Pere Lachaise cemetery
The Earful Tower: Paris
Oliver Gee
4.8 • 794 Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2018
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Did you know Paris is home to a massive cemetery called Pere Lachaise, where all kinds of famous and interesting people are buried?
Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde… and about a million more. And it's the most visited cemetery in the world with 3.5 million people checking it out annually.
Anyway, today's guest, Joe Start, has written a book on Père Lachaise and it's called The Chairfather - a literal translation of the cemetery's French name.
Joe visited the tombstones countless times to research the book and interview the dead, and today on The Earful Tower he shares his tips on which graves to find, what to avoid, and how not to act if you're a tourist there.
And if you like what you hear, you can find the Chairfather book here or on ebook here. Joe's audio tours can be found here and here.
Are you a Patreon supporter of The Earful Tower? Well today's your lucky day, you get one of the cemetery audio tours FOR FREE! Yes, Joe hung around for a chat about Oscar Wilde's tomb stone, and you can find the link to get your free tour there right now.
***********
The Earful Tower exists thanks to support from its Patreon members. From $10 a month you can unlock almost endless extras including bonus podcast episodes, live video replays, special event invites, and our annually updated PDF guide to Paris.
Membership takes only a minute to set up. Thank you for keeping this channel independent.
For more from the Earful Tower, here are some handy links:
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Earful Tower listeners, it's another Monday in Paris, and I hate to say it, but it's a very wet and rainy Monday. |
| 0:05.7 | Maybe you can even hear the rain as I've got the window to the studio wide open because it's still warm. |
| 0:11.7 | I've got wet feet from filming a walk show for Patreon supporters this morning with Jay Swanson. |
| 0:16.0 | We were hunting invaders in the Moray. |
| 0:18.3 | And yeah, I guess the big news for me is that I've been evicted from my |
| 0:22.8 | apartment through no fault of my own. What does that mean for you guys? Well, it could mean a much |
| 0:28.4 | longer honeymoon season. So that's something I'm going to talk about at the end of the episode. |
| 0:31.8 | I'm going to have my fiancé Lena coming into the studio discussing the latest parts of the honeymoon |
| 0:37.0 | plans. But for now, |
| 0:38.6 | we're going to be talking about the Père Lachés Cemetery, the most visited cemetery in the whole world. |
| 0:43.3 | A million people are buried there. It's on the east side of Paris. Everything you need to know |
| 0:47.3 | about it is coming at you right now, thanks to this week's special guest, Joe Start, who literally |
| 0:52.6 | wrote the book on the cemetery. It's called |
| 0:55.1 | The Chairfather. So yeah, enjoy the episode. I hope you guys learned something just as I did. |
| 0:59.7 | Let's get into it. One man, one country, one red scooter. Here's the Earful Tower with |
| 1:08.8 | Oliver G. Joe Stott, welcome to the studio. |
| 1:11.6 | Hey, thanks Oliver. |
| 1:12.6 | How you doing? |
| 1:13.6 | I'm doing very well. |
| 1:14.6 | You're looking well. |
| 1:15.6 | Am I? |
| 1:16.6 | You know, I watched the, you know, Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fine. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Oliver Gee, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Oliver Gee and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.