Borrowed

To honor the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, we take a trip to Green-Wood cemetery to the grave of Sarah Smith Garnet, one of Brooklyn's Black women suffragists. We also talk with NYC Council Member Farrah Louis about how the women in her family encouraged activism through voting.   Read the trasncript here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/votes-for-women 

We dig into the history of a once-unacknowledged African burial ground in East New York, Brooklyn, and ask how a new library branch can honor that legacy.  Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/montgomery-east-new-york 

From Selma, Alabama to Brooklyn, New York — we look at how racial violence and racial memory impacts our country and our libraries.    Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/marching-onward 

You can physically borrow books again, Brooklyn! This episode, we ask how the pandemic can help us re-imagine what we use libraries for. Plus, we talk to LA County Library about how extreme weather is impacting their reopening, and dig into the science of how we are keeping you (and your books) healthy. Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/reopening-reimagining 

Since our libraries were closed for the last four months, we were on the lookout for organizations that were acting in the spirit of public libraries. We found one! Listen to an audio portrait of the food justice movement happening on street corners across Brooklyn. And we'll be back in your feed again in September for Season 3 of Borrowed. Read the transcript here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/your-friendly 

In honor of Juneteenth 2020, the anniversary of the day in 1865 when the news was finally delivered to Galveston, Texas that slavery in the United States had been abolished, we are returning to an episode from earlier in our season. "Free Brooklyn" tells two important stories about the struggle for freedom: a young girl “auctioned” at Plymouth Church in 1860 and the story of Weeksville, Brooklyn's historically Black neighborhood.Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/rebroadcast-free-brooklyn 

In an unprecedented time of stress and resilience, many Brooklynites are at the front lines of responding to the coronavirus crisis, and many more are encountering a new normal, as we adjust to changing work, education, housing, and even access to basic amenities. Listen to stories from people across the borough as part of our ongoing local oral history archive.Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/stories-pandemic 

In 1943, Brooklyn Public Library launched its first radio program, in partnership with WNYC. “Folk Songs for the Seven Million,” written and produced by Elaine Lambert Lewis, documented folk songs and stories from around the country and collected folk traditions from everyday Brooklynites. On this episode, we pay tribute to our audio ancestor. Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/folklorist-for-seven 

 Earth Day is here, but a lot of us are inside. On this episode of Borrowed, we gather sounds of the natural world from the stoops and parks of Brooklyn, and we look back at the first Earth Day fifty years ago, and ask what it means for us today.  Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/fifty-years 

The census doesn’t just distribute representatives in congress and billions of dollars in federal funds—it determines city bus routes, how many garbage cans are on your block, and whether a grocery store opens in your neighborhood. Filling out the census is one of the most powerful ways to use your voice.Read the transcript here and our show notes here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/get-counted 

 Working from home? Kids at home? The library is here for you! We’ve got virtual resources galore to help you keep a healthy social distance during the coronavirus outbreak.  Check out eBooks & Audiobooks: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/borrow/ebooks-audiobooks  Attend virtual story time every day at 11am and 2pm, join our virtual Dungeons & Dragons for teens, and so much more: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/event-series/virtual-programming  Read the latest newspapers and magazines online for free, and learn from home, whether you’re a kid or an adult! https://www.bklynlibrary.org/learning-resources

Listen to three Brooklynites talk about their personal connections to places across the borough. We’ll hear from a Walt Whitman scholar at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, an LGBTQ activist in Brighton Beach, and one of Biggie’s biggest fans on a block in Clinton Hill.    Read our transcript here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/three-brooklyn-stories 

If you’re a kid or if you take care of a kid, chances are you use the library a lot. Listen in on some creative ways that libraries are engaging with children and their caregivers, from writing workshops just for caregivers to classes that help patrons open daycare centers in their own homes.  Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/stroller-parking 

For our first ever live show, we went back to the basics and talked about books! Listen to our librarians as they match audience members to books on the spot, reveal what, in fact, is the real number-one-checked-out-book in Brooklyn and recommend their favorite reads of 2019. This episode was recorded during the Brooklyn Podcast Festival at Union Hall on January 26. Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/borrowed-live 

Andrew Carnegie has a classic rags-to-riches story: an immigrant turned steel magnate who financed the construction of over 2,500 public library buildings worldwide, including 21 in Brooklyn. But, his business and labor policies often hurt the very people his libraries served. As one Carnegie steel worker said in 1900: “After working 12 hours, how can a man go to a library?” We dig into Carnegie’s complicated legacy, with a special appearance from the Bowery Boys! Listen to their companion episode here: http://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2020/01/andrew-carnegie-and-new-yorks-public-libraries-how-a-gilded-age-gift-transformed-america.html   Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/carnegies-legacy 

We’re getting in your ears to tell you about our first ever live recording of Borrowed! It’s free, at 5pm on Sunday, January 26 at Union Hall, as a part of Brooklyn Podcast Festival (event details here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/borrowed-live-tickets-84560078471).   And, we’re collaborating with The Bowery Boys on an episode about Andrew Carnegie’s complicated legacy. That will come out this Friday, January 24 on our feed and theirs (http://www.boweryboyshistory.com/bowery-boys-first/bowery-boys-podcast).

To ring in the new year, take a dive into the stories of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club. We hear from voices from across New York City—a cop speaking openly about his wife's drug addiction, recent Russian immigrants looking for tradition, and a mother mourning her daughter's death—who all have their own reasons for jumping into the freezing ocean every Sunday.    Read the transcript here:  https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/plunging-new-year 

Perhaps Brooklyn’s most iconic neighborhood is Bedford-Stuyvesant. The tree-lined streets and grand brownstones have been here for over 150 years, while the Brooklynites who call those brownstones home are constantly changing. In this episode, we tell the story of this neighborhood through the lives of three women who set down roots there in different ways: activist Hattie Carthan, writer Paule Marshall, and novelist Naomi Jackson.    Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/blocks-and-brownstones 

At the edge of Brooklyn, there’s a beach covered with glass bottles, nylon stockings, rusting kitchen appliances, and decaying batteries. The trash didn’t float here, though. It’s eroding from a poorly-covered landfill. We start this episode at Dead Horse Bay, where we ask what trash can tell us about structures of power, and end the episode in 1960s Bed-Stuy, where the local Civil Rights Movement took on a surprising enemy: garbage collection. Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/our-garbage-ourselves 

We're talking trash at the library today. Specifically, the story of a 3,000-ton garbage barge that made a scene in Brooklyn in the 1980s… and, we ask what happens to library books when they get too old. Finally, we take a trip to East Harlem, where one sanitation worker spent 30 years creating an archive of New Yorkers' trash.   Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/throwing-it-out