Transcript

The Builders: How Beavers Mend Our Planet | Terrestrials Podcast

From Radiolab · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 29 min · 4,634 words · 107 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "The Builders: How Beavers Mend Our Planet | Terrestrials Podcast", an episode of Radiolab published September 27, 2025 (29 min, about 4,634 words). It mentions 6 people, works and ideas, including Dr. Emily Fairfax, Ben Goldfarb, Donald C. Murphy, Eager, the surprising secret life of beavers and why they matter, Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

What this episode is about

The content explores the significant ecological impact of beavers, highlighting how these creatures aid in environmental restoration amidst global challenges such as climate change and wildfires. Through the story of a beaver named Jose, the discussion illustrates how beavers can transform their ecosystems, benefiting biodiversity and improving water quality.

Key takeaways

  • Beavers turn predation on land into aquatic acrobatics—nature's engineers building their own safe havens.
  • From hundreds of millions to near extinction: beavers once sculpted New York's rich ecosystems before hats took them down.
  • José's damming passion isn't random; it's a life-preserving strategy that showcases evolution's clever adaptability.
  • Iron-enriched teeth make beavers nature's lumberjacks—proof that even rodents can have a hard edge.
  • In a world of strife, beavers stand as hopeful architects, demonstrating that small actions can yield monumental change.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Ben Goldfarb
  2. – 10:00: Donald C. Murphy, Jose Srano
  3. – 15:00: Dr. Emily Fairfax
  4. – 29:12: Eager, the surprising secret life of beavers and why they matter, Arthur Vining Davis Foundations

Notable quotes from "The Builders: How Beavers Mend Our Planet | Terrestrials Podcast"

  • So, our story today is going to center around one little beaver named Jose. He will rise out of murky waters in a place where no one expected he could survive. And to tell us…
    about Ben Goldfarb · at
  • There were probably several hundred million beavers, making dams and ponds everywhere. Even in New York City, there would have been beavers all over New York City. That's…
    about Donald C. Murphy · at
  • Until one day, someone said, You know what? This river does not need to look like this. This river could be beautiful. This river could be full of life. Inspired in part by the…
    about Jose Srano · at
  • Much more. Our next storyteller thinks beavers can even fight fire. Find out how after this break. Look up in the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's beavers parachuting…
    about Dr. Emily Fairfax · at
  • No joke. I saw that on a Halloween field tour and I thought someone had like set it up for me. Haunted lodge. Haunted dam. There's like cow knuckle bones and a femur and…
    about Eager, the surprising secret life of beavers and why they matter · at
  • This episode was produced by the naughty gnawing on wood, Anna Gonzalez. Tail slappingly good sound design by Mirror Bert Winonic. Our team also includes Alan Gafinsky, Tanya…
    about Arthur Vining Davis Foundations · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Dr. Emily Fairfax — Person · Main guest / scientific expert · 1 mention · first at
    Explains beaver relocation history and presents research/observations that beaver wetlands can create fire refugia and mitigate wildfire impacts.
  • Ben Goldfarb — Person · Referenced expert (writer/author) and recurring commentator · 1 mention · first at
    Provides explanations of beaver behavior and ecological impacts; later his book is explicitly recommended as a resource.
  • Donald C. Murphy — Person · Referenced local expert (Bronx River worker) · 1 mention · first at
    Describes the historical pollution and degradation of the Bronx River, establishing the before/after context for the beaver’s return.

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

Sponsors

  • Jose Srano — Person · Referenced public official (cleanup supporter) · 1 mention · first at
    Credited with directing funding and political support for Bronx River cleanup; the beaver 'Jose' is named in his honor in the story.

Full transcript with timestamps

Oh, wait. You're listen. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab.

Radio Lab from WNY. See? 3 2 1. Imagine you wake up in the dark. Your eyes dart around to see

a little circle of blue shimmering light. You waddle over on your webbed feet and realize it's water.

So you dive in head first. As you kick and glide, you grow fur, really thick fur

and an extra set of eyelids that act like goggles underwater. And then you look behind you to find

a big black scaly paddle. It's your tail, which you can slap on the water with a nice loud. You have become

a beaver. Okay, now is the part where I make you sing the theme song with me. Okay, I'm ready.

Terrestrials. Terrestrials. We are not the worst. We are the first. Try again. Opposite of worst is

the best. Terrestrials. Yeah, you got it. Okay, I like it. Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the stranges waiting right here on Earth. I am your host, Lula Miller, joined as always by my song Bud

Take Me to the River, Alan, Swimming with the Beaver. So, here we are kicking off this brand new season of terrestrials. While all around us, really hard things are going on. Wildfires, wars, climate change. And so we wanted in this moment to look to creatures that might give us hope. Creatures that actually mend the world around them. And there is maybe no mammal that has such an outsized positive effect on the planet than beavers. Yep, those bucktooththed waddling funnyl looking rodents. By the end of the episode, you will see how a single family of beavers can have such a positive impact on the world around them. You can literally see it from space.

So, our story today is going to center around one little beaver named Jose. He will rise out of murky waters in a place where no one expected he could survive. And to tell us his tale is producer bud Anna. Yep, that's me.

Yeah, you know, Jose is this incredible symbol. And here to help me is Ben Goldfarb, who's a writer

and beaver believer. Don't stop be. So Jose, he waddles out into the world with little webbed feet and whiskers and very large buck teeth that are bright orange because apparently

beaver's teeth actually contain iron. Wo! Metal teeth. Yeah, like a chisel. The iron makes their teeth excellent for chopping down trees. Because beavers have one single obsessive hobby. It's not drawing or knitting or doing puzzles. The classic beaver behavior that most people know about is they build dams.

A dam is basically a wall in the water that beavers build by dragging the trees that they chomp down across a flowing stream, blocking the water and sometimes adding mud or other stuff to keep that wall sealed up tight.

You see them sometimes carrying rocks around and their little front paws waddling on their hind legs. It's like the cutest thing ever.

A beaver dam makes water accumulate behind the barricade. turning a trickling stream into a new pond in the middle of the forest.

Ah, time for a shrimp. Anna, can I just interrupt to ask why? Like, I've always wondered this about beavers. Like a beaver like Jose, why is it driven to go through all this work to chop down trees and make a wall that creates pools? It just feels so random.

That's a a great question there. I mean, a beaver out on land is basically a fat, slow package of meat. Think about wolves and mountain lions and bears and coyotes. All of those big animals are going to want to eat a beaver.

According to Ben, it all stems from the fact that beavers are super awkward on land. With their webbed feet and huge tail that drags on the ground, beavers are not good at running, making them easy pickings for land predators. So, if you're a beaver, you want to spend as little time on land as possible. So,

by making dams, they create deep pools of water, which allows them to transform from wobbly wolf snacks into elegant professional swimmers who can spin and twirl and

can hold their breath for up to 15 minutes. 15 minutes. Yeah. They're like a magical animal. Yeah. They're just incredible.

Pretty epic hiding place. Now, hundreds of years ago, in the time of Jose's great great great great great great great great grandparents, the woods of North America was full of beavers.

There were probably several hundred million beavers, making dams and ponds everywhere. Even in New York City,

there would have been beavers all over New York City. That's right. The Big Apple was once

the beaver city. And the beavers of Beaver City would wake up every evening, that's right, beavers are mostly nocturnal, in their beaver homes and hit the road or the stream, I guess, and get to work.

Hey, I'm waddling here. Hauling stones and sticks and redirecting water and finishing off each day with a night cap of sweet wood juice. Manhattan Island was one of the most lush, incredible ecosystems on the eastern seabboard and beavers were part of what made it that way.

But about 400 years ago, all of that would change because of the arrival of Europeans and their insatiable desire for

hats. Hats, top hats and hats, trapper hats with ear flaps, Wellingtons and sugar loafes. That's another name for witch hats

made of beaver fur. Sorry guys. They killed them off by the millions for the fur trade. And as the beavers began to be killed off, the land and waterways began to change pretty dramatically. Like take the river that slides through the northern part of New York City, winding beside train tracks and beneath highways today. It's called the Bronx River.

It was described as an open sewer. That's Christian Murphy. He works on the Bronx River today.

It was really just an elongated landfill. And over the centuries, more and more animals disappeared from the river, including the few remaining beavers. And by the 1970s,

parents told their kids, "Don't go down there. It's not safe." Because for decades, companies all along the river used it as a convenient dump for their waste. And people had just given up on the Bronx River. They thought it was just too polluted to care about.

In many places, you couldn't see the water because of how thick the trash was. Until one day, someone said,

"You know what? This river does not need to look like this. This river could be beautiful. This river could be full of life." Inspired in part by the first Earth Day in 1970, a couple of folks from the neighborhood, like a lady named Ruth and a guy named Fred, they put on gloves and boots and began picking up the trash, bag by bag, day by day. And at first, people kind of laughed. They thought, "What good is a couple of bags of trash going to do? This whole river is polluted." But then some kids joined in.

Let's do this. High five. Scooping out trash by the huge garbage bag full. And eventually someone very powerful joined in too.

Hello. Hello. Congressman. His name was Jose Srano with a big friendly smile and a bigger bushy mustache.

Let's roll up our sleeves and start a clean. Who directed millions of dollars to the cleanup project, ordering in trucks with big cranes to fish out refrigerators and cars and helping to change the rules over where factories could dump their toxic waste. And soon

the river began to respond. The water got cleaner and the forest began to regrow around it, bringing in more bugs and birds until a little creature popped its whiskered head out of the water.

And it was a beaver. Jose. After an absence of more than 200 years, the beaver has come back to New York City. And so they named him Jose in honor of that congressman who'd been an early bee lever that a little awkward human effort could make a big difference.

What an honor. And the fact that Jose the Beaver showed up in the Bronx River wasn't just a sign that the water was getting cleaner. Because beavers clean the river, too, just by being there and being beavers. See, there's a hidden power to beaver dams. They actually make everything around them healthier.

And that happens in a few different ways. So, first, there's the water. The dams act like purifiers that filter out pollution like trash and even

chemicals from agriculture which get trapped in the dam and drop down into the soil instead of getting carried out to sea. Second, dams cool the air because the pools that dams create mean more water is being evaporated into the air. And so when it's hot, it's kind of like a mini air conditioning unit, making it more hospitable to all kinds of creatures. Third, dams enrich the soil. Nutrients in the water get stuck and drop down into the earth, which creates more fertile ground. And fourth, the real biggie. All of this combined allows new life to sprout. algaee's, grasses, cattails, and flowers which attract

baby trout and salmon and dragonflies and butterflies and frogs and salamanders.

And then birds come, woodpeckers and herand and pretty soon coyotes and foxes and in some regions

moose will come down there to eat all of the aquatic vegetation growing in the ponds.

Thank you, bees. And in Jose's case, after just a few years of him hanging out in the Bronx River,

somebody looked and squinted their eyes and said, "Wait a minute. There's a second beaver there. There are two beavers.

Sakra, another beaver." And so Jose and the second beaver, they were roommates.

Classic New Yorkers sharing rent on the river, sharing groceries, you know, cutting down the same trees together. And it gets better. I can't imagine it getting any better, but it does because you've maybe heard of a little known pop star named Justin Bieber. Well, they held a naming contest and

and the second beaver was named Justin Bieber. Beaver. Beaver. Beaver. There's going to be one less lonely beaver.

Thank you, Alan. Jose and Justin lived together for years, munching on wood, swimming with their eyes peeking out of the water, and slowly but surely increasing the biodiversity of the river and the forest around it. And as time has ticked on, the river has only grown healthier, welcoming back snapping turtles and sunfish. And even as was spotted in 2023,

two dolphins swimming around in the Bronx River. No. Yes, dolphins. Uh-huh. Yep. Okay. Go beavers. I can I mean, imagine if like everywhere you walked, you just sprouted flowers and life followed you.

That would be nuts. I mean, how long does it actually take? Like once a dam goes in, is it years before you start seeing this greening effect?

No, that's the thing. It's super fast. Like within a couple of months, there'll be cattails and lily pads and swamp roses blooming. Wow. Okay, so just to recap everything these funky little guys are doing to the world around them, their dams are cleaning the water, cooling the air, making the soil richer, and increasing biodiversity in these pretty dramatic ways. Uh but that's it, right? Like there's no there can't be anything else. There's so much more. Our next storyteller thinks beavers can even fight fire. Find out how after this break.

Look up in the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's beavers parachuting down from the clouds.

Crates full of beavers. Part of a shipment to be dropped from an airplane. No, this is not an oldfashioned cartoon. It's something that our governments actually did in the 1940s and50s. Some folks in a couple of different states put them in boxes and then dropped those boxes out of airplanes with parachutes on them and let them land in the mountains to do good for us. Like move them from the cities to the mountains.

You're kidding right now, right? They literally pushed them out of planes. Idaho did this. California did this.

This is Dr. Emily Fairfax, and she explains that this was the government's weird idea for pest control. They took beavers that were being nuisances, turning people's yards and farmlands to swamps, and then just dropped them off in the mountains.

They are live trapped and moved to distant mountain lakes and streams where their efforts will aid to conserve water, provide fishing pools. Instead of like taking him out on a horseback or a car, they dropped him out of planes. But, you know, I give him credit for trying.

Now into the air and down they swing down to the ground near a stream or a lake.

Emily gives him credit because she too is trying to bring more beavers out into the wild where they might be able to do some good for the planet. Although that did not used to be her job. Far from it. She used to be an engineer who worked on

weapons. Weapons. Nuclear weapons. Whoa. Very different career path. But she happened to turn on the TV one night and catch a nature documentary and they were showing all these aerial shots of beaver dams and wetlands in the desert and they were bright green. And I was like, "What? Beavers live in the desert? How can they keep it green when everything's so dry?"

And she realized that just like her, beavers were engineers, using all of their engineering to live a good life and mend the world around them.

And I wanted that for myself. So I started studying beavers and I haven't looked back since. Emily hung up her nuclear weapons coat and put on some rubber overalls for a new job following beavers through wetlands to try to learn how they do what they do. And eventually she came to focus on this one little family of beavers that lived up high in a mountain in Northern California in a creek. It's called Little Last Chance Creek. So she called the family the Little Last Chance Beavers. There was a mom, a dad, and

there were definitely three to four babies there. hall and she started watching them, literally taking notes as they

timber constructed their intricate dams and lodges. We're logging a busy day at work.

And she discovered that on really hot, sweaty days inside a beaver's house, it's cold in there.

You've been in a beaver lodge? I have. And on super cold days outside, it's super toasty.

So, the beavers sleep in a big snuggle pile in like one room. It's very sweet. They kind of snore sometimes. It's extremely cute.

And Emily learned that their family members weren't the only ones staying warm in there. They might have mice that want to come live inside the lodge with them. They might have muskrats that want to live inside the lodge with them. They might have little snakes that want to live inside the lodge with them.

They allow this. They allow the these trespassers. Oh, absolutely. It's kind of like they're running a little bed and breakfast, which I call a bee and bee. Uh was one of my horrible jokes. Winter turned to spring. Spring to summer. And then one day there was a spark and the dry grasslands and forests around the little last chance beaver family caught fire. It began burning and burning.

It was a really devastating fire. It burned a lot of forest. This was back in the summer of 2021 and it became one of those mega fires we're seeing more and more of because of climate change. Thousands of people had to be evacuated. Hundreds of houses burned down. And as for the plants and critters of the mountains, it seems like absolutely everything has burned. By October, humans were finally able to extinguish the fire. But Emily had no idea what happened to those beavers. Could they have survived the fire? So, one day, she began the long drive up the mountain. And the drive up is very disheartening because everything is just blackened and it's silent, which was the creepiest and strangest part to me. So, I'm not feeling like super confident,

but she keeps driving and we find a route in. They get out of the car and begin walking and suddenly

it is loud. It is splashing water. There's all sorts of birds. There's lots of bugs. There's a lot of wind in the trees and the grasses and the rustling you expect.

Oh, wait. And even there being wind in the trees means there's still trees standing.

There's still trees. The pine trees that were near it are fine. The trees that are in the wetland are fine. It was completely green. Completely unburnt. Not even just like a little burnt. Like they were unburnt. And when I got there, like honestly, it was like tears in my eyes. Why tears? cuz I drove past the burned houses coming up and the burned roads and all the things that we wanted to protect and couldn't and thinking about the future of climate change and knowing that this is the future that's coming. That's a really difficult reality to wrap your head around. I was living in California at the time, like I was seeing my future there. And then getting up to the beaver wetland, it was a very hopeful moment because sometimes it feels like we're all out of ideas and it's not working. But then right in front of me, something is clearly working. And even if we don't know exactly why or how yet, we can learn from it.

And as for the little last chance beavers, I did stay out in the evening and saw both mom and dad swimming. And when they were out swimming, I could hear three, maybe four different young beaver wines coming from where the lodge was. They made it. Yeah. And it wasn't just them. When Emily looked at the area from way high up in space from a satellite, she saw something incredible. This halo of green around the beaver's dams. She guessed that this one little family, these five or six awkward beings, had saved about 7 and 1/2 acres of land from burning.

Yeah, that effect is called making fire refugeia. It's a patch that doesn't burn that other things can use.

Refugeia is a fancy word sort of like for refuge. It's just like place that is safe. Okay.

Exactly. Refugeia. I love this word. I have not stopped thinking about it since Emily taught it to me. How might we all create a little refuge around us for the other beings of this world? Even if we are clumsy and awkward and waddling and tired. I think about the people in the Bronx. Those first two or three people who started picking up trash.

We got this. And eventually created a ripple effect that cleaned up the river. These things can happen. And they do happen in the human world and in the animal world. That day at the Beaver Dam, Emily saw frogs and birds and even a bear. Creatures she suspects might not have survived the fire without that beaver family. And that's why she has come to see beavers as firefighters.

Yeah. They're spreading water out across the whole landscape that's keeping everything nice and green and healthy and stopping it from being easy to burn. Emily has tested this effect in mountains and forests and deserts

and so far what we've seen is that they are really good at making fireproof patches pretty much everywhere. Little rings of green that you can literally see from space.

You know, when we talk about restoring nature, we don't always know how to do that. But guess what? Beavers instinctively know what it's supposed to look like. That's beaver believer Ben again. He and Emily both work in different ways to inspire and convince people to protect beavers.

One of the mantras of the beaver believer goes, "Let the rodent do the work. They'll store water for us. They'll capture pollution. They'll help us fight wildfires. They'll create habitat for all of the fish we like to eat and the birds we like to watch and so on. They do all of this stuff for us if we let them.

Another mantra, be more beaver. What if we too worked to build structures that actually mended instead of harmed the land? As pie in the sky, or impossible as that may seem, there are people already out there doing just that. Following in the beaver's footsteps, waddling awkwardly toward a better world. One step at a time.

Believer. I'm a beaver believer. Bever. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. You little overachiever. I'm a be believer. Bever.

We see the ripple effect. You make a big splash. I'm a beaver believer. Bever. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh, you little overachiever.

I'm a beaver believer. Beaver. Beaver. Let's get to work. If you believe, roll up your sleeves and let me see that tail slap. We're small and awkward and the challenge is tough. If we work together, we can rise above. We waddle on until the job is done. Don't cry as a river.

You know, we'll just damn it up. I'm a beaver believer. Beaver, bever. Oh. Oh. Oh. You little overachiever. I'm a beaver believer. Beaver. Beaver.

Let's get to work. If you believe, roll up your sleeves and let me see that tail slap. Even though they're kind of weird. The beaver's got it going on. Those little awkward engineers. Sometimes it only takes just one. Maybe it's just a few little critters to chew what needs to be done and change the world for everyone. Gopherinski. Goofinsky. Everybody, he used real beaver tail slaps as percussion in that. Uh, and that's it. There's nothing else cool about to have.

What's that? Excuse me. I have a question. Me too. Me three. Me four. The badgers.

Listeners with badgering questions for our expert. Are you ready? Absolutely. Hi, my name is Felix and I'm 6 years old. Do baby beavers have baby teeth?

Yep. Not the big buck teeth, but some of the side teeth, which are called cheek teeth. Cheek teeth. Cheek teeth. Cheek teeth. Say that 10 times fast.

My name is Remy and I'm 6 years old. Since beavers eat wood, what does their poop look like?

Well, they do the double poop. The double poop. What does that mean? They poop once and then what? They eat that again.

And then when it comes out, it looks like a sawdust marshmallow. And the little sawdust marshmallows, if you dry them out, they're actually great fire starters.

What? Have you ever done that? I have burned one to see if it could burn. And it burned just fine.

Now that's what I call a useful nugget. Hi, my name is Tyler. I'm 39 years old. I am trying to figure out how do beavers raised in captivity know how to build a dam even if they've never seen a river. They learn from their instincts and also from following around their parents and brothers and sisters and trying to do what they do.

Wait, so are there regional differences in architectural style? Like how you get Swedish modernism or southwestern adobe?

Anecdotally, yeah, there are. And some of them built some really weird dams. Really? Like how so?

Like at like 90° angles from one another, like zigzagging instead of having nice curvy shapes. Huh? They like teach their kids what's available to build with. It could be garbage, mud. Uh I have seen cowbones. I have seen all sorts of interesting things.

Spooky. A dam made out of bones. Like a skeleton dam. No joke. I saw that on a Halloween field tour and I thought someone had like set it up for me.

Haunted lodge. Haunted dam. There's like cow knuckle bones and a femur and they're just like integrated into this dam. It's like unreal. And that's where we got to leave it with the spooky beaver dam. And I won't tell you uh that vanilla ice cream, candy, yogurt, and many perfumes used to be made with an oil that came from the beaver's booty. Uh it was called castorium. And that's true. If you used to eat like vanilla ice cream or certain candies back in the time of like your great great grandparents, you were actually tasting beaver bum. I won't tell you that because I'm nice, but I did learn it in beaver believer Ben Goldarb's great book called Eager, the surprising secret life of beavers and why they matter. Highly recommend you check it out. Uh, and that'll do it for today. Terrestrials was created by me, Lula Miller with WNYC Studios. Our executive producer is Sarah Samback.

This episode was produced by the naughty gnawing on wood, uh, Anna Gonzalez. Tail slappingly good sound design by Mirror Bert Winonic. Our team also includes Alan Gafinsky, Tanya Chala, and Joe Plord. Fact-ecking by Diane Kelly. She would not let us get anything wrong. Would spelled W O D. Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. Thank you. We have got new episodes turning out every two weeks this fall. We hope you'll listen and subscribe to the Radio Lab for kids feed and tell your friends. It really helps our chances of getting to keep going. Uh, we also have social media where Allan drops Frog Fact Friday videos every Friday. Frog Fact Friday. Uh, and we also have animated music videos, contests, and just like me saying hello in various natural places. Uh, that's terrestrials podcast. And if you want to submit a Badgers question, sign up for our newsletter, or check out past

episodes, just head on over to www.terrestrialsspodcast.org. Okay. Hopefully all those links would work for you. Would work. woodwork. Nah. Uh, okay. Be very careful out there. Go sink your teeth into some good stuff and see you in a couple of spins of this dirty old planet of ours. Bye.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "The Builders: How Beavers Mend Our Planet | Terrestrials Podcast"?

Lula Miller (Host), Alan Gafinsky (Guest), Anna Gonzalez (Host), Ben Goldfarb (Guest), Dr. Emily Fairfax (Guest), Christian Murphy (Guest).

What is "The Builders: How Beavers Mend Our Planet | Terrestrials Podcast" about?

The content explores the significant ecological impact of beavers, highlighting how these creatures aid in environmental restoration amidst global challenges such as climate change and wildfires. Through the story of a beaver named Jose, the discussion illustrates how beavers can transform their ecosystems, benefiting biodiversity and improving water quality.

What is mentioned in this Radiolab episode?

6 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Dr. Emily Fairfax, Ben Goldfarb, Donald C. Murphy, Eager, the surprising secret life of beavers and why they matter, Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "The Builders: How Beavers Mend Our Planet | Terrestrials Podcast"?

The episode runs 29 min; the transcript is about 4,634 words in 107 timestamped sections.

More from Radiolab

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.