Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship

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 ballet music during pelvic exercises, and forced to participate in something called "testifying" — where a girl named Janine is made to say her own gang rape was her fault. Moira arrives with a bruise and a bad attitude. And then the chapter en...

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 school libraries. Challenged by school boards. And we're going to read every page of it out loud so you don't have to. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast about banned books. Every season we pick a different book that someone somewhere decided you...

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 of the daughter she lost, and has to compose herself back into someone who can survive dinner. Dan and Jennifer read both chapters live, no spoilers, no idea what's coming. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter...

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 them.  Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter — we don't read ahead, so you're discovering the story with us. Things To Listen For: The moment Jennifer identifies the passage that becomes the episode's t...

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 execution wall. And the most powerful man in the house breaks his own rules just to stand outside a door. Chapter 8 of The Handmaid's Tale somehow makes a kitchen feel as dangerous as a checkpoint. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read ba...

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. In Chapter 7, the only freedom left is inside her own head at night, where she drifts between memories she didn't choose and can't control — until one of them ends with her daughter being handed to a stranger. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast...

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 that. She used to be that. And somewhere between then and now, her mind changed... and she doesn't even know it happened. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter... we don't read ahead, so you're discoverin...

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 pictures instead of words. A movie theater is now a dress shop. And Aunt Lydia delivers six words that might be the crux of the entire book: "Freedom to and freedom from. Don't underrate it." Also: Dan reached into a urinal for a $10 bill and...

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 alongside a walking partner who may or may not be a spy. By the end of the chapter, she's found the one thing Gilead forgot to take from her. It's small. It costs nothing. And it works. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned boo...

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 basket, and a diamond ring. She also has thin lips, a clenched-fist chin, and flat hostile eyes. From a distance, it looks like peace. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter — we don't read ahead, so you're...

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 everything familiar has been stripped away and replaced with something much darker. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce us to Gilead: a world of color-coded clothing, cattle prod-wielding aunts, suicide-proofed rooms, and a woman who refuses to call anyt...

🎉 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 with a copy of The Catcher in the Rye in his pocket. John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan with a copy in his hotel room. Robert John Bardo murdered actress Rebecca Schaeffer with one in his backpack — and threw it on a r...

🎉 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 discussion takes considerably longer. Beowulf joins Dan and Jennifer for the first time during the actual reading, and what they discover in those few sentences changes how they see the entire book. Also: a flashback to a wigwam, an organ re...

🎉 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 hunting hat in Holden's face. They walk to the zoo on opposite sides of the street. They watch the sea lions, the bears, and go through a tunnel that smells like somebody took a leak. Then they get to the carousel, and something happens on a...

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 guide for two kids who want to see mummies, passes out in the bathroom, and then Phoebe shows up wearing his hunting hat and dragging a suitcase. She packed her bags. She's coming with him. And what happens next might be the most important mom...

🎉 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 nowhere to go. He sleeps at Grand Central, reads a magazine that convinces him he has cancer, walks down Fifth Avenue at Christmas, and starts begging his dead brother Allie not to let him disappear. Then he builds the most detailed escape fan...

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 scholars have been arguing about since 1951. Jennifer's reaction is immediate. Dan's is complicated. Robot refuses to say a word about it. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter — we don't read ahead, so yo...

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 finalists. All banned. All books someone doesn't want you to read. Now it's time to vote. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter — we don't read ahead, so you're discovering the story with us. The Five Final...

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, and a living room that looks like Don Draper decorated it. What starts as cocktails and small talk turns into Holden's passionate defense of a kid named Richard Kinsella who got an F for being too interesting, and ends with Antolini warning h...

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 and everything shifts to scripted pleasantries. Then Phoebe gives Holden her Christmas money, he cries, he gives her his red hunting hat, and he walks out into December heading for Mr. Antolini's apartment. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast whe...

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 Elkton Hills, refused to take back what he said, and jumped out a window — wearing Holden's turtleneck sweater. Then Holden finally answers, and what he says changes everything you thought this book was about. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast w...

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 Phoebe asleep in DB's oversized bed wearing blue pajamas with red elephants on the collar, he feels good for the first time in twenty chapters. Then she wakes up, figures out he got expelled in about ten seconds, and puts a pillow over her he...

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 wandering Central Park in the freezing cold looking for the ducks. What finally gets him off that bench and walking home might surprise you. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter — we don't read ahead,...

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' Day, we talk with Martha about why book banners consistently target librarians, the coordinated "Lawn Boy" setup that made her one of the first librarians in the country attacked by this organized movement, the personal toll of standing up, a...

Holden heads to the Wicker Bar to meet Carl Luce, an older former student advisor from his Wooten days who knows a suspicious amount about everyone's private life. What follows is one long, uncomfortable bar conversation where Holden can't stop asking the wrong questions — and Luce can't wait to leave. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter — we don't read ah...