From Today I Found Out.

While history knows him as a great Enlightenment thinker and writer, Voltaire was once Francois-Marie Arouet, the charismatic and rebellious youngest son of an upper middle-class French family. (His father was a minor treasury official and his mother from a low-ranking noble family.)

After going against his father’s wishes and abandoning a promising career in law in favor of writing, Voltaire fell consistently afoul of French authorities and was no stranger to controversy. Besides being exiled from Paris for a time in his early career, he was also imprisoned in the infamous Bastille prison in Paris for 11 months, using his time there to write.

A major turning point in his life, which had it not happened may have resulted in history forgetting the brilliant man, was shortly after he returned from exile in England and had a fortuitous encounter with an equally brilliant mathematician, Charles Marie de la Condamine, at a dinner party held by Charles du Fay in 1728. Voltaire at the time was struggling financially, but de la Condamine had a plan which he proposed to Voltaire that would help make Voltaire and himself a boatload of money via ever so slightly unscrupulous means, though technically not breaking any laws.

Author: Andy Williamson
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Samuel Avila