Today, Explained - Sleepaway camp's nostalgia economy

Episode Date: June 22, 2025

Unpacking the American rite of passage that so many children love — but that isn't right for everyone. This episode was produced by Devan Schwartz, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Sarah Schweppe, engineered by Matthew Billy and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Photo by Maskot/Getty Images.  If you have a question, give us a call on 1-800-618-8545 or send us a note here. Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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York Magazine, is dropping a special Hamptons issue on June 23rd, spotlighting the personalities, social scenes, and shifting power dynamics that define the summer enclave alongside the season's most exciting new openings. If that's for you, don't miss New York Magazine. You can find it on newsstands. You can subscribe. New York Magazine. Really a good magazine. I'm a firm believer in summer camp. It's this place where there are no parents. Camps illuminate the ways in which childhood was transformed.

I'm Jon Glenn Hill, this is Explain It To Me, and today on the show, we're going to camp. Summer sleepaway camp, to be specific. Nerves are normal, whether it is your first summer with us or if you've been to overnight camps before. I'm so fortunate to go to sleepaway summer camp for two weeks. Bye guys. I always imagined that sleepaway camp would be adventurous and life changing.

Kind of like in The Parent Trap. These long-lost twins meet each other for the first time at camp and decide they've got one shot to reunite their broken family. Despite the fact that I never went to sleepaway camp, I'm very familiar with the concept. So how did camp get to be such a big deal anyway? I called up Leslie Paris to tell us. She teaches at the University of British Columbia and wrote a book called Children's Nature, The Rise of the American Summer Camp. It's never been the case that the majority of American children went to summer camps, but summer camps came to assume a really important place in American popular culture. They started in the late 19th century. The industry grew phenomenally in the early

20th century. And it continues today in many respects quite similarly to the way it was 130 years ago. Okay. Were there particular groups that developed this American summer camp as we know it? Or lots of different types of camps? camps like how did we get camp? The first camps were founded by urban middle class men who were concerned about boys. They were concerned about white boys who they saw as not getting enough outdoor adventure and the kind of manly experiences they would need to be, in the minds of these adults, the nation's leaders for the next generation. They were worried about the effects of urbanization and they were nostalgic for an earlier day when more boys

had grown up in rural places. So this really began in the late 19th century, mostly in the 1880s onward, very small groups of boys, but quickly the YMCA movement became involved in it. And by the turn of the century, the movement started really ramping up. And ramping up not only because more YMCA camps were founded, but because more different organizations got involved, and more groups of American adults thought this camp idea would be great for my kids, too. You've got small numbers of women leading groups of girls out into the wilderness and

saying this would be great for girls as well. They also need outdoor adventures. In the early 20th century, you've got a whole bunch of new movements, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the Campfire Girls, and they all quickly start sending children out into the wilderness as well. Okay, so you write in your book that quote, this triple nostalgia for the American past,

for camp community, and for individual childhood experience is critical to understanding why camps have figured so influential in American culture and in former campers' lives. I'd love for you to talk about that a little bit more. How so? KSK KAMP KAMP's were a place where children learned nostalgia, and when they had a chance, many of those former children sent their own kids to camp. So this became a kind of a nostalgic cultural practice that for many adults reminded them of often the first time that they had an adventure away from their parents, away from their families.

It's interesting we asked our listeners to call in with their camp stories and so many people met their partners at summer camp. Hi, my name is Nina Villato. Summer camp was the best thing that ever happened to me. I met my husband and some lifelong friends and I'm not the only one that that happened to. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law also met at camp. Hi, my name is Tiffany Andrew. I grew up going to summer camp ever since I was seven and then all throughout college. Every summer I then worked at that summer camp and that

is where I met my husband. And we then got married at that same summer camp. Are these listeners special? Are they the lucky ones? Or historically, have people made connections that last a lifetime at camp? Well, I'd say they're lucky, but they're not exceptional. Since the late 40s, early 50s, a lot more camps have been co-ed. Prior to that, there were camps that had a boy's camp and a girl's camp at the same lake, sometimes owned by the same people, with some degree of socializing.

– Camp is so specific. How did you choose this as an academic subject? – I knew that I wanted to work on American childhood. So one of the things that I look at in my book is how camps illuminate the ways in which childhood was transformed. I imagine that changes at summer camp also reflect changes in American childhood overall. I'd love to hear in broad strokes about some of those changes. How have we seen camp and therefore childhood change over time? One of the main changes that I look at is the rise of the idea of protected childhood. That childhood should be a time apart, that children should be protected from the adult world. Some of the working class kids at the turn of the 20th century

who attended summer camps had never been on a vacation outside of the city. They went on vacations before their parents went on vacations. I feel like nowadays we keep hearing about how important it is for kids to get away from their screens. Camp is probably one of the ways to do that, right? Yes, but some of the same kinds of concerns that adults at summer camps have had were expressed in different ways a century ago, but there were concerns even then that modern culture was hard on kids and that they needed some kind of break. They were very concerned about

kids reading comic books in their bunk or showing up with silk stockings. Oh, the scandal of it all. Many camps have become quite exclusive and expensive and tough to pull off for parents and kids cluttered schedules. Have camps always been big business? Originally, camps were not big business. There were a limited number of elite private camps and increasingly there were organizational camps, charitable camps.

Those camps were not hoping to pull in a large profit. Katie- Leslie, I'm curious if you have any favorite depictions of sleepaway camp and pop culture. What's your go-to moment? Leslie- I always think of The Simpsons episode, Camp Crusty. Bart and Lisa are sent to a camp that ostensibly is run by the local clown, Crusty the Clown, but actually really isn't. It's been franchised and the kids have a horrible time, the counselors are cruel, and finally Crusty appears and makes amends when he realizes what's going on.

Well, I'm going to make it all up to you. I'm going to show you kids the time of your life. But camps appear in a lot of modern American popular culture because I think this really gets back to this place of camps as spaces of adventure and opportunity for children and for young adults, because some of these movies are really focused on the counselors and the staff, that these are spaces where young adults and kids can have adventures that they

wouldn't have had at home. Alright, Leslie Paris, thank you so much. Thank you. Coming up on Explain It To Me, Sleepaway Camp is a big deal on the big screen. Stay with us. Support for the show comes from Koala. Sounds adorable. Let's see what it is. It's a sofa bed. Koala says they take comfort seriously. Unlike traditional sofa beds, Koala sofa beds don't use uncomfortable metal frames. They come in three sizes

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You've packed your bags. You're ready to write your mom and dad. But let's say you also packed some popcorn. That's because we're talking about the classic genre of summer camp movies and we're joined by our producer Devin Schwartz. Hey Devin! Hey JQ. So we already heard from Leslie Parris who literally wrote the book on summer camp about the Simpsons Camp Krusty. But as we were working on this episode our colleagues at Vox decided to share their summer camp movie classics with me.

So I wanted to share a few of those with you and with our listeners. Okay, let's go to camp. Time to fire up that VHS. So first up is another one about a camp that's a bit of a mess. Wet Hot American Summer. This 2001 cult classic is a favorite of our Chung who works with Fox's podcasts. What's so great about that movie was that it was both a parody of and a loving homage to both summer camp and the summer camp movie genre.

It's also got an incredible cast of Gene Garofalo, Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Elizabeth Banks and it was Bradley Cooper's first movie. Andy, have you seen my swimming buddy? I was busy. It's your job to make sure kids don't drown. Wet Hot American Summer. Okay, that is a throwback. So Devin, did you go away to sleep away camp when you were a kid? Well, JQ, like lots of the cast in Wet Hot American Summer, I am Jewish, probably not

a surprise from my last name, Schwartz. And so many of the camps felt a little too Christian-y for me. Okay, well, I used to go to this week-long thing for church called Sunday School Convention, and it was held at a 4-H facility, but my parents were the chaperones, so I was not getting too wild there. But unlike David Wayne, who directed the movie, I didn't go to Jewish camp either. But after college, I did work at a camp in rural Vermont, teaching playwriting and coaching soccer.

It was the exact type of camp I probably would have loved as a kid. And on our last night together, the whole staff partied in a bit of a bacchanal, and we watched wet hot American Summer. Okay. That is very cool. Wasn't there a movie about theater camp not too long ago?

Yeah, that's right. So this is a 2023 mockumentary that Maeve Dunigan from the Dodo, a Vox sister site, absolutely loves. As someone who went to theater camp every summer as a kid and treated our production of Seussical as if it were Shakespeare, I could really relate to the cartoonish levels of sincerity with which the characters in this movie approach children's theater. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Emotionally, physically, and spiritually, this is our most complicated piece we've ever tried to do.

You guys are so talented, so unbelievable. This will break you. This will fully destroy you. Congratulations on being the most talented, so unbelievable. This will break you. This will fully destroy you. Congratulations on being the most talented kids at camp. ["Jazz Hands," by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The Bachelorette, by The to show choir and a good box step. Absolutely. And what's so fun is the stars of theater camp actually went to theater camp together back in the day. I imagine a lot of filmmakers went to some kind of theater or performing arts camp, so it kind of falls in line with the stories they'd want to tell.

Exactly, write what you know and all of that. And I'm not sure if that's the case with the 2003 film Camp, but it's also set at a performing arts camp. Fox's culture writer Constance Grady brought this one up not because it's great cinema per se, but because of a shy, awkward camper played by a very young Anna Kendrick who finally breaks out of her shell at the end of the movie. That's when she sings...

Ladies who lunch from Sondheim's company, and she absolutely blows the rest of the movie out of the water. Let's hear it for the ladies who lunch. Everybody rise. Rise. The story goes that Sondheim saw her do it and he went, she has great teeth. Okay, listen, there are weirder compliments that you could get, but I can really picture that moment of blossoming, of growing up and showing out, and that seems like a hallmark of these camp movies.

So Leslie Paris told us earlier about how nostalgia and sleepaway camp, they're such big things. Did anyone bring that up with you? Big time, a lot of people brought up the nostalgia piece. So Carrie Keeter works with Vox's brand partnerships team and she recommends the 1993 film, Indian Summer. I wanna go back, go back. Oh, I wanna be a kid again.

Carrie Keeter, go back, go back. Indian Summer. I wanna go back, go back. It has feelings of nostalgia, it's heartfelt, Indian summer. It has feelings of nostalgia, it's heartfelt, it brings together friends that have known each other from childhood through adulthood and that is truly the meaning of camp. Oh, I think we got a future camp director in our midst. Yes, very much could be. But of course, not everything is seen with rose colored lenses because, you know, JQ,

camp isn't always safe. Not safe? What do you mean by that? Well, you see, nostalgia for sleepaway camp, it has a scarier side to it. Horror films set at camp. Ooh, spooky. Okay. Yes.

See, it's a whole cottage industry at this point. You're out there in the woods, isolated, you don't know if those sounds at night are animals or something far more dangerous. Peter Ballinon Rosen is my fellow producer on Today Explained and explained it to me. Well, he shouted out the Friday the 13th movies, which center around Camp Crystal Lake. ["The Last Post-Camp"] We've got horny teenagers getting killed. We've got the story of the length family will go for each other.

And across this summer camp setting, we've got great jump scares. This is a movie that could only happen at summer camp. Ah! Ooh, no thank you. I do not want to get slashed at camp. I know, I'm not big on slasher films myself, but this one seems to have staying power in the culture.

The first one came out in 1980, and the 12 or so films are all based on the mythology of a camper turned villain named Jason Voorhees. He drowned in the lake after his fellow campers threw him in. They were kind of bullying him. The counselors, they weren't paying attention because they were off having sex. Oh, and we all know that sex is the number one no-no in horror films, right? Yeah, that's a common trope. If you find love or at least lust, you're next on the list.

Okay, the summer camp watch list is getting pretty long, and I admit that I am almost out of popcorn. Um, let's do one more. Okay, sure thing. Let's hear about Goosebumps from Anna North. She writes the Kids Today newsletter for Vox. Um, growing up, my brother and I loved the Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine and the TV show,

and a big favorite of ours was called Welcome to Camp Nightmare, in which a whole bunch of really scary stuff happens at a sleepaway camp. Why is it just us? Why doesn't anybody else think anything happened? I gotta find a phone, call my parents, tell them to come pick me up and get me out of this hole. I don't know that I would sign up for that camp. What kind of scary stuff happens in that one?

Sorry, J.Q., no spoilers on this one. You're gonna have to get some more popcorn and add it to your camp watch list. Okay, fine. But as it turns out, Anna herself isn't the biggest fan of Sleepaway Camp. You definitely do not need to send your kids to Sleepaway Camp.

If you don't go to Sleepaway Camp, you will be fine as a person. Okay, I definitely wanna hear more about that. And luckily for us, after the break, more from Anna on summer alternatives to sleep away camp. Stay with us. Support for the show already comes from Fireflies. I love Fireflies. I didn't know they had money to support our show.

Let me see. Oh, wait. Fireflies says they're an AI teammate that transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes your conversations so you can get the most out of every meeting. Definitely a different kind of Firefly. Firefly says they help you understand what was said, generate personalized notes, find information, and take action on next steps and develop workflows to create internal efficiencies. According to Firefly, you can capture notes, answer questions, or search the internet all

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That's fireflies.ai slash explained. In 2001, Lindsay met a man named Carlo. About a week later, they went on a date. And almost 15 years after that, she found out Carlo had been keeping a secret. Did you just go through every single moment of your relationship trying to see if you picked up on anything or? Yeah, I didn't sleep for days. I ran over things again and again in my head.

And part of me didn't really still believe it. It took quite a while to sink in. I'm Phoebe Judge. Listen right now on Criminal, wherever you get your podcasts. Before the break, we heard from my colleague Anna North. She's a senior correspondent at Vox and she covers family life. She has children of her own, so she needs to think about how kids spend their summer. And I wanted her theory about why Camp looms so large in our collective imagination. It's this place where there are no parents, which is really fun and exciting for kids

to think about and also scary for kids to think about. And those are just really important ingredients of a good story. Oh, that's so interesting. So how old are your little ones? Yeah, my kids are seven and two and a half. So they're definitely too young for sleepaway camp. What do their summers usually look like? So my little one still goes to daycare and daycare is actually open most of the summer.

So he will continue doing what he does. And my big kid is in school. So he is doing a combo of Lego camp and then also craft camp and we'll travel a little bit in there too. Okay. Is sleepaway camp worth it? You know, not every kid does sleepaway camp. It can be expensive. It's really not for younger kids. You know, a kid has to be a certain level of maturity to be able to handle it.

When you talk about camp generally for the summer though, just practically speaking, a lot of families need camp because school is out and parents are still working. This is like this huge conundrum that families face because like kids are not in school 365 days a year, but American parents like what we get, you know, two weeks vacation, it's not very much. So it's a real mismatch. I think one of the issues we've heard about is this intense planning that goes into kids' summers these days. Like, it's complicated, it's competitive, it's expensive.

Can you talk about that pressure a little bit? That seems like a lot. Yeah, absolutely. So, it's a huge source of pressure for families. Kids typically are off for a couple months every summer. People start signing up for summer camps in January. And that sounds like it's, you know, these type A parents, you know, being really extra. But actually, you know, a lot of camps will fill up really early. And that includes camps that might be more affordable. So, you know, you might actually have to scramble to get your kid into a camp that, you know, one might be a good fit and two is not going to like break your budget. And you know, it's obviously about making sure that kids have

a fun summer, but it's also just making sure that they're taken care of and that they're having an okay time while the parents are doing what they need to do. Okay, so summer sleepaway camp is not an option for everyone. Some people don't want to do it. What are other ways for kids to spend their summer that you would recommend? Yeah, I mean, I would say probably most kids do a day camp at some point. Certainly, like, you know, here in New York, especially among kids like my kids age, that's the most common option. A lot of them are expensive, but there are more affordable options. The YMCA camps tend to be more affordable than some of the others. Some camps have sliding

scales, so depending on income, you might be able to pay less. It's also worth checking out. A lot of school districts have summer schools and or summer schools that are a little bit more fun and a little bit more camp-like. I know New York City has a program called Summer Rising that a lot of kids are doing. So these are all options too. There's definitely stuff out there at a variety of price points. It's just a matter of the parents having to do work,

unfortunately, of looking it all up. What do you make of letting the summer be kind of chill? I think of it and my parents, they would do like, okay, here's a nature day camp or like, you know, we'll mount you around some different vacation Bible schools like in the evening. But a lot of my summer was spent kind of like lounging, eating ice cream, watching VH1 and reading like chapter books. I wonder like, do kids like, is it okay for kids to get that unstructured time? Because I know kids thrive on routine.

Yeah, so I have a lot of feelings about this. So every summer, I feel like there will be an op-ed or a big viral essay about how you should let your kids be bored during the summer. Recently, the New York Times actually had a story about families that are choosing, like, not to send their kids to camp and just kind of letting them hang around the house. I think there's a couple things to think about there. One is like the parent's work schedule. If you have a lot of flexibility and you can say, okay, I'm going to work from home for the whole summer, or we're going to take off a bunch of time and I'm going to travel with my kids,

that's great. And that really changes the flexibility of your summer. If all the adults in your family are working full-time jobs in the summer, it just becomes a lot harder, especially at younger ages. Is there anything going on policy-wise to help like kids with summer? I mean, unfortunately, things are a little bit going in the opposite direction. I guess I will say that, you know, individual cities, I think, have been moving to try to offer more both after school and like school break camp options. So I think Los Angeles has like been looking at this. But at the federal level, President Trump has actually proposed to zero out federal funding for after school and summer learning.

That's something that a lot of folks that are involved in after school and school break learning are really concerned about because there is federal money that goes to support some of these programs. And some after school programs run their own camps. So obviously anything that harms after school programs is a problem for camps too. Yeah, I'm curious about your thoughts on year round school. So obviously anything that harms after school programs is a problem for camps too. Yeah. I'm curious about your thoughts on year-round school. This is something that's been piloted in Philadelphia, for example.

Could that help parents with that summer stress for families and kids? There have been longer school days and school years piloted. It's not necessarily a slam dunk in terms of being better for instruction. It's not necessarily true that kids would learn better if they went to school all the time. They certainly don't wanna do that. Kids do need time to play.

They need time to relax. When I look back on childhood, there's this certain feeling that summer has. And I even have it now as an adult. There's still this pressure of like, this has to be the best summer ever and I can only imagine having a family and feeling the pressure to give your kid the best summer ever. How do parents navigate that? Like why is there so much pressure? Why can't we

just relax and enjoy the warmer weather? I do think something to remember is that your kids are making their own memories and you don't have to curate everything. And even in a camp that might not be their most favorite, they're still probably doing some fun stuff. But I guess as a parent, I just try to accept that sometimes the summer is just going to be stressful. And that's how it's going to be like traveling with kids, especially young kids, like is stressful. It's not really a vacation.

Like it's important to see your family. It's, it's positive. Um, they will have good memories. Do I enjoy being on the plane with a toddler? I don't, I don't enjoy it. I don't think he enjoys it either. It's okay. I know they're little ears. I'm like, aw, you don't know to yawn yet. It helps. All right, Anna North, thank you so much for explaining this to us. Thank you so much.

Great to be here. Okay, before we let you go, we wanna ask you something. We have a series coming up on wellness. Why we spend so much money on it these days. What wellness even means? And we want your thoughts. How are you thinking of caring for your mind and your body these days? Give us a call at 1-800-618-8545.

This episode was produced by Devin Schwartz, it was edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact checking by Sarah Schweppe, and engineering by Matthew Billy. I'm your host, John Glenn Hill. Thank you so much for listening. Bye!