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Sep 09 2016 - 15:00

Auditorium Melotti

Good Shoes and Bad Roots... Man is Not a Vegetable

GAD LERNER

Gad Lerner, journalist, television host, and essayist.

Moderated by Alberto Faustini.

A world torn by conflicts and marked by significant migration flows becomes the ideal breeding ground for the emergence of new artificial identities, all genetically modified even when they self-proclaim as heirs to ancient traditions. The cleansing of a return to origins, the illusory recovery of authenticity are contemporary phenomena that connect various new tribes across different latitudes, oscillating between nostalgia and apocalyptic foreboding. Thus, the innate human need to establish a relationship with the sacred and with the hidden mysteries of life is manipulated for the benefit of new media sorcerers, peddlers of the rhetoric of roots.

Gad Lerner was born in Beirut to a Jewish family. He collaborated with Radio Popolare before joining the editorial staff of l’Espresso. In the early 1990s, he began his television career by producing two programs for Raitre under Guglielmi, focused on the Northern question: Profondo Nord and Milano, Italia. He was invited by Ezio Mauro to La Stampa as deputy director and later worked as a reporter and columnist for Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica. Returning to Rai, he hosted two editions of Pinocchio. In 2000, he was appointed director of Tg1, but resigned a few months later. In 2001, he participated in the founding of La7, where he directed the news program, launched Otto e mezzo with Giuliano Ferrara, and hosted L’Infedele every week for ten years from 2002 to 2012. Among his books are: Operai (Feltrinelli reprinted in 2010), Crociate. Il Millennio dell’Odio (Rizzoli 2000), Tu Sei un Bastardo. Contro l’Abuso delle Identità (Feltrinelli 2005), and Scintille. Una Storia di Anime Vagabonde (Feltrinelli 2009).