As a public library podcast rooted in the borough where we are made, one of Borrowed’s main goals is to help listeners feel more connected to their community. We aim to center the voices of our patrons and our librarians and find stories that challenge outdated ideas of the public library, and of Brooklyn, too. We’ve told stories about libraries during natural disasters (and pandemics), intellectual freedom at the public library, the challenges of homelessness and NYC’s fraught relationship with trash.

Borrowed is fully produced, written, recorded and edited in-house. Narration and select interviews are conducted in our publicly accessible recording studio at our Central Library, and our hosts are two longtime BPL librarians. Because it is a narrative podcast, Borrowed is set apart from other library focused podcasts by surfacing voices and stories from a broad range of library staff and community members — while threading specific library themes throughout each episode by means of our extensive research and writing.

Borrowed is on its fourth season, with over 50 episodes produced, including a five episode mini-series about four neighborhoods that made Brooklyn the diverse and vibrant borough it is today. Borrowed has also spun off a kids-led series that will be released early next year. Our podcast has broad appeal (beyond just fans of the library) and has emerged as a key voice in the telling of Brooklyn's complex story (both past and present) as each episode receives several thousand unique downloads within 90 days of release.