Latest / Drawn of History / Joe Rogan Experience _2547 - Daniel Everett(M4A_128K)

Transcript

Joe Rogan Experience _2547 - Daniel Everett(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Good to see you, sir.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Good to be here.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much for doing this. I'm really excited
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: to talk to you. I've been looking forward to this
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: a lot.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Thanks very much for having me.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: You have a very, very unique life story. So I
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: want to start with how did you become... Let's lay
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: it out for people. What got me interested in you
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: is you became a Christian missionary and then went to
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: the jungle and met these people. Let me say this right.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: The Pidaha?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Pidaha.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Pidaha. Pidaha. And stopped being a missionary and lived with
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: them for how long?
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Well, the total time that I lived with them is
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: about eight years in the jungle with them over a period.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: But I've been working with them for 40 years. I
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: go back a lot. Wow.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: But you lived with them for eight years, and during
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: that eight-year time period, you kind of... Is it safe
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: to say you're an atheist?
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's safe to say that.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: And so let's take it back to the beginning. How
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: did you become a missionary? Did you come from a
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: religious family?
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: No, I came from a very unreligious family. I was...
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: In fact, I was standing out in front of a
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Jimi Hendrix concert in 1968 trying to sell LSD to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: get in, and.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: And this guy that I knew from high school that
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: was really straight-laced came up with his sister. She was
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: very cute. So I went up to try to sell
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: them some LSD. They didn't use drugs. And so I said, well,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: you got any change? I need to get some money
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: to get into the concert. And I saw that she
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: went to the same high school that I did. So
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: after the concert, which she didn't like but I loved,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I went to see her in high school. I sat
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: by her during lunchtime and found out that she was
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: a missionary and had been raised in Brazil. And that
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: really intrigued me because it was the 60s and I was,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: you know, didn't want to have just a typical U.S.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: life and living in the Amazon sounded really cool. But
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: then I became, you know, a genuine, strong, believing Christian.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Went to Bible school. I did my undergraduate degree in
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Bible and theology and I was an ordained minister in
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the Wesleyan Church and very active in church and, um,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: was preached on street corners and did all that kind
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: of thing.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: How did you make this transition from being a guy
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: with a bag of acid in front of a Jimi
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Hendrix concert to....
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Well, her father, who had been a missionary now for
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: 20 years, was the most influential person outside my family
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: in my life. And he and I would sit up
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: late at night talking and And, you know, I was
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: 17 and I found everything he said to be very
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: convincing and very interesting. But mainly I loved his stories
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: of the jungle and what it was like to live
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: in the jungle. And I wanted to do that. And
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I became a believer. It was a gradual process. Well, actually, no,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: it wasn't that gradual. My father was just astounded. He said,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: you know, from one minute I'm worrying about you getting arrested.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: And now you're going to church every Sunday with these
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: people I don't even know. He wasn't that happy about it.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: He'd rather you just get loaded in front of the
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Hendrix concert?
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he would have, actually, because he was a heavy
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: drinker and a construction worker, and he considered that to
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: be part of the masculine experience, you know?
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: But acid? Was acid okay with him?
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: I don't think he knew I was doing acid.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: But he knew I was doing, you know, weed and
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: things like that.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: And he didn't mind that?
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: No, that was— he didn't want me doing it in the house, which.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: I did, but— So your rebellion was to become an
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: outstanding citizen and a Christian missionary? Right.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: That was my greatest form of rebellion against the life
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: I had been leading.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah, that's what happens when parents push their kids
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: into a certain direction.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Little people don't like being told what to do.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: So you immediately, it seems like, go become a Christian.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: And then how long before you are actually doing missionary
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: work in the jungles?
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot of training you have to do.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: So first I had to do four years of college,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Bible and theology, and then I had to do some
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: linguistics training. And then not a graduate degree or anything
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: like that, just some linguistics training from the missionary organization
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: because I wanted to be a Bible translator. And then
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: we did jungle training in southern Mexico. So we went
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: to the jungles of Chiapas and had to do survival
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: training and.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: All of this. Whoa. What did you have to do there?
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Well, there are several phases to it. The family goes
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: and the family's part of it. But the hardest thing
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: is to really see how much you've learned. They take
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: you on what's called survival hike and they leave you
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: alone for about a week in the jungle. You're not
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: allowed to take any food or any supplies of any kind.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: For a week?
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for a week or more. You don't know. It's
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: going to be at least a week. In my case,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: it was about 10 days. And you've got to set up.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Your camp, how best you can figure out how to
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: get a fire going.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Do they teach you how to do all this stuff?
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: They don't just like figure it out.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: This is like the final exam. So you've had almost
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: four months of training before they finally take you out
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: on this survival.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Do you have water?
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: You have maybe a quart of water when you leave,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: but you're going to be out there for 10 days.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: So you've got to find water. So we learned which
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: vines have water and how to cut the vines. We
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: did have a machete. So I was able to jump
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: up and cut a vine. At the top first and
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: then at the bottom.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: And no one's monitoring you? They're just leaving you out
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: there and they're not making sure you're okay?
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: No, they just come along when the time's up. And
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: if you're there, you're there.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, boy. And if you're not, you're dead?
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: You could be.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: So that's insane.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this is what happens when you live by faith.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: You're out there praying. And God's supposed to be supervising
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: your training, but it's really rigorous training. So by the
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: time I actually got to the Amazon, which was eight
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: years after I converted, took that long, it felt like
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: I was coming home. I wasn't surprised by things.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Well, the training was good then. I mean, I would
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: imagine if you really want someone to be able to
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: survive alone in the jungle, best way to do it
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: is to test them by making them survive alone in
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: the jungle so that you get an actual experience. version
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: of the experience. It's not simulated. You actually are getting
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: water from vines. What were you eating?
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Well, I learned different kinds of plants that you could eat.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: And then I learned how to make with a stick,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: you know, make a stick the size of a toothpick
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: sharpened on both ends. And I did have some fishing line.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: I would attach that to that. And I was so
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: proud of myself because I brought up two fish that
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: were about three inches long And I ate those. And
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: most of the time I ate plants and went hungry.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: So when I see the programs like Alone, that wouldn't
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: bother me. That's the kind of stuff we had to do.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: They didn't even give you fish hooks?
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: No. You can't have that kind of stuff. You have
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: to learn to cope on your own. You've got to
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  Speaker 1: make your own. You've got to be able to recognize
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: the plants, which ones are poisonous, which ones are not poisonous.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Did you try to make, like, a bow and arrow
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: or anything?
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: You did? I did.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: I made a bow and arrow.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: How did you do that?
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Well, I had a machete, and that's what I had.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: It's crazy they give you a machete. They won't give
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: you fish hooks.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Like, come on, guys.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Fish hooks are so much easier to carry. Right.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: But the machete you need for firewood. You need for
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: lots of things. You know, when I got to the Amazon.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: What? Do you have a lighter? No. No. How are
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: you making fires?
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Well, they let me take just a few matches.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, Lord.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: And so no lighter, but a few matches, which you
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: kept in a 35-millimeter film cartridge.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: People don't know about those things, those little containers. Yeah.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: How many matches did they give you for 10 days?
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Well, you had one of those little containers with about 10,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: 15 matches in it at the most.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, boy. So you've got to match a day.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: You've got to keep your fire going all the time.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: You always have to keep that fire going. So before
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: you start it, you spend half the day just cutting firewood.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: And I would imagine it's very wet. It's all wet.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: So you've got to find something dry to get it going.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: And as they told us— You've got to keep it going. Yeah.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: They said once it's hot enough, it'll burn anything. But
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: until it gets hot, you can't just throw that wet
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: wood on there. It'll put it out. So— You know,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: you have to spend a lot of time exploring, trying
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: to find dry, crackly wood and leaves and things and
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: get it going. And then slowly introduce the thinner pieces
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: of wet wood until finally you can throw on a
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: sopping log.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: So a big part of your day essentially is making
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: sure that fire stays lit. Yeah. That's a big part
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: of your day. And you can't get too far from it. No.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: You have to stay fairly close to it. And at
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: night you definitely want to keep it going. So I
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: remember one night waking up and hearing heavy steps around
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: my camp.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: And– I was up immediately blowing on that fire for
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: everything I was worth to get that thing up. Yeah.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Was it Jaguars?
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: I suspect that it could have been, although I didn't
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: see it. I had my machete, which when I got
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: to the Amazon and actually saw Jaguars, I realized that
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: would have been a pretty pathetic thing to try, go
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: against a Jaguar with a machete. They would rip your
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: head off before.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: You— Everybody likes to think they have a chance, though.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but— What I found out is jaguars, you know,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: they get up to 400 pounds. And they're the third
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: biggest cat in the world after the lion and the tiger.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: And they often hunt in pairs. And so you wouldn't
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: have a chance against a jaguar unless you were one
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: of the pitahas. I know that guys alone by themselves
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: have killed jaguars.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Really? Yeah. What are they using to kill a jaguar?
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Well, they're always with their bows and arrows.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: It's a bow and arrow range for a jaguar. That's crazy.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Well, you better have it ready because it sneaks up
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: on you. There's another group that I worked with for
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: quite a while, several months, called the Bonowah, and they
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: use poisoned darts and poisoned arrows. So there's a story
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: of this guy who went out hunting and he reached
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: a clearing in the jungle and he saw a deer
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: come out running straight for him. And at first he
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: was happy and he was going to kill the deer.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: And then he realized deers don't just come running out
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: of the jungle towards people. And then right behind the
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: deer came a jaguar. And the jaguar saw him, the guy,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and he was bigger than the deer. So the jaguar
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: just took off straight for him and jumped up. And
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: the guy got his bow, his blowgun. out in front
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: of him. They're about seven or eight feet long, these
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: big blow guns. And they're very sturdy. And the jaguar,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: he holds it away. The jaguar's back legs are tearing
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: the meat off of his legs. And the jaguar's head
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: just keeps snapping at his face, trying to get his face.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: And what saved his life was the jaguar jumped off
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: to go around the back and try to get him
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: from the back. But he had a poisoned arrow and
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: he stabbed the jaguar with it. And that hurts. And
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: the jaguar started to run off and then he shot
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: it with a poisoned arrow. But he passed out, and
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: his family found him a couple of days later with
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: his legs just infected and torn to pieces. But he survived.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: And so these Pidahad, would they go hunt the jaguars?
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: If they saw that it was a danger, if a
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: woman went out and a jaguar or a mountain lion
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: scared her, the men would go out to kill it.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: So I've eaten jaguar.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: What does it taste like?
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Well, this one was sort of, this was a sick jaguar.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: But it's stringy meat. I mean, it's very muscly meat.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Is it a sick one?
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how they wound up killing it, I found
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: out later. I was really impressed, you know, they killed
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: a jaguar. And they have killed many jaguars. But this
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: one turned out to be a sick jaguar, which is
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: why he attacked the woman.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Like he was starving to death or something?
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was starving. So the men killed it.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: And ate it.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: But I did, my children were with me this whole time.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: So I told my children, I said, just remember who's
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: eating whom.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: So do you remember what it tastes like?
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Well, it's a, it's a stringy meat. It's really hard
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: to describe all the, all the tastes.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Like very sinewy?
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: It's tough.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Sinewy and very tough. And my general rule of thumb,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I eat anything that they kill, but my general rule
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: of thumb is I usually have a bottle of Tabasco
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: sauce and And if you put Tabasco sauce on it.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: It's okay. And so these pitahas, am I saying it right?
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: They don't preserve anything, right?
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: No.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: They just kill things and cook them.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't, you know, many, many different groups smoke
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the meat or salt the meat if they have salt
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: or dry it. And the pitahas know how to do that.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know where they learn how to do it
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: because they never do it except if they want to
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: trade the meat with Brazilian boats who come up. But
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: among themselves, they don't preserve any meat. You know, I
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: was talking to a guy one time and, you know,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: why don't you preserve your meat? And he says, oh,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: I preserve it in the belly of my brother. So
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: they share it. And if I get meat, I give
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: you some. And if you get meat, you give me some.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: So why would I?
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: Right. So there's no need to store. And also, I
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: guess it's very abundant. There's a lot of life where
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: they live, like in terms of fish and game.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: There have been.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, they live on this river, the Micey River.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: And they're the only humans that live along the river
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: for almost 300 miles of the curvy river. And it's
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: a relatively large river by U.S. standards. In Brazil, it
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: doesn't even make many of the maps. But it's a
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: couple of hundred yards across. And in the rainy season,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: it can be as much as 75 feet deep, 100
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: feet deep. So there's plenty of fish for them. In
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: recent years, that's changed because the Brazilian... Government has allowed
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the construction of dams across various rivers. Not their river,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: but they affect the water level so much that it's
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: taken all the fish, most of the fish out of
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: their river. So now they're starving. And this has led
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: to conflict with Brazilians who live not too far away.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: And they've killed a few people stealing food from their
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: farms and things.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, man. Can you imagine? You just have this... kind
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: of harmonious existence with nature and someone just decides to
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: make a dam. Like you've got it so dialed in
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: that you don't need to preserve your food. Right. Because
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: everyone's just like happy and eating fish right out of
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: the river. Right.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: And, you know, that's, they don't know where the dam is.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: They've never seen the dam. I told them that they
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: built something that crosses the river like a wall. And
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: they say, why do they do that? And I said, well,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: they want electricity, which they barely understand. They've seen I
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: have a generator. I never had one for the first
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: 20 years I was working with them, but I eventually
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: got a generator and they could see what electricity was.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: And I said, so that's where they get the lights.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: But they don't understand it. And it's for the first
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: time in their history, and they've been living there as
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: far as I can tell for almost 300 years on
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: this one river. For the first time in their history,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: they can't be self-sufficient in proteins.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: That's crazy. And how long ago did they build this dam?
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: I think it was about 10 years ago. But they didn't,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: when it first went into operation, then it flooded the entire,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: lots of farmland, lots of settlements and things up on
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: the Madata. But what was shocking was that way down
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: river from the dam, it affected the water level so
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: much that when their river, the Maisee, goes to its
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: lowest point, in the dry season, there's still only a
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: few places where you can see the bottom of the river.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Most of the places, even when it's at its lowest,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: you can't see the bottom of the river. But in
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the last couple of years, it's gotten so low you
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: can walk across.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: And the fish don't stay there.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: So what are these people eating?
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Well, they go hunting, which they don't like to do.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: But of course, when the fish are gone and when
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the river's gone, You lose a lot of the game
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: from the jungle. So they have to go, instead of
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: going a mile into the jungle, they have to go
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: many miles into the jungle. And they're still not successful.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: So it's busting up communities. Some people are moving out
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: of their normal area to other areas to try to,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: you know, back on bigger rivers. But then that means
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: they're surrounded by Brazilians and they're no longer leading the
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: life that they used to lead.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: So... When they move into these civilization areas, are they
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: integrating or are they trying to like stay as a
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: tribe removed from urban society? Like how are they doing it?
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Well, up until about five years ago, they would never
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: have thought about integrating. They would live in like ghettos.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: If they were out near some town, they would live
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: in the jungle away from the town because that whole
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: part of Brazil is covered in jungle. Even the cities
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: are bordered by jungle.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: But nowadays, because there's no food anywhere, they're trying to
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: integrate more. They're trying to learn Portuguese. And it's a
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: very unfortunate situation for them right now.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: That's such a bummer. That sucks so hard. So when
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: you first got there, your aim was to try to
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: convert them to Christianity.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: That's right. I went there to translate the Bible and
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: to plant a church and get everybody believing.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: And why Pitahah? Why did you go to those people?
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Well, we were in our training, and the missionary organization,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the Wycliffe Bible Translators, offered us three areas. They said,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: you can go to New Guinea. We need people in
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: New Guinea. You can go to Mexico, or you can
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: go to Brazil. And in Brazil, there's this tribe called
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: the Pitahah. that we've had two teams assigned to, and
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: nobody's been able to figure out the language because it's
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: not related to any other known living language. And so
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: they said, if you're up for that challenge, and we
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: know you did well in linguistics, we'd be happy to
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: have you take that group. So I thought, well, sure,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: I'm up for a challenge, so we took that.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: And so this was 1977?
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: 1977.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: We were assigned there in 76, and I made my
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: first trip in in December of 1977. And so how
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: much of the language did you know before you got there? Nothing. Nothing? No.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: What do we know in terms of like before you
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: got there? Was it recorded? Was it something that people understood?
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: No.
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• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in 1784... Portuguese explorers made contact and they didn't
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: take lists of words. They wrote a few descriptive things
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: about the language and about the people. And those things
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: still fit them today. And then in 1821, a German
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: explorer went there and he took a long list of words,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: which was amazing because he didn't have linguistics or anything
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: like that. And his list of words is pretty good.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: And then in 1920... another German who naturalized Brazilian, the
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: founder of Brazilian anthropology, went there and took a much
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: larger word list, and that one is very good. And
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: so I had those little word lists. They're not much,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: and there's no how does the grammar work or anything
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: like that. It's just lists of words. So I had
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: looked at those, but it's a tone language, and so
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: they hadn't written the tone, so I had no idea
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: how to pronounce the words. To give you an example
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: of what a tone language is, so if I want
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: to say friend, I say magiai. And if I want
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: to say enemy, it's magiai.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: What's the difference?
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: So if I whistle it, friend is whoop, whoop, whoop.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: And if I whistle enemy, it's whoop, whoop, whoop. If
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: you can't hear the tones, you don't know what's going on.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: So the word for me is chie. And the word
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: for shit is je. So, you know, you can be
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: talking about yourself and everybody starts laughing because you've called
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: yourself shit.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Because you have the wrong tone.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Because you have the wrong tone. So, you know, there
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: are a lot of tone languages in the world, Mandarin, tonal, Korean,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: somewhat tonal, and many languages of Africa are tonal. But
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: for those of us who speak European languages, this is
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: just really weird and it's hard to hear.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: A complete mind shift. Yeah.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: So you've got to be able to pay attention to
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: those tones. But the first thing you have to do
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: is start just collecting words. So I would point at
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: things my first day, my first hour. I was pointing
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: at things and writing down what they said, and that
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: was the basic linguistics I had had, phonetics, how to
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: write down sounds of the world's languages.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: And when you got there, so on day one, how
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: do you make a connection? You just show up. Hey,
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: brought you the Bible. Everyone have a seat. How do
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: you do this?
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Well, I got off and I started handing candy to
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the kids.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Good move.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: That works. And the people were very curious because I'm
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: this white guy with red hair. At that time, I
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: had bright red hair and they found me curious to
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: look at. And so they came around. They could tell,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: you know, at least I think they thought they could
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: tell that I was no danger to them. They know
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: how to deal with that very quickly if they sense danger.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: So then I would just start pointing at things. I
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: had my pen and paper, and I would get a stick,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: and I would say in English, you know, stick. And
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: they know that I'm trying to communicate something, so they
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: would say back, eh. And I thought, it probably means stick.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: And I would write that down. And then I would
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: take the stick and drop it. And they would say, eh,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: he meke kaobi. And that means stick fell to the ground.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: And that's what I thought it meant. So that's how
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: I started.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: That's what you thought it meant. What is the reaction
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: to this person coming in and demanding that they teach
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: the language?
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Well, I didn't demand.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, you have a requirement. You can't communicate,
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: but you're there. So they're kind enough to welcome you. Yes.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Are you in the actual camp with all these people?
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm in the middle of their village. The plane
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: let me off on, you know, landed on the river.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: I got out.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: You don't even ask? You just, like... wander into their camp.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: There's no way to contact them ahead of time.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: This is crazy.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: And you're just assuming they're not going to kill you.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Is this you?
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: This is the Pitaha. This is a Pitaha village.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Yep. And so this is what it looked like when
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: you showed up. You're like, hi, what's a stick? Yeah.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You land, you land on the river and, and
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: you get there and that is, uh, that's the Pitaha. Wow. And, um, wow.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: So they're very friendly and they start talking. Um, But,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: of course, I don't know what they say. They just
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: see me as a very.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Guy's got a Ferrari t-shirt on. What's up?
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they— riverboats go in and give clothes. If a riverboat
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: hasn't been there in a long time, they'll all be naked. Oh, wow.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: So— And so, like, day one, they just accept the
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: fact that this redheaded dude just showed up and is
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: hanging out with us now?
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there were a couple of things that counted in
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: my favor. I was all by myself, and so— Giving
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: out candy was a big factor. They like to chew tobacco.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: And I had been told this by somebody who had
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: been there. So I took in a big, long horn
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: of tobacco. I don't know if it was a really
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: old-fashioned way. A horn? Yeah.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Like an animal horn?
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: No, it looks like an animal horn. But it's probably
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: eight feet, nine feet long, just rolled up tight tobacco
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: wrapped in latex. Really?
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: And you just cut it off for them, and they
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: chew it, and they like it. So- I would, you know,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: the ones who would help me, I would give them
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a little bit of tobacco or candy. And I also
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: brought canned food for me. And I would trade that
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: to them for fish and other things that they got.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: And they liked that.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: How long did you stay initially?
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: The first time was just to see what it was
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: like before I brought my family. So I stayed 10 days.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: And then I came back with my family and we
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: stayed a year at that time. We just stayed there
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the whole year.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: When you say family, so your wife and how many kids?
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Three kids. There they are.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: How old were the kids when you got there?
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Well, my oldest daughter, who there was about 12, was nine,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: and the middle daughter was six, and then my son
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: was three years old. So this is around that time.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: And so my kids grew up among the Pitahon. Both
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: my older daughters learned to speak the language fairly quickly.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's a risky move. You brought your little kids
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: to the jungle. What is that decision like? Was that
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: a difficult decision?
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Well, today it would be, but I was a Christian
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: and I believed in miracles and I believed God would
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: take care of us. And so I went there and
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: figured he was in charge. He would take care of us.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: So my son got meningitis. My two daughters got malaria.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: I got malaria. In fact, after a few years, I
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: went to San Diego and I I came down with
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: malaria in University Hospital San Diego. They were thrilled because
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: I was the only person they'd ever seen with all
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: three strains of South American malaria at the same time.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Did you have a relapse of malaria? Because I have
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: a friend who got malaria in the Congo, and it
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: came back.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: It can come back, and I've had relapses, but it's
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: been a long time now that I haven't had relapses.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I've taken so much medicine that supposedly— It won't come
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: back anymore. But I can never give blood because it's
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: always in my blood.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: What do they give you? Like what medicine they give you?
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Well, Daraprim, Primaquin, straight quinine. When my wife almost died,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: she weighed 115 pounds. And then she got malaria and
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: almost died. She got down to 76 pounds. And the
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: doctor told me she's going to die tonight. We don't
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: have any way to keep her alive.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. And.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: They put her on blood transfusions because you lose a
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: lot of blood. It kills the blood cells. And they
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: put her on blood transfusions and also straight quinine, which
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: caused her to be in agony for several days of
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: just constant retching. And quinine is a really bad experience.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: But at the end of it, she pulled through.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: She pulled through.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: We all pulled through. You had to be like questioning
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: your decisions. I mean, this has to be a trialing process.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: you know, very difficult time because you chose to be there.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And so we were leaving the village to find
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: help because my wife and daughter were dying of malaria
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: at this time where she got down to 76 pounds.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: And my daughter lost a lot of weight too. She
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: was just skin and bones. And I'm getting my boat
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: out of there. And I had never been out by boat.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: In fact, I didn't have a boat. We were, I
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: had no idea how to get out of there. So
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: this Catholic priest came up to see what the Protestant
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: missionaries were doing. And I said, can I borrow your boat?
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: I got to get my family out of here. He
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: had this very narrow aluminum canoe with a six horsepower Johnson.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: And I got my whole family in there and he
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: just stayed there in the jungle and let my family
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: take off in his boat. And I didn't know where
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: we were, but I was thinking, you know, I've read
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: all these books about missionaries and now I'm having a
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: missionary experience, but it wasn't fun. it was really, it
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: was horrific experience. And I just didn't know what was
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: going to happen.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: So your goal was to convert these people. And how
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: long were you there for?
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Well, I was there in 1980. I spent the whole
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: year there. And in all the other years from 1977
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: to 2013, I was there for three to six months
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: every year so i was there a lot and um
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: got sick every time i went i had typhoid fever
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: and all this stuff but um uh attacked by snakes
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that but um It was just a
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: mind-altering experience. Things didn't go the way I thought. And
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the people started questioning me. They started asking me about,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: why do you believe in this Jesus? You keep telling
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: us about what's he like.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: And you're doing this also, you're translating these concepts from
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: English to Pidaha.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: From Greek to Pidaha. Going from the Greek New Testament,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: because I was translating the New Testament. So going from
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Greek to Pitahum, but I'm referencing English and Portuguese at
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the same time.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: I'm staying in there.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: And you expect these people to understand what you're saying.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, you know, if you're in the middle of
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: the jungle and Jesus does something out in a desert,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: how do you describe desert?
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Isn't their language a completely different language than ours? Like
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: in terms of like, they have no words for color. Right.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: They have no words for direction.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: They And this all takes time to find out because
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: when I went there, I thought everybody had words for colors.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Everybody had words for numbers. Everybody had a concept of God. Right.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: They don't have words for numbers. That's so crazy.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't have.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Do they have numbers?
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: No, no numbers.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: So how many fish did you catch today, Mike?
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: A lot.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: A lot or a little.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: A lot or a little.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Or a good amount.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So in fact, that claim was really controversial.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: I've had psycholinguists and cognitive scientists come down with me
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: to do experiments.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Didn't you get into it with Chomsky about that?
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Well, I got into it with Chomsky about their grammar.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Yes. Oh, that's right.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Chomsky made this claim. I've gotten other people. There have
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: been people who find every claim controversial. So there's some
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: people can't believe they don't have numbers. Some people who
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: don't believe they don't have a concept of God. Other
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: people who believe they don't, who don't believe they don't
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: have colors. Um, but, um, Chomsky claimed that all languages
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: are built on a common property called recursion. And recursion
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: is this, English has it all over the place. So
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: it's the ability to put one unit inside another unit
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: of the same type. So take a noun. If I
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: take the noun truck and the noun driver and I
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: put them together, I can form a third word, truck driver.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: And so that's recursion. I put one noun inside another
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: and I get a third noun. Or with a sentence,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I can say John spoke. There's no recursion there. I
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: can say John said that Bill spoke. And now that's
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: got recursion because Bill spoke is a sentence inside John
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: said that. And so Chomsky claimed, and in my opinion,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: without doing a lot of homework on this, I mean,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: he just was basing it on languages that he happened
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: to know, which aren't many, that all languages were built
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: on this. It made sense. And he had a principles
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: built into his theory that required this. So when I
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: came along and said they don't have it, and now
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: I know there are other languages that don't have it,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: this was like saying you're wrong. And for me, a
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: relative nobody, to tell the most famous linguist in history,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: somebody that Chomsky was called by the New York Times
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: the most important intellectual alive, to tell him that he's wrong,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of people found that very Weird, you know, unbelievable. Yeah, problematic.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: But facts are facts. Yeah. I mean, it should be
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: exciting for a linguist to look at something that violates
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: all the laws of other known languages.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: It was exciting for some linguists and really off pissing
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: for a lot of other linguists.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: Isn't that gross? That's so gross. Yeah. That is one
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: of the grossest things about intellectuals. This gatekeeping of information
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: and this appeal to authority that they're the only person
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: who could possibly know. Especially when you're talking about languages. Like,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: how many languages are there?
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: There are about 8,000 separate languages in the world.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Okay. How the fuck could you know all the rules
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: to 8,000 languages?
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: We don't have data on more than about 1,200 or so.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Well, isn't there also an issue with the Aboriginal tribes
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: of Australia? My good friend Adam Greentree, he's from Australia,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: and he was running a mine there for a while
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: and worked with a lot of Aboriginal people and really
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: learned a lot about their cultures. And they're called mobs,
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: like their tribe, they call it a mob. And there
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: could be a mob that's just like 30 kilometers over
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: that way. They have no idea what they're saying. They
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: don't know the language and it's not written anywhere. And
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: there's hundreds of these. They're all over the place. Right.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: And the bit of fieldwork that has been done, there
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: are some really good Australian linguists trying to figure out
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: these things, but the fieldwork that has been done has
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: found properties that that aren't like anything else we know about.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: So languages can vary so much that it's really premature,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: in my opinion, to be writing laws that languages are
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: supposed to follow, all 8,000 of these languages.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: Well, all you'd have to do is say, as far
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: as we've observed, and then you're okay. But as soon
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: as you say it has to have this, and if
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: someone says actually a language that doesn't have this, And
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: then there's a controversy. You're a bad guy for pointing
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: this out.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: You're a heretic. I had one of Chomsky's followers who
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: was Brazilian write to the Brazilian Indian Agency, which is
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: where I get my authorization to visit these tribes, and say,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: this Dan Everett guy, he's a racist. That's what they
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: always say.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Isn't that the fun one?
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: The moment they want to get rid of you, you're
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: a racist.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, she was silly because she said he's trying
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: to reduce the pitahas to primates. And I said, well,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: in fact, I am because we're all primates. I'm a primate.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: You're a primate. But it's the thing. If Chomsky says
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: that all languages have X and I say here's a
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: language that doesn't have X, then either A, Chomsky's wrong
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: or B, these aren't humans. And so the only person
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: who would claim they're not humans is a racist.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: That's such a crazy way to put it.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: It's so stupid. Yeah. God.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: But this is typical in science. As I got more
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: and more into science, it's very unfortunate.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: It's men. It's men and their egos. That's what it is.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure women as well, but primarily men.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, you don't get a lot of money
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: when you're a scientist. It's not a money-making profession. You
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: go into what is the biggest rate of exchange among scientists?
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: It's ego.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: But it's just so crazy to think that if it
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: doesn't have this one characteristic of language that you're calling
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: them primates, there's not a value judgment. You're saying it's
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: a different kind of language, and this is fascinating.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Exactly. That's my take. And many anthropologists took that. So,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: for example, they originally said that Homo erectus had no
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: capability for human speech, and I thought that was kind
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: of a questionable statement since you know, I've read a
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: lot on Homo erectus, read a book about it, and
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: they don't, um, um, they, all their accomplishments, they had
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: to have pretty advanced language to account for the fact
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: that the ocean was never a barrier for them. And
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: so I said that Homo erectus had language, and I
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: think the evidence supports that, but they don't have the
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: kind of language Chomsky says necessarily. And, um, So an
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: archaeologist at the University of Liverpool wrote me and he says,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: my specialty is Homo erectus, and I think you're right.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: So we wrote a paper together. And then after we
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: wrote the paper, he discovered last year the oldest wooden
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: structure known in all of human history, 500,000-year-old structure built
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: by Homo erectus in Zambia. And he showed that it
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: has interlocking pieces and parts that, nobody ever expected Homo
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: erectus to be able to do. And their brains weren't
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: that much smaller than ours. You know, the average size
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: of a modern human's brain is about 1200 cc's for
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: men and about 950 to 1100 cc's for women. And
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: since we know that men aren't more intelligent than women,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: the size of the brain can't be what's determining that.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Homo erectus had brains of 950 to 1000 cc's, you know,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: cubic centimeters. You measure that by taking the skull and
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: filling it full of sand and seeing how much sand
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: fits in there. And so they were able to make
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: these complex structures and they were able to make boats
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: and they were able to do all these things. Yeah,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: that's what Larry Barham from the University of Liverpool discovered.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: This structure, you see the cross piece. And he recently
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: gave a talk to a world association of archaeologists to
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: get their judgment on what this could be. Not archaeologists,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: but architects, to get their professional judgment. And they were
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: really impressed by this. They said that's actually a pretty
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: advanced structure for building a walkway or a house.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: We actually discussed this yesterday. I had a guy on
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: named Michael Button. He's got a fantastic YouTube channel. It's
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: all about sort of the mysteries of human history. And
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: we talked about the seafaring aspect and how much evidence
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: there is that these people were seafaring as much as
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: a million years ago.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And in my book, How Language Began, I have.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: They had to be communicated.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't... There's an archaeologist in... Australia, Bednarik is
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: his name, and he showed by... He did experiments, and
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: they're not exact because you can't find humans today that
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: don't have any language, normal humans. But he got humans
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: from different languages who couldn't communicate with each other that
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: well to see if they could build a boat. And
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: And then another linguist wrote a paper based on some
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: of this called How Much Language Does It Take to
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Build a Boat? And it turns out you've got to
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: have language to build a boat. And so if they
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: were building these boats that could carry water and could
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: carry as many as 20 people because you've got to
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: have enough to... If you find a colony of Homo
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: erectus on an island that was always an island, it
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: was never connected by land, there had to be more
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: than one person that washed up there on some vegetation.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: There has to have been a community.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Michael brought up that the– what was it? What
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: organization did it? Was it NASA? NASA did a study
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: because they were trying to figure out how many people
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: you need to colonize another planet. And they came up
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: with the number 500. You need a minimum of 500
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: to begin a colony. Right. In order to have genetic diversity,
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: make sure you're not having sex with your cousin, that
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: kind of jazz.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you can't. just send a couple over there,
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Adam and Eve, and expect this to happen.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. How did you feel about that story when you
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: first heard it?
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Adam and Eve? Yeah.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: When you, when you were converting, you're 17, you're doing acid.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, I was one of these guys who I
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: believe the Bible cover to cover and even the covers.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Uh, so we'll get to that in a minute.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: So, but go back to how this is all going down.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: With, uh, the, the controversy.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: So I started getting hate mail and then, um, uh,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: The article came out when I first proposed this in
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: the major journal of anthropology, Current Anthropology. I was in
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Germany at the time at the Max Planck Institute for
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Evolutionary Anthropology. And right down the hall from me was
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Svante Pebo, who just won the Nobel Prize for decoding
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: the genome of Neanderthals. And there was a reporter, a
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: German reporter from Der Spiegel, to talk to him. And
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: she found out about my article, so she walked down
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: the hall after she interviewed him and interviewed me. And
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: this came out, and it started to get picked up
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: in the press in a lot of places. And so
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: the New Yorker did a big profile. But then the
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: reaction came, and it wasn't what I expected. I expected
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: that if you make a proposal that other scientists, if
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: they're skeptical, which they have every right to be, are
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: going to propose experiments to test what you're saying. And
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: they're going to say, well, if they don't have recursion,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: you should find this and you should not find that.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: You should get this and this and this. And I
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: tried to anticipate that. But that's the kind of objection
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: I expected. But instead, they said, I'm a liar. I'm
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: trying to get publicity. You know, I had a New
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: York Times reporter. She called me and she said, do
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: you try to get publicity? I said, did I ask
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: you to call me? I said, you know, you called me.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: I said, you know, it's an interesting story. If people
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: want to talk to me, I'm here to talk to them.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: But I'm not. I said, if I wrote you at
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: the New York Times and said, I'm an interesting person,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: interview me, would that make any difference?
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: They're not mutually exclusive. You could be trying to get
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: attention and publicity because you've discovered something that's very important.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: The idea that you're just trying to get attention. Are
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: you trying to get attention? What are you talking about?
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: It's so weird that the intellectuals, the people who are
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: literally professional thinkers— would fall into these like common human
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: traps of ego. Yeah.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Well, it was a mind-blowing, mind-expanding experience for me to
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: see that intellectuals that I otherwise admired as deep thinkers
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: about their subject would not think otherwise. And, you know,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, intellectuals.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Did they ever engage you on the actual information?
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I had people from MIT, Department of Brain and
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Cognitive Sciences, from Stanford, Department of Psychology, from Columbia University,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: came down at separate times to run experiments, and they
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: were well-designed experiments to test what I said. And they
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: all came away saying, you know, it looks like Dan's right.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: So where's the reaction then? And what do they say
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: about that? Like the people that are negative about this
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: and the people that are calling you a racist and
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: all this saying you're trying to get attention, what are
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: they saying about these results?
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: They don't refer to them directly, but if asked, they
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: often say that these people don't like Chomsky.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: So- All of them? Yeah. All of those individual scientists
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: that are running these studies for you don't like Chomsky,
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: and that's why they have these skewed results?
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: That is one of the many objections that people raise.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: But by and large, they ignore it.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: They ignore it? Yeah. So they ignore the studies?
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I had Chomsky write me some really nasty emails.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: You got them? Do you got them still? I have them.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do have them. And I asked him, I said,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: why don't we debate at the Linguistic Society of America?
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: I said, you think I'm an idiot, so here's your chance.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: You can show that I'm an idiot. Just we'll debate,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: and you'll make a fool of me in five minutes.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Is he saying he thinks you're an idiot when you're
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: explaining a language that he doesn't know?
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: I'm an idiot or I'm a liar.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: He gave an interview to a Brazilian newspaper, and he said,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Dan used to be a fairly good linguist, but he
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: is a charlatan. He's just a 100% charlatan. And he
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: was interviewed on a Spanish station, and they said, what
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: do you think of the contributions of Dan Everett? And
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: he said, they're nothing, nothing, nothing.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: And he's really popular.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: I used to really admire him. Yeah. I used to
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: really admire him. Then I found out I was close
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: homies with Jeffrey Epstein. That kind of threw a lot
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: of water on that. Like, what?
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But then there was the stance during the vaccines
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: when it was like people that weren't vaccinated should be
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: round up and put into camps. They had some crazy
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: positions on the unvaccinated people and very just misinformed, just
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: completely misinformed about whether it was natural immunity or there
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: was other medications that were treat that you could use
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: to treat COVID-19 or even the. the efficacy of the vaccine.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: It was crazy. That was just one thing about him.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: There's just like his earlier debates, like he's got these
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: fantastic debates. I think it's him and William F. Buckley.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: Have you ever seen those? He's so good in those.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: He's so brilliant in those. It was a young Chomsky
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: and like his intellect and his reason, it was like
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: a breath of fresh air. It was like Super well informed.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: Every time Buckley tried to catch him on something, he
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: judoed him. It was amazing.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the first two books of Chomsky I read
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: when I started doing graduate work in linguistics.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: I read the media one. What is it?
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, A Manufacturer of Consent.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: But he had the first book of his I read.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: It was in linguistics, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: And if you're a linguist and you're studying linguistics, that's
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: just genius. It is just brilliant. And then the next
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: book that he published the same year was American Power
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: and the New Mandarins, which was about Vietnam. And that
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: was also brilliant. And, you know, for one person to
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: publish two books like that in one year, I mean,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: that's just first-order genius. So I admired him.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: What goes wrong with a guy like that, though? If
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: a guy can be that smart, how can he not
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: be curious about it? How could he not? Like when
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: you say something that flies in the face of everything
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: that he's taught, how could he not be curious and
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: want to talk to you? And if you're right, why
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: would he not want to like do something with you?
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: Like if I found someone like you and I was,
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, I would have hoped that that would be
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: the same way as I am now. And I had
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: an opportunity. I said, we should do a podcast together.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: We could explain this. This is crazy.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Right. I invited him to the Pita Ha. He was
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: coming to Brazil. And I said, hey, why don't you
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: come with me to the Pita Ha? And I'll ask
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: them any question you want me to ask them. We
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: can talk about it there. And he said, I don't
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: do that kind of thing. I don't do field work.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: So he didn't come.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: Good move. You don't want typhoid fever and fucking malaria
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: bit by snakes, stalked by jaguars. That's all true. See,
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: he's smart. It's just very disappointing when people are really brilliant.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: He's a brilliant guy. And essentially, I mean, especially rather,
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: was really brilliant when he was young. It's just... So
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: sad when you see someone like that just behaving with
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: ego because he was the expert. He was the foremost
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: linguist on planet Earth.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: When the New York Times is saying things like you're
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: the most important intellectual alive and you have people hanging
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: off every word as though it comes from, you know,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the Oracle of Apollo. Yeah. I assume that it affects
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: your ego to some degree.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: 100 percent. Most people, especially back then when there's no
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: Internet to check you. You know, you can get a
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: really distorted perception of how you stand. Also, everyone's kissing
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: your ass. You're surrounded by other people that are trying
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: to climb the same ladder you're on. You're in a
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: very lofty position of authority and power.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: You know, he wrote letters of recommendation for me for
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: my first job in the U.S.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: And he wrote a letter of recommendation when I came
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: up for promotion to tenure at the University of Pittsburgh.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: Why would he do that if you're an idiot?
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: But I wasn't yet an idiot. I became an idiot.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: You became an idiot when you disagreed with him. Meanwhile,
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: ha ha, you're right. That's what's funny. In the end,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: you're right.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, he, you know, I've had so many exchanges
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: in journals and magazines and things with his followers over
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: the years and with him that, you know, I go
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: give a talk somewhere and people say, you know, I
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: hope you're ready because there's a lot of skeptic, a
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: lot of skeptics in this audience. And I say, I
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: don't think they're going to ask me any new questions.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: I've done this so much now that they're going to
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: ask me. I said, I'll be surprised if anybody asks
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: me a question that I haven't heard from Chomsky.
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: And when you have these conversations with Chomsky and you
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: lay out how the Piraha use their language and how
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: it works, what was his reaction to that? You're just incorrect?
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: Well, the first time I talked to him about it,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: he had not made this claim about recursion. This was
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: in 1984. I was a visitor at MIT Linguistics, and
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: my office was next to his. And so I talked
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: to him several times that year. And I said, I
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: don't think their language has this property. And he said,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: you know, he was drinking coffee and looking at the board.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: He had a blackboard right by his desk. And he said, hmm,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: wonder what the consequences of that are. And then one
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: of his PhD students told me, oh, you really got
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: gnome thinking. What is this? He found that very intriguing.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: But then when he came out with the proclamation that
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: all languages had the habit, then I became an idiot.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, God, that's so disappointing. Fucking people. Yeah. Fucking people.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: Even the brightest minds. They're just, ego's such a motherfucker.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it's really disappointing because, you know, he was
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: like my idol for the first part of my linguistic career.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: And I wasn't.
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: Did you try to have a conversation with him after
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: he denounced you? Did you try to like one-on-one get
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: together with him?
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Well, we exchanged emails.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but in his face, like right in front of him.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: Did you try to do that? No.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: I had always told him when I was going through
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: Cambridge that I was coming and maybe he and I
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: could talk. And he always made time. And we talked.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: I would be living somewhere else and I'd come to
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: MIT and he'd talk to me. And my first PhD
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: student is a full professor at MIT. And he started
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: off in linguistics. He's in brain and cognitive sciences now.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: So I had a good relationship with Chomsky. But then
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: suddenly he never had time to meet with me.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: So after his proclamation. Right. Okay.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: He had no time to meet with me. His wife died,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: and I wrote him a letter saying, I'm so sorry
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: that Carol died. This is really terrible. I know you
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: guys have been together for so long. And he wrote
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: back and said, thank you so much. That means a
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: great deal to me. And then I saw this article
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: in a Sao Paulo paper where he called me a charlatan.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: So I wrote him right back, and I said, did
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: you call me a charlatan? And he said, yeah, you
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: are a charlatan. I said, you should be ashamed of yourself.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: He said, no, you should be ashamed of yourself for
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: saying things you know that can't be right. So that
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: was the last exchange we had.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: Silly, silly. No, of course you should have had that
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: in front of them. I mean, just, I think people
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: say things in emails that I think is a terrible
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: way to communicate.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: I agree completely.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: You know, that's especially with insults. It's just, it's such
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: a way. And then you're waiting on the other person's
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: insult in return. Like, God, stop it. Are you fucking
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: 12 years old? Yeah. Stop.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: So the author, Tom Wolfe, um, The last book he
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: wrote was called Kingdom of Speech. And he talked about
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: two controversies, Darwin versus Alfred Russell Wallace and me versus Chomsky.
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: And so he has a very he has some bizarre,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: absolutely wrong ideas about where language came from. He's not
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: a linguist, but he did cover that controversy extremely well. And,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: you know, Tom used to call me every week when
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: he was writing the book. I didn't even know what
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: it was about to ask to get the details right.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: But he was just shocked how this happened.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, it's disappointing. But even the most brilliant humans
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: are just human.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: And they're subject to all the flaws and all the
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: traps that the human mind could fall into.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I've often said after long experience that intelligence is
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: no antidote for stupidity.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: You can be both.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, 100%. Absolutely. Especially when ego is involved. Yeah. So why?
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: How many people, how many of the piddaha did you convert?
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Nobody. In decades, they weren't interested. They were so totally,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: because my claims did not meet their standard of evidence.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: They have a high standard of evidence, and I didn't
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: meet that standard.
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• 55:03
  Speaker 2: and the products being advertised are intended for a United
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: States audience. But don't they have like mystical creatures and
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: stuff that they believe live in the forest? They do.
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: And When I first got there as a Christian, I
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: called these things spirits because that's all I knew how
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: to characterize them.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: How do they describe them?
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: They describe them as distinct beings. They don't say they're
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: spiritual or anything like that. But you see something. Maybe
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: there's another Indian from a different tribe hunting in your
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: jungle because there are some that are close enough to
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: be hunting in the same area. You see them, but
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: you don't see them well. They go behind a tree
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: or something. So you say, oh, that's one of these things.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: I just saw one of these things. They don't put
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: it to the test necessarily, but they did see it.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: When they say these things.
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: So they have three major types of entities besides humans.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: And they have different types of humans. I'm one type
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: and they're another type. And so they have things.
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: How do they make the distinction? Is it the appearance?
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: For humans, yes, it's appearance. Well, actually, for the other entities,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: it's appearance too. So for me. I'm white. And white
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: means you don't have blood. So they asked me, they said,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: so do you have blood? And they asked me one
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: time after I'd been there for years, they said, do
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: Americans die? And I said, yeah, we die. But you're
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: really old and you haven't died yet, you know? And
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: so I cut myself once.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: How old were you at the time?
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: Probably 45.
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: And they thought you were a goner.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because we age differently. I already had gray hair,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: you know, not all over.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: Right. They look a lot different when they're 45.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. They're all still 100% black hair.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, they thought you were a goner with the white hair.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: So they have an expression, almost about to fall to
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: the ground. And that's the way they described me. Wow.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: So Americans are one way, Brazilians are another way. But
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: then there are these things, some of them are called
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: fast mouths. And so they They talk in a high-pitched voice.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: And at night, you hear somebody, you know, a creature
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: talking in a high falsetto voice into the village. And
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: I say, what's that? And they said, oh, that's a
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: fast mouth. I said, but I'm seeing it, and it
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: looks like a pita ha. Oh, yeah, they look just
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: like us, but they're not. They're not us. And so
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: this is where we come to the border of fact
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: and fiction. And we try to draw a fairly rigid
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: line between fact and fiction. in our society and in
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: most European societies. But to them, they don't have to
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: have the full range of experience with this to describe it.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: And so a fast mouth is just a fast mouth.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: And you know who they are because they talk in
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: a high falsetto voice and they go naked. Whereas pitahas
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: often go naked, but if they have clothes, they'll wear them.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: And the fast mouths will never wear clothes. And the
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: fast mouths are also sexually promiscuous. So I had a
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: reporter with me in the jungle from GEO magazine in Germany.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: And he said, can I see one of these fast mouths?
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: And I told one guy, I said, he wants to
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: see a fast mouth. And he said, well, I'll go
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: get one. And he walks off into the jungle. And
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: then the same guy comes back in naked, talking in
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: this falsetto voice, and starts trying to hump the reporter. Yeah.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: And the reporter says, oh, I'm feeling very uncomfortable.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: I said, you asked for it. I mean, you know,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's the way they are. And so I
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: finally told the guy, I said, you know, he doesn't
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: he doesn't want this. He doesn't want to see the
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: fast mouth anymore. So he talks to me in a
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: high falsetto and he walks off and he comes back
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: on with his clothes on. And I said, did you
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: see the fast mouth? He said, was there a fast
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: mouth here? I was gone, you know, but it's the
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: same guy.
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: What did you take of that? Did you think that
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: they were playing a prank on you? Did you think
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: this is like some sort of a psychotic state that
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: they fall into? It is a limit.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Area between being, say, theater and being reality. And I
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: don't know if they feel possessed. I don't think they
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: have a concept of possession. I've asked them and I've
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: investigated this and I've never seen that. But they definitely
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: believe that. They're gone and this other creature is there
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: in their place.
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: Do they have memory of when they become a fast mouth?
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: They deny it. I've tried to get them to talk
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: about it.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: I wasn't here.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: Everyone denies it?
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: Everybody denies it.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: Wow. Do you think that being a fast mouth is
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: like almost like a license to go and do stuff
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: you're not supposed to do? Go fuck everybody? Yeah. You
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: think that's what it is?
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They also change names very frequently. So if I
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: go back there now, all my old friends will have
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: different names. And anything done under the old name is,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: you know, you'll say, you remember when you did this? Well,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: I didn't do that. That was the guy with this name.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: So they don't even claim, so the concept of constancy
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: of identity throughout time, they deny this.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: So when do they choose to make a new name?
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: Or do they get a new name assigned to them?
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: They can. Children often get new names for different phases
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: of life. But adults, if you're out in the jungle
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: and you think you saw something and you can't explain it,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: you might take a new name.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: Not a bad idea, right?
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: This is a way of coping with things.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it kind of makes sense. If something
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: really traumatic happens to you and you want to reclaim
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: your life, you change your name, start over from scratch. Right.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: And some of us do it in American culture, but
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: it's a lot harder legal process to change your name.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: How often do they get killed by jaguars?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: Nobody's ever been killed in my almost 50 years coming
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: and going, but many of them have been attacked. Really?
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: Like one guy was coming back from getting Brazil nuts,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: and he had a big basket. And so his head's
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: down a bit with the tump line, and the basket
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: probably weighs, you know, 60 pounds. Yeah. suddenly a jaguar
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: jumps out of the tree right on his back, but
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: it got the basket and not him, and it pulled
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: the basket off his head, and he shot it with
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: an arrow.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: But they tell me that when you shoot a jaguar
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: with an arrow, the jaguar forgets about you and keeps
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: trying to get the arrow out. And by that time,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: you've got three or four more arrows in it. So
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: these guys are deadly accurate with bows and arrows.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: So if they did that and, like, maybe— they got attacked,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: would they change their name after that?
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: They could. And so I don't completely have it down
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: to a formula.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay. So it's not like when they're uncomfortable. Sometimes
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: it's just like, it's time. It's time that Bob becomes Mike.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: It's a subjective reaction to objective experience that causes them
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: to do this.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: And do they announce it to the village?
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: They announce it to their spouse or their kids, and
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: then the word spreads. And so I'll come back in.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: I came back in after six months, and my buddy,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: my main language teacher- And his name was, when I left,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: it was Kohoibehe, which means blood eater. And when I
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: got back, I said, you know, and the nickname is Ko. Hey, Ko.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: You know, I asked him, how are you doing? And
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: nobody responds. He didn't turn and look at me or anything.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: And I called him again and again. He said, you
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: talking to me? I said, yeah. He said, that's not
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: my name. And so I had to learn his new
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: name was Kapaobi, you know, which, and he was serious
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: about it. He wouldn't respond anymore to that old name.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: Wow. How odd. The first time that happened, were you like, oh,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: my God, these people are fucking crazy?
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: No, I thought, I'm pretty stupid. I can't even remember
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: their names. Wow. That was my first reaction.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: How quickly did this happen from you first, like, encountering
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: these people?
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Well, I would be gone for three or four months
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: at a time and then come back because I was
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: doing linguistic.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, so you never experienced it, like, as it was happening?
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: You only experienced it... One time.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: One time there was... You really need to spend at
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: least a full year there so you can see all
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: the seasons and all the changes. Then I saw some
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: of the stuff. But many of the name changes happened
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: when I was out of the village. Some of them
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: happened when I was in the village. But my best friends,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: their name changes seemed to happen when I was out
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: of the village. And they were very serious about enforcing
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: those new name changes. So if you ask them to
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: tell stories about their childhood, you get these very vague stories.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: And they'll say, you know, but I'm talking about this person,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: you know. Or they'll tell me, you know, they changed
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: my name twice, you know. And so they name me
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: and they, so a guy comes up to me and
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: he says, that name is rotten, which is the same
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: word you use for spoiled food. You know, your name
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: is spoiled. So I'm going to give you this name.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: And then I got, then one time I was in
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: there and was staying with this guy. He's just wearing
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: a loincloth and the other Peter Hoff fearing because he's
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: this fierce guy. guy. And he says, you're really old.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: They always tell me that. He said, you're really old.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: And I said, I'm not that old. He said, yeah,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: you are. My dad's dead. And you're about the same
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: age as he was. They don't know what the age is.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: He said, I'm going to give you my dad's name.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: And Bao Aisi, which is just the name of his dad.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: So that's been my name ever since. I've had that
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: name now for about 15 years.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: And when you go back, what happens if they want
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: to switch it up again? You have to learn a
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: new name? Yeah, yeah. And that could easily happen, right?
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it could easily happen. It just depends on which
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: village you go to and which person you're talking to.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: What is the population of these people?
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: When I first got there, it was under 200. And
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: now it's around 700 to 800. They've grown because they've
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: had more medical assistance. I gave them medical assistance, my
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: wife and I, for 20 years.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: And so your goal was to convert them to Christianity. Right.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: And when it's– so no one's buying it. So what
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: are you doing? What do your days consist of while
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: you're there?
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: Well, my days consist of linguistic analysis and translation effort.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: So I'll work with somebody. And so I worked with
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: this guy, for example– And we went through the story
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: of Jesus. I had translated a large part of the
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Gospel of Luke. And I tell him this story. And
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: then I showed film strips, you know, made by, you know,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: where Jesus looks like an American and has a beard
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: and all this stuff. And I explained it. They don't
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: make a difference between drawings and photographs. So they figured
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: it must be Jesus. He saw Jesus. So that night
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: after I told him all this and we'd seen the
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: film strips, His village was across the river. I lived
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: in one village, and across the river was another village,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: and they went across the river. And all night long,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: I heard screaming and yelling and people running around and
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: women laughing and then women screaming. And the next morning,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: he comes back to work with me, and I said,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: so what was going on all night? He said, oh,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: Jesus came to our village. I said, what? He said, yeah,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: he came to our village, you know, and he had
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: a penis three feet long. They don't have words for feet,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: so I'm just going by his hand thing. He said,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: and he was trying to stick it in all the women.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, the women don't want to know
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: anymore about Jesus.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: What?
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: This is their way of rejecting it. So I never
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: expected that. In all my Bible training and things.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: Did they say, so they wouldn't admit if one of
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: them became like they become a fast talker if they
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: just became Jesus. Right. But that could have been what happened.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that's what happened.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: So one guy just decided I'm Jesus. Yeah.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: But everybody took him, you're Jesus.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: And this is what Jesus is trying to do. Oh, boy.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: But they would ask questions like, you know, hey, Dan,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: what does Jesus look like? Is he brown like us
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: or is he white like you? And I say, well,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: you know, some people say he was brown like you
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: and some people say he was white like me. And
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: they said, yeah, yeah, but you've seen him. What did
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: he look like? And I said, well, I never saw him. Well,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: your dad saw him. No, my dad never saw him.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: He lived a long time ago. I don't know anyone
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: who's ever seen Jesus. And they said, you don't know
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: anyone who's ever seen him and you're just talking about
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: him the whole time, telling us about him? They said,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: we don't want to hear about this anymore. And that
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: was like.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: But you at the time were a believer. You're a
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: true believer. Yeah. So when did that start to slip away?
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: It started to slip away from two sides. One, I
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: was spending a lot of my time in the intellectual
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: world and trying to do serious linguistic science. And it
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: slipped away mainly, however... by constant interaction with the Pirahã,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: because as I've gotten to know these people over the years,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: these are really smart people. They're very intelligent people. They
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: had me figured out before I had them figured out,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: and they can predict my behavior better than I can
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: predict theirs, even today. And so, they would come to
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: me and they would say this, you know, they'd say, Dan,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: you keep telling us about Jesus, but it seems that
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: only Americans believe in Jesus, because we don't know any
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Brazilians that we've ever met that believe in Jesus. So
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: this seems like an American thing, but we're not Americans.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: And then they would say, you know, where did you
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: get your evidence? And I began to think, you know,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: these are good questions. I can't just throw these questions off.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: What is my evidence? You know, I went to Bible school.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: I've been surrounded by Christians. I've surrounded myself by people
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: who believe. And this is what happens in linguistic theory
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: or other scientific theories. You surround yourself with a community
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: that believes the same thing, and pretty soon it's hard
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: for you to consider alternatives. Mm-hmm. And so I started
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: considering the alternative and I realized, you know, I was
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: an atheist back when I, you know, met my first
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: wife in front of a Jimi Hendrix concert. I was
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: an atheist. And then I became a Christian. And then
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: I thought, you know, maybe I was right to begin with.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: And so eventually I told them, I said, you know,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: I don't believe this stuff anymore either. And they started laughing.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: All the guys started laughing. I said, why are you?
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: They said, oh, now you're like us, you know.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: But.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: But then they told me one time, they said, you know,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: from what we understand, Christians don't drink and they don't
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: sleep with other women. And, you know, we like to
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: do those things. So we're not interested.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: What was convincing for you, though? If you're a true believer,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: you think your path is the right way when you're
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: hanging out with these people. What is making you question it?
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: Well, several things. One of the most important things was
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: that having spent so many years as a Christian, and
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: knowing Christians both in the U.S. and missionaries, who are
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: the cream of the crop, supposedly, I didn't know anyone
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: in the Christian faith who was as well-adjusted, who could
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: cope with life as well, who was as satisfied and
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: content with their lives as the Pidahan. They were like
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: the ultimate Zen masters and the ultimate, you know, if
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: you thought, what is Jesus supposed to do for your life?
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: They already had it. And I didn't know many Christians
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: who did. So first it was quality of the spiritual life.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: They seem to me to have the highest quality of
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: spiritual life. So one MIT guy who came down, an
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: MIT PhD student, said, these look like the happiest people
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: in the world. And I said, well, what kind of
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: statement is that? How would you measure who's happiest? He said, well,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: I would spend time, I would see how long they
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: smile and laugh every day and compare it to others
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: and how much time they spend laughing and smiling. And
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: I'll guarantee you, he said, I've never seen a peda
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: here who's not smiling or laughing at frequently. So it
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: was that quality of character, and it was also just
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: the fact that I began to realize that the scientific
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: principles that I've been learning and that I'm applying in
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: linguistics almost have to be suspended to apply them to
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: the faith. Because, you know, for example, I've heard a
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: lot of stories of people being healed. But this is
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: anecdotal evidence. And I'm not going to deny anybody's experience.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: If you tell me you had inoperable cancer, but now
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: you don't, something happened, and I can't tell you what
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: it was. But at the same time, there's no statistical
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: relevance to that. It's also the case that even when
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: I was in Bible school, one of my teachers said,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: I wonder why healers, faith healers, never start with amputees,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: you know? They always start with diseases you can't see,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: like cancer, and explain how it went away. But they
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: said also in the Bible, and the Bible itself says this,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: Jesus not only healed people, he raised them from the dead.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: So if somebody claims to be a healer in the
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: same vein as Jesus, I'd like to see them start
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: at cemeteries and start raising people from the dead. We're
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: not seeing that, and we don't see amputees healed. We
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: see things that are sort of subjective experiences. So that
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: and I'm not claiming that nobody has a right to
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: believe what they believe or that I'm right about all
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: these things, but these are the reason, this is part
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: of the reasoning process that went through my mind. And
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: I thought, yeah, I just can't, I just can't do
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: this anymore. I cannot tell these people to believe something
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: that they have reasonable objections against and I don't have
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: reasonable answers for. So to me, they made more sense
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: than I did.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: Well, there's, so many of these ancient religions that have
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: very similar stories to the Jesus story.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's true.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: It seems like a very old story. And I'm of
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: the opinion that what you're getting with all of these
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: religious texts is there were some events and there's some
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: sort of a documentation of this events, but it's very
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: hard to figure out what exactly happened. Like for instance,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: Paul never met Jesus. When most people find that out,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: they go, wait, what? So all that stuff that Jesus said,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: Paul's writing down, And, well, how does Paul know this?
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: And then you go, oh, well, Paul met Jesus in
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: a dream. Like, hold the fuck on.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: See, ironically, the Pentecost might actually take that as evidence.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: Right. But Jesus came back to their camp as a
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: fast walker.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: But we said, you know, I learned in Bible school
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: that all the apostles had to have met Jesus. And
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: Paul was an apostle. Therefore, he had to meet Jesus.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: And so I said, well, when did he meet Jesus?
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: And they said, on the road to Damascus. He had
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: the revelation of Jesus on the road to Damascus, so
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: he met him. It's tricky. It's tricky.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: It's tricky. It's also, again, when you get especially to
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: the Old Testament, like what were they documenting? What are
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: these events? What happened there? There's some stories that you say,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: like the flood story, for example. Boy, there's a lot
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: of those. There's a lot of those in all sorts
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: of ancient religions. It seems to be some sort of
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: a historical record of some sort of a catastrophe.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: All the other stuff that's attached to it, you just
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: got to go, I'm not sure what this means. Right.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: You know, when I was a little boy, you know,
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: my mother died when I was very young. But when
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: I was a little boy, we would drive up from
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: Imperial Valley, California to San Diego. And you've got to
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: go through the mountains. And there's this line of white
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: stones that I noticed near the top of the mountains.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: And I said, you know, what caused that? And my
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: mother said, the flood. And I thought, well, that makes sense.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: It must be the flood. I'm like seven. And so
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: some of this stuff gets started this way and it
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: becomes truth.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it's certainly when you're talking about a
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: time thousands of years ago where just the ability to
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: read was very limited. And then you're translating things from
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: languages that we don't even speak anymore. It gets real squirrely.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: We try to figure out what these events actually were
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: that they were documenting. It's it's having a belief system.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of value to it. I
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: think it gives you a moral scaffolding, gives you structure
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: in your life. And that alone is like super beneficial
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: to people. And the people that I know that are
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: like true Christians really follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: They're some of the nicest people I've ever met. Right.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: I think there's really great benefit to that. The problem
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: is like, what what are we saying? You know, what exactly,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: like do you, the Adam and Eve one, it's like, okay,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: what do you think happened? Do you think there's two people?
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: That's the only two people on earth? And then where
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: do the other people come from? The brothers and sisters
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: just have sex with each other? Right.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: What? Yeah, I mean, evolution explains that obviously very well.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: But Adam and Eve, you know, I remember when my
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: mother told me the story of eating the apple and
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: betraying God. And Adam is hiding out and God says,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: where are you? And I asked my mother, I said,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: I thought God knew everything. Why is he asking him
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: where he is? I don't understand that. And she said, well,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: he wants him to confess it. Well, there's always that
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: kind of answer. You can always give that kind of answer.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: But you don't have to focus on religion. You can
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: even go to paleoanthropology, and you can look at, are
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: there 20 species of Homo that used to exist in
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: the past or more? Or were there just three, Erectus, Neanderthal,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: and Sapiens? and what does it mean to be a
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: species and how can we really prove some of that
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: stuff before the work of Svante Paibo and the decoding
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: the DNA, the genome of ancient creatures doing this thing
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: that people thought was impossible. That was speculation. It was
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: really hard to tell. And there were a lot of
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: controversies and now We can look at the genetic record
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: and we can look at the genome, but that still
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: doesn't tell us everything. So a lot of straight history
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: and a lot of paleoanthropology and paleoarchaeology, all of these
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: things always involve, as any theory does, speculation. You're guessing
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: and then trying to test your guess. And some things
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: are easier to test than other things. And so science
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: is a community of people who believe they can work
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: towards the truth, but the only way to do that
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: is to have good guesses and know how to test
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: them and be willing to admit that you're wrong and
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: then move on to the next best guess. And every
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: scientist recognizes this, but in practice, it's really hard.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: Well, it's certainly hard if you're also a fundamentalist Christian.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. That makes it much harder.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: Because then you're living in conflict all the time. Right.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: You believe a guy came back from the dead, but
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: show me proof for everything else. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: You believe in miracles, but you can't. They certainly can't
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: be produced on demand anymore.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: You also believe that people tell the truth. That's part
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: of the problem. Part of the problem with all this
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: stuff is like, look, the Bible condones slavery. It talks
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: about slavery in multiple passages.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: That's a person thing. That's a people thing.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: Right. And the Bible talks about all sorts of things that,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: you know, we don't agree with today, but we try
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: to interpret it in such a way that we can
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: live with it.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You know, so God, I mean, if you read
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: anything by Mark Twain about God, which is not only
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: brilliant but funny, you know.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: Just makes fun of the whole notion that— It.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: Says religion started when the first con man made the
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: first sucker.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, how many germs— he has this story
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: about Noah's Ark, about how Noah's family had to be
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: so infested with germs so they could survive the Flood.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: You know, when you stop and think about, I mean, like,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: you know, the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: And then all these creatures had to boogie on down
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: to Australia almost immediately. And so you get these stories
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: and people don't want to talk about those things. Well,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know how God did it.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: I think there was an event. And I think this
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: version of it, this doctrine that you're supposed to adhere to,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: is woefully uninformed about the actual, like, real facts of
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: the event. I don't think anybody could possibly know, but
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: I think when you have the Epic of Gilgamesh, which
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: mirrors the story of Noah's Ark, which mirrors the story
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: of other religions that have similar flood myths or flood stories,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: it's probably something happened. Yeah, it's probably one of the
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: things that happened. Right.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can tell people It would be intellectually
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: dishonest to tell people that all the claims of their
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: religion are false. How do you know that? You don't
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: know that. And I used to tell Christians, I said,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: you know, when I was a Christian, the best evidence
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: for God is what he's done in your life. And
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: are you living a better life? And if you're not
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: living a better life, then why are you saying that
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: he saved you? And if you can't live a more
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: moral life than people who don't know Christ, then what
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: are you saying? You've claimed that he changed your life
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: for the good, but you're not living a life for
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: the good. You know, I went to work in construction
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: when I was still in high school for a Christian contractor.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: And I was in the union. I joined the laborers union,
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: which meant that as a hod carrier, that's the hardest
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: job I ever did, that you got paid $ 8.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: 25 an hour.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: And this is 1968. And that was a lot of
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: money in 1968. And the guy told me when I
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: got hired, he said, The union says, I got to
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: pay $ 8. 25 an hour, but I'm not going to pay
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: you that. I'm going to write you down as only
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: working four hours a day, but you're going to work eight.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: And that's how he got around it. And I thought,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: this guy's a Christian and he's lying on these forms
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: and on his taxes. And he's going to church. And, um,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: I got the job through my Christian missionary father-in-law who
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: knew this guy. And, and I saw that happening time
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: and time again. Um, So very often, unfortunately, people who
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: claim to be religious and follow the commandments of Jesus,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: which are much more difficult to follow than the commandments
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: of the Old Testament because they affect your thoughts and
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: not just your overt action. When you don't see consistency,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: the answer could be, well, we're just humans. We're not perfect.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: And that's true. But why doesn't the Holy Spirit that
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: you say you believe in make a bigger difference in
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: your life than he does in Joe Schmo down the
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: street who doesn't claim anything, and he's leading a more
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: moral life than you are.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: Especially if you're robbing laborers.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And lying on your taxes. Yeah.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: And so when you're with the pitaha, they live a
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: subsistence lifestyle. Right. And there's been a lot of evidence
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: that subsistence lifestyles are some of the Most compatible lifestyles
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: in terms of like people's happiness and peace and having
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: like a sense of meaning. Like your life is wrapped
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: around the gathering of food and community and spending time together.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: And they're the happiest people in the world. Right.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: You know, I monitor them for a while. How many
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: hours a week does a hunter work? And I came
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: up with about 15 or 20 hours a week.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Unless it's not going well. Yeah.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: And then, yeah, like now they're doing it all the time.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: But when the fish are jumping, it's that. And then
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: so what do you do with the rest of your time?
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: You lay around the fire and tell jokes and talk
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: to people and play with your kids. You know, the
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: men love to play with everybody.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: They're in pure subsistence too because they're not even preserving food. Right.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: If they don't find food today, they go hungry today.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: Have you ever seen the Werner Herzog documentary, Happy People?
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen that. I did meet him once, but
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen that documentary. He's really big into these
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: kinds of societies. I know that.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: That's what Happy People is about. It's about these people
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: that live in Siberia. Right. There are hunters and trappers
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: that live in Siberia, and they're all happy. Right. Yeah,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: and they basically just spend most of their time gathering food,
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: gathering food and then spending time with the communities. Yeah.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: Well, the documentary that was made about the Pitaha by
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: the Smithsonian and a couple of other institutions. It's called
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: The Grammar of Happiness. Because the film crew that went
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: with me, it was very small, like three people, but
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: they were deeply impressed by what they saw and the
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: level of happiness. And all the psychologists that I've taken
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: and linguists have also been very impressed by the level.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: If they get past the heat and they get past
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: the confrontation with your body and the pita hump don't
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: have outhouses. They don't have, you know, I mean, if
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: somebody needs to take a dump, they walk off 10
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: feet into the bush and do it. Um, and so
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: we have to have toilet paper. No.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: What do they do?
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: A stick or leaves.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, sticks.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Hey, or if you have corn cobs, that's great,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: but they don't have corn cobs.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: Good Lord.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, so yeah, but it's just not a big deal.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: They grow up that way. It's just a function, you know?
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: And so you ask them things about life. What happens
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: to you after you die? What do you mean? Well,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: when you're dead, what happens? Well, you're dead. And so
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: there's like a dead monkey that somebody just brought back
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: and they're going to eat. He says, he's dead. What
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: else is there? Why are you asking this question? We die,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: we die. And they don't fear death. They don't make
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: up a story to make themselves not fear death.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: Were there a lot of them injured?
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. They live a violent life. I have people
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: bitten by snakes, cut I had people who split their
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: hand almost in two with a machete, run arrows all
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: the way up their arm, step on sticks that go
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: all the way through their foot. I mean, these are
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: people who are naked running through the jungle, and they
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: get scratches. If you get bitten by a snake that's hemotoxic,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: like a jararaca, I don't know what it is. It's
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: a bushmaster. When you get bit by one of those things,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: even if you survive, a lot of the flesh is
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: going to come off whatever they bit. So you see
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: people with one leg normal and one leg that looks
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: like bone because it's basically bone with a little bit
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: of muscle covered in skin because the flesh all fell
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: off after the snake bite. So they know what it
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: is to suffer, and they're tough. You know, if you
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: get a toothache, how do you fix it? Well, if
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: I'm there, I have some things that can help with
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: the pain, or I can pull the tooth. But most
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: of the time, it rots out. That's how they deal
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: with it. So they learn, you know, I was talking
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: to a woman one time, you know, really for, you know,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: pina ha, looking very feminine looking woman. And she gets
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: bit by a wasp on the face while I'm talking
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: to her. And she pulls the stinger out and she doesn't,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: it doesn't stop her conversation. And I've been stung by
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: those wasps and I know they hurt like hell. And
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: I said, didn't that hurt? Yeah. But you didn't say anything.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: She says, I'm not a baby. You know, so this
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: is the way they are.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: From the time they're children, they learn to deal with pain.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: They learn to be tough. In fact, they have an
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: expression for that. He wants to be hard. And that
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: means you deliberately sleep sometimes less than you need. You
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: go hungry on purpose and you put yourself in hard
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: situations because you want to be tough. Because that's what
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: the environment demands.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: So they build their resilience on purpose. Yes. Voluntarily. Well,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: I would imagine that's like the most important thing to have.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: If you're running around naked in the jungle, you have
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: to be tough. Right.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: You have to be. And, you know, like I was
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: I go barefoot sometimes in the village. I'm you know,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: I get you can get parasites that way. But, you know,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: I do it anyway. And but when I go to
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: the jungle, I always put on shoes because my feet
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: can't take all the thorns and everything. And theirs are
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: covered with like a whole layer of callus all around
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: their foot.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: They have those crazy splayed out toes. Yeah.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And that's the way feet are supposed to look, really.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: You know, ours don't look that way because we protect them.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: But their feet are tough. You know, their hands are tough.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: Their skin is tough. It's like leather. Even a little kid,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: their little kids, rather than crawl, they scoot around on
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: their butt. And so you pick a little kid up
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: and you look at their butt and it's just callous.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: It's just solid callous. And these kids are tough. But they.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: By their standards, they're very gentle to their kids. I
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: had a guy with me one time and he was
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: trying to sleep at night and a baby was screaming
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: all night. And he said, why don't they tell that
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: baby to shut up? And I said, why? I said,
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: they don't need to tell it to shut up. That's
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: just part of life. You know, they don't have a
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: schedule to keep tomorrow. He said, what would happen if
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: I went over and swatted it on the behind? I said,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: they'd kill you. They'd kill me. I said, yeah, you
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: don't hit kids. They don't believe in hitting kids.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: Swat a baby to get it to, does he think
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: that's how babies stop screaming?
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: I mean... Does he have any kids?
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: I don't think this guy did, but Christian... often believe,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: really believe, spare the rod and spoil the child. And
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: they believe very much in corporal— Back then at least, right? Yeah,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: back then. I don't know today. But, you know, so
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: the Pidahav never believed this. They don't accept it.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: Well, I think they're probably correct. It is interesting how
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: those people are happier. Like we've done something to ourselves
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: by forcing ourselves into cities and jobs and constant stress
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: and bills and taxes and all these external things that
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: we've attached to our lives that we think are 100% necessary.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: Don't bring anybody any happier. Don't bring anybody any more happiness.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: In fact, make you way more miserable, make you susceptible
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: to a bunch of stress-related illnesses. Yeah.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: I've had friends visit me in the jungle, researchers who
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: are friends, and they'll say things like, I've never seen
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: you so relaxed. You know, you seem tense when you're
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: at the university, but down here you just seem totally
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: laid back. And I said, well, I didn't notice it,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: but that makes perfect sense to me because all these
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: people are laid back. There's Peter Howe that I go
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: to talk to the guy, and I find myself nodding off.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: And I'm not even sleepy when I go over there,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: but he's just so laid back and talks so calmly
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: and softly. and telling jokes and things that it just
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: puts me to sleep.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: God, it's such a bummer that those people have to
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: struggle now.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's terrible.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: What do they hunt? What do they eat?
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: Seventy percent of their diet before they started having river
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: problems was fish. So the average diet of a Pita
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: Ha family is fish and water and jungle nuts and
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: things you get from the jungle. Hunter-gatherers, which they are,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: have healthier diets than agriculturalists. Because, you know, we had
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: this outbreak of disease from lettuce recently in this country.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: They don't grow vegetables, so they're never going to get
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing. They don't get that in naturally
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: occurring things out in the jungle.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: So their diets are healthier. They're eating protein. I know,
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: for example, that I could take any Pitaham man out
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: of the jungle at random, and if I weigh him,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: he's going to be 155 pounds. He's going to have
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: about a 25-inch waist, 26. He's going to have about
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: 4% body fat, and he's just going to be lean,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: mean machine. And they do try to harden themselves, but
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: that's just what the life does to you.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: But they're not overweight. They're not dealing with obesity. No,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: you're never.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: Only when outsiders, you know, representatives of the Brazilian government
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: thought it would be good to give them something to
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: rely on. So they brought in a lot of rice
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: and they started letting the people feed. The people don't
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: grow rice, but the government would supply it. So now
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden you see people overweight because they're
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: eating starch, which they never used to eat that much of.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: Or I took a dentist in once about 25 years
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: ago and we inspected the mouth of every living pitaha
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: and not one cavity. He was disappointed. He said, I
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: thought I was going to be able to do some
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: free dental work here, and nobody has a cavity. Well,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: then somebody introduced sugarcane into their fields from the outside world,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: and now it's almost 100% cavities. Everybody has cavities because
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: they eat sugarcane.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: So you keep away the sweets, you keep away the starch,
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: and you get healthier people. This is just living proof
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: of what we often read about diets, but that we're
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: so tempted by that we don't normally follow.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: I heard another issue with them is when they get
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: introduced to soda.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's bad.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: Also whiskey, but that's a different matter.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: They're both bad. Soda is, yeah, I mean, they love it.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: They call it, you know, sweet water. And they will
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: drink the hell out of that. If they got, you know,
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: five gallons, they'll drink it all. I had a guy
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: once who wove a basket for me. And I said,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: you know, what do you want for it? And he
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: knew that I had some canned fruit that I used
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: on Sundays for my kids when we were all living there.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: And he said, I want a can of this stuff,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: which is peaches and sweet syrup. And it was a
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: big can. And he ate that whole thing. And the
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: kids came around. And I've seen guys trade with a boat.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: And they'll get like a kilo of sugar, two and
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: a half pounds of sugar. And they just sit down
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: with a spoon and eat it.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, boy.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: And so if they have it, they eat it. And
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: if they don't have it, they don't eat it.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: And they have no idea that it's bad for them
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: because it tastes good. Why would it be bad? Right.
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: You can eat anything you find as a hunter-gatherer. And
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: you're not going to have enough of it. To be
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: bad for you.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: Because you're going to get something else the next day.
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: Or like tobacco. I can take in tobacco, but they're
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: not going to get addicted to it. They're not going to,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: you know, even when they roll cigarettes, they like them,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: but they only have it like once or twice a year.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: So you don't have to worry about it. You know,
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: if they had it all the time, they would have
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: serious issues.
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: So they've only developed addictions based on what they've been
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: introduced from the Western world.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: Right. 100%.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: So tell me about this conversion that you have. Tell
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: me about how you, like, what are the steps to
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: go from being a true believer, living with the Pidaha,
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: and then changing your opinions? How many steps did it take?
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: It took some practical steps and it took a lot
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: of mental steps.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: How much time?
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: I would say that I started seriously doubting my faith
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: about five or six years into my time. So about 1982, 1983.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: And I did not announce that I was not a
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: Christian until 2000. And because Christians were saying things about,
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: actually it was 2001, Christians were saying things about the
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: war in Iraq, about how the soldiers that we send
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: over there are the blessed peacemakers of the gospel. And
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: I didn't like that. And so the first step is
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: you start to doubt. Then you pray so that you
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: won't doubt because the Apostle Thomas said, Lord, I believe.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: Help mine unbelief. But then after a certain point, that
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: doesn't work so well. So you start to read literature
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: from apologetics, trying to defend these, you know, defend your
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: mind against these things that you're thinking. And then you realize,
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: I'm not satisfied with those answers either. So finally, one day,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: you reach the conclusion that I just, I just can't
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: do it anymore. I can't sustain this belief. I can't
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: pretend that I have something that I'm not. And so
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: then eventually I told my wife, I said, I just
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: don't believe this stuff anymore. I can't believe it. And
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: pretty much instantaneously, she walked out of the house and
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: we got a divorce. That was the end of that. Also,
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: if you're a Christian missionary and you're getting your income
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: from being a missionary, and then you tell people, oh,
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: I don't believe anymore, then you're unemployed.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: Did you have any other issues in the marriage other
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: than that?
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't. That wasn't the only issue. But she
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: tracked up all the issues we had to what she
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: perceived as my declining faith. Oh, of course. Because, you know,
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: I loved rock music before we met. We met at
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: a Jimi Hendrix concert, and I went many years without
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: listening to rock music. And I love rock music. And
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: so I finally started listening to it again. And she
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: got upset. That was a sign that I was starting
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: to fade away. And, you know, so and I'm not
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: a perfect person. You know, I would go out with
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: Brazilian friends drinking. And that's definitely a no, no.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: And any religion that tries to keep you from Hendricks. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: Can't be. Can't be a real religion.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: My dad said to me when I first became a Christian,
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: you know, he was the epitome of an atheist, you know,
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: and he's. He said, the one thing about religions is
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: they're always trying to beat their own system. They're always
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: trying to find an exception so they don't have to
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: do the unpleasant things that religion tells them they need
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: to do. And I thought, oh, you don't know anything.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: You don't know anything about religion. You've never been in
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: part of a church. But it's not entirely false. People
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: are always trying to make, you know, it's like another
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: expression that comes to mind when you're, If you see
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: somebody who says they're a believer and now they start
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: doing things you don't think they should do, there are
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: two reactions you could have. One is justice and one
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: is mercy. And everybody wants to give justice and get
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: mercy for their beliefs and for their transgressions. And so
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: I was giving myself mercy and my wife was giving
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: me justice. But in the end, I realized I'm not
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: going to be bound by these rules anymore. I'm just
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: going to live my life according to my best lights
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: and according to the best decisions. And I'm not going
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: to let this book tell me anymore. The ironic thing is,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: you know, I graduated number one in my class at
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: a Bible school. So I know the Bible really well.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: And when people try to reconvert me, I've had many
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: Christians try to reconvert me. I said, that's not going
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: to work, you know, because I know the Bible probably
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: better than you do. So you're not going to give
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: me a verse I don't know. I said, I'm not
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: telling you you're wrong. And I'm not even telling you
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: your interpretation is wrong. I'm just saying it doesn't work
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: for me. And I can't pretend that it does.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: Right. It's got to be weird to have your beliefs
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: confronted by a group of people where as you're learning
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: their language, you're realizing that this moral framework and the
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: scaffolding that you've only attributed to Christianity and you think
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: that it's just Christianity and religion that makes people good people.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: And then here's people that don't have any God. Right.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So like, you know, you're in a big storm.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: The Amazon has storms in the rainy season. So somebody's
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: house blows over because their houses, they're hunter gatherers and
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: they're semi nomadic. So they don't build the best houses.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: So it's pouring rain and somebody's house blows over and
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: they're just stuck there in the rain. What is their reaction?
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: They start laughing like it's the funniest thing that ever happened.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: And they will go off into other people's huts and
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: sleep on the ground or get near the fire or
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: they might come to my house, that's very common, and
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: want to sleep with me and then the next day
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: they'll rebuild it. There's nothing except for fear of immediate
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: threat from the outside or from animals that gets them
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: to lose their cool. And when they do lose their cool,
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: it's not really losing their cool. It is calculated defense.
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: They know how to take care of themselves. You know, somebody's,
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: when I mentioned to this guy that they would kill him,
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: they said, I said, they kill for a living. Don't
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: forget that. That's how they make their living. Every man there,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: every boy here could shoot you through the eye at
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: 50 yards with one of those arrows. They're not going
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: to miss. If they decide to kill you or me,
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: we're dead. Um, So they don't because they make a
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: difference between killing out of necessity and killing to murder.
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: But if they think they have to defend their family,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: you're dead.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 2: But their culture doesn't encourage squabbles. Like they just, they're easygoing.
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: They take everything.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: The biggest, if there's a concept of sin among the Pidaha,
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: it is anger. You don't raise your voice in anger.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: You don't hit another Pidaha in anger. You know, I
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: saw a guy get drunk. When they get alcohol, they
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: get drunk. And he took a shotgun that he had
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: gotten from a Brazilian and he shot a dog that
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: belonged to his brother. And his brother runs up to
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: the dog and he's just sobbing because they love their dogs.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: And he's just crying that his dog's dead. And I
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: went up to him and I thought, oh God, there's
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: going to be some violence here. I got to get
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: ready for this. And I said, what are you going
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: to do? He said, what do you mean? I said,
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: are you going to do anything to your brother? He
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: shot your dog. He said, I don't do anything to
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: my brother. He's my brother. He shouldn't have shot my dog,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: but he's drunk and his head's not working. You know,
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: I miss my dog. I love my dog, but I
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: love my brother. I'm not going to hurt my brother.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: So they just don't react that way.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: So do they have punishment for crimes?
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: They have punishment if it threatens the survival of the village.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: So there was one young man, a teenager, and I
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: talk about him in, um, in both my book, don't
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: sleep through our snakes. And in the new one that's
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: coming out next year, born of the river, um, who
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: was paid in alcohol and a new shotgun to kill
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: somebody who was living up the river, who wasn't a Pitaha,
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: living on the same river. And he killed him. And
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: the Pitaha saw this as an existential threat to the
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: whole community because they knew that the police could come up.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: They knew that soldiers could come up. They knew that
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: many Pitaha could be killed if this wasn't handled. So
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: they didn't hurt him, but they kicked him out of
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: the village. He had to live on his own. And
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: he died about two months later. He was dead. It's
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: hard to live on your own in the middle of
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: the jungle with no community and nobody who has anything
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: to do with you. Just shun. Wow. So that's the
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: worst punishment they have. Banishment. Banishment.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: Banishment in the jungle is crazy. Yeah. What did they
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: give him to survive? Was it like you when you
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: were learning? He got nothing. Nothing.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, get out. He could take what he had. but
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: nobody gave him anything else. So he had a bow
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: and arrow, no food, no clothes.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: How did he die?
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: Well, that I don't know, because I just know that
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: when I came, I would ask about him, and then
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: they said, oh, he's dead. So there's two possibilities. He died,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: naturally death, which I think is probably what happened, or
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: somebody killed him.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: And then changed their name. I didn't do it.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. That could have easily happened.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: The change of the name gag is awesome.
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: Everybody up there is violent. You see Brazilians coming up
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: in these boats. Many of them are like pirates. I mean,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: they don't practice piracy now. Some of them do. But
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: you go on a boat with these guys and these
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: are some tough looking guys. They've got scars on their
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: faces and scars on their, these are knife fights. These
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: are guys who, you know, like I got really mad
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: at somebody once and I mentioned to another Brazilian, I said,
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: you know, if he keeps doing that, I'm going to
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: punch him in the face. And he says, If you
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: punch him in the face, he's going to kill you.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: You know, he'll either get a knife or he'll get
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: a gun. So if you decide you're going to hit somebody,
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: you better be armed because they're going to come at
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: you with whatever weapon they can get their hands on.
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 2: You really thought that you were just going to be
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: able to punch him?
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: I was just talking, but I, you know, obviously didn't
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: have a lot of, you know, my dad liked to
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: fight a lot.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: Were you guys drunk at the time when you were
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: doing this?
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, no, I wasn't drunk. This guy was drunk and
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: he was pushing and he was... giving my daughters, who
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: by that time were pretty little blonde teenagers, a hard time.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: And I told him to get away. And he wanted
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: to fight. And I got it calmed down, but I thought,
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: you know, if he keeps trying, I'm going to punch
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: him in the face. And I told this guy that,
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: and he said, you don't do that out here. Unless
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: you're willing to kill him right now, don't do that.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: Because he's not going to fight you fair. He's going
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: to come at you when you're not expecting it, and
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: you're going to die.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: So.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: This is– it's just a different concept. So avoiding violence
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: has lots of reasons to be done.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: I agree with that at all times.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: I think people should constantly avoid violence.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: I completely agree too. And the PETA has shown you that.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: These are people who are much better at violence than
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: most people in this country without guns.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: And they avoid it at all costs.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: And they avoid it at all costs.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Wise.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: Wise. Yeah, very wise.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: What did you think when you were just looking at
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: the framework that they live by that these people don't
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 2: have a God, that they don't have like someone watching over,
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: making sure they're doing the right thing all the time
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 2: or this punishment of being burning forever in hell? None
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: of that is motivating them. No.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: And I also thought that they would be afraid of death.
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: They're not. I thought they would be afraid of the unknown.
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: They're not. They're willing to learn. I sit outside on
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: the riverbank with them and they point out satellites going
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: overhead because they know the sky so well that they say,
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: what's that? And I look and it's like, must be
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: a satellite. I said, it's like a radio thing because
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: they have radio. I mean, they don't have radios, but
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: I have radio. And they said, well, who put that
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: up there? I said, I don't know. I said, Americans,
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: I think. And they said, You know how to do that?
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: I said, no, I don't know how to do that.
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: So they said, some other Americans know how to do that.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I don't know how to do that.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: But they're very conscious of their environment.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: And they're very curious and they want to learn these things.
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: But if I told them that God put it up there,
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't pay attention.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: Now, they have these spirits that we talked about earlier
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: where they believe a thing embodies a spirit. Like it
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: could be like a jaguar embodies a spirit. Yes.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: So they have some spirits. So that's a spirit we
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: haven't talked about yet. So they have the spirit Igagai,
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: which they believe, you know, so they might see a
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: man and then they might see a jaguar. And then
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: they say, it must be the same thing. You know,
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: this man became a jaguar or the jaguar became a man.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: And this is a belief that is, in fact, shapeshifting
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: is not an uncommon belief in the Amazon among even
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: Brazilians that live there. So one time I got up
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: in the morning and everybody was yelling and pointing at
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: the beach on the other side. And I said, what
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: are we looking at? They said, can't you see it?
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: I said, I don't see anything. And they said, that's Igagai.
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: And I didn't see anything. Then later, a few nights later,
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: somebody said, we've seen Igagai. It's dark. It's night. And
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: the guy wakes me up. He says, we've seen Igagai.
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: He's not far behind your house. Would you come with us?
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: Because we know you're not afraid of him. you know,
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: and I fell for that. And so we go out
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: there and then I turn around and they're not by
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: me because Igagai can also refer to the jaguar shape.
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: So there's a jaguar out there and I just won't
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: go walking out there with a machete, you know, and
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: then I realized they're not with me and I go
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: back and they said, did you see it? I said, no,
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: I didn't see anything. But they, if they see a jaguar,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: they believe that it could be a jaguar or it
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: could be Igagai.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 2: But when they were seeing this igagai and you couldn't
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: see anything, they were seeing it. Yes.
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: And I was looking for a human-looking creature. But it's
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: very possible that there was a jaguar just inside the forest.
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: That I didn't see. But they could see it and
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: you couldn't.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because, well, yeah, but if you walk around with
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: them in the jungle, you find that they can see
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of things you can't see. So once I
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: was walking with a guy down a path and he said, oh,
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: don't step on that snake. It's a bushmaster. And I said, what?
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: And I'm looking down. I'm looking at the path. I
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: don't see anything. And I said, what snake? And he
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: takes his bow and he shoots. And the arrow starts
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: flocking around like that. And he pulls it up. And
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: there's a bushmaster at the end. He said, that one.
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: Don't step on that one. And I didn't see it.
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: And I've almost put my hand on snakes. I don't
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: know why I'm still alive. Because it's like I'm a
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: special needs person. They have to watch out for me
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: when I'm in the jungle. Because It takes a lot
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: of skill to be able to see these things. Just
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: like when I take them to the city for like
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: medical work, they get totally lost. They can't they it's
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: hard for them to understand how I can find my
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: way around the city because the cues that I'm using
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: are totally different than the things they're used to.
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 2: So this Igagai, this thing that they said they saw,
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: they could have just been seeing an animal and saying
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 2: it was Igagai and agreeing that it was a spirit.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: And that's not like they're seeing a spirit that you're
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 2: not seeing. Did you ever take that into consideration that
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: they can see things you can't see?
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, that is another possibility. And I definitely took that.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: In fact, for the first several years before I had
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: really investigated the different shape shifting of Igagai, I thought
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: that's all it could mean. They were seeing something. And
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: I couldn't see it. They were all seeing it.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: So you took that into consideration that maybe they have
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: a sense that you don't have? Yes.
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: And it's clear that they have senses in the jungle.
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: They're able to sense things that I cannot.
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 2: Like how?
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: Well, like I say, they've grown up learning. So let's
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: say that you see a branch move in a tree.
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: Was that the wind? Was that a monkey moving? Was
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: that a snake up in the tree? What was it?
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: I barely noticed that the branches make moving. But they
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: know not only that it's moving, but exactly what caused it.
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: I can see bubbles coming out of the water from
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: the river. They're just bubbles to me, but to them,
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: they represent either a rock underneath or an alligator or
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: some other creature that's under the water. And they can
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: tell by the bubbles. But I can't. So they've learned to...
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: interpret their world in a way that I can't.
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 2: So it's not that they don't have senses that you,
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 2: that they have senses that you don't have, but that
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 2: they have pattern recognition.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: That's the way I would put it. But again, you
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: would need to do some sort of psychological testing and
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: much more controlled conditions than I've ever been able to
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: do to sort those things out. But my view now
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: is that they simply have the ability to recognize and,
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: and perceive things that they've grown up with that I
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: miss entirely.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 2: And this spirit thing, does it always embody a creature
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: that they're, that they're, that's common like a Jaguar or
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: does it sometimes take on another form?
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: It can take these, these, um, entities that I've talked about.
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: So there's another one, um, um, I, which has long teeth.
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: And so they see these different creatures. One's naked, talks
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: in a high voice. And so they're putting experiences they
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: can't explain into the shapes of these entities that they
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: can explain. So just like us, we see so many
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: things in the world we don't understand. That's what science
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: is all about. So we create theoretical entities to be
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: able to explain those observations that we otherwise have no
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: explanation for. So in a sense, these separate entities are
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: a primitive form. I shouldn't even use the word primitive.
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: They're a form of science given what they have. They're
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: reducing the unexplained to the explainable.
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 2: And their audit of the jungle is limited to the
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 2: places that they've traveled. Right. So their version of the
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: world is entirely limited to the language they possess. Is
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: it written at all?
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: I developed a writing system for them, yes.
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 2: But before you know. Before you know. So non-written language,
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: verbal language with no historical database to draw from. Right.
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: But they actually get some really good skills out of this.
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: So I took a guy to the nearest town, a
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: big town, Porto Velho. It's the capital of a Brazilian state.
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: because he had cirrhosis of the liver, however he got that.
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: And I took him to the hospital. First, we went
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: to my house that I had in that city on
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: the missionary compound. He had never been out of the
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: jungle before in his life. So we go there and
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: we have lunch and I said, now it's time to
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: go to the hospital. So I take him to the
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: hospital and he says, I don't want to stay here.
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: I said, the doctors say you have to stay here
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: so they can make you feel better. And so then
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: I drive off after I spent a couple of hours
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: with him. And, um, The next morning, about 6 a.m.,
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: there's this knocking on my door. So this is 30
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: miles away. The hospital's 30 miles away. And he's standing
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: there wearing a hospital gown with no underwear or anything on.
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: And I said, how did you find my house? He said, well,
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: I just walked here. I said, but how did you
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: know how to walk here? Well, I saw it yesterday.
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: But all he had to do was get the river
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: where the river is and then mentally compute where we're at.
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: So he... Many experiments have shown that people who don't
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: have right and left, front and back, but use absolute
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: directions like up river, down river, to the jungle, away
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: from the jungle, are better at finding their way in
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: new places than we are. You know, I can tell
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: you turn north, and you might know what I'm talking about.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: For the average person, I say, turn north. If your
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: life depends on it, you don't know which way to turn.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: But they would know. And so that gives them a
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: better sense of a map of where they're at.
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: So do they have a word for north?
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: No, they only use upriver. So the first thing they
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: have to do, the first thing he did when we
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: got him out to town was, where's the river? And
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: I showed him the river. And now he knew where
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: everything was. Because he got the river, hence he's got
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: my house. Now he knows where everything is.
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: 30 miles away.
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, 30 miles away.
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 2: But doesn't the river wind?
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: Yes, but they know how rivers work. And they can
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: tell by the direction which way it's flowing. And when
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: he looks at it, he knows which way is up
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: river and down river based on the way the water
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: is flowing. And he walked out barefoot with nothing but
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: a hospital gown on, 30 kilometers. And so he left
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: at night and he got there first thing in the morning.
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: And I said, well, we have to go back. He said,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: I am not going back. I said, well, the doctor
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: says you'll die if you don't go back. He says, well,
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: I'm going to die then because I'm not going back.
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: He said, I would rather go back and die with
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: my people. And so I took him back. And a
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: few days later, he was dead.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 2: Was he a drinker?
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: He had been, yeah. There was a time before I
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: helped the Indian agency demarcate their reservation so it could
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: be controlled that boats came up and down all the
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: time when the Brazil nuts were falling and when there
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: were other jungle products like latex and sorva, which is
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: a product used to make chewing gum and all sorts
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: of other things, and copaiba, which is used for suntan lotion.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: So the Brazilian boats would come up. and trade for
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: all these things. And they always traded with whiskey because
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: that's the, I mean, sugar cane rum, cachaca, which is
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: the cheapest thing. You know, it's 30 cents a bottle.
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: It was a lot easier to give them that and
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: the pitahal like it. You know, I told him one time,
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: I said, this stuff's really cheap. It doesn't cost, he said,
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: not for us it isn't. We don't otherwise get it
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: and we like it. So, you know, they like to drink.
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: Did they understand the concept of health, of the consequences
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: of drinking alcohol?
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: No, because if you're a hunter-gatherer, and you're not used
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: to having something in constant supply, you don't have to
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: worry about it. But once it comes in constant supply,
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: then you do have to worry about it. And when
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: these guys keep coming up, giving, leaving this stuff off,
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: then it becomes a serious health problem. Whereas before it
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: was like, I got drunk six months ago. Right. You know,
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: it's not a big deal. Right.
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 2: So once it became commonplace. Yeah. And do they adjust
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 2: their behavior based on people dying of like liver sclerosis?
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: Not that I've ever seen. They, they don't, I can
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: tell them until I'm blue in the face that it's
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: the alcohol that's doing this or the tobacco that's doing this.
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: Why would they believe me? They know a lot of
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: guys who have drunk a lot of whiskey and they
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: don't have it. So these couple of guys got it.
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: How do I know that's what caused it? So they
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: don't take their word on faith.
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 2: It's very childlike.
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: It is childlike in the sense that children learn by evidence.
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: And if children don't have evidence for something, And it
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: takes a while for the evidence to start to sink in.
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: You've got to repeat the experiment.
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 2: Right. But you would imagine that if they're intelligent people,
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: you could explain this consumption of alcohol when done infrequently,
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 2: it's okay. But the everyday consumption of alcohol, because you
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 2: have an endless supply of it now, is becoming a
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: real problem.
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: That's a very good point. And I have brought that
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: up with them before. And they say, yeah, we know
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of Brazilians that drink and they don't get
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: that sickness.
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: They come right up. It's like I could tell you
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: that the COVID vaccine is really good for you, and
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: you can say, well, I know a lot of people
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: didn't get it, and they didn't get COVID either. They
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: weren't vaccinated. They didn't get COVID. So you have to
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: look at the statistics, and even there, it's hard.
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 2: They just don't seem very concerned with dying anyway.
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: They're not. They don't want to die right now, but
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: it happens, and they're not worried about it.
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 2: What do they think— do they have a purpose for life?
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: Do they have a thing they worship at all?
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: No, they don't worship anything. The community is everything. You
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: make a contribution to the community while you're alive. And
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: that's your purpose.
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: That's it. And it doesn't take any thought. You don't
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: need somebody to give a lesson. This is what our
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: purpose is, folks. You just see everybody living. And that's
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: how you live.
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 2: Isn't it odd that that's not the primary way people live,
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: if that makes you so happy? It's interesting because even me,
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: I'm hearing this. I'm like, God, it's so appealing. But
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 2: part of me is like, I'm not fucking living like that.
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 2: You know, nobody wants to live like that. It just
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 2: seems too crazy, too difficult, too daunting. I don't want to.
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 2: get bit by a snake and have my bones exposed?
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: Well, I often think this when I talk to people
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: who are extreme ecologists who think we need to not
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: affect the environment. And I'm thinking, yeah, well, go live
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: with the pitaha. You know, you're not going to last
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: three days there with them. Maybe a few days more,
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: but not much. So it is very appealing. And I
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: live there and enjoyed it. But while I was living there,
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: I had things they didn't have access to. So I
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: I can't fairly say that I live just like them.
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: And you could always leave.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: And I can always leave, yeah. I mean, I can
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: get in my motorboat and take off. Or, in the
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: worst case, I can get on my two-way radio or
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: satellite phone and call for help.
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 2: Did you ever think about just saying, fuck it, stay
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 2: there forever? Yeah.
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: In the early years, I did think about it. I
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: thought about not pursuing any kind of graduate degree, not
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: worrying about ever coming back to the U.S. And I
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: was really loving it there. But then I realized... My
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: kids wanted a wider experience, and I didn't have the
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: right to deprive them of that.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 2: So you think if you were single, you would have
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 2: just integrated?
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: It's very possible, yeah. I mean, that would have been
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: easy to do, although I would have had to become
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: much better at outdoor skills than I ever was. I mean,
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: I would not stand up to a pitaha's standards of
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: hunting and fishing, and no woman would have married me
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: because they would have starved to death.
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 2: Did you ever get better at those things?
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: Not really. No? For one thing, I like to hunt.
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: I started hunting when I was like 10 years old,
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: pheasant hunting, dove hunting. And so I do enjoy that,
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: but I've never given it the time to become really
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: good at it. Now, if I were abandoned in the jungle,
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: I probably would, but it would take me a long time.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: These guys are using bows and arrows from the time
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: they're two years old. So by the time they get
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: to be teenagers, they're perfect. They are absolutely unmatchless in
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: their skill. And I've done little archery contests before to
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: see how good they are, and it's just astounding. So
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: I would have to spend many years practicing to get
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: as good as they are. And then in the meantime,
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: I would starve to death because they're not going to
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: feed me.
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 2: How are they making their bows?
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: There's a couple of different kinds of wood that they use,
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: but there's one that is— It's a bright redwood, and
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: it's called piranha food, piranha food, because it grows near
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: the edge of the river, and it drops flowers off
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: the tree into the river, and the piranhas love to
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: eat those flowers. So if you see a lot of
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: those flowers in the water, probably not good to swim there.
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: But they take a section of the bark, a big section.
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: It might be like four inches by four inches or
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: six inches. And it's just a hard piece, maybe eight
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: feet long. And they bring that back, and they have
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: a special tool. And it could be wood or bone,
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: or if they have a machete, they use that. And
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: they just start shaping it until finally they get a
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: bow that's probably two inches wide and an inch and
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: a half thick. And it's taller than they are. It's
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: about seven feet long.
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 2: And.
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: Then they get the bark from a tree, a certain
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: kind of tree, and they give that and they get
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: it off in strands. And so a man, a brother
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: or a father or a husband will give it to
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: their closest woman relative. And she takes those strands and
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: she makes a bowstring. So the bow represents man and
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: woman working together. A man can make the wood. A
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: woman makes the string and they get the arrows. A
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: man gets the feathers. A man gets the shaft. The
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: woman makes the strings that tie everything on. So she's
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: the glue. And once you get that, that thing... Yeah,
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: there's one right there. This guy. That's a pretty.
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 2: And those are the arrows? Really long arrows? Yeah, yeah.
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: Those are the arrows. And these are fishing arrows, so
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: they're much longer. But actually, they're not both fishing arrows.
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: One of them is just a regular arrow. So their
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: arrows are quite long. And that thing is a very
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: powerful bow. And you can see the thickness of the
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: string there.
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: So....
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's the bow.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 2: They eat a lot of monkeys?
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they eat a lot of monkeys.
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: Isn't that weird?
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: No, I asked them once. I said, do monkeys look
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: like people? And they say, no, why would you ask that?
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: I said, they look like people to me. And he said, no, no,
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: they're covered in hair. You're not covered in hair. So
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: I went to the Trans-Amazon Road. I was traveling out
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: all by myself, hitchhiking, and I stayed with this Brazilian. Um,
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: and I said, do you have any cold water? He said,
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: and he had a kerosene, um, refrigerator. And so I
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: went over and I opened it to get his cold water.
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: And at the bottom, it looked like there were like
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: four dead babies. And I'm thinking, Oh my God, what
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: is that? I said, what is this? He said, Oh,
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: it's just some monkeys. I skinned him, you know, and
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: a monkey that's been skinned does look a lot more human. Um, and, uh,
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: but nobody thinks twice about it, you know? Um, I said,
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: are the monkeys more like us or are they more
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: like dogs? Oh, they're like dogs. They're much more like
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: dogs than they are like us. They just don't see
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: the problem.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 2: It's just food.
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just food. And so, you know, and they love,
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: their favorite part of any animal is the brains. And
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: one reason the brains are so good is because brains
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: have a lot of saturated fat. And it's a great
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: source of saturated fat. They eat monkey brains? Yeah, they
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: eat monkey brains. So, The favorite thing, I was talking
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: to a woman one time and I was making a sandwich.
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: I had brought in some lunch meat and bread. I
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: had just gotten there. It was my first day there.
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: And so I had a little bit enough to make
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: a sandwich for that night. And I'm squirting mustard. And
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: you know, when you get to the end of the
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: mustard bottle and you're squeezing, it makes a sound like
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: somebody who's got diarrhea. And she says, what is that
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: bird shit stuff you're eating? And I said, Well, it's good.
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: It's mustard. Do you want to try some? Oh, no.
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: And she said, look at this bird shit. He's eating
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: bird shit. And then I look at her, and she's
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: eating the brains out of a rat. And he's got
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: this rat head, and she's sucking the brains out. And
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: they're cooked, of course. But she's sucking the brains. And
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, this is a great example for an introductory
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: class in anthropology, you know, how different we perceive things.
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: That's great to her. This is great to me. But
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: it grosses the other one out.
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 2: That's wild. Mustard's disgusting. Rat brain's great. Yeah. And isn't
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 2: there an issue with eating primate brain tissue? Can you
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 2: get prion diseases?
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: Well, there are diseases that they discovered in New Guinea
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: from cannibals who were eating human brains.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: But I'm not aware of any diseases that are passed
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: by eating monkey brains or other kinds of brains. They'll
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: eat any animal's brains.
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 2: So the prion diseases that you get are from animals
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 2: eating the same animal, right? Like mad cow disease is
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 2: because they serve cows' literal brain and neural tissue from
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 2: other cows. Right.
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: So I'm not an expert on that, but I do
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: know that I've never seen a case of them getting
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: disease from that. And the superficial reading that I've done
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: on it suggests that humans get it from eating human brains.
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 2: Interesting. So they can eat deer brains, rat brains, no problem. Right.
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: So- The favorite part of any animal is the head.
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: So if they bring me a fish, they'll give me
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: a fish.
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 2: They like to.
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: Trade fish for canned meat because canned meat keeps. But
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 1: I like fish cheeks, but my wife hated the fish heads.
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: She didn't want the fish heads around. So they would
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: be happy to keep the fish heads, and they just
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: make a big stew of fish heads, and they eat
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: the brains and the eyeballs and everything. Those are really
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: tasty bits.
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 2: And probably rich in nutrients.
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they are rich in nutrients. They know what they're doing.
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: They love all the internal organs.
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so weird how we've moved away from all
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 2: that stuff.
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's one of the things that happens with wolves.
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 2: The alpha in the pack is the one that eats
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 2: the liver. Right. They know something's going on. There's a
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 2: lot of nutrients in these organ meats, and we've moved
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 2: away from that in a very strange way.
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 2: People are disgusted by the idea of liver.
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, you know, you go to some— if you go
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 1: to northern Brazil and you go to one of these churrascarias,
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: Brazilian steak restaurants— Love those. If you're in an everyday person's,
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: you're going to get a lot of heart and you're
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: going to get a liver, kidney, kidney, you're going to
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: get all that stuff. You know, so that is stuff they,
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: they love to eat.
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 2: Sure. Well, a lot of cultures, Mexicans, Menudo, Menudo, it's
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 2: got tripe in it and organ meat.
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: Right. And, you know, my, my brother-in-law deceased now, but
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: he was Mexican and That's the first thing he insisted
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: that my sister learn how to make in terms of
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: true Mexican food was menudo. And he wanted that every Saturday,
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: and she loved to make it for him. So then
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: she made this pozole with cow feet in it. Whoa. And,
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: you know, got the hooves and everything in the pozole,
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: but cooks all day.
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 2: I remember when I was a kid, pickled pig's feet
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 2: was a big thing.
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so internal organs are really good.
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: You know that a Brazilian churrascaria is authentic if they
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: serve chicken hearts.
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: You know? And so if I go to one and
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: they don't have chicken hearts, I'm quite disappointed.
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 2: It's westernized.
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 2: They're still great, but, yeah, I know what you mean.
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I went to one when I was in Brazil.
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 2: It was awesome.
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. It's Brazilian fast food.
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is fast, and it's amazing food, too.
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 2: It's like they know how to eat. If you're in
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 2: a rush, a chujasqueria is the best place to eat.
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 2: Because you sit down, you flip that cart over to green,
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 2: the food keeps coming. Twenty minutes later, you're stuffed. Exactly.
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Exactly. And you ate much more nutrition than having
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: a McDonald's Big Mac or something like that. Sure.
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 2: And it's all you can eat. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome.
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: I used to come out of the village and go
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: straight to one of those. I've been out of the
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: village for six months and I was really hungry and
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: I was coming out on my motorcycle. And the first
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 1: one I saw, I pulled over and that's and I
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: ate till I could barely move.
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 2: Did you eat monkey when you were in the jungle? Yeah.
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I didn't eat the brains, but they didn't offer
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: them either because that's the best part. So they would.
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 2: Would you have if they offered you some?
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would have. I would have. I've tried a
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff there. And when I was doing my
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: field experience in southern Mexico in Chiapas, I spent some
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: time with the Celtales, the Celta people, descendants of the Mayas. And,
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I ate this stuff they chew up and
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: spit out and let ferment.
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, I've heard of that. That's a beverage. Is that
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 2: like an alcoholic beverage? Yeah.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: And so I was trying to fit in. And so
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: they gave me just a little bit. And they said,
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: what'd you think? And I, I'm trying to be this
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 1: cool guy. And I said, I loved it. I hated it,
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: but I said, I loved it. And so they bring
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 1: me a big bowl. And so then that night I
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: was up, uh, with, um, things coming out of both
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: ends all night long. And the next morning, my blood
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: pressure was 60 over 40 and I had to be, uh,
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: flown out. They had to get me on a mule
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: and get me out to the nearest airstrip and out. And, uh,
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: But I did my bit. I was accepted as a
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 1: great gringo for eating this stuff, you know, for drinking it.
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 2: What happened to you?
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: Well, whatever it was, my body didn't like it.
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 2: So is it just like the bacteria in it, you think?
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: Probably. I think it had to be that because it
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: didn't gross me out. I didn't like the taste of it,
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't grossing me out. And it was a
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: happy time. We had little ribbons and stuff. We were
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: having a festa and I was sitting with the men
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 1: at the table.
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 2: And And their gut bacteria just knows how to handle it.
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 1: There you go. There you go.
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 2: It says that the human saliva creates the fermentation.
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 2: Come on, people. Isn't there a better way to get drunk?
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 2: Good Lord.
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: If you want to get drunk and you want it
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: bad enough, there it is.
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 2: And I bet that stuff you're not going to drink
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 2: every day because it's so disgusting. It's not going to
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 2: become a problem.
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 1: Once it's fermented, Nobody really cares, you know, who's around
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: that culture.
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 2: Boy.
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: You know, but.
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 2: What does a monkey taste like?
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: Well, there again, I don't have a vocabulary to describe
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 1: all these meats. It's a tough meat, but I pressure it.
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: I put the.
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 2: A crock pot?
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I put it in a pressure cooker over a fire.
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 1: I take in a pressure cooker, you know, not an
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: electric pressure cooker, obviously. One of these pressure cookers you
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 1: can set on top of the fire. And after I
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 1: pressure it, it's falling off the bone, and I take
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: the meat off. And I throw it in a bowl
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: and I put some manioc meal on top of that.
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: And then I cover it in Tabasco. And it's great.
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: It's very filling and it tastes really good.
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 2: Wow. Did you feel weird eating a monkey?
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: When you see the monkey and you put the little
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: monkey body inside the pressure cooker, and it looks like
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: a baby, it doesn't look too good. But once you
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: open up the pressure cooker and it's all cooked and
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: the bones are separated from the meat and then it's
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: just meat floating in there, you know. And when you're
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: out in the jungle and you've been out there long enough,
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 1: just about any kind of meat sounds pretty good. I
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 1: worked with a group called the Wadi. I actually wrote
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: a 540-page grammar of their language, co-wrote it. And they
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: were cannibals up until 1962.
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 2: Yo.
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: And They had two, they had Indo-cannibalism and Exo-cannibalism. Exo-cannibalism
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: was eating their enemies and Indo-cannibalism was eating their people.
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: And so if you die in the village at that time,
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: up until 1962, they keep your body, they call all
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: the relatives, your body might sit there in the Amazon
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: sun for three days and your relatives come from all
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: over and then they cook you over a grill. And
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: slowly they roast the body, and then they cut it
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: into chunks, and they eat them with like little toothpicks.
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 1: And they eat it until everything's gone. They eat the bones.
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: They eat the brains. They eat everything.
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 2: They eat human brains. Yeah.
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: And the purpose, as best I've been able to figure out,
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: anthropologists have tried to answer this, so my answer might
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: not be theirs, but it's based on interviews with the people,
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: is to give your relatives eternal life. because they live
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 1: in you and you're going to live in somebody else.
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: So you just continue living. But exo cannibalism, I kill
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: a guy in warfare. I'm going to eat him like
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: an animal. I just chop him up and grill him
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: and eat it and throw the bones off into the forest.
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: So that's totally different.
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 2: Some native Americans practice that. Yeah. Um, It's been said.
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 2: Eating the brain, though, wouldn't that, what is that disease?
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 2: What is this called? Jakob Kreuzfeld? Is that what it's called?
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, something like that. I should know that.
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 2: But it's mad cow disease, essentially.
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: It's like that, yeah. So, but they don't eat people
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: all the time. They eat dead relatives. And if anybody's
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: ever gotten that disease, it's never been registered. That's crazy.
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 2: But, I mean, even if you're eating dead relatives, you
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 2: eat a dead relative, I would imagine you can get
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 2: prion disease.
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but. It depends on how many die. There's a
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: whole etiquette about it. You're never allowed to say that
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: this tastes really good. For example, you can't say that.
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 2: You can't say delicious.
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't say that.
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 2: Uncle Tom is yummy.
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: And I've talked to some of the older men who
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: have eaten their dead, and they say, well, the babies
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: taste really good, but you can't say that.
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 2: The babies taste really good. It's rough.
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: It's like human veal.
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 2: But.
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: The Brazilian government and missionaries put a stop to that
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: in 62.
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 2: Good move. Why do they let it sit for three
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 2: days before.
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 1: They cut it? Because it takes that long for the
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: relatives to come. Because they might be in other villages.
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: So they've got to send runners out to bring the
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 1: whole family together.
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 2: Doesn't the meat start rotting? Yeah.
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: It starts to smell pretty bad. And there are a
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 1: lot of stories about people puking after every bite.
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 2: Oh. And these are people that can drink that puke beer.
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. Yeah.
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 2: So.
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: You realize cultural differences aren't that superficial.
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 2: What's also probably meat is probably extremely valuable to them.
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 2: And they just probably think, look, there's no reason for
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 2: this to go to waste when it could sustain us.
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 1: It would be very interesting to go back in time
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 1: and see how the customs started. They could have started
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: out of hunger, and then you dress it up with
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 1: some religious beliefs. Or the religious beliefs could have come first,
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 1: and you started doing it. But they do have oral
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: histories about it. But the oral histories never say we
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: were short of meat, so we ate Joe. We ate
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: our buddy. But they do say we want to help
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: them live in us, and we will live in somebody else.
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: So that's the explanation you get.
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: Or that I got.
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 2: Wow. Well, when you got there a few years after,
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 2: it was.
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't start working with them until 1985.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: So it was 20-something years after.
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 2: But they still had stories about.
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. They still had a lot of stories about it. And,
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 1: you know, anybody over 30 had had done it.
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 2: Is there any kind of cannibalism that goes on in
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 2: the Amazon still?
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: Probably, but none that I know of. But there are
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: still some uncontacted tribes and there are still tribes that
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: behave one way when foreigners around and another way when
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: they're not. I have a friend. She died last year,
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 1: but she was a missionary among those people from the 50s.
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: So she remembers the cannibalism. And she told me, although
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: some anthropologists deny this, but I think she knows them
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: better than any anthropologist who's ever been there, that she said,
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 1: I think when nobody's around, they still do that.
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I bet they do too.
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: They don't have warfare.
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 2: They listen to someone else. They don't have warfare.
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: Not anymore. They did. But that's been stopped. And they're
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 1: isolated from other groups that they used to be enemies with.
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: But there are still some who believe the old-time religion.
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: And the old-time religion says, eat your dead. So it's
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: quite possible that it happens. But what you find is
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 1: that since the 80s, most of the groups that have
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: regular contact with the outside have undergone a very rapid
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 1: process of enculturation into Brazilian society.
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 2: So....
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: Even among the Pita Hasnauth in the decades since I
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: was there regularly, I see pictures of them because my
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 1: ex-wife still lives right next to them. And she sends
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: me short videos and pictures of them when they come
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: up to her little wooden shack on the Trans-Amazon Highway
• 2:17:51
  Speaker 1: by their river. And they're dressing very differently now. And
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: some of them are speaking some Portuguese. Not very well,
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 1: but they're speaking some Portuguese.
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 2: And your ex-wife is still a missionary?
• 2:18:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she's still trying to convert them. No conversions.
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: They're not going to convert.
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 2: Boy, you got to give it up to her for having, like, stick-to-itiveness.
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's really determined.
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: She is absolutely a New Testament first century Christian in
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: terms of her faith. Wow. And she doesn't deviate, and
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: she's not afraid of anything. I mean, we've been in
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 1: many life-threatening situations, and I don't tend to get afraid,
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: and she definitely is not afraid, not ever.
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 2: So is that because of her belief that she believes
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 2: that God is looking out for her and if she dies,
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 2: she's going to go to heaven anyway?
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The constant, a common refrain among Christian missionaries is,
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 1: I'm immortal until my task is done. God will protect
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: me until he's done with me. And so if he's
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: not done with me, I don't have to worry about it.
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: And if he is, great. Wow.
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of power in that too. I mean,
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 2: how many people just live in this constant state of
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 2: existential angst? Yeah.
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 1: That's something she's never had. Wow. She doesn't have that.
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of value to that.
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: It's what attracted me to her so much, besides the
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 1: fact that she was really cute. That attracted me to
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 1: her a lot when we first met.
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 2: Were you bummed out when she wanted a divorce because
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 2: you lost your faith?
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 1: Well, by that time, we weren't getting along that well
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: because she's very anti... She's not anti-science per se, but
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: she's anti-helicopter science. She feels that too many people who do...
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: studies of indigenous groups and languages, come in for a
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 1: short time, go out and just speak a lot of
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: bullshit that nobody's ever going to test. And so she
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: hates that. And she's seen it happen with the Piraha.
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: I've seen it happen with the Piraha. I've seen a
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: couple of anthropologists and linguists go in and do doctoral
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: dissertations on them that are like totally ridiculous. But if
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 1: I say something, I'm a gringo. And I'm jealous because
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: it disagrees with me.
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 2: Do you think that they do that because no one's
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 2: going to check and so they just say, I want
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 2: to just write whatever I want to write?
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 1: That does happen. That definitely happens. It's also because people
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 1: realize it sounds really good to go study an indigenous
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: culture or an indigenous language. When you get there and
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: you find out this is so damn hard, I have
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 1: no words to put in how hard this is.
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 2: So they bullshit. Yeah.
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 1: Because, you know, you want to say to a Piraha,
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: what is this? And so how do you ask that? Well,
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: the phrase in Pirahas, he go, ok, I say, but
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 1: where do you get that phrase? You can't ask somebody
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: how to ask, what is this?
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 1: If you don't know the language. So you have to
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 1: watch them very carefully. And somebody might get something new.
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: Or you might even give them something new that they've
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: never seen, hoping somebody's going to ask them, what is this?
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: So you can write it down and then test it.
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 1: And that's how I got it.
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 2: And so now you're fluent in Pirahas. Yes. So you
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 2: can go and have a conversation with them so you
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 2: can explore some of these more nuanced subjects and do
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 2: it in their language.
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 2: So you can kind of translate things in a way
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 2: that they're going to understand what you're saying. Yes.
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: And that's what takes the most practice. So when I
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: first translated the Gospel of Mark into Pitaha, I thought
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 1: I had done a marvelous job. And I would read
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 1: bits out to the Pitaha and they could explain it
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 1: to me and it seemed like they were understanding it.
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: But I used... a grammar that was largely based on English.
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: So when I read to them large sections, they were
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: totally lost. They couldn't understand it at all. And what
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: does that mean? It means I got it wrong. It
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: means that I haven't figured out the language as well
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 1: as I thought I did. And that's very humbling when
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: you've spent so many years trying to do it. So
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: I had to start from the ground up again. And
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 1: these are all, you know, before you can learn a language,
• 2:21:48
  Speaker 1: you have to murder it. And before you can carry
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 1: on a conversation, you just feel like an idiot for years.
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: And for one thing, people who go in to do
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 1: a PhD dissertation on a language like this are going
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 1: to take one to two years of their life, and
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: that's it. And that's not enough time. It takes a
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 1: year to get fluent in the language. And I know
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 1: many people who've written about many different Amazonian languages who
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 1: can't speak a word of the language or speak very
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: little of it. They'll tell people they speak it, but
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 1: you go with them and you realize they don't speak
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 1: it that well. So if you don't speak it that well,
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: how can you ask them to distinguish subtle meaning differences?
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: You can't. And that means that a lot of, you know,
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 1: this kind of field work, which is so vital, is
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: not as reliable as we would like to think it is.
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 2: That's unfortunate. Yeah. Especially if a young student is coming
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 2: along and they're interested in pursuing it further and they're
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 2: starting off with some faulty assumptions.
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: Yes, and the other problem is people learn a theory
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: in graduate school, and they take it as their job
• 2:22:59
  Speaker 1: of their dissertation, and this isn't limited to just linguistics
• 2:23:02
  Speaker 1: and anthropology, but they take it as the job of
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 1: their dissertation to support that theory. So, you know, it's
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: like Paul Simon says, a man sees what he wants
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: to hear and disregards the rest. When you're trying to
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 1: do theoretical research, field research, shouldn't be that theoretically motivated.
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: It should be basically descriptive. And then you can do
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: the theory later. But most people bring the theory into it.
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: And you can't totally divorce those two. But you see
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: a fact. So for example, I've worked with Pinaha and
• 2:23:36
  Speaker 1: I'm asking for a certain kind of data. And they
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: don't give me what I wanted. And I thought, this
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 1: guy's not giving me what I want. What's wrong with him?
• 2:23:45
  Speaker 1: What am I saying wrong? Is he stupid? And then
• 2:23:49
  Speaker 1: As I learned to speak the language better, I realized, oh,
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: he's giving me exactly what I needed, and I was
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: too stupid to know it. And so that's hard. You're
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: the one working for the PhD. He's just a hunter-gatherer,
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 1: and it turns out he's at least as smart as
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 1: you are, and often he's able to know what you
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: need better than you do. And that's another part of
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 1: the humbling experience of doing field research. Wow.
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 2: The amount of commitment that's involved in going as deep
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 2: as you went with this is really crazy.
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I give demonstrations, and you can find some on
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 1: the internet, where I take a language that I know
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: nothing about, and I switch to Pinaha, which I know
• 2:24:26
  Speaker 1: they know nothing about, and within 20 or 30 minutes,
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: I'm able to explain to the audience some basic facts
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 1: about how their grammar works and what their basic vocabulary,
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot of basic vocabulary, and I do
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 1: this to linguists. I've done it in front of as
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: many as 500 linguists at a time, and then I
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 1: tell them that a lot of people think this is magic,
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: this is really cool. I said, What you're seeing here
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 1: is me working for about an hour. Now, you just
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 1: do that every day for two years, and you're in.
• 2:24:56
  Speaker 1: And that's the part. It's intensive. I get a headache
• 2:25:00
  Speaker 1: when I do these demonstrations because my concentration is so hard.
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 1: And you miss obvious things, and you say bad things,
• 2:25:09
  Speaker 1: and you're just self-correcting all the time. You're just constantly,
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: you start off this wide, and you're trying to get
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: this narrow get down to this point of what it
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 1: actually means. And as you work through that, there are
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: no shortcuts. There's no shortcut to doing that. And you
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: need to be well-trained and you need to be very
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 1: committed and you need to have a little bit of
• 2:25:29
  Speaker 1: talent and work really hard. And when people see how
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 1: easy it looks and then they try it, they realize
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 1: they're seeing me at 20 years down the road from
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: when I started. But yeah, There are methods to use
• 2:25:46
  Speaker 1: to learn a language where there's no language in common.
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 2: But it's got to be very difficult to achieve a
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 2: fluent understanding of their language. And the way you did
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 2: it from the ground, literally from starting from what is this?
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 2: How do you say that? And then remembering it, piecing
• 2:26:05
  Speaker 2: it together. And then you have to write it down.
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 2: Then you're writing it down. Right. Oh, my goodness. And
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 2: imagine if a guy like you didn't do that. Like
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 2: how many people are willing to do that? Especially how
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 2: many people that are, you know, you're a linguist. You
• 2:26:20
  Speaker 2: want to be a working intellectual. You don't necessarily want
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 2: to get malaria. You don't want to get eaten by
• 2:26:27
  Speaker 2: a jaguar. You don't want to live in the jungle.
• 2:26:31
  Speaker 1: So there are people who would like to spend that
• 2:26:32
  Speaker 1: much time, but they don't have the funding. So, you know,
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 1: the National Science Foundation and the Brazilian National Science Foundation
• 2:26:42
  Speaker 1: and the British equivalent of the National Science Foundation have
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 1: all funded my research over the years. But the bulk
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 1: of my research was funded by being a missionary. And
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 1: so I had all these years because churches were supporting me.
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: But today.
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 2: But did they ever ask, how come you haven't converted
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 2: anybody yet?
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 1: Well, they ask me that all the time. I've had people...
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: I showed slides of the Pidaha to a church here
• 2:27:05
  Speaker 1: in Texas, in Dallas. And the people started getting up
• 2:27:10
  Speaker 1: and leaving. And I thought they were interested. They gave
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 1: me money to work in these people. And I said,
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: what's the problem? And they said, you're no good at all.
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 1: And I said, well, what are you seeing that you
• 2:27:20
  Speaker 1: don't like? They said, these people are naked. And if
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 1: you're a Christian missionary, why haven't you taught them to
• 2:27:25
  Speaker 1: wear clothes? And I said... Well, they don't want to
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 1: wear clothes. I said, what in the Bible says you
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: have to wear clothes? They said, Adam saw Eve's nakedness
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 1: and they were ashamed of each other. You must wear clothes.
• 2:27:39
  Speaker 1: You're not even teaching. them the basics of Christianity. And
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 1: I thought, you know, I guess I'm not. You know,
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize that's not part of the basics of
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 1: Christianity for me. But.
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 1: You know, how do you tell a guy who wears
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: a loincloth that it's three inches too short? You know,
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: something's peeking out there. So it's not, they don't wear
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 1: it for modesty, you know. They wear it to keep
• 2:28:03
  Speaker 1: from sticks getting poked in your penis. And so modesty
• 2:28:08
  Speaker 1: has nothing to do with it. Why would you, you know,
• 2:28:11
  Speaker 1: to the average pita ha, a woman's breast is about
• 2:28:13
  Speaker 1: as erotic as an elbow. You know, you see a woman,
• 2:28:17
  Speaker 1: she's nursing her baby. And then the baby stops nursing
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: and she's still talking to you and her tits hanging out.
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't mean anything to her. And after a while,
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 1: it doesn't mean anything to you either. You know, what's
• 2:28:27
  Speaker 1: the big deal? And so to get across the idea
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 1: that it may be clothes that's causing this problem instead
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 1: of going naked, which then eliminates the problem of lust.
• 2:28:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a hard concept for some churches, but
• 2:28:42
  Speaker 1: churches tend to get very impatient. But then the National
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 1: Science Foundation, for example, if I say I'm going to
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 1: go study language X today, and I need funding for
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 1: five years. Oh, no, we fund those, and that's a
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 1: year's funding. Yeah, but nobody who goes out for a
• 2:28:55
  Speaker 1: year really learns it that well. I need to learn
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 1: it a lot better. Oh, yeah, we'll go somewhere else.
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: We're not giving you the money for that.
• 2:29:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's ridiculous. Are there really a lot of people
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 2: that are willing to do that kind of extensive work?
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say a lot.
• 2:29:08
  Speaker 2: But enough to do it?
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: Well, there's 8,000 languages, and there's maybe 2,000. 3,000, let's
• 2:29:17
  Speaker 1: say 5,000 linguists in the whole world, and only a
• 2:29:21
  Speaker 1: small percentage of them want to do this kind of work.
• 2:29:23
  Speaker 1: The rest of them, most of them want to do
• 2:29:25
  Speaker 1: Chomsky's kind of work, where you sit at your desk
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 1: and you say, language has this property, and it must
• 2:29:30
  Speaker 1: also have this property. And so the rubber's never meeting
• 2:29:34
  Speaker 1: the road. I mean, if you can do your field
• 2:29:37
  Speaker 1: research on database, I shouldn't say that because that's what
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 1: my son does. He's also a linguist, and he grew
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 1: up in an Indian tribe And, you know, the Pitaha.
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 1: And he also did a dissertation on another tribe that
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 1: he learned to speak the language. But nowadays, he goes
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 1: through databases and comes up with statistical generalizations. And it's
• 2:29:54
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting. But he'll tell me flat out, he said, yeah,
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: I don't want to do that fieldwork anymore. That's really demanding,
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: even though he grew up there. So and that's the
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 1: way most people are.
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 2: How many more cultures that have completely different languages and
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 2: completely different sets of rules and structure? are out there
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 2: that we're not aware of?
• 2:30:17
  Speaker 1: Well, when I was, back in the 80s, they used
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 1: to say there's about 5,000 languages. So 20 years later,
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 1: 21 years later, we're saying, or 31 years later, we're
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 1: saying there are 8,000. Languages die out at the rate
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 1: of about one every two weeks. So they're dying. And
• 2:30:38
  Speaker 1: once they die, we can never recover that information. But
• 2:30:41
  Speaker 1: also languages are being born. on a regular basis because
• 2:30:45
  Speaker 1: you talk like who you talk with. So why are
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 1: Portuguese and Spanish separate languages? Because you've got the Eber
• 2:30:53
  Speaker 1: River and you've got natural divides in that part of
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 1: the Iberian Peninsula. And so they stop talking to each
• 2:30:59
  Speaker 1: other and so their speech diverges. That's how Latin became
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 1: French and Romanian and Germanic became English. So they stop
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 1: talking to each other. So as soon as people stop talking,
• 2:31:11
  Speaker 1: their language evolves. And they have different languages. So British
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 1: English and American English have evolved apart. And yet at
• 2:31:19
  Speaker 1: the same time, we have television and movies and things
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 1: that keeps them sort of together. But if you don't
• 2:31:25
  Speaker 1: have media and you don't have that, then eventually they're
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: not talking with each other at all and they become
• 2:31:33
  Speaker 1: different languages. And that's where most languages come from.
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 2: Wow. And there's got to be a lot of these
• 2:31:40
  Speaker 2: tribes that aren't talking to each other. And how many
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 2: of these tribes have been investigated, and how many people
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 2: have been embedded? Are there tribes out there where no
• 2:31:49
  Speaker 2: one has ever examined a language, no one's ever embedded
• 2:31:52
  Speaker 2: themselves in their culture?
• 2:31:55
  Speaker 1: There probably are over 1,000 where no one's gone there,
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: but there are a couple of thousand where no scientist
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 1: has gone there to study their language or their culture.
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 2: A couple thousand.
• 2:32:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a couple thousand, I would say, if not more.
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 2: And they probably have completely different languages.
• 2:32:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we're worried, and we should be, about
• 2:32:15
  Speaker 1: the disappearance of certain bird species and all these other
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 1: kinds of species. And we should be concerned about that.
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 1: But we're not concerned enough about the disappearance of these
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 1: languages and how the new languages are arising. And why
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 1: should we be concerned? Well, for one thing, every language
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: is like a library. It's a repository of information that
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: is lost when they switch to Portuguese. Because Portuguese doesn't
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 1: have all the same knowledge embedded in it. It doesn't
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: have the same way of talking about the world. There's
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 1: a lot that's missing. Every pitahã, every child, every woman,
• 2:32:50
  Speaker 1: every man knows the name of every species of plant
• 2:32:54
  Speaker 1: and animal in their environment. They will never just say tree.
• 2:32:58
  Speaker 1: Like I walked with the pitahã into the jungle and
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: they said, this is what we call this. And so
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 1: I write it down. What do you call it? Tree.
• 2:33:05
  Speaker 1: What do you call that over there? Tree. Tree. And
• 2:33:08
  Speaker 1: what's that over there, tree? They said, you just have
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 1: one word for all these things. But they're calling them
• 2:33:12
  Speaker 1: by the species name. And I'm thinking, well, I told them,
• 2:33:16
  Speaker 1: I said, well, there's some Americans who do know all
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 1: the different names, but I'm just not one of them.
• 2:33:20
  Speaker 1: But they find it hard to believe that any American
• 2:33:22
  Speaker 1: could get by without that knowledge of their environment. So
• 2:33:27
  Speaker 1: when that language goes, we've lost the difference. So a
• 2:33:30
  Speaker 1: friend of mine did a study on how a group
• 2:33:33
  Speaker 1: in the Amazon classify birds. And they don't classify them
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: based on their anatomy like Western science. They classify them
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: based on what they eat. And so if you know
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 1: their classification, you know what all these birds eat. And
• 2:33:47
  Speaker 1: you know how to deal with those birds to capture
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 1: them or to follow them. And when that language is gone,
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: all that knowledge is gone. So it's like the Library
• 2:34:00
  Speaker 1: of Congress has been blown up or something when you
• 2:34:02
  Speaker 1: lose a language. And why do new languages come into being?
• 2:34:05
  Speaker 1: What are the conditions? And what does all this mean
• 2:34:07
  Speaker 1: for us being human beings? How do we know ourselves better?
• 2:34:10
  Speaker 1: How are we to understand our species if we don't
• 2:34:13
  Speaker 1: study all the different exemplars of our species? And that's
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 1: the challenge. And that's what keeps the work exciting. But
• 2:34:22
  Speaker 1: it also is what makes it a challenge. Because you
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 1: tell a really bright 25-year-old or 24-year-old PhD student, okay,
• 2:34:32
  Speaker 1: now you have to take off to the jungle for
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: three years or four. And they're thinking, I could get
• 2:34:38
  Speaker 1: a job without doing that. You know, I don't need
• 2:34:40
  Speaker 1: to go spend four years in the jungle to get
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 1: a job. And, you know, a professor is a pretty
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 1: cushy job. It doesn't pay well, but it's also, it's
• 2:34:47
  Speaker 1: not like, you know, it's not like real labor. And
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 1: I told, people tell me how hard professors work. I said, yeah, well,
• 2:34:53
  Speaker 1: you know, it does take a lot of hours, but
• 2:34:54
  Speaker 1: I'd rather do this than run a jackhammer because I
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: ran a jackhammer. And I'll tell you, this is a
• 2:34:58
  Speaker 1: lot easier than running a jackhammer. So, um, But you
• 2:35:03
  Speaker 1: go off to the field and you spend this time. Ironically,
• 2:35:06
  Speaker 1: anthropologists seem more prepared to do this than linguists. And
• 2:35:09
  Speaker 1: the other ironic thing is I know, this is anecdote,
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 1: I know more anthropologists who speak the language fluently than
• 2:35:15
  Speaker 1: I know linguists who speak the language fluently, which I
• 2:35:19
  Speaker 1: have to put down to the pernicious influence of certain
• 2:35:23
  Speaker 1: theories and linguistics that makes people think they don't have
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: to learn a language to know how it works. And
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 1: I tell people, when you're going off to do fieldwork,
• 2:35:31
  Speaker 1: I did write a field manual. And I say, the
• 2:35:33
  Speaker 1: first six months, just work on learning the language. Don't
• 2:35:36
  Speaker 1: take many notes. Take notes of words and stuff. So
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: I had a goal where I wanted to learn 10
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 1: new words a day. And I kept a little spiral
• 2:35:44
  Speaker 1: notebook clip in my belt buckle. And I would walk
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 1: around learning these things. And I would learn new words
• 2:35:50
  Speaker 1: and write those down. And then I would spend the
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 1: evening memorizing those words. And I would try them out
• 2:35:55
  Speaker 1: again the next day. And I'd try to make sentences
• 2:35:57
  Speaker 1: with them. And when people start laughing at you, you
• 2:35:59
  Speaker 1: know that I didn't get that right. And sometimes they
• 2:36:02
  Speaker 1: like to teach you dirty words, right? They think that's hilarious.
• 2:36:05
  Speaker 1: You know, you'll ask, so then I, you know, how
• 2:36:09
  Speaker 1: do you learn the words for genitals, for example? That's
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 1: kind of an embarrassing thing if you stop and think
• 2:36:14
  Speaker 1: about it. So I started to ask the guy, I said,
• 2:36:17
  Speaker 1: what do you call that? You know, I pointed to
• 2:36:18
  Speaker 1: his dick and he said, And he calls, he, you know,
• 2:36:22
  Speaker 1: he says, I'm not going to tell you, but he
• 2:36:23
  Speaker 1: calls a little boy over who's naked and he shows
• 2:36:25
  Speaker 1: me every part of his body. And he said, you
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 1: call this, this and this, that and this, that. And
• 2:36:29
  Speaker 1: then he says, but the names change once they start
• 2:36:32
  Speaker 1: to grow hair. So penis as a boy is different
• 2:36:37
  Speaker 1: from penis as a man and vagina as a girl
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 1: is different from vagina as a woman. And so, you know,
• 2:36:43
  Speaker 1: how do you get those words? You've got to count
• 2:36:47
  Speaker 1: on close friendships, right?
• 2:36:51
  Speaker 2: Like I said at the beginning of this, man, you've
• 2:36:53
  Speaker 2: had a fascinating life. You really have. It's very, very interesting.
• 2:36:58
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate you sharing everything today. It was really,
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 2: really fun.
• 2:37:02
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much for having me.
• 2:37:03
  Speaker 2: I enjoyed it. Jamie, pull up his book. Well, books,
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 2: I should say. This one, Daniel Everett, Don't Sleep, There
• 2:37:13
  Speaker 2: Are Snakes. The Life and Language... in the Amazon jungle,
• 2:37:20
  Speaker 2: Amazonian jungle.
• 2:37:21
  Speaker 1: That's what they say to each other each night before
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 1: they go to bed. Don't sleep, there are snakes.
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 2: Amazing. Thank you very much.
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me.
• 2:37:33
  Speaker 2: It was awesome. Bye, everybody.