RHAP: We Know Survivor - MrBeast Explains How Survivor Made Beast Games Better

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

MrBeast Explains How Survivor Made Beast Games Better MrBeast sits down with Rob Cesternino to reveal how Survivor shaped Beast Games, what he’s fixing for Season 3, and why he calls his Survivor 50 moment his favorite thing he’s ever shot. Jimmy Donaldson goes deep on overhauling Beast Games Season 2 after reading hundreds of thousands of viewer comments, the two main complaints that drove every change, and what’s coming in Season 3 — including a tease he showed Rob that he couldn’t read on camera. Plus: what the Survivor 50 × Beast Games crossover actually looks like from the inside, why MrBeast says his appearance “isn’t just a cameo,” and whether Jeff Probst and MrBeast are the only two host-creators in reality TV history. Subscribe for daily Survivor 50 coverage: https://shor.by/survivorfeed Apple Podcasts / Spotify: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/rob-has-a-podcast-rhap/id6443243343 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/RHAP #MrBeast #BeastGames #Survivor50 Chapters: 0:00 MrBeast watched every RHAP episode and left a comment 1:24 How to Read Feedback Without Losing Your Mind 5:00 The Two Biggest Complaints About Beast Games Season 1 7:11 What Beast Games Season 2 actually fixed 10:44 What Is Beast Games? MrBeast’s Own Definition 13:56 The $5 Million iPhone Moment (And Why It Works) 15:33 Will Beast Games look the same in Season 10? 16:59 Beast Games Season 3 Tease – He Showed Rob a Text He Can’t Read 18:25 What MrBeast Learned From Watching Jeff Probst Host 21:46 The Survivor 50 crossover from MrBeast’s POV 24:52 MrBeast and Jeff Probst Ride a Golf Cart Together 26:05 Are Jeff Probst and MrBeast the Only Host-Creators in Reality TV? 27:09 Why MrBeast is obsessed with television, not just YouTube 28:49 Could MrBeast’s YouTube Videos Become Full TV Shows? 30:48 MrBeast: “I Understand Viewers Better Than Anyone But Not Contestants” 35:20 Beast Games Broke the World Record for Most Cameras Ever on a Set 38:22 MrBeast’s Direct Pitch to Survivor Fans Who Haven’t Tried Beast Games To pre-order Rob’s book, The Tribe and I Have Spoken, visit www.robhasabook.com 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!

Everybody, what's going on? Rob Sissredino. How about this? I got the chance to go out to Greenville, North Carolina, to talk to the king of YouTube himself, Mr. Beast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, and talk to him about his work as the creator of Beast games, which we covered here on Rob is a podcast. And then also talk a little bit about what we might expect when a Mr. Beast shows up in Survivor 50. This was a real thrill for me to get the chance to go out and meet Mr. Beast, who's a career. I'm sure many of you are quite familiar with. However, this was also an opportunity for me to do an interview that was by far the most impressive moment of my career for two people that I'm desperate to impress, and that is Dominic and Anthony Cesternino, who joined me in Greenville. And I have to say, Jimmy was absolutely incredible with the boys. And so I hope you enjoy this interview that I did with Mr. Beast. All right. How cool is this? We're here in the office of Mr. Beast. Jimmy, thank you for having us here to talk about everything you have going on in the reality TV world. I really appreciate you taking some time out of your very busy schedule to talk with us. We had been covering Beast Games season two on the podcast.

Which I loved. I listed down every episode. Yeah, we get a comment. And the comment said, loving the content, you said, love to maybe join one. Very noncommittal, but look at us now. Here we are. And so I appreciate you taking the time and watching our stuff. But I think that that's something that's really interesting about you is that I do feel like that you spend a lot of time,

curating through feedback and it seems like that you want to really know what people are saying about the stuff that you're doing to the point where I say you recently were commenting on a video that was about Mr. Beast is boring now and you but but I think that that's unusual for somebody who has reached the level that you have to be interested to know what people are saying and I think it's really commendable and has been a testament. to you and your team and how you continue to iterate on what you've done in the past. Yeah. Thank you.

I appreciate that. And yes, that's partially why I'm here because I listen to every single episode to hear what you guys say because it's interesting as I mean, you guys have probably consumed more reality TV than probably almost anyone else on the planet. And so to hear your feedback on my show from a reality point of view, whereas I've consumed more YouTube than anyone else in the world and like kind of merge the two worlds because the interesting thing is there's no perfect piece of content. Even Christopher Nolan with his movies, as phenomenal as they are, I'm sure, you know,

he looks at these things like, man, I wish in Dark Night, I did this thing slightly better. Or I would have now, with what I know now, I would have changed this or done this. And so since there's no such thing as perfect content, you can always improve it. You could, whether it's the coloring on the shot or the game or, you know, in reality TV, the contestants or how you pair the contestants together are all these different things. And so it's like, why would you not constantly be learning? Like, I acknowledge that I'm not perfect. I don't know everything.

And so I want to always, hopefully until the day I die, be just trying to consume more and more information on how I can improve everything. And it's legendary, the amount of work that you and your team do on going through all of the YouTube data and the infographics and all the stuff that you do on YouTube and testing thumbnails and titles and all sorts of stuff. And it's really incredible. But how much harder is that to do with television where you put it out once? You can't really change things after and you don't have the kind of data. that you have. I don't think you do in terms of being able to tell

how to make the show better. Yeah, that's exactly. Well, so it's a two-sided coin. What's interesting is... You love a two-sided coin. Yeah, I do love coins, which we can talk about in a second point. What's interesting is on YouTube,

you have to gear a video around the title and thumbnail, right? Like, if someone doesn't click a video on YouTube, they don't watch it. So, like, I can't just make, like, a five-part series of something on YouTube, because episode four, not many people would click because they weren't like if if youtube just recommended that people like what is this i haven't seen the first three and it doesn't really do well and so every

video is geared around like i buried myself alive for a week right that's a really good title with a really simple thumbnail so they click because if they don't click they don't click they don't watch and what's completely different from youtube to reality is obviously they're coming for the expectation of a show and they just want to be entertained around this show and like like i don't even know what the thumbnail is for episode two three four five because it doesn't matter right the thumbnail for episode two of Beast Games or episode two of the new season survivor, who cares? You're just, you just want to watch episode two. And so that is like so incredibly freeing because you don't have to gear it around this

image and this title. You can just do whatever you want. And like that little thing, probably very few people listening to this really understand the magnitude of what I'm saying there. But like that is the biggest difference and like opens up the door for so many things you can do in like a reality TV show that you can't do on YouTube. And then obviously the other thing is, you know, you just have so much more time. Like on YouTube. I have 20 minutes to build up characters, tell the story, and then, you know, end it. And then on this, you know, sometimes the total runtime seven or eight hours. So it's just so fun to be able to like tell all these things you guys already know.

But to tell the story over such a long time for my world, you don't have that kind of liberty. So we're so used to condensing things down and like making things so rapid fire, which is why season one, which season one of Beast games, you know, we broke world records left and right on prime videos. So most of you don't script a show over 100 million unique viewers. People really loved it. And so I have to preface that because I'm so critical of the content we make that's someone who only listens to me on here. I think, wow, that was just a massive failure because all Jimmy says is negative things.

So I have to at least some of the positives. So when you hear these negatives, you're not like, oh, well, that show was just the worst thing never happened. But, you know, broke all these world records. People loved it. Even like the completion records of the viewership record, like retention, all that was phenomenal on season one. But even still, the things it was lacking for the most part is people didn't. didn't really know the contestants as much as you would in a typical reality show. And a lot of that's a side effect of I'm used to the YouTube world where it's just so

rapid fire you can't even do that. And what we did in season one was my version of trying to lengthen it out and do the depth. But we just didn't do it anywhere near as well as we needed to. And so like you said at the start, we just read through every single piece of feedback. We watched every single person, you know, your show, every other show that ever said anything about season one. We watched everything. I mean, we're talking hundreds of thousands of comments, everything. And then we just, you know, found what is the commonalities of all the complaints? And it all boiled down to essentially two main things and then like a couple other subheaders. And that's how we fixed in season two.

And so that's what we're in the process of doing right now for season two to apply to season three. And, you know, hopefully after we do five or six seasons, it's like there's basically no real complaints. You said there were two main things that the audience said. What were they? Well, so the first one was they wanted to know the contestants more, which like by episode six or seven, you really know them. Yeah. But it's like, I don't want to have to watch for three and a half hours before I get to know them. And so, okay, perfect.

And so we solved that in season two. The other one was people really didn't like that with the largest cash prize in history, biggest sets in history that some of it came down to randomness. They don't like, you know, like essentially rolling the dice to decide whether or not you move on. So in season two, I really focused on making it was a lot more skill-based, a lot less RNG. Or if it was R&G, it was their choice to make it R&G because they chose the game and they chose the thing that made it random. and those are like the very too big things that I saw that I was like, we're not doing this at all in season two.

And then now we're compiling our list for season three of similar things. And it's pretty interesting because like if you were to read 10,000 complaints, usually like it will look like it's 100 different things, but you can kind of bracket it most of it where it's like, okay, well, but like 40 of them are basically all saying this one little thing. And 20 are saying this. And then these 20 are kind of just a derivative of these two and you picks it, they'll mostly go away.

Yeah. Do you think that you have like a superpower at this point where you're able to go through a ton of feedback? Because I feel like that for so many of us, like we just see the negative comments. We ignore what people say on the positive comments. So you could have one negative comment that really outweighs everything you see. But you've been doing this for so long. And you get so much feedback. I just don't know how you can possibly process at all.

Well, I have a lot of advice on that for if any of you, you know, are starting a reality show. I got you. So the big thing is you have to discern between feedback that's from the place of helping versus, it's not even feedback, but like you'll get so many comments, you know, if you get a million reviews on a show, a subsection of that is just going to be people who they just don't like you for whatever reason. They're just going to say, this is the worst ever. Like, even the most, pick the most beloved show ever, like maybe Survivor or something. There's still people who are just going to go, Survivor's garbage, right? I hate Survivor. Jeff Probs is stupid.

Jeff Probs is. But, like, that's not feedback. that those you just have to develop the mental toughness just to block out, right? Yeah, I could read a thousand comments in a row, just call me the dumbest person ever, and I'll feel nothing. Once you get that, you just look at a comment objectively, like remove all emotion from the equation. Is this a comment that is like real feedback? And then is it feedback from an actual fan?

And if it's real feedback from an actual fan, that you need to internalize. If it's not, hey, Jimmy sucks. If the comment is, you know, Jimmy, sometimes in like really tense moments, lets off an awkward laughter. And I feel like that kind of just destroys the tension. And I don't know. It's something you work on. Right.

Yeah. Right. And like that like is a comment from a fan from a place of actual feedback. That, okay, that's something I should write down and think about. And like discerning between the two is something almost everyone I know, especially like people as they get more famous is just really bad at. And they get in their head like because they can't read things objectively. They just go comments are a waste of time. They don't know.

They don't like I don't read the comments because they get. They like, they'll just, yeah, focus on the ones that are just mean. So what was the feedback that you took away from season two that really resonated with you? The things that people said that from a fan's perspective that they wanted to see more of. In season one, we had the opening with this like these thousand trap doors and people are following the trap doors. It's freaking crazy. And I think we we had more spectacle in season one than we had in season two. And part of it is because we were so focused on building up.

the contestants that it's like kind of hard to do both at the same time. And so one of the big things in season three is like now keeping the storytelling of the contestants we had at season two, but bringing back more of that spectacle in season three, which I'm under so many NDAs, I can't say what it is. But when you know, when you see the finale of season three, you'll understand exactly what I'm talking about. You're going to go, holy shit, that is the craziest thing I've ever seen my life. But it's like pairing those two because that's one of the things I'm seeing most

as people are like, season two is great. man, I feel like season one was more epic, right? And so mixing that in. And then the rest, I'm still going through and trying to figure out what it is. It's hard to marry the two because I think that people think of you and they think of that you have these amazing ideas for YouTube videos that people have never seen before that have these amazing hooks. And then we come to Beast games and so we're expecting sort of like things that we've never seen before. But also at the same time, we really want to get to know the characters better. and it's hard to serve both of those big things that people want.

So also actually and cliffhangers, the cliffhangers will be fixed. I got you guys. Next time, next episode. When people hear about Beast Games, if we're going to talk to somebody who's never seen Beast Games before, can you tell people like, what is your vision for? What is Beast Games? Jeff tried to define it when you did the Survivor crossover. But in your mind, what is Beast games? What is Beast games?

This is a great question. Oh, I feel pressure because I'm like, oh, this is like how people are going to interpret it. I mean, it's the, it is the largest cash prize with the biggest sets, the biggest spectacle, and just the most money. Because even though we give away $5 million, the first two seasons, we gave away over $32 million. Yeah. Collectively between the two seasons. So it's just like a place where people can win, I mean, absolute life-changing money, competing in just the biggest sets ever in history.

And hopefully it's a show that you never know what's coming next. It's always getting better. It's always improving. And it's what, you know, I believe modern, you know, reality game shows should be. Yeah. Like, it's kind of crazy that no one is, you know, before Bs games was doing something like this, you know. So I'd say it's a modern, what a modern reality game shows should be, you know. So one of the things I would love to see is where.

people are getting this money. And what I think is sort of maybe not as satisfying is that people get this money and they leave. And I just started caring about this person. They just had a big decision to make. I'd love to see more people getting the money and then also, you know, now they're, and now they have big target on their bag. And there was, and that did happen in season two. But I think that that's the more that we've seen these people make these decisions and that now we are continuing on with their story. That to me is like really interesting. interesting in Beast Game. Which Tyler is one of our lead ideation, creative guy.

And I said the same thing to him. There's a correlation to someone wins a much of money and then they get out. And it's like kind of brutal because in the process of winning money, we build them up. And then it's like usually the next episode or two, they're gone because they have such a large target. And I don't know if there's anything we can do about that, though, because Beast Games is, I would argue Beast Games is one of the, is the least scripted reality show out there because there's literally nothing about it that scripted it any way, right? We truly let them do whatever the hell they want.

And so one of the positives is that that's why it feels so authentic. And that's why sometimes you have people do the absolute dumbest things ever to, like a normal person, aka we gave people the ability to win a million dollars. They pressed the button and eliminated people, which would have also increased their odds of winning the $5 million price pool. And they didn't do it because they didn't want to hurt their friends. And so it turned down a million dollars. And so like, right, you know, that's a choice they did.

I never in a million years would have guessed they would do that. But everything we do on B-Scan is, you know, we do it in a way where whatever the outcome is, we're fine with it. Like, we still have a show. It doesn't ruin the show. And like sometimes just the most unexpected random things happen. And so, yeah, in that case, it's like, yeah, I would like to have the people who win money go further. But at the end of the day, the other players can do whatever they want. I think my favorite part of the whole show, I think was at the end of it where Tyler ends up coming home.

and telling his wife about the $5 million. And I think that that's something that you don't really get that in any of the other reality shows. I love that you followed him home, and we got to see that moment with him and his... Well, I was just doing a four-year consideration. We're trying to get nominated for an Emmy for season two. And so we were in a theater of like, whatever,

three, four hundred voters just showing them the finale. And I was like watching as that play. And I, like, I started to tear up because the surrounds on big theater. And I was looking out there and I was like counting. and I saw so many people like start to brush tears away from their eyes. Like that scene where his wife is like, stop it. You're kidding. He's like, we just won $5 million.

It's so awesome. And like I think what makes it even better and why you would never see something like that in a different reality show is like that's filmed with an iPhone. Yeah. That's filmed with an iPhone. That's why it looks so grainy and weird. Everyone else would have had like a full-fledged crew and they would have had someone clabbed scene five, you know, mic them up.

And we're like, no, let it be raw. Let these moments like just like sneak a hidden camera in. Obviously the person there knows. And it's just like get a true unfiltered reaction, which is why the ending is so good. And I want to do that more throughout all the future seasons. I think it's like, I think that's one of the best things we ever shot.

It was an intimate moment that we got to see and see what that was like where we got to know that he had this family, but then to see the reaction of like our life has changed forever and have him deliver that news. I thought that was such a cool moment to end the show on. In terms of Beast Games, when you imagine it further out, and we're on Survivor 50. I'm coming up on that.

Yeah, I want to talk about that. When you think about Beast Games 10, is there something that's a core part of the show that you think that even when we're further out, way out into the future in the franchise, this thing is always going to still be a part of Beast Games? Yeah, that's a phenomenal question. I mean, I will start off by saying there's nothing that I'm not willing to change if I thought it would make the show better.

So, no, there's nothing that I would say it's irreplaceable. I think on season 10, we'll still have the core of, you know, have a city that the contestants go to in between each game. Because I think that's really cool. Yeah. They live in a city and they bond with each other. I think we're still going to have big sets. We're still going to have the largest cash prize. We're still going to have all these things.

But, the honest answer, though, is honestly, by season 10, anything can be different. It's like just whatever is necessary to make the best. show possible because we became the biggest YouTube channel in the world by every day for 15 years. I just woke up and I said, how do I make the greatest YouTube video possible? How do I entertain people the best possible? How do I give people what they want? And sometimes how do I give people what they don't realize they want until they see it? And I just did that every day for 15 years. You know, people say it takes $10,000 to master something. I think it takes $100,000 to master something. I think 10,000 hours is just a start. And like, and I just applying that same mindset

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Where it's like crazy because like if I say anything about season three here, then when I bring all the contestants in at the start of season three, we have to play those clips for them. So they're all in a level playing field. We have to, like, all of these compliance things and things like that because, um, we can play this. Yeah, yeah, I know, right. Hey, contestants. So it's hard, but I will say I just, here, I'll, I'll, I'll show you a text.

You can't repeat it. Uh, but something we just got. Okay. For, bro, I actually want to see what your reaction is to this. Okay. And we're not going to read what the text says. No, no. Oh, hell no.

okay if you read it I would be screwed read what that says okay yeah that's yeah okay what do you think um

that's a spectacle exactly exactly so we got some massive massive massive stuff planned but yeah I can't say anything else because it can test so here yeah if we could somehow make it where they would never see this oh I would tell you so much cool stuff okay um

when we're done rolling I'd love to find out from you about the influence that Survivor and traditional reality TV has had on you and your work to this point. Yeah, that's a great question. And honestly, there's like the before I filmed the Survivor Club and the actor. And I think when I filmed with Jeff, a lot of my personal takeaways was like his hosting skills and just, I mentioned this on a different podcast. but there are sometimes where like, you know, contestants would be bickering and then there'd be, I don't know, like almost silence or they're just looking at each other. And I, I didn't notice it, but sometimes he just won't even say anything.

He'll just look at him. And I was like, oh, because when I was watching him host, I would be like, what would I do in this instance? And in my head, I'm like, oh, I definitely would have stepped in. But in this instance, he's just letting him play out, even though it's like very tense and like, borderline awkward. Yeah. And so I was like, so I was just like taking a bunch of notes down of watching him. And so when, that was a lot of fun because I'd never really been, like, Survivors are the

closest thing kind of to Beast games. There's other reality shows, but it's like, our game shows, but like, what is there to learn from Wheel of Fortune that you apply to this or whatever? Or Survivor, there's just some similarities with the host. And so it's just really cool to see him in action and study. Because outside of Jeff, who's going to actually teach me how to like host better on something like this. And then in terms of our team, we just learned a lot. Like, even just how they, they had, like, the, the two camera walls and they, none of it was like rocket science, but it was like, oh, it's interesting to see how they do the layered cameras, how they structure things. And we had quite a few takeaways. Yeah. I really love that episode where you had the crossover and came

into, you know, came into Survivor or Beast Games came to Survivor. And it was just such a fun episode. And I thought that you being there, I thought that Jeff was really loose. Like, I thought that the interplay between the two of you was really fun. I thought there was that really great moment at the tribal council when you're telling everybody to come in and Jeff says, like, hey, why are you yelling? Why are you yelling? You don't need to. And I just thought that, I really thought that, like, Jeff doing his thing, but then you were, like, a little bit more, like, asking the contestants about how they're feeling in that moment. Like, I thought it was, like, a really good collab in terms of how the competitions were.

playing out. I know that you've given Jeff his flowers. Is there anything else that you take away from watching Jeff work that you take with you? Oh, boy. I mean, like I said, for the most part, for me personally, it was just, it was his hosting, right? Because I'm a host. I've never been around another host. And yeah, to host, let scenes breathe out more depth the characters. And my creatives are just eating it up, like Tyler and all my other people on set. They're just like taking notes left and write of things we could do. Do you think that they took anything away from you and your team and what you do? Well, when you see my Survivor episode coming up, you know, there might be some stuff in it.

That one would be better for Jeff. I mean, I think he, like, because we are so unconventional on how we do everything. And so constantly he was, when we were on said, always saying, like, wow, well, that's interesting when we were explaining, like, our thought process behind it. So if we talked in a month after my episode airs, we said, Survivor. There's a lot more I'll say there. You had teased on Twitter that your Survivor 50 moment is one of the favorite things that you ever were shot. Yep. You're going to put me in on pickle because I can't talk about it. Okay. Yes. Can you say why it was your favorite thing without saying what it is? Well, I didn't talk about spearfishing. Okay. Good. That's a good start.

Yes, the joke. I'm kidding. I love Zach. I can't. I can't even talk about it. I can't say anything. Okay. But you guys just give it an honest try.

I know you're not a fan of us, us cameos. You don't like us. But trust me, ours isn't just some silly cameo. You'll like it. Just come into it with an open mind and give it a try. Yeah. I mean, is there anything that you could say, like for the survivor fan who's worried like, hey, this is going, this is not my pure survivor. Yeah, I mean, I don't do like a

monologue or it's not, it's not about me. So I guess that's all I could say, but past that, I'd have to go called chef because I don't know, I'm under a lot of indias. I get that. I get that. So what was going through your head as you came into, you know, Survivor 50 is this huge season. We've been waiting for it for all this time. Yeah. And now you're walking into this thing that's going on. Like what was, what was going on in your mind as you were walking into this? Well, I mean, just the entire thing. The fact that Beast Games has a collab episode Survivor and then Survivor has a collab episode of Beast Game. Until I met Jeff and me and him like rode on this golf cart once I got to the island, I didn't think it was happening. I was like, nah, he's just

going to like back out or he's going to be like, what? I don't care that much. Who are you? And like, I just It all just seemed too good to be true. And it was like all a fever dream. And even as I'm like going into Fiji and I'm on the boats going out there, I'm just like, I'm just like, I'm just constantly like talking to my team. I'm like, you're telling me, we're about to go do a collab. And like, Jeff Probe's just going to film on Beast Games. And I'm just going to film on Survivor.

I'm like, no shot. Like, we're just going to turn around and go back. But I know I got there. He was so kind, so nice. We spent a lot of time together. I mean, we drove around the island. And it's just like the entire time, even like all the way up to when the cameras turned on, I was like, at some point.

I'm like something's going to go wrong. This doesn't make sense. But like the, yeah, it ended up happening and he was awesome. And the, you know, the stuff I filmed with on Survivor, my big thing was, you know, I know it's not about me. It's about the contestants in Survivor. And so I was just trying to really make it all about them and and just elevate the show and not try to distract too much from it, which I think we hit on the head.

And then inversely, the stuff we did on B-scams, I tried to make it all about Survivor because I know a lot of people who watch these games, obviously he grew up watching Survivor. And so I was just like, Jeff, you can literally do whatever you want on my show. I was like, here you go. Like, if you want to kick me off the episode, you can. I don't care. Can you talk about that golf cart ride?

Yeah. What was that like? Well, we actually have a mutual friend named Elon who makes board games. And so like we started talking about him. And I think I have a photo of my friend. We sent Elon in Small World. And then, yeah, we were just, honestly, I was just asking him about how his show works. He was asking me about how my show works.

And it was like, I keep saying, it was like the only time I've ever met someone who is also a host. And there's just so much self or so much commonality and common interest and things that like I could only relate to with him because, you know, like I have phenomenal directors. I have phenomenal creatives, phenomenal producers. I mean, sometimes in Beast games, we have over a thousand people on set that make these thing happen.

But of those thousand people, none of them are the ones who hold the mic and tell the contestants what to do. None of them have to control the pace of the show and to like actually have someone that I could speak with that has done that. And in his case, done it almost longer than I've been alive. It's just like constantly that kind of stuff. And yet not just another host, but the thing that the two of you share is that you are both the face of the thing, but also the creative driver of the thing. And there's probably not too many other people that are in that same situation. I would argue it's only us to. I mean, name one other one, you know?

You know, it's hard to off the top. Like a lot of these other reality franchises that we know, like the host is just the host. And there are other people that come in and they're the creators and coming up with the game design and everything. But yeah, it might just be you too. Which makes it so much more stressful because, you know, in a way, there's so much, there's something that's freeing if you are just the host because then if something goes wrong, it's like, well, not my fault. You know, I'm just paid here to stand and hold the mic and directed.

But like, while I'm directing or leading a challenge and telling contest is what do. I'm also like, you know, turning to my right and just going, guys, that's supposed to be like that. And what is this? And that's not optimal. Why is that lighting? And the cue is off. And I'm like, but anyways, contestants for this next challenge, we're doing Blake. But what, you don't have that camera, something even punched in on Monica? What are you doing? So, anyways, Monica, what are we doing now? Okay. Oh, you and Jim, you know? And so it's like, I'm like doing like four jobs while also hosting. But the thing is in the edit, all you see is the hosting part. You don't see that other stuff. So it's like doing both at the same time makes it even more stressful and

harder. So you've had so much success in the YouTube world, but you, I can feel it from you. You're so passionate about the Beast games and the TV side of that. I would think that so many people who are on TV are maybe wanting to do, get into YouTube and get into this world that you've already conquered. Why is the TV side of it so interesting for you? It's a great question. I mean, it's kind of what I said before is you can't really at the moment tell like long 10 episode stories on YouTube and I

first and foremost just want to tell longer greater stories and also just go bigger and more grandiose and like Amazon's a phenomenal partner I mean they give us to creative freedom to do what we need to do to make a great show they work with us in every way and like it's also just not even financially feasible

to do something like these games on YouTube like just not even close yeah it's just the math doesn't math, you know? I mean, like, I, I, yeah, the season one, if you knew what we spent, you'd be like, what the fuck? I heard it was a lot. I heard it was even more than you wanted to spend. No, yeah, yeah. I mean, we lost a lot of money in season one, but now I'm not, I'm done losing tons of money. I got to, but yeah, just not really wouldn't make sense. Amazon's a great partner for it. YouTube's just not the correct place to put that kind of content,

even if it was financially feasible. And, yeah, and, uh, it's, um, and, uh, it's, um, So that's why, you know, off platform on YouTube. But, um, but, you know, in a world where I guess people did come to YouTube to watch serialized content and was financially feasible, then I, you know, it's just, I've just always wanted to tell longer stories. And I think it's just the next evolution of what we're doing on YouTube. Do you ever make a video on YouTube and say to yourself, you know, this could be a reality show? Oh, all the time. Because, you know, you had recently done a couple of videos about 30 days chained to my ex or like a camping. Can I survive 30 days with my ex?

Yeah. And I'm like, these could be dating shows. Oh, 100%. Like, these could be their own, like, huge franchises. Yeah. I mean, sometimes what we do on YouTube, which is interesting because we get tons of comments like this, which is people would comment like, wow, Jimmy just took a 12-episode season and condensed it down to a 30-minute video. Yeah.

This is awesome. I saved so much time. And that's, like, kind of what we're known for to a lot of people on YouTube. Because, yeah, the video where we had Susie and Josh, basically, we grabbed these people who broke up. They dated for four years right before this guy was about to propose to her. We just watched it. She broke up to them. Yeah.

And so then we blindfolded them, had them come into a set, took off their blindfolds, put handcuffs on them. And yeah, I mean, there's no, or actually even a better example is my friend Madge wanted to lose weight. So he put him in a circle with the gym, a big circle. It took him six months. He lost 100 pounds. We gave him 250 grand.

And like that, I mean, we had 40 cameras running. Maybe not all 40, maybe only 20 of them were running 24-7, 20-7, 20-25 cameras for 180 days. We're talking like, so like, that, that's, you know, is like, what is that, like, 400, 500 hours a day of footage times that. Like, so we probably

walked away from that video with over 100,000 hours of footage. Yeah. The match video, 100,000 hours of footage. And we condensed that 100,000 hours down to a 40-minute video. You know, you have all of this data

that you've learned from all these years of making these videos. And not only are you consuming all of the contents, but you're spending time with like thousands of reality television contestants and you have so many people that come through being a part of your videos. And I feel like that you must have learned so much about the human condition. Oh yeah. And I feel like that you have this really unique vantage point of like really having the data on what people like, what people don't, what people want more of

like fundamentally. Are you talking about viewers or the contestants? I'm talking about both. Because I feel like that you have both of the... What's interesting is viewers, I would argue I understand, especially on the YouTube side, viewers better than anyone else on planet. But when it comes to contestants, the thing you'll learn is there is there is no understanding of them.

They're just predictable. Humans are unpredictable. And you can grab 100 contestants, you know, and put them in that million-dollar scenario and all 100 of those people will take the button. You can grab 100 different contestants, and 99 of them could not press a button. And you just never know.

And that's why with Beaskins, we always set things up as a sandbox where they're allowed to do what they think is right, right? A lot of shows, they have the story producers that stand behind the camera. Actually, I just saw a clip the other day. I won't say what reality show was. But like, this guy said something on camera. And then on stream, he was like, yeah, I didn't really mean that. The story producers just basically told me to say that. Yeah.

And I wish I didn't say that. But I was just doing what the show was telling me to do. The interesting thing is on normal shows, right, you'd have a camera person, a story producer here, film me for 20, 30 minutes or whatever, and they'd go on to the next one. Whereas on Beast Games, we have, you know, in season one, we broke the world record for most cameras recording at the same time.

Never in history of any movie, show, anything. In history, has there ever been over a thousand cameras simultaneously recording? And you might think, why? Well, the reason why is it cost, I mean, literally millions upon, millions upon millions of dollars just to set up those cameras. and it cost millions of dollars to run the cables. We also broke the world record for most camera cable wiring on a set ever in history.

We also brought the world record for the largest control room in history to view it all. And we're talking like over $10 million, just in infrastructure to set up the cameras, to wire the cameras, to host it for storage of it all. I mean, it's spitting off so much footage that it doesn't even make sense. We're talking not gigabytes, not terabytes. We're talking about petabytes, thousands of terabytes, millions of gigabytes. I didn't even heard petabytes. Yeah, yeah.

But we're probably the only show in the world that, you know, actually record, petabytes of footage. But the reason I do all of this isn't so I can just say this all and so I can keep stacking up Guitous World Records. It's because that's what allows beast games to actually authentically record these people. I don't have to put a camera in your face and go say these lines of 20 minutes and move on. I can go, I have a camera on you for the next 12 hours. Do whatever the hell you want. Yeah. I have actually, there's a thousand of you. Yeah, I actually have a thousand cameras. I have a camera on every single one of you. Do whatever you want. Be whoever you want. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it doesn't matter. I don't have to

funnel you into this box and you don't have this set window of recording. And it costs so much money and it's so much effort. And it's why sometimes, I think at one point in these games, I had over 2,500 people on set, 1,000 contestants and over 1,500 non-contestants. I mean, it is ridiculous. And if I switched it from, you know, recording all these contestants 24-7 with the camera always on them and all these perfect white shots down to, hey, just, which is what everyone in the entire industry was telling me to do. Just have them, you know, put a camera on them, do it this way, do it in a more structure format. You can cut down the cameras by 70%. You can cut down the footage by 85%. You can save, you know, here's how you can easily save $8 million doing this. I'm like, yes,

but what happens if, you know, two hours later, that person wants to say something or the person wants to do this or these two people start to become friends? Like, well, it is what it is. You can't capture it. I'm like, why? Why can't I capture it? Why do I have to put words in their mouth? Why can't I just let people be them and just show it. And so that's why I think Beast Games feels different. And I think that that's the thing that I always want to hold firm on and that I think will always forever separate us from other shows. Because even the down, down, downtrum effect is like,

now you have all these cameras. You have all this cable. You have all these things. You have all this storage. I mean, I spend millions in just storage to store the footage. Is then, okay, well, now someone has to watch it. I mean, at some points I have over 200 editors working on it. There are probably points for on Beast games.

I have more people editing Beast games than every other reality show in the world. has editing at that moment. Because then they have to watch it all. And each step of the process, I could shave off multi-million dollars, but it's all so then the contestants can be who they want to be. I don't have to put word to their mouth. And I just have everything.

And it can be an actual true, authentic show. And that's what I think is very important about these games and what separates it. Yeah. That was an incredible answer. And I think that what's interesting about what you're saying is that you could study the data and you can really predict how the audience,

will react, but you can't predict how the contestants are going to... The only way you can predict how the contestants will react is to have a story producer telling what to do, which is what most shows do. And I refuse to do that. I mean, we'll have a person behind the camera to be like, hey, you know, now you're in frame and make sure the frame looks good and things like that. But I don't want people feeding them lines and telling them what to say. I'd rather die.

Wow. Don't die. Well, I'd rather than that. Like Jim, you know, these games. Yeah. He's just funny and weird. Like, we're not, like, we're not telling him to be like that. Right.

He's just a very loud, funny guy. You know what I mean? And other people are just quiet. It is what it is. Yeah. Jimmy, thank you for making this time. Oh, we're done already. Come on.

You don't have one more? Okay. I have a little more time. I mean, so I feel like that this, I've been so blessed to have this opportunity to sit down here with you. I mean, is there anything that you feel like that, people misunderstand about you. And I feel like... No, I don't care about me, but you have a reality audience.

More of the show. I just like, beast games, we pour everything we have into it. I don't know. Did you ever see any of the behind the scenes we did with John Usha? Yeah, I just watch that. Yeah. I would recommend maybe people watch it because I just don't think people realize just how much effort goes into the show.

And like that, everything I just laid out for you guys on like the camera and the editing side, that's just that side of it. And then when you come to the set building, side of it and the casting, the contestants and everything. I mean, we, the show is definitely not perfect and we have a lot we can improve. But my goodness, like, we pour everything we have into it. And also, like, when I mentioned these numbers, like, we have 1,500 people on set. Like, when we filmed these games, we actually create jobs for thousands of people, too, in the space. And, like, you know, after we, every season we record, I mean, we've only done two. I get,

you know, hundreds of emails of people being like, man, it's been really tough to find work. And it was awesome to be able to work on such a massive show. and have consistent work for, you know, like whatever, four or five months straight, especially season one we filmed in Canada. And there was like a little bit of drought, you know, in the art department scene and the camera scene and the set building scene over there. And then they just all had basically nonstop work for this long period. And so it generates an insane amount of jobs for people who really need it.

And everyone who's working on it is pouring everything they have into it. I can tell you this. Like there's not an other show on the planet that has people who care as much about their show as we do. I mean, we care so much. And there's nothing we won't do as long as it's moral, ethical and legal to improve the show. And we pour everything we have into it. And so every second of B-Skin you're watching, like, we gave it all and we left it all out there. And so I would assume a lot of your audience probably hasn't seen it that is watching this.

And so I'd recommend it. Just give episode one to try and see what you think. And hopefully you can tell that the effort's there. Yeah. I think that people who haven't given it a try are sort of like, oh, it's a YouTuber show. Yeah, that's for, or that's for kids. I don't know.

I don't know what this is. And I think that, you know, a little bit like of a hook. I know you did strong versus smart this season, but I feel like that that, like, I don't know if people necessarily resonated enough with like, hey, I'm a strong person. I got to see this. I'm a smart person. So I think that, you know, just like getting a little bit more curiosity into like, what is this?

Oh, I got to see them do this. Exactly. I think that that's really going to help you. And I think that the pitch that you've made to anybody who cares about reality TV today, I think is really going to help get some people to check it out. Hell yeah. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you, Jim.

Thank you guys for listening. This is incredible. And thank you for having me.