For our Halloween and Ognissanti special, we brought in Alexandra Lawrence: British Institute of Florence lecturer, accredited guide, Dante devotee, and the woman Georgette texts every time she needs to know whether something in Florence actually happened. (Usually, annoyingly, it did.)

Together we sort Tuscany's ghost stories from the real history they were built on. A devil outsmarted by a dog on a bridge near Lucca. A noblewoman whose beauty routine involved a thirty-year contract with Satan. And a Palazzo Vecchio whose windows have seen more executions than any building reasonably should.

Then the other side of the season: why Italians spend November 1 and 2 scrubbing headstones and arranging chrysanthemums, why the Etruscans packed cheese graters for the afterlife, and two cemeteries worth a slow walk. Alexandra will die on the hill that Florence's history needs no embellishment. She will not, however, set foot in a deconsecrated country chapel after dark.

In this episode, we cover:

• Meet Alexandra: touring King Charles around Florence (yes really), the Zoom lectures born when the pandemic emptied the city, her Radical Renaissance Women series at the British Institute, and why she's technically not an art historian (her degree is in Italian literature)

• The window that never closes: Palazzo Budini Gattai, a bride still keeping watch, and the very real possibility that a cleaner shuts it by accident one day

• The devil at Giotto's bell tower: Valentina's folklore explanation for the Duomo wind tunnel, picked up from her teacher, the Tuscan story collector Lapucci. Georgette's verdict on the man who never came back: "Sounds like every Florentine man."

• Where the legends live: Valentina's reason for starting Too Much Tuscany (not just the shopping), and Lo Struscio Fiorentino, the first book to collect Florence's stories

• The Pazzi Conspiracy: Giuliano de' Medici stabbed 19 times in the Duomo, Lorenzo saved by Francesco Nori (whose tomb in Santa Croce everyone walks past to look at Michelangelo's), the consecration of the host as the go signal, and the conspirators hanged from Palazzo della Signoria and the Bargello

• Savonarola: an apocalyptic preacher in a hair shirt and black robes in a city dressed like the Magi Chapel, four years in power, a Borgia pope, the San Marco bell, the Bonfire of the Vanities, and his ashes in the Arno. Florence still throws flowers in the river for him every year.

• Florence doesn't do extremes: but, Valentina notes, it does do revenge (see: salting the earth of conquered towns)

• The Devil's Bridge of Borgo a Mozzano: Castruccio Castracani's medieval bridge over the Serchio and the dog sent across first and we asked Alexandra why the 14th-century devil was so damn busy.

• Borgo a Mozzano's Halloween festival: Georgette's visit years ago, a genuinely scary haunted house, and her rule for Tuscany: "Everything's spooky if you just throw some spiderwebs on it." Plus Bagni di Lucca next door. Maybe don't send your dog first.

• Older than the Church: Etruscan banquets for the dead, olive pits in tombs, and Halloween as a kind of Carnevale

• Cemeteries, without the fear: November 1 with flowers and blessings, photos on Italian tombstones, the English Cemetery (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, late-April irises, FAI tours and the nun who looks after it), San Miniato al Monte's monumental cemetery and a saint who carried his own head up the hill (football hold, we've decided), the Florence War Cemetery, and the German Military Cemetery at the Futa Pass on the Gothic Line

• Keeping the dead in the conversation: talking to our kids about the people we've lost, and why facing death head-on is the point of all of this

• Cose a Caso: Alexandra's favorite legend, La Berta at Santa Maria Maggiore ("just like a man, using his powers for evil"), Lucca Comics weekend with a theater kid, and Grinch vs. Halloween

For the record: the open window, the windy corner, the devil's bridge and La Berta are legends. The Pazzi Conspiracy and Savonarola are documented history, with the paintings and paperwork to prove it.

Guest

Alexandra Lawrence has spent more than 25 years in Italy working in journalism and international education, as a lecturer in art history and contemporary Italian cultural studies, and as an accredited guide for Italian museums and archaeological sites. Her academic background is in Italian literature, with a focus on 14th-century Florentine poetry and Dante. Since 2020 she has designed and run lecture series and courses on her own and with The British Institute of Florence, from Dante's Divine Comedy and Boccaccio's Decameron to Renaissance women and the Medici. She also runs an online book club devoted to Italian authors in translation and writes Illuminare, a twice-monthly Substack on literature, art and life. 🔗 Illuminare: · The British Institute of Florence: · Instagram:

Links mentioned

• Live in Italy Magazine, "Exploring Halloween and All Saints' Day in Italy" (Oct 2024)

• Borgo a Mozzano Halloween festival and my take on it on GirlinFlorence.

• VisitTuscany, "Mysteries, oddities and scary stories of Florence"

• Santa Maria Maggiore, Florence and La Berta

• The English Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello.

• Savonarola in Florence: the plaque in Piazza della Signoria and the Museo di San Marco

• April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici by Lauro Martines

• Lo Struscio Fiorentino:

• German Military Cemetery, Futa Pass

• Advancing Women Artists

Produced by Vivace Media and recorded at Zoworking (best coworking in Florence)

If you love Florence's dark side as much as we do, send this to the friend who always wants the scary version of the story, and leave us a review. It genuinely helps.

It felt like the right place to talk about money, mostly because we kept staring out at the view and wishing we had more of it. Hence an episode about money, the etiquette of it in Italy and what you should know.

Listen on Apple here

(Standard disclaimer, which we did say out loud: we are not financial advisors. Please do not take wealth management advice from two women sipping wine near a swimming pool that they don’t own)

It’s worth noting that here in Italy, talking about money is broadly considered rude… if not outright vulgar. Valentina grew up without a single finance class at school, and across many families, discussing income, monthly outgoings, or savings strategies remains strictly taboo. From the outside, it can easily look like every Italian family sits atop an endless reserve of wealth. (Spoiler: It is simply the nonni economy at work. And no, it is not endless.)

The exceptions, naturally, are hilarious. Asking what someone paid for a home or a car is perfectly acceptable… provided you accept a vague range:

• “About 25,000, circa.”

• “250,000... and something.”

Nobody ever gives the exact number. (Also: there are no longer any real property bargains in Florence lol)

Salaries and invoicing, however, remain totally off-limits—sometimes even between long-term partners. Valentina was genuinely startled when acquaintances in the US and UK casually asked what she earned within four minutes of meeting her.

We both strongly believe that this silence works at times like a trap. Back when we first started freelancing, client rates felt like the Wild West and nobody knew what was standard and there weren’t so many resources relevant to our work where we could check. Today, what truly helps is to share our quotes/rates openly with trusted colleagues helps to protect everyone, as we all know knowledge is power.

Fortunately, pay transparency is coming for the secrecy. We discussed upcoming wage legislation, and our point was simple: secrecy almost always benefits employers, and it benefits them most when the person being underpaid is a woman. (Update: Italy’s transparent salary decree took effect on June 7, 2026, which includes a strict ban on asking job candidates for their salary history.)

The question of CASH versus CARD

Despite the myth that Italy is solely a cash society, my girl Valentina almost never carries cash and pays for everything via contactless… which explains why she found herself stranded at an automated gas pump this week with zero actual euros and a sense of betrayal. I have to admit I’m a largely card/phone payer as well.

Yet that doesn’t mean that Italy’s cash culture is a distant.

Despite the fact that cashless situations are becoming super common here in Tuscany, you DO need cash particularly in high-altitude mountain huts across the Dolomites where card readers are non-existent or in the middle of the countryside. Roughly 61% of transactions in Italy were cash-based in 2024 (down from 82% in 2019), compared to just 29% in Sweden. (Source: The Local)

It’s also worth noting that historical distrust of banking institutions runs deep in Italy, reinforced by notorious banking scandals (Monte dei Paschi di Siena inevitably came up in our chat) hence the joke about hiding cash in mattresses. But it’s worth noting that around 36% of Italians keep emergency cash at home. This deep-seated distrust stems heavily from the infamous 1992 prelievo forzoso, when the government overnight seized 0.6% from private bank accounts. (Source: The Local)

Also worth noting that the legal cap on cash transactions was raised from €2,000 to €5,000 in 2023.

My own golden rule is to always keep €50 to €100 tucked away at home for absolute emergencies. Meanwhile, Valentina’s partner holds a firm theory that installing a home alarm system is the single biggest signal to a thief that you have something worth stealing.

A Freelancer’s Field Guide to Surviving Italy

1. Get free advice before opening a partita IVA

Your local Camera di Commercio runs a free support service for new businesses. In Florence, seek out the Sportello Nuove Imprese (link below) where they will walk you through your structural options, tax brackets, and filing requirements (you can do this with your future accountant but at least it exists as a free service). Book well in advance and double-check their opening hours online, as different official pages routinely contradict one another which well.. is standard. Remember Italy is frictionmaxxing!

2. Learn the word “acconto” before November

Italy requires freelancers to pay income taxes in advance, calculated from what you earned the previous year (YAY… not). Valentina insists she actually enjoys paying her fair share of taxes; what she despises is anticipating them. These tax advances for us both arrive right before summer vacation, and then again right before Christmas, which feels extra cruel. Mark the dates in your calendar every January.

3. Factor in the months you will never get paid

Salaried employees in Italy receive a tredicesima (a 13th month’s salary paid around Christmas), and some contracts even include a quattordicesima (a 14th month paid in summer). Freelancers get neither (yeah..). While some corporate clients now fold this 13th-month equivalent into monthly retainer payments, always ensure your quoted rates account for the built-in bonuses an employee contract would provide automatically.

4. Notice when you are asked “con o senza fattura?”

Whether you’re at the dentist, hiring a plumber, or booking a trade service, you will eventually encounter this question. Going without an invoice bypasses the standard 22% IVA (VAT), making it undeniably tempting, but entirely illegal. Valentina notes a visible cultural shift here: most modern professionals she works with now actively prefer digital cards, formal invoices, and trackable bank transfers. Plus, if you consult for public museums or the local municipality, your tax records must be immaculate or you cannot secure contracts at all.

(Friendly reminder: We are not accountants! Please hire a local commercialista—ideally one who explains tax law in plain, jargon-free language.)

Tipping in Italy (Without Being Awkward)

Americans are conditioned to believe that omitting a tip makes you a fundamentally bad human being. As an American who grew up in that culture, I know this guilt well. Here is how to navigate the Italian context gracefully:

• Coperto vs. Servizio: You will almost always see one of these listed at the bottom of the menu. Coperto covers your seat, table linens, bread basket, and basic service, meaning you have effectively already paid a tip. If you spot both itemized on your bill, you are almost certainly sitting in a tourist trap or simply ask for clarification.

• What We Actually Do: Valentina tips taxi drivers and delivery riders, recognizing that their work is precarious and frequently underpaid. I generally round up small bills (a €48 check becomes €50), and also add more for exceptionally warm service. We both always tip licensed tour guides.

• The Oversized Tip: I hate to say it but leaving an exorbitant tip isn’t perceived as generous, it’s pretty awkward. I’m sure people appreciate it but it is never expected.

• The Payment Tablet: The digital screen swiveled around to face you with predefined prompt options of “5%, 10%, 15%, or No” has officially arrived at a few places in Florence. Yes, it’s just as socially awkward here as it is everywhere else and I’m not a fan.

For a deeper dive into the American psychology behind tipping, check out these excellent episodes from Planet Money: “Why Do We Tip?” and This American Life: “Allure of the Mean Friend”.

Bill Splitting, Birthdays & Wedding Envelopes

• Going Alla Romana: Splitting a restaurant bill equally (alla romana) is wonderful, until you find yourself sitting next to the friend who ordered the bistecca alla fiorentina while you had a simple bowl of pasta. More diners are now requesting itemized receipts for what they actually consumed, though Valentina has a friend who meticulously splits group checks down to the exact cent (I get it, this economoy!) Note on kids: children generally aren’t factored into the head-count split (e.g., five adults and five kids means the bill is divided strictly five ways).

• Birthdays: In Italy, the general rule is that the host pays for their own party but I don’t see this in practice that often unless it is indeed a private party. This typically involves a pre-agreed set menu arranged with the restaurant to avoid open-ended ordering. For her partner’s 50th birthday, Valentina’s compromise was covering half the total cost and asking guests for a modest €15 contribution. Honestly being that eating out is much more expensive than it used to be, I always like things to be super crystal clear before going out or attending any event.

• Weddings: It might be a surprise to many but here cash gifts are standard, either sent directly via IBAN transfer or slipped into an envelope box at the venue. Valentina shared a story about an acquaintance who openly judged guests for gifting less than the per-head cost of their plate which again… sigh. We are less in the age of “we need things for the house” and registries are less of a thing here so it makes sense that the couple would want to choose their gifts/honeymoon fun.

Essential Financial Resources

• Pecuniami (Instagram): Run by a former bank accountant who creates engaging, accessible content focused on helping women build long-term financial independence.

• Casa delle Donne (Florence): Offers excellent financial literacy workshops and community courses tailored specifically for women.

• Sportello Nuove Imprese: The city’s official platform for free advisory sessions when setting up a new business or registering a partita IVA.

• Bank of Italy Financial Literacy Survey (2023): Comprehensive data on financial knowledge, gender disparities, and economic trends across Italy.

Can looking at a painting actually make you feel better?

In April 2026, Italy's Ministries of Health and Culture signed a protocol so doctors can prescribe museum visits.

And today's guest has been doing a version of this for about 35 years.

Georgette and Valentina sit down with art historian, art therapist and guide Dott.ssa Lucia Montuschi, who started out as an educator in the Uffizi's Sezione Didattica. That was the same era in which psychiatrist Graziella Magherini was writing about Stendhal Syndrome. Lucia explains the difference between guardare and osservare, and why her first question in front of a painting is never "what is it?" but "what can you see?" She also talks about working with patients alongside doctors, and why she thinks art is the most universal language we have.

Along the way: crying in front of Guernica, the David and the Nike of Samothrace. Why free museums abroad feel so different from Italy's. Night openings for kids. Why Lucia can't stand immersive Van Gogh experiences. And harmony as the real reason people keep coming to Florence. It closes with a Cose a Caso question made for this episode: which single painting would give you Stendhal Syndrome?

In this episode, we cover:

• How it started: the Uffizi's Sezione Didattica, founded in 1972 with volunteer educators, and how Lucia ended up working with patients there while Dr. Graziella Magherini was writing about Stendhal Syndrome

• Guardare vs. osservare: "What can you see in the painting?" as the starting point, and the patient whose reading of a della Robbia Madonna at the Bargello said more about himself than about the sculpture

• "Art is not a medicine": Lucia on why art can't replace treatment but can help people heal

• When art makes you cry: Guernica, visitors walking toward the David, the Nike of Samothrace, and discovering Rothko at the Venice Biennale

• Originals vs. reproductions: a King's College London study (one study, 50 people) comparing stress hormones when viewing original art and reproductions, and why Lucia "really hates" fully immersive projection exhibitions that we constantly see around Europe.

• Museums and kids: free museums in Scotland and Ireland vs. one free day a month in Italy, a less-than-welcoming afternoon at Palazzo Strozzi, and night openings with flashlights at a small pinacoteca in Faenza

• Not every artwork is for you: Valentina's son loves Caravaggio and doesn't get Rothko, and why art is like food or music

• "Flat shoes": Lucia's professor Mina Gregori on why art history means going to see the work in person, light and windows included

• Harmony: the cloisters of San Marco and San Lorenzo, the Duomo's dome, and why Lucia thinks people really come to Florence

• Italy's art on prescription protocol: what the April 2026 agreement between the Health and Culture ministries does, with Canada as an early example

• A pilot program in Florence: Santa Maria Nuova, the Soprintendenza under Antonio Paolucci, a partnership with Paris, and a day trip to the Carrara marble quarries

• Art in hard times: Valentina's art-and-nature reset, and Lucia on art and music after losing her father

• Programs around Italy: Piedmont's museum prescriptions, Alzheimer's programs at Villa Giulia, the Museo Marino Marini and in the Valdarno, touch tours for blind visitors, and oncology patients at the Colosseum after closing

• Go back again: why one visit isn't enough to decide whether a piece speaks to you

• Cose a Caso: which painting gives each of us Stendhal Syndrome, and why all three of us picked something huge

Check out Lucia's website and tour offerings here, and you can follow her on Instagram here and here.

Georgette and Valentina travel the Maremma coast north to south from one home base: ZoWorking's villa in Punta Ala (btw the website is a work in progress, they haven’t uploaded the villa yet but you can see more details about this place here), the pine-forest resort town shaped in many ways by Florentine architect Walter Di Salvo.

You can read about him here, in Italian, but worth translating to get an idea of how much his work has influenced the area.

For anyone interested: this villa (pictured above) in Punta Ala sleeps 7 across four bedrooms and six bathrooms in 315 m², with 360-degree views stretching from the Maremma hills to the Tuscan Archipelago. The wellness wing alone is worth the trip: think infinity pool, sauna, Turkish bath, and gym, alongside an indoor cinema (so cool), grand piano, and a whisky-and-cigar room for evenings in. Outside, an open-air kitchen and wood-fired pizza oven make for the kind of dinners you plan a whole trip around.

Valentina brings the insider's version (the Maremma Tuscans actually vacation in, and why Marina di Grosseto is the beach they don't tell foreigners about). Georgette shares what she fell in love with when she first visited the area (which you can read about here).

You'll come away with ideas about this stunning area: where to base yourself, what to book ahead, and which stops are worth the drive.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Punta Ala: a town once called Punta Troia, renamed for fascist-era aviator Italo Balbo, home port to Luna Rossa in the 2000 America's Cup, and a place Tuscans go to disappear every summer, fall and spring.

• Paolo Fanciulli, the fisherman activist who is all about shining light on the damage that illegal trawling does to marine life along the Maremma coastline and really has dedicated his life force to this important cause (including create a marble sculpture underwater museum to keep nets from ruining the sea floor). just wrote a post about him on her incredible substack today so it’s perfect timing to get to know hi.

• Walter Di Salvo: the overlooked Florentine architect who drew Punta Ala's 1959–60 master plan, built villas that sit inside the pine forest rather, and claimed to have given Tuscany its first roundabouts (fun fact!)

• The villa: why we're basing this trip at Zoworking's villa in Punta Ala, and what a perfect first day there looks like

• Cala Violina: the "singing beach" near Scarlino, why it needs a summer reservation, and why you carry your rubbish out (because of the wild boar).

• Follonica: an old iron-smelting town with a foundry museum, Blue Flag beaches, and Elba on the horizon (more about Maremma on Valentina’s blog here).

• Castiglione della Pescaia: a working fishing harbor under a walled medieval town with one of our favorite personal beaches.

• Diaccia Botrona: one of Italy's most important wetlands, 200+ bird species, and plenty of trails to go on your own adventures.

• Marina di Grosseto: We love it for the Art Nouveau villas and the retro Sciangai district. It is truly a family beach town well known to actual Tuscans, not so much by anyone else.

• The Maremma Park and the butteri: long-horned Maremmana cattle, the mounted herders who work them, and what Italian cowboys actually have in common with Texan ones. This is one agriturismo that offers experiences where you can learn more about how they work and be one of the “butteri” yourself.

• Talamone: Garibaldi's fortress, kitesurfing at Fertilia, and Paolo the Fisherman, who sank marble sculptures into the sea to stop illegal trawlers (and it worked)

• Orbetello and the lagoon: a town floating on a strip of land, flamingos, a lone Spanish windmill, and smoked eel. Here is my experience in this area back in the day.

• Monte Argentario: a former island, Spanish forts, the Roman summer crowd, how normal people do it, and Caravaggio's death in Porto Ercole

• How to do it: why you need a car, what to book ahead, and why late spring and September–October are the sweet spot

• Cose a Caso: as always!

LINKS MENTIONED

• Stay at the villa: Villa di Salvo: https://www.mamoflorence.com/puntaalaluxury, and you can see all of their luxury offerings here.

• ZoWorking Sesto Fiorentino: https://zoworking.com/

• Cala Violina bookings: https://booking.calaviolinascarlino.it/ (the season reopens next June).

• Parco Regionale della Maremma: parco-maremma.it

• Paolo the Fisherman / Casa dei Pesci: paoloilpescatore.it (AMAZING MAN and cause and you most definitely should book a fishing expedition with him).

This episode is made in partnership with ZoWorking, who own the villa featured and host our studio.

Big thanks to our motherboard Vivace Media for producing the show, and to ZoWorking Sesto Fiorentino for hosting us, this time all the way down to the coast!

If this one made you want to drive south, leave us a review, share it with someone planning a Tuscany trip, and tell us your favourite Maremma beach.

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Georgette and Valentina sit down with Florence-based cooking instructor, food journalist, and Saporita Supper Club founder Sara Cagle (LOVE HER) to talk about what has changed the city's culinary landscape due to viral trends on Tiktok. You know about the wine windows serving unnamed "red, white, or spritz" and one historic gelateria where Valentina, who grew up on its gelato, now waits half an hour for a cone.

We get into how social media and post-pandemic tourism have changed the way people eat in Florence, and who that change is actually for.

Sara also shares how she ended up here (culinary school, then a surprise pandemic), why a supper club full of strangers is a very un-Italian idea that works anyway, and the simple ways to eat better in Florence: small local food tours, the Sant'Ambrogio market, a breakfast standing at the bar, and just asking people what's in season.

In this episode, we cover:

• From LA to Florence: Sara's path from food journalism in Los Angeles to culinary school in Florence in 2019, a pandemic halfway through, a stint making pasta at Eataly, and moving back for good in 2022

• Saporita Supper Club: how it started with friend and food writer Phoebe Hunt at Beast Gallery in Sant'Ambrogio, the Italian-meets-international menus, and why Valentina says eating dinner with strangers is "so American"

• Wine Window Overdrive: the history of the buchette del vino (yes, including the plague), the numbers the Associazione Buchette del Vino has mapped across Florence, Tuscany, and the world, Vivoli selling gelato through one during lockdown, and how they turned into crowded streets and unlabeled spritzes made for the camera

• The Vivoli Affogato phenomenon: what happens when the algorithm "discovers" a gelateria Valentina's family has been going to for generations, and our modest proposal involving residency cards

• Bistecca for Two? Why Sara gently steers couples away from ordering a Florentine steak because Tuscan cuisine is much varied than one thinks.

• Rage Bait and Protein: "Italians don't eat vegetables," requests to add chicken to the pasta, and why expecting another country to feed you like home is a universal habit, not just an American one

• Cheese-Wheel Pasta: hygiene questions, whether it's actually new (Valentina remembers it in Rome before it went viral), Georgette's theory that it's an '80s throwback, and what you're really paying for

• Novelty Imports in the Centro Storico: lobster rolls in Santo Spirito, Japanese pancakes in Sant'Ambrogio, a matcha shop in San Frediano, and a viral cinnamon roll, and Sara's point that when new spots open where locals no longer live, they aren't really for locals but that doesn't mean we can't love them anyway.

• How to Eat Well in Florence: small independent food tours, exploring Mercato di Sant'Ambrogio on your own, breakfast al bar, following local food voices instead of the algorithm, and why you shouldn't plan your whole trip with a chatbot

• AI in the Kitchen: students doing all their research through ChatGPT, Google's AI search, and why Sara still keeps recipe development human (which is actually harder than it sounds).

• Cose a Caso Spitfire Round: the one authentic dish every tourist walks past (frittelle di riso, sfoglia alla crema, schiacciata all'uva, and pane, vino e zucchero), and the one food trend each of us would ban from the city tomorrow

Connect & Links Mentioned

• Guest: Sara Cagle , Sara's Instagram

• Saporita Supper Club: Instagram

• Food voices mentioned: Giulia Scarpaleggia (Juls' Kitchen), Emiko Davies, Gipsy in the Kitchen

• Associazione Buchette del Vino

• Wine window book by Robin Gheesling

• Hosts: Georgette & Valentina — Two Voices, No Filter: Talking Truth Beyond the Dolce Vita

Big thanks to Vivace Media for producing the show, and to ZOWorking Sesto Fiorentino for hosting us. If this episode resonated with you, leave us a review, drop a comment, and share it with someone planning a trip to Florence.

A viral Substack essay claimed European women don't hate their bodies the way American women do. Many people disagreed. Georgette and Valentina dig into the actual argument, and the messier truth underneath it: it's not that Italy has fewer body issues, it's that everyone in Italy feels entitled to an opinion about your body, out loud, to your face, starting in childhood.

Sparked by three dueling Substack essays — Rachel Signer's beach-eyed case for European body confidence, Croatian writer Maja Roglic's counter that it's collectivism rather than positivity, and Angelica Frey's lived rebuttal — the conversation moves through Valentina's own memories of comments on her body, the TV culture that trained generations of Italians on what a body is "supposed" to look like, the class and gender lines running under all of it, and an honest, unscripted conversation about GLP-1's that neither of them expected to have on mic. It closes, as always, with Cose a Caso — this time turned inward, on the one thing they each genuinely love about her own body.

Episode highlights

• The essay that started it: Rachel Signer's "Why Don't European Women Hate Their Bodies?" — and why an American writer's beach-side observation landed so differently with the women actually living here

• Valentina's take: Italian body freedom at the beach (the Brazilian bikini, every age, no apology) is real — but so is the collective right everyone feels to comment on your weight, your tan, your "sei stanca," to your face

• Why gym locker rooms, big multigenerational families, and sheer population density might explain more about Italian body comfort than actual confidence does

• The counter-essay: Maja Roglic's "European Women Aren't More Body Positive, They're Just Less Self-Obsessed" (on Substack) — a collectivist-vs-individualist framing neither host had considered before reading it

• Angelica Frey's rebuttal, "Unfortunately, European Women Hate Their Bodies Too" where she shares a specific list of body comments she remembers from age 7 to 24.

• Raffaella Carrà — filmed in three-quarter angle for her entire career to hide her hips — and a modern-day Italian TV performer still getting comments about post-baby weight 15+ years later

• The pre-Berlusconi TV history neither host expected to get into: Cin Cin, and how daily televised objectification (not just an annual Victoria's Secret show) shaped a generation's sense of "normal"

• It's not just women: Valentina's sons weight comments, Mario's father on his beard, and why body judgment in Italy cuts across gender

• Filler, cosmetic surgery, and TikTok-driven beauty trends in southern Italy

• A candid conversation about GLP-1s, where both hosts actually land, and Georgette's experience with a public-hospital endocrinologist in Florence who treated it holistically instead of just saying "lose weight"

• Georgette's 2015 wedding dress story — the bridal shop that made her feel broken, and the Sicilian designer who didn't

• Cose a Caso: what each of them actually loves about her own body — and why both answers end up being about motherhood

Big thanks to Vivace Media for producing the show, and to ZO Working Sesto Fiorentino for hosting us. If this episode resonated with you, leave us a review, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Where to find us

YouTube · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · Instagram — search "Two Voices No Filter"

but what about Italy?

Italy was the first country in the EU to pass a comprehensive AI law. It ranks seventh in the world for AI research, and yet, fewer than one in ten of its small businesses has started a single AI project.

Into that contradiction, Valentina brings something more personal: a newsletter she wrote about FOBO — the fear of becoming obsolete — after the same question landed twice in one week, once from a table of fellow freelancers all twenty years into their careers, and once from her own AI students, decades younger and already asking if they'll have jobs at all.

Joining Georgette and Valentina is the formidable Nadia Koski, a global marketing and communications leader specializing in AI transformation and host of the new podcast Still Human: Real Talk in the Age of AI. The conversation moves fast: why entry- and mid-level jobs are the ones actually at risk right now, the two-to-three-year lag before global AI trends land in Italy, real (and not-so-reassuring) numbers on how Italians are using these tools without understanding them, Italy's new AI law and a deepfake incident that hit disturbingly close to home for Valentina's own family, a classroom study with a genuinely counterintuitive result, and the income and gender gaps already baked into who benefits from AI. It closes with Cose a Caso — including the AI use nobody wants to admit to, and the one Italian job that may be truly automation-proof.

Episode highlights

• Where Valentina's FOBO newsletter actually came from: a table of fellow 40-something freelancers (including Giulia Scarpaleggia of Giulia's Kitchen) all asking the same question her own AI students ask her

• Nadia on why entry-level and mid-level jobs face the first wave of disruption — with Meta's 10% layoffs and Klarna's 30%-cut-then-rehire as live examples

• Valentina's "line": delegate everything to AI and you fall under it; use it to amplify your own judgment and you stay above it

• "AI is always on LSD" — Valentina's classroom trick for teaching students to fact-check everything a chatbot gives them

• Why Valentina tells students not to trust AI as a research tool, and the shift away from a straightforward Google search bar

• The "washing machine effect" — running the same prompt through ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude to compare results

• Real Italian adoption numbers: 77% of Italians say they use AI tools (up from 69% in 2024), but only 7% claim in-depth understanding

• Italy's AI law in practice — prison terms for harmful AI-generated content, and the deepfake incident involving Valentina's son's schoolmate that nearly went to the police

• A study comparing three groups of high schoolers' AI use: the unrestricted-access group scored worst on tests; the group with guided, integrated use scored best

• The US comparison: the Take It Down Act, deepfake victims, and who's already using the law to their own advantage

• The World Bank stat Nadia cites: large language models are trained on roughly half the world's data — meaning half the world is missing from the information shaping all of this

• SME AI adoption in Italy has doubled to 16% (from just over 8%) but still sits at half the EU average, with only 29% of small businesses applying AI to their core business

• How AI is reshaping content and photography budgets for small businesses — and the much bigger disruption already hitting fashion e-commerce photo teams (see verification note)

• Nadia on the one thing she still won't hand to AI: her own voice, her own writing, and who she trusts to help her with the rest

• Cose a Caso: an AI palm reading, a chatbot relationship-advice confession, and the one Italian job *hint: it involves judgmental older men at construction sites* that nobody thinks AI can take

Guest

Nadia Koski is a global marketing and communications leader specializing in AI transformation, and the host of Still Human: Real Talk in the Age of AI — a new podcast examining technology's intersection with human experience, work, and identity. Based in Italy, she works globally, bringing a perspective that's genuinely international and unwilling to just cheerlead for the technology she works in. She previously created the Women Lead podcast and co-built The Digital Distillery podcast network, and now guest-lectures at Syracuse University, Florida State University, and the Florence School of the Arts. Based in Florence for the past 20 years, she also serves as a United Nations Women's delegate. [🔗 Still Human on Apple Podcasts · LinkedIn

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Where to find us

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Special thanks to Vivace Media for producing us and Zoworking for letting us record our magic at your studio!

Part of me wants to disconnect entirely. Let’s plant a garden and stop refreshing the news. Let someone else worry about whether we’ve built our own obsolescence. The other part of me, the endless researcher and writer and relentlessly curious person, has to dive into every aspect of what this actually means.

Fridays are supposed to be for fun. Not for catastrophizing or doom-scrolling through tech employee think pieces.

But it would be honestly weird not to say something.

But I also don’t trust all of this doom and gloom scare we have been seeing because the truth of the matter is that actual humans, mainly white billionaire men, are profiting off this mass hysteria.

We could, in theory, stop and regulate them. Less data centers, more regulation.

This reel, a friend sent, gave me interesting food for thought when it comes to putting the blame squarely on machines (made by humans) rather than the humans themselves, who again, are set to profit trillions. Is the answer to the hysteria we now see that we should give them more money to keep ourselves safe from technology literally forced upon us? Is that how it all works? What do you think?

So here it is.

If you’re in the USA, or here in Italy, or anywhere else, vote. Demand that your local leaders do something about regulating AI. Anything. It’s not partisan anymore, like literally these people are sounding alarm bells for a reason but they also are set to profit from whatever happens to OpenAI or Anthropic’s stock prices once they go public. Let’s remember that.

The Five

Events that would be a crime not to share in Florence and beyond!

ARTISAN CRAFTS: Artigianato e Palazzo — September 11-13, Palazzo Corsini

Without a doubt this is one of the better-curated craft fairs in Florence, if you actually want to find something worth bringing home. But this year, the 32nd edition, it’s evolved into something bigger: over 100 contemporary Italian artisans (including emerging Next Generation makers) showing live, alongside immersive installations by designer Jonathan Bocca, a sonorous bamboo pavilion, and land-art sculptures. You’ll find ceramicists rethinking traditional techniques, textile artists working with recovered materials, young makers building their practices on centuries-old craft traditions, and social cooperatives using artigianato as a tool for real change. The fair also debuts its urban regeneration project—artisans opening new workshops across Florence. Come for the handmade goods; stay for the philosophy: that tradition isn’t something to preserve in amber, but to evolve. September 11–13 at Giardino Corsini.

MUSIC: Firenze Jazz Festival: Through September

This festival has become September's most restless cultural appointment, and this year's 10th edition proves why: it's abandoned the single-stage model entirely in favor of a sprawling, nomadic experience across the Oltrarno and historic villas. Over a dozen venues: think open-air amphitheaters, gardens, unconventional spaces which become stages for everything from reggae to experimental electronics. You'll catch Alborosie & Shengen Clan one night, then find yourself in a dimly lit courtyard watching Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld blur jazz into something unrecognizable. It's about collision, where Florentine history meets contemporary sonics, and the city itself becomes the festival. September 5–13 across Oltrarno. firenzejazzfestival.it

FOOD: Sagra del Tartufo (Truffle Festival) — September 12-15, San Miniato

The Sagra del Tartufo at Il Girone has always been a personal favorite since I first arrived in Florence in 2005. Now in its 42nd year, this September gathering at the ARCI circolo in Fiesole has turned truffle season into a reason for strangers to sit together, two seatings nightly, passing plates of white lasagne, beef tartare, carbonara al tartufo, grilled meat dusted in black truffles. Every euro goes toward ambulances, equipment and actual care for the territory. September 3–27, Il Girone, Fiesole. Reservations essential.

MARKETS: Second-Hand and Vintage — Sunday, September 13, 11am-8pm

Only Usato, a regular vintage clothes fair in Florence will spread across the lawns at Conventino Caffè Letterario, which is basically my second home. In addition to the shopping, expect three DJ sets—Playlistine’s random mix at 11am, Coco Djette at 3pm, Queen LaTipah at 6pm. September 13, 11am–8pm, Conventino Caffè Letterario, Via Giano della Bella 20. Email onlyusato@gmail.com to vendor.

WINE: Expo Chianti Classico: September 10-13, Greve in Chianti

This weekend Piazza Matteotti in Greve becomes an open-air wine festival with dozens of producers from across the Chianti Classico territory who simply pour and talk. The idea is that you get a glass, a holder strap, a tasting booklet, seven tickets (€20), and four days to move between stands at your own speed. In addition, there are guided tastings, exhibitions, live music. September 10–13, Piazza Matteotti, Greve in Chianti. expochianticlassico.com

READING / LISTENING / EATING

Read: Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli is this cycle’s Vivace Book Club pick. I loved it for the writing first, Luiselli moves through time and memory in a way that feels almost lyrical. But also for the grace it gives to the messy middle of life. For the mother whose marriage fell apart, the daughter asking impossible questions, the grandmother whose memory is fading. Read along with me, have a look at my editor’s note, and join our community so we can talk about it!

This week on Two Voices, No Filter: The Guilt Algorithm

Let’s talk about Guilt baby!

You know what I’m talking about, the guilt of dropping your kid at summer camp while she’s clutching a stuffed hedgehog and telling you she doesn’t want to go. The guilt of a vacation you earned but still checked your email on. The guilt of being a working mother, or of not being one. The guilt of simply being tired.

I open up about leaving for Scotland and Northern Ireland in the middle of soft-launching my work’s editorial,Valentina talks about finally taking three real weeks off after two years without one, and why “beato te“ might be the single most irritating thing you can say to a freelancer right now.

We also get into the relocation-influencer spouting that “Italians just know how to embrace summer” content (tone-deaf mid-heatwave when this was filmed, if you ask us), the guilt-versus-selfishness double bind, and why apologizing less in emails quietly changed Valentina’s entire relationship to work.

You can listen on Apple or Spotify (or on Youtube above).

Eat:

I’m in a fig moment because tis the (end) of the season. Luckily for me, one of my nearby neighbors has a tree that I can “borrow” some from and besides that I am just obsessed. I eat them on my own, then with prosciutto and cheese, then toasted on bread, then baked into a cake. Maybe because I’m a millennial who is part of the “fig newton” generation. Pair any good figs you can get with something salty and you’re living your best life. Good figs don’t last long in a house with me.

This week is a short one because of work, life and my inability to focus on anything because of apocalyptic AI news but I know you guys understand that. Wishing you all a wonderful weekend from the busiest train station in Italy (or so it feels currently).

Not the tidy "here's how you can fix it" version, but the real thing: the guilt of dropping your daughter at camp while she clutches her stuffed hedgehog, the guilt of taking a vacation you've worked two years to earn, the guilt of being a working mother (or not being one), and the exhaustion we all seem to currrently embody.

Georgette on leaving for Scotland and Northern Ireland mid-launch of Vivace Media; Valentina on why "lucky you" is the worst thing you can say to a freelancer taking three well-earned weeks off. Plus: the relocation-influencer trope of Italians "embracing summer," guilt vs. selfishness, why apologizing less changed how Valentina works, and chasing serenity instead of happiness.

In Cose a Caso: we both share two things we refuse to feel guilty about.

Recorded at ZoWorking, Sesto Fiorentino. Brought to you by Vivace Media.

Share it with someone who needs to hear it, and leave us a review, it really helps.

🎙 Talking truth beyond the dolce vita.

Follow us on IG here.

Surprise to no one, I know.

And in there, is a $4 trillion industry built on convincing you that you are not okay as you are. And we all have felt that. The urge to turbo optimize our health, to bounce back. Even if there is that part of us that knows we are doing our best with the resources we have, NO, there is a fucking annoying consistent inner voice that many time says you can do better. Get your lazy bum moving. Look at that woman getting up at 4am to do burpees before her baby wakes up.

Which is the perfect segue into the actual news: Season 2 of Two Voices No Filter is here, and we kicked it off with our first-ever guest episode.

Valentina and I sat down with our personal health gurus Ilaria Di Donato and Gloria Fuson to talk about what wellness in all of its messy and contradictory forms.

We get into the meaning of mens sana in corpore sano (and Mussolini’s use of fitness as fascist propaganda… yes, really), performative wellness vs. intuitive wellness, perimenopause and the missing generation of visible role models over 40, period stigma, and the fat-shaming hiding underneath Italy’s “healthier relationship with food” reputation.

Plus Barbie Pilates, and a Gwyneth Paltrow supplement cabinet (scaryyyy) showdown in this week’s ending segment Cose a Caso. It’s funny, it’s honest, and it’s the episode I’ve wanted to make since we started this podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts please go listen, support and share. It means the world to us to get the word out for this very personal project!

THE FIVE

In true back-to-school vibing, here are five things happening around Florence this week as the city likes to go from zero to frantic as September really kicks off.

1. Kinderdisco at Il Conventino (Sun, Sept 6, 3:30pm-8pm): I mean A free family rave sounds actually really fun. Expect electronic sets from Antonio Valente, One Drop, and Santamama, a Playtronica Lab by Epimoric, face painting, food and drinks. Details.

2. IN-Sostenibile: Urban Edition (Sun, Sept 6, Villa Bardini, 12pm): An all-day plant-based picnic festival: eight chefs (including Simone Cipriani who is incredible!) cooking with local producers, free yoga on the lawn, natural wine from Bibo Potabile, and an author’s dinner from Simone Cipriani and Filippo Saporito to close it out. Details and where to book your (free) tickets.

3. Firenze Jazz Festival (through Sept 13, multiple venues all over Florence). Over 100 artists across the city this edition and it’s always a raucous good time. This weekend’s Villa Bardini bill has EMEM and Fabrizio Bosso & Julian Oliver Mazzariello’s “Tandem,” with the Main Stage taking over Porta Romana Sept 11–13th. Details

4. Cirk Fantastik! (Sept 6 in Scandicci, then Sept 10–20 at the Cascine) — Think a contemporary circus under three big tops: 39 shows, free kids’ workshops, DJ sets, and a theater on wheels. We went last year and had a ball trying circus tricks Details

5. La Fierucola del Pane (Sun, Sept 6, Piazza Santissima Annunziata, 9am–sunset): The 43rd edition (yep, you heard that right) of Florence’s bread market: farmer-bakers, tastings, a bread-making demo at noon, and folk dancing to send everyone off. Details

TWO WINS & ONE WOBBLE

Win one: Admittedly, a year ago my sense of self and confidence was at a bit of a low, I was genuinely unsure where to put my time and energy and I just felt this want to create but didn’t know where and how to do it. This September feels almost unrecognizably different. I’m again doing the work I’m actually passionate about which encompasses the podcast and my role as managing editor at Vivace Network. I’m proud of what we’re building there: we’re aiming to foster community, share real stories, a book club that has really been my favorite thing and all of this has rejuvenated me more than I expected. I don’t care as much if I make mistakes and if someone thinks I suck at what I’m doing, that’s fine too. I really don’t care. That being said, it wasn’t always like this, so I’m not taking it for granted. (Some of what we’ve been making, if you want to see it.)

Win two: The transition back to school and routine, after a too hot, slightly blah August (except for last weekend in Liguria which saved my soul), has gone smoother than I braced for. My goal this year is to not overstress about the routines themselves and instead focus on intentional time together — what we actually do with each other once work and school are done. More GAMES. We’ve been playing Clue for kids and getting quite competative at card games. We also may or may not have a resident turtle that comes to visit our garden from time to time too. Her name is “turty”.

One wobble: I still have to work at prioritizing my own sleep and my own time, the kind that’s just for personal joy, not productivity. I always feel like I need to be doing something for the common good. Cooking, planning, ordering photos, organizing our stuff but do I really need to make every moment something productibe? No. I need my own touch grass moments too, it seems.

READING / LISTENING

“The shame of being poor was nothing like the shame of being rich.”

Reading: Emilee Hackney’s memoir All That's Unseen has me diving down a rabbit hole of Appalachian mountain culture and class dynamics. I gobbled this up in two days.

Listening: How to Touch Grass, “The Internet Is More Image-Focused Than Ever” — the episode that kicked off this week’s train of thought, above.

MAP PIN (Mini Route): Via Gioberti

Via Vincenzo Gioberti, historically known as the strada dei cento negozi (street of a hundred shops), connects the ancient porta alla Croce at Piazza Beccaria to Piazza Alberti, weaving 19th-century trade history into a vibrant modern shopping street.

Stroll this bustling 500-meter stretch to sample bakeries and local boutiques while walking the same path that once marked Florence’s rapid expansion during its brief era as the capital of Italy.

CLOSING NOTE

If there’s a thread through this week’s comeback (sorry for the pause, I've been head-down in the trenches), it’s dropping the what you think you need to be and tuning in to what matters. We could also do a lot less with constant performing and more paying attention: to the body, your creative soul, to your people, and to real life off the screen.

In our first-ever guest episode (and Season Two opener), Georgette and Valentina sit down with Ilaria Di Donato and Gloria Fuson of Relax Firenze to talk about what wellness actually means once you strip away the LED masks, the 4am influencer routines, and the supplement cabinets.

We trace "mens sana in corpore sano" back to its real Latin meaning, talk about Mussolini's use of physical fitness as fascist propaganda, and land on the difference between performative wellness (the Instagram version) and intuitive wellness (actually listening to your body). Ilaria and Gloria bring 30+ combined years in the wellness and movement space in Florence — Ilaria on natural health, mindful counseling, and body-focused therapy; Gloria on women's health, menstrual cycle awareness, and movement.

We get into perimenopause and the total lack of visible role models past 40 growing up, why medicine has historically been built around men's bodies, period shame (hidden pads, the water-not-blood in tampon ads, Valentina's first period story), and, because we can't do an episode in Italy without it, la bella figura and the very real, very present fat-shaming that hides under Italy's "healthier relationship with food" reputation.

It's an honest, funny, occasionally emotional conversation about the difference between looking well and being well — and it ends, as always, with Cose a Caso.

Episode highlights

• The real meaning of "mens sana in corpore sano" — and how Mussolini weaponized physical fitness for fascist propaganda

• Why HYROX is a marketing format as much as a fitness one

• "Performative wellness" vs. "intuitive wellness" — Gloria's framing for the whole episode

• Ilaria on chronotypes, aging, and why she wakes at 4am (and why that's not a rule for anyone else)

• Perimenopause, menopause, and biohacking — why "resignation" isn't the only option for aging

• The trad-wife wellness influencer trap and the Ballerina Farm problem

• Menstrual cycle syncing: what's useful, what's oversold, and why "the truth is always in the middle"

• Why medicine has historically been designed around a 24-hour male cycle, not a female one

• Period stigma: hidden pads, blue liquid in ads, Gloria's story about her husband's all-women UK team

• What people actually come to Relax Firenze for vs. what they actually need (the C-section scar story)

• Fatphobia and la bella figura in Italy — "he's not doing a bella figura, he's doing a brutta figura"

• Cose a Caso: weightlifting vs. supplement culture, Barbie Pilates/Barbie yoga, Gwyneth Paltrow's cabinet vs. grandma's menu, Ilaria's 1990s "Slide" class, and what "feeling your best" actually looks like for each of them

Guests

Ilaria Di Donato is a wellness and natural health expert, founder of Relax Firenze — a holistic wellness center in the heart of Florence — and of ID Bio Cosmetics. She is a certified Professional Counselor, Supervisor and Trainer, holds a PhD in Psychological Counseling and Body-Focused Therapies, and a Master's in Mindfulness, Meditation and Neurosciences in Healthcare from the University of Florence. She developed the "Mindful Counseling" approach, blending meditation, bodywork, and Bach flower therapy — and has been teaching in the fitness and wellness industry since 1988. 🔗 relaxfirenze.com · ilariadidonato.it · @relaxfirenze

Gloria Fuson is a movement and wellbeing specialist and co-founder of Relax Florence, with 17 years in the industry and a background in dance and clinical Pilates. Her work focuses on women's health — prenatal, postnatal, pelvic floor, endometriosis, and menopause — plus menstrual-cycle-synced coaching and mindful movement, through 1:1 sessions, in-person classes in Florence, and workshops on women's health and wellbeing. 🔗 @thesoulbodymovement · Substack · thesoulbodymovement.carrd.co

In our home, syntax is a suggestion and monolingualism is more a fiction.

We operate in a haphazard trilingual cassoulet-like-casserole of French, Italian, and English: a linguistic hodgepodge that leaves guests visibly bewildered, yet feels remarkably fluid to the core inhabitants, us.

It’s the kind of everyday reality that gets me thinking about the actual, messy architecture of multilingual households.

Admittedly, my internal monologue doesn’t sound like a glittering polyglot navigating European high society.

It looks less like brilliant writer, conqueror, and beagle tamer and more like a erratic, low-frequency hum of “cosa?!” as stray thoughts collide in real time while I desperately attempt to stay on task.

I grew up around the cadence of Spanish and English, my mother is from Mexico, but because I wasn’t raised by her, the language never quite took root in my daily life.

And since we’re being entirely honest here: I am not naturally gifted at picking up new tongues.

Yes, I speak Italian. Yes, I speak French. And yes, I commit conversational atrocities in both on a daily basis. Perfectionist your girl is not.

I also still carry the scar tissue of a pivotal Christmas dinner at my Italian ex-boyfriend’s family home, where his aunt publicly dismantled my grammar and Italian-speaking abilities until I retreated to the guest bathroom, weeping into a set of stiff, heavily lace-trimmed towels and profoundly questioning every life choice that had brought me to the peninsula.

Years later… once my Italian had actually reached respectable fluency…I found myself on a press tour in Orvieto alongside a cohort of local bloggers and influencers. Within hours, one of them took it upon themselves to openly mock my accent. I still harbor a deeply specific grudge against that person ( I know forgive forgive blah blah). But then again, I’m a Cancer: holding onto small, hyper-localized resentments is practically my birthright.

So, here is the current calculus: an American woman, married to a French man, living in Italy, raising a daughter who happened to be born in Switzerland but is more Italian than the both of us.

Just typing that out feels absurd, the sort of bio that sounds less like a life and more like a setup for a lukewarm geopolitical joke.

How, exactly, did we get here? My younger self, navigating a decidedly un-exotic upbringing in rural San Antonio, Texas, certainly wouldn’t have bet on this trajectory.

Like most prospective parents with all of the best intentions, we entered the arena armed with lofty, high-minded theories about how we would raise our child. Then reality arrived. Now that our daughter is five, those polished intentions have dissolved into the fascinating reality of watching language take root in real time within a polyglot home and doing it in no particularly organized fashion.

Before going on break for August on our podcast Two Voices: No Filter, my co-host and I sat down to unpack the messy, unfiltered reality of raising kids in multilingual homes, and how radically different our two paths have been.

Path A: The “OPOL” Household (And the FOMO That Comes With It)

When our daughter was born, we were living in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. By the time we decamped to Florence in 2023, she was already well on her way to fluently speaking Swiss German….despite my own German topping out at a pathetic A1. (My brain genuinely threw in the towel the second der, die, das entered the chat.)

To ease her transition into Italian, we swore a sacred oath to stick strictly to OPOL (One Parent, One Language), right down to the bedtime stories.

This was important for so many reasons. Our families back home only speak English and French, and we refused to let our choice to live abroad rob her of a real relationship with her grandparents and cousins.

Honestly? It’s been easier than it sounds, mostly because Nico and I both speak the household roster. I read to her in English, Nico reads in French, and strangers in the grocery store aisle or the airport security line routinely track us with the bewildered curiosity reserved for exotic birds as we chatter away in our custom trilingual mashup.

So far, so good. But I’d be lying if I said it was all seamless.

Not many people warn you about the low-key isolation that can happen inside your house.

When Nico and our daughter launch into rapid-fire, gossip-speed French, I’m left standing on the sidelines like a confused latecomer at a party, blinking and trying to trace the plot.

Worse, I am now routinely roasted by a five-year-old who takes visible pleasure in correcting my French grammar and mocking my accent (this seems to be a theme) primarily because, embarrassingly enough, I still cannot roll my Rs to save my life.

I also wasn’t prepared for the reality of realizing my native language isn’t her preferred one. It stings, sometimes, if I’m being honest. But given our geography, she’s marinated in Italian and French all day long… so from a cold, logical standpoint, it tracks.

I am, theoretically, an adult who understands this isn’t a personal attack. But try explaining that to my ego when my own flesh and blood snubs English like it’s an unsolicited email.

To support her trilingual growth without driving ourselves crazy, we lean into community:

• Multilingual Playdates: We facilitate meetups with friends where speaking two or three languages is just... normal. No one has a hang up yet about who speaks what but I know this could change in the future.

• Cultural Anchors: We pay close attention to sharing special songs, stories, and cultural contexts from where we are each from (dia de los muertos and Halloween). My daughter and I sort through. childhood photos and I share silly songs (often about poop, you have my brothers to thank for that) that I grew up singing, along with more public appropriate versions.

• Embracing the Mix: Kids’ brains are remarkable. When sorting through multiple vocabularies, they will naturally mix languages in a single sentence or lean on one dominant language for a season. It’s all part of the process and something I’ve come to accept (see above).

For more practical strategies on structuring this at home, check out this guide on How to Create a Multilingual Home who thankfully popped up on my Substack feed when I posted about the podcast.

Path B: Organic Immersion & Full Exposure

Valentina, my Tuscan born cohost, took a different approach with her son, Edo.

As a native Italian speaker, Valentina decided early on against speaking English to Edo herself after reading research warning that non-native parents risk passing on their own “imperfections.”

Instead, her family spoke Italian at home, but surrounded Edo with a rich, international ecosystem: multilingual family friends, travel, and full immersion at English-language summer camps abroad.

Her “aha!” moment?

Watching Edo sit down and converse fluently for an hour with a Polish friend about his favorite video game, using complex vocabulary and an ease that took Valentina completely by surprise. Which remind me of the very simple-but-obvious fact that if you are keen to get someone talking in another language, MAKE IT FUN, make it about a subject they are already passionate about, make it low key, low pressure. Embrace Mistakes.

What Science (and Experience) Tells Us

Parenting guilt loves to target language choices. Are we confusing them? Should we be stricter? Are they falling behind?

If you are wringing your hands over this, take a deep breath. Linguistics and cognitive research back up what both Valentina and I have learned through trial and error:

1. Language mixing is cognitive strength. Research highlighted by The Guardian notes that bilingual children aren’t confused when they swap languages mid-sentence; rather, navigating multiple linguistic systems builds empathy and perspective-taking. They learn early that different people see the world through different lenses. I also appreciated this post by on code mixing.

2. There is no “ruining” your child: THIS: Studies show that early exposure to language sounds leaves neurological traces that make future language acquisition much easier down the road, even if a child goes through phases of favoring one tongue.

3. Fluency is a spectrum: Whether through strict OPOL at home or total immersion through travel and school, both roads can lead to a child who is confident, adaptable, and culturally grounded. Give it time and be consistent.

The Verdict

Ultimately, both of our approaches get the job done and also reflect our different households. I’ve seen families effortlessly juggle four or five languages under one roof, proving that literally anything is possible.

Whatever your strategy, the baseline rule is simple: approach it with love, total trust, and the full acceptance that the journey will be paved with self-doubt, total clumsiness, and moments of unadulterated, pure comedy.

Trust me on this: I have accidentally uttered every single horribly offensive, wildly incorrect phrase humanly imaginable in French, Italian, and German. It is what it is.

But neither of us would trade the “beautiful mess” for anything else.

We dive much deeper into language guilt, code-switching, and cultural identity in our latest episode and remember the podcast is back with its weekly schedule from the first Friday in September (I am truly so excited because we are bringing guests into the mix and they have some really interesting perspectives to share).

🎧 Listen to the full episode, “Raising Kids in a Multilingual Home,” on Two Voices: No Filter here.

How do you navigate languages in your family? Are you an OPOL household, an immersion family, or somewhere in between? I genuinely would love to know how you navigate a multilingual family at home.

Whether you're struggling with double consonants in Italian, suffering as the "left out" parent, trying to raise multilingual children, or just wondering why Italians refuse to eat Asian tagliatelle, this conversation is packed with laughs, cultural insights, and a reality check on what fluency really means.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Defining Fluency: Why being fluent isn't about being perfect in every sentence, it's about being understood.

• Raising Multilingual Kids: The reality of running a trilingual household and implementing the "One Parent, One Language" strategy. And how it's not always fun.

• The "Humiliation Phase": Why making mistakes (and accidentally saying offensive words with missing double consonants) is part of the process. And oh... have we both made many a hilarious error.

• The Secrets Behind Words: Etymology, Tuscan rivalries, and how French subtly snuck into Italian vocabulary.

• AI vs. Real Translators: Why technology still struggles with localization and context (and why la penna è sul tavolo won't get you far).

Mentioned in this Episode:

• Una Parola al Giorno (Newsletter)

• Coffee Break Podcasts (Language Learning Series)

Connect with Us:

• Follow us on Instagram

Also special thanks to Vivace Media for producing (and believing) in our show and Zoworking for being the wonderful studio where we can make it happen.

Mentioned in this episode:

Listen Vivace

follow @VivaceMediaNetwork A life well lived is never finished. There is always another version of yourself waiting to emerge. Vivace exists for women who believe the most beautiful part of life is not what has already happened, but what comes next. https://vivacenetwork.com/

Vivace Media Network

Listen Vivace

follow @VivaceMediaNetwork A life well lived is never finished. There is always another version of yourself waiting to emerge. Vivace exists for women who believe the most beautiful part of life is not what has already happened, but what comes next. https://vivacenetwork.com/

Vivace Media Network

Georgette and Valentina get personal about how they met their partners after painful breakups — and the sixteen (and twelve) years since. Valentina shares how she met Mario after her husband walked out with zero warning, the votive candle that led to her pregnancy three months later, and the "pomodoro technique" she used to survive the heartbreak. Georgette talks about leaving a codependent relationship, meeting her now-husband Nico as a friend first, and why going slow for once actually worked.

They get into love languages (Gary Chapman), the different ways they fight (writing vs. talking, silence vs. calm discussion), navigating family backgrounds as different as Naples' Camorra and a Texan-Mexican divorce, and why no relationship, however long, is ever finished being worked on.

As usual we welcome your comments and remember this is part of our special summer series. You can follow Two Voices, No Filter on Instagram and leave a review: it helps more people find the show or wherever you listen to the podcast. New episodes every Friday (we will be breaking in August) but back in early September with our weekly rotation. Special thank you to Vivace Media for producing our show And Zoworking, our wonderful studio in Sesto Fiorentino.

Mentioned in this episode:

Listen Vivace

follow @VivaceMediaNetwork A life well lived is never finished. There is always another version of yourself waiting to emerge. Vivace exists for women who believe the most beautiful part of life is not what has already happened, but what comes next. https://vivacenetwork.com/

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Listen Vivace

follow @VivaceMediaNetwork A life well lived is never finished. There is always another version of yourself waiting to emerge. Vivace exists for women who believe the most beautiful part of life is not what has already happened, but what comes next. https://vivacenetwork.com/

Vivace Media Network

This week on Two Voices, No Filter, Georgette and Valentina go through 2026's weirdest travel trends: dead zoning (disconnecting completely, no signal, no Wi-Fi), glow-cations (traveling abroad for cheaper wellness treatments — Turkish teeth, Albanian surgery, Korean skincare), and the rise of "why-cations" — trips built around a personal need instead of a destination.

They also get into the uncomfortable question at the center of it all: does travel actually change you, or are we just using it to avoid fixing our lives at home? Is it all too much?

Plus: over-tourism in Florence, dark tourism ethics, why AI trip-planning still gets it wrong, and the books that stuck with them longer than the trips themselves.

Dive in with them and let them know why travel and if you've felt compelled to discover places in a different way.

You can follow them on Instagram, or Substack, Vale's Substack, and special thanks to Vivace Media for producing our show and Zoworking Studio for facilitating this dream.

Mentioned in this episode:

Listen Vivace

follow @VivaceMediaNetwork A life well lived is never finished. There is always another version of yourself waiting to emerge. Vivace exists for women who believe the most beautiful part of life is not what has already happened, but what comes next. https://vivacenetwork.com/

Vivace Media Network

Listen Vivace

follow @VivaceMediaNetwork A life well lived is never finished. There is always another version of yourself waiting to emerge. Vivace exists for women who believe the most beautiful part of life is not what has already happened, but what comes next. https://vivacenetwork.com/

Vivace Media Network

We’re diving into our summer series with a massive dose of honesty, because let’s be real, we all need a break from pretending we love meditation (kidding).

This week, we’re exposing our actual, unfiltered guilty pleasures.

Here is what we’re diving into

• The Italian TikTok Drama Rabbit Hole: Valentina breaks down the wild, endemic Southern Italian fights taking over her feed (yes, we are talking about the infamous "pink artisan" Ozempic ER scam).

• Trashy TV vs. True Crime: Why Valentina cleans her kitchen to old people fighting for love on Uomini e Donne (Trono Over is the only one that matters, let's be real) and why Georgette is utterly obsessed with the diabolical web of the Scamanda podcast.

• The Guilt-Free Escapism: Why we need to stop treating reading list titles like celebrity name-dropping, why it's a total pleasure to just say "I don't know" instead of having an opinion on everything, and the books we genuinely can't put down.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Podcast: Scamanda (The mind-blowing story of Amanda Riley), https://shows.acast.com/scamandaTV Show: Uomini e Donne (The iconic Italian dating show by Maria De Filippi)

Books: Strangers by Belle Burden (The unputdownable memoir about surviving a calculated, diabolical ex and the sudden demise of a marriage, Yesteryear, the book everyone is talking about in the Trad Wife world and Kate Hash "Gracie Harris is Under Construction" https://www.kate-hash.com/books-by-kate-hash and her newest book "The Mother-in-Law Book Club".

💬 JOIN THE CONVERSATION:What is your ultimate, unglamorous guilty pleasure? Trash TV? Blind scrolling? Let us know in the comments below! Don't forget to LIKE, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE to Two Voices No Filter before we head out on our August break!

• ⚠️ VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: We love you, but we love a proper rest more. We will be completely breaking for the month of August to escape the Florentine heat, touch some grass, and actually recharge. No episodes, no filters, just vibes until we see you back here in September!

Mentioned in this episode:

Listen Vivace

follow @VivaceMediaNetwork A life well lived is never finished. There is always another version of yourself waiting to emerge. Vivace exists for women who believe the most beautiful part of life is not what has already happened, but what comes next. https://vivacenetwork.com/

Vivace Media Network

Listen Vivace

follow @VivaceMediaNetwork A life well lived is never finished. There is always another version of yourself waiting to emerge. Vivace exists for women who believe the most beautiful part of life is not what has already happened, but what comes next. https://vivacenetwork.com/

Vivace Media Network

The weather station at Peretola has now logged eight consecutive days at or above 36°C, a feat that has never happened in more than seventy years of continuous record-keeping here. I was partly inspired to write this after seeing cover this topic about France’s boiling temperatures.

The city’s maximum heat alert has been active for days with no real relief promised before July (ok that’s next week but still, your girl is waiting). On Wednesday, the Uffizi’s air conditioning failed outright causing the museum to stop selling tickets and ration entry while tourists lined up sweating in direct sun outside one of the most visited buildings on earth.

A sobering local headline caught my eye this week, claiming that current temperatures in Florence have surpassed those in Gambia.

It’s a staggering stat, and my thoughts immediately turn to the laborers working under the baking sun on the tram line extension from Piazza della Libertà to Bagno a Ripoli.

For the construction crews, as well as the commuters, pedestrians, and brave cyclists navigating the area, the project has become a grueling Dante-Inferno’s-like gauntlet of hazy heat, thick dust, and deafening noise.

The people who can’t retreat into AC are the ones absorbing this directly.

Case in point, Florence’s metropolitan authority chose not to switch on school cooling systems until June 15th this year, by which point classes were essentially finished, citing energy costs and environmental targets.

Our school, which is private, also doesn’t hair air-conditioning even in the rooms directly under the roof.

Sesto Fiorentino’s Liceo Agnoletti , a few minutes from where Valentina and I record our podcast every week, became the flashpoint, with students sitting finals in rooms running on forced ventilation switched on before the doors opened, while city councillors argued in public over whose budget this falls under.

Yet… banks and Coop, Esselunga and other offices seem to have no issue with getting air con.

There’s also the cost.

Federconsumatori Toscana estimates a family running a unit five hours a day this summer is looking at a 30 to 40 percent jump in their electricity bill (we are screwed). For anyone over 75, for whom that unit functions less like comfort and more like medical necessity, that’s not a small number to find every month on a modest pension.

My mind keeps coming back to 2003, because it was a year when Florence hit 41.1°C (105.98°F) that summer, a record at the time. Istat’s own retrospective count put excess deaths across Italy that summer at close to 20,000, overwhelmingly elderly people living alone, a figure roughly five times higher than the government’s initial public estimate.

Twenty-some years and several “worst since 2003” summers later, it would seem that the trend is that this will only become more of a thing and definitely more frequent than before.

Which is why I get personally so irked at climate change deniers or people sneering at the need for air-conditioning, because yes, it can make the difference between life and death for some.

Valentina and I spent this week’s podcast episode breaking down the actual mechanics of surviving an Italian summer, and no, I don’t mean the lemon-dress, Amalfi-Coast fantasy version, rather the sweaty reality that most of us live in while trying to run errands and work.

Our real-world playbook: Less synthetic fabrics, more linen. Carry water. Never book a single thing between 12 PM and 6 PM. Locate your nearest free fountain (Piazza della Signoria has a great one) and apply that to a wet neck bandana. Wear sunscreen and a hat. And finally, accept that getting pooped on by a pigeon is, technically, a sign of good luck.

Also in this week’s episode, we dived deep into the history of Ferragosto: from the Roman emperor it’s named after, to the Mussolini-era cheap train tickets that turned it into a mandatory national shutdown, to the non-negotiable watermelon. If you want the full breakdown, listen to the new episode here.

On My Summer Reading List

These are recommendations by my friends that I am super excited to dive into. Please share any interesting reads for this list in the comments.

• The Au Pair by Teddy Wayne: Domestic tension, immense wealth, and someone else raising your kids.

• I’ll Take the Fire by Leïla Slimani (trans. Sam Taylor): A woman carving out a free life in socially conservative, late-20th-century Morocco.

• Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli: A mother and teenage daughter head to Sicily after a marriage dissolves, digging up a family history neither of them fully wanted to find.

• Switzy by Emma Cline: A retired executive takes a final farewell lap around the people he loves before a scheduled death in Zurich. His memory starts rewriting the past more vividly than the present.

• The Brightness by Chad Harbach: Fifteen years after The Art of Fielding, two Midwestern best friends collide with the messy reality of adulthood.

• The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout: A high school teacher’s perfectly pleasant life quietly hollows him out from the inside.

• One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle: I’m adding this one for reasons I’m not legally allowed to explain just yet. Consider it required reading for a fun project just about to be launched. I’ll say more next month: keep an eye on this space.

A Different Kind of Summer Reading

If you want something to actively argue with rather than just nod along to, go read ’s Substack Roots.Place.Elsewhere.

Sema splits her time between Rome and Puglia and has spent the last year building a brilliant case against the way we travel now. It’s not an anti-travel manifesto per say; it’s an indictment of travel as a “gotta do it to be a good person” checklist… a way of proving you were somewhere rather than actually being there.

I especially appreciated her line of “walking around drenched in sweaty tourist merchandise” looking for the world’s largest tiramisu instead of reading a single thing about the history of where they’ve landed? I felt that deep in my soul.

In The Italian Dispatch, beautifully compares our impact as tourists to a teenager careless with a borrowed family car, urging us to shift from simply consuming a culture to taking responsibility for it. Can we start a discussion panel? Seriously!

What I’ve Actually Been Eating

Our diet currently is whatever doesn’t require turning on the oven.

My current rotation:

• Cannellini beans tossed with good olive oil and way too much black pepper.

• Tuna and tomatoes with red onion and a aggressive squeeze of lemon.

• Roasted and sauteed vegetables (zucchini with mint, roasted peppers & tomatoes) served with camembert and bread

• 3-ingredient salads by of The Global Pantry is just the content we need right now to remind us that good food doesn’t need to be complicated. I’ll be using this as my July and August food bible.

• GELATO, all of the gelato. Luckily I got to research this for Time Out back in the day and would add to this list Sbrino.

• Pesto: but all kinds, made with walnuts or sun-dried tomato with good olive oil, parmesan and garlic and basil. I’m putting it on grilled chicken, in pasta, in sandwiches. who dutifully updates on the poltico woes in Italy and beyond has a lovely recipe this week in his newsletter that I’m apt to try.

• Fruit and esp fruit in wine like this summer fun concoction shared by on notes.

• I haven’t made it yet but I really want to try this recipe for Roasted Pepper Rolls Stuffed with Tuna and Capers by .

• For additional food or restaurant tips, check out this page on the blog or consider purchasing my comprehensive guide on Saltete (which I update monthly).

A huge thank you to everyone who commented on or shared my last substack. Navigating creativity slumps, while simultaneously acting as your own PR team, video editor, and social media manager, is exhausting. I’ve always promised to show you the messy bits and be honest about the fact that I don't have it all figured out. Doing anything less would just feel wildly disingenuous

Over to you: What are you reading this summer? And more importantly, what are you eating that doesn’t involve an oven? Stay cool.

A presto,

Georgette

The city is currently sitting under Italy's maximum heat alert, bollino rosso, alongside Rome, Turin, Bologna and Brescia as the health ministry escalated heatwave warnings to the highest level for those cities as intense, early‑season heat spreads across the country.

The culprit is an African anticyclone meteorologists have nicknamed "Cerberus," which is producing temperatures with little variation between day and night, with nights offering little respite as minimum temperatures fail to drop below 24-25°C in many areas.

Meteorologists warn this spell of anomalous heat could potentially rival the extreme summer of 2003, with conditions not expected to ease significantly until early July, and it's part of a wider pattern, with red alerts also in place across the UK, France and Spain as a fresh bout of extreme heat pushed temperatures beyond 40°C this week.

Georgette and Valentina kick off one of the lighter, summer-adaptable episodes promised ahead of Season Two — and the conversation opens with a blast from the recent weather past (we recorded this in May) an overnight swing from coat weather to coat-and-flip-flops weather, and what that whiplash says about how unpredictable Tuscan seasons have become. From there, it's a full breakdown of how to actually survive, and enjoy, an Italian summer, dolce vita fantasy not included.

In this episode:

— Dressing for Italy vs. dressing for Instagram: why "main character energy" linen and lemon-print dresses don't survive a sticky Florence city bus (don't do it!), the case for comfort over costume, and a defense of getting pooped on by a bird.

— The summer mental shift: how the city's rhythm changes once spritz season starts ("summer water," not alcohol, obviously), why outdoor evenings become mandatory, and the actual survival kit: light less synthetic fabric, So much water, a fan, sunscreen, and a hard no to booking anything between 12pm and 6pm

— Vacation, the Italian way: roughly 31 paid days off a year, why three weeks at the seaside hits differently than two, the French right-to-disconnect law both hosts have unofficially adopted, and the gap between how Europeans and Americans actually turn work off

— A day at the seaside: Valentina's real itinerary for a family beach day near Piombino: alarm at 7am, beach by 9, home by 4 for a shower and a nap... plus a crash course in free beach vs. paid bagno economics, and why Italians get surprisingly strict about beach parking in July

— Card game culture: Scopa, Scala 40, and the steep learning curve of Burraco (best learned over a four-hour lunch with someone's 83-year-old aunt)

— Ferragosto, properly explained: the Roman emperor it's named after, the agricultural reason it landed in mid-August, the 6th-century Catholic layer laid on top (the Assumption of Mary), and the Mussolini-era train tickets and Fiat factory shutdown that gave it its modern shape — with the obligatory disclaimer that no one here is a Mussolini fan

— What Ferragosto actually looks like: the grigliata, the watermelon tradition, the supermarket panic the week before, and why anyone visiting Florence around August 15th should expect a city running on chiuso per ferie

— How to actually survive the heat in the city: free water fountains (Piazza della Signoria is your friend), the wet-bandana trick, which parks and pools are worth it (Boschetto, Villa Vogel, Anconella, Cascine's Pavoniere, Bellariva, plus day-trip pools in Chianti and Mugello), and the exact window-and-shutter schedule Italians use to keep an apartment livable without air conditioning running all day (spoiler alert this only works when it is consistently not 40 degrees plus every day).

— Secret spots and open-air culture: Bilancino Lake at sunset, Fiesole's open-air amphitheater festivals, Estate Fiorentina, and Florence's outdoor cinema tradition (ChiaradiLuna included)

— Instead of cose a caso this week, Georgette and Valentina read real comments from you guys! Thank you Eileen (drawing a parallel between Florence and her own tourist town in Bend, Oregon), longtime supporter Jane Buzzard, The Redhead Vids, a Latin pun from SJ on carpe diem, and a kind note from Joe Andros to name a few. Keep those comments coming!

Find Two Voices, No Filter —

Two Voices, No Filter is hosted by Georgette Jupe (Girl in Florence) and Valentina Dainelli (Too Much Tuscany), recorded at ZOWorking in Sesto Fiorentino, and produced by Vivace Media (new name!).

New episodes every Friday on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube (though this week it is audio only!)

Mentioned in this episode:

Listen Vivace

follow @VivaceMediaNetwork A life well lived is never finished. There is always another version of yourself waiting to emerge. Vivace exists for women who believe the most beautiful part of life is not what has already happened, but what comes next. https://vivacenetwork.com/

Vivace Media Network

Listen Vivace

follow @VivaceMediaNetwork A life well lived is never finished. There is always another version of yourself waiting to emerge. Vivace exists for women who believe the most beautiful part of life is not what has already happened, but what comes next. https://vivacenetwork.com/

Vivace Media Network

È caldo.

You can feel it in the summer haze, in the dust that coats the cars, in the cicadas who are now omnipresent in the hills around where we live.

This week I’ve been watching with dread as the temperatures creep from 27 to 40 (80s to high 90s for my fellow Americans), all while simultaneously checking the forecast in Scotland, where we’re headed next month for a few weeks.

So until then it’s full summer survival mode.

Which entails opening the windows in the early morning hours 6am and shutting them around 8 or 8:30am to trap the cold air in. You gotta do it and it works… a bit. La dolce vita summer life for most of us is less lounging in a piazza with a spritz and more hibernating like a gremlin in your darkened house between 9 and 6, for anyone who truly lives this version of Italy.

It was also recently Pitti Uomo week in Florence, when hundreds of people descended on the city in fashionable outfits, undoubtedly sweating through fedoras and their colorful tight ensembles, but it’s a bit of fun for anyone looking for a distraction from summer “smells” in the center of town.

This year, instead of cocktails and well-dressed men, I’ve been deep in the birthday party and end-of-school-year kid circuit, mostly just trying not to turn on my oven. I’ve also been in a mood.

Here’s the thing about being someone with constant creative bursts and the urge to do all the things with all the people: it often comes with anxiety, procrastination, and self-doubt baked right in. We're all supposed to be walking around radiating confidence and hyping ourselves up 24/7. It feels almost expected to sound like the smartest original thinker in the room, oversharing just enough to seem authentic without actually being it, or performing a casual disdain for anyone who does. But I suspect a lot of us are, more often than not, just suffering from self-doubt instead.

I love my podcast. I love my work. I love my family. And yet, I still wake up with the nagging feeling that I’m letting everyone down (is this just what your 40s feel like?). I’m trapped in a constant loop of overthinking: Am I oversharing? Undersharing?

I’ll pour all my love into creating something, then have nothing left in the tank to promote it.

I refuse to set up a tripod for aesthetic lifestyle content, because it’s not me and feels invasive. But I can spend way too much time perfecting an Instagram carousel, spot a typo post-publish, and delete the whole thing in a fit of perfectionism. I’m never going to be the writer or journalist who acts like my shit doesn’t stink, or pretends I don't constantly worry about it all. It’s cancer season and I’m a cancer so excuse me if i’m completely in my feelings.

This space is for honest conversations and not a curated 'what I want you to think I am' campaign.

I know these are small-scale, privileged issues compared to what the world is facing—trust me, I really do. But it’s my current internal reality, and I think it’s worth writing down. Matching the deep love you have for your work with the constant frustration of keeping up with output and expectations is a really difficult line to walk.

So what I am going to focus on instead this Sunday is finishing my daughter’s lego airplane, cuddling my beagle and contemplating delicious farro salads (like this one from which, it’s fair to say, has lasted me a few meals.

Currently we are super into fresh salsa (hail to the Mexican roots) that I make in a big batch and keep in the fridge that is basically the love vessel placed on top of everything: scrambled eggs, tostadas, eaten with chips or put on cottage cheese. It’s so so good and most of my Italian friends hate it (too spicy, RAW bell peppers that would kill their digestion or cilantro-y) but luckily I married a Frenchman.

If You’d Rather Be Here in Your Mind

, who writes the newsletter Illuminare, just published a piece on how to be in Florence without actually being here this summer, which is honestly the most useful genre of advice this time of year. Buried in it is a genuinely good offer: she’s running a live online course called The Secret Lives of Masterpieces, four Thursday sessions in July (the 2nd through the 23rd) on the hidden stories behind a hundred of Florence’s most compelling artworks, ancient through Baroque. €100 for all four, recorded if you can’t make it live, and there’s a two-for-one if you want to drag a friend into it. If you’ve ever wanted the version of art history that isn’t a lecture but more like eavesdropping on the objects themselves, this is that.

E La Città Diventa un Palco

While it is true that many locals head away from the city to the seaside and mountains in July and mostly August, there is still plenty to do is you’re here this summer, The Florentine has the full rundown on this year’s Estate Fiorentina, running June 1st through September 30th under the theme Giorni d’Estate (summer days).

We’re talking 1,268 events from 162 cultural associations, spread across all five districts, including newer additions like Crossover 80 (a love letter to Florence’s 80s New Wave scene, opening at MAD with the exhibition Florence Calling) and Costruiamo la Pace, a peace-and-music collaboration between Noa and Gil Dor at the Cascine amphitheater.

Old favorites are back too, including the open-air cinema series at piazza Pitti (I absolutely LOVE this) and the dance festival taking over the cloisters of Santa Maria Novella through late July. Worth bookmarking if you want an excuse to leave the cool cave after all.

Listen: The Nonni Economy

New episode of Two Voices, No Filter is out, and it’s the one I’ve been wanting to make since I first read Elizabeth Petrosian’s essay The Nonni Economy, on her blog Letters from Florence. She named something so precisely that it just stuck, and Valentina and I built an entire episode around it: the way Italian grandparents have been propping up the country’s entire social contract.

Property, childcare, the actual cash that makes the monthly math work when an average Italian salary is €1,300–1,500 against rent, school fees, and gas at €1.80 a liter. We get into what it looks like from the inside, growing up with that safety net, and what it looks like from the outside, watching it operate without access to it.

I also recommend reading ’s essay “A love letter to Americans moving to Southern Europe for the good life” where she also touches on the economic reality of being propped up on the inherited wealth of previous generations and what that means for the future (spoiler alert: no great).

If you prefer to listen then watch: here’s our podcast episode on Apple and Spotify.

More next week.

your girl,

Georgette

In this episode, Georgette and Valentina map the Nonni Economy: how Italy's welfare state has at times been outsourced to grandparents, and what that means for everyone who doesn't have access to that private safety net.

They cover:

• How a generation that survived the war and, in Valentina's family's case, the 1966 Florence flood, built a culture of extreme frugality — and how nonni earned and saved money outside the formal economy

• Why roughly 85% of Italians neither rent nor carry a mortgage, and the flip side of that: inheritance disputes, siblings who stop speaking over property, and the feeling that "that is due to me"

• What it's like to parent without nonni nearby, on both sides — Georgette as an American expat, and Italians who didn't inherit a second property or extra space to fall back on

• The "nonnamaxxing" trend, Blue Zones, and why you can copy the lifestyle but not the forty years of paid-off houses and inflation-indexed pensions behind it

• The story of Giorgio Angelozzi, the 80-year-old who offered money to any family who'd adopt him as a grandfather — and what it says about elderly loneliness in Italy

• Why neither host expects a traditional retirement, and what happens to the nonni economy in ten or twenty years when this generation is gone

• And in Cose a Caso finale section: both hosts answer what their grandparents concretely gave them: Georgette lands on resilience, Valentina on a house and a lesson in dignity.

Episode inspired by and crediting Elizabeth Petrosian's 2012 essay "The Nonni Economy" for Letters from Florence.

Two Voices, No Filter is produced by Sentire Media (Vivace Media) and recorded at ZOWorking, Sesto Fiorentino.

Mentioned in this episode:

Listen Vivace

follow @VivaceMediaNetwork A life well lived is never finished. There is always another version of yourself waiting to emerge. Vivace exists for women who believe the most beautiful part of life is not what has already happened, but what comes next. https://vivacenetwork.com/

Vivace Media Network

Listen Vivace

follow @VivaceMediaNetwork A life well lived is never finished. There is always another version of yourself waiting to emerge. Vivace exists for women who believe the most beautiful part of life is not what has already happened, but what comes next. https://vivacenetwork.com/

Vivace Media Network