Deep jungle expedition

Where are we right now, Paul? Lex, we are in the middle of nowhere.

I can't believe we're actually here. I can't believe you actually came.

So for people who don't know, bushmaster snakes, what are these things? These are vipers, I believe it's the largest viper on Earth.

We've seen a lot of different kinds of sizes, we've seen a baby one, a bigger one. Tell me about these 16-foot plus, apex predators of the Amazon rainforest. The big bad black caiman, which is the largest reptilian predator in the Amazon except for the Anaconda, they kind of both share that notch of apex predator. They were actually hunted to endangered species level in the seventies, 'cause they're leather, black scale leather. But they're coming back, they're coming back and they're huge and they're beautiful. And I was walking near a lake and I never understood how big they could get except for, I was walking near a lake last year and I was following the stream. And it's like when you're following a little stream and there's just a little trickle of water, and all of a sudden this river otter had been running the other direction on the stream. River otter comes up to me and I swear to God, this animal looked at me and went, "Hey," and I went, "Hey." And he was like, "Didn't expect to see me there." And he turned around, he like did a little spin, started running down the stream, then he turned around and you could tell he was like, "Let's go." And I'm not anthropomorphizing here, the animal was asking me to come with him.

In the water, I mean, we talked also about hippos. Those are interesting creatures from all the way across the world. Just monsters. Yeah.

Oh, shit. What a world we live in. So it's interesting, you mentioned black caiman and anacondas are both apex predators. So it seems like the reason they can exist in similar environments is because they feed on slightly different things. How is it possible for them to coexist? I read that anacondas can eat caiman but not black caiman. How often do they come in conflict? So anacondas and caiman occupy the exact same niche, and they're born at almost the exact same size. And unlike most species, they don't have a size range that they're confined to. They start at this big, baby caiman are this big, baby anacondas are a little longer, but they're thinner and they don't have legs, so it's the same thing in terms of mass. And they're all in the streams or at the edges of lakes or swamps. And so the baby anacondas eat the baby caiman. Baby caiman can't really take down an anaconda. They're going for little insects and fish. They have quite a small mouth. Again, it's in their interest to hide from everything. A bird, a heron can eat a baby caiman, pop it back. And so they have to survive. But the anaconda and the caiman joust as they grow.

Yeah. The mammal papers looking at the diversity of life in this one region of the Amazon. Can you talk more about that paper? Mammal Diversity along the Las Piedras River. Once again, the mammal paper, Pat Champagne the prodigy, he was leading on this with a bunch of other scientists who have worked in the region, including Holly O'Donnell out of Oxford, myself. I really just made a few observations. The Junglekeepers Rangers got featured because they're the ones that spotted a pygmy marmoset that had previously been unrecorded on the river. I got to contribute because I had the only photograph that I believe anyone has of an emperor tamarin on this river. It's the first proof of emperor tamarin on this river, and that's exciting. It's exciting because you can post a picture or share a scientific observation or write about something, and then what happens is you get these couch experts, these armchair experts who will come and say, "No, no, you don't get blue and yellow macaws there. I can tell from my bird book, it says they're not there." And they'll tell you you're wrong. "No, you don't get woolly monkeys there or emperor tamarin." But we have proof. And so we're coming together to try and add to that knowledge.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a family thing. You mentioned piranhas. Yeah.

What does the rainforest represent to you when you zoom out and look at the entirety of it? Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot resonated with a lot of people. That everything you've ever heard of, all the heroes, all the villains, all of your ancestors, every achievement, tragedy, triumph, everything has happened on that one spot. This one tiny, tiny little rock that has life on it.

Yeah. What are your favorite animals to interact with? My favorite, absolute favorite animal to interact with is 100% elephants, which there's no elephants here, but I've been incredibly privileged to spend some time with elephants, both in India and in Africa. And I think that they're so smart and so complex that we do a really bad job of understanding what an elephant really is.

Just to zoom out into the ridiculous questions as we were talking about aliens, there's a lot of people trying to understand, trying to study the origin of life. Oh, I love this.

Yeah, man. One of the things you and I talk a lot about is different explorers. Who do you think is... I'm just throwing ridiculous question one after the other. Who do you think is the greatest explorer of all time? Oh God. I love Shackleton, but I hate the cold, so I can't even read about it. I hate the cold so much. I can't even go there for fun. I think Percy Fawcett in the Amazon was the GOAT in terms of just sheer... The last of the Victorian era, march forward, go deeper, just stop at nothing and then eventually take such big risks that you never come back. It's hard for me to relate to that exploration because, to me, I'm such a softie, I wouldn't want to leave my family behind, I wouldn't want to... Even if you told me that I could leave Earth and go exploring and I could go touch the moon, I'd be, nope. Absolutely not. The highway is dangerous enough. I would never risk dying in space. This guy left his home, went out into the jungle, out there with horrendous gear compared to the camping gear we have today, no headlamp, and just explored for years on end.

All right, so what do you think makes a great explorer, whether it's Percy Fawcett, Richard Evans Schultes? By the way, I'll say who Richard Evans Schultes is. He's a biologist. So that's another lens through which to be an explorer, is to study the biology, the immense diversity of biological life all around us. Richard Evans Schultes, I know about him from reading Wade Davis's book, One River, which is this big, hefty 500 or 600 page tome about the Amazon, and it covers two stories. It's Richard Evans Schultes, and I think it's in the '40s. I think it's pre-World War Two era era where he's in the Amazon looking for the blue orchid and the cure for this and that, and he's pressing plants and he's going to these Indigenous communities where they still live completely with the forest and they drink ayahuasca and they talk to the gods and he learns about how they believe that the Anaconda came down from the Milky Way and swam across the land and created the rivers. He came down and even though he was a western scientist from Harvard, he embraced the Indigenous perspective on the world, on creation, on spirituality.

Let me ask you about Jane, Goodall, another explorer of a different kind. What do you think about her, about her role in understanding this natural world of ours? I think that Jane is a living historical treasure. I think somehow she's alive, but she's already reached that level where it's like Einstein, Jane Goodall, there's these incredible minds. And growing up as a child, my parents would read to me because I was so dyslexic. I didn't learn to read until I was quite old. And my mom was a big Jane Goodall fan and all I wanted to hear about was animals. And so I would get read to about this lady named Jane Goodall, this girl who went to Africa and studied chimps and who broke all the rules and named her study subjects even though that wasn't what she was supposed to do and she became this incredible advocate for earth and for ecosystems. And she seemed to realize as her career went on that teaching children to appreciate nature was the key.

So I started reading the River of Doubt book you recommended to me on Teddy Roosevelt. That guy is badass on many levels, but I didn't realize how much of a naturalist he was, how much of a scholar of the natural world he was. That book details his journey into the Amazon jungle. What do you find inspiring about Teddy Roosevelt and that whole journey of just saying, "Fuck it. I'm going to the Amazon jungle," of taking on that expedition? Well, I mean, Teddy Roosevelt, you could write volumes on what's inspiring about him. I think that he was a weak, asthmatic, little rich kid that wasn't physically able, that had no self-confidence, and he had pretty severe depression. He had tragedy in his life and he was very, at least for me, he's been one of the people, one of the first historical figures where he wrote about the struggle to overcome those things and to make himself from being a weak asthmatic little teenager, to strengthening himself and building muscle and becoming this barrel-chested lion of a guy who could be the President, who could be an explorer and one of the rough riders. Just everything he does is so hyperbolically incredible. To come out of war and have the other people you fought with go, "This guy has no fear," he must've just been a psychopath and had no fear. And then proving it further was that thing where he was going to give a speech to a bunch of people and he got shot in the chest.

We talked about Alone, this show a bit. Yo. Rock House.

How has your life changed since we last met? Speak about changing, everything.

Well, I'm glad you're fighting for the light. Is there a milestone in the near future that you're working towards, like financially in terms of donations? There is. In the next year and a half, as you saw in your time here, there's roads working around the Jungle Keepers concessions. All the work that the local people are doing to protect this land is trying to be dismantled by international corporations that are subcontracting logging companies here. And really what we need is $30 million in the next two years to protect the whole thing. You've seen the ancient mahogany trees, you've seen the families of monkeys, you've seen the caiman in the river. All of this is standing in the pathway of destruction. That road, they're going to come down that road, and men with chainsaws are going to dismantle a forest that has been growing since the beginning. This is so magical. Do you see the snake over there?

So one of the other fascinating life forms is other humans, but living a very different kind of life. So uncontacted tribes, what do you find most fascinating about them? What I find most fascinating about the uncontacted tribes is that while me and you are sitting here with microphones and a light, somewhere out there, in that darkness, in that direction, not so far away as the crow flies, there are people sitting around a fire in the dark.

How has your view of your own mortality evolved over your interaction with the jungle? How often do you think about your death? Well, I don't anymore because I've come to believe that there is a benevolent God, spirit, creator taking care of us. And I don't think about my own death. We have a little bit of time here and we clearly know nothing about what we're doing here.

A lot of people say that you carry the spirit of Steve Irwin in your heart, in the way you carry yourself in this world. I mean, that guy was full of joy. If I have a percentage of Steve Irwin, I would be honored. But that guy... I think there's only one Steve. I think that he occupied his own strata of just shining light. Everything was positive, enthusiasm, love and happiness, and save the animals and do better and let's make it fun.

When you have lived here and taken in the ways of the Amazon jungle, how have your views of God... You mentioned, how have your views of God change? Who is God? I've come to believe that, again, back to that Christ wasn't a Christian, Muhammad wasn't a Muslim, and Buddha wasn't a Buddhist. That the game game is love and compassion and the universe is chaotic and dangerous and nature is chaotic and dangerous. But if this is some sort of a biological video game that our reality, that the test is, can we be good? And we go through it every day.