RHAP: We Know Survivor - Know-It-Alls: Survivor 51 Ep 3 Recap

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

Know-It-Alls: Survivor 51 Ep 3 Recap Also available on YouTube! The Know-It-Alls are back as Rob Cesternino and Stephen Fishbach discuss Survivor 51 Episode 3. Never miss a minute of RHAP’s extensive Survivor coverage! LISTEN: Subscribe to the Survivor podcast feed WATCH:  Watch and subscribe to the podcast on YouTube SUPPORT:  Become a RHAP Patron for bonus content, access to Facebook and Discord groups plus more great perks!

The smartest guys around We're about to break it down Like they won The game a million time At all Survivor no it all It's off to a hot start Baby!

We are three for three. I am loving this new season, Stephen Fishback. This has got to be the best beginning to Survivor. I mean, I don't even know since when. That we've had three bangers. Well, I hear we. you're saying on that I don't know since when I will say that season 50 did get off to a hot start also but I do feel like I am so since last season yes but but you know how could it not have gotten off to a great start with being that it was season 50 but for a new season season 50 but for a new player season this is the best start that I can remember in some time I'm so encouraged by where we've started in season 51 and I have to say the formatting of the open era is super fun yes you know the first of all obviously

the 10-person tribe, or I guess 11-person tribe. Is this the biggest tribe in Survivor history? Has there ever been 11-or-more? In U.S. Survivor history, in the premurge, I don't know if we've ever had an 11-person tribe. It's a good catch by you. Yeah. And so biggest pre-merged tribe, obviously there have been

than Merge tribes that are bigger. But then just even like the fun of like the mutiny. Like what a fun little thing to bring up. Yeah, fun wrinkle. And we had so much in this episode. We had a medical evacuation. I don't think, I don't even want to jokingly call it a medical. Yeah, yeah.

I'm past. Yeah, we'll talk about that. You know what, but that comes later, okay, that nonsense from the beginning of the episode. But we had so much to unpack and really so much intrigue here as we had our third tribal council. Let me just also say, coming up one week from tonight, though, I will be in Washington, D.C. for our live show. And we'll have a great turnout.

a lot of celebrity guests that are there. Oh, hobnobbing with the Glitterati. And you can be there too. Go to Robbinswebson.com slash events for that one week from tonight live. And then I will be in Charlotte, North Carolina on December 9th. Tickets for the patrons have just gone on sale. Go to robespelsugsyb website.com slash patron for the early access tickets and the patron discount code. Is that a fallout suit that you're wearing there?

I believe it's my head on a race car driver's body. It looks kind of like you could be like a fallout vault. Maybe, it could be. It has that fall, fall colors. But Stephen, not fall colors like you're wearing. Well, you know, it's chill here. It's crisp in Washington, D.C. Yes, okay.

Well, let's get into it. It was not crisp on Survivor. It was hot. It was hot. Spicy. Spicy. Yeah. As we had a big vote tonight where ultimately, we lost Pantsless Pat, exit interview,

coming double-exit interview coming up on Thursday on the podcast. So I'm very sad to lose Pat here. I did a podcast with Taryn. We did the Stockwatch. We pulled the audience. They ranked Pat as their number one most favorite contestant on the show. Wow. You botched it, audience.

You botched it. They didn't botch it. The show did. Well, honestly, this was a real Sophie's choice, real Sophie Clark's choice with Pat and Kilby. I didn't want to lose either of them. Both very fun characters, I thought. both in like interesting spots on their tribes, both like, you know, actively playing.

So I was, I was bummed. You know, honestly, I liked the Mike versus Tanan dichotomy that I was hoping for. I was something that was like, well, I can lose one of them. Yeah. So interesting. We had an 11-person tribe and really comes down to three factions, three voting blocks.

We've got the devs five, which does not really have a name. I'll borrow Killbys, which was Dev's cult, that five. Then we had sort of the misfit four where Kilby, Tannan, Maggie, and Jenna, which it was interesting. I never really saw them as a block together, but they sort of like came together out of necessity, almost like in the Big Brother House where you have some sort of like alliance is like, okay, well, where are the people in power and the people on the bottom? Like, well, I guess we're in an alliance now. But then you had the two newcomers, the two people that had not voted with this tribe before in Lewis.

and new member of the tribe, Carter, who formed a dynamic duo and then swung this thing. Yeah, and it's such an interesting choice. And I really was on the fence about, like, what I would do here, you know, day six or day seven or whatever it is. You've got these two new guys. If you're who, if you're Carter and Lewis.

Okay. Well, like, first question for you, Stephen, how big are your balls? I can't believe they didn't go with that as the episode title. You know, that was it like, like we need big swinging balls or something? We're going to need balls as big as church bells. And Lewis said, well, I do have big balls, bro. Yeah.

I mean, it was, it was interesting because like you see these five. They are definitely together. To your point, like the other four are not really together. They seem more like an alliance of convenience. In fact, they think that they have Brady. Like, they don't even necessarily know where the fault lines are, this other four. And then you have between them, Lewis and Carter, who either get to, like, sort of reaffirm this power group and then kind of like latch on to it or disrupt the power group with the hope that that leads to like a scattering to the winds. Where are you on this choice, Rob?

So let's talk about it from the perspective of Lewis and Carter because they ultimately are the deciders. And so you have this group of five, which we saw formed in the last episode, but it's, seems like that we saw multiple people in the episode talk about how they are a known five. That this five did not do a very good job of hiding their ranks. And Lewis commented on it. Kilby commented on it. So the five seems like that they're very close. They're hanging out all the time.

So Maggie, who initially said she didn't even want to vote for one of these people, she gets thrown together with Kilby, with Tanan, and with Jenna, who was left out or was, is not part of Dev's group in the first vote. But here is Lewis, who we see in the beginning of the episode that the five, seemed like they were trying to court Lewis to some degree. But Lewis feels like he has an option here. And I do like Lewis and Carter going with the four, because as they kind of were talking about this of like, hey,

it's better for us to be with a misfit four than to be with a tight five. We'll be at the bottom of a tight five. will be six and seven, six seven, and better to be with the rag tag four. Like that's not an alliance, Maggie, Kilby, Tanan, and Jenna. So let me like, I think I agree with you, but let me make the counter argument, right? Which is sort of the Christian argument of you don't want divisive votes. Because it's a type five, they are going to see this betrayal as a betrayal of the five of them. But if you just kind of like go along with them and vote out, Kilby,

It's not like Jenna or Tanan, you know, necessarily or Maggie has some tight thing with Kilby, right? Like they don't feel like, oh, you screwed me, you got my ally out. They don't feel as betrayed by that choice necessarily. So by sticking with the five, you are, you know, kind of creating more tribe cohesion, giving yourself more of like a firm place, which is what you really need, especially with the chaos of this game. You know, if you're Carter, you just pissed off everybody on the other group. why start pissing off people on this group?

And Lewis doesn't have a home. So I think I'm not actually sure where I come down because I think that there is something to be said for just like affirming some kind of structure that you are a part of before the vagaries of the game kind of take hold. So I'm not so sure Carter pissed off everybody on the other group.

It's possible. We don't really have a good read. But they already wanted him gone. They wanted him out because it really that maybe they would have wanted Rob out, but he was the easy vote on the other tribe. But here he is. And he kind of like,

makes a new thing. You know, nobody was going to be that loyal to Carter or Lewis in that five because they voted with them to take out Kilby. And now, to the victor goes to spoils, and we know we're going to have a tribe swap ultimately next week. But they really curry some favor with the Kilby, Tanan, Jenna, Maggie. And so they're still picking up four allies here. And I don't think that you're going to see Dev and Jelly and Mike and Brady.

so mad at Lewis and Carter after this. They're going to be still mad at Kilby. But Brady might be mad, right? First of all, I think Brady's playing a spectacular game. Everybody thinks that they're Brady's Brody. Kilby thinks that Brady's his number one Brody. You know, Kilby says we've got the Brady Brody. Then you certainly see him with Carter kind of trying to like immediately forge that bond

and encouraging him to stay. So the fact that he's able, like in spite of the fact that we see this five, this group of five just like hanging out by themselves, create these kind of side bonds that people feel are really genuine. I think that's incredible. But isn't he going to be mad that you've just gone against him and saved Kilby instead of going with him? I guess Brady is going to be upset.

But ultimately what's Brady going to do? And we saw him leaving the charge against Jenna, but he's going to go on an all-out crusade against Carter or Lewis now. Well, I just thought you would affirm the idea, like the Christian idea of like you want cohesion. So I like that if you're where Christian was. I like it if you're at the top of the tribe where if we're running things. Yeah, but seriously, like if you're dev, like, sure, I would love a clean vote.

Like I want everybody to be feeling good. If I'm a person like a Joe Hunter in Survivor 48 who'll be my guest on Thursday, yeah, I want a clean vote. I want, you know, everybody, I want it to be, you know, 10 to 1 at tribal council. but if I'm at them in the middle and have some wiggle room to be able to swing or especially have them at the bottom,

I don't mind if it's a split vote. Yeah, I just wonder if like for those two specifically, Carter and Lewis, if like it just makes, I mean, if this was it, if this was the final 10, I think this is like a good call, right? Although, you know, we've certainly seen

that like, you know, rebound badly back on people. And I think Carter makes that point that, you know, we're going to be, it's like the fox in the henhouse. We're going to be targets number one. When we go from being the sort of like people, nobody is looking at.

You know, Carter who just rejoined this tribe or just joining this tribe, every reason to think he would be an easy vote. Somehow he's immediately, you know, courted by both factions. And then he goes from that to like taking a real stand here. Because again, like I don't, I don't like, like you said at the very start, I don't necessarily think it's like two sides that they're choosing between.

I think it's like one side and like a bunch of like others. Yeah. So I do wonder if it makes, it just makes more sense to, um, I mean, look, again, like, if this was the final 10, I think, like, you want to, like, disrupt as much as you can to put yourself in a more, in an optimal position. But I don't know if, like, this early in the game, you want to be a disruptor.

Well, we don't really know how to play in the open era. I think that we should be expecting a lot of, you know, variants in terms of what's coming, and we will have a tribe swap next week. So I guess, like, if we know that there is going to be a tribe swap, and I'm not sure if they're expecting one to be coming that I had thought maybe at 18 and we're actually going to be at 17 because of Rob's leaving of the game

that going into a tribe swap, do you like this? Well, no, I think that's when you like at least, right? It's like you don't want to like positively piss off five people. Four. Well, four people, right? When you're going into a tribe swap who might feel like, hey, you promised me one thing.

I thought, we brought you into the fold and now you like betrayed me. And in a way that we just didn't see necessarily from the other four, like you're saying like they made these bonds regard. Like maybe now they have like real allies. I'm really on the fence. I don't have like a strong because I see the merits both ways. So the stuff that Lewis and Carter can't know is the stuff that gives me pause of why I think

that maybe this wasn't as great of a move. I understand why they did it and why they wanted to go with that rag tag group of as opposed to a locked-in group of five, is that we know in this episode that Dev got a advantage, got a second vote. We also know about the Helicopter Alliance. And so from a cross-tribal perspective, that there are a lot of secret allies

that both Dev and Jelly have in Sharonda and Ori. And so we also know that Jelly has an idol. And so there's a lot of firepower that Helicopter Alliance has and you're going to probably end up on a tribe with at least one to two people on that alliance just based off of sheer probability. And now if you have Dev who's armed with an extra vote, potentially he has an axe to grind against you. And we have seen that Dev does not get over things super quickly if you piss him off.

Yeah. I mean, that's the fear, right? It's like you've got, again, it's just a very fact of pissing someone off. I mean, do you think that if they had voted out Kilby, like, is Maggie going to be mad about that? No. Is Jenna going to be mad? Like, I think like at this point in the game. I think Tanan would be upset and maybe that's it. Yeah. And I think that is your goal here is to piss off as few people as possible. You know, the five is not going to be intact until the end game. And, you know, I don't think that's a real worry. You're not thinking like 20 days from now. This is going to be the final five. Yeah. Yeah. This isn't like really old. school survivor where it's just going to be this group is going to, you wake up and that's the final five. So, yeah, I do hear that. Lewis, just as a player in his preseason interviews, he talked a lot about how he loves chaos, his favorite player is Venus. He just wanted to come in and be as chaotic

as possible. Mission accomplished. Mission accomplished. That was great. Listen, for television and for making a fun game and for doing the fun thing, I think that was unequivocally the right thing, you know. And they both, they both kind of said that. Like, I want a game. I want a game. that's like open and and fun and like moves a lot. So like if you thrive in that environment, then yeah, like actually it is a good move for you. And also like, I mean, the other aspect too is like you really don't know they're going to swap your you lose your leverage, right? As soon as they affirm the five, they don't have that leverage anymore. Right. If they vote someone out and then it's a tribe of 10, they don't have like swing vote leverage. Suddenly they are either

with the five or they're against them. So I mean, to that degree, there's also a lot to be said for I think I'm mostly pro this move. I think I'm mostly pro it. Yeah. I don't think that it's a slam dunk one way or another. I like it. I think that it was the right call. I think that in the new era, in the open era,

I apologize. In the open era, I think that the, what the show in production is hoping for, that everybody asks themselves, what would Rick Devons do? You know, I really, I think that this is actually,

like, this is my theory, but I think that there's also, So, like, I asked Jeff about this when we talked before season 51 started airing. And I said that it feels like to me that the spirit of the open era is to try to, you love so much about Rick Devons and the joy he brought to season 50 and he flipped the coin. And he tried to do all these things just because he could. And that's really, I think, what they're looking for from the players. Yeah, I think that's right.

I mean, to do the big fun thing. And, you know, but all, you know, it's often not the most, I don't want to, I'm not saying this about Rick, but like, you know, with other people, it's often not the most strategically intelligent thing to do the big fun thing. Listen, not the right week to be questioning the strategic judgment of Rick Devons. I said not about Rick. Listen, Rick, Rick, Rick, Rick Devons rules in the words of Eric Barger. But I kind of feel like, you know, we don't get the money. We should all be rooting for them to do the most fun thing. Yeah, yeah. Look, yes, but like our job as the know-it-all is to discuss the strategic, you know, implement. But I think what we're saying is that it's a close call, like that it's not necessarily over what, like don't do is the stupid thing. But if there are two paths and one is not so much more optimized than the other, choose the one that's going to be the most fun.

Choose the fun one. That's, you know, I actually, and honestly, like, if you're enjoying playing the game, you'll probably, I think overall you'll do. better? Like, you don't want to just, like, be miserable and sit and, like, grind it out and, like, although, you know, that's a very successful strategy to be miserable and sit and grind out strategy. Let me go back to something that you talked about after you came back from Cambodia. And you talk about how Kelly Wentworth played the idol and then, like, they bought her, like, a lot of clout within the players that are in the game. That being the swing vote, being the two of the people that end up turning this flip, I understand that there will be some folks that are upset. But to the other four, are they sort of like, hey, we will follow you into the depths of hell now?

But isn't like, I mean, classically speaking, I mean, not necessarily two people makes it a little more tricky, but like, classically, like, that swing vote is often like the next person voted out, right? Because like both sides come together. They're like, we don't trust this guy. Yeah, we don't trust this guy. Like, let's get them out. Everyone, it's an easy vote that everybody can agree on. Like, that it often happens to people. Yeah. I don't think that that will be the case in this scenario. I feel like that there is a lot of ill. Well, first off, we're going to have a tribe swap. But it feels like that there's that there's some ill will in this Dev versus Kilby battle. Yeah.

Such an interesting choice. I mean, them sitting out their number one puzzler while they ran like five beefy dudes was just very questionable that's not how Dev saw it. Right. But Kilby didn't have to, it wasn't like Kilby had to sit out this week or the next week. He could have easily played

both weeks. Especially looking back where that tell me if I'm understanding the rules correctly, if we do have a tribe swap, we do have three tribes. I'm assuming three tribes, I saw a Red Buff, which is not one of the current tribe colors that we have in this season. So if we have three tribes, it's not going to be like, well, Dev, you have to sit out of the challenge.

You can't, you know, that I guess. Yeah, no, no, no. I think it's only as like the tribe, tribes are maintained as. Yeah, as I'm talking it through. So we're going to have 17, not divisible by three. Are we going to have, like, run the challenge five, five, five, and then we will need two sit outs and can you not sit out back-to-back challenges if you sat out of like could killby not set out for his new tribe in the three tribe format i think i think it resets when there's a tribe shuffle or something so okay

so it was all for not yeah yeah really but also like it's just like crazy i mean like it just like why why be like we were gonna definitely need you next time i mean maybe they ran up like a weaker puzzler i i guess like kill you know i'm just taking on faith kilby's own you know sense of his own god yeah i mean he he certainly brusely breeze through the previous puzzles. However, he has been wrong about a lot of things. We certainly saw him wrong a lot. We saw him wrong about Brady.

Like, oh, Brady's my number one. Like, I've got Brady. Yeah. And we saw him wrong about confiding in Pat with this, you know, PlayStation analogy that basically destroyed his relationship with Brady. Yeah.

And for Kilby, it's been a mixed bag so far. And I'm rooting for the guy. I think he's a really fun character to have on the show. But they have, They have shown him being incorrect about numerous things so far in three episodes. Can I give Kilby his flowers, though? Yes. Because I want to suggest that Rob going home was maybe in no small part to Kilby getting the shelter supplies.

I mean, you look at those two shelters, it's night and day. And like that was because of what Kilby got in that like, there's like this one like beautiful mansion. And there's another hovel, dev calls. it like living, he calls it the ghetto. You know, he's like, I'm not going to sleep here. Like, I thought about muting until I saw your, like, horrible shelter. Rob hasn't slept, right? For days, how could he in that, in that shelter?

You know, his power. Yeah, yeah. Kilby, you know, it had, had, that was the kill shot. Yeah, exactly. Had Kristen gotten the shelter supplies, like, Rob might have stayed. Mm-hmm. Okay. I mean, the woven mats, they got woven.

They got woven mats like to sleep on? It's a real butterfly effect. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, like a woven mat effect. Let's talk a little bit about the mutiny and this decision that had to be made. Real breakout episode for Carter here, who was compared yet again to JT. We've seen many, many players over the years compared to JT.

But every like farm rancher guy, sort of like sweet talking rancher guy, are they all compared to JT? Yes. Okay. Do you see it? Do you see a comparison to JT? Yeah. I mean, you know, he seems like strong and, you know, he's got an accent. I don't know if strategically I would necessarily compare it. J.T. is not leaving his bag with all of the advantage on top. Right. I mean, J.T. would never make like a gigantic, strategic, blunder that is not something that we would

associate with J.T. I don't appreciate that. He wouldn't just like let one of his enemies have easy access to an advantage that he knew about. Hmm. But that would, you know, by choice,

he would choose to do it, you know? Not by neglect. Yes, yes. He too had a letter intercepted. Okay. Yeah. But we have Carter who's at the bottom. And I thought this was so interesting that we had two tribes and two very different tales of who is going to be the person to mutiny.

We saw one tribe, everybody wanted to mutiny. The other tribe. They didn't know it was a mutiny, right? They just wanted to go on the journey. Yeah, one tribe, nobody wanted to go. The other tribe, they were fighting over who gets to go. Stephen, my question for you is that do you think that any circumstances had to do with everybody wanting to leave the Purple Tribe, who we talked about bad shelter, had lost two challenges in a row. Rob had just quit the game.

Everybody is like, get me out here for the day. And then on the other tribe, nobody wanted to go. And then it's only dead volunteered. I think it probably is a lot of a big part of it. You know, I thought, I mean, they have to be considering, you know, we don't, maybe we're going to get stuck over there, right? Like that certainly happened in China, in Survivor China, where Aaron and James both got kidnapped, right, by, by John Who?

Anyway, one of them. And then, you know, so like, you have to be thinking, like, if we go over there, we don't know if we're coming back or not. So, you know, what is the upside? I mean, you think maybe you will get an advantage. Maybe you'll have an opportunity to like build bonds. Yeah. Are you, even if you're on the purple tribe, bravo, let's say you're Eric on the purple tribe. You have just come off a tribal council where you feel like you've got your people. Are you volunteering to go, you know, over to the yellow tribe knowing that you might not come back? I think I might. I think that that seems like the type of thing where it's not a journey. I'm not super

worried I'm going to lose my vote. You could miss out on some strategic maneuverings. And that was one of the things I thought about where in the tribe where the vote seemed like there were big factions, I wonder if people were afraid of missing out on the strategic part of the game. Whereas on the tribe where it was kind of a foregone conclusion that Carter is going to be the next person to go, everybody was like, hey, give me a chance to go meet the other tribe. Yeah, and I wonder, too, if part of that is also to stop Carter from being the one. You know, maybe that was some of the thing that there as well. Yeah.

As soon as Carter says he wants to go, everyone's like, I too, you know, want to go. What can you do in that spot? If you're somebody who is, you don't want to be seen as the person who, as Kilby would say, the dev of the tribe of saying to dictate what's going to happen. But you also, we see it all the time on Survivor. Okay, this is the one person we can't let have this thing happen to. And then that person is kind of pushing for it. and then they get what they want.

I think they did the best thing they could, which was make it a random, you know, draw, draw, the survivor gods. Yeah, they really did just get unlucky there. Like, you put everybody's thing in the bag, draw one out. The odds of it being the one person are, you know, what, one in eight, seven, whatever it is eight.

Yeah. And so we got both Dev and Carter who went to go swap tribes. They also had the opportunity to find an advantage at the other tribe. Dev ends up of, I thought it was a very, you mentioned it, where they asked Dev about him staying or he volunteers that he could stay. And he talks about their shelter. He's like, I'm not sleeping here. Yeah. Yeah.

That's not the Kilby shelter. No appreciation for Kilby winning those supplies. Yes, from Dev of all people. Yeah, he's like, but Dev was obviously not seriously ever thinking about. He's in too good of a position. He has this five personal alliance. He was never going to consider switching. He does go with.

Sharonda and reconnects with Ori as well and finds the advantage, which is an extra vote, which he keeps and now has. Carter's trip was far more interesting and eventful, okay? Yeah. So for Carter, he walks past the oars. He gets there. Nobody even knows he's there. I got to say, the oars is a lot harder than the water well.

Water well, you get to sneak away. You get to have a private conversation. The oars are right there down on the beach. There's no privacy there. But nobody knew he was there. He had complete privacy. They don't have a ring doorbell camera That's a show like who's coming up on the dock

But like isn't it just down on the beach I didn't see where it was on the beach Isn't it like just down there Like you can like it's a middle of a you know If they look down and Carter's like fiddling with their oars Like what's going on there? I guess so But I think that he would have some visibility

To see if anybody is coming And he could like make it seem like Oh I have to paddle here With your vote They don't know They don't know how he got there But he walks past it and then ultimately leaves his bag out.

And I thought this was like, I was screaming. What a great survivor moment for that he drops his bag. And then all these people are like, you don't think, should we? You don't think. Should we check it out? Yeah. And right on top. Right on top.

Well, what is he going to do? I mean, can he, like, he just got the letter. You just put it in the bottom. Put it in the bottom. Yeah. You put it in a shoe. Yes. Well, I thought maybe they were going to.

to find the idol. If anything, the letter might have saved him from them finding the idol that Rob gave them. You don't think the idol's in his pocket? Maybe not. Yeah, that's a very funny point. It's all the letter. Thank God they found the letter. It was a distraction. That's very funny. Imagine they found hidden immunity idol. Yeah, that would be a very different conversation. Yeah. And then, you know, Brady calls him out on it. I thought this was very funny. Are you sure you didn't get anything? and then he like fesses up to the mutiny part of it, but doesn't say the advantage part, which is totally reasonable, right?

And Brady says, yeah, that was reasonable of him. I hate it when survivors are like, and he lied to me about his advantage, and I can't forgive that. Like, it's the most forgivable sin. And I love that Brady, who's really, I really enjoy, it was like, yeah, I got that. That was totally cool.

Well, I thought it was so funny that they got the clue and it said, okay, that there's a hidden media idol, and it's hidden on the oar. and that here comes Brady with the back to the hatchet he's like this has not learned anything and he's just smashing the ore to smithereens

there was no like like the paddle like the thin part of the ore that's where he went first maybe like you like okay let me look at it let me untie the rope first they completely destroyed the oars it was so funny that he did that

and then it was a fun moment with him and Maggie also where Maggie really wanted her to get a shot at the advantage, and Brady was going through it. And then ultimately, he finds it. And then she asked him, like, what can I have it? Yeah. And he's like, yeah, all right.

It was kind of like a little bit of a temp standoff. But if you're Brady here, what do you do? I think that's the right choice, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's an extra vote. It's not ultimately, you know, a game changer. We wouldn't think.

And so, I mean, he buys some goodwill with Maggie, but Maggie's still most against his alliance. It doesn't buy Maggie's vote in this round. Yeah, I mean, but yeah. And also, like, it was such a weird moment where she's just like, you know, listen, I'm no expert on chopping. As I learned with the Lewis thing

and as I learned when I myself was on Survivor with the chopping. But she was not chopping very well. Like, whatever she was doing, that was not going to work for her. He was kind of essential to that whole process. Yeah. Well, ultimately, Maggie comes away

with the advantage. A good moment for Maggie. I think that Maggie is somebody to keep an eye on here in the early going. I like Maggie a lot. I've been very pro-Maggie since episode one. Yeah, I think that she was somebody who, in her preseason,

I think people thought, I don't know about this. I don't know how well this is going to work, but I think this has gone about as well for Maggie as you could have imagined. Yeah, and she seems to have roughly her finger on the pulse. I mean, she even says to Brady,

like, you've got more people than I do. You know, she knows what's going on. She's no fool. Yeah. She said she did not. want to vote against the five. She was very clear about, hey, the people that are in power, I don't want to vote against them. And then when push came to shove,

she was open to putting the vote on Pat. Actually, let's talk about from the perspective, and we can talk more about Carter's decision. It's a card of decision to stay. There was, the vote changed a number of times where

we had, it was always going to be Kilby from the other side. But there was some talk about, well, we can't go for Dev, we can't go for Brady, but could we go for a soft target in the five? And there was some talk about Mike being the target who people were going to go

for, and okay, sure, nobody's going to be too upset if we go for Mike. Mike is maybe a good consensus name. But here comes Tanan, who to this point had been Tananamus. Don't call me Tananamis anymore because

here she is a breakout episode for Tanan. I know. Never a good sign, is it? Really? Well, I don't know. You don't want your, you know, episode three, you break out episode. Well, I thought I was in my notes. I said, uh-oh, watch out.

To non-visibility spike. I thought she was going to go home. But she doesn't go home in this episode. So this is good, I think. This is like the beginning of a story, maybe. Yeah, maybe so. That could be, hopefully not a very short story. But some of the short stories are the most moving stories of all.

Yeah. You would know. Yeah, I love, you know, short stories. It really packed a punch. So, yes. So she suggests that Mike might is not going to create these bonds and no one is going to go to bat for Mike later in the way that they might for that. In the way that Aaron judge might. That's right.

I don't understand that reference, but I'll go along with it. So I think that that is sort of misguided. I think maybe Mike's strength as a player is his ability to kind of like be anonymous in that way. Right. those are the players who are like get to the end and do great things. And you've been a very big Mike booster. Like, you know, sell, you know, give us the defensive mic here, Rob. The defensive Mike from what, from what angle of that?

Just like as like, you know, for that why he's more of a threat than Pat is a threat. So I kind of like the idea of like, okay, let's take out Pat because people will always go for Mike. I think that the people will like always look at him as he's smart. He's somebody we have to watch out for. for Pat's the one who could, you know, slip under the radar. And maybe Tanan is on some level like, hey, that's my spot. That's my, I'm going to be the person who slips under the radar where Mike, nobody's ever going to forget about Mike.

Like, he's just like too much of, and I mean this of lovingly, like he's a game bot. People are going to see that. He is smart. He looks smart. And I think that people in the post merge are always going to see that he's up to something. Yeah. I'm looking forward to the Mike arc, by the way.

Like, I think it will be very fun. I was nervous. I thought Mike was done tonight. Yeah, I did too. But we've gotten very little of him so far. Just an occasional brief, you know, comment, which Tanan says is sort of the sum of her interact with him as well. And I feel like we're going to get some more from some more good stuff from Mike before.

And it seems like that Mike is like the classic survivor player who is like connecting with people on a game level, but not so much on a personal. level. Is that, like, do you need to be more personal in, um, in, you know, open era survivor? Is it, is like the type of connection changed? I mean, I've always felt you got to be pretty personal. Like the game stuff, like never. You know, it's like a double-edged sword. I mean, we've talked about many times over the years where, you know, Cochran in his winning run in Caramona, one of, uh, caramone, one of his strengths was that he didn't connect with people on a personal level. And then when he got to the final three, that people were like, Dawn, how could you do

this to me. We connected on a personal level. Nobody was like Cochran, like, we, we had this connection and you betrayed me. It was like, oh, you know. Yeah. Yeah, right. As expected, you played the game that you said you were going to play. But on the other hand, like, you can't get to the end if you don't have those. And, you know, Cochran is such a personable guy. I mean, that's like, that works for Cochran because he's Cochran. You know, he's like got this incredible, like, aura that just like bonds with, so, you know, you connect with. He's very vulnerable. He's very, like, open about himself. So, like, if he's talking game, you know, that's against the background of who he is. Whereas for like someone like Mike, where, you know, I think it might be a little different. I think that's the guy because he seems

like I am this, you know, put together, no offense to Kyle, that wasn't meant to be a slight on concrete. You know, I'm this sort of like professional. Like, he kind of needs to humanize himself. So I think you sort of like needs to play against your type almost a little bit. If I may nitpick the people that their plan worked, I would say that I think I would have approached this with going to Lewis and who ultimately were the swings to get to six in this 11-person tribe, I think I would have taken a page out of the Trish playbook from Survivor Caram-Owen of asking Cass, who do you want to go home? And maybe they did onto some level.

We see Tanan being the person who throws Pat's name out there. But I would love to know from Carter or from Lewis, like, hey, is there anybody in that group that you would like to potentially take out? Right, that's the better move for sure here. But like it doesn't seem like they necessarily, you know, again, like at least Killby doesn't necessarily know that it's a cohesive five that they're, you know, voting against. Yeah. One of the things I wish we would have seen more is that Brady was the one that had the most

information on that side. And we see Kilby talking to Brady and saying like, okay, the plan is going to be pat. And you see Brady say like that that's not going to happen. And he talks about how, you know, he's used to. you know, you know, just beating people with his hands, but in this game he's beating people with his head. And so he is like one step ahead of Kilby on that level, but ultimately it's the Lewis and Carter duo that ultimately decide this.

I wish we would have seen more about, did Brady ever go to those guys again and try to like, hey, but you're, you know, we're really doing this, where it just seemed like that, Brady didn't buy it, but it didn't seem like that he was trying to persuade those guys to stick with the five. Yeah, I mean, if Jelly knew about it, you know, maybe she would have played her idol for Pat. Is that a possibility? Was that, did you think, do you think Jelly knew about it? You know, I almost thought, I almost thought that Carter might have played his idol for Kilby.

I guess he didn't need to if he had the six votes. But I was kind of like, when they were talking about like, hey, we're going to like, you know, this is going to be a crazy move tonight. I thought that maybe that might have been the case, but that wouldn't have made any sense. Well, you were going to talk about this from, say, Maggie's perspective, like, who says initially, like, she doesn't want to vote against this power group, but then it only does. Like, it seems like unequivocally a good choice for Maggie, though, right? Yeah, I think for Maggie, it was a good choice. And especially in that she's not making any of the power brokers in the tribe angry. Yes, she didn't vote with them, but, you know, I think that there's precedent established in this group of like, hey, it's the open era.

We don't have to always vote together. I'm still with you. This was a thing against Pat. It wasn't about you. So as long as she didn't write Dev's name down, she didn't write Brady's name down. And so I think that might be a byproduct of this radical honesty of like, hey, Jeff, like, it's the open era. We're just doing our own thing. Odin how we please.

We're voting how we please. We don't have to vote together. Yeah. I liked it. Yeah, so that was very fun. Carter has to make the decision. Yes. Before we get to Carter, I want to say that I myself will be mutineing next week.

I will be going to a different tribe. I will be in Australia. Sam, can I have my slide? I'll be in Australia. You might have thrown away. He might not have been right. You didn't queue it up. I gave him in the chat.

You need, you need the, they call it the wind up. Let the guys know. it's coming. You know, okay. Well, I'll work on my wind up. You sneak attack him. Yeah. Next week, well, Rob is holding down the fort here in Washington, D.C.,

and it's part of the order of succession that there must always be a no-at-all in Washington, D.C. I will be in Australia at the Wheeler Center on October 14th in Melbourne. Melbourne. And, you know, speaking about escape and reality television more broadly, then on October 15th, I'm going to Canberra, to be as part of the Canberra Writers Festival about speaking about how do you survive reality television, again talking about my book Escape. And then on October 18th,

I will still be in the at the Canberra Writers Festival. And on a panel of it, speech writing. As you may know, I was a speech writer, including writing speeches for Stevie Wonder. So I will be sharing some of my experience as a speech writer. Wow. Now onto the more relevant mutiny. Yes, okay.

How was that? Come on, no, go, right? That was very good. You're very worried about the Australian city pronunciation. Are you worried that you will get dragged when you get to Australia that you didn't nail the city pronunciation? I just don't want to be one of those like classical Americans abroad, you know, pronouncing everything incorrectly. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

You know, I want to like blend. Well, I think that they will appreciate it when you get there. Yeah. Okay. Carter had to decide. He too went to a strange land. Did he decide? I don't know.

Was it a conscious decision? Or, like, did he make the decision? And then just, like, for the story, was it better that the boat left without him? I kind of think he must have known that this was like, he must have sort of like played it up a little bit. And so, like, oops, there it goes. Yeah. You know, like, I don't know how the, like, the boat leaves without him, without him being cognizant of it when he is, like, five feet away from the boat. The boat is motoring away.

Like, if you really want to go, you're like, yay, come back. Like, don't go yet, you know? Hold on. I'm going. I'm coming. I'm coming. But it seems like this is unequivocally the better choice for Carter, right? Like everyone on purple once and out, he just was, you know, he just was in the wrong.

Yeah. He was, you know, the uniformly, universally agreed to be the next boot. His best ally is medically removed from the gay. He would talk about it. Yeah. And then, you know, now he goes over to this, you know, Taj Mahal. you know, this beautiful shelter. He's got Brady telling him he has an opportunity here to be a brodie.

You know, Brady can skin a buck. You know, that's, that means something. Yeah. So I think this is the right choice for Carter. Of course, yeah. This was a great choice for him. This was so fun. I really, I love that he had this opportunity that he was the person who got picked.

And so I just thought it was so great. Just like this whole sequence of it just worked out so well where he's distracted. and they went through his bag, and then other people got the advantage, and then he realized he didn't even have the advantage, and now it feels like he's kind of stuck there, but maybe it's a new opportunity, and then he has this bond with Lewis,

where him and Lewis are this dynamic duo that have come together, and there's the two outsiders on this tribe. I just, I loved all of this. It was really, really fun. Yeah, and both farmers, right? Aren't he and Lewis both farmers? That's true. I forgot about that.

And Maggie, the other farm, Big Night for the farmers. It's the farmer, yeah. Oh, that's true. The farmer all of it. Biscuits. How do you do misfits when you have three farmers in the group? Three farmers voting together here. So they're working together. And then Dev called Kilby a farmer throwing seeds of chaos around. Oh.

And Kilby voted with them. So he's an honorary farmer. Yeah. And then what's Tanan's, Tanana's a medical student. So she could be livestock. From what I understand also was very valuable helping out with Brady. But so let's, so now we go, let's go back to the other tribe. And so we had, as Kristen called it, like we kind of had a blood moon here that lost three people in a matter of maybe 24 hours where the numbers in this season have shifted now from, we started with two tribes of 10. And now here we are at the third challenge. And the numbers are now 11 to 7.

And then we have this challenge and it's a runaway. Jeff is getting close to saying, put it in the deep freeze. This one's over. And again, this was a really good challenge. The challenges have been really fun so far. The challenges have been different than what we've seen in similar elements, but there was like this physical aspect of this that I don't really remember from too many challenges that we saw. Just encouraging them, like get rough with each other.

Go at it. It did seem like that that was a departure from the, you know, very, you know, super friendly, no touching challenges that we saw throughout a lot of the new era. But then this was like an all-time comeback that. we saw where it was a real choke job on the puzzle. And who was, who was on the puzzle? It was Tanan and who was the other person that was on the puzzle? That was, Jenna, I think it was. And Jenna had been, I think that was one of the arguments to keep Jenna in the first episode was like, hey, did you see how good she was on the puzzle? But here it was a real struggle. And then a huge comeback in this challenge. And I kind of was like, hey, I want to see.

this group like this is like the new like i2-4 of like i kind of want to see this like scrappy seven now stick together can they beat this group and now we're going to have a tribe swap but i was like yeah this is great is it a sure thing did they say swap like i was like is this a one world situation is there is it definitely a swap um i you know i i really i'm not sure i i didn't do a real thorough trailer breakdown yet of we saw everybody's gonna get on a boat and I saw people wearing red buffs

and so I can't imagine it's the merge Yeah yeah I thought maybe like a one world But I don't know maybe that was just getting hopeful But yeah you're probably just a swap I mean I think if it was the merge I think they would advertise like it's Oh I don't think it's the merge Yeah although we'd have a 17 person merge

In Survivor 50 Yeah I think you know yeah I think you're probably right Yeah, it was very fun seeing them win. You know who I really like, I really like Kristen. I just love her, she's on my screen. I love her confessionals. You know, she just like has such like an aura of calm about her. Yes, crisis manager.

Like a subtle amusement, yes. Yeah, okay. She's like finding, you know, I, I've got like high winner hopes for Kristen. And we have even more respect for Kristen who suffered a foot injury last week. She said she broke her foot. Is that confirmed? Yes, yes. that there are, I think that there were some broken bones in her foot or a fracture at least.

How did she go down on that slide? I don't know. Is that what you were going to say? No, I was going to say. And somehow, Kristen, despite an injury to her foot, managed to stay in the game. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about Rhode Island Rob has left the building. Look, as a Rhode Island partisan, maybe we can call him something else.

What do you want to call him? I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to be too cruel. Yes. Okay. So we saw last week, Rob tried to vote himself out of the game. And we heard him talk about this in the episode.

He did explain what he was going for. And we got the explanation that we had theorized that he was trying to get all the votes on to Eric. And then he was going to nullify those votes and then write down his own name. But he says that, but he's not going. gonna just quit the game. He doesn't like that. But if he's injured, that's different. It's crazy to actually like have the confessional where you see the train of thought.

Like, that's the kind of thing that happens in your interior monologue. You know, when you're going to fake an injury to be medically removed from a situation, you don't give that as a confessional to a TV camera. Yes. Like, well, if I, if I call in sick to work, then I've been. want to have to hand in my paper. We're on the phone with you now. Rob, we can be here. Oh, I, well, like, I am not feeling well. Okay. All right. And so, here we go. And we get our, uh, our doctor to come back after Rob has, spends the night on the

shore. And then, yes. I just want to say, like, the sleeplessness is a real thing. Sure. You know, I mean, like, I want to give him some credit, like, to not sleep for days on end is very destabilizing. And then also to have a little scratch on your foot. And so we had the doctor and let me see if I can get the doctor's name because he's been great. I really love this doctor. And he comes out and examines Rob's foot.

Doesn't see anything. Yeah. And Jeff's face, the Jeff's like face of skepticism during this whole scene was just sublime. Jeff played it perfectly. You think so? Because I felt like that the last time we had. had a honest to goodness quit on Survivor. Jeff made a number of appearances of, hey, spicy Jeff, that's it.

We're like... Are we talking about Sean? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he went on quite the media tour. He was doing the On Fire podcast. He's like, hey, you know what? Quitters from now on, that's it.

It's over. I'm going to end you if you quit the game. Now, this was, I think, a little muddied by it being in the medical. situation. And I think that you got from the show that a number of like, like, it was almost like an office episode, people talking about Michael Scott in their confessionals about Rob and what they thought about his. Yes, exactly. The show did it. The show, the show did it. He was presented, you know, he walked off, did not get a goodbye, did not get any sort of like, you know, final words or anything like that. There's not like how he's doing now. Yeah. Let's give it up to.

on Rob's foot. Nothing, nothing. So the show gave you what they thought about all of this, but I thought it was a little bit of a muted response from Jeff. But it's tough because he's in the situation where there's this, I mean, even if transparently from our perspective, you know, this is BS. And we, you know, he deserves castigation. Like we, I laid it out, you know, I was very mad at Sean when Sean quit. And I think like Rob deserves this. But, you know, from Jeff's perspective, he's in this moment, like this guy is. claim there's a medical issue. Like, you don't believe him.

But at the same time, like, what if there is one? You know, you don't want to be like this. You're, you're, you loser. Like, screw you for ruining our show. And then, and then he, you know, he does have, like, a medical problem later. Like, you look kind of dumb. Yeah. I'm just thinking that Jeff said that it was going to be,

there was going to be held to pay if you were going to quit the game again. But I just think, like, it's not as, like, cut and dry from Jeff's perspective, like knowing there's a camera there, knowing that this is the last moment with this guy. He's claiming there's some sort of, like, infection that he can feel. And like the doctor was said, maybe, you know, I can't rule it out.

I can't rule out the possibility that there could be an infection here. Yeah. I would think, and I'm not a medical professional, but I feel like that if, yeah, okay, I see that there's a scratch here. Wouldn't, aren't there signs of infection? Aren't there like redness, inflammation,

some kind of heat? Like, you would think that, yeah, I guess anything could be infected. But the doctor can't say definitively. Like, when Rob asks, you know, could this be infected? The doctor can't say, no, there's no chance you could be infected. Like, that would be malpractice. Yeah, I guess it would be malpractice.

But I think the doctor would say, like, we can monitor it. If it looks worse tomorrow, we can pull you. But at this point, to my naked eye, there is no sign of infection. Yeah. I mean, it sure seemed that he. He was fine. Like, you can go to the doctor and ask, do I have cancer? And the doctor can check you out.

It doesn't, like, I'm not seeing anything. It doesn't mean that you don't have, like, there's something that they didn't find. I'm just saying if someone is lying to your face and claiming they have, like, severe pain and then, like, they can't move their foot. And they can't, you know, you as like the host of this show can't be like, no, you're lying and you're wrong. You know, the show assembled all of the evidence in the use. Okay. Now, this is interesting. because it is a weird statistical anomaly that we have had many people leave the game,

whether it's a quit or whether it is a medical evacuation, leave the game with a hidden immunity idol. Yeah. This is the first time that I can recall where, and it's happened a lot, where just off the top of my head, Colton had the hidden immunity idol in Survivor One World, did not give it to anybody. Gottlieb had the hidden immunity idol in Survivor Colong, did not give it to Aubrey famously.

Randon had, if not the idol, at least the clue to the hidden immunity idol, did not give it to Venus in Survivor 46. And then also Matthew, yeah, Matthew climbed the rocks. Not only did not give his real idol away, did not tell poor Jamie Lynn Ruiz that her, idol was fake. Tragedy. Mm-hmm. And I don't know if I might be missing some. Yeah.

Do you think that just, well, but because of the way that Rob went out, he probably had more time to hand it off. Yeah. So he did have more time, but it happens off screen, which I thought was odd. Well, it must have happened like in the night, right? Presumably it happened in the night that he handed it off, like before medical got there, I assume. Yeah. Because I say that the rule is that you have to give it away before, like, like, you're

Like once you say you're leaving, you cannot then pass along the idol to another person. It must have been before medical guy. I do think that like from an editing choice that it ends up being a cool moment for Carter as opposed to a heroic moment for Rob to pass off his idol. Yeah, that's a really good call. That's a really good point. Like not giving Rob like empathy. Like, oh, look, he did like the kind thing to his ally before he goes. Instead it's like, oh, nice surprise for our like bumbling protagonist.

Yeah. So Carter now has the hidden immunity idol. Yeah, very fun. I, again, Carter's very fun. I think you're right that he's like mostly in on it. He sort of has that like, oh, shucks what's happening to me demeanor. But I do think he plays it up. I think he's a lot, you know, he knows the game. We certainly saw him like sort of like referring to other seasons.

And so even as he sort of does like make these errors, these unforced errors, he also sort of like plays up that persona. Yeah, I think he's kind of a witty. guy when they asked him about your bag, do you want to bring your bag out in the rain? He's like, oh, no, I like it out there. He's great. Oh, no, it does better in the rain.

And then, like, his, like, I mean, he's just got, like, speaking of, like, metaphors or something, he's got the good metaphors. You know, I need another pair of shoes at this camp. You know, like, he just, like, he's, his, his lingo is so good. He's such a fun speaker. Yeah, he is, uh, very, very fun.

Any final thoughts on Rob, though, as we close the book on, what a, what a wild ride for, because he had such a big episode one. where it was like... It seemed like going to be this big character of the season. I watched the first episode and I was like, wow, okay, this is going to be the polarizing character of the season. I really thought, I'm like, okay, wow, people will hate him, but people will love to hate him. People will also be like, wow, this is like the new Russell Hans, this is our guy, and this is like, this is old school survivor.

And then it all fell apart so quickly. even the middle of the episode last week when he was calling out Eric and guessing Eric's weight and fighting with Linnea. I said, okay, well, this is great. This is conflict. And Jeff, what happened? I thought we don't cast villains.

But then all of a sudden, just like right before tribal council, he has this cockamamie plan, and he's like, you got to do what I tell you to do. And then he tries to vote for himself. And then this week, with a quickness, because I really, after the podcast last week,

or after the discussion, I really thought he would bounce back. I was like, you know what? It's raining. It's, this is when survivors talk about leaving the game. I think that he is going to be spiteful after this. It's like, oh, you voted out. I was hoping for. You voted out.

Anna, well, big mistake. I'm locked the F in now. We didn't get a hint of that. I mean, it was quite the opposite. A lot of people suggested that it was, you know, partially because. And I honestly think that's overstated that he's in a bad, because he's in a bad position, he's quitting. it seems like he wanted to quit anyway

and this just sort of contributed to that. And I do wonder, like, do you think if Eric had gone home and he had gotten his way, would that have like abated his desire to quit? You know, you know, taste of blood? Yeah, a little bit of the, you know, a high from the victory. It's possible.

I mean, I do wonder if perhaps, like, he, the foot thing, like, the most charitable thing, it's like, the foot thing is like, oh, okay, well, yeah, but the foot thing is bad. Let me, okay, let me engineer my own. exit here because the foot thing is bad and then he didn't have that and then it's like all right why not like he was uncomfortable he wasn't sleeping well he didn't want to be there and then he was

just like let me get out of here like how do i how do i get out of here i'm curious to see how he talks about this uh we're going to do the exit interview tomorrow and uh is he going to double down on the hey like no no my foot was really messed up i've been in physical therapy for eight months and, you know, I really had a whole issue with my foot. Or is he going to look back at it like, yeah, you know, I probably could have toughed it out. You're the, you've done, you know, hundreds of these interviews. Which is the better, like, what, what should you do if you're robbed here? Like, what's the correct test?

If I was going to be the PR consultant for, uh, for Rhode Island Robb, I would say to, you know, acknowledge what everybody else is thinking about how this was acquit. And I think that like, hey, bro, I didn't sleep for five days. I was legally insane, okay? I didn't even know what I was doing. I didn't know where I was. Like, this is my dream to be on this show. Like, well, I was, I kicked myself every single day.

What was I thinking? I immediately regretted it. I got a good night sleep that night. And I was like, what did I do? I came to my senses. Yes, I think that that's probably the case. And I got to say, Sean did a really good job of after the fact being like, you know what? I screwed up.

I wish I hadn't done that. I was really like, I'm mad to myself. You know, I think he like really owned up to it. Yeah, I remember less of what he said. I just remember how, uh, Jeff was really angry after the, after the Sean thing. And I hope I'm not putting words in Jeff. It was like a tribe where two people had quit in a row. Yes.

I mean, it was the whole thing. It's like, oh my God, all these quitters is five for 45. Uh, so like Jeff was, Jeff was really worked up at that point in time. Uh, Stephen. Is it that time that we award? the most coveted prize in all of podcasting. This week's Fisie Award. Oh, my gosh.

See, you nailed it, Pam. You got it. That was not more windup than I did. No, I gave so much wind up. That was more windup? Yes. My cadence was indicating wind up. You had a lot of pauses.

Like, you know. Okay. All right. Lesson learned. Let's talk about the candidates here. I think the, we got a few. Lewis is an obvious one, right? Lewis does seem as the one, we sort of agree, I think, that Lewis is kind of the head of the sort of pantomime horse that is Lewis and Carter.

Right? And so he is the one who really says, like, we should go with this other group. He thinks this is a chance to make a move. Don't have words today. No of words today. to sort of like break up this power alliance that is controlling their tribe and then, you know, make a mark for themselves. He also is the one to first suggest to go through Carter's bag. Oh, going through my bag.

I had the great confessional about like, yeah, I think Carter is my guy. Sorry about going through your bag. Yeah. So Lewis is someone, you know, Tannan is the first person to suggest that they, they vote out Pat instead of Mike. And then who else? I mean, you could say Devin had a good week. Why would say, why not Carter? Carter himself had a very fun week.

I mean, he got the hidden immunity idol. He ended up muting. He's on the agency of his own. But all of these, like, he got the immunity idol because Mike gave it to him. I'm sorry, because Rob gave it to him. You know, he ended up mutinying him potentially because the boat just left. He didn't get the advantage. But he's on the right side of the numbers.

and in Survivor, like Big Brother, it is better to be lucky than good, and he had an incredible streak of good luck this week. Yeah, the Fishy is not an award, a broken system that awards people for being lucky. It's a reward's losers for losing. Who else? Is there anybody on Savu that we can give this to?

I mean, I think that, I say hard to say, Dev. You mentioned Dev, but then Dev, who does get an advantage, is also on the wrong side of the vote in this one. Yeah, Dev, who allegedly is controlling this tribe, has now twice been on the wrong side of the vote. Never, not voted correctly yet. Yeah.

So, yeah, I don't think this, I mean, I think that the Savu is the purple tribe? Savu and Toka. Okay. It's purple. Yes. That they had a good week, like, cumulatively that they ended up coming back in the challenge, but I don't think that anything that would be fishyworthy

where there's one particular standout. Yeah, so what do you think? I don't think, I mean, Tanan just saying the name of Pat, I don't think is enough. I didn't really between Carter and Lewis for me. Yes. Where are you?

I think of those three, I think I would lean a little bit more towards Lewis. Lewis has, going back to the beginning of the episode, he was courted by both sides, and then ends up like, oh, there's a group of five, this is a group of four.

You know what? I'm going to make my own thing with the guy who just showed up. And so here he is. He's a player who's aggressive. He gave us the quote. I do have big balls, bro. Yeah, that's pretty good. You know, where's the merch, Lewis?

Come on. Let's go. Would you wear that in the big ball shirt? Yeah, sure. Like, I do have big balls for it. And then it's like two church bells. Ding dong. Yeah.

Okay. So I think so. Go with Lewis. Yeah, I do think it should be Lewis. Lewis, fishy for you. Yes. And also, welcome to Survivor 51 Tanan, who had a breakout, somebody to keep an eye on. But this

season to me has just been really, really fun. And I think that's something that has been interesting as we're watching these episodes. In the new era, it's like, okay, well, we're going to tribal council. It's 80% this person and maybe 20% this person. we come out of the challenge and there's probably like five different names that get mentioned in terms of who it could be.

You know, there's talk about, okay, it's Kilby. All right. Oh, well, maybe it's dev. Okay, now it's Mike. Now it's Pat. Wait, hold on. Tanan is talking up a lot. Is it going to be Tanan now?

So the big tribe, these things can change and there's just so much. There's more room to play. They all talk about like wanting to give the contestants room to play. Like that's what a big tribe does. And you're on the edge of your seat. Yes, yes. I literally had no clue. I was excited.

I didn't feel like it was overdetermined at all. Yeah. And I think that everybody kind of has had something now. Everybody is a little bit fleshed out in terms of the 17 people that are left. And I'm really eager to see where this goes next. So I just, I can't say enough good things about Survivor 51 so far. And I came in and I was a little worried about the season that I felt like. And I don't know if it's necessarily broken through if like the average person.

Like I feel like that there was not a ton of hype coming into Survivor 51. But I do hope that the word of mouth is there, that Survivor 51 has been really interesting to check out. I've been talking, I've been talking about. I'm that man on the street, that fan on the street that Jeff talks about. If I saw Jeff on the street, I would be like, hey, this is a great season, Jeff. Great season so far. You'll keep up the good work. Yeah, and now we need an immunity idol that is, you know, it's like, like, Tyler Perry had.

We need the Tyler Perry Idol back. Yes. I wouldn't say that. You know, he always, like, the man on the street always, like, reaffirms his priors. What Jeff wants. Yeah, you know, the Pearson on the street says, hey, give me more of that Final Four firemaking when you go chance. Exactly, yeah. Yeah.

Anything else that you saw in this episode? No, I mean, super fun episode. Let's see. Like, you know, honestly, not a lot. of jelly, given what a big character she was last week. You know, I'm really enjoying these kind of complex characters

being both wrong and right. You know, we're seeing Kilby do wrong things and right things. We're seeing right to do wrong things and right things. I like that sort of like nuance. I mean, Deb, too, I don't think there's anybody in that group who is, you know, sort of unequivocally right as as I'm seen.

You know, I feel like we didn't spend enough time talking about Pat, who I thought had, was off to a good start. I think, honestly, I'm trying to think of what, I'm not David Bloomberg, but I don't even know what Pat did wrong, other than being, you know, too affable.

Yes, she was like, they didn't want to, like, strike against Dev himself. Everyone thinks that they've got Brady. I wonder if she, I mean, if I had to guess, maybe, although we see her talking to Kilby, right? I was going to say maybe she, like, just hung out with that group of five, but we see Kilby confiding in her.

Yeah. I wonder if she doesn't bring the video game comment back to, Like, Kielby makes the point. I'd love to get your thought on this. Kilby says, hey, you know how you bonds with people? Talk bad about other people. That's what really bonds you together.

And then we see Pat Relay. She's the, you know, don't shoot the messengers, but she is, she brings the bad news back. Hey, Brady, guess what? Kilby says, you're like the little brother who is, feels like the controller's not plugged in, which I feel like is a, a euphemism that Taryn uses quite a bit. And so Kilby describes Brady now and Brady is incensed. And that sort of is like one of the inciting incidents of the episode. Is there anything?

Could we say that to be like our most like survived, like David Bloomberg adjacent to say that, hey, was that a bad move that Pat made? But it doesn't get back to Pat. I mean, the only way that that does anything is it focuses all the attention on Kilby. It makes Kilby kind of the target. That doesn't necessarily get back to... Yeah. No, she was perfect. Sanctalus Pat

who was on my draft team also. I'm sorry. Yes. And we'll find out in the exit interview. Did she get her pants back? Oh, good question. We'll find out. Okay? Yeah. All right. Stephen, let's talk about what else is coming up here on R.HAP. All right? We've got

next Thursday, after I do the live show, check this out. The people over at Ramble where all the survivors are just like writing such funny things about the episode. You can be part of it every week. Go to survivor.com. They're putting together this reality battle royale. And look at this cast list that has been dropped here with eight iconic Big Brother players and eight iconic Survivor players. I'm so happy, Ream. What a get. What a get, that Tyson, Reim Daly, your friend, Abby Maria, Christian Hubicki, Tiffany Irvin, Omer, Sam Fallon, and Sof, Sophie B will be there, taking on Big Brother Legends in a Survivor-style game hosted by yours truly. That's going to be live on Ramble 4 p.m. next Thursday.

Ramble's a much better name than chat BCC. It was just so easy to get it confused with chat GPT. Yes, yes. It'd be like calling something like TwitN. You know, like what? Like why? Yes. Okay, but listen, I don't want the commenters to get upset.

I do have, I do have one thing to say, here, let's take the slide down for a second. So I was talking about, I was raving about Stephen's mustache last week. And I was talking about it with my wife. And I said, you know, Stephen has gone just mustache. It looks, and it looks great. You know, should I do that? And she's like, no. I was like, you know what?

I said, you know, I think I'm going to, I'm going to ask chat GPT to show me. What would I look like with just a mustache? I hope you have the pick. No, no, she seemed to be annoyed that I even was going to do that. She even, she did not even let me. Digitally, you should not have a mustache. Yes, and maybe it was an AI point that she was trying to make of like, hey, like, don't, don't, we're not, this is not, we don't do AI in this house. But no, she did not even want me to show her what it would look like if I asked Chad GPD of the, if I just had a mustache.

Wow. Now, I have to say, my wife was very opposed to me just having a mustache too. And she's been, she's come around. I mean, she, you know, when she saw it, she was less opposed. And I feel like every day she becomes less and less opposed. And now she's like, yeah, I mean, like, it's like, it's. in the beard, but I like it. So I feel like, you know, I'm on a trajectory.

You're on a, yes, you're on a hero's journey of the mustache. But I mean, your beard looks phenomenal. You know, it's so just like full and like it's got a little bit of like salt in the pepper. You know, just looks so like mature and handsome. And it's like beautifully the same change. And even of your shirt. Yeah. You look great.

I mean, you really, I mean, you've been inspiring me. It's like, you know, I got to keep up with Rob here. Like, I got to make a change. I got to like, look. We're pushing each, iron sharpens iron. and Stephen. Exactly. That's how it coach told me.

Okay. All right. Let's then talk about We Know Survivor. We got so many Survivor podcasts coming your way. You got to check them all out every single week. We Know Survivor.com. I'll be talking with Joe Hunter.

I'm so excited to catch up with Joe Hunter. He was so great at the Survivor 50 finale. I love talking to him. I can't wait to hear what he thinks about all this. Yeah. Very curious what his perspective is on the open era. On the open era. And Dev describes himself as, he said, I am the love child of Rick Devons and Joe Hunter.

Huh. What does Joe think about that? That's an interesting love child. Like, those are, because, like, you know, that must have been a real passionate night. You know, working it out. Yes. So check that out coming up on Friday. Then on Friday, I will be live at 3 p.m. Eastern for the patron Q&A, our calling

show. And so for you patrons of Rob is a podcast, keep an eye. I've also been hearing that people, that the emails for that you get on Patreon, uh, don't always go into your main inbox. I feel like that Gmail is putting them into updates. So just keep an eye out for, uh, look sure, look all over. I don't want to make you work for these patron episodes, but Gmail's making it hard. Then on Club Condo, Chappelle and I will go through everything from all of the wackiness of each week of Survivor the Survivor community. So check that out every week on Patreon Club Condo. And then every week, join Mike and Frail Mary for an interactive Survivor game night.

I was live with Frail Mary earlier tonight, and we had a great time with the patrons playing Cahoot games. And I was playing it last week with my son. I was trying to show him what he was like, Dad, like, I cahoot all day at school. I know what this is. Shouldn't he be learning? Shouldn't you need to take away his girlfriend? That's how they have to get kids to learn now.

They have to turn it into a game on their phone. They're gamified education. Yes. Yes. So check it out every week. And hey, the tribe and I have spoken. Get your hands on my walk through the lore and legacy of the first 50 seasons of Survivor. Available wherever books are sold and on audiobook to The Tribe and I have spoken.

Can I get a little shout out speaking of books? Not to my own book, but to this, like, lovely book. What is that? Wilderness Hacks. It's a young adult book. And I just thought it might appeal to this audience. The author sent it to me or the, actually the publisher sent it to me. Yes.

By Jocelyn Brorson. What kind of book is it? It's about a why, it's like a young adult book about like a teen wilderness influencer who gets like kind of trapped on this roaring river with this like young plucky girl who's actually like the better survivalist. And it's just like, you know, for the young adult in your life. who's interested in Survivor. It's a very fun adventure that has themes of, like,

performance and identity that are obviously, like, very relevant and meaningful to me, and, you know, certainly I dealt with an escape. So it was a good book. Yeah. Rave reviews from Stephen. Yeah. Okay.

All right. So you were headed off to Australia. Any, like, is there any Australia questions that the listeners could help you with? Oh, yeah. What, can you, can you, I get a day in Melbourne and, like, a day in, Kempara and a day in Sydney and I want to I don't know I don't know it just feels like I should say it you know I've been wrong about everything um so you know plan my itinerary please I haven't had an opportunity to do so if anyone could uh I'm hoping to see Shannon and Gus how many stars of

Australian Survivor will you see in your travels I don't know I mean you know um certainly the the little lady interviewing me for um at the at the uh at the uh at the uh Writers Festival was an Australian Survivor. But I don't know. People have reached out to me, but I'm not going to have an opportunity to like hang out. So I don't want to be like, oh, come to my event and watch me talk. They could.

They might want to. Yeah. Yeah. No, no Nicaaida. Yeah, he's in Adelaide. You know, I think he can't. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know how the distance is work in that country. Yeah. It's huge. All right. So we will, this is what I'm planning for next week. So that I'm doing the live show on Thursday night, but that I am going to record a Survivor No It All's special edition with Omer Zahir on Wednesday during the day. So here's for you listeners that, you know, I get a lot of feedback about the live show and what's good about it and what's not. And I think that one of the things that people don't love is that they miss the regular show.

So even though Stephen won't be here, I will do a know-it-alls with Omer Zahir on Wednesday. And then Thursday, I feel like I'll be loosey-goosey to talk about whatever we want with the panel. Because my takes will already be out there. Yeah, you've already spoken about Survivor. You don't even have to talk about Survivor. Yes. So Wednesday night, check out me and Omar Zahir in a special Survivor No-It-alls. And then on Thursday, you'll watch the live show from Washington, D.C.,

where a number of the panelists or the people from coming to play on the Battle Royale will be there in attendance, so it should be a really, really fun show. Thank you for joining us. Take care everybody. Have a good one. Bye.