I Don't Know About That - The Amazon Rainforest

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

In this episode, the team discusses the Amazon Rainforest with President and Exec Director at Earth Innovation Institute and "tree-killing ecologist", Daniel Nepstad. Go to EarthInnovation.org to learn more! Our merch store is now live! Go to idontknowaboutthat.com for shirts, hoodies, mugs, and more! Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/IDKAT for ad free episodes, bonus episodes, and more exclusive perks! Tiers start at just $2! Go to JimJefferies.com to buy tickets to Jim's upcoming tour, The Moist Tour.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Okay. Tequila. Vodka. Which one helps Luis forget? We might find out, and I don't know about that, with Jim Jefferies. Or you could just answer the question right now. Vodka. I heard you got blackout drunk the other night.

You went to a brewery, and then afterwards you went to another bar. It was after his birthday recording. He got wrecked. You got wrecked, I heard. What happened? I mean, I was saying the last thing I remember saying, yeah, it takes a lot for me to get drunk. I like never get drunk. And then I wake up and then my dad's like, yep, threw up or fucking stepped on your throw up in the morning.

Oh, God. What a mess. You guys were sleeping in the same toilet, weren't you? If you had never listened to our podcast when that was the first one you heard, you'd be like, well, that's a bit racist. Which one gets Luis drunk? No, no, I could just see tequila sitting in,

tequila and vodka bottles are literally sitting in front of him. And I picked things in the room. It was either that or Gatorade. He has a Gatorade drink. I meant if you didn't know who Luis was, you were just saying a random louise but we do know who louise is i do know that i bought louise probably three shots and i left way earlier than the party and yeah i was fine then i bought him a cake yeah i made him a cake oh that's true i'm a better friend

have you been drunk since then uh no I think that was the last time, but this was actually my first two day hangover. But I mean, that was just Monday. It's Thursday. Three days ago. If I got drunk, I'd have to get drunk a few days in succession because it's like, well.

You might as well lean in. Yeah. It's like, get rid of the shakes. I did three nights in a row, but that was my last one. Wow. That was your last one how old did you turn?

29 alcohol's rough isn't it can I age you up you're 29? oh wow you look great you can do it by counting the crow's feet like that off air force was nice he's like hey you lost weight

but as soon as the mics and the cameras turn on, I would argue that you're the best looking person in the room. You're very handsome. You're very handsome. Let's be fair. I, I, when the mics are off,

I am also, uh, mean. Why don't you tell everybody how it used to be in the office? Oh yeah. So we'd walk in when we're on the Jim Jeffrey show and I'd say hi to everybody. And then I'd say hi to everybody. And then I'd say, Hey Luis, have you gained weight? I greet him every morning.

Every single morning he would walk into our office. You look fatter. We didn't have HR. HR was Tommy Caprio, which means there is no HR. I'm a prince. I don't care. I'm really fat. That's the funny part about it. So it's more hurtful coming from you. I thought about this the other day. I saw like, I was just on Instagram and I saw this person that I'd known in my past. And they're a yoga. They're like a huge yoga person.

They're like in really good shape. And I was like, I wonder if like just thinking, I wonder what it'd be like to date a yoga instructor. I was like, there's no way you can look like me and date a yoga instructor. There's no way that you'd be going to parties like, this is my sack of shit, this husband over here. I take care of myself. I call him the project. I'm not a very good instructor, obviously. It's funny because me and my brothers all have the fat genes and we all fight against the fat gene. But at any given time, one of us is big

and the other two have lost weight we all yo yo up and down and Scott's been fucking every time we play he goes just lost another 10 pounds cup free just you know businessman got a little thin hanging out in

Perth right he does all that right anyway so he did that and then he goes, I've lost 15 pounds already, 15 pounds. And all I said to him is, you'll be back. We don't encourage each other. We wait for each other's downfalls. And then you ring the other brother up. Oh, fuck, he's looking fat.

Maybe you're just giving it to each other. It's just weight that you give to each other yeah we have the same amount of weight that just gets passed around i've got 20 days before i go to australia i'm trying to i'm gonna lose a quick 10 pounds which i can always do in 20 days i've done it for tv and stuff like that i'm on the mission right now to lose the quick 10 pounds because i'm gonna eat the shit out of of Australia. All the meat pies you want. Yeah, so when I come back from Australia, I'll be 10 pounds heavier than I am right now,

but you don't know that I've actually starved to make that 20. So, yeah. So, yeah. You're putting on 20. I'll be eating all garlic chicken with fucking, oh, yeah, I'll be eating everything in Australia. Yeah, less time than that, actually, because you just came back from Baltimore Greenville.

You had those and you had these Canada gigs coming up. Well, Canada's coming up. Saskatoon, Regina. Winnipeg. Winnipeg. What else are you doing? Come and see me. Although those shows are all going to sell out.

They're on target to sell out. So get your tickets now. They're very close. June 2nd, Winnipeg. June 3rd, Saskatoon. Love my Canadian people. They're great crowds. Between me and you, there is a,

I believe there'll be a special recorded in Canada very soon. When do you say soon within this year? Just between you and all the thousands of listeners. I won't say where and I won't say when and I won't say what network for Netflix, but there'll be a recording happening. You have to say where eventually. I will eventually, but it could change.

I don't want to upset the people. It's nobody's business. I don't want to upset the people of beep. Oh, wow. That was a long beep. It's a long name. It's a long name. I say Montreal in both the English and the French.

It's not Montreal. Oh, wow. Okay, well, and then subscribe to our Patreon. I say Montreal in both the English and the French. It's not Montreal. It's not Montreal. Oh, wow. Okay, well, and then subscribe to our Patreon. Patreon.com slash IDCat. Merch is at idontknowaboutthat.com. Follow us on Instagram, IDCat Podcast. And if you want to get a onesie for your baby,

it says April 18th. Those are available. Oh, yeah. We need to talk about that. So a lot of people have reached out saying, we need April 18th merch. So lot of people have reached out saying we need april 18th merch so i decided to research to see if any any like what was out there already and the first thing that you find is fucking baby onesies one of them has a fist and then with april 18th on it and the other one says i love april 18th which is notoriously a day that babies are not made

yeah if you're putting it in the right place. The irony is these people wouldn't exist. So we're going to be coming out with baby onesies. No, don't be bringing that. And then they just put underneath it. Instead of just going April 18th thing, they go, Jim Jefferies. I don't make a cent off these things. One of the captions on it was amazing Jim Jefferies onesie.

And you're like wait what's amazing? What do I fucking do? Write a joke and now you're all fucking telling putting on babies? Well so we won't have those in the merch store but we do have fun stuff. But I'm trying to come up with an April 18th

logo type thing. I'm thinking about doing Jeffries 418 as if it's a Bible verse. Yeah, yeah. Jim 418 maybe. Yeah, that's true. And the Lord will have given it to the Sodomites.

Yeah, exactly. And we're working on Pooh on a Stick right now. Pooh on a Stick tour. Yeah, you'll be happy about that one, Jim. I love that tour. You should still have the tour. The next tour should be Pooh on a stick tour yeah you'll be happy about that one Jim I love that tour you should still have the tour the next tour should be poo on a stick honestly who cares what anybody says you'll get so many people to come

just because they want to go to the poo on a stick tour even people who aren't fans will be like I have to go to this you imagine when you're doing press like the radio in the city we got Jim Jeffries on the line here for his poo on a stick tour is there is there anything i like that name i show these things dangerous is there anything more dangerous than an 11 year old kid with a bit of dog shit on a stick

running at you i think not no that's really scary if you want to fill your fucking heart with fear poo on a stick it's called a war crime so that's why the military doesn't use them anymore. Yeah. Alright, let's start. Slash IDK. Alright. Please welcome our guest, Dan Nepstad. G'day, Dan. Now it's time to play. Yes, no.

Yes, no. Yes, no. Yes, no. Judging a book by its cover. Alright, I've already been privy to knowing that you're a doctor. Are you a Snow, judging a book by its cover. All right. I've already been privy to knowing that you're a doctor. Are you a doctor of medicine, Dan? I am not. I don't know much about medicine, I'm afraid to say.

So if you're on a plane and they go, is there a doctor on board, do you put your hand up anyway or do you think, I'm assuming they're not wanting me, unless this is a philosophy question. I could teach them something. Exactly. You have a sick tree. Ah, here we go.

That's how you get the information. So you're a doctor of nature of some description. Exactly. I gave you a big hand right there. Are you a tree doctor? I am an ecosystem, a tree ecosystem doctor. Exactly. All right.

But that's not our subject. Are we talking about trees? No, we did trees already. Did we? Yeah, we did. Trees are part of this. Yes, a big part. I'll give you a hint.

This is something that you have an opinion on. Oh, is this the rainforest? Yeah. Yeah, let's talk about the rainforest. I have some controversial opinions. We're talking about the Amazon rainforest. Not much rain. I'm all for it.

I'm all for it. Yeah, that's a good position to have. Yeah, I'm all for it. Before the rainforest. Yeah, I think we should have them. I just have been told since I was a kid, they go like this, oh, we lose a football field a day. They've been telling me this since I was little.

It should be gone by now. Football field a day is a lot. Like I know it's very big, but it feels like it should already be gone. I feel like I was bullshitted a bit. In 1988, I felt like they were lying to me a little bit. All right, well, let me probably introduce our guest first. Daniel Nepstad has a PhD in forest ecology at Yale University. You wrote this in there, Daniel's a tree-killing ecologist. You can explain that a PhD in forest ecology at Yale University. You wrote this in there.

Daniel is a tree killing ecologist. You can explain that to us in a minute. He created, with many collaborators, a computer model called Crystal Ball for analyzing the potential of different public policies to protect the forest. He is a champion of the bottom up approaches to sustainable development in tropical forest regions. He co-founded IPAM and Alianca de Terra and Inobu, I-N-O-B-U. Nepstad is an author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fifth Assessment, and has published 160 scientific articles and books. And you also are a big part of, or I'm not sure if you're the founder, part of the Earth Innovation Institute. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yes, we set up the Earth Innovation Institute. This

is my dream institution where we're basically delivering the support that governments, states and regions around the tropics need. If there's a governor who wants to move forward and move his whole economy regionally to forest positive claim climate positive development we want to be there to help him okay well that's earth innovation.org you can find information about that on the website there and um what is a tree killing ecologist yeah what does that mean well i for 20 years i i had these fabulous experiments. Well, let's imagine the rainforest doesn't get enough rain. So we put 6,000 plastic panels so the rain doesn't reach the soil, right? And watch the forest die.

So that makes me a tree-killing ecologist. And it did die, but not all of it. Or we set huge tracks of forest and fire. That one inspired some hate mail i must admit and i think i'm on the blacklist of a lot of elementary school teachers in brazil but and you did this for the greater good i'm assuming you just didn't want to burn trees or watch them die like you had a purpose to this right we torture trees for the broader good exactly and i do the same with children okay um so i'm gonna ask jim a bunch of questions about the amazon rainforest at the end of his answers and kelly will be keeping notes so we can refer to his answers

at the end of him answering his questions you're gonna grade him on his accuracy uh dan zero through 10 10 being the best code is gonna grade him to grade them on confidence. And I'm going to grade them 0 through 10 on et cetera. And if you get 21 through 30, Amazonian woman, a.k.a. Wonder Woman, a.k.a. Gal Gadot. That's pretty good. I love the dot. 11 through 20 total, Amazon on Fire Stick. Yeah, I like them too, yeah.

0 through 10, Jeff Bezos, Rainforest. Not a good one. Very successful, man. Yeah, not as a rainforest, though. Okay. In what continent is the Amazon rainforest located? It's in South America. All right.

You should be proud of yourself. You got one right. Yeah. Okay. We'll give you the easy one first. How many countries does it spread across? Or how many square miles? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, no, no. No, countries. Square miles is way harder. Okay. Both of those questions are in there. Yeah, yeah. I'll go four countries. Four countries.

You know how many square miles? Because you know the football field thing you said at the beginning. Yeah, square miles. It's going to be 2,000 square miles. 2,000 square miles. 2,000 square miles. What does biodiversity mean? Bio meaning two from the word bi. Diversity meaning diverse from the word diverse.

And so it's too diverse, man. It's way too much diversity. Yeah, yeah. Too much diversity. I mean, it's wrong wrong but not that wrong actually why are rainforests so important well a lot of animals survive

there a lot of oxygen is made through the forest that type of stuff it breeds life it's the habitat for many animals now that are all but extinct without the forest water from the Amazon River flows into what ocean i'm gonna this might be wrong but it might be right the indian ocean okay that is wrong um

the the the the the pacific yeah we have indian locked in okay uh how many how many miles long is the river oh okay so across america is 3 000 miles it's going to be shorter than that and it's through the things i'm going to say it's 1200 miles long look you got south america right i don't know actually how long it is. You might be closer. What is the Amazon rainforest nickname? Shorty because it's so long. No, no, the Amazon, it's Hippo Heaven because of, well, I know this because Pablo Escobar let all the hippos out in there. Is that the same thing?

Probably not. How much of the Amazon rainforest is situated in Brazil? Oh, 48%. 48%. How many of the world's species can be found there? Like, for example, one in four, one in five, one in six, you know, like that. I'll say one in five.

One in five of the world's species can be found there. And then what is the average temperature? A balmy 89 degrees. species can be found there. And then what is the average temperature? Abami 89 degrees. I'm doing Fahrenheit here. It's a ridiculous measurement, but I'll do it. Okay, here's the question. What is the Amazon tipping point?

Tipping point? What do you mean? Oh, the point of no return. It would be another 78 football fields. Okay. 78 more days. Yeah. We're very close.

Okay. Here's the question you might get. What is deforestation? It's what a lot of people will request for this podcast. Yeah. You're not wrong. I wouldn't say a lot. Some people want me off the broadcast.

That was brilliant. Sorry, mate. It hurt to say that joke, but it was too good. No, you were so excited. I could see you were excited. I feel bad now. I feel bad now. With current rates of deforestation,

the Amazon rainforest could disappear by what year? At the current rate, we won't have the Amazon in 2042. How many inches of rainfall does the Amazon rainforest get each year? Each year? I can tell you each day. Each day, it's getting

about 4 inches a day. 4 times 364. 365. No, but it's off days 4 times 365 1460 inches yep okay

do humans live in the Amazon rainforest yeah they find tribes in the Amazon every now and again that are untouched by people man that they're still like you know the people with the plates in their lips and shit like that. I might be racist saying that, so I'm trying to say it, but there's definitely people, there's natives that live in the Amazon, yeah.

Okay, I just moved that question because I should have put these in a different order because the next one makes more sense after the rain. Sting hanged out with the bloke with the plate. Yeah, okay. All right, stop. What fraction of the world's fresh water is found in the Amazon Basin? So the entire world that's fresh water, what fraction of it is found in the Amazon? 18%.

How much oxygen does the Amazon rainforest produce? Oh, 14% of the world's oxygen. What is the relationship between the Amazon rainforest and the Sahara Desert? They're cousins. Yeah. They see each other at christmas by blood or no they probably would join together in some way before the plate shifted before the meteorite hit and the dinosaurs all left and all that type of stuff so they probably live next door to each other there's

probably similar fossils in each one dinosaur fossils we've got more questions we'll get to them but i'm only gonna ask a few more because iing it. Yeah, I think we'll just get the right answers here. How about this? What is an epiphyte? An epiphyte? Isn't that a guitar? Yeah, an epiphyte. Epi.

Epi-gural. Okay, next question. It's when you hold down a pregnant woman so she can get the medicine. What is a Liana? Liana? That's your date nigger. That's the friend that annoys you and says you're too good for him. Okay.

Well, last question. Discuss climate change as it relates to Amazon rainforests. Because then when the temperatures rise, the plants won't live because we won't have as much rain or we'll have flooding all the time. Why does the rainforest roll in this? Because it'll get flooded. You don't want that.

You want it to have the right amount of water, four inches a day. Okay. Dan, how are you doing? How did Jim do there in his knowledge? Let's take out the first one, which you got South America, correct? Other than that question, how do you do in his knowledge of Amazon? That's a point.

You can't take away my point. It's not a point. Let's see. You've got about, you know, generously speaking, maybe 35, 40%. Oh. 35, 40. Yeah. Pretty good.

Better than I said. Four out of ten. I'd give you on a scale from one to ten, I'd give you right in the three to four. Yeah, all right. Very amazing. All right, 40. Yeah. Pretty good. Four out of 10. I'd give you on a scale from one to 10, I'd give you right in there three to four. Yeah. All right. Pretty amazing. All right.

Yeah. I've heard about that, you know, that you're a Renaissance dude. I am. I've seen it. Not today. Okay.

How do you do on confidence, Kelly? He didn't even look confident answering the one question. I thought he got right. So I'm going to give him a one on confidence. We're up to five. I got some right. I got 34%. You weren't confident. I think you got partial credit

throughout maybe. That's a total of five. I'm going to give you 15. I'm going to give you 14 just for the joke about me. It was funny. You're up to 19. Amazon on a fire stick. Okay. Jim, I asked him, in what continent is the Amazon rainforest located?

He said South America. And then how many countries is it spread across? He said four countries and it's 2,000 square miles. How do you do there? Yeah, it's eight countries. And it's 2 million square kilometers. Well, 2.7. It's about the size of the lower 48 of the U. So you're off only by a factor of a thousand

on the area. Does that change your opinion on how... I'm talking about what it's going to look like in 2040. Right, but if you were originally thinking it was 2,000 square miles, then it would make sense that you're like, how do we have any left? But 2.7 million square miles. What you do is you take a tree, you plant a tree. That's how you do it. What is it, a tip jar? And the countries are...

Is that what you do with tip jars? No, take a penny, leave a penny. Yeah, that's what I meant. You've been tipping wrong all these years. What are the eight countries? It's Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador. oh actually there's nine uh

venezuela guiana french guiana and serena okay so nine countries and then it was a square kilometers or miles he said that square miles yeah 2.7 the total amazon area and then 2.1 of that is forest. Wow. Okay. I asked Jim, what does biodiversity mean? He says it means it's too diverse. In the Latin, bio and diversity. What does biodiversity mean? Bio refers to life and bi refers to two. So you left out an O on the bio. So it really means that the diversity of life everything from species to communities to ecosystems oh and then um so no one's biosexual

i'm sure everybody is really i mean this is part of life i'm life sexual yeah yeah and then why are rainforests so important I know it's a pretty broad question. He said oxygen and habitat for animals. You got a point there maybe. Yeah. Actually, I hate to break it to you, but the Amazon rainforest is a wash in oxygen. It releases a huge amount of oxygen, but it absorbs about the same amount. But another way it's important

is that it just affects the climate so much. If you look at the total emissions of all human activities over the last decade, that's about as much carbon as are in the trees of the Amazon. So if that gets loose, we're screwed, to put it lightly. And we'll get into some of the other reasons it's important. Yeah, we can talk about it now

because there was a question I didn't even get to about the world's largest pharmacy. That was a question I was going to ask you, Jim. It's called the world's largest pharmacy. Yeah, because why is there no headaches in the jungle? Because the paracetamol. What? What's paracetamol?

Paracetamol. That's the active ingredient. That's other other countries they don't call that here yeah but it's still the active ingredient in in i know we just call it a leave because the paracetamol oh i've never heard of that term i was trying to figure out like the He's a doctor. Okay. But yeah, tons of drugs today, you can trace back the active ingredients to a rainforest plant, either in the Amazon or elsewhere. And we've just begun to tap that potential. It's actually pretty expensive to identify what those active ingredients are. And, but that's, that's one reason it's called a pharmacy.

Oh, it's like that movie medicine man with Sean Connery, where he cured cancer and he couldn't get out in time to tell everyone. Exactly. Yeah. It's called medicine man. Yeah. It's like a documentary with Sean Connery. He was in the rainforest. He's in the rainforest. I did not know that one. I didn't,

I do remember from my schooling that just in general, the medicines that we get from nature like aspirin from willow trees, I think if I'm right. Really? Yeah. They used to chew on willow branches when they had a toothache or something.

I think that's what they said. And then it helped, made it feel better. And that's salicylic acid or something. I'm just pulling stuff out of my butt, but I think that's all right. But is that like of all jungles or just the Amazon seems to be the farm? I know like aboriginals in Australia would open pawpaws up and put them on their skin, and now we use pawpaw ointment

to make things heal a bit easier. Was that unique to the Amazon or just that they had more medicine in there? No, it's all tropical forests, which are just in general, incredibly diverse and just tons and tons of plant species and animal species. So some of the medicines are from animals, some are from plants, what they use to paralyze fish, to capture fish,

that's being used today for heart surgery. So, yeah. Yeah yeah i think the idea is is like we don't know what's there so as we're destroying it we're potentially losing so i imagine imagine at that size the amazon being that big there must be large large portions of the amazon that haven't been set foot on right uh yeah i mean you mentioned the non-uncontacted tribes and there still are lots of uncontacted tribes most tribes have been contacted but if you you know you have to think about the amazon when before the the the 1500s when just diseases from european colonists decimated the indigenous people you know it's probably best to think about it like this one massive forested garden you know from European colonists decimated the indigenous people.

It's probably best to think about it like this one massive forested garden where indigenous people are favoring the trees that they need for Brazil nuts or food or medicine, just doing little tweaks to the forest to manage it to the species they need. And I was in the middle of a forest that everyone thought was primary, never been touched, and a meter underground, we ran into pottery shards. So someone had, there was like a tip up of a forest root ball. They probably swept their fire charcoal and a broken pot into it. And we just happened to land on it.

And so across the Amazon, you find charcoal and shards and things like that. Now, have you met some of these uncontacted tribes early on? Have you done that? Yeah, I've managed to convert three tribes from uncontacted to contacted. So they're no longer in contact. No, I'm just kidding. No, I've never contacted. I've just been with Indigenous people who have been

Pretty well connected to modern society I thought he was going to say he converted them That's going to spin you the fuck out man Because when people arrive And they get contacted that's the same as aliens Yeah for sure You know what I mean And they must see the planes fly over

They must just go fuck it Birds are scary. Things are going crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So water from the Amazon River flows into what ocean? You said the Indian Ocean?

That's a little off. That's the Atlantic. But, you know. All oceans are connected. I've never understood the oceans. They all seem to be one big bit of bloody water the main one there doesn't seem to be borders on the fucking things it's all the same water well but you'd have to go through most of the atlantic to get there i thought it might have

gone because western australia's got the indian ocean you see and i thought that maybe the water went that way and it oh they came out there. I got it. There was method to my madness, but I was wrong. And how long is the river, the Amazon River? It's longer than the U.S. is wide, so it's about 4,000 miles. 4,000 miles. Fuck that up, didn't I? And somebody has swam the whole river, right? Yeah, he's a hippo.

No, there's a human that swam the whole river. No, you've got to that swam the whole river. No, you've got to get an anaconda to fucking kill you. Am I wrong? I know there's someone who kayaked. Maybe someone did swim. Kayak, I'll take. Okay, well, let's see. Hold on.

There's piranhas and stuff, right? You know how far it is to swim? There's piranhas. There's anacondas. There's hippos. Last year. Well, let's see. This was from 2008.

So in 2007, april 8th slovenian marathon swimmer martin strell became the first man to swim the entire length of the amazon river from headwaters in peru to the brazilian port city of belen 3 274 miles it took him 66 days with a support crew of near 20 people following him in a boat for protection oh yeah oh it's on the internet it must be true yeah also i mean if i would have done that i people following him in a boat for protection. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's on the internet. It must be true. Yeah, also, I mean, if I would have done that, I would have got a lot more press than that. Yeah, I did it. I did it

back to me. That would be so scary. Yeah, there's a lot of... You got your mates with you cheering you on. If you're just into swimming, you just do it. Do you cover himself in the whale blubber or whatever they do when they swim the English Channel?

He's just in a wetsuit. Is it warm water? Is it warm? It's very warm. Yeah. Very swimmable. So it was a leisurely swim. No problem.

He's drinking a glass of wine in the water right here. Wow. I hope he avoided the kanjiru. What's the kanjiro? little fish that love orifices oh yeah he's got plenty of those in his pee hole wait wait what do they do? well they follow if they

detect uric acid from urine they follow it until they find the orifice and then they go in and they're really hard to get out I'll say no more. They're really hard to get out. Oh no. So Dan,

how did you get it out, mate? Tweezers. You'll notice how I'm sitting here. Man. What is the Amazon rainforest nickname? Shorty or hippo heaven? Pharmacy.

Gotta be one of those. You you know the one that's most common is lungs of the earth and uh you know i it's just not true i wish it were you know a lung too is not a source of oxygen right so it's true in the sense that uh the forest is the amazon forest The Amazon forest takes in CO2, releases oxygen, and breathes, respires, right? Because we think of the lungs in our body. It's where we get our oxygen, but it doesn't make the oxygen. Okay. And how much of the Amazon rainforest is situated in Brazil? Jim said 48%.

Almost two-thirds. So Brazil is the giant. Such a big country. Makes sense. And then I guess a lot of it. How many of the world's species can be found there? Jim said one in five. You know, I gave him a yes on that because we don't really know.

And it's probably somewhere about one in eight, one in ten, something like that. So I think that was an amazingly brilliant guess. Have there been any new animals just pop up where you're walking along and there's like a pink elephant and you're like, what the fuck? How did we miss this one? Like, does that happen every now and again? There's still new species being found every year.

And, you know, a lot of this, a lot of the things are not nearly as charismatic as a pink elephant. If we did a study comparing little streams on the same farm, and sometimes the overlap in species is only 30%, and, you know, 20% of the species of fish you find are new to science. They've never been described. And so there's incredible diversity that we haven't begun to figure out what it is.

And how did the people, if the people are untouched, how did they get there? Like how big are these tribes? Are they thousands of people or are they just a group of 50 or how big are these tribes? So the tribes are way down. You know, they're much less than about 5% of their original population because of epidemics and all of that.

And so the biggest part of the population are, you know, colonists, you know, European stock folks who've moved in or Spanish stock folks and just also Europe, of course. So there's 27 million people and only a tiny fraction of that are Indigenous people living as Indigenous people. And did they quarantine during COVID? Did they wear masks or did they just not notice it happened? The non-contacted tribes?

Yeah, the non-contacted. Did anyone in the non-contacted tribes get COVID? Good question. They social distance very well. Great question. But, you know, tribes were hammered. They were hammered by COVID. And, you know, some of them had access to masks and vaccinations, but most did not.

And yeah, it's been really sad. Jim, back to your pink elephant. There is a pink dolphin that's in the Amazon River. Really? Yeah. It's a funky looking animal, too. Give me a look at it. Give me. I'll tell you if it's any good. I'll tell you if it's any the Amazon river. Really? Yeah. It's a, it's a funky looking animal too. Give me a look at it. Give me,

I'll tell you if it's any good. I'll tell you if it's any good. yeah. Folklore, folklore has it. He's got a big mouth. He's got a big mouth on him. Wait,

folklore has what? It says that the pink dolphin, the males sneak out of the river at night and they seduce women and get them pregnant. That would be with that big mouth of theirs. That's what the women say is like the dolphin. They bite off a man's balls. They are endangered. I believe, right? The Amazonian dolphins.

Yeah. Cause that's actually what, that was one of the things I, I found something said one South American legend claims that this creature that lives in the Amazon river takes? Yeah, because that's actually one of the things. I found something that said one South American legend claims that this creature that lives in the Amazon River takes the form of a human male who seduces a woman and can get them pregnant. Who's the guy who, I'm the pink dolphin. I don't imagine he's impregnating many women. I believe he's probably dancing the night away somewhere. I believe he's probably dancing the night away somewhere.

It's another bit of the Amazon gone. He just gets alert. It's this depressing alarm that Dan has. He's like, well, we lost another one. So average temperature, 89 degrees Fahrenheit. Is that? Yeah, that's at the upper end actually it's getting it's getting warmer and uh as you might suspect but um it's an amazingly pleasant temperature to actually live in you know every night it's down to about 68 70 degrees and most days it's up around 90 so and is it is it like it's it must be colder under the canopy right than it is is it a drastic change in it's colder in the open because the canopy retains the heat okay

and you know dew formation right if you have a clear sky and humid air you get dew on the ground every single night the forest of the amazon gets dew and that means it's, it's soggy. Right. And that's protects it from, from, from rainfall. I mean, from fire in the absence of rainfall and, but it's incredibly humid. Right. So you, if it gets much above 90 degrees, you really feel it and you have to collapse and drink beer. Yeah. I was, I was in the Kakadu National Park in Australia, you know, Kakadu National Park. Is that where? Never been there. Would love to go there.

But it's, it's, is that similar? It seems like it's a big canopy thing, but it was hot as all balls when I was up there. It's in the north of Queensland. But if you haven't been there, I don't know. No, it's really similar. Very similar. Temperature and humidity wise, it's basically a sweat bath. So the tipping point, the Amazon. Jim said 78 more football fields. So this is kind of something we talked about at the beginning, why he doesn't comprehend how the Amazon rainforest is still there and could be losing that much each day.

But now you might have a better comprehension, right? It's very big. I'll give you that. So a football field a day is still a lot, though. Or is that an accurate even assessment? Are we losing it just for paper or wooden things, or are they mowing it down to put apartments up? What are they doing?

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Yeah. Whoa. So we're losing three or four football fields every second, not every day. Oh, then it should be gone by now. I don't care how big it is. That's very fast.

But the good news is there's still about 80% of it left. And the whole idea of a tipping point comes from the fact that the rain in the Amazon comes from the forest itself. There's so much water coming off the canopy, and that feeds the rain clouds downwind. So we have wind sweeping from the east to the west generally, and they just pick up more moisture from the forest. And when the forest is gone,

we don't get that moisture feeding the clouds. And so, you know, right now we don't know exactly how much, but, you know, 60, 70, 80% forest loss, and we could flip the regional climate to something that doesn't sustain rainforest. And suddenly all of those huge amounts of carbon start leaking into the atmosphere. But anyway, the good news is there's time to prevent a tipping point. And are we doing anything to stop the tipping point, or are we worse than we've ever been? You know, there was a period from 2005 to 2012 when Brazil had a very audacious strategy to slow it down and they got it down 80%. But it's been creeping up since then.

And the good thing that's happened now is finally we're getting a carbon market that could actually pay for reductions. So if a state government has a plan to lower deforestation 90 percent over the next five years, there's now people who are going to pay that. There's companies who are going to pay that. So that that I think is a big part of what could be what could be a solution going forward. They pay who? Like because going back to Jim's question, like why is the who's who's destroying the forest and why is it being destroyed then it's gonna slow these people down is that what it is 70 of all the land cleared in the amazon is in cattle pasture and it's for really farming okay it's for lousy cattle pasture these are skinny cows often some of them are you know are great cattle ranches where they got great forage and they're fattening them up almost as well as the Australians do. But a lot of it is just a way

of claiming the land or keeping some subsistence beef production going, having some milk or larger operations that do commercialize the beef, but they don't make a whole lot of money at it. corporations that do commercialize the beef, but they don't make a whole lot of money at it. And so that's the big thing. If we can give other economic alternatives to small-scale farmers or medium and large-scale farmers who are doing that, that's a big part of it. Another is cracking down on illegal activities, and some of the state governments are making good progress on that you know there's places more than you know 76 percent of the amazon in brazil by law has to remain forest by law so if we can implement the law there's only five percent that can fall legally and um and cover that with carbon credits

or carbon payments and suddenly we have a winning winning solution so then you have options for yeah because i remember that i remember thinking that when i was younger like you asked these other countries to stop doing what we did to become powerful because they're you know they're that's what they're like they want to own land or they want to you know use resources yeah but and so it sometimes feels weird we're like stop doing that other countries even though we've destroyed a lot of our country but you know um all right so uh deforestation we already know what've destroyed a lot of our country but you know um all right so uh deforestation we already know what that is a lot of people want for this podcast um but uh so the current rates of deforestation the amazon rainforest could disappear by what year jim said

2042. yeah it's actually out a bit further than that and uh the big question uh on forest loss is drought and fire right and that gets to that tipping point issue if we start getting really severe droughts that are so severe that even those spongy hard to hard to ignite rainforests can catch fire then it'll speed up and you know we'll you know yeah that's it that's that's interesting like like because we all know australia's been in fire a couple years years ago. The whole country was on fire. What's to stop just one fire just wiping the whole thing out? Or has that happened before?

Because it always grows back more lush, these things, after the bushfires. But you would lose so many animals. You would lose so many different, you know, like is there anything to stop that or just, as you said, it's too damp? Most years it's too damp. But then we're starting to get these really nasty droughts.

And we had a big El Nino event that was extra severe in 2015 and 16. Last year, 2019, was another really nasty drought. So that's part of climate change. And then it's being exacerbated by losing the forest itself, since forests create the rain. And most years, yeah, you can, you know, when the fire moves into a forest, it's knee high. You can step over it. It's easy to put out. But once it's burned, the forest loses a bunch of trees.

The next fire is much bigger, much harder to put out. So if we can keep fire from ever getting a toehold in these primary forests, that makes it all a lot easier. How many inches of rainfall does the Amazon rainforest get per year? Jim said 1,460. Anywhere from, let's see, inches, I'm thinking of a meter and a half, so about five feet is the lower limit and it gets up to 15 feet or more and uh so multiply that by 12 yeah you go to the north

northwest especially and there's three four meters of rain every year and uh but it's on the on the on the all a lot of the cattle ranches and soy expansion and farming is on the eastern edge because you have a really strong dry season. And there's about a meter and a half. And that's where it's most vulnerable, right? If that meter and a half becomes 1.2 meters, then that forest is not going to make it. Wow. Now you have a lot more rain. A lot more rain.

I mean, 15 feet is a ton of rain. I don't even know if L.A. has ever gotten 15 feet in the history of rain. I don't even know if LA has ever gotten 15 feet in the history of LA, total. But yeah, it's a ton. And the fraction of the world's fresh water is found in the Amazon basin, 18%, or is it bigger? So if you measure that as what's coming out the

mouth of the river into the Atlantic, it's about a fifth of all. It's by far the biggest river. I believe it's 20 times the Mississippi. So it's 20%. You were right on. So it's, yeah, it's the biggest.

Wow. Okay. How much bigger than the Mississippi you said? I'm remembering 20 times the size of the Mississippi in terms of disharm. Way bigger than the Congo. Yeah. Is there any casinos in the jungle? He's talking about the Mississippi in terms of disharm. Way bigger than the Congo. Is there any casinos in the jungle?

The Mississippi River? Just so I can start a boat thing. The Amazon Riverboat Casino? I'll go, hey, you've been contacted. And I have something for you. Do you have drinks called the Pink Dolphin? If they don't pay their marker, you put that

fish up their penis. Yeah. Like, was it the Kudgy fish? dolphin. It'd be great. If they don't pay their market, you put that fish up their penis. Yeah. Like what? The kanji fish? Kanji? Kanjiru. Kanjiru. What is it?

It sounds like it's Japanese. Kanjiru. Kanjiru. Yeah. Oh, I could write do with some kanjiru right now. And then oxygen that it produces. Jim said 14% of the world's oxygen,

but you were saying, I don't know if that's right, but you were also saying it doesn't really, it uses as much as it produces, right? Yeah, that really got going around a couple of years ago. President Macron, I think, referred to that 16% or something, very close to Jim's guess. But, you know, the science is just not there. There's a ton of huge amounts of oxygen

come off those trees but it soaks up about the same amount and then where do we so when you say it soaks it up like where does it so it comes from the tree but then who's where is it getting used or just getting absorbed the thing then the oxygen is brought back down it is secular the animals are yeah so when anything dies like if a massive tree falls in the forest, it starts to decompose. Does anyone hear that, by the way? Only the uncontacted folks. Yeah, they do. And so it's just soaking up oxygen as it decomposes, right?

All of the microbes and bacteria and fungi that are soaking it up. And so it's pretty much in balance. With the uncontacted, I'm a bit curious about this, with the ones that are found, do they always have a form of a god? I feel like mankind always finds a way to believe in a man on a cloud, you know what I mean? Do they have a god? Yeah, a God or are there any atheist tribes? You know, that's a great question.

I think the there's, there's a lot of spirituality and all of the tribes I'm aware of and, and with international phenomenon being okay, that's because of the rain God or the rain spirit. And, but it's a very different theology, right? Then big guy sitting on a throne. And,

but there, so I'd say there's a lot of spirituality and a lot of pharmaceutical pathways to explore that spirituality. And yeah. Do any of them believe in QAnon? That's where it started. That is the relationship between the amazon rainforest and the sahara desert just that they're cousins see each other in the holidays you know one way to think about it is the sahara desert is like the the fertilizer for the amazon you know, the big dust storms that happen in the

Sahara, those go across the Atlantic and it falls out in rain over the Amazon. And so people have traced a lot of nutrients to the Sahara. Of course, without the Amazon, that's going to really screw up climate patterns all around the world. And, you know, rainfall in California, snowpack in California, some studies show could be affected negatively if we lose big chunks of the Amazon. And similarly, the Sahara right now, it's there because of the way the climate, global circulation and climate works. And you start to whittle away at that big, huge, continental-sized forest, and suddenly air currents are moving in different ways,

and rainfall and temperatures get different around the world. What does the word Amazon mean? Does it have a meaning? Is there something in the word? Well, it refers to some of the women-led indigenous warriors of the Amazon. And, you know, when the first explorer encountered them coming down the Amazon. So women were called Amazonian before. I thought they were named after the jungle, not the other way around.

Right. It started with them. But I stand to be corrected. Wonder Woman was first. Female warriors of Greek mythology were Amazons. Oh, and they just, oh, it's like. And there was a tribe, I think. They were going to call the jungle big-ass bitch.

Yeah, I call myself Amazonian all the time. Like, I'm 6'2". I am an Amazon woman. And you love ordering from Amazon. Yeah. Unfortunately, I do. And you eat up a lot of natural resources. So the planet's dying.

I don't. You don't cut down trees? I think I've seen you. No, not once. There's an ax in your trunk right now. Admit it. That's not for cutting trees. That's for killing people.

Okay. So what is an epiphyte? I'm not even going to read Jim's answer. Leona, these two things. An epiphyte is I'm not even going to read Jim's answer. A liana, these two things. An epiphyte is a plant that grows on a tree. So it doesn't touch the ground. A liana is a plant that's connected to the ground, but doesn't have its own.

It can't support itself. It hangs on to a tree. Like a circle. Yeah. And those are very common. So it is like the annoying friend. Yeah. You those are very common in the, in the, it is like the annoying friend. Yeah. Okay.

Maybe. Um, and those are very kind. Cause I guess we didn't talk about the tree. I didn't even ask how tall do trees grow there. That was a question. Super tall, man.

Uh, you know, they 200 meters. Uh, no, no, about a third, about a third of that.

60, 65, 70. Well, there's so many different layers to the tree like the canopy is so dense right like how does that affect how the rainfall or sun hits like the the forest floor like um is enough sunlight getting there or rain or any of that stuff? Is that being affected? You know, you should, you should be an ecologist. That's the sort of thing we think about a lot. There's about on average, five layers of leaf, leaf above any patch of the rainforest floor.

So by the time the sunlight gets all the way through those leaves, there's maybe one or 2% of it remaining. And about 20% on average annually of the rain that hits the forest never makes it to the ground. It sticks on the leaves and the trunks and evaporates. Say 20%? Yeah. Wow. This is going to sound super stupid, but I have to ask.

Do they have autumn? You know, it's… Like it feels like there's no seasons there. I know there's no snow is it always pretty much the same every day or are there seasons really is what i'm asking there's two main seasons wet and dry and uh and in between it's not you know it's not unlike autumn in that in that a lot of trees are changing the types of leaves they have they're getting rid of their wet season leaves and putting

on their dry season leaves. And sometimes they're red and yellow and just really bright colours as part of that leaf change. And so, yeah, the temperature is flat. What changes is rainfall, and that means that the forest undergrows this amazing difference or leaf change. Are there a lot of poachers in the Amazon trying to get exotic birds and whatnot for people's collections?

Yes. Yeah, I thought that might be a thing. Sounds like something they'd get up to. You've never seen that? It's terrible with the parrots. I know. I saw there's a movie called Rio, which had some parrots. The animated movie?

Yeah. I have seen Rio. It's actually a documentary. Yeah, it's all about that. Have you seen Rio? It's all right. It's one of the better parrots. I animated movie? It's actually a documentary. It's all about that. Have you seen Rio? It's all right. It's one of the better. Yeah, it's all right.

It's depressing how they smuggle parrots in and the tubes and the PVC, right? And they take them and they like literally shove them in like PVC pipes that have holes in it. They put them in suitcases and they're just expecting most of them or a lot of them to die. And then the ones that live, they say, am I wrong? I've seen pictures of that. No, that's correct. Yeah. So don't buy parrots.

I imagine people try to get exotic snakes and all sorts out of there, right? We had a parrot growing up. We had an Amazonian. I just said don't buy parrots. But we had a parrot growing up. It was a yellow-named Amazon, and we found it after a hurricane. After a hurricane, I grew up in Florida. In his uncle's suitcase.

Yeah. In a tube. It was after Hurricane, I forget which one. Maybe it was Hurricane Andrew in South Florida. And we were at my grandparents' house, and we were assessing the damage. And we just didn't see it. A bird flew in the bushes. And we're like, what?

And my mom goes, hello. And it just comes walking out and goes, hello. And its bill was damaged. It was a little beat up, but it could talk. So we kept it. His name was George. If it couldn't talk, they would have killed it right over there. No, no, I'm saying I should have rephrased that.

It could talk, so we knew a little bit of information about it. We knew there was a guy named Victor, and there was a Dr. Hector, and their dog's name was Patches. He just watched one episode of Fantasy Island like a day before. He didn't know anything. We put an ad in the paper. We're like, hey, we found this parrot. And people tried to claim it

because the birds are worth thousands of dollars. So people were like, yeah, it's my bird. What's its name? I don't know. Like, we knew all this information so people couldn't lie to us. So we ended up keeping him. And we had him for a long time.

And then he changed all of his vocal pattern stuff. So we did have a parrot, but we didn't buy it. Yeah like he used to have a lovely cheerful voice by the end he sounded like gravel no he can he can he did imitate me even he would imitate my my mom's how many grams do you want my mom he would he would he would yell like if my mom was saying hey forrest from across the house he would imitate that and i'd be like what and my mom be like that's george not me and i'm like yeah and he could knock on the door like like that and oh yeah you had a real ferris bueller's day off you used to sit george in there i'm not feeling good yeah anyways i that's the only way we had a parrot other than that there's some horrible ways they get here.

Stay away from it. Oh, the roots of the trees. We talked about how tall they grow, but I didn't even ask you this, Jim. How deep are the roots of Amazon trees? Oh, they would go down 20 meters. 20 meters. How do you do there, Dan? Man, you nailed it 22 wow i i should say that the the science used to think assume that they're really shallow and that all of the action was

in the first few centimeters and uh when i got to start my phd dissertation in 1984 with uh in a little town called Patagobala, which means Patago bullet. And because of it's a big land conflict area. And I talked to whale digger, well diggers, and they said, Oh no, we find roots all the way down. And the deepest route we found was 22 meters. And, and that explains why almost a half of the Amazon is not a Savannah because with those deep roots, they can keep moisture coming up, feeding the leaf canopy, even through the dry seasons.

Yeah, that was the thing I remember. They said they were shallow, but that's been all debunked then, right? Yeah, a lot of the action is on the top, and a leaf falls in the root mat, and fungi go into it to pull the nutrients out before it even gets to the soil. And so where there's really poor soil in the Amazon, these white sands, for example, that don't have anything, no nutrients, you'll see literally a root layer that can be a foot thick sometimes. And in those places, the deeper roots don't play a huge role. Now, you said that it was called the pharmacy because they found so many pharmaceutical drugs that help us to this day. Have they found any fun drugs in there? Is there a molly tree?

Is there an ecstasy fern? What's going on? The same drugs. You just want molly. Banisteriopsis is a vine a liana and it has given us ayahuasca and getting back to the

indigenous people that's one of the main a huge part of many indigenous cultures rituals take a take you guys all want to do it I really want to do ayahuasca so ayahuasca is from the rainforest. Yes.

I just thought it was from Joshua Tree. That's where everybody does it. That's where it's exported to. You should try the fentanyl fern. Have you ever seen a jaguar? Like in the wild? Yeah, I have. Yeah, a lot.

You know, there are to Yeah. That's a lot. You know, they're hard to see. Jaguar? It's just a beaten up car that's driven off an edge. Yeah. How many times have you been there? He's there right now. I lived in the Amazon for about 10 years all totaled. And so, you know, the first few years I was in the forest almost every day.

And so you see a lot and, you know, these fragmented landscapes where you got farms opening up and cattle pastures and, you know, the jaguars and tapirs and peccaries are squeezed, right? They don't, they're squeezed into smaller and smaller areas and they start going out into the pastures and get hit by cars and things like that. going out into the pastures and get hit by cars and things like that. And so, but yeah, we actually ran into a Jaguar, a young one once in our truck coming back from the field one night.

And that was, we all shed a tear on that one. Were you there with your family or were you there by yourself or is it quite lonely out there? Yeah, I was there with my family and my younger, my older kids. I was there with my family my younger, my older kids my younger kids I took to Indonesia but we only spent a year and a half there that's a cool

experience for them, like yeah I grew up in the Amazon rainforest one of them went on to become Tarzan was Tarzan from the Amazon? Where was he hanging out? I think he was in Africa. Congo, yeah. Yeah, Congo, right. He was hanging out with gorillas, right?

So that would have made, yeah. I imagine if I've never been to the Amazon, but I imagine if you got deep enough into it, you would just see so much animal life. Maybe it's a lot of insects and stuff like that, but I just see in my head, I'd just be, oh, there's a monkey and there's jaguar. Imagine doing mushrooms sitting in the Amazon

rainforest. That'd be so awesome. They'd just be on the floor. They're ready to go. That would be awesome. Looking at all those trees. Then there's an ant that'll bite the shit out of you. What are those ants? Isn't there an ant in there? Bullet ant. Bullet.

Tucandera in Portuguese. It's nasty. Have you been bitten by one? I have. What does it do? And it's painful for days, right? And cutter ants are everywhere. They come out at night.

They have chambers that can be 20 feet below the ground where they have gardens. They grow fungus on gardens that they feed, that they eat. And then they put their dead in cemetery chambers. And we started to open up those for our research, of course. And they draw blood, so they don't sting as much. They just bite through your skin. Yeah, these American ants are nothing. Yeah, mushrooms in the Amazon sounds great.

We have ants in Australia that will give you a nasty sting. You're just having a picnic. For the people that are in the tribes there, obviously they'd be affected by this a lot. Do they just, I guess, evolutionarily become used to those types of bites from the insects?

Or how do they deal with all of that stuff there? They're constantly in it. They learn how to use them. I'm like the cutter ants I just mentioned, the leaf cutter ants. They open up the nests and they get the larvae. They have something called neptual flights.

Maybe this could link to the pink dolphin. But all at once, several nests around a region the the new queens which are ready to get further they take off right and they've got abdomens full of eggs and so they're incredibly full of vitamin c but also uh oil and protein and and they they land on the ground and you can go around picking them up they're trying to dig down and start a new colony. But indigenous people, they eat them. They fry them and they're amazing. And bullet ants, they can just see them, you know, because a tree, if it has a bullet ant nest around the base, you can see the pattern of the nest.

It comes right up to the bark. And so they can spot them. And, spot them. Americans get bit by bullet ants. Indigenous people do not. Right, yeah. They're more prepared. And then, so overall, I guess, you know, what... What happened, Forrest? What's the outlook for the rainforest? Do you think it's doomed? Do you think it's not doomed? What should we be doing like i know there um yeah let's let's go with that is everything good and no not everything's good but just kind of a general wrap-up of the you know

we've learned everything about the rainforest every single thing um no but uh i mean just yeah what's the outlook outlook is not good The five years with more deforestation, the most deforestation since the year 2000 happened in the last seven years. And things are going up. I already mentioned the Brazilian Amazon was coming down. Now it's coming up. I think the good thing is that there's a lot of serious, a lot of companies, a lot of governments are taking it seriously. They realize that if we don't fix the tropical deforestation issue, the chances of fixing the climate change issue are going to be much harder or much lower. And so really, you know, this is not just for the rainforest and its species and its people. This is for the future of everyone, you know, to get this right. Right now, it's about 10% of all carbon dioxide emissions

from all human activities are coming from deforestation. And so, like I said, I'm an optimist and maybe chronically so and unfoundedly so, but I do think that some of the pieces are coming together. Deforestation is actually declining in Indonesia right now, which is the other biggest forest after Brazil and, and after the Amazon. So we'll see.

All right. And, and at earth innovation.org, this is like where it sounds like there's just from what I was reading through is like, it seems like there's good like ideas or strategies, at least maybe to, to that make more sense to deal with these problems or to come up with solutions.

Yeah. So we're very much focused on bottom-up solutions and working with… Today, it's so polarized, right? Everyone throws rocks at each other instead of getting down and talking about solutions. If you don't agree with someone else's perspective, they become your enemy instead of working it out. And we try to help create those tables where people can come together. So governments are sitting down with their farm sectors and the companies that are operating in their region, the indigenous people. And that's really happening and working well in some regions. And you can see all of that on our website. And we've got people in the ground in Brazil, in Peru, Colombia, Indonesia, and Malaysia right now.

All right. Well, this is part of our podcast called Dinner Party Facts. We ask our guests to give us some fact about the topic, the Amazon rainforest, that is interesting or obscure that people might not know that they can impress people with. Got anything? rainforest that is interesting or obscure that people might not know that they can impress people with got anything well you know i tried to come up with something that's a little bit new and every two weeks the amazon releases an amount of water into the air through evaporation that's equivalent to all of the water in of the lakes in the entire planet. Oh, that was a good one. Every two weeks? Two weeks. Through evaporation. Through evaporation.

So think of it this way. Two million square kilometers of forest letting go about half a centimeter water day. It adds up. Wow. That's a good dinner party. Every day is Lake Michigan. Lake Michigan every day. Yeah, that's a good one.

Not that it's easy to remember, but it's easy to say. Once you remember, you say it, and people are like, yeah. Then you drink a sip of wine. Pretty cool. Well, thank you, Dr. Dan. I appreciate you being on the show. We learn a lot. I knew most of it before you came here, but that's okay.

I was happy to hear it again. I just want to say earthinnovation.org is the website. You should go visit that. And there's also a Twitter account for that. And I don't know if you have an Instagram account, but I did see a Twitter. We have Facebook too. Facebook.

They got it all. But go to earthinnovation.org for more information on how you can help. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Dr. Dan, for being on the podcast. If you're ever at a party and someone comes up to you and goes, ah, the Amazon, it's only 300 square miles, go, I don't know about that, and walk away. I'm still not sure what it is.

Good night, Australia.