RHAP: We Know Survivor - Shauhin Davari Recaps Survivor 49 Ep 12

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Shauhin Davari Recaps Survivor 49 Ep 12 Survivor 49 is reaching its breaking point, and Rob Cesternino teams up with Survivor 48’s Shauhin Davari for a recap of the penultimate episode. With the finale days away, Rob and Shauhin spotlight the rapidly-shifting alliances, dramatic advantage plays, and emotional reward moments that have shaped the hurricane of strategy at camp. Every move matters as players like Sophi, Savannah, and Rizzo jockey for position on their way to Tribal Council. Rob and Shauhin dissect Sophi’s high-tension Knowledge Is Power play, debating whether her shot at flipping the game came just a bit too late. Rizzo’s idol theatrics spark major debate, with Shauhin providing insight into the bluffing and social reads that let him slip through more than one dangerous vote. The duo weighs Savannah’s clutch challenge wins, and how being a physical force keeps her in the spotlight (and on everyone’s target list). Plus, the impact of the loved ones letter reward leads to an honest take on how family support shifts players’ motivations and endgame plans. Key topics include: – Sophi’s Knowledge Is Power moment: was it bold enough to change her fate? – Rizzo’s inventive idol strategy and what it reveals about social perception – Savannah’s immunity run and why it drives the final five’s vote calculus – The evolving bonds between Sophi, Savannah, and Rizzo – Real parallels between Shauhin’s Survivor journey and this season’s emotional crossroads This episode leaves one big question: Can Savannah and Rizzo stay one step ahead, or will a last-minute flip topple the power balance right before day 26? Chapters: 0:00 Intros 6:31 Sophi’s Crucial Idol Decision 13:36 Emotional Impact of Family Reward 20:49 Social Bonds Shape Jury Perceptions 27:41 Comparing Savannah and Joe’s Paths 34:01 Savannah’s Direct Communication Examined 43:40 Powerful Family Stories Emerge 50:30 Savannah and Rizzo’s Unbreakable Alliance 53:13 Sophi’s Knowledge Is Power Downfall 59:14 Clutch Immunities Shift Endgame Odds 1:07:31 Sage’s Authentic Moves Analyzed 1:14:10 Seasons for New Survivor Fans 1:18:44 Survivor Deepens Family Connections 1:29:16 Reading Nonverbal Cues on Survivor 1:32:29 Survivor 49’s Unique Win Conditions 1:39:00 Who Shauhin Would Work With 1:57:52 Final Reflections on Survivor 49 To pre-order Rob’s book, The Tribe and I Have Spoken, visit www.robhasabook.com This episode of the podcast is brought to you by our friends at Manta Sleep. Summertime is officially here! The days are longer, the sun is brighter, and while all that extra daylight can feel energizing, it can quietly sabotage your sleep. Later sunsets disrupt your body’s natural circadian rhythm, making it harder to fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up feeling refreshed. Manta Sleep is here to help. Whether you’re blocking out daylight or tuning out the sounds of summer nights, taking control of your sleep environment helps you get deep, restorative rest, no matter how long the sun stays up. To take advantage of 10% off your first order, visit https://tinyurl.com/2nsptcy3 or go to www.mantasleep.com and use promo code RHAP49 Never miss a minute of RHAP’s extensive Survivor coverage! LISTEN: Subscribe to the Survivor podcast feed WATCH:  Watch and subscribe to the podcast on YouTube SUPPORT:  Become a RHAP Patron for bonus content, access to Facebook and Discord groups plus more great perks!

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Welcome back to Rob has a podcast. And we have a fun podcast coming up here as we are heading into the finale of Survivor 49, if you can believe it. And so I think that we're going to have a lot to talk about here with a guy who always has a lot to say. Here he is from Survivor 48. It's Shaheen DeVari. Shaheen, how are you? I'm doing well, Rob. Thank you so much for having me back on the podcast. Excited to break down the episode that, of course, was the same episode that I went home on, the rough, the rough spot going home right before the finale. You think you're going to be on all 13 episodes, and then all of a sudden, your legs are cut out from my week.

Yeah, but listen, you are on all 13 episodes. Yes, yes, indeed, indeed. Yes, no doubt. Okay, so we're going to talk about it all, and our sponsor all season long on Thursdays has been AmandaSleep, get 10% off, mantasleep.com, use promo code R-JP 49. So, Shaheen, how have you been? I've been super well. I've really enjoyed the post-survivor life.

I traveled all summer and decided not to teach any classes and really took the time to enjoy whatever this ride was going to be. And then I'm actually taking off, you know, the same thing. I'm going to try and enjoy next summer as well. Wow. Okay. So this fall, are you back or you're, or you're still off this fall? Yeah, I'm going to, I'm back to teaching in the fall. Just taking the summers off from here on now, really trying to enjoy that ride. And of course, like, it's going to try and enjoy as much of season 50 as I possibly can. This, this, uh, this season's ramping up to be just massive. And it is the, the looming elephant over season 49 right now. And even here, we're talking about it before we talk about season 49. I feel bad. Well, we do have a lot to talk about for season

49 today. What have you been up to? I know you have been taking some time off. What do you've been, uh, keeping, uh, busy with? Yeah, I've, uh, I'm a communication coach. And that's what I've done for the last 15 years. And so now I do that on a private one-on-one basis or also small group classes. And so have been building out my company called You Louder, which is the thesis, just tell you how to be yourself a little bit louder. You upgrade your communication. You upgrade your life. And that's been my passion for a long, long time. I've really loved watching people find their voice, heal their voice and then learn how to really use it so that people will actually listen to them.

So that's what I've been focusing a lot of my time, effort and energy on. And then the other thing that I've been focusing on is, you know, busting and move on a dance floor. So those are the two things that have really been important to me. There's a lot of different things to jump off of from that. I want to go back to your company. You said you wanted to help people use their voice,

heal their voice, is that physically healing your voice or is that like spiritually healing your voice? Yeah, it's a little bit of both. Finding your voice really means figuring out what you're passionate about, figuring out what stories you should be telling when you're going into certain meetings. If you're, you know, going to go sell your company, what stories about your company should you be telling? If you're going to go sell yourself in an interview, what stories should you be telling in those interviews? And then healing your voice is really about what framework are you going to use to tell those stories? If you're finding your stories,

you're finally ready to talk about something that traumatic happened to you, are you speaking about it from a healed place where people want to listen to you talk about it? Or are you still bitter? Are you still hurt about that? And I know one or two things about being bitter about something that I need to talk about.

You know what I mean? And so figuring out how to heal people's voices also sometimes comes with, hey, you're speaking from the wrong place in your body. You need to speak from a different place. So certainly healing your voice has to do with that. And then using your voice is how do you speak in a way that people will listen? How do you structure your speech in a way that people are going to pay attention to you when you speak? And that tends to be, you know, how do you practice? How do you prepare all the little tips and tricks that a public speaker or not even for like

a big group, but even small group communication? How do you? you make it so that you're not the one that's dominating conversation, but participating and your overall communication, both intra-personally, how you communicate to yourself, is going to impact your interpersonal communication. So really a full gamut of coaching that exists with the program that I put people through. Yeah, a whole bunch of things that are interesting to me in particular. Yeah. I know when you did the show, though, you were a debate coach, is this something that you were also doing then or is this something new since Survivor? Yeah, I've been doing this with my team, that I'm a debate coach, but really it's a little

tiny bit more complicated than that. I'm a speech, debate, and theater coach. I'm the director of the program. And part of what we have to do with our students is teach them how to speak in an authentic way so that they're believed by their judges. And when you speak from an authentic place, people are more likely to pay attention than more likely to lean in. And that is the foundation of what is a very successful program that we've created at Orange Coast College. We've won more national championships than any other school in the same time that I've been the coach. We've set a bunch of records for championships in a row. And a lot of that comes down to training people in their authentic voice to speak. And then people are more likely to listen to you, more likely to want to

believe you, more likely to want to believe you in a debate and more likely to rank you higher in a competition or in a competition for a job or, you know, in the boardroom, the bedroom and the courtroom if your communication improves. Yes. All right. All right. Well, I would love to explore that more. Yeah, I love it. Let's talk about the Survivor 49 because this was a really jam packed final act of this episode and I watched it again and it's

just there's so much going on between what you're getting set up you don't know what is Sophie going to do with the knowledge of power which way she's going to go and then she goes and

you know she goes the wrong way and it's like ah that's it she's cooked and then there's the other swerve you get side swiped with the fact, no, she's fine and then Rizzo stands up to play the idol and is like, oh, is he going to play the idol on her?

And like, no, and then the total side swipe of Stephen. So I'd love to get your perspective on that. Well, first, I met Stephen this past weekend at the Over the Edge Celebrity Weekend thing, and he's the most delightful human on planet Earth. I see why they wanted to get rid of him because I feel like, look, he is super compelling. I believe that the people on the jury probably would have wanted to vote for him.

And you can see that in their faces when he finally gets voted out. They seem devastated that he did that. And when you watch Rizzo and the reaction that the jury has to Rizzo when Rizzo makes a joke or when Wizzo does a thing, the jury doesn't seem like they're impressed. The jury doesn't seem like they're thrilled by him. they seemed kind of annoyed by him. And if Rizzo can clock that and say that in Final Tribal Council, that that was part of his gameplay,

was saying things like, wow, that was cinema and whatever in order to lower his threat profile. Meanwhile, he's really running the game. I think that's an impressive feat for Rizzo. But let's backtrack just a little bit to Savana or to Sophie, to Sophie's choice, right?

That Sophie's choice here is steal Rizzo's, idol that she knows he has or steal Stevens advantage that she thinks he has. Now, the thing, the confusing part for me is if you steal Stevens thing, Stephen still goes home, right? You steal his thing and he still goes home. So I'm not sure how much that really helps you because he's going home anyway, right? Because he got five votes. Yeah. I think that for her, this was a move of, I think this was the night that the knowledge is power is going to expire. I don't have that on 100% certainty. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, it expires at six. So I think she wants something to put on her resume and maybe the Sage and Christina voting with them, I think was maybe a late development

in that that was going to happen and maybe it was not even 100% bought in of like that she said Sage and Christina say they're voting with us are they really but either way I have to make my move at tribal council

so here's the weird thing if she ends up stealing Rizzo's idol she now has it do you think that there's any chance they then switch the vote to Sophie I don't think they're it so I talked about this exact scenario on I do a call on Friday with the patrons and we talked about then what would

the counter move be that could potentially she used the knowledge as power steal Rizzo's idol and then get voted out with it now that I believe that she knew the idol goes until five I believe that that she was in on there's a clip of him saying it to her of Rizzo saying to her that it goes to Yeah, but I wonder if in that scenario where then Savannah is immune, I think that this was how we were talking about it, where Savannah was immune, and I guess so Savannah's vote is already blocked, so Savannah doesn't get a vote, could potentially after she takes Rizzo's idol, could Rizzo vote for her um and would anybody else potentially then follow suit i mean stephen had wanted to vote for her already so i don't know if she if she would then like it never seems like her move was i'm going to

steal rizzo's idol and then also vote him out it seems like that her move was i'm going to steal rizzo's idol and play it on myself because i'm getting votes tonight yeah and that just seems like such a you know it's to how good Rizzo and Savannah's social game is with Sophie, that in 22 days, and I've been there, I remember what it felt like to be there for 23 days. It feels like you've known these people for about 11 years. Like I think a day on survivor feels like about six months of friendship. And so, because you have all this uninterrupted time, no phone, no whatever. So it feels like Savannah and Rizzo have really done a wonderful job socially with Sophie to make her not want to hurt them like that but weirdly if i'm being honest i think rizzo would have respected it this

kid loves the game and i think he would have been one of those people that was like devastated for sure but then on the other side of it would have been like man i respect it i did not see that coming from sophy from little old sophy taking my idol and then turning around to everyone and going hey now's our shot let's get rizzo and then she has it to play at five Because now she's safe. The question is, the small risk there, or maybe big risk there, is that they go, you have the idol, you feel safe, we're going to vote you out. But then being able to do that in that moment seems almost impossible. It seems like that would be really impossible.

So I think that Sophie was caught between a rock and a hard place in a way, but I think that it got tipped the other direction because of the reward. And you see it actually happening in Sophie. face you see it happening in her demeanor she's at the reward her defenses come down now her stomach is full her heart is full she gets the letter from nana you know what i mean or the reminder from nana like go play this game and live for yourself but once you're looking into savannah's pretty eyes and rizzo's you know crying about his his his family and it's this beautiful moment and you've shared i'm getting chills thinking about it right now this beautiful moment do you really have the stones to turn around and stab them in their face like it's that that's a brutal brutal move but i think

it's a million dollar losing move unfortunately for sophy because now i feel like she's guaranteed the final three yes i think sophy's absolutely now there's no reason to vote her out at five she misplayed this in front of the jury got embarrassed you see stephen's smile is so massive as she's going through this because he knows what she's about to do. He knows she's about to talk to him and ask him if he has something. And he knows he gets to say, nope. And you couldn't have had a happier Stephen for that moment. And that's a rough spot to come back from. And I don't think that she has a lot of win equity left unless something magical happens towards the end of this game. Yeah. I want to talk about the reward because I'm reminded now.

in talking to you that you also went on a reward. Was it also the final six? And Joe, he won the reward, correct? Yep. I won the reward. I'm sorry, I apologize. I apologize.

And you took Joe, like my solid ally and then also, Kyle, that you're presumed also another solid ally. Totally. Yeah. And that was not reciprocated in terms of, like that was that was you had the same same plan at savannah yeah i think the difference between savanna and i

she won the immunity and if if she hadn't won the immunity she goes home i don't i don't there's any question that savanna goes home there if she hadn't won immunity right like even sophy was ready to flip on her yeah and so not winning the if i would have won the immunity yeah sure i make it the final five um but i i think that that is the big difference i think winning that reward challenge is a really bad idea. I think that if you win that family reward, you just paint such a target on your back. It's so easy to go after that person who wins the letters, the loved ones letters. Yeah. Did you know your reward that you won was also going to be the letters? Or did they tack that on? You knew. And was it also overnight? Was it a? Yep. Overnight day, the whole nine

yard same same exact thing here the only difference was burgers um and you know we had been talking about those loved ones letters and i think maybe sometimes the fans don't understand how important those letters are to us because it's not just about oh okay cool i get to read my loved ones letters because you're going to get them eventually anyway but it's about you get to read them on national television you get to talk about your family and you know they're going to show those clips and they don't show those clips of stage they don't show those clips of stage they don't show those clips of Stephen and Christina and, you know, knowing that Joe is going to get to have his kids handwriting shown on television, that's bringing your family. That's the closest thing you're

going to get to having your family out there, knowing that I get to talk about, you know, my mom and to show her handwriting on national television as someone who's a huge fan of the show, that's maybe as close as she's going to get to being out here. And that matters, especially to people who have made it this far, sacrificed this much. They know their family. have sacrificed so much for them to be out there and watching Rizzo talk about his dad working three jobs today to this day his dad's working three jobs to make sure his family can you know be provided for is just that's what the loved one letters that's why we fight for the loved ones letter it's why we care about that and I think sometimes that's lost on the fans because it's just like but you're

going to read them it's like yeah I know I'm going to read them I'm not going to be able to talk about the people that I love the most that supported me out here, that they're going to get their voices heard too. That goes missing. That's underrated. How close do you think

that Sophie came to making the move against Rizzo? Because in the evolution, the way that the episode was structured, she's not going to do it, but then the last thing we see her at tribal, going to tribal council, she's thinking about doing it.

She's talking about Nana. And to me, it reminded me of when Jesse went and he got the letters. I think that that was at the final eight. And his son, Gio, aka Gio, the Mr. Beast kid, he said, Dad, get that money, baby. And that was like, okay, I got to make the move against Cody because that, you know, I got to do this for this is what my letter said this. And then I was just, I was so blindsided that she didn't do it. do it yeah i i think that the difference there is in age that you hear sophie say isn't it amazing we found three of our best friends out here no you didn't you got snowed that they do seem like

they hang out a lot i got to be i have no doubt that they're going to be great friends no doubt about it for sure but that's going to end up being on the person who gets voted out by them right like it ends up being on the shoulders of the person who gets who doesn't end up winning the million dollars it's not on the millionaires right like the millionaire the person who wins the million is going to be like yeah let's be friends yeah but it's on the other people and so at the end of the day whether they're your friends or not is really up to them you get to blindside them you all signed up to play a game it's so much easier said than done and and there's just there's no way because we're watching 12 hours of footage, right? We've watched 12 hours of Survivor

now. They're out there for so, so long. You're out there for a day. It's longer than an episode. Yeah. And the connections just don't come across on television. It's one of the things that's weird about Survivor is the social game, the social aspect of Survivor, is the most nerfed aspect that we see. We don't see social game as much as we see strategic game and as much as we see challenge domination. And it's because it's hard to, you can't sit there and show us a three hour conversation between Rizzo and, you know, Sophie to show how deep their bond is and all the things that are talking about. And even like, but you do see clips of it. So for example, really quick sidetrack, we are seeing constant clips of Stephen and Rizzo talking. Did you notice that?

these two who are essentially diametrically opposed they're on opposite ends of the spectrum and yet they're checking in with each other all the time there's clearly a profound relationship there they clearly talk they clearly like each other they have respect they recognize they're on opposite end of the game but they're having very like on it who do you want oh i want this person okay but what advantage you have oh i have this advantage or i don't that's a that's a pretty respectful relationship there and if you look at the opposite which is christina and Savannah, they didn't have that same level of relationship, right? I don't think.

And so it's kind of interesting to see how good Rizzo's social game is, certainly how good Steven's social game is in a way better and in a way worse, right? Better because I think more people do like Stephen, worse because that means you're more likely to get voted out, right? That means people are more likely to come for you. Yeah. I do think that there is a little bit more there with the Savannah and Christina side of things. I think we see a little bit more in the show than I know.

Savannah had posted about how recently that they had been on the same page in terms of blindsiding Sophie and they were sort of like, you know, going at each other a little bit more at tribal council. And of course, as often happens on Survivor, when people are like, hey, let's let's play this up. We don't see the conversation where they say, hey, let's play this up a little bit. We just see that like, oh, my God, she said she mildly dislikes her. I do feel like that Christina

has been rubbed the wrong way a little bit by Savannah but I think that Savannah more nothing's Christina because I think that she doesn't have any like ill will towards her I actually had been rewatching a couple the episodes ago and Savannah's actually like one of like

the biggest people cheering for Christina that when she's on the has the moment in the reward challenge and so she's like really like championing her there So I don't think that there's any ill will from Savannah towards Christina. I don't think there's really ill will from anybody towards anybody. But I will say, my goodness, at the end of the immunity challenge, that was hard to watch.

The fact that Sage loses, everybody consoles Sage. Nobody congratulates Savannah. Savannah's standing there by herself. And it's like, it's this really awkward moment because when you're in it that long, And this happened on my season two, right? That, you know, these two behemoths, you know, these gigantic men, Joe and David, are going back and forth on this challenge.

You know, David wins the forearm challenge. And he's busy already consoling Joe. And it comes across as a weird moment of inauthenticity because you won. Just be happy that you won. Let Joe go through his thing. and the same thing kind of happens here. Savannah wins.

She immediately tries to console Sage because Savannah was nowhere close to losing that challenge. It seems like she could have gone for another 20, 30 minutes, and Sage was already struggling. Set a record, by the way. Sage is the second best to ever do that challenge, which is impressive. But then everybody consoles Sage. Nobody congratulates Savannah.

Savannah literally just does... Savannah goes to the bench before getting a single high five. And that's pretty rare in the kumbaya. eras of survivor. Yeah. And definitely should tell Savannah where she's at. Like that definitely tells Savannah how badly they want her out. And she seems pretty clocked in on that, recognizing like she needs to win another

immunity challenge at five. And I would be worried if I was Savannah going into this next immunity challenge if I didn't win it. I'd be very, very worried based on their reactions. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When New Year's comes around, there's a lot of pressure to do the whole new year, new you thing. But sometimes you don't need a new you. You just need a less burdened you.

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I would love to hear from you from somebody who is there in the real time. You know, you don't have the edit. You don't have, you only know what's going on. Because that to myself and to a lot of people, when we're watching Survivor 48, we're looking at it. And Joe looks like that he's way out in front. And we're saying like, well, if Joe gets to the end, he's going to win. And then he got to the end. And he got one vote.

And so in terms of the, like, If the perception of the players... He would have got more votes, by the way. He... And I actually would have... I was going to vote for Joe. I was worried that Eva was going... Eva and...

Or that Joe and Kyle were going to split more vote and somehow Eva was going to win. And I just did not want Eva to win our season. That I knew that Star and Mary were leaning towards Eva. I didn't know where Cedric and Chrissy were going to go. And so I knew that Joe was... Okay, cool. He doesn't have the votes to win.

And I wasn't going to have Eva win the season. In fairness, I should have, if I knew what I knew now, I would have voted for Joe, frankly. But in this scenario, when we're talking about this. Can I ask you why was it a concern that Evo was going to potentially win? For me? Yes. I just didn't think she played the best game. I think it was Kyle or Joe, and then Evo was in third.

And I mean, after watching Firemaking, Firemaking took like 30 minutes. that's a like that's a disqualifier for me that firemaking it's the one thing that you definitely can prepare for and it takes like a couple hours it's like not that hard to make a fire in four or five minutes and the fact that it took that long and that she was getting helped by joe and kaila the entire time and camilla was offered no help by anybody that is disqualifying for me i was never going to vote for someone who didn't prepare to play survivor I prepare. I knew what I was going out there. I knew what I was getting into. In fairness, you were getting ready to go out there for longer than anybody else.

Yeah, but it takes three days, Rob. It doesn't take a year to learn how to make fire. Yeah. And it was one of the most, it was probably the most frustrating part of the experience in a lot of ways was watching that firemaking challenge last 30 minutes. That just, it just drove me insane. Yeah. And so I was, it was going to be very hard for eat of a vote to win my vote after watching that firemaking challenge for sure. Okay. Now, for this, for what we're talking about here, the equivalent is, you know, we're seeing Savannah go through this game, but we're not watching it from the jury perspective. And we have a couple different things that's messing with our brain here, right? Number one, we have the elephant in the room of season 50, right? And there is something to be said for some of the people that I know that don't know about season 50.

know who's on season 50 are enjoying this season more than the people who know about 50. It's almost like being a super fan almost like ruins a season for you in a way because you know like in the Sophie versus Savannah vote, Yellow Sophie versus Savannah vote, you kind of feel like Savannah is going to survive this one. Like Savannah's not going home yet. Yellow Sophie's not beating Savannah if Savannah was the one that was invited back for 50. Whereas, you know, for the non people that know what's going on in 50, they don't know. and they have that joy there.

But to bring it back to Savannah and Joe's similarities, I think there are some similarities there in the way that they play the game, but I don't think there are similarities there in their juries feeling about them. Okay. I don't think the jury feels about Savannah the way that our jury fell about Joe.

That if you look at our jury, I think Chrissy and Joe came to, you know, really were at war when Chrissy went home. Sedric didn't really know Joe, but then, you know, you look at David and Joe. David and Joe definitely didn't like each other when David went home, right? David was calling Joe a liar. And you look at Mary.

Mary said that she was going to vote for Joe, but I think that was just because she wanted Joe out. I don't think that Mary was intending to vote for Joe. Starr and Joe, you know, Star was kind of Joe's kryptonite, and Star and Joe didn't really get along out there at one point. And certainly at the point that Star was. at home. And so you have a different vibe on the jury towards Joe than Nate, Alex, you know, MC, and how they feel about Savannah, I don't think is as negative as the jury felt about Joe

going into the Final Tribal Council. You also said that Joe and Savannah, you feel like, are somewhat similar in some ways. Could you talk me through the similarities you see between the two of them. I mean, first of all, they're both incredible athletes. Yes. Right. I think both of them have a direct style of communication that I really, I would have loved working with Savannah out there because she definitely will tell you to your face what's going on. And that's the vibe that Joe and I had for 23 days out there. He's my, you know, my best friend, my brother out there. And to this day, it still is like one of my best friends, my brother, like I call him my brother, which is a high praise you know what i mean um and so i i think there are some similarities there i think that

sometimes savannah because of her history as a reporter can come across as super clean inauthentic almost because that's an interesting word you use clean yeah hyper like she doesn't stutter she doesn't miss a beat she is she has these turns of phrase she's precise yeah she's very precise with her word her diction her word choices really amazing and she has this um style of communication that can sometimes come across as pre-planned and when people like stephen had it too at tribal you know he had that joke about i'm like uh walking around in the dark with a bunch of tables and in my i'm like a pair of shins walking around in the dark yeah i'm i think he said i'm more scared than a pair of shins walking through a dark room filled with coffee tables, something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

And the jury rolls their eyes, right? Alex rolled his eyes. Everybody's just kind of like, that's inauthentic. Exactly, because it's a planned statement. And it didn't come across, like she came up with it in the moment. It came across like, look at the joke I thought of. Right. He's not like a big Tom, like folksy sort of like, here's like these euphemisms I use around the farm. Right. It's like a, I thought about this while I was on the boat ride over to tribal. I can't wait for Jeff to ask me, this is going to be a good one. That's interesting. And when people do that, there's inauthenticity in your communication and what Jeff is looking for is authentic communication. And so we see the reaction to that

is internal, right? We have an internal reaction to like, oh, bro, don't do that. Like, just give me the real tea. Like, give me the real thing, what's going on. You don't need to give me the prepared line. I want to know what's actually going on. And that happens for Savannah as well. But it's not that she's being an authentic. It's just that she's really thought about her communication style. It's something that's appreciated in the world that she operates, which is as a reporter, right? You want to have someone who's always clean, ready to throw it back to you, Tom, and all of that type of talk. But when you're out there, having that clean level of communication can actually make people feel like you're being inauthentic, even though it's just like you've worked on it.

Like, you've thought about it. You've worked on your communication style so much, and that's a bad thing somehow. And I think the internet has a weird reaction to, especially when women in particular, have clean, clear, concise, direct communication. There's an allergy to that on a young, attractive woman that we don't have on men. We don't have that same allergy all the time, especially when it's, direct communication. I do agree with that. And people love it when two men get together to talk about women's communication on a podcast. So let's keep it going. But I really do think that it,

that there is a, you know, an aversion in a lot of places where that I don't think that she necessarily is always projecting warmth. And I think that a lot of times in women that's like, oh what's what's her problem like why is she mean because she's not she's not being warm all the time and I do think that that is something that is you know that makes her a villain all of a sudden yeah and it's not the same for men it's not it's not the same and you know I don't know if there's anything like that's that's that's more of a society thing than a survivor thing but it is something that's interesting yeah and I think it's I don't know that I've maybe I maybe I have missed the parts where she's been mean.

But I feel like I've seen her be direct, but I don't know that I've seen her be. If you want to say she was ever mean when Joanne is getting under her skin a little bit, there's a little... I mean, the guy put a bunch of stuff in her bag. What are you saying? Like, is there any time when she...

And even that was still, but like, you know, Joanne's really getting on my last nerve today. I would have lost my damn mind if someone emptied... Like, if someone put a bunch of sticks and gross shit on the best piece of Survivor

like merch that I'm ever going to get the like one in a you know what I mean I would be I would be livid for sure

I'd be heated so Savannah's good anything she took it a little easy on him she doesn't need to heal her voice she's good but I do want to

go back to yeah she does not the style of communication and something you touched on earlier was that Rizzo to us at home

and I got to ask Steven about this in the exit interview, to us at home, it's like, wow, well, Rizzo, he's got a really great case that he's played the idol. And I really think that he has been so creative in how he's played the game and he has all these ideas and he's trying a bunch of stuff. And I really feel like that he's a guy who has played in a million of these ORGs and he's gotten to, this isn't his first time playing Survivor.

this is like a 90 second time playing Survivor where that he has tried all these off-the-wall things in these games and he's here and he's playing fast and loose and free and he's having fun but that there does seem to be a disconnect where the players who are out there are not viewing it the way that it's necessarily being presented to us on television.

Exactly right. Exactly right. Yeah, there's a huge disconnect between what the audience is feeling versus what the actual jury is feeling. And that happened on our season. It happens on every season of Survivor. And now that I play, I see that in a much different light,

that the audience sees what happens at camp. The jury sees what happens at tribal. They don't see what happens at camp. They don't have all this information. And I think it was mentioned on the On Fire podcast or maybe it was on the RHAP podcast that there is, something to showing what you're doing at tribal before you get to final tribal because you only

have two hours at final tribal can you convince them that you were doing more than they saw are they going to believe you are they going to believe this 20 year old kid who says cinema and you know all this other stuff are they going to believe that he was really the brains behind the operation when he's been moving in secret? Or are they just not going to believe him at the end? Are they not going to give him that agency? Because that seems to be more of the case here. I think it's going to be really hard for Rizzo to convince Nate and, you know, Alex and MC that he was the one that was really in charge. Sophie, that he was the one that was really making all of the moves that, okay, that seems a difficult thing for him to pull off in the

same way that like Liz from 46 was going to flip the script, right? When she gets to final tribal, she was going to reveal she's not actually a millionaire. A lot of the stuff that she was doing was just so that she would seem wacky and crazy. That's a bold move. And if you can pull it off, maybe you win the million dollars. But if you don't, you get a third place finish. And I think Rizzo kind of mentions that. Rizzo says, like, I'm not here to get fifth. I'm not here to get fourth. I'm here to win the game.

And, yeah, I think if he really understands how he was viewed in the game and really explains that and gets after that, nice mug, gets after the, thank you, the elephant in the room. And I think that's kind of the thing in Survivor that you have to do at the final tribal council is you really have to get after the biggest, takeaways that you think the jury has of you, and you have to be accurate. So if he has that, he could win, for sure. Has a huge shot at winning.

Do you think that he would reveal at the Final Tribal Council that you all know me as Rizzo, but I'm actually, I have been Riz God the entire season? Yeah, I think that would hurt him a lot if he starts talking like that. R-I-Z-G-O-D, baby. I've said it 4,000 times. You have no idea. Has he never said it outside of confessional? No, no, I don't even confessionals.

Oh, wow, okay. Yeah, I missed that. Yeah, I think if he reveals that, he loses for sure. Okay. Keep that under his head. I do feel like, and it's interesting because he, I think he's 25 or 26, and you work with a lot of college-age students, but he does present as even younger than his age. 23, yeah, 22, for sure.

Yeah. He's got young energy for sure. Yeah. go ahead and i think that this is mostly a season of people like that are in their late 20s like early 30s that do you think that that's part of the reason why he's not seen potentially as somebody who is you know necessarily okay i'm not buying that he's running things yeah i do i think that his the rhetoric that he's using out there the way he is communicating in celebration the way he's communicating in devastation, all of it is, you know, it's all wrapped up in Gen Z terminology

that people that are slightly older than that don't take seriously. And if that's part of his plan, it's genius. It's so brilliant. And I think it is. Like I think that he is playing into it because he knows that it helps keep his name off the chopping block. And for what it's worth, I think he's stretched this idol out in such a brilliant way. What an amazing way to make an idol make you immune for a really long time. I don't think that he needed to do it earlier because I don't think anybody thought he was a threat

and they knew what the idol was. And so why vote him out? Because we don't want the idol to go back into play. But now the move that he made at six convincing them that it expired at six is a massive, incredible coup. He's been so inventive, and I think that we're going to look back and say, like, he changed the way people play the hidden immunity idol.

But isn't it inexcusable that people bought this lie that the idol expires at six? Yes, it's unbelievable to believe that, especially since didn't Christina have the same type of idol? She found it post-merge. And he, I think his story was, oh, because this merge was from pre-merge. I can't, you know, I can't use the idol. I think that if I'm out there, there's no way I buy that lie because I've watched enough seasons.

I would assume that Stephen and all of these other people have watched enough seasons to know. And that's the time you make the move. That's the time you say, hey, he's lying. You don't tell him. You don't ask to see it. But you go, listen, he's lying. And we should vote him out

because he's clearly not going to play it. He is trying to play some sort of double move where he's going to keep it till five. We vote him out right now and he goes home with an idol in his pocket. R-I-Z, G-O-D, we prove that he's not a God, although I guess they haven't heard him say that. We prove that he's not a god.

He's a mere mortal because his game is now over and he is dead. How many times does he have to bluff with it before? You know what, let's just put the votes on him. Let's just do it. Let's just do it. What are the chances he's going to do it tonight? He's going to play the idol. But I think that the problem with that is

if he does play it, it might be you. So if his bluff is true and he plays it and the votes land on you, you're the one going home. So are you willing to, are you willing to risk your game? You got to risk it to get the biscuit. I agree. And he said, he has. Riz God and also West Nail. Yeah, West Nail.

And now Riz God. Riz God said that, right? Yeah, they both said it. Yeah. Okay. I think that's where their similarities to stop. Is there any other similarity between, well, they both ate a lot of tacos. It's true.

They both suffer from Taco Overload. Yes. They both, you know, some times are talking and you don't know what they're saying. Fair enough. They're both good boys. They both haven't been to jail. Yet. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. They both have cool dads. They both have very cool dads. Yes, they do. Yeah. Man, oh, man. I was all kinds of crying during that little portion just because, you know, my parents, you know, emigrated here.

They all, my mom worked, you know, 12-hour days, standing behind a chair. My dad was hustling, you know, delivering pizzas, you know, was a flight instructor under the Chagra-run, and then all of a sudden he's delivering pizzas for 25-cent tips. And I know what that's like to watch your parents struggle and for you to then be able to play. And Rizzo has a playful vibe about him because of his parents' sacrifice. His parents sacrificed everything so he could not be traumatized. so that he could go and play and have fun and be full of life. And that kid is full of life, man.

It's so fun to watch. And same thing with Sophie. You know, Sophie has this beautiful story about her grandparents. It's one of the coolest parts, I think, about what Survivor is bringing to the island now. And I know that people have problems with casting and whatever, but it's really hard for me to have any problems with that. When you see these amazing stories told by these incredible, like, young people, it's pretty cool to see, especially in a time and place that we're at right now,

especially with how we think of immigrants on a global scale right now. To hear these stories, it humanizes in such a beautiful way. I'm really proud of those two for how they talked about their family. It was really beautiful to see. Yeah, that was a really great story. And I had known some of the Rizzo back story from his interview from the preseason, but I thought that they really artfully did it on the show. I also think it's really amazing that, you know, he has these parents who,

came to America and then in addition to that he has a brother who's special needs who then that the parents need to be out of the house for so much and so he's really like I've been a caretaker to his brother and he has this incredibly close relationship with his brother who I saw on Twitter was like psych to get mentioned on the show so I thought that was that was really good and this is what I talk about with the loved ones letters yeah you know your brother's going to be so pumped. Yeah. And it's, but I think that to speak to what you mentioned about like with with the casting and the backstories and everything, I think that when it comes up organically, and I think that the letters is a good way to do it. And I really even thought in season 48 when, um, there was

the scene with you and Joe and Kyle and Camilla and everyone was talking about sort of like, you know, we have like, uh, sort of like a shared story where, you know, we're all from different places, but like, you know, our parents gave up a lot. And it was, but it was, but, but, It was real quick, the story of Joe, hearing that on the island, was one of the most devastatingly incredible things that I've ever really seen as far as a storyteller is concerned. And shout out to Joe, 48 hours is doing a special on Joe and his sister and the relationship there and what happened to him. Oh, wow. And I would encourage absolutely everybody to go watch the trailer for that and to watch that. This man is incredible. He is the real deal. He really is one of the, I'm so, so lucky that I got to share a beach with him for 23 days and now a lifetime of friendship with this dude. I'm so proud of him for taking this moment and making it into a huge thing, the awareness that he brings to domestic violence. And that's the same thing that's happening here with Rizzo and with Sophie. They're bringing awareness to, and Survivor, right? The editors.

bringing awareness to the immigrant story and how beautiful it is when people come here and sacrifice everything so that their kids can run around and play and enjoy play and enjoy life here. And when we see that, I think it humanizes the experience. And when we see Joe out there talking about one of the most devastating things that can happen to a person, you know, that especially as a brother, I have an older brother, I know what that sibling relationship is like. And to lose a sibling, there's just nothing like that to feel like he felt. And the way he's using it now to make sure that no one else has to feel that way, I mean, how can you have upset about the way that casting goes,

unless you just have a giant hole in your soul that you need to figure out with some meditation in journaling. Some therapy. I was, and listen, I've had some, so I'll take some exception to that. I feel like that, you know, I think it's, everybody's heart is in the right place.

I think that everybody, they want to tell, they want to tell stories. But I think that sometimes that they, they want to tell the stories, so more so than like what happened in the game yeah i think that like the main the a story of survivor should be like okay we have these 18 people from all walks of life who are coming together and and by their interactions with each other we help we all learn about each other because of like and i thought that that scene that you had in survivor 48 was really great where everybody you

you know, four people, you know, I'd say, you know, four people and three from different walks of life, where Kyle and Camilla, from similar walks of life. Yeah, they're kidding. They had a connection. Yeah. But you learned about each other, and we got to learn about all of you because of that. I think it's some of the stuff that is a little bit more, like, seems a little forced or, like, that pulled out of people, you know, in confessional.

Like, I think that that's the stuff where it's a little, a little. little bit we get too much of that. But I don't want to say it's the people. It feels it feels heavy handed in weirdly in the same way that I was talking about, you know, sometimes someone who's super clean in their communication, it annoys, it makes it feel inauthentic. And so when it, it feels like it's coming from an inauthentic place, it's just like randomly like, oh, and by the way, here's this story that has nothing to do with the game, nothing to do with the plot line. I can understand that. Yeah. For sure. I think that some people think that you have to have a sob story to get on Survivor.

I've heard this a lot. They're wrong. You don't have to have a sob story. You need to have a story that's worth telling. That can be a success story. It can be a sob story. It can be a trauma. It can be anything.

But if you're looking to get on reality television and you're not a storyteller and you don't have a story worth telling, and you're not like an awesome person out. Yeah, obviously they're not going to put you on television. What are you complaining about? You don't want those people on television. You want people with,

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I think this is a very interesting pair of Savannah and Rizzo together because I feel like they're so different but they have just like this blind loyalty we don't even really hear a lot from them about their relationship with each other it's just unquestionable he's not voting for her she's not voting for him it's just that they're they're bonded and we don't even really know what the relationship is about

now we've never seen them like half like a moment together or anything like that's like oh that's I'm working with Rizzo I'm working with Savannah um you know it seems like it's a very like professional business relationship between the two of them but it seems unbreakable uh as opposed to Kyle and Camilla who then had like very early on had this uh connection that seemed to go like beyond the game between heritage and then a lot of shared interests and just like on a personality level, but it was, they, they tried to hide it as much as possible, whereas Savannah and Rizzo have been sort of the antithesis of that. They seem to have no actual connection that we'd ever seen on the show, but they're very public in their, in their duo nature.

Yeah, really interesting that we haven't seen. why they've connected so much other than that they were on the same starting tribe. They're the same tribe. Like, that's my guy. That's Rizzo. That's my gal. That's Savannah.

And, you know, Savannah keeps talking about how Rizzo's put his game on the line for her so many times. Did I miss it so many times? I think that there were times where people were going to vote. for her. I don't know, maybe he said he was going to play the idol on her.

And, but, or maybe that she felt like that some of his idol shenanigans have prevented like them from being able to get her out. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, yeah, and also there's just so much that's left on the editing room floor. Like, there's just so many moments that you don't know how close you were, but man, an ally stepped up and had a conversation and got you out of trouble. So it's very possible that, that some of that stuff is.

stuff that we just don't see. But it is interesting that we don't get to really see what's relationally holding them together. What's the foundation of their relationship? But they clearly have a super solid one. They definitely talk. I mean, gosh, their relationship with Sophie is just so interesting because Sophie knows she's at the bottom of that threesome.

And yet, they go on the award, she's, she's, her defenses come, Sophie's defenses come down. She's had this secret the entire time. And then because she now has... Did they have margaritas? Yeah, they have margaritas. Did Sophie have a margarita? I don't know if she did or not. But the defense has come down

and finally Sophie wiltz and just tells them, I have KIP, I have knowledge as power. The whole entire RHAP San Diego watch party that I went to last night was devastated that Sophie revealed she had the knowledge as power.

I think the fandom in general wanted her to keep that secret because it's so fun for her to have just played it but she wanted to tell her allies about it. And you know what's interesting is weirdly knowing that Stephen kept the secret

about what his advantage was basically all the way till he told Sage and Christina had Sage and Christina not kept that secret and gone and told Sophie, Sophie then probably steals Rizzo's idol, right? Yeah, I think that there's a lot of scenarios where this ends up going differently, where, I mean, that Stephen could have played the advantage at the final seven. And now all of a sudden, we have a situation where there's only one thing in the game for her to steal. Stephen could have, and I mentioned this to Stephen today on the exit interview, if he would have not completely, completed the mission.

He would have come back with no advantage, then what else would she have done? But it seems like that they intentionally liked the idea of it being a block of vote because of the interesting wrinkle of that the block of vote gets played before the tribal council. So I think that the show was kind of rooting for a scenario where somebody has knowledge his power and because of the nature of the block of vote, how it gets played before that they would have said, nope, I already used the

advantage. I mean, is there, like that Cheshire grin from Stephen as Sophie is doing her big soliloquit, her big monologue, her big moment, and he gets to sit behind her and we get to see the shot of her excited to screw him. The silent assassin. And the shot of him just being like,

nope, nope, sorry, you're, you're, you just lost a million dollars. Like, and that's the million dollar moment. And Sophie knows it. So I think Sophie knows it that she's like, okay, cool. Now she has a very, very difficult path to winning a million dollars because remember, the jury just sees what happens at tribal. They don't know all of the behind the scenes. Don't you think it's interesting that knowledge is power has been, it's never worked. The person who has used it has fallen on their

face four times. Yeah, I know. Actually, I should say that, I mean, James Jones got voted out with it, but that the it was part of the reason why he went home i mean it's it's i do think it's still a great game mechanic even though it hasn't been used successfully because it comes up all the time like it's talked about out there constantly we absolutely talked about it out there and in what way like can you tell me like what like what just like do you think it's in the game do you think when so-and-so went on the journey that they had it yeah eva could have got it And it's like, okay, well, in our season, it didn't really matter because Eva had it. She's going to steal the advantage from herself.

Fine. That was devastating, by the way, when Eva pulled that rock, like, come on anybody, but Eva or Mary. We just didn't want Eva or Mary. I just didn't want Eva or Mary to get it. But, yeah, I think it's an interesting mechanic. And it's one of those things. Could you just go back to it with pulling the rock? I remember she, like, left camp and you had seen that she went to go get up in the middle of the night.

No, it was the same time that Stephen went on his journey. Yes. At same time, we had the same thing happen. And Mary was on the bottom. And Mary was like, I'll go on the journey. And everyone was like, we're going to draw rocks instead. Well, Eva drew the rock and Eva went on the journey. Yeah.

Remember? And she had to build the thing. Yeah. I think that I'm getting that like conflated with the time that she left camp in the middle of the night to go. And she played the game, right? It was not that she did the challenge. So do you think that because of that, they made that adjustment of like, how do we make it so the person who is on the bottom who needs it the most and they called it the, who wants to go on a strenuous journey? Yeah.

Crazy that. Is Eva going on a strenuous journey? I am shocked that Savannah didn't raise her hand for that. I'm shocked that Rizzo didn't raise his hand for that. that makes that that was confusing to me that it just got to be between sage and stephen and sage just being like go for it man that strenuous word really changed a lot of work for did a lot of work and yeah definitely a little bit more than surprise like i guess i could understand if you're really not an athlete like if you're really like really like not in shape but there were

plenty of people that are in shape enough for a strenuous journey to know that they're going to be able to do it. And especially if Steven's on the bottom and he's the one who wants to go. Yeah. That seems like a wild take. Stephen played, you know, I think a great game. He had a great social game. He definitely was a threat out there. They definitely did not want to sit next to him at Final Tribal Council, especially when you consider what the jury is thinking of them. So yeah, definitely surprised they let him kind of go on that by himself. Very, very, very surprised. Yeah. Okay.

I think it's interesting that this episode started with karma. Like the idea or had it karma as like the idea for sage. Like this is karma. I didn't get Savannah out and now this is karma. I could have gotten Savannah out. And if Savannah was out, one of the rest of us would have won this thing. I wonder if that is foreshadowing.

I wonder if that continues to be the case. How do you mean? For, I mean, Survivor loves a. foreshadow. Yeah. Right. I mean, they did this episode

where Stephen opens the episode and it's like, hey, last night, it was six to one against Sophie. I don't think we're going to have another unanimous vote. Exactly.

And that's my point. Like, the foreshadowing here is, okay, cool. Was that their last opportunity to get Savannah out? Is Savannah going to win immunity at five? Well,

if she wins at five and at four, then she breaks the record. But it's a very weak field with all due respect to the other players that are there. Sage gave her a run for her money last night, but the other people have not been, with all due respect to Christina and to Rizzo. They weren't involved.

Yeah. They weren't in close. They haven't been close. The other people, it's that all of the immunity challenges, I believe, have been won by Savannah, yellow Sophie, or Stephen. Yeah.

I don't think anybody else has worn the necklace. And now Stephen's gone and Sophie's gone. You know, I'm very upset. right. Yes, let's talk about this. We finally have two fucking leg challenges. Two of them. Was it only two? They had one last night. It was a leg challenge. You feel like that's in your real house? For sure. Yeah. Like, am I beating Savannah at that? I don't know. She seems pretty bendy. Like maybe that was a difficult challenge for the hip fluxers. But the first one where they're doing the like lower ab challenge and leg challenge. I'm dominating Stephen in that challenge. Okay. I'm

making Stephen look like child's play. Love you, Stephen, very much. But I believe in my leg and lower ab power. What about holding into the box where you put your feet on the side? That's a foot challenge. That's a foot challenge. I'm into that one too. Oh, okay. I, Rob, I actually put rocks in my shoes when I would go on hikes and stuff like before, when I was prepping. You're sick. So that I could make my foot torture like I would ignore it. I would try to not think about. How about Survivor 46, where you were the alternate? Did they have a lot of leg challenges? On 46, they had this one, which I would have lost immediately.

I tried to do something like this in the gym, and there's no way I'm beating Hunter or who won that? Was it Hunter? I can't remember. They have a lot of leg challenges. Not really. I don't think they did. What's the ultimate leg challenge on Survivor?

You know what? The one that they haven't done in a long time, which I would have loved to do, but I don't know that they'll ever do it again. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

The squat challenge. Yeah. I don't know the last time that they did it. I know I had interviewed Don Meehan last time she was on the podcast. And she was saying that she had like vertebrae that got fused from doing that. I think they'll still do it on Australian Survivor. They don't care. But yeah.

But yeah, I think that like the, that I think they tried to like walk back some of the most dangerous challenges. What about this one? The like hold the bag. You know what I'm talking about? Where people are throwing coconuts in there. and you hold. Well, they kind of did that in this season.

It was on the journey, but it was, you know, sort of like. Which I loved, by the way. Oh, actually, no, no, it wasn't even, you didn't have to hold it. It was just like, it was just like eventually, like, shoot the coconuts and eventually your bag was going to fall down. Yeah. Yeah. But interesting.

So we mentioned Survivor 46, you were the alternate. This was a big alternate season. Yeah, no kidding. I got to hang out with MC and Jason last night, also at the RCHPC. Yes. How are they doing? They're doing great. Yeah.

Is there an alternate group chat? There should be. I'm starting the alternate group chat, actually. I'll do that after this little thing here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting to get to catch up with them

and what it feels like to hit the beach when 12 hours earlier you thought your game was over, especially at that point. I remember being at that point. And after all of the cast photos are taken, okay, it's game over. Like you're as an alternate, you're done. Like you know that you're not playing

because they've taken the photos, right? Then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, all of a sudden, be thrust into the game. Woo, that's, that's a wild wake-up call. How do you think you would have handled that if, okay, all of a sudden there's, you know, oh, Q is talking too much at Ponderosa. He's out, okay, you're going to, you're in.

Jolinsky's breaking all the rules. Yeah, it would have been, it would have been bad for my game, for sure. I, that would not have been good for me. They were, I mean, I think nine of them talked about me and five of them talked about me negatively. Four of them talked about me positively. But you could win them over. over once you get out there. I actually agree with you there.

I think the pregame talk is all kind of nonsense and the first five minutes that you're out there changes kind of everything that you would think about pregame anyway. Maybe the first vote could be a little bit dictated by, you know, who do you want to work with? But after that, I think it's like... It doesn't matter. I agree with you.

I think the first vote is maybe, but it's also three days in. And those three days, you bond a lot. You can get over a lot there in those three days. So I don't think pregame matters that much. much. And there's something to be said about taking people on a ride emotionally. Like there's something to be said about someone not having an opinion of you to liking you. That's a very short jump. But someone having a negative opinion of you to then liking you. That's a big

emotional swing. And when you do that swing, I feel like you're less likely to go back the other way. It's like one of those things where if you want someone to feel amazing, you tell them like, hey we got a talk later and instead of just like telling them hey i really like you you go hey we got a talk later and then you wait 15 minutes and for that 15 minutes they're wondering is this bad like what's going on why and then you tell them hey i really needed to tell you that i think you're fantastic you're so special oh the emotional ride there from what you think is going to be bad to great is just such a bigger jump and i think the pregame can kind of be used in that way and speaking of pregame. The people that got thrown out, right? I feel like they, they don't understand

movie theater talk, right? What is movie theater talk? Yeah. So when you go to a movie theater and you watch a movie and you want to talk to your friend, you can say a word. You can say one word to your friend. No one's going to be that mad about one word because you're not really doing anything significant with a word. You can even give them a look. You shouldn't. You should be focused. It's rude, maybe.

You could maybe get one sentence one time. And this is what pregame is like. Maybe you get a sentence. And someone will be like, hey, stop that. But if you start trading fucking paragraphs, I'm going to get the manager and I'm getting you thrown out of the fucking movie theater. You're being rude.

You're being a dick. we're trying to ponderosa right it's like you're ruining one word but five words now now i'm gonna be mad a whole paragraph paragraphs a warning i tell you hey stop it knock it off and then you keep going nah get out bye you're never playing survivor see you later you didn't respect the movie theater you're not allowed at this movie theater anymore i think that's kind of what what happened there that seems to be what happened there and worse it seems it's talking to jason and mc last night it seems Like, they were doing them most. Okay.

Yeah, it's wild. Wild behavior. So one of the alternates also is Sage. And Sage, I thought, had been on such an interesting ride this season where she really was playing with her heart. But now she has been making some moves, which I think are polarizing in terms of, like, what she's doing. Stephen made a pretty strong case for that basically her win condition is getting to the end of the game with blue. Sophie and Christina, and so she's doing exactly what it takes to do that to end up in that final three with the two people she thinks that she can beat. So who cares what order the other players

go out? So I'd love to get your thought on Sage. I think you nailed it. She knows her win condition is Christina and Sophie and Blue Sophie. So it doesn't really matter if it's Stephen and then Rizzo and then Savannah or whatever order that goes in. I think that maybe. Maybe be the problem is what Christina actually clocked earlier in the episode when they were back from reward. And Christina clocked it like perfect. And she said, you know, Sophie was about to flip on Savannah. And now that Sophie's taken on reward, Christina's worried that Sophie will then tighten to Savannah and Rizzo. And she was right. Sophie absolutely got pulled in, tightened it to Savannah and Rizzo and then didn't want to flip on them and vote for Rizzo. And that, I wonder if that continues to

last into day 24 and 25. I wonder if Sophie continues to be tight with them or does Sophie wake up, smell the coffee, realize I got to get Rizzo and Savannah out if I'm going to have any shot at this. Because I think Sophie's win condition is also against Sage and Christina. I love getting your reads on the communication styles of the players. Could you talk any more about the way that Sage has communicated this season? Talk about authentic communicator, right? She can't help but be her authentic self. Even when she's mad at you, it doesn't matter. She's just going to show it on her face. And I think there's a reliability there that has kept her in this game, right? That you can see it on Sage's face. Amazingly, Shannon did not see it, right? Shannon did. Shannon did.

didn't see it on Sage's face, couldn't read Sage at all, because Sage was really playing it up and hamming it up for Shannon. I have less analysis on that that I want to really talk about and more on what Sage has done since then. But really impressive when Sage goes to, or excuse me, Yellow Sophie is sitting on the beach with Sage after she blinds Sage and sends home, Joanne. right and we see this moment between yellow sophy and sage where sage is very upset it's clear that sage is upset and yellow sophy is telling her you know i'm sorry but in the tone of yellow sophy saying she's sorry she is upset with sage for being upset right she's mad at sage you can feel it her frustration is why are you frustrated with me when i did something that you're supposed to

do in Survivor. And Sage's reaction is like, I hate you right now. Like, you just voted out someone that I really care about and I wanted to play this game with. Like, what do you mean? Why shouldn't? And so the apology, the apology requires accountability. And the apology came without the willingness to allow Sage to be mad at her. And Sage needed that moment to be just mad. Time can heal the wound, right? You need to have the time for the person to be mad, work through the emotion, and then maybe later the next day, you could come to Sage and have a rational discussion. But Sophie missed it. And that's what happens when you're on Survivor for that long. It's also pitch black. So Sophie can't see Sage's facial reactions. Oh, that's such an interesting

point. I never even think about that. Yeah, we can see the facial expressions. They, Sophie can't it's pitch black and all she's hearing is the vocal tone and sage has an interesting vocal tone sage's vocal tone is pretty flat effect right even when she's mad she's not like really over the top she has this kind of flatness so we hear sophie's frustration and we see on sage's face this is not working you're you're not i don't buy your apology and in fact you're kind of pissing me off right now and that ends up ultimately leading to sophie's demise at least in some way it adds to Sophie's demise for sure. But Sage gets mad. Sage's response is, I am revenge-oriented, and that might cost her the game if Savannah continues to dominate.

That might be the karma for Sage. And so a really huge scene that I don't feel like I saw talked about a lot was that apology scene between Yellow Sophie and Sage. When I interviewed Yellow Sophie, about all of that. We were talking about the decisions that she had made. And so at the previous vote, when she votes out, Joanne, she had been, like, this was some some really good survivor play where, I believe it was Savannah and Blue Sophie said, okay, who do you want to vote out? Joanne or, or Sage, you pick, okay?

You're the swing vote, you pick. And Yellow Sophie said, vote out Joanne because I have a relationship with Sage. And she kept Sage in the game because that was her ally. I'm closer with her. She felt like, okay, I'm going to be able to have my ally going forward, get rid of Joanne. Whereas if she would have voted out Sage, Jawan is much less likely to have wanted to get payback against her. Right. Yeah, very true.

Isn't that interesting? Yeah, fascinating. Yeah, I mean, yeah, all of these different. considerations, it depends, especially for Yellow Sophie there, it depends on how good do I think I am at apologizing to somebody and having them believe me. Like I think up back to Adam Klein when he goes to Taylor on the beach and we see this beautiful scene of him being like, I fucked you. And he said it just like that. And I, yeah, like I really screwed you over and there's nothing. There's no two ways about it. And I think that level of accountability is what Taylor needed in that moment

and probably what Sage needed in that moment. Because Sage is sitting there like, my game is cooked. I'm screwed. And Sophie's like, no, it's not. Ah, not the move. That's not in Sage's heart. In Sage's heart, her game is cooked. You need to say, yeah, your game might be cooked. But there's a lot of game left. You need to agree with the flow that they're in. And then you can repair it later. Yeah, your game might be cooked, but there's a lot of game left, Sage, and we can still work this, we can figure this out, we can get ourselves to the end of this game, but everybody was going to give credit to Joanne. That's what was happening. Jawan was the biggest threat to your game because you loved him and someone needed to do this dirty work for you. And now he's on the jury

and he's a surefire vote for you. He's going to vote for you. If you're at the end, that's a guaranteed slam dunk vote for you sage so in a way like i've i kind of helped your game you know what i mean like someone had to cut him because he was going to get all the credit and now he's a vote for you yeah i think sophie also seems oh i'm sorry sage seems a little hung up on who can i beat and i feel like that oh well now you just made a move that i wanted to go to the end with you and now i don't know if i can beat you and so this is like another reason why you have to go she seems like very very hung up on that. Let me also you should be. Yeah, you brought up

about Adam and Jay and I saw you recently said on social media that the first season, any new Survivor fans should watch, needs to be Millennials versus Gen X. Yeah, totally. So that they can see

like this is where Survivor is forever now. This is the first one. I don't I actually think the the reason I like that season for people who have never seen the show is because it's fun. It's got a lot of like fun little dramatic moments. It's got great people to root for. I think Adam's a fun person to root for, especially with the relationship that he has with his mom and everything that

happens at the reunion episode too, like how crazy that story is. And I think it makes people fall in love with the show. And then they're hooked. Like my concern is getting people hooked on the show um i think that a lot of people want people to watch pearl islands seem to be a huge one in the comments i don't think that's the best place to start i think it's kind of nice to go appreciate the game and then go back and watch the historic seasons because i i think it's harder for them to hold up with a modern standard death yeah exactly standard deaf a lot of missing mechanics i think that the casting is great still then but like it's just a little different like it's a little it doesn't necessarily, I think, hold up in the same way

that I think Millennials versus Gen X can get you hooked on Survivor. And look, a little bit of it is Ragebe. I wanted people to be upset. I like to piss people. You like the engagement. Yeah, why not? Of course, yeah.

And I think there are other seasons that you could watch. I think Kagayan is something that a lot of people say you should watch first. I just, I would, I love Kagayan. I just, I'm glad that I got to see a couple seasons before I saw what, you know, Tony did and why it was so special and have an appreciation for it. The first season I watched of Survivor was 19.

Oh. And that was the perfect season for me to watch because nothing's going to motivate me to want to go play like watching someone that I loathe, that I hate, that is such a good motivator and watching him get his comeuppance, right? That like he is this awful person that everybody wants to go home for a long, long time. And then he does do some of the most amazing things. that have ever happened in the game of Survivor. But at the end of the day, you've got to remember what the game is.

The game is convincing the jury. And Eric does this amazing monologue at the end of season 19, just so incredible a monologue that it won, I think, Natalie, the game, that I really do think that absolutely convinced a jury member to switch their vote. That makes so much sense that you're an Eric Cardona guy, because I really, I feel like that you and, Eric have like a similar vibe where that, you know, he is very like passionate and serious and like spoke with, again, talk about a guy who did not need to heal his voice that he came to

that final travel counsel and he gives like the closing speech. And we, I think we called it the Eric Cardona until we called it the David Murphy on the podcast of the person who comes in. And I don't know if anybody else had ever done that before in Survivor history where a jury, or makes the case better than the person who's sitting in the final three. Yeah. It's, I mean,

especially when you're sitting out there for 39 days, it's, and you're completely depleted, and now you have to argue for your game and you're sitting next to Russell and, you know, you're a little smaller and to watch Eric stand up to a bully like that

and say everything that kind of needed to be said for Natalie to win the game. Really impressive. What a fun, you know, wait for me to start i leaned over to my my best friend about 20 minutes into like the second episode you know i've never watched survivor i watched the finale season one but i kind of forgotten about it was very much so of the opinion it was February of 2020 uh so the pinini was just really starting to kick off and we decided to stay in friends like let's watch survivor i didn't know survivor

was still on television at the time and after two episodes leaned over to my best friend and was like uh i'm going on this show like i i i i absolutely going to go play this game. And to my best friend's credit, he was like, yeah, that makes sense. Like, yeah, sure. My buddy Aaron Brew is like, yeah, absolutely. You're going to go do that, sure. But yeah, I think 33 is a good place to start. 19's a good place to start if you're motivated by hate it. Speaking of this rewatch, I know it's also part of your story that you and your mom, correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, that you were not on great terms, but watch your mom watching Survivor was something that really changed your relationship. Yeah. I mean, we were

on great terms, good terms, but, you know, we had lacked something that really connected us that we could talk about all the time. And Survivor came up during the pandemic for me, and I fell in love with the show, watched it all, but I couldn't get my mom to watch it. You know, she was busy watching Turkish dramas instead of watching Survivor, which apparently she should watch Turkish Survivor. I've heard it's amazing. But, you know, it was a really rough day that we had together. And we were playing this Persian game called Yadam Toto Fadalmush, which means I remember and you didn't. And the way the game works is, you place a bet when the game starts, you place a bet and the game starts. And once the game begins,

every time you hand each other something, when I'm handing you something, Rob, you would have to say, I remember that the game is being played, but just I remember before you take it. When you hand me something, I would have to say, I remember. Now, if I hand you something, and you don't say, I remember. I say, I remember and you didn't, I win the game. Okay? So a pretty simple game of memory. Well, my mom bet a trip around the world

that I would have to pay for her trip around the world, and I bet that she would have to watch every single episode of Survivor. And we walk into a Starbucks, and my mom orders a water, and she kind of turns around and isn't paying attention. And the Starbucks barista kind of puts a water out, I grabbed the water. I just shuffle it six inches over to my mom who's not looking.

She grabs the water. I say, Yarm total fat or mush, I remember and you didn't. And my mom has this combination on her face of pride and rage at the same time. Because he's so proud of me for winning and in a devastating fashion so quickly. But she's also so mad that she lost because she's so incredibly competitive. She throws the water on the ground in the Starbucks, water fucking splice. water fucking splashes everywhere. And I am dancing and celebrating in her face

because that's what she does when she wins. Okay, she dances and celebrates in your face and will point at you and go ha ha ha ha ha. And the rest is history. She fell in love with Survivor. And after she watched every season, I, you know, planned a survivor vacation for me and a bunch of immigrant uncles and aunts

and made them play Survivor and they had a blast. And when my mom won, I promised her I would go on the show and promised her that she would meet Jeff Probst and kept both those promises. Yeah, yeah. And even I met your mom when we were at the 48 premiere. She was thrilled, by the way, to meet you.

And does not know that I'm doing this podcast, and I will send it to her. And it'll be a nice little surprise. Hi, mom. And that's honestly one of the craziest parts. Like, I lost my father Thanksgiving of 2021. My mom's had four different back surgeries and essentially was immobile, which is why Survivor was so nice. And now she's a lot, a lot better. But Survivor, especially my process in it, has been this constant source of endorphins for my family, you know?

Yeah. I lost my aunt in October of last year. And, you know, she was my, like, you want to talk about number one fan. My aunt, every time I saw her was like my number one fan, you know. She's the type of aunt that would, like, slap her face when she would get excited. She was so excited to see you. She just was this vibrant personality in our family. And we lost her right before my season aired.

And she would have been my number one fan. And when I was in the hospital with her, I got to tell her everything that happened. I told her everything. I violated my NDA, you know, because she wasn't telling anybody. She was unable to speak. But she heard it and she got to hear everything that happened. And I told her the whole story. And I may have lied to her a little bit about the finish because why not?

you know you told your aunt that you won why not why not yeah yeah i've never heard a story like that before yeah and uh i got to spend the nights with her i was doing like the overnight shifts with with my aunt my aunt parrain and uh you know you you have these devastating things that happen in your life and through all of that you know my cousin who lost her mom got to watch her favorite person on national television just a couple months later. And dealing with grief is really tough. It's not an easy thing to deal with, but it certainly is a little bit better when you get to have these beautiful moments in between grief and these shots of endorphins throughout this whole crazy couple years of my life.

And I'm very, very fortunate that Survivor gave me these crazy, amazing moments. And even to this day, man, it's like I walk around and people are like, oh my God. And they get that caught up in their excitement when they see me. And they don't even know what to say. And it's, I'm a, you know, a college professor. I train people in finding their voice. I was, you know, nobody would do that for me, you know, two, three years ago. And now people are so excited.

I make their day. And it's such a cool thing that you get to do. It makes your day to make somebody's day. And all I have to do is pick up their phone. and ask who their loved one is and say, Oh, Waka, see I know, my God, their loved one. And they're, you know, they're thrilled. And it's such a cool thing.

And that shit will be stuck with me forever. That's for sure. And it's, yeah, it's been really, really special for sure. You know, you were telling the story about your mom. And I was wondering, was English your first language? Hmm. It's funny, there's video of me speaking fluent Farsi, like Farsi better than I can speak even today

when I was like five and six years old. I think that English and Farsi, I was learning at the same time. So they were both my first languages. And then, you know, the assimilation got to me because at that point in the United States, it was very, assimilation was the way. And being in a potentially insular culture

was not the view of how to be successful in this country. The view in Persian culture was assimilate as quickly as possible so that you can go really kick-ass and be super successful in the country. And so definitely lost some of my ability to speak Farsi and some of the Persian culture stuff. And that's actually one of the really interesting things about this journey for me is I used to go by a nickname

and I don't go by that nickname anymore. and I stopped that about a year before I was going on Survivor. Was it Shah God? Yeah, Shah God. It was Shah, actually. And it was easier for people, right? Shaheen, two syllables can be difficult for people. And so instead I just went by Shah.

And it wasn't as a reference to the Shah of Iran. It was because my dad used to yell at me from the kitchen, Shah, finish your food. And when 12-year-old vanilla kids would come over to my house and then they would see me in the lunchroom on Monday, they wouldn't know how to do the so it just became shaw finish your food and uh i went by that for a very long time but for survivor i didn't tell them about my nickname at all i was just shaheen i wanted shaheen to be the name set on national television that was important to me for us to hear

a persian name said by jeff props and his dimples on national television to be the first persian man to play like that was very very important to me and in that transition when I got out there, you know, before people could call me both and I was trying to help them call me Shaheen. But once I got back, 30-something days of only being called Shaheen. I got back, landed. And, you know, one of my friends called me Shaw. And it was the first time that I was like, oh, nope, that guy's dead. That guy died. Whoever that was, that person doesn't exist anymore, I need you to call me Shaheen, actually. And my friends have been slowly making that transition to calling me by my full name. And it's been a way to reconnect with my culture, too.

And I've been doing that as well in the post game. It's been cool. The reason why I was curious about the language was I was wondering if that is something that helps you do what you do when you are analyzing people's speech. Yeah. So much of speech, I mean, so much of communication is nonverbal communication, right? And for a lot of my life, I've been, I kind of understand most of what's being said,

and then I'm picking up the rest with context clues, right? And on top of that, I was always the translator for my parents, right? When I was younger, I was like translating and trying to navigate, help them navigate the world. They were amazing, they are amazing communicators. vote my parents, right? They came here with nothing and figured out how to remake themselves. And that takes communication. My mom worked in a service industry. She was a hairstylist and she would steal people's clients all the fucking time. My mom, like would book them at times. My mom would

stand by the receptionist desk and they would call to book their appointment with their, with their hairstylist. And my mom would book them for times that she knew their hairstylist wouldn't be there but she had openings so when they came in they'd be like where's my hairstylist and she'd be like oh yeah Jennifer does that all the time but you know what why don't you come sit in my chair I'll take care of you my mom would just steal clients like if there's any wonder who should have played the game of Survivor my mom would have been amazing at the game of Survivor for sure you got her at Starbucks yeah I know I know I know and that's why she was so proud of me and anyway like you know for sure I think that helps with communication and I think

you know, Persians are pretty vibrant communicators. We have a way of talking, a, I guess, an embellishment to our communication style that you have to kind of read and understand. Were you able to read a lot of the nonverbal communication in ways that helped you on Survivor? I think so for sure. Yeah. Understanding who, who said they were, you know, they liked me versus who actually liked me. That was always going to be my kind of issue. I think everybody likes me. And that's not the case.

And some people can fake it. And some people can fake it well. And some people can't. And I mean, you see this scene between Say and I where we finally do kind of get eye to eye, where I tell her like, hey, I voted for you. And I read Say's nonverbal communication, I think maybe better than the other people

that were out there. Because I understood she would really rather you tell her to her face, screw you. Like she would rather that than you'd be like, hey, how are you? How's it going? It's nice to see you. Say it doesn't like that. Say that bothers to say. She has a really, really hard time with pleasantries, with politeness. She doesn't like it. She hates it. She's allergic to it. Because it's authentic. Yeah, yeah. It's inauthentic. But it's also not. Like, it's, you can be polite, and it's not inauthentic. You don't, just because you don't like someone,

it doesn't mean to be mean to them. You can still authentically be polite to people you don't like. I am all the time. I have tons of students that I loat. I just don't want to be around. They're stuck. They're annoying. But I'm polite to them.

I'm nice to them. I still grade them fairly. And so I think Say has maybe a little bit of a misread on what politeness means. but I understood. I understood what was going to rub her the wrong way. And I think that we actually would have worked together. I think that she would have worked with me if she would have survived that tribal.

But she didn't. Definitely, definitely didn't. All right. I've got questions for you that I want to get into also. But I also want to thank our sponsor. Those are our friends over at Mantha Sleep. So important to get your eight hours. Get your eight hours.

Is that how you build great legs? you're damn right you got to get your eight hours to build great legs and if you want to play survivor you need to be able to sleep you have to understand how to get yourself to sleep and everybody uses their buff as a mask yeah it would be better than your buff as a mask this is because a buff you can't adjust it look at this it has has cups that go over your eyeballs to get a perfect blackout fit to keep yourself from waking up from the light perfect for if you want to get in a nap any time of day. Great for side sleepers too.

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So this is an interesting question from Colin who says every season has its own culture. around what's most valued in a winner strategy, big moves, loyalty, personal growth. Have we been able to discern what is the culture of Survivor 49? Isn't that a great question? Great question. And actually, Drew Bacil was on RHAP talking about the morality of each season is established by the people who go out there. And I think that if we're asking, what's the morality of the season, that's going to drive the culture and that's going to drive the win condition. Is the wind condition of this big flashy moves? Is the wind condition or the morality of this, you have to get rid of your number one? Or is the win condition of this the loyalty

and like honesty and who was the most honest? If you're looking at the jury, which is the one that gets to establish the win condition, I think Nate's unmoved by, I would assume, Nate is unmoved by a loyal game. I don't think that MC cares too much about that. I think MC as a new fan, as like a new survivor player who's watched, you know, maybe four or five seasons, six seasons. I think more than that, but is newer to the show. Yeah.

You know what? That's such a, I don't, maybe I don't have a good read on this. Yeah, I would say, here's my read on it, where who are the people that we hear consistently talked about as the people who are going to win if they get to the end, it's Savannah, it's yellow Sophie, it's not Rizzo, it's Steven. It seems to me like challenge performance seems to be the biggest thing that players, that at least the people that are in the game seem to be very concerned about of those challenges didn't matter to me at all. I didn't care even a little bit. Yeah, this season, the only three people we have heard talked about as, oh, that person's going to win

is the, has been the challenge performance. And it's been, there's been perseverance from the, you know, Savannah, Rizzo, Sophie side. But I think it's been a little bit more that the other side has just fallen apart under pressure where they've stayed like solid and resolute. I don't know if, I'm trying to think of the move that Savannah Rizzo

Sof has made against the other side where it's like wow they're dominating the game it's like they've sort of just like had like all of their like backs to each other's backs and the other side has just all like fallen down

and gone after each other they've been willing yeah they've been willing to go after each other they didn't want to take on the fight yeah and Savannah really has one immunity at like the best times yeah and I think that because Clutch immunity wins, I think, has been the thing that's like, wow, we can't, we can't stop her.

Yeah, we can't get rid of her when we really want to. And the time they had to get rid of her, they had revenge on their mind instead. And they had a different challenge threat to get rid of. Yeah. So, yeah, I think, I think you're probably right. So Joe's winning immunities, but no, like, were people trying to get out Joe and then he was winning the immunities? Like, it's like, oh, who cares? He's won a bunch of immunities.

Yeah. You know what? I just think that you're out there for 48 hours in between each tribal. And of that 48 hours, 15 minutes to 30 minutes is a challenge. That's how long the challenge is last, right? Maybe 55 minutes for the arm challenge. And so there's so much more time that you're working the actual game versus this challenge part that it didn't play as much of a factor in our minds at the end um and and maybe that's

something that should be really argued for at final tribal like that that might be something that could have been more persuasive if it was made more a point of at final tribal council um yeah that but yeah i think the culture of this season is probably a little bit more challenge heavy, and maybe more so because it's being won at the right time. But I do think like, you see people wanting the big move, but you're right, they've been good moves instead of big moves. And there are big moves that are bad moves. And I think fans get confused because they want to see the fireworks. But sometimes when you set off fireworks, you let people know your location.

You know, you're setting off fireworks and people are now looking at the fireworks and now you're the thing. That's a bad move. You taking out your number one ally, like if Sage would have been the one taking out Joanne, Sage goes home next because she's made the biggest move. So when you make those moves, the timing is really important. I don't think we've ever really talked about this on the podcast, but I feel like this idea of the clutch immunity win really does seem to carry a lot more weight than like.

Like, okay, like if randomly, okay. Christina wins immunity. Christina won an immune. Alex, Alex won two immunities, and he wasn't going home. He was like, who cares? But Savannah, a couple of times, like her, like, if she didn't win immunity at the split tribal council, her group was going to go. She was going to go. So she won immunities when she would have gone home.

And I think that that's like, oh, we can't beat her. I think it's like. Rachel Lamont. Right, right. But Yellow Sophie also did that too, where that there was like that she would. would have gone home, I think, at the merge. She would have gone home at another point where she, but, oh, she won immunity. She kept herself safe.

So being able to save yourself, I think, has really, I think, dictated who are the big people. Oh, now if they get to the end, forget it. We can't beat that story. Okay. Yeah, I do think that, yeah, coming up, because that's using the challenge to further you're a game, right? That's not just winning an immunity. You're using the challenge win to further your game. And are you putting your foot on the gas when you have the immunity necklace? That makes a huge difference. And I think, I think here, when people had the immunity

necklace, they absolutely put their foot on the gas. They started trying to drive the story, drive the narrative, drive the vote. Yeah, I could see that. Okay. Good question. All right. This is from Jonah. If you were on 49, who would you most want to work with? I definitely would have enjoyed working with Savannah. I really enjoyed yellow Sophie on television. I think that I would have worked with her as well. I probably would have been okay with Rizzo and... Can you get some whys, though, of like, why those people in particular?

Savannah, I love because I think that she has a good mind for strategy, and I need someone that I'm willing to bounce ideas off of, like that's willing to go toe to toe with me and tell me no and like really like and that's what joe and i had like joe and i bounced ideas off of each other and he was willing to tell me no and tell me when i was doing too much and i was definitely guilty of doing too much like that was always going to be my thing um i would like to work with riso because of the reason that i think riso hasn't gone home yet which is i don't think people are going to give him credit at the end and that's an important person to work with because if I want to sit next to an ally, which was part of

my game is I wanted to sit next to allies. You need to sit next to allies that believe they have radical self-belief, which Rizzo has. He has amazing belief in himself that also isn't shared by the people that are on the jury. The people on the jury don't believe him and they don't believe in him and they think he's kind of a clown or they don't believe that he has the ability, right? In a way, it's like, you know, to talk about Millennials versus Gen X again, it's Ken and Hannah, right? That people who believe they can beat Adam, but they can't, and they're willing to be loyal to him. And that's a smart move for him because he could have gotten rid of them at some point, but why would he when he can sit next to them at the end and beat his allies?

So, you know, I think Savannah's going to be tough to beat. I think she's going to have a lot to say at Final Tribal Council. I think Rizzo has done a lot, but whether he can get the jury to believe them is tough. And I think Sophie's in that same boat. She's done a lot, but whether she can get the jury to believe that is going to be the difficult thing for her. You know, I think that Stephen and I have like some similarities, not just that we both went home in sixth, but I met him this weekend and I did see some similarities between Stephen and I. He has a super fun personality. He's got a big smile on his face all the time.

time even when the chips are down, like he has a good amount of resilience. And I probably would have thought there's only enough room on the island for one of us, uh, and might have gone swinging for Stephen. Uh, so probably not working with Stephen, um, although I probably would have gotten along with him. And that tends to cloud my judgment, who I get along with. Um, um, can we talk, can we talk early game people that I would have worked with? I would have loved to work with Nate. Nate would have been my number one. I would have dreamed to work with Nate. Why? He has a good, good head on his shoulders. He's super bright. He has a good read on the young people. Like, he understood how to try and like, okay, this is clearly, I'm on the young person's tribe and I have

to like mind my peas and cues. And a lot of the same way that Joe did. Like Joe recognized he couldn't boss people around. He had to let us make mistakes. And then he could come in later. He didn't dad us. You know what I mean? He just kind of waited for his moment. And I think, that's a pretty good stance to take out there, that you have to, you're not being a chameleon because he's still himself, he still has his own opinions, but he understands that he needs to let people be themselves too. And sometimes that means being a frame guy

instead of the star of the show. And that's a difficult thing to do. What's a frame guy? Ah, the person who's just like, you're standing there, you're holding the frame so that the stars of the show can be like, like the nickel back video yeah yeah exactly yes exactly the glitter you know what i mean glitter needs glue and no one's looking at the glue they're looking at the glitter and that's an important

skill set to have out there on survivor with all these vibrant personalities and i think he navigated that pretty well until you know that split tribal man that's a tough spot and yeah you go home brutal Okay. For the blind side. Alex Brown wants to know what's better, chicken tacos or chicken and waffles? Can I annoy everybody? Yeah.

Sure. Fried chicken and waffles. Fried chicken and waffles. They're savory. They're sweet. They're what you want to eat. The internet hates this and I don't give a shit. You don't.

You love it. I love it. Yes. You know why? Because a little bit of cringe is important. Yeah. If you can't cringe every once in a while, You're not taking enough risks, okay?

Cringe a little bit. Fried chicken and waffles. You like the heat. I don't mind it. It's important. Like, if you're not ready for the heat and you go on Survivor, you better get ready because it's coming for you, man. These fans don't have any qualms about saying what they do

and do not like on the internet behind, you know, a profile picture of a potato and user 793-2648 profile. Yeah. Why do you feel like people responded negatively to that? because it's cringy because I don't know it annoys them because it's people having fun in a game for a million dollars and they feel like that you should be miserable out there and I don't know and maybe maybe it is cringy and I think Mary had one of the funniest reactions of just like Jesus is this what we're doing now see what I think that the reason why people didn't like it was because it was like it seemed like that Jeff wanted you guys to do it and you seemed very willing to do okay hey everybody do the do the thing and you seem to where I think that people as compared to this season yellow Sophie when Jeff's like

all right here's the reward it's fruit like what do you mean that's the reward that sucks that's I don't want that Like, I think that people like it when it's that they don't give the company line to Jeff. Yeah. But I was thinking a lot of other ways, you don't give the company line to the production or Jeff either. Yeah, it's like I talked smack on the challenges. Yeah. I was mad that we had so many arm challenges. It's not a company line thing.

But I'm also like a guy who does vocal stems all the time. Like, I can't help, but create lyrics and like do vocal stems. Like, that's why I did the O-Waka thing. It's because it was on my brain all the time. What's a vocal stim? A vocal stem is like just all of a sudden out of nowhere. You know, my dad used to do it. I think I got it from my dad.

But he would just be like walking around. We would be going on a walk and he'd just be like, blame it on the rain. The famous Millie Vanilly song. And I do the same thing. It's like, you know, I'll be walking around. Allegedly Millie Vanilly. Allegedly Millie Vanilla.

Yeah, exactly. And I'll do the, I would do the O Waka, see I know, Makkah, at the end of my workouts and stuff. And that's like a vocal stim. that I would do. And same thing with, once he started that thing, it was like, all right, cool, I can catch a vibe. Like, I don't, you know, vibes are contagious for me.

I'll catch on and try and play along. And I don't know, in improv, it's always, you know, yes and. And Jeff was trying to do some improv and I'm down, I'm down to play along. Jeff's doing a lot of improv. Do you improv? Sure, yeah, why not? I used to do a bunch of improv when I was younger. And doing coaching, like coaching people's speeches is improv, right?

You're spitballing ideas. And it's really harmful if someone spitballs an idea and you're just like, nah, that's not going to work. It's way better if you go, okay, let's do it like this. Okay, how about like this? Yes, this and this. And Walt, and that wasn't Walt Disney. It was, oh, God, Dr. Seuss used to make war propaganda. And one of the things that he did when he was writing both his children's books and also when he was making war propaganda was he would have something called a,

a yes session where he would get into a room with his creatives and the only thing they could do was say yes. No idea was too stupid. No idea was going to get a no. And it allowed for a creative flow to occur. And they created obviously some really successful war propaganda, some amazing books from that creative yes flow. And for me, when Jeff does something like that, it's just a yes and moment where maybe it'll be great, maybe it'll be bad. It was great. It made people talk about it. It made some people mad. It made people feel something. But I'll tell you, you know what? This is one of those things that happens to reality TV people when they come back. They think the internet is everybody and it's not. The amount of people

that have come up to me and loved that part is a gargantuan. It's a massive number of people that bring that part up and how much they loved it and how they still sting it when they're going to breakfast. And it's like, yeah, a lot of people hated it. The haters are always going to be louder than the people who love it. No one's getting online and getting any traction with, I love the fried chicken and waffles part. That's not getting any likes. It's not getting any retweets.

But someone dragging us for it is, of course, going to get a lot of likes, a lot of retweets. So it's one of those things that in your brain sticks out because hate evolutionarily is always going to stick out in your brain more than love. Because it's a threat to your existence and our evolutionary brains don't understand how to get rid of that idea.

And so that stands out, and you are confronted with that, that, that ignoring all of the love. You can scroll by a thousand comments that say they love you and you'll feel obsess about the comment that says that they hate you. And I think this is one of those examples where certain corners of the loud parts of the internet hated it, but a lot of people really enjoyed it and had a good time with it. Okay. Tell me about, I know you went this weekend to the big reality event, over the edge. Yeah. So fun. So why do they call it Over the Edge?

I think Over the Edge has to do with the fact that at some point you can do this like repelling down a building, five-story building. And so that's like the over-the-edge part of it. Really, it's a charity event, right? That these Reality Stars go, they all kind of list their charities they want to raise money for. They raise a bunch of money for the charity. And then the people who go and attend are paying money to the charity for certain, to the

charities of the reality star's choice for these experiences. But I think over the edge celebrity over the edge is maybe bad branding for them. It doesn't really talk about what it is. It's almost like a reality conference. Like it's a reality television conference. I got to meet people from Big Brother, from the challenge, from the snake, from traders, from all these different reality shows and others like Squid Game and all these different people. They're everywhere. And it was so, so fun to get to meet them, talk to them about the mechanic of their games and then on top of that you have hundreds of fans that are there and because there's so many reality people and so many fans it's not overwhelming for you as a reality person you're

not getting like constantly accosted the fans were excellent with how much of your time they would and wouldn't take they understood that there were more people and you know we got to through dance parties and like it was j jerry jerry manthy was in the building which was super cool like it was an awesome party. There was a blue party where everyone wore blue and I wore a little. Blue Kim from Big Brother was there?

Sorry, who? Oh, I couldn't hear you. Yeah, Blue Kim from Big Brother. I don't think that she was there or if she was, I didn't meet her. I did get to meet, like, Keanu bought me Waffle House. Oh, because fried chicken and waffles?

I don't think, maybe. I don't know if he watched her. Is in the lore that deep. Yeah, I don't think that he would be. But he did like pay for my Waffle House with five other people. that I had met that day and then we ended up going

to a Waffle House and that was like that. Well, he did get America's favorite player. Makes sense. And I also met another one of America's favorite players, Tiffany Mitchell.

Oh, yes. I know her. And she blew me away. Like she was so fun to be around. So hysterically funny. I met so many cool people. I definitely learned that I will never do Big Brother. There is no shot you will catch me on.

Why? What was it about the Big Brother people were too crazy? They didn't realize 90, 90-something days in a house and what type of, I've never really watched Big Brother. I watched the first episode of this season and, yeah, that's a mental, that's a version of mental torture that I don't think that I would do well with, whereas the survivor type of torture I think I'm kind of made for, the discomfort that comes with sleeping on the beach and not

eating for 12 days and all of that. I feel like I can handle maybe a little bit better than being trapped inside of a house. That, that, I don't know, I don't think that does well for my brain and how long they were in there. I don't think that does well. And the way that they have to deal with fans is just different. It's it is different. It is different because I feel like that a lot of times the people that watch the live feeds, they feel a connection to, like, yeah, as a parasycial, like, I, I truly know, I've watched you, I truly know you, I've seen you sleep. Like, it's a little bit different than I watch Shaheen on TV. Right. You watch 12 hours of me. You watched hundreds of

12 hours of you in one day. Yeah. You said that you like the suffering. Stephen said that also. Did you ever have the rats and mice crawl on you? I had crabs crawl up my legs. I stole the hammock spot. Oh.

So I was raised up off the ground. And that was just your spot? I called it. I mean, I technically won those hammocks, and so I don't know if that was part of it. Interesting. But, yeah, I think. other people were also more cold

than I was and being in the hammock meant you were going to be cold. Okay. Because you were away from the fire. And so I didn't mind being cold at night. I would fall asleep. I sleep pretty hot. So I think that I kind of snagged that spot and people just, no one ever asked me for it. I offered it, but no one ever really wanted

it. Okay. It's lucky. Let me see. Brandon Donald said he pulled a clip of a, you did an Instagram that went mega viral. Oh, geez. let me let me should we should we look at what did you go viral for tricker trick or treat it says is this worth looking at i mean if you if you enjoy trick or treating sure okay all right and but

and brand is doing mega viral yeah i it look at you let me see let me see what you're talking about here okay couple of three sometimes you got to choose trick what you said What's happening here? The kids came to the door and then somebody threw a bunch of candy at the kids? That is me. Yeah, that's me throwing candy at the kid. This is you? That's me, yes.

Where's your beard? It's there. Is this old? This is old, for sure. Oh, yeah. Okay. Holy shit. You can hear him say, holy shit.

So you just take the candy and just throw it in the hallway. Oh, okay. And you just throw the candy on the kids. Yeah, it's a pinata. So yeah, okay, and the kids like it? They lost it. It's funny, you can't, you can tell if you really look closely, but some of those kids are back for their second time.

Like you see the same costumes two times in a row. You're going through a lot of candy, I feel like. Were you giving out anything good? Are you getting like the real, real crappola milk duds and all the junk? It was, you know, like, like the Reese's and it was good kids. You throw a Reese's away like that? For sure. But here's the deal.

I had a really devastating week before Halloween one year. Got like one of the scariest things ever happened to me. My eyes went cross-eyed. I couldn't see straight. and my brother, who's a physician, tells me, you know, who's always, every time I've ever talked to my brother, ever, ever, ever talk to my brother about my medical condition. I'm like, hey, something's wrong.

And he'd be like, oh, cool, why don't you put a tampon on it? Like, why don't you, you have, you know, SDS, you have sudden death syndrome, you're going to die tomorrow. Like he would just, he can't mess with his patients like that. So he messes with the little brother like that. This time I call him and I'm like, hey, man, this is going on with my eyes. And he's like, long silence. you need to get to an emergency room immediately.

Okay. And got an MRI and the doctors thought I had multiple sclerosis, which was, you know, that's life changing. Sure. That's definitely a big life change. And when I came home from that weekend, the next weekend was Halloween. And I was going to be, I wasn't going to go party. I didn't have the partying in me.

So I went out and bought a bunch of bags of like the king-sized candy because I was going to make kids day and 730 rolls around and we got like one trick or treater and i have all this candy sitting there and so my partner at the time was like hey dump it on them yeah let's go pinata style like we got all this candy we don't throw it on the kids open the door bang through it and it went viral and so the next seat next year i did the same thing i did it again and dumped a bunch of candy on kids and um and then all of a sudden it you know yeah i figured i might as well post it again this should they should this be a reward on survivor where you win a you win a reward like uh all right you want to know what you're playing for you're going to the you're going to the sanctuary

where shaheen is going to throw candy yeah he's throwing reases he's throwing he's throwing snickers he's throwing snickers yeah dude that'd be um and joy he's throwing fried chicken and Yes, absolutely. Jeff, give me a call. I'll fly out there to Pondi. Can you vocal stem a Halloween candy pour? What would that go? Like, oh, I think it would go, oh, thank you.

Holy shit. Oh, thank you. Holy shit. That's, it's the, it's the kids screaming. That would be the vocal stem, for sure. Shaheen, is there anything else? on your mind about Survivor 49, the Survivor

Cinematic Universe? I think that the elephant in the room for this finale is, you know, we know that Savannah and Rizzo are, if you're watching this, you know Savannah and Rizzo are going to be on 50, right? And I

think if you can enjoy... I hadn't heard that, but if that's it's your guess, yeah. If you're going to really watch something and you're going to try to enjoy it, try and watch it from that perspective. Set your frame going into the finale with, I'm going to watch and see, how is it that these two people who just played on 49 ended up taking two people's spots? Like, what is it that they really did out there that showed they were worthy of taking two people's spots on 50? because I don't think that, I mean, maybe I don't, I don't have any tea on this, but I don't think that it was guaranteed that they were going to put two people from

49 on 50. It could have been one person. It could have been no people. They absolutely could have had a season where they put nobody on there. I was surprised they put three people from your season. No comment. That was before. That was another big surprise.

Yeah, you know, I think that there's all these people from the recent seasons on there, and they didn't have to put people from there. And so the frame, if you want to watch and enjoy, instead of watch and be frustrated, I think you should probably be, what are these, what have these people done that really made production go, wow, these people got to come back

and they got to come back in nine days or 10 days, however long they had in between those two things. I feel like it was a little longer. I don't think it was quite like Russell coming back from Samoa. I mean, you might know better than me. But I feel like it was, I think it was more than, more than a couple of weeks, I think.

I think it was like 13 days, Rob. Only 13 days? I mean, I don't know for, I'm, I'm speculating. I'm sure we can, like, do the math on it, but. I want to see the before and after picture of Rizzo and Savannah before they go out on 49 and after they come back from 50 eventually. I think that would be a spoiler right now, but I would want to see how much weight they lose on, you know, 50-something days if they play long, you know,

It would be interesting to see what that looks like. But, you know, I think that if you watch it from that frame, it might be a more enjoyable experience. I watched a lot of seasons that were spoiled. I don't know if I already said that, but I watched a lot of seasons that were spoiled for me when I was working through Survivor during the Panini. And I actually rather enjoyed watching people

that I knew we're going to go far or knew we're going to do well to see, okay, really lock in on like, oh, they made a mistake. But I knew that they were going to win how do they recover from this mistake instead of just thinking like oh they're going home because they made the mistake knowing they're going to recover watching how they recovered or watching how someone else fumbled the bag or whatever that was kind of an interesting thing to watch and that was you know why i really clued into the sophy and sage conversation because it was going to be

savannah or sophy knowing that it probably wasn't going to be savannah made me really pay attention to the yellow sophy moment with sage really clued me in there. So I think there's some interesting tidbits that people can glean from the finale here as they watch knowing, you know, something, two of these people are coming back. Shane, where could people see more

of what you're doing with coaching? Oh, Shaheendevari.com. There is going to be kind of a huge relaunch in January. I'm working with a lovely little team to do a relaunch and a redoing of everything. but if you're interested in one-on-one coaching or group coaching, head over to shaheen-divari.com and love to help you out for sure. It's a subject that I am always particularly interested, especially like the intersection

of communication styles and then also the overlay of that on top of people playing these reality TV games. It's something. I used to show Survivor clips in my classes because I show Eric's clip in my class all the time of his monologue to talk about what great speech looks like. I show Reese, his monologue about Missy, the... Oh, yeah, read, read, yeah. Sorry, Reed.

I don't know why I said Reese. Because you're thinking about the candy that you dumped on the kids. Exactly right. Reed's monologue, I show all the time to talk about why theme can be such a powerful motivator inside of a speech. In classical literary storytelling. Yeah, classical literature, man. Yeah.

And for me, the reason I love this stuff, the reason I love... The reason I love helping people is because it doesn't matter what you do. It doesn't matter if you're an engineer. It doesn't matter what you do. If you upgrade your communication, your life just gets better. If you have the ability to represent yourself, if you know what stories you should be telling and you can control the frame of those stories, people are going to pay more attention to you. And you'll have that skill set for the rest of your life.

It's the thing that will stick with you. It's one of those trainings that will always be on your brain. It's a reorganization of how you communicate. And then once you have that organizational principle internalized, it helps you in every scenario. The boardroom, the bedroom, the courtroom. It's going to help you no matter where you are. Are there any professional speakers that you particularly admire? You know, I think that we recently, the zeitgeist of theater or of public speaking,

has moved away from professionalism in speaking. So like, someone like, you know, Gary V, who you can have your own opinion about, but he is very authentic. He swears a bunch. And I don't think anybody would say he's not an excellent speaker. But if you were to do this 10 years ago, people would be like, oh, he's inappropriate. So he's not an excellent public speaker. That's, we've gone away from that zeitgeist in public speaking. It's not about being professional anymore. It's about being authentic. It's about being yourself louder. That's why I named the company, You Louder. It's why I named the workshop, you louder. Because really what's at the heart of better communication is understanding

yourself, understanding how you communicate with yourself, and then turning the dial up, depending on how many people you're communicating with. If you're communicating one-on-one, you don't have to be at a 10. If you're communicating with 500 people, you're everything has to be bigger and louder so that everybody can really feel that same vibe from you. It's such an interesting pendulum swing where when I was a younger person that you know you would say that somebody was a professional speaker who was very polished very buttoned up very very much like not having like strong emotion you say that that person is and then it's almost like in in our time now it's like the opposite somebody who's like buttoned up seems to professional we don't we don't like that

that's that's fake where's we want the real who's being real like who's cursory saying, who's doing, like, just giving us simple ideas that are straightforward? We crave authenticity now more than ever. And we can talk, you know, forever about why that's now the case and why it wasn't the case before. But I think the democratization of celebrity has a huge part of that. That because anybody can pick up their phone and start talking to it, when people are real and we can see that, we are attracted to that in a way that we aren't attracted to something that is buttoned up and on television. When the traditional media is just not as appealing as someone talking to us on their couch, that has changed the zeitgeist

of the window of what is great communication, what is excellent communication. And I love that that's the case because it allows everybody to be a super communicator, but you have to lean into the thing that you are. You can't lean away from that. You can't, if you are an awkward and an uncomfortable speaker, if you're just awkward and socially awkward and you don't have that, you can't pretend to be Obama. That's not going to work for you, right? If you're not a poet, you shouldn't be speaking like a poet. You have to lean into the thing that you are to turn that up be authentic trust that an audience wants that more than they want you to be something that you're not we just have such an awesome allergy to that right now and i think that's i mean again like

coming back to the game i think that's why you know savannah's worked so much on her communication she really is an expert at it and sometimes that can come across as um something that creates jealousy in the in the mind of the watcher of the viewer i've had that happen to me before too it's like oh, he's so, he's so on it with his wording. It's kind of off-putting. But, yeah, so be it. You've got to lean into the thing that you are. All right.

Well, Shain, thank you so much for this conversation. I really enjoyed it. I thought you were super interesting to talk to, and I appreciate all of your perspective that you brought to all this. Let me also mention to people, something that I had been working on here for the last, when Shaheen was playing.

Survivor. I was writing about it in a little book called The Tribe and I have spoken. And this was certainly season 48 was on my mind when we were putting this all together for you to check out. All of my knowledge

of Survivor history is here in this book, talking about all of the lore and legacy of Survivor, not to mention a chapter all about the best strategy on how to win but no refunds, okay, if it doesn't work out and all of the heroes and villains in the show's history, plus the journey of me.

That's all for you here in The Tribe and I have spoken available for pre-order at rob hasa-book.com. Rob hasa-book.com. Yes. Yes. I'm excited to read it. Yeah. I can't wait. Okay.

It's a lot of fun. Lots of great art. Also, it's a real collector's item for any survivor fan. Are you doing any signed copies? We're going to be doing getting some book plates. book plates yes so so uh where i think i will be doing signatures that will uh that you can will that will come with your book cool how long how long you've been working on this thing i started working on the book i think in the beginning of 20 or like mid 20 24 so i think it was uh the summer

in between survivor 46 and 47 is that sound right yeah yeah yeah yeah how cool yeah what a cool So, is any of it 50 focused or is it more just history of Survivor? I think it's, well, it's 25 years of Survivor, obviously, like we couldn't write about Survivor 50, but, you know, that the closing time was, or we like submitted the draft of the book in June of this year. So it's been a pretty quick turnaround. So really, the only 49 is the only season that doesn't get mentioned. Available for Christmas? Going to be out by Christmas? They'll be out in May, May 5th.

So available for pre-order and we'll send you a postcard if you want to give it to. A loved one. Yeah, good Christmas gift. That'll be a letter that'll make your family member cry. Yeah, exactly right. Hey, actually, by the way, we should be writing each other more letters. Okay. You see the impact that letters have on people out there?

This episode is sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service. Write each other more letters this time of year. Totally. People will appreciate that more than a gift sent to them from Amazon. Write them a letter. Write them a letter. Your handwriting. Isn't it funny how much handwritten?

Handwriting made a huge difference. Rob, I could talk to you all day, by the way. Yeah. Thank you so much for having you. Handwriting. Now, I just want to. Handwriting made a huge difference where? On the program.

In civilization or on Survivor? On Survivor, too. In general? I think on Survivor, when you see your family members handwriting, you know their handwriting is going to be something. Oh, I know that person's vote. I feel like that people used to like try to fake, oh, I'm not writing this voted by handwriting.

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Crazy how much handwriting has had an impact on Survivor. All right. I did not talk about that in the book, but maybe it's a podcast for another day. All right. Thank you so much for joining us. Take care. Everybody, have a good one.

Bye.