The Sunday Read: ‘Why Are These Italians Massacring Each Other With Oranges?’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

One Sunday in February, in a northern Italian town called Ivrea, the facades of historic buildings were covered with plastic sheeting and nets. And in several different piazzas, hundreds of wooden crates had appeared. Inside them were oranges. Oranges, the fruit. Over the next three days, 8,000 people in Ivrea would throw 900 tons of oranges at one another, one orange at a time, while tens of thousands of other people watched. They would throw the oranges very hard, very viciously, often while screaming profanities at their targets or yowling like Braveheart. But they would also keep smiling as they threw the oranges, embracing and joking and cheering one another on, exhibiting with their total beings a deranged-seeming but euphoric sense of abandon and belonging — a freedom that was easy to envy but difficult to understand. The Battle of the Oranges is an annual tradition in Ivrea and part of a larger celebration described by its organizers as “the most ancient historical Carnival in Italy.” Several people in Ivrea told the writer Jon Mooallem that as three pandemic years had passed in which no oranges were thrown, they grew concerned that something bad would happen in the community — that without this catharsis, a certain pent-up, sinister energy would explode. And on that day in February, three years of constrained energy was due to explode all at once.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, my name is John Moalum and I'm a contributing writer to the New York Times magazine.
0:11.6	For today's Sunday read, I'm going to share a story I wrote for the magazine's Voyages
0:16.0	issue about my trip to a small town in northern Italy for what has to be one of the world's
0:21.4	most peculiar festivals, basically a three-day historical food fight.
0:27.4	So here's my story from the March 26, 2023, New York Times magazine, the Voyages issue.
0:40.6	It looked as if a war was coming.
0:43.5	It was.
0:45.2	One Sunday last month in a northern Italian town called Ivereia, the facades of historic
0:51.3	buildings recovered with plastic sheeting and nets.
0:55.6	Storefront windows had been fortified with plywood and tarps, and in several different
1:00.6	piacas, hundreds of wooden crates had appeared, walls of them stacked eight feet high and
1:07.0	even farther across.
1:09.0	The crates looked like barricades, but were actually arms depots.
1:14.5	Inside them were oranges.
1:17.4	Oranges.
1:18.6	The fruit.
1:22.3	Over the next three days, 8,000 people in Ivereia would throw 900 tons of oranges at one
1:27.9	another, one orange at a time, while tens of thousands of other people watched.
1:33.7	They would throw the oranges very hard, very viciously, often while screaming profanities
1:38.8	at their targets or yelling like brave heart, and they would throw the oranges for hours
1:44.4	until their eyebrows were matted with pulp and their shirts soaked through.
1:49.5	But they would also keep smiling as they threw the oranges, embracing and joking and cheering
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New York Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New York Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.