It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, heading into the long holiday weekend.

We've put together some favorite recent interviews lightly polished up from our centennial series

a hundred years of a hundred things including an examination of the cultural changes over that time

with a look at modernism and then one lasting example of modernism the novel the great gatsby

published in 1925 plus american preppy style at 100 and we start here with a look at the

past century of summer camp it's that season and it's mostly but not all fun in games enjoy

now we continue our WNYC centennial series a, 100 years of 100 things, 100 years of summer camp.

This will definitely include oral history calls, but we don't just want wacky or nostalgic summer camp stories.

We actually want to get more serious about this, too, because the 100-year history of summer camps in the United States is also a

history of parental anxieties about modern life in the urban and industrial era. We'll also talk

about the finances of summer camp. An article noted that about half of American parents want to

send their kids to some kind of summer camp, but can't afford it,

40 percent, so close to half, from a survey reported by USA Today. And joining us now on

these angles and more is Ashley Stimson, a journalist who writes most often about science,

conservation, and the outdoors.

She wrote an article for Atlas Obscura called The Anxious History of the American Summer Camp.

Ashley, thanks for joining our 100 Years of 100 Think Series. Welcome to WNYC.

Thank you so much for having me.

And we'll do lots of timeline as we do in these 100-year segments, but let me start with a key concept around why I'm asking callers to say

why they were sent or sent their kids to summer camp. And it really relates to the central

theme of your article. You quote from a book by historian Michael Smith, who wrote that camp has

always involved adults projecting their own ambivalence about modern life onto children. So can you

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