#369 – Paul Rosolie: Amazon Jungle, Uncontacted Tribes, Anacondas, and Ayahuasca
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The following is a conversation with Paul Rosley, a, uh, conservationist, explorer, author, filmmaker, and real life Tarzan. Since for much of the past 17 years, Paul has lived deep in the Amazon rainforest, protecting endangered species and trees from poachers, loggers and foreign nations funding them. He is the founder of Jungle Keepers, which today protects over 50,000 acres of 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 aid sleep for naps, betterhelp for mental health, and athletic greens for a great nutritional basis for your health. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our team, we're always hiring. Go to lexfreeman.com 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's few things I enjoy in life more than a great power nap. I take a sip of coffee, I get some caffeine to my body, and then when the, uh, feeling of just kind of jadedness, of tiredness, if you think of motivation as an ocean, the thing that covers that motivation, uh, are the surface waves. I think of the desire to nap at 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, uh, distributed system with emergent behavior, I'm sure. Although the flocking behavior I'm 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 a threshold beyond which you're 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 to other species as well, at least to humans, anyway. Check out eight sleep and get special savings when you go to eight. Sleep. Flex. This episode is also brought to you by betterhelp, spelled help. Help. I've been going through some rough times mentally. I just took a nap, so I'm feeling pretty good. But this last year, and I just tweeted about this has been really rough. I've 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's no overhead lights. It's just a lamp. And nobody knows how to turn that lamp on. So it's mostly darkness with, uh, 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, um, talking to others helps. I think talk therapy with a professional helps. If you want an accessible version of that, check out betterhelp@betterhelp.com. Lex. And save on your first month. That's betterhelp.com lex. This show is also brought to you by athletic greens, and it's ag one drink, which is an all in one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. Actually, I'm currently in Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and tragically, I ran out of athletic greens. Athletic, uh, greens is one of the things that makes me feel like I'm 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'm getting all the nutrition I need. There's something about making sure your diet is not horrible, and you're getting the nutrients in your body that you need, and you're getting the sleep and the rest and the exercise you need. When all of that is in place, there's 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 multivitamin I rely on is athletic 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 athleticgreens.com. Lex. This is the Lex Friedman podcast. To support it please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friend, friends, here's Paul Rosley.
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In 2006, at 18 years old, you fled New York and traveled to the Amazon. This started a journey that I think lasts to this day. Tell, uh, me about this first leap. What in your heart pulled you towards.
The Amazon jungle from the time, you know, three years? Say, you know, it was dinosaurs, wildlife documentaries, Steve Irwin, you name it. And like, when my parents know nature versus nurture, they nurtured my nature. I was always just drawn to streams, forests. I wanted to go explore where the 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. I remember one time in first grade, they had you doing those multiplication sheets. Uh, 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, once I got to the point where I was like, high school isn't working out, I had incredibly supportive parents that were like, look, just get out, take your GED, get out of high school. After 10th grade, you got to go to college, but 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'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. That was when 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 forest, the jungle, the animals. What drew?
Uh, just. It's always been in my blood. I mean, for any forest, I mean, whether it's upstate New York or India or Borneo, but the Amazon, it's all of that turned up to this level where everything is superlatively diverse. 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. Terrestrially, that's where it is. That's the greatest library of life that has ever existed. And so you're so stimulated, you're so overwhelmed with color and diversity and beauty and this overwhelming sense of natural majesty of these 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's stuff without names walking around on those branches. And it's like it just takes you somewhere. And so going there, it was know, the guys I met just opened the door and they were know, how far do you want to go down the rabbit hole? How much of this do you want to see?
You mentioned Steve Irwin. Uh, you list a bunch of heroes that you have. He's one of them. And, uh, you said that when you're unsure about a decision, you ask yourself, ah, WWSD, what would Steve do? Why is that such a good heuristic for life? What would Steve do?
He's a human being. That 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 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 wildlife and protecting. And, uh, to me, a person like that, where you only see positive things, that's a role model.
And it's just like an endless curiosity and hunger to explore this world of nature.
Yeah. And an insatiable madness for wildlife. I mean, the guy was just so much fun.
If it's okay,
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