BEAVERS AWAKEN SPRINGTIME! 1/8: Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Beaverland-Weird-Rodent-Made-America/dp/153875519X
Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver’s profound influence on our nation’s early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. In her pursuit of this weird and wonderful animal, she introduces us to people whose lives are devoted to the beaver, including a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, who uses drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams; and an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the “beaver whisperer”.
What emerges is a poignant personal narrative, a startling portrait of the secretive world of the contemporary fur trade, and an engrossing ecological and historical investigation of these heroic animals who, once trapped to the point of extinction, have returned to the landscape as one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, BEAVERLAND reveals the profound ways in which one odd creature and the trade surrounding it has shaped history, culture, and our environment.
1920 Beaver dams
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:10.0 | I go to 1783, bound for Baltimore from Europe. On board a young man who's a butcher's |
| 0:18.5 | assistant, his name is Johann Astor. He is bound for his relatives and his friends in New York City via Baltimore. |
| 0:27.8 | However, he is also the first millionaire, multi-millionaire, in the North American continent. And how he makes his |
| 0:36.2 | money is the subject of a brand new book that I recommend to everyone. It's a joy. Beaverland, how one weird rodent made America. |
| 0:47.2 | Leila Philip is the author. |
| 0:49.7 | The professor is at the is a professor of English department in environmental studies program at the College of the Holy |
| 0:56.3 | Cross. We go now to Johann Jacum Astor overhearing a conversation on deck. |
| 1:04.0 | Professor, a very good evening to you. |
| 1:06.0 | Thank you very much. |
| 1:08.0 | Congratulations. |
| 1:09.0 | What did the young Astor hear and what did he do with it? |
| 1:12.0 | Good evening. |
| 1:13.0 | Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is just such a pleasure. |
| 1:17.0 | Well, I just thought this was such a fantastic story. |
| 1:21.0 | So he's headed for the new world with seven flutes because his plan after saving up |
| 1:27.5 | money is to start a music business in Manahatta in Manhattan, but he overhears these traders talking about something and |
| 1:37.0 | they're talking about these staggeringly high prices they can make for a trade item because the markup is something like even after |
| 1:46.4 | they subtract transportation costs it's almost 900% profit they can make by transporting this item that they can get easily in North |
| 1:56.9 | America if they ship it back to London and sell it easily they can make that kind of |
| 2:02.2 | profit and he figures out that they're talking it easily, they can make that kind of profit. |
| 2:03.0 | And he figures out that they're talking about Beaver Fir. |
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