay,

let's split up and surround. We're we're

we're unconted tribes now. And we go,

okay, there's loggers over there. Let's

split up, surround them. We'll see how

many of them there are.

>> And use the monkeys language to

>> use the monkey language. They don't

think anything of it. They'll just keep

doing what they're doing. And then when

we give the go-ahad, everybody, we just

slice them with seven foot arrows and

they're all going down.

I was I was going to ask about

happiness, but I don't even know the

context in which to ask the question

about their happiness.

>> No, I think I think that there's some

some Coror Mc McCarthy quotes that would

probably do better justice to their

reality than the idea of happiness. I

think that they are living in a world

where they're more concerned with

calories. They're more concerned with

how much blood does it cost to walk a

mile. They're more concerned with

stealing the women from other tribes.

They're not concerned with happiness.

It's more apocalyptto than uh Downtown

Abbey. You know, it's it's they're

they're

in a state of desperation. You could see

it in their face.

And that's where there's a further

anthropological question of what happens

in the future for these people. But one

thing that we know for certain is that

rapid contact destroys them. It's

happened before. All of this has

happened before. You know, when the

outside world reaches an unconted tribe,

the pathogens kill them. When the

outside world reaches even an indigenous

community, alcohol, outside pathogens,

money can destroy an indigenous culture

and take away their language in a single

generation. So, so these types of of

severely isolated cultures, if they want

to come out and make contact with the

indigenous communities that are their

neighbors, that has to happen over time.

And and they have to have the agency to

do it, which means their forest needs to

be protected.

And so that's that's and that's all we

know. You know, we don't know what their

birth rates are, what their infant

mortality rates are, where their old

people are, what what what what are

their creation myths, what are their

beliefs? We have no idea.

>> Do we even know where they live in terms

of do they live in huts, houses? Do we

know that?

>> No, they don't. In fact, at this very

moment right now, uh I would imagine

that there's several of them hunched

around a campfire in the darkness

beneath 160 ft of canopy. You know,

because when you're in the jungle,

there's there's these these pillars

going up, but then it's a it's a 4D

environment because it's just you're

walking. It's like you're walking along

the bottom of the ocean. You're this

tiny thing. And above you is all of this

slithering life and frogs and things

moving through the branches. And so

they're they're huddled down there in

the and below the Amazon rainforest. And

somehow they figured out how to make

fire,

which if I handed you a lighter and a

full cup of gasoline and said, "Have all

the sticks you want in the jungle," you

still couldn't make me a fire right now.

>> How do you know they can make fire?

>> Because we see them cook stuff. We find

their camps.

But it's also conceivable because they

don't have pots.

It's conceivable that that they some of

these people haven't seen water boil,

right? They just drink water and it

falls on them from the sky. They

certainly don't know that water freezes.

On this point of happiness, you said you

saw desperation in their faces, but does

that mean that you think they're not

happy,

>> or do you just think that

>> that isn't even a sort of a paradigm

that they even consider? It's all about

survival.

>> I think that we have we're inbuilt to

enjoy moments of joy. I think that

humans enjoy moments of interaction,

moments of play. And not just humans, I

think that animals in general. You look

at, you know, two puppies chasing each

other. They're having fun. You know,

even on even on this day with shotguns

loaded and bows cocked and we still

found the time to smile a little bit at

each other. Give me that machete. Yeah.

Yeah. Come and get it. And we kind of

like, you know, it was kind of like

you're just as scared of us as we are as

you. And it was it was a it was we were

on the same level for that smile,

>> you know? And I was like, oh, okay.

Yeah. None of us want to do that.

>> Um, and so there's there is happiness

there. But I'm saying, you know, uh

knowledge comes with benefits. You know,

there's a lot of things that they may

believe that I I remember when I was in

college reading about an anthrop

anthropologist group that got to

somewhere in New Guinea and all the

people were hiding in trees cuz they had

they'd gotten to a point in their

civilization where that where they

believed that everything that bad that

was bad came from magical spells. You

know, if I fall and break my leg, it's

cuz you set a magical spell on me and if

I get sick, it's because of a magical

spell. And everybody was so scared of

upsetting each other that they'd all

just started living in the trees and

hunting and they were living in this

constant fear state.

>> And so, you know, you at times like

that, you need someone to go, "Okay,

guys, look, here's what, you know,

here's what's happening. Let's get let's