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Selects: Who is The Man of the Hole? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody.
0:01
Speaker 2: Chuck here with a Saturday Select, bringing you one all
0:05
Speaker 2: the way back from August twenty eighteen. A nice summer episode.
0:09
Speaker 2: Who Is the Man of the Whole? This is very interesting.
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Speaker 2: The Man of the Holes was somebody who lived by
0:18
Speaker 2: himself as an uncontacted human, well pretty much uncontacted. A
0:25
Speaker 2: very interesting story. Sometimes I wish I was the Man
0:27
Speaker 2: of the Whole. But check it out right now. Who
0:30
Speaker 2: is the Man of the Hole? Welcome to Stuff You
0:37
Speaker 2: Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:46
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. So I'm Josh Clark,
0:48
Speaker 3: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Jerome Brolind. Boy,
0:54
Speaker 3: I'm not in a good way today, Chuck, you off
0:57
Speaker 3: your game, as if you can't tell I think you're fine. Well, thanks, man,
1:03
Speaker 3: I feel a lot better. Sure, Yeah, no, I'm okay.
1:07
Speaker 3: I can tell you. I'm I'm surrounded by friend's family.
1:13
Speaker 1: Like your dad's in the corner. It's weird.
1:16
Speaker 3: I have the idea I have TV. Oh man. I
1:19
Speaker 3: instagrammed a photo of my mom and dad from the seventies. Yeah,
1:25
Speaker 3: and I captioned it They're like looking at each other
1:29
Speaker 3: kind of lovingly and I captioned it the moment before
1:33
Speaker 3: I was conceived.
1:35
Speaker 1: You know what Jerry showed me that today?
1:37
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, she did. I look a lot like my
1:40
Speaker 3: parents mixed together. Huh.
1:42
Speaker 1: Well.
1:42
Speaker 2: The first thing I noticed was like, Wow, that's that's
1:45
Speaker 2: what Josh would have looked like as a grown man
1:47
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies.
1:49
Speaker 1: Because that profile.
1:50
Speaker 2: Of your dad, I don't know, I've never seen your
1:54
Speaker 2: dad young, So I was like, man, that's really that's you.
1:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally saw it. I saw both.
2:00
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, because you look at my dad, You're like, oh,
2:02
Speaker 3: that's Josh. But then you look at my mom, You're like, oh,
2:04
Speaker 3: there's Josh too. Very bizarre.
2:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't. I guess I definitely favor my father,
2:11
Speaker 1: is that right?
2:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, So a lot of people just favor one or
2:14
Speaker 3: the other. But I'm fifty to.
2:16
Speaker 1: Fifty Yep, that's kay all fifty to fifty.
2:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a new one.
2:23
Speaker 1: There's a T shirt, Yeah, fifty to fifty Clark.
2:27
Speaker 3: So, oh, I know the point I was making. There's
2:32
Speaker 3: this House Stuff Works article that you sent called The
2:34
Speaker 3: Man in the Hole, and it talks about this guy
2:37
Speaker 3: who is the last of his kind, he's, as this
2:42
Speaker 3: article put it, like the loneliest person on Earth. And
2:45
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, I mean, I'm sure this is
2:47
Speaker 3: a lot like being in solitary confinement or something like that,
2:50
Speaker 3: but no, this is way beyond that. And this house
2:53
Speaker 3: stuff works article byes Lynn Shields like really drove it home.
2:59
Speaker 3: She wrote, like, what if you were the last person
3:02
Speaker 3: who could speak your language, the last person who remembered
3:05
Speaker 3: what Halloween was, or a Coca cola, or that a
3:09
Speaker 3: dog says wolf, Like, imagine that, And I'm like, yeah,
3:12
Speaker 3: that's way different from being in solitary. Solitary confinement would
3:16
Speaker 3: be bad enough. You know, you're physically restrained, but at
3:20
Speaker 3: least you'd know out there that there are other people
3:24
Speaker 3: who know the same things you know, that speak the
3:28
Speaker 3: same language you speak, that your family's still out there,
3:30
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. This is utterly different. And this man,
3:35
Speaker 3: the last Tribesman he's called or the Man in the Hole,
3:37
Speaker 3: is possibly not just the last of his kind. He
3:43
Speaker 3: might be the only person on the entire planet in
3:47
Speaker 3: the situation that he's in. Maybe isn't that bizarre to think?
3:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we did another show on are There
3:56
Speaker 2: Undiscovered People? Quite a few years back, and I don't
3:59
Speaker 2: know how he didn't get to this guy, but I
4:02
Speaker 2: saw this article and it was striking, especially if you've
4:05
Speaker 2: seen the couple of videos, and I think there are
4:08
Speaker 2: only two pieces of video of this dude. One I
4:12
Speaker 2: saw where they were sort of shooting, you know, they
4:15
Speaker 2: were zoomed in on a hut, and that's you know,
4:17
Speaker 2: where he lives. There's a series of thatched huts in
4:21
Speaker 2: the Tenaru Indigenous Reserve in the Rondonia state of Brazil, YEP.
4:29
Speaker 2: About twenty thousand acres big area of the forest in jungle.
4:34
Speaker 2: So he lives in these thatched huts that are scattered
4:38
Speaker 2: about in the middle of nowhere, and they were able
4:41
Speaker 2: to get him on film kind of zoomed in between
4:43
Speaker 2: the cracks and you see the guy kind of looking
4:45
Speaker 2: a little bit, but you can't make out much. So
4:47
Speaker 2: I saw that video and then I saw another one
4:50
Speaker 2: where it was a pretty good shot of him from
4:53
Speaker 2: a distance making good work trying to chop down a tree.
4:57
Speaker 3: That was the most recent video, which well, let's just.
5:02
Speaker 1: Go ahead and get into this.
5:03
Speaker 2: He was found or discovered in I think in nineteen
5:07
Speaker 2: ninety six when some loggers from the State of Rondonia.
5:14
Speaker 3: Which from the impression I have, this is a very
5:17
Speaker 3: rough and tumble state populated by loggers and cattle ranchers,
5:22
Speaker 3: and there are very few laws from what I understand,
5:26
Speaker 3: and things are settled by the gun. Is the impression
5:29
Speaker 3: that I have of Rondnia. It's right smack dab in
5:32
Speaker 3: the middle of South America, and it's extraordinarily densely jungled
5:37
Speaker 3: in the Amazon.
5:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that.
5:38
Speaker 2: One New York Times article, like the guy was talking
5:41
Speaker 2: that they were talking to said, from a helicopter, you
5:44
Speaker 2: look down there and you think there's just no one
5:46
Speaker 2: down there.
5:47
Speaker 1: It's just all jungle, he said.
5:48
Speaker 2: But when you get down there, he said, there's a
5:50
Speaker 2: lot of people and drug runners and bad men everywhere.
5:55
Speaker 2: So this guy is definitely an anomaly because he is
5:59
Speaker 2: not hanging out with anybody.
6:02
Speaker 3: No. And the reason why they think he's alone, Chuck,
6:05
Speaker 3: is because back in nineteen ninety five nineteen ninety six,
6:08
Speaker 3: when the rumors of like a wild man in the
6:13
Speaker 3: jungle started to circulate, they think that he had just
6:18
Speaker 3: recently survived a slaughter that had killed off the rest
6:21
Speaker 3: of his tribe.
6:22
Speaker 2: Which was only like supposedly five or six people by
6:25
Speaker 2: that point, because they think the rest had been slaughtered
6:28
Speaker 2: and't that that's a common thing We're going to come
6:30
Speaker 2: up on in a couple of these is these ranchers
6:33
Speaker 2: and loggers. They're like, we want to go clear this land,
6:37
Speaker 2: and there's a tribe, a native tribe, they're an indigenous tribe,
6:41
Speaker 2: so let's just slaughter them, get them out of the way.
6:43
Speaker 1: It's really, really an awful, awful thing.
6:46
Speaker 3: And it's been a very common thing apparently since the
6:50
Speaker 3: seventies and eighties, when ranchers and loggers moved into Rondonia,
6:55
Speaker 3: just snatching up land. And this is again, this is
6:58
Speaker 3: the Amazon. This is basically Christine Forest rainforest that people
7:07
Speaker 3: who have never been contacted by anyone from the outside
7:13
Speaker 3: world live still to this day. And this guy's one
7:16
Speaker 3: of them. So at first they thought maybe Hughes just
7:19
Speaker 3: a member of a tribe that we already know about, right,
7:24
Speaker 3: And then over time as they started to study this guy,
7:27
Speaker 3: it became quite clear that now Hughes, he's a member
7:30
Speaker 3: of a tribe that we didn't know about before, and
7:33
Speaker 3: we're pretty sure he's the last of his kind.
7:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's this organization called Funai fu NAI, the
7:41
Speaker 2: National Indian Foundation of Brazil, and they have been tasked
7:47
Speaker 2: with for the past twenty years monitoring this dude, and
7:52
Speaker 2: before his companions were killed, monitoring his companions. And you
7:57
Speaker 2: sent a nice follow up on FUNAI. They have a
8:00
Speaker 2: departments and one is called the General Coordination Unit of
8:04
Speaker 2: Uncontacted Indians the CGII, and that was established in nineteen
8:10
Speaker 2: eighty seven and they're the only a department of government
8:13
Speaker 2: in the world which protects indigenous peoples who don't have
8:18
Speaker 2: contact with the outside world or nearby tribes.
8:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, because before in the nineteenth century and even through
8:26
Speaker 3: a lot of the twentieth century, there was it was
8:29
Speaker 3: just basically Christian missionaries who were making their way into
8:32
Speaker 3: the Amazon to contact tribes and bring them Jesus basically,
8:36
Speaker 3: and also healthcare and food and all that stuff tools
8:40
Speaker 3: the implements of modern culture, but also to proselytize too,
8:44
Speaker 3: and there was a lot of it just wasn't very
8:49
Speaker 3: well thought out. And as a result, even from these
8:52
Speaker 3: these the best of intentions that a lot of these
8:54
Speaker 3: missionaries had a lot of tribes died. So in nineteen
8:58
Speaker 3: ten Brazil came up with their I think it was
9:02
Speaker 3: like the Indian Protection Services was the name of the
9:05
Speaker 3: department that they first came up with, and the Indian
9:10
Speaker 3: Protection Service they took over from the missionaries, and it
9:14
Speaker 3: was a step up in that sense because it was
9:16
Speaker 3: more coordinated. There was thought to it, there was some
9:18
Speaker 3: sort of study, but the point was to take uncontacted
9:24
Speaker 3: Amazonian tribes and bring them into the modern world so
9:30
Speaker 3: that they could assimilate with the modern world. The point
9:34
Speaker 3: was to basically reduce cultural diversity in Brazil and that
9:39
Speaker 3: kept going until the sixties when there was a huge
9:42
Speaker 3: ExPASy about the Indian Protection Service that they had just
9:47
Speaker 3: fallen down so terribly in their mission that there was
9:50
Speaker 3: basically mass extermination, slavery, rape, everything, every horrible thing that
9:56
Speaker 3: you can think of that could befall a human being
9:59
Speaker 3: happened to these tribes under the watch of the Indian
10:02
Speaker 3: Services Protection over sixty years.
10:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, So.
10:07
Speaker 2: The department in nineteen eighty seven, the CGII was founded
10:12
Speaker 2: by a man named Sidney Posuelo. I guess how you
10:16
Speaker 2: pronounced that. And this was a big sea change in policy,
10:21
Speaker 2: which was, like you were saying, the previous strategy established
10:25
Speaker 2: contact to try and get them integrated at some point
10:29
Speaker 2: to this new policy, which was don't even contact these
10:33
Speaker 2: people unless they are under serious threat, because history has
10:39
Speaker 2: shown all manner of bad things can happen when you
10:43
Speaker 2: contact these people, one of which is certainly introducing them
10:49
Speaker 2: to new diseases and things that will kill them that
10:53
Speaker 2: they've never never seen or experienced. And this is you know,
10:57
Speaker 2: there's a big debate still on, like what the best
11:00
Speaker 2: policies are here.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, So these two American anthropologists, white American anthropologists, men
11:09
Speaker 3: who I guess, wrote an open letter in either Science
11:14
Speaker 3: or Nature, I think Nature, basically saying Brazil and Peru
11:21
Speaker 3: should reverse this long standing policy of not contacting Indians
11:28
Speaker 3: in the Amazon and should actually plan peaceful, well organized
11:34
Speaker 3: contact so that they can be better protected. It's these
11:39
Speaker 3: anthropologists stants that if you don't protect them, they're going
11:43
Speaker 3: to die one way or another. That there's no way
11:46
Speaker 3: that they're going to remain isolated. On the long term.
11:50
Speaker 3: Maybe you've got another generation possibly of some of these
11:55
Speaker 3: tribes that could live like this, but beyond that, it's
11:58
Speaker 3: just not going to happen. There's too many power, powerful
12:00
Speaker 3: interests banging on the doors of their preserved areas. Who
12:03
Speaker 3: are more than willing to hire people who will accept
12:07
Speaker 3: money to go kill these people just to get this land.
12:10
Speaker 3: And by just leaving them alone, you're leaving them very vulnerable.
12:14
Speaker 3: Whereas if you plan out contact, then conceivably you can
12:19
Speaker 3: show them that there are things like medical treatment, there
12:22
Speaker 3: is better ways that you can protect them. You can
12:25
Speaker 3: kind of give them contact, and that even more so
12:28
Speaker 3: interviews with groups that have become have initiated contact or
12:33
Speaker 3: have had contact made with them said we would have
12:37
Speaker 3: made contact with you guys earlier, but we thought we
12:39
Speaker 3: were going to be enslaved or murdered or something. We
12:42
Speaker 3: had no idea that you wanted to actually help us.
12:44
Speaker 3: Had we known that, we would have contacted you guys
12:47
Speaker 3: decades ago. So those two things put together, these American
12:51
Speaker 3: anthropologists have said we endorse this, and fu NI and
12:55
Speaker 3: a lot of other groups, including the UN and human
13:00
Speaker 3: rights group in the UK called Survivors International, have said, no,
13:05
Speaker 3: that is totally disrespectful, that flies completely in the face
13:08
Speaker 3: of agreed upon procedure and protocol. Just be quiet, you're
13:13
Speaker 3: being neo colonialists. Yeah.
13:15
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting though, because what they're trying to
13:17
Speaker 2: do is, like you said, have very highly controlled contact,
13:21
Speaker 2: and the assumption that they don't want to be contacted,
13:26
Speaker 2: at least through their eyes, appears to be false because,
13:29
Speaker 2: like you mentioned, they're afraid of being kidnapped or something
13:33
Speaker 2: or overtaken. And if had they known, like, oh, you
13:36
Speaker 2: just want to give us some nice tools and maybe
13:39
Speaker 2: inoculate us, and we'd actually be.
13:42
Speaker 1: Down with that as long as you leave afterward.
13:46
Speaker 3: Right, And these two anthropologists said, like, you've got to
13:49
Speaker 3: do this smartly, Like you basically have to go in
13:51
Speaker 3: with cultural translators, usually tribes who have made contact with
13:57
Speaker 3: outsiders before, already ablished contact that live in the same area,
14:02
Speaker 3: who might be able to translate between the outsiders and
14:07
Speaker 3: the actual uncontacted tribes. And you need healthcare providers who
14:11
Speaker 3: are going to stay there for at least a year,
14:14
Speaker 3: at least a year of sustained care or else. Yes,
14:17
Speaker 3: they're going to die from these diseases you're going to
14:19
Speaker 3: bring in inevitable.
14:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they're good.
14:22
Speaker 2: They give good examples too in that article about how
14:25
Speaker 2: this is backfired with missionaries, like the your people, they
14:30
Speaker 2: were there for six months and the missionary said, well,
14:33
Speaker 2: let's go on vacation and then the Yora died a
14:37
Speaker 2: few weeks later, and then in nineteen seventy five, missionaries
14:41
Speaker 2: provided care to a community on Ake community they took
14:47
Speaker 2: a vacation and then they died as well. So they're
14:50
Speaker 2: saying like, you got to have a plan to go
14:52
Speaker 2: in and stay there. You can't just go in, bring
14:55
Speaker 2: them some food and machetes and acculate like spring break,
15:00
Speaker 2: and then then get out of there. But I get
15:03
Speaker 2: the idea that this is still a pretty hot topic
15:06
Speaker 2: of debate.
15:07
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, that those anthropologists, they set off a
15:12
Speaker 3: huge debate, and I think it was sparked by the
15:16
Speaker 3: video that was released by Survivor International of the man
15:21
Speaker 3: and the Hole chopping down a tree. And the video
15:24
Speaker 3: was taken in twenty eleven, but they only just released
15:26
Speaker 3: it in July of twenty eighteen. And this is, yeah,
15:30
Speaker 3: this is very much still going on, this big debate
15:32
Speaker 3: and it's a huge it's a huge issue and you
15:35
Speaker 3: can kind of see both sides. Like I had just
15:38
Speaker 3: read about Fooneye's counter to it that like, look, dude,
15:42
Speaker 3: this is our thing. We got this. You just mind
15:45
Speaker 3: your own business. We have our own policy, stay out right,
15:48
Speaker 3: stay out of this. Yeah, But then if you read
15:50
Speaker 3: the anthropologists letters, you're like, actually, they have a couple
15:53
Speaker 3: of good points here. So it's it's not a clear
15:56
Speaker 3: cut a picture, sure, one way or the other. It's
16:02
Speaker 3: definitely there's a lot of nuance to it on both sides.
16:06
Speaker 3: All Right, let's take a respite, let's take a furlough
16:09
Speaker 3: or a vacation.
16:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we'll come back and talk a little bit
16:12
Speaker 2: more about the man in the hole.
16:33
Speaker 1: All right.
16:33
Speaker 2: So the reason they call him the man of the
16:35
Speaker 2: hole or the man in the hole is the odd
16:38
Speaker 2: thing of inside these thatched huts, of which he has
16:42
Speaker 2: several around this area. Inside the huts are these and
16:48
Speaker 2: all over the place there are these holes with like
16:49
Speaker 2: spikes for like trapping animals. But he has these six
16:53
Speaker 2: foot deep holes inside of his own huts, and apparently
16:59
Speaker 2: no other tribes around him have done this, and it's
17:01
Speaker 2: very unusual thing. And the belief is that he is
17:06
Speaker 2: it's for his own protection. I guess if he's being
17:09
Speaker 2: fired upon or something by loggers, he can jump down
17:12
Speaker 2: on one of these holes.
17:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the impression I have too, which is extraordinarily sad.
17:18
Speaker 1: It is.
17:19
Speaker 3: So the reason why they think that that he has
17:24
Speaker 3: these holes is because he's had terrible run ins. I
17:27
Speaker 3: guess this seems to be evidence that he is the
17:31
Speaker 3: survivor of a slaughter or a massacre, because this is
17:34
Speaker 3: not a normal technique that they've seen with other tribes,
17:39
Speaker 3: and they found it at every single one of the
17:41
Speaker 3: huts that they've come upon of his.
17:43
Speaker 1: Yeah.
17:43
Speaker 2: They do know though, from tailing him or mon tailing him,
17:47
Speaker 2: monitoring him for the past couple of decades though, that
17:50
Speaker 2: he he hunts with a bone arrow. He farms probably
17:55
Speaker 2: at night and stays out of the you know, as
17:58
Speaker 2: much as he can. Stays inside during the day out
18:00
Speaker 2: of fear, which is also awful. But he farms like
18:04
Speaker 2: papaya and corn and other fruits and vegetables. He has
18:07
Speaker 2: all these traps set everywhere. Like I mentioned, they have
18:11
Speaker 2: found hand carved arrowheads, torches made from branches in Resin
18:17
Speaker 2: And at one point they actually tried to make.
18:20
Speaker 3: Contact, yes, several points.
18:22
Speaker 2: Well, at one point when they tried to make contact, though,
18:25
Speaker 2: he fired upon them with his bow and arrow and
18:27
Speaker 2: actually hit someone.
18:29
Speaker 3: In the chest, one of the food iye agents.
18:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they were like, all right, we're out of here.
18:34
Speaker 3: Yeah. At that point they stopped trying to initiate contact
18:38
Speaker 3: with this guy. And again, this is like peaceful contact
18:40
Speaker 3: they're trying to initiate, not like hey man, get off
18:44
Speaker 3: of this land. They're like saying, do you need anything?
18:47
Speaker 3: Do you want some food? What do you want? And
18:51
Speaker 3: the first few attempts to contact him resulted in him
18:55
Speaker 3: just basically slipping into the shadows in the jungle and
18:58
Speaker 3: just disappearing. Then it progressed into standoffs. Then it progressed
19:03
Speaker 3: into a shooting, and so they stepped back. Survivor International
19:07
Speaker 3: and FUNAI and some other groups stepped back and said,
19:10
Speaker 3: this guy is escalating in hostilities. He's showing us he
19:16
Speaker 3: doesn't want anything to do with us, like you. It
19:20
Speaker 3: would be something if like he'd shot the first time
19:23
Speaker 3: and then slipped away the second time and the hostilities
19:27
Speaker 3: were decreasing, but instead it's going the opposite way. The
19:29
Speaker 3: hostilities were increasing. So he's getting that he has the
19:33
Speaker 3: opportunity to contact these people who are coming with their
19:36
Speaker 3: hands up and like not trying to kill him, and
19:39
Speaker 3: he's still saying back off. So finally the government said
19:42
Speaker 3: we're just going to back off, and they backed off.
19:45
Speaker 3: They FUNAI established his policy of not contacting this guy,
19:49
Speaker 3: not even attempting to contact this guy, but instead monitoring him,
19:53
Speaker 3: making sure that his preserve is protected, and then leaving
19:59
Speaker 3: him things like the acts that he was seen using
20:02
Speaker 3: in that twenty eleven video, or seeds for some of
20:05
Speaker 3: the plants that he grows.
20:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, which a lot of times he doesn't even accept
20:09
Speaker 2: or take these gifts. Imagine he's not retrusting. And like
20:13
Speaker 2: you said, as far as protecting the area, in two
20:15
Speaker 2: thousand and seven, Funai and the government eventually increase the
20:20
Speaker 2: area to thirty one square miles around where he was
20:23
Speaker 2: is off limits to any trespassing or development, later expanded
20:27
Speaker 2: to three thousand hectares.
20:29
Speaker 3: So I think they added another three thousand.
20:31
Speaker 1: Hectares, okay to the already square mileage.
20:34
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
20:34
Speaker 2: And this is really ticked off the ranchers and the
20:37
Speaker 2: loggers because they're like, our business is being held back
20:41
Speaker 2: by this one guy.
20:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they want to kill.
20:44
Speaker 3: Him, to kill him. As a matter of fact, when
20:48
Speaker 3: the government announced that it was not only keeping up
20:51
Speaker 3: the practice of preserving this guy's land thirty one square miles,
20:56
Speaker 3: but adding an extra three thousand hectares, which brought the
21:00
Speaker 3: total to forty two and a half square miles or
21:02
Speaker 3: one hundred and ten square kilometers that this man has
21:05
Speaker 3: to himself. The five ranches that surround this preserve hired
21:11
Speaker 3: somebody to go try to kill him. Yeah, Fu and
21:13
Speaker 3: I went and checked on him after a couple of
21:15
Speaker 3: weeks after that announcement was made public, and they found
21:19
Speaker 3: that their outpost was ransacked and that they had found
21:23
Speaker 3: the shotgun shells spent shotgun shells in the fourth floor.
21:26
Speaker 3: So there's clearly an attempt to made on the guy's life,
21:30
Speaker 3: and for a couple of years they had no idea
21:32
Speaker 3: if he'd survived until that video was made in twenty
21:35
Speaker 3: eleven that showed this guy who is now fifty. They've
21:39
Speaker 3: been tracking him since he was in his third fifties.
21:41
Speaker 3: Now they chopping down a tree. Yeah, chopping down a
21:45
Speaker 3: tree like it's nothing. So they knew that he was
21:47
Speaker 3: alive and in good health as of twenty eleven, and
21:50
Speaker 3: they're assuming that he's still alive.
21:52
Speaker 2: Man, how good would a movie be about this guy?
21:55
Speaker 2: I know, just have a lot of it play out
21:57
Speaker 2: in silence, you know.
21:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be amazing.
22:00
Speaker 1: That would be cool.
22:01
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's crazy to see a video of
22:04
Speaker 2: this guy from seven years ago. Like in the world
22:06
Speaker 2: we live in, to think about there's still places on
22:09
Speaker 2: earth where this guy it's almost like the Japanese straggler
22:15
Speaker 2: who had no idea that the war had been over
22:17
Speaker 2: for whatever thirty years living in the jungle. It's just
22:21
Speaker 2: amazing to think about the fact that this is the
22:23
Speaker 2: lone the lone guy out there by himself and what
22:27
Speaker 2: his life must be like.
22:29
Speaker 3: But not only that, it's like like when we did
22:33
Speaker 3: the paramedics episode, I think I said something like, there's
22:36
Speaker 3: there's no greater symbol of humanity than paramedics, you know,
22:41
Speaker 3: I think this is another really great symbol of paramedics
22:43
Speaker 3: in this guy. Well. No, the Funai Brazilian government's response
22:49
Speaker 3: to this that this man has been part of a tribe.
22:52
Speaker 3: He's the last of his tribe, and the Brazilian government
22:55
Speaker 3: has said, this man deserves to live his life out
22:58
Speaker 3: in peace in the way that he he wants to,
23:01
Speaker 3: in his traditional way, to be left alone. And we're
23:03
Speaker 3: going to designate one hundred and ten square kilometers that
23:07
Speaker 3: belong to no one but this man. Yeah, despite the
23:10
Speaker 3: fact that all around him is the outside world trying
23:13
Speaker 3: to press in. We're going to stand in the way
23:15
Speaker 3: of that so that this guy can live out his
23:17
Speaker 3: natural life. That just gets me, you know, right in
23:20
Speaker 3: the bread basket.
23:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the Disney version of this movie is
23:24
Speaker 2: they would find alone tribeswoman somewhere, drop her off and
23:30
Speaker 2: have them have them meet cute by the papie tree.
23:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the ranchers want to tickle him. But if
23:39
Speaker 3: it were live action these days, it would be they
23:43
Speaker 3: would hire either John Wayne or Fisher Stevens to play
23:46
Speaker 3: the last time.
23:48
Speaker 1: Fisher Stevens.
23:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, remember he played the Indian programmer in Short Circuit.
23:53
Speaker 1: Really well, that's right, yeah, geez.
23:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was as recently as the eighties.
23:58
Speaker 2: Right, It's not like Mickey Rooney, you playing an Asian
24:01
Speaker 2: man in the nineteen sixties. Not like that was any better. No, boy, Hollywood,
24:07
Speaker 2: you've been getting wrong for so long.
24:09
Speaker 3: They have. At least Mongol got it right though, right maybe, Yeah,
24:14
Speaker 3: we haven't seen him reserve judgment.
24:16
Speaker 1: Should we take another break?
24:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, We'll take another break and talk a
24:20
Speaker 2: little bit more about some of these isolated tribes right
24:25
Speaker 2: after this.
24:45
Speaker 3: Okay, Chuck, So the last Tribesman, the man in the hole.
24:51
Speaker 3: He's being left alone, and that's policy in Brazil and Peru.
24:55
Speaker 3: From what I understand now, there are some tribes that
25:00
Speaker 3: have actually accepted contact and have made peaceful contact and
25:05
Speaker 3: have become I guess a little more integrated. I think
25:10
Speaker 3: there's three degrees that FUNAI separates tribes into indigenous tribes
25:17
Speaker 3: into there's totally uncontacted, which is like they are living
25:22
Speaker 3: off on their own, they outside world has nothing to
25:24
Speaker 3: do with them. There's partially contacted or partially assimilated, right,
25:32
Speaker 3: like they're they're living in their hut in the jungle,
25:35
Speaker 3: but they still have an iPhone, right. And then there's
25:39
Speaker 3: fully assimilated, where they like live in a city now
25:42
Speaker 3: or something like that, or they have like a job
25:44
Speaker 3: in the city or something like that. So it's not
25:49
Speaker 3: just in the Amazon. It's not just in Brazil where
25:52
Speaker 3: there are uncontacted tribes, although that is definitely the place
25:57
Speaker 3: where you're going to find the most. I think I
25:58
Speaker 3: saw somewhere between fifty eighty and one hundred and twenty
26:04
Speaker 3: uncontacted groups of indigenous people are presumed to be living
26:08
Speaker 3: in the Amazon still today.
26:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean just those that random swath of numbers
26:14
Speaker 2: shows you that they there's still so much they don't know.
26:17
Speaker 3: For sure, but there's there are other parts of the
26:20
Speaker 3: world where there are uncontacted tribes, and you found an
26:24
Speaker 3: article that ran down a few of them. One that
26:27
Speaker 3: surprised me was just off the coast of India, on
26:31
Speaker 3: Sentinel Island in India, North Sentinel, a.
26:33
Speaker 2: Good ole cracked article which may have been done under
26:37
Speaker 2: the watch of our now colleague mister Jack O'Brien. Nice
26:42
Speaker 2: shout out to Jack and his daily Zeitgei, Zeitgei's podcast, Yeah,
26:46
Speaker 2: which I was on.
26:46
Speaker 3: Have you been on?
26:47
Speaker 1: You?
26:48
Speaker 3: You gotta be on. It's great, great fun. As a
26:51
Speaker 3: matter of fact, I'm gonna lap you. I'm gonna go
26:53
Speaker 3: on again.
26:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, well please.
26:55
Speaker 3: Do all right?
26:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, But the sentine Leese on North Sentinel Island, Indiana,
27:01
Speaker 2: they don't even know if that's their real name. They
27:03
Speaker 2: just call them that because I guess we have called
27:07
Speaker 2: it North Sentinel Island, not you and me, but other
27:10
Speaker 2: people who.
27:11
Speaker 3: Named it to I think the British.
27:13
Speaker 2: But apparently yeah, probably. We don't know a lot about them.
27:16
Speaker 2: But in two thousand and six, a couple of fishermen
27:19
Speaker 2: drifted there in their boat near the island and were
27:24
Speaker 2: killed and buried in shallow graves, and helicopters came and
27:28
Speaker 2: they were like, we got to find this burial site
27:31
Speaker 2: and get these guys back at least, and they started
27:33
Speaker 2: firing arrows at the helicopter and it was just out
27:37
Speaker 2: of there, and the local cops were like, now, we're
27:40
Speaker 2: just gonna leave those guys there, We're not going near it.
27:44
Speaker 3: They have actually for this has been going on for
27:47
Speaker 3: a very long time. Apparently Marco Polo remarked on them,
27:52
Speaker 3: wrote about them. He was traveling I think the twelfth
27:55
Speaker 3: or thirteenth century, so they've been fierce for years now,
28:01
Speaker 3: and apparently survived the two thousand and four tsunami. Yeah,
28:04
Speaker 3: Indonesia's tsunami. That's crazy because this is an island that
28:09
Speaker 3: the tsunami just swamped and they managed to hang on
28:13
Speaker 3: just fine.
28:13
Speaker 2: I think ancient people have survived more than one tsunami,
28:16
Speaker 2: you know.
28:16
Speaker 3: I guess you're right. That was a pretty bad one though.
28:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty amazing. This other one, the coral Wai tribe
28:24
Speaker 2: of Papua Indonesia. They were contacted in the seventies by
28:29
Speaker 2: of course, missionaries and archaeologists, and they were using stone
28:33
Speaker 2: tools and living in tree huts and stuff like that,
28:36
Speaker 2: and their big belief as a tribe was that the
28:39
Speaker 2: world would be destroyed by an earthquake if they assimilated
28:43
Speaker 2: and changed their customs. So missionary said, all right, you
28:48
Speaker 2: know what, We're just going to leave you alone.
28:50
Speaker 3: What I think these people might have invented bungee jumping?
28:56
Speaker 3: Do you remember that land diving up isode them? They
28:59
Speaker 3: sound really familiar.
29:01
Speaker 2: I think it might be maybe so, But they are
29:03
Speaker 2: in the middle of nowhere, so it's a long way
29:06
Speaker 2: from even like other remote villages.
29:09
Speaker 3: Which is a I mean, that's a mark in your
29:11
Speaker 3: favor for now. But as the Amazon Basin has been
29:15
Speaker 3: showing us since the seventies and eighties, so much of
29:18
Speaker 3: it has disappeared due to clear cutting for ranching, logging,
29:26
Speaker 3: that you just have no idea how much longer that's
29:30
Speaker 3: going to hold up, no matter where you are in
29:32
Speaker 3: the world. Yeah, I mean, we're at seven and a
29:34
Speaker 3: half billion people now, and then I think the next
29:37
Speaker 3: thirty years we're expected to hit ten billion. That's a
29:40
Speaker 3: lot more people that not only need more land, but
29:43
Speaker 3: also are going to be using up those resources that
29:47
Speaker 3: are currently on that land.
29:49
Speaker 1: Right now, you know, yeah, for sure.
29:51
Speaker 3: I mean, like, if they discover oil where the Krawai
29:55
Speaker 3: tribe lives in Indonesia, there goes that isolation.
30:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably so.
30:01
Speaker 3: I think that's a real danger for all tribes. I
30:04
Speaker 3: think that's probably what those two anthropologists we're talking about.
30:08
Speaker 3: They're saying, like, long term, we need a plan here everybody.
30:11
Speaker 3: We can't just be like, well, we just won't contact
30:14
Speaker 3: them because it's just not viable, I think was their point.
30:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about this one really was interesting to me.
30:20
Speaker 1: The Old Believers. Have you ever heard of them?
30:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's like some GQ article in the last couple
30:26
Speaker 3: of years about that.
30:27
Speaker 1: Are they well dressed it?
30:29
Speaker 3: I think so? In burlap apparently.
30:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, these are Soviet Well, here's the deal.
30:35
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy eight, there were these geologists in the
30:38
Speaker 2: Soviet Union that we're looking for iron ore. They were
30:42
Speaker 2: in a helicopter and they saw a cabin way out
30:46
Speaker 2: in the remote areas of Siberia, and they found a
30:49
Speaker 2: family there that actually spoke a language I guess, I mean,
30:54
Speaker 2: what would that be.
30:55
Speaker 1: What language?
30:56
Speaker 3: Old timey Russian?
30:58
Speaker 1: Old timey Russian, uh huh.
31:01
Speaker 2: And they were huddled in fear and they were yelling,
31:05
Speaker 2: this is for our sins. They were dressed in burlap
31:08
Speaker 2: and living off the land. And apparently they were a
31:13
Speaker 2: group of people called the Old Believers, which left the
31:17
Speaker 2: Russian Church, the main Russian church in the seventeenth century
31:21
Speaker 2: and had been I guess looked at you know, they
31:24
Speaker 2: kind of went everywhere.
31:25
Speaker 1: It was sort of.
31:26
Speaker 2: A diaspora for the Old Believers. Some of them just
31:29
Speaker 2: went to other countries and seeking asylum or whatever. And
31:32
Speaker 2: apparently some of them just looked to Siberia and were like,
31:36
Speaker 2: no one's there, so we'll go there.
31:39
Speaker 3: Nice.
31:40
Speaker 1: It sounds creepy though, the Old Believers.
31:42
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's a terrible name for him. You know.
31:45
Speaker 3: It seems like they could scan you or something to
31:47
Speaker 3: make your head explode. Are they worship Cthulhu or something?
31:51
Speaker 1: Yeah.
31:53
Speaker 3: So I almost feel like if we should look into
31:56
Speaker 3: them a little more, because I think they could probably
31:57
Speaker 3: hold up their own up.
31:58
Speaker 1: And I think he might be right.
32:00
Speaker 3: I also remember hearing about families that lived in the
32:03
Speaker 3: Ozark Mountains in the midwest of the United States, I
32:08
Speaker 3: think around Arkansas that had been out of contact, didn't
32:12
Speaker 3: even know the Civil War had happened. They were just
32:15
Speaker 3: that isolated. So yeah, you tend to think of as
32:18
Speaker 3: just strictly indigenous peoples and that it's just in the Amazon,
32:21
Speaker 3: but like, there's groups all over the world, fewer and
32:24
Speaker 3: further between outside of the Amazon because there's less unpopulated areas.
32:29
Speaker 3: But it happens.
32:31
Speaker 2: And one of the sad things about all of this
32:33
Speaker 2: is for one of these other tribes that you know,
32:35
Speaker 2: you can go read this cracked article.
32:38
Speaker 1: What's it called.
32:40
Speaker 3: I didn't see the title. Actually, it's just suddenly there
32:42
Speaker 3: were oh, five isolated groups who had no idea that
32:45
Speaker 3: civilization existed.
32:48
Speaker 1: Crrarect lists were always so great, are always so great.
32:51
Speaker 3: They've come in handy from time to time.
32:53
Speaker 2: But one of the sad things they point out for
32:54
Speaker 2: one of these other tribes is that in Peru, and
32:56
Speaker 2: I imagine in some other South American countries, are these
33:00
Speaker 2: awful things called human safaris where and they will take
33:04
Speaker 2: tourists around to look at uncontacted tribes from afar and
33:10
Speaker 2: close up.
33:11
Speaker 3: They're like, here, drain some of this iohusca through your nose,
33:14
Speaker 3: and we're going to go check out some tribes hanging
33:17
Speaker 3: out on a riverbank somewhere.
33:19
Speaker 1: Man, so weird.
33:21
Speaker 3: Well, I want to add one more thing. I came
33:23
Speaker 3: across an article that wasn't really apropos of what we
33:26
Speaker 3: were talking about, called the Right to Kill on Foreign
33:30
Speaker 3: Policy Magazine, and it's about like this other tangential issue
33:36
Speaker 3: that governments like Brazil have to deal with, which is, like,
33:40
Speaker 3: some of these isolated groups practice things that the outside
33:46
Speaker 3: world finds abhorrent or is illegal in the outside world. Specifically,
33:51
Speaker 3: in this article, in fanticide, if you're born with the disability,
33:55
Speaker 3: and I think about twenty of Brazil's isolated tribes, there's
34:01
Speaker 3: a chance that the community will decide that you need
34:04
Speaker 3: to die again. It's the practice of infanticide. And Brazil's like,
34:08
Speaker 3: we are not quite sure what to do about this
34:10
Speaker 3: because our constitution guarantees everyone in Brazil the right to live,
34:15
Speaker 3: but it also guarantees the indigenous groups the right to
34:18
Speaker 3: live according to their customs. So they have no idea
34:21
Speaker 3: what to do. And it's a big thing about, you know,
34:24
Speaker 3: moral relativism or moral absolutism and which one's correct. And
34:28
Speaker 3: it's really interesting that they're having to think about this
34:31
Speaker 3: right now. Yeah, for sure, it's a really interesting article.
34:34
Speaker 3: Definitely worth reading.
34:36
Speaker 1: Okay, I will check it out. Are you talking to me?
34:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm talking to everybody, but specifically. Yeah. Well, if
34:43
Speaker 3: you want to know more about isolated tribes, you can
34:46
Speaker 3: look those words up anywhere on the internet and they're
34:50
Speaker 3: going to deliver you some amazing stuff. And since I
34:53
Speaker 3: said that, it's time for listener mail.
34:57
Speaker 2: Since you said amazing stuff, well look you here, dude,
35:02
Speaker 2: I have a handwritten letter on construction paper.
35:06
Speaker 3: Beautiful.
35:07
Speaker 1: That nice? Yes, I love it. Hey, guys, I hope
35:11
Speaker 1: this finds you. Well. My name is Claire and I'm
35:12
Speaker 1: twenty one.
35:13
Speaker 2: In fact, for my twenty first birthday, I came and
35:15
Speaker 2: saw you guys live in Cleveland.
35:17
Speaker 3: Awesome. That was a great show.
35:19
Speaker 1: It was.
35:19
Speaker 2: I got to here in college and I'm studying mathematics
35:22
Speaker 2: with a license and education, so I'll be teaching high
35:26
Speaker 2: school math benefan since twenty fifteen. Thank you for the
35:29
Speaker 2: many nights you have calmed me and all the information
35:32
Speaker 2: I've learned. And I've been wanting to write for a
35:35
Speaker 2: while just to say thanks and send appreciation, but also
35:38
Speaker 2: a request and a little something. Whenever you talk about
35:42
Speaker 2: math in any regard, please be more positive.
35:46
Speaker 3: Please stop getting it wrong, Please be.
35:48
Speaker 2: More positive and encouraging. We're well known for poopoing math
35:52
Speaker 2: and saying I hated math.
35:53
Speaker 3: Well, it's so intimidating, it's just so stupid.
35:56
Speaker 2: It is, but she says this math is hard and
36:00
Speaker 2: already has a stigma for people who hate it or
36:03
Speaker 2: to hate it. But as a future educator, since you
36:06
Speaker 2: too are sort of educators that reach a huge audience,
36:10
Speaker 2: your outlook and attitude about math is important. It's okay
36:13
Speaker 2: to not like math and think that it's hard, but
36:15
Speaker 2: know that you and anyone can do math. I know
36:19
Speaker 2: it's a silly thing to ask and point out, but
36:21
Speaker 2: I think you could both have a positive impact on
36:24
Speaker 2: the math stigma. I wish you and your wives and
36:27
Speaker 2: Chuck your daughter all the best. Thank you for all
36:30
Speaker 2: of your hard work, and thank Jerry too. Jerry has
36:33
Speaker 2: to put up with you two all the time, so
36:34
Speaker 2: she's definitely been working hard. And she writes sarcasm, smiley
36:38
Speaker 2: face the fabulous day, and that is from Claire and Claire,
36:42
Speaker 2: You're right, we just joke around, but we should take
36:46
Speaker 2: more care with our words about the maths.
36:49
Speaker 3: You know what, Frankly, Chuck, I think miss Claire makes
36:52
Speaker 3: a great point that we should just basically take all
36:55
Speaker 3: the jokes out of our podcasts entire just so no
37:00
Speaker 3: one takes it the wrong way. No, just make it
37:03
Speaker 3: nice and neutral. She is right, though, she is right,
37:07
Speaker 3: we should take it easy on.
37:08
Speaker 1: Math, she very nicely said, back off math.
37:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, did she draw little Yosemite sam at the
37:15
Speaker 3: bottom there? She did? Oh? Yeah, look at that. Nice. Well,
37:18
Speaker 3: if you want to get in touch with this, like
37:20
Speaker 3: Claire did, you can go to your local post office.
37:23
Speaker 3: We love that place. And you can also instead go
37:26
Speaker 3: to the internet go to stuff youshould Know dot com.
37:29
Speaker 3: Find all of our social media links there, or you
37:32
Speaker 3: can send us a newfangled electronic mail by addressing it
37:36
Speaker 3: to Stuff Podcasts and HowStuffWorks dot com.
37:42
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