Lex Fridman Podcast #369 - #369 – Paul Rosolie: Amazon Jungle, Uncontacted Tribes, Anacondas, and Ayahuasca Machine transcription by Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (MLX, local, Apache-2.0). May contain recognition errors. The following is a conversation with Paul Rosely, a conservationist, explorer, author, filmmaker, and real life Tarzan. Since for much of the past seventeen years, Paul has lived deep in the Amazon rainforest, protecting endangered species and trees from poachers, loggers, and foreign nations funding them. He is the founder of Jungle Keepers, which today protects over fifty thousand acres of threatened habitat. And Paul is one of the most incredible human beings I've ever met. I hope to travel with him in the Amazon jungle one day because in his eyes, I saw a truth that can only be discovered directly by spending time among the immensity and power of nature at its purest. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Eight Sleep for naps, BetterHelp for mental health, and Athleta Greens for a great nutritional basis for your health. She's wiser than my friends. Also, if you want to work with our team, we're always hiring. Go to lexfreeman dot com slash hiring. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep and its new Pod Three mattress. There is few things I enjoy in life more than a great power nap. I take a sip of coffee, I get some caffeine in my body, and then when the feeling of just kind of jadedness of tiredness, if you think of motivation as an ocean. The thing that covers that motivation are the surface waves. I think of the desire to nap with the surface waves, and the nap itself is a way to bring calm to the waters. It's a way to let the storm pass. I just took a nap before this, and you perhaps can tell in my voice the energy of a thousand butterflies. I don't know why I chose butterflies, but I did. I don't know why I chose a thousand, but it's a distributed system with emergent behavior. I am sure. Although the flocking behavior I am aware of is mostly for birds, I wonder if butterflies flock. They seem more independent. They seem too beautiful to flock. Does beauty prevent you from cooperating? Is there is there a threshold beyond which you are too beautiful to cooperate with others? And the definition of beauty, of course, is species dependent, unless we're talking about butterflies. In which case, they're just beautiful, beautiful to other species as well, at least to humans. Anyway, check out Eight Sleep and get special savings when you go to eightsleep dot com slash lex. This episode is also brought to you by BetterHelp spelled H E L P Help. I've been going through some rough times mentally. I just took a nap, so I am feeling pretty good. But this last year, and I just tweeted about this, has been really rough. I had some really low points. It's probably not the right place to talk about such low points here, as I sit alone in a dark hotel room. All the lights off because you know how hotel rooms are. There is no overhead lights. It's just the lamp, and nobody knows how to turn that lamp on, so it's mostly darkness. With a little hints of light from a lamp that's just around the corner, and here I sit alone with a microphone, talking about things. What is this life exactly? Anyway, sometimes those little environments, those little moments, can catch you off guard, and the darkness that's in our past comes to the surface, and it can break you. It's good to bring it to the surface often so it doesn't break you, and that's where I think talking to others helps. I think talk therapy with a professional helps. If you want an accessible version of that, check out BetterHelp at betterhelp dot com slash lex and save on your first month. That's betterhelp dot com slash lex. This show is also brought to you by Athleta Greens and its AG One drink, which is an all in one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. Actually, I am currently in Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and tragically, I ran out of Athleta Greens. Athleta Greens is one of the things that makes me feel like I am home. It is part of the daily ritual. I drink it twice a day, and it kind of grounds me. It helps me make sure I am getting all the nutrition I need. There is something about making sure your diet is not horrible, and you are getting the nutrients in your body that you need. And you are getting the sleep and the rest and the exercise you need when all of that is in place. There is so much more that you can do with life. All the hardship, all the dark things, everything you can take it on. And the easiest version of that is the vitamins. And the super awesome multi vitamin I rely on is Athleta Greens. It's also delicious, I should say. They'll give you a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase when you go to athleta greens dot com slash lex. This is the Lex Freeman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here is Paul Rosely. In two thousand six, at eighteen years old, you fled New York and traveled to the Amazon. This started a journey that I think lasts to this day. Tell me about this first leap. What in your heart pulled you towards the Amazon jungle? From the time I was, you know, three years old, I'd say you know was dinosaurs, wildlife documentaries, Steve Irwin, you name it. And like when my parents said, you know, nature versus nurture, they they nurtured my nature. I was always just drawn to streams, forests. I wanted to go explore where the little little creek led. I wanted to see the turtles and the snakes. And so I was a kid that hated school, did not get along with school. I was dyslexic and didn't know it undiagnosed. I didn't read until I was like ten years old, like way behind. And so for me, the forest was safety. Like I remember one time in first grade, they had you doing those you know those multiplication sheets. That was pure hell for me, and so I actually got so upset that I couldn't do it that I ran out the classroom, ran out the door and went to the nearest woods and I stayed there because that was safe. And so for me, like once I got to the point where I was like high school isn't working out. I had incredibly supported parents that were like, look just get out, take your GED, get out of high school after tenth grade. You got to go to college, but like start doing something you love. And so I saved up and bought a ticket to the Amazon and met some indigenous guys and. The second I walked in that forest, it was like it's like the first scene in Jurassic Park when they see the dinosaurs and they go, oh this is it. I walked in there and just I looked at those giant trees, I saw leaf cutter ants in real life and I just went, oh. It was like the movie just started. You know that was when that was when like I came online. Can you put into words what is it about that place that felt like home? What was it that drew you? What aspect of nature—the streams, the water, the the forest, the jungle, the animals—what what drew you? It's just it's always been in my blood. I mean, for any forest, I mean whether it's you know upstate New York or or India or Borneo, but the Amazon it's it's it's all of that turned up to this level where everything is superlatively diverse. You know you have more plants and animals than anywhere else on Earth. Not just now, but in the entire fossil record. It's the Andes Amazon interface. There is just that's terrestrially that's that's where it is. That's the greatest library of life that has ever existed. And so you are just you are so stimulated, you are so overwhelmed with color and diversity and beauty and this overwhelming sense of natural majesty of these you know thousand year old trees and half the life is up in the canopy of those trees. We don't even have access to it. There is stuff without names walking around on those branches and it's like it just takes you somewhere and so going there it was like. You know the guys I met just opened the door and they were like, you know how far do you want to go down the rabbit hole? How how how much of this do you want to see? You mentioned Steve Irwin. You list a bunch of heroes that you have. He's one of them, and you said that when you aren't sure about a decision, you ask yourself, W W S D. What would Steve do? Why is that such a good heuristic for life? What would Steve do? He's a human being that like everything we saw from Steve Irwin was positive. Everything was with a smile on his face. If he was getting bitten by a reticulated python, he was smiling. If he was you know getting destroyed in the news for feeding a crocodile with his son too close, he was trying to explain to people why it's okay and why we have to love these animals and everything was about love. Everything was about you know wildlife and protecting and to me a person like that that where you only see positive things. That's that's a role model and it's just like an endless curiosity and hunger to explore this this world of nature. Yeah and an insatiable madness for for for wildlife. I mean the guy was just so much fun. I got if it's okay, read to you a few of your own words. You open the book Mother of God with a passage that I think beautifully paints a scene. Before he died, Santiago Duran told me a secret. It was late at night in a palm thatched hut on the bank of the Temple Potah River, deep in the southwestern corner of the Amazon basin. Besides a mud oven, two wild boar heads sizzling, sizzled in a cradle of embers. Their protruding tusks curling in static agony as they cooked. The smell of burning cacao wood and cinched flesh filled the air. A woven basket containing monkey skulls hung from the rafters, where stars peeked through the gaps in the thatching. A pair of chickens huddled in the corner, conversing softly. We sat facing each other on sturdy benches across a table hewn from a single cross section of some massive tree, now nearly consumed by termites. The song of a million insects and frogs filled the night. Santiago's cigarette trembled in the aged fingers as he leaned close over the candle light to describe a place hidden in the jungle. That line, the songs of a million insects and frogs filled the night. For some reason, hit me. What's it like sitting there conversing among so many living creatures all around you? Every night in the jungle, you live in constant awareness of that out there in the darkness. Are literally millions of heartbeats around you, and so like we exist in this in this you know domesticated paved world most of the time. But when you go out there past the roads and the and the telephone poles and the hospitals and you make it out into Earth, just wild Earth. And there is no there is no there is not not like this is a national park. There is no rescue helicopter waiting to come get you. You are out there and you are surrounded at night by. I mean there are snakes and jaguars and frogs and insects and all this stuff just crawling through the swamps and through the trees and through the branches and. We put on headlamps and go out into the night and just absolutely fall to our knees with wonder of the things that we see. It's it's absolutely incredible and most of it doesn't make sounds like the insects do. The insects do the frogs do you have some of the night birds making sounds but a lot of it everything has evolved to be silent invisible. I mean everything there is in the on on the list like like I there is another line in Mother of God where I said like you know like life is just like a temporary moment of stasis and like the churning recycling death march that is the Amazon like it's um. It's been called the greatest natural battlefield on Earth. I mean, in any square acre, there is more stuff eating other things than anywhere else. And and you go through a swamp in the Amazon, and there is like there is tarantulas floating on the water, there is frogs in the trees, there is there is. There is tadpoles hanging from leaves waiting to drop into the water. There is fish waiting to eat them. There is birds in the tree. You sit you you literally are surrounded by so many things that your brain can't process it. It's it's just overwhelming. Life churning death march. Some of the creatures are waiting, and some of them are being a bit more proactive about it. What do you make of that churning death march? The amount of murder that's happening all around you at all scales. What is that? You know we we dramatize wars and the millions of people that were lost in World War Two. Some of them tortured, some of them dying with a gun in hand, some of them civilians, but it's just millions of people. What about the billions and billions and billions of organisms that are just being murdered all around you? Does that do? Does that change your view of nature of life here? I've always kind of wondered like that like when you see like a you know wildebeest taken down by lions and and eaten from behind while it's alive and it makes you question God you know you go how could how could how could they let this happen. In the Amazon, I find personally that these natural processes make up almost a religion. That it reminds you how temporary we are. That you know the the the botflies that are trying to get into your skin and the mosquitoes that are trying to suck your blood and the. You know when that when you sweat you see you see the you literally can like hold out your arm and watch the condensation come off of your skin and rise up into the canopy and join the clouds and rain back down in the afternoon and and then you drink the river and start it all over again and it's like it's flowing through you so. The Amazon reminds me that that there is a lot that we don't understand, and so when it comes to that overwhelming and collective murder as Werner Herzog put it, um it's it's just part of the show. It's part of the freak show of the Amazonian night. So you I you in certain moments able to feel one with a mosquito that's trying to kill you slowly and one with the mosquito as a stretch. Is it always the enemy? What I mean is like you are part of the machine there, right? Yeah and it's like fair play, it's like fair play. So like we have bullet ants and like you know you get you get nailed by a bullet ant, you just go yeah well well done well done. Today's today's over. I am going back to bed and I am taking a pile of tile and all and you know. Do you think in that sense, when you are out there, are you a part of nature or you separate from nature? Man, a part of nature or separate. I think that's what's so refreshing about it is that out there you truly are, and so whether we're bringing researchers or film crews or or whether we're just out there ourselves on an expedition. You truly are part of nature, and so one of the things that the my team and I started doing when I became friends with these guys, you know this is a family of indigenous people from the community of Infierno and they took me in and. As we got close, they started saying, "You know you can come with us on our like annual hunting trip," and I went okay, and it's four guys in a boat and you don't want to get your clothes wet, so we're all in like our boxers in a canoe with a motor going out past the places that have names and you are out in the middle of the jungle and the thing is like. When your when your motor breaks, you are so quickly reminded of the inherent truths like the things that nobody can argue with, and we live in such a human world where everything is debatable, religion and politics and perspectives on everything and then you get down to this point where it's like. If we don't figure something out, the river is going to rise and take the boat. That's the truth, and ain't nobody going to like argue with that. And it's like to me, there is a beauty in that truth because then all of us are united there and that truth against like the natural facts around us. And so to me, I that's that's that's a state where I feel very very at home. And the Amazon is more efficient than most places on Earth at swallowing you up. Oh god, yeah okay. So just a linger on that though because you you spoken about Francisco de Aranha, who's this explorer in the in fifteen forty one and forty two that sailed the length of the Amazon. Probably one of the first and there is just a few things. I should probably read. I should probably find a good book on him because the guy seems like a gangster. Yes, some great books on him. So he sailed, he led the expedition that sailed all the way from one end to the other. There is like a rebuilding of a ship, which is insanity. Yeah, yeah. So because it speaks to the thing, it's like nobody's going to come and rescue you. No, you have to. If your boat dies, you got to have to rebuild it. Yeah, so they came down the Andes, entered in the headwaters of the Amazon, constructed some sort of raft, boat, craft, something, and made it down the entire Amazon basin. Of course, his stories are the ones that led to the Amazon being called the Amazon because he reported tribes of women, he reported these large cities, places where the tribes lived on farms of river turtles that they corralled and they lived off of that protein and then when they came out to the mouth of the Amazon. If I remember it correctly, that just through navigation and the stars, they were able to calculate where the way was back to Spain and make a boat seaworthy enough to bring them home. Incredible, absolutely. Do people like that inspire you your own journey? Like, what gives you kind of strength that in these harshes of times and harshes of conditions you can persevere? Yeah, I mean you look at the stories of people that are so you know these stories of people that have overcome incredible suffering like that or like you know what Shackleton did or something like that and so like when you are you know I've been you know your your tent gets washed away, you go to sleep and the river rises twenty feet and washes away your tent and you crawl out and all you have is a machete and a headlamp, literally no bag, no food, no nothing and you go wow the next six days before I reach it back to the town is going to be just pure hell. I am going to be sleeping on the ground covered in ants, destroyed by mosquitoes, and then it becomes you know am I in any capacity any percentage as tough and resilient as the people that I've read about that have made it through things far worse than this and and then that's the game you play. What goes through your head when all you got is the headlamp and the machete? So are you thinking at all? Like I've I've got a chance to interact quite a lot with Elon Musk and he constantly puts out fires having to run several companies. There is never a kind of. Ah, whiny deliberation about issues. You just always one one step forward, how to solve right. This is the situation. How do you solve it, or do you also have a kind of self motivating, almost egotistical like I am a bad motherfucker. I can handle anything, almost like trying to fake it till you make it kind of thing. There was a little bit. You are machete, and I got a sword. There, there may may have been a little bit of that when I was like you know like fourteen, fifteen years old. I'd like you know have like a hunting knife and my dog and I'd go out into the woods like the cat skills and survive for a weekend with my rule was one match. You know you get one match and you got to make shelter and then you know I'd bring like a steak and like make a fire and stuff and like at that point there may be some ego but in the Amazon. You get stripped down so completely that you, it's like that thing like you know watch the atheism leave everyone's body when they think they're about to die it's like when you. Find yourself staring up at the Amazon at night and you go there is no hope of getting out of here. I mean I was once lost in a swamp where it took me days to get out of there and there was there was moments where. I just said this is you know this is clearly it. There is no there is no ego there. There is just hope. You you start you start realizing what you believe in and. Praying that you'll be okay and and then trying trying to summon whatever you know about how to survive and. And that's it. And so it's it's actually again it's kind of it's kind of a blissful state if you can walk that line between like adventure and tragedy and sort of keep yourself right at that very very fine line without going over. Ever fear of death, fear ever fear. Um terror. No, I don't want to die. I want to I want to you know I love the people in my life and there is a lot of things I want to do but every time I've been every time I've been certain that I am going to die it's been I've been very very calm. Very calm and just sort of like okay well if this is how the movie goes and this is how it goes almost accepting. Yeah, which is which is reassuring. You mentioned Herzog, just to venture down this road of death and fear and so on. T here is been a few madmen like you in this world. Ah, he's documented a couple of them. What lessons do you draw from Grizzly Man or Into the Wild those kinds of stories? Were you ever afraid that you'll be one of those stories? Oh yeah, I actually think that that it's in Mother of God where I said I almost into the wild did myself like I went out there and really I got so lost and so destroyed that. I said this this is this is going to be the next one you know this is going to be the next story of some idiot kid from New York who went to the Amazon thinking he was Percy Fawcett and then vanished because if you if you do vanish out there. Your body is going to be consumed in a matter of days, like like two. You know if we see if we see an animal dead on a trail, it's you got dung beetles and and fly larvae and vultures and there is a whole pecking order. You know you get the black vultures, the yellow vultures, the king vulture. They all come in that thing is picked clean in a couple of days. What would be the creature that eats most of you in that situation? Probably the vultures. Probably the vultures and the and the maggots. It's it's really quick. It's really really quick. Like like like you even as far as like you can't leave food out. You know like if you have like a piece of chicken you say oh I'll eat it in the morning you leave it out you can't do that. It's not it's not good by morning. Grizzly Man for example like what because that's a beautiful story it's both comical and genius and especially the way Herzog tells it. Well first of all do you like the way he told the story do you like Herzog? I do I love Herzog and I love his his documentary The Burden of Dreams which is which is in the Amazon not very far from where I work. And the the sheer madness that you see this man undergoing of just trying to recreate hauling a boat over a mountain. Um is is is wild and and the you know the the extras that he hired to be to play the natives are are the I think they're Machuengga tribesmen and they just. They they just look like all the guys that I hang out with and it's like you know they're they're doing all this stuff in the jungle that months and months and months and you can just see him deteriorating with madness because the jungle you know your boat you know how many times I've tied up a boat to the side of the river this just happened like a year and a half ago I tied up through through COVID I pretty much just lived in the jungle for a while. And there was nobody there and there was no support and I tied up my boat and the rain is just hammering like like like the universe is trying to rip the earth in half the rain is just going and the river is rising and I tied up the boat. But then you go to sleep and you got to wake up every two hours to go check the boat and the boat is thrashing back and forth and so all night every two hours I'd wake up barefoot in driving rain like you know golf ball raindrops and just go down check the boat and then by morning I was like I fell asleep. Woke up check the boat and then I was like I am just going to go make coffee I was so done I was so like at the end of my rope every time bailing the boat out and stuff. And then we got fifteen minutes of heavy rain that filled the boat sank it so now I am stuck upriver with no boat and it's like that type of thing where it's like no matter how hard you try the jungle is just like listen. You you nothing you are nothing and so it's that constant reminder and so Herzog really threw himself into that in that film and it's it's brilliant to watch. What do you think you meant by the line that you include in your book? It's a land that God, if he exists, has created in anger. Said in German accent. Yeah, overwhelming and collective murder. So that's that's. So you didn't really appreciate the beauty of the of the murder. I think he appreciated it, but to him it it was very dark. You know I think he saw the darkness in it and that's there it sure is as soon as you do ayahuasca you that door opens and you see the darkness because it brings you right into the jungle like the the heart of it. But I think that for him it it is I think that darkness is something that he embraces and that he loves. There is another film of his and I don't know if this is accurate but my memory has it. That there is a penguin and I think it's in Antarctica and the penguins going in the wrong direction away from the ocean. And I feel like he goes on this monologue about how like he's just had enough. Yeah, this one penguin is just marching towards you know. Yeah, well he his because I remember that clip from that documentary. And what Werner says is that the penguin is deranged. Yes, he's lost his mind, and I. Took offense to that. Yeah, because maybe that's a brave explorer like how how do you know there is not some a lot more going on like. It could be a love story. Those penguins get super attached. Maybe his mate was over there and he had to go find her like. Or it's a lost mate and he last time he saw her was going to that direction. Exactly. So this is like the great explorer they we we assume animals are like the average of the bell curve like every animal we interact with is just the average but there are special ones just like there are special humans. Yeah, that could be a special penguin. It could have been and I had the same thought where I was like I was like he's I found it beautiful how he interpreted it what I took away from that was I found that Werner Herzog's. Monologue there was was brilliantly dark and also comedic, but but maybe irrelevant biologically speaking towards penguins like you know um which which happens a lot with animals I find like there is so many times where I find people be like do you think that animals can show compassion and you hear like a bunch of people that have never left the pavement. Talking about like wow this this one animal helped another and it's like it's like go ask Jane Goodall animals can show compassion go go talk to anybody that works on a daily basis with animals and they'll and so like to me there is there is always a little bit of frustration in hearing people sort of like. Pleasantly surprised that animals aren't just you know you know these automatons of you know just just what's the word like like programmed you know nothingness. First of all, what have you learned about life from Jane Goodall because she spoke highly of your book and you listers as one of the mentors but what what kind of wisdom about animals do you draw from her. The wisdom from Jane is so diverse. It's I mean she first of all she's someone that you know the work that she did at at the time she did it was so incredible because I mean she she was out there at a very young age doing that field work she was naming her subjects which everyone said you shouldn't do. She broke every rule she broke every rule she was assigning and everyone said you know you're anthropomorphizing these animals by saying that they're doing this and that and she she was like no they they they're interacting they're showing love they're showing compassion they're showing hate they're showing fear. And and she broke straight through all of those things and and it paid off in dividends for her. Do you see the animals as having all those human like emotions of anger of compassion of longing of loneliness from what you've seen. Especially with mammals, but with different species out there do they have all that? It depends on the animal you know if you talk you know on the on the scale of a cockroach to an elephant you know it's like a lot of these things and I wonder about this stuff all the time you know I'll I'll have a praying mantis on my hand and just go what is going through your mind you know or you'll see you'll see a spider make a complex decision and go I am going to make my web there. You know and you go how how are you how are you doing this how are you because he he made a calculation there you know it's smart. I was in the jungle not that long ago and I was walking and all of a sudden this dove comes flying through the jungle right up to my face lands on a branch like right here right next to me I look at the dove dove looks at me and she's like hey. And she's clearly like panting and I am like I am like why why are you why are you so close to this is weird and she's like I know. And then and then an ornate hawk eagle flies up ten feet away looks at both of us and just like scowls and like sticks up its head feathers and then just like flies off and the dove is like sweet thanks and then flit flew in the other direction and I was like dude you just used me to save your life. Yeah the dove knew. See but this is what because there is you know there is Mike Tyson and there is Albert Einstein. Yeah and sometimes I wonder when I look at different creatures even insects like is this Mike Tyson or is this Einstein? Yeah like because one or other kinds of personality like is this a New Yorker or is this a Midwesterner or is this like a San Francisco barista of the insects like. There is all kinds of personalities you never know so you can't like project like you if you run into a bear and it's very angry it could be just the asshole New Yorker. Yeah sure as opposed to what are you saying about New Yorkers man exactly. Point well made. So speaking about communicating with a dove. You first met the crew in the Amazon. You talk about JJ as somebody who can communicate with animals. What do you think JJ is able to see and hear and feel that others don't that he's able to communicate with the animals. When I say this is. The most skilled jungle man I've ever seen and I know so many guys in the region. Um he has libraries of information in his cranium that we cannot fathom it's just it's just stunning like you know I have seen him use medicinal plants to cure things that Western doctors couldn't cure. I've seen him navigate in such a way that he's not using the stars he's not using any any discernible. You know it's it's like when elephants sometimes like you'll watch a herd of elephants and they'll be like yo let's go we're going this way and you'll see them sort of communicate but there is no audible sound. They'll just decide that they're going that when they all do it. JJ has this way in the jungle of you know he'll stop and he'll go wait and you go what is it and he goes. There's a herd of peccary coming and I am like where based on what you know and he's like just wait you'll see and he'll sit there. You know it's just experience it's incredible experience it's it's it's growing up barefoot in the Amazon and the gift is that he can speak fluent English and so when I bring tourists and scientists or news reporters down there. He can communicate with them. He's actually good on camera because he doesn't care about cameras. Um and like you know for instance we were we were we were walking up a stream a few months ago and I went hey look jaguar tracks and he went and I was like what jaguar tracks and he's like no look look harder and I was like. The the toes are deeper than the back and he was like uh huh and where are they and I was like by the water and I was like the jaguar is drinking it was leaning to drink and he was like that's right he's like now look behind you I look behind me and there's scat there's a big log of jaguar shit sitting there and it's got butterflies all over it fresh pretty fresh and then there's another one that's less fresh and so he's he's teaching me as he does he's going look at this look at this is that one as fresh as this one no. And then he goes now look up look up, there's three vultures above us. The kill is near us. The jaguar has been coming multiple times to the river to drink as it's feasting on whatever it killed and he's going it's within thirty feet of us right now and it's like. I am like oh look impressions in the sand he's like I just drew nineteen conclusions from that it's like watching Sherlock Holmes at work it's just constructing the crime scene incredible. Does that apply also to be able to communicate with the actual animals like read into their body movements directly. Into their whatever that dove was saying to you to be able to understand, or is that all just kind of taking in the complex structure of the crime scene of the interactions of the different animals of the environment and so on like what is that that you are able to communicate with another creature that he was able to communicate with another creature. He knows the intention of pose. He knows the habits. He knows the perspective when when when he talks about animals. He'll talk about each species as if it's a person. So he'll say oh oh the the jaguar she never likes to let you see her and so he'll come back from the jungle and he go oh I was watching monkeys and this. This jaguar was also watching the monkeys but I was being so quiet she didn't see me and then when she see me she feels so embarrassed and she go and he'll tell you this story like as if he had this interaction with like his neighbor. And you know and he'll be like oh the puka kunga it never does that you won't see it do that and so one time one time he caught a fish and I I was such a big fish this big beautiful pseudo platystoma this tiger catfish this amazing old fish and they're all excited to eat it and I felt so bad watching this thing gasp on the sand and I went you know what we don't need this this is for fun. I threw back oh no and then I took my hand and I went and I made like drag marks like so I could say oh it it snuck back in the water and so he walks up he looks at it and he was like I hate you and I went what no I said I must have it must have just he went that's not what happens he goes it goes like this when it go he knew the track of a fish and I was like yeah. I was like all right JJ I am sorry I'll catch you another fish. So stepping back to that way you open Mother of God. Yeah, who was Santiago Duran and what secret did he tell you? JJ's father was at some point he was a policeman at some point when he was a teenager he was working on the boats that before this little gold mining city of Puerto Maldonado. Grew the only way to get supplies in was to take canoes up the Tembopata River up to the next state which is Puno and and where mules would come down from the mountains with supplies and then he'd pilot the boats down but they didn't have motors at that time so he would be pulling the boat so he was he became this physically. Terrifying man and I met him when he was in his eighties and he was still living out in the jungle by himself and I mean he's seen an anaconda eat a taper which is the you know a cow sized mammal in the Amazon. He'd seen uncontacted tribes face to face. He once killed an eleven foot electric eel. Opened the back of the thing's neck, removed the nerve that he says was the source of the electric. Then he cut his forearm, placed that nerve into his forearm, wrapped it with a dead toad, and claimed that it would give him strength through the rest of his life. And continued to be a jungle badass until the day he quietly leaned back at a barbecue and ceased to be alive. The man was incredible but the