BUSY PREPPING WINTER? 1/8: Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip (Author
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Beaverland-Weird-Rodent-Made-America/dp/153875519X
From award-winning writer Leila Philip, BEAVERLAND is a masterful work of narrative science writing, a book that highlights, though history and contemporary storytelling, how this weird rodent plays an oversized role in American history and its future. She follows fur trappers who lead her through waist high water, fur traders and fur auctioneers, as well as wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers, and the colorful group of activists known as beaver believers.
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”.
1892
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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