Imagine, stepping into a stadium with 30,000 people, plus 90 million more glued to their TVs. And it's all just for you to make a point. You're literally playing a game for not only yourself, but every woman who's ever been told that she's lesser than. In 1973, Billie Jean King wasn't just playing tennis, she was taking on Bobby Riggs, who believed that women didn't belong in serious competition. This is Historically Unsupervised. Oh my goodness, y'all, it has been ten whole episodes, ten whole weeks of Historically Unsupervised, and if you are still keeping up with me, thank goodness for you.

I love you and adore you. Kisses to you. I'm so glad that you are enjoying this just as much as I am. I thought this would be a really fun episode topic to bring in because the Brinch Open is happening right now, so if you're a huge fan of tennis, then this episode is going to be a good one for you. And honestly, if you're a huge fan of tennis, then you probably already know about this story.

It's quite iconic, and honestly, you can't miss it. If you know anything about sports, women's sports, Title IX, women's rights, really just anything in that kind of realm, you probably already know about this story. But if you don't, then listen up, because this is life-changing information. I wasn't always a tennis person growing up. I thought it was interesting, but not the most interesting sport ever. But the older I got, the more I started to appreciate it a bit more.

It's a bit more quiet, so I guess if you're not into that, you have a bit of a harder time adjusting to it, because I'm the type that wants to get up out of my seat and scream and yell. But you can't do that at a tennis match. But either way, I think it's still quite fun to watch. I really have to credit one of my college best friends for getting me into tennis a little more.

I don't keep up with it as much right now as I probably should, and I wish I did, but my roommate back in college was tennis-obsessed. I hope that she's listening to this episode. When I tell you she was tennis-obsessed, that's not even a joke in the slightest. If there was any sort of Open going on or a tennis match that was really important, this girl was watching it. She would keep the TV on all night in the living room, whether the sound was on or not, and she would literally sleep on the couch just so that she could wake up to them already playing tennis.

She also has a tendency to keep a master list of everybody that's playing and keep up with who won what and who's going on to the next round. Sometimes she'll bet on, well, not bet with actual money, but sometimes she'll bet on like who she thinks is going to win, and then she contemplates if she should bet it with money because she's like, you know what, I actually keep doing pretty well at guessing who's going to win.

So if you think you're tennis-obsessed and you're not doing this, then you've got to get with the program because this girl is tennis-obsessed. I know the French Open is really cool because the court is made out of like terracotta clay or whatever, and it's supposed to make the playing a bit different. I'm no expert at tennis, however, I do know that it makes the game a little bit different because you have to learn how to play on a different court and like the material is different.

I don't know, it's weird, but it's also really cool at the same time. Maybe someday if I have lots of money, I could go to one of the Opens, whether that's U.S. Open, French Open, whatever. I think that would be literally so cool. I'm highly envious of anybody who's ever gotten to go to one. I think that that is a really cool thing to add to your resume of life experiences. This episode is going to be part of the 1970s Archive series, and if you listen to the 1990s Archive, this is basically the same series realm, except it's just a different decade.

So it's the same idea, just a different era. And because the French Open is happening, I just felt it was appropriate to talk about this anyway. Okay, and then to go off topic for a second, last night my mom came over and we were watching movies together and we were talking about my latest podcast episode on the Green Children of Woolputt. And she told me, she was like, it reminds me of this one movie that I watched back in the 90s.

Have you seen it? And I was like, I don't think I've seen it, although it sounds really interesting. And she was like, let's watch it. That movie is called Nell. I don't know if you've seen it or not. I hadn't seen it. And I'm really glad that I watched it because I was so invested, it's not even funny. But it's basically about this woman who is played by Jodie Foster. And she's basically this woman that lived in the woods her entire life.

So she developed her own language. She was isolated from all people and doesn't know how to interact with other people. But then her mother, who brought her out into the woods, died, and so she was kind of alone. And then people found her and wanted to take care of her and almost study her in a way. I guess it's based on a true story, I'm not 100% sure, but it was really, really interesting. And so if you were at all interested in last week's episode, it kind of has that same vibe to it because it's about this person who lived on their own, speak a whole nother language, have to adapt to the real world.

It's really crazy, but it was so good. I was like, so invested. And now I feel like I can speak fluent Nellish. The entire time of the movie, I felt like I was trying to translate what she was saying. And I was like, oh, I think this is what she's trying to say. And it honestly became a little bit of a game and I had so much fun watching it. And it's a happy ending, which I really appreciated.

So 10 out of 10, really great movie. You should watch it. But anyway, back to tennis. This story is a really great one, especially if you're into sports. So I say we get right into it. All right. So you know, I have made it my sole duty of this podcast to give you all the nitty gritty details. So let's start at the very beginning. Welcome to the 1970s, a decade that I'm quite envious of anyone that got to live in.

Whether you were a kid, an adult, I don't care. I am incredibly jealous of anybody who got to live through that decade. I mean, you've got disco, you've got all these social movements happening. TV was good. Movies were good. Everything just seemed like pretty solid. I wonder if that's a thing, like decade envy. That's my new character trait. I've suffered from decade envy quite often, whether that's 90s, 70s, 80s, 60s, maybe not necessarily like, you know, medieval times, but definitely envious of the 1970s at least.

Like I'll pass on the Black Plague, but I'm totally down for some disco Donna Summer lifestyle. Okay. So picture it. You're living in the 1970s. Let's discuss the vibe. I know I already kind of did, but let's get into a little bit more of a realistic vibe. So to really understand why the battle of the sexes hit so hard in 1973, you kind of have to picture a decade that was already like loud and chaotic. There were protests, huge cultural shifts, and a lot of questions about equality.

It was literally the decade of like change. In the late 60s and early 70s, we have the rise of second wave feminist movement. In 1972, Title IX was passed, which basically banned sex discrimination education, including sports. And Billie Jean King was a huge, huge part of that. Now fun fact, if you didn't know this, before this era of the Title IX, many female athletes had to pay their own travel expenses while men earned their prize money simply by playing their games.

But the women were basically paying off what they spent to travel to get to the game. So it made it a lot more difficult to be a female athlete at the time. Also in the 70s, TV was huge. I mean, I grew up with TV my entire life. I've never once not had a TV. But at this time, TV was like the new form of media. Before that, everybody listened to everything on the radio. Their favorite TV shows and stuff weren't TV shows, they were just shows on the radio.

And it's funny to think about because with radio and everything, it definitely went away for a while. But I feel like it's kind of making a comeback with the whole podcast craze. I mean, clearly, I loved it so much that I wanted to make my own. I think it's because a lot of people, especially younger people, are just kind of sick of doom scrolling all the time. So because TV was so big at the time, major events became shared national moments.

At the time, TV almost made people feel like they were there anytime something big happened. So because this match was televised, it didn't just become a game, it almost became a performance. Also, the 70s was just filled with big and bold personalities. People loved to be controversial at the time. Enter Bobby Riggs, who fully leaned into the whole persona of like a male chauvinist pig. And this feels very Pavlovian, but the media at the time literally trained people to say crazy stuff.

They would reward them when they would make shocking statements and controversies. Like it was literally like they were training them like a dog. They said, hey, if you say this thing that makes people go wild and crazy, we will give you more money. And so they did. And this was groundbreaking. Getting a woman to compete against a man in a high profile sport like tennis was incredibly controversial, but it was also exciting and like symbolic at the same time.