{"podcast":{"title":"New Books in Environmental Studies","slug":"new-books-in-environmental-studies-580644","podcast_index_feed_id":580644,"rss_url":"https://feeds.simplecast.com/jQQ0u0HV","website_url":"https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/science-technology/environmental-studies/","image_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/5fe9d3c3-9b70-45f5-8110-15a9c4ae9a98/4582208b-adfb-4117-a192-baa47e5720f5/3000x3000/e5dc75adf8cdf02fb639d7831e4bb4a6.png?aid=rss_feed","author":"New Books Network","episode_count":600,"summary":"This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies","last_synced_at":"2026-09-26T22:19:09.068210+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-environmental-studies-580644"},"episode":{"title":"Edward Cutler, \"This Beautiful Country: How Italy's Nature Shaped Its Culture and Civilisation\" (Chelsea Green, 2026)","slug":"edward-cutler-this-beautiful-country-how-italy-s-nature-shaped-its-culture-and-civilisation-chelsea-green-2026","published_at":"2026-09-01T08:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-environmental-studies-580644/edward-cutler-this-beautiful-country-how-italy-s-nature-shaped-its-culture-and-civilisation-chelsea-green-2026","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-environmental-studies-580644","url":"https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/science-technology/environmental-studies/","audio_url":"https://injector.simplecastaudio.com/5fe9d3c3-9b70-45f5-8110-15a9c4ae9a98/episodes/c46de74b-4291-46b1-9b48-6ae4cdffc375/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=5fe9d3c3-9b70-45f5-8110-15a9c4ae9a98&awEpisodeId=c46de74b-4291-46b1-9b48-6ae4cdffc375&feed=jQQ0u0HV","summary":"In This Beautiful Country: How Italy's Nature Shaped Its Culture and Civilisation (Chelsea Green, 2026), discover Italy’s unique ecological past and how it has shaped its present—and its future, with this riveting look at the incredibly diverse natural history and our need to preserve it. Italy is renowned for its antiquity, classical literature, philosophy, and modern-day culture, cuisine and fashion, but what has gone largely overlooked – and undocumented, even by its people – is its uniquely biodiverse landscape and wildlife. Italy has over 58,000 different species of wildlife, of which 4,777 are endemic, the highest in Europe. Italy provides a home for a third of all European flora and fauna, with a vast range of fruit and vegetable varieties: more grape varieties than France, more wheat than the US and more olives than Spain. Edward Cutler, an art historian by trade, began to explore this history when, four years ago on his small Tuscan farm, he found a salamander that turned out to be endemic to that specific location. In understanding how Italy came together as a country, one of the youngest and still geologically active landscapes in the world, and made up of mountains, volcanoes, earthquakes, glacial lakes, desert islands, caves and forests, Ed realised that this natural history has also had an incredibly important influence on its human history, especially its food culture and low-impact agriculture. And along the way, Ed discovers that Italy once was home to pygmy elephants, giant killer hedgehogs, and vampire-toothed deer. Today we can see the relics of those ancient creatures in the flashy blue lizard of Capri, gladiator crabs under the forum in Rome, the crested porcupine, the beautiful Apennine chamois and of course the Marzipan brown bear and Italian gr…","meta_description":"In This Beautiful Country: How Italy's Nature Shaped Its Culture and Civilisation (Chelsea Green, 2026), discover Italy’s unique ecological past and how i…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3051,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-environmental-studies-580644/episodes/edward-cutler-this-beautiful-country-how-italy-s-nature-shaped-its-culture-and-civilisation-chelsea-green-2026/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-environmental-studies-580644/edward-cutler-this-beautiful-country-how-italy-s-nature-shaped-its-culture-and-civilisation-chelsea-green-2026.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}