Love Letters to...

We are excited to share a show we're loving with you! American Prankster: Wavy Gravy's Life Story pairs the legendary entertainer and activist with our friend, podcaster Rainbow Valentine, following the incredible ride of a life that Wavy Gravy has been on through decades of American counterculture. Enjoy this sample, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts!

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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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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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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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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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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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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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In today's Love Letters to...Melissa celebrates Virginia Hall, the most dangerous of Allied spies, according to the Nazis. This amazing American woman, not limited by a prosthetic leg, rebelled against every barrier life and the world put in front of her to become a key asset in the defeat of Hitler's Third Reich. Her story has been little-known for decades, but recent books have brought the incredible story of Virginia Hall, "Agent Heckler," to this generation of readers. Melissa thinks the world should know Virginia Hall's name and her quiet but supremely important heroism.

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In today's Love Letters to... Alicia celebrates Hollywood legend Joan Crawford with a love letter to her, penned by her first husband, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in 1930. Melissa gives us some insight into the spirit of the people of Ukraine, with a love letter honoring Saint Olga of Kiev - a lady who was not one to be trifled with.

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In today's Love Letters to... Melissa celebrates the legendary Irish actress Maureen O'Hara, and Alicia carries the Irish theme through to talk about luck - what people say about, how we get it, and how we carry it.

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