Borrowed

Today we’re bringing you a really interesting episode from our friends at This Guy Sucked, a podcast hosted by historian and writer Claire Aubin about the worst people in history. Each episode, Claire sits down with an expert to pull back the scholarly curtain on a terrible person from their research. Because, as they say on the show, it’s never too late to have haters, and you can’t libel the dead.This particular episode is about the early 20th century filmmaker D. W. Griffith whose 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation” led to the resurgence of the KKK among other cultural repercussions we’re still feeling today. Africana studies scholar Kellie Carter Jackson joins the episode to tell us exactly why this guy sucked.If you like what you hear, you can listen to the rest – and dozens of other great episodes – by searching for “This Guy Sucked” wherever you find podcasts.GuestOur guest Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College and host of This Day from Radiotopia. H

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, climate scientist and activist. Recently, she sat down with Jordan Kisner, of the Thresholds podcast, to talk about our climate future. You may have heard clips of their conversation in our last episode about Silent Spring. Today, we're playing the full interview as a partnership with Thresholds, a show about about the messiness, overlap, u-turns, revelations, and friction points in the lives and work of artists.If you like what you hear, head on over to thisisthresholds.com to find more great episodes and subscribe!

When Silent Spring came out in 1962, it was an instant best-seller and led to the establishment of the EPA, as well as the ban of harmful pesticides such as DDT. But Rachel Carson’s seminal work also shifted our way of thinking about nature. For the first time, the environment was not just something out there that could be tracked and measured, but something that lived inside all of us. You can read a transcript of this episode on our website, and visit learn more about the topics brought up in this episode.Check out our booklist with books recommended for this episode.This episode was a collaboration with the podcast Thresholds. You can listen to Jordan Kisener’s full interview with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson here. And check out Johnson’s new book, What If We Get It Right? Read Bob Musil’s book, Rachel Carson and Her Sisters, and learn more about the Rachel Carson Council. Read Rachel Frazin’s book, Poisoning the Well, which she co-wrote with Sharon Udasin.Watch Rachel Carson’s full speech to the National Women

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer who documents the extremes, from nightclubs to war zones. She’s also the author of several books, including Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun, a memoir of the Syrian War co-written with Marwan Hisham. We sat down with Crabapple to talk about the difference between words and images, making art in the world, and the power of cartoonists to disrupt fascism.You can read a transcript of this episode here. And check out the following links:Check out our booklist with books recommended for this episode.Read Molly Crabapple’s Drawing Blood, and you can pre-order her new book about the Jewish Labor Bund.See Molly’s drawings and articles about the Dallas Six and the NYC taxi driver strike. You can also read Molly’s interview with Art Spiegelman.Art Spiegelman’s comic collaboration with Joe Sacco was published in The New York Review of Books earlier this year. You can check out Sacco’s Palestine and his more recent War on Gaza from the library.

Art Spiegelman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the graphic novel Maus, the story of his parents’ experience during the Holocaust. We got to sit down with Spiegelman at Brooklyn Public Library’s recording studio earlier this month to talk about Maus almost forty years after it first came out, about censorship, about the war in Gaza, and about what it means to stand up for others.You can read a transcript of this episode on our website, and check out these further resources:Check out our booklist with books recommended by Art Spiegelman, and more.Art Spiegelman’s comic collaboration with Joe Sacco was published in The New York Review of Books earlier this year. You can check out Sacco’s Palestine and his more recent War on Gaza from the library.Watch Art Spiegelman discuss MetaMaus with Dan Nadel at Brooklyn Public Library.

Art Spiegelman’s Maus almost single-handedly elevated comics from throw-away inserts in newspapers to a serious literary art worthy of winning the highest award in book publishing. But it’s not an accident that this book is coming back to us now. Maus was swept once again into the public eye three years ago, when the conservative movement to target marginalized stories took aim at the beloved graphic novel. In this episode, we examine how comic book censorship in the 1950s led to the creation of Maus, and eventually shifted the way we tell stories about resistance, memory, and authoritarianism.You can read a transcript of this episode on our website. Further resources:Check out our booklist with books recommended by Art Spiegelman, and more.Read Amy Kurzweil’s Flying Couch and Molly Crabapple’s Drawing Blood. You can read more about both of them on their websites.Art Spiegelman’s comic collaboration with Joe Sacco was published in The New York Review of Books earlier this year. You can check out Sacco’s Pales

This episode comes to us from our friends at Book Riot! In this segment, you'll hear Book Riot’s Erica Ezeifedi speak with Rodney Freeman, a librarian and producer of the forthcoming documentary, Are You a Librarian? The Untold Story of Black Librarians. This is part of their Reading and Resistance series, which looks at the relationship between reading and the pursuit of freedom in America. Subscribe to Book Riot: The Podcast wherever you listen!

Matt de la Peña is the Newbery Medal-winning author of seven Young Adult novels and five picture books. We talked with him about writing small stories and what it means to write a book that is, as he calls it, “Diversity 2.0.”You can read a transcript of this episode on our website.Check out our booklist with books by Matt de la Peña and more!Learn more about de la Peña on his website, and see more illustrations by Christian Robinson.Protect the freedom to read by getting involved with Books Unbanned.

Meg Medina is an award-winning author of books for kids and young adults, and she was the 2023-2024 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. We talked to her about what it meant to be the first Latinx author in that role, about the need for more diverse kids books, and the importance of reading in families.You can read a transcript of this episode on our website.Check out our booklist with books by Meg Medina and more!Learn more about the We Need Diverse Books movement. Read about the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature at the Library of Congress.

The Snowy Day wasn’t the first picture book to feature a Black child as its beloved protagonist, but it might be the most visible. When it came out in 1962, it challenged the publishing industry to champion books that depict kids of color. Today, we find ourselves in a moment not so different from the one Ezra Jack Keats was in when he sat down to create The Snowy Day. We are, once again, fighting for the right to let kids read the books they love, and we’re still reminding each other that the characters kids see in those books really matters. Read a transcript of this episode on our website and check out these great links:Check out our booklist with titles related to The Snowy DayLearn more about the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, the EJK Award, and the yearly bookmaking competition for kids in NYC public schools.Check out these digitized copies of The Brownies’ Book, books by Black creatorsRead about diversity in children’s book publishing, from “The All-White World of Children’s Books” (1965) to more recent h

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 transcript of this episode on our web page.Check out our booklist with titles related to A People’s History of the United States.You can find Nick Witham’s book Popularizing the Past at the University of Chicago Press.Learn more about the ReVisioning History series from Beacon Press, and visit the Zinn Education Project for tons of resources for teachers and students.History books are one of the subject areas targeted for censorship right now. Learn what you can do to help by visiting our Books Unbanned homepage, or listening to Borrowed and Banned, our previous series about the state o

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 catalog.

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.Check out our booklist with titles related to The Autobiography of Malcolm X.Learn more about the work that BPL’s Justice Initiatives does for patrons who are incarcerated. You can donate recently-published paperback books to the jail and prison collections at Williamsburgh Library or Central Library only during drop-off times. Please contact librarian Claire Mooney (cmooney [at] bklynlibrary [dot] org) for guidance on what to donate, and when.Learn about Reginald Dwayne Betts’s Freedom LibrariesWatch Inside Story, a video series produced by BPL’s Donald Washington and others who are formerly-in

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 from Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin, and more! 

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.Check out our booklist with titles from Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin, and more! Learn more about how you can help Octavia’s Bookshelf in Altadena by supporting their Patreon. And, you can check out the Altadena Community Land Trust.If you’re in California, check out Ode to ‘Dena: Black Artistic Legacies of Altadena,’ an exhibit at the California African American Museum that features Nikki High and others.Listen to Octavia’s Parables, a podcast from adrienne maree brown and Toshi Reagan that follows the Parable books, or Jessica Bethel’s League of Extraordinary Readers podcast. You can also check ou

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 exhibit, and it was produced by audio journalist and historian Ula Kulpa. Trace/s is supported as part of the Dutch Culture USA FUTURE 400 program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York, and by the Alvin and Fanny B. Thalheimer Foundation in memory of Bill Coleman. You can find more information about the exhibition, and listen to Part 2 of Finding Traces here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/exhibitions/traces

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 Club and Coney Island.Take the plunge with the Polar Bear Club this New Year's Day.Help us shape our next podcast series! Fill out this survey and let us know what books you think changed America. Check out the books we loved in 2024.

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 Broker? You can join the club at Macon Library or follow along with the podcast 99% Invisible.Read books by Haitian authors for our Haitian Heritage Book Bingo, or comics in Chinese. Join a quiet reading party or an anime club for teens.Check out what our staff are reading in “The Cover Is Blue” book club.

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:Join Brooklyn Public Library on October 19th for our Freedom to Read Day of Action! Or check out events across the country.Visit San Diego Public Library and LA County Library online to learn about their Freedom to Read Day of Action events. And you can brush up on the California Freedom to Read Act. You can read the New York Times story about SDPL’s LGBTQ+ book displaysLearn more about Hoboken Library and the book sanctuary movement. Austin Public Library has events planned for October 19th, and a new podcast called Save the Books!