Paul Rosolie on Lex Fridman: Why the Nomoles Shoot First

1. 0:00 – 1:08

   Episode highlight

   1. PRPaul Rosolie0:00

      We're standing there, everyone is waiting, 'cause at any moment, an arrow could just fly through your neck, and there's people holding shotguns. And the anthropologist, this little guy, is standing there in the front, and he's going, "No mole." He's going, "Brothers." And then, then it happened. Then you start hearing people screaming, "Mashco, Mashco!" And people are screaming, and w- women are lifting children and running into the huts, and the dogs and chickens are going nuts, and I mean-

   2. LFLex Fridman0:25

      So fear, fear.

   3. PRPaul Rosolie0:26

      Fear. He's going, "Look there, he has a bow. He has a bow." And we're looking up the beach, and there's just this clan walking down the beach with these seven-foot bows, and they're hunched over, and they're pointing at us. They're going, "Look at that one." They're going, "Look, there's a gun there." And they're-- you can see them communicating to each other, and the butterflies are swirling off the beach, and they can hit a spider monkey out of the treetops at forty meters. They can sneak up, and you will never know they're there. And so when that arrow passes through your body, you'll only have a moment to realize it before you fall over. In order for r- any of this to make sense, I have to show you this footage, and this has not been shown ever before. This is a world first.

2. 1:08 – 3:59

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman1:08

      The following is a conversation with Paul Rosolie, his third time on the podcast. Paul is a naturalist, explorer, writer, and is someone who has dedicated his life to protecting the Amazon rainforest and celebrating the beauty of the natural world. He has a new book coming out in a few days, titled Junglekeeper, that you should definitely go pre-order now. It tells some intense stories about his time in the jungle over the past several years, building up to a few epic recent events, including a new full-on extended encounter with an uncontacted tribe that we discuss in this podcast. Both the book and audiobook are great. I highly recommend it. If you would like to support Paul and his incredible team in their mission to protect the jungle, go to junglekeepers.org. You can help with donations or by spreading the word or checking out the gala that Paul is hosting in New York on January twenty-second, in a few days. They are doing all they can to help raise funds for the mission of safeguarding as much of the rainforest as possible, and I think it's a mission worth fighting for. The Amazon jungle is one of the most special and beautiful places on Earth. As an aside, allow me to look back briefly and mention something that I've been struggling with a bit. For context, I traveled to the Amazon rainforest with Paul a while back. It was an adventure of a lifetime, with lots of crazy twists and turns. We did record a podcast out there, literally in the jungle, episode four twenty-nine, if you want to go check it out. It was awesome. And we also recorded a bunch of disparate footage of the journey, just for fun, and I would still love to somehow put all that together into a cohesive video, in case it's interesting to someone. But I've learned just how difficult it is to organize and edit a pile of chaotically recorded footage like that. So let's see if I can pull it off. But in any case, this kind of raw, vlog-style video is something that I would love to be able to do more of as a way to celebrate amazing human beings like Paul and others, including everyday people who I meet on my travels. So I'll keep trying, tinkering, learning, and I ask for your patience and support along the way. Now, back to our regular scheduled programming. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions, give feedback, and so on. And now, dear friends, here's Paul Rosolie.

3. 3:59 – 11:45

   Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon Jungle

   1. LFLex Fridman3:59

      We've survived a challenging time out in the jungle about, uh, a year and a half ago, and since then, your life has increasingly gotten more intense. So you've achieved the incredible feat of saving now more than one hundred and thirty thousand acres of rainforest, and the goal is, that you're working towards, is protecting two hundred thousand acres more-

   2. PRPaul Rosolie4:22

      Yeah

   3. LFLex Fridman4:23

      ... and doing so while facing extreme danger from narcos, narco-traffickers, so-called cocaine mafia, in an escalating drug war. This is insane. These are new developments. Illegal loggers, as we've talked about before, gold miners, and the incredible recent encounter with, uh, a non-contacted tribe, and we'll talk about all of this. So your new book, Junglekeeper, opens with, with the killing of two loggers-

   4. PRPaul Rosolie4:49

      Mm-hmm

   5. LFLex Fridman4:49

      ... by the warriors of a non-contacted tribe, the Mashco Piro, in August twenty twenty-four.

   6. PRPaul Rosolie4:56

      Mm-hmm.

   7. LFLex Fridman4:57

      And then you reveal that you had your own dramatic encounter with the tribe two months later, in October twenty twenty-four. So, uh, if I may, let me read, uh, the opening of the book: "Far out on the western edge of the Amazon rainforest, deep in the Peruvian jungle, a pair of loggers plunged their chainsaws into the buttressed roots of an ancient ironwood. An ironwood, or shihuahuaco, of this size is a giant among giants, an emergent sentinel that reaches heights of a hundred and sixty feet, towering over the rest of the canopy." Uh, I've read that many are over a thousand years old, by the way, as an aside, and you've found ones that are twelve hundred years old.

   8. PRPaul Rosolie5:41

      Mm-hmm. Yeah, incredibly old.

   9. LFLex Fridman5:43

      Anyway, you continue: "This particular tree had started its life as a tiny sapling in the great jungle, a story that began before the Spanish reached Peru, long before the United States was even a dream, at a time when, uh, Leonardo da Vinci was still honing his talents in a faraway part of the world, through the Renaissance, the First and Second World Wars, and the birth of our grandparents.... This tree was out there slowly charging upward, anonymous, just one pillar among the billions of others. But on this day, in August 2024, when the two loggers worked, this witness of the centuries came crashing down through the canopy with such cataclysmic power that it shook the earth. And then you go on to talk about how the shaking of the earth was, was felt and heard by the uncontacted tribe. So, uh, you go on to describe how these particular loggers were murdered-

   10. PRPaul Rosolie6:39

       Mm

   11. LFLex Fridman6:39

       ... by the uncontacted, uh, tribe of Mashco Piro. What do we know about these warriors of the uncontacted tribe?

   12. PRPaul Rosolie6:48

       We know that across the Amazon basin, there's still perhaps thousands of clans of, quote, unquote, "uncontacted peoples," people that are living in nomadic isolation in what remains of the intact Amazon basin and want to remain that way. And so what happened with these loggers was that local people told them, "Don't, don't go out there. Don't, don't go into these territories." And what happens is that people that aren't from-- this is thing with the jungle, people don't believe that it's as wild as, as the legends say. And so when they say there's, there's kalatos out there, there's, there's, there's wild people out there, these loggers from another region go, "Yeah, this, you know, some, some story. We're, we're, we're fine. We'll go. We have shotguns." They don't realize you're dealing with a civilization of people that is still nomadic, still uses bamboo-tipped arrows, still lives naked in the Amazon rainforest, has knowledge of medicines that we've-- we have yet to, to encounter or may never discover, and that they can hit a spider monkey out of the treetops at forty meters. And so while you're using a chainsaw, they can sneak up, and you will never know they're there. And so when that arrow passes through your body, you'll only have a moment to realize it before you fall over.

   13. LFLex Fridman8:07

       And we're looking at, uh, something you posted on your Instagram-

   14. PRPaul Rosolie8:10

       Yes

   15. LFLex Fridman8:11

       ... which are the arrows that they use, which are bigger than you.

   16. PRPaul Rosolie8:15

       Yeah.

   17. LFLex Fridman8:15

       So they're, like, six, seven feet.

   18. PRPaul Rosolie8:16

       Six, seven feet. More like seven feet. And that's-

   19. LFLex Fridman8:19

       Sharp arrows

   20. PRPaul Rosolie8:19

       ... incredibly sharp. They cure it over the fire, and they have a way of sharpening it. That edge of bamboo becomes incredibly, like, knife sharp. You can cut meat with it easily. I've done it. These arrows-- look, look at that. I mean, I'm five, nine. That, that-- that's easily a seven-foot arrow.

   21. LFLex Fridman8:34

       Yeah, so for people who are just listening, this, quote, unquote, "arrow" is really a spear.

   22. PRPaul Rosolie8:38

       Mm-hmm.

   23. LFLex Fridman8:38

       Some people would think it was a spear, but they're shooting this thing with a gigantic bow. That's crazy.

   24. PRPaul Rosolie8:45

       Yeah, and so to be holding that... Look at that. They even, they even twist the fletching, so the arrow spins in the air. They have incredible craftsmanship, and then you see all the, all the little string on there is plant fibers that they've woven, and then this is them.

   25. LFLex Fridman9:01

       Yeah, the warriors of the tribe.

   26. PRPaul Rosolie9:03

       The warriors of the tribe. And, and so the fact that we're sitting here talking on microphones and that we have airplanes and cell phones and all the things that we have in the modern world, and there's still-- we still live in this age where there's, right now, at this moment, people living out in the jungle who have been there since before history, is an incredible thing.

   27. LFLex Fridman9:24

       Let me look this up on Perplexity. What are the technologies we modern humans have that the Mashco Piro do not? It's just interesting to think about the kind of technologies we take for granted. Energy and power, obviously, all the-

   28. PRPaul Rosolie9:41

       Mm

   29. LFLex Fridman9:41

       ... electricity generation, and grids, and batteries, and solar panels, and electric motors, metals and materials, mass-produced steel, aluminum, advanced alloys, plastics, composites, glass, concrete, all of those things.

   30. PRPaul Rosolie9:52

       All those things.
4. 11:45 – 34:51

   Intense new encounter

   1. LFLex Fridman11:45

      So tell me about this encounter in October of, uh, twenty twenty-four.

   2. PRPaul Rosolie11:52

      So in order to tell you about that encounter, I think we need to orient people into where we're talking about. We're talking about this river that runs through the western edge of the Amazon rainforest that you know, you know well now after spending time there with me. It's a high tributary of the Amazon rainforest, where, you know, you have the main river channel, and then smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller tributaries.... and the smaller you get, the less trafficked they are. And so this river has remained wild through the centuries, and even during the '90s, when there was a mahogany boom, where people went out for mahogany trees, there was very few people going up this river.

   3. LFLex Fridman12:30

      Mm-hmm.

   4. PRPaul Rosolie12:30

      And so 20 years ago, when I first got to the region, and people were telling me that there's uncontacted tribes out there, it was, it was always in the realm of something, um... You know, it's like people say there's, there's, there's Bigfoot, or, "Don't go there, it's haunted," or something. You know, it's like, it was like a, a tall tale almost. And even the Peruvian government at the time that I went to Peru first, which was 2006, their official position was that the tribes are a myth. There's no such thing as the tribes. That, that was the official position. And you just, you would hear these stories of people that got shot. You'd meet someone high up a river, four days upriver, deep in the Amazon, that had an arrow, and you'd look at this thing, and it had this, you know, mega gravity. And so as we've created Junglekeepers, and now we're protecting 130,000 acres of this river, we're protecting the plants and the animals and the ancient trees and trying to preserve the ecosystem and counting the butterflies and conducting ecological surveys, and what we've inadvertently found ourselves the caretakers of is the fact that these people, in order to continue living, have to remain isolated, want to remain isolated. That's their one mandate as a, as a civilization, the tribes of the, of these, of the, of the Mashco-Piro. And so in October, we were... You know, we're, as Junglekeepers now, we're working with the indigenous people. What we do is we take loggers and gold miners and make them into rangers, and we give them better jobs, and we try to protect the forest. And those people who live up in the remote indigenous community, they called us on a satellite phone, and they said, "Directors, you've been working with us and telling us you want to help us. The tribes are coming out. What do we do?"

   5. LFLex Fridman14:13

      So even they don't really know, when the tribes emerge from the deep jungle-

   6. PRPaul Rosolie14:18

      Mm-hmm

   7. LFLex Fridman14:18

      ... what to do.

   8. PRPaul Rosolie14:19

      They were terrified.

   9. LFLex Fridman14:20

      What was your thinking when you got the phone call? [chuckles]

   10. PRPaul Rosolie14:23

       When we got the phone call, it was a mix of, you know, we should keep- 'cause we're over here, like, trying to get land concessions and doing all this important work, and part of me was like, "That's... That can't be real-

   11. LFLex Fridman14:31

       [laughing]

   12. PRPaul Rosolie14:32

       ... so we're gonna keep, keep, keep our heads down."

   13. LFLex Fridman14:34

       Bigfoot is emerging-

   14. PRPaul Rosolie14:35

       Yeah, yeah

   15. LFLex Fridman14:35

       ... from the forest. [chuckles]

   16. PRPaul Rosolie14:35

       Like, yeah, sure, sure. And then, 'cause we got the call, we hung up, and we said, "Okay, maybe tomorrow, if they're, like, still there or something." And then it was crazy 'cause it was, it, it was probably about noon, and we had an important day of meetings. We had a meeting with the police. We had a meeting with the landowner. We were trying to do all this stuff for the conservation work. And then I got together with the core team of directors, JJ, Mose, and Stefan, and we, and we said, "Wait, if this is real, we have to get there, like, now. Like, now now." And so we dropped what we were doing, canceled the meetings. We put other people on the meetings. We got a boat. We called Ignacio. We, we called our most hardcore ranger-

   17. LFLex Fridman15:12

       Who has been shot.

   18. PRPaul Rosolie15:14

       Who, in 2019, was shot in the head by an arrow, um, and still bears the scar, and he barely survived. And we said, "Look, this is going down." He said, "I already know, 'cause the whole river already knows." And he said... We said, "Can you get us there by tomorrow morning?" And he said, "Look, it's a two-day journey by boat, so no." And we said, "Is there any way you can get us there?" And he went, "I'll get you there." And so we got a couple sacks of rice, a couple cans of tuna, our dry bags, our tents. We got on a boat by 6:00 PM, and we started riding up the river.

   19. LFLex Fridman15:46

       Through the night.

   20. PRPaul Rosolie15:47

       Through the night, and so a two-day boat journey that we're trying to flex in one night. And so I was at the front with the, with the headlamp-

   21. LFLex Fridman15:54

       Yeah

   22. PRPaul Rosolie15:54

       ... with the torch. And so the f- first few hours, it was clear, and that comet, remember that comet-

   23. LFLex Fridman15:59

       Mm

   24. PRPaul Rosolie15:59

       ... that was going? There was that comet in the sky. I remember looking at the comet and going, somehow, I was like, "This is it." I knew this was it. And the first few hours was clear, and the stars was out, and it was beautiful, and then it clouded over, and the lightning started, and then it just apocalypse downpoured. And from midnight until 8:00 AM, it was just the front of the boat with the light, and it was just Star Wars vision of just, you know, um, raindrops and galaxies and, and, and moths flying in my eye. And, and you... People don't realize you can get hypothermia in the tropics, but it's like, as you're going at night, even if it's 80 degrees outside, in the rain, in the wind, at night, in a lightning storm, you're freezing.

   25. LFLex Fridman16:37

       Yeah.

   26. PRPaul Rosolie16:37

       And so by, you know, 2:00 AM, I'm convulsively shivering, and we're using the crocodile eyes, the caiman eyes on the side of the river as... 'Cause we, it was so dark, we couldn't see where we were going, so those shine back at you. So I'm f- I was finding the caiman eyes and then motioning with the light to Ignacio where to go, and he knew how to find the channel. We had to jump the waterfalls. We did the two-day boat ride in one night.

   27. LFLex Fridman17:01

       Nice.

   28. PRPaul Rosolie17:02

       And we got there, and we arrive at this community where, and it's morning now, and the howler monkeys are calling over the jungle, and, you know, the, the little naked children are all by the side, and everyone's scared. And we get a hug from this guy, Bacho, who we know, and they're like, "Come in, come in, come in," and they're like, "The tribe came out yesterday, that we saw a few of them on the beach, and they're gone now." And so we collapsed. We fell asleep. Rained the whole day. That night, we went out, and we looked for them, and there was this crazy moment where we're standing on this beach, and there were, their footprints were there, and the, the local indigenous anthropologists was standing there, and we're standing at the edge of this beach, looking out into the, into the Amazon beyond, and there's just all this wreckage. It looked like something very Cormac McCarthy, just dark sky, iron clouds. And, and we're standing there. Everyone is waiting, 'cause at any moment, an arrow could just fly through your neck, and there's people holding shotguns. And the anthropologist, this little guy, is standing there in the front, and he's going, "Nomole." He's going, "Brothers." There's only a few words that inter- intersect between the, the languages, and he's going, "Brothers, we're here. We don't want to hurt you." He's speaking in, in the Yine language, and he's saying, "Come out." And you can tell by their footprints, the trackers explained this to us, that you could see it was just the balls of their feet. So right as we pulled up to the beach, they had run, so they were there.... listening to us, and he's going, "No mole! Come out, it's okay. Lay down your arms, we'll lay down ours. No mole." Just keeps, kept saying, "No mole." And nothing happened, and we went back to the village. We went to sleep. We wake up the next morning, and it's five AM, and again, we're trying to save the jungle. We're in a race against time to get these land concessions, and so my team, like Mohsen and Stefan, uh, JJ couldn't come 'cause he was in town actually signing paperwork and interviewing loggers and landowners. And also, he didn't think that there was any chance this was gonna be real, 'cause in his entire fifty-something years in the Amazon, he's never seen them. And so we're getting ready to leave in the morning. We had tents on the boat, and Ignacio comes up to me and he goes, "You're my director, right? You're my boss." And I went, "Yeah." He goes, "I need to talk to you like a friend." I was like, "Yeah, shoot, shoot, go." And he goes, "You'd be an idiot to leave right now." He goes, "They're coming." And so he convinced us to stay. We pull our tents off the boat. Stefan and Mohsen go off with their cameras. They start shooting, you know, people. These are, these are monkey eaters and fishermen, the, the, the, the community that we're in. And everything's quiet, and I opened my laptop, and I was working, just writing, writing my book, and then, then it happened. Then you start hearing people screaming, "Mashko! Mashko!" And people are screaming, and women are lifting children and running into the huts, and the dogs and chickens are going nuts, and I mean-

   29. LFLex Fridman19:50

       So fear.

   30. PRPaul Rosolie19:50

       Fear.
5. 34:51 – 48:07

   Never-before-seen footage of tribe warriors

   1. PRPaul Rosolie34:51

      Before even coming to talk to you about this, we passed this through anthropologists and ethicists and people, and we, you know, we said, "Look, is it even... Can we talk about this?" Because if you talk about this, and you tell people there's these uncontacted tribes, people have misconceptions. They go, "They're the last free people on Earth. They're living the real life. We need to go join them. We want to see them. We want to photograph..." There's all this bad stuff that happens, and all these people want us to be left alone. So the last thing we want to do is, is kill the thing we're trying to protect and tell the world, but at the same time, they're speaking out. They're saying, "Stop cutting our trees. Leave us alone." And so if we're not successful in, in the greater Junglekeepers mission of protecting this river, they cease to exist. And so advocating for these people requires us to have this conversation. It requires us to have this footage and to show the world, and then leave them alone. In order for r- any of this to make sense, I have to show you this footage.

   2. LFLex Fridman35:46

      And this has not been shown ever before?

   3. PRPaul Rosolie35:50

      This is a world first. I mean, up until now, that's the other thing, you know, we're sitting there this day, and, and, you know, the only thing you've ever seen are these blurry images from someone's cell phone from 100 meters away of the uncontacted tribes, and we're sitting there with, you know, 800 millimeters with a 2X teleconverter and, you know, R5s. And so this is as we're looking through the farms, anticipating the tribe coming. I'll put a little bit of volume so you can hear it. [people speaking] And then you can see this is the moment. This is us running when they're like, "They're out. They're coming down the beach."

   4. LFLex Fridman36:24

      We're just... Oh, wow!

   5. PRPaul Rosolie36:28

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman36:28

      Oh, wow.

   7. PRPaul Rosolie36:31

      You see how many thousands of butterflies. But look at the way they move. Look at the way they point. Look at him with his bow.

   8. LFLex Fridman36:39

      Wow. [upbeat music]

   9. PRPaul Rosolie36:45

      There it is.

   10. LFLex Fridman36:48

       They're trying to figure out-

   11. PRPaul Rosolie36:49

       Yeah

   12. LFLex Fridman36:50

       ... what they're looking at.

   13. PRPaul Rosolie36:51

       Uh-huh.... And they didn't know what the cameras are, the- so this was the guys looking out the back. So he's, he's going, "There's something back here."

   14. LFLex Fridman36:59

       Mm-hmm.

   15. PRPaul Rosolie36:59

       He could hear the women in the farm. And I'm looking in every direction, 'cause I'm going, "Which way is the arrow coming from?" But see, he has his shotgun. This is just, like, a farm shotgun. Even if he shot it, you have to use a stick to bang out the shell. But see, as they come closer, they start laying down their... See, he's laying down his bow and arrow. They understand. No, no mole.

   16. LFLex Fridman37:22

       So these are, these are warriors, and the way they were at first moving, it really looked like they're ready for violence. And now they're just all standing in a relaxed-

   17. PRPaul Rosolie37:30

       Yeah

   18. LFLex Fridman37:31

       ... and th- smiling? Are they smiling?

   19. PRPaul Rosolie37:33

       Smiles come at some point. I would say that one of these guys seemed like, uh, in a leadership position. He did most of the talking.

   20. LFLex Fridman37:43

       What, what's with the different hand gestures? This, the holding your hand up to the face [chuckles] ? All of this means something.

   21. PRPaul Rosolie37:51

       All of this means something. And some had red smeared on their faces, some had yellow.

   22. LFLex Fridman37:55

       Did you have a sense of hierarchy at all, like, the boss?

   23. PRPaul Rosolie37:58

       Again, there was just these two dominant guys, and, like, this guy and one other guy who looked almost like him, like his brother.

   24. LFLex Fridman38:05

       Yeah.

   25. PRPaul Rosolie38:05

       Lot of gesturing.

   26. LFLex Fridman38:10

       Wow! This is incredible, Paul.

   27. PRPaul Rosolie38:22

       Yeah. You see the rope.

   28. LFLex Fridman38:26

       Yeah.

   29. PRPaul Rosolie38:26

       Some of that rope is-

   30. LFLex Fridman38:31

       Yeah, I can kinda tell who the, who the bosses are [chuckles] .
6. 48:07 – 1:02:42

   The mysteries of the jungle

   1. PRPaul Rosolie48:07

      in there?"

   2. LFLex Fridman48:08

      So what are some of the questions? Like, if you can know everything you'd wanna know about them-

   3. PRPaul Rosolie48:13

      Mm.

   4. LFLex Fridman48:14

      So maybe in the space of communication and language, that's really interesting. You mentioned that there's all kinds of calls, animal calls.

   5. PRPaul Rosolie48:21

      Mm.

   6. LFLex Fridman48:21

      So they obviously know how to fake animal calls.

   7. PRPaul Rosolie48:25

      Yeah, they speak in... They can use animal calls with enough complexity that w- they can do basic commands. So they can speak in Capuchin. They use tinamu calls. Um, some of our rangers were upriver a few months ago. This is long after this. This is recently. Uh, just, just recently, they were upriver, and they found a, a trail, a, let's say, nomole trail, a Mashco-Piro trail. And it was Ignacio, of course, and he made the wh- there's, like, a secret whistle they do, this mouth [whistles] . And he whistled out into the jungle, and he was listening, and they whistled back.... and so him and everybody on the team just ran back to the boat and got, got out of there. But it was like, at least they answered. They didn't just shoot. They- he whistled, they whistled, and they said, "Out," and he got out. But it's like we don't know, where are the old people? Do they not survive? What is the- what are the, the marriage rituals? How is reproduction handled? Um, there, there's one or two children in the Amazon that I know of who have, you know, washed downriver on a log and been rescued by communities, and then raised, and they either learn the native dialect or Spanish. And then, of course, at some point somebody will go and say, "What was it like when you lived with them?" And the answer is always the same: "I forget." They don't talk about it.

   8. LFLex Fridman49:46

      So maybe we know that they value secrecy. I mean, when you're afraid of the outside world, you don't-- part of that is confidentiality. They all sign NDAs. [chuckles]

   9. PRPaul Rosolie49:57

      Yeah. They have some really good NDAs.

   10. LFLex Fridman49:59

       [chuckles] It's understood. It's an NDA, you can't... There's, there's no lawyers. There's only one way [chuckles] to execute the law.

   11. PRPaul Rosolie50:08

       Yeah, it's either a really strong NDA or, or, or that it's- it is savage, that they're living out there in the jungle, and that you're eating monkeys and turtles, and you're hungry for days on end. And, you know, your wife might get stolen by another tribe, your baby might get stolen. You know, I mean, imagine the botflies and the, and the things that they must put up with. Uh, it's, it's just-- I mean, what we experienced in, what, three days of living out with modern camping gear, and headlamps, and a sense of direction, and they're doing none of that. You could put us out there naked, a very different story, so-

   12. LFLex Fridman50:43

       Yeah, the brutality of nature.

   13. PRPaul Rosolie50:44

       Yeah.

   14. LFLex Fridman50:44

       Werner Herzog comes to mind. That, they have to live in that.

   15. PRPaul Rosolie50:49

       Yeah.

   16. LFLex Fridman50:49

       But then there must be, there's something about the jungle that serves as a catalyst for spirituality, so they must also have a religious component, a spiritual component that probably unifies them. There must be an ideology they operate under.

   17. PRPaul Rosolie51:06

       Oh, there must be, and there, there, there must-- There's many things they must have. They must have a belief system. They probably have amazing origin stories. Um, it would be amazing to know what things they have accurately and inaccurately guessed about us-

   18. LFLex Fridman51:21

       Mm

   19. PRPaul Rosolie51:21

       ... about the outside world. I mean, they've never, they've never heard of the country they live in-

   20. LFLex Fridman51:26

       Mm-hmm

   21. PRPaul Rosolie51:26

       ... or of World War II or any of it. And so seeing them come across the, the beach was surreal because it's like this aperture into history.

   22. LFLex Fridman51:36

       By the way, I mean, you do have a certain look. So you realize, like-

   23. PRPaul Rosolie51:40

       Oh, yeah

   24. LFLex Fridman51:40

       ... them singing to you, your face is carved in some wood somewhere- [chuckles]

   25. PRPaul Rosolie51:44

       [chuckles]

   26. LFLex Fridman51:44

       ... and there's a few of them gathering around-

   27. PRPaul Rosolie51:46

       [chuckles]

   28. LFLex Fridman51:47

       ... and, like, still singing about the, the great gringo, the, with the-

   29. PRPaul Rosolie51:50

       The full beard

   30. LFLex Fridman51:51

       ... with the beard. [chuckles]
7. 1:02:42 – 1:12:18

   Tribe's diet: Monkeys, turtles, and turtle eggs

   1. LFLex Fridman1:02:42

      One thing I forgot to ask you is about the diet of the uncontacted tribes.

   2. PRPaul Rosolie1:02:47

      Mm.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:02:47

      You mentioned potentially, um, monkeys and turtle-

   4. PRPaul Rosolie1:02:51

      Mm-hmm

   5. LFLex Fridman1:02:52

      ... eggs?

   6. PRPaul Rosolie1:02:53

      Yeah.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:02:53

      So, like, what do we know about what they eat? What's the source of protein? Do they eat monkeys?

   8. PRPaul Rosolie1:02:59

      Oh, yeah. Their primary sources of food, I would say, would be monkeys, turtles, turtle eggs, and small game, like, like paca, the large rodent that's, like, the size of a beagle.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:03:09

      Mm-hmm.

   10. PRPaul Rosolie1:03:10

       Capybaras, stuff they can shoot. They don't really fish, and, uh, we know these things because our indigenous trackers and our rangers find their camps, and so they'll find some of those little thatched structures they make on the beaches, and we see the bones. There'll be tapir bones, there'll be turtle shells, which seems like is their closest thing to a bowl. The day that we interacted with them, they did find a bowl in the... We saw them walking away with it in one of the farms, and then days later, we found it destroyed. So they didn't seem like they saw much utility in the bowl.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:03:47

       Hmm, it's temporary container.

   12. PRPaul Rosolie1:03:49

       It's temporary. So they, you know, they kill it, they make a fire. They must be amazing at making fire. I don't know how they do it out there.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:03:56

       It's very difficult because of everything is wet.

   14. PRPaul Rosolie1:03:59

       I don't know how they do it, and I'm a really good fire starter.

   15. LFLex Fridman1:04:02

       And it's tough in the jungle.

   16. PRPaul Rosolie1:04:03

       It is almost impossible most of the year because everything is wet to its core.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:04:09

       So you think they, they cook the meat?

   18. PRPaul Rosolie1:04:11

       I mean, they have, they have to be cooking their meat from a, the parasite standpoint, from everything.

   19. LFLex Fridman1:04:16

       That's true.

   20. PRPaul Rosolie1:04:16

       We know that they're cooking their meat, that we see it, that they've cooked it. You know, there's not a lot of excess berries. Things like berries, and nuts, and fruits, the, the monkeys, and the birds are, and the bats are getting to those first. As soon as... I mean, that's what fruit does, right? A, a tomato is green until its seeds are mature, and then it turns red to advertise, "Eat me," so that you eat it, and then your gut transports that to somewhere else, and it gets free transportation.

   21. LFLex Fridman1:04:40

       Mm-hmm.

   22. PRPaul Rosolie1:04:41

       In the jungle, that happens so quick that you- we're never getting produce.

   23. LFLex Fridman1:04:45

       In the book, you have a picture of a native girl on the Las Piedras-

   24. PRPaul Rosolie1:04:49

       Yeah

   25. LFLex Fridman1:04:50

       ... uh, having monkey for lunch.

   26. PRPaul Rosolie1:04:52

       Yes.

   27. LFLex Fridman1:04:53

       Um, it, it, it looks really strange when you have a m- the monkey kind of looks just a l- it looks a little bit like cannibalism 'cause it looks like a small human.

   28. PRPaul Rosolie1:05:07

       Mm-hmm.

   29. LFLex Fridman1:05:08

       I don't know what it is about, uh, well, I guess I do, about monkeys. There's a human-

   30. PRPaul Rosolie1:05:13

       Yeah
8. 1:12:18 – 1:18:30

   Jane Goodall

   1. LFLex Fridman1:12:19

      I wrote in my notes here a quote from, uh, the great Jane Goodall: "The greatest danger to our future is apathy." So caring about the world, having an optimism for the world, having a hope for the world is the way to, uh, help have an impact, help save it. Uh, but on that, I have to ask you about Jane. She passed away on October 1st. Uh, some humans in this human civilization of ours can open our eyes to, to the beauty of the world, and she is one of the best of them, and she's had an impact on your life. Um, maybe can you speak to, uh, the impact that she's had?

   2. PRPaul Rosolie1:13:03

      I mean, when I grew up, you know, my parents-- being dyslexic, I couldn't read for a very long time, and so my parents read to us every night.... which was amazing, considering how hard they were working. But they'd find the time to give us, you know, an hour of reading every night, whether it was Lord of the Rings or Sherlock Holmes or Jane Goodall. And so I grew up with Jane being this figurehead of conservation and of adventure, and sort of a living historical figure, this legendary person. And so then one time, right around the time that I'd been going to the jungle for a few years, I got to go see Jane speak, I think it was at NYU. And, you know, sitting in the crowd, watched her, completely amazed, and I had-- at the time, my cousins had been telling me that I should write down my stories, of stories of taking care of an anteater and stories of catching anacondas. And they're like: "Write! You know, this, these are such good stories." And so I'd been writing them down, and I just remember after the talk, you know, she, she did it, you know, at least an hour on stage, and then thousands of people lined up. At least hundreds of people lined up, and she sat there, and each of those per- people wants a moment with this legend. And so she has to take a picture, shake their hand. They say, "You mean so much to me." She says, "Thank you," and, and then they move on, and they say, "We'll send you the picture." Okay, great. And so and I got my moment, and we waited in line for a long time, and I gave her this manila envelope with two chapters in it. And one chapter was Lulu the Giant Anteater from Mother of God, and the other chapter was me, JJ, and Pico out on the river, catching anacondas and just talking about how amazing the jungle was. And I said, "I'd love it if you could endorse my book that doesn't exist yet." [chuckles] And I felt like such a loser doing that, and I felt so stupid 'cause I feel like everyone was probably asking something of her, and I-- you know, it's, it's incredibly draining to, to talk to that many people, even if it is for a good reason. And, and forty-eight hours later, she got back, and she said, "Do you-- You know, this is incredible. I would love to write a recommendation for your book as soon as you find a publisher." And what happened with that is that Jane, the way I, I, I think of it is, you know, she, she waved her very powerful, magical wand in my direction, and she had the incredible compassion and presence to act- I mean, you know, after talking to that many people and being on the road three hundred days a year, and being Jane Goodall, this living legend scientist, to actually do something so mundane as look at some kid's writing. And, and, and of course, when I went to publishers, they said, "Jane who? Who said that they would endorse your book?" 'Cause everyone had said no. Every publisher in New York had already said no. And then after that, Harper Collins took me on, and they said: "Well, if Jane Goodall thinks it's a good idea, then we think it's a good idea." And it became Mother of God, and then because of that, you know, Junglekeepers, Dax, everything else was-- stemmed from that. So had Jane not been the legend that she is truly in every moment, my whole career would never have happened, which also means that those thousands of heartbeats and thousands of acres in the Amazon wouldn't be protected 'cause we never would've started Junglekeepers.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:16:17

      And she did that not because you're special, she did that to everybody.

   4. PRPaul Rosolie1:16:21

      Yeah.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:16:22

      And now just imagine-

   6. PRPaul Rosolie1:16:23

      Yeah

   7. LFLex Fridman1:16:23

      ... the scale of the impact she's had because of that.

   8. PRPaul Rosolie1:16:27

      Yeah.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:16:27

      And guess what? That you have a bit of that responsibility now as well. There's young people that walk up to you-

   10. PRPaul Rosolie1:16:33

       [chuckles]

   11. LFLex Fridman1:16:33

       -that way, and you have that responsibility of seeing them, of giving them a chance, se- seeing the, the potential in every single human being that walks up to you.

   12. PRPaul Rosolie1:16:45

       It definitely is-- I would say that Jane's... We could do four hours on just Jane, uh, what she did for humanity, what she did for science, what she did for women, what she did for wildlife, the amount of other people that she inspired and gave careers to, everything she did for me. But to me, that, that, that presence of mind when you reach that level, to not be, like, worried about your own travel and your own schedule, and busy with, you know, getting some rest, and that she actually, she actually looked at it, has, has informed how I operate. And indeed, like you say, at this point, as strange as it is, people will stop me on the street and say, "Hey, I watch your videos every night with my kids, and I..." You know, or, or someone will say, you know, "How do I get your job? I lo- I've been watching you for years, and I'd love to, to help conservation." And so it's, it's made it so that, you know, I follow her example, where it's like, you stop what you're doing, and you, and you, you pay attention because you don't know, that might be the next kid that's out there saving a river, or the next person that makes an innovation that makes it possible to clean rivers or, or whatever it is, whatever, whatever their dream is. But, but we're-- You know, Jane was in the hope business. She always said it, you know, that, that not losing hope was key to staying in the fight, and that we live at a time when, you know, that apathy is, is a poison pedal- pedaled by the darkness. It's-- They're, they're trying to make you feel disoriented and, and apathetic and scared, and, and fighting back against that and having conviction and passion and fire and hope are the only way that we're gonna fight that. And she understood that, and she spent her whole life spreading it, guarding the flame against the storm and, and tipping her candle to others to light them. I mean, she just-- That was her whole thing.

9. 1:18:30 – 1:27:44

   Advice for young people

   1. LFLex Fridman1:18:30

      What a- advice would you give to young people-

   2. PRPaul Rosolie1:18:33

      Mm

   3. LFLex Fridman1:18:33

      ... how to do that? Those young Pauls-

   4. PRPaul Rosolie1:18:37

      Mm-hmm

   5. LFLex Fridman1:18:37

      ... sitting there, I mean, your life story is just incredible in that way. You've taken a leap into adventure-

   6. PRPaul Rosolie1:18:44

      Mm

   7. LFLex Fridman1:18:45

      ... into the unknown. What would you recommend they do?

   8. PRPaul Rosolie1:18:49

      I think the thing that, that I try to communicate to them, and again, my inboxes are filled with people, "You know, I'm from Finland, I'm from Spain, I'm from, you know, Georgia," people saying: "How do I get your job? How do I get out there and do it?" And it's, it really is just that. It's that you throw yourself headfirst into adventure, and it's you just do it. And, and, and I, I remember hearing people say that thing, like, "You know, if I can do it, you can do it," and it's like, I remember thinking how hollow that sounds. 'Cause I'm like, "Yeah, you're on a talk show, or you just wrote a book, and you're going, you know," these, these, these titans of, of their industries and, and, and innovators saying, like, you know, "Oh, if I could do it, anybody could do it." But now that we're protecting all this rainforest-... and that I've, you know, lived with the animals and met the tribes, and that it's becoming this global movement. You know, I didn't have a PhD. You know, there's that quote that someone less qualified than you is, is living your dream life and has your dream job right now, and I am the poster child for that because I went there with-- You know, I failed out of high school and started taking co- unmatriculated college classes, and going to the jungle with my friend JJ, and just doing it for the sheer love of it for years, almost a decade, before anything, um, surfaced. And the other thing is, there was, there's, there's not even a path.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:20:04

      Mm-hmm.

   10. PRPaul Rosolie1:20:04

       There was, there was no path ahead of us. There was no, you know, okay, you go to school, you get trained in this, and you're gonna become a this. I went there, and it was like, "You're never gonna be a conservation biologist 'cause you don't have the grades. You're not-- You don't have a PhD, you don't have family money. You're not gonna, you're not gonna be able to protect rainforests." So I said, "All right, well, then selfishly, I just wanna see it." And then I ended up getting trained by the indigenous people. And like, ha- what happens so many times, and you could use, you know, like, a... I think a restaurant example is the best one you could use, where you might start washing dishes, but at least you're in the restaurant. You know, and then at some point, the, the manager's gonna need you to help with, you know, restocking and da, da... And then at some point, after a few years, you're gonna be helping the new guy. And at some point, after a few years, you might end up being the manager, and at some point, you might end up being in the position where you're starting your own restaurant. That's the only way to do that. You can't just search it on a computer. You have to go sweat and bleed and do it.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:20:58

       And that said, especially if you fall in love with, uh, the journey that you take on, it's full of, um, difficult periods. I think you said somewhere this just seems to be the nature of it, that there's going to be pain, there's going to be suffering along the way. You have a really nice post-

   12. PRPaul Rosolie1:21:16

       Yeah

   13. LFLex Fridman1:21:16

       ... that I recommend people watch about just this, when people ask for advice, that the hardship, the suffering-

   14. PRPaul Rosolie1:21:26

       Mm-hmm.

   15. LFLex Fridman1:21:27

       And I've seen how much you care. You-- When I've seen you, just on your face, when you see the, a tree being cut down or you see the fires, there's real pain there in your heart, and you have to carry that. And so the post is: "How honest can I be? What do I tell these kids who message me asking how they can do what I do? It's not David versus Goliath. There's no sword or sling that can hold back a dragon this big. You're going against the current of global economic entropy and human apathy. Swimming against the current is tiring, a great way to drown. Every day, we don't win, we lose, and when we do, worlds burn. The more you know, the more it bleeds. The heartbeats all stop when the flames come through. Constellations of species turn to ghosts, and we're the only ones saving them, cupped our hands around a candle in the howling darkness. And people want to be inspired. 'Keep that social media going! Keep it up. You're doing great.' They want to know we're winning, and we've done a lot of winning, but not right now. We're getting slaughtered. We're at that part of the story. We're almost at the end game. We can think positively, as positively as we want. Thoughts and prayers won't stop a chainsaw, and the motor that's carrying us against the current towards the miraculous goal only when there's gasoline in it. As soon as that stops, we drown. We drown. We can take the warm light from all of those who help and not let it bother us that there are people who could buy planets claim to care. At some point, you realize what's really happening."

   16. PRPaul Rosolie1:23:17

       Mm-hmm.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:23:17

       "As a kid, you'd rather be Aragorn. You don't want to actually carry the ring, not when you learn what it's gonna cost, even if you make it. How can you explain to Sam why you can't get on the boats? Whatever it takes, whatever it takes. It's that time of year again. Here come the flames. Whatever it takes, it's coming." And people should watch the video that goes along with this. But that speaks to the pain, the difficulty, the challenge, the suffering involved when you're faced with a possibility of destruction. That's the other side of the sword of caring for something deeply.

   18. PRPaul Rosolie1:23:57

       Yeah, we've watched a lot of forests burn. We've pulled a lot of animals out of the flames. Yeah, that, I wrote that at a time where we were just getting hammered, man. We-- Funding wasn't coming in. There was miners. It was just months and months out in the jungle alone. And, uh, yeah, that, that re- that... It's a Thom Yorke track that we'd just been listening to again and again, and I was just so, so low. Um, there was then, you know, the-- There was a huge new invasion where they just, they just burned the whole side of the river and just... You know, it's, it's, it's never gonna come back, and it's part of the forest that I loved, and I knew the animals there, and it's, um, it's gone. And so we have to live through that on a, on a weekly basis, at least a day-to-day basis. And when you take on responsibility for something like this, you, you go to sleep thinking, "Yeah, if we don't do it, then worlds burn." You know, if we don't save it, then... Every time you said the, the, the sadness that surrounds a happy moment, well, it's like, how am I supposed to go to a party and talk with people about anything? Or how am I supposed to even go to sleep when if I don't-- if we don't succeed at what we're trying to do, if we don't outrace the chainsaws and the roads, then those trees die, those millennium trees, and we're the only ones out there protecting them. And, and when you see that black scorched earth with, with nothing left, it's just ashes on, on the ground, and all the-... you know, the cacophony of life is silenced, and it's just, it's just this horrible, violent silence. It's-- it makes you sick. And so yeah, there's a lot of weight that comes with that, where w- we're not, we're not, we're not theoretically doing something. We're, we're, we're black and white practically doing it.

   19. LFLex Fridman1:25:51

       So that's the other side of the advice to young people.

   20. PRPaul Rosolie1:25:55

       Oh, yeah. Well-

   21. LFLex Fridman1:25:56

       It's not gonna be easy.

   22. PRPaul Rosolie1:25:58

       No, the-- I mean, when they say, they say: "How do I get your job?" It's like: Well, you don't want my job, and you don't want the botflies, and you don't want the dengue, and you don't want... You know, don't, don't even inquire what a normal life looks like. Like, you know, I lived out of a backpack for twenty years. Um, you know how many monkey faces I had to eat because there was no other food? Like, seriously. Um, you know, that, just that shot, just being alone on the boat in the river, and how many days the motor didn't work. And you sleep out there, and you get rained on 'cause you don't have any protection, and you have some leaves over your face. And, and then you go home, and everyone's got a job, and everyone's got kids, and everyone's happy, and they're like: "What are you doing down there?"

   23. LFLex Fridman1:26:37

       Mm.

   24. PRPaul Rosolie1:26:38

       "I'm trying to save the rainforest." They're like: "Sure." And now we're at this point where, you know, I cared a whole lot for a whole long time. We've had rises, and then we've had falls, and we've had wins, and then we've had failures. And the last few years, we've had this, this rolling success of, of people finding out about our work and coming in, and we start to go, "Wow, we've protected one hundred and thirty thousand acres. We might actually be able to do this." And so, you know, there's that, there's that moment in 300 where they, they show Leonidas, and they say, "Even the king allows himself a, a moment of hope that this might be okay," right before they get slaughtered.

   25. LFLex Fridman1:27:12

       Yeah. [chuckles]

   26. PRPaul Rosolie1:27:14

       Um, and someone very dear to me recently said, you know, uh, in celebration of where we've gotten to, that, "If it happened in any harder of a way, it would've actually killed you, and if it had happened in an easier way, it wouldn't have been so divine." And that slapped me in the face 'cause it was like, man, it has been so hard, but look where we are. We might actually do this.

   27. LFLex Fridman1:27:41

       It just has to be that way. Uh,

10. 1:27:44 – 1:49:44

    Cartel, Narco-traffickers & assassination attempts

    1. LFLex Fridman1:27:44

       [chuckles] speaking of which, another complexity in all of this, you write about in the afterword of the book, uh, about the narco-traffickers that have moved into the, the river basin. They're not the loggers that we've spoken about anymore. They're growing coca for cocaine, and they're building, uh, airstrips. So tell me how this came to be.

    2. PRPaul Rosolie1:28:14

       Like you said, the loggers, our whole life on this river, when loggers come in, JJ and I would walk up to them and say, "Hey, what's up?" And sit down with them and have a beer or share a, share a meal and talk to them and ask who their father was, and if we know them, and then hire them, and they're friendly. And-

    3. LFLex Fridman1:28:32

       They are, in a way, brothers, JJ. They're the same.

    4. PRPaul Rosolie1:28:37

       Yeah.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:28:37

       They come...

    6. PRPaul Rosolie1:28:38

       They come from the same people. They're simple, local people. They're not evil. They're just people who usually have a kid and a wife, and they're, they're looking for work.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:28:46

       Mm.

    8. PRPaul Rosolie1:28:47

       And so they work with a chainsaw 'cause that's what they know, and they work for, you know, thirty dollars a day, um, if that, in very challenging, harsh environments. And so when we see clearings, I would always go with the drone and fly it over clearings. We'd get some intel, and then we'd go bring that to the police, and the police... You know, Junglekeepers supports the police at this point 'cause the Peruvian government has a hard time with resources, trying to m- manage Amazonia, and there's, you know, when you're three days from civilization, getting cops out there is not the easiest thing. So sometimes we'll lend boats or gasoline or logistical support. And, uh, there was a moment in March, several hours upriver from, you know, home base, and I'm with JJ on the boat, and I fly the drone, and there's this big new clearing, and I flew the drone over it, and we l- lower the drone. And a few times I've had people come out and wave at the drone or say, like, "Get away." And we're out in the middle of the river, just sort of idling, staying in one place, and I lower the drone, and I see the, these little huts. And we're saying, "Okay, this is a big clearing." I'm snapping images, snapping images. These people are on the boat with us, these visitors who had flown in, and I have my local team. And all of a sudden, people come running out of the houses, and they run straight to their boats, and we're already above where their boat is. So home is in downriver direction.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:30:09

       Mm.

    10. PRPaul Rosolie1:30:09

        They get in their boats and start chasing us, and we start driving, and we're going at full speed. We have a sixty horsepower. They, they had a forty, and we're driving up these-- we're just doing this chase now. And our guests, who are gonna be potential funders, you know, at one point, the father looked at me, and he goes, "Hey, this whole, you know, running from the Pirates of the Caribbean thing," he's like, "It's getting scary. You're scaring, you're scaring us." He was like: "Can we, can we-- Like, what are we doing?" He goes: "What-- When are you gonna put the drone down?" And I, I'm flying the drone at full speed to keep up with the boat, and I, I just crash landed the drone on the side of the river near a big tree. I just said, "Fuck it. We'll get it later."

    11. LFLex Fridman1:30:46

        Mm-hmm.

    12. PRPaul Rosolie1:30:46

        And I was like: "This is fine. This happens all the time."

    13. LFLex Fridman1:30:49

        [laughing]

    14. PRPaul Rosolie1:30:49

        "They get mad. They, they chase us. It's no big deal." And I smiled at him, and JJ's smiling. He goes, "This is so bad," and he's smiling.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:30:56

        Yeah.

    16. PRPaul Rosolie1:30:56

        And then JJ looked at me, and the smile fell off him like a mask, and he looked at me, and he was like, "This is not good." And we kept going upriver, and luckily, there was a camp of, of police that we've worked with quite a bit, and I went to, uh, a friend of mine, and I remember we got off the boat. I shook his hand. He said, "What's going on?" I said, "Look downriver," and there's this boat tearing upriver towards us. And he did three things: He got the rest of the guys, they armed up. They got on the boat with guns. They put ski masks on. They got, like, ready for combat. They told us to get down. He also said, "Hey, turn on the sat link. Call for support back home." We turned our boat around-... and as soon as the narcos, which we didn't even realize that this was, these were narcos chasing us. We thought we were looking at loggers. When they saw the guns, and they saw us face them, they turned their boat around, and they went back down river. So we got escorted down river, and I remember shaking his hand, my friend, and saying, "Thank you for saving us today," and telling the other guys they did a good job. I said, "Get back up river." We'd been brought home safe. This is hours later, and I said, "Good job. Thank you so much." And they went back up river, and then that night, I'm sitting at the station that you know, and I get a phone call from Stefan, and he goes: "Pick up the phone." And I go, "I'm can't, I'm in the middle of a conversation." He goes, "Pick up the phone!" And my friend, who I had just shook his hand a few hours ago, they went back up river, and as they were unloading their boat and washing off in the stream, the narcos did a drive-by, and shotgun straight to the chest, shot him in the chest. And so all of that enthusiasm, and we're protecting the biodiversity, and this is so great. There's people from around the world. It's like that scene in the movie where there's just a montage of success and hope and acres and winning... Gunshot. And I could still feel his hand in my hand. I just shook his hand. I said, "No." I said, "No, you can't... You're not... He's..." I said, "Is he okay?" He said, "Is he okay?" He said, "He took a shotgun straight to the chest." And they're like, "He's dead." I said, "Okay." And so I had to go out to dinner and not show the guests anything and just smile and laugh and talk to them about, you know, whatever, um, and keep that, and keep that in, which, which felt very, very difficult to do. Um, and so what happened, as, as you said, the, the threat level escalated, and we didn't know it.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:33:25

        Mm-hmm.

    18. PRPaul Rosolie1:33:25

        The narcos had come in and started realizing that there's so much wilderness here that they can operate, and there's no police, and then when we flew the drone, they got mad. So we realized this. Um, we communicated with our-- with the police, and they said, "Oh yeah, these are, these are narcos." Now, we realize this is part of the serious, like, drug mafia. And then I had gone back with the, the incident that you're referring to at the end of the book, I had gone back to New York, again, to speak to donors to try and get this work to, to continue. And you, you know how it works. We're at the station, and then you go to that little logging town, and then there's a road. And so our, our pickup truck had come in on the road, and JJ was supposed to come down, get in the truck, and drive back to, to the city. JJ was on the river and went, "I forgot I was supposed to get more stuff at the city." He goes, "You know what? I'll go, I'll go tomorrow." He went back up, and he sent the boat driver down and told our driver, Percy, who was waiting with the pickup truck. He said, "JJ's not coming today. Go back and come back tomorrow." Percy starts driving down the road, and he sees a tree across the road, and this is a single-lane road through the jungle. There's nowhere else you can go, and men with guns come and stick the pistols in through the open windows. Gun against his head, they pull him out, and they go, "Where's JJ and the mierda gringo boladrón?" They said, "Where's the-- where's that shithead gringo f- that flew the drone?" And if either of us had been in the car that day, they would've killed us. And we know that because they took his wallet, they took his phone, our driver, Percy. They thank God they didn't hurt him, but they sent a message to us. They said, "Let him know." They said, "We missed you this time, but we'll get you next time." They said, "We're gonna get you." And so when JJ called me, he called me, and he was howling. He just had the, um, you know, that, that adrenaline and that emotion of, of that, "It almost happened." And so that was... That, that changed everything. And so since then, we've been, you know, it's not counting butterflies and taking ecological surveys. It's, it's that there's a drug war being fought on our river, and now when these roads come in, we can't just go out and meet these people anymore and go talk to them 'cause they are actively looking to shoot us. They know our names, and then on-- if as if all these other things weren't enough indication, the police intercepted a phone from someone they arrested, and on the phone, in the WhatsApp chat, it said: "If you see JJ or the gringo, anyone in our network, please kill them. You'll be rewarded." So we both have a hit out on us, and life on the river has changed at the moment. We don't-- We can't... You know, I can't just go out walking around and swimming and driving my boat, and it's like you have to be looking over your shoulder at all times. And, you know, you can get as trained as you want with a pistol and sleep with it under your pillow and-- but the way these people work, they'll catch you when you're least expecting it. They'll wait till you're at a cafe in town. They'll wait till your motor doesn't work on the side of the river. It'll just be a quick one, and they'll go. And so that, that feeling on top of the weight of, of protecting the ecosystem and the animals and the race to, to tell people about it and do all this, it's like now we're actively being hunted when we're there, so-

    19. LFLex Fridman1:36:54

        And this is very directed at you and JJ.

    20. PRPaul Rosolie1:36:57

        Yeah.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:36:59

        So they, they really don't care about the others. This is... They understand.

    22. PRPaul Rosolie1:37:04

        Mm-hmm.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:37:05

        Are, are you afraid? What's it been like living with this, with a real fear of being murdered at any moment?

    24. PRPaul Rosolie1:37:20

        I wish I could say I handled it better than I've been handling it. Like, I wonder how people in war zones do it. I wonder how some of my soldier friends that I have immense respect for have, have did it when they were deployed, 'cause for me, once this happened, it was, you know, every phone call now, I, I think, "Did something happen to JJ?"

    25. LFLex Fridman1:37:40

        Yeah.

    26. PRPaul Rosolie1:37:40

        You know, every time I go to sleep, my dreams are that I'm being shot.... and it, I just, it just, it just, it, it really threw me. It really, really affected me. When JJ called me, the, the, the way-- he was just, he was just shouting. I don't even remember what he was saying. He was just, he's, he was just shouting, "They almost got us. They almost got us!" He was so, you know, uh, terrified and, and angry, and, and, and so, yeah, it's, it's-- I-- there was a day not that long ago that I was swimming in the river, and I was just in the river, you know, right in front of the stairs at the station, and a boat came around the bend. And I remember thinking, "Do I run? Do I go underwater? Do I hide? Do I-- What, what the hell do I do?" I didn't have a gun near me. I didn't have... The security people were up the stairs. It's like, you go, "Holy shit!" And it's not the danger of, you know, if I jump on an anaconda, it might kill me, or if I climb this, I might fall. These are people who want to kill you. And on top of it, you have the, you know, the... When you see your-- when you see what your friend looks like after three days of floating in a river, what a body looks like of a person you used to know, that's very viscerally terrifying because there's the, the tragedy of that, that person lost his life, who was younger than I was. You know, he's, like, he was a kid. He was in his twenties. Um, and then, yeah, it's just... it's very hard, it's very hard to do anything 'cause you're, you're-- I mean, like, right now, my hands are sweating. It just-

    27. LFLex Fridman1:39:12

        Mm-hmm

    28. PRPaul Rosolie1:39:12

        ... it affects me. And even in the daylight, if I can go, "You know, it's, it's fine. This is part of the thing, you know. So this is the adventure. People deal with this all over the world," you can talk yourself tough, and then, and then in those quiet moments, you know, that, that 4:00 AM thing, you wake up, and you go, "Fuck! You know, why am I sweating? Why, why did I just have those dreams? Why is my heart racing?" It's like you just have, um... It sinks its way into your subconscious, and, and it's just not what we signed up for, you know? It's like we, we, we wanted to just protect this beautiful place, and this is this whole new threat. We're not trained for this. We're not, we're not a, a, you know, we're not police or military, and it's, and it's like we've, we've now seen violence on a scale that we were very unprepared for. And so, I mean, just two days ago, I was, you know, on my way to you, and my phone rang at nine o'clock at night, and it was JJ, and it was like I had a... My heart was jackhammering. I had to pull over because I was going, "What, what, what news now?" You know, "Did we lose another bunch of acres? Is it a new road? Did somebody die?"

    29. LFLex Fridman1:40:16

        Mm.

    30. PRPaul Rosolie1:40:16

        "What..." It just, you know, it, it really scatters you.
11. 1:49:44 – 2:00:42

    Climbing the giant tree

    1. LFLex Fridman1:49:45

       And me, as somebody who-... is afraid of heights, [chuckles] and I've had a chance to interact with you a bunch. Uh, you're in some sense fearless, uh, and I've watched you climb a lot of trees. You've helped me, uh, climb a tree. And there's this wonderful part of the book where you talk about finding the tallest tree in the forest you knew at the time, and that was something that you passed and thought was impossible to climb, and you talk about climbing it. You, uh, take us through the experience of that, and that leads you to seeing the Mist River in the rainforest as the sun rises. I w- I was wondering if you could talk the story of that, [chuckles] both for, at least for me, but even for you at that time, the terrifying, uh, process of climbing a tree like that, uh, for the first time with JJ, uh, at the bottom cheering you on, and, uh, what it felt like to see the Mist River.

    2. PRPaul Rosolie1:50:44

       That tree, you've met that tree. She's a, she's a good one. Her base is at least as big as this room, and, um, she's probably about a hundred and sixty-something feet tall. And so when you're looking at these giant buttress roots going up, which I'd been doing for eighteen years at that point, and I'd always said, "Man, if I could just climb it." And I never had the rope skills, you know, and I developed as a rock climber. I was working on strength, and I trained for it. You know, it wasn't-- It's like most things, it's not-- You can't just do it. You know, I'd gone and climbed up, you know, thirty feet and gone, "No way!" You know, the, the, the trunk of the tree goes vertical for about seventy feet before branches even come out, and so there's just this one big vine. And JJ and I did it at, I wanna say, like, four in the morning, like, really early. The howler monkeys had just started. [monkeys howling] And you start climbing with the rope up this one vine, and you have to-- It's not a technical climb, it's a strength climb. You have to gorilla up this vine, and it's all back strength. And, and so I did it, no shirt, no shoes, straight up, and JJ had the belay device. And so every, like, thirty feet, I would put in, uh, a piece of webbing and a carabiner. So then you go up another thirty feet, and you put a piece of webbing and a carabiner, and you don't know what you're gonna find, and you're going up in the dark.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:52:05

       And so when you say it's a lot of strength that's involved, so there's very few places to rest. You're essentially just lifting the whole time-

    4. PRPaul Rosolie1:52:12

       You're lifting-

    5. LFLex Fridman1:52:12

       -so it's extremely exhausting.

    6. PRPaul Rosolie1:52:13

       Extremely exhausting. Like, I really trained for a long time. And there is no rest. You have-- The only rest you get, uh, hurts. You have to-- You'll have to cling to the tree, and your, your, your feet are, are smeared against the bark, and you're holding on with your toes, if the, if anything. And if you fall... You know, if I put a-- If you're climbing up, and it's basically trad climbing. If you're climbing up and you put a safety, which is, you know, a piece of, piece of rope with a carabiner, and you put my rope through that. Again, as you're doing that, it's dangerous, 'cause if you fall, you fall. Then I do that, and then you climb up. Right before you put the next one, you're gonna fall double. So if you climbed thirty feet, you fall sixty feet, and so your, your head's gonna smack against the side of the tree. As you're climbing, you don't know if you're gonna reach into a wasp nest or if there's gonna be a venomous snake.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:52:56

       And there's, by the way, in those trees, a lot of those.

    8. PRPaul Rosolie1:52:58

       Lot of those. And it took me over an hour just to get to the branches the first time, and it's just, again, full exertion, everything I had. And then you get to the branches are above you, and each of the branches is the size of a mature oak tree. They're just, you know, these huge branches, big, big, big branches, the size-- thick as a minivan. And you're, you're climbing up this straight tree that's like the World Trade Center. It's just huge. And then I had to traverse around the tree on vines, and then finally, I get up into the crown of this tree. And then from there, I called down to JJ, and I just see this little speck of light, you know, s- eighty-five feet below me, and then I climbed up to about a hundred and twenty feet, which is up here, and I sat there.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:53:39

       And you're doing all this still in darkness?

    10. PRPaul Rosolie1:53:42

        We're doing all this in the, the pre-dawn light. And so when I got up there, now the howler monkeys are going, [howling] and the jungle's starting to vibrate, and you can hear the first macaws starting to chirp, and everything's starting to turn on. And in the east, the sun is coming over the jungle, and so the sun, the, the first rays, get line of sight to the canopy of the jungle. It starts lifting the mist off the canopy. All of that moisture starts coming up, and I'm sitting on this branch at a hundred-something feet above the ground with dark jungle below me, and all of a sudden, I see the, the river. I see the Mist River I'd always heard about. They say that there's a, a river above the Amazon, an invisible river, that has more moisture in it, more water is flowing above the Amazon than is flowing in the Amazon. And I'd heard this my whole life, and you think like, "Okay, the fact that there's a molten core of the Earth or that black holes theoretically exist, it's just like th- one of those things, you're never gonna see it." And in this moment, on this tree, as-- sweating and just ripped apart and bleeding, I was sitting up there, and I saw the Mist River, and it was flowing over the canopy in the d- the golden rays of the morning, and the macaws started taking flight, and there was monkeys below me that were looking up. And you could tell they were confused. They were looking at me going, "What is that?"

    11. LFLex Fridman1:54:55

        Mm.

    12. PRPaul Rosolie1:54:55

        And I just had this absolutely incredible moment. I wanted to... You know, it felt like, it felt like you're seeing God. I wanted to, I wanted to share it with everyone. You know, I felt, I felt, I felt guilty afterwards for having had a moment like that-

    13. LFLex Fridman1:55:10

        Mm.

    14. PRPaul Rosolie1:55:10

        ... but it felt like I had done this insane risk and, and, um, you know, risked falling out of the tree or, or, or getting strung up on the ropes. And, of course, it's just me and JJ, so if something goes wrong, there's no one, no one's gonna help you. Um, and being out there on that branch felt suicidal, 'cause even then, if you fall, it's, it's a giant swing back to the tree. But the beauty that I saw up there was so intense that it, you know, it sucked the, it sucked the air right out of my lungs. It-- You know, I had tears in my eyes, and, and I'm just watching this incredible process flow over the Earth, this, this legendary thing that I'd heard about, that scientists described, and now I'm seeing it with my own eyes. It was-... um, it felt like the gift of the tree.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:55:56

        And you write: "Now, in the branches of the greatest tree in the jungle, I watched as the mist river caught the morning rays, illuminating golden currents, swirling as it rushed over the canopy like a stream from heaven. In the troughs and basins and lower areas, the river was deep blue. But then, as it flowed up and over the taller trees, slow rapids washing over the canopy, the mist river became ignited, electrified in the gold magnificence of the sunlight. Scores of birds flew up, in and out of the churning currents. The life and breath of the Amazon was flowing from north to south along the basins of the Las Piedras over the jungle. My God. My God. I thought of everyone I loved, of every creature contained in the leafy distance. The jungle itself was like a great being, a monstrous leviathan of warm, green might. I wanted to call down to JJ and tell him to find a way up. I wanted my mother to see it. I wanted the world to see it. The light filled my eyes, and I found myself wiping away tears." You know, I should take the small tangent of saying the obvious, but the thing that needs to be said is you're a fucking great writer.

    16. PRPaul Rosolie1:57:15

        Thank you. I mean, come on, that's-- I'm just describing what happened, but-

    17. LFLex Fridman1:57:20

        All right. You mentioned macaws as part of the process of the jungle waking up.

    18. PRPaul Rosolie1:57:25

        Mm.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:57:25

        I read that, you know, when you st- first started in the jungle, that's kind of your job, is to studying those. And me, as a fan of monogamy and birds, [chuckles]

    20. PRPaul Rosolie1:57:35

        Yes.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:57:35

        So macaws are, are beautiful, but they're also monogamous creatures. They scream at each other quite loudly. What are some interesting things about them? Among which, by the way, you write how important the ironwoods are-

    22. PRPaul Rosolie1:57:49

        Mm

    23. LFLex Fridman1:57:49

        ... to their well-being, to their life.

    24. PRPaul Rosolie1:57:53

        Yeah, I mean, when I went down there, that's-- like I said, you know, for young people, if you wanna get out there, go do it. I agreed to stay at the station and, and do, like, six hours of macaw research every morning. So you'd wake up before dawn and go sit and just stare at the side of the river, and the macaws would show up.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:58:10

        Mm-hmm.

    26. PRPaul Rosolie1:58:11

        And like you said, they all scream and bicker at each other. That's just how they talk. It's very, it's very, very loud and very, very harsh, but they do love each other. Um, they are always... You can actually hear when you walk through the forest, I know what the sound of macaws giving affection is. They make a certain kind of sound when they're just preening each other's feathers and, and, and taking care of each other and, and just nuzzling. And then there's a different call altogether when they're yelling at other macaws or saying, "Let's go!" And you start to learn macaw language.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:58:42

        What have you learned about relationship and successful marriage from, um, listening to macaws scream at each other in nuanced, different ways that you're talking about?

    28. PRPaul Rosolie1:58:52

        Well, I guess, [laughing]

    29. LFLex Fridman1:58:54

        Never mind, you can skip that question.

    30. PRPaul Rosolie1:58:56

        Yeah. Um, it's interesting to see two animals sticking by each other's side, and they're both raising a chick, and at the bottom of the stairs at the station, there is a macaw nest in an ironwood. And the relationship that you mentioned is that in the jungle, there's a limited amount of macaw real estate, and those are all ancient ironwood trees, at least five hundred years or more, so they have to be, you know, thick. Thus, again, car thickness or bigger. And when a branch falls off, it creates a hollow, and the macaws use that to reproduce. And because there's only so many nest sites in the forest, only about seventeen percent, seventeen to twenty percent of the macaw population reproduces in a given year, so they have a slow replacement rate. And macaws are one of the things that people come to the jungle to see. And so along with gold mining and logging and all these extractive things, in our region, ecotourism has been great. It's given the local people jobs as guides and cooks and chefs and, and, and carpenters, and so macaws are a huge part of that because it's one of the last places where you can see these flying rainbows over the canopy. You know, or when you're on a branch from one of these trees and macaws fly under you, and again, that, that-- they'll fly by, [exhales] you just hear the, you hear the wind in their, in their feathers, and they just- they'll look at you over their shoulder, like, "What?" They just keep going. [laughing] Eh, just loud, and they'll just keep going, and then they'll join up with other macaws, and they fly across the horizon. And it, it gives you this sense like you're seeing something from, from the dinosaur times. It's just, it just looks like wild jungle, and there's nothing human in sight, and there's just this savage canopy to the, to the horizon and just these beautiful birds flying over. It's just, they're just, they're just, they're just magical.

12. 2:00:42 – 2:18:00

    Giant anaconda

    1. LFLex Fridman2:00:42

       You have this, uh, Instagram post with an anaconda around your neck. So I mean, there's a million questions. Maybe we can talk about that experience, but also, how did you not die?

    2. PRPaul Rosolie2:00:53

       So, as you know, we've been studying the habits of Eunectes murinus for quite a while. Um, the lowland green anaconda is the largest, heaviest snake on Earth, and I've been practicing a lot for a long time, and this is the biggest one we've ever physically caught. This was just under twenty feet. It was nineteen feet something. And you can see she's in the middle of shedding, and the other interesting thing with her is that she had blue eyes because she was in the middle of shedding, and their-- the scale over their eyes turns blue right before it comes off of their head. And so I've never caught a blue-eyed anaconda before.

    3. LFLex Fridman2:01:34

       Wow!

    4. PRPaul Rosolie2:01:34

       But if you look at the size of my head and the size of my hands, you start to imagine that thing's head is bigger than a Great Dane.

    5. LFLex Fridman2:01:41

       Wow.

    6. PRPaul Rosolie2:01:41

       It's huge. And so the power on that, when we tried to lift her to measure her, we wanted to bring her up out of the stream and get her over to the side, so we can straighten her out and measure her.

    7. LFLex Fridman2:01:51

       Mm-hmm.

    8. PRPaul Rosolie2:01:51

       And again, we're just trying to take some simple data points and then release her. And she, at one point, she just-... decided to flex her body, and you just see 10 people fly this way, and then she flexes the other way, and 10 people fly this way.

    9. LFLex Fridman2:02:02

       Mm-hmm.

    10. PRPaul Rosolie2:02:03

        And every time that mouth would open, she would just open the mouth and try to... Uh, she'd just reach back, and she'd just be like, "Just let me do it."

    11. LFLex Fridman2:02:09

        Mm-hmm.

    12. PRPaul Rosolie2:02:09

        And you know that if she gets purchase-

    13. LFLex Fridman2:02:11

        Mm-hmm

    14. PRPaul Rosolie2:02:11

        ... once they get purchase, they just, they wrap you so quick, and they'll just, they'll crush the life out of you like you're a bag of chips. And if you've ever seen a mouse in a mousetrap, when the mousetrap goes down and the eyes come out, and when snakes... Anybody that's owned snakes and fed them mou- mice knows this, that sometimes if they catch it right, they'll, the, the guts will either come out the back end or the front end. So I'd imagine that the same thing will happen with a snake. You know, it's that big.

    15. LFLex Fridman2:02:36

        Mm-hmm.

    16. PRPaul Rosolie2:02:36

        It's bigger than, bigger than I am around.

    17. LFLex Fridman2:02:39

        So they have a process, when you say purchase, they, they wanna bite just to hold, and then they-

    18. PRPaul Rosolie2:02:43

        Yeah

    19. LFLex Fridman2:02:43

        ... sko, so.

    20. PRPaul Rosolie2:02:44

        But again, she, she, all she wants is to be let go. And her, to her defense, this massive snake, uh, her na- we named her Millie for, for the, for the data entry. Um, she just wanted to go on her way down the, down the, down the stream. The, the, the comments on this are hysterical.

    21. LFLex Fridman2:03:01

        Yeah.

    22. PRPaul Rosolie2:03:01

        People were, "You know, this is, this is the worst example of white people shit I've ever seen." I mean, Snoop Dogg shared it. Some- one guy, one guy goes, he goes, he goes, "Congratulations, you've touched enough grass. Go back inside." [laughing]

    23. LFLex Fridman2:03:13

        [laughing] Yeah, somebody said, uh, "Interesting use of free will." [laughing]

    24. PRPaul Rosolie2:03:18

        [laughing]

    25. LFLex Fridman2:03:18

        Yeah, and I, I, I saw KillPopper007 commented-

    26. PRPaul Rosolie2:03:23

        Mm-hmm

    27. LFLex Fridman2:03:23

        ... uh, and maybe you can tell me if this is correct.

    28. PRPaul Rosolie2:03:26

        Oh.

    29. LFLex Fridman2:03:26

        "Anacondas are ambush predators. If you approach them, they will usually try to flee and will not register you as food. There's other reasons, too..." This is in response of why- how did Paul possibly not die from this?

    30. PRPaul Rosolie2:03:39

        Hmm.
13. 2:18:00 – 2:24:04

    Rescuing a spider monkey

    1. PRPaul Rosolie2:18:00

       that dynamic.

    2. LFLex Fridman2:18:00

       Speaking of somebody that does have camaraderie, there's this incredible video on your Instagram that people should go watch, where this spider monkey was drowning, and you jumped in to rescue.

    3. PRPaul Rosolie2:18:12

       Sure. So we're coming downriver. It's seven o'clock in the morning, so I'm cold. I'm always cold. I'm sitting on the boat, and I'm wearing my warm, you know, I'm wear-wearing whatever. I'm sitting on the boat, and JJ's like: "Look, spider monkey!" And I go, "Great, spider monkey in the river," like that's normal. And JJ's like, "No, she's having trouble." And I was like, I was like: "Why is she having trouble? They swim all the time."

    4. LFLex Fridman2:18:30

       Yeah.

    5. PRPaul Rosolie2:18:30

       He goes, "No, she..." He goes, "You should help!" And so the boat, the boat comes around, then sure enough, what you can't see in the video is that the river was so full that there's these little whirlpools and currents, and she was trying to get to the side. And again, all the animal-righteous people, uh, are very quick to be like, "Let na- let nature take its course, you know. Let the monkey drown," or, "She doesn't need help. You're interfering." Sure, sure, sure. If you were actually there, you would know something, and that is that she did need help, and she was drowning. Her head kept going under, and so I saw that JJ was right. And so we pull around. I took off whatever I could in the moment, jumped in with the pa- with the paddle, because... Now, here again, I trust monkeys, but I don't want her to bite me. She is gonna be scared, so I thought, "Instead of... There's two ways I can do this. I can grab her by the neck, right? And, like, animal control her, grab her by the neck and the tail and take her out of the river, which is gonna be scary for her." And instead, I thought, "I know spider monkeys so well. I've raised so many of them," and when you raise them, they, they curl up to your neck, and they'll... Like, if you have an orphaned spider monkey whose mother got shot by poachers, and you're taking care of her before we bring them to the animal rehabilitation experts, they'll curl up on your neck, and they go, [chittering] and they'll just, they'll just, they'll just talk to you in your ear. And so I feel like I've-- I know a little bit of spider monkey, a broken spider monkey, and so I-

    6. LFLex Fridman2:19:49

       [chuckles]

    7. PRPaul Rosolie2:19:49

       ... I pull up next to her, and I give her the paddle.

    8. LFLex Fridman2:19:52

       Yeah.

    9. PRPaul Rosolie2:19:52

       And we're in this rushing river, and we're moving at ten miles an hour downstream, and I tried to give her the paddle, and she, she smacks it away. She was like, "No-

    10. LFLex Fridman2:20:00

        Mm

    11. PRPaul Rosolie2:20:00

        ... get away from me. I don't know what you are." And then she keeps swimming. She goes under again. I give her the paddle. "No!" And then I-- she puts a hand around the paddle, and that moment that you had paused on, she looked back at me, and she looked at me like-... Yeah, right there. She looked back, and she registered, like, "Oh, this is, this is another animal with a face."

    12. LFLex Fridman2:20:18

        Just, for people just listening or y- you need to go watch the video, you guys are just looking at each other, and she's looking at you.

    13. PRPaul Rosolie2:20:25

        Yeah.

    14. LFLex Fridman2:20:25

        It's so cool.

    15. PRPaul Rosolie2:20:26

        She looked right at me, but then she went, she went, "No." She was like, "Whatever you are, no," and she went to go back in the... She was like, "I'd rather die in the river." She was like, "I'm so scared, and I'm drowning," and she looked at me, and she got scared, and she jumped back in. And then I lifted her up, and I went, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh," and I started talking in spider monkey, and she just... There's a- then, like, the next moment, you see it. She just goes, "Sure." [laughing] And she just, she wraps her tail. See, her tail is around the edge of the paddle.

    16. LFLex Fridman2:20:52

        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    17. PRPaul Rosolie2:20:52

        And she puts her hand around it, and then I lifted her, and then, 'cause I'm taller than she is, I lifted her out of the river. And so now instead of manhandling her like, you know, like a raccoon you're catching by the neck-

    18. LFLex Fridman2:21:02

        Yeah

    19. PRPaul Rosolie2:21:02

        ... she's holding on, in her spider monkey way, to the paddle, and she looks back over her shoulder. She looks at me, and I'm sitting there, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh," I'm over there talking to her in spider monkey, and she looks at me, and you hear her. She goes... I can't do the s- sound she makes, but she does this, this, whoa! She makes this spider monkey sound-

    20. LFLex Fridman2:21:18

        Mm

    21. PRPaul Rosolie2:21:18

        ... like, "Ah," and she goes, "Fine." And then she, she, she's looking off the front end of the paddle as she's looking at the jungle, and she looks back at me, and she's like... You can just tell, she's like, "I have no idea what's happening."

    22. LFLex Fridman2:21:27

        Mm-hmm.

    23. PRPaul Rosolie2:21:28

        But she accepted the help, and the difference is, is that be- it's because I spoke her language in this case. And I know that that would sound... That would be one of those stories that people would nail me on every time if it wasn't on camera. [laughing]

    24. LFLex Fridman2:21:39

        [laughing]

    25. PRPaul Rosolie2:21:40

        You can see, you can see the moment that she makes direct eye contact-

    26. LFLex Fridman2:21:43

        Yeah

    27. PRPaul Rosolie2:21:43

        ... with me and goes, "Okay." And then as soon as we get to shore, she jumps off and runs off into the forest. But it was-

    28. LFLex Fridman2:21:48

        It's so-- I mean, to me, just watching the video, it's so amazing because she, she's looking at you, like, real-

    29. PRPaul Rosolie2:21:53

        Yeah, yeah.

    30. LFLex Fridman2:21:54

        You can, y- you can see that there's an actual connection.
14. 2:24:04 – 2:34:12

    Dangerous animal encounters

    1. PRPaul Rosolie2:24:04

       it's, it's, to me, it's when other animals show... You know, the times that I've been on a trail and a jaguar has walked by and just been like, "What's up?"

    2. LFLex Fridman2:24:11

       Mm-hmm.

    3. PRPaul Rosolie2:24:12

       Keep walking. It's like, "Hmm, it's kinda cool of you not to eat me. Like, I appreciate it."

    4. LFLex Fridman2:24:16

       Has that happened to you?

    5. PRPaul Rosolie2:24:18

       Yeah, I thought somebody was walking on the trail behind me, and I was doing a camera trap, and I put my finger up, and I was gonna go, "Could you walk any louder?"

    6. LFLex Fridman2:24:24

       Yeah.

    7. PRPaul Rosolie2:24:25

       And I had my finger up, and I'm crouched 'cause I was doing a camera trap. Jaguar walks by, and he literally was just like, [mimicking footsteps] just kicking leaves, just, like, having fun, mouth open with, "Ah, ah," and he just walked by, and he looked at me and just went, "What's up?" Never broke stride-

    8. LFLex Fridman2:24:39

       Yeah

    9. PRPaul Rosolie2:24:39

       ... but, like, deadass eye contact with the, the bottom teeth out and that jaguar look of just like, "Hey."

    10. LFLex Fridman2:24:45

        Yeah.

    11. PRPaul Rosolie2:24:45

        I was like, "Okay." [laughing] Now I'm gonna have a, like, full meltdown. Your system-

    12. LFLex Fridman2:24:50

        Mm

    13. PRPaul Rosolie2:24:50

        ... you start sweating. You're like, "Whoa!" Because they're also so beautiful. When you actually see a jaguar, and it's, like, bright yellow, and the teeth and the, all the muscles, and it's, you know.

    14. LFLex Fridman2:25:00

        What do you think you commun- communicated to the jaguar that it didn't kill you?

    15. PRPaul Rosolie2:25:04

        No, nothing. The jaguar was making the decisions. I didn't do anything that, that, like, saved my life. He was just going somewhere.

    16. LFLex Fridman2:25:10

        Mm-hmm.

    17. PRPaul Rosolie2:25:11

        And because he's the king there, he just went, "Eh."

    18. LFLex Fridman2:25:16

        Yeah, probably also not threatened.

    19. PRPaul Rosolie2:25:18

        Not threatened at all.

    20. LFLex Fridman2:25:18

        I don't know, but I, I, I think it, there is something to you. See, you're, you're just taking for granted the things that you're putting out into the world. [chuckles]

    21. PRPaul Rosolie2:25:24

        Mm-hmm.

    22. LFLex Fridman2:25:25

        You're probably radiating calm. Or not, not calm-

    23. PRPaul Rosolie2:25:29

        Oh, my God

    24. LFLex Fridman2:25:29

        ... but non-threat.

    25. PRPaul Rosolie2:25:31

        No, certainly non-threat. I also smell like an animal when I'm in the jungle, right? I'm not... I'm, I shower in the river. I don't use deodorant or shampoo or any of that stuff, so I, I don't smell... You know, you can just imagine to animals that have a smell that's, like, four times as good as ours, that, you know, just your deodorant, just your conditioner-

    26. LFLex Fridman2:25:49

        Mm

    27. PRPaul Rosolie2:25:49

        ... just whatever other products, the, the, the, the detergent on your clothes smell-

    28. LFLex Fridman2:25:54

        Mm

    29. PRPaul Rosolie2:25:54

        ... that we sm- we smell like Times Square. We smell like a fire alarm to them.

    30. LFLex Fridman2:25:59

        Mm.

Episode duration: 3:06:18