Modern WisdomUncontacted Tribes, Jungle Warfare & Being Eaten Alive - Paul Rosolie
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
135 min read · 27,296 words- 0:00 – 5:06
The Agonising Reality of Stingray Venom
- CWChris Williamson
How was getting stung by a stingray?
- PRPaul Rosolie
[inhales] That's a- it was wonderful. I loved every second of it, because people pursue ice plunges and ayahuasca journeys, and, and people, people are constantly looking for the edge. And, and I found the edge, right? I thought I was tough. I thought I'd been through pain. I didn't know anything. I was, I was making deals with God. I was, I was in so much pain, and you don't think, you know... You think, like, y- your chest cavity or your head. You didn't think that your foot could throw you into agony. I got- you know, so it, it stung me in the foot, and what happened was-
- CWChris Williamson
Tell me this, where were you?
- PRPaul Rosolie
So I'm in a stream in the Amazon rainforest, and I had my shoes on just 'cause I'd been hiking, and I reached this waterfall, and I said, "I'm gonna take my shoes off to enjoy the waterfall and swim around." And as I'm playing in the waterfall, I just... You instantly know it. It's like you got shot in the foot. And the stingray, I stepped on the stingray, and it stuck its barb, and it's, you know, it's the size of a steak knife. It sticks its barb in through the skin, and the thing is, it wagged its tail under the skin, so it flayed the skin off of the meat of the foot and then swam out-
- CWChris Williamson
So just what does a-
- PRPaul Rosolie
... in a split second.
- CWChris Williamson
What does a, a stingray, 'cause it's flat-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... and it's the, just the tail? So have you stood on the tail, or has it been looking for you?
- PRPaul Rosolie
No, no, no, it's flat, flat.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
The whole thing is flat, and then if it gets scared, it stings to make you go away.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh.
- PRPaul Rosolie
They're not trying to attack you.
- CWChris Williamson
Right, right, right.
- PRPaul Rosolie
They want to be left alone. I stepped on him. It's my fault. I couldn't see him.
- CWChris Williamson
And then the tail came up-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Tail went straight up, in the, the... And the arch of your foot is sensitive. And so, so steak knife to the arch of the foot, injected a ton of venom as it flayed the skin off, pulls out, and so I'm like... I'm like, "Look, this hurts," but the flesh wounds don't hurt that much. And I'm like, "That hurt. Getting stabbed hurt." And so I'm over there, I'm about to film, and I'm like, "I'm in the Amazon rainforest, and I just got hit by a stingray." My friend comes up to me, and he goes, "We don't have time for this." He's like: "You're gonna pass out soon, and when you pass out, we can't carry you to the river." And I say, "How do you know I'm gonna pass out?" He goes, "It happens to everybody." And sure enough, the next thing I know, I'm on a cart, uh, getting, getting wheeled through the jungle. I don't remember the boat ride at all, and then they got me to the, to the, to the research station, and I was in so much pain. I was, you know, I was making every deal with the universe. "If you just make this stop, I promise I'll do whatever," [chuckles] you know, just everything. And, uh, they, they... Luckily, I was with the local guys, so they were scraping the trees, gathering medicinal barks that they baked in a pan. They, they wrapped it in leaves, and they baked it into a poultice. And they put that on the wound, boiling-hot poultice, which actually, weirdly enough, felt good. Boiling hot, but the skin was already off. They put that on, and then they wrap it to your foot, and they leave that there for a few hours, and that sucks out the venom. But for about four or five hours, it was the worst, most blinding pain, like level 10. You know, the doctor goes, "You know, what, what are, what are you feeling, a two or an eight?" And I was like, "This was a 10." I can't imagine more pain than that. It's like being... Just, just the venom, it's like having e- an electrical wire shoved into your veins. But the last guy I know that got stung by a stingray, he went to a hospital, and he had permanent nerve damage, didn't walk for two months, had a systemic infection, because he went with the Western medicine way. The local guys are like, "Dude, we know how to deal with this. We have trees for that. There's a sap for that." They have it. They know. They've learned from their grandfathers and grandmothers. [exhales] My God.
- CWChris Williamson
You know that, uh, Post Malone song, "I Got a Guy for That"?
- PRPaul Rosolie
I've- I don't think I've ever heard a Post Malone song.
- CWChris Williamson
It's impressive that you managed to evade it. Um-
- PRPaul Rosolie
[chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, that's actually also made of bark and herbs.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Oh, I thought you were gonna-
- CWChris Williamson
Neutonic is-
- PRPaul Rosolie
... say it's also made of Post Malone. [laughing]
- CWChris Williamson
[laughing] It probably is. Um, no, there's a, it's-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Bark and herbs.
- CWChris Williamson
He's got a, uh, he's got a song called "I Got a Guy for That," and the-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- 5:06 – 13:57
What It’s Really Like in the Jungle
- PRPaul Rosolie
worrying about it.
- CWChris Williamson
Are you conscious of the finality, the finitude of life? Is that something you think about a lot?
- PRPaul Rosolie
[inhales] As someone that I think has come close to dying more than most people, very much so. Very much so, yeah. I, I, I, and I, I've, I've... I, I'm not... Like, I want to live very much because I want to be around my family, and I want to experience things, but scared of death, no, not, no, not even a little bit.
- CWChris Williamson
But conscious of time?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Conscious of time, not worried about it.
- CWChris Williamson
Conscious of time in that, uh, uh, how long am I gonna be off my feet? How much of my life am I going to maximize or potentially lose from this sort of a thing?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes, but only because I want to, I need to be saving the Amazon. I need to be running around. I need to be helping other people.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I don't wanna be off my feet.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
That's... What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do then? I'm useless off my feet, you know.
- CWChris Williamson
Surely ever being barefoot-... in the Amazon is dangerous?
- PRPaul Rosolie
We are always barefoot in the Amazon. I'm actually- it's remar- it's- the only reason I had shoes on was because I was doing an ad for Vivobarefoot, and I was, I was... I put them on to film because they're like a barefoot shoe company.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And I- and then I, I was like, "All right, that's enough with shoes," I took them off. I walk around bare- I tr- learned from the natives, right? And so when you go hunting with the native trackers, if you were wearing boots in the jungle, it makes so much more noise.
- CWChris Williamson
Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Clunk. The leaves, the report, the amount of sticks that you break, the slurp in the mud, it's just, you know, if you go barefoot, now you're moving quiet, and you can hit over vines and things. You can pick out the rocks much easier. You also have tactile balance control. Your toes become balancers.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And so you're much better off barefoot. The only problem is, in the Amazon, you have thorns that are ten inches, twelve inches long. You have bullet ants, venomous snakes, stingrays. It... And it goes on, the list goes on and on.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, bullet ants or fire ants, the most painful venom that that gentleman who did... You see that s- guy that did the self-study on him- himself, where he allowed all of these different animals to bite him-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... or inject him with venom, and he described the sense of it happening like a sommelier would-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm
- CWChris Williamson
... the notes of wine. And he would talk about sort of dull, smoky textures-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... and sort of sharp, fiery, electrical senses and stuff like that. I'm pretty sure that bullet ants are fi- an, an ant-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Bullet ants is the top.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, so-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, I mean, they're, they're horrible, and even now I'd say they, they would end the day. If you were me right now in the studio, you know, if there was a bullet ant crawling up your leg and hit you good-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- 13:57 – 26:19
How Almost Losing His Career Led Paul to His Purpose
- CWChris Williamson
Didn't you try to get eaten by an anaconda?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Some producers at Discovery Channel tried to get me to do that, yes, and I did do it. I did try to get eaten by an anaconda-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- PRPaul Rosolie
... because they said that if I tried to get eaten by an anaconda, it would get us such high ratings. 'Cause I said, "Look, we're gonna do research on the biggest anacondas on Earth, right? We're gonna do something no one's ever done before." But sitting at a desk in Hollywood, they were like, "That's not good enough." They're like, "We wanna go bigger. How about we make you a space suit, and we feed you to an anaconda? Well, and you have a breathing tube, so you'll be fine, and snakes regurgitate all the time." Um, and so at the time, I, we- I knew the snake wasn't gonna eat me, and so in the room, you know, you shake hands, and you go, "Sure!" And then they produ- they, they told me the show would be called Expedition Amazon. And again, I'm twenty... Twenty-four, right? And they're telling you, "You can go to the Amazon. You have millions of dollar budget. You can take all your best friends and expert scientists and start research that's never been done before. The only thing that you gotta do is pay the piper by doing this one thing." And so at that age, at that time, I went, "How else do we tell the world that we have to save this river?" 'Cause it was just starting to crystallize in my head that if, if, if me and JJ, my local friend, if we didn't start to save this river, that nobody was gonna do it. And so I said, "This seems like the opportunity." This was my first experience. I was young. I had not learned yet. I was not yet a Jedi. Um, [chuckles] I shook, shook their hands, and they said, "Don't worry, kid, we're gonna take care of you." "Okay." They called it Expedition Amazon, and while we were in the jungle, they had... You know, they were like, "We need danger beats. We need you to be scared." I said, "Scared of what?" And they were like, "We need you to be chased by piranhas." And I was like, "I'm in... We're s- we swim in the water every day. We shower in the river. We're just playing in the river, backflipping into the river." Uh, you know, anyway, at the end, right before I was supposed to go on the Today Show or the Good Morning Show, or whatever it's called, the Matt Lauer show, um, they called me, they showed me the show, and they said, "We're changing it to Eaten Alive." "Eaten Alive?" And I said, "But I didn't actually get eaten alive." And they said, "Well, we're gonna tell everybody you did, so they watch the show." And I said, "You can't do that to me." So they did me hard, and, uh, I had to exile to India. The hatred was so bad. I'd be in the street, and people would be like, "Yo, fuck you, man!"
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Talk shows... Uh, because the- PETA was mad because they thought I risked the life of a snake. The American public was mad because they thought that they were gonna see a guy get eaten by an [chuckles] anaconda. Everybody was somehow outraged-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- PRPaul Rosolie
... like, all, like, the late-night shows. Um, Kimmel was like, "Oh, for your next stunt, you should go have sex with a hippo." Like, it destroyed my career professionally.
- CWChris Williamson
No way.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Destroyed it. So every scientist that I work with, every r- legitimate conservationist... I mean, someone actually said, "You're not, you're not welcome in Brazil." I was supposed to do work on a giant anteater project, like... [inhales] And so I took, and this is where, you know, you hear people say, you know, "What's the Winston Churchill? 'Go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.'" This was a big one, right? I'm in my mid-20s, and I went from thinking I'm gonna have this opportunity where it's like, we're gonna- me and my team, we're gonna get to have the chance to save the rainforest and carry on that Steve Irwin legacy of being on Discovery Channel.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And then it goes to everybody hated it. It was a complete disaster. You got lied to. You got cheated, and in fact, you should probably get out of here. And so for years, that set us back years, 'cause then we weren't taken seriously, and then if we wanted grants to protect the rainforest, if we wanted to work with other organizations, everyone would just go, "You're just that, uh, Anaconda guy."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I mean, to this day, I think my Wikipedia still says, "Paul Rosolie is an American who was the host of Eaten Alive." It's like... It just... It's like you got branded with it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
It's like, "That's the guy that got eaten by the anaconda," and it won't- it wouldn't leave for a long time.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And so that was a very, very infor- I mean, at the time, it was tr- You can only see the tragedy of it at the time.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Right? At the time, you know, six months after that, I was just devastated. I didn't know what happened. It was like a car crash.... Wait, wait, hold on. We, we caught the world record anaconda. We started research that no one's ever done before. We put together an amazing film that they, they chopped up, and they ruined, but, um, the, the backlash, and then the professional backlash, and then-- But then it's funny 'cause now, all these years later, that was what? Twenty fourteen, so more than ten years later, that was one of the best things that ever happened to me. 'Cause now I know how to... I can, I can spot that, I can spot that false handshake a thousand miles away now. Hmm. You know, when we, when we do deals, we know-- We, we learn through those experiences. You know, you're-- the successes are easy. It's those failures that teach you, and then you become confident because you've survived. If you can survive, though, that thing of, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Yeah, unless, unless it, unless it maims you- Mm. -um, but, you know, 'cause that does happen, whether it's mentally or physically. Mm. But if you, if you survive enough of those hits, the, the, the confidence you have going into the hunt, then you know exactly what it's gonna do. And so, you know, think of it from an animal perspective. You, you know, um, you know, you think of a lion going after a gazelle. I've seen a cheetah going after a gazelle, and I've watched cheetah cubs learn. You know, the mother will maim the gazelle and let the cheetah cubs sort of finish it off, so they learn, and you see them get poked as they're learning by those horns. They'll come on from the back, and they'll get poked. It's like, "Yeah, go down for that windpipe on the other side." They learn. And some lions, you know, some cheetahs, some, some predators don't learn. They'll get, they'll get that straight through the eye, and that's the end of it for them. They'll get that infection. And so that, professionally, the Discovery thing was great 'cause it was a huge train wreck, destroyed everything I had going on, and so I had to just exile it, to go live with elephants. I had to go spend more time in the jungle, and so I couldn't, I couldn't do... If I had gotten a TV career at that point, it would've, it would've been terrible. I wasn't ready. It would've been the worst thing. That's a perfect example of life not giving you what you want and instead giving you what you need. It was, it was... I was being moved. I was going, "I wanna go this way," and God went, "No, this is where you're gonna go, and I'm gonna spank you for it." [laughing] Like, it was great, and I got all these experiences that I never would've had otherwise. I went and lived with a herd of semi-wild elephants. I went out on solos in the Amazon rainforest by myself. It led to a long period of isolated reflection and years of... Then I said, "Okay, well, forget, forget trying to..." You know, at that time, in early twenties, you know, you want to, you have that, that young man's sort of need to prove yourself and to go, "I'm, I'm the guy." And so then when you get, you get knocked on your ass, and then you go, "Okay, I'm just gonna do the work." [sniffs] And so we just started doing the work. We said, "Okay, what are we really trying to do here? We're trying to save the forest. How do we do that?" And there was a day where we saw smoke on the horizon, me and JJ, who's this local conservationist who grew up in the Amazon, didn't have shoes until he was thirteen years old, has been working his whole life to protect the forest. And we saw smoke on the horizon, and we have three hundred thousand acres of jungle behind us, and we see the, we see the destruction coming. And I was like: There's gotta be somebody we can call. There's gotta be somebody. This, this can't be legal. We're watching these millennium trees go down. It's like Avatar. We're just watching this destruction. And I said, "There's, there must be someone who can stop this," and he looked upriver, he looked downriver, and he goes, "Do you see anybody else?" I said, "No." But I said, "But then how, how can-- how on earth can we have anything to do with stopping this?" And so we had to start from beyond zero. How do you, how do you stop people from cutting down trees in the Amazon rainforest? How do you, how do you, you know, how do you start an organization? How do you-- How do we find rangers? Who can be rangers? And so we had to answer all these questions, and so we just-- it was just years of just being in the jungle, answering these questions. If we want to protect those monkeys, and those birds, and those millennium trees, and the ecosystem that creates climactic stability on our planet, how do we do this? Or, or are we supposed to just watch this get destroyed? Are we part of the last generation that's gonna have functioning ecosystems on this planet, and are- and we're doomed to watch the ecological apocalypse? Hmm. And that was the question. And there's that, that quote that said, you know, "The search for meaning is only valid if you're willing to take action on what you find." And it's like, when I was a kid, I grew up with the extreme environmental stress. They'd tell you the world is ending. They'd tell you we've lost fifty percent of the wildlife on our planet, the elephants are going extinct, we're gonna lose gorillas in our lifetime, and I, I, I couldn't deal with that. I couldn't sleep, and so I, I, I left. I dropped out of high school two years early. I got a plane ticket to the Amazon. I was like: I have to go out and see it for myself. That was how this started? That was how all this started. My mom-- My parents made the huge mistake of they read me Jane Goodall. So it's a perfect storm of, of... So I'm severely dyslexic, right? So I, I don't, I don't-- I can't read well. I couldn't read until I was probably eleven. But my parents, incredible, they, they would finish their day as parents and then read us... They read me and my sister Sherlock Holmes, Lord of the Rings, uh, Jane Goodall stories, James Harriet, and so I got my hero's compless- hero's complex, hero's journey from Lord of the Rings, got the need for adventure and wildlife from Jane Goodall, got the love of animals from James Harriet, and, uh, and all this stuff. And then, and then at some time around teenager years, you know, when you're getting detention, detention, detention, detention, "Why didn't you do better? Why didn't you do homework?" " 'Cause I don't want to do any more homework." And I'm going: Why did Teddy Roosevelt and Jane, they, they got to lead adventurous lives, and I'm stuck in a desk asking permission to go to the bathroom? And I was like: Why do they get to do it, and I don't?... And so I literally just, again, amazing parents, I said, "I hate this so much." I was so depressed, I was so frustrated, and my parents just said: "Why don't you just leave? Get your GED, leave high school. We want you to go to college, so you have to, you have to go to college, but in between semesters, you can go wherever you want." I bought a ticket to the Amazon, went down, met JJ, and it was like- it's like the first scene in Juras- when you saw the jungle for the first time, it's like the first scene in Jurassic Park. They arrive, and they're like, "Okay, this is gonna be c- you know, it's gonna be cool." They said, "There's some stuff here." It's like the first time they see the dinosaurs. The first time I saw a millennium tree, a hundred and sixty feet tall, and leafcutter ants carrying leaves down from the canopy into their thing, and macaws going across the sky, it was like, that was like the start of the movie in my life. That's like the color came on. I was just... I went, "This is where, this is where I belong." I was like, "This is incredible." Just limitless things to learn, limitless wilderness to explore. Just incredible. That's why I said we should do the... Uh, you got- one time, you gotta come down, and we gotta hang out in the greenhouse.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm gonna come, I'm gonna come and see you.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm gonna come and see you.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 26:19 – 39:33
What Motivates Paul to Conserve the Planet?
- CWChris Williamson
What is it... What is it that drove you from those early days? Because talking about conservation as a young man in his teens, most young people aren't that selfless. They're looking to be driven by-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... the need for status and recognition-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... people that they admire, uh, accumulating wealth or chasing girls or doing whatever. W- w- what were the contributing motivations to this?
- PRPaul Rosolie
It's a great question. I've always loved animals. When I was a child, I would go, and it was specifically wild an- people get this confused, you know? Domesticated animals is a different thing: cats, dogs, cows, chickens. We've made those. Those aren't wild animals. There's something beautiful to me, wild animals on Earth have formed our ecosystems. They're our wild brothers and sisters. You know, we grew up in the ecosystems that they created, and people think that animals live in the forest, but the animals make the forest. They carry the seeds. They pollinate the flowers. The trees grow because the animals move them. And so I was... Even from the time I was this big, I was- I wanted- I said to my parents, "Take me to the streams." I wanted to find frogs. I wanted to find snakes. I liked places where there was... I liked to- always liked big trees, like the parts of the forest where there were poplar trees and big old oaks.
- CWChris Williamson
Where'd you grow?
- PRPaul Rosolie
So we... I was born in Brooklyn, and then for a while, we were in North Jersey, and so I always had access to these, like, lower New York forests, and it was just beautiful trees. Um, but, but my motivation was not selfless. Everybody confuses that. My need to save the rainforest is extremely selfish. I like it. I think that there should be a s- uh, a, a continuing world, and when I look at the fact that, you know, the, the Amazon formed in the Eocene, fif- thirty-three to fifty-five million years ago, and so this cycle of speciation and these trees growing has been happening for millions and millions of years, and for us to break that cycle to the point that it no longer works, you're destroying part of the system on Earth that makes life possible.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
A fifth of our planet's oxygen comes from the Amazon. A fifth of the fresh water on our planet is contained in that system, and that system produces the moisture that rains back down on the Amazon. So if you cut too much of it, you destroy the Amazon rainforest, and for that reason, we've lost twenty percent of the Amazon. We're the first generation in history that has a planetary crisis on our hands that we can stop. So, so we're the ones. All of history has taken place. We're the first ones where we're looking at twenty percent of the Amazon is cut. If we go past that threshold, there's a tipping point that we don't come back from. They've cut too much of the Amazon. It dries out. There's no- it's no longer the Amazon Rainforest, so then the tropical sun bakes it, human degradation destroys it, and then, then you're looking at post-apocalyptic nightmare.
- CWChris Williamson
So it becomes a feedback loop?
- PRPaul Rosolie
A snowball feedback loop, because once you cross-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, can you just dig into it? Can you just dig into that a little bit more?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Sure. So every day, the Amazon Rainforest trees produce, lift up off the gr- out of the ground and into the air, twenty trillion liters of water. It's... There's a larger invisible mist river above the Amazon Rainforest than is on the ground in the Amazon River.
- CWChris Williamson
Held in the trees?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Flowing-
- CWChris Williamson
Or held in the sky?
- PRPaul Rosolie
... through the sky. The trees each morning, and so I've seen this from the branches of the tallest trees, and when the sun comes up in the east, it... You can just see it for a few minutes. It illuminates the mist river that's flowing over the Amazon, and so there's this invisible particulate mist river that's larger than the largest river on Earth, flowing through the sky.
- CWChris Williamson
There's more water in the air than there is on the ground?
- PRPaul Rosolie
In the river.
- CWChris Williamson
Holy shit!
- PRPaul Rosolie
In the Amazon. That's the largest river on Earth.
- CWChris Williamson
Whoa!
- PRPaul Rosolie
And, and at the same time, it's also being, it's also being, um, fertilized with-... compounds from the Sahara Desert. So the Amazon and Africa are exchanging nutrients. And so when people say that the Earth is connected, like, you don't, you don't realize the degree to which it is.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And one of the things the locals down there that we've done is, you know, you have this, this thing we do. It's kind of like a, a, a physical form of prayer. It's a bit of a, a, a natural sacrament. You, you cup your hands, and you drink from a clear stream. [inhales] You hold your arm in the sunlight, and you watch the vapor be lifted off your skin. It'll- the sun will lift the sweat right off your skin, and you can see it joining the vapors coming off the leaves. You watch it become thunderclouds in the afternoons, and then it rains down, and then you drink it again. You're part of the cycle. It's flowing through you. The river and the sky are flowing through you.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And so that 20 trillion liters of water that's coming off the Amazon rainforest, which is bigger than the continental United States, it's tremendous. So globally, it's this huge force, and so in the last century, because of chainsaws, deforestation, expanding countries, agriculture, we've lost 20% of the Amazon rainforest, this system that is the heart of our planet. And so the scientists are warning now that if we lose more, we could cross a threshold where that, that mist river, that 20 trillion tons of water-- liters of water, gets broken. So if that's not coming up off the ground because there's not enough trees to produce it, then the rain stops, and if the rain stops, the forest dries, and if the forest dries, then it burns, and then we lose the Amazon rainforest, and that's a reality. It's a realistic possibility right now.
- CWChris Williamson
Is the reason that there is a tipping point here because there's a critical mass that's needed in order for rain clouds to form? I'm trying to work out, if you cut 50% of it, why wouldn't you just have 50% of the water that would go up, and you would ne- you would have 50% of the trees that would-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- 39:33 – 48:47
How Can We End Deforestation?
- CWChris Williamson
In order to get rid of twenty percent of four hundred billion trees-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
-that's a big operation.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, but we've taken a s- you know, a century to do it.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. But still-
- PRPaul Rosolie
But it's accelerating now.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I mean, you know, that's a high-velocity operation to be able to get that to, to happen. It must be a really, really big industry.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Well, I mean, you have to think, you know, Brazil's formation, the deforestation that's occurred in Peru, the various sources of it. There's illegal gold mining, where they have to cut the forest, burn the forest, and then suck the land up through hoses to get the sediment 'cause the gold is not in nuggets, it's in, it's in the sand. So they have to completely destroy the earth. Like-
- CWChris Williamson
To get tiny shards of precious metal.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Tiny, tiny, minuscule, almost microscopic pieces of, of... And you can see this scar from space across the Amazon. You can see the Amazon. It looks like it, it looks like it caught mange. You see human-
- CWChris Williamson
Wound
- PRPaul Rosolie
... human, human roads moving across the southern Amazon. And so, I mean, to s- to summarize it for the people that don't know, it's... I've been working with the locals for twenty years to find an answer to this. 'Cause either, either we say we're going to have ecological collapse, we just give up on it, 'cause life on Earth used to come standard with fish in the oceans, air, oxygen in the air, and water that you could drink, and now we're ruining those systems. And so we have it-- We're the last generation that's gonna have a chance to save the Amazon rainforest, and what we've done over the last twenty years is we found a way to do that.
- CWChris Williamson
How?
- PRPaul Rosolie
We started asking our enemies, the loggers and the gold miners, if they'd like to join our team. The people that were cutting down the rainforest, we would go have a beer with them, the people that we thought were our mortal enemies, that were causing all of the death and destruction and flames and silence. Uh, JJ would just go and, "Let's, let's go see how they are." We'd go and sit down and have a beer with them and go, "How are you doing?" They go, "Good. How are you doing?" They go, "Well, we moved down here from another part of the Amazon. There's no trees there, so we came here 'cause you guys still have really old trees." We go, "Cool. How much you make a day?" They go, "Fifteen dollars a day." And I go, "You like that work?" And they go, "No, the trees falling is dangerous. We get bitten by bullet ants and stung by things, and it's hard, and there's no food, and fifteen dollars a day really isn't worth it once you subtract the gasoline it takes to get all the way, five days away from town." "Okay." I go, "You guys want to be jungle keepers? We'll pay you three times that. You get a really cool T-shirt, you get medical benefits, a steady paycheck, and a community, and we'll take care of the boat, and instead of your chainsaw, you have to carry binoculars. It's a lot lighter than a chainsaw, and now you protect the forest instead of destroy it." And they go, "Where do I sign?"... and that's it. And so we've been doing that. We've been con- con- converting loggers and gold miners into conservation rangers, giving the local people opportunities that they didn't have, because what we've-- what we discovered is that the reason they're destroying the rainforest is because they don't have anything else they can do.
- CWChris Williamson
A quick aside, do you remember learning about the mighty mitochondria back in grade school? Here's a quick refresher: it's the tiny engine inside of your cells that powers everything you do. But here's what they didn't teach you. As you age, your mitochondria break down. That's what can cause you to feel tired more often, take longer to recover, and wake up feeling like you're never fully recharged, no matter how long you sleep. I started taking Timeline nearly two years ago because it is the best product on the market for mitochondrial health, and that is why I partnered with them. Timeline is the number one doctor-recommended urolithin A supplement with a compound called Mitopure. Basically, it helps your body clear out damaged mitochondria and replace them with new ones. Mitopure is backed by over fifteen years of research, over fifty patents, and nearly a dozen human clinical trials. It was recommended to me by my doctor, and that is why I've used it for so long, since way before I knew who even made the product. And best of all, there's a thirty-day money-back guarantee, plus free shipping in the US, and they ship internationally. Until the end of January, you can get thirty percent off a one-month supply by going to the link in the description below or heading to timeline.com/modernwisdom30. That's timeline.com/modernwisdom30. How much of this is bottom-up, them doing it on their own to then try and make a profit to sell, and how much of this is top-down, a company going in, recruiting locals in order to do an operation on behalf of a bigger organization?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Fifty-fifty.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. So the second one is gonna be much harder.
- PRPaul Rosolie
The second one is gonna be much harder-
- CWChris Williamson
Because if you go and take away worker number three-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... and make him work for you, then guy from the street becomes worker number three.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes, and-
- CWChris Williamson
They'll continue to recruit.
- PRPaul Rosolie
But the, but the good thing with that side is that you can, you can put pressure on those companies, right? You can come and-
- CWChris Williamson
Lobby, restrict.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah. Yeah, that's accessible. Where we are, we- we're so remote. It used to take two days to get to the research station that I started working at, deep in the jungle. And so when you meet these people, it's the bottom-up guys.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
It's people that just have a chainsaw, and they're driving their little tiny motor through the Amazon rainforest-
- CWChris Williamson
They know where to sell the sediment-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- 48:47 – 52:40
Why Humans are the Scariest Thing in the Jungle
- CWChris Williamson
How much are you fighting against crime? When I think South America, sometimes there's gonna be some organized crime floating around in there. How much- you're talking about the dangers of the s- urchin or the, the-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... the worries of the bullet ant or the jaguar-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... but what about the modern human concern?
- PRPaul Rosolie
That's the scary thing. That's the scary part, is, like, the loggers and the gold miners, the, the local people in Peru, [inhales] the local people in Peru are incredibly kind. The people of the Madre de Dios of Peru are rural people. I rock up in a, in a, in a, in a raft or in my boat, and I- they'll, they'll let me camp at their house. You know, it's like these people live in thatched huts. They eat monkeys and turtles. They're, they're wonderful rural people. We also have narco traffickers coming in now, and they are not local. They are not from there. They heard that there are extremely wild parts of the Amazon where the police can't get to. Deep, deep, deep, deep jungle, and so what they do is they launch expeditions deep into the jungle, and they figure, "No one's gonna come out here."
- CWChris Williamson
But what are they doing? Why would you want to be-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Growing cocaine.
- CWChris Williamson
They what?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Growing cocaine.
- CWChris Williamson
Growing cocaine.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Growing cocaine.
- CWChris Williamson
So it's like farms-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... plantations.
- PRPaul Rosolie
But again, it's the artisanal guys. It's not the big crime bosses. It's, like, a couple of brothers that got together and went, "Hey, man, you know what we should do? We should go grow some cocaine-
- CWChris Williamson
It's, it's the equivalent-
- PRPaul Rosolie
... seven days." [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
... it's, it's the equivalent of being a weed farmer in California, like, 30 years ago-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes
- CWChris Williamson
... but doing it with cocaine in the Amazon.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes, and the difference is, like, the weed farmers, I feel like, you know, I, I don't feel like they'll shoot you. There's something about the cocaine grower culture where-
- CWChris Williamson
So this is even though they're more small-time, more grassroots, they're still-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... kinetically protected.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Shoot first. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And so when it comes to the uncontacted tribes, when it comes to us, they've made it very clear, "Uh, if we get the chance, we'll kill you." They say it. The- they, they've... We- the, the cops actually intercepted, uh, one of the people that they arrested. They said, "That gringo and JJ," they said, "to anyone in our network, if you see them, take him out."
- CWChris Williamson
Talking about you?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
- 52:40 – 1:00:11
What Scares Paul the Most?
- CWChris Williamson
What is... I- is there a time in your mind that sticks out as the most fear that you've felt, the most afraid that you've ever been? I wonder whether it's come from threats from humans or threats from jungle or threats from something else.
- PRPaul Rosolie
The most afraid I've ever been... I mean, I can give you the most afraid I've ever been from an animal. I can give you the action version, but the most afraid I've ever been was when I was young and starting out and didn't know. I was dreaming so badly that we'd be at this point one day. I saw it 20 years ago. I wanted to do this, and, and from... And at that time, you know, if you wanted to, if you wanted to protect species and save rainforest, you had to be a conservation biologist, and I didn't have the grades for that. I hadn't even finished high school.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you go back to college in the end?
- PRPaul Rosolie
I did.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I did. I finished college.
- CWChris Williamson
You kept the promise to your parents?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Er, yes, but-
- CWChris Williamson
By the skin of your teeth.
- PRPaul Rosolie
By the skin of my teeth. I would show up late to a semester because I was raising an anteater. You know, my great- [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Didn't I hear that you nearly died because of raising an anteater?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Well, I got a really bad staph infection. I got a MRSA infection across my whole body. My whole face was rotting off, but I kept... I have this really bad habit of trying to walk it off. You know, horrific things. I almost chopped the, the tendon that connects your kneecap. Um, I, I, I chopped most of that tendon, and I was like, "I'll walk it off." You know, the stingray one, "I'll walk it off," and so I got this horrific infection, and I kept going, "Well, at some point it must... At some point, it's gotta get better, right?" No, an antibiotic-resistant staph infection will eventually kill you, and so I was taking care of-
- CWChris Williamson
From an anteater?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Absolutely not. From a hospital. I had dengue fever, and I'd gone to the hospital to, like, get a shot.
- CWChris Williamson
So what's this got to do with the ante- it just happened while you were looking after an anteater?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Well, because the only reason I didn't go home and get help was because I had this baby anteater that needed me.
- CWChris Williamson
[chuckles]
- PRPaul Rosolie
So I kept letting the infection get worse, weeks and weeks and weeks. My body was just-
- CWChris Williamson
So that you could look after the anteater?
- PRPaul Rosolie
She needed me.
- CWChris Williamson
... You know who else was a massive fan of anteaters? Salvador Dali.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes, that picture of him coming out of the subway-
- CWChris Williamson
Do you know why he said that he loved walking an anteater through the streets of Paris?
- PRPaul Rosolie
No, I do not.
- CWChris Williamson
He said, "Because anteaters are never in fashion."
- PRPaul Rosolie
[laughing]
- CWChris Williamson
He just loved the idea of-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I- I'm researching him for my next live show.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm.
- 1:00:11 – 1:15:37
How Relentlessness Steered Paul Toward Success
- CWChris Williamson
today. Well, you've also got a new book, which-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes
- CWChris Williamson
... people can go and check out.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I have a, a copy of this for you.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, very cute.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes, you need to-
- CWChris Williamson
Jungle Keeper: What It Takes to Change the World.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah. And so this is, this is the whole story. This is, this is from the frustrated kid to, to... And I... It's crazy 'cause I wish I had a time machine now to go back because, you know, eighteen years old, getting on the plane for the first time, leaving for the Amazon, never in a million years would I imagine that we would've, you know, caught the biggest anaconda and met the uncontacted tribes, and now that we're actually protecting a hundred and thirty thousand acres of rainforest and on the cusp of making history by saving a whole river.
- CWChris Williamson
And you've got one of the heroes that inspired you writing a blurb....On behalf of the forests that I love, thank you, Paul, for writing this book, Jane Goodall. Dude, that's so amazing. I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Jane, Jane, Jane also- Jane taught me something very incredible, which is the grace of attention. Someone who's as luminary, and famous, and busy as she was-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I came up to her at a talk when I was in my early 20s with, with chapters about the anteater that I was taking care of. I said, "I lived in the, in the rainforest with my anteater, and I took care of her, and we did this, and we did that." And I, I waited in line with hundreds of people-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- PRPaul Rosolie
... after a Jane Goodall talk in New York City, and I handed her a m- manila envelope. You know, you have two seconds with her. "Hello, you're so inspiring." She goes, "Yes, every..." You know, everybody says the same thing, and she takes a picture with you, and then you move on. And I just said, "I've been living in the Amazon rainforest, and I have a story I think you'd love." And I had included a message in there, and I said, "My dream is to become an author, and it would be- it would mean the world to me because you're one of my heroes, if you would endorse my book." And she incredibly actually read the material I gave her.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
This random kid out of hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people. She would travel 300 days a year. She actually read it and had her team get back to me and said, "As soon as you find a publisher, tell them you have Jane Goodall's words."
- CWChris Williamson
That's fucking GOAT, dude.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Dude, she, she, she waved her magical, very powerful wand in my direction and gave me a career.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And by giving me a career, handed me the Excalibur sword to go and actually start JungleKeepers and protect an entire river. And so she- what she did was she empowered other... She wanted to save nature, she empowered other people to do it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. It's interesting that of all of the things that you've done, of all of the terrifying situations that you've been in, not, not fulfilling your dream-
- PRPaul Rosolie
By far
- CWChris Williamson
... is the, [chuckles] the thing that gave you the most terror.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Absolutely. I mean, that's a state of agony.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
That's a state of, you know, that, that young person-
- CWChris Williamson
It's protracted as well, right? It's, like, drawn out over time. It's the barb being in your foot for decades.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, it's the state you live in, and it's the, it's the existential question of, "Am I gonna have these ambitions and never see them to fruition?" Which, what, which... You know, there's the, there's that line, "Many are called, few are chosen." That's the other thing. Am I gonna invest 20 years in this and then fail? And there was, there's a, there's a part in the book, and there's a, there's a part in my life where, you know, after the Discovery thing and after I... God, I'd been going on expeditions with my local friends in the Amazon for years, and so I already was the guy in the Amazon. But I had tried. I'd written the first book. I'd done the Discovery Channel thing and failed. I'd gone and lived with the elephants. I'd even started JungleKeepers, but it wasn't working yet. There was something missing, and it was like, kept trying, and kept trying, and kept trying, year after year after year. And there was a point where my dad... We pulled over somewhere in the car, and my dad went, "Hey, before you get out," he said, "I just want you to know, we love you no matter what." And I went, "What?" And he went, "Y- y- you know, y- you just keep doing this jungle thing."
- CWChris Williamson
Did he think that you were doing it to try and prove your worth to your parents?
- PRPaul Rosolie
No, what he meant was, "Even if none of this works out, it's okay."
- 1:15:37 – 1:26:06
Coming Face to Face With An Uncontacted Tribe
- CWChris Williamson
anyway. Okay, so that was the existential fear. What about the kinetic fear?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Sure. I would say that [chuckles] the, the, the, the two times I've been the most scared, I'll give you two. One, I-- because of this existential fear of not having adventures and not having a meaningful life, I said I want to go out like the great explorers did, but better. I want no porters, no guides, no nothing. I learned for a few years. I trained in the Amazon, and then I went out on solo expeditions, and so I took a boat three days deep into the jungle with some poachers. Then they left me on a beach, and then I walked another few days into the jungle along the river.
- CWChris Williamson
Totally on your own?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Totally on my own, camping at night under the stars, backpack. I had a raft with paddles, so if things got bad, I could, I could get to the main river channel. And fishing and eating. And, uh, that was the first time. I was told that this tributary was so remote that there was nobody on it. I wouldn't see a human. It was just wild nature, and sure enough, the animals... It was like the Galapagos. The animals were so unfamiliar with the, with humans that jaguars would walk out on the beach, and there'd be... You know, the animals just don't care. They don't know what you are. They don't care. Jaguar doesn't care. Um, tapirs and capybara and caiman and just, just in- incredible amounts of life, and I was-- these are the experiences that I wanted to absorb because I wanted to see what raw nature looked like before humans touched it. So this was an incredibly important thing for me, and I was out there enjoying this, and then I, I went up this one tributary, little... I pushed a little bit too far, and it just happened to be where the uncontacted tribes, nomadic tribes, a small band, they had a campfire on the side of the beach. And these are naked people who are pre-Stone Age. They don't have stones. They've been living out there for thousands of years. They've missed the Sistine Chapel and the World Wars and everything else that's ever happened, and they don't even know the name of the country they live in. They've never seen a spoon, and now they're looking at me.
- CWChris Williamson
You're on the water.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I'm on the side of the river, and they're on the other side of the river, and I see them see me, and they're holding bows and arrows, and they're naked, and they have face paint, and they're staring at me, and I'm staring at them. And I know that any help is about three weeks away by foot, and I just ran for my life, and I ran for my life through the jungle for about as long as I could, and then I opened up my packraft. I inflated this raft. It's a pretty durable raft, and I started paddling, and for the, the next few days, I didn't stop. Because even if I stopped, I would go to sleep or put up my tent, fall asleep, and the first dream you have is that you hear the voices, that they're coming. 'Cause these people are f- you know, pretty famous for... They have seven-foot arrows, and they don't, they don't have modern-- much like the Comanches, they're, they're, they're a warrior clan, so they don't... It's okay if they kill you. They don't care, you know? So if they think your shirt is cool, they'll, they'll shoot you in the leg-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- PRPaul Rosolie
... 'cause they don't wanna ruin the shirt, you know? And so to them, it's, it's a whole different... And also, they've been, they've been, as a society, traumatized by the things that happened in the past, like the rubber boom, where outsiders came to the Amazon in the Industrial Revolution and made slaves and h- basically had this massive genocide, making people go out and tap the rubber trees that only existed in the Amazon. And so these tribes have learned the outside world is trying to kill us, so they're very happy to shoot first, so. That was fear on a level... That was like the, the, the fear equivalent of the stingray thing, the idea of being hunted.... in the deep wilderness. It wasn't a, a paradise expedition through the rainforest anymore. All of a sudden I was like: "Wait, I have a mother. Like, I have people that are going to be brokenhearted at- when I disappear, or that I just Into the Wilded myself. Like, this, this is stupid." And then I was, you know, days of, of, of, of running scared and, uh, packrafting all night. Although I'll tell you this, when you're packrafting at night with a flashlight in the Amazon, and you're, you're sort of going down river with the crocodiles and the anacondas, it's incredible. It's an incredible ride. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
What's the difference in the Amazon between day and night, apart from the fact- [laughing]
- PRPaul Rosolie
Ah. [laughing]
- CWChris Williamson
-that it's light and dark? Apart from the fact that it's light and dark, uh, well, how does it feel?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
Does it feel different?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Uh, it's a different reality. It's a totally different world. It's, it... The, the daytime in the Amazon, again, dawn, every moment is different. Dawn is this... It's- every dawn is like the world is being created again. When you're in the mountains, or the desert, or the jungle, when you- somehow living outdoors, you, you end up seeing the sunrise. And I think that that's something that we lose with modern society, where you, you end up experiencing the sunrise and seeing when the light is coming directly into your eyes, and the dawn chorus. And then dusk, you hear it switch over to the night chorus. Nighttime in the Amazon is wild. I mean, the Amazon has been called the greatest natural battlefield on Earth, because everything is eating everything else. Everything in the, in that vast ocean of forest, and branches, and jaguars, and everything will be digested at some point. So in this churning energy transfer, life is a momentary stasis in the entropic march of recycling. It's just, it's just being... It's just an eating machine.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And it's just, it's just mo- marching and marching for thousands of years. And so when you're there, you start to feel it. You go... You know, you get one mosquito bite, two mosquito bites, some wasps land on you, they start eating your skin. It's like, they, the, the, the, the jungle wants to eat you. It's like: "Give me your, give me your carbon. G- give me your energy." Um, nighttime-
- CWChris Williamson
You're decomposing while you're still alive.
- PRPaul Rosolie
They want you to, or they want to start you. Um, the wasps will land, and they'll start pulling pieces off you. They, they can eat... Like, if you leave a piece of meat out, they'll tear it apart. And then if we're-
- CWChris Williamson
Flying piranhas.
- PRPaul Rosolie
They're like flying piranhas. And the worst thing is that the bullet ants sometimes grow wings. I, I saw a bullet ant with wings the other day. Um, but no, so running from the tribes was the most scary thing. The other s- most terrifying thing happened, actually not in the Amazon, in India. I set out to see a wild tiger. Now, you can go... There's no- in the, in the, uh, turn of the century, 1900, there was 100,000 tigers on Earth. When I was growing up, there were 3,000 tigers on Earth. So tigers are almost completely extinct. We almost lost the greatest predator that we have on our planet.
- CWChris Williamson
And then the Tiger King came along.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Well, the people ca- there's more tigers in captivity than, than the wild. And what people don't realize is, people go, "Well, at least there's tigers in captivity." What they don't realize, though, it's a one-way door. Unless a tiger has its mother to teach it how to hunt, you can never take a tiger that's born in a zoo or in captivity and release it. It's never been done. Never.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow!
- PRPaul Rosolie
You can do it with a rhino, you can do it with a deer, 'cause they'll go eat grass. A tiger has to learn how to stalk, how to hunt, what things to hunt, how to-
- CWChris Williamson
It's functionally useless.
- PRPaul Rosolie
It's functionally useless. So, so the fact that we- there's 6,000 tigers in captivity across the world, useless.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I think that might just be just in the US.
- CWChris Williamson
They're good to stay in captivity and breed for captivity-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- 1:26:06 – 1:34:06
What is the Most Powerful Animal in the World?
- CWChris Williamson
What's the most unpredictable or dangerous animal in the Amazon?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Unpredictable or dangerous animal in the Amazon? The thing is, the animals in the Amazon is they're all sweethearts. I mean, my jaguars, um- [inhales]
- CWChris Williamson
They sound like tree tigers. Jaguars sound like tree tigers.
- PRPaul Rosolie
They are. The jags... Okay, so the jags are the- they call them the pit bulls of the big cats. They have the strongest bite of the big cats. They're 250 pounds. They're thick. They're muscles.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Leopards are very lean and lithe-
- CWChris Williamson
Slinky.
- PRPaul Rosolie
-and they're... Yeah, they're way more about jumping up into the trees, get away from the lions. A jaguar is heavy.
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- PRPaul Rosolie
They think nothing of jumping onto a caiman and biting its skull. They have this crushing bite force, and so you look at, you know, that thick f- that thick face of a jaguar, they can just crush everything. But whenever you see... Whenever I've seen a jaguar in the Amazon, it's always... It's peaceful. It's always this, this kind of beautiful-
- CWChris Williamson
It can't be that peaceful if it was that hungry. You look like a nice meal.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, but they're never... Their mothers... Again, the, with the big cats, their mothers teach them, "See that deer? You can eat that deer. Don't go after porcupines." The, the, the, the baby caimans are safe. The mother would have taught the baby what to eat, and again, they're thinking about jumping on the back and biting the neck, or they're thinking about coming underneath and closing the windpipe. They've been taught to, to go after horizontal prey. Now, suddenly, this vertical thing that smells like deodorant and conditioner and all this weird stuff that they've never smelled before, this quite large, vertical animal's walking around them. They're usually curious. They come, and they do the bob. They look at you from side to side, and then they're gone.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And even that, most of the time, you won't see them. Most of the time, a big 250-pound yellow jaguar, I have literally been in one's presence and not been able to see it because the pattern disruption of their spots somehow blends them into the forest, the dappled light in the forest, and you, you know, you're just looking around, and you go... You have this moment, uh, of realization.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Or one time, I was checking a camera trap, and I was down on my knees, you know, just arranging this camera trap, and I heard whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, loud footprints-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- PRPaul Rosolie
... footsteps, and I turned around with my finger up to, to tell whoever it was, I thought maybe it was one of my friend, to be like, "Yo, walk quieter in the jungle. I'm out here being quiet. You could be q..." It was a jag. Just walked by, [panting] looked at me, [grunts] kept walking. Never even broke stride. It was just like, "Hey," tongue out, big teeth out, and I was, like, as close to him as I am to you.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughing]
- PRPaul Rosolie
He walked right by me. Didn't care. Didn't care at all.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow! So is it rare that humans get attacked by jags?
- PRPaul Rosolie
In our region of the Amazon, no one's ever been attacked by a jaguar. There was one old, old... This was 20 years ago, one old jag... You know, their teeth go. The- with big cats, they're usually the first thing is their teeth, and, uh, one old jag attacked, like, a, a, a, an old farmer. At- attacked an old man, and his, his wife defended him with a shovel, and they ended up shooting the jaguar. But it was such a feeble old jaguar that it said, "The only thing I can go after is a human."
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And there's that classic story of, I think, Jim Corbett was the guy that eventually got it, but there was a tiger that was in North India and was killing hundreds of people. This one tiger, she's preying on hundreds of people, and, you know, a tiger has to eat, you know, about a deer a week to live, and so this tiger started eating about a person a week. And so she went through her first hundred people, and they brought in hunters to try and get this tiger, and she was smart, so she moved over into a different village, and then she... Another few years went by-
- CWChris Williamson
The Osama Bin Laden of tigers.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I mean, she just, she was just hungry.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And but for some reason, she figured out people. I could just run into her... They said one woman was working in the field, and this tiger came, grabbed her by the waist, right? And just ran off with her.
- CWChris Williamson
Like a stick.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Like a, like a, like a, like a dog running off with a squirrel. That's how big and powerful they are, and so another hundred people got eaten over here, and then, and then finally they burned the forest down. They just surrounded the forest and burned it down, and she managed to escape again. So they hired expert hunters. They got hundreds of elephants. They surrounded the forest with elephant-back hunters, and they had this, this hunter, Jim Corbett, and they, they burned, and, and they had drummers on the elephants, and they-
- 1:34:06 – 1:46:31
Why We Need to Save the Planet for Future Generations
- CWChris Williamson
What's your sense of spirituality in the jungle? Something more transcendent than mission, which is still on the physical, but a connection to something even greater.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Well, I think that humans have been given this planet where all of these miracles are happening, and first of all, if you think a single one of us knows the answers, you're... You know. N- no one does. No one's ever come back. Um, I think the jungle, to me, is where I feel God the most, where you feel this incredible proliferation of life, and life is the antithesis to all the, the, to, to, to the majority of the universe, which is black nothingness. And we're on this glowing example of, of beautiful life, where there's this, this concert of biological organisms that create a living biosphere that allows us to be doing this. And so to me, the jungle is church. To me, the mountains, the ocean, but specifically the jungle, because it's the, it's the apex of life. There's nowhere-- There's been nowhere... It's the greatest proliferation of terrestrial biodiversity on Earth, not just now, but in the entire fossil record.
- CWChris Williamson
Really?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes. There's never been more life on Earth in one place than the Western Amazon. And then we have to remember that no matter how much we want to think about aliens and Mars and everything else, this little blue planet is the only place where we know for a fact that life exists. And I feel like we've gotten into an age where people are very quick to go, you know, "Oh, but soon we're gonna go to Mars." Okay, sure. You know, and the aliens, okay. Santa Claus is gonna come at Christmas as well. But what I'm saying, if you want to talk about whether or not we're able to breathe, whether or not we're able to eat, whether or not our children have an impoverished world... There's a great Jane Goodall quote where she said, you know, we're-- she said, we're s- she said, "We're stealing, stealing, stealing from our children," and it's shocking, and it's... The idea that we borrow the Earth from the children of the future, that we're, we're, we're the stewards. We're the ones passing this on, and we can pass on a, a, a, a destroyed reality or one that's healthy. And so in the case, in the, in this particular case of, of do, do we want a world that doesn't have elephants in it? Do we want a world where there are still healthy ocean fisheries that are filled with millions and millions of fish, where life and biodiversity is thriving? We do. Nobody, nobody should want the... I mean, we're in a, we're in a period of extinction. They're calling it the sixth extinction, and so this is a human- this is an anthropos- anthropogenic extinction because we're, we're taking up too much land. We're destroying ecosystems too rapidly for wildlife to adapt and keep up, for things to regenerate, and so becoming aware of that is crucial. So that's why what JungleKeepers is doing by saving this river, what I hope is that it can become a blueprint on how other peoples, we can save rivers in Africa, and we can save rivers in New Guinea and India and other places. 'Cause everyone's fighting the same fight right now. They're going, "Okay, human civilization is moving up. Population is moving up." These poor people in these rural areas are realizing that in order to get the gasoline to provide for their families with the boat, even if they just want to do some basic farming, they need money, and if they need money, they need to go get timber or gold or wildlife products. And so how do we get them out of poverty so that they can start becomes, becoming stewards of protecting the r- the, the natural environments that they're a part of?
- CWChris Williamson
You've got to align the incentives.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think, you know, the... One of the saddest things is going to be-... if there isn't sufficient intervention to protect tipping points being reached with stuff like this, what you end up with is a world in future where there's significantly fewer people. I think population's going to peak at about twenty ninety, twenty-one hundred, something like that. We might just kiss the bottom of ten billion people-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Ooh
- CWChris Williamson
... -ish, just about.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And then it is going to be a very precipitous drop.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It's gonna be lower. I would guess that in two hundred years it'll be significantly lower than it is now.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, South Korea, ninety-six percent fewer people in a hundred years' time. For every hundred Koreans, there's four great-grandchildren.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Interesting.
- CWChris Williamson
Because demography is destiny. You know how many one-year-olds there are, and you can't make any more. And you know how many two-year-olds there are, and you can't make any more. And population is increasing while birth rates are going down because people are living longer.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And the saddest thing would be if this brief swell, this brief fat bit in population-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm
- CWChris Williamson
... caused damage, that this thin bit and whatever continues-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Exactly
- CWChris Williamson
... the rest of time-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes
- CWChris Williamson
... then inherits. William MacAskill, who was the youngest tenured philosophy professor in history, I think, he's a Scottish guy, uh, y- youngest maybe that was alive right now. Uh, he wrote a book called What We Owe the Future.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
He's got this philosophy around long-termism. I think you'd really like it. It's pretty access-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... pretty accessible read. And, um, he-- it, it is what he... what it sounds like-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- 1:46:31 – 2:04:43
Why are Uncontacted Tribes Notoriously Violent?
- CWChris Williamson
things. You mentioned uncontacted tribes.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
You recently just found another one?
- PRPaul Rosolie
[chuckles] We were, we're... So as of right now, we have employed numerous local indigenous people as conservation rangers. People that were maybe living in the Amazon. They grew up eating monkeys and turtles, and, and, and then as they grew up, they said, "Well, I need to provide for a family," and so they got a chainsaw, and they might go out and become loggers. We've said, "Hey, instead of becoming loggers, work for us." So we're working with these communities to figure out how they want their future to be because they live five days from civilization, deep out in the jungle, and they're now working with jungle keepers. And so the donations that we get from people around the world go to their salary and towards protecting land. And so we were at one of these remote communities with our friends, planning for the future, making ranger patrols, doing all this, and we got news that one of the uncontacted tribes was approaching. Now, for all of... You know, the time that I saw the uncontacted tribes when I was on the solo, nobody believed me, 'cause I wasn't taking pictures. I ran for my life. [chuckles] All the pictures that you look at on the internet, traditionally, historically, the- it looks like pictures of Bigfoot. Somehow they're always blurry, they're always far away, and it's... There's a reason for that, because the people that are seeing these, these, these naked warriors coming at them aren't sticking around to take pictures, and chances are they're loggers.
- CWChris Williamson
Hang on. Just wait there a second.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah. No, eyes, eyes just, uh, eyes over here for me.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Don't shoot yet.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I wanna just get this picture. [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, you're out of focus.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah. Um, and they're probably loggers, you know, 'cause the only... It's not like you're getting, uh, photographers and PhD students out six days into the middle of nowhere. They're at, they're at the, they're at the, the usual research station eco-lodge. Um, but we were off s- at the end, world's end, and, uh, these people came out across the beach, and we had this incredible moment where, you know, you see them with their bows and arrows, and you see them stalking across the beach, looking at us, and there's maybe 30-something of us, and there's over 100 of them, and they're moving through the forest, and there's... At different times, there's different amounts of them that we can see, but they came to the side of the river, and we were at the other side of the river. So it was sort of, sort of shirts versus skins, and it was... They were all naked, penises tied up, rope around their waist, and we're all standing there waiting. What are they gonna say? [inhales] They put up their hands, and they said, "Nomole." Nomole is brother. "Nomole," they said, "We are the brothers, Nomoles. We are the Nomoles." Traditionally, they're called the Mashco Piro, which really means the wild Piro people, and so the Nomole seems to be the, what they call themselves. But the... What's crazy is you're in this moment, and, you know, we all say, "Oh, I mean, I wish, I wish I could see, you know, go back in time and see the world in the 1800s. I wish I could go see the Comanches riding across the plains 200 years ago." But this is people from 1,000 years ago, at least, walking out of the jungle because they've been in this natural time capsule. Human beings from another age stand across the river from us, and we're, we're sitting here... I mean, we have i- iPhones and airplanes and, and, and we had professional-- I had professional photographers with me, my friend Mohsen and Stefan, um, who are also Jungle Keepers directors, and-... and so we're watching as this, you know, so very- need to be very clear on this, they came out and contacted the local, the indigenous community we happened to be at.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
We didn't make contact. They came out, and they started, they started asking for things. So they came out of the jungle, a thousand years late to the, to the, to the show, and they said, [chuckles] "We want bananas." And they asked for plantains.
- CWChris Williamson
Someone's able to communicate-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... in a language that's close enough?
- PRPaul Rosolie
There's enough of a, of a overlap between the Yine language and the Mash- whatever the Mashco-Piro speak, that they can communicate at a percentage. So there's a, a good degree of miscommunication as well. And, uh, but, but one thing they were able to make very clear is that they wanted gifts. They wanted food. And so the anthropologists put bananas in a boat and pushed it across, and-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- PRPaul Rosolie
... uh, and they, they fell on the boat, and, and as they... As this happened, we, you know, we were shooting the f- world first ever clear footage of the uncontacted tribes. And, and since then, we've released that footage, and it's become controversial because people go, "Should you be releasing this footage? What if, what if they want to be left alone? Leave them alone!" And it's like, listen, we are the only people on Earth, Jungle Keepers, the local people, and the international experts on our team, are the only people that are actually tactically fighting to save these people's forest.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And if you look at what's happened to indigenous cultures through the centuries and how much has been wiped out, this is one chance, again, to get it right. These people are living in isolation, and it seems like the one thing they want to continue to do is live in isolation. That's... That was their second message: "We want bananas, and stop cutting down our trees." They didn't want to come close to us. They didn't want to-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- PRPaul Rosolie
... join us. They didn't want anything. They, I mean, they stole a machete. They're like, "This will be useful." My friend was like, "Oh, they have a machete." He was like, "Put..." He's like, "Let- put down the machete," he's yelling across the river.
- CWChris Williamson
Go back and get it.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You should go get it.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Exactly what they... He, he smiled. He went-
- CWChris Williamson
[laughing]
- PRPaul Rosolie
"Yeah, you come." And then right as they were leaving, one guy walked out, looked at us, real proud, put one seven-foot arrow on his bow and shot, not at anybody, just, just shot an arrow and be like, "That's that." And he walked off into the jungle, but, like, proud. And so the prevailing, um, anthropological strategy on these guys is leave them alone. They want to be left alone, we leave them alone. But now, with Jungle Keepers, in that hundred thirty thousand acres that we're protecting and the three hundred thousand that we're ultimately trying to protect-
- 2:04:43 – 2:12:11
Protecting the Amazon Through National Park Status
- CWChris Williamson
be... So, uh-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... a question I have is, of the work that you're doing, you're trying to get to 300,000 acres-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... protected.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And w- if that happens, the Peruvian government will denote it as a national park, which would make it, give it even more protection, I have to imagine. In order to y- in order to do what you think needs to be done for the entirety of the Amazon-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... how many Paul Rosolies do they need?
- PRPaul Rosolie
[chuckles] Um, well-
- CWChris Williamson
Or how many Junglekeeper operations do there need to be?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Well, okay, so this is the thing is, like, the Peruvian government, we, we do this as the blueprint. We lead by example, and so if we're successful, and we create the... We, you know, we're at 130,000 acres protected right now. In the next 18 months, we have to raise, we have to raise $20 million more. It's only, only $20 million to protect the next, the rest of the national park. We get the national park. If we had $20 million tomorrow, national park tomorrow. We have lawyers waiting, the landowners ready to sell. We have the Peruvian government willing to do it, but they're like, "We don't have the resources."
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Um, if we can establish this, that's part of an already... There's already a huge legacy of conservation. There's Alto Purus National Park. There's Manu National Park. There's a Tambopata Reserve.
- CWChris Williamson
What, what, what, what does the national park thing... What, w- how does that help, calling it a national park? What does that mean?
- PRPaul Rosolie
'Cause then it's officially protected. 'Cause there's a lot of land in the Amazon that's sort of just land in the Amazon. It's someone's land, and so what happens is, you inherited 20,000 acres from your father, who was a real jungle man, but now you kinda live in the city, and there's 20,000 acres on there, and you've gotta pay taxes on it once a year. And you never go there, and you don't want to, and it's dirty and dangerous, and there's bullet ants and jaguars, and, and then your friend comes to you and goes, "Yo, I'm, I'm getting into the logging business. I was thinking, could I go on that land you got and-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- PRPaul Rosolie
... take down some of the ironwood trees and, and, and clear some stuff for farming?" You go, "Yeah, I don't care. I don't care at all." And they're like, "Cool, I'll throw you a few bucks." And so then they go out there, and they do that. So if we go talk to you, and we say, "Actually, can we buy that land? How much was he gonna give you? We'll give you double that. Give us the land." And so we've just been doing that. We go into land acquisition, and again, as an organization, what we do is there's something called a 990 that you have to file with the IRS when you're a 501 [c] [3] , so that when people donate, you can see where the money goes, unlike every other organization on Earth. When people donate, we protect the Amazon rainforest. When people donate, we hire more rangers, and so it's like bang, bang, bang, bang.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And so all these people are coming out of the woodwork as heroes. It's large and small. It's, it's, it's the masses, as well as some huge donors who have helped us along the way with, with large chunks of land. And so if we protect this, though, it, it shows a model where those indigenous communities can work as rangers, and then you don't have the problem of narco traff... They don't become narco traffickers, and so then the Peruvian government's happy. The Peruvian government says, "Well, they're, they have... They're, their, our citizens are taken care of in that region. Well, this is great, and we have clean water flowing out of that region that feeds e- this city and this city and this city, and that's good." And so it's a win, win, win, win, win all around.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
So then you go, "Why don't we do that over here, too?"
- CWChris Williamson
How many times do you need to say, "Why don't we do that over here?"... How many of the-- Is it 3,000? Is it 200?
- PRPaul Rosolie
It's thousands, but the, so much of the Amazon already exists protected in indigenous territories. I mean, the best, the, the easiest and best way to protect these natural areas is just, just hand it over to the people that have it. So the area that's protected by the Yanomami Indians, the p- the areas that are protected by the Machiguenga. There's different tribes all over the Amazon. If you look at a map, there's... Yes, there's national parks, but they're not as big as the tribal areas.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And so, and so what we have to do, though, is, is unfortunately work with world leaders on a, on a, on a large-scale level to s- to, to make slowing deforestation a priority so that we get past this-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- PRPaul Rosolie
... this huge population boom and this adolescence as a global society.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
But you can't protect the whole thing from the start, but you have to start somewhere to protect the whole thing.
Episode duration: 2:12:11
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