Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Jerome Roland. Boy,
Speaker 1: I'm not in a good way today, Chuck, you off
Speaker 1: your game, as if you can't tell I think you're fine. Well, thanks, man,
Speaker 1: I feel a lot better. Uh yeah, no, I'm okay.
Speaker 1: I can tell you. I'm I'm surrounded by friends, family,
Speaker 1: like your dad's corner. It's I have the idea I
Speaker 1: have TV. Oh. Man. I instagrammed a photo of my
Speaker 1: mom and dad from the seventies. Yeah, and um, I
Speaker 1: captioned it, They're like looking at each other kind of lovingly.
Speaker 1: And I captioned it, um, the moment before I was conceived.
Speaker 1: You know what Jerry showed me that today. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: she did. I look a lot like my parents mixed together. Huh. Well.
Speaker 1: The first thing I noticed was like, Wow, that's that's
Speaker 1: what Josh would have looked like as a grown man
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies. Because that profile of your dad,
Speaker 1: I was, I was, I don't know, I've never seen
Speaker 1: your dad young. So I was like, man, that's really
Speaker 1: that's you. Yeah, yeah, I totally saw it. I saw both. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Because you look at my dad, You're like, oh, that's Josh.
Speaker 1: But then you look at my mom You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's there's Josh too. Very bizarre. Yeah I don't. I
Speaker 1: guess I definitely favored my father. Um. Yeah, so a
Speaker 1: lot of people just favored favorite one or the other.
Speaker 1: But I'm fifty fifty. That's what we call you all fifty. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's a new one. There's a T shirt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um so, oh, I know the point I was making.
Speaker 1: There's this how Stuff Works article that you sent called
Speaker 1: them and in the Whole, and it talks about this
Speaker 1: guy who is the last of his kind. He's as
Speaker 1: as this article put it, like the loneliest person on earth.
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: a lot like being in solitary confinement or something like that,
Speaker 1: but no, this is way beyond that. And this how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works article by j Lynn Shields like really drove
Speaker 1: at home. She wrote, like, what if you were the
Speaker 1: last person who could speak your language, the last person
Speaker 1: who remembered what Halloween was, or a Coca cola, or
Speaker 1: that a dog says Wolf, like, imagine that, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's way different from being in solitary. Solitary confinement would
Speaker 1: be bad enough. You know, you're physically restrained, but at
Speaker 1: least you know out there that there are other people
Speaker 1: who know the same things you know, that speak the
Speaker 1: same language you speak, that your family is still out there,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. This is utterly different. And this man,
Speaker 1: the last Tribesman he's called, or the man in the whole,
Speaker 1: is possibly not just the the last of his kind.
Speaker 1: He might be the only person on the entire planet
Speaker 1: in the situation that he's in. Maybe isn't that bizarre
Speaker 1: to think? Yeah, I mean we did a uh we
Speaker 1: did another show on are Their Undiscovered People quite a
Speaker 1: few years back and a deaf. I don't know how
Speaker 1: he didn't get to this guy, but I saw this
Speaker 1: article and it it was striking, especially if you've seen
Speaker 1: the couple of videos, and I think there are only
Speaker 1: two pieces of video of this dude. One I saw
Speaker 1: where they were sort of shooting, you know, they were
Speaker 1: zoomed in on a hut and that's you know, where
Speaker 1: he lives. There's a series of thatched huts in the
Speaker 1: uh Tanaru Indigenous Reserve in the Rondonia state of Brazil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: about acres big area of the forest in jungle. So
Speaker 1: he lives in these thatched huts that are scattered about
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, and they were able to
Speaker 1: get him on film kind of zoomed in between the
Speaker 1: cracks and you see the guy kind of looking a
Speaker 1: little bit, but you can't make out much. So I
Speaker 1: saw that video and then I saw another one where
Speaker 1: it was a pretty good shot of him from a
Speaker 1: distance making good work trying to chop down a tree.
Speaker 1: That was the most recent video, right, which, uh, well,
Speaker 1: let's just go ahead and get into this. He was
Speaker 1: found or discovered and I think nineteen when some loggers
Speaker 1: uh from the state of Rondonia, which from the impression
Speaker 1: I have, this is a very rough and tumble state
Speaker 1: populated by loggers and cattle ranchers and um there are
Speaker 1: very few laws from what I understand, and things are
Speaker 1: settled by the gun. Is the impression that I have
Speaker 1: of Rondonia. It's right smack dab in the middle of
Speaker 1: South America, and it's extraordinarily densely jungle in the Amazon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that one new York Times article, like the
Speaker 1: guy was talking that they were talking to said, from
Speaker 1: a helicopter, you look down there and you think there's
Speaker 1: just no one down there. It's just all jungle, he said.
Speaker 1: About when you get down there, he said, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people and drug runners and bad men everywhere.
Speaker 1: So this guy is definitely an anomaly because he is
Speaker 1: not hanging out with anybody. No. And the reason why
Speaker 1: they think he's alone, Chuck, is because back when the
Speaker 1: rumors of like a wild man in the jungle started
Speaker 1: to circulate um, they think that he had he had
Speaker 1: just recently survived a slaughter that had killed off the
Speaker 1: rest of his trial, which was only like supposedly five
Speaker 1: or six people at that point, because they think the
Speaker 1: rest had been slaughtered, and that that's a common thing
Speaker 1: we're gonna come up on in a couple of these
Speaker 1: as these ranchers and loggers, they're like, we want to
Speaker 1: go clear this land, and there's a tribe, a native tribe.
Speaker 1: They're an indigenous tribe, so let's just slaughter them, get
Speaker 1: them out of the way. It's really really awful, awful thing,
Speaker 1: and it's been a very common thing apparently since the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties when ranchers and loggers moved into Rondonia.
Speaker 1: Um it just snatching up land. And this is again,
Speaker 1: this is the Amazon. This is basically Christine Forest rainforest
Speaker 1: that people who have never been contacted by any anyone
Speaker 1: from the outside world live still to this day, and
Speaker 1: this guy is one of them. So at first they
Speaker 1: thought maybe he was just a member of a tribe
Speaker 1: um that we already know about. And then over time
Speaker 1: as they started to study this guy, it became quite
Speaker 1: clear that now he's he's a member of a tribe
Speaker 1: that we didn't know about before, and we're pretty sure
Speaker 1: he is the last of his kind. Yeah. So there's
Speaker 1: this organization called uh fun I f u n AI,
Speaker 1: the National Indian Foundation of Brazil, and they have been
Speaker 1: tasked with for the past twenty years monitoring this dude,
Speaker 1: and before his companions were killed, monitoring his companions. And
Speaker 1: you send a nice follow up on FUNAI. They have
Speaker 1: a few departments and one is called the General Coordination
Speaker 1: Unit of Uncontacted Indians the c g i I, and
Speaker 1: that was established in seven and they're the only department
Speaker 1: of government in the world which protects indigenous peoples who
Speaker 1: don't have contact with the outside world or nearby tribes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because before in the like nineteenth century and even through
Speaker 1: a lot of the twentieth century, there was it was
Speaker 1: just basically Christian missionaries who were making their way into
Speaker 1: the Amazon to contact vibes and bring them Jesus basically,
Speaker 1: and also health care and food and all that stuff
Speaker 1: tools the implements of modern culture, but also to proselytize too,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of UM. It just wasn't
Speaker 1: very well thought out. And as a result, even even
Speaker 1: from these these the best of intentions that a lot
Speaker 1: of these missionaries had a lot of tribes died. So
Speaker 1: in Brazil came up with their UM. I think it
Speaker 1: was like the Indian Protection Services was the name of
Speaker 1: the department that they first came up with, and UM
Speaker 1: the Indian Protection Service they took over from the missionaries,
Speaker 1: and it was a step up in that sense because
Speaker 1: it was more coordinated. There was thought to it, There
Speaker 1: was some sort of study, but the point was to
Speaker 1: take um uncontacted Amazonian tribes and bring them into the
Speaker 1: modern world so that they could assimilate with the modern world.
Speaker 1: The point was to basely reduced cultural diversity in Brazil. UM.
Speaker 1: And that kept going until the sixties when there was
Speaker 1: a huge expose a about the Indian Protection Service UM
Speaker 1: that they had just fallen down so terribly in their
Speaker 1: mission that there was basically massive extermination, slavery, rape, everything,
Speaker 1: every horrible thing that you can think of that could
Speaker 1: befall a human being happened to these tribes under the
Speaker 1: watch of the Indian Services Protection over sixty years. Yeah. So, Uh,
Speaker 1: the department in the the gu c g I I
Speaker 1: was founded by a man named Sydneys Passuelo. I guess
Speaker 1: sow you pronounced that. And this was a big sea
Speaker 1: change in policy, which was, like you were saying, the
Speaker 1: previous strategy established contact to try and get them integrated
Speaker 1: at some point, uh, to this new policy, which was
Speaker 1: don't even contact these people and us they are under
Speaker 1: serious threat because history has shown all manner of bad
Speaker 1: things can happen when you contact these people, UM, one
Speaker 1: of which is certainly introducing them to new diseases and
Speaker 1: things that will kill them that they've never never seen
Speaker 1: or experienced. Uh. And and this is you know, there's
Speaker 1: a big debate still on like what the best policies
Speaker 1: are here. Yeah, So these two Um American anthropologists, white
Speaker 1: American anthropologists, men who I guess, wrote an open letter
Speaker 1: in either Science or Nature I think Nature UM basically
Speaker 1: saying Brazil and Peru UM should reverse this this longstanding
Speaker 1: policy of of not contacting Indians UM in the Amazon
Speaker 1: and should actually plan peaceful, well organized contact so that
Speaker 1: that they can be better protected. It's these anthropologist stance
Speaker 1: that if you don't protect them, they're going to dot
Speaker 1: one way or another, that there's no way that they're
Speaker 1: going to remain isolated. On the on the long term,
Speaker 1: maybe you've got another generation possibly of some of these
Speaker 1: tribes that could live like this. But beyond that, it's
Speaker 1: just not gonna happen. There's too many powerful interests banging
Speaker 1: on the doors of their preserved areas who are more
Speaker 1: than willing to hire people who will accept money to
Speaker 1: go kill these people just to get this land. And
Speaker 1: by just leaving them alone, you're leaving them very vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you if you plan out contact, then conceivably
Speaker 1: you can show them that there are things like medical treatment,
Speaker 1: there is the better ways that you can protect them.
Speaker 1: You can kind of give them contact, and that even
Speaker 1: more so interviews with groups that have become have initiated
Speaker 1: contact or have had contact made with them, said, we
Speaker 1: would have made contact with you guys earlier, but we
Speaker 1: thought we were going to be enslaved or murdered or something.
Speaker 1: We had no idea that you wanted to actually help us.
Speaker 1: Had we known that, we would have contacted you guys
Speaker 1: decades ago. So those two things put together, these American
Speaker 1: anthropologists have said we we endorsed this, and FU and
Speaker 1: I and a lot of other groups, including the U
Speaker 1: N and UH human rights group in the UK called
Speaker 1: Survivors International, have said, um no, that is totally disrespectful.
Speaker 1: That flies completely in the face of of agreed upon
Speaker 1: procedure and protocol. Just be quiet, you're being neo colonialists. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting though, because what they're trying to
Speaker 1: do is, like you said, have very highly controlled contact.
Speaker 1: And the assumption that they don't want to be contacted UH,
Speaker 1: at least through their eyes, appears to be false because
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, they're they're afraid of being UH kidnapped
Speaker 1: or something or overtaken. And if had they known, like oh,
Speaker 1: you just want to give us some nice tools and
Speaker 1: maybe inoculate us UH and we we'd actually be down
Speaker 1: with that as long as you leave afterward, right, And
Speaker 1: these two anthropologists said, like, you've got to do this smartly,
Speaker 1: Like you basically have to go in with cultural translators,
Speaker 1: usually um tribes who have made contact with outsiders before,
Speaker 1: already established contact that live in the same area, who
Speaker 1: might be able to to translate between the outsiders and
Speaker 1: the actual uncontacted tribes. And you need healthcare providers who
Speaker 1: are going to stay there for at least a year,
Speaker 1: at least a year of sustained care or else. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're going to die from these diseases you're going to
Speaker 1: bring in inevitable. Yeah, I mean they're they're good. They
Speaker 1: give good examples too in that article about how this
Speaker 1: is backfired with missionaries, like the your people they were
Speaker 1: there for six months and the missionary said, well, let's
Speaker 1: let's go on vacation, and then the Jora died a
Speaker 1: few weeks later. And then in nineteen missionaries provided care
Speaker 1: to a community on ok community. Uh, they took a
Speaker 1: vacation and then they died as well. So they're saying, like,
Speaker 1: you gotta have a plan to go in and stay there.
Speaker 1: You can't just go in bring him some food and
Speaker 1: machetes and spring break and then then get out of there.
Speaker 1: But I get the idea that this is still a
Speaker 1: pretty hot topic of debate. Oh yeah, I know that
Speaker 1: those anthropologists, um, they they set off a huge debate,
Speaker 1: and I think it was sparked by the the video
Speaker 1: that was released by Survivor International of the man in
Speaker 1: the whole um chopping down a tree. And the video
Speaker 1: was taken in two thousand eleven, but they only just
Speaker 1: released it in July of two eighteen. And this is, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is very much still going on, this big debate,
Speaker 1: and it's a huge it's a huge issue, and you
Speaker 1: can you can kind of see both sides. Like I
Speaker 1: had just read about food eyes um counter to it
Speaker 1: that like, look, dudes, this is our thing, we got this.
Speaker 1: You just mind your own business, we have our own policy,
Speaker 1: stay out right, stay out of this. But then if
Speaker 1: you read the anthropologists letters, you're like, actually, they have
Speaker 1: a couple of good points here. So it's it's not
Speaker 1: a clear cut, um uh picture one way or the other.
Speaker 1: It's it's definitely there's a lot of of nuance to
Speaker 1: it on both sides. All right, let's take a risp it.
Speaker 1: Let's take a furlough or vacation and we'll come back
Speaker 1: and talk a little bit more about the Man in
Speaker 1: the Whole. Alright, So the reason they call him the
Speaker 1: man of the Hole or the man in the hole
Speaker 1: is the odd thing of inside these statched huts of
Speaker 1: which he has, uh several around this area. Inside the
Speaker 1: huts are these and all over the place there are
Speaker 1: these holes with like spikes for like trapping animals. But
Speaker 1: he has these six foot deep holes inside of his
Speaker 1: own huts and apparently no no other tribes around him
Speaker 1: have done this, and it's very unusual thing, and that
Speaker 1: the belief is that he is it's for his own protection.
Speaker 1: I guess if he's being fired upon or something by loggers,
Speaker 1: he can jump down on one of these holes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the impression I have too, which is extraordinarily sad.
Speaker 1: It is. So the reason why they think that Um
Speaker 1: that he has these holes is because he's had terrible
Speaker 1: run ins. I guess this This seems to be evidence
Speaker 1: that he is the survivor of a slaughter massacre, because
Speaker 1: this is not a normal technique that they've seen with
Speaker 1: other tribes UM, and they found it at every single
Speaker 1: one of the huts that they've come upon of his. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They do know though from tailing him or monitor tailing him,
Speaker 1: monitoring him for the past couple of decades though, that
Speaker 1: he he hunts with a bow and arrow. He farms, uh,
Speaker 1: probably at night and stays out of the you know,
Speaker 1: as much as he can. Stays inside during the day
Speaker 1: out of fear, which is also awful. But he farms
Speaker 1: like papay in corn and other fruits and vegetables. He
Speaker 1: has all these traps, said everywhere, like I mentioned, um,
Speaker 1: they have found hand carved arrowheads, torches made from branches,
Speaker 1: and resin. And at one point they actually tried to
Speaker 1: make contact, yes, several points. Well, at one point when
Speaker 1: they when they tried to make contact though, he he
Speaker 1: fired upon them with his bow and arrow and actually
Speaker 1: hit someone in the chest, one of the agents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were like, all right, we're out of here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At that point they stopped trying to initiate contact with
Speaker 1: this guy. And again this is like peaceful contact they're
Speaker 1: trying to initiate, not like hey man, get off of
Speaker 1: this land there, like saying do you need anything, do
Speaker 1: you want some food? What do you what? Do you want?
Speaker 1: And the first few attempts to contact him resulted in
Speaker 1: him just basically slipping into the shadows in the jungle
Speaker 1: and just disappearing. Um. Then it progressed into standoffs. Then
Speaker 1: it progressed into a shooting, and so they stepped back.
Speaker 1: Survivor International and food I and some other groups step
Speaker 1: back and said, this guy is escalating in hostilities. He's
Speaker 1: showing us he doesn't want anything to do with us,
Speaker 1: Like you. It would be something if like he'd shot
Speaker 1: the first time and then slipped away the second time,
Speaker 1: and and the hostilities were decreasing, but instead it's going
Speaker 1: the opposite way. The hostilities were increasing. So he's getting
Speaker 1: that he has the opportunity to contact the people who
Speaker 1: are coming with their hands up and like not trying
Speaker 1: to kill him. And he's still saying back off. So
Speaker 1: finally the government said we're just going to back off,
Speaker 1: and they backed off. The fun I established his policy
Speaker 1: of not contacting this guy, not even attempting to contact
Speaker 1: this guy, but instead monitoring him, making sure that his
Speaker 1: preserve is um protected, and then leaving him things like
Speaker 1: the acts that he was seen using in that two
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven video. Or seeds for some of the
Speaker 1: um the plants that he grows, which a lot of
Speaker 1: times he doesn't even accept or take these gifts. Imagine
Speaker 1: he's not real trusting. Uh And like you said, as
Speaker 1: far as protecting the area, in two thousand seven, uh
Speaker 1: Funai and the government UM eventually increase the area to
Speaker 1: thirty one square miles around where he was is off
Speaker 1: limits to any trespassing or development, later expanded to three
Speaker 1: thousand hectares. So I think they added another three thousand
Speaker 1: hecks okay to the already square mileage. And this is
Speaker 1: really ticked off the ranchers and the loggers because they're like,
Speaker 1: our business is being held back back by this one guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they want to kill him, to kill him. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, in in when the government announced
Speaker 1: that it was not only keeping up the practice of
Speaker 1: preserving this guy's land thirty one square miles, but adding
Speaker 1: an extra three thousand hectares, which brought the total to
Speaker 1: forty two and a half square miles or a hundred
Speaker 1: and ten square kilometers that this man has to himself
Speaker 1: the five ranches that surround this preserve, UM hired somebody
Speaker 1: to go try to kill him. Fu and I went
Speaker 1: and checked on him after a couple of weeks after
Speaker 1: that announcement was made public, and they found that their
Speaker 1: outpost was ransacked and that um, they had found the
Speaker 1: shotgun shells, spent shotgun shells in the fourth floor. So
Speaker 1: there's clearly an attempt to mate on the made on
Speaker 1: the guy's life, And for a couple of years they
Speaker 1: had no idea if he'd survived until that video was
Speaker 1: made in two thousand eleven that showed this guy who
Speaker 1: was now fifty. They've been tracking him since he was
Speaker 1: in his now, um chopping down a tree, Yeah, chopping
Speaker 1: down a tree like it's nothing. So they knew that
Speaker 1: he was alive and in good health as of two
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven, and they're assuming that he's still alive. Man,
Speaker 1: how good would a movie be about this guy? I
Speaker 1: just have a lot of it play out in silence,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, that would be amazing, It would be cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's crazy to see a video of
Speaker 1: this guy from seven years ago, Like in the world
Speaker 1: we live in, to think about there's still places on
Speaker 1: earth where this guy. It's almost like the Japanese straggler
Speaker 1: who had no idea that the war had been over
Speaker 1: for whatever thirty years living in the jungle. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: just amazing to think about the fact that this is
Speaker 1: the loan, the lone guy out there by himself, and
Speaker 1: what his life must be like. But not not only that,
Speaker 1: It's like like when I when when we did the
Speaker 1: paramedics episode, I think I said something like, there's there's
Speaker 1: no greater symbol of humanity than paramedics, you know. I
Speaker 1: think this is another really great symbol of this guy
Speaker 1: that well, well, no the FUNI Brazilian government's response to
Speaker 1: this that this man has been has been part of
Speaker 1: a tribe, it's the last of his tribe, and the
Speaker 1: Brazilian government has said, this man deserves to live his
Speaker 1: life out in peace in the way that he wants to,
Speaker 1: in his traditional way, to be left alone. And we're
Speaker 1: going to designate a d ten square kilometers that belong
Speaker 1: to no one but this man, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: all around him is it's the outside world trying to
Speaker 1: press in. We're gonna stand in the way of that
Speaker 1: so that this guy can live out his natural life.
Speaker 1: That just gets me, you know, right in the bread basket. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the Disney version of this movie is they
Speaker 1: would find a alone tribeswoman somewhere, drop her off and
Speaker 1: have them have them meat cute by the papaya tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the the ranchers want to tickle him. But if
Speaker 1: it were live action these days, it would be um.
Speaker 1: They would hire either John Wayne or Fisher Stevens to
Speaker 1: play the last. Fisher Stevens here, I remember he played
Speaker 1: the Indian programmer in Short Circuit. That's right, Yeah, geez, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was as recently as the eighties. Right, It's not
Speaker 1: like Mickey Rooney playing an Asian man in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: Not like that was any better. No, Bay Hollywood and
Speaker 1: getting it wrong for so long, they have at least
Speaker 1: Mongol got it right though, right, Uh maybe, yeah, we
Speaker 1: haven't seen any Should we take another break? Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: We'll take another break and talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about some of these um isolated tribes right after this. Okay, Chuck,
Speaker 1: So the last tribesman, the the um, the man in
Speaker 1: the whole. He's being left alone. And that's policy in
Speaker 1: Brazil and Peru from what I understand now, Um, there
Speaker 1: are some tribes that have actually um accepted contact and
Speaker 1: it made peaceful contact and it become um, I guess
Speaker 1: a little more integrated. I think there's three degrees that
Speaker 1: fun I separates tribes into indigenous tribes into there's totally uncontacted,
Speaker 1: which is like they are living off on their own.
Speaker 1: They outside world has nothing to do with them. There's
Speaker 1: um partially contacted or partially assimilated, right like they they're
Speaker 1: they're living in their hut in the jungle, but they
Speaker 1: still have an iPhone, right um. And then there's fully assimilated,
Speaker 1: where they like live in a city now or something
Speaker 1: like that, or they have like a job in the
Speaker 1: city or something like that. Um. So it's not just
Speaker 1: in the Amazon. It's not just in Brazil where there
Speaker 1: are uncontacted tribes, although that is definitely the place where
Speaker 1: you're going to find the most. I think I saw
Speaker 1: somewhere between fifty eighty and a hundred and twenty uncontacted
Speaker 1: groups of indigenous people are presumed to be living in
Speaker 1: the Amazon still today. Yeah, I mean just those that
Speaker 1: random swath of numbers shows you that they there's still
Speaker 1: so much they don't know for sure, but there's there
Speaker 1: are other parts of the world where there are uncontacted
Speaker 1: tribes um, and you found an article that ran down
Speaker 1: a few of them. One that surprised me was just
Speaker 1: um off the coast of India on Sentinel Island in India,
Speaker 1: North Sentinel cracked our iCal which may have been done
Speaker 1: under the watch of our now colleague, Mr Jack O'Brien.
Speaker 1: Nice shout out to Jack and as Daily Zeitgey Zitgey's podcast, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I was on. Have you been on John On?
Speaker 1: You gotta be on. It's great, great fun. It's a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, I'm gonna lap you. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: on again. Well please do all right? Yeah, But the
Speaker 1: Sintinnales on North Sentinel Island, Indian they don't even know
Speaker 1: if that's their real name. They just call them that
Speaker 1: because I guess we have called it North Sentinel Island,
Speaker 1: not you and me, but other people who named it,
Speaker 1: I think the British, but apparently yeah, probably, Uh. We
Speaker 1: don't know a lot about them. But in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six a couple of fishermen drifted there in their
Speaker 1: boat ah near the island and were killed and buried
Speaker 1: in shallow graves, and helicopters came and they were like,
Speaker 1: we gotta find this burial site and get these guys
Speaker 1: back at least, and they started firing arrows at the
Speaker 1: helicopter and it was just out of there, and the
Speaker 1: local cops were like, now, we're just gonna leave those
Speaker 1: guys there. We're not We're not going near it. They
Speaker 1: have actually for this is a This has been going
Speaker 1: on for a very long time. Apparently Marco polo Um
Speaker 1: remarked on them, wrote about them that he was traveling
Speaker 1: and I think the twelve century. So they've been fierce
Speaker 1: for years now and apparently survived the two thousand four
Speaker 1: tsunami in Indonesia's tsunami. That's crazy because this is an
Speaker 1: island that the tsunami just swamped and they managed to
Speaker 1: hang on just fine. I think ancient people have survived
Speaker 1: more than one tsunami, you know. I guess you're right.
Speaker 1: That was a pretty bad one though, Yeah, pretty amazing. Uh.
Speaker 1: This other one, the coral Y tribe of Papua, Indonesia.
Speaker 1: They were contacted in the seventies by of course missionaries
Speaker 1: an archaeologist and they were using stone tools and living
Speaker 1: in ree huts and stuff like that, and they're a
Speaker 1: big belief as a tribe was that the world would
Speaker 1: be destroyed by an earthquake if they assimilated and change
Speaker 1: their customs. So missionary said, all right, you know what,
Speaker 1: We're just gonna leave you alone. What I think these
Speaker 1: people might have invented, um bungee jumping. Do you remember
Speaker 1: land diving episode? They sound really familiar. I think it
Speaker 1: might be maybe so, But they are in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere, so it's a it's a long way from
Speaker 1: even like other remote villages, which is a I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a mark in your favor for now.
Speaker 1: But as the Amazon Basin has been showing us since
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties, so much of it has disappeared
Speaker 1: due to clear cutting, for ranching, logging. Um that that
Speaker 1: how you just have no idea how much longer that's
Speaker 1: going to hold up, no matter where you are in
Speaker 1: the world. I mean, we're at seven and a half
Speaker 1: billion people now, and then I think the next thirty
Speaker 1: years we're expected to hit ten billion. That's a lot
Speaker 1: more people that not only need more land, but also
Speaker 1: are going to be using up those resources that that
Speaker 1: that are currently on that land right now, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, like if they discover oil where the Cora
Speaker 1: white tribe lives in Indonesia. There goes that isolation, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a that's a real danger for
Speaker 1: all tribes. I think that's probably what those two anthropologists
Speaker 1: were talking about. Um, they're saying, like, long term, we
Speaker 1: need a plan here everybody. We can't just be like, well,
Speaker 1: we just won't contact them because it's just not viable,
Speaker 1: I think was their point. What about that? This one
Speaker 1: really was interesting to me. The Old Believers. Have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of them? Yeah, there's like some g Q
Speaker 1: article in the last couple of years about that. I
Speaker 1: think so in bur lap apparently, Yeah, these are Soviet Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: here's the deal in ight, there were these geologists in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union that we're looking for iron ore. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were in a helicopter and they saw a cabin
Speaker 1: way out in the remote areas of Siberia, and they
Speaker 1: found a family there that actually spoke a language I guess,
Speaker 1: I mean, what would that be old timey Russian? Old
Speaker 1: timey Russian? Uh huh uh. And they were were huddled
Speaker 1: in fear and they were yelling, this is for our sins.
Speaker 1: They were dressed in burlap and living off the land
Speaker 1: and Apparently they were a group of people called the
Speaker 1: Old Believers, which left the Russian Church, the main Russian
Speaker 1: Church in the seventeenth century and had been I guess
Speaker 1: looked at you know, they kind of went everywhere. It
Speaker 1: was sort of a diaspora for the Old Believers. Some
Speaker 1: of them just went to other countries and seeking asylum
Speaker 1: or whatever. And apparently some of them just looked aside
Speaker 1: area and we're like, no one's there, so we'll go there. Nice.
Speaker 1: It sounds creepy though, the Old Believers. Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a terrible name for him. You know. It seems like
Speaker 1: they could scan you or something to make your head explode.
Speaker 1: Are they worship Cthulhu or something? So Um, I almost
Speaker 1: feel like if we should look into them a little more,
Speaker 1: because I think they could probably hold up their own up.
Speaker 1: I think you might be right. I also remember hearing
Speaker 1: about families that lived in the Ozark Mountains in um
Speaker 1: the midwest of the United States. Um, I think around
Speaker 1: Arkansas that had been out of contact. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know the Civil War it happened. They were just that isolated.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you tend to think of it as just
Speaker 1: strictly indigenous peoples and that it's just in the Amazon,
Speaker 1: but like there's there's groups all over the world's fewer
Speaker 1: and further between outside of the Amazon because there's less
Speaker 1: unpopulated areas, but it happens. And one of the sad
Speaker 1: things about all of this is, Uh, for one of
Speaker 1: these other tribes that you know, you can go read
Speaker 1: this cracked article. What's it called? I didn't see the
Speaker 1: title actually is just suddenly there were oh five isolated
Speaker 1: groups who had no idea that civilization existed. Correct correct
Speaker 1: lists were always so great, are always so great. They've
Speaker 1: come in handy from time to time. But one of
Speaker 1: the sad things I point out for one of these
Speaker 1: other tribes is that in Peru and imagine in some
Speaker 1: other South American countries, there are these awful things called
Speaker 1: human safari's where and they will take tourists around to
Speaker 1: like look at uncontacted tribes from Afar and close up.
Speaker 1: They're like, here, drained some of this io husk it
Speaker 1: through your nose, and we're going to go check out
Speaker 1: some some tribes hanging out on a river bank somewhere. Man,
Speaker 1: So weird. Uh, Why I want to add one more thing.
Speaker 1: I came across an article that wasn't really apropos of
Speaker 1: what we were talking about, called the Right to Kill
Speaker 1: on Foreign Policy Magazine, and it's about like this other
Speaker 1: tan gentile issue that governments like Brazil have to deal with,
Speaker 1: which is like, some of these isolated groups practice things
Speaker 1: that the outside world finds abhorrent or is illegal in
Speaker 1: the outside world. Um, specifically, in this article, infant aside.
Speaker 1: If you're born with the disability and I think about
Speaker 1: twenty of of Brazil's isolated tribes, there's a chance that
Speaker 1: the community will decide that you need to die again.
Speaker 1: It's the practice of infantaside. And Brazil is like, we
Speaker 1: are not quite sure what to do about this, because
Speaker 1: our constitution guarantees everyone in Brazil the right to live,
Speaker 1: but it also guarantees the indigenous groups the right to
Speaker 1: live according to their customs. So they have no idea
Speaker 1: what to do. And it's a big thing about, you know,
Speaker 1: moral relativism or moral absolutism and which one is correct. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's really interesting that they're having to think about
Speaker 1: this right now. It's a really interesting article that's worth reading. Okay,
Speaker 1: I will check it out. Are you talking to me? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm talking to everybody, but specifically. Yeah. Um, well, if
Speaker 1: you want to know more about isolated tribes, you can
Speaker 1: look those words up anywhere on the internet and they're
Speaker 1: going to deliver you some amazing stuff. And since I
Speaker 1: said that, it's time for listener mail. Since you said
Speaker 1: amazing stuff, mhm uh, well look at here, dude, I
Speaker 1: have a handwritten letter on construction paper. Beautiful. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love it. Hey, guys, I hope this finds you. Well.
Speaker 1: My name is Claire and I'm twenty one. In fact,
Speaker 1: for my twenty first birthday, I came and saw you
Speaker 1: guys live in Cleveland. Awesome. That was a great it was.
Speaker 1: I got to here in college and I'm studying mathematics
Speaker 1: with a license and education, so I'll be teaching high
Speaker 1: school math. It's been a fan since two thousand fifteen.
Speaker 1: Thank you for the many nights uh you have calmed
Speaker 1: me and all the information I've learned. And I've been
Speaker 1: wanting to for a while just to say thanks uh
Speaker 1: and sent appreciation, but also a request and a little something.
Speaker 1: Whenever you talk about math in any regard, please be
Speaker 1: more positive, Please stop getting it wrong, Please be more
Speaker 1: positive and encouraging. Uh. We're well known for poopooing math
Speaker 1: and saying I hated math. Well, it's so intimidating, it's
Speaker 1: just so stupid, it is, But she says this math
Speaker 1: is hard and already has a stigma for people who
Speaker 1: hate it or to hate it. But as a future educator,
Speaker 1: since you two are sort of educators, require that reach
Speaker 1: a huge audience, your outlook and attitude about math is important.
Speaker 1: It's okay did not like math and think that it's hard,
Speaker 1: but know that you and anyone can do math. I
Speaker 1: know it's a silly thing to ask and point out,
Speaker 1: but I think you could both as a have a
Speaker 1: positive impact on the math stigma. I wish you and
Speaker 1: your wives and Chuck your daughter all the best. Thank
Speaker 1: you for all of your hard work, and thank Jerry too.
Speaker 1: Jerry has to put up with you two all the time,
Speaker 1: so she's definitely been working hard. And she writes sarcasm,
Speaker 1: smiley face the fabulous day, and that is from Claire
Speaker 1: and Claire, You're right, we just joke around, but we
Speaker 1: we should take more care with our words about the maths.
Speaker 1: You know what, Frankly, Chuck, I think Ms Claire makes
Speaker 1: a great point that we should just basically take all
Speaker 1: the jokes out of our podcast entirely, just so no
Speaker 1: one get takes it the wrong way. Just make it
Speaker 1: nice and neutral. She is right, though, she is right,
Speaker 1: we should take it easy on math, she very nicely said,
Speaker 1: back off math. Yeah, like did she draw a little
Speaker 1: Yosemite sam at the bottom there? Yeah? Look at that
Speaker 1: and nice. Well, if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with this, like Claire did, you can go to your
Speaker 1: local post office. We love that place. And you can
Speaker 1: also instead go to the internet go to stuff you
Speaker 1: Shao dot com. Find all of our social media links there,
Speaker 1: or you can send us a new fangled electronic mail
Speaker 1: by addressing it to Stuff podcast and how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff works dot com