Daughter of the French scholar Giuseppe Merlino and the sinologist and director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Beijing Annamaria Palermo,[1][2] she graduated from high school.
Although there is no information on the university she attended, various online[3] biographies report that Merlino graduated with honors in political science with a thesis in international law on the Community Charter of Fundamental Rights of Workers.[4] As her first profession, she was hired at the Directorate-General for the Internal Market in the Financial Services area for the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community.[5]
Her journalistic career began with a collaboration with the economics page of the newspaper Il Mattino, entering the Order of Italian journalists in 1995. At the same time, she continued her profession within the RAI television schedules, initially dealing with some investigations for the program Mixer, on Rai 2, continuing on Rai 3 by creating the program Italia Maastricht together with Giovanni Minoli and Alan Friedman in 1995. Subsequently, she wrote the programs Energia and Mister Euro, the latter also as co-host, becoming the economic manager of Rai 3. In 1997, she edited and hosted ten episodes of the column on the history of the twentieth century, the sign of the command of the program La Storia siamo noi.[6]
Between 2002 and 2003, she was responsible for information for Rai Educational,[7] and the following year she was a regular guest on the program Casa Raiuno, as an economic expert. Between 2005 and 2008, she was the author and host of the information program Economix, produced by Rai Educational.
Myrta Merlino in 2011
In 2009 she arrived at La7, as author and host of Effetto domino, an economic analysis broadcast in the late evening until 2011. Since 2011 she has been the creator, author and host, again on La7, of the program L'aria che tira. In the summer of 2014 Merlino debuted in L'aria che tira stasera, four episodes broadcast on Mondays in prime time. In 2015 she published with RizzoliMadri. Perché saranno loro a cambiare il Paese. Since November 15, 2020 she has hosted another spin-off of her program entitled L'aria di domenica. In 2023 she left La7 and moved to Mediaset, where she was chosen as host of Pomeriggio Cinque, replacing Barbara D'Urso.[8][9]
She has also worked for a long time for the radio, hosting, within the Rai Radio 2 program Alle otto della sera, a series of episodes on the history of money and then,[10] again for Rai Radio 2, a series of twenty episodes dedicated to the biographies of the men who changed history through money, entitled Re di Denari. She has written for Il Sole 24 Ore, Il Messaggero, Panorama, International Herald Tribune, Libération, Families in Business, Nord e Sud, Il Secolo XIX, Il Resto del Carlino, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno. She was the author of a dictionary of community terms, distributed in 250,000 copies with the newspapers Il Mattino and La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno. Moderator of numerous conferences and public meetings, over the years she has interviewed the main international players in political and economic life.
Personal life
She had two twin sons, Pietro and Giulio Tucci, in 1997 from a relationship that began at the age of twenty-four.[11] From the early 2000s until 2016 she was linked to the former CEO of Invitalia Domenico Arcuri, with whom she had a daughter, Caterina, born in 2001. Since 2016 she has been in a relationship with the former coach and former footballer of Juventus and the national teamMarco Tardelli.[12]
