November 4, 2025 • 19 mins
Pod Crashing episode 406 with Kelsey Snelling from the Podcast Camp Shame… "Camp Shame" is an eight-episode investigative series that delves into the darker aspects of Camp Shane's operations. Snelling, through meticulous research and heartfelt interviews, exposes how the camp, under the guise of promoting health, often pushed children to their physical and emotional limits. The podcast critically examines the systemic issues and societal pressures that allowed such practices to persist for over half a century.Central to the podcast are the firsthand accounts of former campers. These individuals recount experiences of being subjected to extreme diets, intense physical regimens, and psychological tactics aimed at enforcing conformity to narrow beauty standards. Many describe lasting impacts, including struggles with body image, self-esteem, and mental health. Snelling's compassionate storytelling ensures that these voices are heard, validated, and contextualized within broader societal issues.Beyond the confines of Camp Shane, "Camp Shame" serves as a commentary on the pervasive culture of fatphobia and the commodification of weight loss. The podcast challenges listeners to reflect on how societal obsessions with thinness can lead to harmful practices, especially when targeted at vulnerable populations like children. It also questions the ethics of for-profit institutions that capitalize on these obsessions without adequate oversight or concern for long-term well-being.Episodes available here:Https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-camp-shame-272594326/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, I just wanted to let you know that aero
dot net is the place to get all seventeen of
my podcast. You don't have to go to these streaming
outfits and sit there and say where did he say
he was?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Again?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Yeah? Ero dot net a r r oe dot net. Hey,
thanks for being a part of the conversation. Let's do
some pod crashing. Episode number four oh six is with
Kelsey sideling from the podcast camp Shame Kelsey, Kelsey, Kelsey.
To do a podcast like this and to experience it,
I mean, there has to be a lot of love
inside your heart, compassion as well as forgiveness, and because
(00:32):
I can hear it in your voice and the way
that you share these stories. Am I wrong in this?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh? Wow?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Thank you?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I mean, you're absolutely right. I don't think anyone would
commit their entire adult life to a project if they
didn't feel a very strong compassion for the story.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
One of the things that you do that so incredibly well.
In the opening, you introduce us to everybody, and you
do it at such an amazing pace where I get
to hear their voices and then when they come back
and say something else, I'm going, Oh, I know, who
that is. I know that voice.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
M h. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It was really really tough actually to organize all of
these voices and to make sure that the story was
you know, that people could follow the story. And I
think where we ultimately landed is the perfect way to
tell the story.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
You have the thing that when I found out that
people were going back several different times, I'm going, I've
got this story so completely wrong. I was expecting a
nightmare from page one, and yet they people kept going back.
They became coaches, they become you know, and leaders. I'm going,
what's going on here that they if it's so bad,
why does it sound so good? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I mean that's such a huge part of the story,
and transparently. When I first started this, I really was
approaching it as an expose.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I really wanted to bring this cap down.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
And as I started interviewing more and more people, I
realized that the story was simultaneously almost a love letter
to Camp Shane, which was something I didn't expect. And
I mean, I think that that kind of dichotomy is
almost what made the camp so dangerous. It's almost like
when you have, you know, when you're in a toxic relationship,
(02:16):
and you love someone so much even though they are
inflicting a lot of harm on you. It's kind of
hard for people to separate the good from the bad
in this case, so.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
In a weird way, in their hearts, the campers did
they feel like, oh, I'm going back, I'll fix it,
We'll have a better year this year.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, And those are some of the most heartbreaking stories
when you hear some of these campers really fighting for
this camp that really feels like a home for them.
I mean, a lot of these kids feel ostracized in
the outside world and Camp Shane is the one place
where they can really be themselves and really belong. And
for that reason, it's understandable that they would just be
(02:56):
fighting tooth and nail to make this place the great
place that they want it to be. And unfortunately, I
mean try as they might, it just it was too chaotic,
it was too dysfunctional, and it just all fell apart
of the end.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
You say, to be themselves, to feel like they belong,
and right away I go right to the story of
the of the young guy who took off his shirt
for the first time in front of other people, and
it's like, oh, my god, because we've all been there.
We've all been there.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yeah, Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah, I got chills when I think about that story.
So that's Carl. He was what we call a lifer
at Camp Shane, which means you're there for life. You
start as a camper, you become a counselor, you go
here after year after year. And I mean, camp meant
so much to Carl, and it betrayed him in the end.
And that's one of the saddest stories to me in
the whole in the whole series.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Let's start at the very beginning, the edinburghs Okay, who
the heck are these guys? Where did that vision even
come from? And did they know it would get out
of control?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Yeah? Great question.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
So so Camp Shane was founded in nineteen sixty eight
by a woman named Selma Edinburgh and the very first
summer that Camp Shane was in operation was nineteen sixty nine.
So Selma had been overweight as a kid and as
a teen, and she, it seems, really created this place
out of a love for fat kids, even if that
love was a little bit misled. I mean, the entire
(04:23):
purpose of the camp is to get kids to lose weight.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
And change their bodies.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
So that was her way of expressing love to these
kids in these campers.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
And within a couple of decades the camp was turned
over to her son, David Attenburg, and David had a
bit of a different approach. David was very business forward.
He didn't really have much of a concern with the campers.
And you know the culture of camp, and that's you know,
(04:55):
camp was dysfunctional from the beginning. How could it not
be when it's in entire purpose was to force kids
into weight loss. But really, as the years went on,
it got worse and worse and worse under David's leadership.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
You say that forced kids into weight loss, and there
were many times that felt like they're starving them. It's
because I know what losing weight is all about. You
still have to have the nutrients, you still have to
have the things to fortify your body.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
That's right. Yeah, this was.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I would definitely consider it starvation. A lot of these
kids were sent away. This was a nine week long camp. Wow,
so kids were there all summer long. The kids went
all the way from you know, they could be twenty
two years old all the way down to the age
of eight. All campers were fed the same thing regardless
of age, activity level, gender, and the portions year after
(05:48):
year after year were just so minuscule.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
And to your point, it wasn't really.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Like a nutritionally balanced diet that these kids were on.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
It was really just coloric deficit.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Really seeing that you call that, you say that it
was a nine week course, and yet today most of
these kids get what one week, Oh, I'm going to camp.
How long are you going to be there? One week?
It's like, wow, I don't know if we have the
attention span for nine weeks today that.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Could be true. Yeah wow.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
And well, speaking of being in the present place of now,
and that is is that a camp like this, there's
no way a camp could, a fat camp could exist,
because that's insulting, that's stepping on somebody's private life.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Oh, there are still fat camps out there, for sure.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
And actually Camp Pocono Trails which is another really famous
and well known fat camp that just shut down.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
In the past year.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
But there are still a ton of them out there actually,
and you know, people are trying. The owners of these camps,
some of them are trying kind of a different approach
where it's more quote unquote wellness based.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
But I think a lot of these camps still.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Have this root problem of taking kids with low selfist seen,
taking kids who don't feel great about their bodies, and
then reinforcing the idea that their worth is tied to
their body size.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
One of the things that I kept waiting for inside
the story was the fact that you know, sure, they're
they're they're working on what they're eating, They're they're you know,
they're they're having them in exercise programs. And I kept
telling myself, why aren't they teaching them to write to
get to know themselves? Because because you know, being overweight
is so personal, why aren't they talking to themselves through
through the way of writing? I get? And that's what
kind of a sick freak? I am?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Right?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Yeah, Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I mean, there are a lot of ways to address
issues around food, and for some of these kids, they
they were eating in a way that was a response
to maybe a trauma that they'd had in their earlier childhood.
You know, there were definitely issues around food for some
of these campers, but none of that was being at
dressed addressed.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
At Camp Shane.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
They claimed to have therapists on site. These therapists were
not qualified. They did you know, different like kind of
like wrap sessions, and they did some like one off
body positive sort of workshops, but none of these people
were trained in what they were doing, and in fact,
none of them really had direction from Camp Shane. It
(08:15):
was a lot of people coming in with their own
ideas about how weight loss works and just doing the
best that they could.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
You talk about what parents say, God's honest truth. Here
in my fifties, my father was in his passing moments,
he was transitioning. He looked at me and said, why
are you so fat? And to this day, oh my god,
you know, even though I mean it was in my fifties,
I can't let that go. It's like, why did I
have to hear that?
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Oh my god, that's horrible. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
That's why I've heard a lot of similar stories from
former campers. You know, some parents sent their kids to
this camp because they just saw that their kids were
struggling and they didn't know what to do and they
were desperate. But there were other parents who caused a
lot of body issues in our own kids and then
send them to camp as if they were a problem.
That needed to be fixed. And I've just heard a
(09:05):
ton of horrible stories. I heard a story recently about
someone reached out to me and said her grandmother had
liposuction at age eighty, and like, these are the people
that are raising kids that then get sent to Camp Shame.
There's just all kinds of body issues going on there.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Please do not move. There's more with Kelsey Snelling coming
up next. The name of the podcast Camp Shame with
an M. The host Casey Snelling, Well, you've inspired me
to do so much research beyond the podcast in the
way that I mean. I was looking up things like
why did our parents always tell us to clean your plate?
You can't leave the table unless you clean your plate.
(09:42):
That leads to obesity, you know that, right, right? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I think the big thing there is when you teach
kids to not listen to their bodies and to not
trust their bodies, whether that's force feeding them or on
the other side, putting them on a.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Diet, that leads to a lot of issues down the road.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Not only are they going to to believe that their
bodies are constantly betraying them, they're going to develop this
hatred of themselves. But as we explore in the podcast.
It leads to all kinds of other abuses. I mean,
sexual abuse happened at this camp. It was absolutely rampant.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
There were.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
All kinds of abuses that went down because kids were
taught to not trust themselves.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Essentially.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, I don't think the hill outside the cafeteria was abuse.
I thought, I think that's brilliant because in my forest here,
I have what's called Heartbreak Hill. Every day I've got
to hit Heartbreak Hill to get my heart rate up.
And I mean, and I when when I heard about
that hill, I'm going, yeah, get yet, Oh the hill.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
That was a bit of evil genius.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And I mean the kids, as much as they hated it,
they loved coming up with clever ways to get up
and down that hill. Kids would try to like swarm
the golf cart. When the maintenance man came through, they
would like roll down. It was it was kind of
like it was a lot of fun actually that hill.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, who invested all the time in writing this because
I mean it's so one on one personal and I
really feel like that You're sitting in the front seat
of the car with me and you're saying, by the way,
I read something today I want to talk about this camp.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Oh wow, thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I had an incredible, incredible team. So I worked on
this project by myself for about ten years before. Yeah, yeah,
it is a labor of love. And finally about two
years ago, I was able to connect with Wonder Media Network.
They're now under the umbrella of a Cast Studios, so
they're a woman led production company. And I had a
(11:38):
small team of writers and producers that worked with me
to get this thing going and get it out there.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
I'm so glad you brought up the ladies because I
see in my own personal notes here I talk about
I said, am I hearing this right? Am I hearing
only women's names? And you went right into it.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yes, isn't that so great? I'm so glad you noticed.
First of all, I'm glad you listened to the credits.
Not everybody does that.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
But yeah, this was a fully female team.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
How did you stay so loyal to a project that
took ten years to get the attention of someone Because
so many times when it comes to podcasting, people think that, oh,
I'm going to go step into the room and talk
into my computer and oh I got fifteen hits today.
But the thing is is that you have stayed so
true to this entire project. And I'm sure you face
people that said, what are you doing again?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Oh? Absolutely, I mean anyone who works in a creative
field can probably attest to this. But I pretty much
since I left Camp Shane. So I was a counselor
at Campshane in twenty eleven, and I knew I wanted
to do a project about it.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
I knew that people had to know what was going
on at this camp.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
And you know, I would fundraise, I would interview, and
then I would run out of money and I would
try to forget it. And I mean this happened again
and again and again. Every time I tried to drop it,
something would remind me. You know, I would hear a
diet ad on the radio, or I would see one
of my former campers was struggling with their body on Facebook.
(13:05):
And so that really was. It was small motivations over
and over and over again that got me to where
I am now.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
So then what happens after this? I mean, if you've
spent all this time, you've invested so much compassion into
it and love for it, how do you replenish your forest?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
My god, great question.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Well, I think I'm going to go into the literal
forest and maybe hike for like six months.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
That's really the only thing I have planned for now.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
You shocked me when you told me why they closed
in twenty twenty one, because I've always believed they closed
because of the lockdown and because of the pandemic. But man,
you set me straight.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Oh yeah, Well, Camp Shane would love to have everyone
believe that they got shut down because of the pandemic,
and that is.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
What they told reporters and news.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Stations when asked about it. But that is absolutely not
what happened. Anyone who has ever set foot on Campshane
could see that from a mile away.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Did you giggle in side about the Hidden Underworld? Because
I did. I mean, when once they realized they could
smuggle in some food and stuff like that, I was
like going, Yeah, that that's the kind of kid I
would be right there.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I know.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
That's That's the best part I think of the whole
series are these hilarious stories about kids just being clever,
you know, like they're in this really horrible situation and
it's very it's very dark, and the story could have
been told in a very ominous way. But the fact
that these kids were just so crafty and so clever
(14:31):
is what brings a lot of levity to the story.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
So what are they doing today? In other words, what
I'm asking is that is that if they're being so clever,
then during times that were tough and filled with darkness,
but they use their imaginations, their ambition, their survivor survival skills,
and it's like, Okay, what are they doing today? Or
did they once they were free it was like okay,
I'm done.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Well, you know what is a really interesting pattern. So
so so many former campers and counselors have become dietitians
and have become nutritionists in response to what they experienced
at camp.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Many many, many people.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
I wish I could get some hard data on the
percentages here. What they experienced at camp was just awful
and it was wrong, and a lot of these campers
that completely changed the direction of their lives and they
dedicated their lives similarly to me, I guess into correcting
this wrong that they saw.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
The way that the podcast opens, and I want listeners
to understand this. You cannot judge this podcast by its cover.
You've got to go in there. Within open heart and
listen to what's going on. And the way that you
set us up is that you introduce us to the
people in the very beginning, which I think is amazing.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Yeah, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
We definitely wanted to make sure that these were characters
rather than just voices air grievances over and over and
over again.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
So then as a listener, I mean I kept myself
so glued to it because of because of the personal stories,
and it was their voices, their inflection, pitch, volume, and
tone that kept me there. And then you would come
in and you would continue the story forward. Where did
you learn the fine art of moving things forward?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Interestingly, with this show, I really think it kind of
wrote itself in a way. I mean, when I started
this project, the camp had not yet been shut down,
they had not yet relocated, so you'll hear in the
podcast they relocate a couple of times. And so the
first few drafts of this story didn't really have an ending.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
And Camp Shane kind of created its own ending.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
The momentum was there, and the story just kind of
wrote itself.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
You touched another subject here that's in my notes, and
you said the ending. And after eight episodes you have
to sit there and go, why only eight episodes? We're
talking sixty years here.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Oh, great question.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
I would have loved to do ten, twelve, thirteen episodes,
but we were slated for eight, and ultimately I think
it worked because, you know, it really forced us to
get to the point and keep it meaty.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Keep it juicy.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Why did the does celebrities endorse it so much? Did
they send their own kids there?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
This is a question that I have asked myself so
many times. There were a ton of celebrities, specifically in
the eighties, nineties, and two thousands, who sent their kids
to this camp. But it was also very widely promoted
by especially in the two thousands. It was on the
Tyra Banks Show, it was on MTV Doctor Oz Oprah,
(17:38):
And I think what happens in those cases is, you know,
Camp Sheen probably reached out and said, Hey, I've got
this great camp.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
We help kids. Look at all the good we're doing.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
These hosts and TV shows don't really do their due diligence.
They don't really do any research because you know, they've
got to churn out content and.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
They say, okay, great, we'll do a story about it.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
We'll do this glowing review of Camp Shane, and that
just kind of seemed to happen over and over and
over again, which is really interesting because I think if
anybody went to the camp for even one day, they
would have realized something was not right about this place.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
We keep talking about Camp Shane, and you don't know
how many times I kept going back to my note stage.
And the podcast is called Camp Shame and with an AIM,
and I want listeners when they go to iHeartRadio and
they're go looking for it, they put in Shame and
not Shane.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
The name of the summer camp was Camp Shane with
an N, but a lot of the campers understandably referred
to it as Camp Shame with an M. And so
that's the name of the podcast.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Wow, where can people go to find out more about you?
Because first of all, as a journalist, you're absolutely brilliant.
And when people say, so, what podcasts are you listening to?
I go, you gotta go to the ones where you
have real, honest to god journalism because they know how
to share a story.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Wow. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
That's that's so nice. You can follow us on Instagram.
We have an Instagram account. Camp Shame and listeners. If
you went to Camp Shame, you can share your story there. Yes,
you can also find the podcast wherever you get your podcasts,
on any platform of your choice.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
You got to come back to this show anytime in
the future. You're going to go into the forest. You
said you're going to get lost in there, But when
you come out, you've got to come back on this
show and let me know what you found in that forest.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Absolutely, I'll have a podcast for you.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
There you go, will you'd be brilliant today.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Okay, thank you so much. Thank you
Hey, I just wanted to let you know that aero
dot net is the place to get all seventeen of
my podcast. You don't have to go to these streaming
outfits and sit there and say where did he say
he was?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Again?
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Yeah? Ero dot net a r r oe dot net. Hey,
thanks for being a part of the conversation. Let's do
some pod crashing. Episode number four oh six is with
Kelsey sideling from the podcast camp Shame Kelsey, Kelsey, Kelsey.
To do a podcast like this and to experience it,
I mean, there has to be a lot of love
inside your heart, compassion as well as forgiveness, and because
(00:32):
I can hear it in your voice and the way
that you share these stories. Am I wrong in this?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh? Wow?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Thank you?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I mean, you're absolutely right. I don't think anyone would
commit their entire adult life to a project if they
didn't feel a very strong compassion for the story.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
One of the things that you do that so incredibly well.
In the opening, you introduce us to everybody, and you
do it at such an amazing pace where I get
to hear their voices and then when they come back
and say something else, I'm going, Oh, I know, who
that is. I know that voice.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
M h. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It was really really tough actually to organize all of
these voices and to make sure that the story was
you know, that people could follow the story. And I
think where we ultimately landed is the perfect way to
tell the story.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
You have the thing that when I found out that
people were going back several different times, I'm going, I've
got this story so completely wrong. I was expecting a
nightmare from page one, and yet they people kept going back.
They became coaches, they become you know, and leaders. I'm going,
what's going on here that they if it's so bad,
why does it sound so good? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I mean that's such a huge part of the story,
and transparently. When I first started this, I really was
approaching it as an expose.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I really wanted to bring this cap down.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
And as I started interviewing more and more people, I
realized that the story was simultaneously almost a love letter
to Camp Shane, which was something I didn't expect. And
I mean, I think that that kind of dichotomy is
almost what made the camp so dangerous. It's almost like
when you have, you know, when you're in a toxic relationship,
(02:16):
and you love someone so much even though they are
inflicting a lot of harm on you. It's kind of
hard for people to separate the good from the bad
in this case, so.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
In a weird way, in their hearts, the campers did
they feel like, oh, I'm going back, I'll fix it,
We'll have a better year this year.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, And those are some of the most heartbreaking stories
when you hear some of these campers really fighting for
this camp that really feels like a home for them.
I mean, a lot of these kids feel ostracized in
the outside world and Camp Shane is the one place
where they can really be themselves and really belong. And
for that reason, it's understandable that they would just be
(02:56):
fighting tooth and nail to make this place the great
place that they want it to be. And unfortunately, I
mean try as they might, it just it was too chaotic,
it was too dysfunctional, and it just all fell apart
of the end.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
You say, to be themselves, to feel like they belong,
and right away I go right to the story of
the of the young guy who took off his shirt
for the first time in front of other people, and
it's like, oh, my god, because we've all been there.
We've all been there.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yeah, Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah, I got chills when I think about that story.
So that's Carl. He was what we call a lifer
at Camp Shane, which means you're there for life. You
start as a camper, you become a counselor, you go
here after year after year. And I mean, camp meant
so much to Carl, and it betrayed him in the end.
And that's one of the saddest stories to me in
the whole in the whole series.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Let's start at the very beginning, the edinburghs Okay, who
the heck are these guys? Where did that vision even
come from? And did they know it would get out
of control?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Yeah? Great question.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
So so Camp Shane was founded in nineteen sixty eight
by a woman named Selma Edinburgh and the very first
summer that Camp Shane was in operation was nineteen sixty nine.
So Selma had been overweight as a kid and as
a teen, and she, it seems, really created this place
out of a love for fat kids, even if that
love was a little bit misled. I mean, the entire
(04:23):
purpose of the camp is to get kids to lose weight.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
And change their bodies.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
So that was her way of expressing love to these
kids in these campers.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
And within a couple of decades the camp was turned
over to her son, David Attenburg, and David had a
bit of a different approach. David was very business forward.
He didn't really have much of a concern with the campers.
And you know the culture of camp, and that's you know,
(04:55):
camp was dysfunctional from the beginning. How could it not
be when it's in entire purpose was to force kids
into weight loss. But really, as the years went on,
it got worse and worse and worse under David's leadership.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
You say that forced kids into weight loss, and there
were many times that felt like they're starving them. It's
because I know what losing weight is all about. You
still have to have the nutrients, you still have to
have the things to fortify your body.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
That's right. Yeah, this was.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I would definitely consider it starvation. A lot of these
kids were sent away. This was a nine week long camp. Wow,
so kids were there all summer long. The kids went
all the way from you know, they could be twenty
two years old all the way down to the age
of eight. All campers were fed the same thing regardless
of age, activity level, gender, and the portions year after
(05:48):
year after year were just so minuscule.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
And to your point, it wasn't really.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Like a nutritionally balanced diet that these kids were on.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
It was really just coloric deficit.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Really seeing that you call that, you say that it
was a nine week course, and yet today most of
these kids get what one week, Oh, I'm going to camp.
How long are you going to be there? One week?
It's like, wow, I don't know if we have the
attention span for nine weeks today that.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Could be true. Yeah wow.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
And well, speaking of being in the present place of now,
and that is is that a camp like this, there's
no way a camp could, a fat camp could exist,
because that's insulting, that's stepping on somebody's private life.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Oh, there are still fat camps out there, for sure.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
And actually Camp Pocono Trails which is another really famous
and well known fat camp that just shut down.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
In the past year.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
But there are still a ton of them out there actually,
and you know, people are trying. The owners of these camps,
some of them are trying kind of a different approach
where it's more quote unquote wellness based.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
But I think a lot of these camps still.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Have this root problem of taking kids with low selfist seen,
taking kids who don't feel great about their bodies, and
then reinforcing the idea that their worth is tied to
their body size.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
One of the things that I kept waiting for inside
the story was the fact that you know, sure, they're
they're they're working on what they're eating, They're they're you know,
they're they're having them in exercise programs. And I kept
telling myself, why aren't they teaching them to write to
get to know themselves? Because because you know, being overweight
is so personal, why aren't they talking to themselves through
through the way of writing? I get? And that's what
kind of a sick freak? I am?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Right?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Yeah, Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I mean, there are a lot of ways to address
issues around food, and for some of these kids, they
they were eating in a way that was a response
to maybe a trauma that they'd had in their earlier childhood.
You know, there were definitely issues around food for some
of these campers, but none of that was being at
dressed addressed.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
At Camp Shane.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
They claimed to have therapists on site. These therapists were
not qualified. They did you know, different like kind of
like wrap sessions, and they did some like one off
body positive sort of workshops, but none of these people
were trained in what they were doing, and in fact,
none of them really had direction from Camp Shane. It
(08:15):
was a lot of people coming in with their own
ideas about how weight loss works and just doing the
best that they could.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
You talk about what parents say, God's honest truth. Here
in my fifties, my father was in his passing moments,
he was transitioning. He looked at me and said, why
are you so fat? And to this day, oh my god,
you know, even though I mean it was in my fifties,
I can't let that go. It's like, why did I
have to hear that?
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Oh my god, that's horrible. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
That's why I've heard a lot of similar stories from
former campers. You know, some parents sent their kids to
this camp because they just saw that their kids were
struggling and they didn't know what to do and they
were desperate. But there were other parents who caused a
lot of body issues in our own kids and then
send them to camp as if they were a problem.
That needed to be fixed. And I've just heard a
(09:05):
ton of horrible stories. I heard a story recently about
someone reached out to me and said her grandmother had
liposuction at age eighty, and like, these are the people
that are raising kids that then get sent to Camp Shame.
There's just all kinds of body issues going on there.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Please do not move. There's more with Kelsey Snelling coming
up next. The name of the podcast Camp Shame with
an M. The host Casey Snelling, Well, you've inspired me
to do so much research beyond the podcast in the
way that I mean. I was looking up things like
why did our parents always tell us to clean your plate?
You can't leave the table unless you clean your plate.
(09:42):
That leads to obesity, you know that, right, right? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I think the big thing there is when you teach
kids to not listen to their bodies and to not
trust their bodies, whether that's force feeding them or on
the other side, putting them on a.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Diet, that leads to a lot of issues down the road.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Not only are they going to to believe that their
bodies are constantly betraying them, they're going to develop this
hatred of themselves. But as we explore in the podcast.
It leads to all kinds of other abuses. I mean,
sexual abuse happened at this camp. It was absolutely rampant.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
There were.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
All kinds of abuses that went down because kids were
taught to not trust themselves.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Essentially.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, I don't think the hill outside the cafeteria was abuse.
I thought, I think that's brilliant because in my forest here,
I have what's called Heartbreak Hill. Every day I've got
to hit Heartbreak Hill to get my heart rate up.
And I mean, and I when when I heard about
that hill, I'm going, yeah, get yet, Oh the hill.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
That was a bit of evil genius.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And I mean the kids, as much as they hated it,
they loved coming up with clever ways to get up
and down that hill. Kids would try to like swarm
the golf cart. When the maintenance man came through, they
would like roll down. It was it was kind of
like it was a lot of fun actually that hill.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, who invested all the time in writing this because
I mean it's so one on one personal and I
really feel like that You're sitting in the front seat
of the car with me and you're saying, by the way,
I read something today I want to talk about this camp.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Oh wow, thank you.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I had an incredible, incredible team. So I worked on
this project by myself for about ten years before. Yeah, yeah,
it is a labor of love. And finally about two
years ago, I was able to connect with Wonder Media Network.
They're now under the umbrella of a Cast Studios, so
they're a woman led production company. And I had a
(11:38):
small team of writers and producers that worked with me
to get this thing going and get it out there.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
I'm so glad you brought up the ladies because I
see in my own personal notes here I talk about
I said, am I hearing this right? Am I hearing
only women's names? And you went right into it.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yes, isn't that so great? I'm so glad you noticed.
First of all, I'm glad you listened to the credits.
Not everybody does that.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
But yeah, this was a fully female team.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
How did you stay so loyal to a project that
took ten years to get the attention of someone Because
so many times when it comes to podcasting, people think that, oh,
I'm going to go step into the room and talk
into my computer and oh I got fifteen hits today.
But the thing is is that you have stayed so
true to this entire project. And I'm sure you face
people that said, what are you doing again?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Oh? Absolutely, I mean anyone who works in a creative
field can probably attest to this. But I pretty much
since I left Camp Shane. So I was a counselor
at Campshane in twenty eleven, and I knew I wanted
to do a project about it.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
I knew that people had to know what was going
on at this camp.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
And you know, I would fundraise, I would interview, and
then I would run out of money and I would
try to forget it. And I mean this happened again
and again and again. Every time I tried to drop it,
something would remind me. You know, I would hear a
diet ad on the radio, or I would see one
of my former campers was struggling with their body on Facebook.
(13:05):
And so that really was. It was small motivations over
and over and over again that got me to where
I am now.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
So then what happens after this? I mean, if you've
spent all this time, you've invested so much compassion into
it and love for it, how do you replenish your forest?
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
My god, great question.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Well, I think I'm going to go into the literal
forest and maybe hike for like six months.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
That's really the only thing I have planned for now.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
You shocked me when you told me why they closed
in twenty twenty one, because I've always believed they closed
because of the lockdown and because of the pandemic. But man,
you set me straight.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Oh yeah, Well, Camp Shane would love to have everyone
believe that they got shut down because of the pandemic,
and that is.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
What they told reporters and news.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Stations when asked about it. But that is absolutely not
what happened. Anyone who has ever set foot on Campshane
could see that from a mile away.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Did you giggle in side about the Hidden Underworld? Because
I did. I mean, when once they realized they could
smuggle in some food and stuff like that, I was
like going, Yeah, that that's the kind of kid I
would be right there.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I know.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
That's That's the best part I think of the whole
series are these hilarious stories about kids just being clever,
you know, like they're in this really horrible situation and
it's very it's very dark, and the story could have
been told in a very ominous way. But the fact
that these kids were just so crafty and so clever
(14:31):
is what brings a lot of levity to the story.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
So what are they doing today? In other words, what
I'm asking is that is that if they're being so clever,
then during times that were tough and filled with darkness,
but they use their imaginations, their ambition, their survivor survival skills,
and it's like, Okay, what are they doing today? Or
did they once they were free it was like okay,
I'm done.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Well, you know what is a really interesting pattern. So
so so many former campers and counselors have become dietitians
and have become nutritionists in response to what they experienced
at camp.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Many many, many people.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
I wish I could get some hard data on the
percentages here. What they experienced at camp was just awful
and it was wrong, and a lot of these campers
that completely changed the direction of their lives and they
dedicated their lives similarly to me, I guess into correcting
this wrong that they saw.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
The way that the podcast opens, and I want listeners
to understand this. You cannot judge this podcast by its cover.
You've got to go in there. Within open heart and
listen to what's going on. And the way that you
set us up is that you introduce us to the
people in the very beginning, which I think is amazing.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Yeah, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
We definitely wanted to make sure that these were characters
rather than just voices air grievances over and over and
over again.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
So then as a listener, I mean I kept myself
so glued to it because of because of the personal stories,
and it was their voices, their inflection, pitch, volume, and
tone that kept me there. And then you would come
in and you would continue the story forward. Where did
you learn the fine art of moving things forward?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Interestingly, with this show, I really think it kind of
wrote itself in a way. I mean, when I started
this project, the camp had not yet been shut down,
they had not yet relocated, so you'll hear in the
podcast they relocate a couple of times. And so the
first few drafts of this story didn't really have an ending.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
And Camp Shane kind of created its own ending.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
The momentum was there, and the story just kind of
wrote itself.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
You touched another subject here that's in my notes, and
you said the ending. And after eight episodes you have
to sit there and go, why only eight episodes? We're
talking sixty years here.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Oh, great question.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
I would have loved to do ten, twelve, thirteen episodes,
but we were slated for eight, and ultimately I think
it worked because, you know, it really forced us to
get to the point and keep it meaty.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Keep it juicy.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Why did the does celebrities endorse it so much? Did
they send their own kids there?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
This is a question that I have asked myself so
many times. There were a ton of celebrities, specifically in
the eighties, nineties, and two thousands, who sent their kids
to this camp. But it was also very widely promoted
by especially in the two thousands. It was on the
Tyra Banks Show, it was on MTV Doctor Oz Oprah,
(17:38):
And I think what happens in those cases is, you know,
Camp Sheen probably reached out and said, Hey, I've got
this great camp.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
We help kids. Look at all the good we're doing.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
These hosts and TV shows don't really do their due diligence.
They don't really do any research because you know, they've
got to churn out content and.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
They say, okay, great, we'll do a story about it.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
We'll do this glowing review of Camp Shane, and that
just kind of seemed to happen over and over and
over again, which is really interesting because I think if
anybody went to the camp for even one day, they
would have realized something was not right about this place.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
We keep talking about Camp Shane, and you don't know
how many times I kept going back to my note stage.
And the podcast is called Camp Shame and with an AIM,
and I want listeners when they go to iHeartRadio and
they're go looking for it, they put in Shame and
not Shane.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
The name of the summer camp was Camp Shane with
an N, but a lot of the campers understandably referred
to it as Camp Shame with an M. And so
that's the name of the podcast.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Wow, where can people go to find out more about you?
Because first of all, as a journalist, you're absolutely brilliant.
And when people say, so, what podcasts are you listening to?
I go, you gotta go to the ones where you
have real, honest to god journalism because they know how
to share a story.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Wow. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
That's that's so nice. You can follow us on Instagram.
We have an Instagram account. Camp Shame and listeners. If
you went to Camp Shame, you can share your story there. Yes,
you can also find the podcast wherever you get your podcasts,
on any platform of your choice.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
You got to come back to this show anytime in
the future. You're going to go into the forest. You
said you're going to get lost in there, But when
you come out, you've got to come back on this
show and let me know what you found in that forest.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Absolutely, I'll have a podcast for you.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
There you go, will you'd be brilliant today.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
Okay, thank you so much. Thank you
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