RHAP: We Know Survivor - Why ___ Lost: Survivor 49 Ep 9 with Sam Phalen

Episode Date: November 22, 2025

Why ___ Lost: Survivor 49 Ep 9 with Sam Phalen Alex said as he was leaving: “It’s what I get for playing both sides.” But he reversed course on that in his interviews by saying he wasn’t messy. Which was it? Who deserves credit and who deserves blame for this outcome? And why is David […]

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They'll break down the rules and they'll show you how. You're playing yourself and got voted out. This is why Blank Lost. This is why Blank Lost. Oh, baby, this is why Blank Lost. Welcome back to the 10th anniversary season of Why Blank Lost. I'm David Bloomberg, and I have the perfect way to ensure that I'll be safe through the end of this podcast. Look, I have an idol.

Now nobody will ever want to vote for me or try to flush it because it's just not something we do anymore with people who have I. Apparently, that's exactly how you play the game of Survivor now. So yes, 100% correct. So that voice you heard, of course, is joining me as my co-host, Jessica Lewis. And we have returning special guest, Sam Phelan back as a fellow original Chicago Suburbanite to discuss another fellow Chicago. Chicago Suburbanite. Alex. Oh, so sad.

So sad. You know, normally I relish when a Cubs fan loses, David. And that was the case for Alex this week, but did not want to see Alex go. So unfortunately, have to have to get into it with a heavy heart. Mm-hmm. Oh, goodness. I even wore an Illinois hat. Just, you know, it's a neutral territory there, you know.

so how have you been sam since we last chatted here oh i'm i'm i'm very good um you know watching watching survivor watching sports writing about sports kind of just doing my thing uh you know living living life after survivor i feel like the last time we we talked i was still kind of in the belly of the beast a little bit was like you know just a few months removed from my my season airing uh and kind of being in the chaos uh yeah had a nice summer kind of kind of unwinding from, you know, all the chaos that comes once this becomes part of your life. But, yeah, I got married. I don't know if we got married before or after the last time I talked to you, but, you know, here we are.

I think after because it was like a week difference from my son's wedding. Yes, yes, yes. Something like that. Yeah. Well, congratulations on that. Thank you. Yeah. That's a big, big step.

As you guys got a quick, quick introduction, too, I adopted a cat. I'm a cat dad now, cat daddy. so yeah he he may or may not make a guest appearance later on in the podcast i hope he does because so far from what i've seen it was very entertaining so that'll be lovely if it happens again it will be entertaining and then you may see a black screen and a mic cut out and uh you know a cat have to get disciplined but he's you know these things happen we'll work with it we'll go through roll with the punches there might be some dogs that appear behind me so these things happen it's great it's good entertainment yeah

Well, coming into this episode, I thought I predicted that someone would be stuck in the middle and voted out. I just thought it would be Sophie, not Alex. I had predicted Alex a couple weeks ago, but at this point it seemed like there was no reason that attention would suddenly shift to him. But clearly, everything was not as I thought. And to figure out what went wrong, we will follow our usual path by comparing his game to a set of guiding rules for winning. I originally wrote way back after season one and have been updating ever since. We'll collect all the non-spoiler information available to us from what we saw on TV, interview, social media, and secret scenes.

And the newest published version of these rules can, of course, be found at Robhas website.com slash YX lost feed and clicking on the link bubble for the survivor rules. But before we address how Alex did in terms of the rules, we always have some other things to discuss. But let me start by saying this. this was such a frustrating episode to me. I was incredibly annoyed when it ended. I have calmed down somewhat. I'm still very annoyed now.

I like a fired up, David. Now, most of what I have to say in that regard is going to have to wait till Appendix A, which may give listeners a good idea who I'm annoyed at. But, you know, sorry, you'll have to wait. That's just how you know. Could we get us? people frantically being appendix A.

Appendix A. What's Appendix A about? Right, right. It's like, oh, crap, I didn't study. Yeah. I find it very interesting that you came away frustrated from this episode. So is that, David, do you think that's normally your reaction if you were frustrated by the gameplay of particular players? Because I think from my perspective, I enjoyed this episode so much more. I find it interesting, David, that you were frustrated by the episode.

Is that how you normally feel when, like, you're frustrated by the gameplay? Because I think from my perspective, I was, for lack of a better word, bored by the beginning of the season. Oh, I love this. Ooh, I was not expecting you to know it was bored. This is fantastic. Like, the beginning of the season, it felt like every, like we were just kind of telegraphing who is going home, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. I think you see, and I've kind of maintained this take for a while,

some of the best seasons have awful pre-merges because some of the nothing burger characters, so to speak, are going home early. And then the people that you really care about that are like the stars of the season end up fighting it out late, which makes for an epic kind of post-merge. And I kind of felt like that's where season 49, was going. And so I think, you know, while some of the decision making in this episode could be frustrating, I do think the last two episodes, especially, you could argue three episodes, have all been pretty exciting episodes as far as a not knowing what's going to happen

standpoint and understanding at least like how many different, like we went into tribal council with a handful of different options of what could possibly go down versus I felt like earlier in the season, it was like, all right, so they're probably just voting out Nicole and intended to be what we thought. Yeah, no, I agree with everything you said. You know, we, we there's, you know, people watch for different reasons and I'll have a comment about this because Alex said something that I'll mention in the first rule in one of his interviews about gameplay versus, you know, boredom. Yeah, it did get a little rote, you know, it was the same thing, you know, that's

no player's fault. You know, I don't want players to do crazy things just to do crazy things. It's just the way the game went. Part of it is production's fault for creating a situation where you could have a disaster tribe that ended up the way it was, you know?

Yes. Part of it is the snake's fault. So, although the snake actually saved us from a couple of things. But this episode, the frustration, well like I said we'll get to it I don't want to get to it too much here but yes I get frustrated when I see people who I think are fairly smart and good game players do things that look very dumb to me okay that is where my frustration is so yes it was we'll have to get we'll have to get into it we'll have yeah and I do feel like what what Sam you said it is kind of of a roller coaster season right because at the beginning yes you can i can understand completely that

idea of like this is kind of boring because but then again there's it's there's kind of a shift when it goes from like well there was excitement but you're also just like wait what like what is happening right now like why is this happening and it does become frustrating and then so it's like i don't want to be bored i want to be entertained but also i don't want to be frustrated because they're you're like ah there's this whole like mix of emotions that are happening while you're watching yeah and And that's why we will talk through it and make some determinations about something. Yes. Yes.

So I have a feeling David and I are going to disagree later. I can't. I can already tell. This is very exciting. I can't wait. But we have to wait. We have to get there. You know, I love to have to have a day.

Yes. So let's discuss something else a little different then, which is the big job reveal by Savannah. Oh, yes. Oh, this to me was such a nothing burger. But I will say, and Rob discussed this a bit on the recap with Dr. Evie. It seemed like sharing even this meaningless piece of information made so feel like Savannah trusts her. So I guess from that standpoint, it was a good move. But part of it is because it was such a.

nothing that it wasn't going to make so suddenly see her as a big threat and you know sam i know you're in the same field so i'm not saying being a reporter is nothing i'm saying hiding it is the you know i i'm not one to normally um complain about like i think i think there's a lot of cynicism out there regarding new era survivor in general right like people would like to complain about every little thing that exists and why do players do this why do players do that this is boring this is bad i think a lot of it's crap i think a lot of it's you know like nostalgia taking over in somebody's brain and like you go back and watch an old season of survivor like you spend i'm talking like old old it's bad like it's like as far as if

If you're watching for like the strategy of the game, right? You don't understand we're half the people lie. They don't even speak. And a lot of the same stuff happens. You just had a different feeling because you were younger and watched it through different eyes when in a different culture when it was on your TV screen. One of the things that does drive me freaking mad about New Era Survivor is this need to not tell anybody about your job. I don't care. I don't like it almost like it upset me.

It pissed me off to no end getting off, getting on a flight to Los Angeles from Fiji at the end of season 47, getting my phone and being like, oh, everybody but like two, myself being one of the two lied about their job for no damn reason on this season. Like what do you like because all of a sudden you being like a reporter again, I love Savannah.

Savannah's awesome. I think she's one of like really bringing it on this season in terms of constant content and being fun to watch. But it's everything, right? It's like what is now the long laundry list of jobs that you can't tell anybody you're going to be in Survivor? And let me go a step further. Yes, your job makes you a threat. That is the case for everyone. You know why?

Why? Because when Jeff casts you, one of the questions they ask you is, how does that relate to the game of Survivor? How is that going to help you? It's one of Mike Bloom's questions in the preseason press is, what is your superpower? How is your experience in reporting, in being a bus boy, in sales, in marketing, in social media management, whatever? how many times have people talked about how their skills from their job will apply to the game of Survivor? It can apply to literally any career ever.

So we don't care. Like I do wish the show would stop with that and I wish the players particularly would stop because unless you are, like the only time it's fine to me is if you're a millionaire. If you are rich, don't tell anybody.

Because I do think there's a natural thing of people won't want you to win money if you already have a bunch of money and you're going up against somebody who people view is more deserving. Totally understand that. But lawyer, salesperson, marketing, reporter, TV person, whatever. I don't care. Just like. And I feel a little called out right now. Why? Hi, I'm a lawyer. And I didn't tell anybody in my season that I was a lawyer. I mean, back, I will say back when you did it, like, it wasn't like lawyers, kind of did it sometimes occasionally. Yes. Yes. I will say that in season 33, it was, I was not even the only lawyer that didn't offer up the fact that they were a lawyer.

And the police officer, same thing, law enforcement. And so that one I also understand, by the way, the police officer law enforcement one. That one I think makes a lot of sense. Although it was funny because they pegged him because he was such a. They did. Yes, they did. But I do think that everything that you're saying, I don't disagree with. I think that we have put an over-emplementation. emphasis on people's professions. But unfortunately, at the time when I was playing, if you said I'm an attorney, I'm a lawyer, any type of, there was an immediate thing that you were associated with, like, oh, well, this person can't be trusted or this person is going to be really great at speaking and we don't want to be going up against it. There was a lot of stuff that just came with it. It didn't necessarily matter if you explained what type of law you practice. And I'm a trial attorney. And so there's a lot of extra things that can be added to that. I'm also in law

enforcement. And so it was like, okay, I'm a photographer because that just sounds more clean and easy. And I used to be a photographer. So it was like I had a backstory. I had something I could talk about. And I do think now, though, it was like the salesperson component like popped up a few seasons back. And it was like basically every season where it's like a lawyer one season, a salesperson. a marketing. I'm not going to tell anybody that I do that I do this because of this is how it can be perceived. Right. Right. My problem. And here's my take on it is just that I think, like I said, it can be applied to any job. And I just think it's something people latch on to to justify why they want to vote somebody out, but they already want to vote somebody out. Yeah. It's like, hey, I don't like Jessica. I want Jessica to go. I don't trust Jessica. Well, I learned Jessica's a lawyer. And now, Bing, I can go sell that to other people in the tribe as like why we need to do it. it versus if you're my best friend and my number one and you're a lawyer, I'm probably not immediately like, whoa, as we see it's spoken Savannah, like a relationship that already exists.

Hey, I'm a reporter. Okay, cool. Like, that doesn't affect anything. We've built a relationship already. Right. So, like, I don't know. That's what frustrates me about is because some of the people, like, and again, it was different.

You go back to season, whatever, 15, and you've got people, hey, if you're a lawyer, you're certainly different and perceived different than lunch lady Denise right and like in your careers and like how it can set you apart from people they cast a particular type of person now these are they don't cast dummies these are people with intellect and social oh my gosh you're not kidding yeah and so it's like you know it's like going and being like i'm not going to tell anybody i'm a super fan of survivor it's like man everybody knows what they're doing everybody knows what they're talking about. That's not something that you need to like particularly make it a point to hide. I mean, I actually, I believe I took that out of the rules, or at least I put in

something, you know, kind of a disclaimer there. Because yeah, there used to be something in the rules that said, don't tell people you're a super fan because they will immediately look at you and go, you have got to go. But now everybody is. Everyone is a super fan. There's a difference in, you know, definition of superfan. There's the pandemic superfan. There's the I, you know, just started watching the bingeed every season in three months superfan. You know, so yeah, there's different levels.

But everyone knows what's happening. And I will say the Savannah, like the Savannah way that she played it is my preferred version of this, which is eventually you tell somebody, whatever, where it does drive me nuts is when somebody plans on it to be like a final tribal council bomb that they're going to drop. Yeah, like the big reveal. Oh, by the way, I'm actually a sales executive. Okay.

Thanks for sharing. Like, I don't. To me, if I'm on a jury, by the way, and somebody all of a sudden comes forward with like the everything you thought you knew about me has been a lie. I'm like, yeah. Okay. I have no reason to vote for you then like that. That takes away all of my personal relationship with you.

I'm going to probably vote for the person I did get to know. Yeah. No, and that is fair. And I do think that there is an issue that comes with it, that if you are going to not say what you do, I agree. Like the big reveal at the end is not necessarily going to do anything for you. Because, yes, you've essentially been lying to everyone the whole season.

So they might not appreciate that. And so you really have to be very cognizant of that decision, what that decision can do for your game and how it can affect your ability to get to know people and to connect with people because you aren't being completely honest with who you are.

So you really got to stick with it until the game is completely over if that's the decision you're going to make. But I also do think it needs to make sense. It needs to make sense as to why you're doing it. And I do agree. I think Savannah's reveal makes sense in her circumstance

because she's sharing information with someone she's already close with. And it's going to help build that relationship. But it also doesn't make her more threatening than Sophie's eyes. So it balances itself out there. So I can appreciate Savannah kind of working through that whole process in making that decision to tell Sophie about it. So we'll see how it shakes out because if Sophie decides to not tell anyone as Savannah requested, and she's in a good place. Let me throw out this side of it too, because I hate to spend so much time on this.

one detail from the episode. But I think I've talked with Rachel from my season about this before. It is very funny how people think that they're doing themselves a ton of favors in the game by like not sharing, again, what they do for work, whatever. And what I don't think gets talked about is how much you can miss in terms of potential relationships, things that you could have in common with somebody, connections that could be forged or made if you were just honest about your line of work. I look at 47 alone, a season where I said basically everybody for no reason lied about

what they did. And I think about, you know, like Gabe told people like, oh, hey, I'm a bar back. And Gabe did previous or had a buddy that was a bar back or something. And it turns out he was like trying to break into sports radio and was like an on-air radio person. which is exactly what I was doing at the time. And I think about like how much we could have just, I mean, we did talk our fair share of sports, but how much we could have talked shared experiences and that stuff. Sue lies and tells people, I don't remember what she. She basically said she helped with her husband's business, that he owned like a car service

business and omitted the fact that she also owns a flight school and that she teaches people how to fly and owns a bunch of airplanes. And Tiana shares that she is a flight attendant and lies and omits the fact that she is a training pilot and doesn't tell people. And I'm like, there is a training pilot and a woman who owns a flight school on the same tribe. And neither one of them are telling the truth about what they actually do. And could that have been a connection that they just both missed out on because they chose not to be honest with people. So I think it's, you know, double-sided coin. you could shoot yourself in the foot if the right connection is there for you

that you're you're just lying about yeah we had that exact conversation two weeks ago about Nate you know he was he was he was he was on the tribe with uh you know with juan who one modelized him yes and and stephen was there who is a huge Marvel fan and Rizzo was there who had you know he had all these possible connections and all of them were gone because he liked Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, yeah.

I mean, hey, you know my, my sports, if I was on a, if I was on a tribe with Jeff Kent, I am never writing that man's name down. I love, like, I love Jeff Kent. Are you kidding me? You know, Jimmy Johnson on my tribe. Yeah. Chicago Bears legend, Danny McCray on my tribe. Like, hey, I'm riding with him.

I pointed out to him at one point that when you, if you, if you, Google him, at least at the time. The picture that came up was of him on the Bears. So that must be the case. So let's go. So, yeah. And also just before we leave this, you know, much longer segment than I expected. No, it's fine.

The, the, the, um, you, you mentioned people will invent a reason. And that's exactly what Savannah did earlier with Matt. Did you hear him? he said he used to run be a financial manager he has to be a sociopath that was the one from earlier this season like that's 100% what that read like to me

was Savannah just being like I need other people to get on board to vote Matt let's uh you know let's create a narrative right yeah which is great aimplay by Savannah like that's exactly what you should be doing and I suppose that that exact sort of culture is why people are so afraid

to share their jobs because they hear confessionals like that and they're afraid of not being them. But I do tend to believe that it leans more on like who is the person and what is the circumstance rather than like the actual job itself being alarming to people. It would be

funny if someone's fake job got them in trouble. If she said marketing, what if someone was like marketing? Do you know those marketing people? They know how to follow the trends and adjust people's viewpoints of them. We should get rid of her. She's dangerous as someone in marketing. That would

be hilarious if someone's fake job actually got into trouble. Maybe that's what we need to kill the trend is for that. Sure. Someone's fake job. Well, yes. Yeah, that would be fascinating to see. And I do want to add just one extra little thing here, which is kind of an out of game thing that can affect in game. When you're going through the actual process, production tries very hard to like also not allow other people to figure out who you are, really, right? When you're, like, going through finals when you're in L.A. And so they're very aware of how you're dressed and what you're looking like when you are amongst mixed company where they can actually see you if they're coordinating things

to, like, bring you somewhere else where you have to be interviewed and they want you to dress differently. So I feel like that probably feeds into people's ideas as well because they're like, oh, well, but production's already making it seem as if people see me in a suit, walking around, they're going to know that I matter if I'm, you know, it's like, so you start reading into what production is also doing, and then you start kind of adding it to your game as well, and it might be something production does on purpose, I don't know, but it, I do think that that can also affect people's determinations or decisions about how they want to represent

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Conditions apply. Well, speaking of Savannah, which we were to start this, my son pointed out to me that apparently nobody mentioned the missing vote from last week he thought maybe he'd like dozed off and someone said something and no i was like nope nope they didn't they it should have been obvious which i pointed out last week it should have told them something about savannah that either she lied and she never had a vote which i would think would piss them off or something else weird happened like it actually did but it seems to have just completely passed them by yeah it's it's weird

um this is this is where i might get frustrated like this is the type of thing um and i it just depends on what season you're on i suppose um this group didn't notice it i don't think they thought about it too much i don't even necessarily know if savannah thought about it too much um like i i remember put it this way. When we were at the final eight of Survivor 47, Rachel went on her journey to get an advantage, whatever sort of a thing. Rachel claimed to have come back with, she claimed to have lost her vote, is what she claimed to us, us being me, Genevieve, and Kyle, the three people not in her alliance that she didn't want to tell. And so I had a conversation with Genevieve that that afternoon as everybody was sort of planning to vote Kyle.

And we didn't want Kyle to go, knew we probably couldn't stop it. We're just trying to make up our plan. And we tried to concoct some sort of a split vote that would expose Rachel's vote. Basically, like, knowing, right, the math behind, hey, if there's six votes in the urn, right, Jeff has to read that fourth one.

If it's five to one and it's a six vote thing, he has to read that fourth vote for the majority. in order to be like lock it in so we were trying to come up with what exact split like do i burn my vote on tini just so that jeff has to read the extra vote for kyle and we can verify the fact that rachel voted so like it was something that we were very much noticing i know i know the other people on my cast like a few of them would have clocked that stuff immediately and we're paying hyper attention to it i don't even know if it mattered i looked in like the urn and counted the parchments that were in there

before I voted to read Rachel like I think they might put like dummy ones in there so I voted last and so I knew that hey if Rachel voted I'll be the seventh vote or the eighth vote or whatever if she doesn't vote I'm the seventh vote if she does whatever the math was

there might have been a shot in the dark whatever but I basically figured here's how many parchments should be in there if she's telling the truth and so when I went to put mine in I counted how many were in there and it showed me that she did vote, and so she lied and must have had an advantage.

I've heard maybe that they replace the votes with, like, dummy parchments or whatever. All I know is that I saw the back of apartments in there. I don't know. That is fascinating that you looked in the earning. That was kind of the culture of our season. Like, people were looking for those edges all the time, and that does not feel like the culture of season 49.

No. Just because, I mean, just because of like you said, David, right? like the third vote for MC being the vote that sends MC home should trigger to everybody else that Savannah did not vote to that tribal council and it doesn't appear anybody clocked it. Right. Yeah. They should. If they don't put in dummy votes, they should because like you said, the shot in the dark.

If I can look in there and see that there's one less vote than there should be, then now I know that perhaps someone played a shot in the dark. Does that alter my voting? This is a good place for me to actually say this because I have seen like I said, I talked about that very thing that I did on like one conversation with Rob one time on, I think my deep dive or whatever. And Reddit was certain that I was like lying and making it up because there's no votes in the urn when you go vote. Like they take every vote out.

I can assure you that's not the case. Like when you go to put a paper in the urn, paper is already. Are you saying we should take your word over the word? I want to tell me, because I know people are curious about this, though. When you do vote, if you're like one of the last people to vote, there is paper in there. There are like the votes that you can see in there. I don't know if those are the actual votes or if they do take out the real vote that you did and put in like a blank one. I don't know if I got lucky and the fact that there were seven parchments in there was just like a standard number.

And I read into it because it fit the narrative that of like what I was looking for. That's possible, too, that there's always seven parchments in there, whether you're first to vote or eighth the vote. All I know is there was parchment in there, and I counted those. So, like, that's all I can see. That is fascinating. This is incredible. Just when you went to vote was like, do you remember where they're like, was there was there parchment in there already when you would go vote? Well, see, I actually can't tell you because the way that the that the urn was, it was like you had to open the top and like put it in.

so it was like you couldn't really see in no no so it was like there was I would have never even but also there was I don't even know if there was extra votes like I think 34 there was extra votes but I don't think I don't think 33 wasn't even really a thing for yeah it wasn't so it like didn't really and also I don't think that they would have time to actually like switch I mean they have one has to walk up one has to walk back and I know that at least for us there was the camera person was there but that's that's not much fascinating good point there's not much of a break between like somebody gets back the next person's walking it's it's right right yeah but that is that is fascinating that you did that I'm impressed it's new information it had absolutely no ramifications

on the game whatsoever but it's a good thing to keep in mind in case something like this um right like so like Genevieve and I came away from that tribal council believing Rachel has some advantage. And the next day, Andy tells us what the advantage is. So we're able to like account for it. You know, this is why it's important to like keep that stuff in mind. If Savannah is pulling a fast one and, you know, banking her vote or something like that, keeping an eye on those little details can be the thing that helps you sniff it out. Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. All right. Well, I know we're already, you know, running a little long. He's what happens when you bring me on the podcast. It happens. It's a little bit.

These are fascinating conversations. You know, but yeah, one more thing I did want to mention is something that I did a video about already. And then Rob talked to Dr. Evie about a little bit on the recap podcast. And we'll talk about Rizzo's game in the episode as we go forward in the rules. But at the start of this episode, he was claiming all sorts of great game moves for himself because of the MC vote. And the thing is, we saw and Liz and I discussed here last week, how it wasn't really him. it was everyone else blowing up their own games out of fear of him he didn't really have to do much and obviously we're not going to rehash that now people can go listen to the ymc lost podcast

if you haven't already but it's funny that he thought he was working magic and even said he didn't know what he said to make it happen which is because he didn't say anything in particular it was a combination of other people's bad decisions now i mentioned that i posted the is a video already, and a few people there commented to argue with me and even accused me of not liking Rizzo because I said this, which is a pretty standard dumb thing to say whenever there's an objective look at someone that, you know, one of these people is a stand of. And if I hadn't blocked a couple of them, I'm sure they'd be confused as I'm about to give Rizzo praise for his gameplay in this episode. Yes. But since we're about,

to head into the rest of the podcast where I'm going to be rather irritated at the actions of some of the others. I just want to remind everyone that objective analysis is what we do here. Yes. I like pretty much everyone left to one level or another. That doesn't mean I agree with every move that they make. These are two separate things. And I think that the regular listeners of this podcast understand it. This was just some random on TikTok who was acting this way. But I wanted to mention it. Well, and I think to that point as well, when we talk about players in connection to production decisions, sometimes people can think we're discussing an issue with the player.

But it's like, no, it's an issue with production because I do think that many players can negatively be affected by things production is doing because they're minimizing their actual gameplay. Like Savannah is doing some incredible things. And sometimes you don't necessarily need two extra advantages in order to be rewarded for the thing that you did because then someone can say, well, she didn't necessarily earn what she's gotten.

But no, she's killing it in the game. And so I feel like the extra components that production is adding into the game, players don't always need it. Like let them play the game. I've said this for a long time now. Like they will be great at the game and they will play the game hard.

let them do it don't minimize their ability to play the game by overshadowing them with extra advantages or things that just aren't necessary yeah i'm ready to get into it i'm ready to uh i might have to david you're going to come around on the on my guy rizzo this week so yeah um so now uh you know like i said there were of course other things going on we can't cover them all here uh you know look to my ticot and youtube at david bloomberg tv for some of that uh but we do Before we get to how Alex did, we do want to mention that the rules we're about to discuss come in a shorter and much more colorful version in poster form. Go to rob has a website.com slash yX lost feed.

Scroll down, click on it and order it. And of course, there is the poster on a t-shirt as well. And there is the checklist on a t-shirt. So again, go to rob has a website.com slash y-x lost feed to get. But all of those, you know, they make, they make good, great gifts for your favorite Survivor fan on your list as the holiday season. Yes. Yeah. Well, we're about to have a cat intrusion, guys.

He's eyeballing me. We'll see. We can keep chugging along. We can keep chugging along. We'll keep chugging. We'll just hear the jaw's music in the background. Well, Alex said as he was leaving, it's what I get for playing both sides. and he added in his final words,

I was a little too loose with the lips, and that's why I'm sitting here. But then he reversed course on that a bit in his interviews by saying he wasn't really messy, like they said. So which was it? And why am I so frustrated and annoyed at several of the other players for the way this turned out? He's not going to be able to hold it till.

At RHAP, we know Survivor and we know why Alex lost. Now, the first and most important, and rule is of course to scheme and plot. And since Alex works in politics, he definitely knew this already. In fact, I have to say that Alex is a man after my own heart. Because when Gordon Holmes asked him about Jeff trying to get them to be more entertaining, Alex said, I don't care how things were going to be perceived by fans if it was going to be perceived as boring. I wanted to make it to the end. I was there to win. So doing things that were safe or going to the end with the seven person Alliance who got out Nate was going to be the best for me, I wasn't going to switch things up.

And to that, I say, yes, exactly. He was playing Survivor as the game. It is for the players, which is what we always advocate here. Yes, we understand sometimes gameplay like that can appear boring. That's up to production to make it seem more interesting. That's not up to the players to entertain. They are there to play a game for a million dollars. Yes. Yeah. And I do think that people tend to get caught up in this idea who are the viewers watching. They want to be entertained, which production needs to entertain the viewers in order to keep people watching. And so occasionally they might pick an individual to play the game that is a little more entertaining. But you have to give credit to the gameplay for someone whose goal is I would like to win this game. And regardless of what production wants from me, I'm going to do what is best for me. And so I

certainly can respect players that make those decisions and that's what they want, regardless of how it necessarily appears on television and maybe it's not as exciting, but maybe that person walks away with a million dollars. So kudos to them for pulling it off and playing the best Survivor game as opposed to just being entertainment. Certainly a few schools of thought. I think I'm sure you've talked about this by now, David, but like the the two spots on Survivor 50 of it all is you know announcing that to the players at the merge it clearly right it comes from that even Jeff's whole like play your first time like it's your second time you know he really wants people to go out there and go for it and I get it right you know he's he's a producer he's got his producer he's got his producer he wants fun TV and and I think people go in there with two different head spaces there's people that are trying to

make TV and trying to like make themselves a character trying to make themselves like I'm going to be famous as much as like a you know survivor person in 2025 can be famous as concerned um or like you know there's Alex's headspace which was also my headspace going into 47 knowing that 50 was looming was the idea of the best way that I can get myself on survivor 50 is to win and dominate survivor 47 and you know that's what I'm here to do So, you know, you can't score a touchdown if you don't get the first down. And, you know, you can't be a big character on the TV if you're burning your house down right at the beginning of the game, trying to make good TV.

So I agree. Credit to Alex for, you know, keeping his head down and focused on the prize, even if it didn't work out like he would have wanted it to. Yeah. Now, early on, of course, Alex was in the three-person alliance with Jake and Sophie, but also battling with Sophie, sorry, Sof now, Sophie then. Battling with Sophie who

for who would get Jake. Turned out the answer to that was the snake. The snake would get Jake. But we saw that he was doing more than that as he was the one who convinced Nicole she was okay and didn't need to play her shot in the dark. Then he was the one who convinced Annie

that she was okay because he had a better relationship with her than the others did. he was like the designated hitman. And he even told Mike Bloom, I thought my alliance with Alex was a real one. I got to go find that the one person that can be my alliance. And my read on the room was Alex is the guy.

I thought I had a good alliance with Alex. Of course, only he and Sof made it out of that cursed tribe. And they pledged their loyalty to each other, which didn't exactly last very long since Sof was adopted by her new tribe mates. Alex voted one of them out at the merge. But Alex said in the interviews, he wanted to get back to working with her,

but she was just too tight with Rizzo and Savannah. So if he jumped over to them, he was always going to be on the bottom. Mm-hmm. Yeah, this is probably, I don't want to spoil too much about like why Alex lost necessarily. I wait until we get in the rules. But I do think being on the disaster tribe

was really unfortunate for him because I think we saw the chops of a very good social player and I think what you saw at the merge for Alex was it didn't feel like he had people it just didn't feel like she had anybody whereas you see

Sof has some people who are willing to go to bat for her because she really like locked in with Savannah and Rizzo after the swap I don't feel like anybody had Alex's back like that you have to wonder if that's, you know, I give him credit, even though he voted out people who possibly could have

had his back in Nicole and Annie early on, right? He pretty accurately read the room, knew that, hey, this is a disaster tribe and this is the majority group. And he found his spot in there and controlled his way all the way to the merge and, uh, or to the swap rather. Full, uh, kudos to him for, for getting that done. I just, I kind of wonder like what, what could have been different had he been able to spend a little bit more time with, people and had a real group at this merge stage. I think this is kind of something, you know, it is strategy, but it's also the social game in Rule 5.

And as, you know, we'll talk about there. I hadn't thought about it that way. So maybe remind me when we get there. Yeah, we'll come back to it. But, you know, yeah, I think you're right. But I, one thing I will disagree with you on is I don't think he would have played differently elsewhere because I think I think, I, think he was playing the same social game on his original tribe as he was at the merge he was

friends with everyone that's why he was as i called him the designated hitman right the problem all of the people he had to keep sending out because they kept going back to tribal council so it's like what comes first a chicken and the egg right you you're doing exactly what you want to do playing that great social game but you're playing it in order to vote people out so you can save yourself because you keep going back to tribal council then you have no people when you come to emerge because there's only two of you left. So yeah, it's a very unfortunate situation for him to be in, but I do completely agree.

He didn't have anyone that really had his back. Like, Sof has people now. Right. He was pretty good with Christina and Stephen. You know, we saw Christina sharing her idol find with those two. And he was good with MC as well. But again, when we get to Rule 5, I think we'll find out he was kind of good with everyone. Yes, it feels different.

It doesn't feel like a ride or die kind of situation. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it seemed like he was in a good spot. But then Rizzo saw that he seemed like he was in a good spot and decided he didn't want Alex to be in a good spot. He wanted Alex in a spot on the jury. So he decided to convince the others to make him a common enemy. And he was not in any way restricted by the truth as he embellished small things Alex had said earlier. and just flat, made up other things.

As Alex told Mike Bloom, he really was spinning every little thing I would say to him to my demise. And now, not to mention Appendix A again, but I'll have more to say about people believing Rizzo when we get to there. For now, suffice it to say, Rizzo completely outschemed Alex in this crucial moment. Yeah, agreed. Sometimes that can be the thing that,

I don't know if it's not in the rules of Survivor, but it's certainly one of those like might have maybe a new appendix here is just uh don't make the wrong enemy and sometimes you sometimes i mean you look at i think of like my season but how many people asia kishan like we're just on lava and made an enemy of rome who just so happened to have advantages and wasn't afraid to just call it out like like you know some people are like hey i want Alex out. I'm going to try to like, I'm going to scheme this. Rizzo's not one of those people. Rizzo's one of those people that goes, I want Alex out. I'm going to go take Alex out. And I'm going to go talk to everybody and just get done what I want to get done. Some people hold the gun

and he's somebody that takes a shot. And so it's kind of a circumstance that it's, it's unfortunate for Alex that you made this guy in particular have, you know, want you to want you to go home when he has an idol and is not afraid to, uh, to shoot. Yes. Yes. All right. Well, the second rule says not to scheme and plot too much and to keep your scheming secret.

And this is the rule, Alex, of course, blamed for his loss. As I mentioned earlier, when he was leaving, he said, it's what I get for playing both sides. And in his final words, he added, I was a little too loose with the lips. And that's why I'm sitting here. And that's true to an extent. Though it's interesting because what he said in interviews really downplayed that exact aspect of things.

But in the game itself, he often talked about wanting to play with both sides and stay in the middle. Nate even mentioned it in his interview with Dalton Ross. And Alex talked about hoping he could have Sof join him in the middle, but she was too pissed at him for voting out Nate and not telling her.

And he talked to Sage and Joanne about doing this as well. So with all this said, it's, you know, in this week's episode, He talked about settling down. He said, this whole game I've been playing the middle. Now I need to find the group who wants to work with me and stick with that group.

He finally decided to be a one alliance type of guy. And that was when people decided he was spreading himself across too many alliances. There's so many things that can be said. So many things. Just when you think you've settled down, people call you out on your behavior, your past behavior. Yeah. It's like a playboy who would suddenly decide. he wants to settle down and get married and he said he's about to pop the question and all of a sudden

she finds out about all the women he dated before and gets mad at him even though that's in his past well this is what happens when it's a short game yeah fair i think um yeah i did see some more that alex said like hey if i if i got through this vote he felt very confident and it certainly does feel like the timing was just like he got caught right before he was like he got caught right before he he could really settle in like he wanted to. He played this middle game so well to put him in a position to maybe like sit in a majority with knowledge of an idol and like have a lot of power. And Rizzo just kind of caught him and sniped him right before he was able to get his footing.

Yeah. I do think it's interesting too that being playing the middle is often played up in Survivor as being like a great place to be because then you have options and you get to make a decision. right but I think he was like kind of on his own right he he wasn't someone who was like a duo we've heard a lot about you know power duo like sage and juan and how they feel like they're really in the middle and they're kind of making the main decision and so I think in a circumstance like this when you're by yourself and you're kind of on an island and you are that middle person then you can potentially become the target which is exactly what we saw here as opposed to like

two people playing that middle space and making the decision together because it's a lot harder to narrow it in and just choose one as opposed to in this circumstance. It was very easy to just point it, Alex. It's definitely easier to be in the two at this stage in the game. I think like, you know, maybe you get a couple more rounds from now at seven. You'd rather be the one person in the middle kind of making a decision. But this early merge stage like 11, 10, 9, this kind of chunk right here, I think if you're looking to make something happen, one number doesn't necessarily change anything. So if you're Savannah, Rizzo, and Sof, even if Sof has this relationship that exists

with Alex, which they did and then didn't and did, whatever, I think in Alex's head, right, like he maintained that relationship and kept it open to working together in the future, which is the smart thing to do. But Rizzo, Sof, and Savannah, they need more than just Alex. And so they look at Joanne and Sage as two votes that come together as a package here that they could scoop up as like these middle people instead. And that's far more impactful. And we've seen this in seasons before. I know this is one of the prominent examples would be like Sarah Lucina and Survivor Kagayan, right? Where she's like the one person that's like, I'm making the choice.

I'm with this group and that group and this group in that group. And then people from both groups are like, I don't like that. just go home right um yeah well i mean all the way back to all the way back to the amazon you know the picture that's on the poster there is of christie you know which way do i go do i go with the women or do i go with rob you know and women and rob got together and got together and we're like what's career christie we all stay we all stay if we do that yeah um so yeah this is i i agree with you uh david with what you said about like it felt like sophy segretti was going to be in this position coming into this week.

It felt like she was like defacting from old Hina and trying to be with new Uli. but I think she did a better job of kind of putting her line in the sand, right? Like it felt pretty clearly from the moment this episode started, I was like, yeah, she's with Savannah Rizzo and Sof now. Like that's where she wants to vote. And I still had questions as a viewer about like, how much is the Alex Sof relationship a thing. And so I think they probably felt that too, that, you know, other people are trying to save themselves or settling in a little bit nicer. And Alex is the guy that got left without a

musical chair. Yeah. And the thing is, well, he wasn't left without a musical chair. He had his taken from him. Yeah. Yeah. He got taken out of his chair. Yeah, because, you know, that we, you know, this is, we mentioned it in the first rule. This was really sparked by Rizzo spreading stories about him. The seeds were already there. Everybody knew that he was everyone's friends. So that was there. But he said in his interviews that they saw him as quote, messy because he was friends with pretty much everyone and they all liked him. And he talked to almost all of them. He wasn't just keeping himself to, for example, the original Hino or the original Uli. He might have a friendly conversation with Rizzo and then go have one with Christina.

He was basically a social butterfly. But he also said those were not really game conversations, just being friendly and chatting. The problem is something that, Jessica, you and I have discussed here before. Perception. You may just be discussing the weather or your families or whatever. But when people on Survivor see you talking to them and then talking to them and they're coming to talk to me and talking to them, they will assume you are always talking strategy if you're off alone with people.

Yes, absolutely. And that is those morning talks, I don't know if you can speak. to the Sam, but when you would wake up and you would see two people, maybe sitting watching the sunrise and having, and you're like, oh, here we go. It's starting. Anytime. And it is, it's fair, because you might be, you might be talking strategy, but you might also be talking about the weather or the sunrise, how beautiful it is, or your kids or whatever. So, but yes, the suspicion never goes away when you see two people off talking together. So absolutely, this is a very real concern that people had with Alex because he was talking to everyone.

Yeah. And I want to highlight giving some flowers again to Rizzo here. For something that I don't think was even emphasized in the edit of the show that I don't even think Rizzo himself talked about, it's how he threw Alex under the bus. It wasn't making stuff up about Alex. It wasn't Alex told me you have an idol. just BS that he's pulling out of it right right it was manipulating the things Alex said and here's why I think it's important I clocked it when I watched it in real time sage and Alex have a conversation

at the well and sage and Alex says oh I think what joan said that Rizzo said was that I said this and he goes that's not what I said was blah blah like you know and to me if I'm sage in this situation right if i'm if i'm told jessica says you're the biggest threat in the game and we want you out now i'm like hey jessica what the heck man and then jessica says to me no i didn't say that i said that like traditionally you would be a really huge threat and we should vote you out but i don't want to do that because now i'm sitting here like all right jessica's b sing to get her because she got caught right exactly yes jessica got caught and she's trying to make it sound better for herself versus if Jessica just says to me, I didn't say that. That's garbage. Like whatever.

I might trust her a little bit more. And so I think Alex's attempts to defend himself from Rizzo's allegations became harder because they were rooted in just a baby seed of truth. And so as your sage or Jawan and you're asking yourself, you know, what is the truth here? You might think, that does sound like Alex. That does sound like Alex would say or that. Alex. has been doing a lot of that he did go i did see him go talk to uh to christina on the on the beach and so i think that matters and i want to just kind of like highlight that part of rizzo throwing this under the bus uh of alex because i'm not sure i i think it was very subtle and in the perfect way to get people to buy what he was saying yeah well and stage did mention it too she's like

there's a lot of narratives floating around out there so she was even acknowledging the fact that like Yeah, I'm still questioning which version I'm supposed to be believing in this in this moment. Yeah, it is better to use something that is rooted. The best lies are rooted in the truth. The one thing that the thing that comes up for me for this, just in the bag of survivor history, whatever, it would be it's survivor micronesia right before the merge at the swap tribe when Amy gets voted out. And Eric is like the gimmee head on a, you know, platter. vote out here. And I want to say it's like Amanda and Ozzie and Surrey are making the decision. I think that's the core group at this swap tribe. So Ozzie and Amanda and Surrey are supposed to

play with Amy, one of their favorites, like one of the All-Stars that's returning. And Eric makes some comment about how Amy said that she was planning to vote out Ozzy and blah, blah, blah. And he embellished for sure, but it was rooted in a little bit of truth. And so then once Amy is confronted with that information she kind of started spiraling she starts crying she breaks down at tribal and as much as they kind of believed in the moment i do think amy wants to play with us i think amanda seriazzi are telling himself that does check like that does sound like something amy would have said and it saved eric's butt and got him of a lot farther in the game yeah yeah another seed that i think probably impacted

things here was, I mentioned earlier, he did talk to people like Sof and Joanne and Sage about this idea of working together in the middle. So if there are three people who already know he was talking about that, it contributes to what Rizzo was saying. You know, like I mentioned earlier, even Nate was thinking it. If you talk about people wanting to play the middle and then you or they decide not to play the middle together and you're frequently seen talking to people in different alliances it is not a difficult leap to decide

that you have decided to play the middle you're just not playing the middle with the people you were talking to. Right. Yeah, you're outing yourself really. Right. Right. All right. Well, we can move to the third rule which tells players to be flexible. Sam, how do you think Alex did I think he was the most flexible, right?

I mean, that is that is sort of the cap he can wear for sure as the middleman is that he was certainly very, very flexible and willing to do whatever. One of the few people that says, I'm open, but genuinely, I think, you know, as the game kind of came to him and as he got thrown some curve balls, I think Alex did a really good job of pivoting off of, I mean, just talk about allied with Nicole, allied with Annie, has a number one get medevaced like you know swapped in a minority group he had a lot of things thrown at him certainly seemed to be flexible enough to you know give himself some life so uh check to Alex here yeah yeah I agree I don't think there's much of a doubt that Alex was trying very hard to be flexible I mean we just discussed that you know a lot of his downfall was he was seen as being too flexible and uh as just one example he specifically said in episode seven I'm playing both sides. I just want to be on the right side of the vote. And we talked about how there were

other aspects we didn't even see. Like I just mentioned, him trying to get Jawan and Sage to play the middle with him. So I think he did well here, which, you know, unfortunately, though, it circles back to him not covering it up enough, which we already talked about. Yeah. Not all great all around. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear-off about transferring your business when the time comes.

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Okay, okay. Try the season's hottest flavors from the PC holiday. Day Insiders report. Please feast responsibly. Well, then the fourth rule tells players not to let their emotions control them. Jessica, did you see anything that caused Alex's problems in this rule? No, I think that he really was playing such an even keel game that he didn't have any issues emotionally at all.

And I almost feel like that was part of his problem in a weird way because he didn't have, you were talking about how he had to, like, you were talking about how he had to, like, defend himself, Sam, right? Because he was coming across as just this, this person who was like, oh, but no, this is what I actually said. And so there was no, like, I never said that. I didn't even get emotional, you know, like he didn't even utilize his emotions in a way to even lie about things. He was more just being like matter of fact. And like, no, this is what happened and being very in the middle, which is what he wanted to do. So I don't think he had any issues as allowing his motions to control him. I think he was trying

really hard to keep everything in check. So he didn't end up appearing in a particular way, but in actuality, maybe that would have helped him a little bit. I don't know. Yeah, it's a hard line. One of the things that I think is a super underrated skill for the game is just composure.

Yes. You know, not a lot of people have it out there, surprisingly. And some people present as very composed, but are going nuts up here. Yes. And one of the things that I try to tell myself all the time is just like just maintain your composure like stay in the pocket here okay and I think Alex did that very very well he seemed to be super composed um

and that's the hard part of it is like sometimes maybe losing your composure a little bit and being a little bit emotional is what somebody needs to see from you to feel authenticity um but i do feel like for Alex who is a very cerebral player a very well spoken guy very strategic player. I think that this served him well in the game to sort of follow his logic and stay within himself a lot of the time. I wouldn't put this high on my list of like corrections

that. Right. Sure, sure. Yeah, I agree. I think he did pretty well here. Like, I mean, even in other aspects, like as close as he was with Sof, he knew he couldn't tell her about Nate vote or else she'd pass it along and screw up.

all up. I think one thing that people might have thoughts about is, you know, well, he shouldn't have shown that he was surprised and disappointed. He lost his composure when Sophie returned from the split tribal council while MC was gone and Rizzo still had his idol. But he noted in his interviews, they were confused and disoriented. It was pitch black. They had been asleep. I mean, I also think he was the least guilty. I mean, we see the scene of Sophie talking to Alex about how she was upset at the reaction back at camp. So I don't think she was particularly bothered by his reaction. I think the betrayal from Sophie's perspective was Christina and Stephen, her original Hina people,

that she felt like she was in a hard alliance with being devastated, that she's still there. That's got to be what doesn't feel good. I think Alex probably was not one of the people that she was worried about there. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, the fifth rule reminds players they need to pretend to be nice and play the social game. Now, as I mentioned earlier, he was basically a social butterfly.

And, you know, Sam, we discussed a lot of how being social impacted his game. So how should he have used those social skills to better become a global? guy. Wow. Yeah. Well, it's actually funny because Alex brought up in his preseason interview that his goal was to kind of model my glue guy strategy in the game. And what I would say is Alex has all the skills of a glue guy. But a glue guy has to have a team. You got to be on a team. You need to actually glue things, right? You know, the idea of the glue guy when I first talked about it was it's sort of like the sports reference to the just the locker room guy, the guy that you always want to have around,

the guy that maybe isn't always the best on the field, but he makes everybody else better around him. And so I do think Alex has that, has that vibe to him. He has that magnetic feel. I just don't feel like he ever had a team to really glue his team together. And I think that's what he was trying to get at, you know,

if he solidified this group of seven, this majority group here that took out Nate and, when he said it's finally time for me to pick an alliance and settle down and all that. I think he was trying to glue a group and he just never really had that opportunity. But that would be my thing is you got all the social skills, try to build a, build a squad. Because that's, you need it at some point. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think it goes back to something we mentioned already, which is perception. You know, he told Mike Bloom the things that I mentioned about him having conversations with Rizzo and Christina. none. He said, it's not like I was spreading rumors about anything or playing this, quote, messy game. It's just the people didn't like how liked I was. So, Jessica, should he have seen this coming and been less social? Should he have stopped talking to people like Rizzo once he decided to make his stand with the group that took out Nate? Or was there another way to handle it? Well, I think that's kind of like Monday morning, Monday morning quarterbacking, right? Where I think that now he's probably watching it and going,

geez, in hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have, of been as friendly as I was, because unfortunately with Survivor, things that you think are going to benefit you can come back and bite you. And that was exactly what happened with Alex. He was making all of the connections he needed to make. He was creating the relationships. We say it all the time. You need to talk to people. You need to check in. You need to have those conversations. But if nobody feels like they're with you and they feel like you're with everyone that can work against you, which I think we saw happen with Alex. Like Sam was saying, he didn't have a core group of people because he had to keep voting them out. Everyone he wanted to be that person, well, we're going back to tribal council.

So I need to vote somebody else out. Well, now we're going back to tribal council. I have to vote someone else out. And so unfortunately, he found himself in a circumstance where he was building those necessary relationships. But because of the circumstances he was in, it wasn't really getting him. what he needed to create that group, that core that was necessary. So, yeah, it's hard to know if he could have done anything differently because you have to play within the game that you were given, right?

And Alex was trying to do that. And I do think in Alex's mind, he was saying it, then I have to get past this vote. And then that's it. I make my decision. Unfortunately, Survivor doesn't wait for you to be ready. You have to be ready when it happens. And so he needed to be ahead of where he was. was and needed to make that decision clear, which is why I think Sophie, yellow Sophie was in a

better spot because she immediately, you said it, Sam, she chose, she made the line in the sand. She went right away to Savannah and to Sof and said, listen, they cut me. Like I know, I knew I was on the bottom. They made it very clear. I'm not wanted. I'm yours. Like, this is it. And that was what he needed to do to really solidify himself somewhere to be like this, I'm on this side. I'm with you pick it as soon as you can you can't wait because this was the moment for him and unfortunately he found himself to be on the outs and was the easier person to target as opposed to Sophie who would have really solidified herself with people i do i do think um one of the things that came to mind for me just as as you were talking there jessica was um i forgot about this

but right at the merge i really wanted alex and soph to play this not necessarily middle game but I think they got dealt a really good hand being on opposite split tribes. Yes. And Alex seemed to be in with those heenas like coming out of that

group and clearly because he's in on the Nate vote and Sov is really in with Rizzo and Savannah. I think that presented both of them with an opportunity to basically scratch each other's back. right like hey Alex you guys make sure that uh it's not me or any of my important people going home and if we can pick off just enough folks you can pop over here with us and by the way we

have an idol and we've got all this power and now all of a sudden Alex and Soph are you know relying on their relationship that they forged and he could have people um the problem that I think you know wasn't clear to me until listening to Alex's exit interview was that He sort of felt like the relationship with Sof was more of a rivalry than a partnership from the get-go that they were sort of competing for Jake's affection as like their number one. And then Jake being pulled from the game left them being like, us too, I guess. And soap had no choice.

I mean, Alex is sitting on an idol. So it kind of forced them together more than like them wanting to choose each other with undenied trust. That's funny. The problem with one of those relationships, if you're going to do this, I mean, we just saw like the Kyle Camilla deal, right? Like the secret duo is you have to have a whole lot of just trust, man. Like you have to absolutely put all your eggs in one person that they're going to have your back.

And so I think what really had the walls closing in on Alex was the fact that he didn't have that kind of a relationship with Sof. And Sof did make those relationships with Savannah and Rizzo. And she did feel like she had people who would ride with her. I think he correctly read the idea that, like, I think it ultimately might have done him in that he told, didn't tell Sof about the Nate vote. But I also think he tells Sophie about the Nate vote.

And she probably does go blow it up, which also goes very bad for Alex. And so it was a hard situation that he was kind of put in there, trying to tiptoe around. But, yeah, I don't know, just some thoughts, I guess. yeah one thing uh going back to a couple of things both of you have said i just want to uh kind of put this on the record here i am not convinced that sophy yellow sophy is indeed fully on board with the savannah rizzo soph oh she's not no i think she's she is reading the room and she's like

this is where i need to be right now yeah and i think you know we'll talk a little later i think probably in Appendix A, about some of the things she said at tribal council that really just drove me nuts. But I think that she has a plan. Yeah. And I think she thinks that she will be able to hop back with like Joanne and Sage to turn on them. This is my, this is my thought. We got a few hints of this in the episode of her saying, I'm not sure who I want to go with. So I just, like I said, I just want to put it on.

the record. I don't think she is a hundred percent solid with them. She is, you know, she is not as solid with Rizzo and Savannah as other Sophie is. Yeah. I would agree with that. All right. Well, we could go

to the sixth rule which warns against being too much of a threat. And as we often talk about, you don't have to be a threat to everyone. Just the people that matter. One person. And as Alex told Mike Bloom, Rizzo saw me as that's strategic threat.

And so that's why he was making up lies and embellishing things. But I just thought other people saw that too. And a couple things here. One, I think Rizzo was absolutely right to clock Alex as not just a threat, but someone he could turn the others against, even though Alex was not really a threat to their games. But Rizzo did a great job in convincing them that he was. As Jawan, for example, said, this is taking a. shot at a potential threat to my game and my allies game.

And I'm sitting here on the couch going, no, no, he's, it's not taking a shot at someone who's a threat to your game. But what mattered is Joanne believed it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing that you, you end up, I think in this moment, you build up the person you're talking to, right?

Because what Rizzo was doing is he's making Juwan feel better about himself because he's making it about Joanne. He's not making it about Rizzo. He's like, listen, he's going to be a threat to you. And so then Joanne, who feels like he's in a great position in this game, is then hearing someone else confirm, like, you know, he's coming after you because you are such a great player. Like, this is what Joanne is putting together in his head. And so I think by taking this approach, you're making Joanne feel better about himself. You're making Joanne think I'm in control of this. Like, this isn't Rizzo telling me what to do. This is Rizzo just pointing out some things that I should be aware of.

And then you let the wheels spin. And so it is a really great way to approach it. Even though Rizzo is in everyone's face and saying these things, he's giving them something to think about. But it's a direct effect of their own game. It's not a selfish thing Rizzo is doing. It's like, Rizzo's like, I'm looking out for you. I'm trying to help you. And then so it changes the way that people feel about the decision because

then all of a sudden it's a, it's a decision they're making for their own game as opposed to, well, this is what Rizzo said would be best for all of us, or Rizzo made it sound like this was good for him, and I think that's, that's fair. No, you make it about the other people who are with you or you want them to be with you on the vote, and then it can work out in your favor. Which, by the way, is there ever a way to suss out BS on Survivor more than somebody who's not your ally being like, hey, I'm telling you this. I'm not working out for you.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Now all of a sudden you really just want, you want me to be. Yeah. Now you care about me, right? Yeah. But that's the thing.

That's what Alex thought. That was in that the last sentence of the quote I read there was he thought people saw that Rizzo would be making stuff up because they're not. On the bottom eyes. Yeah. But, you know, in a scene near the end of the episode, Alex wondered to us, who are Joanne and Sage going to believe? Are they going to believe me?

Or are they going to believe Rizzo, someone who's desperate and at the bottom and scrambling to get to the top? Well, now we know the answer to that. But the question I have is how much effort did Alex put into stopping the idea from spreading? He seemed to think it was so obvious that I wonder if he really pushed back much. Well, that I agree, David. This is fully like, that was my takeaway. as I'm watching this scramble unfold is if this happened to me I would be losing it I would be going I would be looking my people like the people that I want to play within the eyes and being like

hey I voted out Nate with you I didn't tell them this is who I'm with make no mistake about it right that is a guy who is desperate doing anything not true like yeah yeah so well well Sam fixes his Mike. But yeah, he just, I would think that from working in politics, he would know there is no idea that is too dumb that someone out there won't believe it. And it can gain momentum that way if people don't push back hard enough. I could live. Well, maybe, you know, maybe it is the political response to it, though, that is a problem. Like, the idea that, hey, I, I'm going to play, like, politically, I'm not going to give this too much attention, right? We're going to like, I'm confident.

I'm going to express confidence. If you exude confidence to your people, they will get a confident feeling from you. And that's why I brought up the thing I brought up earlier about the specific type of lies that Rizzo made up. And how it set Alex up in this position to be like, well, that's not exactly what I said. Exactly what I said is a very political answer. And so now it starts to feel like, okay. okay, there's something to this. And it doesn't give Alex necessarily that kick in the butt to be like,

that's crap. Absolutely not. Don't let him tell you that. And I would say that in his politics and, you know, in Survivor, you do need to directly address these things or else, I mean, in politics, you end up with some very bizarre laws that make things illegal that don't actually exist. You know, I mean, there are states passing laws against chemtrails right now.

chem trails are not real you know and and but nobody was willing to co i mean there are some people out there pushing back against it obviously but i think a lot of people would be like those people are crazy we're not going to deal with them and i think that's the same sort of attitude here he's like it's so crazy that they would believe rizzo that i'm not i'm not even going to i'm not even going to i'm not even going to dignify that with an argument you have to dignify it with yeah yes and it especially in a situation like this where everyone is in an emotional state that is not where a regular person would be, right? You haven't eaten. You haven't slept. You're under this constant stress and pressure. You're trying to play this game. You're trying to suss out who's lying to you

and figure out who's on your side and who's not. And so sometimes you have to like fight fire with fire in a situation like this. And you have Rizzo who's coming hard and saying things. You need to come back with that same energy. Because if you don't, then this is the read that people will put on it. And I do think that he probably did fall into that idea that, well, they are, they're going to see this for what it really is. But he also knew he was going to be getting votes. And so he was aware that his name was going to be coming up. So he should have gone to his people and said, listen, I know that Savannah is voting for me. I know that Rizzo was voting for me. Why do you think Rizzo was running around saying these things about me? They're voting for me. So like, they of course

want you to vote for for me. So then I become the majority vote. So that would have certainly, I think, put him in a better place because he could have reminded them. Like, if you know that they are voting for you, then why would they, then why would you not fight back against what Rizzo is saying about you? Because you are well aware of what his intentions are. One of the things that, uh, that I'm curious about is Alex seems to very accurately clock

this very thing, right? Rizzo's on the bottom. he's doing whatever, kicking and screaming, throwing everything at the wall. And I wonder how much the perception of Rizzo and Savannah for that matter possibly made people not alert to this. We hear basically everybody in the tribe say, Rizzo's so overconfident, he's not going to play his idol. He's so cocky and overconfident right now.

Look at Savannah and Rizzo. They're so cocky and overconfident. We even see Jawan talk about Rizzo thinks he's got me. He seems like he really wants to work with me and he's overconfident thinking I'm with him, but I'm not with him. And I wonder if you believe that Rizzo is maybe not acting out of desperation, believes he's in a really comfortable spot in the game. And if Rizzo is feeling all good about himself,

then maybe he's not making this up because he's feeling the heat. Maybe he's making this. Maybe he's telling you the actual truth because he feels like, the godfather a little bit so interesting i wonder how how easy it would be like just if riso was very clearly on the bottom i'm i'm a i'm the outcast wow wow like nobody wants to talk to me and now he comes out and starts throwing out these bullets it's pretty easy to recognize what's going on there but i i just i have to wonder how much this maybe like tribewide perception of this guy's really confident he feels good with where he's at maybe

maybe confuse them and didn't have them looking at Rizzo as somebody who was you know kicking from the bottom yeah that's certainly possible I mean you know they say that the the image you put forward definitely impacts on people so you know if he if he was out there acting all confident then yeah

what Alex was thinking in terms of well they're not going to believe him because he's obviously at the bottom but if he's up there being like yeah I mean think about Rizzo's interactions with Sage and Jawan, which we've seen for two, three episodes now. And for a lot, right? We've kind of been told it through this perspective of like Rizzo feels like he's got Sage and Jawan right where he wants him.

And then Sage and Jawan are like, we're not actually with Rizzo. But they keep doing what Rizzo wants. And they keep voting with Rizzo. Like, it's working. Whatever he's saying to them is in fact working. He's getting them. And even he's questioning it. He's like, I don't know what I did.

And, you know, he's clearly very confident in this relationship with Joanne and Sage, whether he should be, shouldn't be, who knows, right? It's work it forms thus far. But I wonder if because he's so confident in that relationship, does that make Joanne and Sage go? He wouldn't make this up. He thinks we're with him.

Like, he thinks we're allies. And if Rizzo does think we're allies, maybe Rizzo is saying this, like, to protect me and have my best interest at heart. So I just have to wonder if some of that, like, original. perceived overconfidence is actually allowing Rizzo to plant seeds that are just an underdog from the bottom, kicking and screaming and getting his way every time. That's interesting. Yeah.

Well, we could go to the seventh rule, which covers idols and advantages in game mechanics. And Alex, of course, found the first beware advantage that turned into an idol. And because of the ridiculous tasks he had to do, which were way more difficult than the other two, by the way. Almost everyone found out about it, and he decided to just use the idol. At the time, I said it was too much of a risk to not use it, and he was absolutely right.

And I still agree with that. Even, even, we can't look at what Rizzo has pulled off and decide it would work for everyone in every situation. Yeah. Just look at Survivor 46. So, you know, I do think he was correct in doing that. Ben. Yeah. And he had to do the, well, that was on the big chain, right? Yes. Yeah. So like everyone in their brother knew that what was happening. So no secret there.

Yeah. I tend to side with Rizzo a little bit on this sort of philosophy. I'll kind of come back to like the Alex of it all. One of my favorite confessionals, I've heard it in a real long time. There are actually two of them by Rizzo in the same episode. just in terms of, like, the way he views the game, I think is really strong. The first one is, I don't care if it's 10th or 9th or whatever, like, or he said 10th or 4th, even. He's like, I don't care. Like, I'm here to win. And I think that is a great, you know, strategy. Like this idea, I think so many people cost themselves the game by just trying to make it one more placement ahead.

And they're not willing to take the big swing. Jess, you took a huge swing and it cost you your game but it had not gone that way and broken the other way it could have been the best decision you made the entire time after as it was for some of the people

that made the end game on your season and so I love how Rizzo is sitting there and like I really was not a fan of MC's idol play at the Nate tribal council because I'm like you knew where the votes were going and you played it just so that you I disagree with that. I've already, you know, said it here.

I mean, she had the information that votes were going on Stephen. Yeah, but she plays in, but like, you should never play an idol to me to be like, I just want to see tomorrow. Like, that should not be how you can use an idol unless my exceptions for it are right before a swap, right before the jury phase or end game. Like, like, if you're at the end and you're six and you're like, I just got to get to five because I can win immunity tomorrow and then bang, I'm there. Great. If you're Alex at this split tribal or sorry, at his final three of his tribe going down to a two and you probably

know a split's coming. To me, that's an auto play. Like that is, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to make this next phase of the game and get myself to this phase so that I can potentially unlock new allies and relationships. But, you know, between, hey, I just want to see tomorrow and I might be voted out 24 hours from now without an idol because I played this one too soon. That to me is where I really do respect the way that Rizzo's handled his idol. And like, yo, I don't care if I'm ninth or eighth or whatever. I'm trying to maximize this thing to take control. And it doesn't work for everybody.

But you'd rather be the person taking that swing than, you know, the person who plays it safe and then goes, oh, crap. I'm in a bad spot now because I didn't trust my gut. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think they're, you know, like you said, they're different situations. And so I think, you know, Alex played it well for the time he had. That was a 10 out of 10, you can't do anything else. Like, you have to play that idol.

Right. Mm-hmm. Now moving to our usual question of whether he should have used the shot in the dark, he told Dalton Ross that he thought the vote would potentially be close and he didn't want to risk, you know, losing by one vote or something, which makes absolute sense. So, yeah, I agree with him on that one as well. Yeah.

With that, we finally get to the long way to the appendix A. Here we go. Should I get popcorn? This sounds like it's going to be Oh, Sam's stretching. Yeah, I'm getting ready. We'll see what David says.

I'll let him go first. We'll see. So this discusses players keeping their end goals in mind when voting, and we talk about voting out the week than the strong and the week than the strong. And as I've said for the past couple weeks, at this portion of the game,

you typically want to get out someone who is strong on the opposing side. and who would be stronger than the guy waving around the immunity idol or at least putting enough votes on him to ensure the idol itself goes. But no, they didn't do that. And this is where my frustration kicks in. Because for the second tribal council in a row, everyone just let Rizzo slide.

And to make it worse, he played several of them like a fiddle to convince them that Alex was more of a threat. Alex, the social butterfly. There is no way in any world this is the case. And the thing is, there was no need to go after Alex now anyway. They overcomplicated things so much. They didn't even need to split the vote because they knew three votes were going Alex's way.

So if Joanne and Sage join Alex, Christina, and Stephen in voting for Rizzo, even if he plays his idol Alex is gone oh look it's the same result and you get rid of the idol yes 100% this so this was my

my thing with it was I don't understand like you're going to split the vote why is the vote split not on Alex right right yeah you know

you know that like I mean it makes sense for Alex and Alex's allies, why this isn't necessarily the plan, because they don't want Alex to go home. Right. But if you are, if you are Joanne and Sage in this spot and you are in this middle group planning to potential, or even Sophie Segretti, right?

Like, you're planning to vote Alex out regardless. Um, you know one group's votes are going to Rizzo. Mm-hmm. The other group's votes are going on Alex. If we split our votes between Rizzo and Alex, Rizzo, has to play the idol. If he does, Alex goes. And then it's like we just voted Alex out,

but now we don't have to worry about Rizzo's idol at all. Right. Or two birds with one stone and see you later. Rizzo, we'll deal with the consequences of Alex being left in the game. Yeah. And very simple. You know, Alex himself said it very well in talking to Dalton Ross.

He said, we had the numbers. So to me, it did not make any sense where this is an opportunity. We're getting down to it where we're not going to be able to split votes. Why are we passing this up? They passed it up on the MC vote. Now they passed it up with me and it was not rational to me. And he told Mike Bloom, I just didn't understand how we have an alliance of seven people, basically everyone who is in on the Nate vote. We had said we would stick together. They turned on MC. And at this point, I'm thinking, well, if they didn't get Rizzo's idle out this time, surely they have the wherewithal to do it this time. Surely. And they didn't.

no they did not and it really they they really did complicate it when it didn't need to be complicated at all and i was watching so this uh for for people who watch the traders canada they will understand this this was the look on my face as i was watching all these complicated maneuvers here we go what's coming so yes uh omer yes omer has become a giff i i told him It is now a gift for making that face. I love it. Yeah, like you were saying, Jessica, sorry, I interrupted you there. No, it was just too complicated.

Yes, for no reason. And this, again, goes back to Alex even said that he knew who was voting for him. So everybody knew where the votes were and everybody had the same idea in their head. We want Rizzo gone or we want to flush the idol, period. Done. So why do you need a different backup other than Alex? because you already know that Alex is getting votes. And yes, it's terrible for Alex,

but Alex was well aware of what was happening and well aware that he was getting votes. So there's no reason to do anything different. And I'm stunned at some of the conversations that we saw happening. Christina was talking to Sof directly about Rizzo and everything that they were hoping to achieve with Rizzo, which could have been a strategic move

because we want him to play as Idol. We want him to know he's going home. so maybe she'll go back and tell him. But how did she not, she even said, I don't really know so if that much, I haven't worked with there very much. But how do you not know that she is completely like aligned with Savannah and Rizzo at that point? So was it a strategic move or was it just ignorance?

I don't know where she's actually falling. It seemed very like people were blissfully unaware of what was happening, even though everybody was aware of what was happening. Well, and let me say this too. should they have split the vote, right? Like, should they have done it correctly, right? Let's just say, Alex, Christina, and Stephen actually have Sophie, Joanne, and Sage. And it is a true six against three.

And they split it three and three, which I would presume was their original plan. Right. Even that would have gone very possibly bad, given. Savannah's extra vote. Like that three could have four three-threeed them in a world where they actually split the votes between Rizzo and Sauf. And so the solution here, Rizzo offering up Alex actually might have been the only world in which Rizzo gets voted out is because you said, wow, you just actually gave us,

knowing where your votes are going, you gave us the opportunity to stack them all on you and know that none of us are going to get clipped in the crossfire if you do play your idol. And that is the real missed opportunity. And I will say this. I think Joanne and Sage deserve a little bit of grace for this move because I think in their heads, knowing what they know,

they probably still feel like, okay, well, we just voted with Rizzo and Savannah. We can go over there and we feel good about our spot there or we can jump back with the other group. Like they're maintaining this middle position and not allowing Alex to do it for them. What I think they will run into here is they now have an idol and an extra vote. And that's on the other side at the final eight. And by the way, we don't, nobody knows this but her,

but SOF has the knowledge is power. Right. So even if they go back with the other group, here's my prediction for the next episode. Sorry if I'm jumping ahead. Five people. surely, surely this time will say Rizzo's idol must go. But guess what?

It's too late because you're going to do the 3-2 split vote, right? If Savannah doesn't win immunity this time, you'll say, all right, here comes the three-two split vote. And they've got you. They have four votes and they have an idol. And like they have all the, the. And Rizzo is already calculating all of that. He's already talking about.

He's already saying if we get through this one, we can control the game with my idol. because his idol forces them to split a vote and the extra vote gives them the numbers. And so we can see how dire of a spot this puts them in without the information about the extra vote. I think the calculus of whether or not to take out Alex can be forgiven. And you don't know what you don't know. Like I said, it probably very much sounded like all stuff Alex was saying

was very true, hence why they thought they needed to pull the trigger. but um alas i'm scared for everybody else yeah so i okay i want a couple of things um and one i've already forgotten that you said but the oh that they knew none of them this yeah you're exactly right this was the perfect opportunity is the one chance the rare chance when the person with the idol and his allies you know how they are voting you are not taking a risk unless your name is Alex, you are taking no risk. So vote for him. Just vote for him.

But worse that can happen is what you ended up doing anyway. Well, and this is a sign. Like, I wonder if there was any conversation that happened between Rizzo, Savannah, Sof, that group and the Sophie Joanne Sage group where, like, we saw this. My biggest criticism of the MC Tribal Council was not the fact that. that they voted out MC and didn't flush Rizzo's idol. It was that they telegraphed to him at Tribal Council. Hey, Jeff, let's clear some up.

Rizzo's not going home tonight. Yeah. Like laying it out on a platter, shutting it down at every opportunity so that he can feel very comfortable. Instead of just being like, we'll see, Jeff. And maybe that inspires enough doubt to flush it. Right.

But they made sure not to do that. And I wonder if they did that same thing here. Because like I said, And if Rizzo, Savannah, and Sof believed that this was a possibility 3-3 split, I think they're very much smart enough to know that they should deploy the extra vote and win it 433. But based on the fact that they didn't use the extra vote and Rizzo didn't play his idol, you have to think they were sitting rock solid really good with what they heard from those people at camp,

which that in and of itself is that's a miss by those people to make them feel that good and just allow the idol to stay in the game. Yeah. So I want to look at a few of the players in particular, starting with Chawan. He knew Rizzo was a threat. He knew Rizzo couldn't be trusted. He literally said that. You know, like Alex said to Rob, how do you go from saying you don't trust Rizzo

to suddenly believing everything he says? And that's the question I was also asking. That's the frustrating part. I don't get it. And yet, Joanne seemed to put them both in the same category as a threat to his game. As I was watching,

Joanne said in a confessional just before tribal council, this vote is about who's the biggest threat to my game. Alex causing so much chaos or Rizzo with his idol. And I'm sitting there yelling at my TV. Rizzo, obviously Rizzo. And then Jawan continued.

They both need to go. Who needs to go first? And I'm yelling at it. TV again. Rizzo! Rizzo! The one you know is against you. Alex, you could probably rely on for now. Use Alex to go after Rizzo. Use his vote as part of this vote split. Then if you feel that you need to get rid of Alex, do it after you get rid of Rizzo. There is zero indication that we saw that Alex was coming from. for Joanne anytime soon.

So use him now. He even said earlier that he wanted to take out Rizzo, but Alex was making it very hard for him to do that. And I'm like, how? We saw nothing to actually suggest that was the case. Either get rid of Rizzo

or at least get rid of his idol. Because now you have lost a soldier and Rizzo just keeps getting strong. And Rizzo still has the idol. Yes. My opinion here, here would be and like I would imagine and this kind of I should have said this better just before when I said like they don't know how dire of a spot they're in right I think the thinking here

if I'm Joanne if I'm sage especially I think this is Sophie's calculus going over to that side for this vote is Rizzo is the talk of the town like Rizzo is the most public him and Savannah together right the most public enemies one and two with the idol the obvious threats and so i think you probably if you're joan or sage and especially like i said sophy who has been feeling some heat with you know her name coming out and being in all of these immunity challenges you probably think alics is the sneaky threat and riso is the obvious threat and there is some logic to the idea of well, everybody's going to want to get Rizzo out tomorrow. Like, you know, it's, but this, that's, drives me insane.

It's not, which, but I do kind of like this thinking, right? Like, it was my favorite thing when Rizzo said it about Sophie Sofegretti, I think, at the, uh, the split tribal councils. If everybody wants Sophie out, why would I vote Sophie out? Like, that's bad for me. That's me doing their dirty work. Um, and so I do think that that's probably part of the thinking here from Joanne and Sage. What they're missing is the fact that this extra vote with the idol and now a three-person majority makes it very hard to even execute a move on this group of people.

And so I think that their lack of knowledge about where the advantages are really make like if they know that there's an extra vote there and there's a knowledge as power there, I think without a doubt they shoot into that group and know this is bad for us. but I think in their heads right now tomorrow if one of Savannah and Rizzo don't win immunity we'll vote out one of Savannah and Rizzo and the idol will get played and then the next day after that that person will still want to go home and now all of a sudden we're at the final seven

with a lot of power. It's very linear thinking. Yes, it's very linear thinking and it's very simplistic where they are forgetting that all of these extra components exist in this game. If you already talked about Sam them not doing the math with the extra vote

and figuring out that because Jeff only read so many votes, then they missed an opportunity for information. And if you miss the opportunity for information, then your decisions can become these huge boulders that just continue to roll because you've now lost the ability to stop it. But the one component that I just keep coming back to is this idea that someone is, well, that person's such a big threat. And we can get them out later. Always comes back. It just bites people, right? Because there's this idea. We can. can always get them out later we can always get them out later right and i when i watch seasons and when this is what the mindset is it it infuriates me it's like if you have an opportunity just do it now

because that's the person that's going to be sitting in the final three you see it happening because everyone is like oh we we can always get that person out later and then that person ends up being one of the ones sitting there and and in this particular circumstance well they probably are thinking that about riso you know everyone's going to want to get rid of him at some point. But Rizzo also has the idol still. So it's like there's this extra thing. So it's like, I mean, even if you're sitting right now in like the current spot where they're going to the final eight, all Rizzo has to do is win individual immunity. And then he's at six. Like, you know, like he's, win immunity, play an idol. Now he's at six guaranteed. So it does become sort of a

slippery slope. And I think it all depends on where you view. It probably is most reflective of how you think of yourself. I think people who view themselves as under the radar players or not low players. Now, I don't like, I just mean like they know that they're not the most threatening person in the game. I think those people are very much willing to, hey, why not take the obvious layup that's right here, which is this big, huge threat. Right.

I think other players that maybe have this not always inflated, sometimes correct, view of themselves as a big threat in the game have a fear that if I take out Rizzo today it's me tomorrow and because of that

they try to buy themselves time by punting and if you time it up perfectly you're golden man it's great but if you miss the timing you've just punted the game away and so like it kind of

depends how you view yourself and where on that, like, I think Marianne Ocich had this sort of like theory after Survivor 42 about like where in this totem pole of threats you want to be. You obviously never want to get down here that you're just like the joke that nobody will vote for, but you never want to be the top head either. And having Rizzo at least allows some of these people that believe they're towards the top, it allows them to not be the top head. and I just don't know if they can see in the moment with the information how much damage they're doing. Yeah. So to get to your point that you just mentioned, I mean, Sage and Joanne are really the decision makers here. I don't think either of them thinks of themselves as being one of those top of the totem whole way.

I think Juan does. Oh, Juan absolutely does. He referred to himself in this episode as like he feels like the top dog. We're the top dogs. We're the kings, all this stuff. Yeah. All right. Well, maybe you're a right character.

But I was going to get to this point about, you know, what Joanne and Sage know a little later. But since you already brought it up, I, yes, I agree. We have to give them, or at least I have to give them. I won't speak for anyone else. A little leeway because, you know, like you mentioned and Rob noted I know it all, they don't know what they don't know. They don't know where Sophie, where yellow Sophie stands.

Yeah. You know, they may not realize how tight Sof is with Rizzo and Savannah. We think it's obvious, but clearly there's some question, at least among some of them. They just seem to believe they still have plenty of time to go after Rizzo. But like you said, Jessica, this is Survivor. Things change. People shift. They may have relationships you don't know about.

They have all the trinkets in the game, which, include the things you've already talked about. If you have the votes to take out a big threat now, you should do it now. You put it off till later. You don't know what can change. Yes. You know,

someone might go on a reward and end up with something. Someone might, who knows? So even though they don't know certain things, they should know that they don't know. So like you said, Jessica, that was very linear thinking. They were not thinking of, all the branches that could

happen, all the alternate universes. Yes, that do exist on Survivor. That do exist. So, yeah, I just, you know, I want to give them that grace, but

you gotta know what you don't know. Let me say something else interesting about that too, because I think Rizzo's doing something, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know if I've ever seen somebody this is a pony play, right? Like, I've got the super idol.

I'm going to play the super idol. And then he doesn't play it, right? And he just keeps going every round without having to use this thing because he bluffed them. And that's what Rizzo's doing. And he's doing it so well. And what's interesting is that Joanne and Sage have actually expressed this exact concern about yellow Sophie. I mean, we heard Sage talk to Rizzo about, we got to get yellow Sophie. And Rizzo says, she's not going to win everyone.

like she's going to lose like right come on she's not going to win seven in a row like she'll lose eventually and Sophie goes or sage rather goes like I don't know man like we got the shot we might as well just like take her out right now so like they're aware of of that I just think something about it's so unconventional because it's an idol because you assume surely this guy's going to get spooked and play it one of these times yeah he's unflappable so far he's not he's not budging, which they're also acknowledging that at the same time. They were like, yeah, they are acknowledging. He's not going to play his idol.

So, okay, you know that he's being cocky. You're saying out loud to other people, he's not going to play his idol. So who should we split the votes with? So, what are we doing? This is very obvious as to what the choice should be. And you're complicating it when it need not be complicated. Yeah. And Sam, Dr. Jeremy Faust, who was our guest a couple of weeks ago, he texted me with also the Tony comparison, just in the way Rizzo talks. And he, you know, and he. So yeah, you're, you know, there's. It's a brilliant move. Like, it's a brilliant move with the idol. If you can get even just two rounds of security, you bluff once, you auto play at the next round. You can, if you can turn an idol into two rounds of automatic safety, I mean, you, you really. open up your game. And Rizzo has now turned it into

four rounds of auto safety essentially because they refused to vote for him at 11. He bluffed him at 10. He bluffed him at 9. He can always play it at 8. You've turned one little thing that you found into, granted, not an easy free pass, but a pass at least in this game. Exactly. All right. Well, I want to return to where I was going through some of the other players here. Now, sage at one point said they could make the big move against Rizzo or they could go after messy Alex and just like I said about Joanne it seems to me that the answer there was

obvious messy or big threat you know I mean I can handle messy especially if you know it's messy right right messy can be a weapon if you know this person is messy you just maybe don't put all your trust in a person you perceived to be messy, but they can stay in the game. Exactly. Like you said earlier, Sam, there's the obvious threat and there's the hidden threat. Well, if everyone believed Alex was messy, he's not

a hidden threat. He's someone that everyone knows they shouldn't trust. That is true. And clearly, Rizzo is not hidden either. This is, well, this is what I just like, I wish I knew some of the logic, or

at least some of what Rizzo said, because that would be, I don't don't know how we go from then i've made a lot of cases here defending the decision to vote out alex right and why it can make some sense the one thing that i that just i can't put together is how we perceive messiness or everybody knows this person's playing the middle and we can't trust them to immediate threat to my game yes so as soon as that is perceived you know how to handle it like as soon as you early on sure somebody in your tribe you're like this person's messy this could cause problems down the road sure get them out at this stage in the game

it's about who can win the million dollars or how you can set yourself up to win the million dollars and I just I have a hard time knowing how Rizzo this person that everybody wants out that has this public idol that is acknowledged as a threat somehow finds himself as less imminent danger than a flip-flopper with no allies who everybody else calls messy. Now, I think that's doing Alex a disservice to how capable he is and how good he is at this game. But if that's how they felt about him, I don't know how that turns into six votes on Alex. Right.

That is worth of this. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I want to move on to some things that were said at tribal council that also annoyed me. starting with something simple. Sof said she had been waiting for people to wake up.

And I thought, yeah, me too. But we were clearly not talking about the same thing because she actually doesn't want them to wake up because if they wake up, they would vote for her ally Rizzo or maybe even her. So maybe it was a strategic moment on her part that I'm not even sure what the strategy was. Maybe she was trying to say, you wake up by playing with me. But no, if they truly woke up, they would be doing exactly what we have been talking about here and getting rid of Rizzo. It was a nice, just like a nice tease or whatever.

Like, you know, like she's obviously talking in the context to all the people who are flipping over to her side. And they seem to be eating it up being like, yeah, we finally woke up. And the viewer at home is like, no, open, no, stop. It's whatever the what's the movie Why can I not forget the movie McConaughey Matthew McConaughey

and the space movie Why can I not interstellar Where he's he's banging on the The bookshelf like no don't Come back like it's don't do it That's what we're all saying Yeah John on stage. Sorry I rambled

That's okay So then we move to Sophie with an E so she said they're in grad school survivor now not high school survivor which to me sounded like she was taking a shot at you guys and all previous players and saying you all had it easy but things are now much more difficult and maybe that wasn't her intent but that's how it came off to me and i'm not even one of the people that you know is in that group but i felt like it seemed like some of them needed to go back to kindergarten survivor because yes this is not masterclass at all yeah as a player said on the traders Canada last week sometimes the obvious answer is the right answer and this is one of those times instead they're doing something we often see on the traders which is what you said earlier jessica they're overcomplicating things for no good reason and she then continued back in the day it was simple you have an idol you flush it and i'm like yes exactly

yeah it's simple and the correct answer and it's not back in the day it's now today this right this is not some like yeah she said she said there's no such thing as an easy vote anymore and added if you think that maybe you're asleep like so so said and you need to wake up and it's appropriate to me that stranger things is returning soon because i feel like we're in the upside down when I hear something like this. No, you're asleep. You need to wake up if you think it is a good idea to let Rizzo waltz through the game with an idol.

Because, yes, there is an easy vote, the guy with the idol. Yeah. And I do think it's interesting that I've already talked about Christina and how she was having the conversation with Sof, which I thought was odd. But when you watch her facial expressions during the tribal council

when she's starting to realize, like, wait, no. oh Rizzo didn't play as Idle okay good here we go this is going to happen and then Rizzo doesn't get voted out like you can just you can see her just whole face shift and change like she is just as confused as the rest of us

like what the hell just happened like this was exactly yes exactly and so I could feel for her in that moment because I think everybody was doing that same thing we were like how did this get congluted

This shouldn't have been convoluted. And I do think a lot of what Sophie was saying was really, like, nonsense because it is straightforward. You still flush the idol. That part of Survivor has not changed. Things have been added to Survivor that I don't necessarily love, too many trinkets. But idols are still idols, and they're still used the same way that they've been used since they were introduced in the game. And if you know where one is and you have an opportunity to flush it, that's what you do. That's the easy thing to do.

It can be easy. It can be straightforward. This is not rocket science at this moment. Yeah, I think we see this happen. I'm not surprised that this is happening. And I don't even necessarily blame these players particularly. I think Survivor is, I mean, it's this grand timeline that has these. ebbs and flows of what is perceived to be optimal and not optimal.

And it often has to do with what has happened recently. What has happened, you know, and I think that's probably some of what Sophie's getting at is this idea of like, well, back in the day, people just thought, idle meant flush it. And we've seen over time as we put new super fans on the show and people who are always kind of trying to find optimal strategy or metagame or do whatever it is that, we can overthink things. But just like, you know, you would have somebody be like,

the big strong guys, the big physical threat. And then enough big strong guys never win immunity challenges in a row where you start to acknowledge that those guys aren't really immunity threats anymore. Until one of them wins the game again because they win six in a row. And then you're like, oh, we probably should have been worried about him at the merge. And then everybody makes a correction. And so I think this goes into. what I was saying of like they've just seen 46 and people go out with an idol in their

pocket. They've seen 47 where we played all of our idols and idols were expiring and they weren't a huge factor in, you know, like we didn't really have public idols be a factor in our season. And so I think there's this idea of not really worrying about the power that an idol can truly possess. And I can almost guarantee you that people on 50, who are now watching season 49 are not going to make the same mistake of letting an idle coast by. And so what you do with it,

whether you're Rizzo or somebody who's trying to figure out what to do with Rizzo, you just kind of want to be on the right timeline for what's culturally accepted in Survivor at the right time. And some of that's, you know, whatever. White cat, he's making a guest appearance.

Yeah, that's kind of what I find to be so true is, you know, we'll ask ourselves, like, well, why is this person not doing it this way? And it's often because it shifts, but you never really know which, which season it's going to shift. Which season is going to be the one that all of a sudden, all the big, strong physical people get together versus the one where they are all gone at the beginning of the merge. So, yeah, I agree with you completely. the thing is they're the ones who make it shift. Yeah. So they're the ones collectively deciding to let the idol go by. Even though they saw a bunch of idols get voted or people get voted out with idols,

like one of the most recent seasons. Like why not replicate that? And, you know, another, my point there is I think 46 was fresh in our mind when we were going to to play. It was also fresh in the mind of 48. And when you ask people, what's your biggest takeaway from Survivor 46? Everybody said, I'm not about to get voted out with an idol in my pocket. That was so top of mind that everybody wanted to burn their idol at the first opportunity. And I think had that been the season that's like fresh in the mind of these people where it's like, hey, don't get voted out with an idol in your pocket.

that should allow them to want to burn their idol. I think people are banking on Rizzo following that strategy. They're banking on him being like the guy who's like, I'm not about to get rid of it. Like MC just, I'm not going to get voted out within my pocket. I'm going to play it like MC just did. Rizzo is zagging instead of zgging.

And he zagged at seemingly a really good time. Yes. Because he is zagging in the ones. If he zagged like this, 46, you know, Rizzo, second member of the jury, he's, why didn't I play my idol? But he seems to be zagging in the season that people are okay with letting it slide and are not as aggressive taking the shot. So that's kind of my point is that you, like, if you're going to do something that's

against the grain, you got to hope that you time it up right in a season where the culture doesn't shift with you. And it appears that the culture has not shifted. they're banking on somebody to play their idol and they're starting to learn oh wait hang on he's he's really holding this thing he really is yeah you know and one thing sophie said which i think also contributes to it was that also since they all know he has the idol which is better the devil you know or the one you don't so that tells me even though we haven't seen a lot of discussion about it there's clearly some worried that if they force him to flush it someone

else could end up with it. But my response to that is, so what? If your enemy has it now, the worst that could happen is your enemy has it again. I mean, sure, you won't know for sure. And uncertainty is a bit more difficult. But how is that really different from just allowing him to keep it? And if you flush it, there is with numbers a better than even chance that one of you will find it. Don't just assume your enemy will. find it again. Right. Yeah. All fair. Black Friday is here at IKEA and the clock is taking on savings you won't want to miss. Join IKEA family for free today and unlock deals on everything from holiday must-haves to cozy

at-home essentials, all the little and big things you need to make this season shine. But don't wait. Like leftovers at midnight, our Black Friday offers won't last. Shop now at IKEA.ca.ca slash Black Friday. Ikea. Bring home to life. Sam, you had mentioned on Chat BCC that Operation Italy had everyone spooked. Do you think that that played into anything? I don't know if you were making a joke about it. No, it was mostly like a joke because they did, in theory, attempt to split the vote here.

So I don't think that like a lack of fear of splitting. a vote is what what made this go bad what made this go bad is three people wanting Alex out instead of wanting Rizzo out and you know and then making that call so this isn't a split vote thing but that is another example of what I was talking about in terms of of idols and culture and what you've seen recently shifting your your perspective on the game and I do wonder if there does come a time like this this next vote perhaps right or if there is a time where they are going to take a shot at Rizzo. As these numbers dwindled down, right,

Operation Italy was at 7. We have eight people left in the game. How willing are you to split up your numbers when you're aware of what one person flipping can do to a vote and how badly it can blow up your game or what one extra vote, which is in the game, can blow up your game. It's just another one of those things that you see,

hey maybe the next time that we're at seven instead of putting it as a three three three and we're banking on it being three for this person three for that person maybe we just load up six and hope and uh you know we're all willing to take our chances there because the chance of them playing the idol and idling me out are one in six times whatever you think the odds are of them actually playing the idol yeah but the odds of one person flipping and guaranteeing one of us go home might be much better than that so You know, that's the, that's the calculus that people left away. I don't think that played a factor in this vote necessarily, but it could here coming up as far as why some of these split votes go bad is you're thinking about the last time somebody tried that.

That went really badly for them. Yeah. So the one person that I didn't necessarily talk about as much is Rizzo in Appendix A here. And I just want to say, he did a great job of shifting the vote to Alex. He put in the work. but I can't give him all the credit because I have to give the others so much blame. They let him. He got into their heads, but they let him in.

They opened the door. He was banging on it. He was like, let me in, let me in. And they opened it. And they believed him when they shouldn't have. Yeah. Yeah, he did a great job, really figuring out what was going to make someone listen and presenting it to them in a way that would require them to think about it.

Because as Sam, you did mention, there was, there wasn't air of truth there. And then the reaction by Alex was nothing that made them feel better. It made them question even further what they should do with this information and who they should believe. But still, Rizzo did excellent in what he needed to do, but he also had a very captivated audience, if you will. And they listened to what he was saying and what he was selling them. And unfortunately, they shouldn't have listened because the answer, they were. already had the answer. They knew what they needed to do.

They didn't need any help. They didn't need to go to the back and look for the answer. You know, when you cheat in those textbooks, sometimes it actually tell you what the answer is. They didn't need any of that. They had it. It was right there in front of them.

Here, the thing that I'll say that I think, I just think needs to be stated more in Survivor dialogue. Like when we have some of this discussion, every move that's made by any player in Survivor, blindside, whatever, this, that requires two parties. It requires somebody

to be the catalyst to make a move happen, but a move doesn't happen if every player plays optimally for themselves. Nobody would go home. And so, I don't think you can sit here and be like, well, Rizzo didn't do anything. Joan and Sage

blew it. They're so dumb. They just let him go. Rizzo did stuff to make this happen. He's been doing stuff to make this happen. If you ever sit there and look and are just like, even Survivor 48, right, you might be banging on the TV screen being like, nobody's making a move against the Clear Power Alliance. Well, that Clear Power Alliance is also putting in work to make sure nobody's so they're doing stuff. And then on the other end, right, like Rizzo's move doesn't work if

these people don't let it work, right? There has to be a mistake made. He can't steamroll and bulldoze and do it all on himself. And those people didn't just completely fumble it. They're still trying to do what's optimal for them and their chances of winning the game. And Rizzo pressed the right buttons to make them believe that included keeping him around. So we just need to, we need to say that. That it, like, there's, there's a, there's one person on both sides of every move. And so how much blame versus like credit you want to give every single time a move happens is

is your prerogative, but both of those things exist. Right, right. And I think we made it through Appendix A. I don't think you disagreed with me, really. And, you know, um, I just, it was a little tame. I just, I did want to like, my, my whole, my whole thing was I did want to point out some of the logic that almost guaranteed, I would say probably existed for the, uh, the sage and

Joanne and where I think it looks even, it looks really bad to a viewer is the fact that they don't know where the advantages are. And so they don't realize what they just handed Savannah and Rizzo. And if they did, they probably make a different choice. Right. Yeah. Right. And to get to the point that you just said, yeah, you know, credit versus blame.

Yes, like I said, Rizzo deserves credit. The part that has me so frustrated, had me so frustrated in this episode was Sage and Joanne knew the right answer and they still didn't do it. And so that's the part that has be frustrated. And yes, they probably didn't do it because they thought they could get them next time. We'll get him next time. We'll get them next time. Don't try to. Maybe they will.

Maybe they will. It's possible, but I don't think so. And so, you know, just don't try to predict next time. You have them in your sites. Get them now. We don't have to do predictions. Is that what you just said? Oh, no, we will.

We will. But first, we still have Appendix B because it discusses the jury phase. And, well, I really should have started it a couple weeks ago, but I forgot. And it really didn't matter because neither Nate nor MC were voted out for, you know, jury-related reasons. And I don't really think it had anything to do with Alex this week either. You know, as for Alex himself, like we said, he had friends all over the place. So if he had made it to final three, those people might have been more inclined to vote for him. Of course, the problem was in getting to final three with everyone knowing you have all those friends.

And again, I don't think anyone was projecting ahead all the way to the end game with him. But it was kind of like an issue that overlapped with those that we already discussed. Yeah, I don't think anyone was projecting too far ahead. No, I don't think so. All right. Well, with that, it is about time to wrap things up. So, Sam, what are your final thoughts on Alex? I enjoyed Alex

I think I wish we didn't get to see a ton of I would say Alex the person I think he sort of he sort of defaulted into this this narrator role

if you will of a lot of what happened at Old Kelly amid the disaster and a lot of what happened at rewards and you know set in the stage

for the Smurge tribe I think he was the I think his political background was very much present in his game. He was a good schmoozer, a good ego stroker. He had a great social game and was very flexible to everything that was thrown at him. And he did not have the easiest of rides from a disaster tribe to his number one being medically evacuated, to being on the powerless side of

a split tribal council as another one of his allies is voted out of the game. Alex was continually having to roll with the punches and trying to play this middleman role. he came in wanting to be the glue guy but he found himself in a sticky situation when he didn't have a team to piece together a big fan of Alex really enjoyed his game super capable competent player wrong place at the wrong time in Rizzo's

crosshairs there you know he did say that survivor is identical to the world of politics and that is a very fair point because a lot of times politics just don't make sense, right? And things happen that cause us to question, what are people thinking in this very moment? But I think what happened to Alex is he really did find himself in the crosshairs

of Rizzo. And Rizzo had an opportunity that he took full advantage of. And that was just playing on the emotions of the people around him, finding that thing that was going to make them listen and pause long enough to let the wheels spin on their own brain. And really, really, turn the tides on a situation that really did seem straightforward and simple. Like, it didn't need to be difficult. It didn't need to be complicated. Everybody wanted the same thing. Rizzo needs to go home or the idol needs to be played. How do we do that? We all vote for Rizzo. They want to vote for Alex. Easy, done. No work need be added to that mix. However, Rizzo just kept adding more ingredients and really just made it much more difficult for everyone around them to see the

clear path. So great for Rizzo, bad for Alex. And I do think that Alex really was taking this game from a position that we often credit and we say good job because he was making the connections he needed. He was making the relationships that were necessary. He was willing to turn on his allies when he needed to because he realized he was on that tribe that had to keep going back to tribal council so I have to vote out the people I want to play with, but I'm going to make them feel so comfortable that I don't become the target and they go home and I don't. And so he really was playing a game that we want people to play when they play Survivor. They don't get too emotional. They play the middle. They figure out how to become friends with everyone. But unfortunately, as he said,

Sam, he lost all of those people he needed to be the glue that he wanted to be once the merge happened and once he found himself with this new mix of people and he was waiting too long for his moment and Rizzo saw the moment and pounced on it. Rizzo knew that his time was up and he took advantage of the situation. Alex was waiting for his moment but he didn't realize that that moment was now. And so unfortunately for Alex he really did find himself in a very, very tough spot that should have been easily seen, as Alex indicated in his exit press. How did not everyone see what was actually happening? But just like politics, sometimes you wonder, how do people not see what is actually

happening? But people tend to believe what they want to believe if they believe it is in their own best interest at that time in that moment. And they often become so involved in themselves that they lose sight of the bigger picture. And so unfortunately, Rizzo just really captivated this. this time, this opportunity, and Alex fell prey to that opportunity that Rizzo took. Well, as you've heard, the actions of several players in this episode and speeches of others

really frustrated me. Rizzo did a great job of convincing people that somehow he and his idol were less of a threat than Alex, the social butterfly. Of course, Alex doesn't get away without some of the blame. He knew he was being extremely friendly with people on all sides. He knew he made a few comments that, well, most. harmless, could be enhanced into things that sounded dangerous to other players, and as has been discussed, when confronted with this, he didn't really do a great job of rebutting it.

And while he decided he'd settle down with one group now, it was too little too late because the image of him being, quote, messy and playing both sides was already out there. Despite all of this, we should either have been talking about why Rizzo lost this week, or still discussing why Alex lost, but with the side of Rizzo having played his idol, so a minority vote would have been what took him out. Alex was, and seems perhaps, to still be dumbfounded by the fact that almost everyone went along with what Rizzo said. The logic didn't make sense to him, or me, or many other viewers.

And as I mentioned, in a scene near the end of the episode, Alex wondered, who are Joanne and Sage going to believe? Are they going to believe me? or are they going to believe Rizzo, someone who's desperate and at the bottom and scrambling to get to the top? It doesn't make much sense. But they went with the desperate guy

who poses a much greater threat even if everything he said about Alex was 100% true. Alex thought the fact that he was friends with these people would help him. As he told Dalton Ross, why do they even trust him? I'm here. I'm friends with them.

They can relate to me. They understand where I'm coming from and they still fall for his tricks. But again, even though I still don't think they should have bought it, Alex gave them just enough reason to do so, having even talked to several of them about playing the middle with him. So can we be completely surprised that they accepted he would be doing it without them? In some ways, I felt, again, like I was watching an episode of The Traders,

because so much happened to here is almost a cliche, on that show. One person does something that's tagged as being shady because of it. Then everything they do is brought up by the traders to try to focus attention on them. The other faithfuls jump on board and overcomplicate the situation by seeing some things that are there but intertwining it with things that aren't and creating conspiracy theories to support their beliefs. In this situation, Rizzo was the trader, the target who had more power, but he fooled others into believing he wasn't as dangerous. And they believed him despite what they should have seen in front of their faces.

Again, credit to Rizzo for getting people to turn on Alex by using the smaller errors Alex had already made and blowing them up to giant proportions. But blame to everyone else for believing them and thinking Alex was more dangerous than Rizzo. And that is why Alex lost. Well, there it be. There it be.

All right. And here comes my little Ellie. Well, before we head off to predictions here, we do want to remind everyone quickly that, well, you already know what the predictions are at this point pretty much. But the rules we just discussed are available in poster form, poster on a T-shirt form, and checklist on a T-shirt form. by going to Rob has a website.com slash YX lost feed. Yes.

And the holidays, we already mentioned, holidays are on their way. So great present ideas. Yes. Now you have naive echo. Yes. Well, Sam,

where can people find you on social media or elsewhere online, like if they want to read things that you're doing? Yeah. Well, I am, I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. Much to David. David might not like this.

I'm no longer on blue sky. I quit. I quit the blue sky. Oh no. I quit the blue sky. My Twitter is at Sam underscore Phelan at Sam Phelan on Instagram. Instagram is just kind of like fun stuff. Twitter.

If you're Chicago sports fan, come on down to my Twitter. You'll get a lot of it. Probably maybe even more than you want. But yeah, I'm online. I occasionally fire off a survivor tweet every now and then to to keep the people fed. So, yeah, that's it. That's where you can check me out.

All right. That's great. Well, I am at Jessica Lewis, 89, on Blue Sky and at Jessica Lewis 89 on that thing called X. I'm also at Jessica Lewis, 6,7, 8,9 on Instagram. But I, unfortunately, have spent much less time on social media as of late. Other things in my, in my life, yes, good for me. Other things in my life are taking over. However, David Bloomberg.

has like just i think bloom is probably the the perfect word for you david bloomberg because your social media presence has grown exponentially throughout the years that i have known you so much so he does have a link tree that allows you to see all of the places that you can find the content that is created by david bloomberg so david why don't you explain your link tree and where they can find you well it is at link tree slash david bloomberg or you can find me directly on blue sky is at David Bloomberg. I also am, of course, on the video sites, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, where I'm at David Bloomberg TV.

And I have been continuing to post two or three videos per day of the various reality TV shows. Most of them are, of course, about Survivor 49. But there are some from currently the Traders Canada season three. A few trickling in from the recently ended Squid Game, the challenge. Speaking of the traders, which I have a strange. amount in this episode. I am co-hosting the Trader podcast for the Traders Canada each week. And then just so you know anyone, Celebrity Traders UK is on Peacock now.

So if you haven't seen it, you'll be able to, presuming you have Peacock. And when you get to those episodes, you can check out my TikTok playlist for Celebrity Traders UK. And I am also on the Trade Our podcast for episode. seven and the finale and the special Q&A episode after that. So once you get to those, don't spoil yourself, but once you get to all those episodes,

and it's a fun, fun season. So now, predictions. We've already heard most of Sam's predictions, and you can clarify any, but mine are very similar. Because, you know, preview tells us not a whole lot. There's talk of a flip to blow up the game.

Sage wants to get Savannah out, but she's been saying that for the past three episodes. And again, as we talked about, they don't know about the trinkets. And I think that takes center stage because in the preview, the jury reaction sure makes it look like something big happens. Right. Now, admittedly, sometimes juries will react to just about anything. But considering that Sof's knowledge's power is still in play, it would not surprise me one bit, she uses it to take away Christina's idol. And I, by no means, am I the only one saying this?

As a matter of fact, my son was the first one who pointed out to me, and then it's been on social media, et cetera. Of course. I would be disappointed at this point. I don't know if it happens next week, but I would be a little disappointed if she doesn't do that at this point. I mean, like, she's done a fantastic job. And, you know, keeping that to herself,

while all of her allies are telling her everything. Sof has kept that knowledge of power tight. but at some point here, let's go use that to make the move that can set you apart from your allies if you do get to the end of the game. Right. But the question is,

how does she find out about Christina Zidal? That was going to be my question. How does she know? Here's my guess. My guess is Sage says something to someone and words ends up trickling back through the grapevine.

Because, of course, you know, they don't know about this. And why would Sage say something? That I don't know. But once it does happen, Rizzo, Savannah, and Sof will have two idols and an extra vote. They can easily control the outcome of this vote, even if none of them win immunity.

And, you know, if Sophie stays with them, even more so. I'm not sure she will. The others may decide it is finally time to go after Rizzo. You know, maybe because Savannah doesn't win immunity so they can finally do the vote split they have been wanting. But one way or another, it's going to be too late. The question then is who Rizzo and Savannah and Sof want out.

And I have to go back to the original target at the merge. Stephen. He's probably seen as the biggest threat among the rest. He has not, he and Christina have not been willing to work with them at all. So that's who I'm going to put. predict. Unfortunately, I think we're going to send off our rocket man. Which,

we did not even talk about how lovely the space facts were. We didn't even mention that. That was such a good thing. I will, yeah, listen, Stephen played a dangerous game because you are like, you open your mouth to do that kind of a thing.

90% of the time, it's going to be like corny and annoying. And it's going to be like, come on. I thought he came off so charming. It was fantastic. The space facts were fantastic. I loved it.

I loved it. Normally when like these kind of, we do these bits from like whatever during, I'm usually not a fan. I thought this was excellent. And I'm a big fan of Stephen. My daughter actually, my daughter said,

well, we were watching because it continued. And she's like, can we go back to space facts? That was the most I've enjoyed Survivor in a really long time. It genuinely was like, I mean, the people next to them were like, dude, thanks. That was awesome. And Jeff even seemed a little bit bothered by the fact that he had to like, be like, oh, sage is out. Sorry, Stephen.

We got to interrupt you for a minute. Yeah. Genuinely, thank you for that. It was great stuff. I still question the whole, all the planets can fit between the earth and moon. And I think that's the point. I do not see. How can the gas giants fit in there?

I don't see it. this is another just like hey Stephen get your flowers because when you're asked to give a fact about something that you know so much more about than everybody else there is like a 98% chance that you sound pretentious as hell and like the worst and everybody's just like oh okay mr space guy you know so much about space and he picked the fact that I thought was like so elementary and yet so fascinating at the same time you were like wait is that true How is that true? Seven-year-olds watching Survivor.

They know about the planets and the moon. They understood what he was saying. I thought it was just excellent taste by Stephen. Great job. Someone needs to do this math because I want to know. Well, he apparently is. Yeah, clearly. It's incredible.

Wouldn't it be funny if he was just making it up? This will sound awesome. He just threw this out to the universe. Yeah. I unfortunately have to agree with you because I do think that the options are so limited at this point. There isn't a possibility that you do have the Sage and Joanne, like wanting to continue to work with Savannah and Rizzo. And so they've kind of bought into this. We're going to be in control. So if Rizzo and Savannah allow them to continue to think that they're

in control and they're running the show and they're making the decisions, then I do think that there's a very strong likelihood that we could see a Stephen go because they don't think Christina is going to be on that same like place as far as concerns moving moving forward but I am fascinated by this idea of of Christina's idol being taken

because I how does that information go back to but she did tell someone and that's that's like Survivor 101 keep your mouth shut don't tell people nobody needs to know especially when you know like knowledge is powers that exists in this game maybe it's

Stephen that says something I mean Stephen can tell, I mean, Sage and Joanne are like, they still have their little like, oh, that maybe that's how they're like convincing like, listen, we got an option here. Steve and Jawan, Stephen tells Joanne and Sage about the idol.

Sage already knows. Huh? Sage already knows. Oh, Sage already knows. Okay, so then, yeah, maybe it gets to Joanne and then, you know, I mean, we know Jawan's been pretty loose-lipped throughout the, uh, throughout the game thus far with information. So that could be the, uh, yeah. Jowon tells Rizzo. Rizzo tells so

and ba-a-bing, ba-da-boom. Yeah. Done. Yeah. So are you on the Stephen page also? Yeah, I could really see it being Stephen. I could see it being Juan, maybe. I don't see Christina.

I don't see Sage. I really don't even see it being Sophie Sogretti because to me, if you're going to make a loud statement as Rizzo Savannah, so presumably would in this scenario where they deploy an extra vote to take back control. Sophie Sogretti seems the most willing to work with them of everybody. She is the one person who has sort of declared herself over with this group. I don't know why she would particularly be the target.

I could see a world where Joanne has been this driver of the last three votes now. Whether or not you view those votes to be smart in hindsight, we will see. but, I mean, he was a key cog in making the Nate decision. He was key to the MC decision. He was the swing decider in this Alex move. And based on Alex's exit press as well, David, I know Alex mentioned between Joanne and Sage, he personally viewed Joanne as the decision maker,

the guy who was like directing that duo and that Joanne was not afraid to sort of take a leader role of that, being like, let me go talk to Sage and figure out what we're going to do, whereas Sage was a little bit more passive. So it is possible that Rizzo, Savannah, Sof, decide, Joana's made a lot of decisions. We're ready for him to get up out of here and that he is there. But if I had to bet on it, I would probably bet on Stephen.

I think that's the most logical spot. Okay. All right. All right. Well, there we have it. So as we wrap up, which is one of the longest, if not the longest, podcast episode. It's probably the other one that I did.

I want to encourage people to check out the RJP patron program at rob has a website.com slash patron. You get access to all the special podcasts in case this hasn't filled you up enough. They've put out just for patrons plus Facebook groups and Discord and of course just supporting shows like ours

and everything on the network. So again, that's Rob has a website.com slash patron. And of course, be sure to subscribe to all the RHAP Survivor podcasts by going to we knowsurvivor.com. Yes. And we would like to thank everyone at RHAP for all of the incredible work that you do, not only for the YBlank Lost podcast, but all of the content that you did here, David, speak of.

Thank you to Scott and thank you to Jess for the incredible work that you do, the entire RHAP team. And also thank you to Will from America for the theme song that you did create for this particular podcast. It is quite catchy. It's on the audio version. And thank you to Sam for joining us because Sam, as always, came with a lot of hot takes and some information. I just learned about you peeking in the urn and counting those votes.

Really fascinating stuff. Thank you so much. It's always great to have you join us because you really do bring such incredible insight. So we appreciate it so very much. This is why saying your reporter is dangerous. Exactly. Apparently. Next time, next time I'll make sure I don't.

tell anybody that I didn't fact do it. Two and a half hour podcast. They'll know that I can talk. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Very threatening. Very threatening. Yes. Thank you, Sam, also for me. And thank you, of course, Jessica. And next week, due to Thanksgiving,

we wanted to let you know. We will be a couple days later than usual. I would say look for the podcast, probably early Monday morning. So, Sam, I don't know if you have any final words of goodbye or else we will head on out of here. That's all for me. Chow. All right. All right. Thanks. Ciao. Nice. All right. Goodbye, everyone. Bye. Bye. Did you know that there's an independent agency in Canada available to help if you've been unable to resolve a phone, internet, or television issue directly with your service provider? It's the Commission for Complaints for Telecom Television Services, or CCTS. Their free, impartial

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