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A camp catastrophe. I'm Jason Horton. I'm Rebecca Leeb.

And this is Ghost Town.

Off of State Route 17 in the Catskill Mountains of New York, there's a summer camp.

It looks like you might imagine a vacated summer camp looks like. Green hills, run-down cabins,

campy signage, and overgrown trails. But this isn't some typical wet hot American summer type nostalgia.

This is the old home of America's longest running weight loss camp for kids. Between

1968 and 2021, the camp took in thousands of kids. Some lost weight, some found love, but others

endured injuries, assault, and trauma on a whole other level. This is the story of Camp

Shane. A lot of information from this episode came from this incredible piece on the camp in Bloomberg

Business Week by David Gavi Herbert. Please go check it out. There are photos and more quotes. It's awesome.

Super comprehensive if you want to hear more. To tell this story, though, we need to go back to

1923. That's when Selma Ettenberg was born in Brooklyn to immigrant Jewish parents. She was

smart and beautiful, observant, and ambitious, but was not allowed to attend college like her

older brother. Instead, Selma married a soft-spoken kind of pushover guy named Irving, and had

three kids, Leslie, David, and Diana.

Selma was toughest on David, who was smart and attractive, charismatic.

...