Episodes

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 a red siren pulls up to the house and everything shifts to Janine, who's about to give birth in a world where the women feeding her cookies will call her a whore the second she leaves the room. 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. Th...

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 Chapter 17 sends Offred wandering through the dark house with butter on her face and a stolen daffodil, straight into an encounter she didn't plan and isn't sure she can trust. 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 Fo...

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 handmaid flashes back to her friend Moira's escape attempt from the Red Center, a plan involving faked scurvy, an ambulance ride, and consequences that will stick with you long after the chapter ends. 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 u...

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 flowers, and she realizes she's no different than any of them. Then the chapter takes a hard turn into a flashback nobody saw coming, and suddenly she's in a car with forged passports, hard-boiled eggs, and a drugged child heading for the Canadian border. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter — we ...

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 ends with the worst dream Offred has ever had. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned b...

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 shouldn't read. Then we read it, react to it, and make fun of the people who tried to hide it from...

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 by chapter, we don't read ahead, so you're discovering the story with us. Things To Listen For: T...

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 thesis: "Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance. You have to work at it." Robot's fact-check on Hann...

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 banned books chapter by chapter — we don't read ahead, so you're discovering the story with us. Thin...

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 where we read banned books chapter by chapter — we don't read ahead, so you're discovering the st...

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 discovering the story with us. Things To Listen For: Dan discovers that "All Flesh" is a meat market, not a...

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 has no regrets. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter — we ...

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 books chapter by chapter — we don't read ahead, so you're discovering the story with us. Things To Li...

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 discovering the story with us. Things To Listen For: Dan compares the Commander's wives to Fred ...

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 anything hers. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter — we don't...

🎉 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 rooftop while running from police. This is the episode where Dan and Jennifer try to figure out what actually happened, and whether J.D. Salinger's novel deserves any of the blame. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter — and occasionally go down rabbit holes that make us question everything we thought we knew about literature, murder, and Yoko Ono. Things To Listen For: The inscription Mark David Chapman wrote on his copy of the book the morning of the murder — and what he did with it at sentencing Why one of the three cases may have had nothing to do with…

🎉 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 recital, and the origin story of a podcast that almost was. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we ...

🎉 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 bench in the rain that might be the most important moment in the entire book. Banned Camp is a come...

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 moment in the entire book. Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapt...

🎉 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 fantasy you've ever heard — complete with a cabin, a deaf-mute wife, and children hidden in the woods. ...

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 you're discovering the story with us. Things To Listen For: Jennifer's question before anything bad...

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 Finalists: Animal Farm by George Orwell Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor The Handma...

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 him he's heading for "a terrible, terrible fall." Then Holden accidentally says the most honest thing...

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 where we read banned books chapter by chapter — we don't read ahead, so you're discovering the story w...