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- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The way we change Presidents in this country is by voting.

- A quartet is already a jawn, it’s just The New Jawn.

- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- I mean what other country sends comedians over to embedded military to make them feel better.

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

_ It’s not all about memorizing and getting information, it’s what you do with that information.

- (slowly) Start talking right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - (Traditional Italian folk music) - End music.

- Hi everyone.

Steve Abudato.

Welcome to a very compelling, important Italian American edition of "One-on-One".

By the way, you don't have to be Italian-American to appreciate the conversation we're about to have with two rising stars in the world of media.

We got John Viola and Patrick O'Boyle, who are the co-hosts and executive producers of a podcast, it's called "The Italian American Podcast", and it is hot.

It is on fire.

Gentlemen, good to see you.

- It's a tremendous honor to be on this show.

Yeah, thank you very- - Thank you very much for having me.

- Patrick, I've seen you be sarcastic before.

Are you starting out with sarcasm or sincerity?

I can't tell.

- Sincerity.

I feel like Dolly Parton when she went on "Carson".

Do you remember when Dolly Parton said she knew she made it when she got on "Carson"?

I know I made when I got on Steve Abudato.

- Okay, Hold... Since, okay, listen.

My last name ends in a vowel.

John's name ends in a vowel.

Can we get this out of the way?

Since my wife is Irish and our kids are- - My father's off the boat Irish.

All my father's family sounds like the people on the Lucky Charms commercial.

- Hold on.

First of all, my kids, that means are mets.

and Mets, right?

So my kids are Italian and Irish.

You got that?

Could you explain off the boat first and John, then I'll come back to you and your family off the boat because my grandfather, Luigi Calvello came here in 1919 off the boat from Avellino, which we'll explain in a minute.

Go ahead, John.

What Pat, what does it mean off the boat?

- So my father immigrated, my father's Irish came to the United States at 17 years-old in 1960.

But my mother is not only Italian, she's a Jersey City Italian, which is a little bit more, John shall we say, that's on steroids to an extent.

- John, let me ask you something.

Pat makes a reference to Jersey City Italians.

My family came from Italy, settled in little Italy.

They're a lot Little Italys.

You, Little Italys.

You guys do yours?

You guys doing it right on Mulberry Street?

- We are here right now.

Yeah, we are on the corner of Mulberry and Grand in the heart of Manhattan's Little Italy.

- Is it around the corner from where Joey Gallo took the hit at Umberto's?

- We're not far from Umberto's, that's for sure.

It's a lot of interesting landmarks and history around this place.

- Just checking.

But I also wanna make it clear that people do not realize, and if you check out John and Patrick, you'll find out there are Little Italys all across this country.

My family settled in the Little Italy section of Newark, New Jersey by St.

Lucy's Church.

We just had the St.

Gerard Feast, which is part of St.

Lucy's St.

Gerard, we'll talk about another time, the patron saint of motherhood, if you will.

Little Italys all across this country John, right?

People don't realize that.

- Sure.

Yeah.

We, you know, people think often of the New York, Boston, San Francisco.

But in our work here, we have traveled through Omaha, Nebraska, and Tontitown, Arkansas and Utah and Wisconsin, all, all over the country, everywhere that people went.

So to the Italians and we always built interesting communities.

- Patrick, talk to us about the idea for the podcast in the first place.

Whose idea was it and how did it take off?

- I fought it tooth and nail.

It was John's idea.

As you might know, John is the former president of the National Italian American Foundation.

- NIAF?

- NIAF, yes.

The former head of NIAF.

And he would commute from New York to DC.

He'd come up for the weekends and go back to work.

So on Sunday nights when he was going down to DC for the four hour drive, he would call me and we'd have these four hour conversations and he'd say, we should have a podcast.

And I didn't even know what a podcast was.

And then when he actually went and, I don't know correct word, obtained the Italian American podcast from Anthony and Delores, I fought it tooth and nail.

Every aspect of this, I fought tooth and nail.

And that's been the best, what I've been the most against, that's always the indication of success.

So I fought the studio, I fought the video, and they were all successful.

So the entire genius behind this is John, 100%.

Every part of this studio, every square inch he designed and created.

So to you, Jowan, I have to say, this is 100% your baby.

- Thank you.

- I love that.

Hey, John, talk to us a little bit about what you saw as the possibilities.

Why and what?

- Well, I had been in DC and I'd met the founders of the podcast, Delores and Anthony.

And they were really overtaken by progress in their real professions.

And this hobby I felt could become professionalized with the right crowd.

And I knew it had, you know, it's gonna be 10 years in November for "The Italian American Podcast".

And I knew that it was early enough that it had accumulated a nice, substantial audience in a field that was really becoming more and more bifurcated.

Right?

I mean, nowadays, if certain podcasts get hundreds of listens a week, they're considered successful.

And this was a platform that we were able to come to and evolve that had already had thousands and thousands of listeners every week.

So I knew that Italian American needed a modern mechanism to engage in conversations that used to happen in the neighborhoods.

- Let me ask you this.

So this book is the version of "The Prince" Niccolo Machiavelli, my dad, God rest his soul, would talk about Machiavelli all the time, teach us as kids who Machiavelli was why Machiavelli was so important.

My grandparents, and they'll show a picture of my grandparents.

My grandfather, Luigi Calvello came here as I said, that's my grandmother and grandfather, when they got married from a little province of Avellino in southern Italy in part of Naples.

Much of my family's history, had my grandparents, my parents talking to me about Italy, Machiavelli all the way back, 15, 1600's, et cetera.

The immigrant, the several migrations to the United States.

How hard is it from your point of view, Patrick, to have our children, our children's children understand, care about, and even have a sense that there're Italian American on any level?

'Cause I struggle with our own kids in that, with our kids in that regard - With the Italian American, and I don't know if we'll have time to go into it, but John and I have a program where we get a hundred, about a hundred Italian American.

We call it Italian American future leaders.

We get kids who are Italian American between 21 to 35.

We have a weekend for them in Florida every year to build leadership, to take over all the Italian American institutions that we have.

You know, the next generation of leadership.

I don't think, I've learned a lot.

I think that it's gonna be different.

I don't think it's gonna be gone.

I think it's gonna be different.

Some kids are interested and some kids are not.

But the genetics are not the determination.

So we have kids, I mean, Tontitown, Arkansas, some of these people are one eighth, one 16th Italian at this time.

And they have such a feeling to be Italian.

And you know, we have Italian American kids, you know, in New Jersey, we're from the same neck of the woods.

Both their parents were born and raised in Italy, and they have little interest, right?

So DNA doesn't necessarily determine what the interest is gonna be, which is a good thing because I think, especially if you think the demographics of New Jersey, I see it, you know, 50, 60 years from now, we're gonna be like Argentina, where everyone has a little bit of Italian, right?

I think that kids are interested in Italy.

I mean, like, we're a sexy ethnicity, you know?

John and I always make jokes, what would we would have done if we were born Norwegian or Finnish, right?

So there's, there's an attraction to Italy, but if you asked me the most important factor from all the kids we worked with, I think the grandparents are the number one effect.

I think that we're people of a multi-generational family.

And with that grandparent effect, it just does magic.

So I would say the kids that we find the most interested are the ones that had a strong family presentation or involvement with stuff that we would call Italian American things as opposed to actual bloodline.

- And by the way, I know that our team in post-production will show some pictures of, and I'm not saying go look at me, but I took our kids.

I have an older son who's in his early 30's, Steven, who studies Italian American culture and history.

And when he was a baby, when our three children were very young, I would take them to the Feast of St.

Gerard at St.

Lucy's Church because I was obsessed with, because that's the neighborhood my parents came from, where my grandfather and grandmother immigrated to.

I was obsessed with that they understood.

It's become harder and harder to get them to see themselves at Italian American, John.

So I wanna follow up with you on this.

Some of it, and I hate to bring up controversy, but I will, some of it well, was, I'm not gonna say which one of our kids was like Dad, this Columbus thing, it doesn't work for me.

And I'm like, whoa, wait a minute.

And of course, Columbus, controversial history changing, the name changes for many, they don't call it Columbus Day.

Forget about what Trump said or didn't say it should be.

But here's my question.

How the heck do we separate ourselves, Italians, Italian Americans from Columbus and the controversy of Columbus and that day's supposed to be about us, not him?

Do I have that wrong, John?

- No, not necessarily.

No.

I mean, we've got I think an eight part series we've done exploring Columbus, Columbus Day, the legacy, the history, speaking to about 30 different activist scholars, players in this conversation.

I highly encourage people to listen to it on our website archive, but I think- - We'll put it up right now.

We're putting it up.

- Go ahead.

Yeah, please.

I, it's been because we really did work hard on trying to figure out our own positions, right?

Because it is a complicated thing.

And I think that I oftentimes feel that no matter what the popular consensus is in a community about Columbus, right?

There's some communities who don't want to have Columbus Day, they have Italian American Heritage Day, other communities have Columbus Day.

I think that the point is we need to take opportunities like a holiday based around our heritage to dig deeper, right?

To know our history in a deeper way.

It's one thing to use a popular mythology or a figure that's kind of been, been passed down, you know, that maybe we don't have too much connection to today.

It's another thing to take the opportunity to dive deeper into the other stories of our own ancestors and who we are and the immigration and in, you know, all of our impact in organized labor and our impact in the church here in America.

I mean, there's so much that we've done that goes beyond 1492.

- I think that it's a barometer in the sense that if you're totally pro Columbus, it shows you care.

But if you're anti Columbus and you say, we should replace with Italian American Heritage Day or Cabrini Day, or whatever you choose, it shows you care.

- Mother Cabrini.

- Right.

Apathy is the enemy.

So when people don't care or dismiss it, that's the barometer that they, that there's something not there.

That's, that I feel is much, is much more troubling.

I think that there's a lot of people who are anti Columbus who are, okay, let's replace it with Mother Cabrini Day.

I think that shows a healthy interest and pride in being Italian American.

So I think I see it more as a barometer.

It's the, it's when people don't care that I'm more concerned, - But I will say this, and John, I know you wanna jump back in.

For some of us in the neighborhood, I grew up in an all Italian American neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, and you guys know where that is.

It's not that neighborhood anymore.

But we still stay tight together and we celebrate, all of us get together.

It's been over 30 years.

We celebrate that day.

Some of our guys are like, Hey, why are we calling it indigenous people day?

It has nothing to do with disrespecting indigenous peoples, but what about us?

- Yeah.

- Left- - Yeah.

- I mean, help me on that, John.

- No, I think that there's two conversations, right?

One conversation is how does Italian America, if there is a collective Italian American consciousness, how do we want to define ourselves and the celebration of ourselves, right?

And that's a question that should be ours.

- Right.

- What happens oftentimes is Columbus Day, which was really begun as a holiday for all peoples, right?

The whole idea of it dates back to before there were even Italians here, it was a- - Do you want, John, hold on for, I told our kids this story the other day.

They thought I was making it up.

Do you think most people know where Columbus Day even came from in the late 1800's in our country?

- Well, I think there's a lot of different conceptions going around today.

I think actually, if you really dig into it, the real answer is even before 1891 and the lynchings of Italian 11- - Before the lynchings in New Orleans of 11 Italians who were acquitted of killing a police chief, and then they were lynched in the street anyway, and Italians across the country lost their minds over it.

And the President said, we should have Columbus Day, that's not right?

- Not... It's part of the story.

So the holiday dates back even earlier to the earliest days of the American Republic, when really, you know, our founding fathers had to find some sort of symbol that wasn't British and Columbus was that symbol, right?

He, you know, sailed for Spain.

He was ethnically Italian in (speaking foreign language).

So, you know, the idea that we live in a country where the capital is a District of Columbia, where the university here in New York that used to be King's College becomes Columbia.

You know, all of that is to say, he didn't stink of Britishness.

In the a hundred years between the first celebrations in 1792, the 300th anniversary and the 400th anniversary in 1892, you do have the arrival of massive amounts of Italian Americans or our ancestor immigrants, and you do have the lynchings.

And after the lynchings in 1891, there is a sort of sentiment that the holiday takes on more meaning, because this group is trying to be heard and be recognized.

But it wasn't started in response.

- To follow up on what John- - Jump back in Pat.

- To follow up on what John says, I think that a benefit that has come out of the Columbus controversy is the narrative that supports Columbus Day as an antidote to the horrific lynchings.

Like the largest lynching in American history was against Italian Americans in New Orleans.

You know, as you brought up, was that I think young people today, and this is a good thing, don't comprehend the amount of prejudice that was against Italian Americans because they're in a world where that's much, it exists, but it's much less, I don't think they under, they have a hard time understanding how, how the prejudice and the how much Italians suffered when they came to the United States as the other.

- And by the way, just to be clear, and I know some and just don't think that we don't understand that Columbus is an incredibly controversial figure and what he did or didn't do to people who are on those ships, let's just say highly questionable, and in some cases may have been incredibly wrong.

That being said, and I'm not gonna get my soapbox about this, but there are a whole range of historically relevant pieces of information that document that when Italians came here, they weren't even considered white.

And people say, Steve, what are you talking about?

You have, you have white privilege.

All that is true for me.

That is not true, that was not true for many who were not even considered white because they weren't white-white, Protestant, whiter skinned.

I'm off my soapbox.

Can we go- - Steve, you wanna hear something that really shocked us?

- Go ahead.

- When we visited the Italians of Tantitown, Arkansas, their Catholic church was burned not once, twice by the Klan.

They have a newspaper in their museum that says the dagoes are coming.

It was a local paper when the- - Dagoes is a derogatory term for Italians, but go ahead.

- Right.

And it's just, you know, it's, there was prejudice in the northeast, no doubt, there was prejudice all over, but in the south and certain parts of the United States, Italian Americans really suffered.

- Yeah, but let's fast forward.

John, lemme ask you this.

"The Sopranos", love it.

Gandolfini, the best, the cast.

By the way, check out our website.

Previous interviews we've done with all the members of the cast.

Our website is up right now.

"The Godfather", "Goodfellas", "The Sopranos", as I said.

John, from your perspective, those mob movies that mob series based in New Jersey, "The Sopranos", how much does it hurt our legacy and culture?

And B, how much is that a part of the podcast, John?

- That's a great question.

How much does it hurt us?

I think for, particularly in Italy, actually, I think it definitely hurts the Italian American reputation and awareness.

I think a lot of people in Italy only see this giant 20 plus million person community as those portrayals.

And I think in the United States, in certain places, it hurts us too.

I do think there are a lot of instances I can recall my own life and friends where people have made inferences about organized crime and things like that.

But I think that at the end of the day, you know, they're compelling television for a reason, right?

The mafia overtones are a genre for really compelling storytelling.

And I think, you know, you're going to waste time and energy trying to snuff out this whole genre of entertainment around organized crime and these kind of portrayals.

I think focusing on doing them, doing better in telling other stories is where our community really needs to put our efforts.

That's part of the reason that we have this platform to begin with, to tell the myriad other stories that don't get told when the bottom line is, you know, how do you sell movie tickets?

- I think the genre also damages young Italian Americans because in parts of the country where there are no Italians, we call 'em Italian deserts, or they're very few, people take what they see on screen and take that for who we are.

So if you're in New Jersey, you can separate the mafia, film genre, television genre from the reality of who we are.

If you've never had, if you've never met an Italian American, you take that to be fact.

And we've had young people say to us, even people who live in areas that are heavily Italian, that when they go into the institutions of higher learning and in business and other places, and people make little jokes about Italians and connected with the mafia and stuff, they have a hard time, they have a hard time publicly being Italian American because they feel almost like an intimidation, a self embarrassment over it.

And this is a real battle.

We, if everyone asked me what our number one problem is, intermarriage or kids not interested in the ethnicity, I think our number one problem of passing it on is that kids who are our best and our brightest are embarrassed at times, and we've seen this, identify as Italian American, 'cause they feel that identifying as Italian American, they identify as the characters that are portrayed in those kinds of shows that put us in a mafia light or a bimbo and moronish type of light.

And they don't, they're not associating with Michelangelo and Rafael and Dante.

They're being associated with- - Keep going, keep throwing some names out.

Lombardi, Vince Lombardi.

- I mean, like anybody.

- Come on, guys- - Yeah, we hate to say it, but we, Italy's responsible for Western civilization, right?

68% of UNESCO, I mean.

- John, you back that up?

- Sure.

- Yeah.

Well, yeah, 57%, or at least the last few years, about 55 to 57% of the UNESCO world heritage sites are in Italy.

I mean, you know, as they say, if you take the Italian contribution and you know, the Italian American contribution too, we oftentimes get tempted to go all the way back to Rome.

But the bottom line is, even without that amazing contribution globally, if you look at what our community's done here in a short time under very, very difficult circumstances, we are a very successful ethnic group.

Not just financially, but culturally.

I mean- - And I say that comment not out of haughtiness, we shared, we are sharers.

We know you come in, we feed you.

- Don't we share our food?

We share our food.

- Yeah.

- We share our music.

- We share everything.

Absolutely.

- You got Sinatra, you got Bocelli, you got the greatest.

Do people- - Can I say something about St.

Lucy's?

'Cause I know that's home for you.

- Go ahead.

- In Monsignor Granado, - Father Granado- - Welcomed every one.

- Who passed, God rest his soul.

He kept the feast alive.

But go ahead.

- But everybody was welcome at St.

Lucy's.

They were, they were Nigerians there and Haitians there, and they were Cubans and they all got to share the Italian experience.

That to me was the best example of who New Jersey Italian Americans are.

If you aren't, come to the table, we'll feed you.

And we shared and we celebrate everybody.

- Hey, Patrick, I, but I'm gonna complicate it for you.

I'm there on the first day of the Saint Gerard feast.

Before it gets wild.

I'm there with my mom.

Mom, I know you're watching right now.

Fran Abudato, from the neighborhood, 90 years-young.

She said, take me to the... We had a mass for my father.

It was the day he passed October 16th.

We're there.

And this is true story.

My mother goes, Hey, look up at the, we're in St.

Lucy's Church.

She goes, look up at the window.

So I said, ma, I know the window you're talking about.

Do you know that one of the stained glass windows at St.

Lucy's Church, you know who donated it?

And you know whose name is on it?

- No.

Richie Boiardo.

- Don't know the name?

- Yeah.

Isn't that the parakeet man?

- No, no.

Richie "The Boot" Boiardo, mobster in the Genovese crime family.

The reason I'm saying it was because mob figures who came from the neighborhood, who in the neighborhood, people thought they didn't really know what they did for a living, they donated to the church.

It's complicated.

- Complicated.

- It's complicated.

- Very complicated.

- John, final word's, got two minutes left.

By the way, we're supposed to do a 10 minute segment.

You could see what happens when you host the show and you just run past the breaks.

- Final words.

- That's why you gotta come on the podcast, Steve.

- That's right.

- Can I, can I?

- Oh, we'd be honored.

We'd be tremendously honored, yes.

- I'd be more honored.

John, two minutes left.

Where's the podcast going?

- We're moving into video pretty heavily.

We we're on YouTube now, and that's starting to grow.

We are getting back on the road to go across Italian America.

And I think really honestly, we have stories that are ever evolving.

There's always gonna be enough stories to tell.

Pat used to say, ah, we're gonna run outta people.

We're gonna run interviews.

We could do this for 10,000 years, as he likes to say.

And we'll still have amazing Italian American stories, so ever upward and to younger generations and everybody from, you know, the kids to the Nona.

- So, so Patrick, do you say avanti right now?

Is it avanti?

- I'd say (speaking foreign language).

That's (speaking foreign language) over Italian.

But that's just a personal thing for me.

- You know, what you just did, we goes one minute left.

You made it clear that while there's Italian, and by the way, I got this, this app where it's reteaching me Italian because I was an exchange student there back in the day.

And I knew Italian at the time.

I spoke to my grandmother Italian.

It reminded me that it, the language, Italian language and language from Naples, Neapolitan as you said, ain't the same.

Which is not the same as Calabrese, which is not the same as Sicilian, which is a different language.

The dialects John, 20 seconds left, totally different.

Italian is not Italian across the board, right?

- There's many, many languages in Italy, regional languages all up and down the peninsula from the Alps through Sicily.

There's dialects of those languages.

A Sicilian in Palermo speaks different than a Sicilian in Catania, but they're all beautiful and- - But all but to be, they're all beautiful.

But Neapolitan is the most beautiful.

- Yes of course.

- We got the Irish guy telling us about Neapolitan.

John.

- He's Mr.

Napoli, this guy.

- I know.

Hey listen, I look forward to coming on the podcast.

I cannot thank you enough.

Wish you all the best.

God bless guys.

Take care.

- I'm Steve- - Thank you.

Likewise, Steve.

Thank you very much.

(speaking foreign language) - Those are two terrific, I cut you off.

You were saying I was great, I think.

- Fantastic.

- That's right.

- Okay.

See you next time.

- We're fans.

We're very honored to be here.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by New Jersey Children’s Foundation.

Holy Name.

The New Jersey Education Association.

PSE&G.

EJI, Excellence in Medicine Awards.

A New Jersey health foundation program.

The North Ward Center.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

And by United Airlines.

Promotional support provided by Meadowlands Chamber.

And by New Jersey Monthly.

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