Borrowed & Returned
Brooklyn Public Library is full of stories. Borrowed brings the best of them to you. Current podcast series: Launching July 8, 2025, Borrowed & Returned is a new podcast series that examines what our reading public borrowed in the past, and what we’re all reading now. In conversations with library workers, authors and readers across the country, we’ll return to the books that changed us, and changed America, too. Previous podcast series: Borrowed and Banned is our limited series about America's ideological war with its bookshelves. From September to December 2023, we released ten episodes featuring the stories of students on the frontlines, librarians and teachers whose livelihoods are endangered when they speak up, and writers whose books have become political battleground. Borrowed, BPL's flagship podcast, is a narrative series about superhero librarians, neighborhood stories and what it means to be a free, democratic place in today’s changing world. We tell stories about libraries during natural disasters, the challenges of homelessness, and NYC’s fraught relationship with trash. For transcripts, pictures, book lists, and resources, please visit our web page: bklynlib.org/podcasts
Episodes
When Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States came out in 1980, it literally rocked the boat. Instead of starting where most histories of the Americas start — on the deck of Columbus’s ship as it approached land — Howard Zinn flipped the script, focusing instead on what the people standing on the shore would have seen. In this episode, we look at the ripple effects of Zinn’s radical take on history.
You can read a tran...
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, a lawyer, and the founder and CEO of Freedom Reads, an organization with the goal of bringing a library to every cell block in America. We talked with him about what he read – and wrote – while he was incarcerated, and what it taught him about what it means to be free, to be loved, and to be part of a community.
Read a transcript of this episode on our website, and find books by Betts in our library ...
There are so many reasons to read – and reread – The Autobiography of Malcolm X. But for this episode, we’re revisiting the book with the perspectives of readers who are, or were, incarcerated. Malcolm X’s story isn’t just radical for its narrative of change and self-improvement; it also encourages readers to think more critically about the prison system itself.
You can read a transcript of this episode on our website.
N.K. Jemisin is a New York Times-bestselling science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s a Brooklynite, the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, and the first author to win three Best Novel Hugos in a row. We talked to her about Octavia Butler’s influence on her writing, and how she processes the present moment in her own fiction.
You can read a transcript of this episode on our website, and check out our booklist with titles...
In these unfathomable moments, when the world seems to be falling apart—we often turn to stories for guidance. For the folks in Southern California earlier this year, that story was Parable of the Sower. Readers are returning to the book today because it shows us how speculation – and Afrofuturism in particular – can help us move through the world with our eyes open.
Read a transcript of this episode on our website.
Borrowed and Returned is a new podcast series that examines what our reading public borrowed in the past, and what we’re all reading now. In conversations with library workers, authors and readers across the country, we’ll return to the books that changed us, and changed America, too.
First episode drops July 8, with new episodes coming out weekly. Spend your summer re-reading with us!
A new exhibit at BPL's Center for Brooklyn History explores the history and legacy of slavery here in Brooklyn. The team at CBH gathered documents and accounts from people who were touched by slavery in Brooklyn, and traced the descendants of both the enslaved and enslavers.
"Trace/s" is up at the Center for Brooklyn History (128 Pierrepont Street) through August 30, 2025. This audio story is a companion to the exhib...
As 2024 comes to a close, we wanted to share with you an episode that we produced all the way back in 2020. That year, we went to Coney Island to record the Coney Island Polar Bear Club, the group of swimmers that congregate on Coney Island every Sunday in winter to swim in the frigid ocean as a way to renew themselves. It’s a fun one, and we hope you enjoy!
Further resources:
- Look at historic photos of the Polar Bear C...
Graphic novels, Haitian-American book bingo, and The Power Broker. These are just a few of the book clubs happening at Brooklyn Public Library! This episode, we take a tour around the borough to listen in on our patrons' reading habits and ask why we still read together.
Read a transcript of this episode here.
Further resources:
- Check out our book clubs happening across the borough!
- Want to read The Power B...
We're pulling out all the stops for the first annual Freedom to Read Day of Action on Saturday, October 19th! Hear from libraries in Los Angeles, San Diego, Hoboken, NJ and Austin, TX about what they're doing to promote the freedom to read. And, if you're in Brooklyn, meet us on the steps of Central Library this Saturday for a book rally!
You can read the transcript here.
Further resources:
For Banned Books Week this year, we’re returning to our award-winning series, Borrowed and Banned. Because the fight isn’t over. In 2023, the American Library Association documented a 65% increase in the number of book titles challenged across the country.
Listen to the first episode of the series about what happened in one Oklahoma town when their freedom to read was challenged. And how one teacher’s response caught the ...
Bedford-Stuyvesant is perhaps one of Brooklyn’s most iconic neighborhoods. Its tree-lined streets and grand brownstones have been here for over 150 years. This episode, a re-broadcast from 2019, tells the story of Bed-Stuy through the lives of three women who set down roots here in different ways: activist Hattie Carthan, writer Paule Marshall, and novelist Naomi Jackson.
Read a transcript of this episode here.
Further res...
Splitting her time between Athens, Georgia and Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, Nicole A. Taylor is a food writer and author of several cookbooks. She sat down with BPL’s Bed-Stuy Tea podcast to discuss finding and preserving her Southern voice, the pleasures of restaurant research, and her favorite local spots to eat and drink.
Read a transcript of this episode here.
Further resources:
It's summer and school's out! No matter what age you are, you can spend your summer at the library with book lists and activities galore. We go over the facts and stats of BPL's popular Culture Pass program, which has helped thousands of New Yorkers visit museums and performance spaces in the city ... for free!
Read a transcript of the episode here.
More resources:
Brooklyn Public Library has been hosting Drag Story Hours since 2016. It's one of our most popular, colorful, and well-attended events for kids. In this episode, we explore why Drag Story Hour is important, and how it’s had to change in recent years in response to an increasingly tense political climate.
More resources:
- June is Pride Month! Celebrate at the Library with crafting, story times, film screenings and more!
- Learn m...
Outside of Brooklyn, Arthur Miller's name has largely faded from memory. On this episode, we tell the story of the Black community leader who was killed by NYPD chokehold in 1978, the movement pushed forward as a result of his death, and the ways that Brooklyn Public Library’s Center for Brooklyn History helps to keep the story alive.
Further resources:
- Listen to the "Voices of Crown Heights Oral History Colle...
Listen in on one of BPL's most popular art programs: a theater workshop where, once a week, budding thespians come together to read plays, talk about character motivations, and dig into some surprisingly emotional and political topics.
- Read a transcript of this episode on our website.
- Join fellow thespians at Central Library's theater workshop. Or, find a creative writing workshop at branches across BPL.
- Read along with ...
We revisit an episode from January 2021 in honor of National Library Workers Day, and ask: what do librarians do all day? When they're not planning programs or working the reference desk, these librarians are also obscure trivia players, birders and ... sword fighters!
Read a transcript here.
- Have a minute? Vote for Borrowed and Banned in the Webby's! We were nominated for an award in the "Best Writing for Podcast...
Teens and older adults are perhaps the two age groups you might think have the least in common. But a new program at BPL seeks to bring the two generations together ... by having them debate.
Read a transcript of this episode on our web page.
Resources mentioned on this episode:
- Learn more about services for older adults at BPL and programs for teens!
- Listen to "Bridging the Gap," a podcast series on o...
Brooklyn has 62 neighborhood libraries, each with a distinct architecture, culture, and soul. To kick off the new season and to celebrate our audio stories coming home to Brooklyn, we'll take a tour of the borough with the help of our neighborhood libraries and some of our stalwart patrons who visited all 62 of them ... in a matter of days!
- Read a transcript of this episode.
- Take our Browse the Branches challenge! Not in New...
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