And the the This is joining in France episode 84.

Hello, I'm Annie and join us in France is an independent travel podcast

about all things French but mostly travel except for today

today I'm going to talk to you about a prominent French personality and his name is Voltaire. I'm sure you've heard of him.

The reason why I'm doing this is because originally I was at least and I were

planning to record an episode together and then she had to

bow out because of work reasons which I understand it happens and so just so that I

could have an episode ready for you this week.

I decided, well, why don't I share with the join us in France listeners

this wonderful story I heard from a French historian called Valerie André.

She has written many books, but I didn't see one on Voltaire, but she was on French radio talking about him and she just lit my fire

It was really fun to listen to her and so I listened again and I took some notes and I went and read some more and I thought he I went and I just had a lot of fun with this so I thought well I could

probably talk about Voltaire for a little bit it's not going to be a very long show I don't think but I can tell you a few things about Voltaire that

will make it fun for you when you visit France for instance when you go to the

Pantheon that was episode 71 well the first thing you see as you enter the crypt is Voltaire and he has a

beautiful mausoleum it's kind of a little creepy in the way it's lit and all that

anyway it's very fun and then there's sire of course which I'll talk about a little bit later.

So how about this Voltaire that you've heard of your whole life but you probably don't know that much about

him unless you've studied his his writings I have to say that as you probably

know when French people do the baccalaureate the first exam they have to take is a French

exam it's French literature exam and mine happened to be en voldtaire and that's because the jury

that's who they wanted me to talk about and the the

...