Speaker 1: You're listening to part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. Hey there, Joe, Hello Mango. So I know
Speaker 1: that you like canoli's. You've been making them for all
Speaker 1: the people who come to your book launch parties at
Speaker 1: various bookstores across the country for your wonderful book, The
Speaker 1: Sicilian Inheritance, which is honestly the greatest thing ever. I mean,
Speaker 1: coming to hear an author talk while they make canoli's
Speaker 1: for you is pretty great. But then I saw this
Speaker 1: fact this week about Canoli's and I had to tell
Speaker 1: you about it. So did you know that a canole
Speaker 1: has actually gone into space?
Speaker 2: I did not know that, but I'm also not surprised.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can only can really do anything. It's
Speaker 2: an intensely versatile dessert. But how did it get there?
Speaker 2: Did NASA take it there?
Speaker 1: So the story is a little more low than that. Apparently,
Speaker 1: these three young scientists decide that they wanted to do
Speaker 1: something joyful for Sicily, so they started what they called
Speaker 1: the Sicilian Space Program.
Speaker 3: Wow, do they have T shirts? Because I want one?
Speaker 1: I know I want a tea shirt too. But these
Speaker 1: three scientists, with no real money, decided to send a
Speaker 1: canoli into space, and because a real canoli would actually disintegrate,
Speaker 1: they fabricated this delicious looking canoli or canolo because I
Speaker 1: guess one canoli is called canolo, yes, And they made
Speaker 1: it out of lightweight polymers, and then they modeled a
Speaker 1: path and attached it to a little helium balloon craft
Speaker 1: which they called the Canolo Transporter, and along with it
Speaker 1: they sent a thermometer, a parachute, a GPS device, and
Speaker 1: a camera, which is so great because the shots of
Speaker 1: space from this like Canol helium spacecraft looking down on
Speaker 1: Earth are absolutely amazing.
Speaker 2: Wait, no, no, sorry, Okay, So I am imagining it
Speaker 2: with a face to be honest, because I so when
Speaker 2: I sign the Sicilian Inheritance. And I'm now coming up
Speaker 2: on my one hundredth event for this book in three months,
Speaker 2: because I've been doing bookstores and I zoom into book
Speaker 2: clubs for it for a while. I've been trying to
Speaker 2: draw canoli in the books, but they never look like canoli.
Speaker 2: They look like something else.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm not going to say what they look like.
Speaker 2: And then I draw a little happy face on them,
Speaker 2: which makes it even worse. So I'm picturing I'm picturing
Speaker 2: this space cannoli with a little happy face smiling down
Speaker 2: on the Earth, which is a really wonderful thing.
Speaker 4: But did they actually get it to space. They did
Speaker 4: get it to space, no smiley face. They got it
Speaker 4: to thirty thousand meters into the air, so into the stratosphere,
Speaker 4: and I guess the thermometer recorded a temperature of negative
Speaker 4: fifty degrees celsius before it started crashing to Earth, so
Speaker 4: that's pretty amazing. And then the scientists chase it down
Speaker 4: through this field of sheep to find their space canolo.
Speaker 4: But what's really sweet about the whole thing is that
Speaker 4: they just want to change the perception of Sicily a little,
Speaker 4: from this land of mafioso and economic struggles to something
Speaker 4: really delightful. And according to one of the scientists, this
Speaker 4: is what he said, our Sicilian space program was a
Speaker 4: gift meant for all Sicilians and a way to make
Speaker 4: them smile. For us, this great little gesture is a
Speaker 4: gift to the Cosmos, a technological right, and even just
Speaker 4: a simple gesture to lift up Sicily in our own way,
Speaker 4: which I just think is really sweet.
Speaker 1: I love you. That's the first of a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of facts we have about Sicily today, So why don't
Speaker 1: we dive in.
Speaker 5: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Welcome to part time genius. I'm youngish articular. My good
Speaker 1: pal Will Pearson is off on a business trip this week.
Speaker 1: But that's great because I pulled in author, journalist, podcaster
Speaker 1: and one of the most remarkable people I know, Joe Piazza,
Speaker 1: to sit in his chair. Joe, thank you for being here.
Speaker 3: Oh thanks for having me. I'll fill in for Will anytime.
Speaker 1: And of course leaning back in the studio, feet on
Speaker 1: his desk, cracking open Sicilian pistaches and just tossing them
Speaker 1: on the floor without a care.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, of course that is our wonderful Dylan Fagan,
Speaker 2: just scarfing away on pistachios back there, but just just
Speaker 2: snack and just snack. And you know I should have
Speaker 2: made you guys, can only you know?
Speaker 1: Joe? I always tell people I don't know anyone who's
Speaker 1: as insanely productive as your. You've got three kids, a
Speaker 1: wonderful marriage, You're always writing at least two books at
Speaker 1: any one time, and you also seem to prioritize reading
Speaker 1: and sleep, and you travel. So I am curious, how
Speaker 1: do you get it all done.
Speaker 2: I don't actually I don't actually know how I do it.
Speaker 2: I have to say. I think it's I just don't
Speaker 2: f around anymore, like I'm insanely efficient, Like I don't
Speaker 2: have I don't actually scroll Instagram even though I report
Speaker 2: on Instagram. And yeah, I'm an efficient Virgo.
Speaker 3: I grew up.
Speaker 2: You'll appreciate this as a person who loves astrology as
Speaker 2: much as I do. I grew up rejecting like all
Speaker 2: of the traits of a Virgo, like super organized, super efficient,
Speaker 2: love security, much in the way that I grew up
Speaker 2: reading The Babysitters Club and thinking I was a Stacy
Speaker 2: because she was cool and from New York City, and
Speaker 2: you know, as I'm an adult, I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm a freaking Virgo.
Speaker 3: And I'm not Stacey. I'm totally Christy.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I asked Ruby what they thought they were
Speaker 1: in terms of the Babysitters Club, because of course, you know,
Speaker 1: obsessed with it. And Ruby's like, well, I'm organized like
Speaker 1: a Christie, but I like to hide candy all over
Speaker 1: my room like like a Claudia. Like a Claudia.
Speaker 3: That's fair.
Speaker 1: So I've got your best seller right here. The Sicilian inheritance.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me a little bit about how you
Speaker 1: came up with the story of this book.
Speaker 2: Oh, I sure can, Yeah, I mean it started out
Speaker 2: I wanted to write a delicious adventure to Sicily, and
Speaker 2: I loosely based it on the murder of my own
Speaker 2: great great grandmother, Lorenza Marsala. My family's been passing on
Speaker 2: this story as like a piece of family lore for
Speaker 2: as long as I can remember, but they don't know
Speaker 2: many details. In fact, most of them don't know any details.
Speaker 2: A lot of them didn't even know what her name was.
Speaker 2: It was just, oh, our family matriarch was murdered in Sicily.
Speaker 2: The men thought she was murdered by the mafia because
Speaker 2: they all think they're Tony Soprano.
Speaker 3: And the women.
Speaker 2: Thought that she was murdered because she was a Sicilian
Speaker 2: witch or a healer, because they all believe they're Sicilian witches,
Speaker 2: and frankly, they probably are. And I took that little
Speaker 2: nugget and I just went with it. I tried to
Speaker 2: imagine what it would be like to be a woman
Speaker 2: in Sicily one hundred years ago, when your husband leaves
Speaker 2: for twelve years at a time and you're left alone.
Speaker 2: The women in these Sicilian villages, they took the men's jobs.
Speaker 2: They started lending money and buying land, and they had
Speaker 2: autonomy and agency for the first time in a really
Speaker 2: cool way. And then I had a modern day woman
Speaker 2: in the book go back to Sicily and try to
Speaker 2: claim her family inheritance and solve this murder. So it's
Speaker 2: just it's a delicious adventure and romp through Sicily with
Speaker 2: the right amount of taking down the patriarchy.
Speaker 1: So obviously you mentioned this. The story is based on
Speaker 1: this real story in your family of your great great
Speaker 1: grandmother Lorenzo, getting murdered, and your dad was obsessed with
Speaker 1: this and spending all this extra time trying to solve
Speaker 1: the story. But to tell me a little bit about
Speaker 1: you know, the podcast and how that came together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my dad spent so much time and so much
Speaker 2: money actually before before he passed away, trying to figure
Speaker 2: this mystery out. And you know, now it's been seven years.
Speaker 2: And when I started writing the book, like I said,
Speaker 2: I wanted it to be fiction, straight up fiction. But
Speaker 2: then and once I finished the book, because I'm an
Speaker 2: intensely productive content creator, I decided, oh, now I have
Speaker 2: to solve this mystery in real life, and I started
Speaker 2: making a podcast about it, a true crime podcast also
Speaker 2: called The Sicilian Inheritance to make things very Easy, where
Speaker 2: where I go back to Sicily on a mixture of
Speaker 2: fact finding mission and family summer vacation to solve the
Speaker 2: actual mystery, digging through archives, digging through court records, interviewing
Speaker 2: people in the town where Lorenzo Marsala is from. And
Speaker 2: it's become this wonderful podcast. When I describe it to
Speaker 2: people on tour, sometimes I call it white Lotus meets
Speaker 2: only murders in the building because it is me, in
Speaker 2: many ways, bumbling my way through Sicily trying to solve
Speaker 2: this murder. But from the very start last summer when
Speaker 2: we were there, we did discover some really crazy bombshells
Speaker 2: that come.
Speaker 3: Out in episode two.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean, people are binging this podcast like crazy.
Speaker 2: So many people are telling me that Sicilian Inheritance is
Speaker 2: their new favorite true crime podcast, and it's been.
Speaker 3: It's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a really sweet tone, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: I got to work on it a little bit, but
Speaker 1: to me, it just feels like this lovely driving to
Speaker 1: the Beach Summer podcast that you know is delightful and
Speaker 1: not gory, but still a true crime. You know, there's
Speaker 1: something really wonderful about the tone totally. But you know,
Speaker 1: I was looking into this and one of the things
Speaker 1: that's amazing to me is that, like how many Italian
Speaker 1: Americans are Sicilian, you know, Scorsese, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci,
Speaker 1: Alicia Keys, Ariana Grande, Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, Steve Shechemi.
Speaker 1: I mean, the list just goes on and on, and
Speaker 1: I had no idea that, like Sicily was that big
Speaker 1: a part of the US. But then you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the immigration experience in the podcast. Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about what it meant to
Speaker 1: go to Ellis Island to do research? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean there are so many Italian Americans who
Speaker 2: are Sicilian, because you know, Sicily was very impoverished one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty one hundred years ago, and so it
Speaker 2: was mainly Southern Italians and Sicilians who were immigrating to
Speaker 2: the US to make a better life for themselves and
Speaker 2: for their family. And one of my first stops for
Speaker 2: research was to work with Ellis Island and their researchers
Speaker 2: and historians are incredible. They don't just pullship manifests for you.
Speaker 2: They help you research all different kinds of government records.
Speaker 2: But what they were able to find for me is
Speaker 2: the immigration documents for all of Lorenza's children and her
Speaker 2: husband who came to the United States, which listed just
Speaker 2: so much personal information and also information about Lorenzo because
Speaker 2: they had to write about who they left behind. And
Speaker 2: some of these children that immigrated were kids, they were teenagers,
Speaker 2: they were, you know, thirteen, fourteen years old, and they
Speaker 2: wrote on their document, I left my mom behind, and
Speaker 2: that just got under my skin. And that one child,
Speaker 2: that one son, he was almost sent back because they
Speaker 2: were worried that he wouldn't have enough support here in
Speaker 2: America without his without his mother here, even though you know,
Speaker 2: other family members were here at the time. The government
Speaker 2: was very very nervous about having anyone here that they
Speaker 2: would have to take care of, and so he nearly
Speaker 2: got sent back, and he did and he made it
Speaker 2: to Scratton with his other brothers. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's a really intense emotional journey to hear these stories
Speaker 2: and learn more about the people who came before you.
Speaker 2: And the kinds of things that they went through and
Speaker 2: what they achieved, and you know, it just it puts
Speaker 2: so much in perspective today that we can do hard things,
Speaker 2: we can do difficult things, and that we have this
Speaker 2: actually in our blood and in our DNA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that really is remarkable and obviously so meaningful for
Speaker 1: your family to discover all this stuff through you. But
Speaker 1: I think what I love so much about the podcast is,
Speaker 1: you know, I have no envy for all the struggles
Speaker 1: with bureaucracy and the digging through records in Italy and
Speaker 1: all that, but you know, like those bits about you
Speaker 1: traveling around Sicily and Calta Balota and these like fields
Speaker 1: of lemon trees and olive trees and old world towns
Speaker 1: and gorgeous beaches and you do that beautiful, beautiful food
Speaker 1: scene there. It all just makes me want to go
Speaker 1: to Sicily so badly. Yeah, And that's why I thought
Speaker 1: it'd be really fun to do at nine Things episode
Speaker 1: with you to learn a little bit more about like
Speaker 1: the surprising things people don't know about Sicily. So why
Speaker 1: don't we get to some facts.
Speaker 3: Let's do some facts. I love a fact, you know that.
Speaker 1: So actually, if you don't mind. One of the things
Speaker 1: that really stunned me about the podcast was like some
Speaker 1: of Greece's influence on Sicily, and you talk about it
Speaker 1: in terms of the Virgin Mary kind of being bigger
Speaker 1: than Jesus and Sicily. Would you do that as your
Speaker 1: first fact on the show.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, absolutely absolutely, And you know it makes sense,
Speaker 2: like Sicily was indeed part of ancient Greece, part of
Speaker 2: that ancient world. And one of the things I discovered
Speaker 2: is that Sicilian women have just carried on so many
Speaker 2: traditions of different goddesses from Greek mythology, from Roman mythology,
Speaker 2: from Northern African mythology, and you know, put a lot
Speaker 2: of those attributes onto Mary. You know, Mary is a
Speaker 2: real presence in Sicily. She's she's not a meek woman
Speaker 2: at all. She's not just the mother of the Savior.
Speaker 2: In Sicily. The statues of her present like a powerful goddess.
Speaker 2: I mean, they just radiate strength. They're big, she's big,
Speaker 2: she takes up space, and they treat her kind of
Speaker 2: like a Greek superhero. She's often in a massive white
Speaker 2: and gold cape that flares out around her body like
Speaker 2: a mountain. She doesn't have a tiny halo. Instead, she's
Speaker 2: wearing something that feels and looks a lot more like
Speaker 2: a craft. I mean, almost like the moon, because it
Speaker 2: resembles the goddess Diana, the moon goddess, and it is because,
Speaker 2: like I said, Mary is just a bit of a
Speaker 2: collection of different goddesses. The Sicilians took all of these
Speaker 2: old Greek myths and the myths from the Carthaginians, like
Speaker 2: Diana and Aphrodite, and they combined all of those into
Speaker 2: the Virgin Mary. It made it a lot easier to
Speaker 2: accept Christianity, and like they're fine, They're fine with Jesus, Okay,
Speaker 2: But Sicily is a place where magic definitely still exists,
Speaker 2: and so you can believe in the Virgin Mary but
Speaker 2: also in the Evil Eye. And Mary can be a
Speaker 2: mashup of all of these strong, capable women. She's a
Speaker 2: little bit Greek myth, she's a little bit of Christian belief,
Speaker 2: and in Sicily she's a healer and a mother, but
Speaker 2: also kind of this wonderful, witchy goddess.
Speaker 1: I really love that so much. But I also love
Speaker 1: that you talk about her kind of like a witch,
Speaker 1: Like could you talk about like Sicilian culture and witches
Speaker 1: and strength as.
Speaker 2: Straight I guess, yeah, I mean, as there was this
Speaker 2: idea that Lorenzo Marsala, my great great grandmother, was possibly
Speaker 2: a witch and a healer, and it's one of the
Speaker 2: things that we're trying to prove in the Sicilian Inheritance podcast.
Speaker 2: But of course, you know, there's no legal you know,
Speaker 2: tax documents to be like, oh yeah, I'm just writing
Speaker 2: off my expenses from being a peasant witch, sadly, sadly.
Speaker 2: But there's ways, there's other ways that we try to
Speaker 2: go about it. And you know, the idea of the
Speaker 2: witch and the healer, it just has such deep roots
Speaker 2: in Sicily for so long, and in fact, the straga
Speaker 2: the witches were often known as the dona ayetane the
Speaker 2: women who help, because they did help. They took on
Speaker 2: all the attributes of doctors, healers, also social connectors in
Speaker 2: a way, you know, they did a lot of the matchmaking. Yes,
Speaker 2: they had the evil eye, but the evil eye was
Speaker 2: to you know, not to vex your neighbor necessarily, but
Speaker 2: to keep away dark forces from other towns, I mean,
Speaker 2: from other islands. Things like that. They were really they
Speaker 2: were the protectors and caregivers of Sicilian society for a
Speaker 2: long time. And I do believe that that that is
Speaker 2: part of what Lorenza did. And you know, we have
Speaker 2: we have a very big witchy thread in the Sicilian
Speaker 2: Inheritance novel as well.
Speaker 1: And there were midwives and ob GYNs too, kind of.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yes, there are midwives obgyns. They deliver babies, they
Speaker 2: help women prevent pregnancy, you know, which was was a
Speaker 2: was a very big deal. I mean, so many of
Speaker 2: these women were constantly pregnant or constantly breastfeeding, and it's
Speaker 2: an exhausting life and so these were these were the
Speaker 2: women that really kind of held the fabric of society
Speaker 2: together by by caring for everyone.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I love that bit. There's there's like
Speaker 1: so much of this that like I either kind of
Speaker 1: knew little bit about or like had no idea about.
Speaker 1: And I think just learning about the land and the
Speaker 1: feeling of really how transportive. I know I used that
Speaker 1: word before, but like how transport of the podcast is
Speaker 1: like can't be underscored. But one of the things I
Speaker 1: wanted to do was talk about like a few things
Speaker 1: that people might not know about from Sicily. And I'm
Speaker 1: guessing you know all about Sicilian ice creams.
Speaker 2: Right, I know a lot. I know a lot about
Speaker 2: Sicilian ice cream. So I took the kids there and
Speaker 2: you will hear them on the podcast, and they're little.
Speaker 2: I took three children under the age of six to
Speaker 2: solve a Sicilian murder mystery, which is what they get
Speaker 2: to talk about in therapy in about twenty years and
Speaker 2: so we had Sicilian ice cream about twice a day.
Speaker 1: One of the things I really love is that Sicily
Speaker 1: apparently is the first place where brain freeze is documented.
Speaker 3: Freeze shut your mouth. I didn't know that. I didn't know.
Speaker 1: It's from this book called Frostbite, How ref Changed Our Food,
Speaker 1: our Planet, and Ourselves by Nicola Twilly, and it has
Speaker 1: all these great documented examples, because eating something that cold
Speaker 1: was unusual in the eighteen hundred and seventeen hundreds. But
Speaker 1: she talks about this description of brain freeze from the
Speaker 1: seventeen seventies, and it's an account of a British naval
Speaker 1: officer taking his first bite of ice cream at this
Speaker 1: formal dinner and this is what it says after he
Speaker 1: took his first bite. Quote, at first, he only looked
Speaker 1: grave and blew up his cheeks to give it more room,
Speaker 1: but then quote the violence of the cold. Soon getting
Speaker 1: the better of his patients, he began to tumble it
Speaker 1: about from side to side in his mouth, his eyes
Speaker 1: rushing out water. Shortly thereafter, he spat it out with
Speaker 1: a horrid oath meaning I guess he was swearing, and
Speaker 1: in his outrage, had to be restrained from beating the
Speaker 1: nearest servant. Wow, that description is so insane.
Speaker 3: Wow. Oh wow, that's great. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I've heard I've heard a lot of
Speaker 2: descriptions about cold things in Sicily, you know, Mount Etna,
Speaker 2: because the grenita is the other big dessert in Sicily,
Speaker 2: which is shaved ice. Okay, and you walk through the
Speaker 2: streets of Palermo and literally men make you a greanita
Speaker 2: by hacking away at ice with a machete. It's so
Speaker 2: violent and so delightful. But grenda originated from the snow
Speaker 2: and ice on the top of Mount Etna. They're volcano.
Speaker 3: That's very cool, Pretty cool, right, yeah, So well, fact
Speaker 3: you have next Well, you know.
Speaker 2: Since Dylan got his hands on those special Sicilian pistachios,
Speaker 2: I do think it's worth talking about them a little.
Speaker 2: Sicilians use pistachios in everything, and I mean, this is
Speaker 2: a good time to point out we talk about this
Speaker 2: in the podcast and in the book. Sicilian food is
Speaker 2: very different from Italian food. Okay, there's no heavy red sauces.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of influences from North Africa, from other
Speaker 2: parts of the Mediterranean, and from the French, you know,
Speaker 2: because the were indeed conquerors of Sicily for quite some times.
Speaker 2: So you do see pistachios and crushed pistachios in lots
Speaker 2: and lots of dishes, I mean almost every dish, and
Speaker 2: so Sicilian pistachios or bronte pistachios are often referred to
Speaker 2: as green gold because of their delicious and intense flavor. Now,
Speaker 2: pistachios obviously grow in Iran, California, lots of other places,
Speaker 2: but the reason that the nuts taste so intensely sweet
Speaker 2: and meaty is because, of course, the soil from Mount
Speaker 2: Etna is just so so nutritious and delicious, and that
Speaker 2: soil gives a lot of Sicilian foods their distinct flavor,
Speaker 2: from Sicilian wines and liquors to the local honey and
Speaker 2: the strawberries the rich volcanic soil is not only super fertile,
Speaker 2: but it also imbused foods with a complex earthy goodness.
Speaker 2: And actually, just as an aside, I gotta say, Mount
Speaker 2: Etna also plays a role in Greek mythology.
Speaker 3: Did you know this?
Speaker 1: I did not.
Speaker 2: The green thought that it was where Hephestus, the god
Speaker 2: of blacksmiths, had his workshop and his forges, which is
Speaker 2: why you can almost always see the smoke billowing out
Speaker 2: of it like a chimney. But back to the pistachios.
Speaker 2: The Romans originally brought pistachios back from the Middle East,
Speaker 2: but they were mostly forgotten. And then when the Arabs
Speaker 2: came to Sicily in the ninth century, they could not
Speaker 2: help but notice the incredible flavor of the nuts, and
Speaker 2: they kicked the cultivation up into high gear. And today
Speaker 2: the Sicilian pistachios are still harvested entirely by hand, which
Speaker 2: you know, oh wow, which sounds beautiful, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: we love thinking about things that are done with our
Speaker 2: actual hands and not machines. But it is intensely labor heavy,
Speaker 2: intensely labor heavy. And then they spread out these big
Speaker 2: cloth canopies when they collect them and shell and chop
Speaker 2: them by hand, or sometimes they send them to the
Speaker 2: factories to be turned into paste.
Speaker 3: But because it does take.
Speaker 2: So much labor, and because it's intense on the land,
Speaker 2: it only happens every two years to protect the trees
Speaker 2: and improve the flavors. And this is why Sicilian pistachios
Speaker 2: are a little bit pricier.
Speaker 1: That's funny, I didn't realize. So they're kind of expensive.
Speaker 2: They are, they are, and they're too expensive to use
Speaker 2: in things like cannoli, even though I do it, or
Speaker 2: or or ice cream over here, unless you're paying like
Speaker 2: high end luxury prices. And The Times has an article
Speaker 2: where they point out one businessman actually compared the price
Speaker 2: of pistachios to find jewelry, which makes sense because, as
Speaker 2: the Times rites in their very timesy and way, the
Speaker 2: beautiful little nutmeats grown around Bronte a variety called smeraldo,
Speaker 2: meaning emerald, So.
Speaker 1: The jewels of the jewel nut kingdom.
Speaker 3: They are truly the jewels of the nut Kingdom.
Speaker 1: I also like the word nutmeats.
Speaker 3: The nutmeats, my friends.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna skip forward to a fact that makes
Speaker 1: me think of your uncle Joe from the show and
Speaker 1: how he talks about how maybe there's a vendetta against
Speaker 1: your family and this long held grudge against your great grandmother,
Speaker 1: and this fact is about revenge. So apparently Cicily is
Speaker 1: home to one of the narrowest houses in the world.
Speaker 1: The house is only about three feet wide from the outside,
Speaker 1: and it's two stories high. I'm sure you've seen it
Speaker 1: or been there, but I have. Indeed, yes, I wanted
Speaker 1: our listeners to hear this because it is so incredibly
Speaker 1: narrow that two people can't walk through it, and there's
Speaker 1: nothing in it except a staircase and some windows. So
Speaker 1: you might ask why did you build a place? The
Speaker 1: name will tell you. The house in Sicilian is called
Speaker 1: Casa du Karivo, or House of Spite. And this is
Speaker 1: the story I got from this site. I like Audity Central.
Speaker 1: The owner of the house in the nineteen fifties want
Speaker 1: to expand his place to a second story, but per
Speaker 1: the village rules, you had to get permission from your
Speaker 1: neighbor to build upwards. But the neighbors did not get along.
Speaker 1: The neighbor obviously said no. But there's a loophole that
Speaker 1: if you build something a certain distance from your neighbor's property.
Speaker 1: You don't need permission. So the owner basically built out
Speaker 1: despite this narrow three foot side extension on the side
Speaker 1: of his house two stories high, just to block the
Speaker 1: view of the village below. And he painted the back
Speaker 1: of the extension totally black, so when the neighbor looked
Speaker 1: out their window, that's all they could see. It is
Speaker 1: so horrible and wonderful.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's horrible if you don't think grudges are
Speaker 2: you know a thing that we should do.
Speaker 1: I a the most beautiful grudge possible.
Speaker 3: It's the most beautiful grudge I've ever heard. And you
Speaker 3: know I talk about that.
Speaker 2: I have this line in the Sicilian Inheritance book that
Speaker 2: grudges are our national pastime. In Sicily, grudges are our golf.
Speaker 3: So I love this fact that brings me so much sjoy.
Speaker 1: That's really funny. It also reminds me of that Larry
Speaker 1: David in Career Enthusiasm starts that Spike coffee. I just
Speaker 1: love the idea of like spike businesses.
Speaker 3: I love business.
Speaker 2: You know, I've recently started a war with Philadelphia Magazine
Speaker 2: and I because they didn't get the Sicilian Inheritance in
Speaker 2: like a book list that they were doing. And I'm Sicilian,
Speaker 2: I hold grudges, right, and so I started a war.
Speaker 2: I started my private war with them. I don't even
Speaker 2: know if they know where it or And I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to launch a Spike magazine in Philadelphia,
Speaker 2: a whole Spike magazine of my own. I will launch
Speaker 2: a competitor magazine just to just to hold this grudge
Speaker 2: against you.
Speaker 1: Will writing two books and parenting.
Speaker 2: Three absolutely whatever, I can do it. All right, let's
Speaker 2: move away from something spiteful to something something really cute,
Speaker 2: which is do you know about Sicily's dwarf elephants.
Speaker 3: I do not dwarf elephants, my friend.
Speaker 2: Just think, just just picture this, okay, teeny tiny elephants.
Speaker 2: According to the Smithsonian, the elephants were the size of
Speaker 2: Shetland ponies. Oh it is a really small quite quit dwarfs, Okay,
Speaker 2: dwarf elephants. And they once roamed all over the islands.
Speaker 2: But you know, eventually they did, they did indeed go extinct.
Speaker 1: So was this like fairly recently, like in the last
Speaker 1: hundred years or two hundred years?
Speaker 2: Is something No, No, this isn't like the thylacine, of
Speaker 2: which you know obviously the Tasmanian tiger. The thylacine last
Speaker 2: died out. This was at least fifty thousand years.
Speaker 3: Ago, which is, you know, quite some time.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't like sure the Sicilians kept them around
Speaker 2: the house like pot pelly pigs, but I would I
Speaker 2: mean if I would keep.
Speaker 1: The dwarf, course, a dwarf elephant.
Speaker 2: But what is fascinating is that scientists have clearly wondered
Speaker 2: how did these elephants get so small? And in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, they analyzed a tiny elephant's skull found in
Speaker 2: the Pentali Caves and discovered that the dwarf elephants evolved
Speaker 2: from one of the largest elephants ever, straight tusk elephants,
Speaker 2: which were freaking massive, thirty thousand pound creatures. And what
Speaker 2: the DNA showed was that the animals which either crossed
Speaker 2: land bridges to Sicily or swam there, they went from
Speaker 2: being thirty thousand pounds to these tiny two thousand pounds
Speaker 2: elephants and about forty generations. And for scientists it's just
Speaker 2: this mind blowing example of how quickly animals can change
Speaker 2: shape entirely and evolve.
Speaker 1: Oh that's really fascinating and so cute. So I like,
Speaker 1: that's so cute. So, you know, I didn't think we'd
Speaker 1: be speaking about evolution on this episode exactly. But I
Speaker 1: know what you're gonna get. I found this fact about
Speaker 1: eels that I'm gonna read to you because it's scribbled here.
Speaker 1: This is from the Margin Ilion, which is a great site.
Speaker 1: But apparently eels have baffled civilizations forever. They are super
Speaker 1: shy creatures. They're really hard to observe. Also, obviously they
Speaker 1: can be dangerous and they look kind of serpent like.
Speaker 1: So there's always been this like lore and myth and
Speaker 1: you know, dangerous feeling around them. Aristotle thought they emerged
Speaker 1: from mud, as did Egyptians. But as science evolved, one
Speaker 1: of the big questions became how to eel spawn because
Speaker 1: they have no visible genitalia. People have spotted eels with roe,
Speaker 1: but male eels hadn't been very present, and it became
Speaker 1: this big mystery in science. And then in eighteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: this young brilliant scientist, a med student named Sigmund Freud,
Speaker 1: decides to take up the case. He's only nineteen years old.
Speaker 1: He just becomes obsessed. He starts trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1: He moves to Triesta in Italy to do more study.
Speaker 1: He starts his days gathering eels from local fishermen. Every morning,
Speaker 1: at dusk, he takes them to a shack. He studies
Speaker 1: them in bulls and on counters and dissects them and
Speaker 1: observes them. Then he takes a one hour lunch break
Speaker 1: and studies for another five hours every day. Like he's
Speaker 1: devoted to figuring out do mail eels exist? And he
Speaker 1: just can't crack the case. And there's this writer, Patrick Spenson,
Speaker 1: who wrote this book, the Book of Eels, And this
Speaker 1: is from Marginal Elliot. This is what he says. What
Speaker 1: neither Freud nor other scientists at this time knew was,
Speaker 1: of course, eels have no visible sex organs until they
Speaker 1: need them. Metamorphosis is not just superficial adaptations to new
Speaker 1: life conditions. They're existential, and eel becomes what it needs
Speaker 1: to be when the time is right. And twenty years
Speaker 1: after Freud's failed effort, a sexually mature male silver eel
Speaker 1: was finally found off the coast of Messina in Sicily,
Speaker 1: and thus the eel had finally become a fish, a
Speaker 1: creature not so dissimilar from others, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: I know it's like a kind of a gross creature,
Speaker 1: but I think there's something wonderful and fitting about the
Speaker 1: fact that, like Sicily is this land of myths and magic.
Speaker 1: And also the fact that the answer to why an
Speaker 1: eel isn't just a monster that comes from Sicily is
Speaker 1: kind of wonderful.
Speaker 3: I love that, I really do.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: I talk about this in the podcast.
Speaker 5: I talk about it in the book.
Speaker 2: You know, Medusa is on the Sicilian flag, and I
Speaker 2: love the idea of turning around the Medusa myth to
Speaker 2: be like was she a monster or was she a
Speaker 2: woman who wasn't going to let people mess with her?
Speaker 3: And you know she has the snakes in her hair,
Speaker 3: but some Sicili and think that they may be eels.
Speaker 1: Oh that's really interesting. I had no idea. So I
Speaker 1: know We've got a few more facts before we close
Speaker 1: this out, but let's take a.
Speaker 6: Quick break first.
Speaker 5: It sounds good.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to part time Genius, where I'm talking about
Speaker 1: things you definitely don't know about Sicily with my pal author, journalist,
Speaker 1: podcast or influencer Joe piazza. So, Joe, We've talked pistachios,
Speaker 1: We've talked tiny adorable elephants, we've talked Canoli's in space.
Speaker 1: So what fact do you want to end on?
Speaker 2: This is hard, This is really hard because I mean
Speaker 2: there's just there's so many wonderful things about Sicily to
Speaker 2: talk about. But we haven't talked about the Sicilian Arches
Speaker 2: of Bread festival yet, have we.
Speaker 3: No, Well, you need to know this.
Speaker 2: The Sicilian Arches of Bread festival is very similar to
Speaker 2: you know what.
Speaker 3: It sounds like.
Speaker 2: It's where the local people construct large structures out of
Speaker 2: bread and make chandeliers out of dates. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like the American county fairs where you
Speaker 2: make stuff out of butter, but with bread. So you know,
Speaker 2: love that one. And then of course there's the the
Speaker 2: Icarus myth.
Speaker 3: You know that one.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's really about Sicily because you know, Icarus
Speaker 2: got burned by the sun, his wings melted, he fell
Speaker 2: into the ocean and perished, but his dad, Datalus, allegedly
Speaker 2: landed in Sicily, frankly, in Culta Balota, the town where
Speaker 2: my family is from my town, and the legend is
Speaker 2: that he built the town of Caltablota to be amazed,
Speaker 2: much like the labyrinth that he constructed.
Speaker 3: There's a lot we can talk about, but give me,
Speaker 3: give me a b you go first, you tell me
Speaker 3: what you want to talk about.
Speaker 1: Those are two great facts already, but I like that
Speaker 1: you've got a bigger one coming out were I do so.
Speaker 1: I know, we didn't really want to talk too much
Speaker 1: about the mafia, because you know, there's some more stuff
Speaker 1: out there. But I thought this was kind of funny.
Speaker 1: Apparently in the two thousands, the FBI realized that the
Speaker 1: American mob was sending their men to study abroad in Sicily.
Speaker 1: According to one source high up in the Sicilian mafia quote,
Speaker 1: they send them here to make them become men of honor,
Speaker 1: to make them practice because in America there's not that
Speaker 1: feel for values and there is no more respect, which
Speaker 1: I love that American mafia are traveling for these like
Speaker 1: master classes in Europe to become more honorable in their
Speaker 1: chosen line of work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, my friend.
Speaker 2: I mean those original rules that the mafia had with
Speaker 2: regards to honor and respect were you didn't look at
Speaker 2: the wives of friends. You treat your wives and all
Speaker 2: women with respect, you answer questions truthfully, never be late
Speaker 2: for appointments.
Speaker 1: There was there was really punctuality.
Speaker 3: Punctuality was very important.
Speaker 2: There was honor baked into it, you know, also extortion,
Speaker 2: racketeering and murder. Actually, I do need to tell you.
Speaker 2: There's two main no mafia museums in Sicily. And you
Speaker 2: walk into the one in Corleone, which is the town
Speaker 2: where the Godfather allegedly from, and the first room you
Speaker 2: walk into is pictures of all of the natural beauty
Speaker 2: of Corleone, to try to say, this is what we're about.
Speaker 2: We're about these beautiful cathedrals. Where about these rolling hills
Speaker 2: and these vineyards. And then you walk into the second
Speaker 2: room and there's pictures of Francis Ford, Coppola and Mario
Speaker 2: Puzo on.
Speaker 3: A wall of shame, an actual wall of shame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is amazing. So tell me, how how do
Speaker 1: you want to end this?
Speaker 2: You know, like I said, there's a lot of ways
Speaker 2: that we could go. How about talking about one of
Speaker 2: the world's greatest scientists, a Sicilian you might know as Archimedes.
Speaker 6: I like that.
Speaker 3: It's funny because obviously the.
Speaker 2: Is one aspect of Sicily, and it's prominently known from
Speaker 2: movies like The Godfather. And I've got to say I
Speaker 2: was actually reading this site called Cecilia Anita, and the
Speaker 2: writer writes, quote, think of Sicily as a place that
Speaker 2: gave Europe a taste for sanguinelli, the blood oranges that
Speaker 2: grow only there, a place that made things sweet when
Speaker 2: the Arabs began to cultivate on its soil, that made
Speaker 2: it possible for Europeans to wrap their bodies in the
Speaker 2: luxurious feel of silk. Think of Sicily as the place
Speaker 2: where spring is born when Pluto releases Persephone from her
Speaker 2: infernal captivity. Yes, also also Persephone, the whole Persephone myth
Speaker 2: that takes place in Sicily too. And so the author
Speaker 2: goes on to point out that Sicily was first at
Speaker 2: a lot of things. The first volcano, scientists, the first
Speaker 2: solar clock, the first census, the first map of the world,
Speaker 2: the first labor union, the first cookbook. All of these
Speaker 2: things come from Sicily. And of course, as she pointed out,
Speaker 2: the ice cream. And then there is Archimedes of sarah Cusa.
Speaker 2: I mean, this guy figured out Pia. Okay, he figured
Speaker 2: out how to burn Roman ships by using metal to
Speaker 2: redirect the sun's rays. He discovered pulleys and levers and
Speaker 2: the idea of water displacement. And did you know that,
Speaker 2: like when he figured out water displacement, that is when
Speaker 2: this man ran through the streets naked after hopping out
Speaker 2: of his bath, shouting eureka.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And according to the legend, even though Roman soldiers were
Speaker 2: given orders not to kill him, when one did approach him,
Speaker 2: he was so deep in thought with calculations that he
Speaker 2: didn't see the assassin coming.
Speaker 6: That is so crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we're like first and everything.
Speaker 2: Okay, So even though you can think of Sicily as
Speaker 2: this great tourist attraction and land of incredible food and
Speaker 2: history and beaches and Greek ruins like it would just
Speaker 2: be nice if people remembered it as the land of
Speaker 2: math and science.
Speaker 1: That's really wonderful. I like that. And we started and
Speaker 1: ended on a science fact, so that's pretty great to
Speaker 1: that end. But I am, of course going to have
Speaker 1: to give you this week's trophy, Joe. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being here. It's really a pleasure to have
Speaker 1: you on.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. I love it. I can
Speaker 3: talk about Sicily forever, my friend.
Speaker 1: Well, we can take that offline. But for those of
Speaker 1: you looking for a terrific beat read this summer, go
Speaker 1: out and buy The Sicilian Inheritance. I'm going to put
Speaker 1: the first episode of the podcast Joe made in our
Speaker 1: feed as well. And if you want to tell me
Speaker 1: something about your Sicilian heritage, things you learned on a
Speaker 1: trip to Sicily, or anything else, don't forget We get
Speaker 1: our emails sent to our moms at pet Genius moms
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. They want to hear from you,
Speaker 1: and we want to hear from you from Will, Dylan,
Speaker 1: Joe and Me. We'll be back next week with a
Speaker 1: new episode.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongas
Speaker 1: Chatikler and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
Speaker 1: with support.
Speaker 6: From Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvel
Speaker 1: and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay
Speaker 1: Trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.