Italy

Modernity in the High Mugello

The remote Tuscan-Romagnolan mountains evince a world isolated from modernity, though that solitude likely won't last long. Continue Reading »

17 Oct 2022

The Death and Life of Italian Families

by Virginia Coda Nunziante

Italy, once the country of large families with many children, is today a country of the elderly. Twenty-three percent of the Italian population is over the age of sixty-five, and the mean age of Italian citizens is above forty-four. At the end of the nineteenth century, the fertility rate per woman . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jun 2022

Algis Valiunas on Leopardi

by R. R. Reno

Algis Valiunas joins the podcast to discuss the brilliant and short life of Giacomo Leopardi, a poet still widely ignored in English-speaking circles. Continue Reading »

6 Apr 2022

Nihilism for the Ironhearted

by Algis Valiunas

When a man proclaims nature malignant in all its parts and professes to hate life itself, one’s first suspicion is that something is profoundly wrong with him. The man’s grievance against creation must be the effect of some personal deficiency in body or soul or both, rather than a sound . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Apr 2022

The Witness of the Mafia Martyrs

by Raymond J. de Souza

Together the mafia martyrs lived out the true mission of baptism and confirmation; they honored their sacraments, rather than corrupting them. Continue Reading »

29 Oct 2021

All Will Be Well

by Larry Smith

Love surrounds us, among friends and in families, and in countless kindnesses. Continue Reading »

15 May 2020

Italy in Crisis

by Christopher Caldwell

With just over 120,000 people, Bergamo, northeast of Milan, is not a particularly populous city, and it is short of priests, like almost every other city in the Catholic West. Yet in the second week of March alone, six priests died of coronavirus in Bergamo, and five more died the week after. By . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 2020

Venice Afloat

by Catesby Leigh

An observer of a Spenglerian bent might just write Venice off, taking the floods that afflict the city with increasing frequency as the finishing touches on a long-running spectacle of political, economic, and cultural decline. That decline, spanning half a millennium, has by now reduced the city to . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Mar 2020