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Hey, everyone, it's Chuck here in October is Make Your Month by Stanley Black and Decker. We get to celebrate the tradespeople, the creators, the doers and the bold thinkers who build the world around us. Listen, there are 10 million global manufacturing jobs and three million trade jobs unfilled right here in the U.S. due to the skills gap. If you want to be a maker, now is the time. Check out Stanley Black and Decker Dotcom Slash Maker Month to learn more and see why there's never been a better time to be in the trades.

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Stanley Black and Decker proud to empower makers everywhere. Hi, this is Hillary Clinton, host of the new podcast, You and Me both, there's a lot to be anxious and worried about right now, and it's made so much worse by the fact that we can't be together. So I find myself on the phone a lot, talking with friends, experts, really anyone who can help make some sense of these challenging times. These conversations have been a lifeline for me.

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And now I hope they will be for you to please listen to you and me both on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Step, you should know. A production of IHOP Radio's HowStuffWorks. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles Doublecheck Brian over there and there's Jerry somewhere. And this is stuff you should know, the Orange Incisors Edition. I know that you're going to make a bed naked gun joke.

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No, no. It did run through my head over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

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It's hard up when you're our age. Yeah. And you saw those movies for sure. Yeah. Some joke, though.

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Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a naked gun joke, for Pete's sake. Come on.

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So this kind of ties in, I think a little bit with our Porcupine episode. And the Beavers are, you know, their porcupine is in some ways, I think it ties in even more to our wetlands episode, which gave Burchard the idea for this episode, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm pretty excited about this one. I think beavers are about as great as it gets because they're so studious and they also bend the world to their will.

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They shape things the way that they want them. And I like that about them.

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Yeah. And I also love their familial aspects. Yeah. Which will we'll get to all this stuff. But what we're talking about is the largest rodent in North America, which really demeans them I guess.

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But yes, rodents, such a it's not a bad word. There's so many great rodents who. Beavers, porcupine's, what else, squirrels. I know you have a thing with squirrels, but I know I like squirrels now Momo and I and New Me sometimes comes with us to chase squirrels across the street in the park and feed them peanuts. We give them peanuts.

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Is like to kind of buy them off after Moe chases them up a tree. But the squirrels across the way will actually come to you and eat peanuts out of your hand. So I'm kind of on squirrels now. Momma loves squirrels, chipmunks, mice, chipmunks, too. Yeah, rodents are OK, Chuck.

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I think there are fewer terrible rodents and the only ones I can think of that are terrible are those. Scary New York City, Seurat's oh, yeah, okay, so rodents are all right up with rodents, I guess with the rabbits and I don't think they're rodents.

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They are like a hamster. Sure. Hamsters. I don't know if rabbits are rodents, are they?

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It makes sense that they would be, but it's what rodent dotcom says. OK, well, who am I to disagree with that?

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But we're not talking about rabbits. We're not talking about sewer rats. We're talking about beavers. And again, beavers are amazing, amazing animals. And like you said, you know, it's kind of related to porcupines in that there's what you could call old world and new world beavers. But there's really just two species. And one is found in North America and one is found in Eurasia. And it's easy peasy. No fuss, no muss. These are the beavers that are alive on the planet.

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Yeah. So we've got the American beaver. They weigh between 15 and 65 pounds, which is very large. If you've ever seen a large beaver in the wild, it's it's not scary because, you know, and we'll get to whether or not they're they're dangerous. They're really not. But it's it's such a large thing that you're like, wow, they're bigger than I thought. Usually is has run through my head when I see Beaver. Yeah.

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I mean sixty or thirty. No. Yeah. Sixty five pounds is about thirty kilograms. It's a big beaver, it is a big beaver. And I had to convert it to kilograms for at least our friends in Canada because beavers their national emblem, they have beaver on their nickel which is amazing. Like this just makes me love Canada all the much more, you know.

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So for that sixty pounds you're going to be a couple of feet long. Twenty three to 40 inches long. That's without the tail. You don't count the tail when you're measuring a beaver. The tail will talk a little bit more about it, but they're anywhere from seven to 12 inches. If you're Asian, you're about the same size mate. You can be a little bit smaller, but a bigger well, you can be a little smaller on that.

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I think the range is bigger.

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OK, so you can be down in the twenties poundage wise, but up to the 70s poundage wise and you're probably a little bit longer and your skull and your tail are going to be narrower or your tails narrower in your skull is smaller.

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So yeah, but that tail is what everybody understands when they see a beaver, just like with a porcupine in its quills, a beaver and its tail is they're just synonymous. Everybody recognizes a beaver because of its tail. And also the tails helped make it cute, even though if you zoomed in and took a really close look at the tail, you'd be like, gross, you think? Yeah, it's scaly. It's got sparse, coarse hair associated with it.

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It looks like a black jack that some old timey like Roths would beat you up with. And yet it's one of the most amazing appendages any animal has, is it's like a Swiss Army knife. But for tails, yeah, they're very useful in a lot of ways.

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They obviously, if they're swimming and beavers, by the way, can swim five to seven miles an hour. They have little webbed feet. They have you they can close their ear holes in their nose holes and they can roll their a film over their eyeballs.

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Yeah. Nick detaining membrane. Yeah. It's amazing. So if they're going to be swimming then that tail is going to be acting as a rudder and as a propeller. It's also if they're on land, it's going to act as a little kickstand at times. Yeah.

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When they stand up on their back legs, they use their tail, they kind of lean against the shore balance. It's a big one for sure. They also and this is a sure sign that you have frightened, upset a beaver. They will slap the water with their tail in part to frighten you away, to say, like, don't mess with me, but also to warn other beavers, because like you saying, they're familiar. They are actually fairly social animals and they live in family units.

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So they would want to warn, like, you know, the wife and the kids back at the lodge.

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Yeah. And here's the thing.

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I spent a lot of time at a lake here in Georgia, and I have heard something which I thought was a beaver tail smash, but I'm not sure because I didn't see it. I have seen evidence of beavers eating tree stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

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And which we'll get to in one day.

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When I was in the lake, I saw a mammal's head coming toward me and I don't know if it was. We also have river otters. I don't know if it was an otter or a beaver. But either way, it was it was a large head.

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And even though I know that they weren't going to come after me when that thing pops under the water, you're just like, where's he going?

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What's he doing? Where is he? Is he coming at me or not? Were you swimming in the lake at the time? Yeah.

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Was when I saw this large mammal head, you know, duck under. I could feel you. And if it was, I'm not sure how long. Beaver. Can hold their leaders, can hold their breath, but beavers can hold their breath for about 15 minutes, which is pretty remarkable, I thought.

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I think it's remarkable, too. I mean, it really just goes to show, like, just how adaptive they are for life in the water. And they are mammals. So they have lungs. They need to breathe air outside of the water. But, yeah, the fact that they can hold their breath for 15 minutes, they have Nick dictating membranes that cover their eyes like little goggles so they can see and work underwater. They spend a significant amount of their time under water.

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In fact, they're most protected in water. That's where they can move the fastest. They can swim pretty fast, way faster than they can water a lot of land. Sure. And a lot of their predators won't necessarily come into especially deep water after them. So when they're in the water, they're at they're they're they're they're in their happy place most.

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Yeah. And imagine when they die for 15 minutes and are swimming around, what do you think those fish think?

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Oh, here comes a beaver. You do they do they know or they just like what in the world is that big hairy thing?

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I would guess that they I would like to think they know. I like to think of communities of animals or ecosystems. Just they know each other. Yeah, they know each other. They know each other's foibles. They've come to accept one another. You know, they have their own other things, beaver foibles. They always kind of you know, they they in the end that when somebody, you know, like a human comes in and tries to screw things up, they'll all band together and, you know, raise money for the community center so that the developer can't buy it.

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So if you are North American beaver, you can live pretty much anywhere in North America except for the desert because you want water around, you're probably going to be near a pond or a lake or a marsh or a swamp or a river. Your Eurasian beavers used to live all over Europe and Asia, but they were hunted over, hunted because at one point in time, wearing beaver pelts and beaver hats was like really high fashion. So now they're only found in Germany, France, Poland, Scandinavia, southern Scandinavia and central Russia.

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Yeah, and a lot of those are because they were reintroduced to the areas like I believe Germany had to have their population reintroduced because they were hunted to extinction.

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And how many beavers used to be here? Like four hundred million.

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That's the estimate, is that in North America prior to Columbian contact, that they were there were about four hundred million beavers and they were hunted down to near extinction. Then the hundreds of thousands from what I saw and were luckily held back from the brink. And when I say luckily, I don't just mean for the beavers, but I mean for the the planet as far as North America is concerned, because one of the things that we are still learning but have come to realize is that the beavers are probably the most useful species on the planet because they're one of the few species that alters their environment as radically as they do.

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Yeah, what are they called? They're a keystone species, keystone species, because when they are present, biodiversity thrives. And when beavers are removed from an area, biodiversity suffers. The presence of beavers makes life better and richer for entirely other animals and species just because of what they do and how they do it.

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All right. That's a great place to take a break.

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And I say when we come back, we talk about the two fundamental fulcrums on which beaver life is based, the dam and the large oak.

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This is the secret syllabus podcast. I remember the good old times when I was a college student and then 20/20 hit.

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Hi, I'm Hannah Ashton. And I'm Katie Tracy. We're here to fill in everything they missed in our college curriculum, just like you were confronting the unknown.

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And if we're being honest, we need all the advice we can get.

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Listen to the secret syllabus on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts, see after class. All right, we're back and there are a couple of things, you know, you heard busy as a beaver, it's I don't know if that's proven, but I think it is almost universally agreed that that phrase came about because beavers are, in fact, very busy and they work, work, work all day long, building their homes and building dams.

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Their homes are called lodges. And you've probably seen if you have ever been hiking and stuff in America, you've probably seen a beaver lodge by a river or lake.

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It's a little little dome well out of sticks and grasses and moss and mud. Maybe you thought a local which had built it.

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Yeah, it does look like a little what you call witches houses, which is house. I think there's a cottage. Oh sure.

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I think there's a different name, but which is house. There's a name for this. I thought so now I don't think so. Which house.

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And maybe I'm thinking of Coburn's house day, which know there's a word we just I just watched The Witch the movie again. I think there's a word for it bit.

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That might be my favorite movie. Uh, we did a movie roundtable on that, by the way. It was really good.

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It is this the guy who did the lighthouse, isn't it? Yeah. Robert, God bless that man. I can't wait to see his Viking movie, too. Oh, man. I can't imagine. OK, so the Beaver Lodge is, you know, about eight feet wide, a few feet high there on the banks of these ponds are on lake shores. They have this is one of my favorite parts. Many of them have a little underwater back door.

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Yeah. It's like sort of a ski chalet if you're snow skiing. Yeah.

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Which makes sense because, again, they spend so much time in the water, but also protects them from terrestrial predators because they can get into the water and escape the predators like at their door.

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Yeah. And you know, this is they're nocturnal, they don't hibernate. But most of this action's going on at night and everyone pitches in the whole family. I don't think we said yet. They live with their children until they're about two and a beaver lodge. You might find a mom and a dad who are monogamous mates for life. Yeah. And they might have their three two year old, almost two year old children. And then they might have their little grandbabies.

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Yeah, because when they have their their babies, which are called kids, which admittedly is not as cute a word as porky pets know, but they're cute. But do just baby paws right now.

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Everybody can go look up some baby beaver pictures, little tails. Oh my God, they're cute. So they have baby beavers.

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One of the reasons why they're so cute is because they they stick around for so long. They stick around so long because they're so cute. That's what I mean to say. Yes, but they do they stay as part of the family unit and help like work on the family lodge and damn until about two when they wander off and then at three they start to mate, but they build their own lodge at age two. And from what I've read, it's usually very clumsy.

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It's not in the best place necessarily. And so they kind of learn as they go, but they also learn from their family unit first, which I think is super cute.

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It is. Um, I think we should talk about dams. I mean, the lodges are are cool and it's a great place to live if you're a beaver. But the dams is where they really are. That's where they get their their shining moment as a species that really helps out the environment because they help create these wetlands, don't they.

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Yeah. So so a beaver will move into an area that's dry as a bone, that's maybe cropland, that's maybe Timberland. That is not at all flooded. There's no pond or wetland or anything like that. And they say this can be better. And so they find like a source of moving water like a stream or a brook, maybe a creek, maybe a creek or something like that. And they stop it up. They they build the dam and they build this dam so that the water backs up behind it and floods this area and turns it into a wetland.

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And they do this not to irk humans or just for fun. They do it because they're altering the ecosystem to better suit themselves. Like I said, they survive much better when they're in the water. They move faster, they can work faster. So they actually make this ecosystem into an aquatic ecosystem where before there wasn't an aquatic ecosystem. And they do it all by by building this dam. And the way that they build dams is magnificent in and of itself.

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Yeah. So, you know, you got your dam base, the foundation basically, where you're going to use mud and gravel that you get from the stream and you kind of work together as a family and with your tail and they're pushing. I say we were beavers all of a sudden and you're pushing this mud and gravel up from the bottom of the stream. Yeah. And if let's say it's a place where the creek is running a little bit too fast and there's too much.

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So they're going to say, you know what, we're going to take these sticks, we're going to pile these things up all along the bottom until basically it's like it's like building from the ground up until they're strong enough to stay in place.

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Right. But they're so good at using their hands and they're so strong. You said, you know, 60, 65 pounds or about 30 kilograms. They're mostly muscle, too. They're really strong little little rodents, especially for being like herbivores. You know, they're like those vegan bodybuilders.

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But they can take they'll take sticks and like plant them in the bottom of this stream or whatever and start forming a lattice work that they weave in between and fill up with mud to really stop some, you know, fast moving current that like that's the level of manipulation that they're doing. They're building a dam that they they eventually successfully back up the flow of water from. Yeah.

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Which is I've tried to do that before and it's hard to do. Yeah. My buddy Scotty and I, who, you know, we went camping once in California and it was when I was young and in the film industry. So there was a lot of time between jobs and we just decided to stay and keep staying. And I think we ended up staying for like 11 or 12 days. Wow. And we wanted to build a waterfall next to our campsite.

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So it sounded better. So we spent days and days with sticks and big rocks and trying to reroute and change the river. And it was some of the hardest work I've ever done.

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Imagine doing that at like forty eight inches long and only sixty five pounds. Yeah.

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So they're not only building this thing up, they got their little kits and their children helping, like bringing up sticks and mud saying Parmar is this OK.

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And they say yeah, add it to the pile. And then once they're done they're like there's a periodic like inspections that go on. Yeah. Because they got to make sure that it stays strong because that current just keeps going and it's very easy to wiggle the right stick loose and all of a sudden it starts crumbling down. So they basically inspect these things every so often and check it for leaks and bring in mud and patch it up just like it's like a human might do.

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Oh, I saw that they they do daily maintenance on at that one way to tell whether beavers are in the areas to find their dam, make it like a little minor hole in it, and then go back and look the next day. And if it's patched up, the beavers are around there and giving you the middle finger.

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Right, exactly. Like, OK, yeah, we're here. You figured it out. Please leave our dam alone. But yeah, these things are like water tight for the most part. Are they? They allow very little water through or I guess from what I can tell, as much water as the beaver wants through, like they're very willfully, deliberately constructed structures that will turn a dry area into a wetland. And when that happens, one of the things that they use to build the stuff with their trees around the area and they can they use their teeth.

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Those really, really sharp, strong teeth that I said are like kind of orangish at the very beginning of the episode. And they're very they're orange because they have so much iron in them, which actually gives them that much more strength.

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Yeah, they're up to an inch long. They're super strong. They they actually sharpen as they now on trees. So it's not like it'll dull their teeth out. It actually sharpens them. And the other thing they're doing is they're eating that tree. They're one of the few mammals that are maybe the only mammal that can actually digest cellulose. Well, porcupines can to remember.

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That's right. Yeah, they can they can digest cellulose because they probably have a very similar kind of bacteria that helps. Yeah. Helps digest that for them. But they digest a lot of the cellulose that they eat and it's really hard to break down normally for mammals there.

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Yeah, but like know, you said they're essentially creating these wetlands. They're preventing erosion. They are helping to purify the water.

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Oh, let's let's talk about what the dams can do. OK, Chuck, I mean, it's amazing there. It's it's like a little environmental coalition that goes into the woods to make things better.

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Yeah. So I think in the Wetlands episode, I said something like like a beaver creates the equivalent of some like a five million dollar wastewater treatment plant or something like that. I could not find that again to save my life, but I think that was roughly it.

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They they create this this structure that creates the artificial wetland. And in doing so, it filters the water because it slows the water down so much that the stuff can trickle down to the bottom. It turns a normal terrestrial piece of land into a wetland. So aquatic plants come. And they've also found out that not only does it filter water of like sediment and particles, it also is capable of handling farm runoff fertilizer, which is really pernicious because, you know, when all that.

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Fertilizer makes its way into to watersheds and wetlands, it creates algae blooms, which suck up all the oxygen and kill off a bunch of fish. Right, which is a big problem. They've figured out that beaver dams actually work against that by by fixing nitrogen excess nitrogen from fertilizer. It prevents it from flowing bacteria, chomps down on it and releases it as nitrogen gas into the atmosphere. And the stuff the bacteria doesn't eat floats down to the bottom, gets eaten up by aquatic plants, which, when they die, block it into the sediment.

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So there's this farm runoff. That's a huge problem as it stands, is actually mitigated by beaver dams they've recently found out.

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Yeah. And talk about just what kind of impact it has on who lives there. I mean, it's basically like an invitation to to nature that says, hey, we got a good scene going over here. If you're an invertebrate that doesn't feel like they have a home, you're welcome here. If you're a new species of bird that didn't think that you would flourish here. Time to change that attitude, right? If you're a duck or a goose, you can nest on top of our lodge because our lodge a super warm because it's full of beavers and you can nest on top of there and stay warm.

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And especially if it's out in the middle of a pond or something, you're going to be safer. Hmm. What else?

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If you are a woodpecker and you're like all these trees are too healthy, there's no insects in them. Well, just wait, because flooded Timberline doesn't stand up very well to standing water. And so some of those trees die off and they get they provide housing for insects, which in turn provides food for the woodpeckers.

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What if you're moose? Let's say probably no. Good for you, right? No. You're going to love this if you're a moose. So buckle up, because the the beaver has turned it into a wetland. It's now an aquatic environment. And moose like aquatic plants that grow on the edge of like marshy areas. So these plants that weren't there before are suddenly there for the moose. And it gets even better because when the Beaver family finally like is, you know, move moves away or they die off and the whole thing gets abandoned, the eventually the dam's going to break without regular maintenance.

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And when it does, the the the place is going to go back to how it was before, but it's going to go back to better than it was before because think about all that nitrogen that was fixed in the sediment, all the erosion that was prevented, and all of a sudden you have a lush, beautiful meadow that deer can come eat on.

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Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Like they they help out all these animals and introduce all these new animals that can live together. And then once it's done, it becomes a flowering meadow for deer.

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They leave it better than it was when they first got there. Amazing. It is amazing.

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The problem is, is that humans frequently have much different plans for those same areas and beaver run afoul of them. I see we take a break and we come back and talk about that after a break.

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Like I just said. What do you think the answer now? Yes, OK. When Law and Order is the headline, what does it really mean for us? Now I'm Kate Williams, an attorney and former public defender. I'm also a broadcast journalist and host of a new podcast. We're going to cross-examine news making cases and famous faces to help better understand the facts and the context of the narrative. That's right. And I'm Dustin Ross. I'm a TV writer and a cultural observer.

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And more importantly, I am thrilled to be cohosting holding court with Eboni K. Williams.

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This is not a legal podcast and it ain't no true crime podcast. No, we're helping you understand how to navigate a rigged system. That's right. This show is for the people and to help us understand how the laws impact our lives. So we're going to break down the so-called law and order headlines and get to what it really means for the culture. That's right, you guys, let's get informed. Let's get talking and let's bring some light and insight to our community.

[00:27:28]

Listen to hold in court with Eboni K. Williams on the I Heart radio app, on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Feeling lost, then we've got the podcast for you, Laborites. I'm Amanda Knox and I am Christopher Robinson. I know what it's like to be absolutely stuck to wind up in a life I never expected.

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So come on, get lost with us as we bring you stories from Jon Ronson, LeVar Burton, Yasmeen Mohammed, Dave Navarro, Andrew Yang, Malcolm Gladwell and others expect dark and hilarious misadventures, controversial questions, and above all, expect to arrive at unexpected places.

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Listen to Labyrinths on the I Heart radio app, on Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so we love Beever. You love Beever, everyone out there listening. There's a lot of people who don't love Beever, is that Beever? It is now OK.

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And the reason why is because if you own, like a stand of timber, your plan is to eventually cut that timber down and sell it for wood planks or books, you know, like stuff you should know. Colen an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things available everywhere. You get books to preorder now. Mm hmm.

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There's things you can do with trees that you grow. And if beavers move into your area and they build the dam, those dams are effective. This isn't like a little puddle we're talking about. We can create basic basically like lakes, ponds, like enormous wetlands.

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And when you have standing water over Timberland, those trees are not they're not aquatic trees that you're growing there. So they actually die again. Remember, they die off and bugs move in and woodpeckers eat the bugs. Well, if you're trying to make money off of those trees, you don't really want the beavers to do that to your timberland.

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No. And I think how many tens of millions of dollars? I think it was like 20 million dollars a year or something.

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I think more than that, because I think I saw Alabama alone suffered like 14 million dollars in really Timberland, just Alabama from beaver damage.

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And not only that, it'll it'll flooding for crops. It can make what was ordinarily a very stable bridge or road now unstable and cause damage to roads and stuff like that from like saturating the soil.

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That was holding it up just fine before.

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Yeah, the good news is back in the old days, there would just you know, they would just kill as many beavers as they could to get rid of them these days. And this is kind of a weird stat, but it says 75 percent of of beaver human conflict can be resolved without trapping or killing the beaver. So, yeah, I take that as an they will somehow move them along in a way that's humane.

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Well, I don't know if that's even the case. I think that more often than not, the first question is, is the beaver really causing a problem or is it that there's beavers and they created this this wetland and that wasn't there before? And you're taking it as a problem. And that's the the thing that I'm seeing, that it seems to be like the new paradigm for viewing beavers as far as their relationship to humans. It's like, really what's what's the problem if it's yes, they're damaging cropland.

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OK, that's a problem. If they're killing Timberland, that's a problem. If they've if they're washing out a road, that's a problem. But if they just created a wetland that wasn't there before on your property where you bought the property and it was dry and now there's a wetland there that you didn't plan for, is it really a problem? And I think that's what they're saying, is that 75 percent of the people who are asked that question will say, actually, I guess it's not.

[00:31:55]

I'm going to learn to love the beaver. I love beaver.

[00:31:59]

Yeah. And, you know, it really gets my dander up when I say this lake that I go to the Facebook page. There are people, you know, people post like, hey, it looks like I have a beaver eating on my trees. And, you know, these some of these people literally are like, yep, I'll take care of that with my 12 gauge. Yeah. And it's just like you don't I've never understood the people who want to move to nature to kill the nature.

[00:32:24]

Yeah, I know. It's just it's unnerving. And I have seen some beaver damage and I love it. I welcome it. So yeah. You eat all you want. You would be one of the seventy five percent you would say like you know, it's no problem whatsoever. You probably wouldn't even say it was an issue. You wouldn't even be asked that question. You would just know from the outset that it's not a problem.

[00:32:44]

I call that a beaver. Beaver. Yeah, that's right. Beaver is going to beaver. And so we know now that, like they are a keystone species are so important that it's great. The impression I'm getting is it's kind of like, no, it's not really a problem. So you can't touch that beaver, don't shoot that beaver. You're going to get in big trouble depending on where you are for shooting a beaver when it wasn't creating a problem, which I love, because they should be protected because again, not just the fact that they were almost hunted to extinction.

[00:33:14]

They provide so many really important services. I don't even know if we talked about it. There were two others, Chuck. They prevent flooding, three others. They prevent flooding by slowing the flow of water. So things downstream from the dam don't get overwhelmed as much. Right. The stuff in the dam helps recharge aquifers below, whereas before it's a little stream trickling over. It was doing Jack for the aquifer. Now the aquifer is getting recharged on the daily.

[00:33:41]

And then the third one is they provide natural firebreaks, which helps ensure rain forest fires.

[00:33:49]

Yeah, I have a feeling when we're done we're going to be mad because there were like three more things we didn't think about. That happens to me a lot and drives me nuts.

[00:33:57]

Here's some. The things that people do try and do, though, to mitigate their what they perceive as their Beevor problems, you know, because they they do create some problems as far as human settlement is concerned.

[00:34:09]

They will use beever pipes. And this is basically plastic pipes that you put in a beaver dam to root that water to where you want. It helps control the flooding that beavers can cause.

[00:34:21]

Yeah, it's like so long that the beavers, like, it doesn't think to go to the end of the pipes, sees that there's something around it's dam and it probably dams up around the pipe, but that still lets the flow of water go through.

[00:34:34]

Yeah, this is kind of cool.

[00:34:35]

They will build a pridham if they want beavers away from a certain place and in a different place, they'll basically say, hey, look over here, we got this fence. It's like a foundation for your new home, right? It's kind of you got 10 percent of your work is already done. Want you to start here. So they'll do that.

[00:34:53]

Yeah. The beaver says hot dog. Uh, and then another thing is to design the well, there's two kinds of offenses. There's the pre dam fence that encourages them to come, and then there is another kind of fence to keep them from building there in the first place.

[00:35:09]

Yeah, those are called beaver deceivers. And they are it's just basically so like a culvert is a frequent place that a beaver likes to dam up. And that's where it causes a lot of damage because culverts are are meant to help drain water, to keep roadways stable in that kind of thing. Right. So you would just basically put a fence radiating out from either side of the culvert outward at an angle, kind of like in a V shape. And then those two fences are connected by another fence between the two.

[00:35:41]

So it's just basically like a triangle that ends in the culvert. The key is if you make those fences long enough, I think 12 feet minimum or something like that, the beaver is going to be like nuts to this. This just isn't even worth it. I'm not going to try to build a dam here, or if it does start to build a dam, it's going to give up eventually. And your culvert is saved without the beaver being hurt or harm.

[00:36:02]

The beaver just moves on to a different spot that it likes.

[00:36:05]

Right. And if you have a tree that you really love, that you see has a beaver activity, you can wrap like chicken wire around the base of it if you want. There's also some special paint that you can paint on the trunk that apparently beavers don't like.

[00:36:19]

If you want to protect a certain tree, it's like the nail biting stuff. Oh, my God. Somebody wrote in about that what they say. I didn't see them.

[00:36:29]

I think they were just asking, like, what it was. I'm sure they still have it, but I don't remember what it was.

[00:36:34]

I believe remember Lee Press on nails? I think they had a sideline in that stuff.

[00:36:39]

I'm sure it was. It's probably just like clear nail polish. Yeah, but tastes like garbage.

[00:36:43]

Yeah, it tasted really bad. Taste like what I thought was like hot. Now it was bitter.

[00:36:49]

OK, yeah. I wouldn't like that at all. And that was very bitter.

[00:36:53]

I don't think we mentioned the I mean we should talk a little bit. We talked about the kids, but they do live in large groups. They're very social, they're called colonies and they mate in the winter during the first few months of the year, the Eurasian Beaver just states for sixty to one hundred and twenty eight days and have one to six little babies. And the American beaver is just eight from one hundred to about a hundred and five to one hundred and seven days.

[00:37:21]

Again, one to four little kids. And they are weaned around two weeks of age, whereas the Eurasian beavers weaned it about six weeks of age. Right.

[00:37:31]

And so, Chuck, I saw that beavers tend to live, like you said, they were monogamous typically, and so that they live about ten to fifteen years in the wild, which is so cute. But you can also build a pretty, pretty respectable dam in that time, too. And I think actually the largest dam that they've ever seen is they they think it is from many, many, many generations of beavers staying and working on it in Alberta.

[00:37:57]

Right.

[00:37:57]

Yeah, it's huge. And I guess everyone just got in on the party. Yeah.

[00:38:02]

They think since the 70s that some beavers have been keeping very appropriate. Yeah, pretty much. And those little kids, by the way, can swim about just one day after they're born. They're already swimming around.

[00:38:14]

Right. So like we said, I think that they are I think that they become sexually mature at age three. And around that time they're going to start producing something called Kess Dorham or Kastoria, right?

[00:38:29]

Yeah.

[00:38:31]

Um, and Cafetorium is like a lot of people think that it's like the origin of castor oil. It's not correct from the castor bean. I believe this stuff is like the opposite of castor oil, actually, like tastes and smells like really good.

[00:38:45]

Yeah. I mean, it's it's used it's the FDA says you can eat it. It's one of those grass, remember, generally recognized as safe ingredients.

[00:38:54]

And the thing is, there's just not a lot of it. It's it's very. Very tough to and it's a lot of work to go out there and try and extract this flavor ingredient from the Beavertail, right? I think it says two hundred, about two hundred and ninety two pounds annually total.

[00:39:11]

Right. I imagine it's expensive. It is very expensive.

[00:39:15]

And you can still find in some places, I think I saw a whiskey that uses it to Chanel's perfume. Oh what is it called. Cor Diversey. I believe it still uses it really. And it's flavor ingredient too, because it's like you're saying, it's generally recognized as safe, but it also adds like a vanilla raspberry flavor. That's what it tastes like to humans. And they think that there are some ice creams out there that still may use that, like old timey ice creams that use Beever, Kastoria, like Beevor.

[00:39:50]

It's what it is. It's Beever Musk. Yeah. It just so happens that Beever Musk tastes like raspberry vanilla to humans.

[00:39:59]

Yeah, but they were hunted for a really long time, which kind of led to this one myth didn't it, the testicle myth.

[00:40:06]

Yeah. Yeah. Up until about the eleven hundred people thought beavers ate or bit off their own testicles. And apparently this has its origins in ancient Egypt. In medieval Europe it continued where I think what they said was that beavers knew that hunters were coming after them because of that cafetorium. Yeah. Which originated in their testicles. And none of this is true. I think their testicles, they don't even have hangar's right. No, they don't.

[00:40:40]

They're located inside them, which automatically disqualifies it. But also so the beavers were basically saying like, no, you can't have my Kastoria. I can't have it anymore either. I would rather bite off my own testicles than let you have them. I guess maybe it's a survival mechanism, like they thought the maybe would leave them alone if they didn't have testicles, but maybe now that's not true at all.

[00:41:03]

And then there's one other great fact, Chuck, that I think you got to take to take us out with the.

[00:41:08]

Yeah, the pope in the sixteenth century said, you know what, that that tail is pretty scaly and they sure are in the water a lot. So during the fasting days, go ahead and eat that beaver. It's close enough to a fish.

[00:41:23]

Yeah, exactly. Qualifies as a fish. So you could eat beaver back in the 16th century thanks to the pope.

[00:41:31]

That's right. Uh, as far as I know, it's early. If they were dangerous, they're not. Beavers are very nice little fellows and ladies. And if there is a beaver that attack somebody, it will make the news because it's so rare and it probably means they're really sick.

[00:41:48]

Yeah, they, like all mammals, can get rabies. But like porcupines, I get the impression that that's one of the few diseases you can get from a beaver. Um, the thing is, is if they are rabid and they do charge at you, they can do some serious damage with those teeth, like they can chew through three foot diameter trees, they can bite through your skin. And so if you get too close to a beaver, it can have bad effects.

[00:42:13]

It's just like you said, it's extremely rare. But I saw at least one guy's died from from them in the last decade or so. Right.

[00:42:21]

That was just bad luck. So a guy in Belarus was trying to get a picture of a beaver and got too close and the thing bit him in his thigh and bit through his femoral artery.

[00:42:31]

And the guy bled to death from a beaver attack. He died just bad beaver attack.

[00:42:38]

His family has to live like that for the rest of their lives. Yeah, Beever attack. I know.

[00:42:45]

And there's been some other attacks, too, but yeah, I think they just kind of give a bad name unwarranted, don't you?

[00:42:52]

Shot through the leg and you're to blame. You give beavers a bad name.

[00:42:58]

Oh, goodness, Todd. Well, I guess that's it for beavers, huh? That's it. I'm glad we finally got to do this one.

[00:43:05]

Leave him alone. Yeah. Let them do their beaver thing. Beaver and like Chuck says, Beavers going to beaver. If you want to know more about beavers than by God, you go find some beavers and study them from afar because they are nature's miracles. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail.

[00:43:25]

All right. I'm going to call this brave or angels. Hey, guys, listen to your episode on swing states.

[00:43:32]

You mentioned the dangerous level of polarization going on between reds and blues in America. Oh, yeah. Thanks for reading this one. You're welcome. And I wanted to let you know that there's something we can do about it. There's a great grassroots organization with a specific goal of depolarizing America called Braver Angels, which organizes events to bring reds and blues together, to have real nuanced discussions about things they disagree about and help us understand and respect each other. That's great.

[00:43:59]

It is great.

[00:44:01]

Yeah. And I would love to pick any one of these meetings and maybe go to one. Yeah, they're doing a lot of online events now due to covered in, among other things, just launched a campaign called Hold America Together to prepare a response to potential election related conflict in November. Could you please tell your listeners about braver angels? Yes. And help keep our country together because America needs this love to all the reds and blues out there. And you guys are great at what you do.

[00:44:27]

Join the Braver Angels. That is from Crysta. And just go to Braver Angels, Dawg, FBAR, a VCR, a Angelis dog, BRM, VCR and DJ Elshaug. That is correct. OK, cool.

[00:44:45]

That's fantastic. Thank you, Christine. Thanks to all the braver angels out there who are trying to keep the country together, because like Krista said, we kind of need it right now. And it is brave.

[00:44:55]

It's it's it's daunting to step outside your echo chamber. Oh, man, it is.

[00:45:00]

And it's just harder and harder because, you know, the echoes have gotten stronger and stronger. So to hear something other than that, it's like just almost like makes your brain melt, you know, pretty neat. All right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us to let us know about some group or service to the country or the world is in dire need of we want to hear about it. You can send us an email to stuff podcast that I heart radio dot com.

[00:45:29]

Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart Radio is the radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Babe, guess what? What dead as the podcast is back for a season for all of us, was on Devaux and Kadeem and we're the ELLISS and we're the host of D'états and I Heart radio podcast. Join us in conversation with guest like shanking Shambu Drame, Melanie Fiona, Joe Biden and more.

[00:46:05]

Listen to D'états on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts that ask. Hi, I'm Ariel Damara and I'm hosting a new podcast called Vice News Reports, with so much going on around the world and so many people telling you they have the definitive take on the news, we bring you to the news so you can hear it for yourself from the NEWSROOM that has earned more Emmy nominations than any other news team.

[00:46:32]

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