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?

Listen to The Competition on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App or on Apple Podcasts. Start your free trial by visiting Wondery.fm/TheCompetition_LTN now.  

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After four days of unrest, the energy in Crown Heights seems to have calmed. Still, residents are eager to hold someone responsible for the deaths of Gavin Cato and Yankel Rosenbaum. In comes Rudolph Giuliani and the violent policing tactics Americans are far too familiar with today. 

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It’s a warm evening in August 1991. Two Guyanese children are playing on the sidewalk when a car in the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s motorcade crashes into the two children. The moment ignites a series of events that will change not just Crown Heights, but New York City and policing throughout America, forever.

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As more and more white people leave New York City for the suburbs, the Chabad-Lubavitchers and Caribbean-Americans remain in Crown Heights. Everyone is talking about violent crime. Private citizens patrol the streets in groups. New York City elects its first Black mayor, David Dinkins. And the neighborhood begins to reach its boiling point.

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How did Chabad-Lubavitchers and Caribbeans end up buying homes and settling in Crown Heights? Collier Meyerson goes back to the first half of the 20th century to understand how these two groups, from such different places, changed New York City, how New York City changed them, and how the tensions between them first began.

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It’s August 2020 in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights. Collier Meyerson is at a retirement party for an NYPD officer. Listening to speeches, chatting with guests, watching politicians hobnob with religious leaders, everything seems…all good. But as Meyerson steps back onto the streets of the neighborhood, just weeks after thousands mobilized to protest that Black lives matter, she’s reminded of what happened here almost thirty years before. And she can’t help but wonder how we got here.

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Thirty years ago, in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights, a car accident set off four days of unrest. Two people died. Dozens were injured. Hundreds were arrested. In this Pineapple Street Studios series, journalist Collier Meyerson explores what came to be known as the “Crown Heights Riot.” It’s a story about immigration, New York City’s first Black mayor, the rise of Rudy Giuliani, and the Lubavitch Jewish and Caribbean-American communities sitting at the center of it all. To Meyerson, the Crown Heights Riot can help us unlock and understand so many of our modern dilemmas: from police violence and racism to the persistence of antisemitism. 

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