Episode 3: The Real Heavyweights

Summary

Episode 3: The Real Heavyweights – Detailed Summary

Release Date: June 5, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 3 of Camp Shame, host Kelsey Snelling delves into the intricate and often troubling history of Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for children. Titled "The Real Heavyweights," this episode explores the camp's influence on pop culture, its internal power struggles, and the detrimental impact of its weight-centric regime on campers' physical and emotional well-being.

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Camp Shane and Pop Culture: The Influence of Heavyweights

The episode begins by drawing parallels between Camp Shane and the 1995 Disney movie Heavyweights. Kelsey Snelling explains that Heavyweights was inspired, at least in part, by Camp Shane's promotional advertisements from the late 1980s. These ads featured images of children showcasing significant weight loss, which captivated young Steve Brill.

Notable Quote:

"When I was a kid, Steve saw the notorious Camp Shane ad in the back of the New York Times Magazine... I would always stare at that ad going, wow, what would it be like to go there?"
— Steve Brill [03:35]

Steve Brill, the director of Heavyweights, recounts collaborating with producer Judd Apatow to transform his childhood fascination with Camp Shane into a feature film. However, Brill acknowledges significant differences between the real camp and the movie's portrayal, emphasizing that while Heavyweights showcased a fun and rebellious camp environment, the reality at Camp Shane was far less idyllic.

Notable Quote:

"Camp Shane wasn't quite like Heavyweights, not really."
— Steve Brill [04:51]

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Ownership Transition: From Selma to David

A pivotal moment in Camp Shane's history was the transition of ownership from Selma and her husband Irving to Selma's son, David Attenberg. By 1990, David had been camp director for eight years, overseeing a thriving business with revenues of $260,000 (equivalent to approximately $630,000 in 2025).

However, this transition was marred by familial discord. Selma, still retaining ownership while David managed the camp, led to escalating tensions. Selma insisted that David and his wife Zipporah reside on campus year-round, leading to an attempted eviction and a subsequent legal battle over camp ownership.

Notable Quote:

"Selma insisted that David and his wife Zipporah live in their house on camp all year long... David and Zipporah said no."
— Kelsey Snelling [19:08]

The legal confrontation culminated in David purchasing the camp for $1.2 million by 1993, making him the sole owner. Despite this, Selma remained a contentious presence, often meddling in camp operations from across the street, creating an environment of constant tension.

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Operational Changes Under David's Leadership

Under David's leadership, Camp Shane shifted from its original mission of supporting weight loss in children to a more profit-driven business model. This shift was evident in several operational changes:

1. Hiring Practices: David preferred employing Camp America counselors—international staff willing to work for lower wages—to reduce costs. This practice introduced diverse yet transient staff members who were central to the camp's daily operations.

2. Cost-Cutting Measures: Instances like the infamous movie screening debacle, where a counselor mistakenly rented a pornographic film instead of Heavyweights, highlighted the lack of oversight and prioritization of fun over safety.

Notable Quote:

"Campers were being exposed to graphic pornography... with around 100 kids, some as young as 8 years old, seeing something like that."
— Kelsey Snelling [24:26]

3. Staff Dynamics: While counselors like Simon Greenwood were passionate and dedicated, others viewed the camp's rigid and profit-oriented practices as detrimental to its original mission. This dichotomy created a fractured staff environment.

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The Culture of Fatphobia in the 1990s

Camp Shame situates Camp Shane within the broader societal context of the 1990s, a decade rife with fatphobia intensified by media portrayals and flawed metrics like the Body Mass Index (BMI).

1. BMI Misconceptions: The redefinition of BMI categories in 1998 by the National Institutes of Health inaccurately labeled individuals as "overweight" at lower BMI thresholds, misleading millions about their health status.

   Notable Quote:

   "BMI is also just an incredibly poor predictor of how much body fat a person has... the idea that just taking these two measurements would tell us how fat a person is is intuitively ridiculous."
   — Steve Brill [12:20]

2. Media Influence: Popular shows like Friends perpetuated negative stereotypes about fatness, embedding shame and embarrassment in societal consciousness.

   Notable Quote:

   "In 1994, Esquire magazine printed an article revealing that 54% of women surveyed would rather be hit by a truck than be fat."
   — Kelsey Snelling [08:55]

This pervasive fatphobia created an environment where weight loss camps like Camp Shane thrived, capitalizing on parents' fears about their children's health and societal pressure to attain a slender physique.

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Impact on Campers: Disordered Eating and Physical Strain

The strict regime at Camp Shane had severe consequences for the children enrolled, fostering disordered eating habits and extreme physical exertion without adequate nutrition.

1. Food Restrictions:

   • Campers were subjected to minimal caloric intake, insufficient for their age and the extensive physical activities prescribed.
   • The introduction of the "Pig Out Room" paradoxically punished campers by restricting their food intake while subtly encouraging binge eating through access to contraband snacks.

   Notable Quote:

   "Food intake was heavily restricted... their reward for restriction was to eat a bunch of cake and cookies in the Pig Out Room."
   — Kelsey Snelling [30:07]

2. Extreme Exercise:

   • Campers engaged in up to eight hours of exercise daily, often leading to physical exhaustion, illness, and injuries.
   • Instances like Stacy Toth's collapse due to overexertion and inadequate nutrition underscore the camp's disregard for the campers' well-being.

   Notable Quote:

   "My body was overwhelmed with the amount of exercise and extreme pressure... my body literally crashing, crumpling to beg for help."
   — Stacy Toth [43:02]

3. Psychological Effects:

   • The camp's focus on weight loss as a performance metric instilled a cycle of shame, self-criticism, and unhealthy relationships with food.
   • Former campers like Stacy recount feelings of failure and the perpetuation of disordered eating behaviors long after leaving camp.

   Notable Quote:

   "I didn't think calories really work that way. Like, you need enough calories every day. It doesn't work that way."
   — Sue Steinberg [40:07]

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The Decline of Camp Shane and Lasting Consequences

By the mid-1990s, Camp Shane was embroiled in controversies ranging from suspected arson to accusations of mismanagement, reflecting the broader dysfunction within the camp's leadership.

1. Safety Incidents:

   • A 14-year-old camper's broken collarbone from unsupervised play exemplified the camp's neglect of camper safety.

2. Internal Sabotage:

   • Selma's relentless attempts to reclaim control led to actions like tackling camp operations and instigating fear among staffers.

   Notable Quote:

   "Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie."
   — Steve Brill [33:51]

3. Staff Exodus:

   • Increasingly untenable conditions and unresolved tensions led dedicated staff members like Jana Hopkins to leave, fearing for the campers' well-being.

   Notable Quote:

   "I had the sense that something bad was going to happen and I didn't want to be there when it did."
   — Jana Hopkins [33:45]

Despite attempts to maintain operational stability, the cumulative effect of poor management, internal conflicts, and harmful weight loss practices marked the beginning of the end for Camp Shane's reputation and effectiveness.

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Contrasting Camp Shane with Heavyweights

While Heavyweights concluded on a hopeful note with campers triumphing over an oppressive camp director, the reality of Camp Shane was starkly different. The episode highlights the absence of positive reinforcement and self-acceptance for campers, underscoring the enduring psychological scars left by the camp's practices.

Notable Quote:

"If you've never seen the movie, then spoiler alert, I'm about to talk about the ending... there's no trophy, no music that swells as the credits start to roll, no hearts filled with new lessons about loving yourself."
— Kelsey Snelling [47:56]

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Conclusion and Teasers for Future Episodes

The episode wraps up by contrasting the fictionalized optimism of Heavyweights with the grim reality of Camp Shane, emphasizing that while the movie ends with a sense of accomplishment and self-love, Camp Shane left its campers grappling with unresolved shame and unhealthy body images.

Kelsey Snelling teases future episodes, hinting at deeper explorations into Camp Shane's legacy and the broader implications of fatphobia in society.

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Production Credits

Camp Shame is a production of iHeartPodcasts, with Kelsey Snelling as the host. The episode was produced by Brittany Martinez, Taylor Williamson, Sarah Schlied, Lucy Jones, and Aaliyah Yates Grau. Editing was managed by Courtney Hommeister, supported by Lindsay Cradlewill and Grace Lynch. Executive producers include Jenny Kaplan, Emily Rutter, Christina Everett, and Kelsey Snelling herself. Fact-checking was conducted by Madeline Gore, Lucy Jones, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Lauren Williams, and Fiona Pesto. Theme music was produced by Shaun Patel.

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Call to Action

Listeners are encouraged to share their own Camp Shane stories and follow Camp Shame on Instagram @CampShame to engage with the community and stay updated on upcoming episodes.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Kelsey Snelling]

This is an I Heart podcast.

[Steve Brill]

How could a beautiful young first grade teacher be stabbed 20 times, including in the bat, allegedly die of suicide? Yes, that was the medical examiner's official ruling. After a closed door meeting, he first named it a homicide. Why? What happened to Ellen Greenberg? A huge American miscarriage of justice. For an in depth look at the facts, see what Happened to Ellen on Amazon. All proceeds to the national center for Missing and Exploited Children.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Tremarchi, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the Highwayman suggests men.

[Steve Brill]

Dominated the field, but tell that to.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Lady Catherine Ferrers, known as the wicked lady who terrorized England in the mid-1600s. Her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Find more crime and cocktails on Criminalia. Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Steve Brill]

Marsha P. Johnson is the trans icon of the queer movement and it's time to listen to her. I want to be one of the world's biggest drag queens. Today you can buy T shirts with her face on them. But her death in 1992 was never solved. I'm dying, dying, dying. Hear how Marsha's life and legacy reshaped our world. Just get your heart ready. Listen to afterlives on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did it occur to you that he charmed you in any way? Yes, it did, but he was a charming man.

[Kelsey Snelling]

It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.

[Steve Brill]

I often ask myself now, did I know the true Jan at all? Listen to Hot Agent of chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

[Kelsey Snelling]

You get your podcasts. This episode contains descriptions of disordered eating and diet behavior. This language could be sensitive for some listeners, so please take care. Camp Shane, like any other summer camp, had a set of traditions that kept it afloat starting in the late 90s. One of those traditions was watching the movie Heavyweights, the Disney movie from 1995 about a boys weight loss camp. In the film, a group of campers hold an uprising against the camp's oppressive militaristic leader, played by Ben Stiller. Attention campers.

[Steve Brill]

Lunch has been canceled today due to lack of hustle. Deal with it.

[Kelsey Snelling]

It's based at least partially on Camp Shane. I actually talked to the director of the Movie Steve Brill.

[Steve Brill]

My name is Steve Brill. I think I was billed as Steven.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Brill earlier in my career, but I.

[Steve Brill]

Dropped the N. I thought it was too pretentious.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Great. Okay. I won't call you Steven. That's. Steve told me that the idea for the movie came from an advertisement. When he was a kid, Steve saw the notorious Camp Shane ad in the back of the New York Times Magazine. You know, the one with a skinny kid holding out his waistband, inches away from his body to show off how much weight he'd lost.

[Steve Brill]

I would always stare at that ad going, wow, what would it be like to go there?

[Kelsey Snelling]

Years later, Steve was working in Hollywood brainstorming movie ideas with then rookie producer Judd Apatow. And I told him that about that ad.

[Steve Brill]

He said, we have to make it that.

[Kelsey Snelling]

So that's how it became about a.

[Steve Brill]

Weight loss camp, and particularly about Camp Shane because that was the only camp that we knew about.

[Kelsey Snelling]

If you know anything about Camp Shane, then when you watch Heavyweights, you can see the parallels. There are kids smuggling candy. There are weigh ins. There's a bus driver pretending to pull into a fast food drive thru before course correcting in the direction of camp. There are even go karts.

[Steve Brill]

Go karts.

[Kelsey Snelling]

How many times can you go in the go carts?

[Steve Brill]

As much as you want, Jerry.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Jerry. If you went to Camp Shane, you'd be sorely disappointed. The go karts were always broken. For many kids who had not yet been to Camp Shane, heavyweights was their point of reference. And the movie made camp look crazy fun. When I was interviewing people for this show, it came up again and again.

[Steve Brill]

Movies like Heavyweights.

[Kelsey Snelling]

That movie Heavyweights, I think we all saw heavyweight.

[Steve Brill]

All I really had naturally was heavyweights. In my mind it was like the movie heavyweights.

[Kelsey Snelling]

But Camp Shane wasn't quite like Heavyweights, not really. Even Steve Brill could see that. During his research, he watched several promotional videos from fat camps all over the country.

[Steve Brill]

The Camp Shane was always just something a little off about it. I remember being bummed ultimately that the camp that I was hoping would be the model camp was shady.

[Kelsey Snelling]

This is Camp Shame. I'm your host, Kelsey Smelling. Today we're talking about Camp Shane's new ownership, mother son squabbles and an innocent film screening gone awry. Like the camp and heavyweights, Camp Shayne passed hands from an older married couple to a young man with a friend. Fresh perspective. But instead of the fitness guru Ben Stiller, Camp Shane had David Attenberg. By 1990, he had been camp director for eight years and business was booming. The proof was in the sugar free pudding. Shane's tax returns that year showed profits of $260,000. Adjusted for 2025, that's upwards of 630,000. $30,000. And that's just from the nine weeks that Camp Shane was open each year and enrollment was rising. By 1995, 400 kids had signed up to go to Camp Shane. It had come a long way since the 29 campers of its opening year in 1969. Looking back at the 90s, there are certain things you might remember. Like Friends, Seinfeld and the Simpsons dominating television or Sir Mix A Lot's Baby got back on the radio.

[Steve Brill]

I like big butts and I cannot.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Lie, you, other brothers can't deny. Maybe you have memories of walking around your hometown mall or sitting at home in the computer room exploring the World Wide Web. These cultural touchstones might make you sigh with happy nostalgia, but there was another cultural undercurrent roaring through the 90s. Fatphobia. Fatphobia wasn't new, but as pop culture shifted and advertising became all the more pervasive, it was taking on fresh tactics to convince Americans that being fat was something to fear, something to be mocked. And if you were fat, you'd better spend serious chunks of your hard earned money. Trying to slim down and protein can.

[Steve Brill]

Help you keep muscle while you lose fat. So make the Special K breakfast part of your daily diet and exercise plan. That's why I chose the Ultra Slim Fast plan, and I lost 50 pounds in six months. Your body can be trim, toned, firm, slim, fit and in shape in just eight weeks. Now there's the Sports Illustrated Super Shape up program, fully sponsored by Diet Pepsi.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Trim, toned, firm, slim, fit and in shape. I think we get the point. When you weren't explicitly being sold thinness like in those ads, it was still implicitly being marketed toward you. Fashion magazines were filled with images of emaciated models with pale skin and dark circles under their eyes, a look dubbed heroin chic without an ounce of irony. These models weren't selling diet pills or exercise plans, but they were communicating the idea that thinness equals beauty, even if it's a thinness that can only be obtained through objectively unhealthy means, like drug addiction or disordered eating. And in TV and movies, fat people were constantly the butt of the jokes, once again sending the message that being fat is abnormal and shameful. Take the show Friends, for instance. It was filled with jokes about Monica's weight.

[Steve Brill]

Oh, oh, and I'm sorry that I said you were a cow in high school. That's okay, I was a cow. I know. I'm just sorry I said it.

[Kelsey Snelling]

All of these signals were affecting people's psyches. For example, in 1994, Esquire magazine printed an article revealing that 54% of women surveyed would rather be hit by a truck than be fat. Think about that. Women would rather be seriously injured or die than be fat. This fear of fatness could have stemmed from the fact that between 1980 and the late 90s, childhood obesity rates in America nearly tripled, hovering around 15%. In 1997, the World Health Organization declared obesity as a major major public health problem and a global epidemic. Around the same time, the American Heart association added obesity to its list of major risk factors for heart disease and heart attacks. Then in 1998, the National Institutes of Health changed body mass index, or BMI categories. For those who don't know, BMI is a medical screening tool that measures the ratio of your height to your weight. The resulting number supposedly indicates how much body fat you have. Your number places you into four underweight, healthy weight, overweight, or obese. Under the new guidelines, a BMI of 26 or higher was considered overweight. With this change, millions of Americans went to bed normal sized and then woke up overweight without gaining a single pound. The National Institutes of Health told reporters at the time that the changes were necessary because of studies linking extra weight to health problems. Parents and physicians alike now had a medical cause to prescribe fat camp to even more children. But here's the thing. BMI actually does a crap job of assessing how healthy someone is. And it was never meant to assess the health of an individual in the first place.

[Steve Brill]

It was developed by a Belgian mathematician in the 1800s.

[Kelsey Snelling]

That's Dr. Lisa Erlinger. She's a family physician, educator, activist and speaker who focuses on anti bias weight inclusive trauma informed care for patients of all sizes and backgrounds. This mathematician named Adolphe Quetelet was simply collecting data on averages. He never intended for this to be used as a medical prescription. Plus, he conducted his measurements only on men. And this was nearly 200 years ago. Clearly, his findings are far from applicable in most modern societies.

[Steve Brill]

Those ideas were adopted by eugenicists, people trying to create the ideal human. And also later, this bmi, which was never intended to measure the health of an individual, particularly not in our modern community, started to be used as a way to assess the health of an individual.

[Kelsey Snelling]

And here's another thing. BMI does not take into account muscle mass, body composition, or really Anything other than height versus weight.

[Steve Brill]

BMI is also just an incredibly poor predictor of how much body fat a person has. And we know this intuitively, right? We know 250 pound people who are all muscle, and we know 150 pound people who are all fat. And so the idea that just taking these two measurements would tell us how fat a person is is intuitively ridiculous.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Researchers have found that BMI alone is not a good indicator of mortality risk. In some studies, people in the overweight category actually had the lowest mortality rate of anyone obese. People fare better than any other group when faced with congestive heart failure, certain bypass surgeries, and hypertensive heart disease. Ironic, because doctors often use BMI to determine the types of treatment a patient will receive. And a patient's BMI can even affect their insurance premiums.

[Steve Brill]

And so not only was this never intended to be a measure of health, the way we use it is clearly not a reflection of health.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Contrary to popular belief, it's extremely possible to be healthy and fat at the same time. Yet in 90s America and at Camp Shane, that possibility was completely unrecognized. In fact, obesity was starting to be viewed as a disease. To weight inclusive health experts like Dr. Rachel Milner, these attempts to turn body size into a disease not only dehumanize people and put blame where it doesn't belong, it also sets people up for ineffective treatment. It's why she actually avoids using the words obese or overweight.

[Steve Brill]

This language and this attempt to identify body size as a disease is really a way for the pharmaceutical companies and for the diet industry to make money. If we say bodies are a disease and then they come up with these so called interventions, this is a multi, multi billion dollar industry.

[Kelsey Snelling]

A condition can be classified as a disease if it impairs the normal functioning of the body. But millions of fat people have no negative symptoms at all. In fact, fat storage is actually the human body working properly. It's a key component of our species survival. With this in mind, Dr. Milner doesn't think weight should factor into medical treatment.

[Steve Brill]

The only role that body size should play in medical treatment is if the dosage of a medication or anesthesia, anesthesia or a blood pressure cuff needs to be adjusted to make sure that it's safe and effective for the size of the person's body. Outside of that, it is unethical to make body size a part of treatment.

[Kelsey Snelling]

So yes, Americans were getting fatter throughout the 90s. I mean, how could we not when 11 servings of grain were at the base of the food pyramid. But BMI was also screwing with obesity data. We can now look back and realize it wasn't really the health catastrophe the National Institutes of Health or the World Health Organization would have us believe. But at the time, rising childhood obesity rates and rampant fatphobia in popular culture meant more parents were concerned about their children's weight and more people were interested in Camp Shane than ever. You're listening to Camp Shame, an eight part series about one of America's oldest fat camps for kids.

[Steve Brill]

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

[Kelsey Snelling]

If you're dying to know what else lies in store this season, subscribe to I Heart True Crime plus, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts to get all episodes one week early and completely ad free. Plus you'll get access to other chart topping true crime shows like the Real Killer, Betrayal, the Godmother, and so much more. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe to I heart true crime plus to start listening today.

[Steve Brill]

How could a beautiful young first grade teacher be stabbed 20 times, including in the back, allegedly die of suicide? Yes, that was the medical examiner's official ruling. After a closed door meeting, he first named it a homicide. Why? What happened to Ellen Greenberg? A huge American miscarriage of justice. For an in depth look at the facts, see what happened to Ellen on Amazon. All proceeds to the national center for Missing and Exploited Children. I want to be one of the world's biggest drag queens. You've heard the name Marsha P. Johnson. Trans icon, revolutionary saint. They call me a legend in my own time. But who was she really? She's strutting up there, waving to the policemen in the cars. Pay it no mind. I'm a woman. A real woman. Marsha also survived homelessness, sex work and police violence. And in 1992, her body was found in the Hudson River. Her death remains unsolved. Marsha was pulled out of the water, right over the edge here. Afterlives is a podcast about how trans lives we've lost have reshaped our world. Marsha will tell us who she was in her own words. You're gonna be gagging. Just get your heart ready for heart failure. At a time when trans rights are under attack, her story is more urgent than ever. Listen to afterlives on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jan Marsalek was a model of German corporate success. It seemed so damn simple for him. Also, it turned out a fraudster. Where does the money come from?

[Kelsey Snelling]

That was something That I always was questioning myself.

[Steve Brill]

But what if I told you that was the least interesting thing about him? His secret office was less than 500 meters down the road. I often ask myself now, did I know the true Ryan at all? Certain things in my life since then.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Have gone terribly wrong.

[Steve Brill]

I don't know if they followed me to my home. It looks like the ingredients of a.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Really grand spy story because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.

[Steve Brill]

Listen to Hot Agent of chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

[Kelsey Snelling]

You get your podcasts. Behind the scenes, Camp Shayne was going through some major strife. Selma and her son David were caught up in a battle for ownership. And things were about to get nasty. Not yet ready to pass the reins to her son, Selma still owned the camp, but David was camp director and partial owner. He and his wife Zipporah moved into the house in the center of camp and lived there during the summer season. Selma moved into a house across the street from camp. That meant David had more power and presence than ever before. Under David's reign, things were different because his motivation wasn't necessarily to help kids lose weight like it was for Selma. The biggest change between Selma and David's era is that you could tell by lots of little things that it had become a business. A for profit business. That's Sue Steinberg, who you heard from last episode. By the 90s, she was working at Camp Shane as a lifeguard, swim instructor, and later on head of the pool. She witnessed what she saw as a rocky transition from Selma to David. I did recognize the signs of the lack of love for this community. And with that said, giving David Attenberg the benefit of the doubt. To him it was a business, you know, like he never purported to have started a camp for fat people to create a business bubble of societal, you know, marginalized people who could explore their identities. You know, like he never would have said that Camp Shane was supposed to be that to him. He would have said, you know, I am running a business. And he ran it as such for sure. Another person who noticed this was Jana Hopkins. Jana was a group leader throughout the 90s. She saw David's leadership style grow increasingly lax over time.

[Steve Brill]

It seemed to be better managed by the owners and staff. In the beginning, it just seemed like maybe it was too big for them to properly manage and maybe weren't even really were just taking the money and running, you know, just, eh, it's all right. Well, if that happens, who cares? You know, that was sort of the mentality that it seemed to be as.

[Kelsey Snelling]

The years went on, what happened next was an avalanche. According to reporting from Bloomberg Businessweek, Salma insisted that David and his wife Zipporah live in their house on camp all year long, even outside of the summer season. David and Tzipporah said no. According to David, Selma then sent the sheriff to evict them from their on campus house. Selma later claimed that David abruptly announced he was quitting during the crucial hiring period in April before camp began. We're unsure whether or not he actually did. Because of this debacle, which may or may not have even happened, Selma and her husband Irving furiously filed a lawsuit to invalidate their previous agreement, the one that said David would one day own the camp. David then used his minority shareholder status to dissolve the company. An ugly legal battle ensued. In the end, both parties agreed that David would purchase the camp for $1.2 million. By 1993, David was the sole owner of Camp Shane. Though David and his mother were often at odds, he did continue a few of her business practices, like hiring counselors through exchange programs like Camp America, an organization that sends camp counselors from other countries across the globe to America for summer jobs. This saved David money because Camp America counselors generally worked for lower wages than stateside counselors would. And David loved saving money. Camp America counselors are some of the central characters behind the grandest of Camp Shane lore, like the supplier of the Eminem cartel in episode one, remember, Heavyweights. Each year a counselor would drive to the Blockbuster in town to rent the VHS tape and host a screening in the gymnasium. And yes, I know some of you listening are probably googling Blockbuster and VHS tape right about now. But one year, the screening didn't quite go according to plan.

[Steve Brill]

There was a. The operations manager then was from Eastern Europe and he had a heavy accent, and he was told to go to Blockbuster and rent heavyweights. Well, I don't know why we didn't have it at the camp. We watch it every year, God bless him. He goes to the video store and he asks for heavyweights. He's like, I want the heavyweights. The heavyweights. And he's like, what heavyweights is? Yeah, heavy heavyweights. And he's like, all right. So he gets what he thinks is heavyweights. The, you know, funny Ben Stiller comedy heavyweights.

[Kelsey Snelling]

That's Nelson Jancaterino. You heard him in episode one. He was a camper at Camp Shane for several years before working as a counselor for several more summers. But back to the story. The counselor rented the tape and brought it back to camp.

[Steve Brill]

And they put in what they think is heavyweights and they turn it on. When it wasn't heavyweights, it was Kiwi weights, which was this graphic porno. It only lasted for like a few seconds to like Big Dog, who was like a notorious counselor, like jumped in front of the projector. But all the kids were like five seconds, saw this like graphic sex act.

[Kelsey Snelling]

We're talking around 100 kids, some as young as 8 years old, being exposed to graphic pornography. Somehow, despite this mishap, the heavyweight screenings continued with the actual movie, of course. Another Camp America counselor was a British former race car driver named Simon Greenwood. Meryl Winter, a camper and then Counselor throughout the 80s, 90s and 2000s, worked closely with Simon.

[Steve Brill]

All the girls fell in love with Simon. He had an English accent, he was adorable, and he was meticulous. So he was always good at what he did.

[Kelsey Snelling]

If this were really like the movie heavyweights, then Simon would be Pat, the encouraging counselor that all the kids and fellow staffers love. Only like the lady magnet version. David loved Simon too. And soon David made him his right hand man. And they were quite the character foils to one another. Where David was distant, he never took the time to get to know the kids.

[Steve Brill]

He didn't know any of them.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Simon was invested.

[Steve Brill]

He was a hard worker. He loved the kids, he loved the concept of camp. And he was really the backbone of that camp. It wouldn't have survived without him.

[Kelsey Snelling]

But Selma was still living across the street from camp. And she didn't care how many passionate, hardworking sidekicks David had by his side. She challenged David at every turn. She may have no longer been the camp's owner, but she was still around, helping out in the office and riding her golf cart around the campgrounds to yell at kids for chewing gum. Even when she was off campus, she never really left. She was known to watch whatever she could from her house. If that sounds like I'm exaggerating, I'm not. She sometimes sat on her porch with a pair of binoculars to peer inside the camp. She even contested the sale of the camp, claiming she felt pressure to sell at a low price. Everyone could see the continuing tension between Selma and David, including Meryl.

[Steve Brill]

I saw they were feuding.

[Kelsey Snelling]

You couldn't not see they were feuding.

[Steve Brill]

When they weren't talking. Yet they were sharing an office together and they were mother and son, so it's really hard to fathom. But she installed a lock on the door so if David walked out of the office, she would Just lock it from her seat, which was kind of funny.

[Kelsey Snelling]

And these were the adults in charge of hundreds of children. Jana Hopkins, the group leader you heard from earlier, noticed the rivalry between Selma and David. As soon as she stepped on camp for her first, first day of work.

[Steve Brill]

Everybody knew that there was a battle going on. It was just, it was, you know, it permeated everything.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Jana was a single mom in Texas when she came across an ad for Camp Shane in the back of a teacher's magazine. She decided to apply and got a job as a group leader.

[Steve Brill]

Kind of thought, I'm going to make money. I got an opportunity to be in the outdoors and maybe lose some weight. Plus my kid camps for free. This is pretty cool. And you escape the, you know, 1000 degree Summers and Dallas.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Jana drove herself and her seven year old all the way from Dallas to the Catskills. That's a crazy journey for a single mom to make, but she did it. After days on the road, Jana arrived in Ferndale and drove into the center of Camp Shane.

[Steve Brill]

So I drive in and I park and we get out and I walk up to the, you know, kite, the window of, of the office and this woman slams the window open and she looks at me and she says, what do you want? So I'm immediately thinking, oh no, maybe I'm in the wrong place, I don't know. And I said, hi, I said, my name is Jana.

[Kelsey Snelling]

And.

[Steve Brill]

And I said, I'm supposed to be a group leader this summer. And she looks at me and she says, I didn't hire you. Go home. And I'm just standing there with my kid going, uh, oh, I have to say, I mean, so many things are running through my head. I'm literally still standing there. And then David Attenberg comes out of the office and he says, jana, Jana, Jana, it's David. Don't worry about that. Just ignore her. That's my mother. And that was how I met Selma.

[Kelsey Snelling]

But Jana couldn't really ignore Selma. She kept making herself known and flexing power that she didn't really have anymore. One day, Jana took a group of her campers for a walk into town. One of the girls fell and hurt her leg. It hurt so much she couldn't walk back to camp. So Jana ran back to camp to get her car and drove the girl to the infirmary on campus.

[Steve Brill]

You know, no cell phones. I couldn't stop and whip my phone out and say, hey, I need somebody to come help me. So I made the choice to go ahead and I ran. Well, I didn't really run, but I went back to camp. So I got my keys, I got my car, and I came back and I picked her up, just her. And I took her back and I took her to the infirmary and I left my co counselor with the other girls and said, y' all going back? And the next morning, I woke up in my cabin thing where I slept, and I heard something, and I opened my eyes, and Selma was sitting right next to my bed in a chair. And I just looked at her and I said, selma. And she said, did you put a camper in your car yesterday? And I mean, you know, I just woke up. I was. I was disoriented, and I was just shocked. And I said, yes, yes, I did. And she said, you're not allowed to do that. And I said, here's what happened, you know? And she said, you should have just walked back and got somebody. And I just felt like I had to get her back as soon as I could. And so she just gave me. She kept saying I could get fired and I was breaking rules and all these things. And I'm thinking to myself, man, she had some balls. And she had to have planned that out. She had to find out where I was living. She had to know which room was mine. She even brought a chair. I mean, there wasn't a chair in our room.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Truly horrifying. Remember, at this point, Selma was no longer in charge, but that didn't stop her from trying to discipline staffers as if she were. Her presence still loomed large.

[Steve Brill]

And I honestly, I was afraid of her. There are a lot of people who love her and have a lot of respect for her, but I didn't see or know that Selma. I just saw the one who was overwrought with the desire to get her camp back and would do anything she could to do that.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Jana didn't know just how far Selma was willing to go. In 1995, a smoke alarm went off in Selma's house across the street from camp, prompting a visit from the fire department. The police investigated Leslie, Selma's daughter and David's sister believed Selma started the fire herself. Using old newspapers and film negatives to frame David, Selma claimed she wasn't home that evening. Later that summer, a, quote, concerned parent sent an anonymous letter to the New York State Department of Health, calling attention to overcrowding and poor food quality at Shane. The thing is, the letter included lots of insider details like enrollment figures, bunk square footage, and health inspection dates. To David, the letter wasn't anonymous at all. With all of this Drama and chaos going on. No one seemed to be prioritizing the kids. Sometime that August, a 14 year old broke his collarbone while allegedly playing unsupervised at the off Campus Lake. 1995 was Jana's last summer. At this point, she'd been at Camp Shane for years. She had the sense that something bad was going to happen and she didn't want to be there when it did.

[Steve Brill]

The biggest problem I had with David, I think was later as things were getting crazy. And I just kept saying, I said, I don't want this to happen. And he would say, I know, I know, don't worry, I'm handling it. I'm handling it. But clearly he wasn't handling.

[Kelsey Snelling]

You're listening to Camp Shame, an eight part series about one of America's oldest fat camps for kids.

[Steve Brill]

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

[Kelsey Snelling]

If you're dying to know what else lies in store this season, subscribe to I Heart True Crime plus, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts to get all episodes one week early and completely ad free. Plus you'll get access to other chart topping true crime shows like the Real Killer, Betrayal, the Godmother and so much more. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe to I heart true crime plus to start listening today.

[Steve Brill]

How could a beautiful young first grade teacher be stabbed 20 times, including in the back, allegedly die of suicide? Yes, that was the medical examiner's official ruling. After a closed door meeting, he first named it a homicide. Why? What happened to Ellen Greenberg? A huge American miscarriage of justice. For an in depth look at the facts, see what happened to Ellen on Amazon. All proceeds to the national center for Missing and Exploited Children. I want to be one of the world's biggest drag queens. You've heard the name Marsha P. Johnson. Trans icon, revolutionary saint. They call me a legend in my own time. But who was she really? She's strutting up there, waving to the policemen in the cars. Pay it no more. I'm a woman. A real woman. Marsha also survived homelessness, sex work and police violence. And in 1992, her body was found in the Hudson River. Her death remains unsolved. Marsha was pulled out of the water right over the edge. Here. Afterlives is a podcast about how trans lives we've lost have reshaped our world. Marsha will tell us who she was in her own words. You're gonna be gagging. Just get your heart ready for heart failure. At a time when trans rights are under attack, her story is more urgent than ever. Listen to afterlives on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Jan Marsalek was a model of German corporate success. It seemed so damn simple for him. Also, it turned out a fraudster. Where does the money come from?

[Kelsey Snelling]

That was something that I always was questioning myself.

[Steve Brill]

But what if I told you that was the least interesting thing about him? His secret office was less than 500 meters down the road. I often ask myself now, did I know the true Jan at all? Certain things in my life since then have gone terribly wrong. I don't know if they followed me me to my home. It looks like the ingredients of a.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Really grand spy story because this ties.

[Steve Brill]

Together the cold war with the new one. Listen to hot agent of chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever.

[Kelsey Snelling]

You get your podcast. Another thing David wasn't handling well, the food. David didn't prioritize nutrition so much as he prioritized cutting calories. So kids were served the same junk food they were likely eating at home, just much smaller portions. Say two French toast sticks for breakfast instead of four, and then for dinner, one slice of pizza instead of two or three served with a glass of milk. Not enough food to sustain kids doing eight hours of exercise a day. Now there was one workaround at least for the skinny campers at Cheyne. If kids were deemed an acceptable level of thin, they were sometimes awarded a visit to the Pig Out Room, a supply closet off the dining hall filled with all the contraband snacks that Shaners weren't allowed to eat. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, candy, chips, cakes baked by the camp chefs. And then of the people that were like normal weighted people, they had the Pig Out Room, where, you know, I never got there, so I'm not really sure, but I think there was peanut butter there, you know. The Pig Out Room disappeared in the late 90s, but while it existed, it was protected like a national treasure. Sometimes staff would check bags and backpacks to make sure no one was hiding any contraband food that they might have smuggled from the room. Campers were almost never allowed in there, try as they might. And most counselors weren't either. Only the fittest were permitted. Those who had reached Camp Shane's definition of a goal. Wait, usually that meant the Camp America counselors who were already thin and weren't at Camp Shane to lose anything. So campers food intake was heavily restricted. And then their reward for restriction was to eat a bunch of cake and cookies in the Pig out Room. It's a confusing message that further fetishized, quote, bad foods and not one that instilled healthy habits. Sue remembers a Camp America counselor who was a semi professional soccer player. He was one of those straight sized counselors who would have been allowed to go to the pig out room. He didn't understand this relationship that camp was establishing between campers and food. For him, food was fuel. He never could compute. And I just remember the whole summer him being like, I do not get it. These kids are out there running all day and we are feeding them, you know, a teaspoon of apple butter and some dry toast and some cottage cheese. Like her fellow counselors, sue also had questions about the camp's approach to food and how it was all adding up. One day she got a glimpse of the numbers and learned just how little these kids were surviving off of. I was working there with a nutritionist and she was concerned, you know, rightfully so. And she was somewhat distraught. She was just like, the numbers aren't computing. I remember specifically she was like, oh, on Thursday we got 1400 calories. And that was sort of in the range that we were supposed to be getting per day. And she sort of, you know, showed me the numbers of like four straight days of like 900 or 1,000 calories a day. And somehow I got roped into this. And there was, it was a short conversation with David, but I was like, she's really concerned that, you know, some days are very low in calories. And he was like, you know, it all sort of averages out in the end. And I was like, I don't think calories really work that way. Like, you need enough calories every day. Sue's right. It doesn't work that way. And since David had been in this space for over 20 years, the fact that he didn't understand how calories work isn't just shocking, it's irresponsible. Plus, these days we know calorie restriction simply doesn't work. Researchers have found that more than 95% of all diets fail long term, most within a couple of years. And often the weight regained puts people at a higher weight than where they started in the first place. And still, year after year, the message campers got was to restrict their food intake. Stacy Toth attended camp Shane for two summers in the 90s.

[Steve Brill]

The understanding was very much, you need to lose weight and by all means necessary while you're at camp. Both the camp is going to help you and we're going to turn a blind eye. To behaviors that we know are aiding people in weight loss that are actually not healthy and good for them.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Stacy told me about the shame and embarrassment she felt growing up in a bigger body. She hated walking to the plus size section to pick out her new swimsuit. And she was always comparing herself to her stepsisters, who were just naturally smaller than her, While she listened to her grandma brag about only drinking water and eating Ritz crackers all day. Stacy used food as a coping mechanism after a traumatic experience in in her childhood. She felt like a black sheep in her family.

[Steve Brill]

But looking back at photos, I looked like an olympic swimmer. Like, I looked like a healthy person with a lot of muscle mass. And it wasn't until I was at Camp Shane that I learned how to purge. You know, to binge and purge, how to avoid food, right? Like, if we were going to be weighed in the next day, everybody would just not eat.

[Kelsey Snelling]

This mentality to lose weight by all means necessary was dangerous. At Camp Shane, Stacy experienced disordered eating, Long hours exercising and little food. After a few weeks of this, she got sick. And because she was at fat camp, the counselors didn't believe her. They thought she was just making excuses to get out of exercising.

[Steve Brill]

You had multiple activities that you were doing physically all day long. And particularly when I would go to things that were high intensity cardio, like aerobics and circuit training, I basically couldn't breathe. And it wasn't because I was out of shape. It was because I had bronchitis. And I probably had just caught a cold or something and then gotten sick. But I remember coming back up from the hill from the dining hall and feeling like I couldn't make it up the hill. I remember asking multiple times, like, I don't think I can do this. Can I sit this out? And being told no, Being very much given the impression that I was lazy, I just kept feeling worse and worse until one day when I was trying to make it up the hill, I basically collapsed and they needed to put me on a golf cart and take me up to the nurse's station.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Stacy had bronchitis, which turned into walking pneumonia. She was given broth and tea, but that was it. She kept coughing and soon cracked a rib.

[Steve Brill]

My body was overwhelmed with the amount of exercise and extreme pressure that it was being put under physically and not supported with nutrition. And that led to my body literally crashing, crumpling to beg for help. I mean, that's what sickness is, right, Is our body is physically telling us to slow down, to rest, to recover.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Stacy went home early that summer feeling like a failure. She didn't accomplish what she went to Camp Shane to do to lose weight, to become skinny. She tried to replicate the weight loss tactics she learned from camp at home.

[Steve Brill]

I would starve myself. I would try to restrict my calories the way that had been restricted at camp and then I would starve. I was just so hungry that then I would binge and then I would feel badly about having binged and then I would purge and that cycle would go over and over and over again. I don't know that I fully understood body shame until I went to a fat camp. And it's why it was called Camp Shame. We didn't call it Camp Shane, we called it Camp Shame. And the messaging was very much, especially for children who had been going for years, it was a focus on you get love, you get attention, you get these sort of things when you perform at camp. And performance in that instance was losing weight.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Stacy's experience of starting with calorie restriction and developing disordered eating from there is a pretty common long term effect, according to psychologist and certified eating disorder specialist, Dr. Rachel Milner.

[Steve Brill]

So anything that is an attempt to either lose weight or prevent weight gain for kids and adolescents who need to be growing and developing is going to increase their risk of eating disorders. And if they're not somebody that develop an eating disorder, it's still going to put them down in a place where they're constantly weight cycling, so they're trying to lose weight and then regain weight, which we know has a negative impact on health and where they don't get to feel fully embodied that they feel like their body is constantly betraying them.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Of course, this mindset and messaging wasn't only playing out at Camp Shane. It was happening at home, at school, and in the TV and movies kids watched. Which brings us back to heavyweights. One interesting thing about the movie is even though it was released in 1995, it's somehow not filled with outdated fatphobic jokes like you might expect. The movie is a comedy, but the jokes are rarely at the expense of the fat characters. Director Steve Brill said that was intentional.

[Steve Brill]

I certainly wanted to ennoble and make these characters fun and people you could.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Look up to and not make fun.

[Steve Brill]

Of, which is obviously what the fat guy or the fat kid has always.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Been in movies by being overweight.

[Steve Brill]

The shame and the self criticism and this doubt that it brings into you is really harmful. And that's something that we wanted to.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Address as a problem and that's something that hopefully the kids, when they watch the movie, they go, oh, it's all right.

[Steve Brill]

It's all right to be overweight.

[Kelsey Snelling]

If you've never seen the movie, then spoiler alert, I'm about to talk about the ending. The campers have successfully ousted their militaristic camp director and they've just won the annual competition against their rival Camp Music swells as the campers all cheer and hug each other. The main character, Jerry, turns to Pat, the camp counselor, and says, thanks for the damn best summer of my life. Unfortunately, that's just a movie. At the end of a Camp Shane summer, there's no trophy, no music that swells as the credits start to roll, no hearts filled with new lessons about loving yourself. In spite of the bullies and naysayers, it is alright to be fat like Steve said, but our culture is often telling us otherwise. So even though almost all Shaners had fun at one point or another, I don't think any of them walked away from camp thinking it's alright to be heavy. Another difference between Camp Shane and the fictional Camp Hope. The camp owner at Shane hadn't been ousted. In fact, in spite of his mother's sabotage, David was about to lead Camp Shane into its biggest decade yet. Next week on Camp Shane, he was.

[Steve Brill]

Happy with bodies in camp, whether they be kids or counselors. Didn't matter if they were doing things.

[Kelsey Snelling]

That were unethical or.

[Steve Brill]

Dangerous.

[Kelsey Snelling]

We reached out to David Attenberg and his wife Zippora Janowski for comment. At the time of this recording, we have not received a reply. Camp Shame is a production of I Heart Podcasts. I'm your host, Kelsey Snelling. Camp Shame is produced by Brittany Martinez, Taylor Williamson, Sarah Schlied, Lucy Jones and Aaliyah Yates Grau. Our editor is Courtney Hommeister with additional editorial support from Lindsay Cradlewill and Grace Lynch. Our executive producers are Jenny Kaplan, Emily Rutter and me, Kelsey Snelling for iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. Fact checking done by Madeline Gore, Lucy Jones, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Lauren Williams and Fiona Pesto. Our theme music is produced by Shaun Patel. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram ampshame. That's with an M. If you or anyone you know went to Camp Shane, reach out with your camp stories.

[Steve Brill]

How could a beautiful young first grade teacher be stabbed 20 times, including in the bat, allegedly die of suicide? Yes, that was the medical examiner's official ruling after a closed door meeting. He first named it a homicide. Why? What Happened to Ellen Greenberg? A huge American miscarriage of justice. For an in depth look at the facts, see what Happened to Ellen on Amazon. All proceeds to the national center for Missing and Exploited Children.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Tremarchi, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the Highwayman suggests men.

[Steve Brill]

Dominated the field, but tell that to.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Lady Catherine Ferrers, known as the Wicked lady who terrorized England in the mid-1600s. Her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Find more crime and cocktails on Criminalia. Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Steve Brill]

Did it occur to you that he charmed you in any way? Yes, it did. But he was a charming man.

[Kelsey Snelling]

It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story. Because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.

[Steve Brill]

I often ask myself now, did I know the true Jan at all? Listen to Hot Agent of chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

[Kelsey Snelling]

You get your podcasts.

[Steve Brill]

Marsha P. Johnson is the trans icon of the queer movement, and it's time to listen to her. I want to be one of the world's biggest drag queens. Today you can buy T shirts with her face on them, but her death in 1992 was never solved. I'm dying, dying, dying. Hear how Marsha's life and legacy reshaped our world. Just get your heart ready. Listen to afterlives on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kelsey Snelling]

This is an I Heart podcast.