Podcasts about Southern Italian

What role does the UN play in the Occupied Palestinian territories? What is the responsibility of Western media when it comes to covering issues surrounding Israel and Palestine? How did Francesca Albanese's Southern Italian heritage inform her passion for fighting injustice?  Rory and Alastair are joined by Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, to discuss all this and more.  TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics  Twitter: @RestIsPolitics  Email: restispolitics@gmail.com Video Editor: Josh Smith  Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mikaela de la Myco's groundbreaking research on psilocybin and motherhood reveals its potential benefits for mothers, challenging societal stigma around psychedelics in motherhood. By focusing on the rematriation of psychedelics, her work seeks to empower women and restore indigenous wisdom in the conversation about mental health and maternal care.Today, we take a compelling journey with co-founder Jimmy Nguyen as he engages in a powerful conversation with Mikaela de la Myco to learn about her groundbreaking research initiative, "Mothers of the Mushroom," which investigates the experiences of mothers who have engaged with psilocybin mushrooms during pregnancy, breastfeeding, or postpartum.Mikaela de la Myco is a mother, herbalist, educator, researcher, and facilitator whose work centers on ancestral healing, sacred earth medicine, and trauma-informed care.As the founder of MushWomb, she creates education and containers for birthing people, queer folks, and BIPOC. Based in the occupied Kumeya and Luiseno territory in San Diego, California, Mikaela draws from her indigenous Mexican, Afro-Caribbean, and Southern Italian roots to promote well-being. Professionally, she spearheads organizations like EcoSensual, the Herbal and Trauma-Informed Advocacy Training, Ma'at, the Matriarchal Alliance for Accountability and Transparency, and Mothers of the Mushroom Research and Resources for Psychedelic Families. Known as a maternal caretaker in her community, Mikaela collaborates with individuals, families, and organizations alike in the struggle to rematriate entheogens.No mushroom source? No problem. Download our Free Psilocybin Sourcing Guide.More Psychedelic Passage:Official WebsiteBook a ConsultationBlog PageYoutubeInstagram: @psychedelicpassage  Reddit: u/psychedelicpassageHave a burning topic in mind? Share your thoughts: Feedback & Topic Suggestions BoxAbout Us:Psychedelic Passage is the first psychedelic concierge service in the U.S., connecting clients with a vetted network of local, independent facilitators. As an independent body, we ensure no conflict of interest, advocating solely for you. Our rigorous vetting guarantees faci Join a supportive weekly microdosing community led by two expert psychedelic facilitators. Every Tuesday, you'll optimize your microdosing practice while connecting with like-minded club members. Your first month is only $19. That's four 1.5-hour meetings for only $19. Sign up now.

What an absolute honour it was for us to have a long chat in person with Vince Garreffa. Vince is an icon in the Perth Italian Community, he is most well known for launching Mondo Butchers in 1979 but there is so much more to his story than the business. Born in Calabria in 1951, Vince and his mother and brothers immigrated to Australia in 1956 to join his father who was waiting for them in Perth. Vince told us about the experience of his family in their new country. We heard about family life and the mindset of Southern Italian immigrants during this time period with the priorities being family and hard work. Like many others in his generation, Vince began working early in life and left school to pursue a career as a butcher. We loved hearing some of Vince's memories and his story, especially as we have a shared Calabrese heritage.With so much to talk about this chat became a two part episode, be sure to tune in next week to Part 2 where Vince tells us how he came to start Mondo Butchers, becoming a husband and father and also about the incredible autobiography 'The Flesh In My Life,'

Join Deborah Goodrich Royce and a panel of fantastic thriller fiction novelists for a talk about their books, their writing process, and the thriller genre. About the Authors:  Sara DiVello is a mystery writer and the creator/host of Mystery and Thriller Mavens, a popular author series. Sara loves connecting with fellow mystery-lovers on her social media platforms. She also serves as the director of social media strategy for the International Thriller Writers association. Sara's first book, “Where in the OM Am I?” was the NIEA-winner, selected by SHAPE Magazine as a best book, and named a must-read for anyone considering a career change by Working Mother. Her articles have been published in Marie Claire, Elle, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, and Woman's Day, among others. In her spare time, she loves to teach yoga, cook (and eat!), garden, and go for leisurely walks with her husband and their beloved rescue mutt, Pelu. Jean Kwok is the international bestselling author of Girl in Translation, Mambo in Chinatown, and Searching for Sylvie Lee, which was a Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club pick and an instant New York Times bestseller. Her work has been published in twenty countries and is taught in schools across the world. She has been selected for numerous honors, including the American Library Association Alex Award, the Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Award and the Sunday Times Short Story Award international shortlist. She immigrated from Hong Kong to Brooklyn when she was five and worked in a Chinatown clothing factory for much of her childhood. She received her bachelor's degree from Harvard University and earned an MFA from Columbia University. She currently lives in the Netherlands. Liv Constantine is the pen name of sisters Lynne Constantine and Valerie Constantine. Lynne and Valerie are national and international bestselling authors with over one and a half million copies sold worldwide. Their books have been translated into 29 languages, are available in 34 countries, and are in development for both television and film. Their novels have been praised by The Washington Post, USA Today, The Sunday Times, People Magazine, and Good Morning America, among many others. Their debut novel, THE LAST MRS. PARRISH, is a Reese Witherspoon Book Club selection. Luanne Rice is the New York Times bestselling author of 35 novels including Last Day, Dream Country, Beach Girls, Pretend She's Here and others, Rice often writes about love, family, nature, and the sea. She received the 2014 Connecticut Governor's Arts Award for excellence and lifetime achievement in the Literary Arts category. Several of Rice's novels have been adapted for television, including Crazy in Love for TNT, Blue Moon for CBS, Follow the Stars Home and Silver Bells for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, and Beach Girls for Lifetime. Juliet Grames was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and graduated magna cum laude with a degree in history from Columbia College. For the last twenty years she has worked in book publishing and is currently Editorial Director at Soho Press in New York. She is the recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Ellery Queen Award and Italy's Premio Cetraro for contributions to Southern Italian literature. She is the author of two novels, THE SEVEN OR EIGHT DEATHS OF STELLA FORTUNA and THE LOST BOY OF SANTA CHIONIA. Elise Hart Kipness is a television sports reporter turned crime fiction writer. The KATE GREEN series is based on Elise's experience in the high-pressure, adrenaline-pumping world of live TV. Like her main character, Elise chased marquee athletes through the tunnels of Madison Square Garden and stood before glaring lights reporting to national audiences. She is currently Co-President of Sisters in Crime Connecticut. For more information about the authors on this panel, visit oceanhouseevents.com/events. For details on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) I've said something like this before: I believe the means of global soccer production should be controlled by fans, players and the community the club is in, collectively or cooperatively, and not by firms and companies based half a world away from the clubs in question. So, this podcast is not a natural avenue for an American multi-club owner of European clubs to share his story. In an exception to that pattern, here is a conversation with Matt Rizzetta, an owner of - precisely - a company (named North Sixth Group, in New York) that controls clubs half a world away. Most of our conversation looks behind the scenes of his involvement in Campobasso FC, in Italy's 3rd league, from questions over how investors find clubs in the first place to whether he could rename the club. While I believe I went in with a level of empathy, I also asked perhaps the most critical questions I've asked a guest yet, and what resulted was an interesting and respectful conversation.And: you can WIN a copy of David Kilpatrick's lovely short book 95 Theses on the reformation of Football. I'll tell you how a few minutes into the episode. HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE: Campobasso FC official websiteBrooklyn FC and Project Underdog's websiteMatt Rizzetta on InstagramForbes Magazine on Campobasso's Hollywood investors and on Campobasso's promotionPlease leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook. If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help. Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me. Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige LindInstrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

Alfonso Peccatiello built a following of 500,000 on LinkedIn by doing something radical – by being a real, authentic human in the fund world. And that authentic social presence helped him close investment deals for his new hedge fund, Palinuro Capital. Alfonso's story is proof that it pays to challenge the status quo and to put people (and connections) first – even in a numbers-obsessed industry. Want the full story? Join Alfonso and Stacy as they discuss:Alfonso's backstory: How a car accident sparked his obsession with creating success on his own terms Why he's never afraid to repel the wrong investor How his willingness to repel, both on social media and in meetings, has helped him attract more of the right investors The lesson he learned as a $20B bond manager that has served him most as an entrepreneur (spoiler alert, it wasn't an investing technique) More About Alfonso PeccatielloAlfonso (Alf) Peccatiello is the CIO of the global macro hedge fund Palinuro Capital. Alf was born in Southern Italy, roughly 1,000 km away from the closest financial center, yet his dream was to run his own hedge fund. To get there, he had an idea: share macro analysis and frameworks with the world through his research firm, The Macro Compass, first, establish relationships, and only after spinning out his macro hedge fund. After scoring the largest asset managers in the world as clients of his research, here we are: his global macro hedge fund, Palinuro Capital, is ready to launch in January 2025. As a proper Southern Italian, Alf stands by three culinary rules: no cappuccino unless it's breakfast, no pineapple on pizza, and never break pasta in pieces!Want More Help With Storytelling?  +  Subscribe to my newsletter to get a weekly email that helps you use your words to power your growth: https://www.stacyhavener.com/subscribe  - - -Make The Boutique Investment Collective part of your Billion Dollar Backstory. Gain access to invaluable resources, expert coaches, and a supportive community of other boutique founders, fund managers, and investment pros. Join Havener Capital's exclusive membership - - -Make The Boutique Investment Collective part of your Billion Dollar Backstory. Gain access to invaluable resources, expert coaches, and a supportive community of other boutique founders, fund managers, and investment pros. Join Havener Capital's exclusive membership

This week, Megan Colombo joins us for The Amazing Spider-Man. It's like the other movies, but with a lizard man. Is Andrew Garfeild biblically hot? Which base is under-the-shirt-Tobey-Maguire-boob-touch? Do hot girls like mezcal? “Wow. I have a lot to say.”  - Megan Colombo Megan would like to give a shout out to the folks at The Divine Lorraine Hotel at 699 N. Broad St. in Philadelphia, home to the Southern Italian restaurant called Cicala, a new casual bar and pizzeria called Sorellina and underground concepts, a curated intersection of food, music, and culture. Be sure to follow Megan's improv teams Remain Dog @remaindog and Don't I Know You? @dontiknowyouimprov on Instagram  Go to linktr.ee/rottentreasure to listen, like, follow, rate and review. It really helps the show! You can also support the podcast to gain early access to episodes, promotional opportunities and even get extra franchise rank and review episodes. Who knows?! The tier system. That's who. Visit patreon.com/rottentreasure to learn more!

Repaso libre a la Transglobal World Music Chart de este mes, confeccionada a través de la votación de un panel de divulgadores de las músicas del mundo de todos los continentes, del que los hacedores de Mundofonías somos cocreadores y coimpulsores. En este mes de septiembre del 2024, suenan aires y conexiones euronorteamericanas, tártaras, suditalianas, kurdoflamencas, caribeñocolombianas, polacoucranianas, psicochirpriotas y clásicas de Oriente y Occidente. El número 1 es para los malienses Bassekou Kouyate & Amy Sacko. A loose review of this month’s Transglobal World Music Chart, determined by a panel of world music specialists from all the continents, of which the Mundofonías‘ presenters are co-creators and co-promoters. In this month of September 2024, we hear Euro-North American, Tatar, Southern Italian, Kurdish-Flamenco, Caribbean-Colombian, Polish-Ukrainian, Psycho-Cypriot, and Western and Eastern classical sounds and connections. The number 1 spot goes to the Malian artists Bassekou Kouyate & Amy Sacko. - Moira Smiley - Go dig my grave - The rhizome project - Kadim Almet - Kara burek - Gayar Janay - Assurd - 'O diavolo s'arrecreia - 'O 'mbruoglio - Lemon Bucket Orkestra - Frank’s freylekh - Cuckoo - Martina Camargo - Tutumbú (tambora) - Canto y río - Wowakin - Kolomyjka - Latem - Driss El Maloumi Trio & Watar Quintet - Details - Details - Ruşan Filiztek - Zyryab - Exils - Buzz’ Ayaz - Zali - Buzz’ Ayaz - Bassekou Kouyate & Amy Sacko - Batou - Djudjon, l’oiseau de Garana - (Bassekou Kouyate & Amy Sacko - Djama - Djudjon, l’oiseau de Garana) 📸 Bassekou Kouyate & Amy Sacko

Sospiri, an authentic Southern Italian restaurant and rooftop bar by ilLido Group is inspired by Beppe De Vito's childhood dessert in Puglia. The restaurant offers a blend of culinary mastery and panoramic skyline views.   The 128-seat restaurant features warm colors and natural light, with a private dining room for intimate gatherings and a stylish rooftop bar for 60 guests.   Chef Matteo Ponti leads the culinary team at Sospiri, which focuses on capturing the true essence of Southern Italian cuisine using fresh ingredients like tomatoes, wild vegetables, and tender artichokes.   On Culture Club, Roshan Gidwani speaks to Beppe de Vito, Founder, ilLido Group, to find out more about its offerings.   Presented by: Roshan Gidwani   Produced and Edited by: Alexandra Parada (alexparada@sph.com.sg) and Simone Chua   Want to get featured on our show? Drop me an email today!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted by David and Nycci Nellis.  On today's show: ·        Russ Smith and Cecy Linzey, founders of the Mr. & Mrs. Bourbon Co., are in. Theirs is one of only a few Black- and female-owned bourbon companies in the U.S., and they have quite a story to tell -- and a few bourbons to pour;                                                                                                                                                                                        ·        Our old buddy, Chef Matt Adler, late of Caruso's and now the executive chef at D.C.'s Cucina Morini, serving up Southern Italian and Sicilian delights;                                                                                                                 ·        Aynae Simmons and Leticia Engel-Cobian with Visit Montgomery are with us. You will definitely want to visit the Tastemakers Trail in Montgomery County. It features two dozen craft beverage producers, including wineries, breweries, cideries -- and a meadery;                                                                                                                    ·        Paul Taylor and Sherra Kurtz are co-owners of Your Only Friend, an out-of-the-ordinary cocktail and sandwich concept in Shaw; ·        Originally from Berkeley, Leo and Oliver Kremer are the founders of the Dos Toros Taqueria chain. When they moved to the East Coast, they realized San Francisco Mission-style burritos were tough to find. Enter the first Dos Toros location in New York City's Union Square in 2009. Cut to now: there are 15 Dos Toros spots in NYC, and (drum roll, please) two here in DC. The Kremer Brothers join us with all the details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hosted by David and Nycci Nellis.   On today's show:   ·        Russ Smith and Cecy Linzey, founders of the Mr. & Mrs. Bourbon Co., are in. Theirs is one of only a few Black- and female-owned bourbon companies in the U.S., and they have quite a story to tell -- and a few bourbons to pour;                                                                                                                                                                                        ·        Our old buddy, Chef Matt Adler, late of Caruso's and now the executive chef at D.C.'s Cucina Morini, serving up Southern Italian and Sicilian delights;                                                                                                                  ·        Aynae Simmons and Leticia Engel-Cobian with Visit Montgomery are with us. You will definitely want to visit the Tastemakers Trail in Montgomery County. It features two dozen craft beverage producers, including wineries, breweries, cideries -- and a meadery;                                                                                                                     ·        Paul Taylor and Sherra Kurtz are co-owners of Your Only Friend, an out-of-the-ordinary cocktail and sandwich concept in Shaw;   ·        Originally from Berkeley, Leo and Oliver Kremer are the founders of the Dos Toros Taqueria chain. When they moved to the East Coast, they realized San Francisco Mission-style burritos were tough to find. Enter the first Dos Toros location in New York City's Union Square in 2009. Cut to now: there are 15 Dos Toros spots in NYC, and (drum roll, please) two here in DC. The Kremer Brothers join us with all the details.

Hosted by David and Nycci Nellis.  On today's show: ·        Russ Smith and Cecy Linzey, founders of the Mr. & Mrs. Bourbon Co., are in. Theirs is one of only a few Black- and female-owned bourbon companies in the U.S., and they have quite a story to tell -- and a few bourbons to pour;                                                                                                                                                                                        ·        Our old buddy, Chef Matt Adler, late of Caruso's and now the executive chef at D.C.'s Cucina Morini, serving up Southern Italian and Sicilian delights;                                                                                                                 ·        Aynae Simmons and Leticia Engel-Cobian with Visit Montgomery are with us. You will definitely want to visit the Tastemakers Trail in Montgomery County. It features two dozen craft beverage producers, including wineries, breweries, cideries -- and a meadery;                                                                                                                    ·        Paul Taylor and Sherra Kurtz are co-owners of Your Only Friend, an out-of-the-ordinary cocktail and sandwich concept in Shaw; ·        Originally from Berkeley, Leo and Oliver Kremer are the founders of the Dos Toros Taqueria chain. When they moved to the East Coast, they realized San Francisco Mission-style burritos were tough to find. Enter the first Dos Toros location in New York City's Union Square in 2009. Cut to now: there are 15 Dos Toros spots in NYC, and (drum roll, please) two here in DC. The Kremer Brothers join us with all the details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hosted by David and Nycci Nellis.   On today's show:   ·        Russ Smith and Cecy Linzey, founders of the Mr. & Mrs. Bourbon Co., are in. Theirs is one of only a few Black- and female-owned bourbon companies in the U.S., and they have quite a story to tell -- and a few bourbons to pour;                                                                                                                                                                                        ·        Our old buddy, Chef Matt Adler, late of Caruso's and now the executive chef at D.C.'s Cucina Morini, serving up Southern Italian and Sicilian delights;                                                                                                                  ·        Aynae Simmons and Leticia Engel-Cobian with Visit Montgomery are with us. You will definitely want to visit the Tastemakers Trail in Montgomery County. It features two dozen craft beverage producers, including wineries, breweries, cideries -- and a meadery;                                                                                                                     ·        Paul Taylor and Sherra Kurtz are co-owners of Your Only Friend, an out-of-the-ordinary cocktail and sandwich concept in Shaw;   ·        Originally from Berkeley, Leo and Oliver Kremer are the founders of the Dos Toros Taqueria chain. When they moved to the East Coast, they realized San Francisco Mission-style burritos were tough to find. Enter the first Dos Toros location in New York City's Union Square in 2009. Cut to now: there are 15 Dos Toros spots in NYC, and (drum roll, please) two here in DC. The Kremer Brothers join us with all the details.

This episode is sponsored by House of Macadamias -- ⁠⁠Click Here⁠⁠ to get our specially curated box that also comes with the free snack bars and 15% offer for CURVA MUNDIAL listeners! In this hilarious episode, artist and professional s*** talker Art Morelli joins CURVA MUNDIAL to talk about his love of Napoli, what being from Southern Italian heritage means and analyzing the football world while taking trolls to task on social media. He also dives into his fine art of busting chops as well. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/curva-mundial/support

Really Interesting Women - the PodcastEpisode 125Dr Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli AMIt's hard to briefly describe Maria's bio  - but it goes a long way explaining it by understanding she is from a Southern Italian poor, migrant, working class background which instilled in her a resistance to systemic injustice.She has been an academic, author, activist and ally in the issues and intersections of cultural diversity, gender and sexual diversity, relationship and family diversity for over 30 years....and it was a really insightful discussion which was based on a lifetime's experience and an academic understanding. But it was never laced with anger or contempt or masked with utter disappointment and there were no accusations of inaction by those that could change things. Rather, it was a discussion to help others understand the effect a lack of diversity and acceptance can have. And how to fix that. By way of example, there is a lot written and said about 'safe environments' - and although I think I know what that means, when I asked her what an 'unsafe environment' looks like...I acquired a much better understanding. Maria is regularly called upon to act as a consultant in educational, workplace, youth services, health services and community service settings. Maria is also regularly invited to speak at diverse community, educational, organisational and other functions and conferences, and in various media such as television, radio and newspaper. Head to the link in my bio to have a listen to Maria's podcast. Visit instagram @reallyinterestingwomen for further interviews and posts of interesting women in history. Follow the link to leave a review....and tell your friendshttps://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/really-interesting-women/id1526764849

The legendary shred maestro—best known for his work as a solo artist and as a member of Return to Forever and other high-profile, hot-shot collabs—drops by to chat with Cory about his new epic full-length, Twentyfour. It features “sixteen brand-new compositions and they're all very involved. I hope I don't have to do this again.”One of Di Meola's biggest projects is, of course, the guitar trio he shared with John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucía and their thrilling 1981 record, Friday Night in San Francisco, which elevated the acoustic guitar ensemble to the level of high art. Di Meola shares the behind-the-scenes stories of that tour and the 2022 archival release from the next night's concert, Saturday Night in San Francisco. He calls the ensemble's dynamic a “real healthy competition” and explains, “I knew I was up against two guys who were relentless in their delivery of phenomenal ideas. When they finished a solo, it was like, 'Oh my god, what am I gonna come up with.”No chat with Di Meola, who famously opened up his kitchen in the post-lockdown part of the pandemic, would be complete without a survey of Southern Italian food. Why is sfogliatelle the maestro's favorite pastry, and where does he get his? If he's on tour and there's nowhere to eat but an Olive Garden, what's his order? And much, much more.Listen to the full episode here: https://bit.ly/WongNotesGet 30% off your first year of DistroKid by going here: http://distrokid.com/vip/corywongVisit Al Di Meola: https://www.aldimeola.com/Hit us up: wongnotes@premierguitar.comVisit Cory: https://www.corywongmusic.comVisit Premier Guitar: http://premierguitar.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/wongnotespodIG:

As distant cousins intertwined by Puerto Rican roots, Valerie Evans joins us to unravel the vibrant story of her dual Italian and Puerto Rican lineage. Our conversation traverses the multicultural neighborhoods of East Harlem, brushes through the historical cobblestones of Sannicandro di Bari and Salerno, and touches on the personal transformations ignited by a family accident and the consequential search for identity. Valerie's account of her mother's life and her quest to reveal her mysterious Southern Italian father's past sheds light on the intimate struggles many face in piecing together their family mosaic.The allure of ancestry pulls us deeper as Valerie shares her foray into DNA testing and genetic genealogy. Together, we navigate the complex web of DNA matches and the painstaking detective work of groups like DNA Detectives. Valerie's narrative is a testament to the persistence of those seeking to connect with their heritage, as she recounts the emotional journey that comes with sifting through the shadows of history to find oneself. Our guest's tenacity and the surprising connections she uncovers emphasize the shared human desire to know where we come from and the bonds that form through these discoveries.Rounding out our exploration, we reflect on the ways in which digital platforms and travel serve as conduits to cultural preservation and self-discovery. Valerie discusses the role of her website and BariAncestors.com in safeguarding Italian-American stories and the power of stepping onto ancestral soil. We also venture into the heart of Puerto Rico, examining its nuanced relationship with the U.S. and the island's transformation from a land of emigration to a tourist haven. Join us for this heartfelt episode as we celebrate the resilience and diversity of our family legacies while encouraging others to embrace the journey into their own past.https://www.valeriemevans.comhttps://www.instagram.com/italianataglancehttps://about.me/literanistaItalian Marketplace LLCOnline tee shirts, hoodies and more for ItaliansFarmers and NoblesRead about my research story and how to begin your family research.Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showPurchase my book "Farmers and Nobles" here or at Amazon.

The Pizza Pioneer's Journey: From New Jersey Roots to Global AcclaimIn this episode of CHEF AF, we take you on a flavorful journey with the pizza pioneer himself, Anthony Mangieri. Born and raised in New Jersey, Anthony's love affair with pizza began at a tender age. This passion blossomed into a career that has placed him on the global pizza map. From opening a bakery in his early twenties to the inception of Una Pizza Napoletana, Anthony's path has been nothing short of remarkable.The Meticulous Art of Pizza Making: A Day in the Life of Anthony MangieriAnthony's approach to pizza making is a blend of art, discipline, and relentless pursuit of perfection. Every day at Una Pizza Napoletana is a testament to his dedication. Anthony crafts each dough ball by hand, ensuring that each pizza served is a piece of culinary art. His belief that a restaurant is not just a business, but a life's work, resonates in every slice of pizza he serves.A Leap into Retail: The Birth of Genio Della PizzaExpanding beyond the walls of Una Pizza Napoletana, Anthony embarked on a new venture - Genio Della Pizza. This foray into the retail world with a frozen pizza line was a meticulous decision. Anthony's commitment to authenticity and quality led him to Italy, where he oversees every aspect of production. His involvement ensures that Genio Della Pizza lives up to the high standards he set at his restaurant.Challenges and Triumphs: Anthony's Frozen Pizza JourneyTransitioning from a restaurant to the retail space brought its own set of challenges. Anthony navigated these with the same passion and precision that he applies to his pizza-making. From grappling with the emotional aspect of maintaining his reputation to tackling the complex logistics of retail, his journey is a tale of resilience and adaptation.Anthony Mangieri's Advice to Aspiring Chefs: Stay True to Your CraftFor Anthony, the key to success in the culinary world is authenticity. He encourages young chefs to build a strong skill set and follow their hearts. Anthony's advice underscores the importance of passion and dedication in creating a culinary experience that resonates with customers.Sustainability and Ingredients: The Heart of Genio Della PizzaSustainability plays a crucial role in Anthony's vision for Genio Della Pizza. He ensures that all ingredients are sourced locally, contributing to a minimal environmental footprint. His commitment to sustainability extends to every aspect of production, from the wood used in ovens to the way leftover pizzas are handled.Embracing Culinary Trends with AuthenticityWhile Anthony recognizes the ever-changing landscape of the pizza industry, he remains true to his roots. He appreciates trends that focus on specialization and authenticity. For him, the future of pizza lies in embracing regional nuances and continuing the journey of culinary exploration.Closing Thoughts: The Rhythmic Art of Pizza MakingAs our conversation winds down, Anthony reflects on the rhythm and movement integral to pizza making. He likens it to a dance, where being in the zone can transform a good pizza into an extraordinary one. It's this magical interplay of skill and passion that makes Anthony Mangieri a true pizza pioneer.Chef Anthony Mangieri's Bucatini RecipeAnthony's Bucatini Recipe:1 lb Bucatini 1 head escarole, washed and torn into bite-sized pieces1 cup Southern Italian black olives, pitted1/4 cup golden raisins1/4 cup pine nuts (preferable real Italian)1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes1 clove garlic, minced1 freselle (Italian biscuit), or coarse homemade bread crumbsPecorino Romano cheeseCoarse Sicilian sea saltExtra virgin olive oilHeat a few tbsp of extra virgin olive oil in a pan on medium heat and add garlic and crushed red pepper flakes. Once it starts to sizzle, add the olives to the pan and use the back of a fork to break them up a bit in the oil. After a minute, add the escarole, stir and cover. Check on it every few minutes, and once it's cooked down, remove the cover, stir in the pine nuts and golden raisins and turn off the heat. In the meantime boil a large pot of water. After boiling, add a few tbsp of sea salt and once it comes back to a rolling boil add the bucatini and stir. Once the bucatini is al dente, drain and toss in with the escarole. Add more olive oil (at least another few tbsp. and toss to coat and mix everything together. Then top with bread crumbs (or grate the freselle on top of the bowl so you get some fine and coarse pieces that fall off) and grate plenty of Pecorino Romano cheese on top. Add sea salt to taste.

In Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), Ian MacAllen traces the evolution of traditional Italian-American cuisine, often referred to as “red sauce Italian,” from its origins in Italy to its transformation in America into a new, distinct cuisine. It is a fascinating social and culinary history exploring the integration of red sauce food into mainstream America alongside the blending of Italian immigrant otherness into a national American identity. The story follows the small parlor restaurants immigrants launched from their homes to large, popular destinations, and eventually to commodified fast food and casual dining restaurants. Some dishes like fettuccine Alfredo and spaghetti alla Caruso owe their success to celebrities, and Italian-American cuisine generally has benefited from a rich history in popular culture. Drawing on inspiration from Southern Italian cuisine, early Italian immigrants to America developed new recipes and modified old ones. Ethnic Italians invented dishes like lobster fra Diavolo, spaghetti and meatballs, and veal parmigiana, and popularized foods like pizza and baked lasagna that had once been seen as overly foreign. Eventually, the classic red-checkered-table-cloth Italian restaurant would be replaced by a new idea of what it means for food to be Italian, even as ‘red sauce' became entrenched in American culture. This booklooks at how and why these foods became part of the national American diet, and focuses on the stories, myths, and facts behind classic (and some not so classic) dishes within Italian-American cuisine. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), Ian MacAllen traces the evolution of traditional Italian-American cuisine, often referred to as “red sauce Italian,” from its origins in Italy to its transformation in America into a new, distinct cuisine. It is a fascinating social and culinary history exploring the integration of red sauce food into mainstream America alongside the blending of Italian immigrant otherness into a national American identity. The story follows the small parlor restaurants immigrants launched from their homes to large, popular destinations, and eventually to commodified fast food and casual dining restaurants. Some dishes like fettuccine Alfredo and spaghetti alla Caruso owe their success to celebrities, and Italian-American cuisine generally has benefited from a rich history in popular culture. Drawing on inspiration from Southern Italian cuisine, early Italian immigrants to America developed new recipes and modified old ones. Ethnic Italians invented dishes like lobster fra Diavolo, spaghetti and meatballs, and veal parmigiana, and popularized foods like pizza and baked lasagna that had once been seen as overly foreign. Eventually, the classic red-checkered-table-cloth Italian restaurant would be replaced by a new idea of what it means for food to be Italian, even as ‘red sauce' became entrenched in American culture. This booklooks at how and why these foods became part of the national American diet, and focuses on the stories, myths, and facts behind classic (and some not so classic) dishes within Italian-American cuisine. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), Ian MacAllen traces the evolution of traditional Italian-American cuisine, often referred to as “red sauce Italian,” from its origins in Italy to its transformation in America into a new, distinct cuisine. It is a fascinating social and culinary history exploring the integration of red sauce food into mainstream America alongside the blending of Italian immigrant otherness into a national American identity. The story follows the small parlor restaurants immigrants launched from their homes to large, popular destinations, and eventually to commodified fast food and casual dining restaurants. Some dishes like fettuccine Alfredo and spaghetti alla Caruso owe their success to celebrities, and Italian-American cuisine generally has benefited from a rich history in popular culture. Drawing on inspiration from Southern Italian cuisine, early Italian immigrants to America developed new recipes and modified old ones. Ethnic Italians invented dishes like lobster fra Diavolo, spaghetti and meatballs, and veal parmigiana, and popularized foods like pizza and baked lasagna that had once been seen as overly foreign. Eventually, the classic red-checkered-table-cloth Italian restaurant would be replaced by a new idea of what it means for food to be Italian, even as ‘red sauce' became entrenched in American culture. This booklooks at how and why these foods became part of the national American diet, and focuses on the stories, myths, and facts behind classic (and some not so classic) dishes within Italian-American cuisine. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

In Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), Ian MacAllen traces the evolution of traditional Italian-American cuisine, often referred to as “red sauce Italian,” from its origins in Italy to its transformation in America into a new, distinct cuisine. It is a fascinating social and culinary history exploring the integration of red sauce food into mainstream America alongside the blending of Italian immigrant otherness into a national American identity. The story follows the small parlor restaurants immigrants launched from their homes to large, popular destinations, and eventually to commodified fast food and casual dining restaurants. Some dishes like fettuccine Alfredo and spaghetti alla Caruso owe their success to celebrities, and Italian-American cuisine generally has benefited from a rich history in popular culture. Drawing on inspiration from Southern Italian cuisine, early Italian immigrants to America developed new recipes and modified old ones. Ethnic Italians invented dishes like lobster fra Diavolo, spaghetti and meatballs, and veal parmigiana, and popularized foods like pizza and baked lasagna that had once been seen as overly foreign. Eventually, the classic red-checkered-table-cloth Italian restaurant would be replaced by a new idea of what it means for food to be Italian, even as ‘red sauce' became entrenched in American culture. This booklooks at how and why these foods became part of the national American diet, and focuses on the stories, myths, and facts behind classic (and some not so classic) dishes within Italian-American cuisine. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), Ian MacAllen traces the evolution of traditional Italian-American cuisine, often referred to as “red sauce Italian,” from its origins in Italy to its transformation in America into a new, distinct cuisine. It is a fascinating social and culinary history exploring the integration of red sauce food into mainstream America alongside the blending of Italian immigrant otherness into a national American identity. The story follows the small parlor restaurants immigrants launched from their homes to large, popular destinations, and eventually to commodified fast food and casual dining restaurants. Some dishes like fettuccine Alfredo and spaghetti alla Caruso owe their success to celebrities, and Italian-American cuisine generally has benefited from a rich history in popular culture. Drawing on inspiration from Southern Italian cuisine, early Italian immigrants to America developed new recipes and modified old ones. Ethnic Italians invented dishes like lobster fra Diavolo, spaghetti and meatballs, and veal parmigiana, and popularized foods like pizza and baked lasagna that had once been seen as overly foreign. Eventually, the classic red-checkered-table-cloth Italian restaurant would be replaced by a new idea of what it means for food to be Italian, even as ‘red sauce' became entrenched in American culture. This booklooks at how and why these foods became part of the national American diet, and focuses on the stories, myths, and facts behind classic (and some not so classic) dishes within Italian-American cuisine. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies

In Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), Ian MacAllen traces the evolution of traditional Italian-American cuisine, often referred to as “red sauce Italian,” from its origins in Italy to its transformation in America into a new, distinct cuisine. It is a fascinating social and culinary history exploring the integration of red sauce food into mainstream America alongside the blending of Italian immigrant otherness into a national American identity. The story follows the small parlor restaurants immigrants launched from their homes to large, popular destinations, and eventually to commodified fast food and casual dining restaurants. Some dishes like fettuccine Alfredo and spaghetti alla Caruso owe their success to celebrities, and Italian-American cuisine generally has benefited from a rich history in popular culture. Drawing on inspiration from Southern Italian cuisine, early Italian immigrants to America developed new recipes and modified old ones. Ethnic Italians invented dishes like lobster fra Diavolo, spaghetti and meatballs, and veal parmigiana, and popularized foods like pizza and baked lasagna that had once been seen as overly foreign. Eventually, the classic red-checkered-table-cloth Italian restaurant would be replaced by a new idea of what it means for food to be Italian, even as ‘red sauce' became entrenched in American culture. This booklooks at how and why these foods became part of the national American diet, and focuses on the stories, myths, and facts behind classic (and some not so classic) dishes within Italian-American cuisine. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/popular-culture

This is a conversation with former mobster now mafia historian Louis Ferrante about his intriguing new book BORGATA: RISE OF EMPIRE. The former “chop shop” small time thug now erudite Ferrante is like a cross between Sonny Corleone & Niall Ferguson. Essential viewing/listening. Transcript below.AK (00:18): Hello everybody. It is Tuesday, January the second, 2024. We're in a new year, but old themes. Last year we did several shows on the Mafia, one with the historian Paul Moses on the what he calls, at least the true story of the immigrant cops who fought the rise of the Mafiaa. He had a new book out called Appropriately Enough, the Italian Squad, another with an interesting writer, Matt Beck, the Life We Choose about a series of conversations he had with a Mafiaa member called William Big Belly Delia. He talked about not just Donald Trump and Michael Jackson, but also Jimmy Hoffer, and we're going one better in 2024 rather than writing or talking to people who have spoken to people in the Mafiaa. We have a man, Louis Ferrante, who once upon a time was a member of the Mafia. And since become a very successful writer, the author of many books, bestselling books, including particular Mob Rules, what the Mafia Can Teach the Legitimate Businessman. It was a huge hit. And he has a new book out. It's a history of the Mafia, the Borgata Trilogy, volume one, rise of Empire. It came out in November of last year in the uk, and it's out this week in the US. Louis Ferrante is joining us from his home in Sarasota on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Louis, before we went live, you told me it's very nice in Florida.Louis Ferrante (02:01): Florida's beautiful, the Sunshine State, a lot of sun. I need sun. I grew up in New York, and the winters are dark and dreary, and London's a beautiful place too. I like the people in London, but once again, the weather's not the best part.AK (02:17): Dreary. Yeah, I'm talking to actually from California. So Louis, when you fly out and you get on a plane, you happen to sit next to someone and you get into conversation and they ask you what career you have or had, what would you say?Louis Ferrante (02:31): I'd tell 'em a hijacker if I'm on a plane.AK (02:36): And what do they do?Louis Ferrante (02:38): They look for the attendant or they go to the bathroom? No, I mean, I was a truck hijacker, a little different from a plain hijacker, but I tell them I'm a writer and a television host, which is the truth. I'm a bestselling author. My books have been translated into 2020 languages, and I hosted a show for Discovery Channel.AK (03:04): It's a good trade being a writer. But did you always intend to be one, or how did you go from being, as you say, a truck hijacker, someone who knows the Mafia, the American Mafia to actually writing about it.Louis Ferrante (03:21): I faced the rest of my life in prison, and I was lucky to get out of it with a 13 year sentence. I was represented at the time by the civil rights attorney, William Kunstler, who was very instrumental in, yeah, he helped Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. He went in to negotiate with the convicts during the Attica riots, and he defended me, and I was able to get a plea of 13 years without cooperating against anyone, and I didn't have to go to trial and possibly get the rest of my life sentenced to rest of my life in prison. And while I was there, I started to think through my life and eventually I picked up my first book, fell in Love with books, became an avid reader, and at some point or another I was reading a book a day, and that's what made my time go. And I started to teach myself how to write by reading all the great authors and taking notes as to how Leo Tolstoy begins and ends a chapter, how Dostoevsky Begins and Ends a plot, how Charlotte Bronte introduces a character, et cetera, et cetera. And that's how I taught myself how to write. And by the time I came home from prison, I was ready to be a writer. And my last book, Mob Rules was an international bestseller in 20 languages. And my current book will hopefully get picked up in a lot of languages as well. And it's a trilogy.AK (04:42): Yeah, it's already been picked up by the Germans. You imply that in prison, you were a meticulous reader. Is meticulousness something that's prized within the mafia? Was that one of your skills?Louis Ferrante (05:00): Skills? Yeah, I mean, I was a heist guy. I ran a crew of heist guys, heist and hijackings, and you need to know what you're doing and everything's, you got to cross your T's and dot your i's make sure that everybody knows their role. Make sure that you need a well-oiled machine when you're going to do a heist or a hijack in one mistake. And everybody's lives are at stake, including innocent people. Something I might regret now, but something that was just a fact then. But we wanted to get away with it. We wanted the money. I wasn't thinking about people's lives back then. I was thinking about money and we wanted to get away with it, and you need to know what you're doing and everybody needs to know what they're doing. And I was a big planner. I would make drawings, I would go over everything with everyone. I would do mock runs to the highway to make sure we had an escape route, a backup escape route. I made sure we had backup guys in place. I never just pulled the trigger too fast. At one point, I was picked up by the feds in California where you are. We were in San Francisco and we were looking to hit an armored car, and the feds swooped in on us and grabbed us the day before we were going to hit that armored car. And it was a crucial thing. I was one guy short, and the reason why we waited was I was waiting for an extra guy to come from New York so that he could make sure we had enough guys on the heist. But yeah, so I guess I was meticulous in that sense. I was ignorant and naive in a million other ways, but I was meticulous in that sense.AK (06:27): Yeah, you should come back, Louis. It's much easier to do your heist these days. I don't know if there are any police left in South Africa. Yeah,Louis Ferrante (06:34): I don't know if anyone would care anymore.AK (06:36): Yeah, you'd probably be encouraged. Lots of films and books about how young kids get into the mafia. There's The Godfather, of course, & the Irishmen. How did you get into it?Louis Ferrante (06:48):  If you start committing big enough crimes, they'll find you. And that's what happens. Once I started hijacking trucks, I ran an auto crime, a chop shop. I supplied car parts to auto collision shops for a long time when I was a kid, stole cars, chopped them up and sold them to a shop. That little operation started out with just a few car thieves, me and my friends, and eventually grew into, as I said, a chop shop. And then at some point, once we started hijacking,AK (07:18): What is a chop shop?Louis Ferrante (07:22): Chop shop is you have a shop where you steal a car, you get an order from a collision shop. So a collision shop, for example, has, let's say they got a Mercedes and they got to spend $30,000 in parts because it's a hundred thousand dollars car and the car's wrecked, so they need 30,000 in parts. They might tell us, look, we'll give you five grand, can you get us all the parts? And then they'll put the stolen parts on the customer's car and sell them back the repaired car. So we would get paid then to go out, steal the car, try to get the same color so they wouldn't even have to paint it, but if you had to, you paint it. It's not always easy to match colors, but we would steal the car, chop it up, give them the parts they needed, and then dump the skeleton somewhere in the beginning we dumped it in the woods. And then at some point or another, we started renting. Back then you could lease a building under a phony name and then just abandon the building when you were done with it. I don't think you could get away with that. Nowadays there's too many identifications and stuff required, and people are hip at things like that, but back then you could even fly. When I told you I went to California to knock off an armor car, we flew under different names. Pre 9/11, you just booked an airline ticket under any name. I just picked the name out of the phone book. Just get on a plane.AK (08:35): Those were the days. You mentioned your bestselling book, Mob Rules, what the Mafia can Teach the Legitimate Businessman. There's a sort of cliche, Louis, I'm sure you've heard it a thousand times, that had you been born into the New York or Boston upper classes, you would've ended up at Harvard Business School and made a million dollars that way, is what you were doing. Is that a form of innovation and in some ways equivalent to what kids are taught at Stanford or Harvard Business School these days to think and be meticulous and accomplish what they set out to do?Louis Ferrante (09:19): Yeah, I don't know if they're taught any more to think. I don't know what an Ivy League upbringing is like, so it would be unimaginable for me to even,AK (09:33): But you've met those types.Louis Ferrante (09:36): Oh, all day long. Yeah, all day long. Some of them can't tie their shoes. I mean, just can't fix a flat. I was with a doctor once who got a flat and didn't know what to do, had no idea where the jack was, where to even begin. If I wasn't with him, he would've sat on the side of the road probably for the rest of his life until he died of starvation. So yeah, I would rather grow up and have to learn how to do things yourself.AK (10:01): Where did you grow up? What town?Louis Ferrante (10:03): In Queens? Yeah. I grew up in Queens and one of the five boroughs in New York, lower New York. The lower borough.AK (10:08): Yeah. My son lives there now.Louis Ferrante (10:10): Does he really? What part?AK (10:13): On the border with Brooklyn.Louis Ferrante (10:17): Oh, okay. They're building it up. It's probably up.AK (10:20): Yeah. It's much more fashionable now than it, I'm sure it used to be.Louis Ferrante (10:23): Yeah. I mean, I was in a lower income section of Queens, middle to lower income, so it wasn't all that, but a lot of people now, they've bought up a lot of big real estate in Brooklyn, and I guess they're moving to Queens now too.AK (10:37): Did your family know what you were doing? How old were you when you started your chop shop?Louis Ferrante (10:42): I was in high school when I was running the chop shop, so I kept it from them as best I can. I remember the first time I came home with a tagged car. A tagged car would be if, let's say I bought a wrecked vehicle, let's say a wrecked Cadillac, and I bought the completely, it was totaled out. So you pick up the wreck for a couple hundred bucks. Nobody wants it, but it's got a clean title. If you have a clean title, you don't have to go to motor vehicle and go through an inspection at that time. I don't know if things have changed. Now, this is many years ago. So if you bought a wrecked car, you had a clean title, you could then go out and steal a car, pop a couple of the tags off, for example, the VIN number in the dashboard, pop that tag off, put it on your stolen car, and then drive that as if it's yours. If you get pulled over by a cop, usually the cops just checked the dashboard tag. They never went through the rest of the car unless it was auto crime, which was something different. They'd have to be looking for you. So I came home with a beautiful brand new El Dorado, and I remember my mother was heartbroken. She came out on the porch and looked at it and said, you're killing me. You're breaking my heart.AK (11:48): Right, because she knew what you were doing.Louis Ferrante (11:50): Yeah, of course. How would I afford that car? I didn't have a job. So I tried to tell her that my friend who I work at the Body shop for part-time, he gave me the car and he's going to let me pay it off, but she wasn't buying it. She came from a family who was crooked, although she was law abiding. She was hip to the streets in a way, and she knew something was wrong. And she said, you're breaking my heart. And I never forgot that I did break her heart. She eventually died in my arms. And when I was young, she died at 47. I was 19, turning 20, and I went off the deep end after that. But to this day, I regret that she had to go through that and no, did I admit it to her? No. Did I tell her? But she, no, she knew she was hip.AK (12:33): Louis, talk to me about why you've written this history. Is it bound up with your own history? I mean, much of this history, this first volume is set in the 19th, late 19th, early 20th century when of course you weren't around. But is this a very personal narrative or have you tried to step back and write about the history of the mafia as an objective historian?Louis Ferrante (13:18): Both. And so first answer, I'll answer that question and tell you how the book came about. I do try to be as objective as possible. I don't want anybody to believe that I'm inserting myself where I don't belong. I want to tell a real history. And Publishers Weekly gave me a rave review saying that I did not rest on my own experiences alone.AK (13:40): You didn't threaten them, did you?Louis Ferrante (13:42): No, I did not. No, I didn't hang anybody out of a window or anything. No. And then handed them a pen and said, you know what to do? No, I didn't. Basically, they just said it was Well-researched all my notes. My source notes are in the back years, years reading articles, books. But what I was able to bring to the table from my own insights was I have an extra sense that most people wouldn't have. Being I was a criminal when I read something, I know if it was true or if it wasn't. I know if the writer has been, they don't, usually a writer wouldn't intentionally mislead the reader, but sometimes writers themselves are misled and they may get information, and because they don't know the world or the culture, the subculture, they write the wrong story. And a lot of times I'd be in jail when I was reading history, biographies, science philosophy. I would hear other guys, mob guys reading mob books, and you would hear a lot of guys blurting out b******t never happened, who wrote this crap? And when I finally started to do my own research, I realized that I came across a lot of things that were untrue, and I was able to decipher that stuff for the reader, which I think is interesting. I debunked a lot of old mafia myths that have been around for decades about leading Mafia figures. And I would explain to the reader, this is why it could have never happened. I don't want the reader to just take my word. I want the reader to have confidence in me as a writer to know that this is why this could never have happened. So time and again, I do that. To go back to your original question is where the book came from, how it came about. It wasn't something I really thought about. I was invited to Mob Rules, as we mentioned, was an international bestseller. And I was invited to Sicily by the German media conglomerate at Axel Springer, and it was a retreat for editors in Argento, Sicily. And I was seated next to an older man who happened to be there, and his name was George. And him and I hit it off. He was in his nineties, but a very young nineties, sharp as nails. And we talked all evening, and at the end of the evening, he said, I would like to publish the next book. And it turned out to be Lord George Denfeld, one of the biggest of the 20th century. And the next day we had lunch in Argento overlooking the ruins with Lord George and his charming wife, lady Annabelle. And Lady Annabelle had some priceless input as well, which persuaded me to write the book, what turned down to morphed into a trilogy. Originally, I was contracted to write a book, but I said, you can't squeeze all this into a book. There's too much here. It has to be stretched out. And I probably could have wrote 10 volumes, but I ended up writing a trilogy, and that's how the book came about. Lord George, as I understand it, he had a reputation of connecting writers with subjects, and I was the last one he had personally did that with before he unfortunately passed away.AK (16:39): Louis, if you were to write a history of the Mafia itself, would that begin in Sicily? There's a very strong Sicilian quality, but the mafia existed throughout Italy, of course. Is there something about the Sicilian Mafiaa and the history of the American mafia that are inseparable?Louis Ferrante (18:23): There is, as I pointed out in the early chapters of the book, I dug deep into how the mafia was formed inside the Sicilian womb, and it did indeed start in Sicily and then spread throughout the peninsula up and down the peninsula of Italy. But it was born in Sicily, and it had a lot to do with socioeconomic reasons, culture, family tradition, as I point out all these things in the book. And there was also, I point out a strong Arab influence in Western Sicily, which is interesting because Sicily was invaded by so many different people's over the course of centuries, whether it be the Spanish, the French, the Austrians, and the Arabs at some point. So the Arabs had a strong, I believe, where it developed in Western Sicily for the most part, in places like Palermo and Argento and Casa Lama del Gulfo, there was a strong Arab influence there, which is still present, still prevalent in a lot of places in the architecture and stuff, in words, in people's names, et cetera. So I was able to trace the history deep into Sicily and how it started in America was during the Southern Italian mass exodus wave into the United States after slavery was abolished in the United States in the 1860s. That came on around the same time when the unification of Italy occurred in Europe. And Sicilians were not happy with the unification of Italy being sort of absorbed by Italy proper. And they felt like a lot of Sicilians felt like it was just the newest conqueror, the newest ruler, no different from the bans in France or whoever else was there. So they were like, Hey, you know what? We're not happy with this. And there was a lot of poverty. And when America abolished slavery, we needed labor. We needed cheap labor quick because we no longer had slave labor in the United States. And at that point, we started looking around and there were plenty of poor people in Europe, and we invited them, and they came here in droves, and the mafia rode in on those boats. A lot of them, and I go to detail, I go very, very close detail throughout the early chapters of how exactly that happened. And I'm also very, very careful to point out that most Italian-Americans came here to work hard and to make a new life for themselves and their children and grandchildren, and had nothing to do with the mafia and never committed crimes. But the unfortunate circumstance, the unfortunate byproduct of that mass immigrant wave was the Italian criminals that came with them. A lot of them were fugitives from justice in Sicily, and they planted new flags here in American cities throughout the country, in metropolitan areas. At one point or another. There were just as many Mafia families as there were metropolitan areas across the United States. There was one in every metropolitan area, and then the strongest one survived and went on sort of like Arnold Toby's Darwinian theory of how empires are built, the strong survive. It was the same thing with a lot of these.AK (21:27): Why was it that the Mafia, that the Sicilian Mafia became so dominant, and there were many immigrants from Naples and other parts of mainland southern Italy. What is it about the Southern Sicilian, and is it different in its principles organization, morality or lack of morality from the Neapolitan Mafia, for example?Louis Ferrante (21:51): Yeah. Well, the Neapolitan Mafia was the Kimora. I had done a documentary for the History Channel about them very different from the Italian Sicilian, the Sicilian Mafia in Sicily. A lot of these other mafias from Calabria, from Naples, and even there were a few in northern Italy, very weak. None of them had that sort of Sicilian, the Sicilians. They had something very special on that island. It was an island different throughout up and down the peninsula of Italy. You had city states throughout the Renaissance and stuff. So they were all very, I'm still asked, her father was from Naples, and her mother was from Sicily. So I have two grandparents on my mother's side from Naples and Sicily. And my father's, both parents were from Bari, all from southern Italy. But I'm still asked by people who are Italian American, where are you from? And they sort of connect with you a lot faster if you're from the same place they were from. So you can only imagine back then how territorial Italy was and how people really responded to people like themselves. So at that time, Sicily was an island away from even all those city states, and they were really, really isolated, and they really, really relied on themselves. And throughout history, there were always weak central governments in Sicily, no matter who ruled Sicily, they really never cared about the Sicilian people and implementing any positive changes, whether social changes or institutional changes. They just wanted to pretty much rape Sicily of whatever agrarian products they could get off the island. So most of the time, the Sicilian people relied on themselves, and that went a lot into it as well. And it was a patriarchal society, which in some cases comes from the Arab influence in Sicily.AK (23:33): Are you presenting then the Sicilian Mafia as a resistance, organizational resistance to colonialism of one kind?Louis Ferrante (23:41): Believe it or not, at one point they were. Now, I know that they evolved or devolved extremely quickly into something much more treacherous and less upstanding than that. But I do make the argument that in the very beginning, they were indeed just that in my book, even the word I trace, for the first time, people were, historians were sort of in agreement that it came from an Arabic word, but they threw out a half a dozen different Arabic words that it might've come from one meaning a cave dweller, another one meaning a proud horse, and all kinds of different words from the Arabic language, I was able to trace the word mafia. Those of us in the West who are familiar with the siege of Khartoum, where the Victorian general Gordo, the British General Gordo,, was sent to sort of hold off against the Muslim guy who sort took control and launched this rebellion and said, I am the sort of the prophet. I am the prophet incarnate. And he was sort of like a rebellious character against the status quo all throughout the world, throughout the east and the Middle East. And in this particular case, when the Arabs were pushed into the western region of Sicily, after the unification of Italy, the modest regime was known as the Media, which was one letter away from Mafia. So I left it, look, I'm not an etymologist, but I left it to future historians to debate this. And I make a cogent argument that this is where it came from, my quote, encyclopedia Britannica. I quote people who were on the scene at the time, I quote history books, et cetera, to make this argument. And I do believe it came from that particular word.AK (25:29): As I said, Louis, we've done lots of shows on the mafia infiltration, the response of the police, but is the reason why the Mafia became so powerful and perhaps remained so powerful in the United States because it's a country with a tradition of weak central government, of federal government, of government that isn't for the most part, very effective or efficient. So in other words, was there something, and you have to be careful using this word as a historian, but was there a degree of inevitability about the mafia's rise to power in late 19th century America?Louis Ferrante (26:12): It's a great question, and the answer is yes. There was a Sicilian mobster, and I don't recall his name, but he said, why in the world can anybody think why? When Sicilians left Sicily for New life in America, and a lot of them landed in South America, central America, a lot of them landed in North Africa. They went everywhere. Sicilians were scattered everywhere. But why only in America did the American Mafia, did the Mafia really take root as it did? And that goes to our system, which is we have always had a very corrupt system. And I traced that it was very easily manipulated by mobsters who really learned how to bribe politicians and law enforcement officials during prohibition. And that was a prime time because during prohibition, which took place the roaring twenties into 1930, we had people in America who wanted to drink and were told by their government, you're not allowed. And so the people as a whole didn't agree with this. So they were really, really suddenly the mafiaa who wanted to provide them with liquor, with alcohol and supplying the demand for alcohol weren't seen as these animals anymore. These killers, these beat bad guys, they were all of a sudden these romantic sexy figures who were giving the United States, the people of the country, alcohol when they desperately wanted it. And that's when the mafia began to corrupt a lot of politicians and political machines. And the influence ran throughout law enforcement agencies and that deep influence they had during prohibition, basically, once prohibition was repealed and Americans could drink again, the mafia kept a lot of those deep corrupt alliances that they had made, and they moved on to use them for gambling and stuff, to open up casinos, to have a casino, to have a casino. So a lot of why the mafia was able to prosper here in America had a lot to do with the easily corruptible local governments. And at that point, there wasn't an overarching federal government who could come in and say, Hey, you've been all corrupted. We'll take over from here. We know you're all bought and paid for by the Mafiaa here in your local town. So here the federal government's going to move in with j Edgar Hoover's, FBI, et cetera, et cetera. That didn't happen.AK (28:44): Yeah. And of course, j Edgar Hoover's, FBI began in some ways as a response, not always a particularly effective one to prohibition. To what extent the book covers legendary figures and legendary mafia figures like Lucky Luciano & many others. To what extent do these kind of guys capture the spirit of a violent independent 19th century America?Louis Ferrante (29:16): They do and don't. By the time we get to Luciano and Genovese and Costello, they're sort of this newer generation of American mobsters. So the first generation with these sort of old mustache, peats, grease balls, all the derogatory names that they were called in this country, they were sort of like off the boat, Italians. That was the first generation. Then there was the second generation that were more American, and they weren't as clannish as the Sicilians were. They understood that if they were going to prosper in America, they needed to form these diverse relationships with Jews, with blacks, with Irish. They needed to really, if they were going to get somewhere, they basically came up with the plan that they were going to, Hey, we're going to keep this thing of ours, this thing of ours, this our thing, La Cosa Nostra. We're going to keep that to ourselves.Nobody's allowed entry into this secret organization that we have, but let's deal with everyone. We're not going to get anywhere if we stay to ourselves. And they made alliances with everyone across the country. And that was the key. And that was sort of like that second generation, even though Costello and Luciano came to the country when they were eight or nine years old, they may as well have been born here. They were just as good as Americans, just as good as American born citizens. They were a second generation of this. And they did away with the old ones, the old clannish Mafiosos, who felt like, no, we have to defend ourselves. We have to stick with ourselves. We have to continue to live amongst ourselves, and we can't trust the Irish. We can't trust the blacks or the Jews. This second generation of Italian-Americans said, no, we can trust them and we're going to, and we're going to deal with them.And for example, Frank Costello not only partnered with a million Jews in business, but he married a Jew. So he had a Jewish family. And at one point or another, Al Capone in Chicago, his guy Jake, greasy Thumb Gik was his best friend. He was a Jew. And when somebody had bragged that he made this little Jew greasy thumbs wine, Capone was beside himself, and he went looking for the guy, and he unloaded a revolver in his face and murdered him because Capone wasn't going to allow that to happen. He says, Jew or Italian, it doesn't matter if you're my friend, I protect you, I defend you. So these relationships really started by that sort of next generation of Italian American mobsters. And by my generation, I mean, I had a hijacking heist crew. The two of the toughest guys in my crew were Jews, and they were treated the same as any other Italian. We were all from the same neighborhood. We all grew.AK (31:50): It extend to race as well? I mean, in The Godfather, we all remember the explicit racism of many of the fictional figures were black Americans, African-Americans, were they as welcome as Jewish Americans?Louis Ferrante (32:08): Yes. Now, even in my time you had at one time, I said, for example, mobsters weren't going to go, oh, that African American owes me money. Let's go over there and pay him a visit. Obviously, the lingo would be that N owes me money. Let's go over there and pay him a visit. And the N would refer to us as a grease ball or whop a Guinea. So the words that we used back then would be considered racist today. But were we racist? And what were the Italians or the blacks racist against each other? Absolutely not. The only color we all saw was green. And that was it. And I point out in my book, they made a strong alliance, Lucky Luciano Luciano did with Bumpy Johnson. Bumpy Johnson, when they took over the policy racket in Harlem, they needed to smooth things over with the blacks because the black was a huge population in Harlem blacks. So Luciano struck a deal with Bumpy Johnson, where Bumpy Johnson was going to pretty much handle any black problems in Harlem and deal directly with Luciano. And bumpy Johnson's wife wrote a memoir years later that praised Luciano and said that him and my husband were best friends. And it was a real legitimate friendship. It wasn't just business. They had a real friendship. So all that racism they try to make, that's all television now because it sells. But for the most part, yeah, the talk, you told jokes about each other. You called each other what would be considered horrible names now, but were we really racist toward each other? Absolutely not. People will say Italians. And the Mafia hated gays. The Genovese family ran all the gay clubs in Greenwich Village. They controlled all the gay clubs.AK (33:53): How about women? We did a show last year on female drug gang leaders in Latin America. There aren't that many women in your narrative, are there?Louis Ferrante (34:03): No. I mean, if you want to say misogynistic, then I have to agree. Yeah. Not racist, but misogynistic. The Italian, theAK (34:09):Women in all the movies, the women are at home cooking the past, and the men are out killing each otherLouis Ferrante (34:14): Yeah, go home and cook. No Italian man wants his wife buttoned into his business. So I have to concede that point. I won't give in on racism because it wasn't there. But I will give in on misogynistic outlook toward women.AK (34:27): And I don't necessarily mean that critically. One way. The other narrative, Louis, which of course is most clearly articulated in the Godfather, the movies, the Godfather, maybe even Godfather three, is that the mafia began in a sort of communal way, reasonably decently, even if there was a great deal of violence, and it went really badly wrong with drugs. And of course, that was the foundation of the narrative in The Godfather, the cause of all the bloodshed. Is there any truth in that? There is tell you that veto Corleone in the Godfather wasn't a bad guy, and then it all went wrong when his family got in the drug business.Louis Ferrante (35:07): Yes, there definitely is a direct correlation between the movie and real life and the movie, whether Putto, I believe Mario Puzo, who was the author that they based the movie on, but either Puzo or Francis Ford Coppola adopted it from a real life story, which was Frank Costello. Frank Costello was the acting boss when Lucky Luciano went to jail and then was deported. And when Costello was boss, he was dead set against drugs. He did not want his Borgata dealing drugs because he felt that he had all these big political leaders in Tammany Hall who did everything that they could do for the mob to keep them out of jail, to help them with things. They had judges, they put judges in. They chose the head of Tammany, who in turn helped choose the mayor of New York slash the governor. And then obviously through the governor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt started out in New York and ended up being the president. So it's no telling how high you could go. Well, Costello said, if we continue to deal drugs, these political alliances are going to run away from us. They're not going to, this is something the American people do not like. They're fine with alcohol. They wanted alcohol. We gave it to them. They're fine with gambling. If the United States prohibits gambling and we allow them to gamble, that's fine. The people have no problem with that. They feel like we're providing them with a desire that they have. Even Luciano ran a chain of bordellos. That's an ointment for the hard up. That's fine. But obviously it's human slavery.AK (36:40): can I quote you on that ointment for the hard up?Louis Ferrante (36:44): Well, that's what, yeah, it basically was. It was like an outlet for social frustration maybe. Obviously. Obviously it's woman trafficking. It's disgusting. However, however, Luciano really didn't have a direct connection to it, but it was taking place, but it wasn't thought of by the American people, I should say, as the worst thing in the world.AK (37:10): I mean, the way the Godfather presents it is that this was the argument I think Sonny Cordone made with his father is that if we don't do it, someone else will. There's going to be other groups who do it. Was there any truth to that?Louis Ferrante (37:24): Yes. Yes. And everyone uses that argument today. There are still mobsters who sell drugs and say, if I don't do it, somebody else will. Somebody's got to do it. And me, myself, I never went near drugs. I had an uncle who was a drug addict. He was a heroin addict. And my mother from when me and my sister were little kids, she would beg us, please don't ever do drugs. Please don't ever do drugs. Don't put us through this hell that your uncle put us through. And we never did. I never did it, and I wouldn't sell it. I wouldn't call that curse down upon another person's family. I was dead set against it, but some people did. I knew people who sold drugs. I was in jail with a million different people who sold drugs. I don't think a lot of them sat down and really, really thought deeply about the consequences that could have with regard to mothers crying for the rest of their lives. And some kid dropped dead on his bed because he OD'ed or some, yeah, IAK: Excuse the Dimwittedness of this one. Louis, you've mentioned the word “Borgata” a couple of times. You might define it. Why did you title your book “Borgata”?Louis Ferrante (38:37): Borgata is what we called a crime family is the Borgata or the Broga, we would say, and it's a slang for a crime family. We wouldn't say we belong to a crime family. We wouldn't say we belong to the Mafiaa. We would say, I'm in so-and-So's Borgata or Borgata, and a Borgata. In the Italian definition of the word, it stems from the Latin burial. It's sort of like a poorer neighborhood of Italians would be a Borgata. A poorer community of Italians would be considered a Borgata. And that became, somehow, it became the name of a crime family, which is a little bit of a community. And obviously they don't start off super well off, or they wouldn't be committing crimes. People typically aren't born into wealth and commit crimes. So whoever the name came to mean, a crime family, that's what it means. And nobody had ever used it for a book before. So I figured, what the hell? It's perfect. So I went with the Borgata trilogy.AK (39:32): Well, I hope in this trilogy we're going to get to have you on at least two more shows for volume two and three. You end in the sixties, of course, in The Godfather, there were a wonderful moment in Godfather two, filmed in Cuba. Cuba was central. You make Cuba an important place in this narrative. Why'd you end in the sixties? Did something happen? Did something profoundly change?Louis Ferrante (39:58): Yes. There's a major shift that occurs in 1960 from the beginning of Borgata volume one until the end of Borgata volume one, there really isn't any concerted effort to destroy the Mafia. Thomas Dewey, who went on to become the Governor of New York and eventually ran as the Republican candidate for President against FDR, he did take a shot at locking up some gangsters in New York, but there was never really a concerted effort by the institutions of law enforcement to go after the mob. When Bobby Kennedy, when John f Kennedy's elected president in 1960, or begins his term in 1960, he appoints Bobby Kennedy, his younger brother, the Attorney General of the United States. And Bobby always had a thing against the mafia. He had started out in the McClellan Committee where he went after Jimmy Hoffa, and he went after other gangsters and called them to testify. And he was incensed that they took the Fifth Amendment all the time, and he didn't like that they would hide behind the Fifth, how dare them. And he swore he would go after them one day. And when John F. Kennedy becomes president, and Bobby is appointed Attorney General of the United States, he now suddenly has all of the Justice Department's, 30,000 employees under his control, treasury, I-R-S-I-N-S-F-B-I, et cetera, et cetera.AK (41:18): Although Bobby Kennedy used to call j Edgar Hoover, j Edna Hoover. He never seemed to listen very much to what Bobby Kennedy said.Louis Ferrante (41:27): No, he demeaned Hoover to, I mean, beyond what we would even consider. I mean, our standards today, forget it. They'd cancel Bobby Kennedy in a minute. But he was horrible to Hoover. And Hoover hated him. But Hoover did not. Hoover was dragged into the fight kicking and screaming. Hoover knew that if you made a concerted effort to destroy the mob, a lot of those mobsters, their backgrounds led to Congress led to congressmen, politicians, senator,AK (42:00): And of course, Hoover wonderful new biography, Al Prize winning biography. I'm sure you've read it. He was more interested, I think, in racial divisions in America. He might've been slightly sympathetic to the Mafia because they were white.Louis Ferrante (42:15): Yeah, I mean, he probably was at some point or another, he used the Mafiaa to uncover, I don't know if you're familiar with when those three civil rights workers were killed down in Mississippi.  Johnson put tremendous pressure on Hoover to crack the case, and Hoover probably got dragged into the fray kicking and screaming. I'm sure he didn't want to go after that. He was not deferential to blacks at all, Hoover. But he knew that that's what Johnson wanted. And the public wanted to know who these people were that killed these three civil rights workers, two whites and one black. And Hoover called one of his FBI informants down south and told them, here's the KK guy. The agents told, not Hoover himself, but Hoover's agents told this mob guy, here's the KKK guy. We believe the KKK guy we believe had something to do with it. You could beat it out of him if you want. Go for it. And this guy did. And then they dug up the bodies and they cracked the case. But Hoover, Hoover didn't like Italians, but he didn't go after them. And of course he didn't like blacks. Hoover was old school, very conservative in his views. Yeah. I mean, he was a man of his own time, but he was only concerned with groups trying to advocate the destruction of the United States. He was big on communists. He did not like communists Obviously, blacks and Italians weren't trying to overthrow the United States, but groups for the most part, like communist groups…AK (43:50): Right. His obsession with anti-Communist. And finally, Louis ending in the sixties, of course, in the sixties, America descended into a great deal of political violence, and particularly the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, of Bobby Kennedy, of Martin Luther King, many others. Lots of stories. And I'm sure you covered this in the book about Mafia involvement in one kind of assassination or another in the sixties, is in an odd ironic way at the end of this first volume, did America and the mafia kind of come together? Are they increasingly inseparable in the 1960s in the public use of violence of one kind or another?Louis Ferrante (44:31): That's a great question. I guess they've always remained, there's some sort of inseparability between them. But yeah, America became a very violent place.AK (44:44): Always was, but politically much more violent in the sixties.Louis Ferrante (44:48): Correct. I mean, we didn't have assassinations like we did. There's still a song. I heard it the other day. Where's my old friend, Johnny Martin, Luther King, John and Bobby, they died. Where are they? I forget the lyrics of the song, but it was made on the heels of that violence, and it still plays on the radio today. Where's my old friend Johnny? I think it is. But yeah, I mean, America became a violent place. I do believe that the mafia had something to do directly with John f Kennedy's. I present tremendous evidence in volume two of the Borgata Trilogy, trilogy. They had something to, andAK (45:24): That book's not out yet, right? Louis?Louis Ferrante (45:25): It's not out yet. But they did have something to do with his murder. And I also believe at some point or another, I intend to write a book about the Mafia's involvement with Martin Luther King's murder as well. I do believe there was a mafia informant who had something to do with Martin Luther King's murder as well. And I think if Hoover's hands aren't dirty in each of those cases, he definitely had his head in the sand and he heard things that he chose to ignore. And I think that that was the type of person, Hoover was where if I want a certain outcome and I just didn't see it or didn't hear it, it's like if you have a neighbor whose dog's been crapping on your lawn for the last 10 years, and then somebody beats up the neighbor, maybe you didn't see it. Maybe you looked the other way when it happened. I don't know. Maybe you get the outcome you wanted. So that could be what happened with Hoover.AK (46:19): Final question. I got to ask you this. We will get more next time you come on the show with volume two, talking about JFK and all that. What about you grew up in Queens? What about, you know who, I'm not sure if you've ever met him or come across him, but there's a mafia quality in the way, maybe a wannabe mafiaa quality to your fellow queens in New Yorker?Louis Ferrante (46:43): I never met him. I will say a lot of people have accused him of his construction business and the buildings that went up in New York having some type of mafia involvement. But I will say this, I know for a fact all of the buildings that went up in New York had some sort of mafia involvement. So you couldn't operate as a building developer in New York, especially back then, without having to deal with the mafia controlled unions without having to deal with the mafia controlled construction companies without having to deal with the mafia controlled concrete companies. There was something the mafia had, which was called the Concrete Club. And any bid over a million dollars, which would be any bid for a skyscraper, was controlled by the mafia. They let any bids under a million, they let them go, but anything over a million, they wanted to control. My friend, my former friend, I haven't seen him in years, I did time with him also. Tommy Rizzo supplied the rebar for the Trade Center. He was a Colombo gangster, Colombo family mobster. The guy who was supposed to fireproof the supports in the trade center was a Gambino family mobster. And the Port Authority cleared him of any wrongdoing when the towers fell. But I mean, these are mobsters who have all these contracts in New York and all these building developers to some extent have to deal with them. Now, usually there's a GC on the job, a general contractor, and at some point or another way below, someone like him or someone like somebody, his associates in that industry, somewhere down there, there's someone dealing with the cash envelopes under the table and stuff. But I don't think it ever rises to the height of himself or people like him in the developing industry. I think they're much bigger. They go to the parties. If he has a flamboyant nature, that's a completely different thing. But I mean, as far as incriminating something that he may have done incriminating, I don't believe so. I believe it was done lower, much lower than him. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

"Always notice whatever is happening in the background." The acclaimed producer and composer discusses the art of meaningful listening and his latest LP, Silencio. Moritz von Oswald's legacy as one of the trailblazers of contemporary techno precedes him. The artist's initial claim to fame was his involvement in the duo Basic Channel with Mark Ernestus, a project that formed the dub techno canon in the '90s and is still a primary reference point for many, if not most, modern producers. He was also at the helm of the famous cutting and pressing plant Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin, which has become a home for countless artists over the years. But on this occasion, Oswald sat down to discuss a more recent project: his LP Silencio on Tresor Records, which came out in November. He talked with RA's senior producer, Chloe Lula, about his lifelong love of jazz, tapestry, French film, Southern Italian opera and music from Central Asia. He also reflects on his production process—an endless exploration of drama and dynamics. Oswald is fascinated with reducing sound to its most basic elements and broadening the capacity of what the ear can perceive. Most importantly, he's a critical listener, and in the final moments of the episode, he imparts wisdom on how he's learned to keep a conscious ear open to the world around him. Check out the episode in full.

In this episode we are delighted to be joined by our good friend Deanna Furze (maiden name Giumelli). Deanna is a proud Italian Australian, her father's family come from Sondrio in the North of Italy, and we very much enjoyed examining some of the differences between Northern and Southern Italian immigrants in our conversation.

Downtown Napa, southern Italian cooking, farm to table, a cow town, love the chaos and interview with Madison Crosby, GM & wine director at Oenotri in Napa. ON THE ROAD with MR CA WINE is about California's cool, aspirational lifestyle and awesome wines hosted by Chuck Cramer, a California native, living in London and is the Director of European sales & marketing, Terlato Wines. This is a wine journey covering the hottest topics in the world of California wine, chatting along the way with the key influencers in the industry who make it all happen. This week's episode includes an interview with Madison Crosby, GM & wine director, Oenotri in downtown Napa.

Whether you're a chef or a retailer, self-care can be a difficult concept to grasp at times amid the endless 16 hour work days that are at times your reality. Michelle and Chef Amber sit down to talk about how they've learned to care for themselves while still being bad*sses in their respective careers.Chef Amber believes in the transformative power of food, both for physical health and emotional well-being. Her culinary journey began after earning a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management from Auburn University. She honed her skills in Southern Italian cuisine and later became the executive chef at Mediterraneo in Hermosa Beach, California, where she worked for almost a decade.During her time at Mediterraneo, Chef Amber discovered the healing potential of food, leading her to a personal transformation. This newfound insight drove her to pursue education in food therapy, with a mission to help others change their lives through nourishing meals.Chef Amber also shares her own journey of overcoming an unhealthy relationship with food, aiming to inspire others with her story. Her focus is on helping women heal their relationships with food and body image through private coaching, bodywork, and cooking classes. She recently released her cookbook, "Sexy Nourishing Food," available online and at her restaurant, The Source Cafe in Hermosa Beach.Chef Amber's WebsiteChef Amber's InstagramChef Amber's Facebook

Brandon Ficara thinks we Italian Americans have a special relationship with humor. Born in Philadelphia, and raised in Ocean City, NJ, this proud Italian American used humor to combat the tribulations of life at an early age. Born with Sprangles Deformity, a condition that required major back surgery when he was three years old, Brandon turned to humor to combat pain and ostracism. With his humorous approach and strong Italian Famiglia, Brandon would turn his "unique look" into the cornerstone of his career in stand-up comedy, television, writing, and public speaking.  We're jumping back into Part 2 of this 2-Part exploration of Italian American humor and the varied portrayals that have shared our sense of humor with the world We share how “Dominick the Donkey” brought Brandon into the Italian American Podcast Famiglia, and why looking at the “serious vs silly” approach to telling our story could change the way we look at how we are portrayed by ourselves and others. And speaking of portrayals, we are discussing some of the most famous Italian American characters to grace the small screen in the past 40 years, on shows like “All in the Family”, Who's the Boss” and “The Golden Girls”.  And, we are soliciting YOUR help in seeking out a hidden gem of Italian American TV history, a long-lost 1972 sitcom called “The Super”. Are we genuinely funny people? And does our Southern Italian history make us more comfortable with comedy and tragedy than other communities?   We'll discuss all this and more in this final half of a 2-Part “Live and Uncut” episode, that we hope leaves you with lots of laughs! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/italianamerican/support

Emilia Aiello joins the guys in the studio for this episode! Emilia is the owner of Cittavino & Co. The California based, online wine shop focusing on Southern Italian wines. Emilia is also co-founder of Juice for Justice, the Nonprofit that was created during Covid to raise awareness of Social Justice through wine. The guys dive into their experience being part of Juice for Justice during 2020 & hear from Emilia why her & Summer started it. Emilia dives into more of her background working in wine, being a Somm in NYC, dancing, starting Cittavino & Co. & more! Listen to the full episode now! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/musicinthebottle/support

The thrilling conclusion of all-things-emoji! Eggplants, peaches, jumping ska dudes, gray hearts, family emojis, what NOT to text your Southern Italian friends, yellow hands, red hair, the birth of the smiley face and how to celebrate World Emoji Day on July 17 with Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge, designer Jennifer Daniel, and the world's first emoji translator (and current Emojipedia editor-in-chief) Keith Broni. Listen to Part 1 first, of course. 

My guest on this episode is Petra Reski, a German writer and journalist who has lived in Venice since 1991. As a result of her numerous publications on the Mafia, she was subjected to lawsuits and threats, which is why she received police protection for a while. She has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Ricarda Huch Prize in 2021, which is awarded every three years to personalities whose work is characterized by independent thinking and courageous action, and who are fully committed to the ideals of humanity and international understanding.She has not only written novels, non-fiction books and numerous articles about her hometown of Venice, but also made a film already in 1998 with the prophetic title "The Last Venetians". Her most recent book is about the sell-out of Venice and has been published in Germany, Italy and France. She is a member of PEN and since 2018 has been driving a small fishing boat with which she can also park in reverse.Show NotesEveryday Life on an Overtouristed IslandThe Last VenetiansThe Fascist Political Rigging of Municipal PoliticsMurano Glass and The Death of an IslandThe Changes in Venice in the Last 30 YearsTaking Back Venice in the PandemicApril 19, 2023 Collective Action & Referendum in VeniceThe Loss of the Venetian LanguageOnce I Fell into the Grand CanalHomeworkPetra's Website: www.petrareski.comBooks: https://www.petrareski.com/buecher/Book in English: https://www.petrareski.com/buecher/mafia/the-honoured-society/Discover more episodes and join the conversation: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.theendoftourism.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter @theendoftourismLikewise, you can join the conspiracy and support the pod by subscribing below:Transcript[00:00:00] Chris: Welcome to the end of tourism podcast, Petra. Could you tell us a little bit about where you're speaking from today and what the world looks like for you, where you are?[00:00:08] Petra: Well, actually, I'm speaking from the center of Venice, just kind of not even 300 meters to the square, San Marco Square.So in the middle of everything, what happens here because 90% of the tourists who come to Venice go to San Marco Square and to the Rialto Bridge, and that's all. So, I'm in the middle of what people consider, unfortunately, interesting for just a day trip, for example.[00:00:43] Chris: "in the belly of the beast" we, we might say in English, yes. Yeah. I mean, not to denigrate, right? I'm sure that despite the, the hordes, the masses that there's, there's beauty to be found there still.[00:01:01] Petra: Yeah. Yeah. It is. It is, of course. But let's say for us it's a little bit, how do you say it? Because what we just experienced yesterday was the 1st of May, so it's a holiday.So we had long period of holidays. The 25th of April is a national holiday. So, we have been overcrowded by people. And the problem is even if you live upon tourism, like pizzeria, whatever, you can't even organize because you can't expect today it will be the mass and tomorrow there is nothing because it's changing.Even depends on the weather. Sometimes it's raining. People don't come that much. Or in this case it was almost cloudy. Not really nice weather for a trip to Venice, but it was overcrowded for one day and the next day there's nothing. So, let's say you are organizing a pizzeria and you can't even buy things, so everything is just in the freezer.It's nothing fresh. So, even for this simple motives, it's a problem here. You can't even calculate like you do it in a normal town where people come, you have kind of periods how to, organize your work. No.[00:02:14] Chris: Yeah, certainly. I feel that in the sense of, you know, there's certain types times of year in Oaxaca as well where many of the locals here, they either stay in their homes or they leave the city for an extended time. And this is just part and parcel of what it's like to live in a tourist city and so in that regard, Petra, I wanted to ask you, you're an award-winning journalist, an author of many books, articles, and, and novels.I'm curious what drew you to Venice in the first place?[00:02:48] Petra: Well, actually, for me, for example, I didn't know anything about Venice. When I moved to Venice, I moved to Venice just for a romantic reason, because I knew a Venetian. So that's the only reason I moved to Venice. For me, it would've seemed like, I've lived in Berlin, I lived in Paris, and Venice was not the place I wanted to be actually. So, it was just a choice because I have been drove by this Venetian, who, he like all the Venetians, if he looks outside of the window and he can't see water, so he feels bad.So that's the reason why. And he's very Venetian and he's very attached to a city and to the culture, so for him it would be impossible to live anywhere else. While for me it was easier. So many people, I know so many, who come to Venice and they buy a house or apartment or whatever because it's so romantic to live in Venice.That wasn't the case for me. My romantic reasons were different, like the man I met here a long time ago. So, well I lived here in Venice and I tried to do a kind of normal life, like because I'm a journalist, so I'm not writing always about Venice. I'm, I'm traveling around in Italy and my special subject, for example, is mafia.So I'm not connected to this to tourism. I don't live upon tourism, but I just feel the consequences of tourism and as a journalist, for me it was like the experience to see, because I arrived here actually in 89, and even at the time, one of the first journalistic things I did was, for example, for the radio transmission about the so-called last Venetians, and we are talking about 30,000 Venetians more than today.We were more than 80,000 at the time. 85,000. Wow. If I remember. So, because we lose every year, thousands habitants. And that was for me, quite curious. I wanted to understand the reasons why it is like this. Mm-hmm. And for Venice, what is not almost not known at all outside of Venice, I'm not talking even about in Europe or somewhere else, but even outside a few kilometers outside of Venice, they don't know that Venice is, by a political choice at the time of fascism, there was a group of industrialists who had this good idea to say, well, Venice, it's nice.And we keep it like a museum. And we put all industry, everything, which is not really nice, attractive, we put it on the mainland. Mm-hmm. So, the petrol chemical industry, for example, the oil at the time, but it started really only in the fifties and sixties. So, they settled the whole industry on the mainland and.At one certain point it was very important for the development of Venice was in 66 when there was the first really disaster of high water in Venice. And what they did, they created at the time of fascism.The whole administration, Venice is called now Venice, which is Venice, and they call it Venice, which is not Venice because Venice, as everybody knows, is inside the water, it's island. Mm. But they consider for administration, mainland as Venice. This is very interesting because we are suffering from this monoculture of tourism.And this monoculture of tourism has been started already, kind of 30 years ago. Really, it was really the aim, the drive at a monoculture of tourism, not to do anything else, no industry, not even small industry in Venice, not more classical things like construction of boats or anything else.Just only monoculture of tourism and the reason why, because for example, if you consider the island of Murano, the Murano glass factories, as there was a, a certain moment, the Murano glass factories actually, they have a kind of problem because they live on Murano. So everything that has to be brought to the island is much more expensive than if you produce on the mainland, of course. Mm-hmm. So the European community supports regions who are for geographical reasons disadvantaged, like Murrano obviously. So they had kind of suspension and they felt fine with this, but at a certain time, of course the European community said, well actually you are not an island.You are mainland. Mm. And in this case, the mayor should have said, well, actually, it's a problem because we are both. And so if you are both, you can't have this suspensions. You can't have this money from the European country. And this was the reason why today, for example, Murano is dead.The Moran glass industry is completely dead. Yeah, they don't have any more. They even had to pay back the European community or the money they had . And so it has been a political decision just to isolate Venice and to maintain Venice just only as a kind of monoculture as a museum without.And the last obstacles in a way are the last remaining Venetians. Mm-hmm. And they have to be pulled out. And I think at the speed in which the Venetians are pushed out of the city because they don't find departments because everything is Airbnb.They don't find any job, which is not in the tourism. So it's will be completely dead in a few years, not even.[00:09:00] Chris: Wow. Those are strong words. I'd like to, return to this notion of the quote last Venetians shortly. But I'd like to ask you just to give a little bit of context as you were for our listeners.How have you seen Venice, your home, change over the last, I guess, 30, 35 years?[00:09:23] Petra: So when I arrived here, it was for me quite funny to study the Venetians in the way, because you can see Venetians, how they move differently, for example, if they move around in Venice.And at the time it was like this in the whole crowd of Venetians, you saw tourists completely disorientated, going around, didn't find the right way to go. While today it's just the opposite. It's a huge crowd. And you'll see, I see, I know who is Venetian, even if I don't know him, I can recognize the Venetian, how they move inside the crowd. They try to get around.So even, really just have a look on the crowds. You can see what changed. And well actually where I live, just close to the Fenice Theater, the Opera House and behind this there's a street "Calle de la Mandola," and in this small street, it was like Venice. Everywhere there was fruit and vegetables and cheese and meat and whatever you can buy you, for your everyday life. You could go to these small little shops, and at the time everybody said, oh no, supermarkets are not good in Venice because the people, they don't buy in supermarkets. And so the supermarkets were only on the mainland and no supermarkets in Venice.They are just all these small little shops. But when more and more Airbnb came up and the people in the Airbnb, they are used to use supermarkets. They don't want to pick up the meat here and the fruit there. And so they were supermarkets everywhere. So all the little shops closed.And transformed into tourist stuff like gondolas or something. Just tourist stuff. Completely useless things sold. And because at the time we had already kind of Murano glass shops at the time for tourists, of course, because Venice has always been a tourist city.But now it's just very, very low level tourist stuff, which is sold and it is sold by, today, by Chinese and by Bangladesh, and that's all. So there's a little street and one of these so manys here in Venice is completely dead, dead in the sense it's just tourist stuff and even very cheap tourist stuff.[00:11:57] Chris: Wow. And I'm curious. You know, you spend, I guess 30 years and you see this over tourism as it's called rise and just get stronger and more caustic or problematic in the place you live, in the place you call home. And then suddenly, in probably a few weeks, I imagine in March of 2020, it's all gone.Or at least the tourists. Right. And so I'd like to ask you a little bit about the pandemic and what the feeling was like for locals in Venice during that time. You wrote in that time that Venice's quote, rape was temporarily suspended.Yeah. And so what, what was it like to go from one of the most over touristed cities in the world to having what I imagine was no tourists and no tourism, whatsoever?[00:12:54] Petra: Yeah, for us, it was unbelievable. And I will never forget this, because it was the most beautiful time in Venice I ever experienced, because there was nobody. Actually, everybody, all the Venetians went around with a phone and took pictures and videos. And I sent even videos to my friends in Germany and they said it was astonishing for me, as surprised me, that they said, "oh no, it's terrible. There's nobody there."And I said, yeah, it's true. There's nobody, it was like a ghost town if you want. But, after a few weeks, when we got used to this, there was one moment completely crazy for me because we live on a canal where gondola serenades pass by from nine in the morning until 11 night.So even with rain, singing "Ciao Venetia, Ciao Venetia." So, no gondolas serenades around. That's the reason why we keep always the windows closed because otherwise there's too much noise. Mm-hmm. So, at the time we had the windows open. In this 30 years, the first time I took place on this small balcony and I sat there in the sun and I had a glass of wine. The first time in 30 years.And at a certain point, I heard on the other part of the canal and window opened and there was a guy crying, "oh, Johnny, what do you do here to the other side of the canal?"And the other said, "Well, I live here." And the other said, "since when?" "Since 20 years." because everybody has always closed these windows.We can't open this. So, for me, the experience was to hear in this apartment, when I went around in Venice, in this moment when I heard people in the apartment talking and I was kind of, "oh, these are real Venetians living here." And it was for us, we tried to get back in a way our city, you know. So, when we went around, for example, with the boat, and we entered in small canals where we never go, because you can't even try to get in them. And so we tried to get in possession once again of our own city and obviously we had like, I think so many people in the whole world. We had the hope that there would be a change on even a rethinking. But already after some time we, we had to, to admit that there won't be a change, actually.Today, it's like "revenge travel" no? Everybody wants to travel and they always wanted just to go back to the life they had before. So didn't change anything unfortunately.[00:15:43] Chris: Well, I mean, at least it entered into the minds of the people, the locals anyways, that things could be different. This notion of revenge traveler, revenge tourism, which you don't hear so much about anymore after, I guess a year or two of global tourism having returned.And well, revenge. Revenge against what, right?And people say like, "oh, well, the pandemic." And I'm like, "you can't really take revenge against a virus?"And okay, "well then the lockdown." Well, "you can't really, I mean, if you're leaving a place, you're not really taking revenge against your own government."So who is the revenge against? And then When you think about the consequences, you realize that the revenge is against the places that they want to go. Yeah. Right. The damage that they're causing through their vengeance is against the the places they want to go to, right.And so we see this this return and revenge of travel and tourism and certainly, you know, Venice, like many of the other most over touristed places and cities in the world bear the brunt of this feel this. And so I was in contact with some of your friends and colleagues at Groupo 25, apri. Because there was some protests a couple weeks ago in Venice. Yes. And I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about those actions, how the turnout was, the overall reaction and the next steps?[00:17:15] Petra: So Venice is, let's say, the "golden goose" for the mainland because, do you remember, the mainland lives mainly upon Venice. And so, and even for political reasons like we are here in Venice now, less than 50,000 inhabitants, while on the mainland it's 180,000 inhabitants. So, the election of the mayor means that he is elected by the mainland, not by the Venetians, against our own interests, you know? Wow. And this is for us, the biggest problem of all.So once, one of the activities even of a Gruppo 25 Aprile and even other associations of Venetians was in 19. We had the fifth referendum, two to be autonomous, separation from the mainland, because just we want to decide, we want to elect our mayor who defends our interests and not the interests of people who are not living here, but living on Venice.And actually, it was a huge success, but it hasn't been recognized. It has been declared invalid. Okay,[00:18:42] Chris: So, the referendum passed then?[00:18:44] Petra: Yes. Okay. And had a lot of big success, even on the mainland. But the fact is, it was as if the independence of Scotland, England has to vote too.That's the reason why. So it's completely absurd, no? But we had this. So even the inhabitants of the mainland voted for a separation from Venice. But anyway, so this was one of these things we did. But the last manifestation, the reason why there was this demonstration on the Campo San Angelo was because it's 50 years now that Venice is should be financed by a special law because at the time, in 66 was this completely destruction of the high water in Venice. So then after, the politics in Italy, they decided we have to do something to maintain Venice. And so they decided a special law (legge speciale) to maintain Venice.We are, in a way, we are kidnapped by the mainland. So what do they do with the money? The money they should use, they use it for the mainland. And in this case, for example, money that is thought for Venice, they wanted to put it to construct a sports stadium on the mainland. So this is for voters obviously.So, this was the reason why we were manifesting that you can't go on with this to spend the money which is thought for Venice for other things like even the flood.The money that comes to maintain Venice goes directly to maintain this huge thing against the high water, and this is too long to discuss, but are not really only positive for Venice actually, because we need the flood and so on.But it's very, very delicate and so the money doesn't finish here in Venice and it's invested everywhere else in this huge modern project and on the mainland. That's our problem here.[00:20:57] Chris: Sounds, as you said, extremely complex and convoluted, at least as far as the money is concerned.I'm curious, in those days of organizing and action, I imagine these were public events, and given that I've never been to Venice, I have this image in my mind of, on any given day kind of 80% tourists, 20% locals. I'm curious if there was any noticeable response or acknowledgement at the very least, by tourists in regards to these actions.[00:21:37] Petra: Yeah, let's say a little bit, but only a little bit because they don't speak Italian. They don't understand the problems. I wrote recently a book about Venice, about all the problems. And it was interesting for me because it was published in Germany.So, they might assume the people who read my book, obviously people are interested in Venice, so they said, "oh, it was strange for us. We never knew about this. We never knew."And actually they don't know about it. No. Because even on discussions on Facebook, as somebody, even Italians say, "oh wow, yeah, they are always complaining about the tourism, but they are living upon this tourism."I said, no, they don't live on the tourism. That's the biggest problem because they don't know that, what I explained now, the thing was the mainland, that we are really kidnapped by the mainland. Mm-hmm. And it's a political problem and they don't know anything about it.So that's the biggest problem for us because I think, I wouldn't criticize tourists actually. They come and they don't know anything. You might inform the people of what is happening here and for example, the day trippers. One could organize it easily to diminish this huge masses who come here.So it's not if you want, but they don't want. It's a disadvantage for the tourists who come here, who love Venice, who go to the museums, who stay here for a long, long time. That's long time, today. It's like three or four days, no? "Long time." But if they come and if they don't see anything Venetian anymore and they can't, for example, the food in the restaurant, it's if a restaurant is run by Chinese or Bangladeshi, it's not Venetian food.You come here and you don't have the food, you don't hear Venetian, anymore. Mm-hmm. You don't have Venetian craft work anymore, here. So it's like you go to Pompeii.. No.[00:23:37] Chris: The ruins. The ruins of pompeii.[00:23:38] Petra: Yeah. Yeah. You see nice palazzi, but there's no life in it because the people come to see the life. Because why do you do tourism? Because want to see how people live here and in Venice, the importance is, even a few kilometers from here to the mainland, it's a completely, it's a different culture. It's a different culture.We are here, we're living upon water, which is completely different, completely different concept of living. We don't have the car in front of the house.[00:24:10] Chris: Right, right, right. Yeah. I mean you know, in some of the the articles that I read regarding your work, you had, you had written that "living in Venice consists in watching the city die."[00:24:23] Petra: Yes.[00:24:23] Chris: And that's an incredibly heartbreaking statement. And you mentioned a little bit about this notion of the, the language. I imagine that many foreigners, especially Anglophones don't know that Venetian is a separate language from Italian and that the culture is very, very distinct and unique, of course, geographically and otherwise.And so you mentioned the restaurants and the food. What have you seen happen to Venetian culture and language? Has it just gone to the mainland or are there still pockets of it there on the island?[00:24:58] Petra: There. Well, there's a few places, but you have to know it because everybody asked me even when I arrived here and now, until today, they "No. Where do Venetians go?" There, you won't find any Venetian. You don't even find somebody speaking Italian in restaurants here? No. Wow. Wow. So when I'm in a restaurant, I don't hear Italian. I hear just here English, German, whatever, French. This is Venice. This is daily life in Venice. No, you can find some. It's not because it's not because you can't transfer Venetian life on the mainland. The mainland is different form of life. It's completely different. In Venice, life is like, the food is different.If you are eating fish, for example. All this fish things that were very specially Venetian. You can find it only in Venice. You don't find it on the mainland. So, this is all almost lost now because all the venetians still know where there's still a good restaurant that prepares kind of Venetian food.But you have to know this, and if you come here, you don't know it. You won't find it. No. Mm-hmm.[00:26:15] Chris: I imagine, that perhaps there are still some native Venetian grandparents and great-grandparents on the island still living there and I'm curious, if that's the case, what they might think of the issue.[00:26:29] Petra: Yeah, they see this and for them, it's heartbreaking because they see that their city kidnapped by the mainland is sold out and sold out, and their culture is destroyed. There's nothing left, nothing. So, and we are kind of minority. 50,000 and not even there.Let's say we are really living here, it's about 30 thousand. While on the mainland, 180,000. We do what we can. But the mayor, for example, he thinks in voters, what does it mean? Doesn't mean anything for him. He doesn't care at all. He doesn't care at all. They just want to have the office in Canal Grande.And for example, the Mayor of Venice, he doesn't live in Venice. He never lived in Venice. He doesn't even live on the mainland of Venice. He lives outside, in Treviso. So he has nothing to do with, with Venice. He has never lived here. He doesn't know what it mean. At the time, when we suffered from the flood in 19, it was a complete disaster.I've never seen this cause I experienced even high waters here, but this was, you can't even imagine, was really like, a horror show. Yeah. And if you know what this means for Venetians that they had to pick up when the siren was yelling and you have such a long time. You have to go to run to your shops or whatever you have to protect it against the water because the water it was like until here. No,[00:28:08] Chris: up to the chest. Wow.[00:28:10] Petra: The chest. It was completely crazy. And if you have experienced this, because we had even high waters before and even terrible high waters, but not like this.But you have lived with this for years. It makes something with you, obviously, you know, but if you have always lived in Treviso, or Mogliano or whatever, what do you think? You don't care. You don't care at all. Hmm.I would've, I would like to tell you something more positive.I mean, you know, it's important, it's key that we have the capacity to hear these stories, right? That I think so often go unheard. I just had this image pop into my mind of living in a place where, constantly with this threat of floods and the floods are both natural or I guess in the sense of water and then perhaps unnatural in the sense of tourists.Right. And just reminded me, you have this new book that I had a chance to read a little bit from called "Once I Fell Into The Grand Canal." I don't think it's been published in English yet,No, absolutely not. It's been published in Italian, German, and French. If there's in an editor, I would be happy to publish it in English because Yeah. For me, it's all about my personal experience in this three decades that I live in Venice and how I watched it developed and I participated with my Venetian husband. Yeah, because for him, it's even worse than for me. Yeah. He's very attached to Venetian craft work and everything. So it is very sad for them because yeah, they know that their whole life is almost gone.[00:30:01] Chris: Wow. Wow. And what's been some of the response to the book or the feedback that's come out of places that, you know, as you said, this is where some of the tourists come from.[00:30:11] Petra: No, I was really, really surprised. Positively surprised cause I had so much feedback, so, so much. And every, everybody was like, oh, what can I do for Venice? I would like to do something. I would like to help you and to sustain you. And well, the groups, all this association, because it's not only a Gruppo 25 Aprile. Well, there are several of them, but even Gruppo 25 Aprile is very, very active.And so the Venetians do some things. I don't know, another town, with people so active, coming to this manifestations or even to come to know about what the problem of the high water is really for geographical reasons.I don't know ever if somebody in Munich or somewhere maybe. It's only concerns you immediately, but I don't know, if in other cities the people would have been so engaged in a way. So, the readers were really, really interested and gave me a lot of response and a lot of them even said, I feel guilty if I come.I feel guilty. Mm-hmm. And I said, well, you don't have to feel guilty unless you don't take an Airbnb first thing. Second thing is don't do cruise to Venice for the rest. If you stay here and you go around and you go to the museums and you have, look on Venice, it's okay, but you don't have to feel guilty.Guilty. Guilty are these who come just for day trippers. Day trippers is completely useless. Yeah. It's useless. Mm-hmm.[00:31:51] Chris: I hear this word a lot in the work that I, that I do with the podcast around guilt and shame even. Right. You know, there's, there's certainly people in tourist cities who want to shame tourists, so they feel bad or guilty or whatever.But the other side of that, the constructive side perhaps is, in lieu or instead of feeling guilty, we could feel responsible for our movements, for our travels. And I guess one of the questions that I would have for you in that regard, because, just for our listeners, one of the statistics that I pulled up. There's an unbelievable amount of statistics around Venice, in this regard. But this one is pretty intense. That as Petra said, there's about 50,000 residents, Venetians, that live in Venice on the island, and that Venice receives about 110,000 tourists per day on average.And so, The question is around, responsibility and is that the advice you would have for people who wanted to come and visit Venice? Don't choose an Airbnb? Yeah. Don't go on a cruise ship?[00:33:04] Petra: Yes, this is the most important thing and don't do a day trip to Venice. Don't just buy a little small book about Venice.It must much better than for several reasons, for you and for the environment because whatever you cause with your car or your plane or whatever for one day to come to Venice, it's completely useless because Venice is so special because, it's not the city like Rome or Florence because it's different.It's a different world, and you can experience this different world only if you stay here, if you walk around, if you walk around in the evening because the noise is, for example, is different in the evening. And even to hear you walking, to hear your feet on the ground. This, you can't hear it.But when I go to outside of Venice, I'm always astonished that you hear the cars and the whole time there's a kind of ground noise that nobody hears anymore. And you don't have this in Venice. Mm. So, there are so many experience of kind of sense for sensitivity, and you can experience this only if you stay here more than one day.Of course. So it's even this experience and the water and yeah. This is, it is very important to spend some time in Venice.[00:34:28] Chris: Hmm. Yeah. I mean, how much could you possibly learn in a single day? Right? And. Maybe that's part of the problem, is not only is that we don't even use or consider the term " learn."It's just how much can you see, right? It's always about seeing, and even if we did take up this, exchange of words, and we use the term learn instead of see how much could you possibly learn in one day. We're always quantifying it right? We're always putting it into a number, instead of the quality of our learning.And I guess, that last question brings me to this next one. We can offer advice and suggestions to tourists. Of course it's very, very important and very much needed. But part of the goal of this podcast is to create solidarity across disparate movements, across disparate places, across disparate cultures.And so over the course of your 30 plus years in Venice, seeing these very different social movements all working towards the regeneration of the same place and culture, what advice would you have for other social movements in other parts of the world, maybe suddenly or maybe for a long time, having the storm of tourism or over tourism in their place. What advice would you have for people who want to try to make things better in, in their place?[00:36:03] Petra: Well actually, we in Venice and I, somebody else, they try to connect with other movements over the time because to just create a net of, because we are suffering, for example, Dubrovnik.Which is in Croatia has similar pro problems than Venice. And we try to learn, one tries to learn from the other. Like Barcelona for example, has the same problem of the cruise ships and so we try to learn from each other and mainly, we, we are connected. The different groups in Venice are connected with other groups like in, and even the ones No Grandi Navi were fighting to quit because we have still the cruise ships here in Venice because this was a kind of big fake news that went around the whole world that there won't be any cruise ships anymore.We have still today, the same number of cruise ships in several points, but for the lagoon, it's the same. So mm-hmm. We had a lot of contact and No Grandi Navi they do it with all associations in the world. Like in America, it's like Key West.It's some completely similar to Venice. Yeah.[00:37:19] Chris: Hmm. Fascinating. We'll have to organize a conference in Mexico maybe, and Oh yeah. Invite you all over. Yes. Before we finish, Petra I just wanna thank you deeply for your time, for your willingness to speak with me today to speak for on on behalf of our listeners and on behalf of Venice.And also to speak in a language that I imagine is not your mother tongue. It's very, very much appreciated and something that I think a lot of people forget a lot of the time. And so I'd like to again ask how might our listeners find out more about your work and the social movements you're involved in there in Venice?[00:38:05] Petra: Thank you very much.Yeah. I hope that this will, yeah, we have to bring it in the whole world. So just think about Venice and try to participate if you come to Venice, participate with Venetians. Thank you very much.[00:38:20] Chris: Mm-hmm. And you have a website, is that correct?[00:38:23] Petra: I have a website. It's www.petrareski.com. Petra Reski. If you just Google "German journalist in Venice," you'll find it immediately. And if you put a drawing with Mafia things, mafia, journalist, German, Venice, and you will immediately find my name.[00:38:51] Chris: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much Petra and I have one small final question, if that's all right.I wasn't gonna ask it, but you brought it up at the very end. And if you don't want to answer it, it's quite all right. But I'm curious, given that you've done all this work and, and research and a lot of your books have to do with the mafia or organized crime in that part of the world, I'm curious if you know whether or not Organized crime Venice, or at least in northern Italy, is involved in tourism.[00:39:25] Petra: It is absolutely. It's one of the favorite investment just to to wash the money to. For the lavatriche. What is it still in English? Money laundering. For the money laundering. It's one of the favorite points. now, because it's, and even to invest the already laundered money in big hotels and restaurants, but even the restaurants. So, it's not by coincidence that the money is laundered in so many restaurants even. And we have to deal with Albanian Mafia. We have to deal with Italian Mafia. We have to deal with Chinese mafia.And we have a local, we had even a local mafia, Venetian Mafia too. Mm-hmm. So we have all this so where money, where the money goes. Just follow the money, this is the main concept of mafia here in Venice.[00:40:22] Chris: And so they, they, they own, I imagine they own businesses that are more or less fronts for money laundering.And do they also tax local restaurants and bars ?[00:40:31] Petra: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's like, you know no, no, I know what you mean. No, no, because this, you do this only in Southern Italy with a small shop. No, no, no. They don't do it because they know the legal culture of Northern Italians.It's completely different from Southern Italian. You can't threaten somebody with this here. They don't do this. No, no, no, no. It's just. It's like they move in the Venice, like they move like in Germany or in other parts of Europe, because they know very well how to move it.[00:41:03] Chris: Okay. Interesting. Well, to our listeners, take notice, right? Once again, thank you very much Petra, and if you're ever in Oaxaca or if you're ever in southern Mexico, please let me know. It'd be great to meet you.[00:41:18] Petra: I hope so.I hope very much to join you once in Mexico. Thank you very much for your interest. Thank you very much and thank you to the listeners. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

Get ready for a captivating journey through the vibrant tapestry of Deanna Oliveieri's family history. We trace her parents' migration from Italy's picturesque landscapes to the  streets of Staten Island, New York. Join us as Deanna unveils the intriguing tale of her father's arranged marriage, the struggles they faced as new immigrants, and the humorous yet heartwarming anecdotes passed down through generations.As we unravel Deanna's rich Southern Italian heritage, we plunge into the surprising revelations from her family DNA tests. There's Greek, Albanian, and Croatian lineage intertwined in her roots, and the chase to fill in the blanks of her family tree involves delightful encounters with distant relatives. We also navigate the intricate webs of language barriers that immigrant families often face, adding yet another layer to this multicolored tale of lineage and legacy.Finally, we pick Deanna's brains for nuggets of wisdom for anyone considering a move to Italy. Research, cultural understanding, and the art of renting before diving in for a permanent move - we discuss it all. So, buckle up as we traverse through this riveting reminiscence of Deanna's Italian roots and the astonishing journey of self-discovery.Farmers and Nobles traces the research path of blogger and podcast host Bob Sorrentino. Bob began researching his family roots in 2008 beginning with his great-grandfather's calling card brought from Italy by his paternal grandmother Maria Luigia Piromallo. https://www.italiangenealogy.blog/farmers-and-nobles/Farmers and Nobles Read about my research story and how to begin your family research.Italian Americans: A History Richly researched, beautifully illustrated book illuminates an important, part of American history.Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showPurchase my book "Farmers and Nobles" here or at Amazon.

Sometimes we have conversations that veer off into so many wonderful topics that they seem to make a concise introduction nearly impossible.  When this week's guest, author and “recovering lawyer,” Leigh Esposito, joined us to discuss her debut novel, the conversation quickly turned into one you won't want to miss! Her new book, “The Godmother," was recently released to excellent reviews and has been especially lauded for its portrayal of the experience of Sicilian womanhood. We'll discuss the author's interesting take on the evolving role of women in Sicily and throughout Italy, how our community might be changing how it tells its own stories, and how the craft of the writer is ever-evolving as new voices enter the field.  We'll also explore the light and dark of Italy's South, where sadness and joy create a unique interplay in the Southern Italian experience, engender certain learned behaviors, and perpetuate oppressive institutions like the Mafia. And we'll examine Sicily's place as the melting pot of the Mediterranean, where so many distinct cultures meet and merge to form a distinct and wondrous civilization. Join us as we discover one of our community's brightest new literary voices! This week's episode is sponsored by Mediaset Italia. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/italianamerican/support

This episode features Sommelier Jason Wilfore, the recent champion of our "Unusual Suspects" Blind Tasting Competition here in Atlanta, GA. He was born and raised in Schenectady, NY and got his start working in the restaurant business as a server and singer at Romano's Macaroni Grill. He later worked at Provence in Guilderland, NY which focused more on traditional French and Mediterranean cuisine that also sparked his interested in wine and beverage followed by working at Grappa '72, another local upscale family-owned restaurant that focused on Northern and Southern Italian cuisine. He moved to Atlanta in 2016 and started working at South City Kitchen in Vinings as a server and bartender. He says that as his curiosity for beverage grew, his beverage manager suggested looking into the Introductory and Certified Courses and Exams with the Court of Master Sommeliers, and the Certified Specialist of Wine certification with the Society of Wine Educators. He passed both the CSW and Certified exams in 2019, and he transferred to Ecco in Midtown where he was able to merge his French/Italian/Mediterranean experiences and start building some knowledge in Spanish cuisine and beverage. After eventually getting promoted to Beverage Manager, he started learning the business/logistical aspects of a beverage program. We talk about his move to Marcel, which meant a shift from a management position to be able to work at a fine dining restaurant with an extensive wine program and continue his development while working with and learning from the sommelier. Currently, Jason is working as a sommelier at Mujo, and we talk about the unique setting in which he is now applying his wine knowledge and creativity. The second half of the episode is devoted to debriefing about the blind tasting competition - Jason walks us through his thought process and strategy for each of his calls, and the dialogue is both entertaining and educational. You can follow @wilforejay on Instagram and find him on Twitch at SommJay. Recorded June 9, 2023 ------------------------------------------- This episode is generously sponsored by Diane Carpenter and Ross Knoll Vineyard: https://www.dianecarpenter.org/wines TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE HERE --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/acorkintheroad/support

In this episode, Pat Benincasa shares powerful life lessons on resilience and determination as a daughter of immigrants.  Growing up, she navigated two very different  worlds of customs, languages and traditions and found  valuable insights and a profound sense of belonging. Pat Benincasa is a visual artist, art educator and podcaster whose work has  received national and international attention. She has received  National Percent for Art and General Services Administration (GSA) Art In Architecture Commissions and project documentation is  archived at the Minnesota Historical Society. Benincasa received her MFA and MA from Wayne State University in Detroit and received her K-12 Art Licensure from St. Catherine University.  Thank you Natalie Zett, audio engineer! QUOTES PAT:  "Looking back with an emotional distance of many years, I  have to say, there was something magical about living in 2 worlds." PAT:  “How is it that the older we get opens a portal to our debris strewn past? And this portal becomes a willing vantage point of our earliest memories: Part casualty clearing station, part daytime comedy, or behavioral blueprint- maybe all of these?” Growing up, she navigated two very different worlds of customs, languages and traditions and found  valuable insights and a profound sense of belonging. Pat Benincasa is a visual artist, art educator and podcaster whose work has  received national and international attention. She has received  National Percent for Art and General Services Administration (GSA) Art In Architecture Commissions and project documentation is  archived at the Minnesota Historical Society. Benincasa received her MFA and MA from Wayne State University in Detroit and received her K-12 Art Licensure from St. Catherine University.  LINKS www.patbenincasa-art.com

Maria Valetta, wine educator, and certified sommelier, and Robert Tas review the wine list at Carmine's. This comfortable, low-key eatery offers a big menu of pizza and Italian classics. It's the perfect place to kick back, relax and enjoy a meal with friends and family, and while the food is mostly Southern Italian in style, and the vibe here is relaxed, they offer a superior selection of wines from all around the world.    Wines reviewed include: 2016 Damilano Barolo  2020 Abbazia di Novacella Gruner Veltliner 2018 Valipolicella-Ripasso, Sant' Antonio  For more information on today's episode, and the wines you love to love, visit www.corkrules.com.

In today's third hour, Dom welcomes in Giuseppe, the tour guide of Dom Giordano's upcoming Grand Event, as he and listeners tour through the Country of Italy. Giuseppe tells what to expect on the upcoming trip, and tells listeners what they need to experience in Italy even if not joining the Grand Event. Then, Dom and Giuseppe delve into Italian cuisine, with Giuseppe telling of the differences between Northern and Southern cuisine, with the guide pointing to the usage of tomatoes by Southern Italian. Then, Producer Dan quizzes Giuseppe on some Italian terminology, looking for corrections on oft-mispronounced terms by South Philly Italians, such as ‘gabagool' and ‘muhzarel'. (Photo by Getty Images)

Full Hour | In today's third hour, Dom welcomes in Giuseppe, the tour guide of Dom Giordano's upcoming Grand Event, as he and listeners tour through the Country of Italy. Giuseppe tells what to expect on the upcoming trip, and tells listeners what they need to experience in Italy even if not joining the Grand Event. Then, Dom and Giuseppe delve into Italian cuisine, with Giuseppe telling of the differences between Northern and Southern cuisine, with the guide pointing to the usage of tomatoes by Southern Italian. Then, Producer Dan quizzes Giuseppe on some Italian terminology, looking for corrections on oft-mispronounced terms by South Philly Italians, such as ‘gabagool' and ‘muhzarel'. After that, Dom continues on with the show, returning to the topic of the judge decision on the FOP challenge to Philadelphia's driving equality law, discussing the negative implications on public safety from such a bill. This leads Dom to call out the Bike Coalition, a political powerhouse in Philadelphia, asking why they haven't prioritized the safety of their riders in an unsafe environment. (Photo by Getty Images)

The next time you are at an Italian restaurant, do yourself a favor and reach for a Salice Salentino! Never heard of it? Well, now's a great time to find out more. Hailing from the Puglia area of Southern Italy, Salice Salentino is a wonderful, rustic wine that will make red wine lovers, Italian food lovers, and basically anyone who likes food and wine, rejoice! Made from the Negroamaro grape which is almost exclusively found in Italy and widely grown in Puglia, Salice Salentino is a wine known for depth, character, chewy tannins, and excellent acidity. Carmela shares some of her fond memories of trips to see family in Puglia, and then we talk about foods that will perfectly pair with this underrated red. If you think you know Italian wine but don't know Salice Salentino, we suggest you listen in to learn more! Wines reviewed in this episode: 2018 Marchese di Borgosole Salice Salentino Riserva, 2018 Cantele Salice Salentino Riserva, and 2011 Taurino Salice Salentino.Contact The Wine Pair Podcast - we'd love to hear from you!Visit our website, leave a review, and reach out to us: www.thewinepairpodcast.comFollow and DM us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewinepairpodcast/Send us an email: joe@thewinepairpodcast.com

Episode 113 of the Be More Today show features Chef Nina Clemente. Born in Italy and raised in New York City, Nina Clemente realized the possibilities of transforming local ingredients into Southern Italian feasts by watching her mother make traditional, delicious, and seasonal cuisine.  These childhood experiences — in which food was the anchor for friends and family to gather around a table, share their stories and create memories — inspired her to make food her career.    After graduating from Brown University with a degree in anthropology, Nina began a successful stint as a private chef in Los Angeles.  She went on to work at Osteria Mozza, learning from the incomparable Nancy Silverton. She then worked at Maya's restaurant in St. Barths, followed by time spent under the tutelage of Enrico Crippa at his three Michelin-star restaurant Piazza Duomo in Alba, Italy.    She continued on to work as Executive Chef for the The Standard Hotel in their Hollywood and NYC locations.  Followed by Andre Bolaz on a restaurant project in the Hudson Valley.    Today, Nina strives to bridge both cultures from her childhood by applying all her senses to preparing delicious food, and reveling in the memorable gatherings that her food inspires.  She cooks meals that are clean, colorful, and vibrant on the palate — food that nourishes, is beautiful to look at, and tastes amazing.  She currently lives in the Hudson Valley with her two children, Phoenix and Indigo and husband Wayne.  For more information visit www.bemoretoday.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bemoretoday/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/bemoretoday/support

Many of us have that “one” cookbook that we reach for whenever we want to make something special for our friends and famiglia… and for one of our hosts (and perhaps for many of you out there) that special book was written by this week's incredible guest. Award-winning author Arthur Schwartz (LINK) is a legend in the world of Italian cuisine, thanks to his definitive work “Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania,” as well as “The Southern Italian Table: Authentic Tastes from Traditional Kitchens,” among his countless other highly praised works. (LINKS) For 26 years, he was the food editor of Newsday and then the New York Daily News, where he was also a columnist and first-string restaurant critic, and for 13 years he was the host of the country's only daily food radio program. The Brooklyn-born Italophile also put his passion for Southern Italy to work running a cooking school in Paestum for nearly 12 years. Known for putting food in its cultural context, Arthur tells us about the origins of Southern Italian cuisine and how that cuisine translated to Italians living abroad. He also shares his own stories about how he discovered Italian cuisine and why he considers it his “second soul food.” We'll also dissect the stories of popular Italian dishes, and explore the plethora of products imported out of that region to tables around the world. Its a conversation so great, whittling it down to an hour was a herculean task Join us as we learn from the master, and sit down with a true culinary legend in this week's fun-filled episode!

For many Italian Americans, the American Civil War, a seminal chapter in the history of the United States, can often feel like a chapter detached from their own American experience. Since the massive wave of Italian Immigration to the United States between 1870 and 1920, the brilliant thread of the Italian American experience has been indelibly woven into the tapestry of American history, but even the most passionate student of Italian American history might be unaware of the Italian presence in the war that redefined the United States. While many pages have been dedicated to the “Garibaldi Guard” and the contingent of Northern Italian soldiers who came to defend the Union, the legacy of Southern Italians on both sides of the conflict between the states has, until now, been almost completely forgotten by time. In a return visit to our show, historian Peter L. Belmonte shares his continuing research on these Southern Italian soldiers and sailors who served in Army, Navy, and Marine Corps -- in both the Union and the Confederacy -- from front-line soldiers to musicians, cooks, and even a barber or two who were said to have given President Abraham Lincoln a shave. Peter describes how he painstakingly researched military records, having compiled a listing of hundreds of Southern Italians who served during the Civil War, examining the occupations followed by these men and their roles in the conflict. He'll share incredible stories of individual men that he has discovered, and how his efforts have helped him to reunite these stories with many of the soldiers' modern-day descendants. Join us for a fascinating look at a truly undiscovered chapter of Italian American, and American, history in this week's episode!

Shelley Lindgren's passion for Southern Italian wines has been the invisible hand that has shaped the way we drink wine today. Her restaurant A16 is a culinary destination that's like a big hug from a long lost friend. 

We're back for the second half of our incredible conversation with Ian MacAllen, the author of Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American, as we continue our quest to understand the evolution of “Red Sauce Italian,” - that unique cuisine born of the melding of Southern Italian tastes and American abundance. This week, in Part 2, we'll take the conversation even deeper to explore everything from the ingredients that we treasure to the Red Sauce standards that have gone the way of the Dodo. We'll discover which beloved Italian American family dish originally contained cow utters, how to differentiate between pasta and macaroni, how those famed pastas REALLY got their shapes, and learn about the strange era when the Italian government tried to ban pasta! We're also digging into some of the heirloom products Italian Americans created, and made our own, here in America, looking at lost recipes from Red Sauce days gone by, and uncovering two long lost classics that were once amongst the most famous spaghetti dishes in America… created for America's most famous Italian opera stars! And, as we always do here on the Italian American Podcast, we're asking the important questions… like how DID grated cheese and crushed red pepper become the ubiquitous Italian American table-side seasonings, and where do our cheeses come from, and why does it matter? It's the conclusion of one of our most popular episodes we've ever released, so tuck into a plate of your favorite Red Sauce specialty, and join us as we explore the unique creation that is Italian American cuisine!

Once in a long while, a book comes along and immediately qualifies as a “must have” in the Italian American home library. In Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American, author Ian MacAllen has created one of those books! In this rollicking two-part episode, we're joined by this proud Italian American writer as he leads us in an exploration of the evolution of traditional Italian American cuisine, lovingly referred to as “Red Sauce Italian,” from its origins in Italy to its transformation in America into a new, distinct, and wildly popular cuisine. This week, in Part 1, we'll take a look at the fascinating social and culinary history exploring the integration of Red Sauce food into mainstream America alongside the blending of Italian immigrant otherness into a national American identity. We're looking for the “roots of red sauce” in Southern Italian cuisine, and how early Italian immigrants to America developed new recipes and modified old ones based on the new foods they found in America, and how they were able to introduce and eventually domesticate the staple ingredients they couldn't leave behind. We'll search out the origins of uniquely Italian American dishes like Penne alla Vodka, and examine the new fascinating history of how the earliest Italian immigrants brought the tomato into mainstream America… and why the differences in manufacturing between tomato paste versus canned tomatoes might explain how YOUR family recipes came to be distinct from those of other Italian American clans. And, we'll seek to answer the age old question: “Why do I add sugar to my sauce?" It's the first half of one of our most enjoyable episodes, on a topic we know every Italian American can agree on -- the unique brilliance of Italian American cuisine!

Of the more than 20 million Americans with Italian roots, approximately 87 percent are of Southern Italian origin. This massive dispora from Italy's south has made southern Italian cuisine, culture and traditions into familiar aspects of Italian American life; yet the wealth of classical music originating in the Italian south has remained a mystery, even to the millions whose ancestors left her shores. This week's guest, Alexis Zingale, hopes to change that with The Southern Italian Piano Project. The Southern Italian Piano Project seeks to change the narrative and ensure that the lesser-known composers from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, from both before and after the Risorgimento, attract the attention and respect given other composers in the canon of classical music. Alexis shares how The Southern Italian Piano project got its start (spoiler alert: the Italian American Podcast might have been an early inspiration), how she worked to uncover and reintroduce composers from all over the south of Italy, which composers are part of her repertoire, including Francesco Durante and Alessandro Longo, and how her overall vision is to expand the canon of western art music to include as many underrepresented composers from the south of Italy as possible. Alexis also shares a few samples of works she's unearthed as she prepares to bring them to life in a series of live performances in the greater New York City area in the coming weeks, including: · Friday, May 6, 2022 at 7:30 p.m. at the Branford Free Evangelical Church, 231 Leetes Island Road, Branford, CT. Tickets are $20 for general admission or $10 for seniors at the door, or $20 via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/myevent?eid=312023991157 · Sunday, May 15, 2022 at 2:00 p.m., at the Littlefield Recital Hall at Paier College, 84 Iranistan Ave, Bridgeport, CT. Tickets are $20 for general admission or $10 for seniors at the door, or $20 via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/myevent?eid=312040701137 · Friday, May 20, 2022, 8:00 at p.m., at Mary Flagler Cary Hall at The Dimenna Center for Classical Music, 450 W 37th St., New York, NY. Tickets are $25 via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/myevent?eid=226211192767 If you're a devotee of classical music, a proud daughter or son of the Two Sicilies, or just someone who loves to explore new and unique topics, you won't want to miss this week's episode! This episode is sponsored by Mediaset Italia.