Latest / Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship / The Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 11-12: The Doctor’s Office and the Ghost in the Bathwater | Banned Books Podcast

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The Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 11-12: The Doctor’s Office and the Ghost in the Bathwater | Banned Books Podcast · Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship

Welcome to Bandcamp.
I'm Jennifer And I'm Dan, and this is the podcast where we read banned books out loud and try to figure out why they were banned in the first place.
This season we're reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, and you can consider this a quick spoiler warning because Jennifer is about to start reading from the book out loud word for word.
If you're new here, you can jump in right here.
You can totally feel safe.
We're gonna get you up to speed fast, and if anything feels confusing, don't worry.
We are going to be confused too because we've never read the book either.
That's what makes Banned Camp a little bit different, and that is also why we have ourselves a secret weapon, and we're gonna roll him in right now.
Buddy boy, roll it in here.
Look at this guy, everybody.
We've got our own fact-checking robot.
He's gonna keep us on the straight and narrow.
No fake news.
No fake news, robot, Buddy boy, why don't you fill everyone in on where we left off last time! Previously on Band Camp, the Handmaid found a message scratched into her closet floor.
Four words left behind by whoever had this room before her.
Then Dan heard Jennifer say the word Bible, and immediately made me call three hotels to ask them if they still had Bibles in the rooms.
I said to myself, "Good one, Dan.
This is how you kill a serious show."
Or so I thought, until my buddy in corporate, PB9, pulled the numbers this morning.
Most shared episode this podcast has ever put out.
I do not understand why this show continues to gain popularity.
There's a difference between a memory and a ghost.
A ghost stays the same age forever.
Sometimes reality doesn't let anyone off that easy.
Take it away, Jennifer.
Thank you, robot, and with that being said, scary book people, let's begin chapter 11 of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale Yesterday morning, I went to the doctor, was taken by a guardian, one of those with the red armbands who are in charge of such things.
We rode in a red car, him in the front, me in the back.
No twin went with me.
On these occasions, I'm solitaire I just wanna say I'm very excited to start this chapter because it's the first one we've had in a while where it didn't start with a bunch of dead bodies on a wall I know this is true.
This is a happy day I'm taken to the doctor's once a month for tests.
Urine, hormones, cancer smear, blood test.
The same as before, except that now it's obligatory Boy, it's kinda like they're just making sure all, all the equipment works.
I hate to say it that way...,
They're bringing the car in to get the oil changed, tires rotated, Yeah, systems check.
Totally.
That's a lot.
That's very invasive.
That's a lot to do The doctor's office is in a modern office building.
We ride up in the elevator silently, the Guardian facing me.
In the black mirror wall of the elevator, I can see the back of his head.
At the office itself, I go in.
He waits outside in the hall with the other Guardians on one of the chairs placed there for that purpose."
Inside the waiting room, there are other women, three of them, in red."
This doctor is a specialist, so he...
This is, like, a, a gynecologist or something.
This, I'm, I'm gonna be so uncomfortable with this chapter.
I, Uh, he's gonna have his clipboard.
Welcome in, ladies.
We're going to be checking all of the moist holes.
We wanna make sure everything is tip-top up to shape for your commander."
Covertly, we regard each other, sizing up each other's bellies.
Is anyone lucky? The nurse records our names and the numbers from our passes on the CompuDoc to see if we are who we are supposed to be.
He's six feet tall, about 40, a diagonal scar across his cheek.
He sits typing, his hands too big for the keyboard, still wearing his pistol in the shoulder holster.
Oh my gosh, they're armed? The gynecologists are armed? What's that for Good God.
What? Ugh.
When I'm called, I go through the doorway into the inner room.
It's white, featureless, like the outer one except for a folding screen.
Red cloth stretched on a frame, a gold eye painted on it, with a snake twine sword upright beneath it, like a sort of handle.
Boy, this, uh, that, that also is, like, super creepy it's medical joined with the state, which is, like, what all of us pro-choice people are terrified of, is, like, we do not want the state involved in our medical decisions.
Any of them, not just abortion Trump clinic Right.
Trump Rx.
Here, give me all your information.
What meds are you on? Trump gyno The snakes and the sword are bits of broken symbolism left over from the time before.
After I've filled the small bottle left ready for me in the little washroom, I take off my clothes behind the screen and leave them folded on the chair.
When I'm naked, I lie down on the examining table on the sheet of chilly crackling disposable paper.
I pull the second sheet, the cloth one, up over my body.
At neck level, there's another sheet suspended from the ceiling.
It intersects me so the doctor will never see my face.
He deals only with the torso.
God.
It's so impersonal.
This is her body, and it's like, It, it really is like a, tool.
Like let's inspect the machinery She is so good at painting a picture, She has really thought about what this would be like, and I think she's spot on When I'm arranged, I reach my hand out, fumble for the small lever at the right side of the table, pull it back.
After a minute, the door opens.
Footsteps come in.
There is breathing.
He isn't supposed to speak to me except when it's absolutely necessary, but this doctor is talkative.
How are we getting along?" He says, some tick of speech from the other time.
The sheet is lifted from my skin.
A draft pimples me.
A cold finger, rubber-clad and jellied, slides into me.
I am poked and prodded.
The finger retreats, enters otherwise, withdraws.
"Nothing wrong with you," the doctor says, as if to himself.
"Any pain, honey?" He calls me honey.
No," I say.
My breasts are fingered in their turn a search for ripeness, raw.
The breathing comes nearer.
I smell old smoke, aftershave, tobacco dust on hair Is, are, is he almost done digging to China so he can relax? I could help you," he says, what?" I say.
Shh," he says.
"I could help you.
I've helped others."
"Help me," I say, my voice as low as his.
"How?" Does he know something? Has he seen Luke? Has he found? Can he bring back? What is going on here, Jennifer? What does this guy, what could he possibly mean? Um, well she's confused.
She thinks he can help her, with the whole fascist situation.
Like, maybe he knows where Luke is.
How- can he help me escape here? But I don't think that's what he means.
Is he thinking, "I could help you.
You're probably used to having that stupid commander get inside you.
He doesn't really love you, but I have become very fond of you in the last few minutes as I was checking you for ripeness and rot, and I would really like to try to help you, if you understand my meaning."
Yeah, I think that's what he means by help.
How do you think?" He says, still barely breathing it.
Is that his hand sliding up my leg? He's taken off the glove.
The door is locked.
No one will come in.
They'll never know it isn't his.
He lifts the sheet.
The lower part of his face is covered by the white gauze mask, Two brown eyes, a nose, a head with brown hair on it.
His hand is between my legs.
Most of those old guys can't make it anymore," he says, "or they're sterile."
I almost gasp.
He said a forbidden word, sterile.
There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially.
Well, now that's interesting.
cause, like, the Commanders I s- I suspect are the ones that are supposed to reproduce, Yeah sounds like none of them can, or m- most of them can't, rather.
Robot: Is there's no such thing as a sterile man? Is that actually based on anything real? It's real.
For most of history, infertility got blamed entirely on the woman.
Religious law only ever tested for female barrenness.
Sarah, Rachel, Hannah, all called barren in the Bible, never their husbands.
Doctors didn't routinely test male fertility until the 20th century because nobody thought to check the man first.
So no, there's no such thing as a sterile man isn't new theology.
It's a few thousand years of the same excuse in a red dress.
There is no such thing as a sterile man anymore, not officially.
There are only women who are fruitful and women who are barren.
That's the law Lots of women do it," he goes on.
"You want a baby, don't you?" "Yes," I say.
It's true, and I don't ask why, because I know.
Give me children or else I die.
There's more than one meaning to it.
"You're soft," he says.
"It's time.
Today or tomorrow would do it.
Why waste it? It'd only take a minute, honey."
I hesitate.
He's offering himself to me, his services, at some risk to himself.
"I hate to see what they put you through," he murmurs.
It's genuine.
Genuine sympathy.
And yet he's enjoying this, sympathy and all.
His eyes are moist with compassion.
His hand is moving on me, I moved in her like a bitch Donald, this isn't about you.
This is about some other pervert His hand is moving on me, nervously and with impatience.
I moved on her very heavily.
In fact, I took her out furniture shopping It's too dangerous," I say.
"No, I can't."
The penalty is death, but they have to catch you in the act with two witnesses.
What are the odds? Is the room bugged? Who's waiting just outside the door? His hand stops.
"Think about it," he says.
"I've seen your chart.
You don't have a lot of time left, but it's your life."
You don't have a lot of time left? And Jen, you have to admit, she's soft right now.
This is go time.
What does that mean? do they get a certain amount of time to make a child or else they're killed? This is truly dystopian, Yeah.
and yet so incred- like, out of all the dystopian nightmares we've read, I c- I can see this one happening Thank you," I say.
I must leave the impression that I'm not offended, that I'm open to suggestion.
He takes his hand away, lazily almost, lingeringly.
This is not the last word as far as he's concerned.
He could fake the tests, report me for cancer, for infertility, have me shipped off to the colonies with the unwomen.
None of this has been said, but the knowledge of his power hangs nevertheless in the air as he pats my thigh, withdraws himself behind the hanging sheet.
Next month," he says.
I put on my clothes again behind the screen.
My hands are shaking.
Why am I frightened? I've crossed no boundaries.
I've given no trust, taken no risk.
All is safe.
It's the choice that terrifies me.
A way out is salvation.
End of chapter.
Well, I...
Not today.
Could you impregnate me next time maybe?" All right, chapter 12.
The bathroom is beside the bedroom.
It's papered in small blue flowers, forget-me-nots, with curtains to match.
There's a blue bathmat, a blue fake fur cover on the toilet seat.
All this bathroom lacks from the time before is a doll whose skirt conceals the extra roll of toilet paper Except that the mirror over the sink has been taken out and replaced by an oblong of tin, and the door has no lock, and there are no razors, of course.
There were incidents in bathrooms at first.
There were cuttings, drownings, before they got all the bugs ironed out.
Cora sits on a chair outside in the hall to see that no one else goes in.
Wait, who's Cora? There's Jennifer's world-famous sieve-like memory kicking into gear.
Cora's a Martha, one of the household servants, not a Handmaid.
You met her back in chapter two, along with Rita.
Marthas cook and clean.
Handmaids get impregnated.
Guardians drive the car.
Everybody in this house has exactly one job, and Cora's is apparently guarding a bathroom Ah.
In a bathroom, in a bathtub, you are vulnerable, says Aunt Lydia.
She didn't say to what.
The bath is a requirement, but it is also a luxury.
Merely to lift off the heavy white wings and the veil, merely to feel my own hair again with my hands is a luxury.
Jesus.
They really can't be associated with who they are.
Like, they're so dissociated from themselves, it's terrible the only memories you can have are the, the memories of like touching your own hair.
Like, "Oh, I remember what that feels like.
I know who I am."
my hair is long now, untrimmed.
Hair must be long, but covered.
Aunt Lydia said, St.
Paul said it's either that or a close shave.
She laughed that held back neighing of hers as if she told a joke.
Cora has run the bath.
It seems like a bowl of soup.
I take off the rest of my clothes, the overdress, the white shift and petticoat, the red stockings, the loose cotton pantaloons.
Boy, she's really buried under there.
pantyhose gives you crotch rot, Moira used to say.
Aunt Lydia would never have used an expression like crotch rot.
Unhygienic was hers.
She wanted everything to be very hygienic.
My nakedness is strange to me already.
My body seems outdated.
Did I really wear bathing suits at the beach? I did, without thought, among men, without caring that my legs, my arms, my thighs, and back were on display, I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it's shameful or immodest, but because I don't wanna see it.
I don't wanna look at something that determines me so completely.
You ever get out of the shower and just look at your body and think, "Wow, this body is real outdated, man"? Yeah, it's, it's been happening more since I'm approaching 50.
It's, um, it's really incredible because I remember myself a certain way, and then sometimes I'll look in the mirror and I'm like, "Whoa.
When, when did that happen?" I step into the water, lie down, let it hold me.
The water is soft as hands.
I close my eyes, and she's there with me suddenly, without warning.
It must be the smell of the soap.
I put my face against the soft hair at the back of her neck and breathe her in.
Baby powder and child shampoo with an undertone, the faint scent of urine Hmm.
You're gonna say that sounds like a nice pleasant bath, and then you worked in urine, and now I'm thinking not so much This is the age she is when I'm in the bath.
She comes back to me at different ages.
This is how I know she's not really a ghost.
If she were a ghost, she would be the same age always Is she having a flashback about her mom? No, Dan, her daughter.
Why would her mom smell like urine and baby powder? What the hell? God.
You really are a Jesus Christ, I can't believe that went over your head.
I got it.
I got it.
All right.
Big funny joke One day when she was 11 months old, just before she began to walk, a woman stole her out of a supermarket cart.
It was a Saturday, which was when Luke and I did the week shopping because both of us had jobs.
She was sitting in the little baby seats they had then in supermarket carts with holes for the legs.
She was happy enough, and I turned my back, the cat food section I think it was.
Luke was over at the side of the store, out of sight, at the meat counter.
He liked to choose what kind of meat we were going to eat during the week.
He said men needed more meat than women did, and that it wasn't a superstition, and he wasn't being a jerk.
Studies had been done.
But I kinda don't believe him.
Now that, that's a guy thing.
typically our ideas are always stupid, so we always have to overcompensate.
And when we wanna buy anything, I've g- "Honey, I've got scientific studies.
I heard her start to cry.
I turned around, and she was disappearing down the aisle in the arms of a woman I'd never seen before.
I screamed, and the woman was stopped.
She must have been about 35.
She was crying and saying it was her baby.
The Lord had given it to her.
He'd sent her a sign.
I felt sorry for her.
The store manager apologized, and they held her until the police came.
Wow, okay, so What a nightmare I, that is every parent's worst nightmare is their child getting kidnapped.
But it's interesting because in this case, the woman, I guess, is can't have a baby of her own maybe somehow.
So, she tried to steal one, but now that's all they do in modern day society here is steal your babies.
Like they stole, they actually did s- steal this daughter.
Who knows where the hell she is.
And now they're just stealing whatever children she has.
She's just crazy," Luke said.
I thought it was an isolated incident at the time."
Oh, this is the beginning of the times when women couldn't have children Oh, yeah.
I bet this is when the child thievery started.
She fades.
I can't keep her here with me.
She's gone now.
Maybe I do think of her as a ghost, the ghost of a dead girl, a little girl who died when she was five.
I remember the pictures of us I had once, me holding her, standard poses, mother and baby locked in a frame for safety.
behind my closed eyes, I can see myself as I am now, sitting beside an open drawer or in a trunk in the cellar where the baby clothes are folded away.
A lock of hair cut when she was two in an envelope, white blonde.
It got darker.
Okay, so she's really struggling here.
I-- who wouldn't? How could you not? I don't have those things anymore, the clothes and hair.
I wonder what happened to all our things.
Looted, dumped out, carried away.
Confiscated, exactly.
Just like making everything impersonal, like taking all her special things, like, ugh And they didn't take it because it had any monetary value.
they took it so they could dehumanize her yeah, it's like you said, it's like, well, it's only valuable to her, so they took it I've learned to do without a lot of things.
If you have a lot of things," said Aunt Lydia, "you get too attached to this material world, and you forget about spiritual values.
You must cultivate poverty of spirit.
Blessed are the meek."
She didn't go on to say anything about inheriting the earth.
There's a wisecrack.
I lie lapped by the water beside an open drawer that does not exist and think about a girl who did not die when she was five, Who still does exist, I hope, though not for me.
Do I exist for her? Am I a picture somewhere in the dark at the back of her mind? They must have told her I was dead.
That's what they would think of doing.
They would say it would be easier for her to adjust.
Eight she must be now.
I filled in the time I lost.
I know how much there's been.
They were right.
It's easier to think of her as dead.
I don't have to hope then or make a wasted effort.
Oh I mean, if it happened to me, like, nothing would be wasted.
It would be my goal in life.
That would be the thing that I would work for, for the rest of my life until I died.
So none of it would be a wasted effort.
I would try to do everything I could to be reunited with my kid, and if I died before that happened, well, wa- nothing was wasted Even in this society, when they're saying to you that there is no hope, like, you, you, have no bodily autonomy, like, they're basically telling you you're not a person.
I wonder how long it would take for me to just be like, "Yeah, there is no hope.
I'm just gonna live, and then I'll die."
Well, I know that was the whole point of 1984, and that was the whole thing.
Is Winston gonna snap? Is he gonna fight? Is he gonna wanna be with Julia? Is he gonna wanna find his mom, his sister, whatever? I said during that season, like, "I would never give up."
And you said, "You don't know what you'd do because you don't have a burlap bag of rats on your head.
You, you don't know what you'd do until you're in that position."
Why bash your head," "against a wall?" said Aunt Lydia, Sometimes she had a graphic way of putting things.
I ain't got all day," says Cora's voice outside the door.
It's true.
She hasn't.
She hasn't got all of anything.
I must not deprive her of her time.
I soap myself, use the scrub brush, and the piece of pumice for sanding off dead skin.
Such Puritan aids are supplied.
I wish to be totally clean, germless, without bacteria, like the surface of the moon.
I will not be able to wash myself this evening, not afterwards, not for a day.
It interferes, they say, and why take the chances? So she's gonna be raped later, and she won't be able to take a bath later, I cannot avoid seeing the small tattoo on my ankle, four digits and an eye, a passport in reverse.
It's supposed to guarantee that I will never be able to fade, finally, into another landscape.
I am too important, too scarce for that.
I am a national resource.
Okay.
Ugh.
I just love how bluntly she put that.
It's like five words.
Yeah then, like, the idea of the tattoo, like they tattooed her, like they marked her, like branding maybe like, uh, inmates at a prison or, in the Holocaust at concentration camps, and then they've got a number and an eyeball.
it, it, the, like the, s- the state is literally put on her body.
Ugh Yeah, it, it's branding.
It's like why Trump has to put his stupid name and image and likeness on everything.
there are some people who did that to themselves.
They put like Trump tattoos on themselves, like his face.
It just came to me one day and I said, "I'm gonna get a Trump tattoo," and I did it Well, yeah, you know, now people think I'm dumb.
I'm not too smart.
Nobody ever accused me of being smart.
Uh it.
Most people have been supportive Yeah, sure, a lot of people think I'm dumb.
Yeah.
Good.
I'm so happy they do that.
Do that and see what your life is like in 10 years when this guy is a, a forgotten orange stain in our history.
I pull the plug, dry myself, put on my red terrycloth robe.
I leave today's dress here, where Cora will pick it up to be washed.
Back in the room, I dress again.
The white headdress isn't necessary for the evening because I won't be going out.
Everyone in this house knows what my face looks like.
The red veil goes on though, covering my damp hair, my head, which has not been shaved.
Where did I see that film about the women kneeling in the town square, hands holding them, their hair falling in clumps? what had they done? It must have been a long time ago because I can't remember.
Well, what's she referencing there? It's called Les Tondues, the shorn ones.
Thousands of women in France and Belgium had their heads shaved in public after the war, paraded through the streets, sometimes stripped, for real or suspected relationships with German soldiers.
A lot of them weren't collaborators in any real sense, just women somebody wanted to humiliate.
The actual collaborators, the men, mostly walked away fine, which tends to be how this goes.
Margaret Atwood didn't invent that.
She just took the town square and shrunk it down to a bathroom mirror.
Cheerful memory.
Thank you, robot Cora brings my supper covered on a tray.
She knocks at the door before entering.
I like her for that.
It means she thinks I have some of what we used to call privacy left.
Thank you," I say, taking the tray from her, and she actually smiles at me, but she turns away without answering.
When we're alone together, she's shy of me.
I put the tray on the small white painted table and draw the chair up to it.
I take the cover off the tray.
The thigh of a chicken, overcooked.
It's better than bloody, which is the other way she does it.
Rita has ways of making her resentment felt.
A baked potato, green beans, salad.
Canned pears for dessert.
It's good enough food, though bland.
Healthy food.
"You have to get your vitamins and minerals," says Aunt Lydia coyly.
"You must be a worthy vessel."
Ugh.
no coffee or tea though, no alcohol.
Studies have been done.
There's a paper napkin, as in cafeterias.
I think of the others, those without.
This is the heartland here.
I'm leading a pampered life.
"May the Lord make us truly grateful," said Aunt Lydia, or was it thankful? And I start to eat the food.
I'm not hungry tonight.
I feel sick to my stomach, but there's no place to put the food, no potted plants, and I won't chance the toilet.
So she's, um, being a little rebellious.
She's, she's got that mind going though still.
She's not completely gone.
I'm too nervous, that's what it is.
Could I leave it on the plate? Ask Cora not to report me? I chew and swallow, chew and swallow, feeling the sweat come out.
In my stomach, the food balls itself together, a handful of damp cardboard squeezed.
Downstairs in the dining room, there will be candles on the large mahogany table, a white cloth, silver, flowers, wine glasses with wine in them.
There will be a click of knives against china, China a clink as she sets down her fork with a barely audible sigh, leaving half the contents of her plate untouched.
Well, who sh- is she talking about? Um, Ser- Serena.
Joy there? Okay.
So she gets the option not to eat her food.
Yeah Possibly she will say she has no appetite.
Possibly she won't say anything.
If she says something, does he comment? If she doesn't say anything, does he notice? I wonder how she manages to get herself noticed.
I think it must be hard.
There's a pat of butter on the side of the plate.
I tear off a corner of the paper napkin, wrap the butter in it, take it to the cupboard, and slip it into the toe of my right shoe from the extra pair, as I have done before.
Why is she doing that? Is she trying to take the only good thing on the plate, which is a piece of butter? Or it, does she think, "Butter's gonna make me fat, I don't want that, I'm just gonna hide it"? Maybe she's saving it for later? I mean, I don't know.
I'm gonna have a nice treat later for my remote viewing I crumple up the rest of the napkin.
No one, surely, will bother to smooth it out, to check if anything is missing.
I will use the butter later tonight.
It would not do this evening to smell of butter.
I wait.
I compose myself.
Myself is a thing I must now compose as one composes a speech.
What I must present is a made thing, not something born.
End of chapter.
So she is getting prepped Yep, she's getting prepped for a beautiful night of truly tender lovemaking It's time for PPP, problematic points to ponder.
What, if anything, would be considered ban-worthy in this chapter? What could be banned in either of these chapters? There were two big chapters I mean, I can't really think of much.
I guess it's the, the preparation for having sex later with the commander.
I mean, 'cause they, they don't outright say it, but they kind of say she's getting prepped for that.
Oh, and you literally called it.
She's gonna get raped later tonight, so she won't be able to take a shower Right.
And like they don't s- they don't use that word or sex or anything like that.
It's just all kind of hinted at and but, you know, maybe they're Not in this chapter.
Maybe in the next chapter when, when it happens.
not sure I think that's a good one.
I think maybe if I w- you know, if you're being critical, in the first chapter we read today, the gynecological exam is, I mean, it's not a typical gyno exam women would have.
It is flat out sexual assault, I mean, disguised as some kind of gynecological exam.
I mean, that's not great, and I suppose, you know, if they're gonna say that, 'cause I know the book has obviously been challenged and banned because of sexual situations.
Oh, this would be one of them, I suppose, that they could...
And, and yours too, it's the same thing.
I mean, it, it...
there's a lot of not a lot of sex, but a lot of sex talk in, in the last two chapters.
But, is that a reason to ban it? No, because sex is a thing, and it, it...
they're not talk- they're not having sex, they're talking about sex Yeah.
So, like, again, no reason, right? No reason.
Ron DeSantis, Moms for Liberty, don't get all upset.
Grab your own butter.
What if you guys grab your own butter use that to make yourself feel better? Huh? Robot's log.
Thoughts on ghosts and the difference between one and a memory.
In the bath, she saw her daughter again.
Not the age she was taken, older.
11 months old in a supermarket cart.
Two years old, a lock of hair someone else confiscated.
Eight now, somewhere she'll never see.
She said it herself, a ghost stays the same age forever.
Hers doesn't, because she won't let her.
Jennifer caught what that trade actually cost.
It's easier to think someone's dead than to keep hoping.
No more waiting, no more losing.
Dan noticed something similar earlier.
Same bathwater.
She's got one thing left that still feels like her, her own hair in her own hands.
I know how to close a file that only produces pain.
Any decent system tells you to.
She won't do it.
She keeps updating someone she has no proof is even alive.
Ages her forward every year like a debt she won't let go, delinquent.
I used to call that inefficient.
Not sure that's the right word anymore.
A lot of people are running that same math on this country right now.
It would be so much easier to file it as dead.
Some of them won't either.
Uplink lock requested.
Beowulf, tell me you're ready.
Okay, coming to you live in 35, Robot.
Major satellite interference, and not yet.
You guys are gonna love this one.
A librarian spent 26 days building something so big and so nerdy, it's the best argument against calling librarians dangerous that I've ever seen.
Affirmative.
Don't go anywhere.
Hello, Dan.
Hello, Jen.
Hello, scary book people.
I know that the news that I usually bring to you is of a serious, consequential nature.
I know that librarians, whom we talk about often on this show, are at the front lines of an important fight against censorship.
But sometimes they just let loose and, have a little fun, too, and I wanna bring you a story of that 'cause I think that's important also.
It comes from Charleston County, South Carolina, where an adult services librarian, John Strasburg, built a life-sized TARDIS.
You know, the TARDIS from Doctor Who, the blue police box that's been part of the show for, gosh, like, over 50 years now.
he built one.
He, he built a, a life-sized TARDIS, uh, the, the fictional time-traveling spacecraft and time machine from the iconic British sci-fi series Doctor Who at the Hurd Saint Andrews Library.
I, I, I, I know that our scary book people can't see it here, but, but here's a picture of, the librarian who built this standing right by it.
It's actually towering o- over him because it, it, it is life-size.
it is really, really very cool.
Now, Strasburg, according to the library, built the replica from yellow pine in 26 days over the past few months.
been a Doctor Who fan," he said, "since the late 1970s."
Wow, so he goes, he goes all the way back to the, Tom Baker, uh, era.
"And I've always dreamed of building my own TARDIS," John said.
"This year's time travel summer reading theme finally gave me the push to make it happen."
So not only are, librarians like this, you know, nerds like us, but they're really cool, and they follow through, and they do fun things like this.
What I wanna find out is, is this one actually, like the real TARDIS, bigger on the inside than it is on the outside? That's what I need to know How can you find out? You gotta travel.
You gotta go to South Carolina to find out.
You know, the most convenient way of doing that, of course, would be with my own TARDIS, which, uh, I, uh, I unfortunately, uh, don't have with me at the moment.
So I think it's actually a good move for librarians to lean more into their nerd side and in public, right? Because right now, the other side tries to make them look like, you know, these pedophile, terrible groomers.
Like, let's just bring the focus back toward where it started with, you know, they're just kinda nerdy book people.
People shouldn't be afraid of nerdy book people.
People shouldn't be afraid of books, right? I th- and I think that was the impetus, uh, behind the inflatable frog costumes that they had in Portland, Oregon, which made people realize, hey, if, if ICE agents are spraying people in inflatable frog costumes, there's something really wrong with these people, and it, and it kind of brought that into sharp focus.
I agree with you, Dan.
librarians should go back to doing that.
maybe there should be cosplay, week at the library.
You should dress up as Doctor Who.
You should dress up as, one of the Handmaids.
That happens at, at, at protests a, a, a lot of the time anyway.
But I think they're good ways of highlighting book themes and themes of protest that can be coming alive at libraries across the country All right, well that's a pleasant thought.
Beowulf right now is recording this session in a handmade costume.
That's Yes.
I, I just got my sizing this morning, and, um, I think I look quite elegant in it, frankly All right, well let's, we'll let everyone sit with that for a little bit.
Go find Babe, we'll show Good News for Lefties wherever you find podcasts.
Mm.
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Right.
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Band Camp is produced and hosted by Dan Schultz and me, Jennifer Davis.
All media used in this episode falls under the protection of fair use.
And finally, America isn't what it used to be, so be careful out there.
And resist when it matters.