77 episodes

A Podcast About Wonderful & Unexpected Things
Want to listen to something nice for a change? Love Letters to... is a short burst of celebration, delivered to your phone twice a week. Alicia and Melissa shine their prodigious light on the most interesting and impactful people, events, and ideas throughout time.

Love Letters to..‪.‬ Hemlock Creatives

    • History
    • 5.0 • 24 Ratings

A Podcast About Wonderful & Unexpected Things
Want to listen to something nice for a change? Love Letters to... is a short burst of celebration, delivered to your phone twice a week. Alicia and Melissa shine their prodigious light on the most interesting and impactful people, events, and ideas throughout time.

    Unusual Domestic and International Laws

    Unusual Domestic and International Laws

    In this episode Melissa reveals a few of the strange laws from the domestic United States, and a few international laws, too. How are you breaking the law today, and you don't even know it??
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    • 17 min
    April, National Poetry Month

    April, National Poetry Month

    In today’s Love Letters to…, Alicia marks National Poetry Month, celebrated every year in April, with three poets’ love letters to this paragon of springtime (or, probably, autumn, in the Southern Hemisphere). Ogden Nash, Sara Teasdale, and e.e. cummings had thoughts about April - which is decidedly not the cruelest month, whatever T.S. Eliot may have said.
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    • 7 min
    Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, and Paris's Enduring Shakespeare and Company Bookstore

    Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, and Paris's Enduring Shakespeare and Company Bookstore

    In today's Love Letters to..., Alicia introduces us to two women who blazed their own trails in life, eventually blazing them together. France's Adrienne Monnier established a unique business on Paris's Left Bank as a bookseller and booklender in 1915, with a special focus on supporting the community of women readers. American Sylvia Beach, inspired by the intellectual milieu she enjoyed at Adrienne's La Maison des Amis des Livres, opened the famed English-language bookshop Shakespeare and Company four years later. They didn't only inspire each other in business; these two literary women fell in love and were a couple for the next 36 years, until Adrienne's death in 1955. In their years together, they championed some of the most important literary voices of their generation, including James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and Ernest Hemingway, and left a lasting legacy in the form of today's Shakespeare and Company.
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    • 28 min
    Curious George

    Curious George

    In today's Love Letters to..., Melissa shares the story of the daring escape of the husband-and-wife creative team of Margret and Hans Rey, two German-born Jews who were living in Paris under the shadow of the impending Nazi invasion. Riding bikes they constructed from found spare parts and traveling on Brazilian passports, they managed to cross out of France, and eventually travel on to New York City, with only their most prized possession in hand: a children's book they'd written and illustrated together that continues to delight audiences today.
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    • 8 min
    Pluto and Charon, The Galaxy's Love Affair

    Pluto and Charon, The Galaxy's Love Affair

    In today's Love Letters to... Alicia ponders the nature of love and identity through the lens of Pluto, our solar system's recently "reclassified" dwarf planet. It turns out that Pluto's incessant and requited flirtation with its moon, Charon, meant that teasing out which of these bodies is the planet and which is the moon is more complicated than astronomers thought. Planet or moon, the two will be circling each other until time itself ends, a romance for the ages.
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    • 11 min
    Catherine Granville, Churchill's Favorite Spy

    Catherine Granville, Churchill's Favorite Spy

    In today's Love Letters to... Melissa shares the incredible story of Krystyna Skarbek, aka, Catherine Granville, A Polish noblewoman of Jewish descent, she became one of Britain's most important spies during World War II, but the end of the war tilted her life in a tragic direction. Her homeland was handed to Stalin, and because she was a woman, the British intelligence services thought they had no use for her. In the end, this gallant hero became known to the British public as a victim of what we would now describe as a domestic violence murder. It's long past time the full story of Krystyna Skarbek's contributions to the modern global order are known and celebrated.
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    • 22 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
24 Ratings

24 Ratings

J_Q_4567 ,

Love this podcast!

Each episode is a little treat for the ears. Alicia’s voice in combination with interesting facts you may or may not have known make for such a delightful listen. I’m so happy I discovered this podcast!

Deedsk ,

AMAZING PODCAST

I have LOVED this podcast since episode one! I’m a Trash Panda and enjoy Alicia’s storytelling on Trashy Divorces and Done & Dunne and she delivers just as passionately funny on this podcast too.
Love Letters to….is a quick yet uplifting story delivered daily. I’m really digging the monthly themes! Alicia and Melissa (the incredible researcher for LLT) are so creative in their themes and each month’s content. I’m discovering people and places I never knew existed; as well as learning new details about subjects I thought I knew well.
BIG THANKS for producing a brilliant podcast that I can’t wait to listen to each day!!
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

JenMac23 ,

Touching & Heartwarming

What a lovely podcast! I really appreciate the objective – to pay homage to that which is good about humankind. These short but tender reflections offer a wonderful reprieve from
a world that lately feels very heavy and polarized. I often feel overwhelmed by the media these days. There is so much to feel angsty about. Yes, it is our responsibility to stay informed, to avoid putting on blinders to that which deserves our energy and attention…but there needs to be some balance in that, too. I think this show offers a few moments of that balance! I love the idea of recognizing what is good about us, what beauty and inspiration exist in our past and in our present. I love that the chosen topics are familiar (to me – that is obviously subjective!), yet contain tidbits of information that I never knew and feel surprised by! I find myself smiling, and it feels good to smile! If you are looking for a little sunshine in your day, listen to these beautifully written stories. They are a wonderful reminder of the good that human beings are capable of!

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