Riccardo: The Man Who Blew Up the Pope is the result of nearly six years of research, with its origins reaching back to 2010. For close to fifteen years now, we have lived in the company of Riccardo, his shadow never far from our work and our thoughts.

Every episode in this podcast is built on fact. Nothing here has been fabricated; invention, where it exists, is minimal to the point of vanishing. Every line uttered by a voice other than the narrator’s is taken verbatim from source material. They are countless: books (not least those written by Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi himself, alongside Andrea Tornielli’s monumental biography of Pius XII and the diary of Monsignor Tardini), documents from the Italian State Archives and the Heraldic Archive, civil registry records from the Ministry of the Interior, and a long trail of newspaper articles. Among these, the pages of the Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, L’Unità, and, from journals long since vanished, L’Europeo and La Settimana INCOM, proved especially valuable.

The physical production of this podcast was made possible by Podcastle.ai, a remarkably powerful tool that, at a certain point, began to misbehave: it would suddenly erase entire episodes, costing me weeks of work and no small amount of peace of mind. One day, I trust, the engineers at Podcastle.ai will untangle this colossal flaw and turn it into the perfect instrument it was meant to be.

The vast soundscape — some 487 effects in all, each royalty-free — was drawn from Envato.com. From that same trove came the theme 80s Mysterious Retro Trailer Ident, credited to the account “puremusic,” which recurs throughout the series as a kind of signature motif. From Pond5.com, we acquired the track Back to Plan 9, attributed to PROCLIPS: it became Oreste Nuzzi’s theme, thanks to its inspired use of the theremin, and stands as a fond homage to Tim Burton’s Ed Wood.

Beyond that, most of the original soundtrack was created with Suno.com — an extraordinary tool, immense in its power, though one to be handled with care and wisdom. It has already changed the landscape of music and creativity, and it will go on reshaping it in ways we can scarcely yet imagine.

The only music by established composers included in the podcast comes from elsewhere: El Paralitico by Trio Matamoros, used in the passages about Dr. Fernando Asuero; the preludes from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Lohengrin, underscoring Pacelli’s darkest moments; Auld Lang Syne with lyrics by Robert Burns, marking the passage from the tragic year of 1953 into the still more tragic 1954; When Johnny Comes Marching Home, set against the bombing of San Lorenzo; L’Internationale; and, of course, the Intermezzo from Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. All appear here in archival recordings, by now in the public domain.

I want to thank and salute the people we met along the way, those who generously gave us their time and their voices for this podcast. First and foremost, Bruno Bartoloni — may God rest his soul. Then Professor Gustavo Corni; the distinguished and unfailingly gracious journalist Francesco Grignetti; the unforgettable Professor Francesco Eugenio Negro, who confirmed for us a key interpretive thread in this story; Professor Massimo Biondi, who took the trouble to send us long, meticulously documented emails in answer to our questions; and Professors Edgar Camarós and Meaghan Wetherell, whose generosity with their time and professionalism were exemplary. I am equally grateful to those whose interviews did not make it into the final series — above all the delightful Paolo Basilici, a true master of kindness.

And then there is Guido, a lifelong friend, who offered insights and, metaphorically speaking, played the part of a tomb raider for us, unearthing what we could not have found alone.

All of this, of course, was done for Riccardo. Our last thought goes to him — the man whose extraordinary life deserved to be told in all its complexity, in all its many shades. I cannot say whether we succeeded. But I do know that we tried, and we tried with everything we had.