The Sea Around Us

This is Love

Vox Media Podcast Network

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.8 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When writer Rachel Carson built a house on Maine’s Southport Island, her new neighbor, Dorothy Freeman, sent her a note to welcome her. Rachel wrote back. And when the summer was over, they kept writing to each other. Lida Maxwell’s book is Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love. Martha Freeman's book is Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, 1952-1964 Say hello on Facebook and Instagram. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Want to listen to This is Love ad-free? Sign up for Criminal Plus – you’ll get to listen to This is Love, Criminal, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads. Plus, you’ll get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal and other exclusive benefits. Learn more and sign up here. We also make Criminal and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:23.9	Adobe Express, the quick and easy create anything app.
0:31.7	In 1946, the writer Rachel Carson took time off work to go visit the coast of Maine.
0:39.4	It was her first time there, and she immediately loved it.
0:43.7	She spent time walking along the shores of Maine's South Port Island.
0:49.0	There's woods, there's bayberry, there's mosses,
0:53.3	there's just this kind of conflagration of lush green right next to rocky outcroppings and this beautiful ocean.
1:05.5	Lita Maxwell is a professor of political science at Boston University.
1:09.9	And so Southport was this kind of gorgeous, magical fairyland that Carson stepped into.
1:18.5	Rachel Carson and her mother stayed in a secluded cottage near Southport right on the water.
1:25.7	She wrote that it was completely quiet,
1:27.9	except for, quote,
1:29.6	gulls, herons, and ospreys,
1:32.5	sometimes the tolling of a bell buoy,
1:35.2	and when the wind is right,
1:37.2	the very distant sound of surf.
	...

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