The Competition 👯
Wondery + Pineapple Street team up for my new favorite single-topic limited series -- and I mean it when I say "favorite"
Hi, welcome to Podcast Promise, the new iteration of the once-was Podcast Problems newsletter. The Podcast Problems series still lives over on my blog, but this newsletter will be dedicated to only podcasts that truly inspire me to write something fully dedicated to them. They might be new releases, they might not. Check out my last newsletter edition for more on where else you can find my other writings.
With that out of the way, let’s dive into the podcast so good that it brought my newsletter back to life: The Competition by Pineapple Street and Wondery, hosted by Shima Oliaee of Dolly Parton’s America, UnErased: A History of Conversion Therapy in America, and more. It drops in full on all podcatchers today!
As an ex-cheerleader, ex-Miss America devotee, ex-teenager, ex-girl, and ex-Arizonian (in that order), the second I got the press release for The Competition in my inbox, I knew I’d be in love. Here’s the show’s description:
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?
🕵️♀️True crime minus crime
If you are looking for a podcast with the energy, pacing, and tension of true crime but without the almost necessary exploitation and literal life-or-death stakes of true crime, this podcast is perfect. The stakes feel just about as high as you can get outside of murder: the stakes are whether or not one girl out of fifty might be able to go to college.
Your first instinct here might be to recoil, and I would understand that. I am not, like, pro-pageant — but DYW is not a pageant. Allegedly. And many, many of the competitors are anti-pageant as well. This is not a podcast about the pageant industry. This is a podcast about 50 teenage girls, just about to head off to college, competing with each other to be the best imaginable role model for the batch of 50 girls who will come next.
The Competition is a story about real, actual teenage girls living in the world today. And it’s about how those bonds change not due to the competition they’re in, but the world they’re in.
I said this podcast has the energy of a true crime. Yes, that means there is a twist that changes everything.
💅Ummmmm girls are good actually
You know the way teenage girls are most commonly depicted. There is competition even outside of the specific, external competition imposed by institutions like DYW. Teenage girls are cutthroat. Teenage girls fucking hate each other. Teenage girls will cut each other down for literally no reason. Teenage girls are mean girls, apex predators — we even have a new movie musical all about it or whatever.
I know that’s not what the movie or the musical is about, but also yes it is. Get real. Stop getting your feminism from Tina Fey.
Anyway: we all know that’s bullshit, right? Girls can be mean to each other, sure. People can be mean to each other. But especially as girls get more messaging about the importance of solidarity with other girls, the hyper-competitive, hyper-cruel image of teenage girlhood strikes less and less real.
When I was a teenage girl adjacent thing — who, for all intents and purposes from an external perspective was a teenage girl — what I remember more than anything else wasn’t an emotional arms race with hot blondes. What I remember most was going on trips with my school orchestra to play in competitions against other school orchestras. Here is me and my friends on one such trip, bowing to the trophy we won. My caption on the picture was simply, “Praising the glory of glory.”
We were goofballs, man. Teenagers are goofballs — even the ones who are up against impossibly high stakes with impossibly hard lives. If anything, those stakes make the bonds even closer, which The Competition spotlights in full. This is not a podcast about a cutthroat beauty contest. This is a podcast about 50 girls with plenty of differences, but so much in common, and how they support each other while also hoping they’ll win.
🎓The competitors
It’s probably not surprising to hear that this is one of the most lovable, fascinating, memorable sets of subjects in podcasting. They are literally 50 of the most interesting girls in the United States, and it shows. They’re multi-talented. They’re brilliant. They’re charismatic. And they are often so funny.
You will likely find yourself rooting for one of the girls who make frequent appearances. This may be based on proximity or familiartiy: as soon as I heard Arizona mentioned, my heart latched onto her. I lived my entire life in Arizona until packing up to the opposite side of the country just over a year ago, and while I would absolutely never move back ever, I still get thrilled when I hear about an Arizona girl — especially one who seems aligned with me politically, which is not, um, common in Arizona.
But it might also be based in how hard you relate to each competitor, or how kind they seem, or how deadpan they are, or any number of things — because all of these girls are displayed with such loving, earnest complexity. The podcast adores each of them and implores you to do the same.
This is a podcast that deeply respects teenage girls, loves seeing teenage girls thrive and succeed, and is achingly nostalgic for teen girlhood.
There is a moment in one episode where the girls are all exhausted, and they have been looking forward to a promised moment that they unfortunately just do not receive. It’s devastating. You can feel the disappointment grating on these girls like body glitter gel. But then, they do something teenage girls are so good at doing: they make it fun anyway. They turn into goofballs. They let loose, finally. It is one of the most jubilant, triumphant, beautiful moments I’ve ever heard in podcasting — and so is the conversation with the host and producers that follow.
⚖️The judge
The Competition isn’t just about the competitors. It’s also about host Shima Oliaee . . . who was once a competitor and who, now, is a judge. There are precautions in place to make sure she keeps her distance from the competitors during the competition. Her producers take a prominent role in talking to the competitors, while Oliaee takes center stage to talk about her experience at DYW, and the immense weight on her shoulders to help choose this year’s winner.
Most of the best moments of this podcast are in the hands of the competitors, but one nail-bitingly tense episode centers on one specific part of the competition that she dreaded when she competed. Will she be the kind of judge she feared as a teen? Will she be the kind of judge who leaves these teens feeling motivated and proud?
It’s an easy decision. It’s a much more difficult commitment.
Oliaee’s reflections throughout the podcast help connect the adult audience to the teen subjects, really diving into memory and nostalgia in ways I think other creative teams could have really fumbled. I am not really a fan of nostalgia as a core tenant of a piece of media, but The Competition pulls it off so well. It’s earnest. Oliaee and the producers can’t not reminisce about their teen years among all these teen girls.
And not all of that reminiscing is as sweet as most nostalgic media tends towards. There’s a glowing joy, yes, but it’s undercut by some mourning and some dread. Soon, these girls will have to exist in the world as women. And this is still not a world that is kind to women, in a different way than its unkindness to teenage girls.
And on top of that all, Oliaee did not win her year in DYW! To her recollection, she did pretty bad! And Oliaee, like the competitors, is often so funny.
The Competition is a podcast that truly could not have been made better by anyone else. It’s a riveting story told expertly from some experiencing it in the present and, to some degree, in retrospect. It’s singular and specific while also being widely relatable. I imagine it would be a wildly different listen as a teenager and then later as an adult, just like the experience was for Oliaee.
🎙️Go subscribe!
I could talk here about the great story and dialogue editing, the lovely sound design, the other trapping of what makes a ✨good podcast✨. The Competition has all of those things, but they feel just like cherries on top of one of the loveliest stories I’ve heard in such a long time. It’s a crowd-pleasing listen with highs and lows, memorable characters, and moments that will stick with you long after listening. I could not stop devouring episodes as soon as I started, and I think it’ll be the same for you.
This podcast is so good it brought me out of years-long hibernation to discuss. Go subscribe and listen RIGHT NOW — and then please please please please please talk to me about it when you’ve listened! Who were you rooting for? Which moments had you laughing and which had you crying? WHAT WOULD YOUR TALENT BE? Please discuss!
Other recs
⚙️What I’ve been making
Nevermorphed is my newest podcast baby, in which I read the Animorphs books for the first time ever. These books are so fucked up. It’s honestly insane. And they’re so good??? Come join me as I read this series that puts its contemporaries to shame in like 500 ways. And if you’re an Animorphs person, come be a guest!
Y’all get a sneak preview of this next one. The Deposition is an audio drama meets dramatic reading using Elon Musk’s despoition from the Ben Brody lawsuit as the script. Every single page of this document is unhinged and hilarious, and actually hearing it performed made me notice even more about it. Cannot wait to bring this to you all. It’s going to be a real fun time. More info coming soon!
🎞️What I’ve been watching
Dungeon Meshi, aka Delicious in Dungeon, on Netflix could not be further outside of my interests: it’s a high-fantasy trope-filled story with substance that mostly comes through worldbuilding, and also it’s about eating gross shit. Nightmare premise — but I wound up reading the entire manga in about three days, and the adaptation is really doing it justice. You will not be ready for where this seemingly goofy, typical show goes. It goes all the way to hell and back for real. Here’s the protag eating a bug sandwich. Look at that beautiful, gleaming brioche.
Baby Reindeer, also on Netflix, is one of the most difficult and emotionally honest shows I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately for me given the subject matter, it spoke to me in ways I didn’t know I was lacking. This is a brutal watch. This show belongs to the same genre as Fleabag and Bojack Horseman, comedies that are really just horror stories, complete with jumpscares — just of the emotional type.
📰What I’ve been reading
Aftermath!!!
I am finally — if slowly — reading Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. This new edition is in direct conversation with current battles for trans safety and liberation.
I also finally got through Piranesi and ohhhhhhh my god oh my godddddddd oh my godddDDDDDDDDDD
Also just to be clear those 👆🏻 aren’t affiliate links — I just owe my life to Changing Hands and always use them as my bookstore for links
Some oldishies but goodies:
“Everybody has to self-promote now. Nobody wants to.” Rebecca Jennings for Vox, February 1st, 2024
“ZOOM at 25: Looking back on the after-school phenom that was for and by kids,” Felicia Fitzpatrick for The A.V. Club, January 29th, 2024
🎶What I’ve been singing
I’ve actually been writing recently on music because WILLOW simply left me no choice. Twice. I have these 7/4 + 4/4 bangers on loop right now, and you should too. From the blog:
It’s Literally In 7/4 (“Symptom of Life”)
Oh My God She Literally Did It Again (“b i g f e e l i n g s”)
Like every other bisexual who gets gayer by the moment, Chappell Roan’s new comphet Kate Bush styled cut “Good Luck, Babe!” is stuck in my head forevermore. Her Tiny Desk is, of course, good as hell. Yes, the lipstick on her teeth is 100% intentional.
And another dive into nostalgia, Soccer Mommy’s “Night Swimming” hearkens back to the song of all time, R.E.M.’s “Nightswimming.” The production work on Soccer Mommy’s track is so fuzzy and warm and deep and old until it breaks into perfectly clarity (see also Julien Baker’s perfect, heartbreaking cover of Frightened Rabbit’s “The Modern Leper”). I’m also just obsessed with this song’s rhyme scheme.