Italian Innovators has grown out of my experience as a professor of Italian Studies in the United States. It starts from scholarship as a zeal for constant discovery and teaching as an empowering art of sharing. It is rooted in my peculiar position at the intersection of worlds, as an Italian in America, as a classical philologist dealing with modern design, as a cultural historian interacting with industry. It springs from the desire to constantly translate worlds, from the aspiration to effectively combine research and storytelling, and naturally from an inexhaustible passion for Italy, my country, which I appreciate now even more as not just a repository of past marvels, but rather as a lively piazza of innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity.

In the show, I present Italy’s contributions to the modern world and explore their underlying model of success, which I trace in Italy’s deliberate hybridization of culture and industry, beauty and technology, and craft and production, as I also point out in my book The Art of Objects, The Birth of Italian Industrial Culture. Episodes are released on YouTube twice a month. In the first episode of each month, I introduce the figure of an Italian innovator, in the fields of music, technology, design, or fashion, and in the mid-month episode, I present an interview to intellectuals who made innovative contributions in Italian studies, and key figures in Italian entrepreneurship. 

Check some of my latest interviews on the press and on social media:

* Interview by Filomena Fantarella, Raccontare l’Italia in inglese: la sfida passa per piattaforme e podcast. La Stampa, February 16, 2021

* Interview by Tiziano Dossena, Italian Innovators: A Podcast, A Website, A Classroom About Italy And Italians… L’idea, March 6, 2021

* Article by Andrea Franceschi, Da Marconi a Campari, le storie dei pionieri del made in Italy in un podcast, Sole 24 Ore, Il sole 24 ore, April 27, 2022

* Interview by Umberto Mucci, Telling the Italian Innovators to the Americans. We the Italians. 152, June 2022, pp. 67-84.