15 with Fosca

“Wellness is being well, and being well is being in touch with yourself.” Rachel Zitin In this episode, I sit down with Rachel Zitin, a U.S. expat, somatic coach, yoga instructor, and retreat leader based in Rome. Rachel leads transformational retreats for women, blending somatics, yoga, pleasure, and Italian culture into experiences that nourish the body, mind, and soul. We discuss the evolution...

I wanted to start the new year with a fun, warm conversation about one of my favorite subjects, food! In this week’s episode, I sit down with Italian American chef, Caterina Maranghi, to talk about her life growing up between two countries, raising her bilingual and bicultural kids, and how she built her career around her love of hospitality, spending time with people, and cooking and eating with...

“I think what's been an amazing part of this project in general but particularly with Rodolfo’s story was the comments. There have been thousands, the majority filled with a sense of sadness and very much connected to nostalgia and this sense that Florence is going through a huge transformation at the moment and he represents everything that people think is great about Florence. People wrote that...

I live in an international community and that gives you a lot. If you're open minded, love different languages, know how to interact and interface with people of different cultures it's a very inspiring, very human place. Andrea Zurlo Join me and author and translator Andrea Zurlo for the second part of our conversation about her work, her favorite writing to do and read, and the many ways...

My guest this week is Italo-Argentinian writer and translator, Andrea Zurlo. In this first part of our conversation, we speak about Andrea’s journey to and first impact with Italy in the early 1990s. We also discuss the art of translating, how AI is changing that landscape, and the cultural nuances of language.    We move on to discuss what it means to live one’s life between different countries,...

Your brain is a supercomputer, but we don’t know how to program it. It comes out of the box pre-programmed for fear, and unless we rewire it, it keeps repeating that pattern. Jim Keyes In this inspiring episode of 15 with Fosca, I welcome James W. Keyes, global business leader, former CEO of 7-Eleven and Blockbuster, philanthropist, educator, artist, and self-described modern Renaissance man, to e...

My guest this week is Melissa Deep, CEO & Founder of Virtique Srl, a Tuscany-based company that creates virtual experiences that transform sales, marketing, and advertising through Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, E-Commerce, and Geolocated Mapping. Virtique creates superior digital content that replicates and enhances the intimacy of the brick & mortar store experience. Through Virtiqu...

“What if we believe that what really makes us thrive as human beings, what makes us human beings, is our civility, and that we commit to it from a level of fierceness. That in the face of bullying, in the face of an error in the world system now, where people are rewarded for being nasty to each other and trying to take each other down, we stand fierce in our civility.” Joe Weston Join me and my g...

“When you break, you're forced to open another door, and that's when I came back here and found my roots because Nonna was strong, and I figured it had to be in me somehow. She was the key. A lot of bad stuff happened to us, but we're still together, and a lot of that came from Nonna Carmela.” Libby Cataldi on her new memoir, It Takes a Lifetime to Learn How to Live   In part two of my...

“My grandmother Carmela was my North Star, my safe port in many childhood storms. Strong. Independent. She swept the snow from her sidewalk wearing only a sweater, made her own wine, canned her own tomatoes, strung her own peppers to dry in the basement, and found edible dandelions for salads in the yard. She was the matriarch of la famiglia, whose grown sons stopped by every night after work to e...

As the podcast enters its third year, we’re changing things up a bit! The new season features another incredible lineup of guests and stories; but we’re broadening and widening the scope and taking 15 with Fosca a little outside of its niche to bring you conversations with writers, artists, and change makers exploring creativity, culture, life, and human connections from Italy and beyond. Find out...

Aperilife featuring Sam Rich I try to have one-on-one relationships, and I encourage them, because caring about a person and being kind is what I needed when I first came here because I was unsure. I fell in love with an Italian and I had to fall in love with Italy, with the good and the bad. Sam Rich When I met Sam a few months ago at an event I cornered her, told her how much of a fan I am, and...

In this episode, we’re invited into the warm, magical and delicious world of Carlotta Conti, a gifted cooking instructor who originally hails from Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna and who now welcomes guests into her home in the hills just outside of her Florence. Carlotta doesn’t just teach recipes, she offers a rare opportunity to live and experience Italian culture from the inside. Her bespoke cooking...

An Epic Ride featuring Emma Boutcher “When you're thinking about moving to a place it’s the people, that’s the most important thing. You get to see how they live, what it actually means to live there versus just staying on the surface. I was drawn to the beauty of this place and then had this immediate sense of what a community here is like.” Emma Boutcher Emma Boutcher is a young U.S. expat and e...

In this special episode, we dive into the heart of American football in Italy with Estra Guelfi Firenze, one of the premier teams in the Italian Football League. Founded in 2000, the Guelfi have become a powerhouse in the growing European football scene, known not just for their grit on the gridiron, but also for their deep ties to the local community. To celebrate their 25th anniversary and a spe...

SHARING SECRETS featuring Elia Nichols “I would say that after I did my TED talk in August my life did change in some ways because I think it's about changing the energy. You put yourself out there, you create new work, and you get seen by different people. You bring different energy to yourself and immediately I got a lot of people contacting me for new work or for different types of work.” Elia...

Catching up with Girl in Florence featuring Georgette Jupe  Season 4, Episode 15 “At the time I really felt like I was living my best life in that sense. I was meeting people, I loved Italy, the chaos, the food, and being pushed out of my comfort zone. In the US, I think sometimes especially where I grew up, you can live in a bubble. You're in your car, in your neighborhood, you don't see...

Minobossi: Made in Florence with Love  featuring Monica Bonaiuti  “It’s important to give possibilities for conscious buying because nowadays people know very well what's behind an object and they don’t buy it because of a logo but because they want to know what's really behind these two, three pieces of leather. There must be something that gives the buyer a sense of fairness, of being ha...

Time, Again: A digital detox story - and a new way of being for solopreneurs, leaders, and seekers featuring Sandrine Kom  Last month I participated in a retreat led by Sandrine Kom that aimed to transform stressed out superwomen into Zen superwomen.  I embraced the opportunity, shut off my phone, and spent a glorious weekend free of it and my other devices.  In this week’s episode Sandrine interv...

A lot of people say, I want to go to Italy, I want to go to Tuscany, I want to live there and then they get here and they're like, oh, I didn't realize it was going to be so hard. Yes it is hard, and a lot of times I just trudged along anyway and I did it and I think it was just the pure positive energy of I'm going to get this done . Donna Scharnagl What happens when you truly stumble...

Writing Florence  featuring Lori Hetherington and Monica Sharp, The Florence Literary Society    The real value of the Literary Society is that information exchange and sharing. When you sit down at your computer or with your notepad or notebook, it’s a solitary activity,but so many other aspects of writing involve others. Whether it's brainstorming an idea, getting feedback on a first draft, ...

What I look for in my street photography is the expression of people in everyday situations, their stories, something that's got a little twist to it, that's open-ended, so that people can step into a space and finish the story. Louise Olko Join me and this week’s guest, Louise Olko, photographer, figurative painter, and sculptor who took the leap just over a decade ago and decided to live out her...

The repetition of images creates a belief; the ensemble of beliefs creates the cultural DNA of our society. If we change the images we will change the culture. Chiara Tilesi  I have long been a fan of Chiara Tilesi and her work and was honored to interview her about her tireless efforts to transform the outdated and discriminatory paradigms prevalent in today's media landscape by producing imp...

Bestselling author, podcast creator and award-winning journalist, Jo Piazza, on The Sicilian Inheritance Jo Piazza’s bestseller, The Sicilian Inheritance , comes out in paperback today and to mark the occasion, I interviewed her about the success of the novel, which has been inspiring readers to travel to Sicily and learn about their Italian roots. If you are looking for a magical, mysterious esca...

I am in search of freedom, and it's led me to filmmaking, painting, singing. I've lived many lifetimes already in this lifetime and I'm in the pursuit of happiness, joy and freedom, and trying to understand what it means to be human and a woman and just to be, and sometimes I’ll create a fantastical, colorful, escapist world whether that's in painting or in filmmaking.  Vittoria Co...