Listen Now: The Competition

Even the Rich

Wondery

Society & Culture

4.3 • 11.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2024

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every summer for the past seven decades, 50 high school seniors—one from every state—descend on Mobile, Alabama to take part in one of the country’s most lucrative scholarship competitions for teen girls.

The Competition takes you behind the scenes of the Distinguished Young Women (DYW) program, and follows seven girls as they experience the highs and lows of competing for two weeks, away from home and under the most high-stress circumstances. Some girls enter for the money, some for prestige. All of them are used to being the best and the brightest. But only one will walk away with the top prize.

Host Shima Oliaee (Dolly Parton’s America, Pink Card) was Nevada’s contestant in 2001. More than 20 years later, she returns to Alabama as a judge. What can two weeks with 50 of the country’s most ambitious teens tell us about girlhood in America?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What can two weeks with the country's most ambitious teens tell us about girlhood in America?
0:05.0	And how does surviving the competition prepare them for everything that comes after?
0:09.0	Every summer, 50 high school senior girls won from every state to send on Mobile, Alabama to compete for a massive cash prize.
0:17.0	It's one of America's most lucrative scholarship competitions for teen girls.
0:20.0	From Pineapple Street Studios and Wundery, this is the competition.
0:24.0	Host Shema Oliari was Nevada's contestant 20 years ago.
0:28.0	Now she's returning as a judge.
0:30.0	But this time when the competition's well underway, something happens she never had to deal with her year.
0:36.0	An unexpected Supreme Court decision catapults all 50 girls into the center of a nationwide debate
0:41.6	about the rights of women in America, forcing them to confront what the Follow the competition on the Wundery app or wherever you get your podcast.
0:59.7	Okay, I'm officially almost late to the airport.
1:03.0	It's an early summer morning in New York City
1:05.2	and I'm cutting it close for a flight.
1:08.4	I'm still at home and we're packing up jewelry on top of all this.
1:14.1	I don't know, man, this is a lot.
1:16.9	Hi, that was the 5 a.m. Bell.
1:20.1	When I finally make it to JFK, I pick the wrong line at check-in.
1:24.6	And by the time I make it to the front of the line...
1:27.0	Hi.
1:28.8	Hey, so I missed my flight.
1:30.9	Oh my God.
1:32.1	That's my mom. Remember life sucks and then you die. I'm flying.
	...

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