Is There a Future in French History?

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Dr. Erin Legosi has written a book about the Paris catacombs, which is how she became an expert in this story. She learned to speak French from the time she was five years old and it helped her find documents that would have been indecipherable if not for language skills. Her favorite document includes hundreds of pages of handwritten comments made by visitors on August 8th, 1811. Dr. Legosi: If you can read and understand French, there's just so much moreYou can't do a PhD in French history without without understanding French.

Let’s get spooky. Venture below Parisian streets and into the catacombs: hundreds of miles of subterranean tunnels housing millions of human skeletons, some fashioned into sculpture. Alie tracked down Dr. Erin-Marie Legacey – author of “Making Space for the Dead,” professor of French history and one of the world’s foremost experts on this eerie place. We chat about everything from miasmas to sinkholes, boggling cemetery history, smells, skulls, hidden chambers, (very) underground parties, and how we view our bodies post-life. Also: Alie takes a trip to see them herself.

Dr. Legacy’s book, “Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780-1830” on Bookshop.org and Amazon

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A donation went to: Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas