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 these books are actually about and why the people pushing book banning and censorship don't want you to read them. This season we're reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Every episode we read the next chapter out loud, talk about what we found, and try to figure out why this book scares the book banners so much. It probably has something to do with the political shit show we're all currently living through. You know what's really insane right now? There are people in this country who own a lot of red hats but not a lot of library cards, and somehow those people ended up in charge of deciding what your kids can read. Moms for Liberty, pudding lover Ron DeSantis, and basically every politician who thinks they know better than you have been pushing book banning and censorship for years. We're pretty sure none of them have actually read the books, because if they did they'd have a hard time explaining why Captain Underpants and Charlotte's Web are a threat to your kids' freedom. So we read them ourselves to find out what's really in them. We also have a fact-checking robot so we don't accidentally spread misinformation. Or what some people call "alternative facts." Our listeners are called The Scary Book People. You'll fit right in. New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. You can start anywhere, Robot catches you up fast. Past seasons: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
Episodes
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 scavenged costumes, all the things Gilead publicly banned. Then, across the room, Offred spots someone she never expected to see again.
This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty fact-checking robot, Robot.
Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books...
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 covered in feathers and sequins, a stolen cloak, and a car ride into the dark. By the end of the night she's wearing a purple wristband, and it's not a fashion statement. Jennifer and Dan react to one of the most quietly brutal images this season has produced, and find the real-w...
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 might still be alive. Then Serena Joy shows up with something Offred was never supposed to see again.
This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty fact-checking robot, Robot.
Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter &mda...
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" women. Then the Bible gets quoted, the hymns get sung, and the Handmaid gets a warning from Ofglen that someone knows where she has been going at night. Jennifer and Dan read it, argue about it, and keep finding reasons to hate the seating chart.
This episode includes AI-voice...
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 a weed is actually one of the happiest memories of being a kid. Once they arrive, a whispered phrase from Ofglen about another Handmaid's baby forces Jennifer and Dan to figure out exactly what Gilead does with a child the regime decides isn't good enough to keep.
This episod...
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 a full set of every banned book they've ever covered on the show to one nominated high school librarian. Here's how it works and how to nominate someone before nominations close.
Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter. We don't read ahea...
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 transaction in the house. This chapter gives us a stolen cigarette, a hidden plan, and a commander who wants credit for building the world he broke.
This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty fact-checking robot, Robot.
Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we re...
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 calculated. Dan and Jennifer dig into what's really going on with the Commander's Scrabble habit, a body on the wall marked with a mysterious "J," and an offer from Serena that could get everyone involved killed.
This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty fac...
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 ends, she's questioning whether talking to God is any different from talking to a wall. Jennifer and Dan dig into betrayal, forced prayer, and the particular kind of grief you build before you let yourself feel it, while Robot ties one especially dark real-world case str...
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 she finally works up the nerve to ask him about four mysterious Latin words, his answer connects her to a woman who sat in that exact chair before her, and isn't sitting anywhere now.
This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty fact-checking robot, Robot.
Ban...
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 account in the country. In this chapter of The Handmaid's Tale, Jennifer and Dan watch an entire life get taken apart in the space of a single day — one bureaucratic switch at a time.
This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty fact-checking robot, Robot.
B...
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 democracy. By the end of the chapter, the past and present collide in the worst possible way: a corner store, a declined card, and three words that change everything.
This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty fact-checking robot, Robot.
Banned Camp is a com...
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 them. What starts as small talk about a prayer vending machine turns into the most dangerous conversation either woman has had in years, and Gilead reminds everyone exactly what's at stake before the chapter's out.
This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty f...
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 the hard way when an obvious shortcut has existed since the 1970s.
This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty fact-checking robot, Robot.
Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter — we don't read ahead, so you're d...
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 her strange, quiet arrangement with the Commander — Scrabble, small gifts, and a forbidden magazine he keeps just for the two of them.
This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty fact-checking robot, Robot.
Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read...
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 whole life insisting the man she loved wasn't a monster. Dan and Jennifer end up somewhere they didn't expect: a real conversation about how anyone learns to live next door to something horrible without ever looking at it directly.
This episode includes AI-voiced content, in...
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. This episode, Dan and Jennifer read chapter 23 of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and figure out why a board game turns out to be the most dangerous thing in Gilead.
This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty fact-checking robot, Robot.
Banned Camp i...
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 Moira, passed hand to hand through four different people before it reached her. What follows involves an overflowing toilet, a piece of plumbing hardware, and a woman walking straight out the front gate in someone else's clothes. Whether any of it actually happened is the argumen...
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 baby named Angela and handed away before Janine can hold her. Offred rides home leaking fake milk, holding a ghost baby in her lap. And then Margaret Atwood drops an ice pick of a closing line that reframes everything that just happened.
Banned Camp is a comedy 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 colonized every human experience, including childbirth. Then Aunt Lydia dims the lights and starts the film. What Offred sees on that screen will change everything she thought she understood about how she got here.
Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books ...
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