Shows
Immigrants and Exiles22: “The Music of the Descendants of Migrants: Walter & Davide Musolino, Part OneIn today’s episode, one of two on the subject of music, we hear me - Walter - and Davide Musolino speaking about the songs we write as the founding members of an indie rock band called Man City Sirens. As anyone listening regularly would know, I am one of the co-producers of the podcast series “Immigrants and Exiles” together with my friend, Moreno Giovannoni. Moreno and I have spoken about his novels The Fireflies of Autumn and The Immigrants, beautiful books of wistful reflections and solace but also, the second, of socially and politically focused anger related to the co...
2025-12-1740 minImmigrants and Exiles23: The Music of the Descendants of Migrants: Walter & Davide Musolino, Part TwoIn today’s episode, Walter and Davide Musolino continue the discussion about their music with Moreno who keeps arguing the case for the listener’s freedom to hear & interpret a song anyway the listener wants, without having to pay respect to the songwriter’s reasons for
composing the song. Backstories are argued over but always in the friendly spirit of sharing divergent opinions. Influential connections with migrant parents and families keep surfacing but also intimate, even disturbing, details become shared.
2025-12-1749 minImmigrants and Exiles20: “The Lost Daughters of Agata”The chat you’re about to hear was originally recorded in Messina (Italy) late 2024 at the seaside home of Agata. Agata’s two daughters flew the family nest as young women 13 years ago and they’ve made London their home: clearly far, that is, from the home of their birth. This is the story of how their mother and father have been coping with an unavoidable abandonment. This is the
story of those left behind. Of course, you’ll be hearing a translation of
the interview. My thanks to Rosemary Musolino for her contribution as the other voice.
2025-11-1840 minImmigrants and Exiles21: The Adventures of Josh ArnoldThe chat you're about to hear was recorded in the small mountain town of Palombaro in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. It presents migration from the perspective of someone, Josh Arnold, a super successful young American businessman and entrepreneur from Arizon, who has come to Italy looking for a better life. After an unexpected heart attack a few years ago, he started out on a series of explorations to see what else the world has to offer a man who has basically everything except contentment. As it turns out, Italy is where he may have really struck it...
2025-11-1853 minImmigrants and Exiles18: The wisdom of Arthur: myths and facts about ancestors. Part ONE.Welcome back to another episode of the Immigrants and Exiles series recorded at the Beachcomber Café in St.Kilda. Get ready for some history lessons on the impacts of war, on Italian repopulation of the planet and on citizen historians, all of which brings to light the colour and wonder of migration. Through stories retold and benign memories shared between generations, we hear how sentimental bonds are forged between the original adventurers and their descendants. But we also discover how the offspring listening are inevitably
infected by an incurable disease: a niggling sense of their own displacement, of c...
2025-08-181h 21Immigrants and Exiles19: Young Arthur: growing up in the wilds of Emerald town. Part TWOWelcome back to another episode of the Immigrants and Exiles series recorded at the Beachcomber Café in St.Kilda. Today we hear about the early adventures of young Arthur in a country schoolyard, about the value of ‘bi-linguism’ in brain development but also how being cosmopolitan was a barrier to being socially acceptable or ‘integratable’. Inclusivity was, and still remains, largely elusive in a country like Australia that measures the worth of people by their resemblance to the cultural establishment. At many levels - at the institutional and the popular - there continues a resistance movement against difference. New arrivals n...
2025-08-1840 minImmigrants and Exiles16: Walter Goes To An Elite Tertiary Institution (Part THREE of his story: Walter goes to Italy)Welcome back to another episode of the Immigrants and Exiles podcast series at The Beachcomber Café in St.Kilda. This time we hear Walter tell us about his enrolment at the Scuola Normale in Pisa. I remember going past the gates of the Scuola Normale when I was attending the rather ordinary University of
Pisa, going through the gates and into the cafeteria and buying myself a plate of pasta and sitting there and eating it with all the upper class, elite students. I started by asking Walter why he went to the university, that is, to the S...
2025-07-1750 minImmigrants and Exiles17: Roman SilviaWelcome back to another episode of the Immigrants and Exiles podcast series recorded at The Beachcomber Café in St. Kilda. Today our chat revolves around a truism about migration. You won’t find a better life in another country – yes, it’s ‘out there’ – rather you have to make your life better. Like gold, it’s not waiting for you, you have to fossick and pan, dig and extract: invest, struggle, fail and go again. In other words, a better life is a determination, a state of mind, not a dream, a form of escapism. Dreamers, wake up!
Life...
2025-07-1741 minImmigrants and Exiles14: Walter Goes To Italy, Part ONE. When is an Italian NOT an Italian? PS: “Don’t brainwash your child!”Welcome to the Immigrants and Exiles podcast recorded at The Beachcomber Café in St. Kilda. We’re calling this one: ‘Walter Goes To Italy’. This time Walter talks about his visits to Italy and the people he met over there. He first went back at the age of nine in 1963 although he refuses to confirm that. Walter, start talking…
Music: “A Girl, A Picture, A Wall” by Walter Musolino & Davide Musolino.
2025-05-1753 minImmigrants and Exiles15: Walter Goes To Italy, Part TWO. The love that dares to speak its name: FAMILY, warts & all.“Allora, Walter, tell me then… you want to tell me a bit more about your grandparents…”
Music: “Runaway” by Walter Musolino & Davide Musolino.
2025-05-1735 minImmigrants and Exiles13: The Immigrants, Part Two: The House on The Hill and The Promise of HappinessWelcome to the second part of an episode of the podcast series Immigrants and Exiles, which started as a conversation between myself, Walter, and my friend, Moreno, regarding his second novel: The Immigrants.
We talked about so many topics: love, loving, having loved, having no luck, staying here, leaving here – that is, Australia – going back to Italy. And we finished by talking about how he wanted to stir people up. And I said some people might think that when he’s criticising Australia, or non-migrant Australians, that he’s writing a kind of revenge story, that he’s upset ab...
2025-04-2140 minImmigrants and Exiles12: The Immigrants, Part One: Migrants, Melancholia and MurderWelcome to the Immigrants and Exiles podcast recorded at The Beachcomber Café in St. Kilda. This is a conversation between me and my friend Walter. In this episode we talk about my next book to be published in July 2025, this year, called The Immigrants. Black Ink published my first book, The Fireflies of Autumn, in 2018. Now seven years later, here we are, finished the copy editing and all the other work that goes with publication and the book will be launched in a few months time. It’s currently out with reviewers and book sellers who may or may not...
2025-04-2133 minImmigrants and Exiles11: Same Face, Same Race: Greeks and Italians (The Niki Baras Interview)Hello, and welcome to Immigrants and Exiles; a series of chats recorded at the Beachcomber Café in St. Kilda between me, Walter, and my friend Moreno, the sons of Italo-Australian migrants. Today we chat with Niki Baras, a long-standing friend of Moreno’s. Over the years, they’ve been colleagues – translators and interpreters – and share an affinity as intellectuals. Niki has also worked as an academic, a union organizer and a workplace activist. She’s a force of Nature.
Music: an extract from ‘Extinction Rebellion’ by Walter Musolino & Davide Musolino.
2025-03-3055 minImmigrants and Exiles10: 'Ukraine' Maria falls in love with Italy, the Mother of Exiles.You’re listening to Immigrants and Exiles; a series of chats recorded at the Beachcomber Café in St. Kilda between me, Walter, and my friend Moreno. In part two of the episode dedicated to ‘Ukraine’ Maria – sorry, Maria, we know you’re really Russian – we reflect some more on twenty-first century Italy as a modern destination for new migrants, but also on why Italian cemeteries can be so welcoming and why Australia shouldn’t simply be accepting of newcomers but should also be acceptable to them: that’s right, acceptable to them.
Music: an extract from ‘Leningrad’ by Walter Musolino &
2025-03-3022 minImmigrants and Exiles8: Emigration: a Psychology and a PsychosisIn this episode, we talk about what drives people to emigrate, other than war and natural disasters, Wuthering Heights gets a mention and we ask you what your parents and grandparents told you about why they came here.
2025-02-1710 minImmigrants and Exiles9: The Diatribe or Fighting Back: a Strategy against StereotypesIn this two-part episode, Walter meets Franco Cozzo at the dentist, Moreno asks whether Franco Cozzo ate spaghetti, Walter has an argument with Bob Maguire, and Moreno prefers Ted Whitten to Franco Cozzo.
2025-02-1712 minImmigrants and Exiles7: Crimes and Punishments: the Penalty for not being EnglishIn this episode, we discuss Australia’s shallow political culture and the complicity of migrants in promulgating terra nullius.
2025-01-2015 minImmigrants and Exiles6: Repatriation: Trick or Treat?This time we discuss an issue that our parents struggled with all their lives, namely: Italy or Australia? Did they do the right thing in coming to Australia?
2025-01-2011 minImmigrants and Exiles4: No Place like HomeThis time we talk about bullying, neighbourliness and illegal immigrants.
2024-12-0411 minImmigrants and Exiles2: Secrets of our nearest and dearestIn this episode Walter and I talk some more about our parents, rats as big as cats, whether Walter was conceived on a ship, his fascination with broad beans and how both of us received a $1500 gift.
2024-12-0410 minImmigrants and Exiles5: The Boom-Bust Cycle: Misery-Marvel-MiseryThis time we talk about Australian girls in the 1960s, our experiences in Little Italy, in Carlton in the 1970s and, finally how a visit to Italy can hurt.
2024-12-0410 minImmigrants and Exiles3: The Spice of Life: Heartache and Strong StomachsIn this episode Walter and I talk about why you should open a chain of travel agencies, something magnificent that Mussolini did, picking grapes in Mildura and a dramatic overnight trip from the city to a tobacco farm in country Victoria.
2024-12-0411 minImmigrants and Exiles1: Living in Hope, Surviving DespairIn this episode, Walter and I talk about our families before they came to Australia and the early years in what Walter calls the penal colony and I, in the book I have written which will be published in 2025, refer to as the English colony.
2024-12-0413 min