I Met An Uncontacted Tribe: They Killed My Friend!

Paul Rosolie (0:00)

This Burmese python wants to know what is inside the diary of a CEO.

Steven Bartlett (0:05)

Oh my god.

Paul Rosolie (0:05)

Beautiful. Now, what are you feeling right now?

Steven Bartlett (0:07)

Wondering why the f*** I do this for a living.

Paul Rosolie (0:09)

Have you ever done a podcast with a 10-foot snake across the table before?

Steven Bartlett (0:13)

No, this is my first.

Paul Rosolie (0:15)

Awesome. Bring out the next friend.

Steven Bartlett (0:17)

Don't bring it over here.

Paul Rosolie (0:18)

Just don't move.

Steven Bartlett (0:20)

Paul, what have you spent the last 20 years of your life doing?

Paul Rosolie (0:23)

Living out of a backpack in the Amazon rainforest, barefoot with a machete to help the indigenous people save the Amazon, whatever it takes, which means crocodile bites, snake bites, very rare diseases, hunted by the narco-traffickers. That's a picture of that guy. That scar is because he was shot in the head by a 7-foot arrow while he was trying to make peaceful contact with the uncontacted tribes. And this is actually a very important story.

Steven Bartlett (0:45)

I think I have a video of this.

Paul Rosolie (0:46)

Yeah, this is world-first footage. So a tribe isolated so deep in the jungle that they've never heard of a spoon, or the wheel, or Jesus was coming out to make contact. So we do a two-day boat journey in one night, through the worst thunderstorm I've ever seen. They were scared, we were scared, because these tribes kill people all the time. And they had one question. How do we tell the bad guys from the good guys? You see, these people are being hunted by traffickers and gold miners and loggers and boxed in by deforestation. But if our oceans are rainforests or vanishing, life on earth is not possible. Now, it's not too late, but we're the last generation that can save it.

Steven Bartlett (1:20)

Paul, young kids are growing up attached to screens and lonelinesses at an all-time high. Is there anything that you learn in those 15 years that a Westerner like me would find useful? 100%.

Paul Rosolie (1:28)

So let's start with purpose.

Steven Bartlett (1:34)

Listen, my team gave me a script that they asked me to read, but I'm just going to ask you, in the nicest way I possibly can, thank you first and foremost for choosing to subscribe to this channel. It's been one of the most incredible, crazy years of my life. I never could have imagined. I had so many dreams in my life, but this was not one of them. And the very fact that these conversations have resonated with you and you've given me so much feedback is something I will always be appreciative of. And I almost carry away a burden of responsibility to pay you back. And the favour I would like to ask from you today is to subscribe to the channel, if you would be so obliged. It's completely free to do that. Roughly about 47% of you that listen to this channel frequently currently don't subscribe to this channel. So if you're one of those people, please come and join us, hit the subscribe button. It's the single free thing you can do to make this channel better. And every subscriber pays into this show and allows us to do things bigger and better and to push ourselves even more. And I will not let you down if you hit the subscribe button. I promise you. And if I do, please do unsubscribe. But I promise I won't. Thank you.

Paul, you live an extraordinary life, a very atypical extraordinary life. What have you spent the last 20 years of your life doing?

Paul Rosolie (2:44)

Trying to find a way to explore the wildest parts of the Amazon and figure out a way to save them.

Steven Bartlett (2:51)

The Amazon. For a lot of people that don't know anything about this part of the world, they'll think of it as a bunch of trees where lots of wild animals live. What is the sort of central misunderstanding of the true nature of the Amazon?

Paul Rosolie (3:03)

I think it's a problem of scale. People don't understand the importance of the Amazon. This is one of the most crucial things on our planet. It's one of the most physically defining features of our planet. If you look at Earth from space, you see this giant green belt over most of South America. That's the Amazon Rainforest. And that's where one fifth of our fresh waters contained and another fifth of our oxygen is produced. This system is irreplaceably valuable to all life on Earth.