Fifty high school senior girls descend on Mobile, Alabama every summer to compete for a massive cash prize.
It isn't Survivor, it's one of America's most lucrative scholarship competitions for teen girls.
It's been around for seven decades.
Now you'll hear what took place behind the scenes.
From Pineapple Street Studios and Wondery, this is the competition.
Host Shima Oliyai was Nevada's contestant twenty years ago.
Now she returns as a judge to find out what two weeks with fifty of the country's most ambitious teens can tell us about girlhood in America.
What happens when the competitors are thrown into the deep end with the best and brightest?
And how does surviving the competition prepare them for everything that comes after?
I'm about to play a clip from the competition.
Follow the competition on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay, I'm officially almost late to the airport.
It's an early summer morning in New York City and I'm cutting it close for a flight.
I'm still at home and I'm packing up jewelry on top of all this.
I don't know man, this is a lot.
Hi, that was the 5am, Belle.
When I finally make it to JFK, I pick the wrong line at check-in.
And by the time I make it to the front of the line… Hi, hey, so I missed my flight.
Oh my god. That's my mom.
Remember, life sucks and then you die.
I'm flying, supposed to be flying, to Mobile, Alabama.
A place I haven't been since I was 17.
You have bought your luggage at Wichita right now?
One is in Mobile and the other, it's Tiger Prince.
It's the same one I used when I came when I was 17.
Oh my god. It's the one I got for graduation from Golda.
Oh my god. I'm a grown woman, calling my mom from the airport.
And freaking out a little because I've only missed one other flight in my life when I was a teenager.
And it occurs to me, in the middle of JFK, the similarities are jarring.
I was traveling with the same Tiger Prince suitcase then.
I got it as a gift, right before I traveled to Mobile the last time, 20 years ago.
For a competition, I thought was going to change my life.
Hi, I'm Shimo Yai from Meetin' Nevada and I live just with my team and family in the beautiful waters of Lake Tahoe.
That's me at 17, in the largest cash scholarship competition exclusively for high school girls.
If I'd won my year, I could have walked away with over $100,000.
Back then, the competition was called America's Junior Miss, but today it's called Distinguished Young Women.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 65th National Finals of Distinguished Young Women.
Oh my god. I'm so nervous.
I'm so nervous. I have to breathe.
And here they are. Let's go, Tom.
Let me go. It's taken me.
Amy Pham, it's in its place.
Emily Lee, California.
Every year, one girl from every state leaves her family her whole life behind for two weeks.
Genevieve Batman, Maryland.
And spends each day training, practicing, preparing.
Katelyn Kai, Arizona. To perform at the finale in front of a live national audience.
And Katelyn Rook, Montana.
Selma Baragán, New Mexico.
Because to win this competition, she needs to wow a panel of judges with her academic record, her athletic ability, her speaking skills, and a show-stopping talent.
Madison Manning, Colorado.
The competition's been around for almost 70 years.
And for decades, it was on live TV in front of millions of people.
When I was in Mobile, I thought I'd made the big time.
Winners got written up in the New York Times, appeared on talk shows, even went to the White House.
And some winners became household names.
Like media icon Diane Sawyer.
Grace from Willingrace, Rept.
Rhode Island in 86. The program's alumni have become governors.
Artists. Aerospace engineers.
Lawyers. Doctors. Senators.
Tech leaders. And astronauts.
I didn't win my year, which kind of rocked me.
Because I was a first-gen American kid with big dreams and parents who were not going to bankroll those dreams.
So I thought the money from winning the competition was going to be my ticket.
And also, I hadn't lost much as a teen, and this loss was on national television.
So after the competition, I tried not to think about my experience in Mobile for the next 20 years.
Until I got an email asking me if I would come back, this time as a judge.
At first I was like, no. Then I was like, maybe?
Because it felt like this place that didn't get me back then was signaling, Shima, you are a winner.
You made it. And I kind of felt that way at the time, too.
I mean, I'd won a big award for a podcast I'd made, I have great shoes, I live in New York City, and I'm a producer who gets to travel around the world interviewing people.
But I went through a lot to get here, and I started to wonder if the competition had somehow prepared me for that.
And I don't know, being a judge, it seemed like a chance to look back at what happened when I was 17, to understand why I didn't win the big prize in Mobile.
It's not like I've been wringing my hands over it all this time, but when you get a chance to peek behind the curtain and understand how one girl is chosen out of 50 unbelievable ones, don't you want to know?
So I said, sure, I'll go to Mobile and be a judge.
And then I asked, oh, and by the way, could I bring two producers with me to record all of the behind the scenes action?
And am I surprised? They said yes.
