RHAP: We Know Survivor - Christian Hubicki Recaps Survivor 47 Ep 8

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Today, Rob is joined by Survivor David vs. Goliath's Christian Hubicki to discuss Survivor 47 episode 8.

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or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey everybody, what's going on? Rob Sestranino back with you after episode eight of Survivor 47, getting the chance to talk about something a little different tonight. We're talking about a auction episode of Survivor, and I'm so thrilled

to have my great friend, Dr. Christian Hubicki, here with us live for the postgame. Christian, how are you? Doing just fine, Rob. I'm ready to have some fun, I will say that. And it was a fun episode and a lot of fun things to dig into. So I really honestly can't wait. This is going to be such a joy. Yeah, I think this is going to be a good one here tonight. Look, I know everybody has been through a lot over these last few months. Whether you're happy today, maybe not as happy today. I do relish the chance to talk about something that brings us all together. And that is this game of Survivor. And here, the red and the blue, they work together to vote out Sierra. Indeed, they did. I felt, Rob, and I know we'll dig right into this, but this was a vote that very clearly was the result of the politics that were boiling over from previous votes.

It was starting to get some payoffs and setups to the rest of the season. There's so much to dig into. So much to get into. I have some explaining to do. People might be like, if you're watching the video, where's Rob? Why is he not in the studio? It's been a weird day, okay, said everybody. But for me especially, Christian, are you familiar with, in your science, the science of aerating a lawn? I'm assuming what that is. You take little holes. You drill into the lawn. Drill assuming what that is you take little holes you drill into the drill drill baby drill drill holes i i can see how this could have gone awry but but you can either confirm or refute my theory here and uh the young man who did this i don't know if this was his first day on the job uh managed to sever my fiber optic cable uh that is the lifeline going to my house.

And so on a survivor Wednesday, no less, I scrambled and have booked a stay at a local hotel to podcast with you here tonight come no come nor rain nor sleep nor snow what what's what is the podcasting motto i forget exactly but we gotta we gotta look it's it's wednesday night and we gotta go live uh whether i have an internet connection or not so hopefully uh everything it works works out well here tonight and we're able to talk about this episode. And later on, maybe I'll also share some details. I got a chance to actually see this episode on Saturday. I was part of a crew that was at UNC.

They had a special college screening where I was with some Survivor legends like Sandra D.S. Twine, Crystal Cox, Johnny Fairplay, Sabrina Thompson, and Jane Bright were all part of a crew that watched this together on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill. Well, this is really cool. Was this arranged by Survivor itself? Yeah, CBS. They do the college tours. And they've been going all over the country. And they did one in UNC.

And I had a chance to be a part of that. So some stories later on from that. Plus, on Thursday, I will speak with Ciara, who was my last pick on my draft team. Not a banner year for me in the draft. And I will speak with my third and final draft pick, Sierra, coming up on our exit interview on Thursday. And then Steven Fishback for the Survivor Know-It-Alls will actually join me on Friday this week. Steven has a little bit of a schedule issue. So I'll talk to Steven on Friday and on Thursday instead, we'll do our patron survivor Q&A. So join us at that.

That's going to be at 3 p.m. Eastern for our patrons. Rob is website dot com slash patron for the link for that. But Christian, you and I haven't gotten the chance to talk during Survivor 47. How are you feeling? I mean, I'm feeling great. You know, again, I feel like every time I talk to you, Rob, and you're like, Christian, how are you doing? It's like, well, it's the semester and I'm a teacher.

So, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I'll spare you all that. And we'll talk about this season, which I think is getting to a nice crescendo. So it's been a lot of fun. And so I'm excited to see the payoff of tonight. But yeah, I'm doing OK. OK.

OK. Well, a lot to break down from this episode. The auction was back, and I'm sure we'll talk a lot about that. But I'd love to start with this tribal council and a few interesting things here revolving around. First, the vote target. How about Sierra being the target? It was very interesting. We had this eight person alliance that we saw come together tonight. And there were people who were in favor of getting rid of Sam. There were people in favor of getting rid of

Sierra and people in favor of getting rid of Rachel. What did you think about the decision to have Sierra be the person to go home? Well, that's a I think that for the people who made that decision, I think is honestly a smart one of those three targets. And I'll tell you why from our perspective. And it all comes down to who is left behind and how threatening do they seem to be? So so clearly people have talked about this power couple of Sierra and Sam running things. So they were a target. And there's, of course, also the tertiary target and Rachel, which that her being deflected from is a whole payoff to another storyline with Saul and Saul's secret agents. The Social Security Administration wants its name back.

The Social Security Administration wants its name back. But it makes sense because if you get rid of Sierra, who is left of the three people who are left out of that vote? Sam and Rachel, both of whom I think stand out as potential targets and people who are concerned about making a deep run in the game. They've said this multiple times about Rachel, even before she exited the tribal council last episode. And Sam just has this way of everything. You see it in all the conversations that pop up on the show. Oh, a thing happens and Sam's like, and he has a strategic opinion about it.

So I feel like he's a person that's always going to stand out as a potential threat and a target. So you get rid of of you lop off sierra who i think was quite competent but i think that doesn't have that same bubbles up to the surface as this person has to go as the other two so leaving this other two behind gives everyone else a little bit more wiggle room to play and yeah there's so and that way the tribal council played out also crazy.

But please continue. Yeah. So I thought it was pretty savvy. I think it was Genevieve who first says, you know, I want to leave some of the not so obvious targets in the game. And that's why I don't necessarily want to go after Sam at this vote. I thought that was interesting. But Rachel, do you think that that would have been a juicier target again? And this is that they do not know she has an idol and probably have no way of knowing or suspecting that she has an idol. Doesn't she seem like the more enticing target for eight people to come together on it certainly would seem that way and i think that based on what they know that might have been the right call now based upon the things that we

saw um one rachel's i think it's such an interesting position right now and for a number of reasons but what we saw happen her playing that shot in the dark i think makes her look even more threatening and another target i mean because that what a read what a read and and and it's we haven't seen the shot in the dark played like that before as far as i could yeah let's talk about it okay so uh rachel and i watched this you know with a big crowd of people everyone is very excited. The music was intense. This was so, yes, this was like so well done, this whole sequence. And then you're wondering, because I wasn't even thinking that Rachel would play the shot in the dark. I thought, you know, you see her reaching for her pocket of, OK, she's going to play the idol. But then she takes out the scroll and then here's the shot in the dark.

But then she takes out the scroll and then here's the shot in the dark. So for Rachel to do the shot in the dark first, did you think that the idol was coming out second? If it didn't work, that's interesting. I didn't think that I was kind of surprised the shot in the dark came out at all. But I didn't think about the one to punch. Yes. We're basically we're basically she's thinking that she doesn't value the shot in the dark that heavily and and i think which yeah it makes sense that she she marginally reduces her chances of of being of going home and then plays the idol second what that if i were getting into rachel's brain there i would assume she's making an assessment

as to how likely is it that i am actually being targeted here. Yeah. And clearly it was not existential. Otherwise she would have played her dang idol, I would say. Yeah. So this is something that I do the patron Q&A. And this is something that I Josh Kettles, a patron, a very active survivor Twitter account has talked about. And I believe he calls it a shot and a chaser of, I'm going to play the shot in the dark. If I have an idol, play the shot in the dark first, because then if that hits, I don't have to play my idol first off. So I'm sort of like being like economical with my idol

where potentially I could get through to tribal councils. But this was so interesting what Rachel did where she appeared to read the room. I know she's a poker player. I know that she is somebody who has been a, you know, online poker player. And this was almost like that she made a bet and was sort of like, i'm not gonna you know i'm gonna fold i'm not gonna you know uh go all in after i'm sort of like reading the reaction of the table that's really interesting i i i love this take from you rob this is this i didn't pick up this this um as like you know you know trying to raise and see if you bluff people out.

You know, I'm not a poker guy. She was trying to bluff them. But she was sort of like like I think that and I'd have to go back and like watch like the the Caleb shot in the dark of like the reaction of, you know, everybody like when he's safe, everybody goes nuts. But prior to that, like what's the reaction of the players who know that they've written down the person's name and i'm gonna play the shot in the dark is it like oh yes you know there's and nobody ever was like huh yeah i mean i think that that that's totally i think that can't happen and now i'm normally fairly skeptical of a player's claims that they read the physical reactions of people in the room in a moment, because most people kind of understand that this is a tense moment, that advantages might be played. So they try to keep it together. But that but but it very well could have been the case in this case.

I think to me, what I was impressed of out the gate was how she read tribal councils begin with as being a dangerous one for her. And this is something that's come up, I think, a few times we've talked, Rob, is that tribal council has all these metaphors and analogies floating around. And and normally it's not really meaningful on the surface. But if they don't make sense to you, then clearly you're not in a whatever plotting is going on. If the themes of what the voter are about, the just asking you're like this, this makes no sense. I remember I talked with Gabby about this long time ago. And she's like the votes that she knew was going on versus the ones where she didn't. She was like, what the hell is Jeff talk? What is everyone talking about? And those are the ones she didn't know was what's

going on. And I think that that's really. What can you do? Like, I don't know. You know, I got to be honest. I'm not following the line of questioning here. Is it just too late? Are you just sort of like enjoying the ride at that point? Well, I mean, in this in this new era, which, by the way, at some point, Jeff, it won't be new anymore. So we're going to have to, you're going to have to call it something else.

But you play the shot in the dark if you really feel that that's the case, which is what she did. Or that's her cue to play an idol, which is a cue that I think people in season 46 would have loved to have a number of times. But, I mean, that's what you do. I mean, you could also audible, live, tribal, something's what you do. I mean, you could also audible live tribal something, you know, something Rick Evans would do. I mean, there's a bag of tricks that you could that you could bring bring into play, but it's certainly not a good position. Mm hmm. Yeah. So I think that's such an interesting spot for her. And we could talk about where she goes after this. this um now we had an interesting wrinkle of this tie vote uh which ends up coming out of that we have four votes for sam uh was it was it or was it five five uh five votes sam five

votes sierra and one vote gabe uh there was two there were there were two votes missing so it couldn't have been so it must be four four one four four one yeah okay um so jeff gives us this interesting uh part of the tie break rule and jeff says that all right normally the two people that it's tied against they have to vote for each other so they don't get to vote but because sam didn't vote and I'm not sure if it's also because that Sierra voted for Gabe, Sierra got to go and cast a vote. This blew my mind, Rob. This blew my mind. This changes. I say this without irony. This changes my entire conception as to how tiebreakers worked in the context of the rules of Survivor. OK, and the implications couldn't be more medium. And the the so basically so as my understanding of the tie vote and the way it's been said is that when

there is a tie, OK, that the people for whom the tie votes are on, they do not vote on the revote. Right. That that is an explicit rule. OK. And what Jeff clarified tonight is that no, no, no. It's not an explicit rule. The fact that they don't vote is implied by the fact that their votes cannot possibly matter because they can only vote for each other. And because they can't vote for each other, that's why they don't vote. And that makes sense for the explicit rule. But Jeff said, no, no, if the underlying circumstances change, then they can vote. So I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, is this an explicit rule or an implicit rule? You know, is it implied that they don't vote? And here it's very clear, oh, it's implied. And so, so like, all right. So if you're trying to build the rules of survivor, which by the way, nobody actually knows, nobody knows what they are. They're not written down anywhere. We can see, I played the game.

I never saw said rule book. I wish I could have. So we have to infer what the rules are. What is the rule that might make sense that, that, that for tie votes. And it could be like, rule that might make sense for tie votes. And it could be like, if your vote could not possibly change the outcome or a set of votes could not possibly change the outcome, they don't vote. And that would be explain what we have. But there's a problem with this, is that what other kinds of tie votes have happened? What happens if there's a tie vote of three people? Okay. Which has happened. I didn't get a chance to look up how many times this happened. That's a lie. I absolutely did.

It was seven times in the history of the show. OK, that three people that they're three way ties. OK, so theoretically, in that scenario, what should happen per Jeff's clarification of the rules? Well, it actually matters who these three people vote for because they could vote for any one of these of the other two. In fact, they could gang up on the two could gang up on the one. Right. So it should matter. Therefore, they should vote. Guess what they do? They don't vote. So what is it? What are the rules of a tie? And now we're in this sort of rule limbo as to what the tie votes are. Do you think that part of it is that Sam didn't have a vote, that one of the people that it was tied against did not have a vote?

What was the bigger factor? Was it that Sam didn't have a vote or that Sierra voted for a person who wasn't part of the tie? It doesn't matter who the person voted for, because the whole idea of having the re-vote is that there was a hinky vote going off somewhere else. It's like, okay, fine. Hey, you had your hinky vote.

Now your time to vote for one of the targets, right? It's definitely that Sam didn a hinky vote going off somewhere else? It's like, OK, fine. Hey, how's your hinky vote? Your time is now your time to vote for one of the targets. Right. It's definitely that Sam didn't have a vote and therefore their votes would not cancel off of each other. So that's and they're like, oh, therefore, the underlying reason why they wouldn't vote is now gone. And therefore, they must now vote, which is in direct contradiction with what happens at a three way tie, which has happened seven times in the history of the show. Like I said, when will this matter? Never, because it means one extra vote. Anyway, it doesn't make any, it will never matter.

But the rule guy in me wonders what it is. Yeah. Please tell me. You're asking the wrong person. Please tell me. You're asking the wrong person. Send Christian a message on Twitter at Chewbacca. Okay.

All right. I was thinking about that because that would be the implication, right? Because the goal, like if you're trying to write, I don't know, an algorithm whose job it was to interpret the rules of Survivor, right? What would you write? What would be the rules you would follow? And this complete and before made sense. You're it. If you're a target of a tie vote, you don't vote. That's the way what happened went to the two person tie or a three person tie. That's how it works. I'll leave it there. So we get on to other topics.

But I want to put that out there for those of you actually do care about the rules. So let me know. All right, well, let's talk about Ciara. And she ultimately has this surprising vote out here. Another emotional exit. You know, she got to have it spread out a little bit over the course of getting this tiebreaker. And so it wasn't like this instant blindside like we've seen with Tiana and Annika and Asia

and some of these other people earlier in the season. But another, you know, real gut punch for a player to go out, not expecting it in this spot. Christian, in your mind, where did Sierra go wrong? Well, I mean, just let's start with the TV version of this, which is the show got gold this episode of setups and payoffs. Like, not only did they have the confessionals of people saying, man, that Andy, we only keep him around. You know, basically, it's almost like the producer said, hey, could you say something that discounts the importance of Andy in this

upcoming vote, please? Thank you. Please. They had those. But then you had these extemporaneous moments where you just had Sam talking with Rachel and they were like, oh, I forgot about Andy. You're like, yeah, I do that, too. Like they had these extemporaneous – so much material to go off of. And so part of that was us seeing Sierra discount Andy. And we saw that throughout the episode. seeing sierra discount andy and we saw that throughout the episode and uh even in things that weren't even highlighted like sierra got a chance to give chocolate and peanut butter we'll get to the the the um the auction soon but i'm thinking like do you give it to andy nope nope

she gave it to two other people for reasons that probably made sense at the time but it i mean it's very it's almost a classic uh it's almost a classic thing that happens to a survivor player. You have an ally that you think is lock solid. You think that they're with you, but they don't feel like they're appreciated, so they leave. I was actually trying to think of a parallel for, like, Sierra and Andy. It's not perfect, but I think it hits some of the right emotional notes. It's actually, like, Cochranran and like and Whitney, Whitney Duncan, like in the sort of like, you know, like Cochran felt disrespected by his alliance. Same thing here with Andy. And I have a feeling that Sierra is going to be some shade of Whitney Duncan type mad. Yes, I agree with that, by the way. And I also wonder if Andy's winning prospects might be really diminished after tonight because

that, you know, I try to pay attention to who's the mayor of Ponderosa. And Sierra even said in her parting words tonight that she's looking forward to her duties on the jury and she's going to take her job very seriously and she her i think and sam are probably big mad with andy i do wonder especially after you know shameless plug for i stand kagian where chaos cast uh you know, talks about like the power of the mayor of Ponderosa in terms of and certainly a job that she ends up having in Survivor Second Chance. You really do have the ability to shape the narrative on the jury. I am very worried about Andy's winning prospects. I don't know if this is something that you could really think about, like, in the game as like, okay, well,

I don't want to, like, blindside Sierra this hard in this spot. It gives her too much power over the control of the jury. But I do think for Andy, I think he's going to have a real uphill battle in the final three, winning over this jury. Yeah, I would tend to agree. And you actually took the words right out of my math, Rob. I thought I was going to have a clever plug for I stand Kageyan for that exact thing that

Cass talked about. Which you were wonderful in. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. I enjoyed aping off of some of your insights from Involution of Strategy for that. But when it comes to Andy, I mean, and in a way, I was kind of glad to see Andy get something he wanted, because, I mean, I know we're supposed to laugh at all the things that go wrong for him hilariously over and over again. The camera people have to be like, how much material do we have? What's left on the cutting room floor of Andy?

I want to know of all these things. But so this thing. Release the Andy cut. There's got to be a lot there. And Andy, though, he very clearly wants to take public credit for all of these blindsides. I actually haven't seen someone more overtly say, oh, yeah, that blindside that I did was was sure was great. It was. And and and we in the edit. See if he gets a fishy tomorrow yeah we'll see

friday friday we'll we'll find out i will place your bets folks place your bets and when it comes to but when it comes to what we see we see who gets the ball rolling on this move it seems to be genevieve uh gets the ball rolling on this and um so what so i am what i can only imagine the other players are thinking based on what we know is they're like, yeah, let Andy claim publicly for responsibility for this move. But the people that we know around us that matter for our votes know what's going on. And that's not necessarily good for him. like a cat's paw to some degree of like being the person who is like taking some of the flack from the Sierra types about this move when ultimately other people are going to be getting the real benefits from a move like this. But I do want to go back to Sierra and Sam. And I think that they made a couple of mis missteps along the way and tell me what you

think about i want to go back to the annika vote and sam and annika seem to be butting heads sierra was in uh the real like um uh as penner would say uh the was it the was either the the pivot vote um the fulcrum vote fulcrum vote fulcrum thank you i i uh drew it's okay it was like 10 plus years ago rob it's all right yeah and so she was in a spot where she could really could have decided what happened and they decided to keep andy and then get rid of annika. I really think that, you know, look, I know Sam was going to be a threatening target coming into the merge no matter what, but I think they really made the wrong decision going back from that vote to vote out Anika instead of andy it is the classic conundrum of trying to read how reliable is this ally right and basically evidence that we saw there are lots of things to be like well andy did have that

episode one uh uh um uh explosion at the tribal council yeah that would normally be a pretty big emotional moment emotional moment right and uh which would ordinarily forebode, like, can we rely upon this vote? But it seems like, I guess, maybe to Andy's credit, he came across he he he stabilized himself enough in front of this audience and makes himself look useful to them. And I honestly I mean, there are two sides of these coins. A lot of times we will say, hey, this person saved this person by not voting them out. But it's easy to not look at like the other side of the coin. What did Andy or people who got saved do to put themselves in that position? And so I do, I feel like on some level, I have to give some kind of credit to Andy there.

But I would agree with you. Certainly, I think it bit them in the behind in a way that I feel like the Anika giving Anika in would be less likely to do, especially given how how surprised she was that she would have been taken out by these people. It seems like she would have been maybe a tighter vote with them. would have been taken out by these people it seemed like she would have been maybe a tighter vote with them yeah especially also because sam and sierra it seems like that they really wanted to work with rachel it seemed like that they uh prefer having rachel as like the third person with them over andy and it doesn't really seem that close maybe for sam he was feeling like okay well i'm kind of i'm i'm in the fourth spot with Annika and Rachel and Sierra going into the merge. And I don't really like that positioning. But in some ways, I think it makes Sam less threatening in terms of like, oh, the three women of Gata.

That's something that we have to worry about a little bit. Oh, we need to break up the Gata women. And I think in a little bit of a way, it could have been like a meat shield for Sam coming into the merch. Yeah, I think that that's Sam's theory of the case, I think, for him playing the game is not one where he

gives up power to not appear to be a threat. It does not seem to have that. That does not seem to be how he operates. It seems like he wants to have a direct say in what happens and having more people who might be more loyal to each other than him is a threat that he would rather stomp out early, even if that means he's poking his head up higher. That might just be how he operates. There are people who want direct control over an alliance. That would be

my guess. Yeah. So it's a new year. You know what that means, setting big goals. Maybe you promised yourself you're going to hit the gym every day, or maybe you said you're going to learn to make fire with a flint for once, or the classic save more money. But let's be honest, New Year's resolutions tend to fizzle out by February. Wouldn't it be great if at least one of those goals could be automatic? That's where Acorns comes in. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. You've probably heard me talk about them before, and I'm excited to share how Acorns makes it easy to start automatically saving and investing your money so it has a chance to grow for you, your kids, and your retirement. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that fits you, your kids, and your retirement. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will

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Head to acorns.com slash RobPod or download the Acorns app and start saving and investing for your future today. This has been a paid non-client endorsement. Compensation provides incentives to positively promote Acorns. Tier 1 compensation provided. Investing involves risk. Acorns Advis Tier one compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com slash Rob Pod. So can we talk through winners and losers of this vote tonight? Okay. And non-Gata, I want to talk through some of the winners and losers

from the alliance of eight i feel like that one of the big winners tonight was saul oh yeah big this is a great episode for saul yeah i mean i mean the social security administration i think is like chekhov's gun for this for this season right now i mean it was kind of just floated in and out and it could have just been a witty line that they included. There are two Chekhov's guns I got, these seemingly less important things that could show up later. And that's a big one.

In fact, I mean, the idea that he could have a secret alliance with Rachel and whoever his others, what secret agents are, I'm guessing Kyle's on that list. I just get a feeling Kyle's one of them. And anybody that's seen the Karate Kid, I think I guess that the Karate Kid Alliance. OK, I won't do the K Alliance.

All right. So but the but when it comes. But what a fun alliance that would be. Number one, those three. I think that it would be hard. I'd be hard pressed to think of an alliance. I'd be more excited to see in the last several years of the show than those three working together across tribal lines, by the way, coming in. So he's I think he can plausibly go back to Rachel and say, look, I couldn't include you in that vote, but I made sure that whenever your name came up, it got shifted away, which is true.

It's true. And so he got to keep the person he wanted with him. He got the target out that he wanted. He's starting to build credibility on the DL with some folks that if for whatever reason they get pitched to the jury, they can go on to the jury. It's like, no, you didn't see the things that Saul was doing out there. He was actually more active than you ever saw. Did you know he did this? Did you know he did this? Did you know he did that?

And he's a likable guy. People might want to believe that he was a power player. Yeah. So Saul sends the advantage to Rachel and then he tells her about it in this episode. And I was debating on the podcast last week whether or not Saul should say anything. Did you like Saul telling Rachel that he saved her? I think in this spot it made sense. I mean, it's it would only be a problem if Saul suspected that Rachel was going to throw him under the bus. But that didn't make a lot of sense, I think, from his from the positioning there. I think I mean, the idea

I would long to see a true like stealth cross tribal alliance emerging on one of these seasons that that that just like from characters that would you would not expect to be like ringleaders of an alliance like that. I'm sorry. I know I'm talking about how much how exciting that would be. But I think it sets him up well, because I don't think anyone's coming for Saul. Like what a power player, right? Because of this, but he, but if he,

if he manages that trajectory correctly based upon what we see, I mean, is it crazy to think that he could come out as a winner from this? I don't think that's crazy. I don't think that's crazy at all. I need to see more, but I think that he's definitely improved his position. Yeah.

Yeah. At this current state. Yeah. But like, I mean, how many seasons of the show have we seen where like going into the last couple episodes you're like oh this person doesn't really have a case then all of a sudden the show decides to show us exactly what we need to see right and it really takes off he's definitely within that reachability condition

sure that we could see so anyway to me that's not crazy at all yeah and then saul is able to keep rachel safe again tonight where r Rachel's name is coming up. And Saul's like, no, no, no, no. I worked too hard to save Rachel last week. I can't let her go. And, you know, I don't know if these things are like scientifically proven or if they're sort of like old wives tales. But I think there's like a story where it's like a ben franklin like uh like ask somebody to borrow a dollar and if they give it to you they they like you more because now they are invested they have to like justify in their brain well they they did already

did some they did something nice for you and they have to justify why they do this nice thing for you. So now in their mind that you're instantly more likable to them because they have done you a favor. And now Saul is just like, he saved her last week. And now he's just like, oh, I got to keep sticking my neck out for Rachel. I'm pot committed. There's actually studies on this, Rob. I actually, I know a little, I'm not an expert in this subject, but I know a little bit about it from reading a book called 59 seconds.'s about uh it's about psych quick psychological tricks to do stuff in your life and so the studies what that they would do to validate this is like you would go to like a museum they would have people sign up for a study

and it's like oh go meet this person at a museum and you go around a museum together and it's all a setup because the person you're going to meet is of course a confederate of the experimenters and they would do a thing where where the person that who's who's a plant for the experimenters would occasionally would sometimes ask a person for a favor oh can you lend me a dollar um in order to pay for like a drink at the museum or something and then they were more likely to give other favors in the future because you had to – because – and it's my understanding of the literature, which is very shallow, that the cognitive dissonance of saying I did this one nice thing for a person, but I actually don't like them and wouldn't do it again prevents people from not giving them another favor.

That's my understanding of the phenomenon that you're talking about. So I think there is something there to that. And they're just really – they just seem to also have a natural chemistry. Yes. That's on top of all that. So I mean, great episode for Saul. A good bond. A loser of this vote out of Sierra I think is Teenie. I think that Teenie does not have a lot. I think

that people like Teenie, but I don't think that Teenie really commands a lot of the agency of this group. I think that Teenie said, hey, I like Sierra the the best i want to keep sierra um i would do sam sam is the person i would do uh and it seemed that teeny's opinions were not really factored into the final uh discussion i mean i i didn't pick up on teeny's change in position as a result of that but i definitely noted what you talked about because he wanted to teeny it was was like, hey, great news. Like, let's work with Gata. And Genevieve's like, I'd rather work with Tuku. I mean, if we're looking at people who are seemingly getting their way in the negotiations, that's actually a pretty good proxy for who has the power. Now, that, of course, then can wrap back around on you if people notice that, right? But Genevieve certainly seems to be the instigator of a lot of these cross-tribal things.

Tini's lucky that they got looped into the vote. Tini could have been blindsided with the Gatas here. No, I mean, we're looking at the numbers. I mean, especially given once Sam didn't have a vote, right, then he didn't need as many. They didn't expect Rachel to play their player shot in the dark necessarily. But there was enough of a wiggle room that, yeah, I mean basically – I think the thing about Genevieve, I imagine she doesn't want to give the impression to Saul and Tini that Genevieve is looking to start cannibalizing the Lavos post getting rid of Rome. That would be my guess. So like why thruffle more feathers on this vote? But I definitely see – I mean additionally, another point on Tini, and again, it's hard for me – it's hard to read the politics exactly, but not a general phenomenon for a lot of people. Indeed, Rob. Indeed.

And when when it comes to teeny or like when you or anyone actually today, it's pretty easy. When it comes to anybody pushing a vote that doesn't go through, there can be blowback from that. Who was pushing for who? Because Sam is going to be on the warpath trying to figure out what happened. We got a little bit of that at the end. And so if he finds out that who was pushing for him, that's not going to bode well potentially for Teenie. And if there's ever a counter move of who, oh, who do we throw under the bus? Well, Sam's going to want to, if not Andy, try to vote for Teeny. That's a possibility.

Yeah. One other quick winner, I think, from this vote. Gabe was really pushing Sierra is the head of the snake, he tells us. is the head of the snake, he tells us. Yeah. So, I mean, really, I mean, but I will say that, you know, if you could argue that Genevieve and other people and Genevieve and Caroline were both trying to push for for Rachel that vote and didn't get it. But I think that how what they got instead was maybe more in line with their aims. Maybe that's what you're implying.

And so but yeah, Gabe definitely got who he was pushing for. Well, but honestly, but, you know, in the previous vote, Gabe also wanted to get rid of Rachel. Obviously, that was the available target. So I don't know. I think it's the people who are really trying to push for Sam. That's going to probably cause more trouble would be my guess guest okay um let's talk about the auction the auction is back and this is a wild auction christian you know the auction was gone for so long we brought it back in survivor 45 did a lot of uh things to try to like fix the auction the auction and we put a lot more stuff into the auction tonight yeah we did we did i i i mostly love this auction i want to say that up front because i don't want to be a nitpicker but i

will nitpick but like so i mean a lot of things again they're getting right one that there is an auction it's fun it's fun uh fun uh also, no explicit advantages will be given as a thing that you are bidding on explicitly. Great. I will point out, though, that I think last time in 45, Jeff explicitly said there will be no advantage. Right. And this time he did not say that because there was. He didn't see it. If if it was maybe it could. Well, but either way, it was hidden in one in a way that would be a Jeff lie. And then Danny McRae would just explode with his head, you know, if he was lied again. So but the but the and I think that so there's that.

And I think that that's a good choice because then people don't hoard their money. And and overall, it's fun. I also like how it's a little bit more transparent in terms of how many items are going to be. And it used to be kind of arbitrary, which I think from a gameplay standpoint, the players have an idea. They could do some math in their head as to how long they should do, how long they should hold on for their money. We don't need them to lose their votes, in my opinion, because they're just we see what the consequence of it is. They just spend all their money. There's no bidding war. It's literally like I'll spend this. I'll spend more. Oh. You got it. That's it.

So get rid of that. It's already I think you've improved it significantly more. I think that the other challenge is there's so much stuff. Like how many gimmicks were in this? there was so much stuff going on in there and again like uh i don't want to complain about the auction either the auction was was very fun yes uh that if i if i had any complaints it would be like yeah i don't know if you need to lose your vote it doesn't really bother me i'm not like uh up in arms about it but in addition to okay so we had the auction we brought it back. Okay. First you got to find your money. And then of course the person who has the most money left

at the end of the auction, that person's going to lose their vote. Now you're going to have covered items sometimes in the auction and in the covered items, sometimes you're going to bid on something and then you're going to get money back. We got a new, they call it a survivor cash back program where you're going to get money back at different points during the auction. This is like on press your luck when they get like, uh, Oh, $2,000 and a spin. Like, Oh, now I got another spin. I have to use. Yeah. And I, and I, the reason why, look, I also don't want to nitpick as I, as I said, but the reason why I, I, one't want to nitpick, as I said, but the reason why I one of the reasons that it's problematic for an auction to have this incentive to spend all your money is part of the fun of the auction is the bidding, the bidding war. Right. There there's a there there is a pressure to bid enough to win the auction, but not so much.

You don't have any money left now. You want to get rid of your money. you don't have any money left now you want to get rid of your money i bet you could plot what how many bids are made uh per purchase at this auction compared to and 45 compared to all the previous ones is way less yeah it's not even an auction because i feel like that in uh that okay the auction is everybody in the old auction everybody has 500 so it's like okay so jeff brings out like okay it's uh we've got a sandwich it's like i'll do 100 Jeff brings out like, okay, it's a, we've got a sandwich. It's like, all right, I'll do a hundred for the sandwich. Like 120, 140. So here, 160. Okay.

180. Okay. Uh, like we're going to see how much are people willing to put in for the sandwich that really people only bid against each other on the first five items. Because then once we get to the, then it's like, all right, now the auction could end at any point. And whoever has the most money loses their vote so the person it's just like you just take turns whoever has the most money just goes all in like there's no i don't think that there was

one point after item five where there was a multiple bid on something where jeff jeff brought something out uh like maybe that they could do like sort of like do borderline gross stuff that people are like, I'd do $20 for that. That's the other thing. A lot of them were covered. Some covered is great. That adds some variance to it. He does the little switcheroo thing

that he got to do with Gabe. A lot of the stuff was great. I think that we want the bidding. I think just minor tweaks will get us fun bidding like that and and i think that i mean how many gimmicks did they have this time and we had the gross food challenge broke out it happened in the middle of it and look i think any one of those things is great classic auction and they're like let's do all the things and i think they wanted to kind of fill up like what could be up to 15 of these of these things.

So that's that's a lot. That's a lot. OK. And we had Rachel also get the fries that had the hidden clue in it also. So there was a lot going on in the auction. Yeah. All right. What was most enticing to you, Christian? Oh, to eat? Yes. Well, I mean, well, to eat, I mean, a hamburger is great. The burger looked good.

Yeah, I was fine. I was good with the burger. That's a survivor burger. Yeah, I'm not sure that that's the compliment he thinks it is to a lot of the survivor players. But I'm not I'm not that is not my opinion. But that is the opinion of several people on the Twitters. But I think that when it comes to – well, funny thing about in Fiji is you order – so tip three if you go to Fiji. If you order a hamburger, they will bring you a slab of ham on a bun. That's what they will give you. So make sure you order a beef burger.

I mean so that would be the one thing I'd like probably want to enjoy to eat because also also the fries good calories i will say though uh from how i would handle the food just the calories part i mean peanut butter if you can just like like snarf down like what like way back in season 40 when tyson got that jar of peanut butter like i tried to compute the number of calories, that thing, like the dude could survive for days on that jar of peanut butter. It's just so many calories in that thing. So that's, that's how I handled food when I would eat. Like I got to go over to pizza reward and there were so many damn bread

sticks, so many. And I just, just, I was a challenge to make sure I just get as many calories as I could. We had a situation with Kyle and the chicken wings. Kyle, that he was vegan, and then he became a vegetarian

so that he could eat more things on Survivor, but he kind of got boxed in. If you're Kyle, what are you doing bidding on the covered item? And if you're Kyle, what are you doing bidding on the covered item? I feel like, hey, oh, I have a dietary restriction. And we've seen this with Ethan back in Survivor Africa at the auction. But if you have a certain dietary restriction, I would avoid this.

Lots of items. I would avoid the covered item. I mean, ideally, yes. But the limited stock of these things and the high pressure to spend all your money, it's not even just a missed opportunity. You're not eating. They take away your vote. This was item four. Yeah, it was item four. But keep in mind, in these people's mind, at item six, there could be nothing more.

Like five was the last one, right? So there's only one more after that. And if there's going to be, and so if you, if you really value your vote, I mean, there's a one and a one in 10 chance that you, that, that you have the most money and you're out. I forget what is, what is, what is the money total is. But I think, and again, another one of the reasons that people are less picky, they just throw down their money. Yes. I'll take anything. I would, I would be like, okay, I don't, I ate them. Number one. Yes. Done. Okay. I got my food. I'm I'll take anything. I would. I would be like, okay, item number one.

Yes, done. Okay, I got my food. I'm out. That's what I would do. So Jeff is bringing the trays in and out. And Jeff was on one. He was having a lot of fun. He's like walking in and like carrying the tray. I think that Emily, it was Emily Flippen, I think, got in his head in Survivor 45.

She called out. She's like like that's the margarita look how he's holding the tray and so now jeff is like really like playing up when he has the tray of like oh do i have is there something that could spill here i don't know uh yeah that's definitely a reaction to emilylippen calling about it. He very clearly overreacts or I say reacts strongly to a recent thing that's happened to make sure he is not criticized for the same thing again. I get it. It's a common human phenomenon. Yeah. I think the thing, though, that was really I was I was watching and I turned my head for like a little bit. I regret it because I didn't realize like alan coming came on to the show yeah yeah so like it i i heard alan coming and and it was alan coming doing an impression of jeff probst doing an impression of mr belvedere yeah what did he say he was like uh if i was doing

shakespeare in the park maybe I would talk like this. Jeff is a creative man. It actually sounds a little bit like when, if you ever listen on the on fire podcast, when Jeff does an impression of Mark Burnett. That's funny. I didn't put that together. But it was funny how like he, he didn't,

he couldn't even quite commit to the bit at some point, just started dropping out of the accent entirely like mid sentence. I'm like, I get it. You're performing on the fly. It's live improv on camera. But, you know, it's it was fun. It was fun. I mean, that was a good time. The Saul apple pie looked delicious. If I went to a Thanksgiving dinner and somebody had the Saul apple pie with the Survivor 47 whipped cream on it. Well, I was surprised how solid it was. See, my fear with any pie, so to speak, is that any pie is going to have some degree of moisture. And it's not going to be – that not that it's not like a dry pie. Yeah, I would imagine. So I think that there's there there is an element that, you know, I don't believe that the the kitchen is just off camera cooking these things up. They must get transported somehow from location.

I'm sure that that that some some some enterprising journalists could, you know, I bet Dalton Ross would write an oral history of the pie, like how it got from, you know. I think that Jeff in 45 on the On Fire podcast talked about how like they have all the food prepped and they have it like they want it like, like the stuff that's supposed to be hot that needs to be hot, the stuff that's supposed to be cold,

they keep it cold. So he made it sound like it's quite a production to keep the food looking appetizing to be hot it needs to be hot the stuff is supposed to be cold they keep it cold so uh that he may sound like it's quite a production to keep the food appetizing for the auction i'm sure it is and i think that those are the and i think it's one of the great values of the of things like the on fire podcast and all the little details that'll go if we're going into like a quality show that wants to make everything look right i mean they would like like i mean there was there was i know this is different but like the mud in the challenges which yes again the nitpick i'm with you i don't want mud challenges i don't know who these people are when they're

slatter than mud but if you're gonna do mud like mud's a tricky a tricky substrate yeah i mean mud is a colloidal is a colloid and and it like dries out and like and they get that all right i mean that's impressive you know other reality shows are just saying i just mud just go go go jump in the mud that's it here they you know they they like vetting the mud it's like it's like oh i'm imagining jeff with like the viscosity here you know it's it's uh it's it's it's 0.7 probes when it needs to be about 0.8 to 0.9 scale to be fair. Like, all right, Jeff, here's what we have. Seven different flights of mud for you to review before they're like, oh, yeah, this is it.

Three. Three is it. That's the mud. It has notes of Rome in this one. Yes. Yeah. Let's talk about the gross food challenge. We have not seen the gross food.

I want to say not since Ghost Island. Yeah, I think I think I'm trying to remember. But that's definitely I remember this vividly. Sea Slug Slugger. Well, this that episode was airing while we were filming on location. And the production was always very careful to never let us know what was happening on the season that was currently airing. Probably because they were worried it was going to spoil, give hints as to what challenges we could see. And literally, that's one of the things that Jeff said to us during our big, long six-hour challenge was,

I can confirm to you, the gross food challenge is back on season 30 36 we're like whoa yeah it's back so at least i remember it was back on that season for sure yeah so this was fun that they did it was so gross when sue was spitting the the is it buttock uh you know i didn't look up the species before I got on here. But but but I what the thing I noticed mostly is when they revealed the the grub and next to it were very conspicuously placed little lumps of black, you know, little black lumps, which I assume were its feces. And so that's what I assumed it was. I'm like, that's the thing. I was like, that is that is excrement. Go back and look at that. But yeah, that was pretty incredible.

Is there a strategy to the buttock? I'm sure there is. I mean, you were present for, was something like the buttock when Matt Alderman won that? So I don't know if it was exactly the same thing or what species it was but in survivor of the amazon we did have a gross a post-merge uh gross which i guess was like what they did in ghost island uh and um that the final task was matthew and dina were the two people left. And Jeff like took the thing off. Dina was not feeling vulnerable at all.

And just like said to Matthew and he swallowed it whole and then was like pantomiming the thing crawling down his stomach. He said, I hope my digestive juices can handle this or something like that. I didn't know if that was in the show or not. I remember you were talking about that story. So I'm curious how he reported that strategy as being effective. He certainly won. I remember even Dean was kind of like, yeah, it was fast, which is all that matters.

And just to get into rules again, Jeff did in fact say to sue it's like sue you have to get most of it down it's like oh jeff really so did you weigh these things beforehand if i just eat 51 of this thing by weight am i good you know so you know if you want to you know there's there's a challenge hack that they would uh never allow you to do. Yeah. Okay. So how about Caroline? She gets to, first she gets to eat the gross beetle and then she gets the fish eye. She's like racking up the calories on the gross food. She's going for the Jeremy Collins special on this, where you just grab a little bit of the balut, you know, just for fun, you know, it's, I feel like you could do this, right? the balut you know just for fun you know it's a yeah i feel like you could do this right me personally yeah i i do okay look look i as as i i got added by one davy rickenbacker this evening

on watching this he was like it's like christian and i did this for free and it's true um he gives me more credit though like like we didn't eat the we ate all kinds of random things my strategy was very simple davey would hand me a thing and i would eat the thing you know and so uh where did you do this this was just on the beach davey as is is a well-known traveler adventurer of the beach and he would just find us critters uh to to just to cook and hand off to me to eat uh he thought i think he thought it was funny or just an experience. And I always said yes, I think. I think, Dave, you'll have to correct me if I ever said no. So, but, you know, no, I remember there are all kinds of things that,

I mean, hermit crabs with a shell on. It's just like I remember biting into those things and the camera guy like visibly winced at the sound that it was making. And it was – yeah, I don't know what happened to my digestive tract after that. But I'll leave that story there and save it for the patrons. Yeah. OK. The Survivor breakfast and the pastry all looked very good.

They do good stuff. I mean, look, I understand people are picky about things like pizza and stuff like on survival. I mean, look, it's just calories. It's just calories. Out there, everything looks, at least, okay, to me, everything looks amazing. Some stuff was, I think, ages better on Fiji than others.

Like, oh, a pancake, right? Grab a pancake, take a bite out. That looked good. Yeah, it looked good. Nice, thick pancake yeah yeah now i jeff taking a bite of the peanut butter after you know everyone else has already dug into that peanut but i hope that was swapped out um he just like did like a a pinky okay fair enough fair enough that was he was a little bit like, he's like a guy in the evidence room,

like, oh, is this cocaine? Like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, sure, sure. Look, not a lot of things grossed me out. That's one of those things that kind of like, it just hit me. On that note, we've talked about this before. I want to say, was it Survivor 45,

which had that like kind of gross turkey chicken like reward or something like that? before i want to say i wasn't survivor 45 which had that like kind of gross turkey chicken like reward or something like that bruce kendra and i think mama j they got they got a chicken with no utensils in in the art of filmmaking there's something called foley as you know rob where people make sounds off camera, like in the studio. Yeah, they totally add this stuff in. And I'm like, please don't. Like Rachel is biting a burger.

You do not hear the burger being bit into that. And just they purposely pick the squishy sounding thing. I'm like, look, I get it. I get it. Your job is to enhance the experience for the audience. I think Sierra did comment on Saul's chips being crunchy. That tracks. Chips are notoriously loud. Burgers are not known for their volume, Rob. Everyone knows this. Yeah. OK, let me take this question from Chaz. Did Sierra not picking Andy for chocolate and peanut butter seal her fate? Tara not picking Andy for chocolate and peanut butter seal her fate.

You know, I was watching and I wondered that. But you got to think that they would have cut to a reaction shot of Andy. But they kind of yada yada straight through her choice. All right. So let me ask you something next level. All right. I want to talk about Andy. And we saw in the opening of the episode, Andy was depicted as, oh, hapless Andy can't even find any money for the auction. He's walking right past it. That was Andy potentially not looking for any auction money.

I wouldn't put it like this. An intentional Bruce. I wouldn't. I don't think that Andy did that. Not that he couldn't think of that strategy. I really think that he just when he panics, he doesn't step back and think that's the way he described it. And I'll tell you, I as a as a man around the house who will lose things constantly and in a panic, in a rush, I'll be like, oh, my God, where's my keys? And Emily would be like, is that they're they're they're in your office, on your desk. I see somehow it's like a GPS on them. But like I but I'm happy to entertain the the potential for it and what that means. And here is why I would say that, because that maybe Andy goes out there, he starts looking for money for the auction, doesn't instantly find any,

sees other people are doing well and sort of realizes, hey, I'm better off to have $0 at the auction than to have a hundred twenty dollars at the auction so okay i want to dig in with this you with you rob now we now have seen the episode and and jeff now calls it a new era survivor auction which in the history of the show we now know the rules of the new era auction are always the same the one time they did it uh that that is that if you are left with the most money you lose your vote are we supposed to like assume i mean i wouldn't i mean andy i would bet would know this fact and might assume that fact it does i do wonder if we are supposed to

assume that fact imagine if we're players out there rob right like like are we supposed to assume that because jeff did it once it is therefore tradition and will be done again um yeah i think so i think that everybody is a super fan and it's a similar setup of go out and find the money for the auction so i think they're all operating under the same idea that it's going to be the same rules as the survivor 45 auction so i i could i could see it entering into his mind it's it definitely if you get to a point where like ah like i i bet legitimately for a while he was trying and i i think all the way through uh uh i mean do you need i mean people want to eat you know it's like like and and they know there's uneven quantities

of money um and i mean andy also i just look at like his personality traits when he's playing these challenges it's not like he's through i don't have to see evidence of him throwing a challenge strategically i think he wants the validation of showing how well he can do it's probably frustrating for him that he can't in that moment he didn't at least so this weekend I went to UNC and we had a really nice event that CBS put on. And so I was, uh, moderating, uh,

or, uh, hosting the, uh, panel and Christian, the thing that we got to do when we screened this episode was that the, uh, people who set up the event for CBS, they hid some, they hid advantages around the room,

under people's chairs. And then eight students found the advantages and got to come up and participate in our own survivor auction well that's fun how did that so what were the items what did what happened what went down they came up this was the rules of the auction that i participated in at unc and i think that they'll probably share some of these clips on the survivor instagram account i felt felt a little bad. Um, I, I got the students up there and so they all had their advantage and then there were envelopes and inside the envelopes was the play money that they were going to bid on for the auction. So we started like handing out the envelopes and I had said that, all right, students in one of these envelopes is going to be your entire tuition to UNC paid for. The room blew up.

I'm joking. I'm joking. Is this Scott's tots in real life that we saw? Is that the reference? I don't. What is Scott's tots oh it's an info it's an infamous episode of the office where as where he went oh yes yeah where he went to like a school room full of school children decades ago saying i'm paying for all if you if you graduate from high school i will pay for all

your tuition and years later uh they had started up a foundation called scott's tots that apparently he was supposed to fund and he forgot all about it. Yeah, and loud groans for that. So they bid, and the other survivors came in and brought in an item, and sometimes it was a covered item, and there were some and there were uh like a couple of food items but the coup de grace christian was that we had the actual gavel and block from the auction jeff's gavel and a block from fiji came to unc and I used it I hosted the auction with Jeff's gavel that's crazy I mean that's honestly that's really cool I mean more I mean think about the logistics of that I mean how much stuff comes back and forth to Fiji and then gets all the way out from wherever it's stored in l.a and that was

the the final item at the auction was that we auctioned off the uh actual gavel and uh auction block someone got to take that home like that's theirs yeah we gave it away on saturday that's really cool like that's genuinely cool i thought you'd be like you know it's a survivor sticker you know like that like i don't know not that that's that's my standard for just free giveaways. It's just a random thing. But that's great. That's really cool. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know if you could see, you know, here's here's my son, Anthony, with the actual gavel. We weren't supposed to share any pictures before tonight but uh it was yeah a really cool part of the event it probably just has small microbes of that grub feces on it rob so like you just it's a yeah so there it's it's a it's it's a sign that relic was impressive

was like uh i don't know if jeff does it or in like production but somebody like really banged the hell out of it like there was like a you know like big like you could marks in the thing where it just has just been hammered the hell out of it uh i just assume that's just just bang it that hard in the episode so i don't know if they're just like testing it or what that's just john kierhofer taking blown off some steam in between uh takes maybe maybe um so a couple other things from the episode um we got our double immunity challenge of uh for uh hold on actually we did this challenge back to back we did this in season 46 also uh this was you know charlie talking about the grip strength sue and kyle win individual immunity yeah i mean i and i i like love the way that kyle put his position this is great this is great but i hate it more like it like you know

it's a you know it would be the death of me tomorrow i mean it's it's a very there we've said in many ways how you know doing well can make you a threat and therefore you can be knocked out. It was a very cute and endearing way that he said it. And Sue got her inspirational story about – She's doing it for her generation. For the entire generation. Not since Banu did it for the billions in India that I's one one person has represented so many on survivor but they're great for sue great for sue yeah it was a nice moment for sue uh for sure we haven't

talked about rachel's idol clue uh and rachel's idol clue this was a tricky one the idol is hidden inside the tarp christian what is your best guess of how does production pull this off? Does production give the Survivor contestants a tarp that has an idol in it to start? I think no would be my guess.

Definitely we can just from watching the show know that production is up to all kinds of shenanigans when the survivors are off the beach. Think about all the money that they had to hide, which, you know, for the auction. And Caroline had to come back and and very naturally say, hey, everybody, why don't we go over here and and introduce everyone to go find the money? So I think that – and also specifically I think in terms of timing, this is part of the hide and re-hide and advantage sort of thing. This was the re-hide presumably of when the – I forget what was played. The safety without power was played, the Safety Without Power was played

at the previous Tribal, would be my guess. Mm-hmm, okay. So do they sew an idol into the tarp while everybody's at the auction? I guess, yeah. It would have to be, I'm thinking the timing would have to be the auction. I was wondering if it was going to be Tribal,

but no, I think it was at the auction. I mean, how long does that take? I mean, you and I said, if we have the right tools, we go out and we sort of like, you know, we, we, we snip some of the thread, other thing, take it out, shove it in there. And then what person does the loop after loop? I mean, I, I mean, 10 minutes, I imagine would be enough time. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I, I'm sure someday there'll be a wonderful backstory of all of of of the shenanigans that producers go through to hide things that are on the beach. Yeah, that'll be a good episode of On Fire. For Rachel, I thought that this was a very gutsy and daring of like, oh, I'm just going to get the machete and slice open the tarp.

I mean, you ruined the tarp? Like, this could be a lot of questions. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things. What the hell, Rachel? Why did you do that? It's one of those things you just hope people never think to ask you what you're doing. And then by the time you're by the time you've found it, you're in the wind and no one really remembers what it was. I mean, people do all kinds of weird things all the time around the beach,

and it's easy to not pay attention to any particular thing. But it does take guts to do that. I mean, I will point out that, you know, in the history, so to speak. And so in the history of this show, I mean, there have been many stunts for what people had to do to find idols and advantages. And every time people have found it, and I think only to my knowledge on U.S. Survivor. And additionally, it's very rare for them to even get caught secondarily. I mean, this season, Sue getting caught red-handed was one of the rare times it kind of kind of beeline back to her. Eventually, people generally are creative enough to find a way to make it work. OK. Andy also has the moment that she's all that Christian.

Have you ever he's all that it. I wouldn't dare. I would would not not dare you will not take off your glasses i i mean i i would but um i i don't know i just i will not let your hair down no no the the the christian version of this is is the um he's professor and if a student is looking at me and i want to uh subtly intimidate them i'll just look down over my glasses and know that i mean serious business that's the most that's not that's not the same effect that you're going for no i mean even on survivor um i remember i got a note from production about halfway through it's like yeah christian you know your your hair has gone from you know kind of like island you know island slick

to island rat's nest if you could do something about that, that would be great for television. Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you. So I don't think I had the same – I didn't think they cared like that. I had at least one producer looking out for me because at some point I was just like, I had no idea what I looked at. You don't know what you look like out there, as you know, to the point where they scuff up the machete so you can't see in your reflection.

You know, they scuff – or the – if you get a reward with knives in it. I remember Davey was trying to use the knife handle to get some kind of reflection. The only time I ever saw my reflection clearly was I was lying on the beach and a camera guy came up right in my face to get a shot of God knows what. I saw myself clear as day in the reflection of the lens. I was like, oh, my God. I had never seen myself with a beard before. It was crazy. So anyway, Andy, the reason I should be talking about, a couple things to note about the she's all that moment.

One, it's a bold analogy. Good for him. He is a man of confidence andy uh and how they cut to sierra as if she was fawning over andy post transformation yeah i'm not sure if sierra was properly represented by that cutaway what you want to ask her tomorrow rob if she actually saw the moment uh and and reacted like that. Yeah, just a very fun moment. And really kudos to the editors for putting that together, because that was a real like that was a huge pop at UNC when that moment happened. Everybody went nuts.

They're doing more of that. I mean, like there was a scant two seasons ago when they were playing when they when they played the playing with the boys by Kenny Loggins, you know, the film references, they enjoy their film references very clearly. be together with our Rob is a podcast community when I'm going to be in Houston, Texas for RHAP live. Sounds great. Sounds great. Yeah. There's still tickets available or you're all sold out now. No, tickets are still available right now.

If you want to be there with us, you can go to robisawebsite.com slash Houston. We'll have a patron-only meetup on the Tuesday night before, and then a patron-only after party following our live panel in Houston, Texas, December 4th. So looking forward to that. We got a lot of questions from our listeners. OK, all right. Let's go. All right. Kevin wants to know. All right. What do we think of Caroline attacking the fish eyes head on? She's a woman of confidence. I got to say. I don't have – I can eat some gross foods.

I would have to steal myself to bite the fish eye. So, I mean – so bold and also reflective about how she's playing the game too. I feel like I haven't given a lot of these players enough flowers. I got to say, there's a lot of interesting players who i could see on some kind of ascendancy to become a winner a lot of them um i feel like even the starting tribes have like you like like have like a have a cerebral strategic woman who has a very who i think has a very clear view of how they want to play the game between you know caroline and uh genevieve and and rachel i think that the like a lot of times so sometimes seasons you see uh patterns across the three tribes sometimes it's

like oh here here's the nerd fan of the game guy like like guy with glasses right that they'll sometimes that'll be paired across the different tribes i think that that's one of the patterns here and i think all three actually could i could see them on a trajectory where they take control of the game at a critical moment and win. Yeah. Caroline has really impressed me over these last couple episodes. And I thought that she really had the right attitude in terms of like biting into the fisheye, biting into like that sort of like a winning attitude to me of just sort of like, OK, I'm going to try. I'm here. I'm in Fiji. I'm going to try it. I wouldn't want to do it. Well, I think that there are two.

The show has two ethoses. I don't want to ask Steve what the plural of that is, but that I think have been consistent across all of these seasons. I mean, some things have shifted. One of which is exactly what we're talking about, which is go outside your comfort zone. That Survivor is about getting outside your comfort zone and trying new things. And the other is never give up. Never give up.

I was going to say work hard, but never give up. Try new things. Yes. The third ethai or ethesis would be, I think, would be what you're talking about. The work hard. There's shades of the same thing. Like things, other things have changed over the years. There was a time where I am still upset on your behalf, Rob, that Jeff yelled at you for making a reference to the show on the show.

Or like a different time though different time exactly but now things are different right things have changed like there's a lot of things about the show that change over the years that's fine that's totally cool uh i but like uh but these things have always been the same what from austin quitting and survivor seven you know that was like that that was treated as the worst thing that one could possibly do perhaps an unfairness to austin at the time but that's always been the ethos yeah okay paulo asks rob you always say that the tightest group always makes it farthest in the new era i think i've said actually across the history of the show um what group do you think that is this season uh i i have said christian that the largest tightest group uh will prevail

on survivor okay so i mean it could be two people that could be three people yeah so i mean if i'm looking for what the who the question if question one would be who is the tightest significant group on that we have seen so far not just the hints of what could be what has existed i would say that i think we have i think right now i would say i feel comfortable saying a couple of pairs of sam and sierra and car and Sue. Would you say that Caroline, Sue, and Gabe are a trio, though? That's trickier. I definitely, Caroline, Sue, I would say as a pair. Yeah, you know what?

They did set up the trio very early. The only thing with Gabe is I feel like he would be one to break that alliance at a strategic time, potentially. No, no, that's not true. No, it's not true. Right. Gabe was the guy talking about how he's going to avenge Russell Hance's game. And because Russell Hance actually was really about Kylo Ren of Russell Hance.

Can you imagine like the like warped fedora that he took out of the fire? He's like, I will avenge you. I will finish what you started. I will finish what you started i will finish what you started that's it yeah you know so i so i think so honestly yeah i would clue in all three and i think that and that by my reasoning in his mind that's his final three i mean i agree i mean is that a smart final three it's hard to tell from from our position. But but I mean, Caroline, from what we see, has a lot of agency in these decisions. And people who talk with her, I think, see that like you're telling me that if Genevieve ends on the jury, ends up on the jury and Caroline's and Caroline's in the finale.

I think that Genevieve understands what caroline was up to okay let's take a question about um how about uh this question about andy uh while everybody is playing andy going for gata isn't that just making it easier for sue gabe and caroline to tika three their way to the end? This seems like short-term thinking that's from LL Cool Dubs. Do you think that Andy is laying the groundwork for Sue, Gabe, and Caroline to get to the end? Well, that's a great question, LL Cool Dubs. And I think that when it comes to – I think that Andy flipping was such a gift to the to to the Tukus.

I mean, the Tukus could have very well been in the firing line. I mean, granted, it wasn't Andy who necessarily may get the ball rolling on this from what we could tell, temporally speaking. But I mean, it is such a focus and distraction from what actually went down at that at that tribal council that you're gonna have andy coming back and we see sam apparently trying to like bore a hole through andy's like eyes with with his stare like confronting him next episode like that's gonna be such a focus on andy andy andy and anything that's a distraction from your core group potentially running the game is great. You know, the other thing that the Tuku three has going on is that they also have Kyle. They also have a four. Yes.

Until until the Social Security Administration takes over and takes in Kyle. But for the moment, I agree. I agree. But you see Kyle flipping against Tuku. Well, I mean, here's the thing. There was that whole blood feud early on between Sue and Kyle way back pre-merge. I don't know if it was patched over. I think that was like episode three.

It was. It was. It was episode three because it was right after TK went home. I totally agree. I'm mostly just looking at this now from sort of a filmmaking standpoint that there are, again, two markers. There are two markers I've noticed. One is the Saul secret agents. I think that

it makes me feel like there's a story there that it was mentioned with a name and it wasn't just this funny line from Saul. And we immediately are treated to Saul having a nice moment with Kyle right after. I feel like that alliance, that little dream alliance,

there might be some story there, whether it works out or not some story was there some symbolism that upon forging this relationship with kyle then that saul then cements the relationship by drinking a coconut which is rancid and that's very well could be foreshadowing very well could be foreshadowed how it goes but the question of it was like uh indiana jones in the last crusade he drank he chose poorly he chose poorly yeah yeah and i think that so so but what it portends at a minimum is that they're going to try to pursue this something between the two of them i mean or it could just be saying as as as convenient way to be saying from a filmmaking perspective that oh isn't saul what a good guy because you have good seemingly good guy kyle saying nice thing about the other thing that i wonder has not paid off enough yet is um andavieve the andy and jenna

vive andavieve yes from from from from last episode that could have just been expressing Andy's willingness to flip. But the way Genevieve talked about it, she saw it as some kind of back pocket alliance for the future. So when I'm looking at alliances that could be to come, ones that have stories to pay attention to, those are the two. Yeah, I think it's going to be interesting. And I think that we still have to deal with Sam. And so he seems it sam and tuku versus the andy andy and what's left of luvu it is again hard to say i mean right now uh after after that vote it makes sense you have targets out of sam and rachel but i think that there's enough people with other plans that people could use the obvious target as a distraction for some kind of move there's at least enough factions going on in sub factions i think that could totally happen i wouldn't make a strong

prediction as to whether he survives or not yeah as a consequence of it yeah go on i'm sorry all right well let's bring uh rachel back into i want to talk more about Rachel. It's perfect. Paolo wants to know, where does Rachel go from here? Every episode she's constantly having to fight for her life. That's that is I loved a lot of what Rachel has done over these last several episodes, including this one. I worry that she's closing in on that threat spiral. I mean, like when I mean, and some of it's completely unfair. Yeah. What do you mean a threat spiral where she's,

everybody's just completely focused on her as a threat? Yeah. And so, so, you know, I'm sure we remember every second of every conversation we've had, but when we talked the last in early, we talked in early 2019 about Rick Devins, you know, the idea is that once you start surviving near, near death experiences, people look at you like, wow, what a threat you have survived this thing.

And it only increased your threat, like a death spiral of an airplane that as you try to pull out of it, you actually make it worse. And so and until eventually you crash. And so it's very hard to pull out of. And so because to no damn fault of her own, the last episode, she was swapped onto a tribe where she had to be saved via this twist, which none of that was her doing. Now people view her like, oh, wow, she survived that her side was losing on that vote at tribal council. That was impressive. That was impressive. And she has a marker. She played it, the shot in the dark, at tribal. I'm sure people noticed that fact.

So that's only going to increase to a lot of people like, wow. No, she is savvy. So if she keeps getting targeted, the best hope for someone like Rachel is that other people can become targets, too. Yeah. So and that's a challenge. That's a challenge. So here's the issue for Rachel, in my mind, is that we think that the best thing she has going is the SSA, where she's potentially going to be working with Saul. The problem is that Andy has flipped away from Gata to potentially work with Lavo. And so Andy and Rachel, not on the same page, have sort of like inadvertently flipped to the same new alliance? Like, is that going to be workable? Yeah, there's the same alliance might be tricky.

But if the head of the SSA is, of course, Saul, then if he brokers it, I think there's a chance there. Now, of course, there was. I didn't know he's going to be here. I didn't know she's going to be here. I mean, and there was at last episode, there was that opening conversation between Saul and Andy where Andy was where Andy said to Saul, you better vote and do exactly what I expect you to do the next several votes. Sort of like a sort of like a threat because Saul voted for Andy after that at the Rome Tribal Council. But whatever that happened, I think that that hatchet got buried because Andy had other ambitions. I think that one thing that if I were working with Andy or on the beach with him at this point, I think it made it clear. He wants to be seen as a mover and shaker.

We've seen him say, I am a strategist. And like, and, and I think that in this, like in his conception of how the game is played, that means him making Tony esque flips at the right time. And so if,

if, if presented with those opportunities, he might go for it. at the right time. And so if presented with those opportunities, he might go for it. Mm-hmm. Is Andy in danger from Sam's vendetta next week? I would be shocked if somehow Sam managed

to marshal the votes on Andy. It's hard for me to see the case from what we see of people saying, yes, Sam, it's time to work with you to exact your vengeance on Andy. When there's got to be some people who are looking at Andy as a person to take really deep. And that could be maybe not a good idea. Just ask Sierra how that went. Ask Sierra how that went.

But I think that it's someone in Andy's current position, enough people might see that him as an opportunity. But I think that there's a secondary opportunity that if everyone is seeing Andy as someone that they feel that they can beat, what would Seri do in this place? WWCD. Yeah, take out Andy. Take out Andy. Take out Andy. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry.

Sorry. We have an astute audience who I would assume knows what it means, but thank you for punctuating that for me. You got it. Okay. Christian, anything else from tonight's survivor 47? I mean,

nothing specifically really jumps out. I, but I will say like, again, I think that this is setting up, hopefully, some interesting story. This was a good payoff to all the stuff that happened to Andy in the first half of the season.

It sets him off on a new trajectory moving forward. We also planted the seeds of all these other alliances that could come to fruition. I think this could be a lot of fun where we don't really know how everything's gonna gonna gonna shake out in the next few weeks like in a good way that i don't i don't think we're gonna re-before the situation anytime soon yeah

okay yeah we'll see if uh tuku is going to crack or uh if they are potentially uh going to be able to uh like this uh you know season 47 i do think has some season 45 vibes especially with the auction being back so we'll see if uh they end up if there ends up being a dominant alliance uh to discuss at the end of this thing all right christian we're gonna have a ton of coverage coming up for this episode of Survivor. You can catch it all in our We Know Survivor feed. That's all at WeKnowSurvivor.com, including my exit interview with Sierra, the Survivor Know-It-Alls, Survivor Global, Why Blank Lost, Purple Pants podcast, the B&B, you name it, it's all there. And my Survivor San Juan del Sur rewatch with Josh Wigler, where each week we go exactly 10 years into the past

to talk about that week's episode of San Juan del Sur. So we've lost Julie McGee. We have lost Jeremy at this point. Where are we now? No, not yet. No, so that this, 10 years ago tuesday julie mcgee quit the game and then this upcoming week 10 years ago uh this tuesday uh josh will get oh josh josh oh yeah spoiler alert oh man i'll never forget uh uh sam waldedell sir i was living by myself in a Motel 6 in Central Texas for a research visit. Relatable. Yes, as we all

do. And I think Survivor was by one tether to my extended family to talk about the episode thereafter. All right. Then we've got, talked about this, Christian, and you and I have talked about some time travel movies over the years. And Chappelle and I talked about a movie called Time Cut about a woman who goes back in time to 2003. I have seen promos from this. And I think where a woman suddenly sees things that are relics and says, whoa, what is this strange universe that i'm in yeah my phone doesn't have a screen this phone is a flip phone yes uh fun movie and it was the

number one movie on netflix uh and i said time cut is uh back to the future meets scream time cut oh oh oh i see i see the cut i now see the knife as the check okay that bad name it has a bad name time okay not a good name okay all right um i stand kagian starring uh dr christian yubicki and uh a score of others talking about the uh season of survivor that changed the franchise and its online fan base check that out you could watch that in its entirety for free at i stand kagian.com okay uh checked in with angela do you know who this person is oh yes i do even even as a non-big brother watcher it was impossible for me to miss the beginning of this freaking brother angela mur. Check her out. Also talk to America's

favorite player, Tucker, as well. I'll have our Survivor Q&A coming up on Thursday at 3 p.m. Eastern with our patrons, and we will be taking their calls before the Survivor Know-It-All is coming up on Friday.

OK, Christian, what else is coming up for you? Well, first, i have a question i i have seen enough of this this tucker person does he have something to do with puzzles is that a thing or am i confusing this with something else he competed in the ai arena um that are you familiar with the game mechanics of a big brother in general but the ai arena sounds a little bit too close to work for me but uh but go on yeah so that on big brother the hoh picks two people to sit on the block on thursday this season uh the hoh would pick three nominees and they would compete in something called the ai arena and

one of them would earn safety on thursday night and it ended up uh wreaking a lot of havoc okay got it got it okay cool thank you for clarifying it no and it starts me wreaking a lot of havoc. Oh, OK. Got it. Got it. OK, cool. Thank you for clarifying. And it turns me things that are going on. Look, you can you can you can find me on on on a website called Twitter. I'm, you know, I'm teaching this semester. Also, if for some reason you you want, you know, a professor to come to your school to talk about robotics and or

Survivor, you can find me on Christian Hubicki dot com if you're if you're interested in that sort of thing. I give talks. But other than that, you know, just just enjoying such a relaxing November like the rest of us. OK. All right. Well, Christian, what a delight this was.

This was a great time for me to go through all of this from this episode with you. I hope the listeners enjoyed it too. And then we have a very busy Thursday coming up. Hope everybody had a nice time going through this episode of Survivor. Hope everybody is doing okay out there wherever you are and looking forward to more fun together coming up starting tomorrow on thursday take care have a good one bye the test can you cover every show post game the weather's a clock I know only one man

can really know so we say don't go broke says to me no you are the best that we know just grab your mic and we go wild we're led by a simple creed

If Rob has a podcast, we have a hero Rob says to Nino, time to fly More things make big This is your time Big thanks to Eric Barger, who composed the beautiful ballad you just heard. Hear more of his music at itelectric over on Instagram.