With tablets, Legos, and coding, these fourteen teams from library branches across Brooklyn met at Central Library to compete in the final championship of Brooklyn Robotics League — resulting in what is surely one of our loudest stories ever. 

Read a transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/go-robots-go 

We love love at the library, so for Valentine's Day this year, we're devoting the episode Romance Novels! We'll learn how Romance covers hint at what's between them, and chat with writer Nichole Perkins about how the genre is diversifying.

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/happily-ever-after 

La Hora Mágica has been the heart of Sunset Park’s storytime programming for a decade now, highlighting songs and stories in Spanish and English for speakers of all different languages.

Read the transcript here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/la-hora-m%C3%A1gica 

Dyker Heights, Brooklyn is a destination this time of year, with houses decked out in lights drawing visitors from all around the world. And inside Dyker Library, a strong community gathers to sing, play mahjong, do yoga, and so much more. 

You can find a transcript of this episode here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/dyker-singers-dyker 

From “the most expensive pigeon roost in the world” to one of the world’s most unique libraries, Brooklyn’s Central Library has many stories to tell. We’ll dive into the history of Central Library, hear from Brooklynites starting small businesses, and one patron’s path from homelessness to determined author.

Find the transcript and book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/rebroadcast-work-progress 

Take our new audio tour of Central Library: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/central-tour 

This Thanksgiving, meet the people who run Central Library's café and get a peak into their kitchen on the Library's third floor, where fourteen students speaking seven different language meet every day. This episode is a collaboration with Emma's Torch, a workforce development program that empowers refugees through the culinary arts and job placement services.

Read the transcript here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/family-meal 

In honor of Veterans Day, we are bringing you four stories of service, from veterans who served in World War II, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and Iraq. Three voices come to us from interviews collected at BPL for the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress.

To honor the tenth anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, we are returning to an episode we produced in 2019 about the impact of the storm on our library system, and how libraries can become information centers, shelters and community spaces in the wake of natural disaster.

Check out our book list and transcript here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/rebroadcast-weathering

In the early 1900s, if you walked around Sunset Park, you might have heard Finnish being spoken on the streets. That's because the neighborhood was home to the largest concentration of Finns in New York City, and though most have since gone from Brooklyn, they left behind their co-operative spirit. The Finns built the first non-profit co-operative apartment buildings in the nation, many of which are still standing today.

Read our transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/building-brooklyn 

At the start of World War II, 200 women were employed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. That number ballooned to 7,000 at the height of the war, but afterward—women workers were gone as rapidly as they appeared. We tell the story of this unique moment in history, using oral histories from women who worked at the yard during the war, and an interview with author Jennifer Egan, who helped create the collection and used it as research for her award-winning novel, Manhattan Beach.

Read our transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/building-brooklyn-women 

We're launching a mini-series about four neighborhoods that made Brooklyn the vibrant, diverse borough it is today! “Building Brooklyn” will take you to Gowanus, the Navy Yard, Sunset Park, and Canarsie to discover some of Brooklyn’s most unique and over-looked stories. 

Episode transcript: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/building-brooklyn-coming

"To me, what all these books say is independence and personal choice," says Nefertiti Matos of the stacks of Braille books at NYPL's Andrew Heiskell Library. In this episode, we talk about what inclusion means, whether it's creating tactile graphics so that all may encounter the visual world, or making our virtual classes accessible to kids with disabilities.

Read our transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/all-may-participate 

It’s been a rough year. So, we gathered all the good news we could find to brighten your podcast feed. Hear kids read to a therapy dog, a library love story, babies learning ASL, and adults age 90 and older learning to use Zoom.

Read our transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/good-news 

Ingrid Douglas never finished high school as a teenager. When she started looking for a better job at age sixty, she found not having a degree was a huge barrier. So, Ingrid came to the library to get her diploma. In this episode, we talk to students and instructors at BPL about how the library can be a refuge for those who have experienced trauma or adversity on their path to education.

Read our transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/education-for-all 

"We want all the kids to see themselves in all the stories," says Raakhee Mirchandani, author of Super Satya Saves the Day. This episode, we hear Drag Queen Cholula Lemon read Mirchandani's book, and we visit BPL's wildly popular Tibetan language storytime, which provides language refuge for thousands of Tibetan-speaking New Yorkers, and reaches thousands more across the world. Bring a kiddo along to this episode!

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/storytime-anytime 

A special episode, created in partnership with Queens Memory and the online newspaper The CITY, on grief and mourning during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how we can move forward as a community.

Read our trasncript here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/missing-them 

Belle da Costa Greene and Nella Larsen are two librarians of color, one who is white passing, and the other of mixed heritage who wrote famously about the phenomenon of passing in her novels. We're telling the stories of these women and asking what they can tell us about race in librarianship and in literature.

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/passing 

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 

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 

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 

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 

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 

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).

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 

Immigration is a pressing topic in our political landscape right now, with concerns about ICE raids and immigration bans. In this episode, we listen to inspiring stories of recent asylees, the case for more bilingual librarians, and what the library means when we say “American.”

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/new-americans 

There’s something about Brooklyn that makes you want to write. “Everything is alive here,” says poet Mahogany L. Browne. And thank goodness we have writers to capture that. In this episode, we share an interview with Mahogany Browne and Brooklyn poet laureate Tina Chang, plus a story about the classic novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. 

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/writer-grows-brooklyn 

Kairi Hollon tried to go to the library when he was a teenager in Brooklyn in the 1980s, but he kept getting kicked out. Years later, he came back to the library and started to create spaces just for teens. We’ll listen in on a Dungeons & Dragons game in Mill Basin, a teen party at Central, and learn how video games are changing the library.

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/teens-take-over 

From “the most expensive pigeon roost in the world” to one of the world’s most unique libraries, Brooklyn’s Central Library has many stories to tell. We’ll dive into the history of Central Library, and bring you stories of small businesses, fashion shows, and one patron’s path from homelessness to determined author.

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/work-progress 

It turns out that libraries weren’t always so friendly toward children. That started to change around the turn of the 20th century, thanks to a librarian who is pretty much unknown today. We're taking a field trip to a library truck in the Flatlands, a story time at Central, and to Brownsville in 1914...

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/for-kids-sake 

Sometimes, in the wake of natural disasters, the library becomes an information center, a shelter and a community space. We travel to Coney Island, Red Hook, and Puerto Rico to learn about how neighbors come together after a storm, and how libraries can help.

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/weathering-storm 

Online search engines are basically universal, so questions at the library reference desk are changing. We follow the story of one question, “I want to know how I can be happy,” and learn about how libraries are keeping up with the needs of the community.

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/across-reference-desk 

“A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.” So goes the quote from librarian Jo Godwin. From Dr. Seuss to kosher books to Drag Queen Story Hour, this episode will explore what it means to challenge censorship, and what happens when patrons disagree with content in the library.

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/something-offend-everyone 

Preserving history is about more than battling mold and disintegration. We took a trip to Greenpoint, Brooklyn to learn about how an environmental disaster propelled residents into action, and how the public library is archiving the neighborhood’s past and present.

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/oil-spills-and-moldy 

Books on conveyor belts, book vacuums and books in the mail. This episode of “Borrowed” will take you behind the scenes to see how books travel around the boroughs, from Long Island City to Bensonhurst to your bedside table.

Read the transcript and check out our book list here: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/podcasts/books-are-not-dead 

Brooklyn has so many stories to tell, and a lot of them start at the library. Every other week, “Borrowed” brings you stories that start here and take you somewhere new. Brought to you by Brooklyn Public Library. Our first episode launches March 12.