Paul Rosolie: Amazon conservationist, author, and co-founder of Jungle Keepers, who has spent ~20 years protecting a remote headwater river in the Peruvian Amazon. Author of the memoir Mother of God.
What this episode covers
Paul Rosolie returns to JRE to describe his recent encounter with the uncontacted Mashco Piro tribe and the broader fight to protect the Peruvian Amazon. He and Joe dig into the science of whether the Amazon is 'man-made' (Rosolie pushes back hard), the threats from loggers, gold miners, and cocaine-growing narcos, and the very real death threats and assassination attempts he and his partner JJ now face. He recounts vivid survival stories: a venomous stingray strike healed by indigenous plant medicine, a tree crushing a ranger, and swimming out to save a drowning spider monkey by 'speaking its language.' The conversation widens into MMA, martial arts, ayahuasca with Lex Fridman, Jane Goodall's career-making endorsement, Bigfoot, EMF/injury conspiracy theories, and the case for nature over the modern 'concrete and electronic' world.
The guest's own work
Mother of God
Paul Rosolie
“I was just writing chapters of my first book, Mother of God, which didn't even have a name yet.”— Paul Rosolie
Mother of God
Paul Rosolie
“if that didn't happen, I never would have published Mother of God. I never would have started Jungle Keepers.”— Paul Rosolie
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
The Lost City of Z
David Grann
“even in the Lost City of Z, I mean, even the the talk What is it? Percy Fawcett?”— Joe Rogan
Neosporin
Johnson & Johnson
“we have Neosporin. You got a cut, looks a little infected, you put Neosporin on it. It might work.”— Paul Rosolie
The Wayfinders / books on indigenous wisdom
Wade Davis
“If you listen to authors like Wade Davis who writes a lot about indigenous wisdom”— Paul Rosolie
Insomniac with Dave Attell
Comedy Central
“David Attell used to have a TV show called Insomniac... It was a Comedy Central show. It was a really good show.”— Joe Rogan
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy
“It's like you think like the cowboy days like when it was really wild like Blood Meridian.”— Joe Rogan
Blade
New Line Cinema
“Wesley, if you look at his like skills like from the movie Blade and like he's a really good martial artist.”— Joe Rogan
Avatar
James Cameron
“there's just macaws everywhere it's just there's just so much life it's Avatar it's just just pulsing life.”— Paul Rosolie
Big reveals from this episode
- Rosolie released footage of making contact with the uncontacted Mashco Piro tribe, who came out asking for bananas and demanding loggers stop cutting their trees.
- Police intercepted a WhatsApp message from narcos offering a reward to kill Rosolie and his partner JJ; gunmen later ambushed their driver believing JJ was in the car.
- A logger admitted that locals preemptively murdered two European hikers, fearing they were 'organ harvesters.'
- Rosolie was hit by a stingray that flayed the skin off his foot; indigenous plant medicine had him walking in 2 days while a previous victim didn't walk for 2 months.
- After an intense ayahuasca ceremony, Rosolie says he physically cannot tolerate alcohol anymore, becoming hypersensitive to it.
- Jane Goodall personally read chapters of his unpublished first book, told him to finish it, and wrote him an endorsement that launched his career.
- Narcos later assassinated one of the police officers who had been dispatched to protect Rosolie's team.
Worth remembering
- About 20% of the Amazon rainforest has already been destroyed; cattle ranching accounts for ~60% of the deforestation.
- A four-lane highway is being cut through protected Amazon rainforest to host the COP30 climate summit in Belem, Brazil.
- Sangre de Drago ('dragon's blood'), an Amazonian tree sap, is reportedly far more potent than Neosporin at killing bacteria.
- Roughly 25% of modern pharmaceutical drugs are derived from rainforest plants, including quinine (malaria) and captopril (from bushmaster venom).
- Indigenous trackers read the birds to know how fast to walk; sudden silence can mean a jaguar or an incoming storm.
- Rosolie says his favorite jungle foods are piranha and paco (pacu), which has human-like molar teeth for crunching nuts.
- Gigantopithecus, a bipedal primate 8-10 feet tall, once coexisted with humans, fueling debate about Bigfoot legends.
- A Mojave Desert concentrated-solar plant incinerated about 6,000 birds a year before being shut down.
- The San Francisco 49ers' training facility sits near an electrical substation, prompting a theory that EMF exposure drives their high rate of catastrophic injuries.
- A 70-million-year-old dinosaur egg found in China was filled with sparkling calcite crystals, forming a natural geode.