This appointment, announced Wednesday by the president of Radio France, Sibyle Veil, comes a few weeks before the presidential election and while France Inter is strongly attacked by far-right candidates, Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen.

"I chose to name Adèle Van Reeth, who produces + Les Chemins de la philosophie + on France Culture", declared Ms. Veil, questioned by the daily newspaper Le Monde on the name of the successor of Laurence Bloch, 69 years old.

The latter, who "was concerned not to do the year too much", added Ms. Veil, "will stay until the end of the summer grid".

Normalian and philosopher Adèle Van Reeth, 39, will have the difficult mission of maintaining audiences at the highest level (7 million listeners).

She will design in tandem with Ms. Bloch the next radio schedule.

The first woman to run public radio, Laurence Bloch managed to boost the audiences of France Inter which, since 2019, has taken the place of France's leading radio station from its rival RTL.

In her interview, Ms. Veil paid tribute to "her extraordinary record".

Laurence Bloch "considerably transformed the channel to anchor it in its time", she said, citing a renewal of the themes addressed, but also the expansion of the audience, thanks to youth podcasts or replay listening.

The director of France Inter, Laurence Bloch, in Paris, July 8, 2021 JOEL SAGET AFP / Archives

"Intellectual requirement and modernity"

Ms. Van Reeth made her debut in the round house in 2011 at France Culture, with the production and animation of a daily philosophy program alongside the philosopher Raphaël Enthoven, who became her companion.

Sibyle Veil explained to Le Monde that "this choice was obvious, as Adèle Van Reeth represents everything that France Inter is: both intellectual rigor and modernity".

"She is a great radio professional in all her dimensions: she knows what it is to produce a daily newspaper and her program (Les Chemins de la philosophie, editor's note) is one of the greatest successes of podcasts in re-listening to Radio France," she added.

The intellectual succeeded in making this program one of the most listened to on Radio France by making the most complex philosophical issues accessible and entertaining.

The choice of a philosopher as captain of France Inter is not trivial.

Homeland of Jean-Paul Sartre, France gives a prominent place to philosophy in its general education in high school and, each year, many books devoted to this subject are published.

Off the microphone, the young woman published a collection entitled "Questions of character", compiling her interviews with figures of contemporary philosophy under several themes, as well as a novel in 2020, "Ordinary life", in which the author , now a mother, questions the relationship to everyday life and the ordinary, one of her favorite subjects.

Her arrival on the radio in 2011 came from a happy coincidence: while she was passing the philosophy aggregation, one of her teachers at the Ecole Normale Supérieure informed her that France Culture was looking for a collaborator for its program. on philosophy.

She responds to the ad then ends up giving up the diploma, preferring this radio program that she is preparing in tandem with Raphaël Enthoven before taking over the reins of the show.

Also to the credit of the normalienne, the presentation of the educational tablet "D'art d'art" between 2018 and 2020 and the animation of the literary program "Livres & vous" broadcast on Public Sénat.

France Inter is regularly accused of being a left-wing radio.

Attacks demolished by Sibyle Veil in her interview with Le Monde: "When you are the first radio station in France, you are necessarily watched, jealous, criticized. There is no secret, most of the attacks began when France Inter became number one.

© 2022 AFP