Speaker 1: Hey, guys, today is going to be a special episode.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the Amazon Rainforest and the incredible biodiversity
Speaker 1: and the indigenous people living in it who are trying
Speaker 1: to protect their home right now that Amazon is burning.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about why this is happening, what's
Speaker 1: at stake, and what you can do to help. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: We're also going to have lots of fun talking about
Speaker 1: the amazing, incredible and crazy animals living in the Amazon.
Speaker 1: But I also know that you guys are some amazingly
Speaker 1: empathetic people, and I know you might be heartbroken over
Speaker 1: the recent developments in the Amazon as am I. And
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard about this issue yet, that's okay,
Speaker 1: since we'll explain what's going on, So please enjoy the show. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to Creature Feature, the show where we dive into
Speaker 1: the world of animals the world of people and realize, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, it's the same world. Wow. Deep. Today
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Amazon Rainforest, which, well, it's on fire.
Speaker 1: Is it time to panic? Yes? That really now is
Speaker 1: the time. But let's engage in some constructive panic. Today.
Speaker 1: We're going to get educated and motivated and inspiraated, inspiated. Yeah, sure, inspiraated.
Speaker 1: So the Amazon rainforest, why should we care? I know
Speaker 1: that's a dumb sounding question, but I think it's always
Speaker 1: important to not take our world for granted. What is
Speaker 1: it about the Amazon that's so special, both in terms
Speaker 1: of its importance to animals and its importance to humans.
Speaker 1: So South America's Amazon rainforest is over two million square
Speaker 1: miles of rainforest. It's the largest rainforest on Earth. And
Speaker 1: that sounds like a hell of a lot of trees,
Speaker 1: but it's not really that much when you consider its function.
Speaker 1: The Amazon rainforest is called the lungs of the Earth,
Speaker 1: as it provides over twenty of the entire oxygen supply
Speaker 1: on the planet. This is not only important for breathing, obviously,
Speaker 1: but it's also an important part of the carbon cycle
Speaker 1: and absorbing dangerous greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Right now,
Speaker 1: living Amazonian trees absorb hundreds of millions more CEO two
Speaker 1: than their dead trees release, but that could change at
Speaker 1: the burning and destruction of the trees continues. Alive, the
Speaker 1: Amazon is our lungs, keeping the world healthy. Dead, it
Speaker 1: would become a decaying math that would accelerate global warming,
Speaker 1: possibly beyond repair. Between the nineteen sixties and seventeen percent
Speaker 1: of the Amazon has been destroyed, and right now the
Speaker 1: fires and destruction is occurring at unparalleled rates. And that's
Speaker 1: frightening because if the rainforest reaches about deforestation, it could
Speaker 1: reach the point of no return where the hydrological that is,
Speaker 1: water cycle system would no longer be able to support
Speaker 1: the rainforest ecosystem. It's kind of like if someone cut
Speaker 1: off of your body, in most cases, you wouldn't really
Speaker 1: survive that. Aside from the global impact, the Amazon is
Speaker 1: home to millions of people and animal residents. The rainforest
Speaker 1: is the ancestral home of over one million indigenous peoples
Speaker 1: of various tribes, and they are trying to fight the
Speaker 1: destruction of the rainforest and their home, which we'll discuss
Speaker 1: in more detail later in the show. It's also very
Speaker 1: literally the home to the most bio diversity on the planet.
Speaker 1: Ten percent of the planet's total species live in the rainforest.
Speaker 1: There are sixteen thousand species of trees, two and a
Speaker 1: half million species of insects, two thousand species of birds
Speaker 1: and mammals, and thousands of species of fish, amphibians, and reptiles. Well,
Speaker 1: we've got about an hour and a half. As long
Speaker 1: as we talk fast, we can probably get to all
Speaker 1: of them. Joining me today is Miles Great, co host
Speaker 1: of The Daily Zeitgeist. I'm sorry, I was drinking cold brew.
Speaker 1: I just come in very late. That's fine. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a lot to take in. There's a lot going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then this is uh, this is the intersection of so
Speaker 1: many different things, this fire and the situation in the Amazon. So,
Speaker 1: you know, but I'm I'm I'm actually wanting to know
Speaker 1: more about the rainforest because all I know is, you know,
Speaker 1: in the eighties when people rainforest, man, I think that's
Speaker 1: when I can save on, say the rainforest. But why
Speaker 1: why say, Well, I mean it's pretty obvious. Uh, in
Speaker 1: some ways, it's like we need them to live. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the planet won't turn into a charred husk of
Speaker 1: inhospitable land mask. But there are parts of the Amazon
Speaker 1: that're becoming a charred husk of And like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: it's I think people when they think about like how
Speaker 1: big the Amazon rainforest is, it's like, oh, well, like
Speaker 1: even if there's like seven right now, we're at about
Speaker 1: seventeen deforestations like, well, that doesn't seem like that much.
Speaker 1: But it's a living organism like an ecosystem is. You
Speaker 1: can think of it like a living creature because it
Speaker 1: it all interacts. Like I talked about, the water cycle
Speaker 1: is important to keep it functioning, and if you kill
Speaker 1: off a bunch of the forests that that evaporation water
Speaker 1: cycle breaks down. Um. So it is like taking a
Speaker 1: human being, like, well, if I just take away seventeen
Speaker 1: of the human that's shouldn't make much of a difference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I try doing that with you know, like, okay, then fine,
Speaker 1: let's take from your forearm down and one of your kidneys,
Speaker 1: right yeah, or like seventeen percent of your blood. You
Speaker 1: know it's fine, probably right, Well, let's see your blood.
Speaker 1: If your blood alcohol was pointing on seven, yeah, you'd
Speaker 1: be pretty fucked up. Actually if you let's replace some
Speaker 1: of your blood with alcohol and then see how you want.
Speaker 1: Let's get the rainforest drunk or just wet the fire start.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know how to say that. I do
Speaker 1: that thing where I think people hate hearing the word moist,
Speaker 1: and I don't. It's weird. I almost ford tell people
Speaker 1: being like, oh god, I don't. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: is wrong with thing. Get the rainforest moist, ye, get
Speaker 1: it wete wet moist. And if look, if the word
Speaker 1: itself is un it's a word. Look if you can't handle,
Speaker 1: if you're not mature enough to handle, that's talking about
Speaker 1: getting the rainforest wet again. I mean, but maybe that's
Speaker 1: like my privilege of not having that thing where like
Speaker 1: a word like actually gives you some kind of thing
Speaker 1: that's true, like like the synesthesia of moist, causing some
Speaker 1: people to just cringe. Um. Well, so I want to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the incredible animals as promised, and
Speaker 1: these are these are amazing. Some of them are only
Speaker 1: found in the Amazon rainforest and there some of the
Speaker 1: most I think because rainforests are there, that that ecological
Speaker 1: niche is home to so many different animals, birds of reptiles, amphibians, mammals, insects, plants, trees,
Speaker 1: You get huge amounts of diversity. And like I said before,
Speaker 1: the Amazon is the most bio diverse ecosystem on the planet.
Speaker 1: So imagine, if you will, if you had superpowers and
Speaker 1: you're the invisible man, but you could just turn your
Speaker 1: skin invisible. Love it. I think there was actually did
Speaker 1: you ever watch the clothes become invisible to or just
Speaker 1: my sister skin? So I would have to be nude
Speaker 1: and your skin well right, but you just your skin,
Speaker 1: so all your organs and your bones and your various
Speaker 1: uh those would be visible. Yea yeah, Oh so you're okay.
Speaker 1: You're asking if I would become a c through human, right,
Speaker 1: would you? Would you take on that superpower? Would you?
Speaker 1: Or just have no superpowers to just look like literally
Speaker 1: just straight through my skin and into the body. No,
Speaker 1: because I already go on web m D and invince
Speaker 1: myself I have some kind of cancer. But think of
Speaker 1: how like it would be so much easier for doctors
Speaker 1: to diagnose you with stuff like if your skin with
Speaker 1: c through, they could just see right into your organs
Speaker 1: and like like shift aside some muscles. Okay, then I
Speaker 1: guess maybe for the savings on like specialist doctors visits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go for it. I think did you ever see
Speaker 1: Venture Brothers that that TV show, like sporadic episode. It
Speaker 1: was like an adults from cartoon and they did it
Speaker 1: was like a parody of the superhero genre and they
Speaker 1: had the Fantastic Four, but the invisible woman could only
Speaker 1: turn her skin invisible, just like plasticized body. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: looked like she was like all her muscle tissue and
Speaker 1: organs and stuff. I remember on Nickelodeon there was inside
Speaker 1: Out Boy, and that was a boy who literally just
Speaker 1: turned That was creepy, That was freaky and it was
Speaker 1: like it was claymation too right or yeah, or maybe
Speaker 1: that was no no yet Nickelodeon. Yeah, and he just
Speaker 1: looked odd. It didn't make sense because his bones were
Speaker 1: on top. Like it was claimation. You couldn't to you know, accurate. Also,
Speaker 1: imagine how weird pregnancies would be. Just like I feel
Speaker 1: like a baby slashing around in there. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I guess that would be fun for some people for
Speaker 1: a split second, but I think I would be very
Speaker 1: you know what. Also be if if my partner had
Speaker 1: sea through skin, I feel like touching them, I would
Speaker 1: be like, oh is that going to sting? Looks like
Speaker 1: I'm just touching directly onto their bare muscles. Excuse me?
Speaker 1: Had my stomach charmed as I said that. I wonder
Speaker 1: if like we'd be more empathetic as a species of
Speaker 1: you could see through because it's like, man, you can
Speaker 1: just see how fragile the internal organs are and like
Speaker 1: punching someone. You could see that and you would truly
Speaker 1: see no race. That good point. Good point, you would.
Speaker 1: But people get racist and be like, I know your
Speaker 1: spleen of bluish purple Japanese. By the way, your quad looked?
Speaker 1: What boy? That? Yeah, well, we always find a way
Speaker 1: to suck. We will find aginately, though, frogs don't suck.
Speaker 1: This is a segway. So I want to talk about
Speaker 1: glass frogs because they are actually see through and they
Speaker 1: they're expensive to the glass frog. Theyre's called glass frog.
Speaker 1: That's a real thing. Yes, it's a real thing. Oh
Speaker 1: I thought suddenly this was turning into like a crafts show.
Speaker 1: I feel like antique glass from like a balling that's
Speaker 1: like frog shaped. Thank you prefer speaking of my language
Speaker 1: translating it to oh you mean a frog? Okay. So
Speaker 1: their family of amphibians, as you may know, who live
Speaker 1: in the Amazon. Uh, they're light green on the surface,
Speaker 1: but their bellies are transparent, and there a lot of
Speaker 1: their skin is actually transparent, um like on their toes
Speaker 1: in certain areas. I'm just gonna just gonna show you
Speaker 1: this picture. Oh no, see and again I would look
Speaker 1: at that and this is what you're saying. I would
Speaker 1: be like, I'll break this because everything is what is
Speaker 1: transparent skin exactly. There's just no pigment. It's thin and
Speaker 1: there's no pigment exactly. Okay, I'm a scientists. You are there,
Speaker 1: you go your and like, see that's a pregnant one
Speaker 1: with all and you can see it's organs just all
Speaker 1: smashed in. There's that big red vein probably an artery. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not a doctrine. Probably yeah, what that uh, these
Speaker 1: are probably bones and then that's probably a big to
Speaker 1: read that's going up from the groin um. And then
Speaker 1: that's that looks this looks like it's is that like
Speaker 1: an evolutionary like did that evolve to survive or that's
Speaker 1: just one of those things. It actually does have an
Speaker 1: evolutionary purpose. So it's thought that the transparency, so when
Speaker 1: potential predators are looking like through a leaf, the light
Speaker 1: will actually pass through the leaf and their skin in
Speaker 1: such a way that they can't see their outline as clearly,
Speaker 1: so that they through the leaf, they just kind of
Speaker 1: look like a weird cluster of lumpy organs. Right, So
Speaker 1: so predators who are keyed into frog shape will look
Speaker 1: and it's like it just looks like a bunch of
Speaker 1: goo and then they don't see the actual frog evolutionists.
Speaker 1: I feel like we talked about this every time I'm
Speaker 1: on here for the last time I was on here,
Speaker 1: where I'm just being like, okay, cool, I like how
Speaker 1: there was that one that had to see through skin
Speaker 1: and then like you know what, that's that's the one
Speaker 1: we're gonna go with. Yeah, let's just let's bread this
Speaker 1: into Yeah. I mean it's pretty incredible because has something
Speaker 1: like just the simple function of do you stay alive? Okay,
Speaker 1: just create such insanity, like like you stayed alive and
Speaker 1: your skin is see through and we can see like
Speaker 1: your veins. You you win though, because you live? Like
Speaker 1: why does get all the sorry man? Because these passing
Speaker 1: is genetic material they're all their genetic materials to the
Speaker 1: next generation. These are also called the kermit frogs because
Speaker 1: their eyes are forward facing and so what do you mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: tree frogs, their eyes are on the side to side. Um,
Speaker 1: So is that a trait because you need to have
Speaker 1: your wits about you. Yeah, so it helps them keep
Speaker 1: a eye out for um, predators. Here's an image of
Speaker 1: one of the ones that it really does look yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's got these it's got these bright white eyes
Speaker 1: and then the black pupils, which and then with the
Speaker 1: green skin it looks like Kermit because frogs their eyes
Speaker 1: aren't normally front facing like them, and immediately it warmed
Speaker 1: my heart. They are adorable. From underneath, they look like
Speaker 1: some kind of lynch in special effects or like Cronenberg
Speaker 1: thing from a movie. But then from the front they
Speaker 1: are so cute. They are adorable. Um. And so the reason,
Speaker 1: i mean one of the reasons that this could be
Speaker 1: so like with tree frogs, that those side to side
Speaker 1: eyes give them a panoramic view of potential predators. These
Speaker 1: front facing eyes helped the glass frogs zero in on
Speaker 1: prey right in front of them. They open their mouth,
Speaker 1: I mean, like the Kurmit frog puppet, just like keep
Speaker 1: it open and then just like go forward like a
Speaker 1: pac man. Yeah, exactly. The something No, No, they just
Speaker 1: they're just they're just eating with their mouths. I mean,
Speaker 1: they have a tongue, um, but not like you know,
Speaker 1: get ghost or whatever, right, I mean, most frog tongues
Speaker 1: aren't actually that long. They don't like those fucking adwis.
Speaker 1: I know, I know it's but I mean, like chameleon tongues,
Speaker 1: they've got some length, they've got a yawn those times.
Speaker 1: I like those videos where like like reptile ologists what
Speaker 1: are they called herpetologists? Great, yep, like use them as
Speaker 1: just like fly traps, because I've I've seen just all
Speaker 1: kinds of videos where they're just holding it up, like
Speaker 1: where there's a flannel window and just the precision. It's
Speaker 1: that's when I know, that's when I almost believe in God. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that if God is a chameleon, though,
Speaker 1: that would be the speaking of cool eyes that like
Speaker 1: their their eyes like go off in different directions and
Speaker 1: they have an incredible yeah, an incredible visual processing center
Speaker 1: in their brains. Um. And then with frog guys, when
Speaker 1: frogs swallow, their eyes actually um kind of dipped down
Speaker 1: into their heads and help push the food down their throats. Okay, um,
Speaker 1: so that's a cool party trick for the frogs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wish. I I don't know, maybe maybe that would
Speaker 1: be a good good skill to have. Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: not chew my food well, so that would probably help.
Speaker 1: You could like take a frog and just like shove
Speaker 1: the frog down your throat and maybe and just pray
Speaker 1: that it becomes part of me. Right, Like a little
Speaker 1: lady who swallowed the frog to push the food down
Speaker 1: with the eyeballs. That's how that song goes, like swallowed
Speaker 1: the frog to eat the dog and she died and
Speaker 1: then she died. So from a different from unrelated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Actually the foods you ate there, they are food born illnesses,
Speaker 1: very unrelated, not because of shoving up the entire frog. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so glass frogs and the amazon. Also another reason
Speaker 1: to love them is they lay their eggs on the
Speaker 1: underside of leaves above water, so that when their tadpoles hatched,
Speaker 1: they just paratrooped down into the water because they're they're amphibious,
Speaker 1: so that means they partially live in the water. And
Speaker 1: then they have that terrestrial form so um. And then
Speaker 1: males from the fleishman glass frogs species. Uh, they actually
Speaker 1: babysit their eggs until they hatch. So they'll chill out
Speaker 1: with the little babies on a leaf until they hatch
Speaker 1: and drop down into the water. And they started popping
Speaker 1: in there like all right, good out when you have
Speaker 1: legs and feet, it's like it's like, like, where where's
Speaker 1: our dad? Like it's like I'm right here, I'm just invisible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just just do you look at you? You're you don't
Speaker 1: even we don't even look alike. We don't look like anything.
Speaker 1: We just look like organs exactly. Uh So I want
Speaker 1: you to look at an image and tell me what
Speaker 1: you think this animal is. That's an animal? Is a spider?
Speaker 1: I love spiders. Yeah, but to me it looked like
Speaker 1: like a satellite image of maybe a mountain town at night.
Speaker 1: But it looks but it looks like like the spiders.
Speaker 1: Is that that's the thing, right, Yeah, there's something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it was just all this the streaks coming
Speaker 1: off of it that I thought were roads. It does
Speaker 1: look like one of those maps where like you light
Speaker 1: up a city at night. Yeah, but a very poorly
Speaker 1: planned city like eight streets that just kind of converging
Speaker 1: on spider Lake streets. Well what if I told you
Speaker 1: this isn't a spider and it's not a city. It
Speaker 1: is actually a sculpture made by a spider. Um, fuck
Speaker 1: you what, It's a skull. It's just like a decoy
Speaker 1: spider they built. It's actually from a decoy building spider,
Speaker 1: which is a spider of the Amazon that builds a
Speaker 1: decoy of a larger spider. Oh so that's even the
Speaker 1: artist behind that work as much as much smallers. So
Speaker 1: this is about Um, I'm gonna zoom in on this
Speaker 1: so you can see it more clearly. This is really
Speaker 1: about authorship. And yeah, so you can see uh uh
Speaker 1: it's so you can see like it has eight legs,
Speaker 1: it has what looks like an abdomen, and you can
Speaker 1: even see like what looks like mandibles. Um. And the
Speaker 1: this is about an inch big, and then the spider
Speaker 1: who built it is about a quarter of an inch,
Speaker 1: so it's like four times as big a tour the
Speaker 1: artiste of the big spider Um a metaphor though too,
Speaker 1: like your ego and like how we use that to
Speaker 1: protect ourselves? I mean really there's this spider contaste. I
Speaker 1: mean the the exactly the metaphor gets deeper too, because
Speaker 1: the like you suggested, the decoy is to protect it
Speaker 1: from predators. Um. And they h they also they not
Speaker 1: only make this thing that looks like a spider, they
Speaker 1: shake the web to puppet it so it looks like
Speaker 1: it's moving. Uh. You look devastating while I was like
Speaker 1: it sounded like a busting act or something where it's
Speaker 1: like and then it does it to like vanilla ice,
Speaker 1: just like yeah, do dude, do do do do And
Speaker 1: then it builds a small hat for you to put
Speaker 1: money in so it can Oh, it's not that as
Speaker 1: if it's full on doing puppeteering, because he in my mind,
Speaker 1: I like to go fully fantistic. Each a spider thread
Speaker 1: is like attached to one letter pretty close, pretty close,
Speaker 1: or there's like a crew of seven other spiders, like
Speaker 1: which leg are you onto? We call ourselves imagineers understudy.
Speaker 1: For the abdomen, you have to be the until you
Speaker 1: get to the legs. Really, so this is part of
Speaker 1: the genus genus of spiders known as Cyclosa which um.
Speaker 1: A lot of these members of the species are capable
Speaker 1: of doing uh what's called as a web sculptures um
Speaker 1: and or web decorations. But the decoy building spiders the
Speaker 1: only known species to build a replica of itself but bigger,
Speaker 1: basically like the Wizard of Oz guy where it's like
Speaker 1: he's this tiny little guy and then like the Wizard
Speaker 1: of I was like paring no attention to the tiny spider.
Speaker 1: The tiny, delicious spider behind the web curtain. How often
Speaker 1: does that the decoy spider get attacked? It effective, Well,
Speaker 1: this was just discovered in so there's not a huge
Speaker 1: body of research about it. Um. They see and again
Speaker 1: this speaks to the density of diversity and the Amazon
Speaker 1: where it's like, yeah, we figured this out seven years ago.
Speaker 1: It's there's so many species will probably never even know
Speaker 1: existed because they'll probably go extinct before we ever. Um,
Speaker 1: which is sad. But back to this crazy, crazy spider
Speaker 1: who builds a bigger spider. So this decoy but you're
Speaker 1: wondering what it's made out of, right, it's not web nope.
Speaker 1: Uh so it's made out of debris like dead plant matter,
Speaker 1: egg shells or egg casings or even dead prey items,
Speaker 1: so a lot of dead insects. Trash spider. It's a
Speaker 1: trash spider, but it's a giant like four times the
Speaker 1: size of the spider. Trash spider. Like imagine seeing a
Speaker 1: giant human, like four times the size of a regular human.
Speaker 1: And then you get and it's like kind of looks
Speaker 1: a little weird from a distance, and you get closer,
Speaker 1: you realize it's like made out of garbage bull like ratchets,
Speaker 1: like road kill, and like human corpses, and also reminds
Speaker 1: me of like the kind of Halloween costume my mom
Speaker 1: would make me where it's like she didn't I never
Speaker 1: bought a store bought costume. She's like, I'll make it.
Speaker 1: Figure something out. And from afar right, it looked like
Speaker 1: you know whatever, Keanu reeves and speed or something like that.
Speaker 1: And then we got close. I'm like, na thrown together
Speaker 1: bunch a cigarette butts, cigarette butts, uh, and empty wine
Speaker 1: bottles right right right, like a boxed wine on your head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was actually my boot Okay, sorry, And then the
Speaker 1: internal bladder we used as a backpack. Oh fun, that's
Speaker 1: creative up cycle. Yeah. And then child protected services when
Speaker 1: I trick or treated in the wrong house. So this
Speaker 1: up cycled giant spider, it's something that is sort of
Speaker 1: an advancement that other species of Cyclosa do because they
Speaker 1: also build web decorations which are meant to distract or
Speaker 1: confuse predators or even to just keep birds from running
Speaker 1: into their webs, because that's a huge problem just birds
Speaker 1: haplessly flying into their webs and the bird is too
Speaker 1: big to be well, there are bird eating spiders. But
Speaker 1: that's not what this shout out to those spiders. Um,
Speaker 1: don't don't jump in my d ms bird eating spiders
Speaker 1: and go like, well, actually I bords. Yeah, I wonder
Speaker 1: what I mean. I think that is a threat to
Speaker 1: the rights and you know of of a all birds
Speaker 1: right exactly the rights of birds? Interesting someone is you
Speaker 1: know that? Yeahs out there? So um. Some orb weavers spiders,
Speaker 1: which is another group of spiders, will build X shaped
Speaker 1: designs um also made out of debris that they line
Speaker 1: their legs up with, so that one of the theories
Speaker 1: is that it's to make themselves look bigger, like here's
Speaker 1: how long my legs are? Um, that is that made
Speaker 1: with debris too? Or that's yeah, it's it's debris and
Speaker 1: extra webbing is what those like little zigzags are? Yeah, exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's it's really funny because it's just like if
Speaker 1: you if you were a smaller person, you're like, I'm
Speaker 1: feeling secure about being small, so you just like attached
Speaker 1: a bunch of tin cans to your feet and you
Speaker 1: start stomping around like look at how big my limbs are? No,
Speaker 1: you look goofy. It's like you can't look good on stilts, Like,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen many people who can actually work a
Speaker 1: pair of stilts. We'll actually know what at a couple
Speaker 1: of raves? What about that like like times square guy
Speaker 1: who's like dressed as Uncle Sam. Yeah, I guess those
Speaker 1: like those ones those legs go all the way out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those legs go all the way up? Or are they
Speaker 1: partially made out of wood and other components? Rainforests aren't
Speaker 1: just important because of how they keep the entire planet
Speaker 1: alive and that they're the home to some of the
Speaker 1: coolest animals on the world, and that they're the home
Speaker 1: to millions of people. Okay, I mean each of those
Speaker 1: are reason enough to care. But did you know that
Speaker 1: they are also home to plants and natural resources that
Speaker 1: can cure diseases. Many of these compounds have been used
Speaker 1: for generations by the indigenous peoples of Latin America, such
Speaker 1: as the alkaloidd turbo curan derived from poisonous bark of
Speaker 1: cure are lenaias, which can be used as an anesthetic
Speaker 1: insurgeries and to treat diseases like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's and
Speaker 1: other diseases that require muscle relaxants. There's all sorts of
Speaker 1: medicines derived from plants all over the world, like madagascars
Speaker 1: rosy a wrinkle found in Africa with tumor fighting agents.
Speaker 1: Wild nams in Mexico and Guatemala provide the active ingredients
Speaker 1: found in birth control, and quinine, a treatment for malaria,
Speaker 1: which is derived from an extract of the bark of
Speaker 1: the sein Chona tree found in Latin America and Africa.
Speaker 1: When you consider the amazing properties of rainforest plants and
Speaker 1: consider the fact that the Amazon is home to over
Speaker 1: forty thousand species of plants, there are very likely many
Speaker 1: extracts from these plants that have yet to be discovered
Speaker 1: that could help cure diseases. But if they go extinct
Speaker 1: before we discover them, we'll never know what advancements in
Speaker 1: medicine we could have made. I didn't mean to end
Speaker 1: own such a bummer note. But when we'll return, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about pink dolphins. Right now, animals are going extinct
Speaker 1: in the Amazon, and if us humans don't get it together,
Speaker 1: the situation is dire. A recent study by the Imperial
Speaker 1: College in London projected that as deforestation continues as it
Speaker 1: had between the nineteen seventies and two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: over fifty five Amazonian species will die out by In fact,
Speaker 1: there's so much biodiversity there may be animals who go
Speaker 1: extinct before we even get a chance to discover them.
Speaker 1: Even under the most optimistic scenario where ranchers reduce deforestation
Speaker 1: by up to thirty eight, species are projected to still
Speaker 1: go extinct. But unfortunately, the current situation is not the
Speaker 1: most optimistic, nor is it business as usual. In fact,
Speaker 1: scientists are warning that the current rate of deforestation and
Speaker 1: burning could trigger a feedback loop called die back, where
Speaker 1: the forest dries out too quickly, which makes it even
Speaker 1: more vulnerable to fires, creating a vicious cycle of burning.
Speaker 1: And these fires are not natural or inevitable. Environmentalist groups
Speaker 1: and indigenous groups have reported that cattle ranchers intentionally set
Speaker 1: fires to clearland to set up cattle farms, and have
Speaker 1: been given carte blanche to do so by Bulsonaro's government.
Speaker 1: When combined with the dry season and deforestation that is
Speaker 1: already drawing out the Amazon, these man made fires can
Speaker 1: spiral out of control. What's so frustrating is this is
Speaker 1: something that can be stopped if measures are taken now.
Speaker 1: To stop deforestation, to force deforesters to comply with laws
Speaker 1: forbidding them from grabbing more land. Doom isn't inevitable for
Speaker 1: the wonderful animals who are endemic to the Amazon and
Speaker 1: who are facing extinction. So let's talk a bit about
Speaker 1: some of these wonderful animals who are being threatened. And
Speaker 1: to cheer you up, pink dolphins not the ecstasy, sorry,
Speaker 1: but maybe better. That's a thing. Pink dolphins. Pink dolphins.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know about the kind of dolphins. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I think it's also a clothing brand too, is it. Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I always say that's a weird I hope it's
Speaker 1: not made out of dolphins. So the closed stink, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's stinky dolphin. Jerkey. Don't don't wear dolphin clothing people, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not a good look. So this is
Speaker 1: the Boto River dolphin or Amazon River dolphin, which is
Speaker 1: a pink, magical dolphin who is endangered. They are pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Let me get you a picture of that. WHOA, that's
Speaker 1: a that's a beautiful shade of pink. I know, right,
Speaker 1: it's this sort of like light. I don't know, rosy pink. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's what you would imagine a sun faded
Speaker 1: pink flamingo figure on a lawn. That's beautiful. But as
Speaker 1: a dolphin. H well, you know you have if you
Speaker 1: have an active imagine used in a podcast, you can
Speaker 1: envision that's beautiful. I want that's like, that's like a tattoo,
Speaker 1: like a sun faded pink flamingo, but as a dolph,
Speaker 1: but as a dolphin. But the text is a tattoo,
Speaker 1: right exactly. Yeah, but like you have it in a
Speaker 1: like in French or in uh in some other languages,
Speaker 1: people don't know what. Yeah, I mean yeah, if that
Speaker 1: sounds great, Yeah, I wonder what that That probably would
Speaker 1: sound pretty good in French there like oh my god,
Speaker 1: is that sort? Or So these pink river dolphins, as
Speaker 1: I've said, the males are actually pink. So they have
Speaker 1: fat foreheads and long snouts, and they're one of the
Speaker 1: largest dolphins because they can reach up to eight ft
Speaker 1: and four fifty pounds UM. So the reason males are pink,
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty metal backstory. So it's thought to be
Speaker 1: scar tissue all over their bodies. Um, not necessarily from
Speaker 1: any actual like bad injury, but from just rough manly
Speaker 1: dolphin games and fighting like play fighting, fighting games, rough housing. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that like kind of rubs at their skin and
Speaker 1: makes them pinker. So are the females less pink or
Speaker 1: not at all? They're they're more of a they're more
Speaker 1: of a grayish color. Yeah. Wait and so so then
Speaker 1: by that logic, could a female look pink if it
Speaker 1: were engaging in the same activities as a male, But Julie, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting point. I feel like it could. But
Speaker 1: there it could also be the case that they're less
Speaker 1: their skin is less pigmented. That right, um wow. But
Speaker 1: the brighter the pink, the more attractive they are to females,
Speaker 1: the more like scar tissue. It's like it's like an
Speaker 1: all over body tattoo or like scarification thing, and the
Speaker 1: ladies love it. I like to think though, that they're
Speaker 1: just engaged in this like this this dolphiny rough housing
Speaker 1: where it's like they're giving each other noggies, and like,
Speaker 1: I see, it's weird. I see. It's just such a dark,
Speaker 1: dark world and it's mostly like most max. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not even physical stuff. It's like you you can tell
Speaker 1: just how like haunted a guy is by how pink
Speaker 1: they are. The brighter the pink, the more the stink. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there we go, there's a shirt. So these dolphins are
Speaker 1: also very nimble. Their neck vertebrae are unfused, so they
Speaker 1: can bend their next at a ninety degree angle, which
Speaker 1: makes is very good for them because they have to
Speaker 1: navigate a round a lot of tree roots and obstacles,
Speaker 1: so they can just kind of slide right in. In
Speaker 1: my mind, I guess I'm typically when I think of
Speaker 1: a dolphin neck, I can't picture because to me, they're
Speaker 1: just a big tube. But in a way. But I
Speaker 1: guess as they swim you sort of see that motion,
Speaker 1: but they can straight up just like well this one
Speaker 1: they can't. Yeah, I mean for this kind of Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Voter River dolphin can bend its neck at a
Speaker 1: like basically like a human can, if not more nimbly.
Speaker 1: Well you know what, let's I like this dark backstory.
Speaker 1: Flexible neck. Yeah, I mean most dolphins have some flexibility
Speaker 1: in their neck, you know, like I see the enslaved
Speaker 1: dolphins like nodding their neck. Yeah. So they're also drummers, am, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what can't these dolphins do? Their head banging headbanging there.
Speaker 1: They're so metal and they're pink. They're pink metal. They wait,
Speaker 1: they really drum Yeah. So they old branches, no, no,
Speaker 1: the whole branches and grass in their mouth, and they'll
Speaker 1: beat the water with it to impress the ladies. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they even hold up sometimes even like hold up live
Speaker 1: turtles in their corners. Yes, they do. They'll be like,
Speaker 1: y'all check this out, turtle turtle headband. Wow. And like
Speaker 1: in l A. It's such a cliche to like, like
Speaker 1: a drummer with a haunted past. Yeah yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm surprised these are on l A River dolphins. I
Speaker 1: kind of want to date this dollar. Yeah me too.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what's your story, Like I need to know
Speaker 1: a little bit about you. Well, speaking of dating the dolphin, uh.
Speaker 1: Native Amazonian folklore believes that boto dolphins can transform into
Speaker 1: a human and come out of the water with a
Speaker 1: hat or a wig to disguise the blowhole. And these
Speaker 1: are called incantatas um. So it's either a beautiful man
Speaker 1: comes ashore and impregnates maidens or a beautiful woman who um.
Speaker 1: One of the legends is that it'll come to shore
Speaker 1: seduce a married man, then after a week of the affair,
Speaker 1: transforms him into a baby and transfers him into his
Speaker 1: own wife's womb. Wow, it's At first I was like,
Speaker 1: this sounds like an excuse of philandering husband makes when
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't know, man, maybe it was this dolphin.
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened. I don't know who. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of the theories that it is a way
Speaker 1: to explain like certain like family drama and stuff. But
Speaker 1: but I feel like it's like a dolphin version of
Speaker 1: being John malcolvit right, Yes, that is um also. But
Speaker 1: I do like the idea though too, that like back
Speaker 1: then they would treat a dolphin like a normal human
Speaker 1: just because they didn't see a blowhole. We're like, oh yeah, cool,
Speaker 1: where are you from? Oh great, cool. I've not been there,
Speaker 1: but I've I hear great things. I don't know what
Speaker 1: that was. That was definitely dolphins sound they do. That's great,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a good dolphin call. You know. It's
Speaker 1: the dolphin burst through the door, horny dolphins and like
Speaker 1: I show you. I'm like, I have a secret, where's
Speaker 1: the check? Oh? Man? So the only threat to these
Speaker 1: glorious pink dolphins is humans and their habitat being destroyed.
Speaker 1: So uh, and they don't do well in captivity and
Speaker 1: they can't be quote unquote trained, which also very metal
Speaker 1: of them, Like, we don't live by your rules. We
Speaker 1: are pink because of all the rough housing we do.
Speaker 1: We drum the water, we seduce your ladies, and we
Speaker 1: turn you into a baby and impregnant your wife with
Speaker 1: your own baby self. This is you know what, And
Speaker 1: just for that reason we should respect them and all
Speaker 1: of their and all of their I want to say people,
Speaker 1: but they're not people, all of their species. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The idea though, that they're untrainable is so amazing to me,
Speaker 1: because dolphins are so intelligent that to them it almost
Speaker 1: feels like, No, I don't even like this concept that
Speaker 1: you're even proposing, in which I will perform for you.
Speaker 1: I drum for myself, and I drum for the ladies,
Speaker 1: but not for you. Drum to mate exactly, and if
Speaker 1: and I don't see any I don't see any viable
Speaker 1: mates around here, so I'm drumming. I am not having
Speaker 1: sex with a scientist, so I am not going to
Speaker 1: drum with for you. And also before I get ahead,
Speaker 1: of myself. Are there any turtles here? So moving on
Speaker 1: to another aquatic animal, the giant otter uh is, which
Speaker 1: is known in Brazil as the ariana or water jaguar
Speaker 1: because they grow up to six ft six ft. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's the longest member of the otter family and the
Speaker 1: entire weasel family, which otters are actually a member of. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: the m used to live family probably screwed up that pronunciation,
Speaker 1: but you know the weasel family. Yeah, I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to correct you, but this is your noodle boys, like
Speaker 1: the noodle boys, the noodle boys weasels you call noodle
Speaker 1: boys little boys are girls? Is that like a thing
Speaker 1: in the weasel community we're not knowing about now. To you,
Speaker 1: they're like noodly, Yeah, they look like noodles. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: very d Do you have a photo of a six
Speaker 1: foot arter next to a basketball player? For scale, Let's
Speaker 1: see giant otter next to NBA point guard basketball player.
Speaker 1: And here's one of them, resplendent on along. He's so pretty,
Speaker 1: is like a beard. Well know, so that's a white patch.
Speaker 1: And what's really interesting about that is it's like a
Speaker 1: giant otter's fingerprints. So each of the waters will have.
Speaker 1: Um these are white patches of fur and it's unique
Speaker 1: to each otter and that's how they identify each other.
Speaker 1: And they actually they'll engage in this behavior known as periscoping,
Speaker 1: where they'll come above the water and kind of like
Speaker 1: turn around and like show off their neck and under
Speaker 1: their chin, and then other otters are it's like giving
Speaker 1: their business cards other utters like Hey, I'm this order
Speaker 1: rightly exactly. Yeah, squares up here, you may you may
Speaker 1: have to turn turn a little bit. Yeah there. For me,
Speaker 1: from seeing it from afar, I thought it grew like
Speaker 1: a really dope whispy. It does look like a beard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually, but it's flat. It's it's just yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So a few more reasons to love these these guys.
Speaker 1: First of all, they are one of the most endangered
Speaker 1: mammals in the Amazon. There's only about five thousand living
Speaker 1: individuals um and there endemic to the area, so they're
Speaker 1: not found any where else in the world. UM. And
Speaker 1: they form monogamous pears and uh, they will have like
Speaker 1: a big old family that sticks together. So uh, the
Speaker 1: parents and a bunch of kids that all hunt together
Speaker 1: up until the kids are sexually mature, which can be
Speaker 1: a couple of years. So these big families of all,
Speaker 1: it won't be like you'll never see grandparents with the grandkids. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean you could, but the I think they do
Speaker 1: disperse at that point out there, Like I wish you
Speaker 1: met your grandpa. I mean he's probably still around. We
Speaker 1: just he had a great cure coat on his neck,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. They love to eat fish and snakes.
Speaker 1: Just noodles eating noodles, big noodles eating small noodles. That's
Speaker 1: all nature is big noodles eating small noodles. And yeah,
Speaker 1: well I mean a noodle eating a noodle is a circle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like in a way, or just a really long line.
Speaker 1: I guess it's the sphere of life. Noodles, the noodles,
Speaker 1: the noodles, noodle of life. There you go. Uh. They
Speaker 1: like to find a peaceful place to eat their food
Speaker 1: or a little picnic spot it's called. They're so just wholesome.
Speaker 1: They're they're monogamous. Family some noodles. Yeah, these are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're family oriented. They like they go. I have to
Speaker 1: I have to be honest with you. I haven't fully
Speaker 1: bought it on this noodle thing, right, you know, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to seem like I'm a band contrarian,
Speaker 1: but um, I just after knowing how they feel, I
Speaker 1: just feel like they need something a little more elevated
Speaker 1: than the noodle. What would like just long long tallboys.
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll have to have to put a pin
Speaker 1: in this flippery dudes, slipper, something a little more genderless.
Speaker 1: Tubular tubular tubular buddies to buddies, Buddy two buddies. There
Speaker 1: we go. Yeah, buddies, and they're they're sick. They're sick.
Speaker 1: They have a bunch of different growls and barks to
Speaker 1: communicate alarms. They'll warn other otters of like oh hey
Speaker 1: you're in my territory, or they'll warn them of predators. Uh.
Speaker 1: They'll also like do like barks and stuff that secret
Speaker 1: reassurance from each other's and they're little their little tube families.
Speaker 1: Um uh and like the needy bark. And then one
Speaker 1: of them validating, yeah yeah, just like just like validate me.
Speaker 1: You're validated. Please like my post? I like it. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they are okay essentially, I to me, that seems
Speaker 1: like they're needing. They're always on Instagram like posting, just
Speaker 1: like those vague. Those vague Instagram posts are like where
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, eating fish just and then like
Speaker 1: an emoji of like kind of a like sort of
Speaker 1: sad otter and you're like, hey, what's up, and it's
Speaker 1: like I can't explaince long story. Don't worry, long story
Speaker 1: because we're also the longest have the Weasel family. So
Speaker 1: it's a long story. Long boy, you gotta you gotta second.
Speaker 1: I just feel like, yeah, they would also be mad.
Speaker 1: They're like you keep I know you watch my stories,
Speaker 1: but right you never I don't know, you're just like
Speaker 1: creeping on my I wonder how they post on it,
Speaker 1: Like do you think they do like one like a
Speaker 1: bunch of different photographs of themselves, so it's like one
Speaker 1: of their head, one of their middle, one of their middle,
Speaker 1: one of their middle, and one of their butts, so
Speaker 1: that you like flip through to get the whole otter
Speaker 1: because they're too you know, maybe or they just I
Speaker 1: have a feeling they don't. They're just on there for likes.
Speaker 1: It's all like vantage shots whatever they feel their best
Speaker 1: feature is like in landscape mode, yeah exactly. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: kind of have to do a pano every time you
Speaker 1: get a shot yourself. So moving on to uh, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about the bald you a carry monkey, uh,
Speaker 1: which is another beautiful, beautiful animal. I want to show
Speaker 1: you a picture. M hm m hmmm. So whoa how
Speaker 1: this is one monkey? I'm sorry almost broke your computer.
Speaker 1: Uh okay. It reminds me of kind of like a
Speaker 1: Japanese kabuki mask with like a very long haired body. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they have bright red faces and red hair, which
Speaker 1: is exactly what I look like after I'm in the
Speaker 1: sun for any given amount of time. That is a
Speaker 1: shade very similar. Yeah, yeah, okay, so it's uh, my
Speaker 1: sunburned face and my red hair. So this is sort
Speaker 1: of a style like yeah, actually they it is. It
Speaker 1: is the I love. I mean their hair is straight though,
Speaker 1: so it's like it's like if I straighten my hair
Speaker 1: and then I get a sunburn. No, I don't straighten
Speaker 1: your hair. Your hair is a great body to it.
Speaker 1: You look just a mess, you know, I would, I
Speaker 1: would actually a little fried. Now they rocket, they rocket,
Speaker 1: I can see the ends from here. That's true. So
Speaker 1: why are they face their faces so read? Is it
Speaker 1: because they're embarrassed about their split ins? I hope they
Speaker 1: heard this yet. So recently, researchers have found that they
Speaker 1: have a huge amount of capillaries right under the skin. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like how when we blush, it's
Speaker 1: because flood blood is flowing to the capillaries. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's all over their face. It's permanent. And the reason
Speaker 1: we can see it so well is their skin is
Speaker 1: actually translucent, so there's no pigment. Just similar to the
Speaker 1: glass cross. They're so transparent. They're very transparent. And not
Speaker 1: that I'm saying transparency is a bad thing, but like
Speaker 1: too much of a good thing. Yeah, you can be
Speaker 1: an overshare, like if you're literally showing me what your
Speaker 1: splein looks like the first meeting first, when I meet
Speaker 1: you at first and you're like, here's all my capillaries,
Speaker 1: and like, I mean, eventually we could talk, Like I'm
Speaker 1: a very open person, I'll talk to you about stuff,
Speaker 1: but when I first meet you, I maybe don't want
Speaker 1: to see all your capitalaries, you know, and like how
Speaker 1: did go? It's like they were kind of thing now
Speaker 1: you so, but with these monkeys, they do actually wanna
Speaker 1: be over shares because the red faces are actually an
Speaker 1: honest indicator, which in UH evolutionary biology terms means in
Speaker 1: an indicator of your health or to mates, that is
Speaker 1: actually a true signal of your health. Oh so if
Speaker 1: you're unhealthy, you would not be right right right? So
Speaker 1: less healthy monkeys who say contracted malaria will look pale
Speaker 1: because the redness is just blood. It's the capillaries under
Speaker 1: their skin. Um, and so like blood loss or or
Speaker 1: illness will make them look pale, and then their mates
Speaker 1: will be like, your look like a ghost. I don't
Speaker 1: want to marry like with you, um, welcome to my life.
Speaker 1: Oh man, another ghost. You wouldn't believe it. They're pale,
Speaker 1: red skinned ghost again, keeps I gotta get off ghost date. Wait,
Speaker 1: but with their capillaries, does that mean it will they
Speaker 1: will always be that shade of red, even if they're healthy, Like,
Speaker 1: are there moments where they red mite subside or just know?
Speaker 1: It's always that red? It's always that red. But sometimes
Speaker 1: their faces get redder, like when they're aroused or excited.
Speaker 1: So it goes from extremely red to very extremely red. Wow,
Speaker 1: what's above extremely violently violently red atastrophically. So now let's
Speaker 1: move from the red to the blue. Wait? Can I
Speaker 1: ask about their hair really quick, because it looked like
Speaker 1: their hair was so long and healthy that like it
Speaker 1: looked like a Gillie suit that like a marine sniper
Speaker 1: would wear. It just sort of like it almost gives
Speaker 1: them more of a presence than there might actually be
Speaker 1: underneath their coat. They're pretty small. Yeah, they're actually um
Speaker 1: one of those smaller monkeys. Um, they grew up to
Speaker 1: around like excluding the tail, it's around like seventeen inches. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're really not that big. They know that photo
Speaker 1: they do look deceptively big because of how fluffy they are,
Speaker 1: But yeah, it is something I will give him that look. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: even despite the burnt and split ends. Maybe maybe that
Speaker 1: does help them like intimidate being more intimidating because of
Speaker 1: how Yeah I wonder if like your coat, if you're
Speaker 1: like there's especially some good body to it with your
Speaker 1: super red face. Yeah, people like they are achieving a
Speaker 1: lot of volume, which I'm pretty Yeah, there's something I'm
Speaker 1: just saying. There's a lot of interesting stuff with the
Speaker 1: thin skin. But maybe pal Mitchell and Loreale or something
Speaker 1: do some studies on this. Some of the chi what's
Speaker 1: that called the Chai hair products that like super expensive
Speaker 1: or something, um as someone who has very little hair.
Speaker 1: I don't know. And it feels like a direct shot
Speaker 1: at me, like the like the t you rub it
Speaker 1: on your head. Really yeah, wow, I see, I'm look,
Speaker 1: I've missed a lot, missed a lot. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: now we're gonna shove from the red to the blue.
Speaker 1: Because it's hyacinth macaw time. Um, that was a great segal.
Speaker 1: I love a good Hyacinth macaw. Yeah. So they're these beautiful,
Speaker 1: bright blue parrots. Let me get a picture of that
Speaker 1: for you. I have a feeling I can picture this
Speaker 1: one even before you show me. Then yeah, and I
Speaker 1: was right, yep, it's a bit. It's like the one
Speaker 1: thing I think of when I think of a blue.
Speaker 1: But I called parrots because well, it is a parrot.
Speaker 1: Parrot makes a parrot a parrot. I'm sorry to just
Speaker 1: complete the parrot. Great. Onward we go, there we go.
Speaker 1: Um and macaw's are within the parrot family, so fantastic um.
Speaker 1: So it's the largest flying parrot. It grows over three
Speaker 1: ft in length and up to eight pounds um. So
Speaker 1: they're threatened mostly by the illegal pet trade and in
Speaker 1: their habitat being lost, so like when they're instead of
Speaker 1: being just bred as pets, like when wild individuals are
Speaker 1: captured and put into the pet trade. Um, they're known
Speaker 1: as being gentle giants. They have sort of a nice
Speaker 1: friendly demeanor. Yeah, they're big. They're like I said, they're
Speaker 1: up to eight pounds. That's a lot of bird. Wow,
Speaker 1: I didn't. Yeah, think about like a turkey. Well, think
Speaker 1: about a normal parrot, Like you hold it on your arm.
Speaker 1: It's like not that big. I'm sorry. Do you hold
Speaker 1: a lot of parrots on your A few parents? Well
Speaker 1: I've never been on a Caribbean where the one of
Speaker 1: the stops are taking a photo up with a parrot,
Speaker 1: is it? Oh? So okay? See I don't This is
Speaker 1: where you know I have blind spots in my experience
Speaker 1: as of a human beings. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: that the gentle touch of a parrot. You should maybe
Speaker 1: educate you more on birds or go to rainforest cafe.
Speaker 1: So these are highly intelligent birds who can actually use tools. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they've been observed wrapping leaves around nuts and fruits
Speaker 1: to keep them from slipping like oven midst or like
Speaker 1: like no slip grip stuff. Um, why all they crack
Speaker 1: open the nuts or pry off the husk from the fruit. UH.
Speaker 1: They'll also used pieces of wood to act as a
Speaker 1: wedge to help pry open nuts. UM and younger hyacinth
Speaker 1: macause will actually experiment more with tool use than adults
Speaker 1: who have learned better, so they'll combine tools or they'll
Speaker 1: A study found that UM captive young macause uh would
Speaker 1: try to use shoelaces, rubber bands, or even poop as
Speaker 1: like tools, and then like as adults, they learned the
Speaker 1: same kinds of macause when when they were studied as
Speaker 1: adults they just did wood and pieces of leaves. Because
Speaker 1: they're like, you know that, this is how this. I
Speaker 1: just love that the younger macause are like, would would
Speaker 1: poop work? What if I sho on my food? I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: what if I defecated on right? Right? I mean, like
Speaker 1: like any normal high school kids like what if I
Speaker 1: what if I poop on it? Yeah? I think that
Speaker 1: will work. Yeah, let's try. Don't knock if you try it?
Speaker 1: And parents like yeah, go ahead, yeah try that. Try that.
Speaker 1: See how Yes, it also shows how intelligent they are
Speaker 1: because first of all the creativity of using poop as
Speaker 1: a tool, but also just like that as adults, they don't.
Speaker 1: They seem to narrow down the tools to really the
Speaker 1: most efficacious one. So they've learned. They learned. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what, that didn't work. They go through an awkward
Speaker 1: teenage phase where they're like hammer and poop against stuffs
Speaker 1: and the tour. Yeah, you turn to an adult who
Speaker 1: doesn't poop on their food exactly. Well, some of us, Okay,
Speaker 1: to each their own, you know, to each their own.
Speaker 1: I'm not here to judge, but I regret to tell
Speaker 1: you I don't think I'll be having dinner at your house.
Speaker 1: Well that's too bad. I had using some special tools.
Speaker 1: I think you'd really enjoy the crime. Brewet animals are
Speaker 1: the only ones whose homes are being threatened by the fires.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned earlier, the rainforest is the ancestral home
Speaker 1: of over one million indigenous peoples. There are around four
Speaker 1: hundred distinct communities with their own languages and cultures, a
Speaker 1: minority of whom have little to no contact with outsiders.
Speaker 1: In Brazil, tribal communities are being threatened and are trying
Speaker 1: to fight for their rights, their lives, and their homes.
Speaker 1: Illegal ranchers and deforesters and policies of the Bolsonaro government
Speaker 1: in Brazil threatened their lives. Groups representing the Amazonian indigenous
Speaker 1: peoples have explained that they are currently undergoing a humanitarian emergency.
Speaker 1: The fires and aggressive commercialization of their land threatened them
Speaker 1: with extinction and genocide, and the situation is more dire
Speaker 1: than ever before. Compared to eighteen the number of fires
Speaker 1: during the dry season has increased by eighty four percent.
Speaker 1: When we return, will explain why the Amazon is burning,
Speaker 1: what policies are harming the situation, and what is being
Speaker 1: done and what you can do to help. So, as
Speaker 1: of recording this podcast, there have been two thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred active fires burning in the Amazon. As we discussed earlier,
Speaker 1: this is not natural. The deforestation and burning by ranchers
Speaker 1: the Amazon has led to a shocking increase in the
Speaker 1: amount of fires. So what are the politics behind this catastrophe.
Speaker 1: The Amazonian rainforest is sprawled beyond the borders of nine nations,
Speaker 1: but the vast majority of the rainforest falls under Brazilian control.
Speaker 1: The current policies of the Bulsonaro government that enable ranchers
Speaker 1: and commercial interests to grab land from indigenous people to
Speaker 1: diforest and burn certainly are culpable for the current situation,
Speaker 1: but it's important to remember that the responsibility doesn't stop
Speaker 1: at Brazil's borders. US President Donald Trump supports Bulsonaro and
Speaker 1: tweeted out on August quote, our future trade prospects are
Speaker 1: very exciting and a relationship is strong, perhaps stronger than
Speaker 1: ever before, which is really upset ing given the like
Speaker 1: he ends the tweets saying, quote, I told him that
Speaker 1: the US can help with the Amazon rainforest fires. We
Speaker 1: stand ready to assist, which in the context of talking
Speaker 1: about trade, it makes it sound like helping set more fires.
Speaker 1: And I know, I know, like I'm not like, I'm
Speaker 1: not like fake news twisting his words. I know, he's
Speaker 1: like saying, like, help stop the fires. But again, it's
Speaker 1: just like that whole tweet, it's like future trade is
Speaker 1: looking great, let us know if we can help with
Speaker 1: the fires. It's just like, hey, we love to visit
Speaker 1: with you, and like you know, you know, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's it's like and I mean, Bolsonaro has been
Speaker 1: like praised by uh like people talking about like how
Speaker 1: he's gonna increase trade and increase exports, and what that
Speaker 1: means is like cut the rainforest exactly because everyone, you know,
Speaker 1: his whole thing was like, ah, the indigenous people are
Speaker 1: ruining the rainforest because it's all protected and ship, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's all protected. Uh And I think you
Speaker 1: know that was one of his he campaigned on that, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: don't worry, I can turn that into a big we
Speaker 1: can play. You know, what's that game with the farming
Speaker 1: that I won't played on Facebook? Farm place, farm Farmville, Farmville,
Speaker 1: And I hate to bring a Facebook farm down Farmville,
Speaker 1: just basically saying we'll convert that into a massive cash
Speaker 1: cow for lack of a better word, I mean sports.
Speaker 1: And I think it is important to not just be like,
Speaker 1: oh Bolsonarow, that horrible man over there in Brazil. This
Speaker 1: is a This is not the actions of just like
Speaker 1: this one man, although obviously he's he is responsible for
Speaker 1: huge up tickets exactly, so like a lot of the
Speaker 1: responsibility lies there, but he's enabled by all of the
Speaker 1: old Garks in the US and other countries that are
Speaker 1: totally on board to make another buck off of the rainfall. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: because I think you know, in the eighties is when
Speaker 1: they really started being like, hold on, what can we
Speaker 1: do with this? Rainforest here and that's when it started
Speaker 1: really spike. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the late nineteen seventies. Between
Speaker 1: the nineteen like before the nineteen seventies, only about one
Speaker 1: percent of the rainforest had been deforested between the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies and like around now seventeen percent. And like I said,
Speaker 1: once we reach around that's kind of like that's the
Speaker 1: potential tipping point that scientists believe that's when, um, there
Speaker 1: could be this kind of cataclysmic series of events that
Speaker 1: destroys the whole force and it gets turned into I
Speaker 1: think it's called downgraded savannah. Um. So that would uh
Speaker 1: you know, that would be catastrophic. Wow, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and that's the really sad thing is, like you say,
Speaker 1: it's a system that, when it's running efficiently, can you know,
Speaker 1: bring a lot of good things. And when you start
Speaker 1: kneecapping it, the wheels fall off and it has really yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of just with the drought that that
Speaker 1: can it'll exacerbate too with the lack of rainfall and
Speaker 1: all the even just cloud pattern all everything is so
Speaker 1: connected with it, and that's that die off sort of
Speaker 1: domino effect where the more you deforce, the more it
Speaker 1: dries out from human activity the more it burns during
Speaker 1: the dry season. And that's not to say I mean
Speaker 1: like there are definitely ranchers who are um setting fire
Speaker 1: to it in a all threatening indigenous people's living there
Speaker 1: is because they're emboldened by the Bolsonaro government. Um, but
Speaker 1: it's also even even beyond that, like the more it's
Speaker 1: deforested and the more it's dried out, the more susceptible
Speaker 1: it is to the dry season and and fires. So
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's just a really bad situation all around.
Speaker 1: There's a recent news story where Bolsonar was blaming NGOs,
Speaker 1: the non governmental organization, the environmentalist groups. Well didn't he
Speaker 1: all say, well, who do you think martians? Did it?
Speaker 1: Like very flippantly was like I think it's yeah. He
Speaker 1: was like he was like saying claiming that they were
Speaker 1: going to hurt his image. So like the idea that
Speaker 1: environmentalist groups would literally burn down the rainforest right and
Speaker 1: go after him, that's like the whole sting the rainforest.
Speaker 1: That's sort of like, that's sort of the whole optics
Speaker 1: campaign that they're trying to pursue to sort of make
Speaker 1: deforestation like a viable or attractive thing, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: there's like a whole conspiracy from environmental groups about this,
Speaker 1: and really this is about like our economic output and
Speaker 1: all these other things. And it's just a shame too,
Speaker 1: because you know, all tied up into that are the
Speaker 1: people that live in the rainforest, and their way of
Speaker 1: life is the most you know, as compared to our
Speaker 1: modern lives, tied to the earth, tied to mature, tied
Speaker 1: to that system there in that they participate in. And
Speaker 1: when you keep taking away the things that they need
Speaker 1: to live off of, especially like the plants and things,
Speaker 1: because living in the rainforest means there's no there's no
Speaker 1: wall greens, right, and there's like the there there are
Speaker 1: like you know, small farmers and and like it depends
Speaker 1: on the the communities, but like they're like small, Like
Speaker 1: I mean, there are still like barely contacted people laying
Speaker 1: in the Amazon who I mean, they're they're a minority
Speaker 1: of the people living there. But that makes them all
Speaker 1: the more vulnerable because like they don't have a lobbying group.
Speaker 1: And um, so there are these leaked documents from Bolsonaro's
Speaker 1: ministry that showed the government is trying to thwart the
Speaker 1: Triple A multinational effort, which is like this, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: the NGO effort to protect the Amazon um by strategically
Speaker 1: occupying the Amazon with commercial intraists. And also they plan
Speaker 1: to use both scenarrows racist rhetoric against the indigenous people
Speaker 1: uh to dehumanize and isolate them. Um. And so here's
Speaker 1: here's a quote from one of the leaked slides. Quote.
Speaker 1: Development projects must be implemented on the Amazon basin to
Speaker 1: integrate it into the rest of the national territory in
Speaker 1: order to fight off international pressure for the implementation of
Speaker 1: the so called Triple A project. To do this, it
Speaker 1: is necessary to build the trom Vedas River hydroelectric plant,
Speaker 1: the Obidos Bridge over the Amazon River, and the implementation
Speaker 1: of the b R one highway to the border with
Speaker 1: Surinam um. So basically like we need to develop it
Speaker 1: so that we can you know, start taking it over right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and be like well, actually this is usual infrastructure projects
Speaker 1: we need. And yeah, it's really like this whole idea
Speaker 1: of there's like the colonization aspect that's a threat to
Speaker 1: indigenous people that has been there since the Portuguese got there,
Speaker 1: and then now you're adding like global capitalism with the
Speaker 1: president who's like, let me exploit like the most one
Speaker 1: of the most valuable resources on earth to create more
Speaker 1: capital for a country that's only going to benefit of
Speaker 1: very small amount of people. And it's the wealth and
Speaker 1: quality in Brazil is extreme too. Yeah. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: just so there's just so many layers of tragedy sort
Speaker 1: of mapped onto this one thing, aside from just the
Speaker 1: environmental things. And yeah, I hope that this actually does
Speaker 1: help bring more awareness, because you know, it took so
Speaker 1: long for most of the rest of the world and
Speaker 1: even in Brazil for people to be like, oh right,
Speaker 1: this is like this is becoming really terrible. But it
Speaker 1: feels like a lot of the activism, or at least online,
Speaker 1: it's just more about like can you believe this, versus like,
Speaker 1: hold on, there's a leader there who's doing this, who's
Speaker 1: terrorizing these people who live there, all in the sake
Speaker 1: of bringing in more Right, this isn't natural, this is
Speaker 1: human made catastrophe. This these leak slides, like they talked
Speaker 1: about how they feel like they're successfully that the Bullsonaro's
Speaker 1: sort of racist in inflammatory comments are successfully separating people
Speaker 1: from caring about the indigenous people because they were talking
Speaker 1: about how like a huge portion of the population hadn't
Speaker 1: even heard about the fires in the media, and that
Speaker 1: was like a that was a good thing. And in
Speaker 1: this slide show presentation, it's it's such a weird thing,
Speaker 1: like you imagine these like government officials like here's our
Speaker 1: evil plan next flood. Yeah, what's weird? I feel like
Speaker 1: in this last Just recently, there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: leaked stuff that articulates exactly like the most evil stuff,
Speaker 1: like with the GOP sor like this is our mass
Speaker 1: shooting playbook and you're like, oh wow, like you've articulated
Speaker 1: my evil plan, right, or even like Monsanto being like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is what we need to do. So people don't
Speaker 1: connect round up with blood cancers, I hope someone like
Speaker 1: raids uh, who's the one who died David Coke's estate,
Speaker 1: for like all his evil He's just going to have
Speaker 1: like a thing on his desktop where it's like evil
Speaker 1: plans and then porn and then the porn is just
Speaker 1: human suffering climate change disasters. Right. Um, So just so
Speaker 1: people know, like here a few of Bolsonaro's racist statements
Speaker 1: about the indigenous people. Um, and this is what's thought
Speaker 1: to help, um, you know, kind of rile up people
Speaker 1: and encouraging ranchers and land developers to illegally uh steal
Speaker 1: land and set fires and even like harass them with violence.
Speaker 1: Um So, here's one of Bolsonaro's quote quote, the Indians
Speaker 1: do not speak our language, they do not have money,
Speaker 1: they do not have culture. They are native people's how
Speaker 1: did they manage to get of the national territory that
Speaker 1: was set in, which is very uh you know hitlerrian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know there's a group of people who are sitting
Speaker 1: on something or possess something. You want to take from them,
Speaker 1: so begin dehumanizing them. This is like this is like
Speaker 1: Trump's rhetoric to against like immigrants. Yeah yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: especially for right. Um here's another quote quote, there is
Speaker 1: no indigenous territory where there aren't minerals. Gold, tin, and
Speaker 1: magnesium are in these lands, especially in the Amazon, the
Speaker 1: richest area in the world. I'm not getting into this
Speaker 1: nonsense of defending land for Indians. And that was also
Speaker 1: in um So, that's I mean, just it's he's being
Speaker 1: totally transparent about it that he's he wants to plunder
Speaker 1: the land and he doesn't care about the people already living,
Speaker 1: and he has that sort of like colonizer rhetoric of
Speaker 1: being very dismissive about the Indians, right right, Yeah, what
Speaker 1: you hear a lot like in South America to to
Speaker 1: sort of like be insulting, like they're like, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, it's it's can be a slur. And
Speaker 1: he was even running on this idea of being called
Speaker 1: Captain Chainsaw when he is running for presidents. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: because his whole thing was, well, here's the deal. Our
Speaker 1: economic development is being held back because everyone loves the rainforest,
Speaker 1: right he does. And that sounds familiar to like blaming
Speaker 1: the indigenous people for they're kind of be being stamming
Speaker 1: when really it's because of the wealth inequality where and
Speaker 1: just like gross terrible corruption and mismanagement of money. And
Speaker 1: that's really but no, let's again like let's blame the
Speaker 1: other We've done that in America all that. You know,
Speaker 1: everyone there's a scapegoat for everything except for the people
Speaker 1: who are responsible. Here's one last quote. I can't do
Speaker 1: any more quotes, so I'm gonna vomit, but quote, you
Speaker 1: can be sure that if I get elected president of Brazil,
Speaker 1: there will be no money for NGOs. If it's up
Speaker 1: to me, every citizen will have a firearm in the house.
Speaker 1: There will be not a centimeter demarcted for indigenous reservations
Speaker 1: or Kyle Umbula's. Um So, this was said Vantine kylum
Speaker 1: Bola's are Afro Brazilian residents of Kilombolo settlements, which are
Speaker 1: made up of the ancestors of people who escaped from
Speaker 1: chattel slavery in Brazil. Um So, these are, you know,
Speaker 1: the ancestors of some of the most oppressed people in Brazil.
Speaker 1: And I think and also didn't he like completely dissolve
Speaker 1: like one of the governmental organizations that's in charge of
Speaker 1: like like advocating for indigenous people, Like it's just been
Speaker 1: systematic like of like no, let's take every possible defense mechanism.
Speaker 1: And I mean when you also even look at the
Speaker 1: lives of these people, it's almost like a war that
Speaker 1: these people are just even before the fires of you
Speaker 1: have greedy people who want to develop on their land
Speaker 1: and sometimes they have to defend themselves and are killed. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean there's that that viral video of that woman
Speaker 1: who's crying on the on the camera. She's an Indigenous
Speaker 1: woman and she's talking about how she was trying to
Speaker 1: get her children to fall asleep and she heard gunshots
Speaker 1: and she was like she herself couldn't sleep either because
Speaker 1: of how frightened she was. UM And I mean, you
Speaker 1: know again, it's like I don't want to just like, oh,
Speaker 1: look at this horrible stuff just happening in Brazil because
Speaker 1: like in the US that we're also like reducing protections
Speaker 1: for um native land, for land reserves and and form
Speaker 1: natural resources and trying to take the control of these
Speaker 1: lands from like um native. Yeah, I mean it's I
Speaker 1: think it's just generally a global problem of us just
Speaker 1: sort of disregarding the rights of indigenous right right. I
Speaker 1: think it's just like right now this is like catastrophe
Speaker 1: of the Amazon burning. I think it's like if we
Speaker 1: haven't been paying attention so far, like now like we
Speaker 1: have to, this is this is you know, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it should come from a place of empathy. But even
Speaker 1: if like it's coming from place of just you know,
Speaker 1: carrying like Machiavellian is um, like, it's still super are
Speaker 1: important everyone on the planet. And I think that's where
Speaker 1: at some point, that's where the other governments of the
Speaker 1: world have to sort of exert more pressure, certainly not
Speaker 1: supporting him, like absolutely, And I think that's why, you know,
Speaker 1: like Finland has proposed, like you know, trying to stop
Speaker 1: Brazilian beef imports into Europe, like proposed that to the
Speaker 1: EU and things like that, because yeah, the rainforest, even
Speaker 1: though it is on the land of you know, a
Speaker 1: few countries, but mostly Brazil, that's a thing that affects
Speaker 1: you know, one fifth of the world's oxygen, right, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I think in that sense, the
Speaker 1: lungs of the planet. Yeah, that we need to that's
Speaker 1: where people have to be like, hold on, this is
Speaker 1: actually this Like everything, there are so many existential threats
Speaker 1: to our world, but like we have to treat this
Speaker 1: as one just as serious exactly. And I think this
Speaker 1: is a good time to talk about like what what
Speaker 1: you can do, like what people can do, because I
Speaker 1: know when there's stuff like this where it's just it
Speaker 1: feels so overwhelming and I'm right there with you, like
Speaker 1: I it about like, as I was reading through this,
Speaker 1: I just got I felt so down. I had to
Speaker 1: look at some invisible frogs to feel better. And as
Speaker 1: pete dolphins. I'll I'll include a bunch of pictures too
Speaker 1: in the in the show notes, so you can uh
Speaker 1: nice to like some of these wonderful animals. But there's
Speaker 1: also stuff you can do to help UM. And I'm
Speaker 1: certainly not since I'm not um a part of uh
Speaker 1: like and I'm not like an organizer uh in any
Speaker 1: of these um environmentalist groups, I may not know the
Speaker 1: best way. So like, if any of you out there
Speaker 1: have uh like, I'm going to mention some stuff. But
Speaker 1: if there's something that I don't mention that you think
Speaker 1: would be cool, like, let me know, tell me in
Speaker 1: social and like all um, I'll mention it next podcast too.
Speaker 1: So I mean, some of the things we can all
Speaker 1: do is vote for people who take environmentalism seriously, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: spread the word to people like word of mouth, talk
Speaker 1: to your family's uh talk on social media. UM you
Speaker 1: know ruined Thanksgiving like do it um. You can donate
Speaker 1: to organizations uh fighting uh for the Amazon. I'll include
Speaker 1: some links in the footnotes the the WWF website, which
Speaker 1: is not the World Wrestling Now but um they're great too,
Speaker 1: but it's the World Wildlife Foundation. They won that lawsuit.
Speaker 1: I know. Um, so they have an emergency appeal. You
Speaker 1: can sign a petition on there. You can also donate
Speaker 1: to their emergency appeal. Um and uh, you know, donate
Speaker 1: and signal boost indigenous organizations fighting the deforestation. They're like
Speaker 1: on the front lines. Um. Uh. Like this August, tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of Indigenous women and girls marched in Brazil
Speaker 1: as part of the first Indigenous Women's marched uh sorry,
Speaker 1: Indigenous Women's March. Uh. They denounced the policies of both
Speaker 1: Narrow and the deforestation and attacks on their ancestral homelands. Um.
Speaker 1: You can read more about that on the Amazon Frontlines website.
Speaker 1: I'll also include a link to that in the show notes.
Speaker 1: I think, I think that's really incredible in show notes. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I just it's like, it's so, I mean,
Speaker 1: they're they're really like, if you know, if we can
Speaker 1: support the people who are on the front lines, who
Speaker 1: have lived there for generations, who are trying to fight
Speaker 1: for their homes and from the Amazon, it's very easy
Speaker 1: for us being so far removed exactly. Oh, I think
Speaker 1: it's bad, but no, like for them, right their life
Speaker 1: literally life or death. And even though that may seem distant.
Speaker 1: It is actually life or death for the rest of
Speaker 1: the planet. We just it's less immediate, like yeah, when
Speaker 1: it's abstract to many people, well, that's a fire there,
Speaker 1: and I guess there's fire, no, right, this is this
Speaker 1: is daily life or death for people living there. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean because I'm sure, like I know
Speaker 1: so many people really do care and like, but don't
Speaker 1: feel paralyzed, don't feel like, oh, there's nothing we can do,
Speaker 1: so why care anymore? There's certainly stuff we can do.
Speaker 1: There's so much that we can do, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's even really had me. I mean not even that,
Speaker 1: like you know, we eat that much Brazilian beef in
Speaker 1: the US. I mean, there's certainly an amount that's important,
Speaker 1: but it's mostly in Asia. But the amount of just
Speaker 1: like beef consumption, I've it's been like a thing. I've
Speaker 1: slowly like, I didn't think I would really give a ship,
Speaker 1: to be honest, just as a human being who likes food.
Speaker 1: But like you know, and a lot of the times
Speaker 1: I'm sort of like, well, this isn't my fucking this
Speaker 1: isn't my problem. And because a lot of this is
Speaker 1: born out of these like massive industries, and then then
Speaker 1: at the consumer level you're told, well, you need to
Speaker 1: do this to offset all of that. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: am starting to sort of begin to have more and
Speaker 1: more misgivings about it, or at least trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: I go more plant based in those senses, because, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the more I look at things like when I just
Speaker 1: think of an indigenous person who is you know, they
Speaker 1: are looking down the barrel of a gun because someone
Speaker 1: is trying to make money off of the land that
Speaker 1: they've lived on since time immemorial is really heartbreaking and
Speaker 1: that that has I think motivated a little bit of
Speaker 1: change inside of me. Uh not say I've gone fully vegan,
Speaker 1: but I do eat much more plant based things when
Speaker 1: I can, and try to avoid the beef when possible.
Speaker 1: Where is the beef? Yeah, you know, I just get
Speaker 1: the impossible burger. I mean I think that because there's
Speaker 1: so many things you can do that like whatever you
Speaker 1: can do, whatever you feel motivated do, and you want
Speaker 1: to do like like do that, Like I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I think I'm sort of there with you where it's
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm cutting down my meat consumption, um, and
Speaker 1: like I try to do mostly fish uh, and and
Speaker 1: vegetarian stuff. Um, And I mean I have great respect
Speaker 1: for people who go vegetarian and vegan. I think that's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's obviously not a lifestyle that everyone can do because
Speaker 1: of health reasons and stuff, but right and cost exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: but like it's um, you know, you don't have to
Speaker 1: do one thing, Like you don't have to just like
Speaker 1: just become vegan or something. You can you can cut
Speaker 1: down on stuff you do or you know, if your
Speaker 1: lifestyle doesn't permit making dietary consumer changes, you can vote,
Speaker 1: you can donate, you can be an activist. You can
Speaker 1: like talk about it, like just if you care and
Speaker 1: you just do stuff about it. You you talk to
Speaker 1: one person about it, you go online and you read
Speaker 1: more about it, and you find out things that you
Speaker 1: can do. Like that all helps. Like that's all good.
Speaker 1: And sometimes you're like, well, I won't even say anything
Speaker 1: because you know, especially like with politics and things like that,
Speaker 1: people get turned off because let's say like well I'll
Speaker 1: say it to so and so person in my social group,
Speaker 1: family or whatever, but there's no point because they won't
Speaker 1: listen to anything. But you know what even if it
Speaker 1: feel is like something that's completely futile. The fact that
Speaker 1: you that might even get a person too. They might
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, whatever or whatever, and then when you leave,
Speaker 1: they go on the internet. You see what's up them?
Speaker 1: Show them a picture of one of these doofy little
Speaker 1: kermit frogs and they're cute weird faces and crumple it up.
Speaker 1: This is what's happening. This is what your apathy does mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're like, I don't know, it seemed photoshop to me.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, but those are those are moments too.
Speaker 1: I think. You know again, sometimes they are people whose
Speaker 1: minds you can't change, but sometimes just offering a contrary
Speaker 1: opinion to those people can create a chain of events
Speaker 1: where thought is given to other things that might not
Speaker 1: have been before. Sometimes it's not always about completely changing
Speaker 1: people's minds, but at least getting someone to think. And
Speaker 1: if you care, if you really care about an issue,
Speaker 1: if you read about it and you care about it,
Speaker 1: you talk to other people. I think that's infectious. I
Speaker 1: think that really like when you really care and you
Speaker 1: and I think, don't don't let that fatigue get to you,
Speaker 1: because I know that it's overwhelming with everything that's in
Speaker 1: the news, that is so setting, and you can feel
Speaker 1: overwhelmed and fatigued, like just where you just want to
Speaker 1: not think about it and give up. And I feel
Speaker 1: that too, Like I think that's totally natural and sometimes
Speaker 1: you do have to protect your your mental health that way.
Speaker 1: But but just like you know, try to feel I guess,
Speaker 1: try to approach it from a constructive angle of like,
Speaker 1: you know what, this is sad and I do care,
Speaker 1: and it is heartbreaking, but there are so many other
Speaker 1: people that care to and there are people like on
Speaker 1: the ground like fighting this and it's that's great and
Speaker 1: that's inspirational, and like, you know, look up some of
Speaker 1: these cool animals and look look at how amazing they look,
Speaker 1: and like you can feel that that joy of like
Speaker 1: how incredible our planet is while also understanding the urgency
Speaker 1: in the situation. And you know, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people it's easy um to get disheartened when the
Speaker 1: change you want to see is not happening immediately or
Speaker 1: sometimes you know, from the time I worked organizing and
Speaker 1: things like that, I know it can be it can
Speaker 1: be really disheartening because you are so passionate about something
Speaker 1: that if you're not changing people's minds, like you take
Speaker 1: that burden on yourself of like, okay, well if I
Speaker 1: take this on, that means every person I meet I
Speaker 1: have to change our minds about something, and that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the best way to view it. Obviously, that's a
Speaker 1: great place to come from motivationally, but I think it's
Speaker 1: also important just to even be a beacon or someone
Speaker 1: who just transmits the message. Not necessarily. Don't don't grade
Speaker 1: yourself on how persuasive you're being or effective. Sometimes merely
Speaker 1: just verbalizing these things out loud to other people is
Speaker 1: just as much as you can do just as much good.
Speaker 1: So don't you know. Also, let we need to adjust
Speaker 1: sort of what our expectations are from even talking about
Speaker 1: these things too, so we are able to do it
Speaker 1: for a prolonged period of time, because I think the
Speaker 1: second that apathy kicks in, it can be very difficult,
Speaker 1: and just to become disheartened be like well I tried,
Speaker 1: and that's it. No one's listening, and you know, like
Speaker 1: I'll just I'll just zone out. I mean, imagine your
Speaker 1: actions the things that you're doing, like say it's it's
Speaker 1: donating or it's like talking to people about it, or
Speaker 1: you know, signal boosting an organization. Imagine like what you're doing,
Speaker 1: but on the large scale of like millions of people
Speaker 1: also doing that and like that. That's the key thing is, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have to personally take the world
Speaker 1: on your shoulders, but if you're doing stuff, you're trying,
Speaker 1: and you're caring, like that is healthy if we all
Speaker 1: do that. I feel like this is a good time
Speaker 1: to talk about how much I appreciate all of the
Speaker 1: Dick Dick pick picks that I've been getting, because last
Speaker 1: time I said, Dick Dix are these adorable tiny antelopes,
Speaker 1: And last time I talked about how it's said that
Speaker 1: nobody sent me pics and I have been flooded with
Speaker 1: Dick Dix. Uh addic Dick is here. I'll show you, yeah,
Speaker 1: one of those many antelopes. Uh they're very very cute.
Speaker 1: Um and uh oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're they're adorable.
Speaker 1: I apprec I love and appreciate every single one of
Speaker 1: those Dit pick picks. I've looked at all of them.
Speaker 1: Keep those coming, Uh, send me any anything. So if
Speaker 1: I haven't mentioned or included any links to organizations to
Speaker 1: donate to or stuff, than me those to me. Dit pics.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, you guys for listening. I know
Speaker 1: this was probably an emotional one and I really appreciate
Speaker 1: you tuning in and uh, you know, it's just it's
Speaker 1: been great talking about this. I think it's so important
Speaker 1: and it's so incredible, and good on you for listening
Speaker 1: to the end to get the message out there, because yeah,
Speaker 1: this really is such a vital part of our ecosystem.
Speaker 1: It's one fifth of our oxygen. If there's not one,
Speaker 1: if you're not compelled by the frog argument of the
Speaker 1: pink dolphins threat to the existential threat indigenous people, think
Speaker 1: about one fifth of yourtion, you know exactly. So Miles
Speaker 1: you got got anything to Where can people find you?
Speaker 1: Uh well, mostly Monday through Friday on this network doing
Speaker 1: the daily's like Geist daily political comedy news show that
Speaker 1: won't bump you out. I think I think I pitched
Speaker 1: it right, um and just you know on the internet
Speaker 1: at miles of Gray, that's miles within I Gray within
Speaker 1: a Would you like Dick Dick pickpics? Yeah, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: send mylesome Dick pick picks. I prefer action shots. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a lot of post stuff, So
Speaker 1: you think any frolic any frolick dick dick pick pick yes, yes,
Speaker 1: um yeah, And you can find Creature feature Pod dot com. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's Creature feature Pod on Instagram, Creature feet Pot on Twitter.
Speaker 1: E T not f e e T. That's a thing,
Speaker 1: very that's a whole different thing. Um monsters, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening, you guys, and thanks to the
Speaker 1: Space Classics for their awesome song ex Alumina.