Rule of the Competent
by Mark BauerleinJames Hankins joins the podcast to discuss his new book Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy: The Virtuous Republic of Francesco Patrizi of Siena. Continue Reading »
A Forgotten Catholic Novelist
by Stephen SchmalhoferFrancis Marion Crawford was a very important novelist in his own day, and yet today few know his name. It is worthwhile revisiting his works. Continue Reading »
Modernity in the High Mugello
by M. D. AeschlimanThe remote Tuscan-Romagnolan mountains evince a world isolated from modernity, though that solitude likely won't last long. Continue Reading »
The Death and Life of Italian Families
by Virginia Coda NunzianteItaly, 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 »
Algis Valiunas on Leopardi
by R. R. RenoAlgis 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 »
Nihilism for the Ironhearted
by Algis ValiunasWhen 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 »
The Witness of the Mafia Martyrs
by Raymond J. de SouzaTogether the mafia martyrs lived out the true mission of baptism and confirmation; they honored their sacraments, rather than corrupting them. Continue Reading »
All Will Be Well
by Larry SmithLove surrounds us, among friends and in families, and in countless kindnesses. Continue Reading »
Italy in Crisis
by Christopher CaldwellWith 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 »
Venice Afloat
by Catesby LeighAn 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 »
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