On this episode of Naked and Afraid, we have a guest on the show who is a wildlife biologist living in the jungles of Colombia. Joe is a great story teller, fisherman, guide, and all-around badass. He talks about his adventures in the Amazon, how to survive in the wild, and what it's like to live a life in the middle of nowhere. We also talk about some of his favorite places in the world to fish, and some of the amazing things he's caught in his time in the jungle. It's a great episode that you don't want to miss! Naked & Afraid is a production of Native Creative Podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday morning. Subscribe to our new home on Podchaser.fm and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms. You can also join our FB group, and join the conversation by using the hashtag , and tag to be featured on the next episode! Subscribe, rate, and review! Thank you for listening and share this episode with your fellow podcasters! If you like what you hear, share it with a friend, and spread the word to a fellow podcaster you're listening to this podcast! Timestamps: 5:00 - What's up? 6:30 - How did you feel about this episode? 7:15 - What do you think about it? 8:00 | What would you would you like to see me do in the future? 9:20 - What are you looking forward to hearing more of this podcast? 11: What are your thoughts on this episode in the next one? 13:00 16: What would your favorite part? 17:00 -- How do you want to hear from me? 18:30 -- What's your biggest pet peeves? 19:40 -- What are some of your biggest fears? 22:40 - How would you're going to be my thoughts on the future of the jungle? 26: How do I feel about the Amazon? 27: Is it a little bit more? 29: What is your favorite place? 30:00-- Is it cool? 31: What's a good day? 32:00 // 33:00 Thoughts? 35:00 Do you think I m going to go back to the jungle again? 36:00 Is it possible?
00:01:57.000As a biologist, that's all I can think about.
00:01:59.000Because I was in Hawaii recently, and we did some snorkeling, and when you're swimming around with the goggles on, looking down at the ocean, one of the things that's kind of shocking is how few fish there are.
00:02:20.000I mean, there are these pockets left in the world that are completely untouched, and it's like as soon as you get into one, you can see it.
00:02:27.000You're like, this is what it used to be like everywhere, and it's like humans haven't had an impact.
00:02:32.000I don't want to disparage anyone in Hawaii, but I don't think there's anywhere in Hawaii like that, because it's all so accessible.
00:02:40.000I've been fortunate enough to see a couple of these pockets, and they're just booming with stuff, and it's like, this is what it could be.
00:02:46.000Yeah, I mean, I guess that's like what it must be to just be in the Amazon itself as well, right?
00:02:59.000The jungle there, so we were in Colombian Amazon, and like, talk about untouched by people, there's been this kind of ongoing conflict in Colombia for many, many years.
00:03:08.000So we were the first Westerners to go there in over 60 years.
00:03:11.000So the village we flew into, they'd literally never seen white people before.
00:03:14.000And then we went 200 kilometers from that.
00:04:53.000So, it's funny, because when they didn't want us to understand what they were talking about, they would switch to their native Indian language.
00:05:36.000And the village we were in is literally, I think it's over 200 kilometers from the next village of 15 or so people, and they don't have fuel, they don't have motors, you know, they're just in this pocket, and they just substance live.
00:06:12.000Now, when I say splayed-out feet, what I'm talking about is that people that walk barefoot in the jungle for long periods of time with their whole life, their toes spread out, and their feet almost look like a hand.
00:06:34.000But, yeah, Steve Rinella, who's a good friend of mine, told me about that.
00:06:38.000He was in Guyana, and it was the same thing, and they actually got some pictures and videos of these people's feet, but look at these guys up there.
00:07:34.000So when these guys just can climb up trees with them, so they grip the side of the tree with their feet like a hand.
00:07:40.000Oh, I mean, I didn't notice, like I say, the feet just like that specifically, but the way they could, like, everything's covered in mud down there, right?
00:07:46.000It's all wet, it rains every day, and they could run up and down these tree trunks, like, to get up and down the village, and here's me and my crew with our awkward cameras and stuff, and we're slipping and sliding and falling over, and, like, they're literally like, what's wrong with these people?
00:08:08.000Yeah, we're wearing muck boots, and my one buddy's got waders on, and we think we're all hard and cool because we've got all this gear, and they're just running around in shorts barefoot.
00:08:16.000It is so fascinating when you see people that don't have contact with the outside world, like...
00:08:23.000I'm sure you're aware of that recent story, the missionary was killed by the people on North Sentinel Island.
00:09:28.000There's a doctor named Peter Hotez that's coming on the podcast, and I have to follow up on him.
00:09:34.000When you start talking about the people in the jungle, he's an actual doctor who specializes in infectious diseases in jungle and tropical climates, and he's like, everyone's infected with something.
00:10:55.000And we talked to the shaman through our translator, and he said, please help, please help.
00:10:59.000So we gave, including him, everybody this dewormer, but, you know, they'll just come back.
00:11:04.000Yeah, and also they probably don't understand the consequences of taking some antibiotic that's going to do some weird shit to your whole biome.
00:11:58.000But I think that's the idea behind it, is that you're, somehow or another, you're killing the bad bacteria when you piss on your feet and you have athlete's foot.
00:12:25.000People really fuck up where they like, Put bleach on it and a bunch of different things to try to kill it and it winds up getting worse and also fucks up all the natural skin flora.
00:12:34.000Jock itch, athlete's foot and ringworm are all types of fungal skin infections known collectively as tinea.
00:12:41.000They're caused by fungi called dermatrophytes that live on the skin, hair, and nails and thrive in warm, moist areas.
00:14:07.000I was in Myanmar late last year, and we're down there filming this thing, and this kid, like 22-year-old crab fisherman, gets bitten by a crocodile.
00:14:16.000Croc grabs him by the arm, grabs him by the thigh, and death rolls.
00:14:26.000And we hear about this, and we're minutes away.
00:14:29.000It's kind of one of the similar situations where we're the first Westerners to be there in a long time.
00:14:33.000We go bombing over at high speed, and we get there, and the mom is off mourning the death of her child, but her child is sitting there still alive.
00:14:44.000And mom is literally mourning the death of her child, and he's lying there, conscious, but like in total shock.
00:14:51.000Fortunately, just because of the situation, we had a speedboat, everything else.
00:14:55.000We bandaged him up, you know, tried to keep his arms stable and his legs stable, put him in our speedboat, and it was six hours by speedboat to a village that had a, or to a hospital, really.
00:15:04.000And so he got there, and his life was saved.
00:15:07.000But I asked, we asked the people in the village, what were you going to do?
00:15:11.000And they're like, there's nothing we can do.
00:15:42.000One of the most disturbing stories I ever read was these guys were kayaking in an African river and the guy in front of them got grabbed by a crocodile and that it went under and it plunged like a bobber as the crocodile pulled him out of the bottom of the kayak.
00:16:26.000I know there's areas that are hot spots.
00:16:28.000All of the locals were very nervous and kind of knew about them.
00:16:33.000Like, you know, I went out for bushwalks at night and stuff, and I'd just go, me and one guy with a camera, and they were like, oh, be careful, like, peligroso, you know, very dangerous, don't do it.
00:17:00.000Like, they say that mountain lions are, like, if you live in a place that has them, you know, Wyoming or Colorado or something like that, they know where you are.
00:17:12.000Maybe driving home, you see one skittering into the bush.
00:17:15.000There was a nuts video, I think it was from the LA area, did you ever see it, where the security cams picked up this mountain lion that was walking through this very residential neighborhood, and you'd see people would walk by, and then 30 seconds later, he'd dip out of the shadows, and then dip back in, and then the next set of people would walk by,
00:24:02.000So my understanding is the way that it's done is they genetically engineer the males to reproduce with the females, which are the malaria carriers, and then the offspring of that generation can no longer carry malaria.
00:24:21.000Yeah, it would have had to kill, it says like, five and a half million people on average per year, every year for all of human history, and that's not...
00:24:27.000I think it kills half a million a year.
00:24:30.000I think the real number's like half a million.
00:24:31.000Yeah, it says it would have to be five and a half million to kill everyone.
00:26:40.000That sounds amazing, but fucking terrifying.
00:26:43.000I mean, it's like one of those things where it's what you're used to, right?
00:26:47.000I found moving to the States at age 14 and, like, trying to find my place in the world and being this weird little private school kid from Africa way more terrifying than going to meet a tribe in the middle of the bush.
00:27:02.000I always carry a pocket knife on me, right?
00:27:04.000My first day here in the States, I go to school, I'm sitting in my uniform, because I went to a very proper English boarding school, pull out my pocket knife, start cutting my apple.
00:29:00.000And we were in the Zambezi Valley, so Zambezi River is one of the biggest rivers in the world.
00:29:03.000So we'd do these walking safaris, and then we did canoe safaris as well, which is why I have so many hippo and croc stories, because we'd be canoeing down the Zambezi River and then taking photographs and seeing wildlife that way.
00:29:27.000Regardless of being a scientist by trade, I feel like I have a very intimate understanding of animals because I grew up completely surrounded by them.
00:29:34.000Now, what other countries have you explored?
00:29:42.000Whether it's for the show that I do, or for biology contracts before I did the show, or just because, like, for instance, when I got done with college, I was like, I had a tiny little business starting college, sold it, and was like, I'm going to travel the world and try and photograph these animals.
00:29:56.000And I went to 28 countries looking for wildlife.
00:29:59.000Did you have something to do with looking for the Tasmanian tiger?
00:30:05.000I think of all the extinct animals that have gone extinct at the hand of man, given the range, I don't know if you know this, but the Tasmanian tiger at one point ranged from Papua New Guinea all the way down to Tasmania.
00:30:16.000So not just the island of Tasmania, but thousands, tens of thousands of miles.
00:30:20.000I think given the range, the frequency of sightings...
00:30:23.000The amount of untouched habitat in Australia and Tasmania and Papua New Guinea, where they just found a new dog species, by the way.
00:30:50.000I've done two expeditions looking for thylacine, and one of them, I was literally talking to the man who is the head park ranger for, like, the entire North Queensland.
00:31:00.000So, he's a scientist by trade, a biologist by degree, and he says, I saw four of them.
00:31:42.000I mean, it's one of those things where, like, I would say the thylacine is like the icon of animals coming back from extinction for Australia, right?
00:32:11.000I'm blanking on the name of it right now.
00:32:13.000The university itself put money towards funding to find it.
00:32:17.000So when you have a credible institution like a university going, here's money, go and find this thing, you've got to think, and I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, but you've got to think they have some intel that says, look, we're not wasting our money to look for something that's not there.
00:32:30.000We've heard something, we've seen something, we caught something on a trail camera, let's prove it.
00:33:31.000And no one's taken a photograph that they have cameras?
00:33:35.000Everybody's, you know, everybody's got a cell phone kind of thing, but it's like, it's always the same story where it's like, yeah, it was there, it was late at night, by the time I reached in my pocket, it had gone off.
00:33:44.000Except for the biologist I was telling you about, who said it ran around with his dogs.
00:34:51.000Yeah, when settlers came to Tasmania, which was the last stronghold for them, they were killing sheep and sheep farmers' things, and the government was like, get rid of them.
00:36:28.000Yeah, and then the university that we partnered with, who didn't go as remote as we did, but they're still doing a big area, I think they have 10,000.
00:36:45.000So they literally, here's the mountains, here's whatever, and they set out all these undergrads, and they're like, place one every 300 meters, pointing in this direction, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:36:56.000And they just do a grid, and they do that for a month, Two months, whatever it is, collect them all and then move to the next grid and then move to the next grid and just blanket the area.
00:37:05.000And I think, I could be wrong on this, but I think the search that they're doing, that university, is going to be the most comprehensive trail camera survey ever conducted.
00:37:13.000And so, as far as you know, they don't have a photo of one yet.
00:37:17.000As far as we know, but think of it this way.
00:37:19.000Again, I'm not a big conspiracy guy, but if you're in a university...
00:37:23.000This is probably as close as they have me.
00:38:15.000So, don't you think, though, that if they had definitive footage that they would release it to try to get more funding?
00:38:21.000Dude, the problem is footage isn't definitive anymore.
00:38:24.000Like, two years, last year, I got a photo of a leopard in Zanzibar.
00:38:28.000The first time in 25 years, the animal was declared extinct, and we caught a video, not even a photo, a video of a Zanzibar leopard, and took it up the chain, and they're like, unless we have genetic proof, the animal remains extinct.
00:38:49.000So yeah, I think if the university had something, they're trying to get enough data to really present a case as opposed to throwing up a flag over something, one individual thing.
00:39:00.000Is there a concern that a bunch of amateur wildlife hunters would go there?
00:39:17.000That they're starting to make their way up from Mexico.
00:39:19.000It's such a weird region, that, because here's this huge Sonoran Desert that you think none of these tropical animals can make it across, and for whatever reason, southern Arizona gets jaguars and codamundi and peccary and all these tropical animals.
00:39:33.000What the hell's going on that all these rainforest creatures are making it through this thousand mile stretch of desert and into southern Arizona?
00:40:28.000I mean, we had so much megafauna here back in the day, there would have been a lot of prey for them.
00:40:34.000Now, because of the fact that you spend so much time in the wild and, you know, and that you have this interest in these, what would you call, cryptozoology animals?
00:40:44.000Well, I'm not a crypto guy, so just to be clear, and nothing against crypto guys, but I don't do Loch Ness or Bigfoot or anything.
00:40:51.000I'm a true wildlife biologist, so I only focus on wildlife.
00:40:54.000So, not to interrupt you, but I'm just very, very structured in the sense that I really only look for animals that we have an understanding of.
00:45:50.000Like, they say the modern ones aren't bad, but the malarone...
00:45:54.000Like, you have hallucinations at night, you have crazy sweats, like, especially if you're in hot sun, so I would rather be more focused, especially if I'm working with reptiles or stuff like that that can, you know, envenomate me, so I try to stay away from it and just cover up.
00:47:19.000I went fishing with my friend Ari and we pulled up the car and we got out of the car and we opened the car door and within seconds, a swarm of mosquitoes was inside the car.
00:47:55.000And I wear it for a lot of reasons, because I definitely feel it helps me get closer to wildlife, but I've noticed mosquitoes do not like it.
00:48:08.000So it's this interwoven carbon grid that actually holds the body's electrical energy and capacity, like the door of a microwave oven, like a Faraday cage, right?
00:48:17.000And so you naturally emit electrical energy, and then when you wear this clothing, it's got this conductive carbon grid, and when you touch the ground or something, it grounds it and releases all the energy.
00:48:29.000Now, has it been proven that this stuff actually...
00:48:32.000I mean, it has been proven that it has an effect on the electrical energy that you release, but has it been proven that the animals can actually recognize that electrical energy?
00:50:03.000I guess it would be that there is something coming off of your body, and it probably would be an advantage for animals to be able to recognize that, just because we can't quantify it and put it on a scale or weigh it or something like that.
00:50:43.000Because birds have that in their brain.
00:50:45.000They have, I'm going to quote it wrong, but they have something that they can detect electrical signals of what helps them migrate around the world.
00:50:52.000So, for sure, I think it makes a difference.
00:50:59.000I mean, I customize stuff, you know, like in the Amazon we were looking for caiman and type of crocodile, so I built like a beefed up dog catcher that I use to try and lasso them.
00:51:07.000I have a snake hook on me at all times.
00:51:54.000Wild dogs of all kind are unbelievable.
00:51:57.000They're so at the top of their respective food chain.
00:52:00.000Yeah, we have a lot of coyotes around here, and basically they're little wolves, the little sneaky wolves.
00:52:06.000But real wolves, like wolves in Yellowstone, wolves in the northwest area of the United States, they have got to be some of the most majestic animals.
00:52:19.000Because they operate together, always, as these packs.
00:52:23.000So there's some sort of weird kind of communication and...
00:52:27.000And what's amazing is, like, the social dynamic, like, within the pack, you know, the hierarchy, and then on a hunt, like, you go left, I go right, but without any verbal communication, and then coming together and making a kill.
00:52:44.000We don't understand what kind of communication is going on.
00:52:46.000Do you think there's some sort of like telepathic or is it just facial and recognizing cues and patterns that they've established before of they see an animal, they know to flank it?
00:52:59.000Like, I definitely believe there is an intrinsic understanding of you go left, I go right, you know, facial recognition, you know, your expression tells me to do something, you're dominant, I'm passive, you know, learning that way.
00:53:13.000But I also think there's something more than that.
00:53:16.000Whether it's telepathic, whether it's a low frequency sound that is not audible to us, I have no idea.
00:53:22.000But I do think it's more than just visual cues.
00:53:25.000That's where, apparently, the myth of the werewolf comes from, is that wolves are so smart, they think that a wolf and a person were, like, combined together.
00:53:34.000I don't believe that, per se, but I can see how that came up.
00:55:24.000And that's the thing, like, with what I do looking for extinct animals or proof that they're still out there, is, like, there are so many stories like that.
00:55:33.000America's very well covered with eyeballs, but what's to say there isn't some remnant, small population, somewhere in the middle of nowhere that nobody has found these horses that have been untouched by human beings for millennia?
00:56:34.000If you've ever seen a gharial, if you know what that is, a type of crocodile with this long, crazy nose, it's like the alligator family, the caiman family version of that.
00:57:11.000So, I've had probably three years of research into this, into giant sloths, because Manapuguri, I believe is how it's said, it's the South American name for giant sloths, I don't want to give away too much info before I get to do a chance at looking for it,
00:57:27.000but after all the research I've compiled, there is, in my opinion, one location on Earth.
00:58:09.000I saw a documentary once about this scientist that was essentially risking his reputation trying to find a giant sloth somewhere, maybe in the Amazon, somewhere.
00:58:18.000Probably Peruvian Amazon, that's where I'm thinking too.
00:58:20.000And he kept talking to people that had seen it, and he never could get a hold of it, but he had been there for years.
00:58:30.000If you're a little Amazonian villager, you don't read, you don't have TV, there's no reason to make up science fiction, why say you've seen it?
00:58:39.000Because you like to fuck with white people.
00:59:25.000I mean, to me it's like you have to take an eyewitness report of an extinct creature or a cryptope creature with a grain of salt, but you still have to take it.
01:00:44.000Yeah, you'd be surprised because, you know, we're here, we're in a city, we're so used to our modern conveniences, but there are totally untouched pieces of the world still.
01:00:52.000Well, do you know David Cho, the artist?
01:02:16.000Oh, I mean, you know, it's a generic question, because we discover you'd have to look up the numbers, but it's like 2,000 new species a year.
01:03:28.000People, little tribal people, have been talking about it in like a mythological way, the same way they would talk about dinosaurs in the Congo.
01:03:34.000And the Western world's going, sure buddy, whatever you say.
01:03:36.000And then somebody finally goes down there, does an expedition, just like David did, and goes, oh, it turns out it's here.
01:03:44.000What is it about animals where we're so fascinated by the ones that might not be real or that might be hidden?
01:03:53.000I mean, people love to study giraffes and things that are absolutely real, but they also have an even more compelling need to search for things that are not quite sure if they exist or not.
01:04:31.000I think it's probably a side effect of our compulsion for innovation.
01:04:36.000Human beings are constantly trying to find out new secrets and find out new discoveries and invent new things and explore new worlds.
01:04:47.000I mean, this is just something that's been a part of human nature forever, this desire to improve and to go further, find the next best spot, find the new thing.
01:04:57.000You know, and then I think that also works with animals.
01:04:59.000I think we have this desire to find animals that we didn't know are real or weren't sure are real.
01:05:04.000Well, knowledge is the foundation of that, right?
01:05:06.000To go to a new planet, we have to have the knowledge of how to get there, right?
01:05:10.000To go to a new habitat, we have to know what's there.
01:05:12.000And I think maybe that's kind of that deep-rooted desire is like we need to know about this thing in order to understand if we can innovate off of it.
01:05:39.000I think there was one, there was some scientist that was disputing, but essentially they were talking about a three foot tall, hobbit-like man kind of thing.
01:07:16.000So who are these people that used to hunt these?
01:07:18.000Like I say, I kid you not, it was like the old English explorer would go and conquer Africa and hunt these people like they were an animal, you know?
01:09:32.000And I might get ridiculed as I go back to my scientific community for saying this, but my belief is there are these isolated pockets where small populations of megafauna still exist that we don't know about.
01:11:06.000Whether we can or cannot do it, to me that's a waste of scientific resources that could go towards conserving things that are on the brink.
01:11:13.000Now when you say, like, heal or mend the environment or the ecosystem, when you would bring back something like a pasture pigeon, isn't like 90% of everything that ever existed extinct?
01:11:25.000So does the ecosystem adjust and evolve and would reintroducing something like a passenger pigeon, would it kind of fuck things up that exist now where new animals have taken a different position on the hierarchy?
01:14:10.000This is a very abridged version of what happened.
01:14:13.000But now we've got the golden eagles also pushed out the bald eagle, which are fish eaters which lived on the island.
01:14:18.000So now after loads of years of removing golden eagles, like relocating them, removing all of the livestock, Now you have a healthy population of Channel Island foxes.
01:14:28.000The whole ecosystem is back in balance.
01:14:30.000Had it been left the way it was, what you would have found at the California Channel Islands over, say, 20 or 30 more years, 40 or 50 more years, no foxes, no bald eagles, a ton of golden eagles, and a ton of pigs, and likely over time, pigs would have exploded to the point that they Easter Islanded themselves,
01:15:18.000And what actually happened is because they were so remote, the middle of the ocean, nowhere near South America, nowhere near anywhere else, they cut down the last tree.
01:15:30.000It was void of trees, void of life, void of anything, and they didn't have the canoes or anything to leave anymore because they cut down the last tree to build a boat or make firewood, and everybody there died.
01:16:14.000I think certain people believe that the heads were calling to the gods to help save things because they were going so badly, yada yada.
01:16:22.000But I believe the heads are still a pretty big mystery, but the actual anthropology, the population, the collapse is known to be due to running out of resources.
01:16:40.000But it was a thriving population that flew too close to the sun, as they say.
01:16:45.000Because of Easter Island's small size, only 63 square miles, it quickly became overpopulated and its resources were rapidly depleted.
01:16:52.000When Europeans arrived on Easter Island between the late 1700s and the early 1800s, it was reported that the Moai were knocked down and the island seemed to have been a recent war site.
01:17:13.000Constant warfare between the tribes, lack of supplies and resources, disease, invasive species, and the opening of the island to foreign slave trade eventually led to Easter Island's collapse by the 1860s.
01:19:51.000So, the guy was telling me it's like 45 degrees Celsius, so that's well over 100. And, yeah, we've got to be careful about water and hiking, and there's a lot of elements.
01:20:03.000But that's the thing, is I'm looking for an animal nobody's seen in a very long amount of time, so you've got to go to these places nobody's going.
01:20:46.000There's mongoose that were introduced that destroyed the birds, and there's turtles, there's frogs, there's all kinds of things that have been brought in there, but none of those are culturally significant, whereas the pig, as you're saying, is a huge cultural significance.
01:22:36.000You know, they shot the last one, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:22:38.000There's one guy, crazy looking dude, long hair, long beard, like nuts looking guy, and he's been on the hunt, not hunt hunt, but like trying to prove that the New Zealand moose is still there.
01:22:47.000He's found antler sheds, he's found bedding sites, some guy even got a picture of one standing on a rock, and you know moose.
01:22:55.000And so there, in theory, somewhere down the South Island, there's one or two or three of these super elusive moose that have been in New Zealand for like 50 years.
01:23:09.000There's a friend of mine who's been there, my friend Adam Greentree, he's been there.
01:23:13.000He lives in Australia and he goes there to hunt tar.
01:23:16.000And, you know, they live in the- On the steepest- The craggiest shale where the rock's real slippery and it's just like cold as shit and really high altitude.
01:25:21.000Very, very intelligent genetic scientists that are trying to isolate specific genes that are specific to the animals that have been extinct and putting them into extant animals, animals that are still here, to basically make this Frankenstein animal,
01:25:38.000because it'll never be the animal that's gone, right?
01:25:40.000It will look like it, it'll behave like it, it'll think like it, etc., but it will never actually be the animal that we've lost.
01:25:49.000Right now what we can do is isolate a genome, put it into an existing animal that gives birth to an animal that looks and acts very much like the extinct animal.
01:25:57.000But it's some degree different because it's like a mammoth, for instance.
01:26:02.000They would have to take some DNA from a mammoth.
01:26:05.000That they would somehow or another get and introduce it to an embryo of an elephant, and then the elephant would give birth to a very hairy, very large tusk, like these isolated genetic codes, elephant.
01:26:18.000And it would look like a mammoth, it would act like a mammoth, but the reality is, it's a shaggy elephant with big tusks.
01:26:24.000Right, so if you did like 23andMe on it, it would show, oh, it's mostly elephant, but it's a little bit of a mammoth.
01:26:32.000Yeah, I mean, if you think of a double helix, like a DNA strand, right?
01:26:36.000You have these little bars in the middle of it.
01:26:38.000So what they do is, this is a very crude way to explain it, but they pull out a bar from an elephant and they put in a bar from a mammoth.
01:26:46.000And then eventually you get this mammoth.
01:26:48.000And so this would be with like gene editing tools like CRISPR or something along those lines?
01:28:00.000Can we take this thing that's gone and say, no, it's not?
01:28:03.000Like, we have the tools to make it not gone.
01:28:05.000Yeah, there was some article that I read where they were talking about reintroducing the mammoth to Siberia and that there would be some ecological benefit to reintroducing the mammoth because of the way they forage for food.
01:30:04.000But, I mean, still, can you imagine, like, you know, you're out fishing at Catalina and you look up and there's a pygmy mammoth on the cliff?
01:32:41.000If I was thinking of my best me, the best me would mark a pin and then alert some scientists and tell them where it is and leave it the fuck alone.
01:33:33.000Digs up one single gold coin, and he's like, it's here, I know it's here.
01:33:37.000He's a big spear fisherman, adventure guy.
01:33:39.000Goes, spends tens of thousands of dollars, he's not a rich man, spends tens of thousands of dollars, gets all this excavator equipment, goes to this very remote area of northwestern Australia, pulls up something like $10 million worth of treasure, takes it home, legally declares it all, tells the government,
01:33:57.000You can see his treasure in the museum in Perth.
01:34:02.000Here's this guy who would have retired, been a wealthy man, you know, had his whole life taken care of because of this thing he was obsessed with and then found, and then got the tools on his own dime to go and get it, declares it and has it confiscated.
01:36:38.000And I believe the island's changed hands like seven or eight times because people trying to find it have gone broke, digging it up, excavating it, exploring it, and there's booby traps and all this crazy stuff.
01:36:50.000There's some sort of a method that they've devised where if you go deep enough, it just fills up with water so you can never get to the actual treasure itself.
01:37:02.000We're assuming they're so smart that they buried the treasure in a way that nobody could ever get it out, but they might have just buried it in a way that they couldn't even get it out.
01:39:32.000Nobody has successfully, unless it's happened very recently and I'm unaware of, successfully done Source to Sea of the Congo River from guerrilla warfare, from crazy waterfalls, disease.
01:40:15.000And he went in there, took him a while for them to kind of assimilate and get comfortable, and then he got these photos that are just mind-blowing.
01:40:22.000Now, how often do they practice cannibalism?
01:40:27.000It is a spiritual thing where they actually eat the other tribes deceased after a war or an intertribal conflict as a way to ward off bad spirits.
01:41:29.000Yeah, but it's just so incredible that there's still people that live the way they lived many, many, many thousands of years ago, and they essentially just get their resources from the land, from the area they live, and they're just rocking it old school.
01:41:43.000And then for me, like, the cultural significance is huge, but what's the biological area like, right?
01:43:21.000So if someone stops, and there's one guy, he was sick, and so they left him on a tree, and he became covered with buzzard shit, because the vultures would just sit over him and wait for him to die, but he eventually recovered.
01:43:33.000And he caught up with the rest of the tribe, and for the rest of it, they called him something like buzzard shit or something like that.
01:45:39.000This giant male would come out of nowhere and there's a video of it, a video of him smashing these hyenas, just grabbing them with his giant head, shaking them, snapping them and tossing them in the air and then chasing after another one and killing them too.
01:47:10.000But there's, you know, very few things that they can eat on this one island, so they've developed this ability to just have larger frames, and they're much more muscular.
01:47:20.000And apparently there's, what's really interesting is there's this pack that's really big, but then there's another pack that lives on the island that's normal sized.
01:47:50.000So there was this island, Newfoundland, and these wolves, gray wolves, were isolated there for a long, long time, and all they were eating were moose and caribou.
01:48:22.000The ecological niches that each animal fulfills and the roles that they play within each other, it's all perfectly balanced.
01:48:31.000And to see it and understand it, it's fantastic to see the individual, but to understand the big picture of the environment and the roles that are filled, as you say, it's mind-blowing.
01:48:40.000Yeah, there's a documentary on the Congo from the BBC from, I want to say, like the early 2000s, maybe even late 90s.
01:48:48.000And it goes into that, into detail about how all these animals have adapted.
01:48:52.000And like dikers, there's dikers in the Congo that swim underwater for as much as 100 yards.
01:51:55.000And then over generational time, this tale evolved little spikes and little things, and all of a sudden you have this whole population of animals that look like that.
01:52:40.000Like, there's the bacteria, and the fungi, and the plant life, and the animal life, and the predators, and the prey, and it all sort of works together.
01:52:51.000And when something doesn't work, it just sort of drops off, and then the system sort of resets itself in a new order.
01:52:57.000I mean, to me, there is no—you're saying it's one of the most fascinating things—to me, there is nothing more fascinating.
01:53:02.000Like, I'm, you know, I'm obsessed with it.
01:53:05.000I live for it because I find it so interesting.
01:53:08.000Now, when you study these things, do you ever try to think how the fuck that happened?
01:53:14.000If you see that spider-tailed snake, is there anyone that has an idea that this was just a lucky break that this one snake had a freaky tail and then he got to fuck a lot because he ate a lot of birds?
01:53:49.000Over thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, what happened was, say there's two snakes with a white spot on their tail.
01:54:25.000You know, it's entirely made for showmanship, for peacocking, if you will.
01:54:30.000And over generational time, it gets bigger and crazier and more elaborate and more colorful, and the females literally flock to them, and that's the animal that continues on.
01:54:39.000I really wish there was a way, and maybe there will be sometime in the future, where they're going to be able to show you with some sort of supercomputer sequencing, where they'll be able to look at the DNA of this thing and say, oh, this is the exact progression.
01:54:52.000This is what it started off with, and this is what it became.
01:54:55.000This is how some sketchy-looking forest chicken became a peacock.
01:56:01.000But he's, you know, when we're looking at this, but this is apparently like peer-reviewed, published paper about the possibility of octopus being reintroduced.
01:56:10.000And I think it has something to do with the way RNA and DNA is on them, right?
01:56:17.000It's like the thought that the population came from out of space because of the DNA sequencing suggests something that makes it extraterrestrial adaptability.
01:56:27.000Yeah, he was super skeptical because he was saying that they're essentially so close to everything else here that it doesn't make sense.
01:56:32.000But the other theory was it might be just this is the path of life.
01:56:36.000And the reason why it's so close to us is that this is the way all life, even if it's extraterrestrial, gets established.
01:57:03.000I don't know if you know this, but they've proven that certain, I don't know about psilocybins, but certain mushroom spores are impenetrable to the vacuum of space.
01:58:03.000I've heard about guys that microdose with mushrooms, with psilocybin, and it heightens their focus and cures their autism.
01:58:12.000I'm not very well read on that, but there's a whole idea that microdosing with these chemicals that are naturally produced can actually have very positive effects.
01:58:22.000Yeah, there's quite a few people who do that.
01:58:27.000And they also microdose with LSD. There's a lot of that going on.
01:58:30.000Yeah, a lot of Silicon Valley people are microdosing with LSD. It's funny, because the one person that I know that's done the microdosing with mushrooms from Silicon Valley.
01:58:37.000Yeah, people grind them up into pill form.
01:58:40.000And in fact, a lot of fighters are doing that now.
01:59:40.000The mushrooms, for some people, alleviate that stress and put you in this elevated state where they say, and I've never fought on mushrooms, but they say that when you're on mushrooms, you actually can see what a guy's going to do before he does it.
01:59:57.000Yeah, you have a sense of what they're going to do that's a much more heightened sense than you would if you were just in a normal sober state.
02:00:03.000So do you think you're picking that up through, like, biological cues?
02:00:06.000Like, you could see the muscles twitching in the arm before the punch comes?
02:02:10.000And I'm like, okay, what does that mean?
02:02:12.000He's like, come to the Moloko, which is the, like, spiritual house.
02:02:14.000So, we go to the spiritual house, we sit around, we talk, and we talk, and we talk, and it's like hours of, not like asking him to go, but just like, almost like idle conversation where he's almost like interviewing us, like, well, what are you doing?
02:03:07.000Mixed with a bunch of a root and tobacco, I believe, like all together.
02:03:11.000And anyway, so he goes, there's five of us in my crew.
02:03:14.000He goes around the circle and he hits three guys and they all go, whoa, my brain feels like I've got chlorine on the head, you know, whatever.
02:04:57.000And the whole fucking trip, I've got that in the back of my mind going, maybe the whole reason nothing's going wrong is because I just had green fucking powder blowed up my nose.
02:05:12.000Were you trying to make logical sense out of this?
02:05:15.000Was there ever a thought where you're like, maybe in this extreme environment that's so utterly different than any other place in the world that these rules are different?
02:05:28.000I mean, I'm sitting there going, going into it, I'm like, cool, yeah, I'll do the stupid powder if it means I can go on my expedition, you know what I mean?
02:05:37.000I'm just, like, going through the motion to get my job done as a scientist.
02:05:41.000And then I had this experience, and I'm not saying I was enlightened or awoken or anything like that, but all of a sudden I attributed my success and my safety in small part to this green fucking powder blown up my nose by a shaman through a monkey bone.
02:05:57.000And the thing about it is, even if that's not true, if you think it's true, and then you wind up being okay, and you have confidence that you're going to be okay, and maybe you have less anxiety and make better critical decisions because you think that everything's going to work out...
02:06:17.000We were very, very successful in what we set out to do, and I... I feel like because I had that crazy experience and here's this old little jungle Indian going, now you're going to be okay, I didn't have any anxiety going into the situation.
02:06:33.000And before that, I had no thought of it ever playing a part.
02:06:37.000Well, like the mindfuck of the placebo effect, right?
02:06:46.000But is there a change in the way you interface with reality if you believe that you've experienced some sort of spiritual enrichening and that some bad spirit has been released from your body?
02:07:37.000The only reason I did that is because it was a necessity to do what I was doing.
02:07:42.000It was coming from an expert, if you will, but a person who saw it as a necessity to do what I was doing, and I was under his guidance.
02:07:49.000To go out and pick a mushroom and try it and have an experience, I don't see the benefit in that.
02:07:56.000But when someone who lives in that community, embraces that wild jungle, says, this is my home and this is how you do it, I will absolutely do it.
02:08:07.000What if they wanted you out of respect?
02:08:08.000There's a bunch of those different snuffs that they pump up their nose, and one of them is, I think it's some form of 5-methoxy-dimethyltryptamine, which is that stuff that comes off of toads.
02:08:32.000I mean, look, if it was the same situation where he's telling me you've got to do this to go to work, do your job, whatever, absolutely I'd do it out of respect.
02:08:45.000I mean, I think, you know, when you're in the world of these people and they've survived in this world for eons and this is their environment and, like, you kind of have to let go and give in to this.