BUSY PREPPING WINTER? 3/8: 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
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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”.
1866
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is a |
| 0:05.0 | this is CBSi in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Professor |
| 0:08.0 | Lila Philip, the College of the Holy Cross, she teaches in the |
| 0:12.0 | environmental studies program and that's what we're talking about |
| 0:14.6 | the Beaver Kasser Kanadensus and once upon a time the beavers were as big as bears but that's several |
| 0:21.5 | million years ago leading up until the end of the Ice Age. |
| 0:25.7 | We're talking about the beaver that is recognizable in colonial America. |
| 0:30.6 | And now we're in the late 19th century. A man named Louis Henry Morgan in 1855 and then again in 1862 has converted in his obsession from the trout to the beaver and he's on an expedition in the Lake Superior |
| 0:48.5 | Basin to photograph a beaver dam. Professor, this is a story you can't make up. |
| 0:55.0 | Morgan is a character. |
| 0:57.0 | What did he make of this Beaver Dam? |
| 0:59.0 | What were his thoughts? |
| 1:01.0 | Thank you. |
| 1:02.0 | This is one of my favorite sections of the book and he is such an amazing American figure because he's such |
| 1:10.3 | a study in contradictions. So Louis Henry Morgan, you know, he's one of America's first |
| 1:17.2 | ethnographers and anthropologists. He was also an industrialist, so he was a railroad investor. |
| 1:25.2 | You know, he managed to write actually what is still considered one of the most |
| 1:29.4 | important and earliest ethnographies of the Iroquois people. And he goes out to visit his |
| 1:35.0 | his friend, one of the Eelis who's building a railroad line |
| 1:40.0 | to mine for iron ore near Marquette, Michigan. |
| 1:45.9 | And as you point out, well, he's a big trout fisherman, |
| 1:49.0 | and while they're fishing for trout, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.