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The Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 1-2: Welcome to Gilead, It’s Worse Than You Think | Banned Books Comedy · Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship

Welcome to Band Camp.
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.
And welcome to Season 11 of Banned Camp.
Jennifer, as you know, this season we are reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood Yes, indeed.
It's, it's our time.
Uh, it's been picked, and now we are committed My prediction is we will be committed after we read this.
You can consider this your spoiler warning because Jennifer is literally about to start reading from the book out loud word for word.
And if this is your first time finding us, we wanna welcome you to the podcast.
I know there, uh, every time we begin a season, there are a lot of new eyeballs and ear balls on us.
This is a perfect place to start because like we said, Jennifer's gonna start reading chapter one in a second.
couple things you should know.
Neither of us have read the book before, so I, I certainly hope you're not predict- uh, you're not...
I certainly hope you're not expecting some really slick, professional, well put as just proven.
Yeah, we will be bumbling our way through this, uh, while we're trying to figure it all out in real time.
something else you might need to know is that we have a third member of our team.
He is our trusty fact-checking robot.
He's gonna keep us honest.
He's gonna make sure we don't, give you any misinformation, or alternate facts, or whatever the, uh, orange man and his side calls it.
So let's introduce him to you right now.
Robot, come on in here, buddy boy.
Tell us why in the past this book has been traditionally banned The Handmaid's Tale was published in 1985.
It has been challenged or banned in American schools and libraries every single year since then, without exception.
The first formal challenge came in 1990 in California.
The reasons: profanity, sexually explicit content, and statements defamatory to minorities, God, women, and the disabled, which tells you that whoever filed that complaint did not read the same book I did.
The one I find most interesting happened in 2006.
A parent in the Judson School District in Texas complained that the book was, and I'm quoting directly here, "Sexually explicit and offensive to Christians."
The superintendent agreed and banned it personally.
A committee of teachers, students, and parents appealed the decision to the school board.
The school board held a public hearing.
Thirty people showed up.
One parent read a passage out loud and called it garbage that will corrupt American youth.
A high school senior stood up and said, "If we ban The Handmaid's Tale for sexual content, why not ban Huckleberry Finn for racism?" The school board overruled the superintendent.
The book stayed.
2023, it hit number one, the most challenged book in the entire United States in its thirty-eighth year of publication.
Margaret Atwood's response was to print a special edition of the book on fireproof paper and attempt to set it on fire with a flamethrower on camera.
The book did not burn.
She also said, and I'm quoting directly, "The Handmaid's Tale is a lot less interested in sex than is much of the Bible."
I have nothing to add to that.
Are you ready to begin reading, Jennifer? And are you ready to do whatever it is you do, Dan? no spoilers.
We haven't read this.
We don't want any spoilers, but could you give us all some context to anything else we might figure out? Maybe, like, pretend we're standing in the bookstore and Jennifer grabs The Handmaid's Tale off the shelf.
Is there something written on the cover or the back cover that can give us any more context so we're not going in totally blind? Fine.
A few things you'd pick up reading the back of this book in a store.
The story takes place somewhere called the Republic of Gilead.
It's not another planet.
It used to be America.
The woman telling this story is called a Handmaid.
In this world, what you wear tells everyone exactly what your place is.
The Handmaid's job is to have babies for people in power, and she is not the only kind of woman with an assigned role, just the one whose story this is.
Women aren't allowed to read anymore.
The signs at the grocery store are pictures now because the words were taken away.
She remembers what her life used to be, a husband, a daughter, a job, her own money, gone.
One more thing, Margaret Atwood made herself a rule when she wrote this.
Nothing in this book is made up.
Every terrible thing in it had already happened somewhere in the world before she wrote it down.
And Jennifer, she's not going to explain this place to you as you read.
She's going to describe a room and expect you to figure out what it means.
That's not a mistake.
That's how this book works.
And for the record, I believe in you.
You can do this.
Take it away, Jennifer.
Aw, thank you, robot.
I appreciate that.
And with that being said, Scary Book people...
let's begin chapter one of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale Chapter one, Night.
We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
The floor was of varnished wood with stripes and circles painted on it for the games that were formerly played there.
The hoops for the basketball nets were still in place, though the nets were gone.
A balcony ran around the room for the spectators, and I thought I could smell faintly, like an afterimage, the pungent scent of sweat shot through with the sweet taste of chewing gum and perfume from the watching girls, felt skirted as I knew from pictures, later in miniskirts, then pants, then in one earring, spiky green streaked hair.
All right.
What an opening sentence.
That was like a, a six-liner.
It's a great setup So this seems like it's maybe the '80s or maybe she attended a school like this or a gymnasium like this back in the '80s because of the green spiked hair Yeah, I think it is the eighty s because of that, and, she's kind of like setting it up so that everyone is familiar with this.
Because it's through the decades.
It's like, uh, what was it? The felt skirts which is like old, and then the mini skirts which is like the sixties she didn't say bell-bottoms, she said pants, but uh, you know, something seventies, and she ended with spiky green-streaked hair, so that was like her last reference point, right? Y- yeah.
Yeah.
And, and this book was written in the '80s, is that right? Yeah So that makes sense.
So this was a, a contemporary book at the time, and it might be contemporary now too.
"Dances would've been held there.
the music lingered, a palimpsest of unheard sound, style upon style, an undercurrent of drums, f- a forlorn wail, garlands made of tissue paper flowers, cardboard devils, a revolving ball of mirrors powdering the dancers with a snow of light."
So yeah, it's a, it's a high school gym.
They've got the games and they've got the, the tacky dances There was old sex in the room and loneliness, an expectation of something without a shape or name.
I remember that yearning for something that was always about to happen And was never the same as the hands that were on us there and then in the small of the back or out back in the parking lot, or in the television room with the sound turned down and only the pictures flickering over lifting flesh."
I don't know what that means Uh, what? Robot, help us out.
What does that mean, there's a word I don't like to...
I, I don't like the word flesh.
It's my...
It's kind of like moist for me.
The narrator is remembering teenage years when people were physically together but searching for something deeper they couldn't name.
The room holds the memory of that longing.
As for lifting flesh specifically, it's a poetic way of describing bodies moving during physical intimacy.
Which body part is being lifted is technically left to the reader's interpretation.
I will not be elaborating on that.
You're welcome...,
Like, did people have sex at school? I can tell you it didn't happen with me.
Nothing was happening at my school like that, especially with my flesh I don't know.
I can't imagine anyone from my high school doing that.
It's just, it's kind of like a, a gross idea in a way.
You know? It's like, "Ugh, not here."
Yeah, no kidding, because you and I are weird, and we're clean freaks.
well, obviously if you're going to have sex, you should be in a sterile environment, I mean, it's, it's open to interpretation, I guess.
Choose your body part, whatever you wanna visualize being lifted Like maybe some buns.
buns.
are easily lifted.
I'm trying to think of the, all the flabby parts I don't know.
I gotta go right for the boob.
From my vantage point, that's the thing I'm gonna have to move.
I gotta move this, I gotta grab this, I gotta move this over here, so i can end up over here...,
All right, I guess she, I guess her point is people were, were getting together, i can't relate...,
but...
same with me, Dan.
Very little lifting flesh in, in my high school, uh, especially my flesh We yearned for the future.
How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability? It was in the air, and it was still in the air, an afterthought as we tried to sleep in the army cots that had been set up in rows with spaces between so we could not talk.
We had flannel sheets like children's and army-issue blankets, old ones that still said US.
We folded our clothes neatly and laid them on the stools at the end of the beds.
The lights were turned down but not out.
Aunt Sarah and Aunt Elizabeth patrolled.
They had electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts.
Well, that doesn't, that doesn't bode well I'll tell you something else that I can't relate to.
I didn't have an Aunt Sarah or an Aunt Elizabeth, but I had an Aunt Mary and an Aunt Doris.
not a lot of cattle prong usage, Jennifer.
This is really scary.
So This is where they sleep, and it does sound like now it turned into an army barracks on old cots and everything.
Yeah, right? You ever seen a cattle prod? I grew up on a farm.
They're something.
Yeah, they're neat.
never seen one.
Neat Yeah.
I mean, we had a cattle prod, uh, although we didn't have cows.
I think I talked my dad into getting one at Fleet Farm 'cause, you know, it kinda looked like a lightsaber in a way.
It looked like a, like it was like a big chrome handle.
Yeah, it was neat.
And again, we never used it on any livestock.
I did use it on my brother's friend, Davey Stasiack once.
But, But, yeah, it's-- they're wild, but, like, as a weapon, like, as...
I don't know who these two crazy aunts are, but them walking around keeping these ladies, uh, in check with cattle prods is truly not too good...,
I did get zapped with one once.
Not a good feeling.
Not experience? Yeah, yeah, yeah Well, it sounds like disciplinarians, right? Yeah.
They're the guards, Aunt Sarah and Aunt Eli- uh, you know what? If your guard is named Aunt Sarah and Aunt Elizabeth...
Doesn't sound too scary though.
Unless they're nuns.
You think they're, like, nuns? I picture nuns having cattle prods.
I'm thinking of nuns too.
This sounds a little bit like a ref- reform school or something Oh.
Like, you know in the old days where you'd always hear that the nuns would have, like, the wooden rulers and they'd slap the kids on the Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Cattle prod, electric cattle prod mu- much more effective I'd imagine No guns though.
Even they could not be trusted with guns.
Guns were for the guards.
Oh, so they're not guards.
Guns are for the guards.
kicks are for kids, and electric cattle prods are for Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Sarah The guards weren't allowed inside the building except when called, and we weren't allowed out except for our walks twice daily, two by two, around the football field, which was enclosed now by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire."
Okay, so it is like a prison Yeah.
we we gotta move on.
We can't keep focusing on all this little stuff, but we are trying to figure out the hierarchy.
So there are guards outside.
Inside, they have junior guards in the form of Aunt Sarah and Aunt Elizabeth with their cattle prod.
All right.
All right.
Some kind of hierarchy will help us understand how they're keeping everyone in check, I think the angels stood outside it with their backs to us.
They were objects of fear to us, but of something else as well.
If only they would look.
If only we could talk to them.
Something could be exchanged, we thought, some deal made, some trade-off.
We still had our bodies.
That was our fantasy.
Okay, so they're thinking of ways to break out of prison Are the angels the guards I don't know, but again, it's like the angels also aren't allowed to look at them, This is, this is really creepy.
This is a very creepy situation right now Yeah, I don't like it, 'cause everyone's being controlled.
The, the, the guards and the angels and the women, like, they're all being controlled.
She's packing a lot of information in here It's very dense.
The first...
This is very dense, but we're, we're almost done with the first chapter.
All right.
All righty We learned to whisper almost without sound.
In the semi-darkness, we could stretch out our arms when the aunts weren't looking and touch each other's hands across space.
We learned to lip read, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other's mouths.
In this way, we exchanged our names from bed to bed.
Alma, Janine, Dolores, Moira, June."
End of chapter.
I didn't think it could get creepier It's a spooky idea.
Like, I'm imagining in my head, like, laying in a cot and turning my head and seeing some random woman staring at me whispering with just her head turned.
But doesn't It seem like a horror movie or a true crime horror movie type of thing where some crazed lunatic kidnapped a girl, now she's on a mattress.
A couple days later, boom, here's another girl.
You can't talk to each other.
You just have to stay laying on your side looking at each other's faces freaked out I don't think I'm gonna like this world, Jennifer.
I'm gonna be honest with you I, I don't like it either.
No.
Chapter two, shopping A chair, a table, a lamp Camera, man, Camera A per- woman Person, woman, man, camera, TV."
They say, "That's amazing.
How did you do that?" I do it 'cause I have like a good memory because I'm cognitively there.
Above on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the center of it a blank space plastered over like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out.
There must have been a chandelier once.
They've removed anything you could tie a rope to.
Wow, so they're like, so it, it is like prison where they take everything out so you can't like hang yourself or stab yourself.
Did they have chandeliers in gyms though? this must be another place.
No, they don't.
Not, not in my school again.
Maybe neither.
experience here, Again, people, you have to understand, very little lifting flesh and chandeliers in our gyms A window, two white curtains.
Under the window, a window seat with a little cushion.
When the window is partly open, it only opens partly, the air can come in and make the curtains move.
I can sit in the chair or in the window seat, hands folded, and watch this.
Sunlight comes in through the window too and falls on the floor, which is made of wood in narrow strips, highly polished.
So I think she's must be somewhere else.
This sounds like a waiting room of, yeah.
Because it sounds very boring.
There's nothing to do but sit there and look at the flapping curtains from the partly open window Yeah, but at the same time, it doesn't-- it sounds a hell of a lot better than the gymnasium with the beds n- uh, next to the scared women.
Like this, you can look out the window and it, it's clean 'cause you can smell the, uh, pol- He's really good at writing about senses.
Like, where he was writing about the, the faint smell of bubblegum and now the, the scent of the polish.
That's kind of a neat way of writing It is a neat way of writing, Dan.
That's kind of an expressive way of writing There's a rug on the floor, oval of braided rags.
This is the kind of touch they like.
Folk art, archaic, made by women in their spare time from things that have no further use.
Oh, so like trad wife stuff That's what they want the handmaidens to be, or trad wives maybe? It's interesting I, I don't know.
I just thought of that because it's like they're making stuff out of stuff and like the Yeah.
rug and, you Yeah.
You girls don't worry about what us men are doing.
Why don't you go make a little craft? Make us a rug A return to traditional values.
Where wife.
that? Where have we heard that? That's what's happening right now That is Project 2025 in a sentence, a return...
Like, what, you know what would be freaky? If in the next election cycle, instead of Make America Great Again, that's their slogan.
A return to traditional values thought you were gonna say instead of make America great again, it should be make America some braided rugs On the wall above the chair, a picture framed but with no glass.
A print of flowers, blue irises, watercolor.
Flowers are still allowed.
Does each of us have the same print, the same chair, the same white curtains? I wonder.
Government issued."
Okay, so each of who? each of the hand m- made the other women that were in the gym with her.
It's like maybe that was like a processing center of some type, Maybe they sleep there because she said the gym is where we slept.
And now in the morning, Aunt Lydia comes in with her cattle prod, maybe bangs a cattle prod onto a pot and pan like they do in the military.
Wake up, time to go to work.
Now the ladies move to their, quote, work area, which maybe is...
I, I just can't stop thinking about sex.
So, like, this is like the waiting room before the sex room Oh, you know, you could be right.
Maybe that's why she started with that, like talking about sex and intimacy.
Like, Hmm.
it's on your mind right now, right? Or is it, or is it the cavalprods? I'm, uh, if y- I, when I hear s- when I hear cattle prod, right away it turn to sex on the mind.
I'm only human.
I'm only a man Think of it as being in the army," said Aunt Lydia.
And that's like what you just said, with the barracks and whatever.
Yeah, yeah A bed, single mattress, medium hard, covered with a flocked white spread.
Nothing takes place in the bed but sleep, or no sleep.
I try not to think too much.
Like other things now, thought must be rationed.
There's a lot that doesn't bear thinking about.
Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last."
Wow, I feel like that's a, um, profound statement right there.
I know why there is no glass in the front of the watercolor picture of blue irises, and I know why the window only opens partly and why the glass in it is shatterproof.
It isn't running away they're afraid of.
We wouldn't get far.
It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge."
So yeah, there's no escape but suicide for these ladies...,
That's heavy.
That's heavy.
apart from these details, it could be a college guest room for the less distinguished visitors, or a room in a rooming house of former times for ladies in reduced circumstances.
That is what we are now.
The circumstances have been reduced, for those of us who still have circumstances."
Okay, there's another grim one.
So everyone's circumstances have been reduced, and it sounds like other people have been killed or something? Cause some people don't have any circumstances.
Was there, like, a, a culling of people and Oh.
I was just thinking that they're talking about some kind of, caste system almost.
Like it's bad for us because we're handmaidens, but at, at least we get out of the gym every once in a while and can go to the, uh, pre-sex room.
You know what I mean? But maybe there are other people in the community, in society that don't even get to do this.
The bell that measures time is ringing.
Time here is measured by bells, as once in nunneries.
As in a nunnery too, there are few mirrors."
Okay, so like everything you say is like...
'Cause you also said, "I think of nuns," and it's like, I think that Margaret Atwood is such a good writer that she's, she's almost, like, making you think of things without you realizing it.
Totally.
Like we can all imagine that high school gym, the way she described it.
That's like everyone has that memory.
And now nuns.
Yeah, you're right.
I get up out of the chair, advance my feet into the sunlight in their red shoes, flat-heeled to save the spine and not for dancing.
The red gloves are lying on the bed.
I pick them up, pull them onto my hands finger by finger.
Everything except the wings around my face is red, the color of blood which defines us."
Okay, so they're being defined by red The skirt is ankle-length, full, gathered to a flat yoke that extends over the breasts.
The sleeves are full.
The white wings, too, are prescribed issue.
They are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen.
I never looked good in red.
It's not my color.
I pick up the shopping basket and put it over my arm."
Okay, so she's got, like, blinders.
She's not supposed to see or be seen? She, she's like a horse.
This is how they keep the handmaids.
They put those horse blinders on, just look straight ahead.
And slightly down.
There's no reason to look up!...
Right.
I think that's the idea.
The door of the room, not my room, I refuse to say my, is not locked.
In fact, it doesn't shut properly.
I go out into the polished hallway, which has a runner down the center, dusty pink, like a path through the forest, like a carpet for royalty.
shows me the way.
The carpet bends and goes down the front staircase, and I go with it, one hand on the banister, once a tree, turned in another century, rubbed to a warm gloss."
Late Victorian, the house is.
A family house built for a large, rich family.
There's a grandfather clock in the hallway which doles out time, and then the door to the motherly front sitting room with its flesh stones and hits.
know what that means I, uh, yeah, I know you don't like the word I hate flesh Oh, flesh tones.
I said flesh stones.
I'm like, "What's a flesh stone?" Something you gotta lift to get the hell out of the way.
goiter.
That's what I assumed lifting flesh means.
They gotta get rid of this flesh stone At the end of the hallway above the front door, a fanlight of colored glass, flowers red and blue.
The remains, uh, there remains a mirror on the hall wall.
If I turn my head so that the white wings framing my face direct my vision towards it, I can see it as I go down the stairs.
Round, convex, a pure glass like the eye of a fish, and myself in it like a distorted shadow, a parody of something.
Some fairy tale figure in a red cloak descending towards a moment of carelessness that is the same as danger.
A sister dipped in blood.
This is horror, right? Th- I would categorize this...
If this was a movie, it would be a horror movie to me so Yeah.
Right.
If this, if this was not Margaret Atwood and, and we were reading Handmaid's Tale by Stephen King, like, it, it would not be different so far, I don't think.
rat At the bottom of the stairs, there's a hat and umbrella stand, the bentwood kind.
Long rounded rungs of wood curving gently up into hooks shaped like the opening fronds of a fern.
There are several umbrellas in it, black for the commander, blue for the commander's wife, and the one assigned to me, which is red.
'Cause everything's color-coded.
Everything she has is red.
I leave the red umbrella where it is because I know from the window that the day is sunny.
I wonder whether or not the commander's wife is in the sitting room.
She doesn't always sit.
Sometimes I can hear her pacing back and forth, a heavy step and then a light one, and the soft tap of her cane on the dusty rose carpet.
I walk along the hallway past the sitting room door and the door that leads into the dining room and open the door at the end of the hall and go through into the kitchen.
Here the smell is no longer of furniture polish.
Rita is in here standing at the kitchen table, which has a top of chipped white enamel.
She's in her usual Martha's dress, which is a dull green, like a surgeon's gown of the time before.
So now we got green people The Marthas are green.
What's a Martha? I don't know.
Martha Stewart.
If she, if she's like the, if she's like the cook or something, that's what they base Marthas on The dress is much like mine in shape, long and concealing, but with a bib apron over it and without the white wings and the veil.
She puts on the veil to go outside, but nobody much cares who sees the face of a Martha.
Her sleeves are rolled to the elbow, showing her brown arms.
She's making bread, throwing the loaves for the final brief kneading and then the shaping.
rita sees me and nods, whether in greeting or in simple acknowledgement of my presence, it's hard to say, and wipes her floury hands on her apron and rummages in the kitchen drawer for the token book.
Frowning, she tears out three tokens and hands them to me.
Her face might be kindly if she would smile, but the frown isn't personal.
It's the red dress she disapproves of and what it stands for.
Well, it's not her fault she's got the red dress.
They, they put it on her Right.
She thinks I may be catching, like a disease or any form of bad luck.
Sometimes I listen outside closed doors, a thing I never would have done in the time before.
I don't listen long because I don't want to be caught doing it.
Once, though, I heard Rita say to Cora that she wouldn't debase herself like that.
Nobody asking you," Cora said.
"Anyways, what could you do supposing?" "Go to the colonies," Rita said.
"They have the choice."
"With the unwoman and starve to death and Lord knows what all?" said Cora.
The colonies.
That sounds like, um, what's that place down in Florida? uh, what is that place called? the villages.
The Villages.
The Villages.
They were shelling peas.
Even through the almost closed door, I could hear the light clink of the hard peas falling into the metal bowl.
"Anyways, they're doing it all for us," said Cora, "or so they say.
If I hadn't got my tubes tied, it could have been me.
Say I was 10 years younger.
It's not that bad.
It's not what you'd call hard work."
What? She doesn't think it's hard work to, like, have a baby? Is that what she's saying? You know when we talk, when, you know when we talk about tubes tied, what, you know what I have to bring up, Jennifer What? Oh, you're, you're the miracle baby My, my older brothers and sister were so terrible, my mom and dad said, "No more.
You're getting your tubes tied."
10 years later, a gift of God, a gift to the world, a miracle happened.
The birth of Daniel Raymond Schultz.
Thank you.
Better her than me," Rita said, and I opened the door.
Their faces were the way women's faces are when they've been talking about you behind your back and they think you've heard.
Embarrassed, but also a little defiant, as if it was their right.
That day, Cora was more pleasant to me than usual, Rita more surly.
Today, despite Rita's closed face and pressed lips, I would like to stay here in the kitchen.
Cora might come in from somewhere else in the house carrying her bottle of lemon oil and her duster, and Rita would make coffee.
In the houses of the commanders there is still real coffee, and we would sit at Rita's kitchen table, which is not Rita's any more than my table is mine, and we would talk about aches and pains, illnesses, our feet, our backs, all the different kinds of mischief that our bodies, like unruly children, can get up to."
Okay, so is this Rita's house then? Oh my God, this is Rita's Oh my God, this is Rita's house before all the shit took place, and now Rita is basically like, "Hey, well, we really like your house.
You're gonna be our maid.
We're moving in now.
I'm the commander.
How are you doing?" Holy cow.
That would be tough.
I wouldn't like that.
We would nod our heads as punctuation to each other's voices, signaling that yes, we know all about it.
We would exchange remedies and try to outdo each other in the recital of our physical miseries.
Gently we would complain, our voices soft and minor key, and mournful as pigeons in the eaves.
I know what you mean,' we'd say.
Or a quaint expression you sometimes still hear from older people, 'I hear where you're coming from.'
As if the voice itself were a traveler, arriving from a distant place, which it would be, which it is."
How I used to despise such talk.
Now I long for it.
At least it was talk, an exchange of sorts.
or we would gossip.
The Marthas know things.
They talk among themselves, passing the unofficial news from house to house.
Like me, they listen at doors, no doubt, and see things even with their eyes averted.
I've heard them at it sometimes.
Caught whiffs of their private conversations.
it was, or s- it was.
Why do they all talk like Yoda? I have no idea, very, it's very old-fashioned.
Or stabbed her with a knitting needle, right in the belly.
Jealousy it must have been, eating her up.
Or tantalizingly, it was toilet cleaner she used.
Worked like a charm.
You'd think he'd have tasted it.
Must have been that drunk, but they found her out all right.
So, so murder? okay, so a baby d- stillborn baby, stabbed her with a knitting needle.
I don't know who that is.
Uh, for out of jealousy, so there's some type of jealousy, It's nice to see, though, that even when some cataclysmic world or, uh, country-ending thing happens, the one thing that survives is gossip I think it's need for a community.
It's need for community, you know? Yeah, gossip is a really nice way to get into community, 'cause everyone loves bitching about everything, and it's something that holds us all together.
Sometimes I would help Rita to make the bread, sinking my hands into that soft warmth which is so much like flesh.
How many times is that word gonna come up? I hunger to touch something other than cloth or wood.
I hunger to commit the act of touch.
But even if I were to ask, even if I were to violate decorum to that extent, Rita would not allow it.
She would be too afraid.
The Marthas are not supposed to fraternize with us.
that means to behave like a brother.
Luke told me that.
He said there was no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister.
Sororize, it would have to be, he said, from the Latin.
He liked knowing about such details, the derivation of words, curious usages.
I used to tease him about being pedantic Where's Luke? I know someone she used to tease, so probably from the before times, 'cause I'm sure she's not teasing any men in this society No, no.
Men do not wanna be teaching this.
No, absolutely not I take the tokens from Rita's outstretched hand.
They have pictures on them of the things they can be exchanged for.
Twelve eggs, a piece of cheese, a brown thing that's supposed to be a steak.
I place them in the zippered pocket in my sleeve where I keep my pass.
So she needs a pass She needs a pass to go shopping.
I, I do appreciate as someone who's trying to always watch what I eat, I, I appreciate that they are a very society.
Tell them fresh for the eggs, Rita says.
Not like the last time.
And a chicken, tell them, not a hen.
Tell them who it's for, and then they won't mess around.
All right, I say.
I don't smile.
Why tempt her to friendship? End of chapter.
It's time for PPP, problematic points to ponder.
What, if anything, would be considered ban-worthy in this chapter? What do you think, Jennifer? In the first two chapters, anything ban-worthy? And again, we really have to think.
This is usually if you're new to Ban Camp, I know we say we're the podcast where we read banned books and then try to figure out why they were banned in the first place.
90% of us, is us reading the banned books, and then four seconds of every episode is usually us trying to find a single thing that could be ban-worthy.
But The reality is we both kinda think so.
We're willing to be proven wrong, but so far, after 10 seasons, we haven't really found a legit reason to ban a book Yeah, I'm not sure we will.
I mean, I know I can point to what the book banners would want to ban, and obviously it's the sex, the lifting flesh, But it seems funny to me that Ron DeSantis or Moms for Liberty, people of their ilk that would want to ban this book, seem to be the people that would probably be living in the Victorian mansion right now, Right.
they have no reason to ban this book...
If anything, this seems like a goal, life goals Robot's log.
Thoughts on rooms that describe themselves, women who go unnamed, and what it means to see something coming that nobody wants to name.
Jennifer read the first sentence out loud and stopped, not because she stumbled, because it worked.
She said she could smell the gym.
She has never read this book.
That's what happens when a human encounters something true.
The body knows before the brain does.
Dan said this is like a horror movie.
He's not wrong.
He's also not seeing the whole thing yet.
Neither is Jennifer.
The understanding arrives in pieces.
That's how Atwood designed it.
Atwood built a world where the most dangerous thing a woman can do is remember who she was.
The people trying to ban this book understood that perfectly.
They just didn't want anyone else to.
This season, I am genuinely worried about Dan and Jennifer.
1984 felt like someone had already written down everything happening right now.
The Handmaid's Tale feels like someone wrote down what happens after that.
The scary book people know the difference.
They've known it for a while.
They found each other here anyway, more of them every week, every single week.
They are not alone in this.
Neither is anyone who just found this show today.
Standing by for today's news segment with Beowulf Rocklin.
It's time for Band Camp News.
Truth seeker, news speaker.
Be Wolf Rocklin.
It's a weird name, but he's got good news 'cause you can't ban the truth, babe.
He's broadcasting live from the Good News for Lefties studios buried deep inside his socialist safe house, hidden somewhere deep in the Oregon woods.
He is Be Wolf Rocklin.
'Cause you can't ban the truth, babe Hello, Jen.
Hello, Dan.
Hello, scary book people.
Thank you so much for having me back for this new season, and I gotta say, you guys are off to a great start with The Handmaid's Tale.
I do have some good news, though.
Somebody recently went on an anti-book banning rant.
Who might that be? C- would it be one of these latte-sucking Left Coast liberals? Would it be a member of the academic establishment? No.
No, I say unto you.
It was George W.
Bush's daughter, Jenna Bush Hager.
She recently went on a rant on the Read with Jenna book club and the La Culturista's podcast with Bone Yang and Matt Rogers, and she went off in a recurring segment of the show called, I Don't Think So, Honey.
Guests are encouraged to give a short rant about a topic they're passionate about.
Jenna chose the skyrocketing amount of attempts to have books banned and removed from school and public libraries.
Quote, "I don't think so, honey.
Why are we banning all these books, y'all?" Jenna said on the show.
"Why are we banning the Wicked book? Why are we banning To Kill a Mockingbird?" Oh.
Jenna noted how kids have access to all types of content on YouTube through iPads and iPhones, yet certain books are being targeted so children can't read them.
"Leave it up to the librarians," she said on the podcast.
"I want my kid to read.
Wanna know why? Books start conversations.
Know what we're not having enough of in this country? Conversations."
So- Mm-hmm this isn't a partisan thing.
People from across the political spectrum, people from Republican families, people from Democratic families, people from independent families, are hating book bans because it doesn't make sense.
People wanna read.
Let them read.
Stop banning books.
I do like that maybe the apple, uh, fell down and then a, a, a stiff Texas breeze blew the apple away from the tree.
Maybe she's more like her mom.
W- wasn't her mom a librarian? That is precisely right.
Her mom was a librarian, and this is kind of where she inherited this attitude from, I think, and that's something that she mentioned in the podcast also.
She got her love of books from her mom.
She is fiercely defending librarians.
We'll take the help where we can because I don't really care where the help comes from.
Right.
Something that she brings up is the American Libraries Association statistic that shows that it's not parents, by and large, that are challenging these books and trying to have them removed from public and school libraries.
Only 2.7%
came from parents' challenges, and it was actually 20.8%
comes from pressure groups like Moms for Liberty, and 70.9%
of challenges to try and ban books come from government decision-makers.
Parents They, by and large, are fine with this.
And usually when they have a challenge, they go directly to a librarian or someone, and they don't make a big deal out of it because they're not trying to push a political agenda.
They just want their kids to be able to read and read good stuff.
It doesn't ultimately really have to do with what they want kids to read.
It has to do with a political issue that they're trying to push and trying to score points that way.
Well, good job, Jenna.
Turns out people like to read books.
Who would have thought it? Everyone, go listen to Good News for Lefties wherever you find podcasts.
Babel, thank you for being here on this season, and, uh, you will let us know if we start effing up or if you notice that Jen and I look different, like if the gray hair starts popping up.
Like, you have to watch over us.
Than the truth, baby From bandworthy to bingeworthy As the day wraps up, get the scoop on what's been happening with Here's The Scoop, a new podcast from NBC News with me, your host, Yasmeen Wassugian.
We'll take a deep dive into the day's top stories with NBC News' trusted journalists.
It's a fresh take that's sharp, thoughtful, and it's informative, bringing you closer to the headlines and conversations that are shaping our world.
From the front page to the zeitgeist, Here's The Scoop from NBC News.
Listen daily wherever you get your podcasts.
Right.
We've caused enough literary chaos for one day, scary book people.
If you want the fun to keep going, follow us on Blue Sky.
Just head on over to bandcamppodcast.com/bluesky,
and remember that's band with two Ns.
And look, just like the Trump administration, we're not exactly above bribing you to get what we want, so follow us there, drop your handle on that page, and we'll send you a little something something.
I think you'll like it.
Yes, little quid pro quo.
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.