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Dear friends, even in August, ciao from a Rome full of American tourists and empty of us Romans!   In early August a dear friend traveling to Liguria sent me a photo, taken by him. While driving he had seen a sign that had attracted his curiosity, and he knew well that it would interest me as well. The photo is the one you see here: Cogoleto, the s...

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What does it mean to live “La Dolce Vita?” This week’s guest is here to tell us how the answer to that question is just as varied as Italy herself! Carla Gambescia is a cultural “edu-tainer,” award-winning author, travel journalist, lecturer and avid photographer. The author of “La Dolce Vita University: An Unconventional Guide to Italian Culture f...

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Our adventures through Italian American California continue, as we make our way up the West Coast to the entertainment capital of the world… America’s Dream Factory… the 500 square-mile beacon of Southern California’s timeless allure that is Los Angeles! From a brief walk through the history of California wine, to one of America’s most unique monum...

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“Viva San Rocco!” It’s the last weeks of summer in Italian America, and in neighborhoods across the country, paesani are celebrating the Feast of Saint Rocco, one of the most venerated saint days in the Italian American year. For our part, we’re sitting down with Stephen La Rocca, president of the St. Rocco Society of Potenza, to discover more abou...

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We spent last week filming in one of the most overlooked (and criminally underappreciated) corners of Italian America… deep in the Ozarks in a little Italian village called Tontitown, Arkansas! In this week’s episode of The Italian American Podcast, we’re sitting down with two of the new paesani we met during our travels, Heather Ranalli Peachee an...

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“What does Italy mean to you?” For those of us who think about Italy and our Italianness on a daily basis, it’s a question that can force the mind into an exhausting array of mental gymnastics. To this week’s guest, Nikki Taylor of La Dolce Vita Lifestyle Magazine, it’s the question she is asking the entire world to answer! The Australian Italophil...

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On Thursday July 21, 2022, Mario Draghi, Italy’s technocratic Prime Minister, resigned from his role as Head of Government. With Italy facing a summer of unprecedented heatwaves, fires, draught, inflation, war on the continent, gas shortages, and the lingering effects of COVID shutdowns, the departure of this highly-regarded European technocrat has...

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In modern America, countless thousands of Italian American women and men practice every imaginable discipline of the law.  However, not so long ago, a vowel on the end of one’s surname was likely a barrier to entry to most of the nation’s elite law schools and most important law firms.  What exactly changed to allow so many of our fellow Italian Am...

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It’s easy to make the argument that the annual feast is the soul of the Italian American neighborhood, and for the true feast aficionado, it’s the music that is the soul of the feast! And no two people know this better than this week’s guests, the talented musicians at the helm of two of Italian America’s most renowned feast bands, Marty Caliendo a...

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When we scored an interview with famed Italo-Australian comedian Joe Avati, we figured we would be lucky to get 45 minutes with the man many credit with creating a worldwide Italian comedy revolution. In fact, we ended up spending two hours in deep discussion with the man known around the world as the “Italian Seinfeld!” On this week’s episode of t...

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