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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh and there's Chuck.
It's just the two of us.
And that's great because I'll be playing the role of Billie Jean King.
And Chuck's going to play the role of male chauvinist pig Bobby Riggs.
Oh, man.
Take it, Chuck.
Hey, before we get going on this one, I have a quick shout out.
And this is coming out a couple of days after I did this because we're cutting it so close because of our week off last week.
But that makes me happy because I was asked a friend of mine's son.
His name is Royce.
He is a student, a junior at Midtown High School here in Atlanta.
Nice.
And he has a teacher, Miss Smolko, who is a longtime Stuff You Should Know listener.
And when Royce told Miss Smokal, like, hey, I know that guy.
We're buddies.
We go to Hawks games together.
She kind of flipped out and was like, oh my God, I wonder if like, would he be interested in and helping us out with our podcast program.
Oh, cool.
And they set it up via email.
And I spent yesterday, which was in our world Monday, at Midtown High School addressing the junior class about 200 kids.
And I got to say, man, it was an incredible experience.
The students were into it.
They were engaged.
They had great questions.
They had great answers.
They were.
You know a lot of it was sharing.
You know what they're doing with this podcast project, which is based off of like stuff.
You should know style stuff.
Neat.
Which was super cool.
Like these real philosophical questions that they're digging into and taking opposite sides and debating.
And they were seeking advice.
And it was just it was an incredible experience.
And I just I left like on a real high about this.
Gen Z and like where our future is headed.
And it was just awesome.
Great.
So the, the broad strokes are Gen Z got Chuck high yesterday.
Yeah.
Yeah, they got me super high.
It was really cool.
They were all just amazing kids.
And Miss Smolka was wonderful.
And and the other teacher, I think his name was Alex.
I can't remember his last name, but he was super nice.
And they're just like hats off to these teachers.
Yeah.
What's going on in the at least at Midtown High School is is amazing.
And I just left feeling great.
It was awesome.
I think Royce is getting an A.
You know, Royce wasn't even there.
He's, he's a, does like a late arrival thing because of like work study or something.
And so I was like, dude, I texted him.
I was like, where were you?
And he explained the whole deal.
Like he's not even allowed in school till later.
So it was just one of those things, but everyone was super nice.
And it was just, it was, it was so cool to see how into it everybody was.
That's awesome.
Well, way to go, Chuck.
Oh, and real quick, there were a couple of students.
I won't name them.
I have permission to name Royce because he's a pal.
But there were two legitimate big time stuff.
You should know listeners in the junior class that came up after and said hello.
And they were both like really, really nice.
Awesome.
Shout out thing one and thing two.
That's right.
Way to go, Chuck.
You were basically a teacher for that moment.
I kind of felt that way.
It's like maybe one day when I retire, I'll just like go and teach for real.
I'll let you borrow my tweed jacket with the suede elbow patches.
The don't be dumb jacket?
Mm-hmm.
Wow.
That's a big deal.
You have to overlook all the stains on it.
All right.
So we are talking about the battle of the sexes today, which I guess I mean.
This is a tough act to follow after your story, frankly.
No, this is a great, fun sort of pop culture history story and sports story.
There was a movie about it just a handful of years ago, starring Steve Carell as Bobby Riggs and Emma Stone as Billie Jean King, where they portrayed the very famous tennis match between a male chauvinist pig.
An aging pig over-the-hill hustler tennis star that you know basically came out and said you know what?
Men are better at women than everything.
And an old me can beat a young champion in Billie Jean King.
And let's do it on national TV at the Houston Astrodome in front of a ton of people.
Yeah.
And that's what happened.
The end.
That's right.
So this was a really big deal.
I mean, it sounds like...
Just kind of lighthearted, maybe a bit of a joke.
This actually still happens today.
There are Battle of the Sexes tennis matches.
This was the first one, and it was a very big deal for everyone involved.
On the one hand, you had Bobby Riggs, like you said, over the hill.
He was 55, and he was trying to figure out.
I'm 55 in two weeks.
Oh, that's right.
The Ides of March are coming up.
Oh, boy.
Yeah.
So over the hill.
I get it.
OK.
Yes.
Although 55 in 1973 was a lot different than 55 now.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't look like Bobby Riggs.
But he he was over the hill, not just necessarily because of his age.
He'd just been so far out of tennis for so long.
He was an attention hound and he wanted to get back in the spotlight.
So for him, this was a gambit.
It was a lot of work to do it, but it was something he was trying to do.
On the other side was Billie Jean King, who took this very seriously because to her this was symbolic of women's rights, which she was a tireless fighter for, not just before this but after, for essentially her whole life still today
Yeah.
She's great.
Love Billie Jean King.
She's a hero.
Bobby Riggs, we'll talk about him in depth.
We're not going to make excuses for the guy, but I will say Billie Jean King remained very good friends with him and never came out and said like you know, I mean when they were going at it she was kind of playing him up as a male chauvinist pig, which he was.
Right.
But she would end up saying, like Bobby Riggs was was a man of his time and sort of a victim of being a man of his time.
So she kind of went easy on him.
I'm not sure I'm going to go so easy on him.
Well, I saw in places that it's questionable whether he actually even believed most of the stuff he was saying.
Again, all this was a gambit.
He figured out a really good way to get media attention was to just be like the most loudmouthed chauvinist pig, just saying the most offensive stuff and becoming loathsome to women, that this would just generate more buzz and more hype for what he was trying to do.
Which, I mean, just doing that is a jerk move.
But it's not set in stone that he was...
Someone who actually harbored these feelings personally.
So you've got to bear that in mind while we're telling this story.
Because a lot of people don't realize that.
Like anti-feminists, a lot of men don't realize it.
And a lot of feminists don't realize it.
They took everything he was doing very seriously.
But like you said, Billie Jean King didn't, which is a huge signal right there.
Yeah, and it's just hit my brain.
If I'm going to go hard on Bobby Riggs, then I also need to do the same to Andy Kaufman and his whole wrestling shtick, which I think is one of the great funny kind of comedy bits.
But it was kind of the same thing, like playing a role to get women riled up to get attention.
Well really, if we learned anything from this battle of the sexist tennis matches, if you're going to go hard on Bobby Riggs, you need to go hard on Billie Jean King.
Right.
Should we go back to the early 70s and set the stage?
Yes.
All right.
Early 1970s was it was a pretty volatile time.
It was a big time for women to start kind of standing up for real and saying like hey we, we want attention.
We want rights.
We want the same rights as men.
Roe v. Wade was decided in 73.
The Equal Rights Amendment was all over the news.
In the case of sports, certainly 1972, with Title IX of the Education Amendments Act that required schools to offer girls and women the opportunities to basically get equal funding and participate equally in athletics as boys and men.
So it was a...
It was a big time for women's advocacy and feminism and women's rights between like 19 and, you know, certainly before that, but definitely between 1970 and like 1975.
Yeah.
And, just as an aside, we did, if I may say so, a pretty good episode on the Equal Rights Amendment in 2021 called Why is the ERA Still Not Ratified?
Yeah, which is true.
Yeah.
So, yeah, it was a big time.
There was a lot of momentum for Women's Lib for Feminism.
It was also a big time for tennis, which was becoming really, really popular, especially in the United States.
The number of Americans who played tennis tripled from 1970 to 1974.
And one of the reasons why is because the... tennis world started um holding opens i never knew this before but the u.s open the australian open the reason they're called opens because they're open to all players you can be an amateur you can be a pro and you can compete in this um these tournaments an open tournament that was brand new i think wimbledon was the first one to start it i think in 1968 so a lot of really freaky exciting stuff's going on in the world That's right.
Billie Jean King was, and we should also point out that you know.
As far as wage disparity, in 1968, if you were a professional tennis player, you earned two to three times as much as a woman.
And when the sport grew, that gap actually grew.
It didn't get more narrow, which was pretty startling at the time.
But Billie Jean King was born in 1943, and by the time this event rolled around, She was huge.
She had won 10 Grand Slam titles by 73.
She was number one ranked tennis player six different times.
In 1970 or by 1973, was the 1972 Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year.
And like you said, was a real feminist activist, kind of from the jump.
I think there was a story from when she was a kid, when she was 11 or 12, a junior player.
She was not allowed to be in a photo like a tournament photo because she wasn't wearing the tennis skirt.
She was wearing shorts.
And they said, you can't be in this picture.
And immediately, little 12-year-old Billie Jean King was like, what the hell?
Yeah.
She was like, these are skorts.
They said, that doesn't count.
Right.
That's not a thing yet.
So yeah, and one thing about Billie Jean King from a bunch of stuff I read and saw about her is that like she was tireless.
And still is.
She's a tireless activist for women's rights.
Like, she didn't ever slow down.
And when you kind of learn about all the side stuff she did to promote women in tennis and women's rights in general, like on top of that, bear in mind she's – one of the top tennis players in the world by dominating in tennis.
So that takes a lot of practice, a lot of dedication, and she's doing all this other stuff at the same time.
So she's like basically the definition of tireless.
Yeah, and she was doing this in the 1960s because all those accomplishments I mentioned was by 73.
But in 1966 she was the number one women's tennis player in the world and she was making 100 a week as a playground instructor at Los Angeles State College.
So...
The money the athletes were making was not anything like it is today.
And it was way, way worse for women.
I think that first Open you mentioned at Wimbledon in 68, she won.
She won that tournament and won 750 pounds.
Rod Laver, the men's champion, won 2000 pounds.
And she was like in 68, she was like, this is totally unfair.
What's going on?
Yeah, and money comes up a lot.
The reason why is it's an easy shorthand to basically point out women's lesser treatment compared to men.
It's also something that most people can just kind of wrap their minds around, like yeah, 750 pounds is a lot less than 2000 pounds, but they're both the champions.
Well, that doesn't make any sense.
So money is a big focus throughout this, but it's not just because everybody wants money, you know?
Yeah, totally.
So in 1970 Billie Jean King was like we need to do something sort of official and sort of big here.
So she looked to a woman named Gladys Heldman, who was the founder of World Tennis Magazine.
She was a very big, prominent figure in the tennis world overall, obviously because of world tennis and also because she was, at the time, the mother of of a very high-ranked player named Julie Heldman.
That was her daughter.
So she was a good person to go to, and they said, here's what we can do to make a splash.
There's a tennis tournament coming up called the Pacific Southwest Open in LA, where they're paying.
The prize purse for the men's champion is 12500.
The purse for the women's champion is 1500, which I mean looking back at the Wimbledon disparity.
That wasn't too bad compared to this.
Right.
Yeah.
And this was even after that.
And they said, why don't we boycott this tournament?
And Gladys Heldman said, you know what?
Why don't we start our own tournament that competes with this tournament?
And everyone went, oh, this sounds exciting.
Yeah.
So, yeah, that was a huge step beyond what they were originally thinking of.
And so the U.S.
Tennis Association, at the time they were called the U.S.
Lawn Tennis Association.
They were like hey, go ahead and try that, but we are going to suspend you.
We might ban you from tournament play.
We're going to erase your rankings.
Like, it's going to be a bad jam if you guys go off and form your own tournament.
And it took a lot of bravery because not all women tennis players signed on for this.
In fact only nine, including Billie.
Jean King said you know what we're going to go, do this anyway.
And so they signed contracts with Heldman.
And so they became pros on this other tour, which protected them from getting punished on the USLTA tour.
And they started their own championship, which eventually was, I think, supported and sponsored by Virginia Slim Cigarettes.
Yeah, that's right.
And we should mention that contract was for a dollar each.
So they clearly were doing this to make a statement and not to make a ton of money.
Right.
But Philip Morris yeah, they stepped in because there was a recent federal ban on advertising on TV and radio for cigarettes.
And so they said, we got to get our name out there somewhere.
So let's call this the, you know, we've got these Virginia Slims with its quasi-feminist message.
You've come a long way, baby.
That was our ad slogan for a long time.
Long time.
And tennis, you know, the original nine is what they were called.
Those tennis players that went along, or the eight that went along with Billie Jean King and said they're like yeah, I mean, we're athletes.
It's a little weird to have a cigarette sponsor.
But we need a sponsor.
So we'll take it.
And that tournament went over really well.
And it was so successful that they said, hey, why don't we start our own circuit?
And they had the Virginia Slim Circuit.
There were eight more tournaments that they sponsored.
And the original nine.
You know they initially did follow through with their threat to like ban them.
The U.S.
LTA?
Yeah, the U.S.
LTA at the time.
But they said, oh, actually, they're doing so well over there.
We're in trouble now.
So we need to join forces.
And they gave up and they merged with the Virginia Slim events.
Yeah.
And I'm not usually one to defend tobacco producers, but I saw a PBS, I think American Masters clip that was interviewing some of the original nine.
And they were like, Virginia Slims showed up.
Like they knew how to market.
They knew how to get buzz.
They put a ton of money behind advertising.
And like they, this was not like a, just a whatever thing to them.
They were actually a really great sponsor for this.
So, yeah, they yes, these nine women and I think eventually more joined.
They were they were like, if you won't include us, we're just going to go create our own thing.
Like they worked at it like that.
And it actually paid off in ACES.
Yeah, for sure.
Hey, you want to take a break?
Hey, yeah.
All right.
We'll be back right after this.
We went from normal life, healthy child to acute lymphoblastic leukemia or B-cell ALL.
The St.
Jude team came up to get CJ via ambulance.
Shortly after that, I noticed a rainbow.
It meant that there was hope.
We were driving into hope.
To have hope is to have your child healthy and we have that because of St.
Jude.
You can help kids fight childhood cancer.
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Jude partner in hope today by visiting musicgives.org.
Hi, this is Jill Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts and how to step into your most vibrant life.
And I just sat down with a mini driver.
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If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity and real life.
This episode is a must listen.
Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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All right.
So where we left off the original nine went off and formed their own Virginia Slim circuit.
They were, you know, endangered the USLTA such that they partnered with them eventually.
But money started flowing in a little bit.
In 1971, Billie Jean King was the first female athlete of any sport at all to make more than 100000.
A lot of money in 1971 dollars.
Still a lot less than her peers on the male side of the equation.
And so she was still, you know, banging that drum.
She wasn't like, all right, our work is done.
And in 1973, before Wimbledon that year, she got together in London, where Wimbledon is in a hotel room with 63.
I guess it was probably a large meeting room.
Yeah.
63 other women tennis players.
And they said, all right, we're doing this today.
We're going to form the WTA, the Women's Tennis Association.
We're going to have an actual union in place where we can do what unions do and stick up for ourselves.
Yes.
They threatened to boycott like pretty much immediately after they formed the WTA.
They said that they were going to boycott the U.S.
Open if we don't get equal prize money for women and men.
And I believe that was successful.
They got the U.S.
Open to agree.
And it was this is like things are moving along for for women's equality in tennis at this time.
Right.
So it's a huge focus of conversation with tennis.
Yeah.
I mean, it was all over the media.
Everywhere you looked, it was about sort of equal pay, equal rights.
And that was in the regular world.
And all of a sudden it was now like in the sports world in a big way.
Well put.
So now we can talk a little bit about our I'm going to put it in scare quotes our villain, Mr Bobby Riggs, who was, I tell you what man I mean.
It is very Andy Kaufman-esque.
If you watch interviews with this guy, if he's nothing, he is entertaining.
For sure.
He was a true great tennis player at one time shortly after World War II.
I think he was the number one men's player in 1946 and 1947.
And not just from like December to January, like both of those years.
Right.
Yeah.
So he had, you know, the goods to back up like this.
It wasn't just some dude who had a tennis racket, right?
But after the late 40s he essentially like left the tour and he started hustling and taking bets from essentially anybody who would play him in tennis pool.
I think you saw a 60 Minutes clip where he was gambling on throwing cards into a wastebasket.
Yeah.
Like he would bet on anything.
There was a quote in that 60 Minutes clip where he said he likes to play for big money.
If he can't play for big money, he'll play for small money.
If I can't play for small money, I won't get out of bed that day.
Like that's just what that guy did.
He gambled, he hustled, and he was known as a loud mouth too.
But he also seems to be fairly loved, essentially.
He was like one of those people that you just kind of You couldn't help but like, even though yeah, he was a loud mouth and trying to get you to bet him some money.
Yeah, he was a, he was a troll.
Livia called him a pre-internet troll and that's exactly what he was.
Um, it seemed like a bit of an act and a bit of a shtick to get attention, like we said.
But um, he would say things.
Uh, you know, a woman's place is in the kitchen and the bedroom, and not necessarily in that order.
Or women play 25 as good as men.
So they should get 25% of the money men get.
Um, I was reading, I think it was a, uh, Oh, was it Esquire or something?
An article about him and the whole idea of playing Billie Jean King was birthed when, I think, a reporter was just talking to him about.
You know, can men beat women, or who could beat Billie Jean King in tennis?
And he said, I think any guy in the top 100 could beat Billie Jean King.
And he went, in fact, I think I could beat her.
And that's sort of when he seemed to hatch this idea for publicity and money.
Yeah.
He was like, oh, but there's good action there.
Yeah, totally.
So, yeah.
So, like, he said these things.
Actually, at least one of those quotes is from one of his autobiographies.
So he wrote this stuff down.
This wasn't just stuff he started saying when he decided to play Billie Jean King.
He was already known as a male chauvinist.
Yes, he was an attention hound.
And this was, again, a way that he figured out how to do this.
So he started publicly challenging Billie Jean King.
He's like in his mid 50s.
She's in her late 20s prime.
And she's like, no, that's OK.
I'm too busy.
And again remember like she was genuinely tireless organizing the Virginia Slim Circuit and like creating the Women's Tennis Association, all the while winning all of these championships and grand slams.
So she had a legitimate excuse like I'm too busy there.
The thing is is there was also like a case you could make that she saw very clearly like I don't know if I have that much to gain by playing this.
And I have a lot to lose for the women's movement.
I could easily set it back if I lose.
So there was a she had good reason to kind of avoid this as long as she could.
Yeah, it's sort of a lose-lose proposition for her.
If she beats him, everyone's like, well, of course she'd beat this old man.
And that's how he probably would have played it up.
And, well, we'll see what happened.
And if she loses, that, of course, looks terrible to be beaten by the old man.
So she was wise to avoid it, I think.
But there was another woman.
In fact, she was the...
I think she was the number one player in the world.
A women's player in 1973 named Margaret Court in Aussie.
And she was like she wasn't super active in the politics of women's sports.
And she was like, yeah, sure, I'll play him.
She stepped right up.
And in May of 1973, this was in San Diego or outside San Diego.
They played a three set match where ten thousand dollars and about 10 million people played.
A lot of people tuned into this first one on CBS.
3,500 people were there live.
And he beat her.
He beat her 6-2, 6-1 by playing.
I want to say a certain thing, but I can't.
He was playing like a punk.
Oh, yeah.
He's playing junk shots and like drop shots.
And he wasn't playing like sort of real tennis.
He was playing sort of joke tennis.
And when you're playing against a player that can hit aggressive, strong shots and you're just plunking them over the net like it's going to.
You can't play tennis that way if you're a real player.
And it threw her off her game.
She got in his head.
I think the moment was a little too big for her.
I don't think she realized how much attention there was going to be.
And she ended up getting beat pretty badly.
Yeah, he got in her head, right?
Yeah.
He took that that match very seriously.
He trained for months ahead of time.
He was playing or training like 10 to 12 hours a day every day.
He really trained.
And by the time he was, by the time the game came around, he knew he was going to beat Margaret Court.
So just keep that in mind how hard he trained for that.
Okay.
Yeah.
And also, we should point out, like at the very beginning of that match, to open it up, he presented her with a bouquet of roses and she curtsied back to him.
And Billie Jean King is watching this just like, you know, furious inside.
Like she's like, oh, he's played.
And she in fact said later that she played right into his hands there.
And I would have grabbed him and kissed him.
If he gets dirty, I can get tough, too.
So she hated the fact that Margaret Court went out there and sort of curtsied to him and took the roses and then lost on national TV, I guess international TV.
And so she was like, all right, you know what?
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to step up and I'm going to play Bobby Riggs.
It's my turn.
Yeah.
So she agreed to do this and it became immediately buzzworthy.
I guess is what you would call it if you're into that kind of thing.
That's right.
The Libber versus the Lobber is how they dubbed it.
Yeah.
So, like I said, it's immediately generating buzz.
Bobby Riggs starts giving television interviews to any camera that will stand still long enough.
And he's a magnet for that kind of stuff because, again, he's a loud mouth.
He's saying horrible things about women.
He's accepting, like, the male chauvinist pig moniker, like, with pride or whatever.
And he's just like one of those, like, he would talk a mile a minute.
He had so much energy.
He was just a little... a little kind of squirrely guy, kind of like Richard Simmons.
Did you ever see Richard Simmons when he would go on Letterman?
Oh yeah.
Okay.
So the way that Letterman kind of regarded Richard Simmons affectionately but also like this guy's, he's moving around a lot.
Um, it was, he was like that, but amped up on like speed essentially.
So he was a magnet for cameras and he was giving interviews all over the place.
Yeah, and he was also – he's adding hype for the event obviously, by saying things like she's a woman.
They don't have the emotional stability.
She'll choke.
He added more stakes.
He said that he would jump from the London Bridge in Arizona or the Pasadena Bridge if he lost.
And, you know, he was all over the place.
He was on the cover of Time magazine that year in September.
It was a caricature of him wearing a male chauvinist badge.
And then there was a picture of a pig and a banner that said the happy hustler.
So it was all working exactly as he planned.
But Billie Jean King, like if he took that first match seriously, he didn't take this one as seriously.
And Billie Jean King was really taking it seriously.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm not sure if he was just, you know, resting on his laurels because of how badly he beat Margaret Court, that he just assumed that that was going to translate into playing Billie Jean King.
But he did not train nearly as much as he did for Margaret Court.
Essentially, he was out partying in the lead up to all of this.
He was also really, really getting more and more offensive as things went on, right?
Are you going to leave this one for me?
Yeah.
One of the things he did was he showed up to practice one day with the cameras there with holes cut out in his shirt so his nipples could show.
And he said that Billie Jean King would look better in this.
And she came out in public and she was like this guy is a creep which was you know about?
As tough as you could be in language back then.
Yeah.
And he was publicly it was at a press conference with them together.
And he said, well, you should take that back.
And she said, nope, creep stands.
And she said later I saw in an interview she said that like she didn't take him seriously, but she knew that there were men out there that took him seriously and that he had crossed the line.
And she needed to make sure that that that was demonstrated that she was not OK with that one.
Yeah, I think she kind of played it all just right.
It was really pretty savvy stuff on her end.
Yeah, for sure.
So I say we take, is this our second break?
Yeah, second break.
All right.
So the gun is going to go off when we come back.
We went from normal life, healthy child to acute lymphoblastic leukemia or B cell, ALL.
The St.
Jude team came up to get CJ via ambulance.
It was a little bit of a scary drive.
There was a time where the storms were really heavy.
Shortly after that, I noticed a rainbow.
It meant that there was hope.
We were driving into hope.
St.
Jude gave us a hope that we didn't know was possible.
I truly can't even imagine not having St.
Jude in our lives.
I knew that it was really bad and I had a lot of questions, but I knew that everything was going to be okay.
St.
Jude saved everything that matters to us.
I don't know that we'd have CJ without them.
I am beyond grateful.
My hopes are I could work with St.
Jude.
To have hope is to have St.
Jude.
To have hope is to have your child healthy, and we have that because of St.
Jude.
You can help kids fight childhood cancer.
Please become a St.
Jude partner in hope today by visiting musicgives.org.
Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts and how to step into your most vibrant life.
And I just sat down with a mini driver.
The Irish traveler said when I was 16 you're going to have a terrible time with men.
Storyteller and unapologetic Aquarian visionary.
Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives.
And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius like are misunderstood.
A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership.
He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all.
If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity and real life, this episode is a must listen.
Listen to the spirit daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast.
China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world.
But in 2017, the FBI got inside.
This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall.
This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him.
But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary.
Hear how they got it on the 6th Bureau podcast.
I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life.
And that's a unicorn.
No one had ever seen anything like that.
It was unbelievable.
This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets.
Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I wonder how many people are like what is he talking about when he keeps saying the gun is going to go off whenever Act 3 comes around?
Well, I would say study your Chekhov friend.
That's right.
And not your Chekhov friend, your Chekhov comma friend.
Right.
Not the friend that you're like, I got to hang out with him.
And then you do real quick.
You check him off your to-do list.
Not that guy.
Yeah, we all have Chekhov friends.
Yeah, I'm sure I'm a lot of people's Chekhov friend.
No, no, no, no, no.
All right.
So where are we?
Are we at match time, basically, which was turned into a complete circus, by the way?
Yes.
This is September 20th, 1973.
It's at the Houston Astrodome.
Oh, man.
30,000 people showed up in person to see this.
I saw all over the place, including Britannica, that 90 million people watched it around the world.
That's.
Yeah, I think Livia had 50 million people, but I watched an interview with her with, I mean, serious journalists.
It was Kathy Lee and Hoda.
And they said 90 million and they were just drunk on white wine at nine in the morning or whatever.
So I trust them.
Man, that was a weird time, wasn't it?
It was a very weird time.
I did want to point out that I looked up.
I was like, well, how many people see a tennis tournament at like the grandest stage?
And center court at Wimbledon is about 15,000 people.
So this was double that.
Wow.
Yeah.
Plus, it was in the beautiful new Astrodome.
Oh, yeah.
So great.
So the odds were very much in favor on Bobby Riggs.
Odds were six to one that Riggs would win.
Mm-hmm.
And this was like the whole thing was kind of presented in the media as like the battle of the sexes thing, the man versus woman, and every juvenile joke or quip or whatever you could make out of that.
That is how the whole thing was being promoted.
That's how it was being played up in the media.
It was not like this is a very serious thing that may set women's rights back or move them forward.
None of that was in there.
It was all just this almost tongue-in-cheek approach to it.
And that's how the whole thing, if you were a viewer, that's what you were kind of shown.
Yeah, for sure.
And that's a good thing to point out.
There was Hollywood was involved.
There were a lot of actors and singers and stuff that were in a celebrity tournament beforehand.
They were really milking it.
They, when they came in the University of Houston band performed the song Conquest, which is an anthem from the 1947 movie Captain from Castile.
That's when Bobby Riggs came in.
They played Helen Reddy's I Am Woman when Billie Jean King came in.
Livia pointed out that John Wayne, Bill Cosby, and O.J.
Simpson were in attendance.
And I had probably 13 different comments or jokes written out for that.
But I'm just going to let that trio stand without comment.
It stands on its own.
Yeah, I think so.
So ABC made a fat $1.2 million off of ads for this match.
Yeah.
Astrodome got about half that in people paying admission price.
Yeah.
And the...
So with the Margaret Court Mother's Day Massacre game that was played under women's rules, in that there were three sets.
That's how women's tennis matches are played.
Three sets.
Men's tennis matches are played five sets.
Billie Jean King was like, no, we're going to play five sets.
Best of five, essentially.
I love it.
Which is smart.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Another thing that you'll see that's happened recently is sometimes a woman's court might be smaller than the man's court, which makes it harder for the man to land a ball in bounds.
Like in a battle of the sexes match.
Yes, thank you.
There was nothing like that.
This was like a men's match that Billie Jean King was playing against Bobby Riggs.
Oh, yeah.
Well, she was like, I got this 55 year old guy like he wants the three set match.
So we're going to go five because I'm in great shape.
Right.
Bobby Riggs enters on a carriage pulled by women that are outfitted as Bobby's bosom buddies.
How did Billie Jean King come in?
She came in on basically a platform carried by men in togas.
I also saw as Egyptians, like Egyptian servants.
They were shirtless, essentially, and they were brawny dudes.
Probably not her idea.
No, but she was going along with it, right?
Yeah, she played along.
Yeah.
We were saying that she was taking it seriously, and she was, but she was also like, willing to play along with this too.
Like she wasn't just some like stick in the mud, you know?
Yeah, totally.
So just very appropriately, Bobby Riggs was sponsored by Sugar Daddy Candy.
Right.
And he presented Billie Jean King with a two foot long Sugar Daddy.
Remember those?
They would just pull your fillings right out of your head.
Totally.
And so King was like, oh, I have a gift for you, too.
It was a piglet that she named Bobby Riggs because he was a male chauvinist pig.
And don't worry about the pig.
She coordinated with the promoter, Jerry Perenchio, very legendary promoter, that the pig would not be eaten or harmed.
It would go to live on a farm afterward.
And it did.
That says everything you need to know about Billie Jean King.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She thought of everything.
She did.
She crossed her T's and dotted her oinks.
That's right.
So, of course, it's 1973.
So you want to get the best in the business at the time to do the play-by-play.
So they got none other than Howard Cosell.
Uh, initially they had a tennis promoter and anti-feminist named Jack Kramer who was going to do they're going to do sort of a he versus she commentary, and he was going to be on rig side.
And one of the original nine, uh, Rosie Casals was going to be on Billie Jean King side.
Uh, but Kramer, and this also speaks to Billie Jean King.
He was one of the guys behind that original tournament.
That they, that they protested and wouldn't play in the Pacific Southwest Open, where they said, oh yeah well, we're going to ban you then.
So she was like, hey, this is all fun and games and everything.
But if that jerk is involved, I'm not even going to do this.
So they pulled Kramer off the off the broadcast.
Yeah, and they didn't have Rosie Casals speak, too, and I'm really glad they didn't do that.
I mean, it's a gimmick and it's understandable, but it would have made the whole thing suck.
They brought in Gene Scott who was the publisher of Tennis Week, and he just gave commentary like it was a regular tennis match, which is kind of what he wanted in this one.
Agreed.
So, I mean, imagine Dennis Miller and Dennis Miller calling a tennis match.
You don't want that.
Yeah.
I mean, think about it.
Whose idea was it to put him on Monday Night Football?
On the one hand, it's brilliant.
On the other, it's like, what?
Yeah, that was weird.
But it lasted for years, too.
It's not like it was a couple of games.
Yeah.
No, I think it was a full season, wasn't it?
I think it was more than that.
Oh, was it?
Yeah.
That was weird.
Yeah.
So the game is on, essentially.
That's the point we've reached here.
That's right.
So Bobby Riggs takes a 3-2 lead in the first set.
And later on, Billie Jean King would say like, I was in trouble.
I knew I was making some mistakes.
I was in my head a little bit.
And I knew that I could not give this first set away, basically.
Like he needed to get that set for his psychological standing.
And so that first set was so, so important for her.
So she knew that she had to win it.
She was down 3-2.
And she came back and beat him and won that first set 6-4, which was a huge blow to his psyche.
Yeah, she said that she could tell that that had gotten to them when they switched sides.
So she also changed her playing style.
Normally, she would be like she'd want to win the point as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Instead, she started drawing volleys out.
And basically put the ball in one corner and then put the ball in the other corner.
So she had this old man running back and forth chasing down these balls to purposefully tire them out.
I mean, that's just so cool that people are capable of doing that.
You know, like I want the ball to go right here.
So I'm going to go right there with this racket, even though the ball's coming at me at 70 miles an hour.
Yeah, for sure.
So she wore him out.
By the end, he was talking about hand cramps.
The levity had kind of lessened because, like you said, this 55 year old was an old, old man.
Right.
So remember, we're so old.
Right.
Not 54, 55.
Okay.
Okay.
I got a couple more weeks.
So, um, Billie Jean King won and she won like convincingly six, four, six, three, six, three.
So remember best out of five, she beat him in three straight sets.
Yeah.
Um, and she got her a hundred thousand check from no less than George Foreman.
Yeah.
Who, I read, had hoped to use Bobby Riggs the pig to demonstrate his new type of indoor grill, but was disappointed that he wasn't allowed to.
Oh no.
Oh no.
And so this was it was just an immediate splash.
Remember, this is a media spectacle.
Everybody knows about this.
90 million people are watching.
So the media just got right in on it again to let everybody know Billie Jean King won.
And let's celebrate her as a pro tennis player.
And that's it.
That's right.
I think we know Josh's coy voice by now.
That's not at all how it was reported, of course.
They kept reporting it sort of in the lowest common denominator way.
The AP said that screaming, delirious women's livers lit up more brightly than the rocket shooting.
Astrodome scoreboard.
Even my beloved New York Times said.
King collapsed, tears in her eyes and her husband's arms, adding later all of a sudden she was a champion, a woman and a little girl all at the same time.
That one brings like my eyes water from that one.
Yeah, that's tough.
That's so much worse than the Astrodome scoreboard.
Right.
I mean, neither one are great.
Yeah.
That one is just like they meant that they were trying to like really be poignant there.
And it's just like, good God.
Yeah.
They missed the mark.
The thing about Bobby Riggs is he wasn't like well she, you know, she obviously is some freak woman who beat me.
That's the only woman who could beat me.
He did the opposite.
He accepted the defeat with dignity and grace.
Yeah, I saw that coming.
He had a thing where he hopped over the net win or lose after the end of every match.
Yeah.
And he did.
He hopped right over the net and went up to her and he said confidentially to her that he underestimated her.
And then in the press conference, he went on to basically say the same thing.
Like she beat him very clearly.
Yeah.
He said she was too strong for me.
There have since been rumors that he threw the match as a gambler, with six to one odds against that.
He threw the match and bet against himself.
There was a report in, I think, 2013.
ESPN dug into that and that there were like mafia figures he was working with to rig the odds.
Uh, we'll never know the truth, but, um, Bobby Riggs said he didn't throw it.
Um, Billy Jean King said that I don't think he threw it.
Uh, like she could tell what was going on emotionally on that court and could tell that he wanted to win and that he was losing.
Um, you know, he might not have prepared like he should have and I guess we'll never know the truth.
But uh, my money's on cheap.
She beat him.
Yeah, mine too.
But there's there's the that rumor does have legs like he did hang out with mob guys.
He was a huge gambler.
The idea was that this he was indebted to the mob like 100 grand for in gambling debts and they would wipe it clean if he threw this and that he was also betting on himself.
And his son said, it's possible.
I don't really think that's true, but it's possible.
Although his best friend is like, I won't even entertain that that's possible.
Like he just didn't do that.
Yeah.
But one of the things that people point to is he was making some terrible mistakes during the game.
So either she got in his head and he was rattled or he was throwing it.
It just seems like the general consensus is that no, he didn't.
It seems pretty fringe to genuinely believe that he threw the match.
Yeah, I agree.
I saw bits of that movie.
I never saw the whole thing.
The casting was incredible.
Steve Carell and Emma Stone were kind of perfect.
I don't think the movie was reviewed super favorably, but it looked okay.
It was supposedly very true to life, actually.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Billie Jean King, at least she told Hoda and Kathie Lee that it was pretty true to life.
She said that she said they got the essence of it.
She said it's a movie, of course, but they nailed the essence.
Man, have you seen Begonia?
Oh, boy.
Yeah.
That is one of my new favorite movies.
That is so good.
I did not like I can never remember his name.
What is it?
I'm glad you watched that.
Oh, Jesse Plemons?
No, no, no.
The director.
Oh, oh, oh, uh, Yorgos Lanthimos.
Thank you.
Wasn't that him?
Let me try saying it too.
Yorgos Lanthimos.
I don't think I've ever tried it because I've always been like, I'm going to screw this up.
Well, I might've screwed it up, but that's what I said.
I don't think so.
I think you got it.
Anyway, I did not like poor things.
Um, and I was like, oh, I don't know.
Cause I liked everything leading up to that, but not this.
And then I saw this, I'm like, he's back.
Yeah.
It's a great movie.
I told you I texted you to see Kinds of Kindness too.
Have you seen that one yet?
I still have not, no.
I've been watching just tons of riff tracks.
Yeah.
It's hard to get out of that cycle once you get in.
For sure.
All right.
So back to this after the back to the Battle of the Sexes.
After this, he wanted to kind of keep the media spotlight on him.
So he tried to jump off the London Bridge in Arizona, but the sheriff there.
So, like, you can't do that.
So he had his picture taken on the lake below it in a raft.
Billie Jean King went on to just keep being Billie Jean King.
In 1974, she founded the Women's Sports Foundation, which is a nonprofit for women's and girls in athletics.
And she would end up sort of very publicly coming out of the closet after being married for a long time to a guy not the Larry King, but her Larry King.
Right.
In 1981, her longtime manager and assistant, Marilyn Barnett, it was very sad what happened.
She filed a lawsuit against her which revealed their affair that they had from 72 to 79, because she had fallen from a balcony of Billie Jean King's house in Malibu and lost the use of her legs and said that hey, Billie Jean King promised to give me that house and support me financially.
So she took her to court and it got really messy.
Yeah, I saw.
So the fall from the House in Malibu I saw was an attempted suicide and that she had blackmailed Marilyn Barnett, had blackmailed Larry King and Billie Jean King.
Before the lawsuit basically said hey, if you don't want this to come out, let's settle before I actually go public with it.
They didn't.
She went public with it.
And then to her great credit, after being outed in 1980, what?
81.
81.
Billy Jean King said, you know what?
We'd never promised her the Malibu house, but yes, I'm gay.
Larry and I have an open marriage.
And we're actually going to stay together for the time being.
And they stayed together until 1987.
And they divorced because Billy Jean King fell for Ilana Kloss, a fellow tennis player.
And they ended up getting married in 2018.
Yeah.
So this is enormous.
She was outed.
She hadn't outed herself.
Her choice to do so was removed, but she stood behind it.
She didn't deny it.
She didn't deny who she was.
She said, yep, I'm gay.
Yeah, it was pretty great.
As far as the quality and pay in pro sports, that's obviously still a thing.
It was 2007 when all the Grand Slams agreed to pay women equally in tennis, and they still don't in some of the other big events.
I think just a couple of years ago, the 2024 Canadian Open, there was a 59 million pool for the men and 25 million pool for women.
Um, and if you know, if you come back with an argument of like yeah well the, you know, the men's events are uh, they get more viewers and more advertising because they're in those better time slots.
Then you kind of just said it yourself.
It's a lot of.
It has to do with the fact that they're in those better time slots and they tend to schedule the women's events in in lesser time slots.
And so they don't get as much advertising.
Uh, they don't have, you know, a great maternity leave and, uh, professional tennis for women.
So it's, There's still battles to be fought, but Billie Jean King is still out there fighting them.
One last little thing, Chuck, that always struck me.
Before he died, in 1995 I think.
The night before he died, Billie Jean King visited Bobby Riggs to say goodbye.
Yeah.
It was pretty great.
They had a lifelong tie and friendship.
Mm-hmm.
So that's it.
That's the Battle of the Sexes.
It was great.
How about that?
Yeah.
I feel like Tim Robbins in Anchorman.
He's like, you know, we at PBS are really down with women's lit.
Yeah.
Also, Steve Carell was in that.
Yeah.
He loves lamp.
He loves lamp.
Since Chuck said he loves lamp, I tricked him into it.
He just unlocked listener mail.
Ding.
Yeah, this is a listener mail where I'm going to apologize to Aoife from Ireland because apparently we have here and there dabbled in Irish erasure in our show, which is something that is a total accident and something that I'm going to be more aware of moving forward.
And here's the email.
Okay.
Hi guys, longtime listener here.
I'm so sad to hear two Irish erasure moments in one episode.
In the Third Man Syndrome episode, you used the example of the Endurance Expedition to show how it works.
And you called Ernest Shackleton British.
And if I'm not wrong, also Tom Crean.
But both men were reborn in Irish.
Shackleton was born in Kilkee County, Kildare.
Did I say that right?
I think I did.
You said Kilkee.
Yeah, Kilkee County, Kildare, just under an hour from Dublin City.
And Crean was born in Annaskal County, Kerry.
This is a sore spot for Irish people, as we are often, so often, called British and we don't take it so well.
Example, look up Cillian Murphy, also being called British.
But we will forgive you, however.
And that is from Aoife.
And Aoife, that is me being an ignorant person.
And I certainly know there's a difference.
And I have a hard time keeping track sometimes.
But I need to do better at that.
So apologies.
Nice work, Chuck.
I'm sure I've done that before, too.
So I want to apologize, too.
Great.
Two apologies.
In one.
Yes.
And who is that from?
That was from Aoife, spelled A-O-I-F-E.
Beautiful.
Thanks a lot, Aoife.
And if you want to be like Aoife and call us out on something, we stand for that.
You can send it in an email to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
We went from normal life, healthy child to acute lymphoblastic leukemia or B-cell ALL.
The St.
Jude team came up to get CJ via ambulance.
Shortly after that, I noticed a rainbow.
It meant that there was hope.
We were driving into hope.
To have hope is to have your child healthy and we have that because of St.
Jude.
You can help kids fight childhood cancer.
Please become a St.
Jude Partner in Hope today by visiting musicgives.org.
Hi, it's Jill Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts and how to step into your most vibrant life.
And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams.
It can change you in the best way possible.
Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns.
The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves.
So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart.
Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
I'm Clayton Eckerd.
In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor.
But here's the thing.
Bachelor fans hated him.
If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would.
That's when his life took a disturbing turn.
A one-night stand would end in a courtroom.
The media is here.
This case has gone viral.
The dating contract.
Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you.
This is unlike anything I've ever seen before.
I'm Stephanie Young.
Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is an I heart podcast guaranteed human.
