Mieli, I tell the story through women and novels

The relationship between women and power, from Agrippina to Teodolinda to Eleanor Roosevelt;

the figures of the great historians, from Herodotus to Marc Bloch;

the telling of history through the great novels, from War and Peace to the Odyssey to the Leopard.

Stories, characters and topics that will accompany the ninety new episodes of "Passato e Presente", the daily program of historical analysis produced by Rai Cultura and hosted by Paolo Mieli which returns with its sixth edition starting from 5 December at 1.15 pm on Rai 3 and at 8.30 pm on Rai Storia.

The relationship between women and power will be analysed, just when the first female premier arrives in Italy.

"It's true, but we actually started preparing the program before Giorgia Meloni's victory - explains Mieli in an interview with ANSA -. Beyond this, it is interesting to see how, unlike what many think, in history, even in ancient history, there are many women who have taken power and played a leading role. Many women of command who have already broken through the glass roof".

One of the strands is the telling of history through great novels.

"Novels have often left a greater trace of history than the history books themselves. We know some events better through novels or even through films (and I do not exclude that in the future we will also deal with these). Ad example Gone with the Wind, which is both a novel and a film, has told American history in an impeccable and also courageous way, because it reports the events of the civil war not on the side of the victors, but of the vanquished. , which tell the story in a very precise way: I am certainly not referring to the characters, but to the context, to the factual data, which are entirely corresponding to reality.It is not the case in TV series, which often contain elements of fantasy.

Among the objectives of this cycle is also that of making the great historians known.

"We want to make people understand what their role has been in the development of knowledge - underlines Mieli -. Often history is reconstructed from the point of view of the winners of a political dispute. The great historians rebalance this judgment and are able to look at the events in equidistant manner".

The program confirms its formula, with Mieli and an academic historian addressing a theme in a narrative journey, with a young historian as narrator.

First guest, Professor Alessandro Barbero.

"Barbero has been with us since the beginning: he is so successful because he has the ability to simplify and explain very complicated events in an ironic way. He is a great communicator,

like Franco Cardini or Silvia Salvatici.

It is from them that the fortune of this program is born".

The transmission also includes major current issues, such as atomic fears, climate change and the energy crisis.

"The program is called 'Past and Present', so each episode is actually also dedicated to the present. However, we don't want to make explicit the analogies with the period we are living in. We want to explain well the stories of two thousand, one thousand or one hundred years ago, through themes that can easily lead to the present. If you talk about Russia's wars, you easily get to the Ukrainian conflict; if you talk about the plague of the 1300s, you can move on to the Covid pandemic. In short, we want to provide the tools through history to understand the present ".