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

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 knowing. Dan and Jennifer try to work out whether the man over the garage is a lonely guy, a trap, or something else. The handmaid is risking a lot for a little safety, and the hosts are not sure she should be.

This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty fact-chec...

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. Then she tells us she made it up, and tells it 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. We don’t read ahead, so you’re discovering the...

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 news Moira just gave her about her mother. Then she has to walk back out and face the man waiting on the bed.

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 cha...

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 gets within sight of a boat to freedom. The escape plan runs into a problem, and what Moira chooses next tells you everything about where this story is headed.

This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty fact-checking robot, Robot.

Banned Camp is a comedy podcas...

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 and the pink walls, she finds Moira. Then Moira starts whispering the story of how she got out. This is the first half of the chapter, and it ends on a cliffhanger at a door.

This episode includes AI-voiced content, including our trusty fact-checking robot, Robot.

Banned Camp is...

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...