Next Sunday’s episode will be more Italian history—reunification (1870) through the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1897—with an emphasis on what’s going on in southern Italy, since the previous episode was largely from a northern perspective. I’m also putting the finishing touches on my version of “Funiculì, Funiculà,” which was composed in 1880 and will be a part of the episode.

This week I am also working on a script for a future episode on the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. So far, we’ve released two episodes on TR, with one more coming shortly. This script I’m working on this week may be the last episode on the Roosevelt presidency, but it may get long enough that I’ll have to split it into two parts. That would make five episodes on a seven and a half year presidency. It was never my plan to give each US president this much attention, but TR demands attention, as much so today as he was when he was President.

We’re coming up on the Russo-Japanese War pretty soon. I expect that will take seven (!) episodes to cover properly. And, of course, the Great War of 1914 is looming off in the distance.