EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,020 words- 0:00 – 0:02
Intro
- JRJoe Rogan
[upbeat music]
- 0:02 – 1:05
Paul returns with “Junglekeeper” — catching up, Marshall the dog, and a big update from the Amazon
- JRJoe Rogan
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
- SPSpeaker
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. [upbeat music] Hello, jungle man.
- PRPaul Rosolie
What's happening?
- JRJoe Rogan
Good to see you, my brother.
- PRPaul Rosolie
It's been a while.
- JRJoe Rogan
What's going on? You got books, you got notes.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I got books. I got the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Marshall's here with us.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I got this for you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ooh.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, a little, little note in there-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh
- PRPaul Rosolie
... you can read later.
- JRJoe Rogan
Junglekeeper, buddy.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, the brand new... That's what- back from the Amazon with that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nice. Marshall, say hi to everybody. Come up here.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I love that you bring Marshall. Have you- has Marshall gone on other podcasts, or is it just-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes, he's been on a couple.
- PRPaul Rosolie
You're a good boy. You're a good boy. We should-
- JRJoe Rogan
I just have to keep him from, uh, going under the wire. Hello, buddy.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I gotta keep him from, uh, getting under the... Come on up. Come on up here. Say hi to everybody.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [chuckles]
- JRJoe Rogan
Aw. He's the best.
- PRPaul Rosolie
He is the best.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's a good sweetie.
- PRPaul Rosolie
He's soft, man. He's got-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah
- PRPaul Rosolie
... he's got amazing coat.
- 1:05 – 5:11
Uncontacted tribe encounter on the river: “Nomore” (brothers), plantains, and a tense first exchange
- JRJoe Rogan
You re- you released that video. I saw the video of, uh-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes
- JRJoe Rogan
... the uncontacted tribe.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, hitting send on that was scary, 'cause-
- JRJoe Rogan
Ooh!
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wild.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I sent you, I sent you a message that day-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah
- PRPaul Rosolie
... when that, [chuckles] when that happened.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you did.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That is crazy. I've shown it to a few people, but we've never showed it live-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... but it is... So Marshall, you gotta lie down, buddy. You can't be, uh-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Come here
- JRJoe Rogan
... climbing under the wires.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Come here.
- JRJoe Rogan
Lie down, bubba.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Sit, sit, sit. Come here. Good boy, good boy, good boy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, that experience has to be so insane to-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... to contact, like, legitimately uncontacted people. There they are.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah. Yeah, and so-
- JRJoe Rogan
Ladies and gentlemen, do not look at their dongs.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Do not. Well, I mean, you know, but also maybe take a style tip from them and tie them up.
- JRJoe Rogan
Weird how they got their waist wrapped up, but they don't have their dongs wrapped up or their butthole.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Well, the, it, it seems like they're-
- JRJoe Rogan
Strange choice
- PRPaul Rosolie
... they're trying to protect or they're trying to keep lots of rope. I think rope is, like, their main-
- 5:11 – 13:49
Amazon under pressure: deforestation scale, cattle ranching, roads, and the “COP road” irony
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah. Yeah, and so right now what we have is we have the loggers and the gold miners coming in, and so since, like, the last time I saw you, it was, it was... We were, we were nailing all these successes, adding acres to the reserve, 'cause what we're doing is trying to create this corridor, which is gonna become a national park. We're trying to save this one river in the headwaters of the Amazon, and we had been on this success run, you know, from, from people hearing the stories, from things like this, people coming in and helping us do that. And then it started to change, where we realized, okay, we're protecting so much land, that the logging mafias and the narco traffickers started pushing back. And so now it's getting more serious. As we're getting closer to the finish line, it's getting harder because they're going, "We want this to remain wild." And we're going, "We're trying to protect this," and the local communities are going, "This is our forest." And the loggers and the narcos and the miners are coming from other places, and they're cutting down this forest.... and so it's just, you know, I mean, everyone knows the Amazon is the lungs of the Earth. Everyone knows it's got a, a- it, it produces a fifth of our o- oxygen on our planet. It contains a fifth of the oxygen, of the fresh water on our planet, so it's vital to global planetary stability. But we've already destroyed 20% of it, and so we're seeing the moisture cycle get broken.
- JRJoe Rogan
20%?
- PRPaul Rosolie
20% of the whole Amazon rainforest.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's insane-
- PRPaul Rosolie
And that thing is-
- JRJoe Rogan
So big
- PRPaul Rosolie
... 2.7 million square miles, and I think the lower 48 is three-point-something million square miles.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow!
- PRPaul Rosolie
It's gigantic.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow. And they've already killed off 20% of it?
- PRPaul Rosolie
20% of it's already gone.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it, um, mostly cattle running? Like, what is... What are they, what are they doing it for?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Cattle ranching accounts for 60% of Amazon deforestation, and then it's just development, roads. China has a new shipping port in Peru that they wanna, you know, create a, I think, an- a railroad over the Andes Mountains or through the Andes Mountains so they can start getting access to the Amazon for Asian markets.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it true they carved out a giant pathway through the Amazon for a climate change conference?
- PRPaul Rosolie
You know, I've been trying to figure out if that's true. I saw that go all over the internet, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
But it's one of those things, it's like, who knows if that's real?
- PRPaul Rosolie
That, and then the other one is the, like, a s- you know, Swedish billionaire bought this much of the Amazon, and it's like, but what's his name?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PRPaul Rosolie
They keep saying that, and I'm like, I don't-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, let's put it into Perplexity and find out if that's true.
- SPSpeaker
Which one?
- JRJoe Rogan
The, uh, whether or not they carved out a pathway through the Amazon for a climate change summit-
- PRPaul Rosolie
That seems-
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause that sounds like horseshit.
- PRPaul Rosolie
That just sounds too, too ridiculous.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's no way they would do something that stupid.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I don't know, but I did see people-
- JRJoe Rogan
But also, why would they have a climate change summit in the Amazon? You gonna do it in a tent? Like, what are you-
- PRPaul Rosolie
No, I think they did it in Manaus. I mean, there are cities in the Amazon.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sh-
- 13:49 – 18:22
Was the Amazon “man-made”? Terra preta, LiDAR discoveries, and why the framing matters politically
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I'm happy to get the word out 'cause I, I, I mean, it, it's, it's kind of insane that it's happening, but it's also, that place is such a magical place, and it has such an insane history that we're, we're just starting to understand the history of the people that lived there.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, through the use of LIDAR, they're just starting to understand that the entire place was massively populated and that a lot of the plants that exist in the Amazon are actually agriculture plants that went, you know, went rogue when the people were depopulated because people brought in smallpox.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I, I gotta push back on that. That's, that's-- I feel like that's a theory that's been becoming prevalent as a theory-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And then-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, sure, there was a jungle-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... before.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because even in the Lost City of Z, I mean, even the, the talk-- What is it, Percy Fawcett?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think that's his name.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, Percy Fawcett.
- JRJoe Rogan
All the pe- the people that went there-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... they talked about the-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... Amazon being a lush rainforest.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, but, and these enormous cities w- that were incredibly complex-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... before the jungle swallowed them up. So it's, it's clear that there was some form of jungle there already.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Hundred percent.
- JRJoe Rogan
But that these plants that they grew for agriculture were the ones that had, uh, you know, once people stopped tending them-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm
- JRJoe Rogan
... and taking care of them, they overwhelmed the rest of the forest.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah. A, a friend sent me a clip, and you were, I think you were talking to Tom Segura, and you went, "You know, and the crazy thing about the Amazon..." Uh, and you went, "It, it's, it's largely man-made." And I was like, [claps] and I, like, threw something, and I was like: "No, this is not!" [chuckles]
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, let's find out why we said that. Let's, uh, pull that up. Um, put- run that into Perplexity and see what articles we get.
- PRPaul Rosolie
So-
- 18:22 – 23:19
Amazon deep history: inland sea origins, freshwater dolphins, low-visibility rivers, and unusual fauna
- PRPaul Rosolie
It used to be a vast inland sea.
- JRJoe Rogan
Crazy!
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes. When it, when it separated from Africa, the, the, the, the Congo and the Amazon used to be joined in some sort of proto-Congo system, and then when they, they separated, the Amazon, South America hit up against the Nazca Plate, the Andes Mountains shot up, and then the salinated water drained out, and that's why we still have, uh, inland freshwater stingrays, manatees, pink river dolphins.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, that makes sense.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And so that happened-
- JRJoe Rogan
That makes sense
- PRPaul Rosolie
... over millions of years as the, the salinated water-
- JRJoe Rogan
So over millions of years, the saltwater dolphins adapted to freshwater.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Exactly, and changed.
- JRJoe Rogan
And is that why they became pink?
- PRPaul Rosolie
They became pink, I think because they've lost their pigmentation. They have terrible eyesight.... um, they almost don't need to see, because you don't- in the, in that sediment-rich water, they're using s- they're using sonar.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa! That's crazy.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow, so they become almost blind?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, like, all the fish. You pull out these giant catfish, they hardly have eyes. They have, like, light-sensing organs.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa!
- PRPaul Rosolie
There's... You can't see- I mean, there's- there are clear rivers in the Amazon, which I would love to-- I've never been to one. And, like, the streams are clear, but the Amazon River itself is nothing. Everyone's like: "Oh, you should bring a GoPro in the river with you." And I'm like: "For what?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I understand.
- PRPaul Rosolie
You're not gonna see anything.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's just sediment.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
But the thing that, that, that the, that this, this theory about the, the Amazon is even human-engineered is wrong. Because when you look at the size of the Amazon, you look at that 2.7 million miles, it's, it's that they've said that what they're not getting is that in the areas that these people have been studying with LiDAR and through this anthropological digging, they're saying it's more than we thought. There's certainly more human settlements than we previously thought. There maybe were a few million people there before Pizarro and, and, and the explorers came. But when you don't-- what you don't realize is that between the rivers, between each river, which is the majority of the Amazon, is this terra firma giant jungle with hundreds of miles between the rivers. Nobody's been there. And so I just was reading a scientific paper. It was saying they went out and sampled those areas, and it showed absolutely no sign of human engineering. And so most of the forest-
- JRJoe Rogan
In terms of the growth of the plants-
- PRPaul Rosolie
And in-
- JRJoe Rogan
But did they do LiDAR to see if there's previous structures?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Well, the good thing with the LiDAR is that they fly over.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 23:19 – 27:17
Living with communities: eating turtle and monkey, respecting hosts, and managing modern hunting tools
- JRJoe Rogan
Have you had sea turtle before? Have you... This kind of turtle, whatever it is, have you eaten it yet?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Oh, sea turtle? No. This? Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
This turtle? Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Absolutely.
- JRJoe Rogan
What is it like?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Uh, uh, uh, it's kinda slimy. It's not like anything. It's very strange, 'cause you-- they cook it and just, you know, everyone, everyone always go: "How could you be a conservationist and eat the animal?" Because when you go to someone's house, and they live on the side of a river, and they go, "We're having dinner," that's what they're serving.
- JRJoe Rogan
You gotta eat with them, yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
You gotta eat with them.
- JRJoe Rogan
I wouldn't do that, man. You're ruining the Earth.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, how could you?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Let me throw paint on it. [laughing]
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughing] Let me glue myself to this shell.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes, that's what I'm gonna do next time.
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughing]
- PRPaul Rosolie
Um, I mean, I showed you that video where I'm sharing the monkey head with the girl.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
It was like I was babysitting a six-year-old, and she was like, "It's lunchtime." And I was like, "Well, what did your parents leave you for lunch?" She, like, opens this pot and pulls out a monkey head, and she was like, "This." So we put it on the fire, warmed it up, and then we both sat there, just, like, rip- I would, like, rip off a piece for her, 'cause I was stronger, and give it to her, and then she was like: "No, no, no, I want the ear." And she, like, she would rip off the ear.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa!
- PRPaul Rosolie
Like, we just sat there eating a monkey face. And so the turtle, they cook it in the shell. They'll just, like, you know, they'll just, like, slit its throat, throw it on the fire, and so it cooks in the shell. Then they part the shell, and then you kinda just, like, it's like a slow-cooked, like, when the meat falls off the bone.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow!
- PRPaul Rosolie
You just throw a little salt on there-
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's kinda-
- PRPaul Rosolie
... and have it with rice.
- JRJoe Rogan
How do they get their salt? Is that something they trade for?
- PRPaul Rosolie
They trade for it. They trade for it. I mean, the people I'm dealing with have access to the outside. Even the really remote communities that are two days upriver, they, they, they trade with the outside world. They have some interaction with money.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And so that's one of the things that we're doing as an organization, is saying, "Okay, what do you want your future to look like?"... because right now you have a couple shotguns, you got a couple chainsaws, you got a couple boats, and those things make you want money, but you also want to eat fish out of the river every day.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PRPaul Rosolie
You also wanna eat monkeys every day, and these are your staples. And they're like, "You know, i- if, if you cut down more of these trees, there will be less monkeys. If you shoot too many..." Like, it's not like they have deer tags, where it's, like, a monitored thing. They just, they- they're not understanding this. You know, when it was a bow and arrow, it was kind of a fair game.
- 27:17 – 34:15
Gold mining’s scar: mercury, poisoned food chains, fires, and the brutal reality of habitat loss
- JRJoe Rogan
Do they g- uh, is there any pushback? Like, is there any, like, political influence by the, whatever it is, miners, ranchers, anyone who tries to stop that from happening, bribe people to try to take over the land of these people?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Absolutely. I mean, the Amazon is a war zone of, of influence, and so you have... I mean, the, the miners, if anybody tries to protest the gold mining, they kill you. So one of the lawyers that I was working with, his father had come out and said, "Look, as a local Peruvian person in the jungle, I want this to stop. They can't-- they're destroying..." There's a-- Jamie, there's a, a, a photo in the folder that says, I think it says Sandstorm or something, but it's just... It's not even... Again, deserts are, are actually ecosystems. This is a wasteland. They've, they've destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres in the Peruvian Amazon. You can see it from space. It's this horrible scar, and they've cut the trees, burned the forest, and then they've sucked the land up, and then they, they take the bottom of the sediment, and they use mercury to bind the gold out of the sediment. And then they burn the mercury off the gold, releasing it into the air.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, great.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Oh, yeah. So that then in the rain, it comes down as mercury rain, which gets into the fish-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, God
- PRPaul Rosolie
... which gets into the people.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then also the miners must be getting mercury poisoning.
- PRPaul Rosolie
The miners all have mercury poisoning, birth defects-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh
- PRPaul Rosolie
... health problems, respiratory issues.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I mean, it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow!
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, that's some of the fires. Um, that's, that's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that you?
- PRPaul Rosolie
That is me. That is me running out there with my-
- JRJoe Rogan
So you're right there?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah. I mean, as soon as we see forest burning, we, we, we run towards it.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it rains there a lot, right?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, like, how long does this forest fire last?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Well, they do it in September, when the- so like, it's like, uh, July through September when the forest is at its driest. They come in, and they cut the forest, and they leave it down.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was that picture you just showed me, Jamie?
- PRPaul Rosolie
That's a horrible picture. That's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that animals burned alive on a tree?
- PRPaul Rosolie
That's two baby jaguars that were burned alive.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, God.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah. And so people-
- JRJoe Rogan
And they're just stuck on the tree, burned alive?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- 34:15 – 47:42
Medical stakes in the wild: stingray injury, indigenous plant poultices, and why intact ecosystems limit disease
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, there's gotta be a bunch... Well, there, there's so many plants that they find there. That- this is an interesting statistic. Um, find out what percentage of pharmaceutical drugs, the compounds emanate from the Amazon.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's an enormous percentage.
- PRPaul Rosolie
It's huge. Yeah, yeah. A lot of the base drugs, quinine, came from the Amazon, the first cure for malaria. I know captopril, which was a blood pressure medication, came from bushmaster venom. That was in the '90s. There's, there's so much. I mean, I just got whacked by a stingray hard.
- JRJoe Rogan
I saw that. It got your foot, right?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Ah, it was brutal.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was that like? What happened?
- PRPaul Rosolie
That was brutal. I mean, that in-
- JRJoe Rogan
Bro, you've been hit by everything.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I, I had this- [laughing] Dude, I, I- my body is a Jackson Pollock painting of scars.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you, do you ever get checked for parasites? 'Cause you must have all of them.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I do. I do. I have to.
- JRJoe Rogan
Estimates typly- typically say that about 25% of modern, modern pharmaceutical drugs are derived from rainforest plants, and many of the, of those known examples come from the Amazon, but there's no precise peer-reviewed percentage-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm
- JRJoe Rogan
... just for the Amazon alone. Um, most popular figures, you see, like, 25% of medicines come from the Amazon, actually refer to all tropical rainforests, not specifically the Amazon. But the, the thing is, like, uh, how much of the Amazon has not been explored, and how many potential pharmaceutical drugs or... You know, here's, that's the term, right? Pharmaceutical drugs. What about natural remedies exist in the Amazon-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yep
- JRJoe Rogan
... that aren't, you, you don't need to patent them and sell them at a fucking pharmacy and-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, I mean, look, so we have, you know, we have, we have Neosporin. You get a cut, it looks a little infected, you put Neosporin on it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
It might work. Down there, we have a tree that if you get... We, we tested this, and it, it murders bacteria. It's like 100 times more potent than Neosporin.
- JRJoe Rogan
What's it called?
- PRPaul Rosolie
The sangre de drago. It's not even a big secret. Like, people know about this. Every time I post about it, everyone's like: "Yeah, we know about that. We use it."
- JRJoe Rogan
No kidding!
- PRPaul Rosolie
But, but, but no one's ever turned it into a cream.
- JRJoe Rogan
Can it grow in Austin?
- PRPaul Rosolie
[chuckles] Probably.
- JRJoe Rogan
Can I get some sangre... How do you say it?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Sangre de drago, the dragon's blood.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sangre de gr- de drago.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Sangre de drago.
- 47:42 – 59:07
Jungle intelligence and animal communication: reading the forest, lying monkeys, and rescuing a spider monkey
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. And, and the, the, you know, the other thing is, like, how much of our senses have atrophied by modern civilization?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, what kind of communication do you actually get from the forest? Like, is there... Is it instincts, intuition? Are there senses? Does- is there a feeling that you get, where you get an understanding of combining two things because the jungle's actually got a way of communicating with you that's a non-verbal way?
- PRPaul Rosolie
I think the, the jungle... I mean, I view it as almost a, you know, it's like, it's godlike. It's, it's almost like a, a giant, complex, sentient being. And so you, if you listen to, if you watch, you know, if you walk the jungle with JJ, an indigenous tracker, he'll tell you, "You listen to the birds, they'll tell you how fast you're allowed to walk."
- JRJoe Rogan
What?
- PRPaul Rosolie
And what he, what he means is, you're walking through the forest on a sunny day, it's the afternoon, and everybody's chirping and making tons of noise, then all of a sudden, everything goes quiet. And then you gotta figure out, you know, is that because there's a weather system coming in, and we're about to be in a thunderstorm, or is there a jaguar right over there, and everything around me knows? And it's like the, the, the birds are the messengers of the forest. And so you- even that, you start to become attuned to the frequency of the forest. And I notice when I bring people in that, you know, have never been in the wild before, they, they walk loud, they're talking the whole time. They're not paying attention to that sort of-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right
- PRPaul Rosolie
... you know, holistic view of where you are.
- JRJoe Rogan
We're so clunky.
- PRPaul Rosolie
... you know, modern civilized life has made us so clunky when it comes to the woods.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
You know, just when I take people in the woods, if people have never hunted before-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah
- PRPaul Rosolie
... they're stepping on branches, snap!
- JRJoe Rogan
Snap, yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Kicking rocks over.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Like, da, da, da, da, da, da.
- JRJoe Rogan
Talking-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Talking loud.
- JRJoe Rogan
My favorite is walking in front of you, and then when the stick snaps back, like-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... you know, having the sensitivity to, like-
- PRPaul Rosolie
They don't catch it.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
They don't catch it, like, come on.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Just get [claps hands] smacked in the face.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- 59:07 – 1:11:22
The dark frontier: missionaries, exploitation, and the new threat landscape of narcos and logging roads
- PRPaul Rosolie
He was like, "It's just sh- destroyed." And it was... Where he is, is, like, something, it's like Cormac McCarthy's nightmare. If Cormac McCarthy was still alive, I would show him the, the, the-- I went to a part of the Amazon that, that really no one goes to, up this horrible river, and, and the- there were recently contacted, uncontacted people, just, just this tribe that had just come out of the forest, and they still had their bows, and they had no idea... Me and JJ went for, like, a three-week expedition, plane to plane to plane, to three days on a boat, to two days on a boat, to finally reaching this last settlement, and the missionaries had pulled this tribe out of the forest. They'd tricked them. They said, "Just come with us for a ride," and pulled them out. But then they said, "Well, if you want to go back, you've got to pay for your gasoline." And the tribe was like, "Well, how do we-- pay with what?" And they were like, "Money." And the tribe was like, "What's that, and where do we get it?" And so these little people were stand- these were not tall people like the Mashco-Piro. These were little, tiny people, and they were standing there with their bows. And so we showed up with our tents and our gear, and we were trying to go up this river in our boat, and these little people came up to us, and they were like... They were making the gesture for food. And so there's some loggers over there, and so JJ just didn't, didn't think, and he was like: "You want some food, you gotta go pay for it." He was like, "Money." And, you know, he's-- through a guy who was translating, and these people are going, "But we don't have any money." And JJ took some coins out of his pocket and was like: "Just go buy some bread." And he gave them some coins, and they went and they tried it, and they got some bread. And then all of a sudden, there's 50 of them coming at us, and they were surrounding JJ, and they were grabbing at him, and they were like, "He's the guy with these tokens that allow us to eat."
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh!
- PRPaul Rosolie
And we had to get out of there 'cause it was causing a problem.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- PRPaul Rosolie
But, I mean, these people think they, they, they're with their bows and arrows, and there's no more animals to hunt-
- JRJoe Rogan
[exhaling]
- PRPaul Rosolie
... and no one's gonna give them money, and they live at the edge of the world.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they're probably tiny 'cause they don't have any protein.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow!
- PRPaul Rosolie
It was horrifying. It was one of the worst things I've ever-- I've seen poverty all over the world. This was, uh, again-
- JRJoe Rogan
A hunter-gatherer tribe-
- PRPaul Rosolie
... McCarthyan-
- JRJoe Rogan
-with no food
- PRPaul Rosolie
... With no food and no way of getting back to forest where they could be a hunter-gatherer tribe. Now, they were in this, in this wasteland where the loggers and the gold miners and the oil companies... There was, there was even, there was even a barge with oil, and it was like, this is where the Amazon is being eaten.
- JRJoe Rogan
[exhaling]
- PRPaul Rosolie
And it was out of sight. You have to go for days just to get there. There's no foreigners there. Actually, they did say... We were talking to one logger, and he said-... He goes, "You know, a few years ago," he goes, "there was a- we saw some rafts coming down river, and then they stopped at this beach up river, and they, they, they made camp." And he's like, "So we all talked about it, and we said, 'Well, we have a feeling they're organ harvesters.'" And they-
- SPSpeaker
What?
- PRPaul Rosolie
They were scared of these, of these incomers, right? And so-
- SPSpeaker
The, the organ harvesters-
- PRPaul Rosolie
That's what-
- SPSpeaker
-visit the Amazon?
- PRPaul Rosolie
No. And so but that's what they were... They're sitting around the campfire, and someone was like: "What if they're organ harvesters?" Like-
- SPSpeaker
Well, why would they think that?
- PRPaul Rosolie
I don't know.
- SPSpeaker
But, but that must be a thing that gets-
- PRPaul Rosolie
I don't know. But, but the dude I was sitting with told me, he goes, "You know, we got real scared sitting around the campfire. Everyone was telling these stories," and he's like, "So we figured the safest thing would be to go kill them." So they went, and they killed them, and they were a couple of European, like, hikers on a mega expedition in the Amazon.
- SPSpeaker
Oh, God.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And they just got murdered by the locals preemptively in case they were dangerous.
- SPSpeaker
Oh, God!
- 1:11:22 – 1:32:13
Protecting a river corridor: mapping the battle, ranger stations, and why the park model could work
- PRPaul Rosolie
And so we went... Of course, we went to the police, and we're like: "Look, you- we're gonna need a lot more protection." They're like, "It's getting..." I mean, we're, we're just trying to save the rainforest, man. Like, we're not trying to... And these people are going, "Well, we're just trying to grow drugs, and we want to do that where there's no police." And the wilderness is only s- the, the wilderness is becoming a finite thing now, so it's becoming this battlef- battleground. Jamie, on there is a map. I'm wondering if you could pull up the map, 'cause I could explain to you-
- SPSpeaker
What's the status of this right now? Are they still after you guys?
- PRPaul Rosolie
They are still after us, but it's been... For, for about eight months, it was really bad. It was-
- SPSpeaker
Eight months
- PRPaul Rosolie
... really scary. It was horrible. Like, every day, anytime JJ called me, I'd, I'd have a panic attack. But you see, the, the, the yellow on the right is the Trans-Amazon Highway. That's the big, that's the big artery. That's what the Chinese and Brazil built. But then that smaller thing going up, that's, that's the roads that the loggers and the narcos are making. And so that big red arrow, they're trying to make a road that goes in through there. And so the, the white line outlines what we're trying to protect, and then that light greenish-blue is the area that we have protected. That's that 130,000 acres that we have protected, and so that's what we're doing right now. It's a race against time. If we can fill in that area, if we can fill that whole thing in, we save the land, and once it's ours, once it's under Junglekeepers protection, it's Indigenous protected, the-
- SPSpeaker
All right, we're back.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Um, so where are they dr- growing the drugs in this map?
- PRPaul Rosolie
So right at the upper tip of that arrow, sort of the outside, they had cut a little, a little road filament into there, and again, these little, tiny trail roads, they, they go under the forest. The forest is 160 feet tall.
- SPSpeaker
Is there a way you can communicate with these guys, saying you're not trying to stop this?
- PRPaul Rosolie
I mean, right now, what we're doing is putting signs on, on all of these little, tiny... I mean, these are jungle roads, where just to go on the road, you're going out to where, you know, if anybody finds you out there, they'll just kill you, and your body will be decomposed and recycled within 48 hours by the jungle. So you're, you're, you're past where there's police. This is just Earth. It's the Wild West.
- SPSpeaker
[exhales] More than the Wild West, right? Because the Wild West was never this dense.
- PRPaul Rosolie
... Well, it's the Wild West, and you can't see 10 feet in front of you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what I'm talking about.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, this is more wild than the Wild West.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I, I guess so.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
You still have- you have, you have Indians with arrows, and now you have these narcos that are, that are straight-up evil that are coming. I mean, they're taking girls from indigenous communities to work in their brothels. They're growing cocaine-
- JRJoe Rogan
They have brothels up there?
- PRPaul Rosolie
You got men working out in the jungle, and so they go to the communities, and they tell them, "Hey, your d- your daughter's very pretty. She'd be a great waitress. You know, we can educate her while she trains and helps people," and then they, they never see them again.
- JRJoe Rogan
[exhales]
- PRPaul Rosolie
And so it's all that darkness, and, and at the same time, what we're doing is bettering the lives of the community, making friends with these people. We have these amazing rangers, and, I mean, we have different ranger stations along the river, and if we make this into a park like, um, Teddy Roosevelt... No, John Muir took Teddy Roosevelt on a three-day camping trip and showed him Yosemite and, like, Sequoia and all this stuff, and he was like, "We've gotta protect this. Like, it's special here. Look at the size of these trees. Look at the beauty of this valley," and then they protected it. There's nothing as wild as this river on Earth today, and so if we protect this now, the, the, the, the 200 indigenous people that live on this river get protected from the narcos. They continue having abundant fish and resources, and then they'll work as park guards and educators and chefs and boat drivers to maintain this gigantic pr- protected area, and then Peru will have this crown jewel of the Amazon. So they love it.
- JRJoe Rogan
But how can you protect them from the narcos? I mean, it seems like-
- PRPaul Rosolie
The police-
- JRJoe Rogan
... the amount of money that's involved-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... in trafficking cocaine-
- 1:32:13 – 1:58:01
From Amazon to fight talk: Lex’s ayahuasca night, then UFC legends, training philosophy, and brain injury realities
- PRPaul Rosolie
It's weird, after, um... Lex ruined drinking for me.
- SPSpeaker
Lex gets saucy. [laughing]
- PRPaul Rosolie
Well, this is the thing, when he came, when he came to the am- when he came to the Amazon, he, he goes: "I wanna do ayahuasca." And so we called, you know, JJ's oldest brother, he's 70-something, we called this shaman in, and he's like, you know, with the Lex voice, he's like: "Brother, you have to do this with me." And I was like: "I am not drinking ayahuasca." I, I... There's a chapter in the book about when I did it with the old master, and he, he, he over-boiled it, and we all, like, saw God in the uni- we were there for the Big Bang. It was awful.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, nice.
- PRPaul Rosolie
It was hard. No, it was not.
- SPSpeaker
No?
- PRPaul Rosolie
No, no.
- SPSpeaker
Why?
- PRPaul Rosolie
It was like taking a mega dose. It was-
- SPSpeaker
Oh, I like.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Sure. It was awful. It was traumatic.
- SPSpeaker
You don't like to get scared?
- PRPaul Rosolie
I was terrified, man. [laughing] Yeah, I know. So I was like, "I have retired."
- SPSpeaker
[laughing]
- PRPaul Rosolie
I was like, "I'm not doing it." And Lex was walking around in circles for two hours, and he comes up to me, and he puts his hand on my shoulder, and he goes: "I came all the way here for you." He goes, "Now, you do this for me." He goes: "Don't leave me alone in the dark." And I went, "God..." I said, "All right, I'll do it."
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. [laughing]
- PRPaul Rosolie
And we drank right next to each other, and the guy's smoking his pipe, and, you know, he has the feathers on, and he's singing to us, and you're drinking, and you're going deeper-
- SPSpeaker
Icaros
- PRPaul Rosolie
... and deeper into the hole, and God! Um, it was interesting, though, we both, um... The shaman said that, um, you know, he was talking about what Lex was going- afterwards, he was talking about what Lex was going through on his journey, and he, he does, goes in and does this deep work of the things he sees coming off of you.
- SPSpeaker
Uh-huh.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And this is a guy, the shaman, I've known for 20 years. He's like my uncle. And, and so he would come up to me, and he'd go... I'd be laying down, you can't, you can't get up, and he'd come up to me, and he'd go, "One more cup?" And I'd be like: "Sure." [laughing] Like, "Why not?"
- SPSpeaker
[laughing]
- PRPaul Rosolie
And he'd, like, give me, like, a, like, a kiss on the forehead-
- SPSpeaker
Ah
- PRPaul Rosolie
... and throw it down my throat. And then he'd go to Lex and go, "One more cup?" And Lex would be like, "Yes." And then, l- you know, give it to Lex, and he said that, he said that he wasn't worried about my spirit. He said I was, I was there to protect Lex.
- SPSpeaker
Oh.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And he said Lex was there to, to, to do some real work. And so, what's interesting is that we both reached this sort of, um, we, we both reached the pinnacle of, of, of what was happening at the same time, where I felt myself about... I felt it coming. I was like: "Oh, no, I'm gonna throw up, I'm gonna throw up." And all of a sudden, my, my consciousness lifted six feet above my body, and I was looking down at me and Lex, and I got this overwhelmingly calm sensation, and it... Without speaking, the shaman said to me, he said, "You're not gonna feel this. I know you don't like it." He said, "You're just here to support him, so you can vomit now." And so Lex started vomiting, and I started vomiting, but I was watching myself, and I was watching him, and I was just like, "This is fine. It doesn't hurt a bit." And it was very, very comforting. And then he came, and he started with the, you know, shaking the leaves and singing louder and, and really cultivating, making sure we gave everything, that we purged all of it. And then, and then he brought the crescendo down, and then he, he, he calmed, and then he began singing, and then we, we came... We, we, we settled back into the, the, the symphonic throb of the night. And then the trip went on for some time, but it was, it was interesting that things heightened at that moment and that we went through it together.
- SPSpeaker
Wow!
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
So why did he think that you were there to protect Lex? Is it just, like, something he felt?
- 1:58:01 – 2:15:40
Bigfoot, small hominins, and why evidence is hard: Jane Goodall’s influence and Paul’s origin story
- PRPaul Rosolie
He loves dinosaurs. Um, no, it's just, it's crazy, man. You, you've, you've gotten to this... You've, you've met everyone. Did you ever have Jane Goodall on here?
- JRJoe Rogan
No, I did not, unfortunately.
- PRPaul Rosolie
[chuckles] I wanted to make that happen.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I w- I wanted to, and I wanted-
- PRPaul Rosolie
I wanted to make that happen.
- JRJoe Rogan
She's gone, right?
- PRPaul Rosolie
She just died.
- JRJoe Rogan
I wanted to talk to her-
- PRPaul Rosolie
We just lost her
- JRJoe Rogan
... about Bigfoot, 'cause she was convinced [chuckles] that Bigfoot was real.
- PRPaul Rosolie
What?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
She was convinced that Bigfoot was real?
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she did this interview.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Find me-
- JRJoe Rogan
She said she's certain of it.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Come on.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, yeah. We'll find it. Jamie, see if you can find that.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I, I... Not that I don't believe you, but I just don't find-
- JRJoe Rogan
I know
- PRPaul Rosolie
... Jane Goodall.
- JRJoe Rogan
I know, I know, I know. I was stunned. I was like, "What?" And this is by the time I had been convinced that Bigfoot was fake.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, I'm in that camp.
- JRJoe Rogan
But I, this is-
- PRPaul Rosolie
There's camera traps.
- JRJoe Rogan
But this is the camp. Um, there was an animal that e- that coexisted with human beings for sure-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Sure
- JRJoe Rogan
... that was called Gigantopithecus.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes, fine.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know the whole story?
Episode duration: 2:42:08
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Transcript of episode EoFniMSMj08
