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...

“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...

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...

“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...

We are very excited to announce that our television series, The Italian America Show, is returning for Season 3 on News 12+ this September in the New York City Metropolitan area. If outside the NYC Metro area, you can stream the episodes online! Be sure to tune in every Sunday at 8 p.m. EST for our 30-minute episodes featuring interviews with promi...

It’s reductive to consider Sicilian carts as mere vehicles. These carts are so rich in color and decorations that, according to Marianna Gatto of the Italian American Museum in Los Angeles, they’re best described as “walking books”. For the painter from Palermo, Gianfranco Fiore (who decorates these carts), they represent the most popular, creative...

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...

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...

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...