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Paul Rosolie (2026) - Surviving The Amazon's Cartel War · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap and before we get going, please
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  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
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  our latest episodes in your feed.
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  Today we are diving into a conversation that really rattled
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  me, and I don't mean that in a bad way, but more in a a wake up
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  and smell the coffee kind of way.
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  We're breaking down the recent episode with Paul Rosalie.
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  Oh yeah, this one was intense. And for anyone who doesn't know
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  Paul Rosalie, he's not your typical academic
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  conservationist. He's the founder of Jungle
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  Keepers. He's an author.
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  And honestly, the guy is like Indiana Jones.
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  Yeah, if Indiana Jones cared way more about ecosystems and, you
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  know, less about dusty artifacts.
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  That is a surprisingly accurate description.
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  I mean, he is very much in the field.
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  And that's really the mission of this deep dive today.
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  We aren't just talking about cool animal facts.
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  Although there are some crazy ones.
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  Oh, we will get to some crazy animal facts later for sure, but
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  we're looking at the Amazon rainforest as an active war
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  zone. It's a heavy reframing.
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  I think most of us picture the Amazon as this like distant,
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  peaceful nature preserve. But Rosalie, he paints this
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  picture of a total conflict zone.
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  You've got uncontacted tribes coming out of the woodwork,
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  cartels moving in, illegal gold miners turning the place into a
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  desert. And this desperate race to save
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  the literal lungs of the earth before the clock runs out.
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  Exactly. Rosalie isn't just watching from
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  a distance, He's surviving assassination attempts and
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  Stingray attacks. He calls himself a buffer
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  between the Stone Age and the modern world.
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  And you really see that. I mean, nowhere is that more
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  visible than in the footage that recently went viral.
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  Let's start there. That time machine moment,
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  Rosalie shared footage of the Moshko Piro tribe.
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  I've seen this clip. It's just it's mind blowing.
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  It really is. They're also known as the No
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  Mole or the Brothers, and Rosalie describes watching them
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  as looking through a time machine.
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  You were literally seeing humans living exactly as they did
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  10,000 years ago. And this wasn't some, you know,
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  National Geographic stage shoot. This was a tense real time
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  encounter on a riverbank. So set the scene for us.
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  OK, so picture this, a wide river in the Madre de Dios
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  region of Peru. On one bank you have Rosalie,
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  his team, some local anthropologists, and on the
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  other bank, just emerging from this like dense green wall of
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  the jungle, is this tribe. And the first thing you notice
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  is the tension. Right, because they aren't just
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  standing there waving, are they? No.
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  Not at all. They are armed.
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  Rosalie points out that the men are holding 6 foot bows with 7
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  foot arrows. 7 foot arrows, that is terrifying.
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  I mean, the draw weight on those things must be incredible.
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  It's serious weaponry. These areas are designed to take
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  down a tapir or a Jaguar or a person.
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  The local guides on Reza Lee's side were terrified.
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  They had shotguns ready just in case.
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  They know the history here. These encounters don't always
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  end well. But in this case, they were
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  actually trying to communicate. Rosa Lee mentioned they had an
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  interpreter. Right.
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  They had a local Pira man who speaks a derivation of their
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  language, Yin, and he was just shouting across the river,
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  basically trying to figure out what they wanted and, you know,
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  keep things calm. And what they wanted was it was
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  heartbreakingly simple. They wanted bananas.
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  Plantains specifically, and rope.
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  The rope. That detail is fascinating to
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  me. Why rope?
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  It's their utility belt. Rosalie points out that these
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  guys are naked, which makes sense in 100% humidity, but they
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  wrap rope around their waist. It's their currency.
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  It's how they carry tools, food, weapons.
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  It's like the most valuable piece of tech they have.
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  So you have this standoff Stone Age tech on one side, shotguns
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  and iPhones on the other. But the big question, the
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  elephant in the room, or I guess the taper in the room, is why?
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  Why are they coming out now, exactly?
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  I mean, if they've been uncontacted for centuries,
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  clearly they prefer it that way. And that is the tragedy of it.
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  Rosalie is adamant about this. They are not coming out because
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  they are curious about us. They are not coming out to say
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  hello. They are refugees.
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  Refugees in their own forest. In their own land, they are
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  being pushed out. Rosalie explains that behind
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  them, deep in the jungle where they usually live, illegal
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  loggers and gold miners are encroaching.
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  They're cutting down the mahogany.
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  They're scaring away the game. They're bringing violence.
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  The tribe is terrified, I. Remember Rosalie mentioning that
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  they actually asked the interpreter who are the bad
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  ones? Why are you cutting down our
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  biggest trees? It.
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  Just chills you to the bone. They don't understand the global
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  market for hardwood. They just know that their world
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  is shrinking and they are forced to approach the very people they
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  fear us, because the threat behind them is even worse.
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  So let's talk about that threat, because Rosalie describes the
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  Amazon today as the Wild West. But honestly, the Wild West had
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  sheriffs. This sounds completely lawless.
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  It's a frontier in the truest sense.
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  There is no 911 and the destruction is being driven by
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  two main forces, gold and cocaine.
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  OK, let's start with the gold, because I think when people hear
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  gold mining they picture a guy with a pan and a stream, maybe a
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  pickaxe. Yeah, that's not what this is,
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  not even close. This is industrial scale
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  devastation. Rosalie showed Rogan these
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  photos that looked like they were taken during a sandstorm in
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  the Sahara, But it was the Amazon.
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  How do you even turn a rainforest into a desert?
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  You cut down every single tree, you burn it all, then you bring
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  in these high pressure water pumps and you just suck up the
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  earth itself to filter out the gold dust.
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  You're literally vacuuming the jungle floor down to the
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  bedrock. That sounds apocalyptic, but
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  there's a chemical element to this too, right?
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  It's not just mud. That's the mercury rain.
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  This was a part of the deep dive that really stuck with me.
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  To separate the gold from all that sediment, the miners use
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  mercury. It binds to the gold.
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  Then to get the gold by itself, they burn the amalgam.
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  So they're just burning the mercury off?
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  Yeah, into the air. Right.
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  And where does that smoke go? Into the atmosphere.
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  It rises, condenses in the clouds, and it comes back down
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  as rain, as mercury rain. That sounds like something out
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  of a science fiction horror movie.
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  It poisons everything. It gets into the river, into the
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  fish. Then the indigenous communities
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  downstream eat the fish and they get mercury poisoning.
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  It causes birth defects, neurological damage.
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  It even poisons the miners themselves.
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  It's like a suicide pact for a little bit of gold.
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  And then, if the Mercury rain wasn't enough, you have the
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  other major player, the Narcos. The drug trade Rosalie explained
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  this concept called the balloon effect.
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  Think of a balloon. If you squeeze one part, the air
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  just bulges out somewhere else. So as conservationists protect 1
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  area, the bad guys just move next door.
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  Exactly as Rosalie's team, Jungle Keepers, buys up land and
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  puts Rangers on patrol, they're squeezing that balloon.
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  They're taking territory away from the cartels who want to
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  grow coca leaves for cocaine. And when you mess with cartel
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  business, well, things get dangerous very, very quickly.
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  Dangerous feels like an understatement.
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  They literally put a hit out on him.
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  They. Did.
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  And this wasn't some vague threat.
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  The police intercepted a WhatsApp message that was
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  circulating. It's specifically named Paul
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  Rosalie, calling him that shithead gringo and his partner
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  JJ. It offered a cash reward to
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  anyone who killed them. Do you even imagine that knowing
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  there's a price on your head while you're walking through the
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  jungle? And they almost collected on it.
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  There was this terrifying story about an ambush Jay-Z was
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  supposed to be in a specific car by.
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  Sure, luck, or maybe intuition. He didn't get in, but that car
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  was stopped by masked men with guns.
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  They pulled the driver out. Pulled him out, realized JJ
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  wasn't there and told the driver we missed him today but we'll
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  get him soon. That is straight out of a movie,
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  but it's real life. And there was another scene with
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  a drone that felt like an action sequence.
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  Oh, the boat chase. So Rosalie's in a boat, and he
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  flies a drone over a clearing that just looks suspicious.
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  He says. Usually if it's just illegal
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  loggers, they hide when they hear the drone, you know they
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  don't want to be seen. But these guys didn't hide.
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  No, they ran out into the open with guns.
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  They jumped into their own boat and started chasing Rosalie's
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  team down the river. So now he's in a high speed boat
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  chase on a winding jungle river getting chased by armed narcos.
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  And let me guess, he still has to land the drone?
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  He has to land the drone on a moving boat while escaping.
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  It's just madness. But Rosalie makes a really
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  somber point about this. He says the scariest part isn't
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  even the guns, it's the isolation.
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  If they kill you out there, you just disappear.
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  The. Jungle recycles you.
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  In 48 hours, decomposition takes over.
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  Scavengers, insects, the heat. A body just vanishes.
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  It is the perfect place to commit a murder.
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  It really highlights the bravery of these Rangers.
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  They aren't just hugging trees, they're soldiers on a frontline.
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  But moving away from the humans for a second, the jungle itself
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  has plenty of ways to hurt you, and Rosalie shared a story about
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  a Stingray that I wish I could unhear.
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  I was wincing the entire time, he told this.
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  You know, we always worry about the big predators, the Jaguars,
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  the anacondas, but the freshwater Stingray is the
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  silent assassin of the river. It hides in the sand, right?
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  Completely buried. Rosalie stepped on one and these
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  things have a barbed Stinger on their tail.
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  It didn't just poke him, it went deep into the arch of his foot.
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  Ouch. And then the Stingray started
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  thrashing. It's wagging its tail while the
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  Barb was inside his foot, he said.
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  It was flaying the meat from the inside out.
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  Stop. That is just gruesome and the
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  pain. He called it white hot pain.
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  This is a guy who's been bitten by bullet ants, which are famous
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  for having the worst pain. He said.
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  The Stingray was significantly worse.
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  He was blacking out. And this is where the story
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  takes a turn that I found really inspiring.
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  Because in the West we'd be screaming for a helicopter for
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  morphine. But he was days away from a
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  hospital. Right.
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  And if he had tried to travel to a hospital, he might have lost
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  his foot. The venom causes necrosis.
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  It kills the tissue. Infection sets in so fast in the
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  jungle, but the indigenous locals he was with, they didn't
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  panic. They knew exactly what to do.
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  The plant puss. That's what he called it.
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  They ran into the forest, found two specific trees and just
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  shaved off some bark and fiber. They heated it over a fire until
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  it turned into this hot, sticky paste.
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  He said it looked like a fish cake.
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  And they just slapped it on the open wound.
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  Scalding hot and Rosalie said the relief was almost instant.
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  He could feel the poultice drawing the venom out.
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  He described black denatured blood just pouring out of the
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  wound, and two days later he was walking.
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  He compared it to a friend who had a similar sting, went to a
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  modern hospital and couldn't walk for months because of the
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  infection. It just proves that the forest
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  isn't just a bunch of raw materials, it's a library of
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  knowledge. That's the perfect way to put
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  it, a library. Rosalie mentioned that something
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  like 25% of our modern pharmaceuticals are derived from
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  rainforest ingredients. He talked about Sangre did
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  Dragon's blood. Which sounds like a potion from
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  Harry Potter. It does, but it's a real tree
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  SAP. When you cut the bark, it bleeds
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  this red latex. It's a potent antibacterial,
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  stronger than Neosporin, and it seals, cuts like a liquid
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  bandage. It's just miraculous stuff.
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  And his point was, if we bring the forest down for gold or for
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  beef, we are burning the library before we've even read the
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  books. We are destroying cures for
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  diseases we haven't even identified yet.
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  It's just incredibly short sighted.
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  Which leads us to the tipping point.
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  This is the part of the conversation where the stakes
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  went from local tragedy to global catastrophe, because the
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  Amazon does something for the planet that nothing else does.
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  It's the engine of the moisture cycle.
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  Think of the Amazon as a giant heart.
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  It pumps water instead of blood. Every day, the trees release
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  about 20 trillion liters of water into the atmosphere. 20
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  trillion liters. It's a number that's hard to
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  even wrap your head around. It creates these massive flying
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  rivers, clouds that travel South and dump rain on the
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  agricultural belts of Brazil and Argentina.
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  Without that rain, the food supply for South America just
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  collapses. And we are getting dangerously
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  close to breaking that engine. We are.
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  Scientists talk about the 20% rule.
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  We've already lost about 20% of the Amazon to deforestation.
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  The fear is that if we lose just a little bit more, the system
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  hits a tipping point. The forest won't be able to
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  generate enough moisture to sustain itself.
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  And then what happens? It starts to die back, it turns
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  from a lush rainforest into a dry Savannah.
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  And once that feedback loop starts, you can't stop it.
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  It's game over for the ecosystem.
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  It feels heavy, but I want to pivot to the hope because
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  Rosalie isn't a defeatist. He's incredibly driven and he
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  told this beautiful story about how he got started, involving
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  none other than Jane Goodall. This was such a human moment.
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  Imagine Paul Rosalie, not as this rugged jungle veteran, but
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  as a young, shy kid. He goes to a lecture by Jane
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  Goodall. He's clutching a Manila envelope
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  with his manuscript. His diary, basically.
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  And he just hands it to her. He waits in line and just hands
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  it to her. Here, please read this.
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  It's the kind of thing you do when you're young and naive.
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  But the amazing thing is she actually read it.
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  That speaks volumes about her character.
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  It really does. Her staff contacted him 48 hours
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  later. She loved it.
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  She endorsed his book, which launched his career, and she
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  gave him a directive. She told him your job is to
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  protect this forest. Talk about a call to action.
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  And he took it seriously. That's what Jungle Keepers is
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  all about. But what I love about their
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  strategy is that it's not just idealistic, it's economic.
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  It's so pragmatic, Rosalie realized.
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  You can't just go into a poor community and yell at people for
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  logging. If a guy has to choose between
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  cutting down a tree and feeding his kids, the tree is coming
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  down every single time. So jungle keepers changes the
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  math. Exactly, they buy land to create
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  protected corridors but then they hire the locals to be the
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  Rangers. I love the numbers he broke
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  down. He said.
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  An illegal logger might make what, $20 a day?
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  And it's dangerous back breaking work.
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  And Jungle Keepers offers them $60.00 a day, plus a uniform,
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  plus steady pay, plus the pride of being a protector rather than
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  a destroyer. That's a no brainer.
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  You make conservation the most profitable job in the region.
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  And it works. You flip the workforce, the
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  people who know the forest best, the ones who are dismantling it
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  are not the ones saving it. It's a model that actually gives
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  me hope. Now, before we let you go, we
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  have to talk about some of the Wilder anecdotes Rosalie
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  dropped. Because living in the jungle
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  isn't all gun fights and philosophy.
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  Sometimes it's just weird nature.
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  The Anaconda story. The pillow.
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  I could not believe this. So Rosalie finds an 11 foot
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  Anaconda sleeping on a log in the sun.
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  Now most people would run the other way.
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  Rosalie decides this is a teaching moment.
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  He wants to prove that anacondas aren't these bloodthirsty
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  monsters from the movies. So he lays his head on the
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  snake. He uses the Anaconda as a pillow
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  and he takes a nap. And the snake was cool.
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  With it, the snake did not care, it just kept sleeping.
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  It totally debunks that whole movie monster myth.
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  Although I don't recommend our listeners try this at home or in
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  the Amazon. Definitely do not try that.
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  And then there was the food talk.
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  He mentioned eating piranhas, which he said are actually
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  pretty good, like chips. Yeah, crispy fins.
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  But the Paku, that's the one that haunts me.
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  The vegetarian piranha. It's a giant relative of the
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  piranha, but instead of meat, it eats nuts and fruit that fall
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  into the river. But here's the kicker to crack
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  those hard nuts it has evolved teeth.
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  And they don't look like shark teeth.
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  No, they look exactly like human molars.
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  That is so disturbing. Imagine reeling in a fish and it
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  smiles at you with a human mouth.
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  Nightmare fuel, but apparently the meat is delicious.
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  Rosalie called it a muscle building superfood.
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  He swears by it. I think I'll stick to protein
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  shakes things, but this all ties into his bigger philosophy about
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  touching grass. You know we use that as a meme
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  online, but he means it literally.
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  He does. He talks about tuning in.
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  In the jungle, survival depends on your senses.
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  You have to listen to the birds. If the birds stop singing,
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  silence is an alarm. It means a predator is there.
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  Or storm is coming. Right.
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  And he believes that modern life with our phones and headphones
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  and constant noise has atrophied those senses.
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  We are walking around blind and deaf to the world.
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  Going into the jungle forces you to reconnect with that primal
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  awareness. It's a powerful reminder.
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  OK, let's bring this home. We've covered a lot.
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  The Amazon is a war zone. It's a pharmacy.
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  It's a climate engine and it's full of fish with human teeth.
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  It is a lot to process, but if there's one thought I want to
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  leave everyone with, it's this concept of shifting baseline
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  syndrome. This was the quote from the
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  Indigenous elder. Yes.
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  Rosalie asked an older man about the changes he's seen, and the
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  man said grandparents ate monkeys and big fish.
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  Now we eat sparrows. Man, that hits hard.
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  That is shifting baseline syndrome.
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  Each generation accepts A degraded environment as the new
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  normal. The grandfather remembers a
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  river full of giants. The sun remembers a river with a
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  few fish. The grandson thinks an empty
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  river is just how it's always been.
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  We lower our standards for nature with every generation
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  because we forget what it used to be.
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  That is a haunting thought. It makes you look at your own
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  environment differently. What used to be here that we've
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  already forgotten? Exactly.
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  The fight for the Amazon is a fight to remember what we have
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  before it's gone for good. If you want to dive deeper into
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  these stories, and trust me, we only scratch the surface, you
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  have to check out Paul Rizzoli's book Jungle Keeper.
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  It sounds like an absolute thrill.
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  Ride highly recommended. It's a real wake up call.
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  Thanks for listening to the Joe Rogan recap on the Deep Dive.
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  Make sure to follow us and we'll catch you on the next one.