The spirit of the rainforest: a journey with Rosa Vásquez Espinoza

The Amazon Rainforest - vibrant, untamed, and full of stories yet to be told - is home to worlds most people have never seen.

From jaguars that self-medicate with jungle plants, boiling rivers that harbour microbes unknown to science, pink river dolphins gliding through ancient waters, to stingless bees that craft medicinal honey, every corner of this vast wilderness holds a mystery waiting to be uncovered.

In this talk, scientist and author Rosa Vásquez Espinoza unveils a new face of the Amazon - one where discovery, science, and ancestral wisdom intertwine.

Blending modern research with Indigenous knowledge, she reveals how the rainforest is not just an ecosystem, but a living archive of intelligence, healing, and beauty.

Through stories from her book The Spirit of the Rainforest, Rosa shares her work with remote communities and hidden species, offering a rare glimpse into how science and tradition together illuminate the path toward protecting the world’s most extraordinary forest — and rediscovering our own sense of wonder.

About the speaker

Rosa Vásquez Espinoza is a UNESCO-awarded scientist, National Geographic Explorer, and author, named among the BBC 100 Women for her leadership in bridging Indigenous knowledge and modern science.

Of Amazonian and Andean Indigenous roots, she is the founder of Amazon Research Internacional, where she leads groundbreaking efforts to protect biodiversity and empower Amazonian communities.

Her book, The Spirit of the Rainforest, intertwines adventure, science, and ancestral wisdom to reveal the living intelligence and beauty of the world’s greatest rainforest.

Please note: The views of our speakers do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society.

Note on captions

The Society aims to provide automatically-generated captions for all event recordings. The captions appear as text at the bottom of the video which you can toggle on and off.

The accuracy of automatically-generated captions varies depending on the audio quality, any specialist language used and the speaker. They are therefore are unlikely to be 100% accurate and the Society does not edit or correct automatically-generated captions.