Paul Rosolie: Amazon Jungle, Uncontacted Tribes, Anacondas, and Ayahuasca | Lex Fridman Podcast #369

1. 0:00 – 2:33

   Introduction

   1. PRPaul Rosolie0:00

      ... it was just like one of those moments where we saw it at the same time. And we were standing by the tail, and the snake was so big that, I mean, this must have been a 25-foot anaconda dead asleep with a- with a probably a 16-foot anaconda, like, sprawled across her.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:19

      Mm-hmm.

   3. PRPaul Rosolie0:19

      And they're laying in the starlight and we're floating on top of a lake standing there in the middle of the Amazon. And J.J. just- I just- I could feel the blood drain out of his face.

   4. LFLex Fridman0:28

      Mm-hmm.

   5. PRPaul Rosolie0:29

      And as like a- however old I was, you know, maybe 20 years old, I just said, "If I- if we could somehow show people this, we'll be on the front cover of National Geographic and we can protect all the jungle that we want." And so-

   6. LFLex Fridman0:45

      (laughs)

   7. PRPaul Rosolie0:45

      ... I tried to catch it. (laughs)

   8. LFLex Fridman0:47

      Yeah.

   9. PRPaul Rosolie0:48

      So I jumped on the snake, and the only measurement I have of this animal is that when I wrapped my arms around it, I couldn't touch my fingers.

   10. LFLex Fridman0:54

       Yeah.

   11. PRPaul Rosolie0:54

       And so I was, you know- my- my- my feet were dragging. And to her credit, this anaconda did not turn around and eat me 'cause her head was, you know, this big.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:01

       Yeah.

   13. PRPaul Rosolie1:02

       And- and she went and she reached the edge of the- the- the grass island and she starts plunging into the dark. And so I'm watching the stars vibrate as this anaconda's going and I had to make the choice of either going headfirst down into the black, which no thank you, or stopping and just keeping my hand on this thing as it raced by me. And I just felt the scales and the muscle and the power go by and then eventually taper down to the tail until it slipped away into the darkness. And I was laying there just panting.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:36

       The following is a conversation with Paul Rosolie, a conservationist, explorer, author, filmmaker, and real life Tarzan. Since- for much of the past 17 years, Paul has lived deep in the Amazon rainforest protecting endangered species and trees from poachers, loggers, and foreign nations funding them. He is the founder of Jungle Keepers, which today protects over 50,000 acres of threatened habitat. And Paul is one of the most incredible human beings I've ever met. I hope to travel with him in the Amazon jungle one day because in his eyes, I saw a truth that can only be discovered directly by spending time among the immensity and power of nature at its purest. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast, to support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Paul Rosolie.

2. 2:33 – 13:47

   Amazon rainforest

   1. LFLex Fridman2:33

      In 2006, at 18 years old, you fled New York and traveled to the Amazon. This started a journey that I think lasts to this day. Uh, tell me about this first leap. What in your heart pulled you towards the Amazon jungle?

   2. PRPaul Rosolie2:47

      From the time I was, you know, three years old I'd say, you know, it was dinosaurs, wildlife documentaries, Steve Irwin, you name it, and like when my parents said, you know, it's nature versus nurture. They- they nurtured my nature. I was always just drawn to streams, forests. I wanted to go explore where the little- little creek led. I wanted to see the turtles and the snakes. And so I was a kid that hated school, did not get along with school. I was dyslexic and didn't know it. Undiagnosed. I didn't read until I was like 10 years old, like way behind. And so for me, the forest was safety. Like, I remember one time in first grade they had you doing those- you know those multiplication sheets?

   3. LFLex Fridman3:26

      Mm-hmm.

   4. PRPaul Rosolie3:27

      That was pure hell for me. And so I actually got so upset that I couldn't do it that I ran out the classroom, ran out the door, and went to the nearest woods and I stayed there 'cause that was safe. And so for me, like once I got to the point where I was like, "High school isn't working out," I had incredibly supportive parents that were like, "Look, just get out, take your GED, get out of high school after 10th grade. You gotta go to college, but like start doing something you love." And so I saved up and bought a ticket to the Amazon and met some indigenous guys and the second I walked in that forest, it was like- it's like the first scene in Jurassic Park when they see the dinosaurs and they go, "This is it."

   5. LFLex Fridman4:04

      Yeah.

   6. PRPaul Rosolie4:04

      I walked in there and just- I looked at those giant trees. I saw leafcutter ants in real life and I just went, "Oh." It was like the- the movie just started, you know?

   7. LFLex Fridman4:12

      Mm-hmm.

   8. PRPaul Rosolie4:12

      That was when- that was when like I came online.

   9. LFLex Fridman4:15

      Can you put into words, what is it about that place that felt like home? What was it that drew you? What aspect of nature, the streams, the water, the- the forest, the jungle, the animals, what- what drew you?

   10. PRPaul Rosolie4:29

       Uh, it's just- it's always been in my blood. I mean, for any forest, I mean, whether it's, you know, Upstate New York, or- or India, or Borneo, but the Amazon, it's- it's- it's all of that turned up to this level where everything is superlatively diverse, you know? You have more plants and animals than anywhere else on Earth. Not just now, but in the entire fossil record. It's- the Andes-Amazon interface, there's just- that's- terrestrially, that's- that's where it is. The- it's the greatest library of life that has ever existed. And so you're just- you're so stimulated, you're so overwhelmed with color and diversity and beauty and this overwhelming sense of natural majesty of these, you know, 1,000-year-old trees and half the life is up in the canopy of those trees.

   11. LFLex Fridman5:10

       Mm-hmm.

   12. PRPaul Rosolie5:10

       We don't even have access to it. There's stuff without names walking around on those branches and it's like, it just takes you somewhere. And so going there, it was like, it- you know, the guys I met just opened the door and they were like, you know, "How far do you wanna go down the rabbit hole? How- how- how much of this do you want to see?"

   13. LFLex Fridman5:25

       You mentioned Steve Irwin. Uh, you list a bunch of heroes that you have. W- he's one of them. And, uh, you said that when you're unsure about a decision, you ask yourself, uh, WWSD, what would Steve do? (laughs) Why is that such a good heuristic for life, what would Steve do?

   14. PRPaul Rosolie5:42

       I- he's- he's a human being that like everything we saw from Steve Irwin was positive. Everything was with a smile on his face. If he was getting bitten by a reticulated python, he was smiling.

   15. LFLex Fridman5:52

       Yeah.

   16. PRPaul Rosolie5:52

       If he was, you know, getting destroyed in the news for feeding a crocodile with his son too close, he was trying to explain to people why it's okay and why we have to love these animals and everything was about love. Everything was about, you know, wildlife and protecting and-... to me, a person like that, that where you only see positive things, that's- that's a role model.

   17. LFLex Fridman6:12

       And it's just like an endless curiosity and hunger to explore this- this world of nature.

   18. PRPaul Rosolie6:17

       Yeah, and an insatiable madness for- for- for wildlife. (laughs) I mean, the guy was just so much fun.

   19. LFLex Fridman6:22

       I got a, if it's okay, uh, read to you a few of your own words.

   20. PRPaul Rosolie6:26

       Okay.

   21. LFLex Fridman6:26

       You open... (laughs)

   22. PRPaul Rosolie6:28

       Oh boy.

   23. LFLex Fridman6:29

       ... the book, Mother of God, with a passage that I think beautifully paints a scene. "Before he died, Santiago Duran told me a secret. It was late at night in a palm-thatched hut on the bank of the Tambopata River deep in the southwestern corner of the Amazon basin. Besides a mud oven, two wild boar heads sizzling, sizzled in a cradle of embers. Their protruding tusks curling in static agony as they cooked. The smell of burning Cecropia wood and singed flesh filled the air. Woven basket containing monkey skulls (laughs) hung from the rafters where stars peeked through the gaps in the thatching. A pair of chickens huddled in the corner conversing softly. We sat facing each other on sturdy benches, across a table hewn from a single cross-section of some massive tree now nearly consumed by termites. The song of a million insects and frogs filled the night. Santiago's cigarette trembled in the aged fingers as he leaned close over the candlelight to describe a place hidden in the jungle." That line, "The songs of a million insects and frogs filled the night," for some reason hit me. Um, what's it like sitting there conversing among so many living creatures all around you?

   24. PRPaul Rosolie7:52

       Every night in the jungle, you live in constant awareness of, that out there in the darkness are literally millions of heartbeats around you. And so like we exist in this- in this, you know, domesticated, paved world most of the time. But when you go out there past the roads and the- and the telephone poles and the hospitals, and you make it out into earth, just wild earth, and there's no- there's, you know, there's not- it's not like this is a national park. There's no rescue helicopter waiting to come get you. You are out there, and you're surrounded at night by, I mean, there are snakes and jaguars and frogs and insects, and all this stuff just crawling through the swamps and through the trees and through the branches. And we put on headlamps and go out into the night, and just absolutely fall to our knees with wonder of the things that we see. It's- it's absolutely incredible.

   25. LFLex Fridman8:43

       And most of it doesn't make sounds like the insects do, the frogs?

   26. PRPaul Rosolie8:47

       The insects do, the frogs do, you have some of the night birds making sounds, but a lot of it, everything has evolved to be silent, invisible. I mean, everything there is in the- on- on the list, like- like I... There's another line in Mother of God where I said like, you know, like, "Life is just like a temporary moment of stasis in like the churning, recycling death march that is the Amazon." Like it's, um, it's been called the greatest natural battlefield on earth. I mean, if any- in any square acre, there's more stuff eating other things than anywhere else. And- and you go through a swamp in the Amazon, and there's like, there's tarantulas floating on the water. There's frogs in the trees. There's- there's- there's tadpoles hanging from leaves waiting to drop into the water. There's fish waiting to eat them. There's birds in the tree. You're sit, you're, you literally are surrounded by so many things that your brain can't process it. It's- it's just overwhelming life.

   27. LFLex Fridman9:41

       Churning death march. Some of the creatures are waiting, and some of them are being a bit more proactive about it. Is wh- (laughs) what do you make of that churning death march, that the amount of murder that's happening all around you at all scales? What does that... You know, we, uh, we dramatize wars and the millions of people that were lost in World War II. Uh, some of them tortured, some of them dying, uh, with a gun in hand. Some of them civilians. But it's just millions of people.

   28. PRPaul Rosolie10:14

       Hmm.

   29. LFLex Fridman10:15

       What about the billions and billions and billions of organisms that are just being murdered all around you? Does that, um, do you, does that change your view of nature? Of- of life here?

   30. PRPaul Rosolie10:27

       It... I've always kind of wondered like that, like when you see like a, you know, wildebeest taken down by lions and- and eaten from behind while it's alive, and it makes you question God. You know, you go, "How could- how could- how could they let this happen?" Um, in the Amazon, I find personally that these natural processes make up almost a religion, that it reminds you how temporary we are, that, you know, the- the- the botflies that are trying to get into your skin, and the mosquitoes that are trying to suck your blood, and the... You know, when, that when you sweat, you see- you see the, you literally can like hold out your arm and watch the condensation come off of your skin and rise up into the canopy and join the clouds and rain back down in the afternoon. And- and then you drink the river and start it all over again. And it's like, it's flowing through you. So I, uh, the Amazon reminds me that- that there's a lot that we don't understand. And so when it comes to that overwhelming and collective murder, as Werner Herzog put it, um, it's- it's just part of the show. It's part of the freak show of the Amazonian night. (laughs)
3. 13:47 – 18:24

   Discovery of the Amazon

   1. PRPaul Rosolie13:47

   2. LFLex Fridman13:47

      So (laughs) just to linger on that though, 'cause you- you've spoken about Francisco de Orellana, uh, who's this explorer in, uh, in, uh, 1541 and '42 that sailed the length of the Amazon.

   3. PRPaul Rosolie13:59

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman13:59

      Probably one of the first, and there's just a- a few things I should probably read. Uh, I should probably find a good book on him 'cause the guy seems like a gangster. Um-

   5. PRPaul Rosolie14:07

      Yes. There's some great books on him.

   6. LFLex Fridman14:09

      So he sailed, uh, he led the expedition that sailed all the way from one end to the other.

   7. PRPaul Rosolie14:16

      Yeah.

   8. LFLex Fridman14:16

      There's like a rebuilding of a ship.

   9. PRPaul Rosolie14:18

      Which is insanity.

   10. LFLex Fridman14:19

       Yeah.

   11. PRPaul Rosolie14:20

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman14:20

       See, 'cause it speaks to the thing. It's like nobody's gonna come and rescue you.

   13. PRPaul Rosolie14:24

       No.

   14. LFLex Fridman14:24

       You have to (laughs) -

   15. PRPaul Rosolie14:26

       (laughs)

   16. LFLex Fridman14:26

       If your boat dies, you're gonna have to rebuild it.

   17. PRPaul Rosolie14:29

       Yeah, so they came down the Andes, entered into the headwaters of the Amazon, constructed some sort of raft, boat, craft, something, and made it down the entire Amazon basin. Of course, his stories are the ones that led to the Amazon being called the Amazon because he reported tribes of women. He reported these large cities, places where the tribes lived on farms of river turtles that they corralled, and they lived off of that protein. And then when they came out to the mouth of the Amazon, if I remember it correctly, that just through navigation and the stars, they were able to calculate where the way was back to Spain and make a boat seaworthy enough to bring them home. Incredible, absolutely incredible.

   18. LFLex Fridman15:08

       Do- do people like that inspire you in your own journey? Like, uh, do, wh- what gives you kinda strength that, um, in these harshest of times and harshest of conditions, you can persevere?

   19. PRPaul Rosolie15:19

       Yeah, I mean, you look at the stories of people that are so, you know, these stories of people that have overcome incredible suffering like that or like, you know, what Shackleton did or something like that. And so like when you're... You know, I've been, you know, your- your tent gets washed away. You go to sleep and the river rises 20 feet and washes away your tent, and you crawl out and all you have is a machete and a headlamp. Literally no bag, no food, no nothing, and you go, "Wow, the next six days before I reach back to a town is gonna be just pure hell. I'm gonna be sleeping on the ground covered in ants, destroyed by mosquitoes." And then it becomes, you know, "Am I in any capacity, any percentage as tough and resilient as the people that I've read about that have made it through things far worse than this?" And- and then that's the game you play.

   20. LFLex Fridman16:03

       What goes through your head when all you got is the headlamp and the machete? So are you, um, thinking at all? Like I- I've- I've gotten a chance to interact quite a lot with Elon Musk, and he constantly puts out fires having to run several companies. There's never a kind of-

   21. PRPaul Rosolie16:19

       Yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman16:19

       ... uh, whiny deliberation about issues. You're just always one- one step forward how to solve, right? This is the situation, how do you solve it? Or do you also have a kind of self-motivating, almost egotistical, like, "I'm a bad motherfucker."

   23. PRPaul Rosolie16:36

       (laughs)

   24. LFLex Fridman16:36

       "I can handle anything." Almost like trying to fake it till you make it kinda thing.

   25. PRPaul Rosolie16:40

       (laughs) There's- there was a little bit of that.

   26. LFLex Fridman16:42

       With your machete and a headlamp. (laughs)

   27. PRPaul Rosolie16:43

       (laughs) You know, I got a sword.

   28. LFLex Fridman16:45

       (laughs)

   29. PRPaul Rosolie16:45

       Um, there- there may- may have been a little bit of that when I was like, you know, like 14, 15 years old. I'd like, you know, have like a hunting knife and my dog, and I'd go out into the woods or like the Catskills and survive for a weekend.

   30. LFLex Fridman16:57

       Sure.
4. 18:24 – 24:30

   Werner Herzog

   1. PRPaul Rosolie18:24

   2. LFLex Fridman18:24

      You mentioned Herzog.Just to, uh, venture down this road of death and fear-

   3. PRPaul Rosolie18:31

      Uh-huh.

   4. LFLex Fridman18:31

      ... and so on. There's been a few mad men like you in this world. Uh, he's documented a couple of them. Uh, what lessons do you draw from Grizzly Man or Into the Wild?

   5. PRPaul Rosolie18:43

      Hmm.

   6. LFLex Fridman18:43

      Those kinds of stories. I, were you ever afraid that you'd be one of those stories?

   7. PRPaul Rosolie18:48

      Oh, yeah. I actually think that that's in Mother of God, where I said I almost Into- Into the Wild-ed myself. Like, I- I- I went out there and really, I got so lost and so destroyed that I said, "This, this is, this is gonna be the next one." You know? This is gonna be the next story of some idiot kid from New York who went to the Amazon thinking he was Percy Fawcet and then vanished. Because if you, if you do vanish out there, your body's gonna be consumed in a matter of days. Like, like two. You know, if we see, if we see an animal dead on the trail, it's ... You got dung beetles and, and fly larvae and vultures, and there's a whole pecking order, you know? You got the black vultures, the yellow vultures, the king vulture. They all come in.

   8. LFLex Fridman19:23

      Mm-hmm.

   9. PRPaul Rosolie19:23

      That thing is picked clean in a couple of days.

   10. LFLex Fridman19:25

       What would th- be the creature that eats most of you in that situation?

   11. PRPaul Rosolie19:29

       Probably the vultures.

   12. LFLex Fridman19:30

       The vultures?

   13. PRPaul Rosolie19:30

       Probably the vultures and the, and the, and the maggots. It's, it's really quick. It's really, really quick. Like, like, like you ... Even as far as like you can't leave food out, you know? Like if you have like a piece of chicken, you say, "Oh, I'll eat it in the morning." You leave it out. You can't do that. It's not, it's not (laughs) good by morning.

   14. LFLex Fridman19:47

       Grizzly Man, for example, like what ... 'Cause that's a beautiful story. It's both comical and genius and especially the way Herzog tells it. Well, first of all, do you like the way he told the story? Do you like Herzog?

   15. PRPaul Rosolie19:58

       I do. I, I love Herzog and I love his, his documentary, The Burden of Dreams, which is, which is in the Amazon, not very far from where I work. And the, the sheer madness that you see this man undergoing of just trying to recreate hauling a boat over a mountain, um, is, is, is wild. And, and the, you know, the, the extras that he hired to be, to play the natives are, are the ... I think they're Machiguenga tribesmen and they're just ... Th- they just look like all the guys that I hang out with and it's like, you know, they're, they're doing all this stuff in the jungle that ... Months and months and months, and you can just see him deteriorating with madness because the jungle, you know, your boat ... You know how many times I've tied up a boat to the side of the river? This just happened like a year and a half ago. I tied up ... Through lo- through COVID, I pretty much just lived in the jungle for a while.

   16. LFLex Fridman20:44

       Mm-hmm.

   17. PRPaul Rosolie20:45

       And there was nobody there and there was no support and I tied up my boat, and the rain is just hammering. Like, like, like the universe is trying to rip the earth in half. The rain is just going and the river's rising, and I tied up the boat. But then you go to sleep and you gotta wake up every two hours to go check the boat.

   18. LFLex Fridman21:00

       Mm-hmm.

   19. PRPaul Rosolie21:01

       And the boat is thrashing back and forth. And I ... So all night, every two hours, I'd wake up barefoot in driving rain like, you know, golf ball raindrops and just go down, check the boat. And then by morning I was like ... I fell asleep, woke up, checked the boat, and then I was like, "I'm just gonna go make coffee." I was so done. I was so like at the end of my rope every time bailing the boat out and stuff. And then we got 15 minutes of heavy rain that filled the boat, sank it. So now I'm stuck up river with no boat. And it's like that type of thing where it's like no matter how hard you try, the jungle's just like, "Listen. You ain't, you're nothing. You are nothing." And so it's that constant reminder. And so Herzog really threw himself into that in that film, and uh, it's, it's brilliant to watch.

   20. LFLex Fridman21:42

       What do you think he meant by the line that you include in your book, "It's a land that God, if he exists, has created in anger."

   21. PRPaul Rosolie21:52

       (laughs)

   22. LFLex Fridman21:53

       Said it in a German accent.

   23. PRPaul Rosolie21:54

       Yeah. Overwhelming and collective murder. Um. (laughs)

   24. LFLex Fridman22:00

       (laughs)

   25. PRPaul Rosolie22:00

       (laughs)

   26. LFLex Fridman22:00

       So that's, that's wh- (laughs)

   27. PRPaul Rosolie22:02

       (laughs)

   28. LFLex Fridman22:02

       So he didn't really appreciate the beauty of the, of, of the murder?

   29. PRPaul Rosolie22:05

       I think he appreciated it, but to him it, it was very dark, you know? I think he saw the darkness in it, and that's there. It sure is. As soon as you do ayahuasca, you, that door opens and you see the darkness 'cause it brings you right into the jungle, like the, the heart of it. But I think that for him, it, it is ... I think that darkness is something that he embraces and that he loves. There's another film of his, and I don't know if this is accurate, but my memory has it that there's a penguin and I think it's in Antarctica, and the penguin's going in the wrong direction-

   30. LFLex Fridman22:36

       Yeah.
5. 24:30 – 38:19

   Jane Goodall

   1. PRPaul Rosolie24:30

      nothingness.

   2. LFLex Fridman24:30

      First of all, what have you learned about life from Jane Goodall? 'Cause she spoke highly of your book and you, you list her as, uh, as one of the mentors, but what, what kind of wisdom about animals do you draw from her?

   3. PRPaul Rosolie24:42

      ... the wisdom from Jane is so diverse. It's, I mean, she, first of all, she's someone that, you know, the work that she did at- at the time she did it was so incredible, because I mean, she, she was out there at a very young age doing that field work. She was naming her subjects, which everyone said you shouldn't do. She broke every rule. She broke every rule. She was assigning... And everyone said, "You know, you're anthropomorphizing these animals by saying that they're doing this and that." And she w- she was like, "No, they're- they're- they're interacting, they're showing love, they're showing compassion, they're showing hate, they're showing fear." And- and she broke straight through all of those things, um, and- and it paid off in dividends for her.

   4. LFLex Fridman25:19

      Do you see the animals as having all those human-like emotions of anger, of compassion, of longing, of loneliness? From what you've seen, with- especially with mammals-

   5. PRPaul Rosolie25:32

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman25:32

      ... or different species out there, do they have all of that?

   7. PRPaul Rosolie25:34

      It depends on the animal. You know, if you're talking, you know, on the- on the scale of a cockroach to an elephant, you know, it's like a lot of these things... And I w- I wonder about this stuff all the time. You know, I'll- I'll have a praying mantis on my hand and just go, "What is going through your mind?" You know?

   8. LFLex Fridman25:46

      Yeah.

   9. PRPaul Rosolie25:47

      Or you'll see a, you'll see a spider make a complex decision and go, "I'm gonna make my web there."

   10. LFLex Fridman25:51

       Yeah.

   11. PRPaul Rosolie25:52

       You know? And you go, "How- how- how are you- how are you doing this? How are you..." 'Cause he- he made a calculation there, you know? It's smart. I was in the jungle not that long ago, and I'm- I was walking, and all of a sudden this dove comes flying through the jungle, right up to my face. Zoom. Lands on a branch, like right here, right next to me. I look at the dove, dove looks at me, and she's like, "Hey." And she's clearly, like, panting. And I'm like-

   12. LFLex Fridman26:11

       Mm-hmm.

   13. PRPaul Rosolie26:11

       I'm like, "W- why- why are- why are you so close to me? This is weird."

   14. LFLex Fridman26:14

       Mm-hmm.

   15. PRPaul Rosolie26:15

       And she's like, "I know." And then, and then an ornate hawk-eagle flies up 10 feet away, looks at both of us and just, like, scowls, and, like, sticks up its head feathers, and then just, like, flies off. And the dove was like, "Sweet, thanks," and then fl- flew in the other direction. And I was like, "Dude, you just used me to save your life."

   16. LFLex Fridman26:30

       Yeah.

   17. PRPaul Rosolie26:31

       The dove knew.

   18. LFLex Fridman26:32

       See, but, well, this is what... Because there's diff- you know, there's Mike Tyson and there's Albert Einstein.

   19. PRPaul Rosolie26:39

       (laughs) Yeah.

   20. LFLex Fridman26:39

       And I sometimes I wonder when I look at different creatures, even insects, like, "Is this Mike Tyson or is this Einstein?"

   21. PRPaul Rosolie26:44

       Yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman26:45

       Like, 'cause y- one (laughs) or other kinds of personali- like there, is this a New Yorker or is this a Midwesterner-

   23. PRPaul Rosolie26:52

       Yeah.

   24. LFLex Fridman26:52

       Or is this like-

   25. PRPaul Rosolie26:53

       Yeah.

   26. LFLex Fridman26:54

       ... a San Francisco barista-

   27. PRPaul Rosolie26:55

       Uh-huh.

   28. LFLex Fridman26:55

       ... of the insects?

   29. PRPaul Rosolie26:56

       Yeah.

   30. LFLex Fridman26:56

       Like, there- there's all kinds of personalities, you never know.
6. 38:19 – 1:02:08

   Anacondas

   1. PRPaul Rosolie38:19

   2. LFLex Fridman38:20

      So what was the journey of looking for these giant snakes?

   3. PRPaul Rosolie38:24

      (laughs)

   4. LFLex Fridman38:25

      Of, uh, looking for anacondas?

   5. PRPaul Rosolie38:28

      Well-

   6. LFLex Fridman38:28

      And w- what are anacondas?

   7. PRPaul Rosolie38:30

      Anaconda is the largest snake on earth. So you have reticulated pythons in Southeast Asia. They're actually longer. But anacondas are these massive boas. They give live birth. And unlike a lot of other species... So an anaconda starts off, you know, a little two-foot anaconda, just a little thicker than your finger, a little baby, and their food for cane toads, herons, crocodiles, you name it. They're, they're, they're pretty harmless, defenseless. But as they grow, they're eating the fish, they're eating the crocs. And then they grow a little more and they're eating things like capybara, and they're eating larger prey. And then at the end of their life, a female anaconda, you're talking about a 25, 30-foot, 300, 400-pound snake-

   8. LFLex Fridman39:14

      Mm-hmm.

   9. PRPaul Rosolie39:14

      ... with a head bigger than a football, and these things, that means that they impact the entire ecosystem-

   10. LFLex Fridman39:20

       So it's-

   11. PRPaul Rosolie39:20

       ... which is very unique.

   12. LFLex Fridman39:21

       ... moves up the food chain to become basically-

   13. PRPaul Rosolie39:24

       An apex predator.

   14. LFLex Fridman39:25

       Yeah, apex predator.

   15. PRPaul Rosolie39:26

       Yeah. The, the, the apex predator of the rivers. And so-

   16. LFLex Fridman39:29

       That's so interesting. It's just eating your way up the food chain. (laughs)

   17. PRPaul Rosolie39:31

       eating your way up the food chain. If you can survive. And like they, you know, they're constantly at, at war with everything else, but... You know, so I showed up in the Amazon, I was like, "So where are the anacondas at?"

   18. LFLex Fridman39:40

       Yeah.

   19. PRPaul Rosolie39:41

       And they were like, "Oh, no, no, no, it's not like that." They're like, "It's you, you have to find these things. They're, they're subterranean. They're living in the special swamps. They're... People kill them." And so we went to the floating forest after we'd come back from an expedition. We'd caught, like, a 12-foot anaconda, and it's, now it's become, like, this, like, classic photo of me and JJ with this anaconda over our shoulders, and we were like, "We..." You know, we... 12 days out in the jungle on a hunting trip, and we, we came back and we showed his dad, and, uh, Santiago looked at us and he was like, "That's the smallest anacondita-"

   20. LFLex Fridman40:12

       (laughs)

   21. PRPaul Rosolie40:12

       "... I've ever seen." He's like, "You guys are pathetic."

   22. LFLex Fridman40:15

       Oh, man. 12 foot.

   23. PRPaul Rosolie40:17

       And he was like, "Look, you go to the... Go." He's like, "Go." He's like, "I'm giving you permission. Go to the boy or go to the floating forest." And so we went to this place and we reached there at night, and it was me, JJ, and one of his brothers. And his brother took one look at it and was like, "I'm out." And he started walking back. And me and JJ get to the edge of this thing and, and this is our friendship. It's both... It's two idiots pushing each other farther and farther.

   24. LFLex Fridman40:39

       Mm-hmm.

   25. PRPaul Rosolie40:39

       And like, I, like, put a foot on the, on the ground and it, and it all shook.

   26. LFLex Fridman40:44

       Mm-hmm.

   27. PRPaul Rosolie40:44

       And the stars are reflecting on the ground. And what we realize is that it's a lake with floating grass on top of it.

   28. LFLex Fridman40:52

       Yeah.

   29. PRPaul Rosolie40:53

       And there's islands of grass floating on this lake, very Life of Pi, and the tops of trees are coming out of the surface of the water. And so we start walking across this and JJ is going, "These are big anacondas." And I'm going, "JJ, that's a two-foot wide smooth path snaking through the grass."

   30. LFLex Fridman41:11

       Mm-hmm.
7. 1:02:08 – 1:14:32

   Eaten Alive

   1. PRPaul Rosolie1:02:08

   2. LFLex Fridman1:02:08

      L- let's come back briefly to anacondas. Can you tell me, uh, this whole situation with Discover is Eaten Alive.

   3. PRPaul Rosolie1:02:18

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:02:18

      There's some drama and controversy around that. Can you explain that whole saga with Discovery, with, um, with your whole effort? Maybe outside of even the drama, the, the initial thing (laughs) which I now-

   5. PRPaul Rosolie1:02:31

      Uh, uh-

   6. LFLex Fridman1:02:31

      ... feel you're sufficiently insane to actually do of being eaten-

   7. PRPaul Rosolie1:02:36

      Yeah.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:02:36

      ... by an anaconda. Is that actually possible to survive something like that?

   9. PRPaul Rosolie1:02:39

      I mean, if a- the anaconda swallows you while you're wearing the suit that they made, maybe, but that was, in hindsight, whether that was the result of, look, I go to the jungle and you start seeing these beautiful places, these incredible species. You start developing a relationship with these animals, and then you watch it get destroyed every year. We watch it burn every year. Places that are, are crucial to my soul, I have seen leveled and turned to ash. And at some point, we started going, "Someone has to do something about this." And you look to your right and you look to your left, and there is no one 'cause it's the middle of the Amazon, and the rainforests have been being destroyed since the '70s. It's a cliché. And so we started trying to do something about it. And so I started putting a little bit more emph- emphasis on, on publicity, a little bit more emphasis on getting the message out there. And so I started trying to see how, what was gonna work, you know? You just start firing shots in the dark and seeing and, you know, JJ's going, "You have to help us do something." And I'm going, "Okay." You know? And so from 18 years old now, now I'm 23 years old, and all of a sudden, this place isn't, isn't foreign to me anymore. It's, it's home. And, and so when-

   10. LFLex Fridman1:04:01

       You're trying to think of all the different ways you can bring attention to this place that you care about that's being destroyed.

   11. PRPaul Rosolie1:04:05

       Yeah. You're standing next to a boulder of progress, of, of destruction, and it's about to roll onto the forest and just destroy it and snuff out all that life, and no one's there to do anything about it. And so you go, "Is there any way that I could put myself in front of this boulder and hold it back?"

   12. LFLex Fridman1:04:24

       Mm-hmm.

   13. PRPaul Rosolie1:04:25

       And you're talking about, you know, the, the glo- the global economic reality. Uh, it's just, it's just such a massive... It's systemic.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:04:33

       So what's the most dramatic possible thing I could do? (laughs)

   15. PRPaul Rosolie1:04:37

       Exactly. So when you find yourself flown to LA as a 23-year-old dude, and, uh, you're sitting there with some guy, you know, who's, like, spinning a pen and got his feet up on the desk and going, you know, "What can you show us down there?" And you go, "I could show you the biggest anacondas in the world."

   16. LFLex Fridman1:04:52

       Yeah.

   17. PRPaul Rosolie1:04:52

       "And we could talk about mercury and bioaccumulation and we could show people how these animals are misunderstood and we go on a big expedition and we could be the coolest show ever." And he goes, "Yeah, not good enough."

   18. LFLex Fridman1:05:03

       Hmm.

   19. PRPaul Rosolie1:05:03

       And you go, "Okay." And so those, that, that, that, that cycled through a bunch of times. Then someone at some point in one of those meetings said, you know, "What if we show people that anacondas really can eat humans?" And I went, "How is that a good show? You want me to feed someone to an anaconda?" And I said, I said, I mean, and I kinda joked like, "What if..." You know. I was like, "The only way that's feasible is if you, like, make a suit with a breathing apparatus and let the snake eat you and then come back out safely and make sure you don't hurt the snake." And they were like, "Kid, you're on." And I was like, "Oh, shit."

   20. LFLex Fridman1:05:35

       So I should mention as a small tangent, I think I mentioned to you offline, uh, due to travel troubles-

   21. PRPaul Rosolie1:05:41

       (laughs)

   22. LFLex Fridman1:05:41

       ... where I traveled to the totally wrong part of the United States, um, on my way to Boston, uh, and on my way to Boston, I did a conversation with, uh, MrBeast-

   23. PRPaul Rosolie1:05:51

       Yeah.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:05:52

       ... Jimmy, and I've gotten a chance to hang out with him for the day. And one of the things we did is have a lengthy brainstorm session with his team, or I was, I was observing it.

   25. PRPaul Rosolie1:06:02

       Sure, sure.

   26. LFLex Fridman1:06:03

       Um, but it was interesting because he's probably way better at that conversation that you had with the, with the guy in LA-

   27. PRPaul Rosolie1:06:12

       Yeah.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:06:12

       ... than the guy in LA-

   29. PRPaul Rosolie1:06:13

       Yeah.

   30. LFLex Fridman1:06:13

       ... obviously because he's made... He's revolutionizing entertainment and he's also doing philanthropy-

Episode duration: 3:34:57