History on Fire Daniele Bolelli

This is a tale of Italian Resistance during WW II. Unlike nearly all History on Fire episodes, this is not a story I researched in books. It’s a much more personal one—these are my grandparents’ experiences. The starring role goes to my grandmother, Liana Germani, who as a teenager was a combat partisan active against the Fascist regime and the Nazi occupation.

This is a cultural history episode about sexuality in Ancient Rome. I thought the topic would be fun and juicy, but that’s because my memory of Roman sexuality was hazy. After refreshing it with lots of research, I can safely say that ‘fun’ is not a word I would apply to it. ‘Insanely disturbing’ is probably more fitting. Most of the ancient sources, in fact, seem to indicate that little to no attention was paid to the idea of sex being for mutual pleasure.

This episode covers some of the things that happened in El Salvador in the 1980s, in particular the story of the massacre at El Mozote, and how policies formulated by the White House supported death squads unleashing hell on civilians.

This is a story about what happened in El Salvador in the 1970s and 1980s, and the role that democratic as well as republican administrations played in this tale. As much as humanly possible, I’ll try to let the facts speak for themselves and not inject too much of my own commentary.