Joe Rogan Experience - Daniel Everett

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The Joe Rogan Experience.
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Showing by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
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Good to see you, sir.
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Good to be here.
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Thank you very much for doing this. I'm really excited
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to talk to you. I've been looking forward to this
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a lot.
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Thanks very much for having me.
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You have a very, very unique life story. So I
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want to start with how did you become, let's lay
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it out for people. What got me interested in you
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is you became a Christian missionary and then went to
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the jungle and met these people. Let me say this right.
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The Pidahai?
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Pidahai.
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Pidahai. Pidahai. And stopped being a missionary and lived with
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them for how long?
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Well, the total time that I lived with them is
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about eight years in the jungle with them over a period.
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But I've been working with them for 40 years. I
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go back a lot. Wow.
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But you lived with them for eight years, and during
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that eight-year time period, you kind of.
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Is it safe to say you're an atheist?
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Yes, it's safe to say that.
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And so let's take it back to the beginning. How
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did you become a missionary? Did you come from a
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religious family?
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No, I came from a very unreligious family. I was...
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In fact, I was standing out in front of a
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Jimi Hendrix concert in 1968 trying to sell LSD to
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get in, and.
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And this guy that I knew from high school that
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was really straight-laced came up with his sister. She was
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very cute. And so I went up to try to
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sell them some LSD. They didn't use drugs. And so
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I said, well, you got any change? I need to
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get some money to get into the concert. And I
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saw that she went to the same high school that
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I did. So after the concert, which she didn't like
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but I loved, I went to see her in high school.
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I sat by her during lunchtime and found out that
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she was a missionary and had been raised in Brazil.
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Wow.
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That really intrigued me because it was the sixties and
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I was, you know, didn't want to have just a
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typical us life and living in the Amazon sounded really cool.
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But then I became, you know, a genuine, strong, believing Christian, uh,
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went to Bible school. I did my undergraduate degree in
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Bible and theology. And I was an ordained minister in
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the Wesleyan church and very active in church. And, um,
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was preached on street corners and did all that kind
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of thing.
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How did you make this transition from being a guy
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with a bag of acid in front of a Jimi
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Hendrix concert to?
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Well, her father, who had been a missionary now for
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20 years, was the most influential person outside my family
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in my life. And he and I would sit up
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late at night talking. And, you know, I was 17
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and I found everything he said to be very convincing
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and very interesting. But mainly I loved his stories of
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the jungle and what it was like to live in
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the jungle. And I wanted to do that. And I
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became a believer. It was a gradual process. Well, actually, no,
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it wasn't that gradual. It was my father was just astounded.
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He said, you know, from one minute I'm worrying about
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you getting arrested. And now you're going to church every
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Sunday with these people I don't even know. He wasn't
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that happy about it.
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He'd rather you just get loaded in front of the
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Hendrix concert?
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Yeah, he would have actually because he was a heavy
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drinker and a construction worker and he considered that to
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be part of the masculine experience.
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But acid? Was acid okay with him?
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I don't think he knew I was doing acid. But
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he knew I was doing weed and things like that.
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And he didn't mind that? No. He didn't want me
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doing it in the house, which I did.
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So your rebellion was to become an outstanding citizen and
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a Christian missionary? Right.
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That was my greatest form of rebellion against the life
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I had been leading.
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Interesting. Yeah, that's what happens when parents push their kids
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into a certain direction.
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Right, right.
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Little people don't like being told what to do. Yeah.
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So you immediately, it seems like, go become a Christian.
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And then how long before you are actually doing missionary
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work in the jungle?
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Well, there's a lot of training you have to do.
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So first I had to do four years of college,
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Bible and theology, and then I had to do some
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linguistics training. And then not a graduate degree or anything
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like that, just some linguistics training from the missionary organization
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because I wanted to be a Bible translator. And then
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we did jungle training in southern Mexico. So we went
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to the jungles of Chiapas and had to do survival
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training and all of this.
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Whoa.
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What did you have to do there?
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Well, there are several phases to it. The family goes
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and the family is part of it. But the hardest
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thing is to really see how much you've learned. They
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take you on what's called survival hike and they leave
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you alone for about a week in the jungle. You're
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not allowed to take any food or any supplies of
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any kind.
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For a week?
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Yeah, for a week or more. You don't know. It's
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going to be at least a week. In my case,
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it was about 10 days. And you've got to set up.
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Your camp, how best you can figure out how to
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get a fire going.
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Do they teach you how to do all this stuff?
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They don't just like figure it out.
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This is like the final exam. So you've had almost
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four months of training before they finally take you out
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on this survival.
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Do you have water?
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You have maybe a quart of water when you leave,
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but you're going to be out there for 10 days.
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So you've got to find water. So we learned which
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vines have water and how to cut the vines. We
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did have a machete. So I was able to jump
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up and cut a vine out. At the top first
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and then at the bottom.
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And no one's monitoring you? They're just leaving you out
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there and they're not making sure you're okay?
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No, they just come along when the time's up. And
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if you're there, you're there.
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Oh, boy. And if you're not, you're dead?
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You could be.
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So that's insane.
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Yeah, well, this is what happens when you live by faith.
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You're out there. And God is supposed to be supervising
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your training, but it's really rigorous training. So by the
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time I actually got to the Amazon, which was eight
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years after I converted, it took that long, it felt
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like I was coming home. I wasn't surprised by things.
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Well, the training was good then. I mean I would
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imagine if you really want someone to be able to
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survive alone in the jungle, the best way to do
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it is to test them by making them survive alone
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in the jungle so that you get an actual– Version
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of the experience. It's not simulated. You actually are getting
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water from vines. What were you eating?
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Well, I learned different kinds of plants that you could eat.
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And then I learned how to make with a stick,
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you know, make a stick the size of a toothpick
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sharpened on both ends. And I did have some fishing line.
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I would attach that to that. And I was so
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proud of myself because I brought up two fish that
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were about three inches long. And I ate those– most
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of the time I ate plants and went hungry. So
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when I see the programs like Alone, that wouldn't bother me.
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That's the kind of stuff we had to do.
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They didn't even give you fish hooks?
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No. You can't have that kind of stuff. You have
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to learn to cope on your own. You've got to
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make your own. You've got to be able to recognize
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the plants, which ones are poisonous, which ones are not poisonous.
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Did you try to make like a bow and arrow
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or anything?
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Yeah, yeah.
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You did?
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I did. I made a bow and arrow.
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How did you do that?
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Well, I had a machete and that's what I had.
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It's crazy to give you a machete. They won't give
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you fish hooks.
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Like, come on, guys. Yeah, yeah.
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Well, machetes are so much easier to carry.
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Right. But the machete you need for firewood, you need
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for lots of things. You know, when I got to
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the Amazon. Do you have a lighter? No. No.
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How are you making fires?
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Well, I had just– they let me take just a
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few matches.
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Oh, Lord.
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And so no lighter, but a few matches, which you
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kept in a 35-millimeter film cartridge.
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People don't know about those things, those little containers.
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Yeah.
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How many matches did they give you for 10 days?
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Well, you had one of those little containers with about 10,
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15 matches in it at the most. Oh, boy.
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So you've got to match a day.
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You've got to keep your fire going all the time.
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You always have to keep that fire going. So before
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you start it, you spend half the day just cutting firewood.
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And I would imagine it's very wet. It's all wet.
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So you've got to find something dry to get it going.
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And as they told us— You've got to keep it going. Yeah.
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They said once it's hot enough, it'll burn anything. But
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until it gets hot, you can't just throw that wet
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wood on there. It'll put it out. So, you know,
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you have to spend a lot of time exploring, trying
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to find— dry crackly wood and leaves and things and
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get it going and then slowly introduce the thinner pieces
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of wet wood until finally you can throw on a
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sopping log.
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So a big part of your day essentially is making
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sure that fire stays lit yeah that's a big part
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of your day and you can't get too far from it.
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No you have to stay fairly close to it and
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at night you definitely want to keep it going so
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i remember one night waking up and hearing heavy steps
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around my camp and uh I was up immediately blowing
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on that fire for everything I was worth to get
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that thing up. Yeah.
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Was it Jaguars?
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I suspect that it could have been, although I didn't
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see it. I had my machete, which when I got
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to the Amazon and actually saw Jaguars, I realized that
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would have been a pretty pathetic thing to try, go
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against a Jaguar with a machete. They would rip your
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head off.
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Before you— Everybody likes to think they have a chance, though.
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Yeah, yeah, but— What I found out is jaguars, you know,
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they get up to 400 pounds. And they're the third
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biggest cat in the world after the lion and the tiger.
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And they often hunt in pairs. And so you wouldn't
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have a chance against a jaguar unless you were one
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of the pitahas. I know that guys alone by themselves
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have killed jaguars. Really?
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Yeah.
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What a surprise.
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They using to kill a jaguar?
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Well, they're always with their bows and arrows.
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A bow and arrow range for a jaguar. That's crazy.
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Well, you better have it ready because it sneaks up
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on you. There's another group that I worked with for
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quite a while, several months, called the Bonowah, and they
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use poison darts and poisoned arrows. So there's this story
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of this guy who went out hunting, and he reached
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a clearing in the jungle, and he saw a deer
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come out running straight for him. And at first he
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was happy, and he was going to kill the deer.
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Then he realized deers don't just come running out of
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the jungle towards people. And then right behind the deer
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came a jaguar. And the jaguar saw him, the guy,
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and he was bigger than the deer, so the jaguar
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just took off straight for him and jumped up. And
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the guy got his blowgun out. Out in front of him,
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they're about seven or eight feet long, these big blowguns,
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and they're very sturdy. And the jaguar, he holds it away.
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The jaguar's back legs are tearing the meat off of
250
00:11:00.669 --> 00:11:03.710
his legs, and the jaguar's head just keeps snapping at
251
00:11:03.750 --> 00:11:06.309
his face, trying to get his face. And what saved
252
00:11:06.350 --> 00:11:09.210
his life was the jaguar jumped off to go around
253
00:11:09.230 --> 00:11:10.909
the back and try to get him from the back,
254
00:11:11.529 --> 00:11:13.409
but he had a poisoned arrow, and he stabbed the
255
00:11:13.429 --> 00:11:15.970
jaguar with it, and that hurts, and the jaguar started
256
00:11:16.009 --> 00:11:17.330
to run off, and then he shot it with a
257
00:11:17.370 --> 00:11:23.929
poisoned arrow. But he passed out, and his family found
258
00:11:23.970 --> 00:11:27.940
him a couple of days later with his legs just
259
00:11:28.019 --> 00:11:30.799
infected and torn to pieces. But he survived.
260
00:11:33.659 --> 00:11:36.919
And so these Pidahad, would they go hunt the jaguars?
261
00:11:37.899 --> 00:11:40.879
If they saw that it was a danger, if a
262
00:11:40.919 --> 00:11:44.190
woman went out and a jaguar or a mountain lion
263
00:11:45.389 --> 00:11:47.509
scared her, the men would go out to kill it.
264
00:11:48.330 --> 00:11:49.350
So I've eaten jaguar.
265
00:11:49.370 --> 00:11:52.149
What does it taste like?
266
00:11:52.210 --> 00:11:56.879
Well, this one was sort of– this was a sick jaguar.
267
00:11:56.940 --> 00:11:59.179
But it's stringy meat. I mean it's very muscly meat.
268
00:11:59.220 --> 00:11:59.980
Is it a sick one?
269
00:12:01.100 --> 00:12:04.080
Yeah. That's how they wound up killing it. I found
270
00:12:04.139 --> 00:12:06.409
out later. I was really impressed. They killed a jaguar.
271
00:12:06.990 --> 00:12:08.929
And they have killed many jaguars. But this one turned
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00:12:08.990 --> 00:12:10.669
out to be a sick jaguar, which is why he
273
00:12:10.710 --> 00:12:11.750
attacked the woman.
274
00:12:12.450 --> 00:12:14.110
Like he was starving her down or something?
275
00:12:14.149 --> 00:12:16.389
Yeah, he was starving. So the men killed it. And
276
00:12:16.429 --> 00:12:18.240
ate it. But I did– my children were with me
277
00:12:18.269 --> 00:12:21.100
this whole time. So I told my children, I said,
278
00:12:21.120 --> 00:12:24.840
just remember who's eating whom out here.
279
00:12:24.879 --> 00:12:26.159
So do you remember what it tastes like?
280
00:12:27.379 --> 00:12:30.379
Well, it's a stringy meat. It's really hard to describe
281
00:12:30.480 --> 00:12:31.230
all the taste.
282
00:12:31.419 --> 00:12:33.470
Stringy, like very sinewy?
283
00:12:33.490 --> 00:12:38.549
It's tough. Yeah, sinewy and very tough. And my general
284
00:12:38.590 --> 00:12:41.289
rule of thumb– I eat anything that they kill. But
285
00:12:41.429 --> 00:12:43.250
my general rule of thumb is I usually have a
286
00:12:43.409 --> 00:12:46.490
bottle of Tabasco sauce and And if you put Tabasco
287
00:12:46.509 --> 00:12:47.529
sauce on it, it's okay.
288
00:12:48.169 --> 00:12:51.320
And so these pitahas, am I saying it right?
289
00:12:51.419 --> 00:12:52.720
Yeah, that's right.
290
00:12:53.539 --> 00:12:55.299
They don't preserve anything, right?
291
00:12:55.320 --> 00:12:55.419
No.
292
00:12:55.440 --> 00:12:57.539
They just kill things and cook them.
293
00:12:58.080 --> 00:13:01.500
Yeah, they don't, you know, many, many different groups smoke
294
00:13:01.539 --> 00:13:04.080
the meat or salt the meat if they have salt
295
00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:08.259
or dry it. And the pitahas know how to do that.
296
00:13:08.360 --> 00:13:09.659
I don't know where they learn how to do it
297
00:13:09.700 --> 00:13:11.899
because they never do it except if they want to
298
00:13:11.960 --> 00:13:14.830
trade the meat with Brazilian boats who come up. But
299
00:13:14.870 --> 00:13:17.370
among themselves, they don't preserve any meat. You know, I
300
00:13:17.409 --> 00:13:20.240
was talking to a guy one time and, you know,
301
00:13:20.279 --> 00:13:22.340
why don't you preserve your meat? And he says, oh,
302
00:13:22.399 --> 00:13:24.200
I preserve it in the belly of my brother. So
303
00:13:25.899 --> 00:13:28.240
they share it. And if I get meat, I give
304
00:13:28.259 --> 00:13:30.000
you some. And if you get meat, you give me some.
305
00:13:30.039 --> 00:13:31.419
So why would I? Right.
306
00:13:31.940 --> 00:13:34.080
So there's no need to store. And also, I guess
307
00:13:34.159 --> 00:13:37.179
it's very abundant. There's a lot of life where they live,
308
00:13:37.450 --> 00:13:39.049
like in terms of fish and game.
309
00:13:39.690 --> 00:13:42.070
There have been. Yeah. I mean, they live on this river,
310
00:13:42.110 --> 00:13:46.059
the Micey River. And they're the only humans that live
311
00:13:46.100 --> 00:13:50.399
along the river for almost 300 miles of the curvy river.
312
00:13:50.980 --> 00:13:54.299
And it's a relatively large river by U.S. standards. In Brazil,
313
00:13:54.340 --> 00:13:56.740
it doesn't even make many of the maps. But it's
314
00:13:56.759 --> 00:14:00.279
a couple of hundred yards across. And in the rainy season,
315
00:14:00.320 --> 00:14:04.470
it can be as much as 75 feet deep, 100
316
00:14:04.470 --> 00:14:08.230
feet deep. So there's plenty of fish for them. In
317
00:14:08.289 --> 00:14:12.070
recent years, that's changed because the Brazilian … Government has
318
00:14:12.110 --> 00:14:16.309
allowed the construction of dams across various rivers. Not their river,
319
00:14:16.370 --> 00:14:19.509
but they affect the water level so much that it's
320
00:14:19.570 --> 00:14:21.549
taken all the fish, most of the fish out of
321
00:14:21.590 --> 00:14:24.580
their river. So now they're starving. And this has led
322
00:14:24.700 --> 00:14:28.820
to conflict with Brazilians who live not too far away.
323
00:14:28.899 --> 00:14:31.700
And they've killed a few people stealing food from their
324
00:14:31.799 --> 00:14:35.870
farms and things. Oh, man. Can you imagine?
325
00:14:35.950 --> 00:14:39.960
You just have this. kind of harmonious existence with nature
326
00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:42.960
and someone just decides to make a dam. Like you've
327
00:14:42.980 --> 00:14:44.580
got it so dialed in that you don't need to
328
00:14:44.620 --> 00:14:47.879
preserve your food. Right. Because everyone's just like happy and
329
00:14:47.960 --> 00:14:49.419
eating fish right out of the river.
330
00:14:50.500 --> 00:14:54.659
Right. And, you know, that's– they don't know where the
331
00:14:54.679 --> 00:14:56.840
dam is. They've never seen the dam. I told them
332
00:14:57.179 --> 00:14:59.700
that they built something that crosses the river like a wall.
333
00:15:00.419 --> 00:15:03.809
And they say, why do they do that? And I said, well,
334
00:15:03.830 --> 00:15:07.250
they want electricity, which they barely understand. They've seen– I
335
00:15:07.289 --> 00:15:09.940
have a generator. I never had one for the first
336
00:15:09.940 --> 00:15:13.000
20 years I was working with them, but I eventually
337
00:15:13.019 --> 00:15:15.159
got a generator and they could see what electricity was.
338
00:15:15.220 --> 00:15:17.679
And I said, so that's where they get the lights.
339
00:15:19.139 --> 00:15:22.649
But they don't understand it. And it's for the first
340
00:15:22.710 --> 00:15:24.769
time in their history, and they've been living there as
341
00:15:24.789 --> 00:15:28.090
far as I can tell for almost 300 years on
342
00:15:28.110 --> 00:15:31.720
this one river. For the first time in their history,
343
00:15:31.750 --> 00:15:36.500
they can't be self-sufficient in proteins.
344
00:15:38.029 --> 00:15:40.889
That's crazy. And how long ago did they build this dam?
345
00:15:42.490 --> 00:15:45.529
I think it was about 10 years ago. But they
346
00:15:45.610 --> 00:15:49.669
didn't– when it first went into operation, then it flooded
347
00:15:50.049 --> 00:15:54.009
the entire– lots of farmland, lots of settlements and things
348
00:15:54.090 --> 00:15:56.269
up on the Madeira. But what was shocking was that
349
00:15:56.909 --> 00:16:01.269
way downriver from the dam, it affected the water level
350
00:16:01.370 --> 00:16:06.230
so much that when their river, the Maisee, goes to
351
00:16:06.289 --> 00:16:12.240
its lowest point– in the dry season, there's still only
352
00:16:12.279 --> 00:16:14.759
a few places where you can see the bottom of
353
00:16:14.779 --> 00:16:16.639
the river. Most of the places, even when it's at
354
00:16:16.679 --> 00:16:18.590
its lowest, you can't see the bottom of the river.
355
00:16:19.610 --> 00:16:21.710
But in the last couple of years, it's gotten so
356
00:16:21.730 --> 00:16:22.789
low you can walk across.
357
00:16:23.610 --> 00:16:24.549
Oh, wow.
358
00:16:24.690 --> 00:16:25.830
And the fish don't stay there.
359
00:16:28.120 --> 00:16:29.200
So what are these people eating?
360
00:16:30.240 --> 00:16:33.460
Well, they go hunting, which they don't like to do. But,
361
00:16:33.539 --> 00:16:35.960
of course, when the fish are gone and when the
362
00:16:36.019 --> 00:16:38.629
river is gone, You lose a lot of the game
363
00:16:38.669 --> 00:16:40.659
from the jungle. So they have to go– instead of
364
00:16:40.700 --> 00:16:43.559
going a mile into the jungle, they have to go
365
00:16:43.639 --> 00:16:46.720
many miles into the jungle and they're still not successful.
366
00:16:46.820 --> 00:16:50.679
So it's busting up communities. Some people are moving out
367
00:16:50.720 --> 00:16:54.330
of their normal area to other areas to try to–
368
00:16:54.580 --> 00:16:57.580
back on bigger rivers. But then that means they're surrounded
369
00:16:57.639 --> 00:17:01.159
by Brazilians and they're no longer leading the life that
370
00:17:01.179 --> 00:17:01.879
they used to lead.
371
00:17:04.019 --> 00:17:08.289
So– When they move into these civilization areas, are they
372
00:17:08.509 --> 00:17:11.910
integrating or are they trying to like stay as a
373
00:17:11.990 --> 00:17:15.789
tribe removed from urban society? Like how are they doing it?
374
00:17:16.289 --> 00:17:20.490
Well, up until about five years ago, they would never
375
00:17:20.549 --> 00:17:24.279
have thought about integrating. They would live in like ghettos.
376
00:17:24.390 --> 00:17:27.359
If they were out near some town, they would live
377
00:17:27.380 --> 00:17:29.579
in the jungle away from the town because that whole
378
00:17:29.599 --> 00:17:32.140
part of Brazil is covered in jungle. Even the cities
379
00:17:32.220 --> 00:17:37.660
are bordered by jungle. But nowadays, because there's no food anywhere,
380
00:17:37.720 --> 00:17:40.410
they're trying to integrate more and they're trying to learn Portuguese.
381
00:17:41.150 --> 00:17:47.750
And it's a very unfortunate situation for them right now.
382
00:17:48.170 --> 00:17:52.769
That's such a bummer. That sucks so hard. So when
383
00:17:52.930 --> 00:17:58.430
you first got there, your aim was to try to
384
00:17:58.470 --> 00:17:59.609
convert them to Christianity.
385
00:17:59.849 --> 00:18:02.430
That's right. I went there to translate the Bible and
386
00:18:02.589 --> 00:18:04.470
plant a church and get everybody believing.
387
00:18:04.529 --> 00:18:06.960
And why Pitahah? Why did you go to those people?
388
00:18:07.440 --> 00:18:10.519
Well, we were in our training, and the missionary organization,
389
00:18:10.579 --> 00:18:14.759
the Wycliffe Bible Translators, offered us three areas. They said
390
00:18:14.779 --> 00:18:16.460
you can go to New Guinea. We need people in
391
00:18:16.509 --> 00:18:19.869
New Guinea. You can go to Mexico, or you can
392
00:18:19.890 --> 00:18:22.670
go to Brazil. And in Brazil, there's this tribe called
393
00:18:22.690 --> 00:18:25.970
the Pitahah. that we've had two teams assigned to, and
394
00:18:26.029 --> 00:18:28.210
nobody's been able to figure out the language because it's
395
00:18:28.230 --> 00:18:31.859
not related to any other known living language. And so
396
00:18:31.920 --> 00:18:33.680
they said, if you're up for that challenge, and we
397
00:18:33.720 --> 00:18:36.559
know you did well in linguistics, we'd be happy to
398
00:18:36.599 --> 00:18:39.859
have you take that group. So I thought, well, sure,
399
00:18:39.900 --> 00:18:41.500
I'm up for a challenge, so we took that.
400
00:18:42.329 --> 00:18:43.009
And so this was 1977?
401
00:18:42.980 --> 00:18:43.039
1977.
402
00:18:43.009 --> 00:18:45.450
We were assigned there in 76, and I made my
403
00:18:45.509 --> 00:18:53.789
first trip in in December of 1977. And so how
404
00:18:53.829 --> 00:18:57.630
much of the language did you know before you got there? Nothing.
405
00:18:57.950 --> 00:18:59.029
Nothing? No.
406
00:18:59.089 --> 00:19:02.049
What do we know in terms of like before you
407
00:19:02.089 --> 00:19:05.410
got there? Was it recorded? Was it something that people understood?
408
00:19:06.220 --> 00:19:09.519
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422
00:20:05.579 --> 00:20:11.920
Yeah. In 1784, Portuguese explorers made contact, and they didn't
423
00:20:12.000 --> 00:20:15.880
take lists of words. They wrote a few descriptive things
424
00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:19.490
about the language and about the people, and those things
425
00:20:19.529 --> 00:20:24.609
still fit them today. And then in 1821, a German
426
00:20:24.650 --> 00:20:26.990
explorer went there, and he took a long list of words,
427
00:20:27.170 --> 00:20:30.250
which was amazing because he didn't have linguistics or anything
428
00:20:30.289 --> 00:20:35.119
like that, and his list of words is pretty good.
429
00:20:36.240 --> 00:20:42.420
And then in 1920— Another German who naturalized Brazilian, the
430
00:20:42.460 --> 00:20:46.269
founder of Brazilian anthropology, went there and took a much
431
00:20:46.369 --> 00:20:50.089
larger word list, and that one is very good. And
432
00:20:50.130 --> 00:20:52.029
so I had those little word lists. They're not much,
433
00:20:52.170 --> 00:20:54.670
and there's no how does the grammar work or anything
434
00:20:54.710 --> 00:20:57.720
like that. It's just lists of words. So I had
435
00:20:57.740 --> 00:21:01.759
looked at those, but it's a tone language, and so
436
00:21:01.779 --> 00:21:03.599
they hadn't written the tone, so I had no idea
437
00:21:03.640 --> 00:21:06.799
how to pronounce the words. To give you an example
438
00:21:06.819 --> 00:21:10.440
of what a tone language is, so if I want
439
00:21:10.460 --> 00:21:13.980
to say friend, I say magiai. And if I want
440
00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:17.539
to say enemy, it's magiai.
441
00:21:18.640 --> 00:21:19.380
What's the difference?
442
00:21:19.569 --> 00:21:21.910
So if I whistle it, friend is whew, whew, whew.
443
00:21:22.849 --> 00:21:26.369
And if I whistle enemy, it's whew, whew, whew. If
444
00:21:26.390 --> 00:21:29.250
you can't hear the tones, you don't know what's going on.
445
00:21:29.670 --> 00:21:35.329
So the word for me is chie. And the word
446
00:21:35.369 --> 00:21:39.650
for shit is je. So you can be talking about
447
00:21:39.690 --> 00:21:43.950
yourself and everybody starts laughing because you've called yourself shit.
448
00:21:44.829 --> 00:21:45.970
Because you have the wrong tone.
449
00:21:46.109 --> 00:21:48.390
Because you have the wrong tone. So there are a
450
00:21:48.390 --> 00:21:51.309
lot of tone languages in the world, Mandarin, tonal, Korean,
451
00:21:51.710 --> 00:21:54.710
somewhat tonal, and many languages of Africa are tonal. But
452
00:21:55.430 --> 00:21:58.549
for those of us who speak European languages, this is
453
00:21:58.589 --> 00:22:01.210
just really weird and it's hard to hear.
454
00:22:01.230 --> 00:22:03.369
A complete mind shift.
455
00:22:03.730 --> 00:22:07.230
Yeah. So you've got to be able to pay attention
456
00:22:07.309 --> 00:22:11.569
to those tones. And so– but the first thing you
457
00:22:11.589 --> 00:22:13.710
have to do is start just collecting words. So I
458
00:22:13.730 --> 00:22:16.119
would point at things my first day, my first hour.
459
00:22:16.559 --> 00:22:18.839
I was pointing at things and writing down what they said,
460
00:22:18.880 --> 00:22:21.819
and that was the basic linguistics I had had, phonetics,
461
00:22:21.880 --> 00:22:24.859
how to write down sounds of the world's languages.
462
00:22:25.819 --> 00:22:29.400
And when you got there, so on day one, how
463
00:22:29.440 --> 00:22:32.049
do you make a connection– Do you just show up? Hey,
464
00:22:32.130 --> 00:22:33.910
brought you the Bible. Everyone have a seat.
465
00:22:34.410 --> 00:22:37.279
How do you do this? Well, I got off and
466
00:22:37.319 --> 00:22:39.500
I started handing candy to the kids.
467
00:22:40.220 --> 00:22:40.599
Good move.
468
00:22:40.700 --> 00:22:45.579
That works. And the people were very curious because I'm
469
00:22:45.619 --> 00:22:48.990
this white guy with red hair. At that time, I
470
00:22:49.029 --> 00:22:51.890
had bright red hair and they found me curious to
471
00:22:51.930 --> 00:22:55.150
look at. And so they came around. They could tell,
472
00:22:55.630 --> 00:22:57.549
you know, at least I think they thought they could
473
00:22:57.569 --> 00:23:00.680
tell that I was no danger to them. They know
474
00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:02.880
how to deal with that very quickly if they sense danger.
475
00:23:04.660 --> 00:23:06.619
So then I would just start pointing at things. I
476
00:23:07.109 --> 00:23:10.990
had my pen and paper, and I would get a stick,
477
00:23:11.170 --> 00:23:14.769
and I would say in English, you know, stick. And
478
00:23:14.809 --> 00:23:16.750
they know that I'm trying to communicate something, so they
479
00:23:16.769 --> 00:23:20.509
would say back, eh. And I thought, it probably means stick.
480
00:23:20.730 --> 00:23:22.170
And I would write that down. And then I would
481
00:23:22.210 --> 00:23:24.710
take the stick and drop it. And they would say, eh,
482
00:23:24.849 --> 00:23:28.049
he meke kaobi. And that means stick fell to the ground.
483
00:23:28.319 --> 00:23:30.930
And that's what I thought it meant. So that's how
484
00:23:30.990 --> 00:23:31.349
I started.
485
00:23:32.410 --> 00:23:35.490
That's what you thought it meant. What is the reaction
486
00:23:35.539 --> 00:23:38.839
to this person coming in and demanding that they teach
487
00:23:39.039 --> 00:23:39.700
the language?
488
00:23:40.980 --> 00:23:42.140
Well, I didn't demand.
489
00:23:42.339 --> 00:23:45.640
Well, you know, you have a requirement. You can't communicate,
490
00:23:45.660 --> 00:23:48.720
but you're there. So they're kind enough to welcome you.
491
00:23:48.920 --> 00:23:49.160
Yes.
492
00:23:49.599 --> 00:23:52.200
Are you in the actual camp with all these people?
493
00:23:52.220 --> 00:23:53.839
Yeah, I'm in the middle of their village. The plane
494
00:23:53.859 --> 00:23:56.140
let me off on, you know, landed on the river.
495
00:23:56.599 --> 00:23:57.039
I got out.
496
00:23:57.059 --> 00:24:00.130
You don't even ask. You just like. wander into their camp.
497
00:24:00.230 --> 00:24:01.809
There's no way to contact them ahead of time.
498
00:24:01.950 --> 00:24:02.910
This is crazy.
499
00:24:03.069 --> 00:24:03.269
Yeah.
500
00:24:03.490 --> 00:24:05.150
And you're just assuming they're not going to kill you.
501
00:24:05.269 --> 00:24:05.730
Is this you?
502
00:24:06.309 --> 00:24:08.509
This is the Pitaha. This is a Pitaha village. Yep.
503
00:24:09.049 --> 00:24:10.309
And so this is what it looked like when you
504
00:24:10.329 --> 00:24:12.349
showed up. You're like, hi, what's a stick?
505
00:24:12.650 --> 00:24:15.250
Yeah. Yeah. You land, you land on the river and,
506
00:24:15.430 --> 00:24:20.740
and you get there and that is, uh, that's the Pitaha. Wow. And, um, wow.
507
00:24:20.839 --> 00:24:25.599
So they're very friendly and they start talking. Um, But,
508
00:24:25.619 --> 00:24:27.099
of course, I don't know what they say. They just
509
00:24:27.140 --> 00:24:27.880
see me as a.
510
00:24:27.900 --> 00:24:30.180
Very— Guy's got a Ferrari t-shirt on. What's up?
511
00:24:30.640 --> 00:24:35.619
Yeah, they— riverboats go in and give clothes. If a riverboat
512
00:24:35.660 --> 00:24:37.680
hasn't been there in a long time, they'll all be naked.
513
00:24:38.319 --> 00:24:38.819
Oh, wow.
514
00:24:39.839 --> 00:24:46.000
So— And so, like, day one, they just accept the
515
00:24:46.039 --> 00:24:49.440
fact that this redheaded dude just showed up and is
516
00:24:49.460 --> 00:24:50.160
hanging out with us now?
517
00:24:50.980 --> 00:24:52.670
Yeah, there were a couple of things that counted in
518
00:24:52.690 --> 00:24:55.799
my favor. I was all by myself, and so— Giving
519
00:24:55.839 --> 00:25:00.000
out candy was a big factor. They like to chew tobacco,
520
00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:03.039
and I had been told this by somebody who had
521
00:25:03.059 --> 00:25:05.940
been there. So I took in a big, long horn
522
00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:07.519
of tobacco. I don't know if it was a really
523
00:25:07.579 --> 00:25:09.859
old-fashioned way to– A horn? Yes.
524
00:25:10.019 --> 00:25:10.880
Like an animal horn?
525
00:25:11.160 --> 00:25:14.940
No. It looks like an animal horn, but it's probably
526
00:25:15.289 --> 00:25:18.450
eight feet, nine feet long, just rolled up tight tobacco
527
00:25:18.509 --> 00:25:22.109
wrapped in latex. Really? Yeah, and you just cut it
528
00:25:22.210 --> 00:25:23.990
off for them, and they chew it, and they like it.
529
00:25:24.069 --> 00:25:28.809
So– I would, you know, the ones who would help me,
530
00:25:29.490 --> 00:25:32.259
I would give them a little bit of tobacco or candy.
531
00:25:33.299 --> 00:25:37.960
And I also brought canned food for me. And I
532
00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:40.720
would trade that to them for fish and other things
533
00:25:40.759 --> 00:25:42.900
that they got. And they liked that.
534
00:25:43.180 --> 00:25:44.539
How long did you stay initially?
535
00:25:45.400 --> 00:25:47.779
The first time was just to see what it was
536
00:25:47.839 --> 00:25:50.359
like before I brought my family. So I stayed 10 days.
537
00:25:51.079 --> 00:25:53.079
And then I came back with my family and we
538
00:25:53.160 --> 00:25:55.640
stayed a year at that time. We just stayed there
539
00:25:55.680 --> 00:25:56.140
the whole year.
540
00:25:56.730 --> 00:25:59.720
When you say family, so your wife and how many kids?
541
00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:00.839
Three kids. There they are.
542
00:26:00.880 --> 00:26:02.220
How old were the kids when you got there?
543
00:26:02.359 --> 00:26:06.099
Well, my oldest daughter, who there was about 12, was nine,
544
00:26:06.460 --> 00:26:09.460
and the middle daughter was six, and then my son
545
00:26:09.519 --> 00:26:14.420
was three years old. So this is around that time.
546
00:26:16.119 --> 00:26:19.289
And so my kids grew up among the Pitahon. Both
547
00:26:19.369 --> 00:26:22.009
my older daughters learned to speak the language fairly quickly.
548
00:26:22.470 --> 00:26:27.430
Wow, that's a risky move. You brought your little kids
549
00:26:27.470 --> 00:26:31.299
to the jungle. What is that decision like? Was that
550
00:26:31.319 --> 00:26:32.160
a difficult decision?
551
00:26:32.819 --> 00:26:34.859
Well, today it would be, but I was a Christian
552
00:26:35.160 --> 00:26:37.480
and I believed in miracles and I believed God would
553
00:26:37.519 --> 00:26:40.200
take care of us. And so I went there and
554
00:26:40.299 --> 00:26:42.559
figured he was in charge. He would take care of us.
555
00:26:42.609 --> 00:26:47.890
So my son got meningitis. My two daughters got malaria.
556
00:26:49.329 --> 00:26:52.029
I got malaria. In fact, after a few years, I
557
00:26:52.069 --> 00:26:54.740
went to San Diego and I I came down with
558
00:26:54.779 --> 00:26:59.660
malaria in University Hospital San Diego. They were thrilled because
559
00:26:59.720 --> 00:27:01.519
I was the only person they'd ever seen with all
560
00:27:01.559 --> 00:27:04.670
three strains of South American malaria at the same time.
561
00:27:05.109 --> 00:27:09.549
Did you have a relapse of malaria? Because I have
562
00:27:09.589 --> 00:27:13.029
a friend who got malaria in the Congo, and it
563
00:27:13.089 --> 00:27:13.769
came back.
564
00:27:14.809 --> 00:27:16.990
It can come back, and I've had relapses, but it's
565
00:27:17.049 --> 00:27:19.359
been a long time now that I haven't had relapses.
566
00:27:19.970 --> 00:27:23.759
I've taken so much medicine that supposedly... It won't come
567
00:27:23.799 --> 00:27:25.940
back anymore. But I can never give blood because it's
568
00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:26.819
always in my blood.
569
00:27:27.579 --> 00:27:29.460
What do they give you? Like what medicine do they
570
00:27:29.480 --> 00:27:29.740
give you?
571
00:27:29.779 --> 00:27:35.920
Well, Daraprim, Primaquin, straight quinine. When my wife almost died,
572
00:27:37.259 --> 00:27:42.700
she weighed 115 pounds and then she got malaria and
573
00:27:42.740 --> 00:27:47.000
almost died. She got down to 76 pounds. And the
574
00:27:47.039 --> 00:27:48.880
doctor told me she's going to die tonight. We don't
575
00:27:48.920 --> 00:27:51.160
have any way to keep her alive. Oh, my God. Yeah.
576
00:27:51.970 --> 00:27:54.619
They put her on blood transfusions because you lose a
577
00:27:54.630 --> 00:27:57.720
lot of blood. It kills the blood cells. And they
578
00:27:57.759 --> 00:28:01.380
put her on blood transfusions and also straight quinine, which
579
00:28:01.460 --> 00:28:05.059
caused her to be in agony for several days of
580
00:28:05.299 --> 00:28:09.380
just constant retching. And quinine is a really bad experience.
581
00:28:10.180 --> 00:28:11.359
But at the end of it, she pulled through.
582
00:28:11.460 --> 00:28:12.079
She pulled through.
583
00:28:12.099 --> 00:28:13.059
Oh, my God.
584
00:28:13.079 --> 00:28:15.240
Yeah, yeah. We all pulled through.
585
00:28:15.359 --> 00:28:18.410
You had to be like questioning your decisions. I mean,
586
00:28:18.430 --> 00:28:22.009
this has to be a trialing, you know, very difficult
587
00:28:22.670 --> 00:28:25.170
time because you chose to be there.
588
00:28:26.130 --> 00:28:29.660
Yeah. And so we were leaving the village to find
589
00:28:29.700 --> 00:28:32.660
help because my wife and daughter were dying of malaria
590
00:28:32.779 --> 00:28:34.819
at this time where she got down to 76 pounds.
591
00:28:34.839 --> 00:28:37.279
And my daughter lost a lot of weight, too. She
592
00:28:37.319 --> 00:28:42.240
was just skin and bones. And I'm getting my boat
593
00:28:42.319 --> 00:28:43.799
out of there. And I had never been out by boat.
594
00:28:43.819 --> 00:28:45.759
In fact, I didn't have a boat. We were. I
595
00:28:45.799 --> 00:28:47.240
had no idea how to get out of there. So
596
00:28:47.269 --> 00:28:50.349
this Catholic priest came up to see what the Protestant
597
00:28:50.369 --> 00:28:53.490
missionaries were doing. And I said, can I borrow your boat?
598
00:28:53.589 --> 00:28:54.869
I got to get my family out of here. He
599
00:28:54.890 --> 00:28:58.650
had this very narrow aluminum canoe with a six horsepower Johnson.
600
00:28:59.390 --> 00:29:01.920
And I got my whole family in there and he
601
00:29:01.960 --> 00:29:04.339
just stayed there in the jungle and let my family
602
00:29:04.400 --> 00:29:08.220
take off in his boat. And I didn't know where
603
00:29:08.259 --> 00:29:09.779
we were, but I was thinking, you know, I've read
604
00:29:09.799 --> 00:29:12.730
all these books about missionaries and now I'm having a
605
00:29:12.750 --> 00:29:18.299
missionary experience, but it wasn't fun. It was really, uh, horrific.
606
00:29:18.519 --> 00:29:20.819
It was horrific experience. And I just didn't know what
607
00:29:20.839 --> 00:29:21.480
was going to happen.
608
00:29:23.079 --> 00:29:26.609
So your goal was to convert these people. And how
609
00:29:26.660 --> 00:29:27.569
long were you there for?
610
00:29:29.150 --> 00:29:32.470
Well, I was there, um, in 1980, I spent the
611
00:29:32.509 --> 00:29:35.910
whole year there in nine, in all the other years
612
00:29:36.009 --> 00:29:36.970
from 1977 to 2013, I was there for three to
613
00:29:36.990 --> 00:29:43.400
six months every year so i was there a lot
614
00:29:43.880 --> 00:29:47.359
and um got sick every time i went i had
615
00:29:47.400 --> 00:29:52.150
typhoid fever and all this stuff but um uh attacked
616
00:29:52.190 --> 00:29:58.130
by snakes and stuff like that but um It was
617
00:29:58.170 --> 00:30:01.490
just a mind-altering experience. Things didn't go the way I thought.
618
00:30:02.829 --> 00:30:08.150
And the people started questioning me. They started asking me about,
619
00:30:08.380 --> 00:30:10.480
why do you believe in this Jesus? You keep telling
620
00:30:10.539 --> 00:30:11.539
us about what's he like.
621
00:30:12.579 --> 00:30:17.079
And you're doing this also, you're translating these concepts from
622
00:30:17.259 --> 00:30:18.500
English to Pidaha.
623
00:30:18.880 --> 00:30:22.480
From Greek to Pidaha. Going from the Greek New Testament,
624
00:30:22.500 --> 00:30:24.589
because I was translating the New Testament, so going from
625
00:30:24.640 --> 00:30:29.029
Greek to Pitaha, but I'm referencing English and Portuguese at
626
00:30:29.069 --> 00:30:29.740
the same time.
627
00:30:29.849 --> 00:30:30.509
Oh, my goodness.
628
00:30:30.890 --> 00:30:31.650
I'm staying in there.
629
00:30:31.849 --> 00:30:33.930
And you expect these people to understand what you're saying.
630
00:30:34.970 --> 00:30:36.710
Yeah. So, you know, if you're in the middle of
631
00:30:36.750 --> 00:30:39.670
the jungle and Jesus does something out in a desert,
632
00:30:41.109 --> 00:30:42.230
how do you describe desert?
633
00:30:42.619 --> 00:30:46.460
Isn't their language a completely different language than ours? Like
634
00:30:46.519 --> 00:30:49.640
in terms of like they have no words for color.
635
00:30:50.039 --> 00:30:50.180
Right.
636
00:30:50.200 --> 00:30:51.980
They have no words for direction. They don't have a
637
00:30:52.019 --> 00:30:52.740
left or a right.
638
00:30:52.920 --> 00:30:56.240
Right. So– And this all takes time to find out
639
00:30:56.299 --> 00:30:58.279
because when I went there, I thought everybody had words
640
00:30:58.319 --> 00:31:01.059
for colors. Everybody had words for numbers. Everybody had a
641
00:31:01.079 --> 00:31:02.599
concept of God. Right.
642
00:31:02.759 --> 00:31:05.200
They don't have words for numbers. That's so crazy.
643
00:31:05.220 --> 00:31:05.819
Yeah, they don't have.
644
00:31:06.359 --> 00:31:07.299
Do they have numbers?
645
00:31:07.759 --> 00:31:08.880
No, no numbers.
646
00:31:09.140 --> 00:31:11.519
So how many fish did you catch today, Mike?
647
00:31:12.680 --> 00:31:14.339
A lot. That's it. That's it.
648
00:31:14.339 --> 00:31:15.240
A lot or a little.
649
00:31:15.319 --> 00:31:15.980
A lot or a little.
650
00:31:17.119 --> 00:31:17.759
Or a good amount.
651
00:31:18.039 --> 00:31:23.069
Yeah, yeah. So, in fact, that claim was really controversial.
652
00:31:23.109 --> 00:31:27.390
I've had. psycholinguists and cognitive scientists come down with me
653
00:31:27.410 --> 00:31:28.410
to do experiments.
654
00:31:28.450 --> 00:31:30.259
Didn't you get into it with Chomsky about that?
655
00:31:31.140 --> 00:31:35.440
Well, I got into it with Chomsky about their grammar. Yes.
656
00:31:35.539 --> 00:31:36.240
Oh, that's right.
657
00:31:36.339 --> 00:31:39.859
Chomsky made this claim. I've gotten other people. There are
658
00:31:40.200 --> 00:31:42.740
people who find every claim controversial. So there's some people
659
00:31:42.759 --> 00:31:45.089
can't believe they don't have numbers. Some people who don't
660
00:31:45.119 --> 00:31:47.690
believe they don't have a concept of God. Other people
661
00:31:47.730 --> 00:31:52.710
who believe they don't, who don't believe they don't have colors. Um, but, um,
662
00:31:53.220 --> 00:31:56.690
Chomsky claimed that all languages are built on a common
663
00:31:57.130 --> 00:32:02.569
property called recursion. And recursion is this– English has it
664
00:32:02.609 --> 00:32:05.049
all over the place. So it's the ability to put
665
00:32:05.730 --> 00:32:09.269
one unit inside another unit of the same type. So
666
00:32:09.289 --> 00:32:12.799
take a noun. If I take the noun truck and
667
00:32:12.839 --> 00:32:15.819
the noun driver and I put them together, I can
668
00:32:15.859 --> 00:32:19.480
form a third word, truck driver. And so that's recursion.
669
00:32:19.500 --> 00:32:21.180
I put one noun inside another and I get a
670
00:32:21.200 --> 00:32:24.829
third noun. Or with a sentence, I can say John spoke.
671
00:32:25.029 --> 00:32:28.630
There's no recursion there. I can say John said that
672
00:32:28.710 --> 00:32:32.809
Bill spoke. And now that's got recursion because Bill spoke
673
00:32:33.150 --> 00:32:38.599
is a sentence inside John said that. And so Chomsky claimed,
674
00:32:38.630 --> 00:32:41.559
and in my opinion, without doing a lot of homework
675
00:32:41.599 --> 00:32:44.019
on this, I mean, he just was basing it on
676
00:32:44.079 --> 00:32:48.519
languages that he happened to know, which aren't many, that
677
00:32:48.559 --> 00:32:50.720
all languages were built on this. It made sense. And
678
00:32:50.759 --> 00:32:53.829
he had a principles built into his theory that required this.
679
00:32:54.380 --> 00:32:56.759
So when I came along and said they don't have it,
680
00:32:57.549 --> 00:32:59.950
and now I know there are other languages that don't
681
00:32:59.990 --> 00:33:05.990
have it, this was like saying you're wrong. And for me,
682
00:33:06.009 --> 00:33:10.710
a relative nobody, to tell the most famous linguist in history,
683
00:33:11.069 --> 00:33:13.589
somebody that Chomsky was called by the New York Times
684
00:33:13.630 --> 00:33:18.089
the most important intellectual alive, to tell him that he's wrong,
685
00:33:18.109 --> 00:33:25.349
a lot of people found that very Weird, you know, unbelievable. Yeah, problematic.
686
00:33:25.410 --> 00:33:27.109
But facts are facts.
687
00:33:27.670 --> 00:33:27.890
Yeah.
688
00:33:28.069 --> 00:33:30.390
I mean it should be exciting for a linguist to
689
00:33:30.430 --> 00:33:32.990
look at something that violates all the laws of other
690
00:33:33.029 --> 00:33:33.730
known languages.
691
00:33:33.910 --> 00:33:38.029
It was exciting for some linguists and really off-pissing for
692
00:33:38.069 --> 00:33:39.829
a lot of other linguists. Isn't that gross?
693
00:33:40.289 --> 00:33:41.130
That's so gross.
694
00:33:41.410 --> 00:33:41.589
Yeah.
695
00:33:41.809 --> 00:33:44.970
That is one of the grossest things about intellectuals, this
696
00:33:45.109 --> 00:33:48.430
gatekeeping of information and this appeal to authority that they're
697
00:33:48.450 --> 00:33:51.490
the only person who could possibly know. Especially when you're
698
00:33:51.529 --> 00:33:54.890
talking about languages. Like how many languages are there?
699
00:33:55.119 --> 00:33:58.640
There are about 8,000 separate languages in the world. Okay.
700
00:33:58.680 --> 00:34:04.380
How the fuck could you know all the rules to 8,000 languages?
701
00:34:04.660 --> 00:34:06.859
We don't have data on more than about 1,200 or so.
702
00:34:06.940 --> 00:34:10.500
Well, isn't there also an issue with the aboriginal tribes
703
00:34:10.860 --> 00:34:15.449
of Australia? My good friend Adam Greentree, he's from Australia
704
00:34:15.670 --> 00:34:18.030
and he was running a mine there for a while
705
00:34:18.170 --> 00:34:21.340
and worked with a lot of aboriginal people and really
706
00:34:21.380 --> 00:34:25.530
learned a lot about their cultures. And they're called mobs,
707
00:34:25.820 --> 00:34:28.989
like their tribe. They call it a mob. And there
708
00:34:29.010 --> 00:34:32.030
could be a mob that's just like 30 kilometers over
709
00:34:32.090 --> 00:34:34.570
that way. They have no idea what they're saying. They
710
00:34:34.630 --> 00:34:36.710
don't know the language and it's not written anywhere. And
711
00:34:36.730 --> 00:34:39.070
there's hundreds of these. They're all over the place.
712
00:34:39.429 --> 00:34:42.329
Right. And the bit of fieldwork that has been done,
713
00:34:42.349 --> 00:34:44.659
there are some really good Australian linguists trying to figure
714
00:34:44.719 --> 00:34:47.400
out these things. But the fieldwork that has been done
715
00:34:47.460 --> 00:34:50.519
has found properties that that aren't like anything else we
716
00:34:50.579 --> 00:34:55.500
know about. So languages can vary so much that it's
717
00:34:55.579 --> 00:35:00.019
really premature, in my opinion, to be writing laws that
718
00:35:00.079 --> 00:35:03.909
languages are supposed to follow, all 8,000 of these languages.
719
00:35:04.050 --> 00:35:06.349
Well, all you'd have to do is say, as far
720
00:35:06.469 --> 00:35:09.010
as we've observed, and then you're okay.
721
00:35:09.289 --> 00:35:09.409
Right.
722
00:35:09.429 --> 00:35:11.949
But as soon as you say it has to have this,
723
00:35:12.030 --> 00:35:14.670
and if someone says actually a language that doesn't have this,
724
00:35:15.050 --> 00:35:17.750
And then there's a controversy. You're a bad guy for
725
00:35:17.829 --> 00:35:18.630
pointing this out.
726
00:35:19.150 --> 00:35:24.159
You're a heretic. I had one of Chomsky's followers who
727
00:35:24.199 --> 00:35:27.559
was Brazilian write to the Brazilian Indian Agency, which is
728
00:35:27.719 --> 00:35:31.329
where I get my authorization to visit these tribes, and say,
729
00:35:31.349 --> 00:35:35.329
this Dan Everett guy, he's a racist. That's what they
730
00:35:35.369 --> 00:35:36.139
always say. Yeah.
731
00:35:36.610 --> 00:35:37.510
Isn't that the fun one?
732
00:35:37.690 --> 00:35:38.429
Yeah.
733
00:35:38.710 --> 00:35:40.309
The moment they want to get rid of you, you're
734
00:35:40.329 --> 00:35:41.130
a racist. Yeah.
735
00:35:41.289 --> 00:35:43.269
Well, she was silly because she said he's trying to
736
00:35:43.329 --> 00:35:46.369
reduce the pitahas to primates. And I said, well, in fact,
737
00:35:46.449 --> 00:35:48.840
I am because we're all primates. I'm a primate. You're
738
00:35:48.860 --> 00:35:52.340
a primate. But it's the thing. If Chomsky says that
739
00:35:52.420 --> 00:35:56.219
all languages have X and I say here's a language
740
00:35:56.239 --> 00:35:59.699
that doesn't have X, then either A, Chomsky's wrong or B,
741
00:35:59.760 --> 00:36:02.550
these aren't humans. And so the only person who would
742
00:36:02.730 --> 00:36:04.170
claim they're not humans is a racist.
743
00:36:04.710 --> 00:36:06.909
That's such a crazy way to put it.
744
00:36:07.170 --> 00:36:07.409
Yeah.
745
00:36:07.570 --> 00:36:08.429
It's so stupid.
746
00:36:08.449 --> 00:36:11.210
Yeah. God. But this is typical in science. As I
747
00:36:11.250 --> 00:36:14.730
got more and more into science, it's very unfortunate.
748
00:36:14.809 --> 00:36:18.550
It's men. It's men and their egos. That's what it is.
749
00:36:18.869 --> 00:36:21.969
And I'm sure women as well, but primarily men.
750
00:36:22.869 --> 00:36:24.889
Well, you know, you don't get a lot of money
751
00:36:24.929 --> 00:36:27.550
when you're a scientist. Right. It's not a money-making profession.
752
00:36:27.570 --> 00:36:30.760
You go into what is the biggest rate of exchange
753
00:36:31.280 --> 00:36:32.489
among scientists? It's ego. It's ego.
754
00:36:33.179 --> 00:36:35.079
But it's just so crazy to think that if it
755
00:36:35.139 --> 00:36:38.989
doesn't have this one characteristic of language that you're calling
756
00:36:39.030 --> 00:36:41.610
them primates, there's not a value judgment. You're saying it's
757
00:36:41.650 --> 00:36:43.690
a different kind of language and this is fascinating.
758
00:36:43.929 --> 00:36:50.789
Exactly. That's my take and many anthropologists took that. This–
759
00:36:50.929 --> 00:36:55.949
so for example, they originally said that Homo erectus had
760
00:36:56.010 --> 00:36:58.449
no capability for human speech and I thought that was
761
00:36:58.510 --> 00:37:01.929
kind of a questionable statement since– You know, I've read
762
00:37:01.949 --> 00:37:03.739
a lot on Homo erectus, read a book about it,
763
00:37:04.280 --> 00:37:11.260
and they don't– all their accomplishments, they had to have
764
00:37:11.539 --> 00:37:14.110
pretty advanced language to account for the fact that the
765
00:37:14.199 --> 00:37:17.690
ocean was never a barrier for them. And so I
766
00:37:17.769 --> 00:37:20.250
said that Homo erectus had language, and I think the
767
00:37:20.309 --> 00:37:22.889
evidence supports that, but they don't have the kind of
768
00:37:22.949 --> 00:37:24.869
language Chomsky says necessarily.
769
00:37:24.889 --> 00:37:25.769
Right.
770
00:37:26.900 --> 00:37:30.079
So an archaeologist at the University of Liverpool wrote me,
771
00:37:30.099 --> 00:37:32.480
and he says, my specialty is Homo erectus, and I
772
00:37:32.519 --> 00:37:35.559
think you're right. So we wrote a paper together. And
773
00:37:35.579 --> 00:37:39.360
then after we wrote the paper, he discovered last year
774
00:37:39.780 --> 00:37:45.510
the oldest wooden structure known in all of human history, 500,000-year-old
775
00:37:45.570 --> 00:37:49.550
structure built by Homo erectus in Zambia. And he showed
776
00:37:49.570 --> 00:37:54.989
that it has interlocking pieces and parts that, Nobody ever
777
00:37:55.030 --> 00:37:57.030
expected Homo erectus to be able to do. And their
778
00:37:57.070 --> 00:37:59.889
brains weren't that much smaller than ours. You know, the
779
00:38:00.050 --> 00:38:04.019
average size of a modern human's brain is about 1,200
780
00:38:04.019 --> 00:38:10.039
cc's for men and about 950 to 1,100 cc's for women.
781
00:38:10.699 --> 00:38:12.900
And since we know that men aren't more intelligent than women,
782
00:38:12.940 --> 00:38:15.739
the size of the brain can't be what's determining that.
783
00:38:16.769 --> 00:38:18.650
Homo erectus had brains of 950 to 1,000 cc's, you know,
784
00:38:18.670 --> 00:38:24.489
cubic centimeters. You measure that by taking the skull and
785
00:38:24.570 --> 00:38:27.070
filling it full of sand and seeing how much sand
786
00:38:27.090 --> 00:38:31.349
fits in there. And so they were able to make
787
00:38:31.389 --> 00:38:33.929
these complex structures and they were able to make boats
788
00:38:34.010 --> 00:38:36.820
and they were able to do all these things. Yeah,
789
00:38:36.940 --> 00:38:40.639
that's what Larry Barham from the University of Liverpool discovered.
790
00:38:41.440 --> 00:38:44.440
This structure, you see the cross piece. And he recently
791
00:38:44.500 --> 00:38:50.260
gave a talk to a world association of archaeologists. to
792
00:38:50.300 --> 00:38:52.960
get their judgment on what this could be. Not archaeologists,
793
00:38:53.019 --> 00:38:57.159
but architects, to get their professional judgment. And they were
794
00:38:57.280 --> 00:38:59.610
really impressed by this. They said that's actually a pretty
795
00:38:59.639 --> 00:39:04.090
advanced structure for building a walkway or a house.
796
00:39:04.710 --> 00:39:07.650
We actually discussed this yesterday. I had a guy on
797
00:39:07.710 --> 00:39:10.809
named Michael Button. He's got a fantastic YouTube channel. It's
798
00:39:10.829 --> 00:39:13.969
all about sort of the mysteries of human history. And
799
00:39:14.730 --> 00:39:17.809
we talked about the seafaring aspect and how much evidence
800
00:39:17.849 --> 00:39:20.710
there is that these people were seafaring as much as
801
00:39:20.750 --> 00:39:21.559
a million years ago.
802
00:39:21.760 --> 00:39:25.139
Yeah, yeah. And in my book, How Language Began, I have.
803
00:39:25.159 --> 00:39:26.449
They had to be communicated.
804
00:39:26.840 --> 00:39:31.929
Yeah, you can't... There's an archaeologist in... Australia. Bednarik is
805
00:39:31.989 --> 00:39:37.469
his name. And he showed by– he did experiments. And
806
00:39:38.269 --> 00:39:41.110
they're not exact because you can't find humans today that
807
00:39:41.150 --> 00:39:44.929
don't have any language, normal humans. But he got humans
808
00:39:44.989 --> 00:39:47.969
from different languages who couldn't communicate with each other that
809
00:39:48.019 --> 00:39:50.909
well to see if they could build a boat. And
810
00:39:50.949 --> 00:39:53.760
then another linguist wrote a paper based on some of
811
00:39:53.780 --> 00:39:56.019
this called How Much Language Does It Take to Build
812
00:39:56.079 --> 00:39:58.320
a Boat? And it turns out you've got to have
813
00:39:58.360 --> 00:40:00.920
language to build a boat. And so if they were
814
00:40:00.940 --> 00:40:03.900
building these boats that could carry water and could carry
815
00:40:03.940 --> 00:40:05.880
as many as 20 people because you've got to have
816
00:40:05.940 --> 00:40:08.699
enough to– if you find a colony of Homo erectus
817
00:40:08.780 --> 00:40:11.599
on an island that was always an island, it was
818
00:40:11.659 --> 00:40:15.929
never connected by land, there had to be more than
819
00:40:16.030 --> 00:40:18.789
one person that washed up there on some vegetation. There
820
00:40:18.829 --> 00:40:20.010
has to have been a community.
821
00:40:20.500 --> 00:40:25.239
Yeah, Michael brought up that the– what was it? What
822
00:40:25.280 --> 00:40:28.840
organization did it? Was it NASA? NASA did a study
823
00:40:28.880 --> 00:40:30.300
because they were trying to figure out how many people
824
00:40:30.340 --> 00:40:35.289
you need to colonize another planet. And they came up
825
00:40:35.309 --> 00:40:38.050
with the number 500. You need a minimum of 500
826
00:40:38.050 --> 00:40:39.349
to begin a colony.
827
00:40:40.170 --> 00:40:40.369
Right.
828
00:40:40.429 --> 00:40:42.789
In order to have genetic diversity, make sure you're not
829
00:40:42.929 --> 00:40:45.449
having sex with your cousin, that kind of jazz.
830
00:40:45.789 --> 00:40:48.460
Yeah, so you can't. just sent a couple over there,
831
00:40:48.539 --> 00:40:51.340
Adam and Eve, right. And expect this to happen. Yeah.
832
00:40:51.440 --> 00:40:53.360
How did you feel about that story when you first
833
00:40:53.400 --> 00:40:53.679
heard it?
834
00:40:53.880 --> 00:40:54.519
Adam and Eve? Yeah.
835
00:40:54.539 --> 00:40:57.860
When you, when you were converting, you're 17, you're doing acid.
836
00:40:58.159 --> 00:41:00.019
I mean, I was one of these guys who I
837
00:41:00.059 --> 00:41:02.199
believe the Bible cover to cover and even the covers.
838
00:41:02.980 --> 00:41:04.320
Uh, so we'll get to that in a minute.
839
00:41:04.380 --> 00:41:04.579
Yeah.
840
00:41:04.679 --> 00:41:07.960
So, but go back to how this is all going down.
841
00:41:08.719 --> 00:41:10.320
With, uh, the, the controversy.
842
00:41:10.469 --> 00:41:10.760
Yes.
843
00:41:10.860 --> 00:41:14.929
So I started getting hate mail and then, um, uh,
844
00:41:15.809 --> 00:41:19.030
The article came out when I first proposed this in
845
00:41:19.070 --> 00:41:23.590
the major journal of anthropology, Current Anthropology. I was in
846
00:41:23.659 --> 00:41:26.280
Germany at the time at the Max Planck Institute for
847
00:41:26.340 --> 00:41:30.559
Evolutionary Anthropology. And right down the hall from me was
848
00:41:30.579 --> 00:41:33.579
Svante Pebo, who just won the Nobel Prize for decoding
849
00:41:33.619 --> 00:41:38.159
the genome of Neanderthals. And there was a reporter, a
850
00:41:38.179 --> 00:41:42.320
German reporter from Der Spiegel, to talk to him. And
851
00:41:42.480 --> 00:41:44.360
she found out about my article, so she walked down
852
00:41:44.400 --> 00:41:46.320
the hall after she interviewed him and interviewed me. And
853
00:41:46.360 --> 00:41:48.239
this came out, and it started to get picked up
854
00:41:48.780 --> 00:41:51.719
in the press in a lot of places. And so
855
00:41:51.780 --> 00:41:55.199
the New Yorker did a big profile. But then the
856
00:41:55.219 --> 00:41:58.679
reaction came, and it wasn't what I expected. I expected
857
00:41:58.719 --> 00:42:01.900
that if you make a proposal that other scientists, if
858
00:42:01.920 --> 00:42:04.159
they're skeptical, which they have every right to be, are
859
00:42:04.179 --> 00:42:07.590
going to propose experiments to test what you're saying. And
860
00:42:07.610 --> 00:42:09.650
they're going to say, well, if they don't have recursion,
861
00:42:09.670 --> 00:42:11.630
you should find this and you should not find that.
862
00:42:11.690 --> 00:42:14.210
You should get this and this and this. And I
863
00:42:14.269 --> 00:42:17.010
tried to anticipate that. But that's the kind of objection
864
00:42:17.030 --> 00:42:20.329
I expected. But instead they said, I'm a liar. I'm
865
00:42:20.369 --> 00:42:23.909
trying to get publicity. I had a New York Times reporter.
866
00:42:23.929 --> 00:42:26.190
She called me and she said, do you try to
867
00:42:26.210 --> 00:42:29.090
get publicity? I said, did I ask you to call me?
868
00:42:29.769 --> 00:42:32.329
I said, you know, you called me. I said, you know,
869
00:42:32.730 --> 00:42:34.769
it's an interesting story. If people want to talk to me,
870
00:42:34.809 --> 00:42:36.989
I'm here to talk to them. But I'm not. I
871
00:42:37.030 --> 00:42:38.650
said if I wrote you at the New York Times
872
00:42:38.710 --> 00:42:41.219
and said I'm an interesting person, interview me, would you–
873
00:42:41.440 --> 00:42:42.300
would that make any difference?
874
00:42:42.320 --> 00:42:44.860
Yeah, but that's not– they're not mutually exclusive. Like you
875
00:42:44.880 --> 00:42:47.840
could be trying to get attention and publicity because you've
876
00:42:47.880 --> 00:42:51.159
discovered something that's very important. The idea that you're just
877
00:42:51.199 --> 00:42:53.309
trying to get attention. Are you trying to get attention?
878
00:42:53.869 --> 00:42:58.369
What are you talking about? That's such a– it's so
879
00:42:58.489 --> 00:43:04.760
weird that the– intellectuals, the people who are literally professional thinkers,
880
00:43:05.159 --> 00:43:08.730
would fall into these like common human traps of ego.
881
00:43:09.090 --> 00:43:17.260
Yeah. Well, it was a mind-blowing, mind-expanding experience for me
882
00:43:17.380 --> 00:43:21.340
to see that intellectuals that I otherwise admired as deep
883
00:43:21.400 --> 00:43:25.719
thinkers about their subject would not think otherwise. And, you know,
884
00:43:25.739 --> 00:43:28.059
I mean, Did they.
885
00:43:28.199 --> 00:43:31.079
Ever gauge you on the actual information?
886
00:43:31.880 --> 00:43:36.260
Yeah. I had people from MIT, Department of Brain and
887
00:43:36.300 --> 00:43:41.960
Cognitive Sciences, from Stanford, Department of Psychology, from Columbia University
888
00:43:42.019 --> 00:43:44.900
came down at separate times to run experiments, and they
889
00:43:44.920 --> 00:43:49.500
were well-designed experiments to test what I said. And they
890
00:43:49.539 --> 00:43:52.940
all came away saying, you know, it looks like Dan's right. Right.
891
00:43:53.440 --> 00:43:57.820
So where's the reaction then? And what is the– what
892
00:43:57.880 --> 00:44:00.380
do they say about that? Like the people that are
893
00:44:00.460 --> 00:44:02.710
negative about this and the people that are calling you
894
00:44:02.730 --> 00:44:05.929
a racist and all this saying you're trying to get attention.
895
00:44:06.010 --> 00:44:07.670
What are they saying about these results?
896
00:44:08.590 --> 00:44:12.340
They don't refer to them directly. But if asked, they
897
00:44:12.489 --> 00:44:17.510
often say that these people don't like Chomsky. So– All
898
00:44:17.550 --> 00:44:18.309
of them? Yeah.
899
00:44:18.590 --> 00:44:21.230
All of those individual scientists that are running these studies
900
00:44:21.269 --> 00:44:23.090
for you don't like Chomsky, and that's why they have
901
00:44:23.130 --> 00:44:24.030
these skewed results?
902
00:44:24.510 --> 00:44:27.239
That is one of the many objections that people raise.
903
00:44:27.260 --> 00:44:29.010
But by and large, they ignore it.
904
00:44:29.699 --> 00:44:30.539
They ignore it?
905
00:44:30.599 --> 00:44:30.820
Yeah.
906
00:44:30.880 --> 00:44:32.000
So they ignore the studies?
907
00:44:32.380 --> 00:44:35.480
Yeah, I had Chomsky write me some really nasty emails.
908
00:44:35.920 --> 00:44:36.260
You got them?
909
00:44:36.539 --> 00:44:37.760
Do you got them still? I have them.
910
00:44:37.960 --> 00:44:42.460
Yeah, I do have them. And I asked him, I said,
911
00:44:42.480 --> 00:44:44.940
why don't we debate at the Linguistic Society of America?
912
00:44:45.630 --> 00:44:47.679
I said, you think I'm an idiot, so here's your chance.
913
00:44:47.719 --> 00:44:50.179
You can show that I'm an idiot. Just we'll debate,
914
00:44:50.480 --> 00:44:52.119
and you'll make a fool of me in five minutes.
915
00:44:52.139 --> 00:44:54.539
Is he saying he thinks you're an idiot when you're
916
00:44:54.559 --> 00:44:56.199
explaining a language that he doesn't know?
917
00:44:56.519 --> 00:44:57.780
I'm an idiot or I'm a liar.
918
00:44:58.619 --> 00:44:59.889
Oh, my God.
919
00:45:00.010 --> 00:45:02.869
He gave an interview to a Brazilian newspaper, and he said,
920
00:45:03.510 --> 00:45:07.289
Dan used to be a fairly good linguist, but he
921
00:45:07.409 --> 00:45:10.570
is a charlatan. He's just a 100% charlatan. And he
922
00:45:10.610 --> 00:45:13.510
was interviewed on a Spanish station and they said, what
923
00:45:13.530 --> 00:45:15.489
do you think of the contributions of Dan Everett? And
924
00:45:15.510 --> 00:45:20.460
he said, they're nothing, nothing, nothing. And he's really popular.
925
00:45:21.059 --> 00:45:24.019
I used to really admire him. I used to really
926
00:45:24.039 --> 00:45:26.239
admire him. Then I found out I was close homies
927
00:45:26.280 --> 00:45:28.900
with Jeffrey Epstein. That kind of threw a lot of
928
00:45:28.960 --> 00:45:29.420
water on that.
929
00:45:29.440 --> 00:45:30.420
Like what? Yeah.
930
00:45:31.079 --> 00:45:33.340
But then it was the stance during the vaccines when
931
00:45:33.380 --> 00:45:35.480
it was like people that weren't vaccinated should be wound
932
00:45:35.519 --> 00:45:37.519
up and put into camps. So he had some crazy
933
00:45:37.559 --> 00:45:43.960
positions on the unvaccinated people and very– just misinformed, just
934
00:45:44.000 --> 00:45:49.480
completely misinformed about whether it was natural immunity or there
935
00:45:49.519 --> 00:45:52.460
was other medications that were– that you could use to
936
00:45:52.519 --> 00:45:57.300
treat COVID-19 or even the efficacy of the vaccine. It
937
00:45:57.320 --> 00:46:00.260
was crazy. That was just one thing about him. It's
938
00:46:00.300 --> 00:46:04.690
just like– His earlier debates, like he's got these fantastic debates.
939
00:46:05.190 --> 00:46:06.949
I think it's him and William F. Buckley.
940
00:46:07.309 --> 00:46:07.429
Yeah.
941
00:46:07.449 --> 00:46:08.329
Have you ever seen those?
942
00:46:08.369 --> 00:46:08.690
Yes, I have.
943
00:46:08.710 --> 00:46:10.230
He's so good in those.
944
00:46:10.409 --> 00:46:10.610
Yeah.
945
00:46:10.650 --> 00:46:13.710
He's so brilliant in those. It was a young Chomsky
946
00:46:14.300 --> 00:46:18.539
and like his intellect and his reason, it was like
947
00:46:18.579 --> 00:46:22.079
a breath of fresh air. It was like super well-informed.
948
00:46:22.360 --> 00:46:25.860
Every time Buckley tried to catch him on something, he
949
00:46:25.940 --> 00:46:26.539
judoed him.
950
00:46:26.940 --> 00:46:29.659
It was amazing. Well, the first two books of Chomsky
951
00:46:29.719 --> 00:46:32.949
I read when I started You know, doing graduate work
952
00:46:32.989 --> 00:46:33.590
in linguistics.
953
00:46:33.869 --> 00:46:36.409
I read the Medium one. What is it?
954
00:46:36.750 --> 00:46:39.949
Oh, A Manufacturer of Consent.
955
00:46:39.989 --> 00:46:40.489
That's right.
956
00:46:40.590 --> 00:46:43.880
Yeah. But he had– the first book of his I read,
957
00:46:44.219 --> 00:46:47.340
it was in linguistics, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.
958
00:46:47.880 --> 00:46:50.059
And if you're a linguist and you're studying linguistics, that's
959
00:46:50.139 --> 00:46:53.840
just genius. It is just brilliant. And then the next book,
960
00:46:53.860 --> 00:46:57.820
which he published the same year, was American Power and
961
00:46:57.840 --> 00:47:01.070
the New Mandarins, which was about Vietnam. And that was
962
00:47:01.269 --> 00:47:04.230
also brilliant. And, you know, for one person to publish
963
00:47:04.289 --> 00:47:06.010
two books like that in one year.
964
00:47:06.030 --> 00:47:06.750
Wow.
965
00:47:07.090 --> 00:47:10.289
I mean, that's just first order genius. So I admired him.
966
00:47:10.510 --> 00:47:12.400
What goes wrong with a guy like that, though? If
967
00:47:12.460 --> 00:47:15.059
a guy can be that smart, how could he not
968
00:47:15.159 --> 00:47:18.440
be curious? How could he not? Like when you say
969
00:47:18.539 --> 00:47:21.500
something that flies in the face of everything that he's taught,
970
00:47:22.280 --> 00:47:24.860
how could he not be curious and want to talk
971
00:47:24.909 --> 00:47:27.510
to you? And if you're right, why would he not
972
00:47:27.550 --> 00:47:30.409
want to do something with you? Like if I found
973
00:47:30.449 --> 00:47:32.250
someone like you and I was– I mean I would
974
00:47:32.269 --> 00:47:33.849
have hoped that I would be the same way as
975
00:47:33.889 --> 00:47:36.329
I am now. And I had an opportunity. I said,
976
00:47:36.550 --> 00:47:38.969
we should do a podcast together. We could explain this.
977
00:47:39.010 --> 00:47:39.889
This is crazy.
978
00:47:40.139 --> 00:47:42.559
Right. I invited him to the Pidaha. He was coming
979
00:47:42.619 --> 00:47:45.059
to Brazil. And I said, hey, why don't you come
980
00:47:45.099 --> 00:47:47.239
with me to the Pidaha? And I'll ask them any
981
00:47:47.280 --> 00:47:48.860
question you want me to ask them. We can talk
982
00:47:48.900 --> 00:47:50.809
about it there. And he said, I don't do that
983
00:47:50.849 --> 00:47:53.619
kind of thing. I don't do field work. So he
984
00:47:53.639 --> 00:47:54.050
didn't come.
985
00:47:54.309 --> 00:47:57.369
Good move. You don't want typhoid fever and fucking malaria
986
00:47:57.510 --> 00:47:59.530
bit by snakes, stalked by jaguars.
987
00:47:59.550 --> 00:48:00.110
That's all true.
988
00:48:00.150 --> 00:48:04.389
See, he's smart. It's just very disappointing when people are
989
00:48:04.769 --> 00:48:08.489
really brilliant. He's a brilliant guy and essentially– I mean
990
00:48:09.010 --> 00:48:12.840
especially rather was really brilliant when he was young. It's
991
00:48:12.860 --> 00:48:15.719
just so sad when you see someone like that just
992
00:48:15.760 --> 00:48:19.329
behaving with ego. Because he was the expert. He was
993
00:48:19.530 --> 00:48:21.809
the foremost linguist on planet Earth.
994
00:48:21.949 --> 00:48:23.949
When the New York Times is saying things like you're
995
00:48:23.969 --> 00:48:27.480
the most important intellectual alive and you have people hanging
996
00:48:27.599 --> 00:48:31.400
off every word as though it comes from the Oracle
997
00:48:31.440 --> 00:48:35.940
of Apollo, I assume that it affects your ego to
998
00:48:35.980 --> 00:48:36.460
some degree.
999
00:48:36.460 --> 00:48:40.030
100 percent. Most people, especially back then when there's no
1000
00:48:40.070 --> 00:48:43.150
internet to check you. You can get a really distorted
1001
00:48:43.210 --> 00:48:47.309
perception of how you stand. Also, everyone is kissing your ass.
1002
00:48:47.630 --> 00:48:50.880
You're surrounded by other people that are trying to climb
1003
00:48:50.900 --> 00:48:53.199
the same ladder you're on. You're in a very lofty
1004
00:48:53.239 --> 00:48:55.760
position of authority and power.
1005
00:48:56.239 --> 00:48:58.880
He wrote letters of recommendation for me for my first
1006
00:48:58.920 --> 00:48:59.780
job in the US.
1007
00:48:59.940 --> 00:49:00.280
Really?
1008
00:49:00.420 --> 00:49:02.159
And he wrote a letter of recommendation when I came
1009
00:49:02.219 --> 00:49:05.219
up for promotion to tenure at the University of Pittsburgh.
1010
00:49:05.460 --> 00:49:06.940
Why would he do that if you're an idiot?
1011
00:49:07.079 --> 00:49:09.860
But I hadn't been– I wasn't yet an idiot. Really?
1012
00:49:10.849 --> 00:49:11.840
I became an idiot.
1013
00:49:12.139 --> 00:49:15.349
You became an idiot when you disagreed with him. Meanwhile, ha-ha,
1014
00:49:15.389 --> 00:49:18.949
you're right. That's what's funny. In the end, you're right.
1015
00:49:19.429 --> 00:49:24.599
Yeah. Well, he– I've had so many exchanges in journals
1016
00:49:24.780 --> 00:49:28.059
and magazines and things with his followers over the years
1017
00:49:28.179 --> 00:49:32.780
and with him that I go give a talk somewhere
1018
00:49:32.920 --> 00:49:35.079
and people say, I hope you're ready because there's a
1019
00:49:35.119 --> 00:49:39.139
lot of skeptics in this audience and I say– I
1020
00:49:39.139 --> 00:49:40.840
don't think they're going to ask me any new questions.
1021
00:49:40.860 --> 00:49:42.599
I've done this so much now that they're going to
1022
00:49:42.699 --> 00:49:46.639
ask me– I said I'll be surprised if anybody asks
1023
00:49:46.699 --> 00:49:49.610
me a question that I haven't heard from Chomsky.
1024
00:49:50.570 --> 00:49:53.769
And when you have these conversations with Chomsky and you
1025
00:49:53.909 --> 00:49:57.829
lay out how the pitaha use their language and what
1026
00:49:57.869 --> 00:50:00.909
they– and how it works, what was his reaction to that?
1027
00:50:01.110 --> 00:50:02.050
You're just incorrect?
1028
00:50:02.610 --> 00:50:04.250
Well, the first time I talked to him about it,
1029
00:50:04.309 --> 00:50:06.829
he had not made this claim about recursion. This was
1030
00:50:06.949 --> 00:50:11.780
in 1984. I was a visitor at MIT Linguistics, and
1031
00:50:11.820 --> 00:50:14.539
my office was next to his. And so I talked
1032
00:50:14.559 --> 00:50:17.679
to him several times that year, and I said, I
1033
00:50:19.860 --> 00:50:23.219
don't think their language has this property. And he said,
1034
00:50:23.599 --> 00:50:25.719
you know, he was drinking coffee and looking at the board.
1035
00:50:25.739 --> 00:50:28.260
He had a blackboard right by his desk, and he said, hmm,
1036
00:50:28.480 --> 00:50:31.099
wonder what the consequences of that are. And then one
1037
00:50:31.119 --> 00:50:33.119
of his Ph.D. students told me, oh, you've really got
1038
00:50:33.159 --> 00:50:36.630
known thinking. What is this? He found that very intriguing.
1039
00:50:36.949 --> 00:50:38.969
But then when he came out with the proclamation that
1040
00:50:39.010 --> 00:50:41.219
all languages had to have it, then I became an idiot.
1041
00:50:41.579 --> 00:50:47.820
Oh, God, that's so disappointing. Fucking people.
1042
00:50:48.239 --> 00:50:48.440
Yeah.
1043
00:50:48.780 --> 00:50:53.559
Fucking people. Even the brightest minds. They're just– ego is
1044
00:50:53.699 --> 00:50:55.119
such a motherfucker.
1045
00:50:55.489 --> 00:50:58.710
Yeah. Well, it's really disappointing because he was like my
1046
00:50:58.849 --> 00:51:01.929
idol for the first part of my linguistic career and
1047
00:51:02.090 --> 00:51:02.809
I wasn't.
1048
00:51:03.090 --> 00:51:04.909
Did you try to have a conversation with him after
1049
00:51:05.130 --> 00:51:08.130
he denounced you? Did you try to like one-on-one get
1050
00:51:08.170 --> 00:51:08.699
together with him?
1051
00:51:09.699 --> 00:51:11.099
Well, we exchanged emails.
1052
00:51:11.360 --> 00:51:13.880
Yeah, but in his face, like right in front of him.
1053
00:51:13.920 --> 00:51:15.360
Did you try to do that? No.
1054
00:51:15.849 --> 00:51:18.010
He never had– I had always told him when I
1055
00:51:18.050 --> 00:51:21.349
was going through Cambridge that I was coming and maybe
1056
00:51:21.389 --> 00:51:23.550
he and I could talk. And he always made time
1057
00:51:24.050 --> 00:51:26.489
and we talked. I would be living somewhere else and
1058
00:51:26.510 --> 00:51:28.039
I would come to MIT and he would talk to me.
1059
00:51:28.500 --> 00:51:31.619
And my first PhD student is a full professor at
1060
00:51:31.639 --> 00:51:35.780
MIT and he started off in linguistics. He's in brain
1061
00:51:35.800 --> 00:51:38.389
and cognitive sciences now. So I had a good relationship
1062
00:51:38.429 --> 00:51:41.050
with Chomsky. But then suddenly he never had time to
1063
00:51:41.090 --> 00:51:41.590
meet with me.
1064
00:51:41.989 --> 00:51:43.690
So after his proclamation.
1065
00:51:43.909 --> 00:51:44.050
Right.
1066
00:51:44.989 --> 00:51:45.230
Okay.
1067
00:51:45.449 --> 00:51:47.630
He had no time to meet with me. His wife died,
1068
00:51:47.849 --> 00:51:50.210
and I wrote him a letter saying, I'm so sorry
1069
00:51:50.230 --> 00:51:52.329
that Carol died. This is really terrible. I know you
1070
00:51:52.369 --> 00:51:54.750
guys have been together for so long. And he wrote
1071
00:51:54.789 --> 00:51:57.150
back and said, thank you so much. That means a
1072
00:51:57.179 --> 00:51:59.460
great deal to me. And then I saw this article
1073
00:51:59.519 --> 00:52:01.699
in a Sao Paulo paper where he called me a charlatan.
1074
00:52:02.059 --> 00:52:03.780
So I wrote him right back, and I said, did
1075
00:52:03.820 --> 00:52:06.840
you call me a charlatan? And he said, yeah, you
1076
00:52:06.900 --> 00:52:09.460
are a charlatan. I said, you should be ashamed of yourself.
1077
00:52:09.500 --> 00:52:11.400
He said, no, you should be ashamed of yourself for
1078
00:52:11.460 --> 00:52:15.059
saying things you know that can't be right. Oh. So
1079
00:52:15.239 --> 00:52:16.539
that was the last exchange we had.
1080
00:52:16.559 --> 00:52:18.500
Silly, silly. No, of course you should have had that
1081
00:52:18.599 --> 00:52:21.519
in front of them. I mean, just, I think people
1082
00:52:22.079 --> 00:52:24.559
say things in emails that I think is a terrible
1083
00:52:24.599 --> 00:52:25.260
way to communicate.
1084
00:52:25.300 --> 00:52:26.539
I agree completely.
1085
00:52:27.559 --> 00:52:30.719
You know, that's especially with insults. It's just, it's such
1086
00:52:30.780 --> 00:52:33.179
a way. And then you're waiting on the other person's
1087
00:52:33.239 --> 00:52:36.889
insult in return. Like, God, stop it. Are you fucking
1088
00:52:36.889 --> 00:52:37.349
12 years old?
1089
00:52:37.670 --> 00:52:42.860
Yeah. Stop. So the author, Tom Wolfe, um, The last
1090
00:52:42.929 --> 00:52:46.119
book he wrote was called Kingdom of Speech. And he
1091
00:52:46.179 --> 00:52:51.519
talked about two controversies, Darwin versus Alfred Russell Wallace and
1092
00:52:51.579 --> 00:52:52.679
me versus Chomsky.
1093
00:52:52.960 --> 00:52:53.340
Oh, wow.
1094
00:52:53.480 --> 00:52:56.500
And so he has a very– he has some bizarre,
1095
00:52:56.860 --> 00:52:59.849
absolutely wrong ideas about where language came from. He's not
1096
00:52:59.889 --> 00:53:03.530
a linguist. But he did cover that controversy extremely well.
1097
00:53:04.230 --> 00:53:07.809
And Tom used to call me every week when he
1098
00:53:07.829 --> 00:53:09.289
was writing the book. I didn't even know what it
1099
00:53:09.329 --> 00:53:12.110
was about to ask to get the details right. But
1100
00:53:12.150 --> 00:53:14.570
he was just shocked how this happened.
1101
00:53:15.389 --> 00:53:20.429
Yeah. Again, it's disappointing. But even the most brilliant humans
1102
00:53:20.530 --> 00:53:21.150
are just human.
1103
00:53:21.719 --> 00:53:21.969
Right.
1104
00:53:21.989 --> 00:53:24.860
And they're subject to all the flaws and all the
1105
00:53:24.940 --> 00:53:27.400
traps that the human mind could fall into.
1106
00:53:27.880 --> 00:53:32.340
Yeah. I've often said after long experience that intelligence is
1107
00:53:32.420 --> 00:53:35.590
no antidote for stupidity. Right. You can be both.
1108
00:53:36.030 --> 00:53:36.929
Oh, 100 percent.
1109
00:53:37.210 --> 00:53:37.809
Absolutely.
1110
00:53:37.849 --> 00:53:42.190
Especially when ego is involved. Yeah. So– How many people–
1111
00:53:42.349 --> 00:53:44.590
how many of the Piraha did you convert?
1112
00:53:45.269 --> 00:53:52.429
Nobody. In decades, they weren't interested. They were so totally–
1113
00:53:52.559 --> 00:53:55.780
because my claims did not meet their standard of evidence.
1114
00:53:56.150 --> 00:53:58.409
They have a high standard of evidence, and I didn't
1115
00:53:58.710 --> 00:53:59.570
meet that standard.
1116
00:54:00.250 --> 00:54:03.170
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1133
00:55:08.059 --> 00:55:11.400
But don't they have like mystical creatures and stuff that
1134
00:55:11.440 --> 00:55:13.960
they believe live in the forest? They do.
1135
00:55:14.599 --> 00:55:18.119
And When I first got there as a Christian, I
1136
00:55:18.599 --> 00:55:21.530
called these things spirits because that's all I knew how
1137
00:55:21.570 --> 00:55:22.010
to characterize them.
1138
00:55:22.030 --> 00:55:22.769
How do they describe them?
1139
00:55:23.150 --> 00:55:26.789
They describe them as distinct beings. They don't say they're
1140
00:55:26.829 --> 00:55:30.329
spiritual or anything like that. But you see something. Like
1141
00:55:30.349 --> 00:55:34.670
you see– maybe there's another Indian hunting from a different tribe,
1142
00:55:34.730 --> 00:55:36.869
hunting in your jungle because there are some that are
1143
00:55:37.070 --> 00:55:39.789
close enough to be hunting in the same area. You
1144
00:55:39.869 --> 00:55:41.820
see them, but you don't see them well. They go
1145
00:55:41.860 --> 00:55:45.219
behind a tree or something. So you say, oh, that's
1146
00:55:45.320 --> 00:55:48.159
one of these things. I just saw one of these things.
1147
00:55:50.570 --> 00:55:52.679
They don't put it to the test necessarily, but they
1148
00:55:52.699 --> 00:55:53.030
did see it.
1149
00:55:53.030 --> 00:55:54.070
When they say these things.
1150
00:55:54.409 --> 00:55:58.190
So they have three major types of entities besides humans.
1151
00:55:59.210 --> 00:56:01.650
And they have different types of humans. I'm one type
1152
00:56:01.750 --> 00:56:05.809
and they're another type. And so they have things.
1153
00:56:05.829 --> 00:56:07.909
How do they make the distinction? Is it the appearance?
1154
00:56:08.809 --> 00:56:12.429
For humans, yes, it's appearance. Well, actually for the other entities,
1155
00:56:12.489 --> 00:56:16.760
it's appearance too. So for me. I'm white, and white
1156
00:56:17.300 --> 00:56:20.159
means you don't have blood. So they asked me. They said,
1157
00:56:20.719 --> 00:56:23.960
so do you have blood? And they asked me one
1158
00:56:24.000 --> 00:56:25.579
time after I'd been there for years. They said, do
1159
00:56:25.619 --> 00:56:29.610
Americans die? And I said, yeah, we die. But you're
1160
00:56:29.639 --> 00:56:31.929
really old, and you haven't died yet. And so I
1161
00:56:31.929 --> 00:56:33.309
cut myself once.
1162
00:56:33.349 --> 00:56:34.469
How old were you at the time?
1163
00:56:35.329 --> 00:56:36.409
Probably 45.
1164
00:56:36.409 --> 00:56:38.219
45. And they thought you were a goner.
1165
00:56:38.639 --> 00:56:41.300
Yeah, because we age differently. I already had gray hair,
1166
00:56:41.320 --> 00:56:42.960
you know, not all over. Right.
1167
00:56:43.000 --> 00:56:44.639
They look a lot different when they're 45.
1168
00:56:44.639 --> 00:56:47.320
Yeah, yeah. They're all still 100 percent black hair.
1169
00:56:47.849 --> 00:56:49.989
Oh, they thought you were a goner with the white hair.
1170
00:56:50.150 --> 00:56:54.849
So they have an expression, almost about to fall to
1171
00:56:54.889 --> 00:56:58.030
the ground. And that's the way they described me. Wow.
1172
00:56:58.110 --> 00:57:01.730
But so Americans are one way. Brazilians are another way.
1173
00:57:02.090 --> 00:57:03.510
But then there are these things. Some of them are
1174
00:57:03.530 --> 00:57:06.840
called fast mouths. And so they They talk in a
1175
00:57:06.860 --> 00:57:11.309
high-pitched voice. And at night, you hear somebody, you know,
1176
00:57:11.530 --> 00:57:14.269
a creature talking in a high falsetto voice into the village.
1177
00:57:15.030 --> 00:57:16.650
And I say, what's that? And they said, oh, that's
1178
00:57:16.690 --> 00:57:20.570
a fast mouth. I said, but I'm seeing it, and
1179
00:57:20.610 --> 00:57:22.099
it looks like a pita ha. Oh, yeah, they look
1180
00:57:22.119 --> 00:57:24.599
just like us, but they're not. They're not us. And
1181
00:57:25.539 --> 00:57:28.699
so this is where we come to the border of
1182
00:57:28.780 --> 00:57:31.739
fact and fiction. And we draw a fairly– we try
1183
00:57:31.780 --> 00:57:35.440
to draw a fairly rigid line between fact and fiction–
1184
00:57:35.860 --> 00:57:39.340
in our society and in most European societies. But to them,
1185
00:57:41.559 --> 00:57:45.739
they don't have to have the full range of experience
1186
00:57:45.780 --> 00:57:49.650
with this to describe it. And so a fast mouth
1187
00:57:49.849 --> 00:57:52.469
is just a fast mouth. And you know who they
1188
00:57:52.510 --> 00:57:54.989
are because they talk in a high falsetto voice and
1189
00:57:55.010 --> 00:57:58.730
they go naked. Whereas pitahas often go naked, but if
1190
00:57:58.750 --> 00:58:00.690
they have clothes, they'll wear them. And the fast mouths
1191
00:58:00.710 --> 00:58:04.570
will never wear clothes. And the fast mouths are also
1192
00:58:04.989 --> 00:58:08.059
sexually promiscuous. So I had a reporter with me in
1193
00:58:08.099 --> 00:58:11.500
the jungle from GEO magazine in Germany. And he said,
1194
00:58:11.519 --> 00:58:13.880
can I see one of these fast mouths? And I
1195
00:58:13.980 --> 00:58:16.380
told one guy, I said, he wants to see a
1196
00:58:16.400 --> 00:58:18.400
fast mouth. And he said, well, I'll go get one.
1197
00:58:18.960 --> 00:58:20.920
And he walks off into the jungle. And then the
1198
00:58:20.960 --> 00:58:25.789
same guy comes back in naked, talking in this falsetto voice,
1199
00:58:26.409 --> 00:58:32.659
and starts trying to hump the reporter. And the reporter says, oh,
1200
00:58:32.860 --> 00:58:35.289
I'm feeling very uncomfortable. I said, you asked for it.
1201
00:58:35.300 --> 00:58:38.059
I mean, that's the way they are. And so I
1202
00:58:38.099 --> 00:58:40.659
finally told the guy. I said, he doesn't want this.
1203
00:58:40.699 --> 00:58:42.820
He doesn't want to see the fast mouth anymore. So
1204
00:58:42.860 --> 00:58:44.300
he talks to me in a high falsetto, and he
1205
00:58:44.340 --> 00:58:46.380
walks off, and he comes back with his clothes on.
1206
00:58:47.000 --> 00:58:51.039
And I said, did you see the fast mouth? He said,
1207
00:58:51.119 --> 00:58:54.019
was there a fast mouth here? I was gone. What?
1208
00:58:54.039 --> 00:58:54.909
But it's the same guy.
1209
00:58:56.449 --> 00:59:00.380
What did you take of that? Like what– Did you
1210
00:59:00.460 --> 00:59:02.929
think that they were playing a prank on you? Did
1211
00:59:02.949 --> 00:59:06.010
you think this is like some sort of a psychotic
1212
00:59:06.070 --> 00:59:07.510
state that they fall into?
1213
00:59:07.530 --> 00:59:13.730
It is a limit. area between being, say, theater and
1214
00:59:13.750 --> 00:59:17.719
being reality. And I don't know if they feel possessed.
1215
00:59:17.880 --> 00:59:20.699
I don't think they have a concept of possession. I've
1216
00:59:20.940 --> 00:59:23.360
asked them and I've investigated this and I've never seen that.
1217
00:59:23.900 --> 00:59:28.360
But they definitely believe that they're gone and this other
1218
00:59:28.420 --> 00:59:29.860
creature is there in their place.
1219
00:59:31.570 --> 00:59:34.690
Do they have memory of when they become a fast mouth?
1220
00:59:34.750 --> 00:59:36.789
They deny it. I've tried to get them to talk
1221
00:59:36.829 --> 00:59:38.630
about it. I don't know. I wasn't here.
1222
00:59:38.929 --> 00:59:40.039
Everyone denies it?
1223
00:59:40.170 --> 00:59:41.150
Everybody denies it.
1224
00:59:41.570 --> 00:59:44.219
Wow. Do you think that being a fast mouth is
1225
00:59:44.449 --> 00:59:48.239
like almost like a license to go and do stuff
1226
00:59:48.280 --> 00:59:50.559
you're not supposed to do? Go fuck everybody?
1227
00:59:50.599 --> 00:59:53.519
Yeah. You think that's what it is? Yeah, because they
1228
00:59:53.559 --> 00:59:56.820
also change names very frequently. So if I go back
1229
00:59:56.860 --> 00:59:58.840
there now, all my old friends will have different names.
1230
00:59:59.179 --> 01:00:02.300
And anything done under the old name is– You'll say,
1231
01:00:02.639 --> 01:00:04.760
you remember when you did this? Well, I didn't do that.
1232
01:00:05.480 --> 01:00:08.460
That was the guy with this name. So they don't
1233
01:00:08.500 --> 01:00:12.860
even claim– so the concept of constancy of identity throughout time,
1234
01:00:14.239 --> 01:00:14.940
they deny this.
1235
01:00:15.699 --> 01:00:18.079
So when do they choose to make a new name
1236
01:00:18.179 --> 01:00:20.400
or do they get a new name assigned to them?
1237
01:00:20.719 --> 01:00:24.929
They can. Children often get new names for different phases
1238
01:00:24.969 --> 01:00:28.469
of life. But adults, if you're out in the jungle
1239
01:00:28.550 --> 01:00:30.730
and you think you saw something and you can't explain it,
1240
01:00:30.750 --> 01:00:31.570
you might take a new name.
1241
01:00:35.949 --> 01:00:37.469
Not a bad idea, right?
1242
01:00:37.849 --> 01:00:39.570
This is a way of coping with things.
1243
01:00:39.690 --> 01:00:41.750
Yeah. I mean it kind of makes sense. If something
1244
01:00:41.929 --> 01:00:44.409
really traumatic happens to you and you want to like
1245
01:00:44.449 --> 01:00:47.570
reclaim your life, you change your name, start over from scratch.
1246
01:00:47.710 --> 01:00:50.469
Right. And some of us do it in American culture,
1247
01:00:50.489 --> 01:00:53.590
but it's a lot harder legal process to change your name.
1248
01:00:53.780 --> 01:00:55.659
How often do they get killed by jaguars?
1249
01:00:56.940 --> 01:00:59.539
Nobody has ever been killed in my almost 50 years
1250
01:00:59.860 --> 01:01:03.429
coming and going, but many of them have been attacked. Really? Yeah,
1251
01:01:03.489 --> 01:01:08.050
like one guy was coming back from getting Brazil nuts,
1252
01:01:08.119 --> 01:01:10.840
and he had a big basket. And so his head's
1253
01:01:11.340 --> 01:01:13.599
down a bit with the tump line, and the basket
1254
01:01:13.639 --> 01:01:18.960
probably weighs, you know, 60 pounds. And suddenly a jaguar
1255
01:01:19.019 --> 01:01:21.099
jumps out of the tree right on his back, but
1256
01:01:21.139 --> 01:01:23.489
it got the basket and not him, and it pulled
1257
01:01:23.530 --> 01:01:26.829
the basket off his head. And he shot it with
1258
01:01:26.849 --> 01:01:27.170
an arrow.
1259
01:01:28.150 --> 01:01:28.750
Oh, my God.
1260
01:01:28.829 --> 01:01:31.070
But they tell me that when you shoot a jaguar
1261
01:01:31.110 --> 01:01:33.869
with an arrow— The jaguar forgets about you and keeps
1262
01:01:33.909 --> 01:01:36.840
trying to get the arrow out. And by that time,
1263
01:01:36.860 --> 01:01:40.860
you've got three or four more arrows in it. So
1264
01:01:40.880 --> 01:01:43.699
these guys are deadly accurate with bows and arrows.
1265
01:01:43.800 --> 01:01:47.940
So if they did that and, like, maybe they got attacked,
1266
01:01:48.099 --> 01:01:49.400
would they change their name after that?
1267
01:01:49.739 --> 01:01:52.409
They could. And so I don't completely have it down
1268
01:01:52.449 --> 01:01:53.130
to a formula.
1269
01:01:53.550 --> 01:01:56.570
Oh, okay. So it's not. It's not like when they're uncomfortable.
1270
01:01:56.590 --> 01:01:58.750
Sometimes it's just like, it's time. It's time that Bob
1271
01:01:58.769 --> 01:01:59.030
becomes Mike.
1272
01:01:59.050 --> 01:02:02.480
It's a subjective reaction to objective experience that causes them
1273
01:02:02.539 --> 01:02:03.059
to do this.
1274
01:02:03.539 --> 01:02:05.420
And do they announce it to the village?
1275
01:02:06.800 --> 01:02:09.920
They announce it to their spouse or their kids, and
1276
01:02:09.960 --> 01:02:12.760
then the word spreads. And so I'll come back in.
1277
01:02:12.800 --> 01:02:14.760
I came back in after six months, and my buddy,
1278
01:02:14.780 --> 01:02:20.510
my main language teacher, his name was, when I left,
1279
01:02:20.650 --> 01:02:24.929
it was Kohoi Behe, which means blood eater. And when
1280
01:02:24.949 --> 01:02:26.949
I got back, I said, you know, and the nickname
1281
01:02:27.010 --> 01:02:28.900
is Ko. Hey, Ko. You know, I asked him, how
1282
01:02:28.960 --> 01:02:31.139
are you doing? And nobody responds. He didn't turn and
1283
01:02:31.159 --> 01:02:32.920
look at me or anything. And I called him again
1284
01:02:32.960 --> 01:02:35.659
and again. He said, you talking to me? I said, yeah.
1285
01:02:35.699 --> 01:02:37.980
He said, that's not my name. And so I had
1286
01:02:38.010 --> 01:02:41.650
to learn his new name was Kapaobi, you know, which–
1287
01:02:42.449 --> 01:02:44.750
and he was serious about it. He wouldn't respond anymore
1288
01:02:44.789 --> 01:02:46.570
to that old name. Wow.
1289
01:02:46.590 --> 01:02:46.659
Wow.
1290
01:02:47.699 --> 01:02:48.440
How?
1291
01:02:48.719 --> 01:02:50.639
The first time that happened, were you like, oh, my God,
1292
01:02:50.659 --> 01:02:51.980
these people are fucking crazy?
1293
01:02:52.320 --> 01:02:54.739
No, I thought, I'm pretty stupid. I can't even remember
1294
01:02:54.780 --> 01:02:57.219
their names. Wow. That was my first reaction.
1295
01:02:57.280 --> 01:03:01.400
How quickly did this happen from you first, like, encountering
1296
01:03:01.420 --> 01:03:01.840
these people?
1297
01:03:02.440 --> 01:03:06.269
Well, I would be gone for three or four months
1298
01:03:06.309 --> 01:03:08.949
at a time and then come back because I was
1299
01:03:09.389 --> 01:03:10.090
doing linguistic.
1300
01:03:10.210 --> 01:03:13.130
Oh, so you never experienced it, like, as it was happening?
1301
01:03:13.469 --> 01:03:13.969
One time.
1302
01:03:14.250 --> 01:03:17.210
One time there was... You really need to spend at
1303
01:03:17.269 --> 01:03:19.429
least a full year there so you can see all
1304
01:03:19.469 --> 01:03:22.110
the seasons and all the changes. Then I saw some
1305
01:03:22.130 --> 01:03:24.170
of the stuff. But many of the name changes happened
1306
01:03:24.210 --> 01:03:25.969
when I was out of the village. Some of them
1307
01:03:26.010 --> 01:03:28.670
happened when I was in the village. But my best friends,
1308
01:03:28.769 --> 01:03:30.789
their name changes seemed to happen when I was out
1309
01:03:30.809 --> 01:03:34.030
of the village. And they were very serious about enforcing
1310
01:03:34.070 --> 01:03:39.550
those new name changes. So if you ask them to
1311
01:03:39.610 --> 01:03:43.789
tell stories about their childhood, you get these very vague stories.
1312
01:03:44.409 --> 01:03:47.039
And they'll say, you know, but I'm talking about this person,
1313
01:03:47.300 --> 01:03:49.900
you know. Or they'll tell me, you know, they changed
1314
01:03:49.940 --> 01:03:53.260
my name twice, you know. And so they name me
1315
01:03:53.320 --> 01:03:54.880
and they– so a guy comes up to me and
1316
01:03:54.900 --> 01:03:58.179
he says, that name is rotten, which is the same
1317
01:03:58.239 --> 01:04:01.460
word you use for spoiled food. You know, your name
1318
01:04:01.519 --> 01:04:04.420
is spoiled. So I'm going to give you this name.
1319
01:04:04.940 --> 01:04:06.800
And then I got– then one time I was in
1320
01:04:06.840 --> 01:04:09.210
there and was staying with this guy. He's just wearing
1321
01:04:09.230 --> 01:04:12.769
a loincloth and the other Peter Hoff fearing because he's
1322
01:04:12.789 --> 01:04:18.280
this fierce– And he says, you're really old. They always
1323
01:04:18.320 --> 01:04:20.539
tell me that. He said, you're really old. And I said,
1324
01:04:21.300 --> 01:04:22.929
I'm not that old. He said, yeah, you are. My
1325
01:04:22.949 --> 01:04:25.230
dad's dead and you're about the same age as he was.
1326
01:04:25.610 --> 01:04:27.849
They don't know what the age is. He said, I'm
1327
01:04:27.869 --> 01:04:30.679
going to give you my dad's name. And Bao Aisi,
1328
01:04:30.719 --> 01:04:32.599
which is just the name of his dad. So that's
1329
01:04:32.639 --> 01:04:34.699
been my name ever since. I've had that name now
1330
01:04:34.739 --> 01:04:35.820
for about 15 years.
1331
01:04:36.059 --> 01:04:39.139
And when you go back, what happens if they want
1332
01:04:39.159 --> 01:04:40.510
to switch it up again? You have to learn a
1333
01:04:40.530 --> 01:04:41.590
new name? Yeah, yeah.
1334
01:04:41.730 --> 01:04:44.269
And that could easily happen, right? Yeah, it could easily happen.
1335
01:04:44.289 --> 01:04:45.869
It just depends on which village you go to and
1336
01:04:45.889 --> 01:04:46.969
which person you're talking to.
1337
01:04:47.489 --> 01:04:49.590
What is the population of these people?
1338
01:04:50.210 --> 01:04:51.739
When I first got there, it was under 200. And
1339
01:04:51.800 --> 01:04:57.300
now it's around 700 to 800. They've grown because they've
1340
01:04:57.320 --> 01:05:00.179
had more medical assistance. I gave them medical assistance, my
1341
01:05:00.219 --> 01:05:02.460
wife and I, for 20 years.
1342
01:05:03.340 --> 01:05:07.489
And so your goal was to convert them to Christianity.
1343
01:05:07.590 --> 01:05:07.800
Right.
1344
01:05:08.030 --> 01:05:12.130
And when it's– so no one's buying it. So what
1345
01:05:12.170 --> 01:05:15.289
are you doing? What do your days consist of while
1346
01:05:15.329 --> 01:05:15.710
you're there?
1347
01:05:15.789 --> 01:05:21.449
Well, my days consist of linguistic analysis and translation effort.
1348
01:05:22.269 --> 01:05:24.650
So I'll work with somebody. And so I worked with
1349
01:05:24.690 --> 01:05:27.849
this guy, for example– And we went through the story
1350
01:05:27.889 --> 01:05:30.590
of Jesus. I had translated a large part of the
1351
01:05:30.630 --> 01:05:33.670
Gospel of Luke, and I tell him this story. And
1352
01:05:33.710 --> 01:05:37.380
then I showed film strips, you know, made by, you know,
1353
01:05:37.389 --> 01:05:40.159
where Jesus looks like an American and has a beard
1354
01:05:40.219 --> 01:05:43.440
and all this stuff. And I explained it. They don't
1355
01:05:43.460 --> 01:05:47.019
make a difference between drawings and photographs, so they figured, well,
1356
01:05:47.079 --> 01:05:50.440
this must be Jesus. He saw Jesus. So that night,
1357
01:05:50.619 --> 01:05:52.000
after I had told him all this and we had
1358
01:05:52.039 --> 01:05:55.710
seen the film strips, His village was across the river.
1359
01:05:55.769 --> 01:05:57.610
I lived in one village, and across the river was
1360
01:05:57.650 --> 01:06:00.210
another village, and they went across the river. And all
1361
01:06:00.269 --> 01:06:03.250
night long I heard screaming and yelling and people running
1362
01:06:03.309 --> 01:06:06.969
around and women laughing and then women screaming. And the
1363
01:06:07.030 --> 01:06:08.800
next morning he comes back to work with me, and
1364
01:06:08.840 --> 01:06:11.519
I said, so what was going on all night? He said, oh,
1365
01:06:11.579 --> 01:06:15.760
Jesus came to our village. I said, what? He said, yeah,
1366
01:06:15.800 --> 01:06:17.139
he came to our village, you know, and he had
1367
01:06:17.179 --> 01:06:20.739
a penis three feet long. They don't have words for feet,
1368
01:06:20.780 --> 01:06:23.269
so I'm just going by his hand thing. He said,
1369
01:06:23.309 --> 01:06:24.809
and he was trying to stick it in all the women.
1370
01:06:25.389 --> 01:06:27.829
And so, you know, the women don't want to know
1371
01:06:27.869 --> 01:06:32.619
anymore about Jesus. What? This is their way of rejecting it.
1372
01:06:34.280 --> 01:06:37.260
So I never expected that. In all my Bible training
1373
01:06:37.320 --> 01:06:37.719
and things.
1374
01:06:38.280 --> 01:06:41.900
Did they say, so they wouldn't admit if one of
1375
01:06:41.960 --> 01:06:44.949
them became like they become a fast talker if they
1376
01:06:44.989 --> 01:06:45.969
just became Jesus.
1377
01:06:46.110 --> 01:06:46.289
Right.
1378
01:06:46.789 --> 01:06:47.989
But that could have been what happened.
1379
01:06:48.130 --> 01:06:49.170
I'm sure that's what happened.
1380
01:06:49.730 --> 01:06:51.710
So one guy just decided I'm Jesus. Yeah.
1381
01:06:52.739 --> 01:06:54.559
But everybody took him, you're Jesus.
1382
01:06:54.860 --> 01:06:55.079
Yeah.
1383
01:06:55.199 --> 01:06:56.599
And this is what Jesus is trying to do.
1384
01:06:57.340 --> 01:06:58.280
Oh, boy.
1385
01:06:58.480 --> 01:07:01.280
But they would ask questions like, you know, hey, Dan,
1386
01:07:02.119 --> 01:07:04.159
what does Jesus look like? Is he brown like us
1387
01:07:04.280 --> 01:07:05.909
or is he white like you? And I say, well,
1388
01:07:05.929 --> 01:07:07.929
you know, some people say he was brown like you
1389
01:07:07.989 --> 01:07:09.809
and some people say he was white like me. And
1390
01:07:09.829 --> 01:07:11.710
they said, yeah, yeah, but you've seen him. What did
1391
01:07:11.750 --> 01:07:14.869
he look like? And I said, well, I never saw him. Well,
1392
01:07:14.889 --> 01:07:17.409
your dad saw him. No, my dad never saw him.
1393
01:07:17.429 --> 01:07:19.130
He lived a long time ago. I don't know anyone
1394
01:07:19.170 --> 01:07:21.230
who has ever seen Jesus. And they said, you don't
1395
01:07:21.250 --> 01:07:23.320
know anyone who's ever seen him and you're just talking
1396
01:07:23.380 --> 01:07:26.079
about him the whole time telling us about him? They said,
1397
01:07:26.099 --> 01:07:27.440
we don't want to hear about this anymore.
1398
01:07:27.460 --> 01:07:32.300
And that was like– But you at the time were
1399
01:07:32.320 --> 01:07:33.820
a believer. You're a true believer.
1400
01:07:34.460 --> 01:07:34.679
Yeah.
1401
01:07:35.019 --> 01:07:37.570
So when did that start to slip away?
1402
01:07:38.210 --> 01:07:42.090
It started to slip away from two sides. One, I
1403
01:07:42.130 --> 01:07:45.010
was spending a lot of my time in the intellectual
1404
01:07:45.070 --> 01:07:49.239
world and trying to do serious linguistic science. And it
1405
01:07:49.280 --> 01:07:53.130
slipped away mainly, however– by constant interaction with the Pidaha.
1406
01:07:53.150 --> 01:07:55.329
Because as I've gotten to know these people over the years,
1407
01:07:56.650 --> 01:08:00.429
these are really smart people. They're very intelligent people. They
1408
01:08:00.690 --> 01:08:03.250
had me figured out before I had them figured out.
1409
01:08:03.469 --> 01:08:05.489
And they can predict my behavior better than I can
1410
01:08:05.530 --> 01:08:09.900
predict theirs, even today. And so they would come to
1411
01:08:09.940 --> 01:08:11.559
me and they would say this, you know, they say, Dan,
1412
01:08:11.579 --> 01:08:15.260
you keep telling us about Jesus, but it seems that
1413
01:08:15.320 --> 01:08:17.460
only Americans believe in Jesus because we don't know any
1414
01:08:17.500 --> 01:08:20.430
Brazilians that we've ever met that believe in Jesus. And
1415
01:08:20.829 --> 01:08:23.250
So this seems like an American thing, but we're not Americans.
1416
01:08:23.829 --> 01:08:25.550
And then they would say, you know, where did you
1417
01:08:25.590 --> 01:08:28.369
get your evidence? And I began to think, you know,
1418
01:08:28.409 --> 01:08:30.880
these are good questions. I can't just throw these questions off.
1419
01:08:30.909 --> 01:08:33.579
What is my evidence? You know, I went to Bible school.
1420
01:08:33.619 --> 01:08:37.779
I've been surrounded by Christians. I've surrounded myself by people
1421
01:08:37.819 --> 01:08:40.539
who believe. And this is what happens in linguistic theory
1422
01:08:40.619 --> 01:08:43.560
or other scientific theories. You surround yourself with a community
1423
01:08:44.090 --> 01:08:47.010
that believes the same thing, and pretty soon it's hard
1424
01:08:47.029 --> 01:08:51.220
for you to consider alternatives. Right. And so I started
1425
01:08:51.260 --> 01:08:55.760
considering the alternative and I realized– I was an atheist
1426
01:08:55.819 --> 01:08:59.770
back when I met my first wife in front of
1427
01:08:59.810 --> 01:09:01.789
a gym. Hendrix concert. I was an atheist and then
1428
01:09:01.829 --> 01:09:04.470
I became a Christian and then I thought maybe I
1429
01:09:04.510 --> 01:09:10.560
was right to begin with. And so eventually I told them.
1430
01:09:10.600 --> 01:09:12.359
I said, you know, I don't believe this stuff anymore either.
1431
01:09:12.399 --> 01:09:14.760
And they started laughing. All the guys started laughing. I said,
1432
01:09:14.800 --> 01:09:16.819
why are you– they said, oh, now you're like us.
1433
01:09:17.060 --> 01:09:20.810
But– But then they told me one time, they said,
1434
01:09:20.829 --> 01:09:24.439
you know, from what we understand, Christians don't drink and
1435
01:09:24.479 --> 01:09:27.380
they don't sleep with other women. And, you know, we
1436
01:09:27.420 --> 01:09:31.520
like to do those things. So we're not interested.
1437
01:09:33.159 --> 01:09:36.510
What was convincing for you, though? If you're a true believer,
1438
01:09:36.909 --> 01:09:39.390
you think your path is the right way when you're
1439
01:09:39.409 --> 01:09:42.420
hanging out with these people. What is making you question it?
1440
01:09:42.890 --> 01:09:45.930
Well, several things. One of the most important things was
1441
01:09:45.970 --> 01:09:48.869
that having spent so many years as a Christian and
1442
01:09:48.949 --> 01:09:51.829
knowing Christians, both in the U.S. and missionaries, who are
1443
01:09:51.850 --> 01:09:56.010
the cream of the crop, supposedly, I didn't know anyone
1444
01:09:56.050 --> 01:09:58.869
in the Christian faith who was as well-adjusted, who could
1445
01:09:58.930 --> 01:10:01.189
cope with life as well, who was as satisfied and
1446
01:10:01.229 --> 01:10:04.390
content with their lives as the Piraha. They were like
1447
01:10:04.430 --> 01:10:08.310
the ultimate Zen masters and the ultimate, you know, if
1448
01:10:08.350 --> 01:10:10.489
you thought, what is Jesus supposed to do for your life?
1449
01:10:11.010 --> 01:10:13.789
They already had it. And I didn't know many Christians
1450
01:10:13.829 --> 01:10:16.560
who did. So first it was quality of the spiritual life.
1451
01:10:16.760 --> 01:10:18.520
They seem to me to have the highest quality of
1452
01:10:18.590 --> 01:10:21.930
spiritual life. So one MIT guy who came down, an
1453
01:10:22.069 --> 01:10:25.630
MIT PhD student, said, these look like the happiest people
1454
01:10:25.670 --> 01:10:28.310
in the world. And I said, well, what kind of
1455
01:10:28.329 --> 01:10:31.949
statement is that? How would you measure who's happiest? He said, well,
1456
01:10:32.010 --> 01:10:34.979
I would spend time, I would see how long they
1457
01:10:35.060 --> 01:10:37.460
smile and laugh every day and compare it to others
1458
01:10:37.520 --> 01:10:40.840
and how much time they spend laughing and smiling. And
1459
01:10:40.880 --> 01:10:43.239
I'll guarantee you, he said, I've never seen a Peter
1460
01:10:43.260 --> 01:10:46.069
Hahn here who's not smiling or laughing at Frequently.
1461
01:10:46.609 --> 01:10:46.930
Yeah.
1462
01:10:47.869 --> 01:10:50.829
So it was that quality of character. And it was
1463
01:10:50.909 --> 01:10:53.090
also just the fact that I began to realize that
1464
01:10:53.609 --> 01:10:56.430
the scientific principles that I've been learning and that I'm
1465
01:10:56.470 --> 01:11:01.369
applying in linguistics almost have to be suspended to apply
1466
01:11:01.430 --> 01:11:06.729
them to the faith. Because, you know, for example, I've
1467
01:11:06.760 --> 01:11:12.319
heard a lot of stories of people being healed. But
1468
01:11:12.359 --> 01:11:15.170
this is anecdotal evidence. And I'm not going to deny
1469
01:11:15.229 --> 01:11:18.399
anybody's experience. If you tell me you had inoperable cancer,
1470
01:11:21.340 --> 01:11:24.720
but now you don't, something happened, and I can't tell
1471
01:11:24.760 --> 01:11:28.000
you what it was. But at the same time, there's
1472
01:11:28.039 --> 01:11:32.439
no statistical relevance to that. It's also the case that
1473
01:11:32.520 --> 01:11:36.260
even when I was in Bible school, one of my
1474
01:11:36.340 --> 01:11:40.260
teachers said, I wonder why healers, faith healers, never start
1475
01:11:40.279 --> 01:11:43.739
with amputees, you know? They always start with diseases you
1476
01:11:43.779 --> 01:11:47.750
can't see, like cancer, and explain how it went away.
1477
01:11:47.869 --> 01:11:50.989
But they said also in the Bible, and the Bible
1478
01:11:51.029 --> 01:11:54.890
itself says this, Jesus not only healed people, he raised
1479
01:11:54.909 --> 01:11:57.489
them from the dead. So if somebody claims to be
1480
01:11:57.529 --> 01:12:00.829
a healer in the same vein as Jesus, I'd like
1481
01:12:00.850 --> 01:12:04.289
to see them start at cemeteries and start raising people
1482
01:12:04.329 --> 01:12:06.050
from the dead. We're not seeing that, and we don't
1483
01:12:06.109 --> 01:12:09.770
see amputees healed. We see things that are sort of
1484
01:12:09.829 --> 01:12:13.270
subjective experiences. So that And I'm not claiming that nobody
1485
01:12:13.310 --> 01:12:15.130
has a right to believe what they believe or that
1486
01:12:15.170 --> 01:12:16.890
I'm right about all these things. But these are the
1487
01:12:16.949 --> 01:12:19.510
reason– this is part of the reasoning process. It went
1488
01:12:19.529 --> 01:12:23.890
through my mind and I thought, yeah, I just can't
1489
01:12:25.250 --> 01:12:27.609
do this anymore. I cannot tell these people to believe
1490
01:12:27.649 --> 01:12:32.119
something that they have reasonable objections against and I don't
1491
01:12:32.180 --> 01:12:35.880
have reasonable answers for. So to me, they made more
1492
01:12:35.939 --> 01:12:36.720
sense than I did.
1493
01:12:37.720 --> 01:12:42.149
Well, there's– So many of these ancient religions that have
1494
01:12:42.310 --> 01:12:45.050
very similar stories to the Jesus story.
1495
01:12:46.210 --> 01:12:46.449
Yes.
1496
01:12:46.670 --> 01:12:51.289
It seems like a very old story. And I'm of
1497
01:12:51.329 --> 01:12:54.960
the opinion that what you're getting with all of these
1498
01:12:55.039 --> 01:13:01.680
religious texts is there were some events and there's some
1499
01:13:01.760 --> 01:13:05.930
sort of a documentation of this events, but it's very hard.
1500
01:13:06.569 --> 01:13:11.390
to figure out what exactly happened. Like, for instance, Paul
1501
01:13:11.449 --> 01:13:12.329
never met Jesus.
1502
01:13:12.850 --> 01:13:12.989
No.
1503
01:13:14.189 --> 01:13:16.340
When most people find that out, they go, wait, what?
1504
01:13:16.520 --> 01:13:19.640
So all that stuff that Jesus said, Paul's writing down.
1505
01:13:20.460 --> 01:13:23.800
And well, how does Paul know this? And then you go, oh, well,
1506
01:13:23.920 --> 01:13:27.699
Paul met Jesus in a dream. Hold the fuck on.
1507
01:13:28.039 --> 01:13:32.189
Right. See, ironically, the Pentecost might actually take that as evidence. Right.
1508
01:13:32.590 --> 01:13:34.729
But... I mean, Jesus came back to their camp as
1509
01:13:34.770 --> 01:13:35.250
a fast forward.
1510
01:13:35.270 --> 01:13:39.229
But we said, you know, I learned in Bible school
1511
01:13:39.250 --> 01:13:42.229
that all the apostles had to have met Jesus. And
1512
01:13:42.289 --> 01:13:44.260
Paul was an apostle, therefore he had to have met Jesus.
1513
01:13:44.310 --> 01:13:46.020
And so I said, well, when did he meet Jesus?
1514
01:13:46.039 --> 01:13:48.340
And they said, on the road to Damascus. He had
1515
01:13:48.380 --> 01:13:50.720
the revelation of Jesus on the road to Damascus, so
1516
01:13:50.739 --> 01:13:51.119
he met him.
1517
01:13:51.859 --> 01:13:52.020
But.
1518
01:13:52.279 --> 01:13:54.020
It's tricky. It's tricky.
1519
01:13:54.180 --> 01:13:59.529
It's tricky. It's also... Again, when you get especially to
1520
01:13:59.550 --> 01:14:05.199
the Old Testament, like what were they documenting? What are
1521
01:14:05.220 --> 01:14:11.260
these events? What happened there? There's some stories that you
1522
01:14:11.300 --> 01:14:13.939
say– like the flood story for example. Boy, there's a
1523
01:14:13.979 --> 01:14:15.659
lot of those. There's a lot of those in all
1524
01:14:15.720 --> 01:14:19.409
sorts of ancient religions. It seems to be some sort
1525
01:14:19.449 --> 01:14:23.310
of a historical record of some sort of a catastrophe. Right.
1526
01:14:24.489 --> 01:14:26.310
All the other stuff that's attached to it, you just
1527
01:14:26.350 --> 01:14:28.270
got to go, I'm not sure what this means.
1528
01:14:29.569 --> 01:14:32.170
Right. When I was a little boy, my mother died
1529
01:14:32.210 --> 01:14:33.449
when I was very young, but when I was a
1530
01:14:33.449 --> 01:14:36.039
little boy, we would drive up from Imperial Valley, California
1531
01:14:36.079 --> 01:14:38.300
to San Diego, and you've got to go through the mountains.
1532
01:14:38.720 --> 01:14:41.680
And there's this line of white stones that I noticed
1533
01:14:41.960 --> 01:14:44.539
near the top of the mountains. And I said, what
1534
01:14:44.590 --> 01:14:48.810
caused that? And my mother said, the flood. And I thought, Well,
1535
01:14:48.949 --> 01:14:52.090
that makes sense. It must be the flood. I'm like seven.
1536
01:14:53.289 --> 01:14:56.340
And so this is– some of this stuff gets started
1537
01:14:56.479 --> 01:14:57.720
this way and it becomes truth.
1538
01:14:58.180 --> 01:15:00.479
Well, I mean it's certainly when you're talking about a
1539
01:15:00.560 --> 01:15:06.239
time thousands of years ago where just the ability to
1540
01:15:06.359 --> 01:15:09.859
read was very limited. And then you're translating things from
1541
01:15:09.899 --> 01:15:13.550
languages that we don't even speak anymore. It gets real
1542
01:15:13.619 --> 01:15:16.210
squirrely when you try to figure out what these events
1543
01:15:16.390 --> 01:15:22.869
actually were that they were documenting. It's– having a belief system,
1544
01:15:22.949 --> 01:15:24.560
I think there's a lot of value to it. I
1545
01:15:24.600 --> 01:15:27.920
think it gives you a moral scaffolding, gives you structure
1546
01:15:27.939 --> 01:15:30.479
in your life, and that alone is like super beneficial
1547
01:15:30.920 --> 01:15:32.859
to people. And the people that I know that are
1548
01:15:33.000 --> 01:15:36.760
like true Christians, really follow the teachings of Jesus Christ,
1549
01:15:37.119 --> 01:15:38.659
they're some of the nicest people I've ever met. I
1550
01:15:38.819 --> 01:15:41.739
think there's really great benefit to that. The problem is
1551
01:15:41.779 --> 01:15:46.409
like what are we saying? You know, what exactly– like
1552
01:15:46.430 --> 01:15:48.550
do you– the Adam and Eve one. It's like, okay,
1553
01:15:48.689 --> 01:15:51.210
what do you think happened? Do you think there's two people?
1554
01:15:51.369 --> 01:15:53.130
That's the only two people on earth? And then where
1555
01:15:53.170 --> 01:15:55.569
do the other people come from? The brothers and sisters
1556
01:15:55.609 --> 01:15:57.210
just have sex with each other? Right.
1557
01:15:57.569 --> 01:15:57.789
What?
1558
01:15:58.390 --> 01:16:02.319
Yeah, I mean evolution explains that obviously very well. But
1559
01:16:02.439 --> 01:16:04.800
Adam and Eve, you know, I remember when my mother
1560
01:16:04.859 --> 01:16:09.220
told me the story of eating the apple and betraying God.
1561
01:16:09.819 --> 01:16:14.329
And Adam is hiding out and God says, where are you?
1562
01:16:15.119 --> 01:16:17.399
And I asked my mother, I said, I thought God
1563
01:16:17.439 --> 01:16:19.800
knew everything. Why is he asking him where he is?
1564
01:16:19.840 --> 01:16:22.439
I don't understand that. And she said, well, he wants
1565
01:16:22.479 --> 01:16:25.420
him to confess it. Well, there's always that kind of answer.
1566
01:16:25.460 --> 01:16:27.600
You can always give that kind of answer. But we,
1567
01:16:27.979 --> 01:16:29.979
you know, you don't have to focus on religion. You
1568
01:16:30.000 --> 01:16:33.409
can even go to paleoanthropology and you can look at,
1569
01:16:33.850 --> 01:16:36.869
are there 20 species of Homo that used to exist
1570
01:16:36.930 --> 01:16:40.829
in the past or more? Or were there just three, Erectus, Neanderthal,
1571
01:16:41.310 --> 01:16:45.029
and Sapiens? And what does it mean to be a species?
1572
01:16:45.649 --> 01:16:48.380
And how can we really prove some of that stuff?
1573
01:16:48.760 --> 01:16:53.100
Before the work of Svante Pebo and decoding the DNA,
1574
01:16:53.520 --> 01:16:58.279
the genome of ancient creatures doing this thing that people
1575
01:16:58.319 --> 01:17:01.840
thought was impossible, that was speculation. It was really hard
1576
01:17:01.880 --> 01:17:06.399
to tell. And there were a lot of controversies. And
1577
01:17:06.479 --> 01:17:09.359
now we can look at the genetic record and we
1578
01:17:09.390 --> 01:17:11.770
can look at the genome and But that still doesn't
1579
01:17:11.789 --> 01:17:15.329
tell us everything. So a lot of straight history and
1580
01:17:15.350 --> 01:17:19.840
a lot of paleoanthropology and paleoarchaeology, all of these things
1581
01:17:20.439 --> 01:17:26.859
always involve, as any theory does, speculation. You're guessing and
1582
01:17:26.899 --> 01:17:30.020
then trying to test your guess. And some things are
1583
01:17:30.079 --> 01:17:33.930
easier to test than other things. And so science is
1584
01:17:33.989 --> 01:17:38.329
a community of people who believe they can work towards
1585
01:17:38.390 --> 01:17:40.880
the truth, but the only way to do that is
1586
01:17:40.920 --> 01:17:43.340
to have good guesses and know how to test them
1587
01:17:44.060 --> 01:17:47.039
and be willing to admit that you're wrong and then
1588
01:17:47.079 --> 01:17:51.590
move on to the next best guess. Right. And every
1589
01:17:51.649 --> 01:17:55.270
scientist recognizes this, but in practice, it's really hard.
1590
01:17:56.189 --> 01:17:58.829
Well, it's certainly hard if you're also a fundamentalist Christian.
1591
01:17:59.050 --> 01:18:00.210
Oh, yeah. That makes it much harder.
1592
01:18:00.229 --> 01:18:02.529
Because then you're living in conflict all the time.
1593
01:18:02.729 --> 01:18:02.890
Right.
1594
01:18:02.909 --> 01:18:04.409
You believe a guy came back from the dead, but
1595
01:18:04.510 --> 01:18:05.729
show me proof for everything else.
1596
01:18:05.850 --> 01:18:09.260
Yeah. You believe in miracles, but you can't. They certainly
1597
01:18:09.279 --> 01:18:10.000
can't be produced.
1598
01:18:11.270 --> 01:18:14.890
You also believe that people tell the truth. That's part
1599
01:18:14.930 --> 01:18:16.550
of the problem. Part of the problem with all this
1600
01:18:16.569 --> 01:18:20.470
stuff is like– look, the Bible condones slavery. It talks
1601
01:18:20.489 --> 01:18:23.130
about slavery in multiple passages.
1602
01:18:23.489 --> 01:18:24.390
Yeah.
1603
01:18:24.590 --> 01:18:26.609
That's a person thing. That's a people thing.
1604
01:18:26.890 --> 01:18:38.899
Right. That's– Interpret it in such a way that we
1605
01:18:38.939 --> 01:18:42.529
can live with it. Right. Exactly. You know, so God–
1606
01:18:42.560 --> 01:18:45.409
I mean if you read anything by Mark Twain about God,
1607
01:18:45.470 --> 01:18:51.229
which is not only brilliant but funny, you know– just
1608
01:18:51.289 --> 01:18:54.810
makes fun of the whole notion that– It.
1609
01:18:54.789 --> 01:18:57.270
Says religion started when the first con man made the
1610
01:18:57.310 --> 01:18:57.850
first sucker.
1611
01:18:58.310 --> 01:19:01.840
Yeah. And how many germs– he has this story about
1612
01:19:02.239 --> 01:19:04.960
Noah's Ark about how Noah's family had to be so
1613
01:19:05.039 --> 01:19:09.539
infested with germs so they could survive the flood. Yeah.
1614
01:19:11.489 --> 01:19:14.840
When you stop and think about it, I mean like
1615
01:19:15.029 --> 01:19:18.319
the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat and then
1616
01:19:18.819 --> 01:19:21.220
all these creatures had to boogie on down to Australia
1617
01:19:21.279 --> 01:19:25.220
almost immediately. And so you get these stories and people
1618
01:19:25.279 --> 01:19:27.699
don't want to talk about those things. I don't know
1619
01:19:27.739 --> 01:19:28.430
how God did it.
1620
01:19:28.770 --> 01:19:32.010
I think there was an event and I think this
1621
01:19:32.449 --> 01:19:36.250
version of it, this doctrine that you're supposed to adhere to,
1622
01:19:37.340 --> 01:19:43.810
is woefully uninformed about the actual like real facts of
1623
01:19:43.819 --> 01:19:46.210
the event. I don't think anybody could possibly know. But
1624
01:19:46.229 --> 01:19:49.170
I think when you have the epic of Gilgamesh, which
1625
01:19:49.409 --> 01:19:52.609
mirrors the story of Noah's Ark, which mirrors the story
1626
01:19:52.729 --> 01:19:56.489
of other religions that have similar flood myths or flood stories,
1627
01:19:56.949 --> 01:19:59.979
it's probably something happened. Yeah, it's probably one of the
1628
01:20:00.020 --> 01:20:00.739
things that happened.
1629
01:20:01.670 --> 01:20:06.970
Right. I mean, you can tell people— it would be intellectually
1630
01:20:07.029 --> 01:20:09.970
dishonest to tell people that all the claims of their
1631
01:20:10.010 --> 01:20:12.229
religion are false. How do you know that? You don't
1632
01:20:12.250 --> 01:20:15.140
know that. And I used to tell Christians, I said,
1633
01:20:15.189 --> 01:20:18.199
you know, when I was a Christian, the best evidence
1634
01:20:18.260 --> 01:20:20.960
for God is what he's done in your life. And
1635
01:20:21.239 --> 01:20:23.239
are you living a better life? And if you're not
1636
01:20:23.279 --> 01:20:25.000
living a better life, then why are you saying that
1637
01:20:25.039 --> 01:20:27.500
he saved you? Right. And if you can't live a
1638
01:20:27.560 --> 01:20:32.920
more moral life than people who don't know Christ— then
1639
01:20:32.960 --> 01:20:35.439
what are you saying? You claim that he changed your
1640
01:20:35.460 --> 01:20:37.720
life for the good, but you're not living a life
1641
01:20:37.760 --> 01:20:40.060
for the good. You know, I went to work in
1642
01:20:40.100 --> 01:20:43.500
construction when I was still in high school for a
1643
01:20:43.539 --> 01:20:47.109
Christian contractor. And I was in the union. I joined
1644
01:20:47.130 --> 01:20:49.310
the laborers union, which meant that as a hod carrier,
1645
01:20:49.550 --> 01:20:53.130
that's the hardest job I ever did, that you got
1646
01:20:53.149 --> 01:20:53.409
paid $ 8.
1647
01:20:53.310 --> 01:20:53.550
25 an hour.
1648
01:20:53.569 --> 01:20:54.670
And this is 1968. And that was a lot of
1649
01:20:54.689 --> 01:20:56.029
money in 1968. And the guy told me when I
1650
01:20:56.050 --> 01:21:02.979
got hired, he said, the union says I got to
1651
01:21:02.989 --> 01:21:05.159
pay $ 8. 25 an hour, but I'm not going to pay
1652
01:21:05.180 --> 01:21:06.920
you that. I'm going to write you down as only
1653
01:21:06.979 --> 01:21:09.060
working four hours a day, but you're going to work eight.
1654
01:21:09.979 --> 01:21:11.739
And that's how he got around it. And I thought,
1655
01:21:12.840 --> 01:21:15.500
this guy's a Christian and he's lying on these forms
1656
01:21:15.619 --> 01:21:19.300
and on his taxes and he's going to church. And, um,
1657
01:21:19.680 --> 01:21:22.460
I got the job through my Christian missionary father-in-law who
1658
01:21:22.500 --> 01:21:26.180
knew this guy. And, and I saw that happening time
1659
01:21:26.220 --> 01:21:30.579
and time again. Um, So very often, unfortunately, people who
1660
01:21:30.640 --> 01:21:34.020
claim to be religious and follow the commandments of Jesus,
1661
01:21:34.050 --> 01:21:36.909
which are much more difficult to follow than the commandments
1662
01:21:36.949 --> 01:21:40.689
of the Old Testament because they affect your thoughts and
1663
01:21:40.729 --> 01:21:46.310
not just your overt action. When you don't see consistency,
1664
01:21:46.550 --> 01:21:49.149
the answer could be, well, we're just humans. We're not perfect.
1665
01:21:49.630 --> 01:21:53.090
And that's true. But why doesn't the Holy Spirit that
1666
01:21:53.130 --> 01:21:55.329
you say you believe in make a bigger difference in
1667
01:21:55.369 --> 01:21:57.829
your life than he does in Joe Schmo down the
1668
01:21:57.869 --> 01:22:01.680
street Who doesn't claim anything and he's leading a more
1669
01:22:01.720 --> 01:22:02.720
moral life than you are.
1670
01:22:02.899 --> 01:22:04.460
Especially if you're robbing laborers.
1671
01:22:04.880 --> 01:22:07.720
Yeah, exactly. And lying on your taxes. Yeah.
1672
01:22:08.140 --> 01:22:12.819
And so when you're with a pedaha, they live a
1673
01:22:12.890 --> 01:22:14.210
subsistence lifestyle.
1674
01:22:14.670 --> 01:22:14.869
Right.
1675
01:22:15.170 --> 01:22:19.229
And there's been a lot of evidence that subsistence lifestyles
1676
01:22:19.989 --> 01:22:25.119
are some of the most compatible lifestyles in terms of
1677
01:22:25.180 --> 01:22:29.100
like people's happiness and peace and and having like a
1678
01:22:29.159 --> 01:22:34.329
sense of a sense of meaning like your your life
1679
01:22:34.489 --> 01:22:37.369
is wrapped around the gathering of food and community and
1680
01:22:37.409 --> 01:22:40.310
spending time together and they're the happiest people in the world.
1681
01:22:40.909 --> 01:22:42.989
Right you know i i monitor them for a while
1682
01:22:43.060 --> 01:22:46.279
how many hours a week does a hunter work and
1683
01:22:46.340 --> 01:22:49.869
i came up with about 15 or 20 hours a week. Yeah.
1684
01:22:49.989 --> 01:22:51.329
Unless it's not going well.
1685
01:22:51.470 --> 01:22:54.229
Yeah. And then like now, they're doing it all the time.
1686
01:22:54.270 --> 01:22:57.630
But when the fish are jumping, it's that. And then
1687
01:22:57.649 --> 01:22:58.770
so what do you do with the rest of your time?
1688
01:22:58.970 --> 01:23:01.390
You lay around the fire and tell jokes and talk
1689
01:23:01.409 --> 01:23:04.229
to people and play with your kids. The men love
1690
01:23:04.270 --> 01:23:05.239
to play with everybody.
1691
01:23:05.260 --> 01:23:09.060
They're in pure subsistence too because they're not even preserving food.
1692
01:23:09.220 --> 01:23:12.359
Right. If they don't find food today, they go hungry today.
1693
01:23:12.979 --> 01:23:15.939
Have you ever seen the Werner Herzog documentary, Happy People? No.
1694
01:23:16.720 --> 01:23:19.300
I haven't seen that. I did meet him once, but
1695
01:23:19.739 --> 01:23:24.460
I haven't seen that documentary. He's really big into these
1696
01:23:24.539 --> 01:23:26.090
kinds of societies. I know that.
1697
01:23:26.199 --> 01:23:28.159
That's what Happy People is about. It's about these people
1698
01:23:28.189 --> 01:23:31.550
that live in Siberia. Right. There are hunters and trappers
1699
01:23:31.649 --> 01:23:33.630
that live in Siberia, and they're all happy.
1700
01:23:33.930 --> 01:23:34.130
Right.
1701
01:23:34.390 --> 01:23:37.729
Yeah, and they basically just spend most of their time
1702
01:23:37.770 --> 01:23:40.770
gathering food, gathering food and then spending time with the communities.
1703
01:23:41.050 --> 01:23:43.590
Yeah. Well, the documentary that was made about the Pita
1704
01:23:43.609 --> 01:23:47.199
Ha by the Smithsonian and a couple of other– It's
1705
01:23:48.239 --> 01:23:52.590
called The Grammar of Happiness because the film crew that
1706
01:23:52.630 --> 01:23:56.050
went with me was very small, like three people. But
1707
01:23:56.829 --> 01:23:59.130
they were deeply impressed by what they saw and the
1708
01:23:59.170 --> 01:24:01.630
level of happiness. And all the psychologists that I've taken
1709
01:24:01.710 --> 01:24:05.060
and linguists have also been very impressed by the level.
1710
01:24:05.159 --> 01:24:07.560
If they get past the heat and they get past
1711
01:24:07.680 --> 01:24:12.619
the confrontation with your body and the pita hump, don't
1712
01:24:12.659 --> 01:24:14.810
have outhouses they don't have you know i mean if
1713
01:24:14.819 --> 01:24:17.050
somebody needs to take a dump they walk off 10
1714
01:24:17.050 --> 01:24:20.130
feet into the bush and do it um and so
1715
01:24:21.050 --> 01:24:21.550
we have to.
1716
01:24:21.510 --> 01:24:24.289
Do they have toilet paper no what do they do
1717
01:24:24.890 --> 01:24:27.770
a stick or leaves oh sticks yeah hey.
1718
01:24:27.989 --> 01:24:29.810
Or if you have corn cobs that's great but they
1719
01:24:29.850 --> 01:24:30.750
don't have corn.
1720
01:24:30.529 --> 01:24:35.550
Cobs good lord yeah so so yeah but it's just
1721
01:24:35.590 --> 01:24:37.470
not a big deal they grow up that way it's
1722
01:24:37.510 --> 01:24:40.270
just a function you know and so you ask them
1723
01:24:40.289 --> 01:24:42.170
things about life what happens to you after you die
1724
01:24:42.909 --> 01:24:43.329
What do you mean?
1725
01:24:44.069 --> 01:24:47.909
Well, when you're dead, what happens? Well, you're dead. And
1726
01:24:47.930 --> 01:24:50.029
so there's like a dead monkey that somebody just brought
1727
01:24:50.069 --> 01:24:51.909
back and they're going to eat. He says, he's dead.
1728
01:24:52.180 --> 01:24:55.720
What else is there? Why are you asking this question?
1729
01:24:55.979 --> 01:24:59.140
We die, we die. And they don't fear death. They
1730
01:24:59.159 --> 01:25:01.020
don't have to– they don't make up a story to
1731
01:25:01.060 --> 01:25:02.500
make themselves not fear death.
1732
01:25:02.880 --> 01:25:05.140
Were there a lot of them injured? Oh, yeah.
1733
01:25:05.159 --> 01:25:07.420
They get– they live a violent life. They get– I
1734
01:25:07.439 --> 01:25:10.930
have people who– people bitten by snakes, cut– I have
1735
01:25:11.189 --> 01:25:13.310
had people who split their hand almost in two with
1736
01:25:13.350 --> 01:25:16.289
a machete, run arrows all the way up their arm,
1737
01:25:17.569 --> 01:25:19.939
step on sticks that go all the way through their foot.
1738
01:25:20.270 --> 01:25:22.180
I mean, these are people who are naked running through
1739
01:25:22.189 --> 01:25:26.380
the jungle and they get scratches. And, you know, you know,
1740
01:25:26.399 --> 01:25:30.399
if you get bitten by a by a snake that's hemotoxic,
1741
01:25:30.460 --> 01:25:35.859
like this is I don't know what it is. And
1742
01:25:36.000 --> 01:25:38.340
it's a bushmaster. When you get bit by one of
1743
01:25:38.359 --> 01:25:41.489
those things. Even if you survive, a lot of the
1744
01:25:41.550 --> 01:25:43.970
flesh is going to come off whatever they bit. So
1745
01:25:43.989 --> 01:25:46.550
you see people with one leg normal and one leg
1746
01:25:46.590 --> 01:25:49.090
that looks like bone because it's basically bone with a
1747
01:25:49.090 --> 01:25:51.890
little bit of muscle covered in skin because the flesh
1748
01:25:51.949 --> 01:25:57.020
all fell off after the snake bite. So they know
1749
01:25:57.060 --> 01:25:59.079
what it is to suffer, and they're tough. You know,
1750
01:25:59.119 --> 01:26:01.579
if you get a toothache, how do you fix it? Well,
1751
01:26:02.340 --> 01:26:04.020
if I'm there, I have some things that can help
1752
01:26:04.060 --> 01:26:07.020
with the pain or I can pull the tooth. But
1753
01:26:07.500 --> 01:26:10.180
most of the time, it rots out. That's how they
1754
01:26:10.199 --> 01:26:13.659
deal with it. So they learn, you know, I was
1755
01:26:13.760 --> 01:26:16.979
talking to a woman one time, you know, really for,
1756
01:26:17.229 --> 01:26:19.989
you know, pina ha, looking very feminine looking woman. And
1757
01:26:20.069 --> 01:26:22.029
she gets bit by a wasp on the face while
1758
01:26:22.050 --> 01:26:24.930
I'm talking to her. And she pulls the stinger out
1759
01:26:25.029 --> 01:26:27.369
and she doesn't, it doesn't stop her conversation. And I've
1760
01:26:27.390 --> 01:26:29.109
been stung by those wasps and I know they hurt
1761
01:26:29.149 --> 01:26:31.409
like hell. And I said, didn't that hurt?
1762
01:26:32.270 --> 01:26:32.350
Yeah.
1763
01:26:32.390 --> 01:26:35.550
But you didn't say anything. She says, I'm not a baby,
1764
01:26:35.569 --> 01:26:39.659
you know? So, this is the way they are from
1765
01:26:39.680 --> 01:26:41.699
the time they're children they learn to deal with pain
1766
01:26:41.720 --> 01:26:43.840
they learn to be tough in fact they have an
1767
01:26:43.880 --> 01:26:46.800
expression for that he wants to be hard and that
1768
01:26:46.859 --> 01:26:50.590
means you deliberately sleep sometimes less than you need you
1769
01:26:50.609 --> 01:26:53.529
go hungry on purpose and you put yourself in hard
1770
01:26:53.590 --> 01:26:56.449
situations because you want to be tough because that's what
1771
01:26:56.470 --> 01:26:57.789
the environment demands.
1772
01:26:58.069 --> 01:27:03.350
So they build their resilience on purpose yes voluntarily well
1773
01:27:03.550 --> 01:27:06.079
i would imagine that's like the most important thing to
1774
01:27:06.140 --> 01:27:08.199
have if you're running around naked in the jungle. You
1775
01:27:08.239 --> 01:27:09.239
have to be tough. Right.
1776
01:27:09.779 --> 01:27:13.460
You have to be. And, you know, like I go
1777
01:27:13.520 --> 01:27:17.199
barefoot sometimes in the village. You know, I get– you
1778
01:27:17.220 --> 01:27:19.399
can get parasites that way. But, you know, I do
1779
01:27:19.439 --> 01:27:22.560
it anyway. But when I go to the jungle, I
1780
01:27:22.560 --> 01:27:25.720
always put on shoes because my feet can't take all
1781
01:27:25.760 --> 01:27:28.479
the thorns and everything. And theirs are covered with like
1782
01:27:29.560 --> 01:27:32.039
a whole layer of callus all around their foot.
1783
01:27:32.529 --> 01:27:34.449
They have those crazy splayed out toes as well.
1784
01:27:34.470 --> 01:27:37.149
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the way feet are supposed
1785
01:27:37.170 --> 01:27:39.590
to look really. Right. Ours don't look that way because
1786
01:27:39.649 --> 01:27:43.949
we protect them. But their feet are tough. Their hands
1787
01:27:43.989 --> 01:27:46.649
are tough. Their skin is tough. It's like leather. Even
1788
01:27:46.689 --> 01:27:49.770
a little kid, their little kids, rather than crawl, they
1789
01:27:50.390 --> 01:27:53.229
scoot around on their butt. And so you pick a
1790
01:27:53.260 --> 01:27:54.680
little kid up and you look at their butt and
1791
01:27:54.720 --> 01:27:58.880
it's just callous. It's just solid callous. And these kids
1792
01:27:58.920 --> 01:28:06.090
are tough. But– By their standards, they're very gentle to
1793
01:28:06.109 --> 01:28:07.760
their kids. I had a guy with me one time,
1794
01:28:07.800 --> 01:28:09.880
and he was trying to sleep at night, and a
1795
01:28:09.920 --> 01:28:13.340
baby was screaming all night. And he said, why don't
1796
01:28:13.359 --> 01:28:15.539
they tell that baby to shut up? And I said, why?
1797
01:28:16.500 --> 01:28:18.529
I said, they don't need to tell it to shut up.
1798
01:28:18.560 --> 01:28:20.579
That's just part of life. They don't have a schedule
1799
01:28:20.619 --> 01:28:22.579
to keep tomorrow. He said, well, what would happen if
1800
01:28:22.640 --> 01:28:24.699
I went over and swatted it on the behind? I said,
1801
01:28:24.739 --> 01:28:27.300
they'd kill you. They'd kill me? I said, yeah, you
1802
01:28:27.340 --> 01:28:29.810
don't hit kids. They don't believe in hitting kids.
1803
01:28:30.250 --> 01:28:32.350
Swat a baby to get it to– does he think
1804
01:28:32.390 --> 01:28:33.819
that's how babies stop screaming?
1805
01:28:34.680 --> 01:28:35.100
I don't know.
1806
01:28:35.159 --> 01:28:36.619
I mean– Does he have any kids?
1807
01:28:37.859 --> 01:28:40.819
I don't think this guy did, but Christian– often believe,
1808
01:28:41.239 --> 01:28:44.449
really believe, spare the rod and spoil the child. And
1809
01:28:44.470 --> 01:28:47.149
they believe very much in corporal– Back then at least, right? Yeah,
1810
01:28:47.170 --> 01:28:52.109
back then. I don't know today. But so the Peter
1811
01:28:52.130 --> 01:28:55.430
have never believed this. They don't accept it.
1812
01:28:56.090 --> 01:28:59.949
Well, I think they're probably correct. It is interesting how
1813
01:29:00.050 --> 01:29:03.369
those people are happier. Like we've done something to ourselves
1814
01:29:03.470 --> 01:29:07.909
by forcing ourselves into cities and jobs and constant stress
1815
01:29:07.949 --> 01:29:11.430
and bills and taxes and all these external things that
1816
01:29:11.449 --> 01:29:14.090
we've attached to our lives that we think are 100
1817
01:29:14.090 --> 01:29:19.380
percent necessary. Don't bring anybody any happier. Don't bring anybody
1818
01:29:19.529 --> 01:29:22.859
any more happiness. In fact, make you way more miserable,
1819
01:29:23.399 --> 01:29:26.500
make you susceptible to a bunch of stress-related illnesses.
1820
01:29:26.800 --> 01:29:30.510
Yeah. I've had friends visit me in the jungle, researchers
1821
01:29:30.550 --> 01:29:34.810
who are friends, and they'll say things like, I've never
1822
01:29:34.850 --> 01:29:37.649
seen you so relaxed. You know, you seem tense when
1823
01:29:37.670 --> 01:29:39.729
you're at the university, but down here you just seem
1824
01:29:39.880 --> 01:29:43.100
totally laid back. And I said, well, I didn't notice it,
1825
01:29:43.199 --> 01:29:45.720
but that makes perfect sense to me because all these
1826
01:29:45.760 --> 01:29:47.460
people are laid back. There's a pina ha that I
1827
01:29:47.479 --> 01:29:49.600
go to talk to the guy, and I find myself
1828
01:29:49.680 --> 01:29:52.420
nodding off. And I'm not even sleepy when I go
1829
01:29:52.460 --> 01:29:55.359
over there, but he's just so laid back and talks
1830
01:29:55.420 --> 01:29:59.810
so calmly and softly. and telling jokes and things that
1831
01:29:59.829 --> 01:30:00.710
it just puts me to sleep.
1832
01:30:00.989 --> 01:30:02.869
God, it's such a bummer that those people have to
1833
01:30:02.909 --> 01:30:03.529
struggle now.
1834
01:30:03.850 --> 01:30:04.810
Yeah, it's terrible.
1835
01:30:08.069 --> 01:30:09.569
What do they hunt? What do they eat?
1836
01:30:10.720 --> 01:30:13.439
Seventy percent of their diet before they started having river
1837
01:30:13.500 --> 01:30:17.539
problems was fish. So the average diet of a Pita
1838
01:30:17.579 --> 01:30:22.939
Ha family is fish and water and jungle nuts and
1839
01:30:23.000 --> 01:30:26.369
things you get from the jungle. Hunter-gatherers, which they are,
1840
01:30:27.029 --> 01:30:31.319
have Healthier diets than agriculturalists because, you know, we had
1841
01:30:32.239 --> 01:30:36.210
this outbreak of disease from lettuce recently in this country.
1842
01:30:37.510 --> 01:30:39.409
They don't grow vegetables, so they're never going to get
1843
01:30:39.430 --> 01:30:41.750
that kind of thing. They don't get that in naturally
1844
01:30:41.789 --> 01:30:45.210
occurring things out in the jungle. Right. So their diets
1845
01:30:45.270 --> 01:30:49.569
are healthier. They're eating protein. I know, for example, that
1846
01:30:49.609 --> 01:30:52.609
I could take any Pitaham man out of the jungle
1847
01:30:53.029 --> 01:30:55.520
at random, and if I weigh him, he's going to
1848
01:30:55.560 --> 01:31:02.149
be 155 pounds. He's going to have about a 25-inch waist, 26.
1849
01:31:02.149 --> 01:31:06.890
He's going to have about 4% body fat, and he's
1850
01:31:06.930 --> 01:31:11.970
just going to be lean, mean machine. And they do
1851
01:31:12.010 --> 01:31:14.229
try to harden themselves, but that's just what the life
1852
01:31:14.449 --> 01:31:14.989
does to you.
1853
01:31:16.170 --> 01:31:18.409
But they're not overweight. They're not dealing with obesity.
1854
01:31:18.510 --> 01:31:25.390
No, you're never. No diabetes. Only when outsiders, representatives of
1855
01:31:25.409 --> 01:31:27.630
the Brazilian government thought it would be good to give
1856
01:31:27.670 --> 01:31:30.090
them something to rely on. So they brought in a
1857
01:31:30.130 --> 01:31:33.069
lot of rice and they started letting the people feed.
1858
01:31:33.350 --> 01:31:35.710
The people don't grow rice, but the government would supply it.
1859
01:31:36.100 --> 01:31:39.060
So now all of a sudden you see people overweight
1860
01:31:40.119 --> 01:31:42.739
because they're eating starch, which they never used to eat
1861
01:31:42.779 --> 01:31:45.600
that much of. Or I took a dentist in once
1862
01:31:45.720 --> 01:31:49.609
about 25 years ago and we inspected the mouth of
1863
01:31:49.789 --> 01:31:53.630
every living pitaha and not one cavity. He was disappointed.
1864
01:31:53.649 --> 01:31:54.569
He said, I thought I was going to be able
1865
01:31:54.590 --> 01:31:57.550
to do some free dental work here, And nobody has
1866
01:31:57.590 --> 01:32:02.229
a cavity. Well, then somebody introduced sugarcane into their fields
1867
01:32:02.550 --> 01:32:06.039
from the outside world, and now it's almost 100% cavities.
1868
01:32:06.159 --> 01:32:09.020
Everybody has cavities because they eat sugarcane.
1869
01:32:09.600 --> 01:32:09.920
Wow.
1870
01:32:10.039 --> 01:32:12.380
So you keep away the sweets, you keep away the starch,
1871
01:32:13.039 --> 01:32:15.720
and you get healthier people. This is just living proof
1872
01:32:15.779 --> 01:32:19.600
of what we often read about diets, but that we're
1873
01:32:19.640 --> 01:32:22.689
so tempted by that we don't normally follow.
1874
01:32:22.710 --> 01:32:25.189
I heard another issue with them is when they get
1875
01:32:25.289 --> 01:32:26.270
introduced to soda.
1876
01:32:27.399 --> 01:32:31.579
Yeah, that's bad. Yeah. Also whiskey, but that's a different matter. Sure.
1877
01:32:31.600 --> 01:32:35.079
They're both bad. Soda is– yeah, I mean they love it.
1878
01:32:35.090 --> 01:32:38.949
They call it sweet water and they will drink the
1879
01:32:38.970 --> 01:32:41.289
hell out of that. If they got five gallons, they'll
1880
01:32:41.310 --> 01:32:43.470
drink it all. I had a guy once who wove
1881
01:32:43.510 --> 01:32:46.590
a basket for me and I said, what do you
1882
01:32:46.609 --> 01:32:49.590
want for it? And he knew that I had some
1883
01:32:49.649 --> 01:32:52.569
canned fruit that I used on Sundays for my kids
1884
01:32:52.630 --> 01:32:54.520
when we were all living there. And he said, I
1885
01:32:54.539 --> 01:32:58.020
want a can of this stuff, which is peaches and
1886
01:32:58.100 --> 01:33:01.289
sweet syrup. And it was a big can. And he
1887
01:33:01.350 --> 01:33:04.029
ate that whole thing. And the kids came around. And
1888
01:33:04.069 --> 01:33:06.909
I've seen guys trade with a boat, and they'll get
1889
01:33:07.010 --> 01:33:09.010
like a kilo of sugar, two and a half pounds
1890
01:33:09.050 --> 01:33:11.109
of sugar. And they just sit down with a spoon
1891
01:33:11.149 --> 01:33:11.430
and eat it.
1892
01:33:11.609 --> 01:33:12.149
Oh, boy.
1893
01:33:12.289 --> 01:33:14.109
And so if they have it, they eat it. And
1894
01:33:14.130 --> 01:33:15.319
if they don't have it, they don't eat it.
1895
01:33:15.329 --> 01:33:16.829
And they have no idea that it's bad for them
1896
01:33:16.850 --> 01:33:18.350
because it tastes good. Why would it be bad?
1897
01:33:18.560 --> 01:33:21.880
Right. You can eat anything you find as a hunter-gatherer,
1898
01:33:22.039 --> 01:33:24.180
and you're not going to have enough of it. To
1899
01:33:24.220 --> 01:33:24.840
be bad for you.
1900
01:33:25.020 --> 01:33:25.260
Right.
1901
01:33:25.520 --> 01:33:27.079
Because you're going to get something else the next day.
1902
01:33:27.359 --> 01:33:29.859
Or like tobacco. I can take in tobacco. But they're
1903
01:33:29.880 --> 01:33:31.739
not going to get addicted to it. They're not going
1904
01:33:32.359 --> 01:33:35.350
to– even when they roll cigarettes, they like them. But
1905
01:33:35.529 --> 01:33:37.729
they only have it like once or twice a year.
1906
01:33:37.789 --> 01:33:40.750
So you don't have to worry about it. If they
1907
01:33:40.789 --> 01:33:43.229
had it all the time, they would have serious issues.
1908
01:33:43.869 --> 01:33:46.930
So they've only developed addictions based on what they've been
1909
01:33:46.970 --> 01:33:48.409
introduced from the Western world.
1910
01:33:48.569 --> 01:33:50.789
Right. 100%.
1911
01:33:51.289 --> 01:33:54.489
So tell me about this conversion that you have. Tell
1912
01:33:54.520 --> 01:33:57.439
me about how you, like, what are the steps to
1913
01:33:57.460 --> 01:34:00.479
go from being a true believer, living with the pitaha,
1914
01:34:01.199 --> 01:34:04.960
and then changing your opinions? How many steps did it take?
1915
01:34:05.819 --> 01:34:08.279
It took some practical steps, and it took a lot
1916
01:34:08.300 --> 01:34:09.220
of mental steps.
1917
01:34:10.039 --> 01:34:10.659
How much time?
1918
01:34:12.399 --> 01:34:15.210
I would say that I started seriously doubting my faith
1919
01:34:15.510 --> 01:34:21.149
about five or six years into my time, so about 1982, 1983.
1920
01:34:21.149 --> 01:34:22.949
And I did not announce that I was not a
1921
01:34:22.970 --> 01:34:31.800
Christian until 2000 because Christians were saying things about– actually,
1922
01:34:31.859 --> 01:34:34.460
it was 2001. Christians were saying things about the war
1923
01:34:34.720 --> 01:34:38.600
in Iraq, about how the soldiers that we send over
1924
01:34:38.619 --> 01:34:43.380
there are the blessed peacemakers of the gospel. And I
1925
01:34:43.399 --> 01:34:47.510
didn't like that. And so the first step is you
1926
01:34:47.529 --> 01:34:50.569
start to doubt. Then you pray so that you won't
1927
01:34:50.630 --> 01:34:54.130
doubt because the Apostle Thomas said, Lord, I believe, help
1928
01:34:54.189 --> 01:34:58.300
mine unbelief. But then after a certain point, that doesn't
1929
01:34:58.340 --> 01:35:03.439
work so well. So you start to read literature from apologetics,
1930
01:35:03.560 --> 01:35:06.479
trying to defend these, you know, defend your mind against
1931
01:35:06.520 --> 01:35:09.340
these things that you're thinking. And then you realize, I'm
1932
01:35:09.380 --> 01:35:12.739
not satisfied with those answers either. So finally, one day
1933
01:35:13.520 --> 01:35:17.300
you reach the conclusion that I just, I just can't
1934
01:35:17.340 --> 01:35:21.199
do it anymore. I can't sustain this belief. I can't
1935
01:35:21.380 --> 01:35:24.180
pretend that I have something that I'm not. And so
1936
01:35:25.359 --> 01:35:28.619
then eventually I told my wife, I said, I just
1937
01:35:28.659 --> 01:35:31.600
don't believe this stuff anymore. I can't believe it. And
1938
01:35:34.159 --> 01:35:37.029
pretty much instantaneously, she walked out of the house and
1939
01:35:37.069 --> 01:35:40.050
we got a divorce. That was the end of that. Also,
1940
01:35:40.090 --> 01:35:42.010
if you're a Christian missionary and you're getting your income
1941
01:35:42.069 --> 01:35:44.500
from being a missionary, and then you tell people, oh,
1942
01:35:44.539 --> 01:35:46.520
I don't believe anymore, then you're unemployed.
1943
01:35:46.699 --> 01:35:48.520
Did you have any other issues in the marriage other
1944
01:35:48.560 --> 01:35:49.000
than that?
1945
01:35:49.939 --> 01:35:52.659
Yeah, it wasn't. That wasn't the only issue. But she
1946
01:35:52.699 --> 01:35:55.439
tracked up all the issues we had to what she
1947
01:35:55.500 --> 01:36:02.619
perceived as my declining faith. Oh, of course. Because, you know,
1948
01:36:04.340 --> 01:36:06.239
I loved rock music before we met. We met at
1949
01:36:06.279 --> 01:36:08.560
a Jimi Hendrix concert, and I went many years without
1950
01:36:08.600 --> 01:36:11.800
listening to rock music. And I love rock music. And
1951
01:36:11.859 --> 01:36:13.699
so I finally started listening to it again.
1952
01:36:14.310 --> 01:36:16.170
And, um, she got upset.
1953
01:36:16.310 --> 01:36:21.029
That was a sign that I was starting to fade away. Um,
1954
01:36:21.630 --> 01:36:24.170
and you know, so, and I'm not a perfect person,
1955
01:36:24.210 --> 01:36:26.630
you know, I would go out with Brazilian friends, uh,
1956
01:36:26.670 --> 01:36:28.680
drinking and that's definitely a no, no.
1957
01:36:29.619 --> 01:36:32.840
Um, and, um, any religion that tries to keep you
1958
01:36:32.859 --> 01:36:33.500
from Hendricks.
1959
01:36:34.020 --> 01:36:34.239
Yeah.
1960
01:36:34.500 --> 01:36:36.539
Yeah. Can't be, can't be a real religion.
1961
01:36:36.579 --> 01:36:38.760
My dad said to me when I first became a Christian,
1962
01:36:38.779 --> 01:36:40.970
you know, he was the epitome of an atheist, you know,
1963
01:36:41.060 --> 01:36:45.319
and he's, He said, the one thing about religions is
1964
01:36:45.760 --> 01:36:48.859
they're always trying to beat their own system. They're always
1965
01:36:48.899 --> 01:36:51.189
trying to find an exception so they don't have to
1966
01:36:51.270 --> 01:36:53.750
do the unpleasant things that religion tells them they need
1967
01:36:53.789 --> 01:36:56.630
to do. And I thought, oh, you don't know anything.
1968
01:36:58.170 --> 01:36:59.970
You don't know anything about religion. You've never been in
1969
01:37:00.010 --> 01:37:03.970
part of a church. But it's not entirely false. People
1970
01:37:04.010 --> 01:37:08.510
are always trying to make– it's like another expression that
1971
01:37:08.550 --> 01:37:11.109
comes to mind when you're If you see somebody who
1972
01:37:11.149 --> 01:37:13.329
says they're a believer and now they start doing things
1973
01:37:13.350 --> 01:37:16.399
you don't think they should do, there are two reactions
1974
01:37:16.439 --> 01:37:18.880
you could have. One is justice and one is mercy.
1975
01:37:19.579 --> 01:37:23.479
And everybody wants to give justice and get mercy for
1976
01:37:23.500 --> 01:37:29.340
their beliefs and for their transgressions. And so I was
1977
01:37:29.380 --> 01:37:32.479
giving myself mercy and my wife was giving me justice.
1978
01:37:32.590 --> 01:37:35.409
But in the end, I realized I'm not going to
1979
01:37:35.449 --> 01:37:37.899
be bound by these rules anymore. I'm just going to
1980
01:37:37.939 --> 01:37:40.239
live my life according to my best lights and according
1981
01:37:40.260 --> 01:37:42.359
to the best decisions, and I'm not going to let
1982
01:37:42.399 --> 01:37:44.779
this book tell me anymore. The ironic thing is, you know,
1983
01:37:44.819 --> 01:37:47.180
I graduated number one in my class at a Bible school,
1984
01:37:47.199 --> 01:37:49.859
so I know the Bible really well. And when people
1985
01:37:49.899 --> 01:37:52.199
try to reconvert me, I've had many Christians try to
1986
01:37:52.239 --> 01:37:54.859
reconvert me. I said, that's not going to work, you know,
1987
01:37:54.890 --> 01:37:57.210
because I know the Bible probably better than you do,
1988
01:37:57.289 --> 01:37:58.550
so you're not going to give me a verse I
1989
01:37:58.590 --> 01:38:01.670
don't know. I said, I'm not telling you you're wrong,
1990
01:38:01.770 --> 01:38:04.029
and I'm not even telling you your interpretation is wrong.
1991
01:38:04.069 --> 01:38:06.069
I'm just saying it doesn't work for me, and I
1992
01:38:06.090 --> 01:38:07.010
can't pretend that it does.
1993
01:38:08.909 --> 01:38:14.930
It's got to be weird to have your beliefs confronted
1994
01:38:15.010 --> 01:38:18.489
by a group of people where as you're learning their language,
1995
01:38:19.329 --> 01:38:24.210
you're realizing that this moral framework and the scaffolding that
1996
01:38:24.229 --> 01:38:28.069
you've only attributed to Christianity and you think that it's
1997
01:38:28.289 --> 01:38:31.430
just Christianity and religion that makes people good people. And
1998
01:38:31.449 --> 01:38:33.789
then here's people that don't have any God.
1999
01:38:34.189 --> 01:38:34.409
Right.
2000
01:38:35.470 --> 01:38:35.609
Yeah.
2001
01:38:35.630 --> 01:38:37.350
So like, you know, you're in a big storm. The
2002
01:38:37.399 --> 01:38:40.840
Amazon has storms in the rainy season. So somebody's house
2003
01:38:40.880 --> 01:38:43.819
blows over because their houses, they're hunter gatherers and they're
2004
01:38:43.840 --> 01:38:46.590
semi nomadic. So they don't build the best houses. So
2005
01:38:46.689 --> 01:38:49.770
it's pouring rain and somebody's house blows over and they're
2006
01:38:49.810 --> 01:38:52.590
just stuck there in the rain. What is their reaction?
2007
01:38:52.909 --> 01:38:55.850
They start laughing like it's the funniest thing that ever happened.
2008
01:38:56.329 --> 01:38:58.510
And they will go off into other people's huts and
2009
01:38:58.550 --> 01:39:00.350
sleep on the ground or get near the fire or
2010
01:39:00.369 --> 01:39:02.720
they might come to my house, that's very common, and
2011
01:39:02.810 --> 01:39:04.199
want to sleep with me. And then the next day
2012
01:39:04.239 --> 01:39:08.380
they'll rebuild it. There's nothing except for fear of immediate
2013
01:39:08.479 --> 01:39:11.640
threat from the outside or from animals that gets them
2014
01:39:12.000 --> 01:39:14.840
to lose their cool. And when they do lose their cool,
2015
01:39:15.960 --> 01:39:20.569
It's not really losing their cool. It is calculated defense.
2016
01:39:21.510 --> 01:39:24.869
They know how to take care of themselves. When I
2017
01:39:24.909 --> 01:39:27.630
mentioned to this guy that they would kill him, I said,
2018
01:39:27.649 --> 01:39:29.609
they kill for a living. Don't forget that. That's how
2019
01:39:29.649 --> 01:39:33.270
they make their living. Every man there, every boy here
2020
01:39:33.670 --> 01:39:36.710
could shoot you through the eye at 50 yards with
2021
01:39:36.770 --> 01:39:39.010
one of those arrows. They're not going to miss. If
2022
01:39:39.029 --> 01:39:42.600
they decide to kill you or me, we're dead. So
2023
01:39:42.939 --> 01:39:45.579
they don't because they make a difference between killing out
2024
01:39:45.600 --> 01:39:49.789
of necessity and killing to murder. But if they think
2025
01:39:49.829 --> 01:39:51.409
they have to defend their family, you're dead.
2026
01:39:51.890 --> 01:39:55.949
But their culture doesn't encourage squabbles. Like they just– they're easygoing.
2027
01:39:56.010 --> 01:39:56.770
They take everything.
2028
01:39:57.449 --> 01:40:00.710
The biggest– if there's a concept of sin among the pitaha,
2029
01:40:00.869 --> 01:40:03.800
it is anger. You don't raise your voice in anger.
2030
01:40:03.880 --> 01:40:07.939
You don't hit another pitaha in anger. I saw a
2031
01:40:07.979 --> 01:40:10.859
guy get drunk. When they get alcohol, they get drunk.
2032
01:40:11.409 --> 01:40:13.510
and he took a shotgun that he had gotten from
2033
01:40:13.550 --> 01:40:16.770
a Brazilian, and he shot a dog that belonged to
2034
01:40:16.989 --> 01:40:21.229
his brother. And his brother runs up to the dog,
2035
01:40:21.250 --> 01:40:23.630
and he's just sobbing because they love their dogs, and
2036
01:40:23.670 --> 01:40:26.409
he's just crying that his dog's dead. And I went
2037
01:40:26.479 --> 01:40:27.840
up to him, and I thought, oh, God, there's going
2038
01:40:27.850 --> 01:40:29.500
to be some violence here. I've got to get ready
2039
01:40:29.539 --> 01:40:31.479
for this. And I said, what are you going to do?
2040
01:40:31.539 --> 01:40:34.180
He said, what do you mean? I said, are you
2041
01:40:34.199 --> 01:40:36.239
going to do anything to your brother? He shot your dog.
2042
01:40:36.319 --> 01:40:38.819
He said, I don't do anything to my brother. He's
2043
01:40:38.859 --> 01:40:40.760
my brother. He shouldn't have shot my dog, but he's
2044
01:40:40.800 --> 01:40:43.300
drunk and his head's not working. You know, I miss
2045
01:40:43.340 --> 01:40:45.239
my dog. I love my dog, but I love my brother.
2046
01:40:45.260 --> 01:40:47.619
I'm not going to hurt my brother. So they just
2047
01:40:47.659 --> 01:40:48.479
don't react that way.
2048
01:40:48.899 --> 01:40:50.979
So do they have punishment for crimes?
2049
01:40:52.279 --> 01:40:55.689
They have punishment if it threatens the survival of the village.
2050
01:40:55.779 --> 01:40:58.890
So there was one young man, a teenager, and I
2051
01:40:58.949 --> 01:41:02.369
talk about him in, um, in both my book, don't
2052
01:41:02.430 --> 01:41:04.130
sleep through our snakes. And in the new one that's
2053
01:41:04.170 --> 01:41:08.420
coming out next year, born of the river, um, who
2054
01:41:08.460 --> 01:41:12.189
was paid in alcohol and a new shotgun to kill
2055
01:41:12.810 --> 01:41:17.710
somebody who was living up the river, who wasn't a pitaha,
2056
01:41:17.949 --> 01:41:21.810
living on the same river. And he killed him. And
2057
01:41:21.850 --> 01:41:25.529
the pitaha saw this as an existential threat to the
2058
01:41:25.550 --> 01:41:28.079
whole community because they knew that the police could come up.
2059
01:41:28.430 --> 01:41:30.729
They knew that soldiers could come up. They knew that
2060
01:41:31.340 --> 01:41:34.680
many pitaha could be killed if this wasn't handled. So
2061
01:41:34.840 --> 01:41:36.359
they didn't hurt him, but they kicked him out of
2062
01:41:36.380 --> 01:41:37.760
the village. He had to live on his own, and
2063
01:41:37.800 --> 01:41:41.220
he died about two months later. He was dead. It's
2064
01:41:41.260 --> 01:41:42.680
hard to live on your own in the middle of
2065
01:41:42.720 --> 01:41:45.359
the jungle with no community and nobody who has anything
2066
01:41:45.399 --> 01:41:49.409
to do with you. Just shun. Wow. So that's the
2067
01:41:49.449 --> 01:41:50.329
worst punishment they have.
2068
01:41:50.350 --> 01:41:50.770
Banishment.
2069
01:41:51.149 --> 01:41:51.609
Banishment.
2070
01:41:52.789 --> 01:41:54.949
Banishment in the jungle is crazy.
2071
01:41:55.369 --> 01:41:55.590
Yeah.
2072
01:41:55.789 --> 01:41:57.670
What did they give him to survive? Was it like
2073
01:41:57.710 --> 01:41:58.630
you when you were learning?
2074
01:41:59.270 --> 01:41:59.729
He got nothing.
2075
01:42:00.050 --> 01:42:00.390
Nothing.
2076
01:42:00.510 --> 01:42:03.060
Yeah, get out. He could take what he had. But
2077
01:42:03.159 --> 01:42:05.060
nobody gave him anything else. So he had a bow
2078
01:42:05.100 --> 01:42:06.939
and arrow, no food, no clothes.
2079
01:42:07.220 --> 01:42:07.920
How did he die?
2080
01:42:09.920 --> 01:42:12.260
Well, that I don't know because I just know that
2081
01:42:12.340 --> 01:42:15.460
when I came, I would ask about him and then
2082
01:42:15.479 --> 01:42:18.850
they said, oh, he's dead. So there's two possibilities. He died,
2083
01:42:19.159 --> 01:42:22.229
naturally death, which I think is probably what happened, or
2084
01:42:22.289 --> 01:42:22.949
somebody killed him.
2085
01:42:23.649 --> 01:42:24.550
And then changed their name.
2086
01:42:24.569 --> 01:42:27.869
I didn't do it. Yeah, yeah. That could have easily happened.
2087
01:42:29.189 --> 01:42:31.260
The change of the name gag is awesome.
2088
01:42:31.800 --> 01:42:34.420
Everybody up there is violent. You see Brazilians coming up
2089
01:42:34.460 --> 01:42:37.560
in these boats. Many of them are like pirates. I
2090
01:42:37.579 --> 01:42:40.000
mean they don't practice piracy now. Some of them do.
2091
01:42:40.640 --> 01:42:43.300
But you go on a boat with these guys and
2092
01:42:43.319 --> 01:42:45.760
these are some tough-looking guys. They've got scars on their
2093
01:42:45.800 --> 01:42:48.640
faces and scars on their– these are knife fights. These
2094
01:42:48.680 --> 01:42:54.319
are guys who– like I got really mad at somebody once.
2095
01:42:55.109 --> 01:42:57.260
And I mentioned to another Brazilian, I said, you know,
2096
01:42:57.279 --> 01:42:58.560
if he keeps doing that, I'm going to punch him
2097
01:42:58.579 --> 01:43:00.819
in the face. And he says, if you punch him
2098
01:43:00.859 --> 01:43:02.939
in the face, he's going to kill you. You know,
2099
01:43:02.979 --> 01:43:04.500
he'll either get a knife or he'll get a gun.
2100
01:43:04.539 --> 01:43:06.460
So if you decide you're going to hit somebody, you
2101
01:43:06.479 --> 01:43:08.279
better be armed because they're going to come at you
2102
01:43:08.319 --> 01:43:09.800
with whatever weapon they can get their hands on.
2103
01:43:09.800 --> 01:43:11.180
You really thought that you were just going to be
2104
01:43:11.199 --> 01:43:11.800
able to punch him?
2105
01:43:13.159 --> 01:43:15.960
I was just talking. But I, you know, obviously didn't
2106
01:43:15.979 --> 01:43:18.159
have a lot of, you know, my dad liked to
2107
01:43:18.199 --> 01:43:21.680
fight a lot. Were you guys drunk at the time
2108
01:43:21.739 --> 01:43:25.090
when you were doing this? Oh, no, I wasn't drunk.
2109
01:43:25.430 --> 01:43:27.850
This guy was drunk and he was pushing and he
2110
01:43:27.890 --> 01:43:30.609
was giving my daughters, who by that time were pretty
2111
01:43:30.649 --> 01:43:34.210
little blonde teenagers, a hard time. And I told him
2112
01:43:34.250 --> 01:43:38.689
to get away. And he wanted to fight. And I
2113
01:43:38.739 --> 01:43:41.319
got it calmed down. But I thought, you know, if
2114
01:43:41.359 --> 01:43:43.100
he keeps trying, I'm going to punch him in the face.
2115
01:43:43.140 --> 01:43:45.619
And I told this guy that. And he said, you
2116
01:43:45.659 --> 01:43:47.699
don't do that out here unless you're willing to kill
2117
01:43:47.739 --> 01:43:50.579
him right now. Don't do that because he's not going
2118
01:43:50.600 --> 01:43:53.050
to fight you fair. He's going to come at you
2119
01:43:53.069 --> 01:43:54.909
when you're not expecting it and you're going to die.
2120
01:43:55.869 --> 01:43:59.909
So this is– it's just a different concept. So avoiding
2121
01:43:59.949 --> 01:44:03.289
violence has lots of reasons to be done.
2122
01:44:04.689 --> 01:44:06.840
I agree with that at all times.
2123
01:44:07.119 --> 01:44:07.319
Yeah.
2124
01:44:07.720 --> 01:44:09.819
I think people should constantly avoid violence.
2125
01:44:10.359 --> 01:44:12.819
I completely agree too and the PETA has shown you that.
2126
01:44:12.859 --> 01:44:16.279
These are people who are much better at violence than
2127
01:44:16.899 --> 01:44:20.090
most people in this country without guns.
2128
01:44:20.720 --> 01:44:21.619
And they avoided it at all costs.
2129
01:44:21.640 --> 01:44:23.119
And they avoided it at all costs.
2130
01:44:23.180 --> 01:44:23.880
Yeah, wise.
2131
01:44:24.439 --> 01:44:25.279
Yeah, very wise.
2132
01:44:25.800 --> 01:44:28.300
What did you think when you were just looking at
2133
01:44:28.359 --> 01:44:32.010
the framework that they live by that these people don't
2134
01:44:32.050 --> 01:44:36.069
have a God, that they don't have like someone watching over,
2135
01:44:36.170 --> 01:44:38.550
making sure they're doing the right thing all the time
2136
01:44:38.649 --> 01:44:42.890
or this punishment of being burning forever in hell? None
2137
01:44:42.909 --> 01:44:44.029
of that is motivating them.
2138
01:44:44.380 --> 01:44:46.880
No. And I also thought that they would be afraid
2139
01:44:46.920 --> 01:44:50.720
of death. They're not. I thought they would. be afraid
2140
01:44:50.760 --> 01:44:54.939
of the unknown. They're not. They're willing to learn. I
2141
01:44:54.979 --> 01:44:58.270
sit outside on the riverbank with them and they point
2142
01:44:58.310 --> 01:45:02.409
out satellites going overhead because they know the sky so
2143
01:45:02.470 --> 01:45:04.569
well that they say, what's that? And I look and
2144
01:45:04.609 --> 01:45:07.569
it's like, must be a satellite. I said, it's like
2145
01:45:07.609 --> 01:45:09.789
a radio thing because they have radio. I mean, they
2146
01:45:09.810 --> 01:45:13.659
don't have radios, but I have radio. And they said, well,
2147
01:45:13.680 --> 01:45:16.359
who put that up there? I said, I don't know.
2148
01:45:16.819 --> 01:45:20.899
I said, Americans, I think, And they said, you know
2149
01:45:20.939 --> 01:45:22.189
how to do that? I said, no, I don't know
2150
01:45:22.199 --> 01:45:23.949
how to do that. So they said some other Americans
2151
01:45:23.989 --> 01:45:25.529
know how to do that. I said, yeah, I don't
2152
01:45:25.550 --> 01:45:29.210
know how to do that. But they're very conscious of
2153
01:45:29.250 --> 01:45:33.050
their environment. Right. And they're very curious and they want
2154
01:45:33.090 --> 01:45:35.369
to learn these things. But if I told them that
2155
01:45:35.409 --> 01:45:37.369
God put it up there, they wouldn't pay attention.
2156
01:45:37.810 --> 01:45:42.140
Now, they have these spirits that we talked about earlier
2157
01:45:42.359 --> 01:45:46.890
where they believe a thing that embodies a spirit? Like
2158
01:45:46.930 --> 01:45:49.329
it could be like a jaguar embodies a spirit?
2159
01:45:49.409 --> 01:45:53.430
Yes. So they have some spirits. So that's a spirit
2160
01:45:53.449 --> 01:45:55.810
we haven't talked about yet. So they have this spirit, Igagai,
2161
01:45:56.369 --> 01:45:59.949
which they believe, you know, so they might see a
2162
01:45:59.989 --> 01:46:02.010
man and then they might see a jaguar and then
2163
01:46:02.029 --> 01:46:03.800
they say, that must be the same thing, you know,
2164
01:46:03.880 --> 01:46:06.739
this man became a jaguar or the jaguar became a man.
2165
01:46:07.699 --> 01:46:11.800
And this is a belief that is in fact shape-shifting
2166
01:46:11.859 --> 01:46:15.039
as a Not an uncommon belief in the Amazon among
2167
01:46:15.340 --> 01:46:19.670
even Brazilians that live there. So one time I got
2168
01:46:19.710 --> 01:46:22.670
up in the morning and everybody was yelling and pointing
2169
01:46:22.710 --> 01:46:25.789
at the beach on the other side. And I said,
2170
01:46:27.130 --> 01:46:29.750
what are we looking at? They said, can't you see it?
2171
01:46:29.869 --> 01:46:32.329
I said, I don't see anything. They said, that's Igagai.
2172
01:46:32.930 --> 01:46:37.880
And I didn't see anything. Then later, a few nights later,
2173
01:46:37.920 --> 01:46:41.109
somebody said, we've seen Igagai. It's dark. It's night. And
2174
01:46:41.130 --> 01:46:42.930
the guy wakes me up. He says, we've seen Igagai.
2175
01:46:42.970 --> 01:46:45.779
He's not far behind your house. Would you come with us?
2176
01:46:45.770 --> 01:46:48.300
Because we know you're not afraid of him. And I
2177
01:46:48.380 --> 01:46:51.479
fell for that. And so we go out there. And
2178
01:46:51.500 --> 01:46:54.199
then I turn around and they're not by me. Because
2179
01:46:54.300 --> 01:46:57.819
Igagai can also refer to the jaguar shape. So there's
2180
01:46:57.880 --> 01:47:00.579
a jaguar out there. And I just won't go walking
2181
01:47:00.619 --> 01:47:03.000
out there with a machete. And then I realize they're
2182
01:47:03.020 --> 01:47:04.619
not with me. And I go back and they said,
2183
01:47:05.039 --> 01:47:06.859
did you see it? I said, no, I didn't see anything.
2184
01:47:08.100 --> 01:47:13.250
But they... If they see a jaguar, they believe that
2185
01:47:13.270 --> 01:47:16.239
it could be a jaguar or it could be Igagai.
2186
01:47:17.060 --> 01:47:19.600
But when they were seeing this Igagai and you couldn't
2187
01:47:19.640 --> 01:47:20.920
see anything, they were seeing it.
2188
01:47:21.760 --> 01:47:27.579
Yes. And I was looking for a human-looking creature. But
2189
01:47:27.819 --> 01:47:31.149
it's very possible that there was a jaguar just inside
2190
01:47:31.210 --> 01:47:32.390
the forest that I didn't see.
2191
01:47:32.430 --> 01:47:34.710
But they could see it and you couldn't watch.
2192
01:47:35.449 --> 01:47:37.109
Well, yeah, but if you walk around with them in
2193
01:47:37.149 --> 01:47:39.090
the jungle, you find that they can see a lot
2194
01:47:39.130 --> 01:47:41.609
of things you can't see. So once I was walking
2195
01:47:41.640 --> 01:47:43.479
with a guy down a path, and he said, oh,
2196
01:47:43.640 --> 01:47:46.520
don't step on that snake. It's a Bushmaster. And I said, what?
2197
01:47:47.220 --> 01:47:49.039
And I'm looking down. I'm looking at the path. I
2198
01:47:49.060 --> 01:47:52.640
don't see anything. And I said, what snake? And he
2199
01:47:52.680 --> 01:47:55.520
takes his bow, and he shoots, and the arrow starts
2200
01:47:56.020 --> 01:47:58.039
flocking around like that, and he pulls it up, and
2201
01:47:58.060 --> 01:47:59.779
there's a Bushmaster at the end. He said, that one.
2202
01:48:00.319 --> 01:48:03.560
Don't step on that And I didn't see it. And
2203
01:48:03.840 --> 01:48:07.560
I've almost put my hand on snakes. I don't know
2204
01:48:07.880 --> 01:48:11.180
why I'm still alive because they can– it's like I'm
2205
01:48:11.420 --> 01:48:15.770
a special needs person. They have to watch out for
2206
01:48:15.810 --> 01:48:17.909
me when I'm in the jungle because it takes a
2207
01:48:18.010 --> 01:48:19.970
lot of skill to be able to see these things.
2208
01:48:20.439 --> 01:48:22.300
Just like when I take them to the city for
2209
01:48:22.340 --> 01:48:26.409
like medical work, they get totally lost. They can't– it's
2210
01:48:26.470 --> 01:48:28.210
hard for them to understand how I can find my
2211
01:48:28.270 --> 01:48:32.430
way around the city because the cues that I'm using
2212
01:48:33.029 --> 01:48:34.770
are totally different than the things they're used to.
2213
01:48:35.300 --> 01:48:38.520
So this Igagai, this thing that they said they saw,
2214
01:48:38.600 --> 01:48:41.239
they could have just been seeing an animal and saying
2215
01:48:41.460 --> 01:48:43.079
it was Igagai and agreeing that.
2216
01:48:43.000 --> 01:48:45.880
It was a spirit. And that's not.
2217
01:48:45.699 --> 01:48:48.970
Like they're seeing a spirit that you're not seeing. Did
2218
01:48:48.989 --> 01:48:51.930
you ever take that into consideration that they can see
2219
01:48:51.970 --> 01:48:52.770
things you can't see?
2220
01:48:52.930 --> 01:48:55.390
Yes, that is another possibility. And I definitely took that.
2221
01:48:55.689 --> 01:48:58.210
In fact, for the first several years before I had
2222
01:48:58.270 --> 01:49:02.520
really investigated the different shape shifting of Igagai, I thought
2223
01:49:02.529 --> 01:49:05.000
that's all it could mean. They were seeing something. And
2224
01:49:05.079 --> 01:49:06.819
I couldn't see it. They were all seeing it.
2225
01:49:06.850 --> 01:49:10.229
So you took that into consideration that maybe they have
2226
01:49:10.270 --> 01:49:11.649
a sense that you don't have?
2227
01:49:11.829 --> 01:49:16.529
Yes. And it's clear that they have senses in the jungle.
2228
01:49:16.569 --> 01:49:18.250
They're able to sense things that I cannot.
2229
01:49:18.529 --> 01:49:18.949
Like how?
2230
01:49:19.979 --> 01:49:26.399
Well, like I say, they've grown up learning. So let's
2231
01:49:26.439 --> 01:49:28.260
say that you see a branch move in a tree.
2232
01:49:29.460 --> 01:49:32.850
Was that the wind? Was that a monkey moving? Was
2233
01:49:32.890 --> 01:49:35.100
that a snake up in the tree? What was it?
2234
01:49:36.270 --> 01:49:39.050
I don't know. I barely noticed that the branches make moving.
2235
01:49:39.649 --> 01:49:41.949
But they know not only that it's moving, but exactly
2236
01:49:41.989 --> 01:49:44.319
what caused it. I can see bubbles coming out of
2237
01:49:44.340 --> 01:49:48.939
the water from the river. They're just bubbles to me.
2238
01:49:49.000 --> 01:49:52.960
But to them, they represent either a rock underneath or
2239
01:49:53.180 --> 01:49:57.239
an alligator or some other creature that's under the water.
2240
01:49:57.359 --> 01:50:00.319
And they can tell by the bubbles. But I can't.
2241
01:50:00.680 --> 01:50:05.350
So they've learned to... interpret their world in a way
2242
01:50:05.390 --> 01:50:06.109
that I can't.
2243
01:50:06.529 --> 01:50:08.829
So it's not that they don't have senses that you,
2244
01:50:09.649 --> 01:50:11.529
that they have senses that you don't have, but that
2245
01:50:11.630 --> 01:50:12.970
they have pattern recognition.
2246
01:50:13.810 --> 01:50:18.050
That's the way I would put it. But again, you
2247
01:50:18.069 --> 01:50:22.729
would need to do some sort of psychological testing and
2248
01:50:22.829 --> 01:50:25.569
much more controlled conditions than I've ever been able to
2249
01:50:25.609 --> 01:50:29.609
do to sort those things out. But my view now
2250
01:50:29.760 --> 01:50:33.460
is that they simply have the ability to recognize and,
2251
01:50:34.180 --> 01:50:37.449
and perceive things that they've grown up with that I
2252
01:50:37.489 --> 01:50:38.250
miss entirely.
2253
01:50:39.489 --> 01:50:45.029
And this spirit thing, does it always embody a creature
2254
01:50:45.130 --> 01:50:48.569
that they're, that they're, that's common like a Jaguar or
2255
01:50:48.649 --> 01:50:51.930
does it sometimes take on another form?
2256
01:50:54.159 --> 01:50:57.720
It can take these, these, um, entities that I've talked about.
2257
01:50:58.680 --> 01:51:06.050
So there's another one, um, um, I, which has long teeth.
2258
01:51:06.989 --> 01:51:10.010
And so they see these different creatures. One's naked, talks
2259
01:51:10.029 --> 01:51:16.050
in a high voice. And so they're putting experiences they
2260
01:51:16.130 --> 01:51:20.069
can't explain into the shapes of these entities that they
2261
01:51:20.130 --> 01:51:23.789
can explain. So just like us, we see so many
2262
01:51:23.829 --> 01:51:26.050
things in the world we don't understand. That's what science
2263
01:51:26.090 --> 01:51:30.069
is all about. So we create theoretical entities to be
2264
01:51:30.170 --> 01:51:33.810
able to explain those observations that we otherwise have no
2265
01:51:33.890 --> 01:51:39.710
explanation for. So in a sense, these separate entities are
2266
01:51:39.729 --> 01:51:41.869
a primitive form. I shouldn't even use the word primitive.
2267
01:51:41.890 --> 01:51:44.970
They're a form of science given what they have. They're
2268
01:51:45.430 --> 01:51:48.770
reducing the unexplained to the explainable.
2269
01:51:49.479 --> 01:51:53.699
And their audit of the jungle is limited to the
2270
01:51:53.840 --> 01:51:57.329
places that they've traveled. Right. So their version of the
2271
01:51:57.409 --> 01:52:01.350
world is entirely limited to the language they possess. Is
2272
01:52:01.409 --> 01:52:02.050
it written at all?
2273
01:52:02.979 --> 01:52:05.039
I developed a writing system for them, yes.
2274
01:52:05.060 --> 01:52:05.920
But before you know.
2275
01:52:06.199 --> 01:52:06.939
Before you know.
2276
01:52:06.960 --> 01:52:11.680
So non-written language, verbal language with no historical database to
2277
01:52:11.739 --> 01:52:12.239
draw from.
2278
01:52:12.619 --> 01:52:15.939
Right. But they actually get some really good skills out
2279
01:52:15.979 --> 01:52:18.720
of this. So I took a guy to the nearest town,
2280
01:52:18.739 --> 01:52:21.260
a big town, Porto Velho. It's the capital of a
2281
01:52:21.279 --> 01:52:25.329
Brazilian state. because he had cirrhosis of the liver, however
2282
01:52:25.369 --> 01:52:28.090
he got that. And I took him to the hospital. First,
2283
01:52:28.109 --> 01:52:30.470
we went to my house that I had in that
2284
01:52:30.529 --> 01:52:34.229
city on the missionary compound. He had never been out
2285
01:52:34.350 --> 01:52:35.949
of the jungle before in his life. So we go
2286
01:52:35.989 --> 01:52:38.560
there and we have lunch. And I said, now it's
2287
01:52:38.579 --> 01:52:40.539
time to go to the hospital. So I take him
2288
01:52:40.560 --> 01:52:42.159
to the hospital and he says, I don't want to
2289
01:52:42.220 --> 01:52:44.840
stay here. I said, the doctors say you have to
2290
01:52:44.899 --> 01:52:47.079
stay here so they can make you feel better. And
2291
01:52:47.119 --> 01:52:49.119
so then I drive off after I spent a couple
2292
01:52:49.140 --> 01:52:53.760
of hours with him. And, um, The next morning, about
2293
01:52:53.760 --> 01:52:57.460
6 a.m., there's this knocking on my door. So this
2294
01:52:57.520 --> 01:53:00.159
is 30 miles away. The hospital is 30 miles away.
2295
01:53:00.840 --> 01:53:03.350
And he's standing there wearing a hospital gown with no
2296
01:53:03.470 --> 01:53:06.609
underwear or anything on. And I said, how did you
2297
01:53:06.649 --> 01:53:09.869
find my house? He said, well, I just walked here.
2298
01:53:10.569 --> 01:53:12.210
I said, but how did you know how to walk here? Well,
2299
01:53:12.229 --> 01:53:14.609
I saw it yesterday. But all he had to do
2300
01:53:14.680 --> 01:53:17.659
was get the river where the river is and then
2301
01:53:18.479 --> 01:53:22.619
mentally compute where we're at. So Many experiments have shown
2302
01:53:22.659 --> 01:53:25.659
that people who don't have right and left, front and back,
2303
01:53:25.720 --> 01:53:28.819
but use absolute directions like up river, down river, to
2304
01:53:28.840 --> 01:53:32.449
the jungle, away from the jungle, are better at finding
2305
01:53:32.470 --> 01:53:35.430
their way in new places than we are. You know,
2306
01:53:35.489 --> 01:53:37.689
I can tell you turn north and you might know
2307
01:53:37.729 --> 01:53:39.869
what I'm talking about. For the average person, I say
2308
01:53:40.390 --> 01:53:42.090
turn north. If your life depends on it, you don't
2309
01:53:42.109 --> 01:53:45.520
know which way to turn. But they would know. And
2310
01:53:45.579 --> 01:53:48.600
so that gives them a better sense of a map
2311
01:53:49.020 --> 01:53:49.579
of where they're at.
2312
01:53:49.949 --> 01:53:51.529
So do they have a word for north?
2313
01:53:52.760 --> 01:53:56.140
No, they only use upriver. So the first thing they
2314
01:53:56.180 --> 01:53:57.720
have to do, the first thing he did when we
2315
01:53:57.739 --> 01:54:00.960
got him out to town was, where's the river? And
2316
01:54:01.000 --> 01:54:03.239
I showed him the river, and now he knew where
2317
01:54:03.279 --> 01:54:07.720
everything was. Because he got the river, hence he's got
2318
01:54:07.739 --> 01:54:09.569
my house, now he knows where everything is.
2319
01:54:09.569 --> 01:54:11.149
30 miles away.
2320
01:54:11.369 --> 01:54:12.289
Yeah, 30 miles away.
2321
01:54:12.789 --> 01:54:14.409
But doesn't the river wind?
2322
01:54:14.649 --> 01:54:17.229
Yes, but they know how rivers work. And they can
2323
01:54:17.270 --> 01:54:19.109
tell by the direction which way it's flowing. And when
2324
01:54:19.130 --> 01:54:20.880
he looks at it, he knows which way is upriver
2325
01:54:20.909 --> 01:54:22.899
and downriver based on the way the water is flowing.
2326
01:54:23.600 --> 01:54:26.260
And he walked out barefoot with nothing but a hospital
2327
01:54:26.300 --> 01:54:29.899
gown on, 30 kilometers. And so he left at night
2328
01:54:29.979 --> 01:54:31.300
and he got there first thing in the morning.
2329
01:54:31.520 --> 01:54:31.899
Wow.
2330
01:54:32.140 --> 01:54:33.960
And I said, well, we have to go back. He said,
2331
01:54:34.119 --> 01:54:36.619
I am not going back. I said, well, the doctor
2332
01:54:36.659 --> 01:54:38.550
says you'll die if you don't go back. He says, well,
2333
01:54:38.569 --> 01:54:40.189
I'm going to die then because I'm not going back.
2334
01:54:40.670 --> 01:54:42.270
He said, I would rather go back and die with
2335
01:54:42.310 --> 01:54:44.710
my people. And so I took him back and a
2336
01:54:44.750 --> 01:54:45.829
few days later he was dead.
2337
01:54:47.170 --> 01:54:47.829
Was he a drinker?
2338
01:54:48.760 --> 01:54:51.859
He had been, yeah. There was a time before I
2339
01:54:51.920 --> 01:54:56.260
helped the Indian agency demarcate their reservation so it could
2340
01:54:56.300 --> 01:54:59.560
be controlled that boats came up and down all the
2341
01:54:59.619 --> 01:55:04.140
time when the Brazil nuts were falling and when there
2342
01:55:04.159 --> 01:55:07.180
were other jungle products like latex and sorva, which is
2343
01:55:07.239 --> 01:55:09.470
a product used to make chewing gum and all sorts
2344
01:55:09.489 --> 01:55:12.670
of other things, and copaiba, which is used for suntan lotion.
2345
01:55:12.689 --> 01:55:14.960
So the Brazilian boats would come up. and trade for
2346
01:55:14.979 --> 01:55:17.420
all these things, and they always traded with whiskey because
2347
01:55:17.439 --> 01:55:21.859
that's the– I mean sugarcane rum, cachaca, which is the
2348
01:55:21.930 --> 01:55:25.270
cheapest thing. It's $ 0. 30 a bottle. It's a lot easier
2349
01:55:25.289 --> 01:55:27.630
to give them that, and the pitahal like it. I
2350
01:55:27.649 --> 01:55:29.470
told him one time, I said, this stuff is really cheap.
2351
01:55:29.489 --> 01:55:32.210
He said, not for us it isn't. We don't otherwise
2352
01:55:32.250 --> 01:55:36.489
get it, and we like it. So they like to drink.
2353
01:55:36.569 --> 01:55:40.569
Did they understand the concept of health, of the consequences
2354
01:55:40.609 --> 01:55:41.510
of drinking alcohol?
2355
01:55:41.770 --> 01:55:44.449
No, because if you're a hunter-gatherer, and you're not used
2356
01:55:44.489 --> 01:55:47.609
to having something in constant supply, you don't have to
2357
01:55:47.649 --> 01:55:50.539
worry about it. But once it comes in constant supply,
2358
01:55:50.560 --> 01:55:52.720
then you do have to worry about it. And when
2359
01:55:52.760 --> 01:55:55.399
these guys keep coming up, giving, leaving this stuff off,
2360
01:55:55.800 --> 01:55:58.600
then it becomes a serious health problem. Whereas before it
2361
01:55:58.640 --> 01:56:00.340
was like, I got drunk six months ago.
2362
01:56:00.359 --> 01:56:00.899
Right.
2363
01:56:01.079 --> 01:56:02.699
You know, it's not a big deal. Right.
2364
01:56:02.779 --> 01:56:04.180
So once it became commonplace.
2365
01:56:04.380 --> 01:56:04.539
Yeah.
2366
01:56:04.760 --> 01:56:08.729
And do they adjust their behavior based on people dying
2367
01:56:08.770 --> 01:56:10.529
of like liver sclerosis?
2368
01:56:10.729 --> 01:56:14.140
Not that I've ever seen. They, they don't, I can
2369
01:56:14.180 --> 01:56:16.479
tell them until I'm blue in the face that it's
2370
01:56:16.520 --> 01:56:19.680
the alcohol that's doing this or the tobacco that's doing this.
2371
01:56:21.100 --> 01:56:23.229
Why would they believe me? They know a lot of
2372
01:56:23.270 --> 01:56:25.550
guys who have drunk a lot of whiskey and they
2373
01:56:25.569 --> 01:56:28.659
don't have it. So these couple of guys got it.
2374
01:56:29.390 --> 01:56:33.109
How do I know that's what caused it? So they
2375
01:56:33.149 --> 01:56:36.369
don't take my word on faith. It's very childlike. It
2376
01:56:36.430 --> 01:56:39.949
is childlike in the sense that children learn by evidence.
2377
01:56:40.750 --> 01:56:44.770
And if children don't have evidence for something– I mean–
2378
01:56:44.829 --> 01:56:46.609
and it takes a while for the evidence to start
2379
01:56:46.649 --> 01:56:49.180
to sink in. You've got to repeat the experiment. Right.
2380
01:56:49.189 --> 01:56:52.239
But you would imagine that if they're intelligent people, you
2381
01:56:52.260 --> 01:56:58.359
could explain this consumption of alcohol when done infrequently, it's OK.
2382
01:56:58.720 --> 01:57:01.539
But the everyday consumption of alcohol because you have an
2383
01:57:01.600 --> 01:57:04.659
endless supply of it now is becoming a real problem.
2384
01:57:04.939 --> 01:57:06.760
That's a very good point and I have brought that
2385
01:57:06.840 --> 01:57:10.350
up with them before and they say, yeah, we know
2386
01:57:10.369 --> 01:57:11.850
a lot of Brazilians that drink and they don't get
2387
01:57:11.890 --> 01:57:15.770
that sickness. So– They come right up. It's like I
2388
01:57:15.789 --> 01:57:19.329
could tell you that the COVID vaccine is really good
2389
01:57:19.350 --> 01:57:20.869
for you. And you can say, well, I know a
2390
01:57:20.869 --> 01:57:22.090
lot of people didn't get it, and they didn't get
2391
01:57:22.109 --> 01:57:25.939
COVID either. They weren't vaccinated. They didn't get COVID. So
2392
01:57:25.949 --> 01:57:29.840
you have to look at the statistics. And even there,
2393
01:57:30.000 --> 01:57:30.859
it's hard.
2394
01:57:31.539 --> 01:57:34.279
They just don't seem very concerned with dying anyway.
2395
01:57:35.000 --> 01:57:38.880
They're not. They don't want to die right now, but
2396
01:57:39.359 --> 01:57:41.000
it happens, and they're not worried about it.
2397
01:57:42.220 --> 01:57:46.010
What do they think– do they have a purpose for life?
2398
01:57:46.449 --> 01:57:49.649
Do they have a thing they worship at all?
2399
01:57:50.789 --> 01:57:55.640
No, they don't worship anything. The community is everything. You
2400
01:57:55.680 --> 01:57:58.859
make a contribution to the community while you're alive, and
2401
01:57:59.199 --> 01:58:03.619
that's your purpose. That's it. That's it. And it doesn't
2402
01:58:03.659 --> 01:58:06.470
take any thought. You don't need somebody to give a lesson.
2403
01:58:06.510 --> 01:58:08.729
This is what our purpose is, folks. You just see
2404
01:58:08.789 --> 01:58:10.520
everybody living, and that's how you live.
2405
01:58:10.539 --> 01:58:14.340
Isn't it odd that that's not the primary way people
2406
01:58:14.399 --> 01:58:18.859
live that makes you so happy? It's interesting because even me,
2407
01:58:19.119 --> 01:58:21.439
I'm hearing this. I'm like, God, it's so appealing. But
2408
01:58:21.560 --> 01:58:23.380
part of me is like, I'm not fucking living like that.
2409
01:58:23.659 --> 01:58:25.510
You know, nobody wants to live like that. It just
2410
01:58:25.550 --> 01:58:28.649
seems too crazy, too difficult, too daunting.
2411
01:58:28.670 --> 01:58:29.090
I don't want to.
2412
01:58:29.350 --> 01:58:31.869
Get bit by a snake and have my bones exposed?
2413
01:58:32.130 --> 01:58:34.170
Well, I often think this when I talk to people
2414
01:58:34.210 --> 01:58:37.689
who are extreme ecologists who think we need to not
2415
01:58:37.729 --> 01:58:39.989
affect the environment. And I'm thinking, yeah, well, go live
2416
01:58:40.010 --> 01:58:42.609
with the pitaha. You're not going to last three days
2417
01:58:42.649 --> 01:58:46.659
there with them. Maybe a few days more, but not much.
2418
01:58:47.859 --> 01:58:51.819
So it is very appealing. And I live there regularly.
2419
01:58:52.420 --> 01:58:54.199
and enjoyed it. But while I was living there, I
2420
01:58:54.239 --> 01:58:56.859
had things they didn't have access to. So I can't
2421
01:58:57.020 --> 01:58:58.760
fairly say that I lived just like them.
2422
01:58:58.859 --> 01:58:59.699
And you could always leave.
2423
01:59:00.020 --> 01:59:02.260
And I can always leave. Yeah. I mean, I can
2424
01:59:02.680 --> 01:59:06.020
get in my motorboat and take off. Or in the
2425
01:59:06.079 --> 01:59:08.960
worst case, I can get on my two-way radio or
2426
01:59:09.020 --> 01:59:10.840
satellite phone and call for help.
2427
01:59:11.140 --> 01:59:13.479
Did you ever think about just saying, fuck it, stay
2428
01:59:13.520 --> 01:59:14.039
there forever?
2429
01:59:14.579 --> 01:59:16.890
Yeah. In the early years, I did think about it.
2430
01:59:16.960 --> 01:59:19.859
I thought about not pursuing any kind of graduate degree,
2431
01:59:19.979 --> 01:59:23.810
not worrying about ever coming back to the U.S. And
2432
01:59:23.869 --> 01:59:25.869
I was really loving it there. But then I realized
2433
01:59:26.409 --> 01:59:31.550
my kids wanted a wider experience. And I didn't have
2434
01:59:31.569 --> 01:59:32.930
the right to deprive.
2435
01:59:32.590 --> 01:59:33.770
Them of that. So you think if you were single,
2436
01:59:33.829 --> 01:59:34.810
you would have just integrated?
2437
01:59:35.569 --> 01:59:38.399
It's very possible. Yeah, I mean, that would have been
2438
01:59:38.449 --> 01:59:41.159
easy to do, although I would have had to become
2439
01:59:41.260 --> 01:59:45.399
much better at outdoor skills than I ever was. I mean,
2440
01:59:45.439 --> 01:59:48.460
I would not stand up to a pitahas standards of
2441
01:59:48.539 --> 01:59:51.470
hunting and fishing. And no woman would have married me
2442
01:59:51.829 --> 01:59:53.489
because they would have starved to death.
2443
01:59:54.829 --> 01:59:56.430
Did you ever get better at those things?
2444
01:59:57.250 --> 02:00:01.210
Not really. No? Yeah, I have– for one thing, I
2445
02:00:02.449 --> 02:00:04.760
like to hunt. I started hunting when I was like
2446
02:00:04.760 --> 02:00:07.699
10 years old, pheasant hunting, dove hunting. And so I
2447
02:00:07.739 --> 02:00:12.640
do enjoy that. But I've never given it the time
2448
02:00:13.600 --> 02:00:15.020
to become really good at it. Now, if I were
2449
02:00:15.060 --> 02:00:18.239
abandoned in the jungle, I probably would. But it would
2450
02:00:18.260 --> 02:00:20.340
take me a long time. I mean, These guys are
2451
02:00:20.460 --> 02:00:23.010
using bows and arrows from the time they're two years old.
2452
02:00:23.449 --> 02:00:26.789
So by the time they get to be teenagers, they're perfect.
2453
02:00:26.810 --> 02:00:29.949
They are absolutely unmatchless in their skill. And I've done
2454
02:00:29.989 --> 02:00:33.029
little archery contests before to see how good they are
2455
02:00:33.130 --> 02:00:37.130
and it's just astounding. So I would have to spend
2456
02:00:37.569 --> 02:00:39.970
many years practicing to get as good as they are.
2457
02:00:40.649 --> 02:00:42.510
And then in the meantime, I would starve to death
2458
02:00:42.550 --> 02:00:43.670
because they're not going to feed me.
2459
02:00:45.600 --> 02:00:48.260
How are they making their bows? Yeah.
2460
02:00:48.810 --> 02:00:50.930
There's a couple of different kinds of wood that they use,
2461
02:00:51.050 --> 02:00:55.000
but there's one that is a bright red wood, and
2462
02:00:55.039 --> 02:01:04.100
it's called piranha food because it grows near the edge
2463
02:01:04.140 --> 02:01:07.100
of the river and it drops flowers off the tree
2464
02:01:07.159 --> 02:01:09.670
into the river, and the piranhas love to eat those flowers.
2465
02:01:10.590 --> 02:01:12.189
So if you see a lot of those flowers in
2466
02:01:12.210 --> 02:01:15.369
the water, probably not good to swim there. But they
2467
02:01:15.409 --> 02:01:17.890
take a section of the bark, a big section, you know,
2468
02:01:17.909 --> 02:01:21.930
it might be like four inches by four inches or
2469
02:01:21.989 --> 02:01:27.880
six inches and it's just a hard piece maybe eight
2470
02:01:27.920 --> 02:01:31.260
feet long and they bring that back and they have
2471
02:01:31.279 --> 02:01:34.819
a special tool and it could be wood or bone
2472
02:01:34.840 --> 02:01:36.899
or if they have a machete they use that and
2473
02:01:36.930 --> 02:01:39.470
they just start shaping it until finally they get a
2474
02:01:39.510 --> 02:01:45.270
bow that's probably two inches wide and an inch and
2475
02:01:45.289 --> 02:01:49.000
a half thick and It's taller than they are. It's
2476
02:01:49.060 --> 02:01:53.930
about seven feet long. And then they get the bark
2477
02:01:53.970 --> 02:01:56.609
from a tree, a certain kind of tree, and they
2478
02:01:56.630 --> 02:01:59.510
give that– and they get it off in strands. And
2479
02:01:59.550 --> 02:02:02.850
so a man, a brother or a father or a
2480
02:02:03.090 --> 02:02:06.829
husband will give it to their closest woman relative, and
2481
02:02:06.930 --> 02:02:10.069
she takes those strands and she makes a bowstring. So
2482
02:02:10.109 --> 02:02:13.600
the bow represents man and woman working together. A man
2483
02:02:13.640 --> 02:02:16.319
can make the wood. A woman makes the string. And
2484
02:02:16.340 --> 02:02:18.689
they get the arrows. A man gets the feathers. A
2485
02:02:18.729 --> 02:02:21.149
man gets the shaft. The woman makes the strings that
2486
02:02:21.210 --> 02:02:25.710
tie everything on. So she's the glue. And once you
2487
02:02:25.729 --> 02:02:29.869
get that, that thing, yeah, there's one right there, this guy.
2488
02:02:30.369 --> 02:02:32.949
And those are the arrows, really long arrows?
2489
02:02:32.970 --> 02:02:36.270
Yeah, yeah, those are the arrows. And these are fishing arrows,
2490
02:02:36.310 --> 02:02:39.260
so they're much longer. But actually, they're not both fishing arrows.
2491
02:02:39.340 --> 02:02:40.819
One of them is just a regular arrow. So their
2492
02:02:40.880 --> 02:02:44.680
arrows are quite long. And that thing is a very
2493
02:02:44.739 --> 02:02:52.909
powerful bow. And you can see the thickness of the strings. So, yeah,
2494
02:02:52.949 --> 02:02:53.670
that's the bow.
2495
02:02:54.729 --> 02:02:55.750
They eat a lot of monkeys?
2496
02:02:56.310 --> 02:02:57.449
Yeah, they eat a lot of monkeys.
2497
02:02:57.470 --> 02:02:58.489
Isn't that weird?
2498
02:03:00.100 --> 02:03:04.819
No. I asked him once. I said, do monkeys look
2499
02:03:04.840 --> 02:03:08.000
like people? And they say, no, why would you ask that?
2500
02:03:08.100 --> 02:03:10.220
I said, they look like people to me. And he said.
2501
02:03:10.760 --> 02:03:11.039
No, no.
2502
02:03:11.079 --> 02:03:14.579
They're covered in hair. You're not covered in hair. So
2503
02:03:14.640 --> 02:03:18.470
I saw– I went to the Trans-Amazon Road. I was
2504
02:03:18.520 --> 02:03:22.489
traveling out all by myself hitchhiking and I stayed with
2505
02:03:22.529 --> 02:03:26.390
this Brazilian and I said, do you have any cold water?
2506
02:03:26.529 --> 02:03:30.130
And he had a kerosene refrigerator. And so I went
2507
02:03:30.210 --> 02:03:31.949
over and I opened it to get his cold water
2508
02:03:32.350 --> 02:03:33.899
and at the bottom it looked like there were like
2509
02:03:33.979 --> 02:03:37.840
four dead babies. And I'm thinking, oh my god, what
2510
02:03:37.880 --> 02:03:39.890
is that? I said, what is this? He said, Oh,
2511
02:03:39.939 --> 02:03:44.010
it's just some monkeys. I skinned them. And a monkey
2512
02:03:44.029 --> 02:03:47.829
that's been skinned does look a lot more human. But
2513
02:03:47.989 --> 02:03:52.750
nobody thinks twice about it. I said, are the monkeys
2514
02:03:53.649 --> 02:03:55.920
more like us or are they more like dogs? Oh,
2515
02:03:55.930 --> 02:03:58.329
they're like dogs. They're much more like dogs than they
2516
02:03:58.369 --> 02:04:00.609
are like us. They just don't see the problem.
2517
02:04:01.250 --> 02:04:01.770
It's just food.
2518
02:04:02.050 --> 02:04:06.130
Yeah, it's just food. And so, you know, and they
2519
02:04:06.189 --> 02:04:08.989
love the favorite part of any animal is the brains.
2520
02:04:09.930 --> 02:04:11.890
And one reason the brains are so good is because
2521
02:04:12.250 --> 02:04:15.630
brains have a lot of saturated fat. It's a great
2522
02:04:15.710 --> 02:04:19.069
source of saturated fat. They eat monkey brains? Yeah, they
2523
02:04:19.090 --> 02:04:21.529
eat monkey brains. So the favorite thing, I was talking
2524
02:04:21.569 --> 02:04:25.399
to a woman one time, and I was making a sandwich.
2525
02:04:25.460 --> 02:04:27.920
I had brought in some lunch meat and bread. I
2526
02:04:27.939 --> 02:04:29.539
had just gotten there. It was my first day there,
2527
02:04:29.579 --> 02:04:31.039
and so I had a little bit enough to make
2528
02:04:31.079 --> 02:04:34.930
a sandwich for that night. And I'm squirting mustard. And,
2529
02:04:34.939 --> 02:04:36.039
you know, when you get to the end of the
2530
02:04:36.079 --> 02:04:39.079
mustard bottle and you're squeezing, it makes a sound like,
2531
02:04:39.619 --> 02:04:45.340
somebody who's got diarrhea. And, um, she says, what is
2532
02:04:45.380 --> 02:04:49.180
that bird shit stuff you're eating? And I said, well,
2533
02:04:49.239 --> 02:04:50.819
it's good. It's mustard. Do you want to try some?
2534
02:04:51.020 --> 02:04:55.029
Oh no. And, um, she said, look at this bird shit.
2535
02:04:55.069 --> 02:04:58.130
He's eating bird shit. And, um, then I look at
2536
02:04:58.170 --> 02:05:01.630
her and she's eating the brains out of a rat. Uh,
2537
02:05:02.210 --> 02:05:04.520
and he's got this rat head and she's sucking the
2538
02:05:04.539 --> 02:05:08.550
brains out. And, um, they're cooked of course, but, uh,
2539
02:05:09.090 --> 02:05:11.949
She's sucking the– and I'm thinking this is a great
2540
02:05:12.029 --> 02:05:17.279
example for an introductory class in anthropology. Right. How different
2541
02:05:17.319 --> 02:05:19.979
we perceive things. That's great to her. This is great
2542
02:05:20.020 --> 02:05:22.020
to me. But it grosses the other one out.
2543
02:05:22.199 --> 02:05:25.380
That's wild. Mustard is disgusting. Rat brain is great.
2544
02:05:25.560 --> 02:05:25.770
Yeah.
2545
02:05:26.119 --> 02:05:30.729
And isn't there an issue with eating primate brain tissue?
2546
02:05:31.470 --> 02:05:32.810
Can you get prion diseases?
2547
02:05:32.989 --> 02:05:36.109
Well, there are diseases that they discovered in New Guinea
2548
02:05:36.189 --> 02:05:40.590
from cannibals who were eating human brains. Right. But I'm
2549
02:05:40.630 --> 02:05:43.350
not aware of any diseases that are passed by eating
2550
02:05:43.409 --> 02:05:47.069
monkey brains or other kinds of brains. They'll eat any
2551
02:05:47.130 --> 02:05:47.869
animal's brains.
2552
02:05:49.350 --> 02:05:52.010
So the prion diseases that you get are from animals
2553
02:05:52.090 --> 02:05:55.449
eating the same animal, right? Like mad cow disease is
2554
02:05:55.489 --> 02:05:58.909
because they serve cows literal brain and neural tissue from
2555
02:05:59.130 --> 02:05:59.729
other cows.
2556
02:05:59.930 --> 02:06:03.460
Right. So I'm not an expert on that, but I
2557
02:06:03.500 --> 02:06:05.119
do know that I've never seen a case of them
2558
02:06:05.159 --> 02:06:08.529
getting disease from that. And the superficial reading that I've
2559
02:06:08.550 --> 02:06:11.130
done on it suggests that humans get it from eating
2560
02:06:11.149 --> 02:06:11.750
human brains.
2561
02:06:12.289 --> 02:06:16.949
Interesting. So they can eat deer brains, rat brains, no problem.
2562
02:06:17.069 --> 02:06:20.069
Right. So the favorite part of any animal is the head.
2563
02:06:20.750 --> 02:06:22.939
So if they bring me a fish, they'll give me
2564
02:06:22.979 --> 02:06:26.140
a fish. They like to trade fish for canned meat
2565
02:06:26.199 --> 02:06:30.930
because canned meat keeps. But– I like fish cheeks but
2566
02:06:31.850 --> 02:06:34.329
my wife hated the fish heads. She didn't want the
2567
02:06:34.369 --> 02:06:37.529
fish heads around. So they would be happy to keep
2568
02:06:37.569 --> 02:06:39.149
the fish heads and they just make a big stew
2569
02:06:39.189 --> 02:06:40.789
of fish heads and they eat the brains and the
2570
02:06:40.890 --> 02:06:43.140
eyeballs and everything. Those are really tasty bits.
2571
02:06:44.020 --> 02:06:45.739
And probably rich in nutrients.
2572
02:06:46.020 --> 02:06:48.100
Yeah, they are rich in nutrients. They know what they're doing.
2573
02:06:48.140 --> 02:06:49.680
They love all the internal organs.
2574
02:06:50.060 --> 02:06:52.560
Yeah, it's so weird how we've moved away from all
2575
02:06:52.600 --> 02:06:53.079
that stuff.
2576
02:06:53.439 --> 02:06:53.640
Right.
2577
02:06:53.960 --> 02:06:56.359
I mean that's one of the things that happens with wolves.
2578
02:06:56.420 --> 02:06:58.020
The alpha in the pack is the one that eats
2579
02:06:58.079 --> 02:07:01.859
the liver. Right. They know something's going on. There's a
2580
02:07:01.880 --> 02:07:04.579
lot of nutrients in these organ meats, and we've moved
2581
02:07:04.619 --> 02:07:07.020
away from that in a very strange way. Right. People
2582
02:07:07.060 --> 02:07:08.680
are disgusted by the idea of liver.
2583
02:07:09.060 --> 02:07:11.300
Yeah. So, you know, you go to some– if you
2584
02:07:11.319 --> 02:07:12.920
go to northern Brazil and you go to one of
2585
02:07:12.939 --> 02:07:15.250
these churrascarias, Brazilian steak restaurants.
2586
02:07:16.989 --> 02:07:17.390
Love those.
2587
02:07:17.529 --> 02:07:20.310
If you're in an everyday person's, you're going to get
2588
02:07:20.329 --> 02:07:23.569
a lot of heart and you're going to get liver.
2589
02:07:23.810 --> 02:07:24.170
Kidney.
2590
02:07:24.409 --> 02:07:27.890
Kidney. You're going to get all that stuff. You know,
2591
02:07:27.970 --> 02:07:30.989
so– That is stuff they love to eat.
2592
02:07:31.210 --> 02:07:35.890
Sure. Well, a lot of cultures. Mexicans, menudo. Menudo, it's
2593
02:07:35.909 --> 02:07:37.930
got tripe in it and organ meat.
2594
02:07:38.409 --> 02:07:42.840
Right. And, you know, my brother-in-law, deceased now, but he
2595
02:07:42.899 --> 02:07:45.979
was Mexican. And that's the first thing he insisted that
2596
02:07:46.039 --> 02:07:48.680
my sister learn how to make in terms of true
2597
02:07:48.739 --> 02:07:52.600
Mexican food was menudo. And he wanted that every Saturday,
2598
02:07:52.659 --> 02:07:55.460
and she loved to make it for him. So then
2599
02:07:55.500 --> 02:07:58.890
she made this pozole. with cow feed in it. Uh,
2600
02:07:58.909 --> 02:08:02.300
you know, um, And got the hooves and everything in
2601
02:08:02.340 --> 02:08:04.260
the pozole but cooks all day.
2602
02:08:04.279 --> 02:08:07.020
I remember when I was a kid, pickled pig's feet
2603
02:08:07.050 --> 02:08:07.770
was a big thing.
2604
02:08:07.850 --> 02:08:12.050
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so internal organs are really good.
2605
02:08:12.069 --> 02:08:15.909
You know that a Brazilian churrascaria is authentic if they
2606
02:08:15.970 --> 02:08:18.890
serve chicken hearts. Right. You know. And so if I
2607
02:08:18.930 --> 02:08:20.689
go to one and they don't have chicken hearts, I'm
2608
02:08:20.729 --> 02:08:21.510
quite disappointed.
2609
02:08:21.529 --> 02:08:22.409
It's westernized.
2610
02:08:22.489 --> 02:08:23.149
Yeah, yeah.
2611
02:08:23.470 --> 02:08:25.630
They're still great, but, yeah, I know what you mean.
2612
02:08:25.750 --> 02:08:25.989
Yeah.
2613
02:08:26.180 --> 02:08:28.239
Yeah, I went to one when I was in Brazil.
2614
02:08:28.359 --> 02:08:28.920
It was awesome.
2615
02:08:29.199 --> 02:08:31.680
Oh, yeah. It's Brazilian fast food.
2616
02:08:31.920 --> 02:08:34.560
Yeah, and it is fast, and it's amazing food, too.
2617
02:08:34.579 --> 02:08:36.359
It's like they know how to eat. If you're in
2618
02:08:36.399 --> 02:08:38.850
a rush, a churrascaria is the best place to eat. Yeah.
2619
02:08:38.859 --> 02:08:41.270
Because you sit down, you flip that cart over to green,
2620
02:08:41.310 --> 02:08:43.649
the food keeps coming. Twenty minutes later, you're stuffed. Exactly.
2621
02:08:43.689 --> 02:08:44.109
Exactly.
2622
02:08:44.630 --> 02:08:45.069
Exactly.
2623
02:08:45.149 --> 02:08:48.310
And you ate much more nutrition than having a McDonald's
2624
02:08:48.350 --> 02:08:49.579
Big Mac or something like that.
2625
02:08:49.600 --> 02:08:50.560
Sure. And it's all you can eat.
2626
02:08:50.800 --> 02:08:51.439
Yeah. Yeah.
2627
02:08:51.920 --> 02:08:52.399
It's awesome.
2628
02:08:52.819 --> 02:08:55.380
I used to come out of the village and go
2629
02:08:55.439 --> 02:08:56.600
straight to one of those. I've been out of the
2630
02:08:56.640 --> 02:08:59.000
village for six months and I was really hungry and
2631
02:08:59.020 --> 02:09:01.500
I was coming out on my motorcycle. And the first
2632
02:09:01.560 --> 02:09:03.619
one I saw, I pulled over and I ate until
2633
02:09:03.640 --> 02:09:04.319
I could barely move.
2634
02:09:04.579 --> 02:09:06.420
Did you eat monkey when you were in the jungle?
2635
02:09:06.520 --> 02:09:09.300
Yeah. Yeah. I didn't eat the brains, but they didn't
2636
02:09:09.340 --> 02:09:12.220
offer them either because that's the best part.
2637
02:09:12.539 --> 02:09:14.100
Would you have if they offered you some?
2638
02:09:14.510 --> 02:09:16.250
Yeah, I would have. I would have. I've tried a
2639
02:09:16.270 --> 02:09:18.949
lot of stuff there. And when I was doing my
2640
02:09:18.989 --> 02:09:22.340
field experience in southern Mexico in Chiapas, I spent some
2641
02:09:22.350 --> 02:09:27.300
time with the Celtales, the Celta people, descendants of the Mayas. And,
2642
02:09:28.100 --> 02:09:30.979
you know, I ate this stuff they chew up and
2643
02:09:31.039 --> 02:09:32.199
spit out and let ferment.
2644
02:09:32.720 --> 02:09:35.460
Oh, I've heard of that. That's a beverage.
2645
02:09:35.899 --> 02:09:36.020
Yeah.
2646
02:09:36.060 --> 02:09:37.640
Is that like an alcoholic beverage?
2647
02:09:37.699 --> 02:09:39.359
Yeah. And so I was trying to fit in. And
2648
02:09:39.380 --> 02:09:43.050
so they gave me just a little bit. And they said,
2649
02:09:43.069 --> 02:09:44.609
what did you think? And I said, I'm trying to
2650
02:09:44.630 --> 02:09:47.390
be this cool guy. And I said, I loved it.
2651
02:09:47.770 --> 02:09:49.909
I hated it. But I said I loved it. And
2652
02:09:49.989 --> 02:09:51.069
so they bring me a big bowl.
2653
02:09:52.369 --> 02:09:54.470
And so then– Drink his people spit.
2654
02:09:55.010 --> 02:09:59.800
That night I was up with things coming out of
2655
02:09:59.840 --> 02:10:03.479
both ends all night long. And the next morning my
2656
02:10:03.520 --> 02:10:05.739
blood pressure was 60 over 40 and I had to
2657
02:10:05.779 --> 02:10:08.539
be flown out. They had to get me on a
2658
02:10:08.600 --> 02:10:11.020
mule and get me out to the nearest airstrip and
2659
02:10:11.119 --> 02:10:14.840
out and– But I did my bit. I was accepted
2660
02:10:14.920 --> 02:10:17.699
as a great gringo for eating this stuff, you know,
2661
02:10:17.720 --> 02:10:24.149
for drinking it. What happened to you? Well, whatever it was,
2662
02:10:24.329 --> 02:10:25.260
my body didn't like it.
2663
02:10:26.010 --> 02:10:28.810
So is it just like the bacteria in it, you think?
2664
02:10:29.350 --> 02:10:31.489
Probably. I think it had to be that because it
2665
02:10:31.529 --> 02:10:33.420
didn't gross me out. I didn't like the taste of it,
2666
02:10:33.449 --> 02:10:35.350
but it wasn't grossing me out. And it was a
2667
02:10:35.369 --> 02:10:37.930
happy time. We had little ribbons and stuff. We were
2668
02:10:37.970 --> 02:10:40.130
having a festa and I was sitting with the men
2669
02:10:40.189 --> 02:10:41.149
at the table.
2670
02:10:40.869 --> 02:10:43.520
And And their gut bacteria just knows how to handle it.
2671
02:10:44.119 --> 02:10:46.279
There you go.
2672
02:10:46.680 --> 02:10:47.140
There you go.
2673
02:10:47.939 --> 02:10:53.239
It says that the human saliva creates the fermentation.
2674
02:10:53.279 --> 02:10:54.079
Yeah, that's right.
2675
02:10:56.300 --> 02:10:59.020
Isn't there a better way to get drunk? Good Lord.
2676
02:10:59.159 --> 02:11:01.819
If you want to get drunk and you want it
2677
02:11:01.859 --> 02:11:03.340
bad enough, there it is.
2678
02:11:03.500 --> 02:11:05.300
And I bet that stuff you're not going to drink
2679
02:11:05.359 --> 02:11:08.300
every day because it's so disgusting. It's not going to
2680
02:11:08.319 --> 02:11:09.060
become a problem.
2681
02:11:09.279 --> 02:11:12.739
Once it's fermented, Nobody really cares, you know, who's around
2682
02:11:12.779 --> 02:11:13.319
that culture.
2683
02:11:13.439 --> 02:11:13.819
Boy.
2684
02:11:14.090 --> 02:11:14.750
You know, but.
2685
02:11:16.029 --> 02:11:17.050
What does the monkey taste like?
2686
02:11:18.229 --> 02:11:21.369
Well, there again, I don't have a vocabulary to describe
2687
02:11:21.390 --> 02:11:25.689
all these meats. It's a tough meat, but I pressure it.
2688
02:11:25.770 --> 02:11:26.210
I put the.
2689
02:11:26.229 --> 02:11:27.630
A crock pot?
2690
02:11:27.770 --> 02:11:29.649
Yeah, I put it in a pressure cooker over a fire.
2691
02:11:29.689 --> 02:11:31.729
I take in a pressure cooker, you know, not an
2692
02:11:31.789 --> 02:11:34.140
electric pressure cooker, obviously. One of these pressure cookers you
2693
02:11:34.149 --> 02:11:36.189
can set on top of the fire. And after I
2694
02:11:36.229 --> 02:11:39.100
pressure it, it's falling off the bone, and I take
2695
02:11:39.140 --> 02:11:40.909
the meat off. And I throw it in a bowl
2696
02:11:40.970 --> 02:11:42.989
and I put some manioc meal on top of that.
2697
02:11:43.399 --> 02:11:46.060
And then I cover it in Tabasco. And it's great.
2698
02:11:46.439 --> 02:11:48.960
It's very filling and it tastes really good. Wow.
2699
02:11:49.220 --> 02:11:50.760
Did you feel weird eating a monkey?
2700
02:11:52.800 --> 02:11:55.579
When you see the monkey and you put the little
2701
02:11:55.600 --> 02:11:58.479
monkey body inside the pressure cooker and it looks like
2702
02:11:58.520 --> 02:12:01.220
a baby, it doesn't look too good. But once you
2703
02:12:01.399 --> 02:12:03.279
open up the pressure cooker and it's all cooked and
2704
02:12:03.300 --> 02:12:05.340
the bones are separated from the meat and then it's
2705
02:12:05.399 --> 02:12:08.689
just meat floating in there, you know. And when you're
2706
02:12:08.750 --> 02:12:10.630
out in the jungle and you've been out there long enough,
2707
02:12:11.750 --> 02:12:14.789
just about any kind of meat sounds pretty good. I
2708
02:12:14.829 --> 02:12:18.090
worked with a group called the Wadi. I actually wrote
2709
02:12:18.109 --> 02:12:22.720
a 540-page grammar of their language, co-wrote it. And they
2710
02:12:22.760 --> 02:12:24.659
were cannibals up until 1962.
2711
02:12:24.659 --> 02:12:25.000
Yo.
2712
02:12:26.060 --> 02:12:32.680
And they had two– they had Indo-cannibalism and Exo-cannibalism. Exo-cannibalism
2713
02:12:32.720 --> 02:12:37.180
was eating their enemies and Indo-cannibalism was eating their people. Right.
2714
02:12:37.600 --> 02:12:39.710
So if you die in the village at that time,
2715
02:12:39.770 --> 02:12:45.069
up until 1962, they keep your body. They call all
2716
02:12:45.109 --> 02:12:47.489
the relatives. Your body might sit there in the Amazon
2717
02:12:47.630 --> 02:12:50.720
sun for three days. And your relatives come from all over.
2718
02:12:51.220 --> 02:12:56.680
And then they cook you over a grill. And slowly
2719
02:12:56.819 --> 02:13:00.159
they roast the body. And then they cut it into
2720
02:13:00.239 --> 02:13:03.539
chunks and they eat them with, like, little toothpicks. And–
2721
02:13:04.119 --> 02:13:05.880
They eat it until everything is gone. They eat the bones.
2722
02:13:06.359 --> 02:13:08.119
They eat the brains. They eat everything.
2723
02:13:08.140 --> 02:13:09.180
They eat human brains.
2724
02:13:09.319 --> 02:13:12.689
Yeah, and the purpose, as best I've been able to
2725
02:13:12.699 --> 02:13:15.289
figure out, anthropologists have tried to answer this, so my
2726
02:13:15.350 --> 02:13:17.689
answer might not be theirs, but it's based on interviews
2727
02:13:17.710 --> 02:13:21.289
with the people, is to give your relatives eternal life
2728
02:13:22.590 --> 02:13:24.380
because they live in you and you're going to live
2729
02:13:24.409 --> 02:13:28.760
in somebody else, so you just continue living. But exocannibalism,
2730
02:13:29.020 --> 02:13:30.789
I kill a guy in warfare. I'm going to eat
2731
02:13:30.829 --> 02:13:32.710
him like an animal. I just chop him up and
2732
02:13:32.770 --> 02:13:34.489
grill him and eat it and throw the bones off
2733
02:13:34.560 --> 02:13:35.189
into the forest.
2734
02:13:35.439 --> 02:13:35.960
Boy.
2735
02:13:35.979 --> 02:13:36.920
So that's totally different.
2736
02:13:37.560 --> 02:13:39.579
Some Native Americans practice that.
2737
02:13:40.020 --> 02:13:41.180
Yeah.
2738
02:13:43.199 --> 02:13:45.899
It's been said. Eating the brain though, wouldn't that– what
2739
02:13:45.920 --> 02:13:48.939
is that disease? What is this called? Jakob Kretzfeld? Is
2740
02:13:48.960 --> 02:13:49.500
that what it's called?
2741
02:13:49.699 --> 02:13:52.600
Yeah, something like that. I should know that. But it's
2742
02:13:52.640 --> 02:13:56.430
mad cow disease essentially. It's like that, yeah. So– but
2743
02:13:56.859 --> 02:14:00.029
they don't eat people all the time. They eat dead relatives.
2744
02:14:00.869 --> 02:14:03.409
And if anybody has ever gotten that disease, it's never
2745
02:14:03.449 --> 02:14:04.149
been registered.
2746
02:14:04.329 --> 02:14:08.270
That's crazy. But I mean even if you're eating dead relatives,
2747
02:14:08.289 --> 02:14:10.529
you eat a dead relative, I would imagine you can
2748
02:14:10.550 --> 02:14:11.550
get prion disease.
2749
02:14:12.189 --> 02:14:15.529
Yeah, but it depends on how many die. There's a
2750
02:14:15.550 --> 02:14:17.630
whole etiquette about it. You're never allowed to say that
2751
02:14:17.649 --> 02:14:20.310
this tastes really good. For example, you can't say that.
2752
02:14:20.329 --> 02:14:21.630
You can't say delicious.
2753
02:14:21.710 --> 02:14:22.770
Yeah, you can't say that.
2754
02:14:22.810 --> 02:14:23.439
Uncle Tom is yummy.
2755
02:14:23.520 --> 02:14:25.779
And I've talked to some of the older men who
2756
02:14:25.819 --> 02:14:29.229
have eaten their dead and they say, oh, the The
2757
02:14:29.279 --> 02:14:32.029
babies taste really good, but you can't say that.
2758
02:14:33.149 --> 02:14:35.949
The babies taste really good. It's rough.
2759
02:14:36.750 --> 02:14:42.270
It's like human veal. But the Brazilian government put a
2760
02:14:42.569 --> 02:14:44.310
stop to that in 62.
2761
02:14:44.310 --> 02:14:47.609
Good move. Why do they let it sit for three
2762
02:14:47.630 --> 02:14:48.439
days before they cut it?
2763
02:14:48.449 --> 02:14:50.270
Because it takes that long for the relatives to come
2764
02:14:50.750 --> 02:14:52.510
because they might be in other villages. So they've got
2765
02:14:52.529 --> 02:14:54.409
to send runners out to bring the whole family together.
2766
02:14:54.439 --> 02:14:55.180
Doesn't the meat start rotting?
2767
02:14:55.750 --> 02:14:57.930
Yeah, it starts to smell pretty bad. And there are
2768
02:14:57.949 --> 02:15:00.689
a lot of stories about people puking after every bite.
2769
02:15:01.170 --> 02:15:04.869
Oh, these are people that can drink that puke beer.
2770
02:15:05.020 --> 02:15:05.560
Yeah, yeah.
2771
02:15:05.909 --> 02:15:06.779
Oh, my God.
2772
02:15:07.079 --> 02:15:14.300
Yeah. So you realize cultural differences aren't that superficial.
2773
02:15:14.479 --> 02:15:17.659
It's also probably meat is probably extremely valuable to them.
2774
02:15:18.170 --> 02:15:20.229
And they just probably think, look, there's no reason for
2775
02:15:20.250 --> 02:15:21.989
this to go to waste when it could sustain us.
2776
02:15:22.350 --> 02:15:24.670
It would be very interesting to go back in time
2777
02:15:24.729 --> 02:15:28.260
and see how the customs started. They could have started
2778
02:15:28.310 --> 02:15:30.319
out of hunger, and then you dress it up with
2779
02:15:30.359 --> 02:15:34.739
some religious beliefs. Or the religious beliefs could have come first,
2780
02:15:34.840 --> 02:15:38.260
and you started doing it. But they do have oral
2781
02:15:38.300 --> 02:15:43.250
histories about it. But the oral histories never say we
2782
02:15:43.310 --> 02:15:45.350
were short of meat, so we ate Joe. We ate
2783
02:15:45.390 --> 02:15:50.529
our buddy. Right. But they do say we want to
2784
02:15:51.130 --> 02:15:52.840
help them live in us, and we will live in
2785
02:15:52.899 --> 02:15:56.399
somebody else. So that's the explanation you get. Wow. Or
2786
02:15:56.439 --> 02:15:56.960
that I got.
2787
02:15:57.640 --> 02:16:01.119
Wow. Well, when you got there a few years after,
2788
02:16:01.199 --> 02:16:02.779
it was– Yeah.
2789
02:16:02.939 --> 02:16:04.979
I didn't start working with them until 1985. Okay. So
2790
02:16:05.039 --> 02:16:07.479
it was 20-something years after.
2791
02:16:07.520 --> 02:16:09.420
But they still had stories about– Oh, yeah.
2792
02:16:09.460 --> 02:16:10.979
They still had a lot of stories about it, and
2793
02:16:11.000 --> 02:16:12.539
anybody over 30 had done it.
2794
02:16:15.060 --> 02:16:17.720
Is there any kind of cannibalism that goes on in
2795
02:16:17.739 --> 02:16:18.600
the Amazon still?
2796
02:16:19.779 --> 02:16:22.920
Probably, but none that I know of. But there are
2797
02:16:22.960 --> 02:16:26.340
still some uncontacted tribes, and there are still tribes that
2798
02:16:26.380 --> 02:16:28.939
behave one way when foreigners are around and another way
2799
02:16:28.979 --> 02:16:33.409
when they're not. I have a friend. She died last year,
2800
02:16:33.430 --> 02:16:37.649
but she was a missionary among those people from the 50s.
2801
02:16:38.489 --> 02:16:42.549
So she remembers the cannibalism. And she told me, although
2802
02:16:42.629 --> 02:16:45.149
some anthropologists deny this, but I think she knows them
2803
02:16:45.170 --> 02:16:48.629
better than any anthropologist who's ever been there, that she said,
2804
02:16:48.690 --> 02:16:50.629
I think when nobody's around, they still do that.
2805
02:16:52.389 --> 02:16:54.450
Yeah. I bet they do too.
2806
02:16:54.709 --> 02:16:56.610
They don't have warfare. They listen to someone else.
2807
02:16:56.739 --> 02:16:57.620
They don't have warfare.
2808
02:16:57.860 --> 02:17:00.780
Not anymore. They did. But that's been stopped and they
2809
02:17:00.819 --> 02:17:04.100
have– they're isolated from other groups that they used to
2810
02:17:04.139 --> 02:17:07.520
be enemies with. But there are still some who believe
2811
02:17:07.559 --> 02:17:12.120
the old-time religion. And the old-time religion says, eat your dead.
2812
02:17:14.239 --> 02:17:18.139
So it's quite possible that it happens. But what you
2813
02:17:18.200 --> 02:17:22.350
find is that since the 80s, most of the groups
2814
02:17:22.370 --> 02:17:25.969
that have regular contact with the outside have undergone a
2815
02:17:26.069 --> 02:17:34.719
very rapid process of enculturation into Brazilian society. So even
2816
02:17:34.750 --> 02:17:37.840
among the Pita Hasnauth in the decades since I was
2817
02:17:37.879 --> 02:17:41.680
there regularly– I see pictures of them because my ex-wife
2818
02:17:41.739 --> 02:17:44.360
still lives right next to them. Oh, wow. And she
2819
02:17:44.420 --> 02:17:47.409
sends me short videos and pictures of them when they
2820
02:17:47.430 --> 02:17:50.979
come up to her little wooden shack on... the Trans-Amazon
2821
02:17:51.020 --> 02:17:54.620
Highway by their river. And they're dressing very differently now.
2822
02:17:55.059 --> 02:17:58.979
And some of them are speaking some Portuguese. Not very well,
2823
02:17:59.000 --> 02:18:00.059
but they're speaking some Portuguese.
2824
02:18:00.079 --> 02:18:02.059
And your ex-wife is still a missionary?
2825
02:18:02.260 --> 02:18:07.239
Yeah, she's still trying to convert them. No conversions. They're
2826
02:18:07.260 --> 02:18:07.959
not going to convert.
2827
02:18:07.979 --> 02:18:12.299
Boy, you've got to give it up to her for having, like, stick-to-itiveness.
2828
02:18:12.920 --> 02:18:15.280
I mean, that's really determined.
2829
02:18:15.719 --> 02:18:20.350
She is absolutely a New Testament first century Christian in
2830
02:18:20.409 --> 02:18:23.489
terms of her faith. Wow. And she doesn't deviate, and
2831
02:18:23.549 --> 02:18:27.129
she's not afraid of anything. I mean, we've been in
2832
02:18:27.170 --> 02:18:30.469
many life-threatening situations, and I don't tend to get afraid,
2833
02:18:30.909 --> 02:18:33.110
and she definitely is not afraid, not ever.
2834
02:18:33.739 --> 02:18:35.989
So is that because of her belief that she believes
2835
02:18:36.020 --> 02:18:38.069
that God is looking out for her and if she dies,
2836
02:18:38.110 --> 02:18:39.309
she's going to go to heaven anyway?
2837
02:18:39.549 --> 02:18:44.870
Yeah. The constant, a common refrain among Christian missionaries is,
2838
02:18:45.930 --> 02:18:50.450
I'm immortal until my task is done. God will protect
2839
02:18:50.489 --> 02:18:52.139
me until he's done with me. And so if he's
2840
02:18:52.159 --> 02:18:53.700
not done with me, I don't have to worry about it.
2841
02:18:53.700 --> 02:18:56.040
And if he is, great. Wow.
2842
02:18:56.819 --> 02:18:58.620
There's a lot of power in that too. I mean,
2843
02:18:58.639 --> 02:19:01.159
how many people just live in this constant state of
2844
02:19:01.399 --> 02:19:03.159
existential angst? Yeah.
2845
02:19:03.620 --> 02:19:06.659
That's something she's never had. Wow. She doesn't have that.
2846
02:19:06.760 --> 02:19:08.000
There's a lot of value to that.
2847
02:19:08.170 --> 02:19:10.549
It's what attracted me to her so much besides the
2848
02:19:10.569 --> 02:19:13.729
fact that she was really cute. That attracted me to
2849
02:19:13.770 --> 02:19:14.969
her a lot when we first met.
2850
02:19:14.989 --> 02:19:17.149
Were you bummed out when she wanted a divorce because
2851
02:19:17.170 --> 02:19:18.069
you lost your faith?
2852
02:19:18.870 --> 02:19:21.430
Well, by that time, we weren't getting along that well
2853
02:19:21.479 --> 02:19:26.500
because she's very anti... She's not anti-science per se, but
2854
02:19:26.559 --> 02:19:32.360
she's anti- helicopter science. She feels that too many people
2855
02:19:32.399 --> 02:19:36.049
who do studies of indigenous groups and languages, come in
2856
02:19:36.090 --> 02:19:38.590
for a short time, go out and just speak a
2857
02:19:38.629 --> 02:19:41.190
lot of bullshit that nobody's ever going to test. And
2858
02:19:41.229 --> 02:19:43.329
so she hates that. And she's seen it happen with
2859
02:19:43.350 --> 02:19:46.479
the Pidaha. I've seen it happen with the Pidaha. I've
2860
02:19:46.510 --> 02:19:48.520
seen a couple of anthropologists and linguists go in and
2861
02:19:48.540 --> 02:19:51.399
do doctoral dissertations on them that are like totally ridiculous.
2862
02:19:51.940 --> 02:19:56.040
But if I say something, I'm a gringo. And I'm
2863
02:19:56.079 --> 02:19:57.879
jealous because it disagrees with me.
2864
02:19:58.479 --> 02:20:00.760
Do you think that they do that because no one
2865
02:20:00.799 --> 02:20:02.700
is going to check and so they just say, I
2866
02:20:02.920 --> 02:20:04.739
want to just write whatever I want to write?
2867
02:20:05.200 --> 02:20:10.059
That does happen. That definitely happens. It's also because people
2868
02:20:10.120 --> 02:20:12.600
realize– it sounds really good to go study an indigenous
2869
02:20:12.639 --> 02:20:14.860
culture or an indigenous language. When you get there and
2870
02:20:14.879 --> 02:20:17.899
you find out this is so damn hard. I had
2871
02:20:17.979 --> 02:20:21.020
no– I have no words to put in how hard
2872
02:20:21.059 --> 02:20:21.559
this is.
2873
02:20:21.620 --> 02:20:22.340
So they bullshit.
2874
02:20:22.479 --> 02:20:26.579
Yeah, because you want to say to a Piraha, what
2875
02:20:26.639 --> 02:20:29.399
is this? And so how do you ask that? Well,
2876
02:20:30.260 --> 02:20:33.750
the phrase in Pirahas, he go, but where do you
2877
02:20:33.770 --> 02:20:36.690
get that phrase? You can't ask somebody how to ask,
2878
02:20:36.889 --> 02:20:39.290
what is this? Right. If you don't know the language.
2879
02:20:39.729 --> 02:20:42.690
So you have to watch them very carefully and somebody
2880
02:20:42.709 --> 02:20:45.219
might get something new or you might even give them
2881
02:20:45.280 --> 02:20:48.020
something new that they've never seen, hoping somebody is going
2882
02:20:48.040 --> 02:20:50.100
to ask them, what is this? So you can write
2883
02:20:50.139 --> 02:20:51.719
it down and then test it. And that's how I
2884
02:20:51.760 --> 02:20:52.069
got it.
2885
02:20:52.600 --> 02:20:54.909
And so now you're fluent in Pirahas.
2886
02:20:55.360 --> 02:20:55.579
Yes.
2887
02:20:55.860 --> 02:20:58.129
So you can go and have a conversation with them
2888
02:20:58.250 --> 02:21:01.549
so you can explore some of these more nuanced subjects
2889
02:21:01.909 --> 02:21:03.549
and do it in their language.
2890
02:21:03.750 --> 02:21:03.969
Yes.
2891
02:21:04.409 --> 02:21:06.450
So you can kind of translate things in a way
2892
02:21:06.469 --> 02:21:07.889
that they're going to understand what you're saying.
2893
02:21:08.549 --> 02:21:11.450
Yes. And that's what takes the most practice. So when
2894
02:21:11.489 --> 02:21:15.489
I first translated the Gospel of Mark into Pitaha, I
2895
02:21:15.510 --> 02:21:18.170
thought I had done a marvelous job. And I would
2896
02:21:18.209 --> 02:21:20.430
read bits out to the Pitaha, and they could explain
2897
02:21:20.469 --> 02:21:22.549
it to me, and it seemed like they were understanding it.
2898
02:21:23.899 --> 02:21:27.450
But I used... a grammar that was largely based on English.
2899
02:21:27.469 --> 02:21:29.819
So when I read to them large sections, they were
2900
02:21:29.850 --> 02:21:32.540
totally lost. They couldn't understand it at all. And what
2901
02:21:32.579 --> 02:21:35.159
does that mean? It means I got it wrong. It
2902
02:21:35.219 --> 02:21:37.780
means that I haven't figured out the language as well
2903
02:21:37.819 --> 02:21:40.239
as I thought I did. And that's very humbling when
2904
02:21:40.260 --> 02:21:42.860
you've spent so many years trying to do it. So
2905
02:21:42.899 --> 02:21:46.159
I had to start from the ground up again. And
2906
02:21:46.180 --> 02:21:48.729
these are all, you know, before you can learn a language,
2907
02:21:48.750 --> 02:21:51.690
you have to murder it. And before you can carry
2908
02:21:51.729 --> 02:21:54.770
on a conversation, you just feel like an idiot for years.
2909
02:21:56.110 --> 02:21:59.829
And for one thing, people who go in to do
2910
02:21:59.870 --> 02:22:02.049
a PhD or citation on a language like this are
2911
02:22:02.290 --> 02:22:04.329
going to take one to two years of their life,
2912
02:22:04.729 --> 02:22:08.340
and that's it. And that's not enough time. It takes
2913
02:22:08.399 --> 02:22:09.940
a year to get fluent in the language. And I
2914
02:22:09.979 --> 02:22:13.200
know many people who've written about many different Amazonian languages
2915
02:22:13.659 --> 02:22:15.780
who can't speak a word of the language or speak
2916
02:22:15.860 --> 02:22:18.600
very little of it. They'll tell people they speak it,
2917
02:22:18.639 --> 02:22:21.420
but you go with them and you realize they don't
2918
02:22:21.459 --> 02:22:23.489
speak it that well. So if you don't speak it
2919
02:22:23.510 --> 02:22:26.549
that well, how can you ask them to distinguish subtle
2920
02:22:26.649 --> 02:22:31.909
meaning differences? You can't. And that means that a lot
2921
02:22:31.950 --> 02:22:35.930
of this kind of field work, which is so vital,
2922
02:22:37.059 --> 02:22:39.079
is not as reliable as we would like to think
2923
02:22:39.139 --> 02:22:39.379
it is.
2924
02:22:40.120 --> 02:22:41.159
That's unfortunate.
2925
02:22:41.360 --> 02:22:41.620
Yeah.
2926
02:22:42.340 --> 02:22:45.319
Especially if a young student is coming along and they're
2927
02:22:45.340 --> 02:22:48.700
interested in pursuing it further and they're starting off with
2928
02:22:48.760 --> 02:22:50.620
some faulty assumptions. Yes.
2929
02:22:51.239 --> 02:22:54.829
Yes, and the other problem is people learn a theory
2930
02:22:55.370 --> 02:22:59.629
in graduate school, and they take it as their job
2931
02:22:59.670 --> 02:23:02.870
of their dissertation, and this isn't limited to just linguistics
2932
02:23:02.909 --> 02:23:04.750
and anthropology, but they take it as the job of
2933
02:23:04.790 --> 02:23:10.340
their dissertation to support that theory. So, you know, it's
2934
02:23:10.360 --> 02:23:12.579
like Paul Simon says, a man sees what he wants
2935
02:23:12.620 --> 02:23:16.620
to hear and disregards the rest. When you're trying to
2936
02:23:16.659 --> 02:23:21.829
do theoretical research, field research research, shouldn't be that theoretically motivated.
2937
02:23:21.879 --> 02:23:24.639
It should be basically descriptive. And then you can do
2938
02:23:24.659 --> 02:23:27.149
the theory later. But most people bring the theory into it.
2939
02:23:27.959 --> 02:23:34.260
And you can't totally divorce those two. But you see
2940
02:23:34.309 --> 02:23:36.770
a fact. So, for example, I've worked with Pinaha, and
2941
02:23:36.809 --> 02:23:39.729
I'm asking for a certain kind of data. And they
2942
02:23:39.770 --> 02:23:43.569
don't give me what I wanted. And I thought, this
2943
02:23:44.110 --> 02:23:45.829
guy's not giving me what I want. What's wrong with him?
2944
02:23:45.879 --> 02:23:49.229
What am I saying wrong? Is he stupid? And then
2945
02:23:49.709 --> 02:23:52.090
as I learned to speak the language better, I realized, oh,
2946
02:23:52.149 --> 02:23:54.469
he's giving me exactly what I needed and I was
2947
02:23:54.510 --> 02:23:58.030
too stupid to know it. And so that's hard. You're
2948
02:23:58.069 --> 02:24:00.870
the one working for the PhD. He's just a hunter-gatherer.
2949
02:24:00.889 --> 02:24:02.969
And it turns out he's at least as smart as
2950
02:24:02.989 --> 02:24:04.870
you are and often he's able to know what you
2951
02:24:04.909 --> 02:24:08.059
need better than you do. And that's another part of
2952
02:24:08.090 --> 02:24:12.020
the humbling experience of doing field research. Wow.
2953
02:24:12.360 --> 02:24:15.659
The amount of commitment that's involved in going as deep
2954
02:24:15.739 --> 02:24:17.700
as you went with this is really crazy.
2955
02:24:18.840 --> 02:24:21.379
Yeah, I give demonstrations and you can find some on
2956
02:24:21.399 --> 02:24:23.799
the internet where I take a language that I know
2957
02:24:23.840 --> 02:24:26.909
nothing about and I switch to Pinaha, which I know
2958
02:24:26.930 --> 02:24:29.750
they know nothing about. And within 20 or 30 minutes,
2959
02:24:30.149 --> 02:24:33.510
I'm able to explain to the audience some basic facts
2960
02:24:33.549 --> 02:24:35.930
about how their grammar works and what their basic vocabulary,
2961
02:24:35.950 --> 02:24:37.850
you know, a lot of basic vocabulary. And I do
2962
02:24:37.889 --> 02:24:39.750
this to linguists. I've done it in front of as
2963
02:24:39.790 --> 02:24:45.360
many as 500 linguists at a time. And then I
2964
02:24:45.420 --> 02:24:47.579
tell them that a lot of people think this is magic.
2965
02:24:47.620 --> 02:24:50.250
This is really cool. I said, What you're seeing here
2966
02:24:50.309 --> 02:24:52.590
is me working for about an hour. Now, you just
2967
02:24:52.629 --> 02:24:55.510
do that every day for two years, and you're in.
2968
02:24:56.809 --> 02:25:00.170
And that's the part. It's intensive. I get a headache
2969
02:25:00.510 --> 02:25:03.739
when I do these demonstrations because my concentration is so hard.
2970
02:25:04.329 --> 02:25:09.120
And you miss obvious things, and you say bad things,
2971
02:25:09.280 --> 02:25:13.860
and you're just self-correcting all the time. You're just constantly,
2972
02:25:13.879 --> 02:25:15.639
you start off this wide, and you're trying to get
2973
02:25:15.680 --> 02:25:18.299
this narrow, get down to this point of what it
2974
02:25:18.360 --> 02:25:21.190
actually means, what this And as you work through that,
2975
02:25:21.430 --> 02:25:24.739
there are no shortcuts. There's no shortcut to doing that.
2976
02:25:25.239 --> 02:25:27.540
And you need to be well-trained and you need to
2977
02:25:27.579 --> 02:25:29.600
be very committed and you need to have a little
2978
02:25:29.620 --> 02:25:33.799
bit of talent and work really hard. And when people
2979
02:25:33.860 --> 02:25:36.950
see how easy it looks and then they try it,
2980
02:25:36.969 --> 02:25:40.750
they realize they're seeing me at 20 years down the
2981
02:25:40.790 --> 02:25:45.770
road from when I started. But yeah, there are methods
2982
02:25:45.870 --> 02:25:48.219
to use to learn a language where there's no language
2983
02:25:48.280 --> 02:25:48.659
in common.
2984
02:25:48.959 --> 02:25:54.600
But it's got to be very difficult to achieve a
2985
02:25:54.909 --> 02:25:58.090
fluent understanding of their language. And the way you did
2986
02:25:58.149 --> 02:26:01.770
it from the ground, literally from starting from what is this?
2987
02:26:02.149 --> 02:26:05.090
How do you say that? And then remembering it, piecing
2988
02:26:05.129 --> 02:26:07.469
it together. And then you have to write it down.
2989
02:26:07.530 --> 02:26:08.530
Then you're writing it down.
2990
02:26:08.770 --> 02:26:09.000
Right.
2991
02:26:09.319 --> 02:26:12.840
Oh, my goodness. And imagine if a guy like you
2992
02:26:12.920 --> 02:26:15.780
didn't do that. How many people are willing to do that?
2993
02:26:16.739 --> 02:26:20.680
Especially how many people that are You're a linguist. You
2994
02:26:20.700 --> 02:26:25.209
want to be a working intellectual. You don't necessarily want
2995
02:26:25.250 --> 02:26:27.709
to get malaria. You don't want to get eaten by
2996
02:26:27.750 --> 02:26:29.649
a jaguar. You don't want to live in the jungle.
2997
02:26:30.989 --> 02:26:32.909
So there are people who would like to spend that
2998
02:26:32.950 --> 02:26:38.190
much time, but they don't have the funding. So the
2999
02:26:38.290 --> 02:26:42.200
National Science Foundation and the Brazilian National Science Foundation and
3000
02:26:42.239 --> 02:26:45.780
the British equivalent of the National Science Foundation have all
3001
02:26:45.840 --> 02:26:49.319
funded my research over the years. But The bulk of
3002
02:26:49.360 --> 02:26:52.579
my research was funded by being a missionary. Wow. And
3003
02:26:52.639 --> 02:26:55.309
so I had all these years because churches were supporting me.
3004
02:26:55.829 --> 02:26:58.069
But today— But did they ever ask, how come you
3005
02:26:58.090 --> 02:26:59.139
haven't converted anybody yet?
3006
02:26:59.809 --> 02:27:01.489
Well, they ask me that all the time. I've had
3007
02:27:01.549 --> 02:27:05.030
people— I showed slides of the Pidaha to a church here
3008
02:27:05.069 --> 02:27:10.389
in Texas, in Dallas. And the people started getting up
3009
02:27:10.450 --> 02:27:13.139
and leaving. And I thought they were interested. They gave
3010
02:27:13.170 --> 02:27:15.579
me money to work in these people. And I said,
3011
02:27:15.600 --> 02:27:18.139
what's the problem? And they said— you're no good at all.
3012
02:27:18.659 --> 02:27:20.420
And I said, well, what are you seeing that you
3013
02:27:20.440 --> 02:27:23.520
don't like? They said, these people are naked. And if
3014
02:27:23.579 --> 02:27:25.879
you're a Christian missionary, why haven't you taught them to
3015
02:27:25.920 --> 02:27:29.069
wear clothes? And I said, well, they don't want to
3016
02:27:29.110 --> 02:27:31.450
wear clothes. I said, what in the Bible says you
3017
02:27:31.489 --> 02:27:35.350
have to wear clothes? They said, Adam saw Eve's nakedness
3018
02:27:35.409 --> 02:27:39.010
and they were ashamed of each other. You must wear clothes.
3019
02:27:39.190 --> 02:27:41.600
You're not even teaching them the basics of Christianity. And
3020
02:27:41.639 --> 02:27:44.280
I thought, you know, I guess I'm not. You know,
3021
02:27:44.319 --> 02:27:46.379
I didn't realize that's not part of the basics of
3022
02:27:46.399 --> 02:27:51.010
Christianity for me. But... How do you tell a guy
3023
02:27:51.049 --> 02:27:53.549
who wears a loincloth that it's three inches too short?
3024
02:27:58.270 --> 02:28:00.510
Something is peeking out there. So it's not– they don't
3025
02:28:00.530 --> 02:28:03.819
wear it for modesty. They wear it to keep from
3026
02:28:03.920 --> 02:28:08.180
sticks getting poked in your penis. And so modesty has
3027
02:28:08.219 --> 02:28:11.500
nothing to do with it. Why would you– to the
3028
02:28:11.579 --> 02:28:14.600
average pitaha, a woman's breast is about as erotic as
3029
02:28:14.639 --> 02:28:18.750
an elbow. You see a woman. She's nursing her baby.
3030
02:28:19.350 --> 02:28:21.719
And then the baby stops nursing and she's still talking
3031
02:28:21.760 --> 02:28:24.239
to you and her tits hanging out. And it doesn't
3032
02:28:24.260 --> 02:28:25.920
mean anything to her. And after a while, it doesn't
3033
02:28:25.940 --> 02:28:27.860
mean anything to you either. You know, what's the big deal?
3034
02:28:28.540 --> 02:28:31.340
And so to get across the idea that it may
3035
02:28:31.379 --> 02:28:35.180
be clothes that's causing this problem instead of going naked,
3036
02:28:35.229 --> 02:28:40.110
which then eliminates the problem of lust. I mean, it's
3037
02:28:40.129 --> 02:28:42.850
a hard concept for some churches, but churches tend to
3038
02:28:42.870 --> 02:28:46.290
get very impatient. But then the National Science Foundation, for example,
3039
02:28:46.329 --> 02:28:48.680
if I say I'm going to go study language X,
3040
02:28:49.200 --> 02:28:52.180
And I need funding for five years. Oh, no, we
3041
02:28:52.219 --> 02:28:55.000
fund those and that's a year's funding. Yeah, but nobody
3042
02:28:55.040 --> 02:28:57.020
who goes out for a year really learns it that well.
3043
02:28:57.420 --> 02:28:59.399
I need to learn it a lot better. Oh, yeah,
3044
02:28:59.420 --> 02:29:01.200
we'll go somewhere else. We're not giving you the money
3045
02:29:01.239 --> 02:29:01.500
for that.
3046
02:29:02.500 --> 02:29:04.899
Oh, that's ridiculous. Are there really a lot of people
3047
02:29:04.920 --> 02:29:07.059
that are willing to do that kind of extensive work?
3048
02:29:07.260 --> 02:29:08.180
I wouldn't say a lot.
3049
02:29:08.569 --> 02:29:10.129
But enough to do it?
3050
02:29:10.469 --> 02:29:17.280
Well, there's 8,000 languages and there's maybe 2,000. 3,000– let's
3051
02:29:17.309 --> 02:29:21.069
say 5,000 linguists in the whole world and only a
3052
02:29:21.290 --> 02:29:23.190
small percentage of them want to do this kind of work.
3053
02:29:23.750 --> 02:29:25.309
The rest of them– most of them want to do
3054
02:29:25.370 --> 02:29:27.190
Chomsky's kind of work where you sit at your desk
3055
02:29:27.610 --> 02:29:30.129
and you say language has this property and it must
3056
02:29:30.309 --> 02:29:33.790
also have this property. And so the rubber is never
3057
02:29:33.829 --> 02:29:37.530
meeting the road. I mean if you can do your
3058
02:29:37.549 --> 02:29:41.219
field research on database– I shouldn't say that because that's
3059
02:29:41.250 --> 02:29:43.500
what my son does. He's also a linguist and he
3060
02:29:43.520 --> 02:29:46.780
grew up in an Indian tribe. And he also did
3061
02:29:46.819 --> 02:29:48.979
a dissertation on another tribe that he learned to speak
3062
02:29:49.000 --> 02:29:51.979
the language. But nowadays he goes through databases and comes
3063
02:29:52.059 --> 02:29:57.139
up with statistical generalizations. And it's pretty interesting. But he'll
3064
02:29:57.180 --> 02:29:58.639
tell me flat out. He said, yeah, I don't want
3065
02:29:58.659 --> 02:30:01.719
to do that fieldwork anymore. That's really demanding even though
3066
02:30:01.739 --> 02:30:04.520
he grew up there. And that's the way most people are.
3067
02:30:05.059 --> 02:30:10.020
How many more cultures that have completely different languages and
3068
02:30:10.079 --> 02:30:14.799
completely different sets of rules and structure– are out there
3069
02:30:14.860 --> 02:30:15.680
that we're not aware of?
3070
02:30:17.700 --> 02:30:21.290
Well, when I was– back in the 80s, they used
3071
02:30:21.329 --> 02:30:24.610
to say there's about 5,000 languages. So 20 years later,
3072
02:30:24.610 --> 02:30:30.290
21 years later, we're saying– or 31 years later, we're
3073
02:30:30.309 --> 02:30:34.299
saying there are 8,000. Languages die out at the rate
3074
02:30:34.350 --> 02:30:37.879
of about one every two weeks. So they're dying. And
3075
02:30:38.379 --> 02:30:41.120
once they die, we can never recover that information. But
3076
02:30:41.260 --> 02:30:44.899
also languages are being born. On a regular basis because
3077
02:30:45.540 --> 02:30:48.479
you talk like who you talk with. So why are
3078
02:30:48.520 --> 02:30:53.200
Portuguese and Spanish separate languages? Because you've got the Eber
3079
02:30:53.239 --> 02:30:56.120
River and you've got natural divides between– in that part
3080
02:30:56.139 --> 02:30:59.129
of the Iberian Peninsula. And so they stop talking to
3081
02:30:59.170 --> 02:31:01.790
each other and so their speech diverges. That's how Latin
3082
02:31:01.809 --> 02:31:07.489
became French and Romanian and Germanic became English. And so
3083
02:31:07.510 --> 02:31:09.870
they stop talking to each other. So as soon as
3084
02:31:09.930 --> 02:31:14.459
people stop talking, their language evolves. And they have different languages.
3085
02:31:14.500 --> 02:31:18.799
So British English and American English have evolved apart. And
3086
02:31:18.840 --> 02:31:21.309
yet at the same time, we have television and movies
3087
02:31:21.370 --> 02:31:25.510
and things that keeps them sort of together. But if
3088
02:31:25.549 --> 02:31:28.809
you don't have media and you don't have that, then
3089
02:31:28.870 --> 02:31:32.850
eventually they're talking– they're not talking with each other at
3090
02:31:32.889 --> 02:31:36.129
all and they become different languages. And that's where most
3091
02:31:36.170 --> 02:31:37.709
languages come from. Wow.
3092
02:31:38.870 --> 02:31:41.190
And there's got to be a lot of these tribes
3093
02:31:41.219 --> 02:31:43.010
that aren't talking to each other. And how many of
3094
02:31:43.030 --> 02:31:46.229
these tribes have been investigated and how many people have
3095
02:31:46.270 --> 02:31:48.950
been embedded in the– are there tribes out there where
3096
02:31:48.969 --> 02:31:51.750
there's no one has ever examined a language? No one
3097
02:31:51.770 --> 02:31:53.700
has ever embedded themselves in their culture?
3098
02:31:55.379 --> 02:31:58.659
There are– there probably are over 1,000 where no one
3099
02:31:58.680 --> 02:32:01.159
has gone there. But there are a couple of thousand
3100
02:32:01.520 --> 02:32:04.500
where no scientist has gone there to study their language
3101
02:32:04.620 --> 02:32:05.239
or their culture.
3102
02:32:05.340 --> 02:32:06.180
A couple thousand.
3103
02:32:06.319 --> 02:32:08.819
Yeah, a couple thousand I would say, if not more.
3104
02:32:09.319 --> 02:32:11.879
And they probably have completely different languages.
3105
02:32:12.200 --> 02:32:15.889
Yeah, you know, we're worried, and we should be, about
3106
02:32:15.909 --> 02:32:19.129
the disappearance of certain bird species and all these other
3107
02:32:19.149 --> 02:32:22.170
kinds of species. And we should be concerned about that.
3108
02:32:22.870 --> 02:32:26.219
But we're not concerned enough about the disappearance of these
3109
02:32:26.280 --> 02:32:30.239
languages and how the new languages are arising. And why
3110
02:32:30.260 --> 02:32:32.620
should we be concerned? Well, for one thing, every language
3111
02:32:33.379 --> 02:32:37.389
is like a library. It's a repository of information that
3112
02:32:37.489 --> 02:32:41.360
is lost when they switch to Portuguese. Because Portuguese doesn't
3113
02:32:41.399 --> 02:32:43.520
have all the same knowledge embedded in it. It doesn't
3114
02:32:43.559 --> 02:32:45.979
have the same way of talking about the world. There's
3115
02:32:46.040 --> 02:32:50.639
a lot that's missing. Every pitahã, every child, every woman,
3116
02:32:50.719 --> 02:32:54.469
every man knows the name of every species of plant
3117
02:32:54.620 --> 02:32:58.030
and animal in their environment. They will never just say tree.
3118
02:32:58.370 --> 02:33:00.729
Like I walked with the pitahã into the jungle and
3119
02:33:00.750 --> 02:33:03.190
they said, this is what we call this. And so
3120
02:33:03.229 --> 02:33:05.149
I write it down. What do you call it? Tree.
3121
02:33:05.170 --> 02:33:06.969
What do you call that over there?
3122
02:33:06.989 --> 02:33:07.530
Tree. Tree.
3123
02:33:08.159 --> 02:33:10.059
And what's that over there? Tree. They said, you just
3124
02:33:10.100 --> 02:33:12.799
have one word for all these things. But they're calling
3125
02:33:12.819 --> 02:33:16.250
them by the species name. And I'm thinking, well, I
3126
02:33:16.260 --> 02:33:17.950
told them, I said, well, there's some Americans who do
3127
02:33:17.989 --> 02:33:19.670
know all the different names, but I'm just not one
3128
02:33:19.690 --> 02:33:21.829
of them. But they find it hard to believe that
3129
02:33:21.969 --> 02:33:25.590
any American could get by without that knowledge of their environment.
3130
02:33:27.110 --> 02:33:30.370
So when that language goes, we've lost the difference. So
3131
02:33:30.870 --> 02:33:33.370
a friend of mine did a study on how a
3132
02:33:33.409 --> 02:33:37.190
group in the Amazon classified birds. And they don't classify
3133
02:33:37.229 --> 02:33:41.629
them based on their anatomy like Western science. They classify
3134
02:33:41.670 --> 02:33:44.500
them based on what they eat. And so if you
3135
02:33:44.559 --> 02:33:46.979
know their classification, you know what all these birds eat.
3136
02:33:47.459 --> 02:33:49.379
And you know how to deal with those birds, to
3137
02:33:49.440 --> 02:33:52.700
capture them or to follow them. And when that language
3138
02:33:52.780 --> 02:33:58.469
is gone, all that knowledge is gone. So it's like
3139
02:33:59.530 --> 02:34:02.069
the Library of Congress has been blown up or something
3140
02:34:02.110 --> 02:34:04.850
when you lose a language. And why do new languages
3141
02:34:04.889 --> 02:34:07.190
come into being? What are the conditions? And what does
3142
02:34:07.229 --> 02:34:09.469
all this mean for us being human beings? How do
3143
02:34:09.510 --> 02:34:12.290
we know ourselves better? How are we to understand our
3144
02:34:12.370 --> 02:34:16.059
species if we don't study all the different exemplars of
3145
02:34:16.139 --> 02:34:21.040
our species? And that's the challenge, and that's what keeps
3146
02:34:21.059 --> 02:34:23.659
the work exciting, but it also is what makes it
3147
02:34:23.700 --> 02:34:27.520
a challenge because you tell a really bright 25-year-old or
3148
02:34:27.540 --> 02:34:32.909
24-year-old PhD student, Okay, now you have to take off
3149
02:34:32.950 --> 02:34:36.829
to the jungle for three years or four. And they're thinking,
3150
02:34:37.670 --> 02:34:40.450
I could get a job without doing that. I don't
3151
02:34:40.500 --> 02:34:42.219
need to go spend four years in the jungle to
3152
02:34:42.260 --> 02:34:45.280
get a job. And a professor is a pretty cushy job.
3153
02:34:45.340 --> 02:34:49.420
It doesn't pay well, but it's also– it's not like
3154
02:34:49.479 --> 02:34:52.139
real labor. And I told– people tell me how hard
3155
02:34:52.200 --> 02:34:54.120
professors work. I said, yeah, well, it does take a
3156
02:34:54.159 --> 02:34:55.920
lot of hours, but I'd rather do this than run
3157
02:34:55.959 --> 02:34:58.459
a jackhammer because I ran a jackhammer. And I'll tell you,
3158
02:34:58.500 --> 02:35:01.840
this is a lot easier than running a jackhammer. So–
3159
02:35:03.229 --> 02:35:04.870
But you go off to the field and you spend
3160
02:35:04.909 --> 02:35:08.430
this time. Ironically, anthropologists seem more prepared to do this
3161
02:35:08.469 --> 02:35:11.520
than linguists. And the other ironic thing is I know–
3162
02:35:11.770 --> 02:35:14.739
this is anecdote. I know more anthropologists who speak the
3163
02:35:14.799 --> 02:35:17.579
language fluently than I know linguists who speak the language fluently,
3164
02:35:17.600 --> 02:35:22.719
which I have to put down to the pernicious influence
3165
02:35:22.780 --> 02:35:25.899
of certain theories and linguistics that makes people think they
3166
02:35:25.940 --> 02:35:28.850
don't have to learn a language to know how it works. Right.
3167
02:35:29.659 --> 02:35:31.639
And I tell people, when you're going off to do fieldwork,
3168
02:35:31.680 --> 02:35:33.399
I did write a field manual. And I say, the
3169
02:35:33.440 --> 02:35:36.120
first six months, just work on learning the language. Don't
3170
02:35:36.680 --> 02:35:39.809
take many notes. Take notes of words and stuff. So
3171
02:35:39.850 --> 02:35:41.309
I had a goal where I wanted to learn 10
3172
02:35:41.309 --> 02:35:44.010
new words a day. And I kept a little spiral
3173
02:35:44.809 --> 02:35:48.270
notebook clip in my belt buckle. And I would walk
3174
02:35:48.309 --> 02:35:50.200
around learning these things. And I would learn new words
3175
02:35:50.239 --> 02:35:53.219
and write those down. And then I would spend the
3176
02:35:53.319 --> 02:35:55.639
evening memorizing those words. And I would try them out
3177
02:35:55.700 --> 02:35:57.399
again the next day. And I'd try to make sentences
3178
02:35:57.420 --> 02:35:59.819
with them. And when people start laughing at you, you
3179
02:35:59.860 --> 02:36:02.120
know that I didn't get that right. And sometimes they
3180
02:36:02.139 --> 02:36:05.360
like to teach you dirty words, right? They think that's hilarious.
3181
02:36:05.420 --> 02:36:10.250
You'll ask– so then I– how do you learn the
3182
02:36:10.290 --> 02:36:13.030
words for genitals, for example? That's kind of an embarrassing
3183
02:36:13.590 --> 02:36:15.809
thing if you stop and think about it. So I
3184
02:36:15.969 --> 02:36:17.510
started to ask the guy. I said, what do you
3185
02:36:17.530 --> 02:36:20.659
call that? I pointed to his dick and he said–
3186
02:36:21.459 --> 02:36:23.319
and he calls– he says, I'm not going to tell you.
3187
02:36:23.340 --> 02:36:25.459
But he calls a little boy over who's naked. And
3188
02:36:25.479 --> 02:36:27.120
he shows me every part of his body. And he said,
3189
02:36:27.139 --> 02:36:28.780
you call this this and this that and this that.
3190
02:36:29.340 --> 02:36:32.510
And then he says, but the names change once they
3191
02:36:32.549 --> 02:36:37.170
start to grow hair. So penis as a boy is
3192
02:36:37.209 --> 02:36:39.889
different from penis as a man and vagina as a
3193
02:36:39.930 --> 02:36:42.549
girl is different from vagina as a woman. And so,
3194
02:36:43.129 --> 02:36:47.219
you know, how do you get those words? You've got
3195
02:36:47.239 --> 02:36:48.579
to count on close friendships.
3196
02:36:51.379 --> 02:36:53.059
Like I said at the beginning of this, man, you've
3197
02:36:53.100 --> 02:36:57.600
had a fascinating life. You really have. It's very, very interesting.
3198
02:36:57.819 --> 02:37:01.079
I really appreciate you sharing everything today. It was really,
3199
02:37:01.360 --> 02:37:01.860
really fun.
3200
02:37:02.479 --> 02:37:03.540
Thank you very much for having me.
3201
02:37:03.540 --> 02:37:08.860
I enjoyed it. Jamie, pull up his book. Well, books,
3202
02:37:09.000 --> 02:37:13.649
I should say. This one, Daniel Everett, Don't Sleep, There
3203
02:37:13.690 --> 02:37:20.309
Are Snakes. The Life and Language in the Amazon Jungle,
3204
02:37:20.450 --> 02:37:21.350
Amazonian Jungle.
3205
02:37:21.840 --> 02:37:23.860
That's what they say to each other each night before
3206
02:37:23.879 --> 02:37:30.850
they go to bed. Don't sleep, there are snakes. Amazing.
3207
02:37:31.329 --> 02:37:32.010
Thank you very much.
3208
02:37:32.090 --> 02:37:32.969
Thank you so much for having me.
3209
02:37:33.049 --> 02:37:34.690
It was awesome. Bye, everybody.