when i was kid, my grandparents teach that there are some people who have been in madagascar before. they were very little people and they live in forests and they respect their environment. but then comes many people from

other countries, from africa, from asia, spain, from france. many of us don't know the history. ♪ i took a walk through this beautiful world ♪ ♪ felt the cool rain on my shoulder ♪ ♪ found something good in this beautiful world ♪ ♪ i felt the rain getting colder ♪ ♪ sha, la, la, la, la ♪ sha, la, la, la, la, la ♪ sha, la, la, la, la ♪ sha, la, la, la, la, la

[ drums ] ♪ ♪ ♪ market. ♪ >> over the years i've let a lot

of extraordinary landscapes recede into a blur outside my windows. i've looked, maybe seen, maybe noticed, then gone. we all carry different experiences inside us. we see things differently, don't we? madagascar -- exotic, unspoiled paradise or microcosm for the end of times.

antananarivo, tana for short, madagascar's crowded, chaotic capital city. >> how are you doing, man? base camp. >> wow, that's quite a rain. ♪ i don't know. i'm not sure if i can be in front of the camera. >> just ignore them. >> i'm so used to controlling everything. >> darren aronofsky, director of the films "pi," "requiem for a dream," "the wrestler," "black swan," and sort of appropriate to our location, "noah." he asked me if he could go along on a trip with us. i said where do you want to go. >> madagascar, i knew almost nothing about it. i knew it was an animated film i've seen a lot of times in my car. >> i guess it's one of the more extreme, distant places that you

hear about that you'll never go to unless something weirdly summons you. you're sort of that weird force. >> we're on an island in the indian ocean with this amazing ethnic mix, an incredible landscape. something like 80% of the animals here don't exist anywhere else. >> what does it mean when an ecosystem goes out of balance? what is the blowback? here, you can see the blowback. the people have been chopping down the forests, and so you don't have soil anymore, and you can't grow anything anymore. it's a really [ muted ] situation. there we go. there we go. >> an important question. you are a vegetarian. >> yes. and it just sort of happened with the release of "noah." in scripture he is a vegetarian as was adam and eve. humans weren't given permission to eat the animals until after the flood. >> all right. so we'll see who is doing better at the end of these 13 days. little social experiment here.

♪ >> madagascar was settled best we can tell around 700 a.d. by people from what is know indonesia, later by africans. ♪ in 1895 the french took it, killed off a substantial number of people in the process, and as they do, left behind beautiful buildings and the french language. when independence came in 1960, it was sudden and ill prepared for. continuing political incompetence has left most of madagascar's 22 million people living on less than $2 a day. >> do you know this place?

have you been here? >> yes. wednesday, saturday, to go out, before going out tonight club. >> first meal in country and i suggested this place. i thought it would be perfect darren being a vegetarian, and all. i thought it would be perfect with aaron being a vegetarian and all. this is what you call being passive aggressive, i think. >> so what's good here? >> pork. >> pork, my favorite vegetable. >> just the head of the pork. >> it sounds good. >> i'm not going to have it. i'm going to go just with vegetables. beans and -- >> you don't want to taste it? >> i'm not going to taste pig head, not today. that is the fun and torture of darren. >> always take it with beans. >> rossi, the famous musician here, is after a period out of favor with the previous

government back home and elected to parliament. >> the leaves are from -- >> oh, great. there you go. that's excellent. >> these days what are the big issues that are not being taken care of? >> poverty. and not enough education. we have oil, but our political leaders most of the time are crook. >> how much does the environmental issues matter to the people? it's just about survival. >> they don't care. the international community, they've paid a lot of money to protect the forest. you protect the monkey. you don't protect the people. i eat the monkey. if i'm hungry, i eat them. they don't care about the world is going more and more war.

>> climate change. >> okay. you are going to die, yes? okay. you're going to die. that's life. for them, just normal. >> a lot of people feel that the future should be ecotourism, that leads you to essentially be working in hotels and restaurants for tourists. >> yeah. >> that's kind of a return to colonialism, isn't it? >> that's it, exactly. ♪ i thought i was managing my moderate to severe crohn's disease. i didn't think there was anything else to talk about. but then i realized there was. so, i finally broke the silence with my doctor about what i was experiencing. he said humira is for people like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn's disease. in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections,

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♪ tell me what you think of this. >> i'm looking forward to this. it's a very famous dish, goose. >> goose and shredded meat. >> very cool. >> there's always someplace where the flame is kept burning, history kept alive however faintly. >> this is the stuffing. >> these days in madagascar's

capital city it's left to mariette. >> the epitome of the cooking is the way mariette cooks it. ♪ [ laughter ] ♪ ♪ you are, you are like a sweet perfect bloom ♪ >> during the colonial period, mariette was a frequent culinary ambassador. ♪ you are like the sun on my skin ♪ >> harry bellefonte. >> the go-to chef for visiting presidents and royalty. [ speaking in a foreign language ] the success story -- her mansion high atop oatville, the former neighborhood of choice for aristocrats and colonizers alike. though semi-retired, mariette

continues to entertain guests from time to time. >> so this is broth with chicken and ginger. >> these dishes marry mostly disappeared cuisine with the techniques and training of classical french. >> so moisten the rice with the broth? >> exactly. moisten the rice with the broth. >> wow, look at this. >> it is one of the side dishes. it's like a salad. string beans. most of us don't eat meat at every meal. most would eat rice broth with vegetables and that's meat once a week.

>> i'd do fine. >> yeah, absolutely. >> this is a country that is very rich in natural resources. >> madagascar, we have a lot of things that a lot of people want. for example, the trafficking of rosewood, prospecting for oil for gas and then don't leave anything for the rest of the country. this is an island paradise. >> and it is disappearing very, very quickly. >> a lot of our forests are being burned down. because people don't have land on which to grow their crops. >> the best case scenario that everybody seems to raise is that ecotourism will save the day. the local people will be cleaning rooms, cooking, and performing traditional ethnic dances. >> yeah, absolutely. >> to me, this is not an ideal option. and we see it -- >> what's an ideal option, though?

♪ >> heading south from tana, it's a very different country out there where rice is the difference between life and death. ♪ between the traditional slash and burn agriculture that's existed here since this island was first settled and the imperative of charcoal as heat source, 90% of the forests and jungles that covered madagascar are gone.

♪ >> anything? >> not yet. they're very elusive. they're very difficult to see. >> thanks largely to the work of dr. patricia wright, over 40,000 hectares of forest have been set aside and protected with the creation of ranomafana national park. her recently completed research station is a state-of-the-art complex that reminds one of that cynical spielberg franchise, what was it -- jurassic -- jurassic merch? >> there he is. he's right next to me.

can you see him? hello. >> the area provides essential habitat for the golden bamboo lemur. a species that dr. wright discovered here in 1986 and the greater bamboo lemur, previously thought extinct. >> there's only 500 of these in the world in the whole wild. >> slash and burn agriculture. look at it. beautiful. it's so nice. >> he's taking a leak right now. >> i can't watch. >> hopefully that's not an editorial statement. ♪ >> look. this is the kind of bamboo shoot that the lemurs love. it's full of protein, and it's full of cyanide.

>> the cyanide not a problem for them? >> they can tolerate all kinds of cyanide. the cyanide comes straight through in the poop. >> do they know how they get it through their system? >> we're working on that. >> okay. what is the dew on the outside of it? just dew? >> careful. >> oh, don't touch. >> how is your finger feeling? >> i felt a little sharp, but like a fuzzy sharpness. >> yeah, fuzzy sharpness just wait a bit. >> it's like fiberglass. >> it's just like fiberglass actually. >> leave tiny little cuts. >> if i lick my finger am i going to die? >> probably. >> are you serious? can it go through the skin now that i've touched it? >> no, you have to eat it. >> hopes for "black swan 2" were dashed today when -- >> one right above you. >> has the film "madagascar" been good for the lemur

business? >> there you go. >> i think the cartoon really woke up the world to the fact that there really is a place called madagascar although many people think it doesn't really exist. >> how hard is it to maintain the forests? >> it's incredibly hard. we've been working with the villagers around the park, and i think they really do understood the value of these extraordinary lemurs and the extraordinary value of the forests and the economic value of tourism is tremendous for this country. with the xfinity tv app,

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download the xfinity tv app today. the boundaries of the ranomafana park protect what they can of madagascar's rapidly diminishing rain forest, but it's not all about lemurs and rare species of unspoiled beautiful places. >> these are the tenella people. these are the people of the forest. this is the fifth time they've had to change the location of the village because they do slash and burn agriculture. this ceremony today is a ceremony to celebrate the fact that 17 people from the village are going to donate their land

to conservation. it won't be cut down. ♪ >> before the tenalla land can officially become a part of the park, the gods, the ancestors, somebody must be appeased and that, as it often does, means something must die. >> seen this a lot? >> i usually don't go when this is happening. ♪ >> wow. >> for someone with as dark a world view, judging from his

films anyway, as the newly vegetarian aronofsky, he seems unusually uncomfortable with the bleeding realities of local custom, preferring instead to trip the light fantastic in the rain forest idle. ♪

[ speaking in a foreign language ] ♪ ♪ ♪ >> how do you make the argument that it is in your interest to protect your area of the forest when the forest means fuel, food? >> what we've had to do, of course, is make their lives better in exchange. health projects, education projects, tourism. many of the people work as tour guides. they work in the hotels. they have work. they didn't have any work when i got here, but also the benefits of researchers. we hire 85 people full-time.

the director of the national park, where's your village that you lived in when you were a little girl? that's on one side of the park. ♪ [ speaking in a foreign language ] >> the ancestors presumably okay with the land transfer. it's time to party. ♪ dr. wright worked hard to establish ranomafana park with the stated aim of protecting the absolutely unique flora and fauna here and reducing human

pressures on the area. ♪ this, however, is the face of human pressure, just so we're clear. ♪ >> okay. take care, guys. ♪ >> we're right on the edge of the park. >> wow. >> and right on the edge, literally, is where they built the power lines and where they're slashing and burning. we were trying for landscapes like this in "noah." >> sort of a cormick-mccarthy post-apocalyptic wasteland thing going on, right? >> "the road."

>> look, all the original fauna and flora and new york city and chicago and detroit are gone. we don't feel too guilty about that. >> that's the argument of all these developing countries, you did it. didn't they teach us in the third grade that two wrongs don't make a right? all right, here we go, baby.

hey! we're doing the wave! taking off with me! for 42 minutes he's been trying to bring an entire stadium to its feet. you missed it buddy. (rich) why does he do it? for glory? notoriety? we don't know. waaaaave! frankly, we don't need to know. but much like this hero, courtyard is all about the game. taking off with me! one, two, three! waaaaave-- there's my guy! yes. snacks? yeah, man, eat it up and we're gonna burn it off doing the wave!

♪ what were they welding on? >> oil pan. [ speaking in a foreign language ] >> most of madagascar's french built rail network has crumbled into nothingness, but this train

still runs. >> look how it's painted. >> it's first class. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. >> we ride in style. how old is this train? [ horn ] wow, it works. >> oil pan worked. >> i hope that's not a pitying look i see on some of their faces. they're all looking at us like -- >> it's 163 kilometers to the one time major port town of

manakara. it's both the greatest thing ever, meaning a fantastically scenic immersion into parts of madagascar that people rarely see and at times, punishing crawl. for the majority of the 17 station stops along the line, this train provides the only connection to the outside world. people hop off and on, load and unload fruit, lychees, bananas. quite a few foreigners on board watch. >> can we get some peanuts? thank you. >> and there are vendors selling food and drink, which is increasingly a necessity since the supposed eight-hour trip is said to approach 18.

♪ >> all right. so we got a shaker. we got an umbrella, champagne. you let the train pour for you. >> right. >> this is the lychee. >> oh, that smells good. >> yeah. >> darren woke early and hit the hotel kitchen to make the necessary lychee puree for festive cocktails. >> wait, wait, wait. >> oh, yes. it's not bad. it's not bad at all. >> okay. it's a nice summery drink. >> the lychee makes it. >> the lychee makes it, yes. >> what do we call it? the golden lemur would be good. >> the golden lemur would be good, yes.

♪ >> flashes of everyday life, the struggle to live, to eat, viewed from a moving train, then gone. ♪ >> and it's plumes of different areas of madagascar burning everywhere you can see. >> after seven hours or so -- >> we're coming into a town. >> -- the imperatives of food, any food, become more urgent. >> this is it. this is the food stop. i am starving. >> i am so with you.

look, this kid is wearing a banana like a yarmulke. >> the wonderland of fresh papaya salads along with the train of treats we were told would here is somewhat suboptimal. >> little did i know there would be a feeding frenzy. there's no papaya salad. everything's gone. here are some bananas. >> yeah, a few of those. >> yeah, merci. >> we get what we can. >> that is what it seemed. >> it's pretty insane. it's hard to complain about the lack of food options if you look around. >> lots of kids. want some? yeah, it's hard. ♪

>> this is nice. >> this is the way to travel. ♪ until like a palm leaf comes flying at you. ♪ watch it, watch it, watch it. ♪ ♪

♪ this is what it's like to i had that dream again --

that i was on the icelandic game show. and everyone knows me for discounts, like safe driver and paperless billing. but nobody knows the box behind the discounts. oh, it's like my father always told me -- "put that down. that's expensive." of course i save people an average of nearly $600, but who's gonna save me? [ voice breaking ] and that's when i realized... i'm allergic to wasabi. well, i feel better.

it's been five minutes. talk about progress. [ chuckles ] okay. more "doing chores for dad" per roll more "earning something you love" per roll bounty is more absorbent, so the roll can last 50% longer than the leading ordinary brand. so you get more "life" per roll. bounty, the quicker picker upper

♪

this is what it's like to wake up at the end of the world. beyond here to the east nothing but thousands of miles of indian ocean. ♪ morning, and fishermen return with their catch. ♪ >> have you felt how wobbly that boat was coming over? >> yes. >> imagine going out into the serious chop of that thing and fishing.

>> manakara was a major port back in the day, a major transportation hub, but now it's a sleepy beach town. that's a disturbingly large spider. i would be unhappy if i saw that coming across my pillow. dude, it's a chicken or rooster. >> talking about spiders and that chicken comes out. >> i tell you, that lobster is smelling good. >> no, they're disgusting. they're like giant insects. what do they eat? >> corpses. >> dead things. >> you are such a debbie downer. you are such a downer. ♪ >> you were born here. >> and your parents are from here.

>> from here. he's a fisherman. >> how far out do they go out? >> about 50 miles. >> he goes out 50 miles in a little canoe? >> yes. every day, every day. >> awesome. >> this is typical dish. green leaves, eggplants, some spices, then meat. >> it should be pointed out we bought a lot of food. this sort of spread is not an everyday meal in these parts. >> there's your veggie platter. there you go, man. >> now we have a piece of a shark. he says that before 2000 more fishes, but since then -- >> smaller fish? >> yes and the quantity smaller. >> that's a papaya salad. >> anthony: yeah, yeah, yeah.

it's one of those days where the artifice of making television threatens to move dangerously into cruelty. what are you guys eating over here? who gets to eat, and when, becomes a pressing concern to the two of us. >> darren: can we get the kids eating? can we hand out the food? >> jonah: uh, in a local village like this -- >> anthony: uh-huh. >> jonah: first they did serve the men. >> anthony: right. >> jonah: and then the kids, they will eat later. >> anthony: yeah, right. >> jonah: because it's like a custom. >> anthony: i gotcha. it may not be our system but it's a system. the kids are getting ready for theirs over there. and it becomes clear that yes, everybody will eat. >> darren: there we go. >> anthony: come to daddy. oh, that's good, dude. you picked a bad time to become a vegetarian, you really did. oh man, the food is amazing. there's some really good cooks at work here today. i mean, really amazing. ♪ and then the music starts, and

the dancing. and as so often happens, the not-so-spontaneous made for tv party becomes a real party. we all, for a little while anyway, forget about where we came from and where we might be tomorrow. ♪ but then i realized there was. so, i finally broke the silence with my doctor

about what i was experiencing. he said humira is for people like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn's disease. in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. if you're still just managing your symptoms, talk with your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible.

♪ >> locals: hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

>> preacher: hallelujah. praise the lord! you are blessed today, amen! hallelujah. >> group: hallelujah. >> preacher: the book of revelation say that what if ever we do god can see and he take not. i will destroy this city because all of the people are sinner. amen. hallelujah. >> group: hallelujah. >> preacher: hallelujah, hallelujah. >> group: hallelujah. >> anthony: the camera is a liar. ithows everything, it shows nothing. it reveals only what we want. often what we see is seen only from a window moving past, then gone. one window.

my window. if you'd been here chances are you would've seen things differently. whoa. >> darren: whoa. >> anthony: you've lived it now. looking back, if you were editing this show, how would you tell this story? >> darren: uh. >> anthony: this is it, this is the food stop. i am starving. >> darren: i am so with you. [ shouting ] >> anthony: that is quite a scene. >> darren: lots of kids. you want that? >> anthony: uh, uh, uh.

this is really -- up here. >> darren: you always want a simple answer to everything to make it all make sense and it seems to -- i don't know, it's just constantly surprising. >> preacher: what can you see everywhere in god? in the office, in the market. people are still making sin. >> darren: as a kid i always wondered if i was good enough to get on the ark. so i always, sort of, empathized with people who didn't make it. >> preacher: god make all of the animals. come inside the big ship. and all of the people are dead. but what family are saved? here is our ship. >> darren: god decides to destroy creation ten generations

after he created everything, so it must have hurt tremendously. >> preacher: god will choose us, like he choose noah. he saved noah, he protect noah. he will send a storm. hallelujah. >> group: hallelujah. ♪ >> preacher: pray for madagascar. pray for yourself. pray for your family. pray! ♪ god will save madagascar. ♪

>> anthony: where is home? most of us are born with the answer. others have to sift through the pieces. ♪ i took a walk through this beautiful world ♪ ♪ felt the cool rain on my shoulder ♪ ♪ found something good in this beautiful world ♪