In this episode of Booked In with Beyond Text, Tanya Sedneva is joined by Alison Carpenter Davis, author of Letters Home from Stanford: 125 Years of Correspondence Collected from Students of Stanford University.

Together, they explore why letters — even in a world of instant messages — still feel so powerful.

Through real excerpts from over a century of correspondence, this conversation brings the past unexpectedly close. A student writing home after hearing about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A young woman describing an earthquake, convinced it might be the end of the world. And lighter, almost timeless moments — like a student asking their mother not to embarrass them in public.

Funny, intimate, and deeply human, these letters reveal something simple: we haven’t changed as much as we think.