#489 – Paul Rosolie: Uncontacted Tribes in the Amazon Jungle

**Lex Fridman** (0:00)
The following is a conversation with Paul Rosolie, his third time on the podcast. Paul is a naturalist, explorer, writer, and is someone who has dedicated his life to protecting the Amazon rainforest and celebrating the beauty of the natural world. He has a new book coming out in a few days titled Junglekeeper. They should definitely go pre-order now. It tells some intense stories about his time in the jungle over the past several years, building up to a few epic recent events, including a new full on extended encounter with an uncontacted tribe that we discuss in this podcast. Both the book and audio book are great. I highly recommend it. If you would like to support Paul and his incredible team in their mission to protect the jungle, go to junglekeepers.org. You can help with donations or by spreading the word or checking out the gala that Paul is hosting in New York on January 22nd in a few days. They are doing all they can to help raise funds for the mission of safeguarding as much of the rainforest as possible. And I think it's a mission worth fighting for. The Amazon jungle is one of the most special and beautiful places on earth. As an aside, allow me to look back briefly and mention something that I've been struggling with a bit. For context, I traveled to the Amazon rainforest with Paul a while back. It was an adventure of a lifetime with lots of crazy twists and turns. We did record a podcast out there, literally in the jungle. Episode 429, if you want to go check it out. It was awesome. And we also recorded a bunch of disparate footage of the journey, just for fun. And I would still love to somehow put all that together into a cohesive video, in case it's interesting to someone. But I've learned just how difficult it is to organize and edit a pile of chaotically recorded footage like that. So let's see if I can pull it off. But in any case, this kind of raw vlog style video is something that I would love to be able to do more of, as a way to celebrate amazing human beings like Paul and others, including everyday people who I meet on my travels. So, I'll keep trying, tinkering, learning, and I ask for your patience and support along the way. Now, back to our regular scheduled programming. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description or at lexfridman.com/sponsors. It is in fact the best way to support this podcast. We got Perplexity for curiosity-driven knowledge exploration and better help for mental health, Element for electrolytes, Shopify for selling stuff online, Fin for customer service AI agents, Miro for brainstorming ideas with your team and Masterclass, of course, for learning. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, on to the full ad reads. I try to make them interesting, but if you skip, and there are in fact chapter markers that make it easy to skip after you listen to this part, please still check out the sponsors. And I should say that a lot of folks said they still listen to these sponsors because of the personal touch, because of the human stories that I put in there, because of the random, disparate, chaotic thoughts that I throw in there. So for those folks, thank you. But if you skip, please, please still support the sponsors. I really wouldn't be able to do it without them. To get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexfridman.com/contact. All right, let's go. This episode is brought to you by a better help, spelled H-E-L-P help. They figure out what you need and match you with a licensed professional therapist under 48 hours. I've been reading a lot about the history of psychiatry recently, preparing for this gigantic super episode on the history and the current state of the art across the board in psychiatry. And it's such a fascinating history. If it reveals anything, it reveals just how complicated the human mind is, just how difficult, how heavy, how important the chaos our mind takes us through on a daily basis. And I've always been a big believer that the sort of psychotherapy approach, talking, talk therapy, in all of its different forms, is a really powerful method of exploring that. Anyway, BetterHelp is easy, discreet, affordable, available worldwide. Check them out at betterhelp.com/lex and save on your first month. That's betterhelp.com/lex.
This episode is also brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix. I take one packet usually. I put it in a one of those larger powerade bottles, mix it up, put it in the fridge and then drink it throughout the day. I drink several throughout the day, especially before and after an intensive workout where I know I'm going to lose a lot of water, a lot of electrolytes. I replenish. If I don't do that, especially with the fasting I do, I mostly eat one meal a day and especially with the extremely low carb diet that I eat, basically zero carbs on most days, especially when I'm just in my happy focus place. Getting the electrolytes right just makes me feel good. I think that's anecdotally what a huge amount of people report online, especially if you're doing keto, carnivore, if you're doing fasting, all that kind of stuff. Getting the electrolytes right is essential. Get a free eight count sample pack with any purchase. Just try it at drinklmnt.com/lex.