I'll let Ryan take it from here.

There's a, a, a local lore that has been passed down through the generations here around San Antonio that in the mid-1800s, as dusk was descending over the live oaks and prickly pear cacti of Texas Hill Country, that there's a sense of panic that was spreading in the local human communities.

German settlers were engaged in a territorial dispute with powerful Native American tribes at the time, who had long since inhabited that land.

And so the colonists were very fatigued and jittery, and they were alarmed when they saw this massive smoke column emerging on the horizon, blacking out the summer sun.

And so the settlers raced on horseback to identify the source and steeled themselves for battle, anticipating that they had a huge army headed towards them.

And so they ventured deep into the hills northeast of San Antonio before arriving at this ominous crack in the earth's surface, and they realized this is not ordinary smoke.

In fact, what they saw was not smoke at all.

Mm-hmm

Spending time near the mole rats really affected Ryan.

H- honestly, I think the mole rats pulled at my heartstrings the most.

We did get some glimpses into it, because when, when some of the farmers would open up some of the tunnels with a shovel or a hoe, the mole rats can immediately sense when there's air coming into their tunnels.

Air coming in means that there's potentially a predator nearby, so if they feel a breeze kind of wa- wafting through their tunnels, they say, "Uh-oh, I gotta go plug that as quickly as possible." And I would see them, and I'd watch and let them make it secure again so they can feel reassured that they're safe underground.

I would watch that, and I'd have a lot of empathy for them because I know that they're just trying to fix a hole in their roof.

[laughs] If I suddenly had a broken window in my house, I'd want to fix it as quickly as possible, too.

[instrumental music plays] But then as soon as we pulled away from the area where the mole rats were, and I returned to the highway, I would see these massive strip mines where you'd have these double-wide dump trucks and excavators digging into the soil and m- taking up hundreds of pounds of soil and just throwing it to the side.

Seeing those worlds side by side for Ryan highlighted a double standard in how we measure what is populated and what is vacant.

The Beaver Belt [laughs]

... because, because of its dense population of huge beaver dams.

And it's not a coincidence that the, that there are so many beavers there because of course there are beavers all across North America, as you say.

Um, but the dense concentrations in this area is distinct, and the reason for that is because of the topography.

There, there's this kind of muskeg bog, uh, landscape, uh, because of the retreat of melting glaciers after the last ice age.

And so it creates these virtually impassable conditions for humans.

Uh, you know, it's just a, a, you know, feet, feet deep of muck [laughs] walking around.

... promiscuous beavers?