RHAP: We Know Survivor - Road to Reality | A Thing You Did Once with Jacob Derwin

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Episode 6 of Road to Reality features Jacob Derwin from Ghost Island

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Iris and Josh seem like the perfect match, but when a weekend getaway turns into a nightmare, Iris realizes that things aren't as perfect as they appear. From the creators of Barbarian and the studio that brought you The Notebook comes a twisted tale of modern romance and the sweet satisfaction of revenge. Companion, only in theaters January 31st. Hey everybody, welcome back to Road to Reality. Today we are speaking

to one of my dear friends, Jacob Derwin from Ghost Island. Hang around, this is an amazing episode. Jacob is a friend of mine since the show, even though we did not meet out on Ghost Island, our paths did not cross then, but they did shortly after. And he has been a dear friend ever since. In fact, I looked back when you get voted out of Survivor, you do a word association.

And here was the word association I said about Jacob after I got voted out of the game. He's a Survivor super fan gem and the number one person I wish I could have played with. That is so, so true. Jatia said in her episode that Survivor casts 20 people to start who could have a winner's edit and a winner's story. And Jacob is no exception. And we forget, even here at Road to Reality, where I've talked to so many winners and repeat players and heroes, that sometimes your big, big, big survivor dream comes crashing down and spins out of your control. Sometimes you're just a 22-year-old kid

trying to find your way in the world. That way gets a little lost on a little ghosty island and turned into clown music for an edit that fits the narrative of a first episode boot. This couple hours here with Jacob shows us how he could have been a winner's edit. He was living a full life and certainly the way he gets into the nitty gritty of his survivor experience and gives us the perspective of what it's like to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start your post-survivor life, which has led him to a super cool job in New York City. We start out talking there, his beautiful fiance, you'll hear more about her and just his perspective on his experience that we all, all of us, everyone who plays survivor, everyone who has lived life can learn from.

All of us, everyone who plays Survivor, everyone who has lived life can learn from. I am thrilled to introduce to you, reintroduce to you, the goofy, charming, and wholeheartedly sincere Jacob Derwin. I'm currently in my little workplace studio. I work for Audio Technica at the moment. And have, we have this cute little podcast studio here in, uh, in Soho. And so I'm making good use of it for today's, uh, for today's chat. Yeah. It's a, it's a wonderful little space and we're, we're building it. We're refining it. It's brand new, uh, you know, ironing out all the kinks and it's becoming something, uh, really special and something that can be kind of hard to find here in New York. Yeah. So it is a, correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is it is a

rentable studio space where you can come and record a podcast just like this to be a podcast guest or a podcast host. And you look perfect and the audio sounds perfect and the lighting is perfect. And that's, that's that's the setup right that you have for people they're super cool yeah we're still working on obviously this is not an ad for audio technical but i am i yeah we're working on making it into a rentable space uh we're working with a lot of local shows podcasts entertainers who have been like coming in doing episodes here testing it out with us uh and eventually probably starting next year it'll be like uh you know you pay a certain amount you get a certain amount of hours

and uh we'll help you out every step of the way that we can awesome yeah no this isn't a paid for ad unless they want to um hi hi boss hey boss boss hey i mean hey not? But you have been working there for a few months now, right? You started there. Yeah. And this is at least for a while, one of your first long, big full-time corporate gigs. That's what's so funny. Yeah. It's a funny situation. Cause I, this is my first like full-time corporate job ever. It's one of my, I mean, I wouldn't say it's my, one of my first full-time jobs ever, but it is up there. I mean, I, I've spent most of my adult life working freelance or like a ton of part-time jobs at once, or like a full-time job that was like, kind of more like a part-time job. And then I had like two temp jobs on top of that. Like

you can ask anyone for the last seven years, I've worked a million different positions in a million different places. So this is like my first kind of like, oh, I have an office to go to. There's a corporate ladder. There's an org chart. It's a very interesting kind of adjustment to get used to, but it's been very enlightening about how all this works and I'm figuring it out day by day. Yeah, I love that idea because I think so many people are either who have done what I would call maybe a portfolio career, doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. corporate job or just like people who are in a corporate job, but would love to go work part time at a podcast studio are afraid that if they took that break, they could never quote unquote, get back in to like a corporate job. And I love that your example is such one of like, all of your experiences led you to this perfect spot, which is what do you want to just give us a little bit more about what your role is there? Yeah, sure. So my, my job title is event manager and brand ambassador, though. I'd say I have at least four other titles. Uh, it's a lot, it's a lot of different responsibilities

all rolled up into one. It's an ever evolving position because it's a brand new position. I didn't jump in or fill in for somebody. This was a brand new situation in a brand new studio, brand new office, brand new. It brand new office brand new it's a lot of new and so we're all still figuring it out together it is a culmination of kind of all this all the different things and roles i've held before and the little ones who not just like working in casting and stuff which i did for almost four years but like you know the the the two months of sales i did at the holiday market, you know what I mean? The, the little bit of education and music teaching, like at being a musician myself,

like being able to speak those different languages has been, uh, very, very useful. And I'm learning that it kind of makes me a little bit of a multi-tool in, in this environment. So I'm figuring out you know which buttons to push and which way to go on different things it's a whole whole new thing yeah the whole commute happening all over again right that's that's part of it um what is some of like what's one of the most fun things about your job so far yeah well. Well, I mean, the best part of it is the fact that Audio-Technica is a pretty established company and we've been around for 60 years or so. I happen to be using an Audio-Technica mic. So we are there. So for people who don't know,

Audio-Technica is a company that creates microphones and recording equipment. These headphones and these mics and your record player at home. I've been around for a really long time. So the best part of it has just been the fact that, you know, if we want to reach out to a musician or a content creator or podcaster, like we can kind of do that and not worry about, you know, I'm so used to a DIY background where I'm like getting whatever I have together and just making it work however I need to make it work. This is an established brand. You know what I mean?

People know who you are. If you reach out and say, I'm a brand ambassador for Audio-Technica, they say, okay, and? Okay, let's talk. So, you know, we're still working on what all those different relationships are going to mean for the company and what we're going to be able to collaborate on and things like that. for the company and what we're going to be able to collaborate on and things like that. But the really exciting bit is, you know, I've invited and welcomed, you know, over a hundred people to this space already in the first couple of months of working here. And some of them are people who I'm like genuinely a fan of, you know what I mean? Or genuinely like I love their work or their art or their content or whatever you want to call it. So it's really special to be able to kind of build

a little bit of a connection with them personally and and try to find ways that we can work together that benefits us and benefits them. Because I've been an artist myself and I know what it feels like to have a company try and rip you off. And it's nice that I can kind of be that little intermediary in between that where I can make sure everybody's getting a good deal. Yeah. It feels nice. that where I can make sure everybody's getting a good deal. Um, which was nice. Yeah. Tell me about your, your, um, as many of, you know, the intro and outro song is Jacob's song written, composed, produced by Jacob Derwin here. Yeah, it was engineered by an old friend. Yeah. But the rest, yeah. Yeah. It's Jacob's song. And thank you so much for letting me use it. And I get so many comments around people who love the song and just, it's

a part of this space here, but I do not know how old young you were when you started. Like, when did you pick up a guitar for the first time? When did you start singing for the first time? Yeah, sure. I mean, I was involved in music from when I was like little, like I did choir and stuff in like fourth grade and all that. And, um, and then growing up in a reform synagogue and Jewish summer camp and all those things like contemporary music was a big part of those worlds too. Like singing in harmony, singing, sing along song sessions, whatever you want to call them. Um, and so singing has always been a big part of my life. The, the irony of it is I've never been the best

singer. It's this kind of like, you know, I've done a lot of classes and, um, been around a lot of great people who've taught me a lot of things and you just kind of, you know, you take little influences here and there, but I've always had kind of a distinct, uh, maybe slightly off pitch voice. So for me, it's, you know, when I started pursuing my own music, it was kind of about trying to find what fit me, um, instead of trying to make myself fit into other genres. Like I'm never going to be a, you know, a jazz singer or something. So I got to figure out, you know, what, how do, how do I express myself in a way that suits my, my style? I played like piano and drums growing up and I got into guitar when I was a teenager. Uh, once speaking of like Jewish summer camp,

like I learned pretty much everything, all the basics through summer camp and synagogue, because I was trying to be a song leader, which is, you know, if you grew up in a church, maybe there was that one young guy with an acoustic guitar who was playing like pop Christian songs at you. I'm, I'm, I was just doing the Jewish version. Uh, Christian songs at you. I'm, I'm, I was just doing the Jewish version. Uh, so, you know, you're, you know, you're Rick Rex and Dan Nichols and

Noam Katz, all these kind of cool, hip, acoustic rock pop, contemporary musicians, bringing a little bit of a modern musical flair to ancient Hebrew text, if you will. So, uh, that was my life for, for years from, from 16 16 when I was learning guitar all the way through my early 20s when I was working at camps and synagogues teaching that music to kids as like a way to access their religion and stuff like that. Super cool. And is, I mean, you wrote Mirror for Manhattan, like at what point do you start writing songs and writing your own stuff? I mean, I was, I was a moody little kid writing poetry for a long time, writing seriously, like trying to sit down and like,

actually like turn songs out and like present them to people started doing like open mics and stuff when I was like 17, 18, um, 19 going to coffee shops, just trying stuff out. Uh, sometimes it was covers. Sometimes it was originals. Uh, I think probably like 1920 is when I started like feeling like, Oh, I'm a decent songwriter. Like I can, I can come up with an idea and I can follow it. Um, and so I would just write my like college dorm or my bedroom or wherever and recorded them on whatever janky equipment I had available to me. A lot of those early recordings do not sound amazing. And I mean, Mirror for Manhattan, I wrote, that was a, that's a funny song, man, because it's not about anything. That's what's funny is it was almost like a writing exercise. In some ways,

it's very literal. I was literally, I was turning 21 and I decided to spend a few weeks in the UK. I just paid for a ticket and some housing in like Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, just that whole, that whole area. And I had some friends out there from like when I was a camp counselor, there was international staff. And so I crashed with them for a bunch of it. I was on the plane, I was seated next to a woman who we were just like chatting and you know nothing serious literally just like chit chat oh where are you

going i'm doing this so what's that like so i picked up a handful of details about her trip and so those details are the lyrics of the song basically where i was just like i just wrote it down basically like she was literally taking notes in a novel that she was reading. I think it was the Aziz Ansari, like love, uh, modern love book or something. There was, I caught the emojis that she was using with the flags to show where she was going her next, like her trip, uh, you know, little stupid, tiny little details. Um, and I had been working on a different song that was using that guitar line, uh, uh, like before I'd even left on the trip. And then one of the people I was staying with, she had a guitar. And so I was like, I was, I had like a few hours of downtime

in the apartment. And so I was like kind of plucking out what I'd been working on. And then I brought up my notes and I saw the notes I'd taken about the person on the plane and I kind of merged the two together. And that where the song came from and I was yeah I guess I was I just turned 21 I guess and um she's like oh that works pretty well that's cool it's a fun little exercise and I mean to this day a lot of people I mean it's the favorite song I've written for sure so it's it's funny how that works out oh my god was her name actually Mira no clue what her name is no no that's the whole no no that's the whole point right that's the whole point is it doesn't matter where she's from oh well yeah i just i mean i was

listening to your music right as i got back from the show because we had not met yet i think i would have listened to your music before i had even met you you know um and I just I was doing a lot of flying at the time and when you get back from a show like Survivor your identity is confused to say the least or some of our identities are confused and I just remember being on those planes going in and out of Denver and I moved from Chicago to Denver at the time. And just like, I identified so much with that woman that you were writing about. And also like, what can my life become right now? This excitement piece of, I could say what my name is.

I can say I'm Mira from Manhattan, Chelsea from Chelsea, you know, like we, it was all this stuff. And then also the feeling of there's an undertone of grief for me of listening to it, of like, do these people really ever know who I am? And are they going to actually ever know who I am? So it just meant a lot to me. And I think the first time I told you that you were just like, oh yeah, I just like, it was a little ditty. I wrote one song and I was like but this is my entire life that's so sweet no it's true that's first of all it's very very sweet and very kind and and gracious of you to share that it's it's it's funny how that works though I mean you know most of the hits aren't the song that the songwriter thought was going to be the hit

you know what I mean like uh it's it's I'm glad it connects with you in that way and I'm glad it's what you take from it and I mean obviously I you know the album art is uh is by Shelby Solomon a friend of mine and I I the the kind of theme of the whole record was that paper plane idea was that like ethereal flying thing so that I clearly I I my brain was in a similar place of like you know you you do a lot you meet a lot you see a lot what does it actually amount to um but yeah it's funny how you know unintentionally things can can have an impact like that for sure and then when it was like time to put all this all podcast together and you were a friend who i called to talk about like can i do this thing i don't even know what

it what what is this world like? And you believed in me and encouraged me. And I appreciate that so much. And it was just like the words, like, I never knew you. It just fits so much with this idea of road to reality, right? Like you see these people on TV for two minutes. You think, you know, their name, you think, you know, where they're from and you didn't really know them at all.

And I think that that also tied into, I'm not sure if anyone was picking up on any of this meaning of the road to reality piece and choosing this song but for me that is what it has it has really meant like grounding the people that you meet on your television here in this moment and getting to know who they really are and getting to express who you really are. Karishma's episode came out a little bit before this and she just messaged me like, I'm saving this for my children. Like it feels like this opportunity to have told my story. And I haven't gotten to do that in this survivor experience and um that's what i wanted this place to be so when i suggested that you come and be on the show and talk to me a little bit about your before during and after survivor journey what's your like gut kick instinct when somebody asks you to do that yeah i mean that's

that's the funny thing i mean so, so, I mean, I almost feel like I should preface this whole conversation with like, I know what I'm sorry. You know what I mean? Like I've definitely taken like a couple of years kind of out of the thing. Um, you know, I'll pop in on the Reddit sometimes and leave a comment or something, you know, that's about as far as I go these days. Um, and as grateful as I, as I was that you reached out and that you were interested in having me on because of course that's very flattering. There's the pretty, you know, large part of me that's like,

yeah, but every time you talked about your experience in the past on a podcast or a charity event or a panel, it was mostly people being like, Jacob, please stop. Like you're bumming everybody out. You know what I mean? Like we're tired of the Eeyore schtick it's i think there's a lot of context maybe missing about my story i guess if you want to call it that well i was surrounding the show given that um there you were on the show for however many minutes that it was two minutes i would imagine that there is a lot of context

sure missing but i don't even mean i don't even mean like why i did what i did i think i think there i can so i could explain for for well we're not talking yeah that part doesn't you know that doesn't even really i mean if that's what you wanted to talk about today but it's not yeah it's not what i want to talk about is you were very close to 21 when we went on the show, right? How old were you? I turned 22 about three days before the shoot. So I was.

So you're like on the plane going to Northern Ireland, like going to Northern Ireland, riding Mira from Manhattan, like in your life, you're working at summer camps and teaching music and your relationship with Surviv survivor as a show is what at that point like leading up to go sure yeah i was just a big old fan boy i i was i've been a big fan forever that's if there's one thing you pulled from my character from watching it you got that jacob is a big old nerdy fan boy um i was writing a blog i was involved online i'd never really broached the in-person fan community i'd always kept my distance a little bit um people forget that back then it wasn't that right at least for

me maybe there was out on the east coast but where i'm from there wasn't like tons of survivor meetups yeah it was kind of like it was kind of like coastal you know i mean there was like a new york group there was an la group and i felt like mostly it you know um but yeah i wasn't i wasn't super involved i i you know but i like memorizing every like did you just love the show did you love the idea of playing like what kind of fan sure i you know i i didn't have i've never had the memory power to be the guy who knows like every single contestant in every boot order. Like some folks do for me, I'd always been a big gamer and a big strategy person. And the idea of playing this specific game that was on this scale with these

stakes had always been like a huge kind of like how crazy amazing would that be? Like it was, it was always just the appeal of the adventure in the game and the proving be? Like it was, it was always just the appeal of the adventure in the game and the proving myself thing. There were, there was always, that always had kind of been at the core of my fandom of it. Um, on top of the storytelling, um, I've always, I mean, I've kind of studied reality TV, whatever that means for, for most of my life. Like I, even I worked in the industry for a couple of years, like, um,

I'm really fascinated by formats and characters and development and story and game. And, um, to be in the middle of, you know, the one, the kind of the OG in the U S at least, it always felt like a, it would be just a really special thing and a cool experience. Um, and who doesn't like to be a little bit of a know-it-all and smarty pants on a on a tv show maybe maybe maybe outplay a couple people so that that had been kind of the core of the fandom for especially the couple of years leading up to me actually making the show when i was younger i think it was just like the thing everybody was

watching and it was fun and it was exciting and it was moody and it was it was action and uh you know that that it was a movie you watched every week with my my family you know what i mean it was cool yes so you were watching with your you were watching with your family and yeah and you get to 18 and you start applying how to yeah yeah absolutely and i sent my first tape at 18 i hope it's somewhere in the depths of hell. I hope it never emerges. Deeply embarrassing thing. I applied again when I was 19 after I'd started blogging a little bit. I think I have a timeline, right? I think I started blogging and then I applied again at 19. And I heard back. I heard back when I was when I was 19. And I heard back. I heard back when I was 19. And I got to the first round, which is just paperwork and a phone call, the basics.

And that was that. Didn't hear back after that. I believe that season was those seasons were in Cambodia, like the Korong situations. I always joked that Julia Sokolowski. How do you say her last name? I always joke thatia took my place because she was the 19 year old on that season because she was the kid the baby yeah which is so hilariously wrong but you know i hope you're well julie uh and then um yeah i i i kind of i applied the next year as well when i was 20 and didn't hear back and i was like well that's that's a bummer

and then knowing it was like kind of casting that's, that's a bummer. And then knowing it was like kind of casting season was going to start up in the fall. Uh, when I was 20, when I was 21, um, I, instead of sending a tape in, I just kind of emailed the casting producer who'd reached out to me. Um, and I literally sent her my resume, which is God almighty, where I was like, here's everything. Here's everything I've done since we last talked basically. Yeah. Yeah.

Which they are tracking by the way. It was literally like, I've, I've, I'm living a life. I've, I've done, you know, done three internships and I'm graduating early on Dean's list. And I've been involved in two student media organizations and I'm trying to get into, you know, radio and NPR and I'm trying to get into, you know, radio and NPR and I'm, I'm doing music and I traveled here and I've done like, I'm living a life. You want a young person with life experience, which was the tagline for a long time. I'm a young person with life experience.

And I, I got, I got their attention that way. And they started working with me to kind of build up my application. And, uh, I got all the way through that time. Yeah. I mean, we laugh about the resume thing just because of the instant, like what you first think of as the contrast of like sending your resume into but it is so true. And actually we, we don't do a ton of casting advice on this podcast, but that is true is they are looking for people who are living a life. And that was the best thing you could have done was say, Hey, this is, that's what I living a life. And that was the best thing you could have done was say, Hey, this is, that's what I did as well. And I applied one year. And then the next

year I redid my video. I got through the, as far as you did just like the written stuff. And then I just make a new video being like, so since last year, I happened to have gotten married, got divorced, moved to a futon, you know, not, didn't have a house to live in. It happened to be like a lot happened in that time. Um, but even if it wasn't that quite dramatic, they are tracking you. And even if you don't think they are, they are watching people and seeing where they're going if you're interested. So, um, I love that you said, Hey, here's my resume. Here's my life resume. Check out. I'll say this. Like was graduating that December across the semester early. I was doing pretty well in classes and all these internships under my belt. I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

I applied to a bunch of radio jobs, a bunch of podcasting jobs, news jobs all across New York, mainly obviously in the tri-state where I live. And I couldn't get an interview. I was getting, I think I got two interviews and an interview I I was getting I think I got two interviews and then rejected I was getting rejected left and right and I had all this like energy and passion and I knew exactly what it is I wanted to do and nobody would hire me out of college and you know just like that I'm on my parents couch at home wondering what I'm going to do next applying to work at grocery stores and CVS, who also aren't interviewing me because they don't want someone with a bachelor's,

they want a high school student. So I'm like, truly, I had zero prospects except Survivor. Survivor was the only thing that was calling me back. It was, it was a weird situation. I treated it like a job interview. Genuinely. I was like, I was on top of it constantly in a way that I bet a lot of other people didn't have the time for because I didn't have a, you know, my job, quote unquote, as a music teacher was once a week, I was going to a synagogue

and playing sing-alongs. Like I was legitimately, I had nothing. What do you mean by on top of it? Because I know the casting directors are always like, don't bother us. Like, so, and I don't imagine you were bothering maybe somewhat I mean good but you got to bother them a little bit but what would you what do you mean by you were on top of it I mean that when they needed something I got

it back to them within 24 hours yeah I mean if they needed yeah if they needed an update to paperwork if they needed me to edit my tape seven times which I did I think I held the record for a second yeah okay so they're having you edit your tape and do all that stuff oh yeah if I if they needed wardrobe options if they like literally every aspect of the process however it was back then I don't know how it is now um every step of the process I was I was the I imagine I was the first one of the first if not the first person to get back to them with everything they needed and we were going through at the exact same time I think this was both of our second time. We were at finals together. I think, yeah, we were at finals together. So I think we were both,

and we both had the same casting director. So you and I were probably the first two to get all of it. We were the good students. Yeah, absolutely. I didn't have a job that I need to focus on first. I didn't have to ask for permission to take some time off. I was, I had nothing going on. Yeah, this was all I had. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices

and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. What was the feeling for you just as a like you person, Jacob, going through finals week and casting? What was that like for you to be there?

It was like I stepped into a storybook or something because if you're a big fan of the show, you already like kind of in your head, there's a certain fantasy version of what that's all like, right? Like it's kind of mythological. I feel like, um, I don't know if it still is that way for folks who are still applying for the show and big fans. Like, I don't know, I've kind of lost that perspective over time, but I know for me when I was like in my early 20s and i'd heard for years

about like yeah you go to finals and you're all like sequestered and you do interviews and there's a hotel and you can't talk to each other and it's like whoa you know like there's it's it's this kind of like weird mythological thing and then to actually be in it it had to be kind of similar to what i was expecting like that like yeah you're all sitting at separate tables in the restaurant that's right you're being called from your hotel to come do interviews throughout the day you're doing your this you're doing like it was exactly the way I kind of imagined it was so it was so magical and like mysterious at least for me it was so mysterious I feel like we got in at the right time to have that experience that is now, I think, ruined, frankly. Well, it's mostly like virtual now, isn't it?

Yeah. Well, I think a lot of it is virtual, but they're still, they're back to going in person, from what I understand. So there is some of that. But like everything, you know, if you push and pry and all these people, like you can go and read essentially exactly what it's like. But for me, I had no idea. I i mean i knew like exactly what you knew i think which is like you go to a hotel what you're not gonna be able to talk to anybody but i remember being i remember eating an extra sandwich at the airport before i went because i was like what if this is the beginning of the test and they don't feed us this whole week like that's genuinely how much I had no idea what was

going to happen. So you were a part of enjoying the magic and the mystery of it. Like what was it like to walk in and meet Jeff for the first time for you? I'm fully with you. Like I had my notebook the whole time and I was taking notes on every single person I saw, every single person, every little bit of information I could glean, uh, glean, not glean, glean. I also thought it was like, this is the beginning. It starts now. Um, uh, meeting, which you kind of did. Yeah. Um, with Jeff, I was actually, so I do this thing and I think it comes out on the show, unfortunately, where when I'm nervous, uh, or or something I feel like something's kind of high stakes I I tap into a kind of a fake it till you make it kind of bravado thing where I need to like this is my shield this is my armor I am confident I can do this I am confident I got this and so I kind of I know I I try to like put

on a swagger kind of because something I don, I don't typically wear in my everyday life, but when I have to, you know, time to go, time to, we got to do this. To be on or something. Yes. Yeah.

I'm going to be on. I'm on right now. Big time. I'm entertaining. I'm huge. Cause also keep in mind, again, I have no job.

I have nothing to go back to. I have no prospects. As far as I can tell. And it's fucking Survivor. And we're like on the CBS line. And it's like, it's, it's high stakes, man. It was incredibly, well, that's just it. Like,

it's not just high stakes in like the sense that it's Survivor, it's high stakes in the fact that in my head at this point, this is how my career starts. Like literally like, oh, I want to have money and start a life and like move out of my parents' house. I have to win Survivor and to win Survivor, I have to get on Survivor. And so I really have to bring it right now. So like, oh, I knew that I was kind of being pitched as a super fan nerd, living in his parents' basement guy. Okay, let's tap into it. And so I really played up the character

like pretty hard in those early interviews. I came in with a lot of bravado, a lot of gravitas, a lot of humor, very goofy, very self-deprecating. But like the parts of me that are there they're definitely there but i really like i turn them up to 11 but i also connected with jeff a little bit because i remember we talked about i remember we were talking about like childhood friendship there were some like connections there i felt like i was able to emotionally connect with them a little bit and like kind of show the kind of person I am. He was already like tapping into like, oh, this is your performance and you were connecting in

underneath that a little bit. Exactly. There was a, there was a personal, like, I think he understood kind of who I was or in some way during our, during our early conversations. Um, I felt like I, I had their attention, you know what i mean like i i didn't feel like i was fighting for their attention like i've i'll say this you know in the future i worked in casting for almost four years like i know i can tell when an interview is going badly like i can tell when like talent is having a hard time staying on message or keeping the attention of a casting director or like getting through an interview i was not not having any of that. I was on top of it. If I was challenged on something, if someone called me out on something, I came back a hundred percent harder at it. Like I was full energy, full enthusiasm.

You like knew what they wanted you to be. You were all in, you were in, you were in control of that. I was fully, I fully understood what I was doing during those interviews. And I'll say that by the end of that week, I was 90% sure I was on. Like I legitimately, not to sound like overconfident or anything, but like I had seen people leave the hotel. I had seen people kind of vanish. And after those interviews, I just, every single time I left it feeling more confident because I felt like they were all getting what they wanted to get they all had their eyes on me nobody was looking down nobody was looking elsewhere like they were they were focused on me and maybe what

they were thinking was who is this strange lunatic who is this who's this weirdo who's this crazy boy uh fine I had to get on the show. So whatever I had to do, you know. And you did it. And you did it. And you did what many, many, many, many, many, many, many people in the world try to do and do not get to do. Sure. And then.

And then. And then. And then. My dear friend. My uh my dear friend my dear dear friend like since we we so quickly jacob and i were on different starting tribes we did not meet while we were on survivor we met after we came back home i think that has given me such a one of my not just spouting this because we're on a podcast together like literally such a unique beautiful friendship between the two of us that we had the shared experience and yet it never crossed and out there while we were on quote unquote and so my friendship with you has

always been like able to be kellen as keellen, not Kellen from survivor. I hear that. It's not tainted by, by the game at all. And not even like the, like I always felt like you were seeing me and I was seeing you as like, we're in on the joke here of like all of the fanfare of the post season and all the stuff and like the cool kids and who's this and all that. Like,

I always felt like I had you see me as the person I was beyond, even if I was hamming it up. And if I was, you know, in my little hot pink dress and doing all this stuff and getting the attention, like I felt like you were, you and I could make eye contact and be like, this is a show. Yes. And you knew me from that. And i didn't have to play that with you ever and i don't want to do that now either what i want to do is give the platform if we want to call it that like the space of not having you go back into the like really not lovely things of your survivor experience if you don't want to. And people who went on Survivor and their story got away from them and they did not have the experience that they expected and wanted

is absolutely as legitimate. And by the way, more common than the people who go out and get to have their story told and have it go exactly as they want it and to be the hero's journey. And therefore, when people are thinking about going on the show understanding that it can go well and it can go not well is extremely important yeah and to not mince words it didn't go well for you no no it didn't go well it didn't go well i wouldn't go as well as it could have yeah no it did not go well i mean what's funny is it started really good because like I said earlier,

I turned 22 right as the game was about to start. And so like the production team and the casting team secretly pulled me aside on my birthday and brought me to a bungalow where it was like the resort staff and a few producers and they gave me like a cake and they quietly sang happy birthday to me away from the rest of the casting, the cast and the the whole rest of everybody and i i felt so special

you know what i mean it was it was really sweet and i have i have the video of it i i got from someone about a year later which was incredible um and so like that part i was i was having so much fun with the pre-game of it you, I got to meet all these journalists and interviewers who I was like a fan of. I got to meet Andrea Belkey, you know, Wiggler and, and,

and, and Gordon and Dalton. And everyone was there. It was so cool. It was a full media day. I just got to go around and meet people. And I thought, this is so special.

And I was, I was definitely hyping myself up. I was getting excited. I was feeling like just so um simultaneously like excited and overwhelmed by just how much was on us for those couple days i was taking notes on all these people i was getting ready um i realized you know in retrospect i i probably shouldn't have had like my notebook out taking notes all the time like because what happens is like

the game does start before the game starts and so people are eyeing each other they're taking mental notes they're figuring people out they're trying to figure out how they feel about everyone you read it in a lot of the pregame interviews like what do you think of this person and they'll just like hold up a photo and like oh that guy that you know foxy bear looking fellow

he's probably this and da da da so i i i probably could have done more to just come off less strange and uh dorky but i think my my yeah maybe maybe sealed that fade a little early but no i mean not without getting into the details of the whole six days because everybody saw pretty much all of that uh you know it's, it's, it's this funny thing where I keep bringing it up because I think it's really important context that I did not have anything going for me. Like legitimately had no prospects, like had nothing to fall back on. Um, my friends and community were all in Ohio where I went to college. I was already living back in New York and trying to make a life for myself in New York City.

So I was back on Long Island. I had my family, but it's a lot to put on them. Didn't have a partner, you know, like didn't have a job, really a community. I was, a few people have asked me for advice about getting on the show before. And I always told them like, if you get there, make sure that your community, your world back home is set and ready to catch you when you fall. You are going to, even if it goes great, even if you make it deep and you feel like you had a good experience, you're going to need people who are down to just sit there with you and help you process the parts that maybe weren't so positive because it's a weird thing you know what i mean inherently it's a strange experience uh it doesn't exist in the real world it's a weird little make made up that we film. So when it went wrong, I did not have anyone to fall back on the way I needed.

In fact, because I was out so early, I was actually stuck with the pre-jury situation for a couple of weeks and a long time. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, I was meant to be the first out ended up being the second out. Wasn't exactly a beloved character of most of the people I was with. Right. Most of the pre-jury is, is, is starting Malolo, um, with the exception of, I think little sad and a little confused and you're not sure what you're going to do next and you just blew your only opportunity at like a life because remember for me this was my career yeah and now you're stuck in like purgatory and now i'm stuck in purgatory uh and i i was already sober so i I wasn't drinking and most people were, um, and I just felt, uh, I call it depressed in paradise. I was very like, it just felt like this weird fever dream the whole time from, from Fiji to our pre-jury trip it just felt like this kind of exercise in tolerance like how much can you how much how much mental anguish can you take how much loneliness can you handle it was um it was

rough it was a legitimately hard experience and i don't put that on any of the people i was with it's fine you know what i mean like i don't want the last thing i ever want is to try and make anyone feel responsible for my my shit you're not coming across that way at all um good uh i thank you but still you know what i mean like it's it was a really challenging experience it's like a time where you're looking for a foundation in your life and then instead of like walking on the sand, somebody just took you up top and dropped you out of an airplane. It's all air. It's literally, you're looking for ground and it's all clouds. A hundred percent. It is. It is. And to make it even worse. And I know I don't come off as particularly self-aware on the show, but I was self-aware enough to know what was going to happen because I know the show.

I know how editing works. I know how character portrayal works. I, I, I, I know this stuff and I know how much I did in six days trying ridiculous last ditch efforts to save myself when I knew I was in trouble pretty early and every single attempt failed. So I wasn't helping the situation. I was digging my own grave deeper and deeper and deeper. And I knew that every single time something didn't work, that was another thing that was going to be featured on the show with clown music in the background. And so by the time I was out, I'm like, I was looking, I think I was literally sitting in like the tent they hold you in after you're voted out. And I was thinking to myself, I'm like, the first two episodes are going to be the Jacob Derwin falling on his ass montage like I I just I knew like unless somebody else somewhere on the other tribe was doing more insane stuff than I was which I guess maybe a little bit of Dominic and Chris uh I was they did that for a long time so they that's true they got to show that a little more

yeah they got to spread that out yeah I I knew that i knew that this was not going to go um and it was so you have the weight of that upcoming you have the weight of like i'm going back i'm 22 years old anyone who's coming out of college is like freaking out about what is my job going to be what does my life look like and then you have this added pressure of we're coming back in July and we know the show doesn't come on until February. What is that period like? It's a bad time. It's a bad time. Yeah.

It was good in that, you know, you get a little bit of money for showing up on the show and I was able to advance it to a certain degree. Not all of it, but a little bit of it. So I was able to move out of my parents' house. So I got my first room in an apartment in Brooklyn. I started working every part-time job I could get my, my hands on, working at synagogues, afterschool programs, preschools, music teaching, anything, start making a living. Cause I wanted to live. The last thing I wanted to do was sit around and just wait.

I didn't want to rot anymore. I wanted to go live a life. And so I just started living. You know what I mean? I took, I took voiceover classes. I started performing at open mics. I started meeting people,

building a community, a network of artists and others. And that part was going great. Like that part was unbelievable. You know, 2018. What were you doing to like go meet people? I feel like so many myself when I'm getting ready to move again to a new place. And it's like, oh my God.

How did you build out meeting new friends and new community at that time? Yeah. For me, a big thing was open mics because i obviously music um my my roommate ryan was part of a theater company and they would put on mics every single month at a coffee shop in harlem called manhattanville coffee uh the name of the mic was work in progress and it was kind of meant for musicians artists actors anyone to come present something they were working on. And, uh, I, I went every single month with him and we were in Brooklyn. So we went all the way up to Harlem

every single month. And I just started meeting people. That's where I met my fiance. You know what I mean? Like it was, it was a vital community that unfortunately COVID broke a lot of that up and people moved all over the country. But for a couple of years there, like I started, you know, I started finding friends who I would continue to be close with for years now. And are now marrying. Yeah, one of whom I married. Yeah, I mean, that was huge. She was the best thing that came out of all that, obviously. But I can wrap that all up with a bow later about destiny and fate and how one thing

inevitably leads to another, I suppose. But, um, yeah, those open mics. This is like, you go to this open mic, you're building your community, you're getting these jobs, you're hustling to get and simultaneously and simultaneously, whenever things are quiet, uh, the spirals begin. Uh, that's, that's when things get rough. That was, um, like I remember, so there's a therapist on the show. There's two therapists, but we had Dr.

Liza. Um, I, I remember emailing Dr. Liza because I was a few months out and I had been living in the apartment for a little bit and I've been living my life. And I went to a concert with an old childhood friend of mine. So Jonathan Colton, a great show.

And I, I get home and I've had a great night out of an amazing night out. I saw one of my favorite musicians, hung out with one of my oldest friends, had a great evening. I get home and the voice inside my head is screaming. I am spiraling out of control internally with just like self-hate and how the fuck did you ruin this? Your life is over. How do you think you're going to come back from this? Just like, how did you blow it this hard? Like legitimately, I could not get off of myself. You know what I mean? And I would try to redirect it as like self-deprecating humor which a lot of people really did not like um as i learned over the last over about two years

um just trying to like cope with it and like kind of deal with it i remember emailing dr lies of being like i don't know how to get the spiraling to stop like i don't know what to do and at this time we've been leaked right so people in your life are like asking you about it you're having to lie we all are having to lie so it's not like you're getting to just like i mean maybe that would have been better or worse i don't know but you are having to talk about it and people are asking you about it as well yeah and i think i was able to turn it on i think i think i would have to ask people who were around at that time, what they thought. I felt like I did a pretty good job of like, kind of pretending like it was going to be good.

You know, like, I feel like I did an okay job. I don't know. I might have won. I might be a million dollar man. I was able to play it out. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't lie to my parents. Like I told my family as soon as I got home, like, but like everyone else,

I feel like I was able to kind of sidestep it to a certain degree. Building and building and building. And it's getting closer and closer to February. It was, it was rough. And to make matters worse, I agreed to be a part of a watch party here in New York with like James and James Lim.

And it might've been one or two other people that I can't remember. I don't know why I did that. I should have just been like, I think I'm going to sit back on this one, but you know, I was trying to like also be a part of it and still try to make the best of the parts that were still there. Right.

Yeah. I wanted to, I wanted to see if I could have fun with it. You know what I mean? Like the New Yorkork survivor community the fans are reaching out and they want to like play games with me and like invite me out to watch parties and they want me to do this and i'm like yeah let's do it and i'm showing up and charity oh the charity events oh yeah come on out the new season come on oh yeah i gotta go to that i gotta be a part of that so like i was doing everything that i felt was expected of me and that i wanted to do you know as a fan of the show leading up to the things i thought i would be more excited to be

involved with um and then every step of the way just felt like it just it was just uh oh boy it was a rough one it's just you know you feel like you feel like everyone's thinking the same thing you know what i mean you feel like you know i would go to a an event with a bunch of survivor fans and i'm sitting there you know i may as well have been wearing like a mascot head or something you know what i mean like we all yeah all right there's this this this clown over here let me sign sign my buff you know what i mean like and i'm sure that's not how people were thinking you know what i mean just to be clear for people who asked me to sign their buff i don't think you think i'm a clown or whatever but that's how i was that's how that's where my brain went you know what i mean i and i

try and i could unfortunately i could only handle the the the thing in my head telling me that for so long you know what i mean it was this issue of uh this issue of of of you know truth versus reality and and uh yeah it was i don't know if i'm making any sense i relate i really like inherently it's not that i understand what you're saying because you're speaking clearly what you are. It's I feel what you're saying. Like, because no one gets away from these. I don't think hardly anyone that I've spoken to or my experience gets away from this negative self-talk that happens between when you play survivor, you think it's going to be something.

It's not that no matter, even if you win, I don't think, you know, taking it from, from Wendell and Adam, people who have won that I've interviewed on the show. I think we all have this where you just said like the difference between truth and reality and like the difference between who you are as a person and then what your real lived experience was of the show and then what it is on the show and the mix of all of that and who you were before and who you are now meeting people. It is a. It is a identity shattering experience, no matter how it goes. shattering experience no matter how it goes and then when you had this additional fear of essentially knowing for sure like you said you understand casting you understand storylines you understand that you're not going to get out unscathed as like oh it was joey amazing

who got voted out because he was a big threat. You knew it was not going to go that way. And so having that added pressure on top of having to do the whole performance piece outside of it, it makes sense. And it's a massive undertaking for anyone. And then it had this added spice for you, I guess. Yeah, it was a pretty darkly frustrating moment, right? Because it is the knowing of what's coming, the deep suspect of, you know, the deep suspicion of knowing what your head is going to look like and just how catastrophic it's going to be and how deeply, how far removed it's going to be from your expectation of your experience and how you want it to be

portrayed and uh it's it's it's basically almost a year just waiting for a bomb to drop uh you know you get a premonition of the future uh you don't really know how damaging the blast radius is going to be until it hits you can only you can only write your little predictions in your little books. Yeah. So it was a lot of waiting. Shortly before the show aired, Dr. Liza recommended a therapist to me. I ended up with a therapist. Started going to therapy pretty regularly,

just to start talking through all this before it even happened. And I kind of just braced myself for for the worst yeah and so then the show comes on does that happen to be the worst or was that after all of this time not as bad as maybe you thought it would be or was it worse or it's it's funny it's a little muddled in my memory if I'm honest yeah it's such a it's such a whirlwind um i think i think my portrayal was actually a little worse than even i thought it was going to be like i knew it was going to be bad i i don't think i realized that i was going to have more exposure in our premiere episode than some people got their entire season i don't

think i realized that and and some people put it entire season. I don't think I realized that. And some people put it up as like, wow, production really loved this guy. Like they showed him so much. He had such a big edit. They must have loved him. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how TV editing works. How reality TV editing works is that there's a bunch of story producers on the beach

who are marking down whenever anything interesting, notable happens. And then they take the best of those bits and they weave it into this. They take all these little glass shards and they make a little stained glass window out of it so it makes sense to the naked eye. So I just had so much material that they just had to put it all out there. It wasn't because the production loved me. I'm not buddy-buddy with the cameraman. You know what I mean? I think I'm friendly with like one story producer. That's kind of it, you know? It's, it's a misunderstanding of how this thing works. And there was just so much of me and all of it was bad it was a strongly negative edit uh and so it's this thing where i'm standing there in public at a bar at a watch party with a bunch of other people a bunch of my friends my family

my you know other survivor people uh just like grinning and bearing it being like wow crazy i wonder what's gonna happen to this guy. You know what I mean? Like it was a new kind of catastrophe. I don't think I've ever experienced anything like that before. I've always been an anxious, neurotic person. And I've always kind of suspected that everybody was pointing and laughing. I've always been sensitive to that. I was bullied a lot as a kid.

It was kind of ingrained in me. And so watching that show, it was was the recognition it was the realization that my worst fear was in fact happening like i i literally had millions of people pointing and laughing or cringing or reacting strongly negatively to me and it is a weird sensation and your gut instinct is to fight it a little bit like i spent i remember spent quite a few like weeks just like kind of like no no no that's not but you don't understand you gotta get the full picture you gotta understand the full story you gotta understand why why this happened why i'm not gross i'm normal like you you get so defensive about it because because what do you do

you know you you search my name on google and it was just headline after headline of people making puns off me you know what i mean mean? It was, what do you do? So I became very defensive and very, I tried to be like, I tried to be like down and in on the jug for a little while. You know what I mean? I tried to be like open to, you know, going to events and like, yeah, totally. Ha ha. Well, you know, very fun. Totally. You know, like being, you know, whatever about it, but it was, it was haunting me truly like deeply in my guts uh just nudging me every second and um trying to navigate that feeling

i mean inevitably the result was just like oh no i need to completely separate myself from this and it took me about a year to like actually fully do that but like yeah i'm not going to meetups anymore i'm not going to go to events i'm not going to go to shows i'm not going to go to this i'm not going to go to that no offense to any of the people there it hurts too much it just hurts it's it's it's it's digging into a wound that i need to let heal and i the only way i'm going to do that is with space um and so i took a I mean with the exception of a little thing here and there a little comment a little post I showed up on a little thing here like you know I I just started saying no to a lot of things um which I'm sure some people didn't

like also I'm sure some people saw that as like dismissive or or you know Jacob's not doing so good you know what I mean I remember there was literally an article headline that was like you know this survivor player needed therapy after he was voted out i'm like yeah yeah all of us and yeah all of us all of us yeah yeah exactly yeah when it was that time where you decided to just be like, I I'm out for a bit, were you still communicating with people from your cast? Did you maintain a relationship with people from, you don't have to use names or anything,

but I mean, I know our, our situation, but like, were you talking with people from the show? Like, was there the other piece of the people you had met somewhat or were you like close the door altogether i'm out i'm done for now it's it kind of depended if i'm honest

like there were some people that i've found you know like you uh laurel for example people who i've kind of built a real genuine connection with that has nothing to do with survivor which is really nice you know what i mean like it felt like for a couple years the only conversation i could have with survivor players was the back driver and like i why are we still talking about what we could have done should have done did but wasn't appreciated four years after it happened like the game's over dude like we're not going back to the island like can we can we can we cool it on the game talk like i felt that way even during the pre-jury trip it's like you know we're literally here because we're out we're in brisbane because

we're not in fiji like can we can we can we cool it on the game talk you know what i mean none of us know each other none of us have any connection there's no there's no personhood here and um so like with people outside of people on the cast who i was able to connect with and become close with outside of all that like laurel like you um i still have a good connection with and they were it's a pretty important to all that you know i think that that like tells the explains in a different way like how on on this in particular, we talk about our relationships and like the, like to tie it back to like what's real

and what's the truth and all that stuff. Like even in our one-on-one relationships with the people from the season, each of those storylines has its own. Sure. What's from the show? What's real? What's the truth?

What's the reality TV piece? And that is, I think, would describe why my relationship with you is so fun for me because we went through the exact same time and there was no really question about what was game relationship and what was real relationship. And that was a really beautiful like unique thing um yeah yeah like i see people i see people pre-gaming for 50 like that thing you know i'm talking about where like people are posting photos hanging out with other players like and there's the the jokes in the comments but yeah they're talking about their season 50 alliance because yeah apparently

it's going to be a returnee season like that stuff drives me crazy it's like you can't the game ended the game the game starts when you go out it ends when it's over and and that's why i like games yeah yeah i love that i like games i have a board game group that i play with constantly and it's because yeah maybe we get heated about a thing in the strategy or the why did you can't do? You can't do that or whatever. Yeah, the politics or whatever. But like when it's over, it's over. What happened happened and you could talk about it. But like trying to trudge on it, like it means more than it did.

I mean, you're just going to hurt your own feelings. So don't get me wrong. Survivor is a much more high stakes game than Werewolf. Yeah, there are differences. But it is a little, i've been playing blood on the clock tower some i don't know have you ever played that it's so fun it's probably the closest thing to like a survivor experience is that is that something that you would like or even that like steven fishback hosted a game or something so there were a couple survivors there were a couple

people is that kind of stuff are you interested in that like um I don't know what to say like nearby stuff or is that still too much like survivory if I'm honest I think I kind of I think I kind of blew that um because I did have people like text me about those kinds of things and seeing if I was interested. And I said I was, um, but in retrospect, you know, I think in the couple of years after the season, when like the ghost Island cast was a relatively relevant group of people in the survivor community and like the recency of it all. Um, I was 22, 23, you know, working a bunch of part-time jobs, just getting my life started, dealing with a whole ton of anxiety, not articulating myself well, not explaining myself well in a way that was engaging, more self-serving than anything, right? The whole self-deprecation of it all um i had a really hard

time like what i've said to you a couple times today is like for me it was so hard because my life was over it wasn't over i wasn't i wasn't messed up because i lost survivor i was messed up because i lost everything you know what i mean at least in the perspective of that kid who went through that but um you know you look back on it, I'm almost 30. You know what I mean? Like it's, I look at the way it was all handled and I don't, I see a lot of mistakes made along the way. And I see a lot of relationships

that could have been stronger than ours. I see a lot of people who see me in one way and that's not how I see myself. That's not how my community sees me um and so at a certain point in my life I kind of decided like it's not worth harping on you know what I mean if people want to reach out and I'm glad you reached out if people want to reach out and they want to talk and I feel like I can talk about it or I want to be involved in that then I'll say yes you know what I mean but I'm not trying to make it my whole life anymore. I know people who did the show in 2003.

It's still, it's still their whole life. And you need to, you need to move on. You need to live. We're not going back to the Island. We need to, we need to live here. I have a fiance. I have cats. I have a career.

I have hobbies. I have friends and survivor was a survivor was a weird little thing I did once. And it's a fun story sometimes to bring up in certain company. And I pray to God that employers in the future don't Google me before they talk to me. That's really it. I always feel like if they see that and they want to judge us from our time on Survivor, then it's not where I want to work anyway. Sure. But I do.

It was interesting because I just talked with Jatia. She obviously had a fire experience. Weirdly, weirdly, weirdly, I'd say me and Jatia fall in a very rare group of people. It's like I didn't think going on a survivor that my one of my closest reference points for my experience would be Jatia. But I think it is. You know what I mean? Yeah. uh a reference point for my experience would be jatia but i think it is you know yeah they like

um go out hot sort of it's short and it's it's fire sort of experience and sure you know she has just recently started to go back she was at the bryson wendell event in chicago and she was like really this is actually like really fun to like go and do these things. She also, she has, her life has gone on. She now is married and has kids. It is working and it has the whole thing.

And, and so it's so interesting to, although she did sequester with me during, during 2020 and online games. And like, I have recently, I didn't do some stuff for a while i think whether or not it looks like it to the outside i i feel like i took a pretty big break like my first live event since i had been on the show was chicago this year wow yeah so i hadn't

been going to anything in person or anything like that at all and it was so fun jacob like most people didn't even know that i was a survivor at the event like it's funny man yeah it's like time passes like that part was so fun to like literally a couple people like i went up and said like you're trying to be friendly and stuff and i like went up and said like oh hey are you guys having they had no ideas on the show and i just got to like talk to them about the current season right without the pressure of that and it was so it really was not saying that you i am in no way saying you should that is not what i mean i'm saying that like after time it has changed for me and all of us are like relationship with the show and being on the show and the fandom of it just changes um i know you weren't watching

for a while have you have you been watching at all no i'm not watching it and as lovely as it does sound to like you know kind of infiltrate those spaces a little bit um and maybe not maybe not no no that's that's what's funny is like, you know, like I said, I go on the Reddit still sometimes just to like keep up. You know what I mean? Because I get something out of it. That's a scary place to be. I don't know why I do it.

Dipping the toe back in. Yeah. I poke around sometimes. And someone had posted my engagement video of me proposing to my fiance. And it was very sweet. Well, I mean, aw, did that make you feel good that they posted it or did it feel weird? Well, it was more, well, not good or bad. It's just like, oh, okay. I guess they, I guess someone was interested in all three.

There were only three comments and the three comments were like, I didn't, who is this guy? I don't know this guy. And then somebody that goes from ghost island is like, oh, I didn't watch that one. Cause a lot of, you know, we're almost at 50. There's, there's this whole era of 40 plus that a lot of people got into that reemerged interest in the show uh uh from a certain group that maybe wasn't really into it for the 40 seasons prior and like yeah we're not relevant characters in that story you know what i mean maybe maybe two of us from our season are

it's not it's not uh we we don't loom large like like rob and sandra's giant heads or something so it's it's uh it's can you imagine kellen and jacob's giant heads that's the one that's the that's the island of the idols uh that was italic too um yeah i don't i don't think i'm gonna be like i will say like the most i've done is like i have a couple friends who are still really big big fans and so like if they ask me to come to a little viewing party where it's just like a couple of us hanging out in their apartment I will do that you know what I mean like I'm happy to do that and maybe one day somebody will give me a call and be like I really want you to be a part of this panel because I think you have an interesting perspective yeah and maybe I'll do that you know what I mean but

like the idea of just like showing up at a place and you know I don't I don't really think I needed to be a big part of my personality at this point like it was such a massive aspect of me for so literally most of my my young adult life yes yes the lead up to that major fandom and and it's not to say you know you can't enjoy something for your whole life you know I mean you can enjoy things for for your whole life. You know what I mean? You can enjoy things for your whole life from birth to death. They can be important the whole way through. But for me, at a certain point, when it became too personal and I couldn't separate the game thing from the life thing, you know, the most, the healthiest thing to do was to was was to was to break up

with survivor kinda it's a weird one it's because i also don't want us to portray the thing as like wholly negative you know what i mean like you know because because you know there are millions of people who are they care about the thing they watch the thing they they listen to podcasts about the thing and they're reading blogs about the thing i was on an amtrak for amtrak train from from from uh glenn's falls to new york city last weekend and i was sitting behind someone watching an rhab cast assessment like it's everywhere and they didn't notice me which is great uh i'm just incognito and i wear glasses now i'm now incognito um that's that's how far we've come so So it's not all negative, even with, we've talked about

the heaviness of your experience, but there are clearly positive things in your life and changes that have, of who you are today that have gone through it. Is there anything about the positive side that you would want to share?

Well, I'll say this, you know, I don't know if I'm necessarily a destiny fate guy but you know things happen for that's not even right it's more like whatever came before is what causes what comes next you know what i mean there's a timeline there's cause and effect there's events that happen sequentially and for me the disaster of survivor for me if i don't go through that if I don't do that, I'm not here. You know what I mean? Like, if I don't fight like hell to get on the show, you know, if I don't get on the show, if I don't fail the way I do, you know what I mean? I don't get that $2,000 advance from the production to move out.

that $2,000 advance from the production to move out. And if I don't go on the show and if I don't meet Andrea Belkey in an interview, I don't hang out with her in New York afterwards. If I don't hang out with Andrea Belkey in New York afterwards, I don't get in an Uber with her and her friends off to grab drinks somewhere in Queens. And if I'm not in that Uber, I don't overhear her friend talking about

trying to move out of her apartment. If I don't hear that, I don't speak up and say, hey, I'm looking in that Uber, I don't overhear her friend talking about trying to move out of her apartment. If I don't hear that, I don't speak up and say, hey, I'm looking for a place in Brooklyn. I just got a job in Brooklyn Heights. And if I don't do that, I don't get that room. If I don't do that, I don't get the roommate I had who became a dear friend who I still do game nights with constantly, who invited me to come to the open mics where I met all of my friends and my fiance. You know what I mean? Like Like I don't meet my fiance.

We don't start our life with our cats and we've gone through a lot of tough parts too, but like, we don't start our life with our cats and our engagement and her pursuing her career as an actor and a musician. She's done more television than I have, which is funny. We're both reality TV trash. It's hilarious. Um, you know, you know I don't I don't I don't end up working in casting for four years you know what I mean like if I if I don't go on Survivor I don't feel compelled to start taking acting classes because I need to put my energy somewhere else I don't meet my friend Kristen who gets me into the casting world and I don't work in casting for four years which is my whole career for four years you know what I mean which I turned the thing that, you know,

stabbed me in the foot into something fairly lucrative for at least a little while. Yeah. That's crazy. I thought I honestly, I thought we were going to talk about that piece of it. Oh my God. I can't get too deep into it. Yeah. You can't get too deep, but just to briefly say your job for four years was to review and pitch people who were applying for survivor sorry for reality tv right yeah never never worked on survivor hilariously

but i did work on i worked on uh the parent test i worked on love and hip-hop i worked on an upcoming show for hallmark and lifetime i worked on tons of in-development stuff for like every network and streamer. There's someone you might recognize on an upcoming season of Extreme Makeover Home Edition that I may or may not have had a big part in. Like there is, I was doing that. I turned the thing that kind of killed me into a career for quite was that like like what was it like to be like watching all of those sure videos and applications it is the most interesting perspective and one that i think anyone who goes on one of these shows should get if they can and not everybody can because there's a million reality shows now and uh so many people that go through some version of what we went through. But the perspective of doing it from the outside and on the inside,

you understand it so much more deeply. You understand how much more unlikely it was that either of us ever ended up on Survivor. You know what I mean? The sheer number of people that apply to these shows, no matter how niche and the specifics that these companies are looking for i mean these things get narrowed down fast and it like it takes making quite an impact to make any progress at all in a casting process um so to be a part of that process to be a part of them like i was the guy who was essentially trying

to sell you to the network like you you would send in a tape and you do an interview and i had to turn it all in three minutes of like this is why this person is good for this you know um like you you understand why there are archetypes and personality things that people look for because you know some some exec at some network is going to look at this guy for two minutes and they're going to make their decision pretty quickly and they need to pop immediately and if they if they are too hard to understand as a character from the get then it's just probably it's probably just not going to happen you know what i mean so you me and the other 7 000 people that have done survivor around the

world or whatever all of us had to stand out in some very specific way that made some vice president go all right jeff i'm with you on this one okay lynn okay jesse yeah sure you know what i mean it it that's what it all boils down to um it's it is a it's a tricky process and it's it's political and it's strategic and it's and it's complicated it's hard um yeah does it feel did it make it feel so much more like it's a machine you know i wouldn't say it's a machine because at the end of the day the thing that's interesting about casting is that like people have to make decisions about people you know what i mean and yes sometimes there are decisions on minuscule pieces right and don't get me wrong sometimes you just got to check some boxes 100 but

at the overall you know to get the attention of a casting associate, to then get it to the attention of a casting producer, to be considered strong enough to be pitched to the casting director, and strong enough to be pitched to a network, or a production company, or what have you. Do you want to share any, like, advice, I guess, for the casting process? Yeah, sure. I'll say that there is no formula. And that's what I'm saying is people making decisions about people. Like even if there are certain attributes

they're looking for, or we want them to be hot, young and single, fine, great start, whatever. Like you still need to impress so many people in a row with nobody saying no. And you do that with your winning personality, your big attributes, your big that with your winning personality your big at your big person your big personality your winning attributes your life story the things that

make you interesting compelling a little bit deep um fun to watch uh an interesting storyteller engaging right so i actually i i have some problems with the idea that you can like teach someone how to make a person perfect cast shape or something like that because there's no such thing it is it is so person to person it is so show to show it's a project to project you know the way you're going to get someone's attention on on survivor is not the same way you're going to get their attention on any other show on any other network it's so different from thing to thing um the the core of it is just being a good storyteller that's it that's the reason i got on survivor i didn't get on how do you become a better storyteller if you aren't sure

like how yeah are there things that people can do to be a better storyteller or is it just you got it or you don't got it i i well you could definitely learn and grow some people have it in her like i think dominic performed with it you know but um but no but it is it's something you grow with i mean when i was 19 i interned at the moth and if you don't know the moth is it's a non-profit yes yeah it's a non-profit and they they do uh they do storytelling events where you literally go to an event there's a theme you prepare a five-minute story put your name in the hat and at the card your name you go up tell the story and there's like judging based on the story like i came in second once at a story so i never won whatever um but i interned there when i was like 19 helped put a couple events on in new york

there's a very popular podcast and radio show of a bunch of the different stories like the main thing they teach you is like beginning middle and end you know like it's it's about change it's about something changing over time you're a different person at the end than you were at the beginning it's about being able to right it's being able to express a specific point of view in a way that is compelling and engaging and detailed and where were you the catalyst and as the catalyst what did you do this is how i do with my career coaching or interview time is before during and after what was the situation before what happened during what did you do during and what was the after and where were you the catalyst and all that like get it down to being

able to tell every single story of your life in three sentences and prove that you're the catalyst you can maybe get on reality tv that way i think i mean that's how you get jobs i i don't know i'm not a reality tv expert but well we talked about that we talked about like to get on survivor you have to be a pretty good interview you know i mean you have to be a pretty good interviewee because you're doing a lot of them and you need to be you need to convince them that you're the right fit for the thing over and over and over again it's like anything else um you just also have to do it while being either incredibly hot incredibly funny or incredibly unique in a different way that is appropriate for television i suppose thank god we were all free jacob thank god we're all so hot we're so we're just so attractive i mean it's uh it's kind of unbelievable honestly um

no i got i got on the show because I could tell a story. And that's it. I got on the show because I made my casting producers laugh. I got on the show because Jeff looked at me and thought I was amusing. Actively, actively, there were people at CBS who did not want me on the show because I had been writing a blog and they were worried that I was going to like reveal something on the blog or something, which was insane. The idea that I would ever give up a shot at this for a blog that a couple of people were reading is psychotic, but I was getting phone calls weeks up to the reveal that I was on the show being from my Jeff, from the producers being like, don't fuck me.

Do not screw me over. If I putting you on this show like it was a hundred like there were genuine concerns about me being there and the only reason i'm there was not because i was strong not because i was the smartest person in the world literally just because i was compelling that's it and you it's just about being able to tell your story from your perspective in a way that is engaging that makes people lean in a little bit and you learn how to do that with practice. You can go do the mock. You can listen to a bunch of stories. I recommend D and D when you can. It's a great storytelling tool. Like there's so many ways.

That is the key compelling, compelling, compelling. Well, thank you for taking time to talk us through that. Like I just can't have somebody else who's now been on the other side and has been through such a part of it. And I know that people listening want to be on Survivor, even after if they made it this far into Road to Reality season two and you all still want to play

the game of Survivor, you are potentially meant to be out there. So if you've listened to this song, even after all of these roller coasters and you still want to do it, I feel like keep working towards compelling storytelling. That's, that's where to head next.

Yeah. Well, that's just it, right? It's, it's, you know, we're not saying don't play survivor. We're saying you need to have these things to do it a little more safely. You know what I mean? That's all I'm saying. I'm not, you know, it's more like, you know, if I had done everything I had done and then come home and immediately been embraced by people who understood how I was feeling and could talk me through these feelings. And I had a little more of a stable thing at home and a little more of a community.

I was able to articulate how I was feeling and what I was going through a little bit better to those people. Very likely a completely different experience for me post-game you know what I mean like it's it's and some of that's on me some of that's on me having to learn how to be a better about my feelings I was a kid yeah 100 you're a kid like that is that's a that's kid I mean you're doing big big big stuff that has now impacted the trajectory of your life in all of these very real ways into, into beautiful situations and to really, really freaking hard ones. And you were a kid. I mean, to give yourself the, the break there and to be 30 now and looking back on it is the, the, the time, I don't know that time heals all but it certainly helps with the

perspective when it comes to the survivor experience absolutely you you need that space you so desperately need that space and that distance and some people don't understand that some people hear kind of how i talk about it and they don't understand why i can't just be grateful you know i mean for the experience they don't understand why i'm not well you know but you got to do the thing you the experience, they don't understand why I'm not, you know, but you got to do the thing. You got, you did it. Aren't you so proud of yourself? To me, it's like, no, I'm not proud of myself. Like I performed poorly. It looked bad. I was embarrassed. I still am a little embarrassed. Um, now I'm just learning how to sit with it. You know what I mean? Now, now I'm trying to, now I, you know, I want this to be a party trick. I want this to be a two truths and a lie. I don't want this to be my whole life. I mean, like there's,

there's a big difference there and, and, and learning how to compartmentalize that thing. Um, it took a couple of years of therapy. I was at the same therapist for a real long time and it was very helpful and it was very good. And also just growing and having a life and doing things and not sitting in it forever you know my my therapy going into the show was so helpful and then i didn't do as much therapy right after as i should have but then therapy about a year later really really helped a lot if you are wanting to apply to be on survivor like the moment you apply make sure you are seeing a therapist. Or at the very least, the moment you get a call back to do it, just go immediately into fucking therapy.

That is the number one thing. 100%. Yeah, 100%. When you talked about at the top of the call, you felt like there was missing context. Do you feel like we've been able to touch on at least some of that context or is there other pieces of context that you wish people knew no i mean that's really it it was it was it was the it was the fact that to me going on the show was more than a game for me it was trying to start

my life that was the biggest bit of context that was never really articulate it was it was literally just like i had nothing else going for me and so i thought if i can do this if i can somehow pull this off or at least do fairly well you know pick up a following something i don't know why but something maybe that's how i start i'm a musician i want to do voice acting i want to do personality stuff podcasting radio i want to do all this maybe this is the catalyst with which it begins and when it was over and in such fireworks uh i knew that that was all probably gone, at least for the time being, if not forever. And so the pain of that whole time frame, that whole experience, was based not just on Survivor, but on the loss of everything that surrounded it. Yeah, the grief of the plans.

Yeah, exactly, which I fully recognize, you know, are these realistic thoughts? Not necessarily. But in those moments, you're not thinking like, wow, these insane, sad, anxious thoughts are so not reasonable. Like, no, that's not how that works, unfortunately. No. It all feels very, very very real it was very very real yeah i'll just say i'll just say because i mentioned it the funniest thing about all this is that i've been with my partner now five years she was on undercover boss um the same like year

we did survivor she was on undercover boss celebrity edition she was edina menzel's mentee and um she has this amazing episode and edina like helped her move to new york and paid off her medical bills and like got her whole life together like started here in new york so she could pursue her dreams and we you know we're on our third date uh and i say that i just want to let you know like you know i you probably googled me i just want to explain like you know i don't i promise i'm not like i'm in real life i'm not like i am on the show i know i came off a certain way and she goes i didn't i didn't look that up i didn't google you right you know i'm like oh okay well don't you know and then she explains to me her

experience right her going on the show and make you know you know like supporting her career and like getting her life started in new york and I just look at her and I go respectfully go fuck yourself and she cackled and that was kind of the beginning of our of our understanding of people you know of our relationship and she also did on Fox she did I Can See Your Voice um uh it was aired in January of this year and she got to sing with like Lauren Alaina live on the show and it was aired in january of this year and she got to sing with like lauren elena live on the show and it was incredible like it's it's always cracked me up how like whatever i have like a brush with reality television it's like look at that boy and his shoes in the water and then like when she goes on it's like you know it's just like everyone sees how amazing she is which is amazing which makes me really happy it's kind of the the dichotomy of a of a of a trash reality tv couple i

suppose and yet here you are together right yeah she's something in me i'll take it yeah of course of course of course she does um it's so yeah the the contrast between like, everything's going so well. Yeah, meanwhile, I'm that meme of, you know, Troy from Community walking back into the room with the pizza and everything's on fire. You know, different strokes. So, Jacob Derwin, I have 10 rapid round questions. You can answer them with one word or however long you'd like to go um number one i think we already said this uh how many times did you apply for survivor three three kind of four three to three and a half three and a half. Three and a half. Yeah. In your survivor bio, you described yourself as self-deprecating,

charming, and affable, though others would say punchable. Would you like to make any additions and changes to the three words that you describe yourself today? Oh, that kid was trying so hard. Oh, he was trying so hard. Yeah. I've, I've worked really hard to take self-deprecating kind of out of my, my lingo. It still pops out sometimes, but I'm, I don't, I don't rely on that anymore. Uh, it's not, It's not a good place to sit. I do think I'm charming. Not to everybody. I do think I, to the right crowd, I'm a very, like, literally my job is to, like, go into rooms and be a face for a couple. Like, I'm charming.

Yes, darling. Affable is so fucking weak. That's, like, how everybody for five years used like gregarious. You know what I mean? Let's say, let's say, oh yeah, I like charming. I'll say, I'll go back to, I used to say goofy. Charming, goofy, and wholeheartedly sincere. I, I, and it gets me in trouble sometimes because I say the quiet thing

loud, but I am so achingly sincere in my everyday life. Yeah. I think that's a beautiful thing. Yeah. Zadoozy, from the moment you applied on the show till today, here we are. What was the

hardest part of the survivor experience. What was the hardest part of the Survivor experience and what was the best part? The hardest part is a little gamey. The hardest part was winning an advantage I couldn't use because

obviously you edit around these things. there's about 50 minutes of footage of confessional footage lying on a editing floor somewhere of me basically screaming at the show being like how did i get this screwed over knowing that like when i go back i am in trouble and now I have a piece of paper I need to give away. OK, like that was everything was going to hell right there. That was truly the hardest part, like kind of seeing it all. When you were on Ghost Island. When I was on Ghost Island, I won the legacy advantage. It had no power. I had to give it away. And I realized like there's there's no way out of this, is there?

I'd say that's the hardest part. And I realized like, there's, there's no way out of this is there. I'd say that's the hardest part. Obviously a lot of hard parts followed, but if we're talking about the survivor experience itself, that's the one. To today, the best part, the best part is that I have a handful of friends from that community. There is no chance I ever would have known without the show.

There's, there's, I never would have met you. I never would have met Laurel. I never would have met any of the people from any of the other seasons that I've become friendly with a couple of a small handful. Um, I, I drove across the country in 2019 and I crashed on all of your couches and it was the best. It was the best. Like that is, that is is that is you know not I definitely do not have a relationship with everybody from our cast there are some people who I felt willfully tried to push me as far away from them as they could and that's fine but there are a handful of people that I have a very good relationship with and I value that incredibly highly. If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice on day one of the game, what would it be?

One piece of advice. Spend a little time with everyone, not just the people who you think you get along with spend a little time with everybody because you know i was i was in trouble early for a lot of reasons there's a world in which i just endear myself to the right people. But what really happened is I never really got to know, you know, Brendan, Michael, Libby, Jenna. I never really got to know them at all. I don't know until after the game, even after the game, I know Brendan a little bit, you know, like it's, it's, it's, that's the biggest piece of advice is find time to ask them about themselves and who these people

are forget it's a game for a minute just talk that's it um i don't know if it would have changed anything but would have felt better going out than i did yeah yeah yeah that was great advice i think that was great i forget it's a game and talk to everybody and get to know who everyone is as a human so good you're so wrapped up so easy from your couch right sounds so you're so wrapped up in it on day one you're so it's so go go go we had a challenge the moment we stepped off the beat. Oh my God. I'd die. It's just floating in the water for seven hours or something like it's, it is, is just pause.

Just start spending time with people. That's it. Yeah. It really, I think it would have been honestly, I think remember that it is potentially some of your best new best friends for life or not even they stay your best friends, but they are temporarily. And a lot of them will be, I mean, we're eight years later sitting here talking with each other.

Like, you know, it's really look at it from that way for like the first 24 hours and then go. Yeah. A hundred percent. Absolutely. Other than survivor,

what's your favorite reality TV show to watch? Top chef. absolutely other than survivor what's your favorite reality tv show to watch um top chef oh yeah we love a good cooking show i love top chef i've tried to create my own cooking show multiple times yeah you've gotten so far in the process right i'm pretty good i'm pretty good i've had some i've had some meeting um i love cooking shows my mom and i did a food network show once a couple years ago in like 2020 for for the food network kitchen app that i'm still very grateful we got to do um she is the latke queen and we got to show off our latke recipe it's awesome um love the show my the thing that cracks some people up when i turned in my bar, my bar mitzvah, I'm Jewish, obviously. One of, one of, one of 10 who have done Survivor. There's more, but the, my bar mitzvah theme.

When I was turning 13, we had your little bar mitzvah party. My theme was the amazing race, not even Survivor. I was a huge Survivor fan, but my theme was the amazing race because I made all of the tables named after different countries and i made little signs for all of them and like my little uh book for people to sign in was like this big like like a journal with like the like a map on it and like a compass rose and stuff like i i i genuinely could never do the amazing race probably me and betta have joked about like getting weirdly in shape and trying to do it or something but uh uh i do love the amazing race for sure that's a good one i know adrian and i were always like we don't we don't have the we don't have the hips and knees for that show but we did we did

send in our video we're trying we're trying yeah we're trying um do you have a favorite place in the world that people could visit? I got two for you. Cause as I mentioned earlier, I did a full cross country road trip and I got, I, you know, I basically just drove for a month and I got, I got to most of the country. And I loved a lot of the country. I mean, I loved you were over in Denver at that point. I loved that. I really enjoyed Colorado. I enjoyed a lot of places. I have a hard time

living anywhere but new york i i have such a i'm so spoiled by this city and it kicks my ass every day don't get me wrong like it is expensive and it is hard and it's it's expensive i mentioned it was expensive it's expensive uh it is living here is complicated but there's just so much. I'm an arts and theater and music guy, and I'm in the middle of all of it. Many of my closest friends live within a 30-minute walk of my apartment. I can get to the sculpture gardens in Jersey or the, the, the seaside all the way out on the coast of Long Island, or I can take an Amtrak a few hours up to Boston. I'm in the middle of all the places that I like to be in the Northeast and the East coast. There's so much here

and I, and there's so many people here who I love and who are so accessible because the city is, you can get anywhere from anywhere here you know i mean i i and so i i genuinely love new york and on the more fantastical side of things i spent when i was still freelancing and i had a little more control over my own schedule uh betta my fiance was working on a cruise ship she's uh she's an on again off again actor singer for virgin voyages on one of their ships. And she does these amazing shows. And I spent a month with her on the ship last December while they were in Australia and New Zealand.

And I'd been to Australia. And my last time in Australia was not a great experience. But this time, because I was on a luxury ship with my fiance and all of her amazing performer friends and all these awesome people. And we were going to New Zealand. I mean, New Zealand was, was, was mind altering. Like you have not seen beauty until you have been to Taronga and, and, uh, Wellington and these nature reserves, uh, along the coast coast same goes for tasmania off the coast of australia we went to this museum called the um the mona the museum of old and new art in tasmania that was the most like gobsmacking art museum i've ever been to like literally has a whole vineyard and like wild chickens and a concert venue and like food stalls and then like a five-story

menu and like food stalls and then like a five-story subterranean new age art museum like blew me away so I highly recommend that anyone who enjoys a little bit of artistic beauty or natural beauty get their asses over to Tasmania

and New Zealand to enjoy so cool I've got to get my rear end all the way over there. Am I not supposed to be cursing this whole time? Because I definitely... No, no. We curse. We say whatever we want on

Road to Reality. No, you're good. Don't worry about it. Whatever we want. Whatever we want. We do what we want. The earth is flat. The earth is flat. Do you have a book or article that you want to share that's changed your life or just you want to share that you love? That's a good one.

It's fun. Stephen Fishback does a podcast sometimes where he interviews authors. That's called Paraphrase. And one of the books he featured was severance by an author named ling ma and i decided to read that one because it was i'm not like the biggest reader in the world uh for fiction i do more non-fiction typically um but i'm like you know i'm looking for a good novel it's pretty it's not too long it seems

interesting and i was reading it not not too big of a spoiler but it's about a strange pandemic that occurs uh that leaks out of leaks out of china and gets across the world and the whole story takes place in new york um and the character lives in brooklyn and she describes her commute in the book and it was literally my old commute from my old neighborhood and all these things that I was reading it in like 2019. And I loved it. I still love it. I recommend it to everybody. It's absolute shit. Like it,

it talked about storytelling. It changed my perspective on how stories can be told in that format. It's so different than anything else I've read like it before. And it just so happened to be so directly connected to where I was in my life and what was going on in the world in a way that nobody could have predicted really so it like really really special so deeply recommend Severance by Ling Ma fishback did good on that wreck for sure oh super cool and you can listen to the paraphrase episode right you can yeah you can take that journey journey um what is speaking of podcasts do you have a favorite podcast or

podcast episode that you just can't stop thinking about your podcast episode i got a couple favorite podcasts i love uh i love how did this get made uh which is a bad movie podcast of paul I've got a couple of favorite podcasts. I love How Did This Get Made, which is a bad movie podcast with Paul Scheer, Jason Manzoukas, and June Diane Raphael. Actually, I called her. Paul Scheer has become a huge Survivor fan. He talked about it on the show sometime, so I called in.

I'm just like, just letting you know you have one fan who's been on the show before. If you ever want to talk to him, I'm happy to tell you all about it. And I featured the call in the episode and I'm like oh cool uh like i i love that show um i also on the more like sincere side of things uh i was a less so these days but i was a massive radio lab fan for like ever and ever if you don't know where to start with radio lab go to the colors episode with the mantis shrimp and uh and how like different like the different uh creatures see different amounts of color and how they portray that over sound in a podcast form it is some of the most like it's it's it's at this point it's old news it's been around but like at the time

listening to it like after it just come out like you got like a teenager like blew me away completely like how how does this even exist how did they come up with this this is brilliant uh that's that's that's a big one two questions left what song do you listen to on repeat right now that's something that you or an album you want

to share who's new you're up in the cool music scene tell us what's good I find myself falling behind more and more i went to an event with work uh called the anti-social camp a few weeks ago where i got to meet like over 100 artists and songwriters and producers um and like learn about them what they were doing um a lot of amazing music it met a lot of amazing artists uh there was one song in particular and by one artist in particular that has been like in my brain ever since the artist's name is party nails um like party like parade party and like nails um and the song i believe was called

some way somehow and it just hit me like a ton of rocks. It was gorgeous. Beautifully produced, beautifully written. Super, super passionate. Like, in some ways, super straight ahead, kind of slightly distorted pop rock thing. In other ways, so clearly very intricate and thoughtful and artistic. Big, big fan of that song i'll say shout out an indie artist go listen to party now they're really cool and they were

lovely to spend some time with them for that cool and yeah yeah uh yeah party nails yeah awesome that's a fun one um so last but not least where if you want can people find you if they want to know what's going on with your music, with your worlds, meet up with you in New York. Where can people find you? Don't meet up with me. I don't know you. Don't find me in New York.

No, I'm kidding. I do occasionally get a comment or something. It's like, I thought I saw you in Penn Station, but I wasn't sure. You looked like you were in a rush. I'm like, you should say hi. It's all right. It's fine. Hello, Kitty.

How are you? You can find me, Jacob Derwin, in all the places. I don't do Twitter anymore because it's gone. It was a shame to leave those 2,000 followers or whatever. But yeah,

I'm on Instagram and TikTok pretty frequently. If you care to see what I'm up to professionally, I have a website, jakeanddurman.com, leading into event management and some working with talent as much as I can. Music, I'm kind of out of the game at the moment, but if you care to listen to Amira or any of the other stuff that's out

there, I've just my name. I'm on all the streaming platforms that you typically find things on. I highly recommend listening to my fiance stuff. Her name is Beth Escondola, B E D A S P I N D O L A. She's an amazing musician. She's performing.

She's going on a contract soon, but she's going to be performing all over New York. We're going to try and get her on Broadway. That's the whole plan. I'm constantly working with her to get her new gigs and stuff. She's, she's going to be performing all over New York we're going to try and get her on Broadway that's the whole plan I'm constantly working with her to get her new gigs and stuff she's the real musical star here and when you hear her you'll understand the girl is out of her mind

one of the best singers in the industry so yeah she's extremely talented and super fun to check out because she's doing cool stuff all the time too so you guys are a fun couple to follow congratulations on your fairly recent engagement and best of luck during all the wedding planning and getting ready that stuff is always crazy um just for i've been married twice, so I do have some advice here, which is you won't remember it. So interesting.

It's like you think all of these details like you literally won't remember it. You won't remember if you had flowers on the tables or you didn't. You won't remember all the things like all you remember is how you felt and who was there and mostly who was there kind of forget that part too um so just do what you want between the two of you how did the two of you want to feel when you wake up the next morning looking at each other that's all that really matters that's cool that's good advice but doing what i will say we we didn't we chose a location and it wasn't because it was the thing that made the most people happy it most certainly did not make the most people't because it was the thing that made the most people happy. It most certainly did not make the most people happy, but it is the thing that we know we're going to remember for us. And,

and we had to be able to be big and brave and make that decision. And we're proud of ourselves for doing it. Oh, it is hard to be big and brave out in this world. And I mean, it is, but you did it. I think it took a little bravery to come and talk with me today so thank you so much I really appreciate maybe not maybe I'm just a cloud of pillow so welcoming but it definitely was not like something I thought I would do so yeah I'm so so thankful you did it's just so first of all, you're an amazing storyteller. Duh. That's not the first of all, first of all, your sincerity and your authenticity and talking about it and every type of survivor, human being story is worthy.

all that for sure um and if for some reason someone decides to give me a call i'll pick up the phone and we'll talk from there um i've grown up a lot since then so it's it's it's been nice to like be able to actually put words to the feelings and process it and not just be like this looming thing on your back you know yeah oh my god you've come yeah so far and yeah so much and it's a thing you did once that's all it's a thing you did once. That's all. It's a thing you did once. That's a, yeah, that's right. You got a lot more, a lot more life to live. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you so much for being here with me today. I appreciate you.

Yeah. You too, bud. Who doesn't want to have that guy in your phone to call when you're having a bad day or you're having a great day. It's Jacob is just someone who, while we aren't together all the time, he's just a steadfast friend for me through this ghost island experience. He's just means a lot more than he probably even knows to me in my life. And I'm so thankful for that time with him that he was willing to open up and really

talk about some of the really hard stuff he's worked through over these years. I think his perspective, you know, looking back now that he's 30 is so helpful for any of us. And I know some of you new survivors are listening. I've heard season 47, 47 folks. We're so excited to have you a part of the crew and thank you for listening to Road to Reality and anyone who in the future plays Survivor as well. It will not go as you expect.

It may go better, it may go worse, but it will not go as you expect. And there are people who have gone down the road before you who are always willing to help. So you are not alone. And I'm so thankful for Jacob again. Anywho, thank you to those of you who are rating and reviewing. I know we hear that in our ears all the time listening to podcasts, but I could really

use a few more likes, a few more reviews if you feel up for that today. If you've enjoyed what you've heard here on Road to Reality, I love to see some extra stars on Spotify and Apple podcast reviews. Thank you for being along for the ride. Thanks for your lovely feedback and messages that you all have sent me. I love getting those. I really appreciate all of you who take the time to listen to me interview these survivors, these amazing people. I'm so thankful and we still have two episodes left for the season. So stay tuned for two really big guests for the rest of the season to round out as we get prepared for survivor 47. All right, y'all went on today. I hope you're having a great week and I will catch you next time. Take care. I'd like to thank Rob Sestranino and the entire RHAP team for their support in making this podcast.

Jessica Sterling is the editor. Tricky Rice created the artwork. To all of my fellow survivors, thank you for showing up for free to give me and all the listeners a look into your lives that we wouldn't otherwise get to see. And much gratitude to all of you listening. And much gratitude to all of you listening. If you'd like to connect, and only if you're kind, you can find me on social media at TheKellenB. Or at kellenbechtel.com, where I, as a holistic career coach, try to give away as many free resources as I can to help people find more happiness and success in their career journeys. May each of your realities lead down a road of peace, joy, and a whole lot of adventure. And now, here's Jacob Derwin with Mira from Manhattan.

Her name is Mira from Manhattan. Her name is Chelsea from Chelsea Her name is Krista from Columbus It doesn't matter much to me Now she's staring on the night She takes a pen to her new novel And the airplane takes flight Mmm, I never knew Mmm, I never knew. I never knew. I never knew. I never knew you. guitar solo Now we're flying out to Dublin Just to stop along the trail

Mira hops from there to Paris I ride to Belfast on the rail now she's cheering in the winery I'm staring at the sea Her name is Mira from Manhattan It doesn't matter much to me Mmm, I never knew Mmm, I never knew. I never knew. I never knew.

I never knew. You. You. Thank you.