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
Latest Episode
Previous Episodes
- The Legacy of Howard Zinn's Radical History 04.08.2025
- Reginald Dwayne Betts on Freedom and Poetic Constraint 29.07.2025
- On Reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X in Prison 22.07.2025
- N.K. Jemisin on Truth, Education, and Speculation 15.07.2025
- What Parable of the Sower Taught Us About the Future 08.07.2025
- Introducing: Borrowed and Returned 24.06.2025
- Tracing the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn 18.06.2025
- A New Year’s Plunge (Rebroadcast) 30.12.2024
- Why We Still Read Together: The Joy of Book Clubs 27.11.2024
- Book Sanctuaries, Buttons and Bouncy Houses 15.10.2024
- Banned Books Week: All for a Library Card 23.09.2024
- Rebroadcast: Blocks and Brownstones 15.08.2024
- Bed-Stuy Tea: An Interview with Cookbook Author Nicole A. Taylor 30.07.2024
- Explore Your City This Summer! 26.06.2024
- Drag Story Hour 06.06.2024
- Say His Name: Arthur Miller 17.05.2024
- When the Library's a Stage 01.05.2024
- Rebroadcast: Secret Lives of Librarians 09.04.2024
- Bridging the Gap 21.03.2024
- Browse the Branches 14.03.2024
