S8 Ep658: 3. Leila Philip details the work of Lewis Henry Morgan, who first documented the intricate engineering of beaver dams in the 1860s. She explores the resilient ecosystems of the Lake Superior Basin and the modern American trapping subculture. Philip emphas
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 29 March 2026
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
3. Leila Philip details the work of Lewis Henry Morgan, who first documented the intricate engineering of beaver dams in the 1860s. She explores the resilient ecosystems of the Lake Superior Basin and the modern American trapping subculture. Philip emphasizes how trappers possess unique ecological insights. (3)
Transcript
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| 0:43.6 | This is CBS Eye on the World. |
| 0:45.4 | Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:52.0 | Continuing my conversation with Professor Leila Philip of the College of Holy Cross, |
| 0:56.3 | she teaches in the Environmental Studies program. She's a professor of English. And her new book is Beaverland, how one weird rodent made America. This is the story of |
| 1:02.5 | the beaver in North America, discovered as colonial Europe discovered America, as a source of |
| 1:10.1 | trade and capital formation, as a source of wonder |
| 1:13.9 | for what it can do to the environment, with the environment. |
| 1:18.2 | And here in the 21st century now, I learned from the professor that the beaver is a fascination |
| 1:24.8 | to science. |
| 1:26.5 | People studying our natural world and asking, can we learn from this? |
| 1:31.3 | What have we done wrong? How can we restore balance given the eight to nine billion people on the |
| 1:37.4 | planet? Now dealing with the onerous climate change story, at the same time we want to live better lives. So we go to the |
| 1:47.3 | beaver, castor canadensis, and we ask, is a beaver intelligent? Professor, it's, it's meant to be a |
| 1:56.7 | provocative question immediately. Everybody's going to think, what's intelligence? But in the |
| 2:02.2 | scheme of things, how have been, how have beavers been regarded and what are we learning about |
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