Shows / Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship
Love banned books? Hate censorship? Same. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books out loud, cover-to-cover, and try to figure out why they were banned in the first place. If you've never read them, now's your chance to hear them for the first time with us. If you have, well, you already know what's coming and this will be your chance to laugh at us as we bumble our way through and get horrified over and over again. 11 seasons in, we've gotten pretty good at figuring out what…
Episodes
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Halloween Special: Mary Webster Survives the Hanging | Banned Books Podcast
It’s a Halloween special, so there’s no chapter this time. Jennifer reads Margaret Atwood’s poem “Half-Hanged Mary,” about the real woman The Handmaid’s Tale…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 43: What Did Aunt Lydia Leave Out? | Banned Books Comedy
In Chapter 43, the day on the lawn at the old university is not over yet. Dan and Jennifer try to work out what Gilead is asking of these women now, and why…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid's Tale Chapter 42: The Wooden Stage on the University Lawn | Banned Books Podcast
In Chapter 42, the handmaid goes to a Salvaging, and it is nothing like a rummage sale. Dan and Jennifer try to figure out what the word even means, what the…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 41: The Kitchen Door Clicks Shut Behind Her | Banned Books Podcast
In Chapter 41, the handmaid wishes her story were different, then tells us what she did next: she kept going back to Nick, on her own, without Serena Joy…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 40: What Really Happened Over the Garage? | Banned Books Podcast
At midnight, Serena Joy walks the handmaid out the kitchen door and sends her up the back stairs to Nick. The handmaid tells us what happened in that room…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 39: The Last Time She Saw Her Mother | Banned Books Comedy
The Commander finally gets the Handmaid alone in a hotel room, and it’s the same hotel where she used to meet Luke. Hiding in the bathroom, she remembers the…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid's Tale Chapter 38.2: How Moira Escaped and Where It All Went Wrong
Moira finishes the story of how she got out of the Red Center. She goes from a Quaker safe house to a mail sack to a truck full of carsick chickens, and she…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid's Tale Chapter 38. 1: Reunited in a Pink Bathroom | Banned Books Comedy
The Handmaid slips into the women's washroom of the hotel club, where an Aunt in a purple caftan and gold eyeshadow guards the door. Inside, behind the smoke…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid's Tale Chapter 37: The Commander's Secret Club | Banned Books Podcast
The Commander walks the Handmaid into a secret club hidden inside the same hotel she used to visit with Luke. It's packed with powerful men and women in…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid's Tale | Chapter 36: If Anyone Asks, Say You're a Rental
The Commander summons the Handmaid to his study for what starts as an awkward round of Scrabble and turns into something much stranger: a smuggled costume…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale | Chapter 35: Sixty Seconds With Something She Isn’t Allowed to Keep
The Handmaid is stuck in her room with nothing but her own memories for company — falling in love, losing Luke, and the strange math of mourning someone who…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid's Tale Chapter 34: Saved by Childbearing | Banned Books Comedy
The handmaids file into the courtyard for a mass wedding of teenage brides, and the Commander takes the podium with a speech about how much Gilead has "given"…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 33: Janine’s Baby and the Shredder | Banned Books Podcast
The Handmaid and Ofglen walk to a Prayvaganza past lawns stripped clean of dandelions, and Jennifer can't stop thinking about how something so many people call…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 33: Janine’s Baby and the Shredder | Banned Books Podcast
The Handmaid and Ofglen walk to a Prayvaganza past lawns stripped clean of dandelions, and Jennifer can't stop thinking about how something so many people call…
- Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship
Introducing the Bookshelf Initiative | Banned Camp
This is a bonus episode, not a chapter. Jennifer and Dan are launching something new called the Bookshelf Initiative: every quarter, Banned Camp is giving away…
- Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship
Introducing the Bookshelf Initiative | Banned Camp
This is a bonus episode, not a chapter. Jennifer and Dan are launching something new called the Bookshelf Initiative: every quarter, Banned Camp is giving away…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 32: What She Keeps Under the Mattress | Banned Books Comedy
Rita's cutting radishes into little Aztec hearts and Offred just wants a match. That's it, that's the whole ask, and somehow it turns into the most loaded…
- Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship
The Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 32: What She Keeps Under the Mattress | Banned Books Comedy
Rita's cutting radishes into little Aztec hearts and Offred just wants a match. That's it, that's the whole ask, and somehow it turns into the most loaded…
- Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship
The Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 31: Serena Joy’s Dangerous Offer | Banned Books Comedy
The Handmaid counts her days, walks the wall with Ofglen, and gets pulled aside by Serena Joy for a yarn-winding session that turns into something a lot more…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 31: Serena Joy’s Dangerous Offer | Banned Books Comedy
The Handmaid counts her days, walks the wall with Ofglen, and gets pulled aside by Serena Joy for a yarn-winding session that turns into something a lot more…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid's Tale Chapter 30: Luke Kills the Cat Before They Run | Banned Books Podcast
The Handmaid is one night away from fleeing the Republic of Gilead when Luke makes her a quiet, terrible promise about their cat — and by the time chapter 30…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 29: The Latin Words Written in a Textbook Margin | Banned Books Podcast
The Handmaid and the Commander settle into an unsettling new nightly routine of forbidden magazines, banned novels, and word games in his private study. When…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 28.2: The Day Her Money Stopped Working | Banned Books Comedy
One morning her debit card stops working. By that afternoon, armed soldiers have shut down her workplace and the government has frozen every woman's bank…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 28.1: This Number’s Not Valid | Banned Books Comedy
The Handmaid spends the hour picking at old wounds — her friendship with Moira, her guilt over Luke, and the day the government quietly stopped being a…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 27: Two Women, One Whispered ”Neither Do I” | Banned Books Comedy
The Handmaid and Ofglen walk the summer streets past a franchise called Soul Scrolls, where machines print prayers to order so no human has to bother saying…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 26: Why Didn’t Gilead Just Use IVF? | Banned Books Podcast
Chapter 26 finds Offred and the Commander drifting into something neither Dan nor Jennifer expected, which kicks off a debate about why Gilead does any of this…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 25: For Him, She’s Only a Whim | Banned Books Comedy
The Handmaid fakes her way through a dropped breakfast tray, spends an afternoon watching Serena Joy take her frustrations out on the tulips, and settles into…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 24: The Mistress Who Said He Was Not a Monster | Banned Books Podcast
The Handmaid plays Scrabble, gets asked for a kiss she doesn't mean, and then spends a sleepless night remembering a TV documentary about a woman who spent her…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale | Ch. 23: Not Like That, As If You Meant It
The Handmaid gets called into the one room in the house she's never been allowed to enter, and what's waiting for her isn't what anyone expects, her included…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale | Ch. 22: Lava Beneath the Crust of Daily Life | Why Books Get Banned
The Handmaid comes home from the birth exhausted, lies down under the ceiling wreath, and tells herself a better story. It's the story of what happened to…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 21: You Wanted a Women’s Culture | Banned Books Comedy
Chapter 21 is the birth chapter. Janine delivers at the Warren household in full Gilead ceremony — the wife on the birthing stool, the Handmaids chanting, the…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 20: The Birth Ceremony & The Propaganda Film | Banned Books Podcast
Chapter 20 takes Offred to a birth ceremony at the home of another Commander — a ritualized, militarized event that reveals just how thoroughly Gilead has…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 18-19: Believing the Impossible to Stay Alive | Banned Books Comedy
The handmaid lies in bed and builds three impossible versions of what happened to Luke — all of them contradictory, all of them believed at the same time. Then…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 16-17: Nobody Wanted to Be in That Room | Banned Books Comedy
Chapter 16 finally takes us inside the Ceremony — the state-sanctioned act that gets this book banned more than anything else. It's not what you'd expect. Then…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 15: Blessed Are the Silent | Banned Books Comedy
The commander unlocks the only Bible in the house, reads the parts that serve him, and leads a ceremony nobody in the room wants to be part of. Meanwhile, the…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 14: Is It Bad Enough Yet? | Banned Books Comedy
The Handmaid kneels in a sitting room full of expensive objects, waiting for the Ceremony to begin. She's surrounded by velvet drapes, a china cupid, and dried…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Chapter 13: Pig Balls, Pigeons, and the Girl Who Stopped Fighting | Why Books Get Banned
The Handmaid describes the crushing boredom of life in the Commander's house, then flashes back to the Red Center where women are drugged, conditioned with…
- Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship
This is Banned Camp - a comedy podcast where we read banned books out loud and try to figure out why they were banned in the first place.
Season 11 of Banned Camp is here. This time we're reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It's one of the most banned books in America. Pulled from…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 11-12: The Doctor’s Office and the Ghost in the Bathwater | Banned Books Podcast
The Handmaid goes to her monthly doctor's exam, and it turns into something much more dangerous than a checkup. Then, in the bath, she disappears into a memory…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 9-10: Someone Lived Here Before Me | Why Books Get Banned
The Handmaid discovers a message scratched into her cupboard floor by someone who came before her — four Latin words left for a stranger who might never find…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 8: The Smell That Almost Broke Her | Banned Books Comedy
A funeral procession carries a jar small enough to tell the age of what was inside it. A dish towel almost breaks someone who's already survived a public…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 6-7: Bodies on the Wall | Banned Books Podcast
In Chapter 6, the Handmaids walk past a wall where six bodies hang from hooks — doctors executed for performing abortions that were legal when they did them…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 5.2: She Doesn’t Even Know It Happened | Banned Books Comedy
Japanese tourists walk through Gilead with cameras and smiles, and our protagonist can't stop staring at a woman's painted toenails. She used to dress like…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 5: Freedom To and Freedom From | Banned Books Podcast
The handmaid walks through a neighborhood that looks like an architecture magazine came to life, except there are no children and no people. The stores have…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 4: She Still Has One Power Left | Banned Books Comedy
Chapter 4 takes the Handmaid outside the house for the first time — past a winking guardian washing a car, through checkpoints guarded by boys with guns, and…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 3: Everything Looks Normal From a Distance | Banned Books Comedy
Chapter three of The Handmaid's Tale introduces Serena Joy — the Commander's wife — and she is not happy to see the handmaid. She has a garden, a knitting…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 1-2: Welcome to Gilead, It’s Worse Than You Think | Banned Books Comedy
Margaret Atwood opens with a gymnasium that smells like bubblegum and decades of girls who passed through it — and within three pages, you understand that…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipCatcher in the Crosshairs: When a Banned Book Gets Blamed for Murder | Banned Books Podcast
🎉 Season 11 begins Tuesday, June 9th — The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Three high-profile crimes. One banned book. Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Catcher in the Rye Ch. 26: Don’t Ever Tell Anybody Anything | Banned Books Podcast
🎉 Season 11 begins Tuesday, June 9th — The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. The final chapter is half a page long. It takes about two minutes to read. The…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Catcher in the Rye Ch. 25.3: If They Fall Off, They Fall Off | Banned Books Comedy
🎉 Season 11 begins Tuesday, June 9th — we're reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Robot has been promoted to official composer. Phoebe throws the…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Catcher in the Rye | Ch. 25.2: She Showed Up With a Suitcase | Banned Books Podcast
Holden goes back to Phoebe's school and sees something on the wall that drives him crazy. Then he sees it again. And again. He visits the museum, plays tour…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Catcher in the Rye Ch. 25.1: The Kid Who Asked a Ghost for Permission to Keep Existing | Banned Books Comedy
🎉 SEASON 11 ANNOUNCED: Banned Camp will be reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, starting June 9th. The scary book people have spoken. Holden has…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Catcher in the Rye Ch. 24.2: Then Something Happened | Banned Books Comedy
Old Mr. Antolini finishes his speech about the size of your mind, makes up the couch, and calls Holden "handsome." Then something happens that readers and…
- Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship
Banned Camp Season 11 Book Vote: You Pick What We Read Next | Banned Books Comedy Podcast
We're handing the show over to you. The scary book people have nominated the books they want us to read for season 11, and we've narrowed it down to five…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Catcher in the Rye Ch. 24.1: Holden Flunks the Art of Staying on Topic | Banned Books Podcast
Holden shows up at Mr. Antolini's swanky apartment in the middle of the night to find his old teacher in a bathrobe with a highball, his wife heading to bed…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Catcher in the Rye Ch. 23: The Safest Place He’s Ever Been | Banned Books
Holden dances with Phoebe in the dark with the radio turned low — maybe the only moment in the entire book where he's truly happy. Then the parents come home…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Catcher in the Rye Ch. 22: James Castle, the Sweater, and the Cliff | Banned Books Podcast
Phoebe asks Holden to name one thing he likes about anything in the world. He can't do it. His mind drifts to a boy named James Castle who was brutalized at…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Catcher in the Rye Ch. 21: Holden Sneaks Home to Phoebe | Banned Books Podcast
Holden finally goes home... but he has to break in like a burglar to do it. Fake name, fake bad leg, holding his breath past his parents' door. When he finds…
Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. CensorshipThe Catcher in the Rye Ch. 20: Drunk Dials, Broken Records & Central Park at 1AM | Banned Books Podcast
Holden closes out one of the longest nights of his life alone at a bar, drunk-dials Sally Hayes at 1 AM to ask if he can trim her Christmas tree, and ends up…
- Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship
Banned Camp Presents: They Came After the Librarian
Martha Hickson is a school librarian featured prominently in the PBS documentary "The Librarians." She's also a Banned Camp fan. On National Library Workers'…