Welcome to the worst bestsellers, where we read about turnip-sized bigots so you don't have to.

I'm Kate.

And I'm Renata.

And for this episode, we read Go Settle Watchmen by Harper Lee.

Joining us to discuss this dubious draft are Jennifer Davis and Dan Schultz from Band

Camp, a comedy podcast where they read banned books out loud one chapter at a time and try to

figure out why they were banned in the first place. Hello, Jennifer.

Hey, how's it going?

And hi, Dan.

Hello, thanks for having us.

Thanks for joining us on the show.

Yeah, looking forward to it.

Happy to be here.

Yeah.

So if you're listening to this episode one, it comes out, it is an observance commonly known as Band Books Week in the U.S. And this is a poorly named festivity that many librarians such as myself keep trying to advocate to have the name changed to something like freedom to read week because the problem when you put up like a banned books week display at your library is people come in and they're like

why are you banning these books and we're like no we're not we're trying to call attention to

the fact that other people are trying to ban these books and then it's like a whole thing and so if we're not. We're trying to call attention to the fact that other people are trying to ban these books.

And then it's like a whole thing.

And so if you're not familiar, most libraries, most teachers are not actively trying to ban books.

Most challenges come from patrons or parents.

And many of the books that are frequently considered to be banned are

you know we don't have complete book bans the way that you might in you know fully fascist

...