Hey, it's Zoe Ball and Joe Wiley here from the Digit podcast, and we're currently sponsored by the Woodland Trust.

The Woodland Trust lets you dedicate a tree, a bench, even a whole area of woodland in someone's name.

Plus, all of the Woodland Trust's sites are free to visit, so you can go and see it any time.

It really is a gift that keeps growing and every

dedication directly supports the Woodland Trust's vital work. So if Woods are your happy place or

theirs, this is just a beautiful way to celebrate a birthday, a wedding anniversary, anything really.

Visit woodlandtrust.org.org.org slash dig it. Full terms and conditions can be found on the Woodland Trust website.

I'm John Batchel with Professor Lila Phillip of the College of Holy Cross.

Her new book is Beaverland, How One Weird Rodent Made America.

The science of beavers is the science of

geomorphology, effluvial geomorphology. I don't say it fast. That is watching how rivers

shape the land, watching how land reacts to the river system. And we've learned from Professor

Philip, and she's learned from other researchers, that a river is a complex city of the flowing water, which can be in drought or can be in flood, the wetlands, what looks like a swamp or a marsh, and the meadow that is emerging from the swamp and the marsh.

The beaver manages all of that.

And we go now to the White Mountains because Professor Birchstead did her work there 10 years before.

And this is a 7,800-acre experimental forest that Lila-Philip traveled to.

The part that got my attention was sawgrass is a way of keeping people out in order for the animals to prosper.

I thought, you know, we don't need to go back 100 years for Indian legends.

We can make them up on our own.

So what does the forest look like, Professor?

Well, what was interesting to me, and it was

such a privilege to go up there with Dr. Berksted and Dr. Bailey. I mean, these are really

...