The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Lie About the Truck: Survivor, Reality TV, and the Endless Gaze by Sallie Tisdale

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

The Lie About the Truck: Survivor, Reality TV, and the Endless Gaze by Sallie Tisdale The author of the acclaimed Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them) brings “her singular sensibility, her genius for language, her love of our deeply imperfect world” (Karen Karbo, author of In Praise of Difficult Women) to this insightful exploration of reality TV and the shifting definitions of truth in America. What is the truth? In a world of fake news and rampant conspiracy theories, the nature of truth has increasingly blurry borders. In this clever and timely cultural commentary, award-winning author Sallie Tisdale tackles this issue by framing it in a familiar way—reality TV, particularly the long-running CBS show Survivor. With humor and in-depth superfan analysis, Tisdale explores the distinction between suspended disbelief and true authenticity both in how we watch shows like Survivor, and in how we perceive the world around us. With her “bold and wise, galvanizing and grounding” (Chloe Caldwell, author of I’ll Tell You in Person) writing, Tisdale has created an unputdownable, thoroughly entertaining, and groundbreaking book that we will be talking about for years to come.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming to another great podcast who knew we'd do it again oops there it is guys so to see the video version of this of course go to youtube.com for chest christmas hit the bell notification button

go to goodreads.com for chest christmas see all the books for reading and reviewing over there we do this thing called reading and expand your minds and helps your skin look better from what i understand too as well i think the attorney said i can't say that anymore but ah sue away go to all the groups facebook linkedin twitter, and all those great places. Wait, I'm getting served with a notice here. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life,

and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can pre-order the book right now

wherever fine books are sold, but the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken

and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out or order the book wherever fine books are sold. And we have an amazing author on today. She's the author of a new book. It just barely came out. It's hitting the shelves as of two days ago. October 26, 2021.

The Lie About the Truck. Survivor, reality TV, and the endless gaze. She's written a book here. Sally Tisdale is going to be with us today. She's going to be talking about the book. She's the author of several books, including The Lie About the Truck, Advice for Future Corpses and Those Who Love Them,

Violation, Talk Dirty to Me, Stepping Westward, and Women of the Way. She's received a Pushcart Prize and NEA Fellowship and was selected for the Schoenfeld Distinguished Visiting Writer Series. Her work has appeared in Harper's, The New Yorker, The Three Penny Review, The Antioch Review, Conjunctions, and Tricycle. And in addition to her award-winning career, she's been a nurse for several years, so there's

that. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to the show, Sally. How are you? Hi. Thanks for having me. There you go. I'm fine. You're fine. Great. So Sally, give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs.

Part of what I say, I talk about in this book is my relationship to social media is very scanty. I have a static website where I just list what I'm writing about. And then I have a Tumblr blog, which is new and evolving writing. I am not on Facebook. I'm not on Twitter. I'm not on Instagram. I saw TikTok once, though. I go to YouTube to watch Tai Chi videos. Yeah, the endless gaze in the title of the book refers in part to the fact that we've put ourselves on camera all the time. You and I today, we scheduled this.

We're choosing this. But we walk out our door and we are on camera whether we choose to be or not. I live in a townhouse complex where there's two doors side by side. And my close next door neighbor neighbors just put in a ring camera. So now as soon as every time I walk down the walk to my front door, I'm smiling on camera. I'm on camera. So there's something called photo taking impairment effect, which you've probably never heard of. But it's a fact of the brain that if you take a photo of something, you are much less likely to remember it.

The brain just needs to see something clearly to remember it. And if you put a camera in between you, the camera remembers. And I find it very interesting that we've abdicated our brain to a device in a lot of ways. Children learn how to make that duck face before they walk these days. So that's my social media relationship.

I'm a slightly bald. I also, though, went, I was on Second Life for many years. I don't know if you've ever been to Second Life. But Second Life is where you're not yourself. And I'm fine about being on camera if I'm not myself. Oh, there you go. That's always different and everything else. I remember Second Life, there's people buying stuff on there.

It's crazy. So tell us, you've written a lie about the truck. What motivated you to want to write this book and give us an overarching overview of the book if you would please so i i have from the earliest age i've just been a story person everybody has their drug and stories are my drug they're my intoxication from the earliest age i just i love. My brother and I read endless comic books, science fiction, thrillers, everything. I love action films. And I gradually came to really love television as television got much better at telling stories. Television now tells the best

stories we can find. And where does reality television fit into that? It's selling us this story that these are real people in real circumstances. Of course, it's not exactly true. I started watching Survivor years ago because I'm a physical coward, and here were these daunting circumstances, and I bought the lie for quite a while that they were really trying to survive. And I just did not, I didn't think about the cameras. I didn't think about the way this show was curated.

I then went down the rabbit hole to Project Runway and Amazing Race. And I gradually woke up to the fact that there were cameras this far away from the faces that we were seeing, that these people were surrounded by cameras, and that everything I was seeing was curated and edited to the max to create a story, which took away some of the pleasure for me. Then, years later, pandemic, boom, I went nuts. I went back and binged every season. And then of course I had to write about it because I write about things that I'm experiencing as problems or questions in my life. And I had this question of what am I really seeing and why am I willing to go there? Why am I willing to fall for it?

And how does this show really work? So that just gradually became this book. Oh, wow. I was home with a television and time. I remember the original stories when it first came out, and I think I watched the first couple seasons. And I remember there were stories of them, of the crew eating like hamburgers and normal food in front of the dudes while they're filming.

They're like, yeah, this burger's great for McDonald's. Yeah. People are cooking rats and stuff. Yeah. And hunger is real. It is a real thing on the show. But I find that a little bit appalling because they film in countries where people are actually hungry, where hunger is a real problem for people. And like you said, there's food right in front of them.

There have been a few instances where contestants managed to get away long enough to steal food. So the crew now has to lock things up a lot tighter. That's what I do. I'd be like, I'm breaking into stuff at night. Yeah. Not even around. tighter. That's what I do. I'd be like, I'm breaking into stuff at night. Yeah. And these are many, most of the players, I would say 99% of the players have never really experienced hunger before. Although I swear some of the women go on diets before they go on the show. They know hunger, but they know a certain kind of hunger. But the real hunger, starvation hunger, is a completely new experience for people.

And I love it when people on Survivor say things like, oh, this is real. It's real. This really is happening. They're surprised to discover that it's real. Wow. Yeah. They're like, where's the food service truck is that around here somewhere like they usually have in hollywood i remember too there's a lot of manipulation on these shows i remember hearing that like for the apprentice they would basically give very little food or high quality food they just give you garbage food and then lots of alcohol and some like protein drinks basically just fuel to cause drama and problems by not giving people a proper diet there's a whole sociological concept called making a scene and in which people who are in groups create a scene to to somewhere, to use the drama to promote something. And on reality

television, it's the producers, the editors, and the hosts are constantly creating scenes exactly like that. They may reward on Survivor, two people win a feast, but they have to eat it in front of everybody else. Or they tantalize people with rewards and then take it away at the last minute. And they also lead Jeff Probst, who some fans call Jiffy. I like that. Jiffy likes to ask very leading questions and gives away secrets without warning. So he undermines the alliances. It's constant manipulation.

Yeah. The one thing I think that people don't realize about these shows is there. A lot of them are scripted. I don't know so much about Survivor, but I know like the Kylie Jenner shows or whatever. Those shows, they sit down, they make a plan. A great television isn't, you know, is and these guys aren't talented actors either. So a great television is an improv. They sit down and manipulate a lot of this.

People just sit around and go, that's amazing, I had no idea. The way they do that on Survivor and on shows like The Amazing Race and these competition elimination shows, Top Chef and things like that, they're not scripted in that people are speaking spontaneously,

but they are speaking for hours and hours. So the editors have many hours of film from many cameras to work with to create one hour show, one hour long episode. So they script it through editing. You know, there's also the confessional, like many shows have this break the fourth wall and speak to the camera thing, and it's called a confessional. But in the confessional, they're sitting there with cameras right here and reflectors and lights and producers asking leading questions, and they're pretending they're talking to the camera. So there's layer after layer of editing and manipulation that essentially is scripting. And they say they give everybody a winner's arc,

that they're not setting up winners and losers from the beginning. They're letting everybody look like a winner. Because one of the, Chris, one of the lies that reality television sells over and over is that anyone can win, that these are ordinary people. And that's a big lie on Survivor that it's anybody can win. It's just, but you too could do this. And then in the first episode, you can see how people are being shunted into the hero and the fool and the devious one and the flirt. Everybody's given a role from the beginning. Yeah. I remember the one thing that was interesting about The Apprentice was evidently one of the lead cast members on The Apprentice had an Adderall problem and then he ran for president. And that comes from, I think,

Noel Castor. I believe we should credit for that. He's a friend of mine who's a comedian and very famous now for making that, breaking his NDA. But evidently he would be so coked up, he would forget which person he was supposed to fire, or he wouldn't read that teleprompter that was sitting in his desk that's mounted there. And he would fire the wrong person. Oh, really? I didn't know. That's great. You are talking about Mark Burnett in both cases. Mark Burnett created Survivor. It made him a kajillionaire. Then he went on to do The Apprentice. So we have Mark Burnett to blame more for the last five years than anybody else.

And he completely enriched himself doing it. And since then, his star is really falling. He hasn't really had a hit since then. And he's tied to Trump forever. Yeah, that's always an ugly thing to be tied to. He's also written several really appallingly bad books, including one about the first season of Survivor, in which Mark Burnett says that he couldn't believe the moral impairment people showed

that they were willing to lie to win. This is a show in which everybody loses but one person for a million dollars, and you have to execute your fellow castaways in order to win. And he was so shocked that people would lie. It's just yet another part of the manipulation. I would still like to see the hidden tapes that I guess he won't release out of a safe of the certain name Coke addled addled thing but I guess what they would have to do is he would fire the wrong person and not follow the script and then they would have to take all of the tapes that they had filmed

and they would have to reverse engineer the show plan to to to show the the person is a bad guy that's why everyone's so pissed at the show i would always see the taxi scene and they'd be like they manipulated the thing i had actually won this is bs and you're like and at first you're like oh you're just a sore loser but after you see that like every time you're like wait something's going on but yeah so how does this affect our society what what effects does this have on us and our reality and how we view the world and is it making it better that's a different question but i've met a lot i met a lot of people or i have a lot of friends in my life who are shocked that i'm writing about reality television because i'm a serious writer and then they'll say things like reality television, because I'm a serious writer. And then they'll say things like, reality television is awful.

And I ask them what they base that on, what they've watched, and sometimes the answer is, I've never watched it. I would never watch that. And there you are. You just promoted some fake news. You don't know what you're saying. Reality television is hugely influential and important. Right now, at this moment, there's about 700 shows being produced around the world.

There's reality television in every country, in every language, in every culture, and people really dig it. And it has affected the travel industry, the fashion industry, the culinary industry. Everything's been affected by these shows. And they're not all negative and competitive and cutthroat. There are also some really sweet and lovely shows. There was a show in which people competed to do good deeds without in secret. There's shows like that. And there's all kinds of shows based in science. It's a very big shaggy beast. And there are many kinds of reality shows. So first of all, we shouldn't tar something this huge and important to people as all bad.

That's disrespectful to the people who really like these shows. So that's one reason it matters. But television is so important. Television is the primary mediator for shared culture on the planet. And if you don't believe that, you haven't been watching the news the last few... That's one reason

we should pay attention. Like it, hate it, watch it, don't watch it. But don't say it doesn't matter. Because it very much does. I think the one reality tv show that disgusts me the most are the real housewives ones yeah and i don't i i do say like i say in the book there's certain shows i love i like shows where people creative people are solving problems

that's you know early project runway was just heaven for me because I don't know or care about fashion. So I could watch people doing something that I had no, I didn't have a dog in that race. I could just watch creative people have their aha moments and do things that seemed pretty interesting to me. But the slice of life shows like Real Housewives, I've got my own life. I don't need a slice of someone else's life. And they really are not very interesting people. Yeah, and what concerns me about it is that a young person might watch that or somebody who's gullible and think,

I'm going to become that big of a drama queen and jerk in real life and attain the wealth and success that these people put on. And some of it isn't even real. Or they've taken out big loans. We've seen the guys have gone to jail over it or been arrested or bank fraud or taxes or things like that. And certainly they probably didn't become successful to get picked to be on the show by acting that way. Or I hope they wouldn't because some of it's really toxic it's like as a man if i ever met a woman who was like yeah i love those shows i learned everything i know i'd be like maybe i should get to know you better moving right along

and the survivor is always trying to sell itself to children at this point. There are two generations now that I've watched the show. It's 22 years old. And Jeff Probst likes to face the camera and talk about what a great show it is for kids because people never get up. They learn to dig deep. They find their real power. And then they learn how to lie, cheat, steal, and betray. So when he says, kids, you can play right along, and the next scene is somebody telling a lie, I'm not quite sure what he's telling. Yeah, it's like lies and deception. Yeah, that's what you want your kids to learn.

I've often made a joke about how there's no real husbands of Atlanta, like a real husband show. There's just a real housewife show. Because it would be boring because Bob would turn to John and go, hey John, what are you doing? Watching the game. Okay, John.

Episode one. There you go. Hey John, you want to go fishing? Sure. Alright. Let's go. I think these shows are great if you see them for the entertainment value and you take them for the entertainment value. But I really get concerned as we live in a really weird world right now.

And I don't know if you get in this book, but with the rise of the Instagram basically becoming this almost, it's almost a Playboy edition in and of itself if you've ever gone on Instagram. And then there's the rise of OnlyFans. and we've become this thing where everybody's a brand everyone's trying to push their image everyone's you know if you've i don't know if you talk about the book but the fakery of some of these instagram people where they actually go into studios to take photos of them sitting in a small private jet and they're homeless under a viaduct? I have grandchildren and including two teenage granddaughters. And of course, they have seen a lot of Instagram over the years. And I finally, I was watching my daughter, my granddaughter,

Taylor, looking at Instagram. And I said, why are you looking at that? I worry about what you're getting from that. And she turned her camera around and it was a Greenpeace video about saving whales. And I thought, okay, I should stop assuming. But then my other granddaughter was watching one of those makeup videos and I said, they don't really look like that. And she just turned to me and she's, of course I know that. So maybe they're more savvy than we think. We hear sad stories about kids being bullied and even committing suicide from the kinds of things that they get through the social media. But a lot of kids are growing up very savvy about computers and about image and about, to some extent, privacy. I do talk in the book about

privacy and how our relationship to privacy has really changed. We used to be able to go out in public and find a place where we could just be alone. And now you have to do that internally because cameras are everywhere. It's not just static cameras, but people with cameras on their phones are everywhere. And you never know when you're being filmed. So people are learning to create privacy in their mind and to just be in a bubble. And yeah, I remember a few years ago, the first time I went to a coffee shop and I realized that every single person in the coffee shop was looking at it, even the ones sitting at the same table. And that's when I knew, okay, things have really begun to shift in our culture. And it's not just the United States.

This is a global phenomenon. And it's one reason I want people to realize how important not just television just television but screens have become yeah dopamine nation everyone's looking for that dopamine hit the I recognize it too I think it was like 2011 2012 I think 2012 ish and I would go into restaurants and you would see a family three or four kids wife and husband they're sitting there and everyone is just no one's talking just people just eating and just wow i thought my dinners at home were bad and mom would always be like everyone has to sit down and eat and we all have to talk to each other i thought that was bad but

yeah you just you're just like wow this is it was like zombies watching zombies eat or something yeah i'm like i don't know this is really good so why did you name the title of the book the lie about the truck what is that in reference to? Well, so, yeah, we were just talking about lying. So The Lie About the Truck, and this is a story that partly tells a story on Survivor because it was a particular season that had a really sweet older man and a really young kid, barely out of his teens. And they got very close to the end, and they made a deal that if the young kid won immunity,

immunity from being voted off, at a certain point he would give it to the old man, and if the old man would give him this truck, he'd won. So they make this deal. The old guy wins a truck in a challenge, and he makes this deal with the kid to give him the truck in exchange for immunity. If he wins it, a pretty good deal. Who knows if he'll win it? It's a great new truck, $50,000 pickup. Lo and behold, the kid gets immunity. And the whole episode is his struggle to decide whether he should give it up, keep his promise or not. Does he give the guy immunity or not?

And he says to the camera, I was such an idiot. If I win a million dollars, I can buy a lot of pickups. Now I'm stuck. And then it suddenly becomes he victimized me. He knew that this would be a problem. He tricked me. And, of course, he doesn't give him immunity. And the whole thing plays out on television.

And in an interview, Jeff Probst said that they shouldn't have condemned the kid for this because he was just a naive young kid who had never been in such a situation before and i just thought who put him there oh my god you're the producer yeah he's sitting there counting his money yeah we shouldn't have done that but that was cruel i I'm going to go shopping now. That was cruel. It is interesting to me on these shows, too, that a lot of these people get typecast into the character they play on the show or whatever. Oh, do you know about the contracts?

No. Tell us. And it's not just Survivor, although Survivor probably has the most draconian contracts ever written, but all the reality shows require people to give up a massive amount of control over their image. And the contract for Survivor, at least the only one that's been leaked that we've seen,

because CBS has a litigious stranglehold on details, but the contract that was leaked, people have to give up the right to their entire autobiography forever. Wow. Their life story now belongs to CBS, and their image name belonged to CBS, and that CBS can do anything they want with it, including fiction. So they sign a contract saying that you can use my name and image in the most

negative conceivable way. You can make up stuff about me for the rest of my life. And you, and people were signing that contract just to go to the audition, not even to be on the show. And they also are signing away their right to talk about anything that happens on the show. Like for years, they can only do appearances that CBS approves. And then for the rest of their life, they cannot tell any secrets of production or any behind the

scenes things. Now people have broken that multiple times, but the ones who have broken it are the celebrities of Survivor, the ones that have played multiple times, who the ones who have broken it are the celebrities of Survivor, the ones that have played multiple times, who are a good brand for Survivor. So I think they can get away with it. The Malcolms and the Tysons and the Boston Robs can tell secrets a little bit because they're good for the show. But Joe Schmoe, who gets voted out in episode three, he's just going to be cut off at the knees if he breaks anything in that contract. After the first season, somebody sued because they felt they were given a really negative edit, and that lawsuit went nowhere.

All he had to do was look at the contract and realize he'd agreed to the possibility of a negative edit. Wow. Wow. That is crazy. Anything more you want to tease out on the book before we go? No. I have a chapter called Race. I have a chapter called Sex. edit. Wow. Wow. That is crazy. Anything more you want to tease out on the book before we go? No, I have a chapter called race. I have a chapter called sex and I have a chapter called hunger and a chapter on the terrifying natives. Those are a few of the windows that I think Survivor

opens on the world. Every in one of the things I love about television as opposed to the internet is that if you surf the channels, you don't know what you're going to get. Everything is there. You're not going to like some of it. You're going to love some of it. But everybody is there. There you go. There you go.

It's been wonderful to have you on, Sally. Very insightful. And people should go pick up the book. Give us your plug so people can find you on the interwebs. I am at www.sallytisdale.com. There you go. And Sally, thanks for coming by and spending time with us today. Thanks a lot.

Thanks for having me, Chris. There you go. The Lie About the Truck, Survivor, Reality TV, and the Endless Gaze. It just came out two days ago, October 26, 2021. If you're watching this years from now. So you can pick up the order. I'm sure you can pick up the book years from now, too, if you want. We have people still watching our videos from 12 years ago. It's insane.

And they'll actually make comments on them. You're like, what? Same thing with Survivor. Fan forums never stop. Cool. I think I'll start showing up nude in a loincloth like Survivor does and even that. Wait, I'm doing that now.

Anyway, I'm going to have some rat soup after this. I don't know where these rat jokes are coming from. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com, Forge has Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification. Go to Goodreads.com, Forge has Chris Voss. See all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and all those different places.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies.

I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can pre-order the book right now wherever fine books are sold. But the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away.

Different collectors, limited edition, custom made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out or order the book wherever fine books are sold.