This is an episode of Inside the Tent, a podcast going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning shows.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Seven years ago, journalist Justine van der Leun received a letter that would change her life. The sender was a woman named Kwaneta Harris, who was incarcerated at a prison in Texas.

Kwaneta’s story turned out to be more complicated, deceptive, and unhinged than Justine could have ever imagined.

Bad checks are cashed. Fibs turn into lies. Lies turn into scams. A mysterious man wrapped in bandages signs binding legal documents.

At one point, a young mother walks into a courthouse in Dallas and confesses to a murder she did not commit. None of it is real, or maybe all of it is. And somehow at every twist, behind every bizarre story, Justine kept finding her way back to one person: Kwaneta.

Matt begins by asking about Justine’s mission to learn about women in U.S. prisons on murder and manslaughter charges. She sent more than 10,000 letters and received more than 1,000 responses.

Kwaneta responded with a thoughtful note about the stigma of a murder accusation and the stigma of facing your past. Justine wanted to hear more.

Typically Justine communicated with women who had clearly acted in self defense. But Kwaneta’s story seemed quite a bit more complicated than that. Well, that turned out to be an understatement, and Justine’s journey turned into the What She Buried podcast.

Matt notes that there was in incredible level of access. Justine still can’t believe that even a judge in Texas was willing to talk on the record.

There seemed to be two reasons for the access: first, Kwaneta’s cooperation - at least initially - made others more willing to talk. Second, it was a case that was truly memorable, even to law enforcement professionals with decades of experience.

Justine tells Matt about one of the most surprising interviews she and producer Eric Benson conducted. And then she flags one of the most remarkable elements of the show: Justine became a part of the story.

Listen to Inside the Tent on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Email us with questions or comments: [email protected].

We hope to see you inside the tent again soon. Subscribe now for updates on What She Buried and all of Campside’s hit shows.

This is an episode of Inside the Tent, a podcast going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning shows.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

James Dolan was born into immense privilege. He could have done anything with his life. But he chose the family business — a cable television empire that came to include ownership of the New York Knicks, a valuable and beloved franchise.

During his tenure, the Knicks have been one of the least successful teams in all of sports. Which has made his relationship with the fans, and the city, quite an adventure!

After chronicling Dolan’s stewardship of the Knicks in Reign of Error three years ago, there was an awfully good reason to look back at the show. The Knicks are NBA champions!

Josh and Mike jump right in to ask, did we get it wrong? Not long ago, there was no sign that the team might be capable of an epic run.

So did Dolan do things differently? Mike shares his theory about the blessed distraction provided by the Sphere Las Vegas (which also happens to be a huge success). The spectacular venue also came up in a discussion with Reign of Error host David Greene.

Josh expresses pleasant surprise at the assembly of the most lovable team you can imagine: Jalen Brunson, OG Anunoby, Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges and more.

And together, Mike and Josh cover the crucial roles played by an unlikely trio in the story of the championship series: Mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani, President of the United States Donald Trump and, of course, the Wu-Tang Clan.

Mike goes on to break down the surprising speeches Dolan gave to his team before the playoffs and the fans after the championship was clinched. And Josh notes that unfortunately, all is not yet well with Dolan and Knicks legend Charles Oakley.

Wu-Tang forever!

Listen to Inside the Tent on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Email us with questions or comments: [email protected].

We hope to see you inside the tent again soon. Subscribe now for updates on all of Campside’s hit shows.

This is an episode of Inside the Tent, a podcast going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning shows.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Infamous, Vanessa and Natalie give you a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to shine an unflattering light on the world’s most powerful people.

From high-profile divorces to sex cults to the lies that started a war, the show takes you through the juiciest, most outrageous, celeb-filled stories of the last two decades.

Infamous recently covered the story of Jen Shah in the miniseries, “The Rich Utah Wives and Their Scams.”

Vanessa and Natalie discuss the case that sent Shah to prison. It started with a phone call. Victims of a telemarketing scheme paid thousands of dollars to start their own businesses from home.

And those calls came from call centers filled with workers pitching the idea of setting up lucrative online shops. In theory, all you needed was coaching, tax prep and a website.

According to prosectors Shah helped generate and sell lists of leads, meaning lists of individuals, often older and financially vulnerable, to contact.

Natalie goes on to describe Shah’s recent interview after being released from prison. Shah expresses remorse and claims to have spent time at Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas with Elizabeth Holmes (former CEO of Theranos) and Ghislaine Maxwell (Jeffrey Epstein associate).

Vanessa wonders if future telemarketing schemes will require much human involvement at all given the ability of artificial intelligence to carry on conversations.

And the conversation moves on to Mormons as content creators, conquering pop culture. It’s a long way from The Book of Mormon and skepticism of Mitt Romney’s religious beliefs.

Listen to Inside the Tent on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Email us with questions or comments: [email protected].

We hope to see you inside the tent again soon. Subscribe now for updates on Infamous and all of Campside’s hit shows.

This is an episode of Inside the Tent, a podcast going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning shows.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Each episode of Campside’s weekly podcast, Eclipsed, features a true story hidden in the shadow of another historical event.

For example, the murder of an Australian pop star on the day of the moon landing was overshadowed by… the moon landing.

But the episode of Eclipsed hosted by Layne was not about murder. It was about Cecil H. Dill, a well known 1930s manualist, a performer who makes music by squeezing air between his hands.

To be clear about his claim to fame, a 1933 newsreel prominently featured Dill’s “hand farting.” And Layne’s episode featured a theme song composed of fart sounds.

Layne and Anthony treat this topic with the seriousness it deserves. And Layne begins by explaining how she tracked down Dill’s nephew.

Anthony wonders what separates the amateur manualists from the artists. And he relates all this to Marty Supreme and the notion of a niche king.

Now, as you’re no doubt wondering, how could Layne avoid mentioning Weird Al? She could not. And also, should Chalamet play Dill in the inevitable biopic?

The conversation then turns to the Hunt brothers, the subject of other episodes in the series. They were not hand farters, rather entrepreneurs who tried to corner the world’s silver market. The Hunts ultimately lost more than a billion dollars, but that did not stop the family from becoming NFL owners. Go Chiefs?

To hear about more colorful characters in front of and behind the mic, listen to Inside the Tent on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Email us with questions or comments: [email protected].

We hope to see you inside the tent again soon. Subscribe now for updates on Eclipsed and all of Campside’s hit shows.

This is an episode of Inside the Tent, a podcast going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning shows.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

When a birthday party in suburban San Jose turns deadly, 18-year-old identical twins are arrested for suspected murder. One brother spends nearly two years in jail before the truth comes out: authorities locked up the wrong twin.

How could one brother let his twin take the fall? And why would the other sacrifice his freedom for a crime he didn’t commit?

Jen begins by recounting her first meeting with one of the twins, Trung, during a visit to San Quentin State Prison in 2020. She was reporting a story about therapeutic Shakespeare programs for incarcerated men.

Matt wonders why the story was a better fit for a limited series podcast, rather than a magazine article. Jen explains that it was a complicated story that needed to be told in an expansive way, with the voices of the brothers literally heard. Trung and Anh ultimately participated even with death threats directed at them.

Jen goes on to say that making Blood Will Tell was a collaborative experience and, in this instance, putting up a wall between the reporter and her sources was not the right way to go about it.

Matt highlights that talking to reporters at all must be a difficult decision for sources. And Jen explains what motivated Trung in particular, who has actively worked to change his life.

Finally, Jen compares the experience of finishing a book to completing a podcast and gives us insight into what the brothers thought of Blood Will Tell.

Listen to Inside the Tent on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Email us with questions or comments: [email protected].

We hope to see you inside the tent again soon. Subscribe now for updates on Blood Will Tell and all of Campside’s hit shows.

This is an episode of Inside the Tent, a podcast going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning shows.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Our cities and towns are deceptively simple. You flip a switch, and the lights come on. You turn a faucet, and water flows. You tap “buy,” and a package lands at your door.

Usually, we don’t think about how these systems work or how we interact with them… it all feels effortless. But behind each of those ordinary moments are invisible systems and the people who keep them running.

From 99% Invisible and Campside Media, Service Request is a new series that starts small: a call to 311, a traffic jam or a single flipped switch. We then zoom out, tracing that moment through the networks that keep a community organized and comfortable.

Delany starts at the beginning, when Campside approached 99% Invisible (99PI) with the idea of making a show about infrastructure. Together we developed the format: a question from a listener leads us into a system, and we dissect how it works.

Shoshi goes back even further, when Delaney started at 99PI more than ten years ago. Delaney didn’t arrive fascinated with architecture and design, but appreciated the lens that Roman Mars and other colleagues brought to storytelling: the ordinary world is really interesting and worth exploring.

Shoshi asks about episode one of Service Request, noting that 311 is not a typical example of infrastructure. Indeed, Delaney and Shoshi both settle on the idea that the show’s definition of infrastructure includes public services and systems that contribute to the public good.

Delaney then describes something that stuck with her when making the first five episodes. It’s an approach to preparation that one guest calls, “remembering the floating luggage.”

Finally Shoshi and Delaney discuss the Service Request episode suggestions already coming in from listeners, including elevators, toll roads and the pipes that bring us water. It turns out that many listeners are well aware of the importance of infrastructure and the consequences of a system not working!

Listen to Inside the Tent on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Email us with questions or comments: [email protected].

We hope to see you inside the tent again soon. Subscribe now for updates on all of Campside’s hit shows.

This is an episode of Inside the Tent, a podcast going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning shows.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

We are living in a golden age of deception. It feels like everyone has an angle and that, everywhere you turn, someone’s trying to scam you.

Chameleon is a weekly show hosted by veteran journalist and Campside co-founder Josh Dean. It takes you inside the incredible, stranger-than-fiction stories about people pretending to be something they aren’t.

And today, hear about the band that’s not quite human, not quite machine: The Velvet Sundown.

They were a hot new band and storming up the charts. But something seemed off. Was this the work of AI? When someone behind the band came out denying it, this looked like mystery solved. But this was only the beginning of an internet hoax with many layers.

Here’s more from Josh:

The episode is set last summer (2025), a long time ago in AI time. Even then, there were many people questioning whether AI could fool us into believing it was real. AI music, for better or worse, almost definitely worse, is now ubiquitous.

As a kind of proof of concept, part of our investigation, and a fun easter egg, we asked AI to go to town and come up with a version of our theme (originally created by two brilliant, real-life musicians, Mark McAdams and Yi-Wen Lai-Tremewan) as if written and performed by the band featured in this episode.

The AI take on Chameleon’s theme music:

And then we went further and asked it to make tracks about other episodes in this season of Chameleon. Check them out here.

Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Audiochuck. Listen to Inside the Tent on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Email us with questions or comments: [email protected].

We hope to see you inside the tent again soon. Subscribe now for updates on all of Campside’s hit shows.

This is an episode of Inside the Tent, a podcast going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning shows.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Origin Stories is a show for anyone curious about the workings of the creative mind.

Hosted by veteran journalist Matthew Shaer, every episode takes you behind the scenes of your favorite book, magazine article, TV show, podcast, or movie - from the initial spark of curiosity to the long sessions in front of a white board.

Nothing is off the table: not the frustrations and the joys, not the setbacks and the successes. Hear from Patrick Radden Keefe on Say Nothing, Mimi Leder on The Morning Show, and Connie Walker on Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s.

And today, hear from Mo Amer on Mo.

Mo Amer is a stand-up comedian, actor, and writer whose work blends raucous humor with serious conversations about borders, identity, and belonging. Spanning two wildly funny and deeply moving seasons, Mo follows a lightly fictionalized version of Amer navigating family, work, and love while also navigating the U.S. asylum system.

In this episode, Amer talks to Matthew about concluding the series’ second season, building a show that’s both a meditation on belonging and a sharp commentary on what it means to be American right now, and carrying the emotional weight of telling a story so close to home.

Origin Stories is a Campside Media production. Listen to Inside the Tent on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Email us with questions or comments: [email protected].

We hope to see you inside the tent again soon. Subscribe now for updates on all of Campside’s hit shows.

This is an episode of Inside the Tent, a podcast going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning shows.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if someone close to you just… vanished one day?

That happens to tens of thousands of families a year in Japan, and it happened to Jake Adelstein too. In 2017, his friend and accountant disappeared just before tax day.

Adelstein, the author of Tokyo Vice, and co-host Shoko Plambeck go in search of that missing accountant, and take us on a journey into the fascinating and bizarre world of Japan’s jouhatsu, or “evaporated” people.

Campside co-founder Josh Dean asks Jake to take us back to the beginning of the story, when Jake went searching for his accountant. Shoko joined the team and was able to find a service that helps people “disappear,” often leaving their homes in the middle of the night (Night Moving).

Josh wonders why this industry exists in Japan. Why are there guidebooks and companies that help you “evaporate”?

Shoko and Jake discuss how debts, stalking and the Yakuza helped to shape the Night Moving industry in Japan.

They describe the woman behind a Night Mover business featured in Evaporated. And Jake wonders if you can forgive someone who has chosen to disappear rather than face the consequences of bad decisions.

Would you ever choose to run, leaving behind friends and family forever?

Listen to Inside the Tent on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Email us with questions or comments: [email protected].

We hope to see you inside the tent again soon. Subscribe now for updates on Evaporated and all of Campside’s hit shows.

This is an episode of Inside the Tent, a podcast going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning shows.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the weekly series So Your Parents Are Old, Campside co-founder Vanessa Grigoriadis talks to friends, experts, and celebrities about the chaos of dealing with aging parents.

From Medicaid nightmares to emotional meltdowns in storage units, it’s a brutally honest, often hilarious look at one of life’s most disorienting stages. If you’re currently the parent to your parents, this show is your group chat in podcast form.

You’re sure to find catharsis in the unfiltered conversations and gallows humor. And this week on Inside the Tent, we are sharing an episode of So Your Parents Are Old.

Nobody Should Live This Long, with Comedian Lewis Black

It’s an episode where Lewis and Vanessa get mad! Lewis cared for his elderly parents, who lived to 101 and 104. He talks about something nobody wants to even think about: what he'll do when he's too old to care for himself.

So Your Parents Are Old is a Campside Media production. Listen to Inside the Tent on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Email us with questions or comments: [email protected].

We hope to see you inside the tent again soon. Subscribe now for updates on all of Campside’s hit shows.