Campside was born to tell stories: big, surprising, original stories that can only originate from the beats of the world's best journalists. We’ve made dozens of hit podcasts and we’re now welcoming you inside the tent. Listen now to go behind the scenes of our shows.
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This is an episode of Inside the Tent, a podcast going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning shows.
Listen on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-the-tent-with-campside-media/id1768758485), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/3N4ktEpZU47ttwVreP59Mw), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLurr_1up60T0MjZVHT5Jfre8MbX98qxM) or wherever you get your podcasts.
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From the outside, Diana Keough’s family looked like the kind everyone admired. Her father was a successful attorney. The family sat in the same church pew every Sunday. There were six children, sporting events and family vacations. Everything appeared picture perfect.
Then, in 1988, her father was diagnosed with AIDS. People might describe that moment as the one that changed everything. But that’s not quite true. It was the moment everything hidden began to come into the light.
Trained as a journalist, Keough did what came naturally: she picked up a tape recorder. Over the next several years, she recorded more than one hundred hours of conversations with her parents and siblings, never imagining those tapes would one day become the heart of a podcast.
And she couldn’t have known then where the story would lead - not just to long-buried family secrets, but to unexpected grace. To a father transformed near the end of his life. To a mother whose heart was changed by a friendship with a woman on Texas’s death row.
Diana and sound designer John Delore are both from the Milwaukee area and begin their conversation with an important question: where to find the best frozen custard. (Perhaps it’s Gilles!)
And they move onto something even more pressing: why share the story of Not From A Nice Family (https://join.campsidemedia.com/p/not-from-a-nice-family-podcast-audiobook-series-overview?) publicly after thirty years? For Diana, it was about having perspective and the cooperation of her five siblings.
John asks about the distinction between journalism and memoirs. For Diana, her experience as a journalist - reporting on the pain of others - prepared her to face her own past and to use the hours of cassette tapes to report on her own family.
And Diana admits why she felt compelled to tape her mother over the years: she needed to fact check the woman who often retold stories as she wanted to remember them, rather than how they were.
John asks about the experience of listening to old tapes and rereading old journals. For Diana, it was traumatic, but also a chance to process what happened. And making the show was a chance to tell a sensational story with care and find the elements of redemption.
Finally, Diana and John acknowledge something we all have to face: parents keep secrets from their children. Listen to Inside the Tent on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-the-tent-with-campside-media/id1768758485), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/3N4ktEpZU47ttwVreP59Mw), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLurr_1up60T0MjZVHT5Jfre8MbX98qxM) or wherever you get your podcasts.
Email us with questions or comments: questions@campsidemedia.com.
We hope to see you inside the tent again soon. Subscribe now for updates on Not From A Nice Family and all of Campside’s hit shows.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit join.campsidemedia.com (https://join.campsidemedia.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)
10 Sept 2026
An Unsparing Investigation of the Canadian Indian Residential School System
Matt here. Thanks for being part of the Campside community. Today we are revisiting our Origin Stories (https://join.campsidemedia.com/t/origin-stories) conversation with Connie Walker, a veteran Cree journalist, and the first podcaster to win both the Pulitzer Prize and a Peabody Award in the same year.
Connie is one of the most ethical journalists I know – she thinks deeply about the sensitivities of both her subjects and her listeners. It’s a surprisingly uncommon skill, and one I was eager to better understand.
She talks about the backstory of “Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s,” a deeply-personal investigation of the Canadian Indian residential school system, which she reported while at Gimlet.
To Connie, all great audio documentaries should hinge on “a question that you’re trying to answer. It doesn’t have to be the question that you end up asking the whole way through,” she says. “But initially, you have to start with that.”
This is an Origin Stories interview, where we get very smart writers, reporters and TV & movie people to explain how their most beloved works were created.
The people I’ve spoken with have their own systems, habits, anxieties, tricks, and (occasionally) deeply strange methods for getting from a first glimmer of… something, to a masterpiece.
If you’ve listened to the show before, thank you. And if you’re new to it, there’s plenty to catch up on (https://join.campsidemedia.com/t/origin-stories).
Origin Stories is a Campside Media podcast. Email us with questions or comments: questions@campsidemedia.com.
We hope to see you inside the tent again soon. Subscribe now for updates on all of Campside’s hit shows.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit join.campsidemedia.com (https://join.campsidemedia.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)
6 Aug 2026
A Murder Case That Turned Out To Be More Complicated Than You Can Imagine
This is an episode of Inside the Tent, a podcast going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning shows.
Listen on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-the-tent-with-campside-media/id1768758485), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/3N4ktEpZU47ttwVreP59Mw), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLurr_1up60T0MjZVHT5Jfre8MbX98qxM) 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 (https://join.campsidemedia.com/p/what-she-buried-podcast-series-overview) 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 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-the-tent-with-campside-media/id1768758485), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/3N4ktEpZU47ttwVreP59Mw), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLurr_1up60T0MjZVHT5Jfre8MbX98qxM) or wherever you get your podcasts.
Email us with questions or comments: questions@campsidemedia.com.
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 a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit join.campsidemedia.com (https://join.campsidemedia.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
10 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 40 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
68
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
32
Contact Inside the Tent with Campside Media
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