| In the lead-up to a historic election, Francesco Costa has become a new-media phenomenon, cutting through the insularity of the big papers to deliver funny, incisive commentary.  Illustration by The New Yorker; Source photograph by Leonardo Cendamo / Getty What can beach umbrellas tell us about modern Italy? Gideon Lewis-Kraus’s fascinating profile of the charismatic editor and podcaster Francesco Costa offers the answer. (Hint: it has to do with laws, public manners, and coveted sandy real estate.) Not long after its launch, last year, Costa’s daily show became “one of the few sources that Italians could turn to for straightforward explanations of the deliberately illegible machinations of national politics,” Lewis-Kraus writes. And at a time when Europe and the wider world is watching Italy with alarm as a right-wing populist movement rises ahead of national elections, Costa’s plainspoken, outsider analysis offers a mixture of hope and despair. “Will Italy be a police state? No,” he explains. “Will it be very badly run? Yes.” —Ian Crouch, newsletter editor The New Yorker Festival: See Quinta Brunson, Billy Eichner, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and more at our signature event, taking place October 7th through 9th in New York City. See the lineup and buy tickets » | 
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