RHAP: We Know Survivor - Why ___ Lost Survivor 50 Ep 5 w/ Steven Ramm

Episode Date: March 28, 2026

Why ___ Lost Survivor 50 Ep 5 w/ Steven Ramm Two tribes had decisions to make. Emily said the plan to vote out Angelina “is the most obvious plan on earth!” Meanwhile Charlie said, “I can only imagine that I might’ve played a little too hard.” Were these statements accurate or was it more complicated? Steven Ramm from Survivor 49 joins David Bloomberg and Jessica Lewis to answer all these questions and more, including insight into Rizo’s gameplay from the perspective of someone who played with him! At RHAP, we know Survivor, and we know Why Angelina and Charlie Lost. David Bloomberg and Jessica Lewis dive deep into recent gameplay, joined by NASA engineer and Survivor 49 alum, Steven Ramm. This packed episode breaks down all the drama, strategy, and emotion behind Angelina and Charlie’s torch snuffs, uncovering which alliances falter and whose social reads miss the mark. The team spotlights those game-changing moments when trust slips, alliances fracture, and even the Shot in the Dark becomes a centerpiece of strategy and paranoia. The group unpacks the tension on today’s swapped tribes, where old pregame rumors haunt Angelina, and swap tribe numbers leave her and Charlie exposed. Listeners hear about Angelina’s post-blindside scramble, her attempts to pull in Ozzy for a big Christian vote, and the challenges of overcoming damaged reputations and former alliances. For Charlie, the hosts dig into how trusting relationships from his original tribe backfire, his struggle to read new dynamics, and that infamous late-night, idol-related confrontation with Rizo. The subtle plays and timing of information-sharing get their due, as do the ways hunger, exhaustion, and returning-player baggage cloud judgment when lines must be drawn in the sand. Steven details his own paranoia about alliance-building and the hazards of swapping into the minority Jessica and David debate whether waiting for the “right people” at the merge can ever be a viable plan Ozzy’s reaction to last week’s blindside, and the pitfalls of leaving camp at the wrong moment, gets an in-depth look How a single vote in a past season (the infamous “Maria” vote) can haunt present-day strategy, especially when confessionals and reality blur The crew points out the edit’s focus, sometimes at the expense of a woman’s perspective, sometimes misdirecting viewers about who’s driving the vote With trust eroding and the merge looming, the podcast raises big questions: Is waiting for new alliances worth it, or does it cost you your own tribe’s faith? When does overthinking, or emotional baggage, become the real twist in the game? 0:00 Panel Introductions 6:36 Ozzy’s Meltdown on Mike Vote 12:21 Ozzy Misses Crucial Tribe Strategy 19:02 Shot in the Dark Mishaps 27:00 Critiquing Survivor Edit Choices 35:44 Angelina’s Swap Tribe Predicament 44:02 Premerge Alliances Shape Decisions 53:43 Charlie’s Blind Spot With Kamilla 1:01:24 Rizo Outsmarts Charlie’s Confrontation 1:08:53 Kamilla Chooses Her Side 1:16:00 Scheming Styles Clash and Backfire 1:26:41 Trauma and Emotional Decisions Return 1:34:45 Social Bonds Influence Tribal Targets 1:49:37 Angelina and Charlie’s Exit Explained Check out Peace Corps: https://peacecorps.gov/serve To pre-order Rob’s book, The Tribe and I Have Spoken, visit www.robhasabook.com LISTEN: Subscribe to the Survivor podcast feed WATCH: Watch and subscribe to the podcast on YouTube SUPPORT: Become a RHAP Patron for bonus content, access to Facebook and Discord groups plus more great perks!

Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything, like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember, 9-88, Canada's Suicide Crisis Hubline. It's good to know, just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 9-88 Suicide Crisis Helpline is funded by the government in Canada. This time of year, the school calendar really starts to fill up, spring activities, testing season, and that final push toward the end of the year.

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It fits into even the busiest spring schedules. It's also trusted nationwide. In fact, Iexel is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the U.S. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get Iexel now. Listeners can get an exclusive 20% off Iexel membership when they sign up today at Iexel.com forward slash today. Visit Ixl.com forward slash today to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. This time of year, the school calendar really starts to fill up.

spring activities, testing season, and that final push toward the end of the year. It's a great moment for kids to stay focused and build confidence in what they're learning. That's where Iexel comes in. I Excel is an award-winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand their schoolwork, from math and reading to writing and science. It's designed for pre-K through 12th grade, with personalized interactive content that adapts to each child's level and pace. I Excel makes it easy to stay on track with instant feedback and clear explanations, skills organized by grade level and simple progress tracking.

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Welcome to Survivor and you're feeling down. David and Jessica will turn it around. They'll break down the rules and we'll show you how. You're playing yourself and got voted out. This is why Blank lost. And this is Wibank Lost. Oh, baby, this is Y Blank Lone. Welcome back to the 10th anniversary year of the Y Blank P.

I can't speak right off to that to the Y Blank Lost podcast and 25th anniversary of why Blank Lost as a concept. See, I added that in there and it just totally threw me off right off from the get-go. I'm David Bloomberg, also known as the Rules Walker to some and add to others. With me, of course, is my co-host, Jessica Lewis, who I have now dubbed as the Bad Rock Warrior. Oh, the bad rock warrior. I kind of like that. That's a little, you know, little, you know, sensitive but also like,

Mm-hmm. Bad rock warrior. I can handle that. I can take that. Yep. So thanks for, do, oh, wait, if you're going to give me a name, do I also, are you bestowing it upon me by like, yes, thank you. Thank you very much for that.

I want to make sure. Yes. And joining us, and those of you on video could already see, is a new special. guest with a lot of insight into the gameplay of one of the main characters of this episode, Stephen Ram from Survivor 49. Yo, what's up? I'm so excited to be here.

It's funny because this time of year, last year, I was notified I was going to be on 49 and I was out prepping and I was actually listening to a lot of your podcast, kind of getting my head in the game. I'd be working out. Yeah, this is kind of surreal and a really exciting, cool moment. So thank you for having me here. I'm pumped. Excellent.

We're excited to have you join us. Yes. We're very happy to have you here. And I don't have a coach name for you. I couldn't, you know, I mean, I feel like, I feel like that's, you know, something. I don't. I was thinking of some that they were a little too obvious, you know, like Rocket Warrior or, you know, something like that. Those were too obvious.

I don't know if you have one for yourself. I'm always hesitant to give myself nicknames. He did a great job doing that. And like I love laugh for him. I was called semi-lovingly the Shermanator in college because I was very dorky but fearless. And so that was my name for a bit. I don't want that to stick. Actually, I'm regretting you even saying that now.

I was going to say too late. Too late. Can we cut that? I don't know. I kind of like the. I left my flashy thing, you know, my men in black flashy thing. You probably have those. Yeah, you probably have access to those, you know, Area 51 or something like that.

I can't confirm or deny. But, yeah, I'm definitely going to forget that. Yeah. No, it's all good. No, I'm excited to, we'll see what maybe people in the comments can give me a nickname. We'll go. I don't know that you want that. You just welcome that too.

I'm generally good. So that's okay. Yeah. But so we obviously, you know, for us, just recently saw you play Survivor. What else have you been up to since then or since you were even, you know, were at Fiji?

Yeah, I mean, obviously enjoying the ride that was season 49. I started this show or the season with like, this imposter syndrome feeling of like, I don't even think I should be out here. And like, I left the game feeling so confident, but then it was fun watching it again and seeing who I was at the beginning

and kind of cringing a bit. But that's a good sign because that means that I'm no longer that person. And so seeing episode one where I was just like in tears over something so trivial and silly was really a fun moment full circle. And so since then, I mean, I'm still working with Nysa. I don't know if you guys saw the recent announcement, but it's all about a moon base now, $20 billion. We're going back to the moon, which I'm really pumped about and working on some music stuff on the side. And yeah, just enjoying watching some of my, you know, castmates from 49 do really well on season 50.

This is really cool. That's amazing. So are you turning three boys on a bench into a hit single? Is that? Well, I mean, yeah, I actually have a home recording studio. And I joked about this out on the island. So fun fact, it was actually four boys on a beach. I don't know why they decided to boot Alex from that.

But we had a whole moment on the beach where we were riff in. And I think our flow, we hadn't quite mastered it yet. So some of our rhymes maybe weren't quite hate. It went from four boys on a beach to three boys on a bench. It was just Rizzo. And then it was just Rizzo. He was the last boy on a beach. But yeah, we're going to start the world tour, I think, after 50 finishes airing.

I want to give Rizzo some time to enjoy that, enjoy that this moment before we start hitting it hoard. Yeah. Yeah. And you're hoping he wins so that he can finance the tour. Oh. Yeah. Do we need a, this is not going to pay for itself. Right.

We need a lot of auto tuned. Amazing. All right. You said about a year ago you were listening to this podcast and now you're here and you get a double episode and you get to talk about Rizzo. I mean, not in the way that we often talk about people. You still get to talk about him. And so, you know, just like we've done for all those podcasts you listen to and I've done for over 25 years now in one format or another, we will figure out what went wrong for both Angelina and Charlie

by comparing how they played to a set of guiding rules for winning I originally wrote way back after season one and have been updating ever since. We use all the non-spoiler information available to us from what we saw on TV interviews, social media, and secret scenes. The newest published version of the rules can be found at rob has a website.com slash yxlost feed where you can click on the link bubble for the survivor rules. Now, as always, we have a few other things we want to

to discuss before we address how Angelina and Charlie did in terms of the rules. But with two players to talk about and most of the episode focusing more or less on those votes, I only have one main topic to bring up here. And that is a biggie. Ozzy's reaction to last week's mic vote. Because it was absolutely over the top. And for a moment, I thought it might actually. cause Christian and Emily to turn on him and just be like,

we want to get rid of polyprosy pants here. I, you know, I, I somewhat understand him being upset in the moment they got back. Fine. I mean, maybe don't show it that much, but I understand being that upset. But, and I, you know, I may have said this once or twice, perhaps last week, but if he actually wanted to know what was happening at camp, maybe he shouldn't have gone off fishing. Yes, but they weren't going to tell him anyway.

If he had been there, it would have been a lot more difficult to avoid it. If he had seen them all going around talking to each other, it would have been a lot more difficult to not tell him. It's very easy to not tell him when he's gone and just shows up for 15 minutes before we're going to tribal. Understood. Understood. Yeah. My first thought when I saw that was like I would start to want to, or why does he feel so comfortable that while we're all game strategy, before tribal, to go on a fishing trip, does he have something?

Does he have an advantage? So those that didn't know that maybe he had something, I would start to be like, why, I mean, I know Ozzy's Ozzy and that's his thing. He loves fishing. Like, but at the same time, like this is 50. He's trying to be the new Aussie. And I saw him going off and fishing when everyone else was talking strategy. And I'm like, I would have never dreamt to do that because like, even like you said,

even if you don't, you're not a part of every conversation. you're at least wary of who's pairing up and walking off. And that's valuable information. You're clocking how long they're off talking. Like, oh, they don't usually seem like they're talking, but they've been on for a while. This must be more than just a lot of a lot of something. So it's just all, you know,

you'd think like, oh, why does Ozzie feel so comfortable? So I agree. Yeah. And then he came back and was like, why was I left out? Yeah. Yeah. And I wanted them to say that to him. I was going to say nobody pointed out to him that like,

well, if you hadn't been fishing, because it would have been interesting to see what the response would have been then. Because do I think that that's why they didn't tell him? No, I think they didn't tell him because they decided we're not going to tell Ozzy. But it would have been very interesting to be like, well, we were going to tell you, Ozzie, but you were fishing and we didn't have a chance to because by the time we came back, we had to get ready to go. And then to see what the response would have been.

They did have a chance because Emily almost did. And but he even admitted, you know, I made it. a video about how clueless he was when she was trying to tell him. And he's sitting there staring at her like, what? Huh? Who? Like that was literally what happened. She's like, Mike is turning on me. What? Mike is turning on me. He wants me out. Who? You know, this was the previous one. And I was like, oh my gosh, it's just so bad. And then in this episode, he's like, well, Emily tried to tell me and I didn't pay attention. Yeah, exactly, which again, maybe if you had been around, if he had been around,

he would have seen Christian and Mike go off to the beach. He would have seen Christian running around frantically to talk to Emily. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered to him. Because I mean, the thing is, is Ozzy is his own player, right? He plays and we, we know how you feel about the way he plays, David, because you, and I can understand why he would frustrate other players because he's, he's not the strategic mastermind. He never has been. And so it might not even matter if he's sitting there seeing these things happen because he's sitting having a conversation with Emily and he still doesn't understand what's going on. He still doesn't get it. So for him, it might just be like, well, I am not the strategist. I need someone to strategize for me. And I think we kind of saw that at the

beginning of this season when he was talking with Surrey where it was kind of like, I need help. And so I feel like he was in kind of like that comfortable space. And I think that's why Emily is a comfortable space for him because she's the brains of the operation. And he's like, well, I'm going to go get the food now because Emily is going to figure this out. And so maybe that's just his comfortable way of playing for Ozzy because he doesn't have those other tools that some players have. I mean, I see what you're saying that.

Yeah, maybe it would have happened anyway. But he would have at least had a chance to notice something was going on. Oh, for sure. And if he ignored it at all. If he ignored it, then I'd have criticized him for ignoring it instead of not even being there. You know, I mean, it's one or the other. But, but, you know, he is trying to strategize. Yeah.

He's not getting it. And we saw a lot of that in this rant because he said things like, I'm trying to wrap my head around how this makes sense strategically. And all I can think of was, don't hurt yourself. And then he had the nerve to tell them, I think you should have just thought about it a little more. And I'm like, you didn't think about it at all. And you were missing the rather important point that Mike was coming after Emily. They didn't have time to be like, let's think about this for a few days. No, Mike was coming after Emily.

And when Christian tried to use logic and ask if, you know, would you have rather known and lie to Mike? Ozzy was like, well, I would have rather been in on it. And again, okay, try staying at Tampa. if you would have wanted to be in on the decision. Then because by the time he got back, I mean, we don't know the exact timing, but it seemed like by the time he got back, they maybe had a few minutes to tell him.

But there's no way they could have reworked the whole plan if he wanted to be in on something, you know? Right, right. And he even went so far as to mock Christian saying, the math isn't mathing. Maybe I need an algorithm, you know? And it's like, come on, dude. And it's like, no, you just,

just needed to do what you said you were going to do in the pregame and early on, actually think strategically instead of returning to usual form. Sure. But I will give him just a little bit of grade. And I think Stephen can probably, and not that I'm telling you have to back me up here, Stephen, but I do think that there are things that happen when you are playing this game that affect you so much more emotionally than you would ever expect them to, which is why I think we then saw the next day he was apologizing for the way he behaved

because I think he had that moment of clarity and the realization that like, yeah, it was a little overboard because at the time you're playing a game for a million dollars and there's so many things happening all at once and when you're left out of conversations and when you don't know what's going on and then you find out that people are are hiding things from you, they can have a really like heavy like toll on you because it keeps happening and you're just like God, I just want to break. I just want my brain to turn off for two seconds. And so, you know, not that I'm thinking that he should have done something necessarily different other than stuck around.

But, yeah, I mean, I think the emotional outbursts happened to people when they play Survivor. And we've seen some very crazy emotional outbursts. I mean, people have dumped bags of rice into the fire and because they were so upset about things. I mean, like, things have happened that you would never do in real life. you just wouldn't do these things. But in Survivor, you're like, well, I'm going to burn someone's hat now just because it's going to be, that's how I feel right now. This is what I'm going to do.

But you wouldn't do that in real life. Yeah. Yeah. No, I definitely agree. And I think, too, like, it's interesting. I love these, I love returning player seasons because everyone is looking for some form of redemption. They maybe want to rewrite their legacy or prove to people that they've changed. But what I love so much about Survivor is that you can, it's so hard to change.

you're so hard. And when you're hungry and you're tired, it's your brain sometimes just defaults to what could have been bad habits. Like just because like you don't have the extra gas in the tank sometimes. Don't react emotionally. That's what the old Ozzy would do. And so sometimes like these things hit you and like the feeling of being left out of a vote and it's just like, and like you feel like lost, you feel hurt, you feel angry. And like all of that stuff. overrides maybe the new operating system that he's downloaded, you know, and so I can definitely feel for him. And there's also, there's probably a lot of other stuff that was said and done,

like maybe that didn't make, you know, the edit that maybe let him to feel even hurt. But at the same time, I thought it was interesting. And I could be misremembering. So correct me if I'm wrong. But didn't he also say, like, if they, I would have absolutely blown up their first thing. Yeah, that was the next thing. I was going to say was he basically admitted that it was good for them, I mean to us, not to them,

that it was good that they didn't tell him because he would have blown it up. So you got all mad about being left out and then you admit that they were right to leave you out. And then Jessica, to your point about yes, how he calmed down the next day. I was thinking the same thing as you when I was watching it. But then he turned around and went into this mode. where he tried to do strategy and it was bad because he kept like through the episode he kept saying and believing things that sounded like strategy but it reminded me of like a toddler with a toy squeaky hammer believing that they're really building something it looks like it

it sounds like it the toddler believes it but it's not happening oh my god like after ozie had seemingly recovered, but really hadn't, he told us he wanted insurance that Christian wasn't going to vote him out. So he was like, I need your shot in the dark. Yeah, the thing is, those really aren't all that valuable. And if Christian did want to vote him out, but also wanted to make him feel good, I'm sure he would have given him the shot in the dark and been like, I'll still vote you out with it. Because I don't know if you know this, Stephen, but Some people even lose their shot in the dark. Yeah, no.

So the shot in the dark this season, one thing that popped out to me this episode was how much bigger it is than the ones we had on 9. And I like to think that this might be one of the legacies I've left on the game. You know, you try to leave your mark on the game. And hopefully it's for something bigger than the shot in the dark dimensions. But I actually misplaced mine day two, sleeping on the beach. It's in your in your bag. It was the first night we slept on the beach. and I don't know, like I just didn't tighten it enough and like a crab was crawling over me and you know, you know,

and so you move around and it was a yard sale. I woke up in the morning and my clothes were everywhere and I'm traveling stuff and like my socks and everything and I'm like gosh, they must think I'm so scatterbrained, which is great because they know I'm also a rocket scientist. Maybe this is good. And I'm doing that and I'm digging around. And I remember Jason came up to me and he was like, hey, what are you doing? What are you looking for? Because I've been there for a while and I'm freaking out. And he goes, I was like, oh, I'm looking for my hair. hearing aid case. He said, what does it look like? And I told him, I was like, that looks a lot like a shot in the dark. And we never ended up finding it. Of course, I'm panicking because, I mean, the yellow tribe historically was the disaster tribe. And even though we ended up killing it,

that was always in the back of my head. We hadn't been to immunity yet. And I was like, dude, if they find out that I am defenseless, I'm just easy picking. So I looped in MC and I looped in Jason and we actually diverted, we created this plan and we thought maybe Yellow Sophie had found an extra one by mistake and didn't realize it. So while she was gone, they created a diversion to get her away from camp and I dug through her bag. And anyway, I ended up getting the shot in the dark back later. I ended up finding and it was good. But part of me wonders if they're like, dang, Stephen lost it so easily. Maybe we need to make this little bigger. Well, bigger. And I noticed that in the video when Christian does hand his over, it has his name on it. And,

Yeah. So which you, you know, they didn't used to have probably. Ours, unless I totally missed it and it's very possible. I was, I didn't look at my shot in the dark a lot. Like it's not like I was sitting there looking at the side. It was just like a brown dice. And I'm pretty sure it didn't have our names on it. So that's a really cool detail that maybe they also added so that if someone finds

another person shot in the dark, they don't make that mistake. So I have to think that maybe my, my, my. dumb-dumness in the first couple days. You're a game changer. You are a game changer. You're a shot in the dark changer. Yes. But even, I mean, even as that was happening on chat BCC,

several of the new era players were like mocking Ozzy for thinking this was so valuable. Carolyn was like, I gave mine to Jam Jam. Owen also lost his. So people, I mean, yes, has it had an impact? at times, yes. But Ozzy seemed to just put such a huge value on it. And that's what I mean, you know, by he thinks he's being strategic, but these are things people don't care about.

And certainly Christian would not have cared about if he actually wanted to vote him out. Yeah. And what Ozzy did accomplish with this demand was show Christian that despite his earlier words and a couple of hugs, he really didn't trust him. And then another comment that was, you know, something like he'd seen things about this but didn't really understand the implication was telling Emily, well, you're going to want to get rid of Christian so you're not seen as a duo with him. And it's like, okay, yes, you don't want to be seen as a duo. We talk about that here. But there are other ways to do it other than voting out your duo partner.

Yeah. Also, why would you not expect her who's, they're clearly in a. duo, he clocked that. Immediately she's going to go and tell Christian, like, you know, everything that I just told her. Like, you kind of have to assume that if you like know that they're not supposed. So if you're trying to be sneaky and get someone to flip, I don't know. Like, I just didn't seem like it was the most tactful approach.

But again, we don't see everything. So I try to be mindful of that. But yeah. Yeah. And I do think it's interesting that everything that Emily has been told thus far, she then immediately turns around and tells. So it's like, that's also happening. So if you want everyone to know,

a secret tell Emily because Emily will immediately tell everyone who isn't supposed to know. Yes. Yeah. But maybe she's doing it on purpose. I don't know. It's just fascinating to me. Yeah, I think she was definitely doing that on purpose, telling Christian, that was definitely on purpose.

I think, you know, I have maintained this and, you know, eventually I'll either be proven right or wrong, that I believe those two are like the tightest, too, which is why some decisions, some people are like, oh my gosh, you're putting so much in the hands of Emily. He knows he is because he trusts her. Yeah. So. Absolutely. And like I just always assumed that when I was saying anything to Rizzo, Savannah or Sof,

that they, whatever I said was going to get back to the other two. Yeah. And I think they assumed the same with me, Jawan and Sage. And so, I mean, to put myself, to roast myself a little bit, though, I made kind of a similar mistake where I was working with Jaron and Sage. And I told Sage about Christina finding an idol. And I wanted to hold off on Joanne. And in hindsight, I was like, why did I, of course, immediately Sage went and told

John her number one. Yeah. I knew where I stood in the pecking order there. Like, I just, so like, I don't know. Like, yeah. I think maybe why I found that so painful to watch is because I made a similar ish mistake at one point too. And, but yeah, it was a little baffling that that was the approach to try to rally

the troops against Christian. Let's go to the number one, his number one ally as my first pitch. Maybe he pitched others first, but it's like, dude, maybe, yeah, start showing up the troops at a more grassroots level over here and then show Emily. If I'm going to turn, you're either with us or not. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. This time of year, the school calendar really starts to fill up, spring activities, testing season, and that final push toward the end of the year. It's a great moment for kids to stay focused and build confidence in what they're learning. That's where Iexel comes in. I Excel is an award-winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand their schoolwork, from math and

reading to writing and science. It's designed for pre-K through 12th grade, with personalized interactive content that adapts to each child's level and pace. I Excel makes it easy to stay on track with instant feedback and clear explanations, skills organized by grade level, and simple progress tracking. It fits into even the busiest spring schedules. It's also trusted nationwide. In fact, Iexel is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the U.S. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get Iexel now. Listeners can get an exclusive 20% off Iexel membership when they sign up today at Iexel.com forward slash today. Visit Ixl.com forward slash today to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. This time of year, the school calendar really starts to fill up.

activities, testing season, and that final push toward the end of the year. It's a great moment for kids to stay focused and build confidence in what they're learning. That's where Iexel comes in. Iexel is an award-winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand their schoolwork, from math and reading to writing and science. It's designed for pre-K through 12th grade, with personalized interactive content that adapts to each child's level and pace. I-Xcel makes it easy to stay on track with instant feedback and clear explanations, skills organized by grade level and simple progress tracking. It fits into even the busiest spring schedules. It's also trusted nationwide. In fact, Iexel is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the

U.S. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get Iexel now. Listeners can get an exclusive 20% off Iexel membership when they sign up today at Iexel.com forward slash today. Visit Iexel.com forward slash today to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. This time of year, the school calendar really starts to fill up, spring activities, testing season, and that final push toward the end of the year. It's a great moment for kids to stay focused and build confidence in what they're learning. That's where Iexel comes in. Ixel is an award-winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand their schoolwork, from math and reading to writing and science. It's designed for pre-K through 12th grade, with personalized interactive content

that adapts to each child's level and pace. I-Xcel makes it easy to stay on. track with instant feedback and clear explanations, skills organized by grade level, and simple progress tracking. It fits into even the busiest spring schedules. It's also trusted nationwide. In fact, Iexel is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the U.S. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get Iexel now. Listeners can get an exclusive 20% off Iexel membership when they sign up today at Iexel.com forward slash today. Visit Iexel.com forward slash today to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. On top of everything else, after they compared notes on the way they were acting or the way he

was acting to both of them, you know, Emily said to Christian, we're playing Survivor. You have to know this stuff is going to happen. And if anyone should know, it's someone who's playing for the fifth time. Yeah. Yeah. That is a fair point. I don't know. I mean.

Ful me five times. Yeah. We're going to think of it's going to. Yeah. All right. Well, I don't have anything specific for our new semi-regular segment. The CBS Mornings crew is wrong about blank. Although I really wish, I don't have anything factual based.

But here's something I wish they would stop doing. Don't ask the players who they think will win. Because I guarantee every one of them. them already knows who wins. Yes. Okay. I always love that when any of the, anyone interviewing this like,

who are you rooting for? And who do you hope? They can put themselves in the mind of where they were at the time. And that's the way both Charlie and Angelina answered it. So, but you could see like the host, I think it was Gail King. I can't remember exactly which of them asked,

but said, who do you want to win? And you could see Charlie like freeze for a moment. at least in my eyes, he, like, froze and was like, well, I'm rooting for Tiffany. You know, and then they asked Angelina, and Angelina's like, I'm all about the women. I'm rooting for the women. And so they knew to shift it. Yeah.

To the answer that they can give. But you people are the CBS morning crew. You are supposed to be news people. you should know what is going on there. Do not ask them a question they can't answer. Yeah, they know the NDAs we all had to sign. And I was paranoid anytime I just was talking to a fan at a watch party because I get asked that stuff all the time and you're just like very careful. And I can imagine Dary and a headlights how I would have felt if I was on a live show, you know.

So I feel you. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Maybe they want to take the money back from them. So they're like, let's clip them. The next season. I don't know. We need bigger shots in the dark.

We need them to go bigger. Yeah. They're like baseballs and then basketballs and then like, yeah. That's a big box you're just carrying around. Yeah. So I know I said I only had that one thing plus the CBS. Do either of you have anything else or do you just want to move on to the rules here? Well, I'm only going to say one thing and it's going to be really quick.

I love Christian Hubicki, but this is not the Christian Hubicki show. Oh, I beg to differ. It clearly is, according to producers. I know. This is the problem I'm currently having with the, uh, with the edit. I, he's fantastic and I love him, but I would love a different perspective. Like maybe I don't know the occasional woman's perspective. I don't know, you know, someone like Angelina who just experienced her number one, like

both in the game and then like best friend outside of the game getting voted out. It was a blind side for her. and not hearing anything from her about how, I don't know, that made her feel, how that affected her at all. It just, it would have been, that would have been lovely to actually have part of this particular episode. But I digress.

I can understand why they didn't show the scene that she talked about in interviews a lot of her telling Mike, you're more important to me than the game. Oh, yeah. I understand that. The game, the TV show does not want to have anyone saying something is more important than the game going on in the TV show. Although I guess Jeff says that because he says you come for the experience or what I.

The experience is the prize. It's different if Jeff says it. And so, but yes, you know, she needed to and I, you know, a lot of people have said it already. But I'm glad that she pointed that out in her interviews like. Yeah, I'm glad she did too. And I understand entirely that like they have a story to tell. I get that. And they are looking to create an entertainment.

show. Right. But some of the things they choose to spend time on versus the things they choose not to has always been a little head scratching. And I feel like it's a little more obvious this season. We've seen some things that we didn't need to see. Apparently Christian, shitting his pants was more important than that particular conversation about how Angelina felt about him being voted out and she didn't know. And okay, that's a decision. It's a choice. For whatever reason they made that choice. But it is, I think as someone and again, Stephen, I'm not expecting you to agree, but when you have never been on a reality TV show before, and suddenly you're on a TV show and you don't know what they're going to show and you don't

know what they're going to include about you. And you can watch an entire episode and you're like, I was on for two minutes. And like, yeah, it's not about being on TV, but you were like, I was there and I know other things happened and they didn't show it. And that can be frustrating to you because the world doesn't know what you did, but you know what you did. And you know what effect you might have had on a vote or on a decision that was made. And then they give credit to someone else.

And you're just like, wait, hi, me. I was there too. So anyway, it's just I won't complain too much about it. But it's just something that I think is a little disheartening as a previous player and also as a viewer. Yeah. And I agree with 99% of what you just said, although I will say I did love. I love the poop segment from fish and I'm also, maybe that's because I'm really close with Sage and like that was kind of what we bonded over like gross stuff too. So I'm maybe a little bit biased.

But I mean, I agree. And like having just gone through that exact experience where you described where I mean, aside from the premiere episode, you don't know what the what you're going to be shown as. Like you remember you clocked through your head like all the things you said and you're nervous and like the anxiety that you feel before it airs. And especially for me, I'm on mountain time, unless I was traveling to the East Coast for watch party. So I sometimes get texts from people and I would try not to read them because they were on the East Coast. They'd see it first. And I'm like, oh, gosh, is this a good text or a bad text? And I put my phone up.

Right, right, right. There would be times where it's like blowing up and I'm like, this could be either two ways and ugh. And it's really tough because like I feel like on our season especially. I know it was very heavily spoiled because I think everyone knew like who from our season made it on 50. And so like, but even those that. didn't like, for example, like Hina and Ouli, we were both winning the same rate. Like we haven't gone to tribal council. And I understand you got to show the disaster tribe and like, you know, can communicate that. I mean, Uli was getting a disproportionate

an amount of airtime than Hina. And as like a watch, a viewer, like a fan, if I took myself out of the game and watched it, I was like with a functioning brainstem. I'm like, well, they're probably, the OOLEA members might be doing better. And so it kind of sometimes can telegraph things that I don't know if production goes or not. I know they need to tell the story of how people got to where they were and make you love them and stuff. But it's really tough because exactly like you said, Jessica, like you're like now people don't know like all the things that we did. And in my interview or after the game's over,

if I come out and say like, no, I did all these crazy things, you kind of come off to someone that's maybe like either delusional or people think that you're just trying to look at the industry. And they're like, oh, if it was that important, it would have made the edit. And it's like on a returning season especially, I was a little bit surprised to see that, yeah, I don't know.

I would have thought it maybe would have been more balanced. So yeah. Yeah. I was through for Angela for sure. Like especially your boot episode. Like you think she should get a little more insight into her head. And everyone else's mindsets as they're about to make that decision. And I feel like we got a lot of the Charlie and Rizzo dynamic, but not a lot on the other side.

So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, speaking of the Christian scene that you talked about, Jessica, just to head this off. at the past. We know that those were in different episodes. It wasn't, it wasn't cut one, not the other. You know, we understand it was an example of what's important.

Right. It's just, it's the things that we have seen. I mean, everyone who listened to us last week, how much I complained about the Zach Brown segment. You know, it's like, so it's, these are all choices, yes. Yeah. I mean, like, for example, a choice, especially after we, we'll go into it in a minute here, but, you know, Angelina.

describing in her interviews that Emily was the one who convinced her. Yes. I think they talked about how great Emily was and we saw none of it. Why did we see none of it? That is, you know, that's one of the, that, I think that is a particularly good example where it's like, why were you making it production look like this when it was really like this? And you could have highlighted the person who was doing it. Mm-hmm.

I agree. Yeah. So all right, well, we are about to get into the rules. And before we do that, I just realized I, when I left, I did not pop the screen back up. But so we can, you can own the rules in a shorter and much more colorful version, the rules that we are about to get into. And you can go to rob his website.com slash yx lost feeds. scroll down to the poster and click on it.

In addition to the poster, you can keep scrolling and get the poster on a t-shirt. And you can keep scrolling beyond that and get the checklist version on a t-shirt. So again, that is at rob has a website.com slash yX lost feed and click and order away. Yes, please do. And I know this is a family show, but one of these days I'll have to show you guys. I have this tattooed, you know, very... Oh, wow. Okay.

When I was out there, I was like, come on. No, but yeah, it's cool seeing them. Except now you have to look at them in the mirror. I know. You can't even read it if it's on your back. Yeah. I'm like, hey, what does it say again? Well, yeah.

Come on. Throw me here. Oh, goodness. All right. Well, two tribes had decisions to make. Emily said the plan to vote. out Angelina, quote, is the most obvious plan on earth. Meanwhile, Charlie said in his last words,

I can only imagine that I might have played a little too hard. Both statements seemed true in the moment. Were they? Or were there indeed more complications in one or both tribes? At RJAP, we know Survivor and we know why Angelina and Charlie lost. Now, the first and most important rule is, of course, do scheme and plot. From the sounds of things,

Angelina was at least rumored to have done more of this before the game than in the game. And with the additional claim of this rumor that she was targeting the old school people, when she ended up on a tribe with a couple of those very players, well, they were not very happy about it. And she did not have much wiggle room for scheming there. In fact, she was in the running to be voted out first if they had gone to tribal council, but she didn't have to go until the swap. And then, of course, on the swap tribe, things started off great

when she reunited with Mike and Christian to get rid of Q. But we know how things went from there. She told Mike Bloom she was looking forward to the merge so she could find her people. But you have to remember that old song. If you can't scheme with the ones you love, scheme with the ones you're with. Or something like that.

It's very close to that. Anyway, my point is she needed to figure out a way to do something after Mike was taken out. And what she did seemed to be going along with what Emily and Christian told her. Well, she did indicate, though, that she tried to shift things towards Christian and see if people would vote that way. But I think at that point, even if she was making those attempts, the manner in which she had entered the game and continued to play it as she described it was a much more softer approach than she had done in her previous season. And I think once you kind of begin that type of gameplay, it becomes very difficult for you to ramp it up and change it and start playing in a more

aggressive manner or trying to get people to do things because it might be a little too late at that point. Like you've not necessarily been involved in the decisions up to this point. You've not really been pushing for certain things up to this point. Now all of a sudden you are and it's because your backs up against the wall and you know you're going to be voted out. So I think that that was an additional part of her problem where she was trying to, I'm going to say it again, we talked about it last week, but trauma from like the last season she had played where people were very vocal about the Angelina that they saw on their screens and how she played the game and the things that she did. And she didn't want to do that again. She wanted to pull back. She wanted to pull back. And,

on that a little bit and I think it really affected her more so than she thought it was going to it probably would have been better for her to just be like this is who I am and this is what I'm doing and I'm going to play this game the way I played before and that was to get to the end and win yeah I absolutely and like I mean I I I love your your poet your poetic song there David and it reminded me like yeah like you can't wait until the merge to find your people like if you don't have your people by the time you get to the merge it's it's really hard unless you had them before and you were split and then you're re-get, you know, reunited. But like, I don't know.

Like, I think back to, I will say this, there's nothing more terrifying to a player in Survivor than a swap because there is a luck element to the game. And you can be the best player in the world. But if you end up on a tribe and you're the one lone person against a sea of the other tribe and you guys have this rivalry, it's going to be a lot, you know, the odds are against you in a way that's not favorable. So, yeah, like, usually someone somehow makes it through, you know, if they're the only one from their tribe. Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

I managed to connect with Sage and Juan and we, I convinced them to take out Chan. And like, that was a really, that was tough, though. I was like, Juan was definitely in that moment. I remember he at first was, his instinct was stick really strong. That makes sense. You want to go into the merger numbers. What I'm getting at is it surprised me to hear her say that because I think, um, Yeah, you got to work with the people that you have.

And sometimes it's not your ideal hand that you're dealt, but you got to play with the hand you're dealt. And you can always ask the dealer for another deal later. When you get to the merge, you can always adapt and shift. But you can't just like kind of wait and hope that you're going to make it through. And yeah, you got a role. And I'm sure that I'm sure she was. I'm sure that more than what was shown.

But yeah, I played a similar strategy too in my season as well. kind of trying to lay low, not Angelina's first season, but Angelina's second play through it was a lot more resonated with that. And like when she was saying like, yeah, I was kind of not edited as much because I was trying to lay low. And I was like, I get that. I feel that because I was like, I was like, a scientist. I was pretty good at the physical stuff. I was like, you know, sociable. And I was really, really nervous. Everyone I talked to before I went on, I was like, what are some things that I don't know? What are my blind spots? And they're like, you think that you're not as, you think you come off dumber sometimes than you do and like you're going to people are going to

clock you and so they're like you got to like dumb it down and like sometimes that means laying low and I wonder if you know angelina having seen her season before coming in was like okay I'm going to shift things and yeah I can relate I get that I understand that feeling so yeah yeah now now it's interesting Jessica because what you brought up is kind of a counter ahead of time to what I was going to say now. So, which is, now she, that Angelina noted in her interviews,

it was really Emily who convinced her. We sort of referred to that earlier, saying Emily's the mastermind. It was crying with her about how much she wanted to play with Angelina and so on. And so, yeah, I want to give Emily props, certainly more props than the show gave her,

because, you know, she went above and beyond, according to what Angelina said. But, right. Rob brought up on know-it-alls. that Angelina should have been more proactive

and trying to get Ozzy to go after Christian and I was thinking the same thing. I don't disagree with that. Okay, okay. She saw Ozzy have a full on meltdown about how he couldn't trust Christian anymore. So play into it. Try to take the reins.

You know, I understand what you were saying, Jessica. This is how she was playing, so it may have been difficult, but sometimes you just got to switch into another gear. Right. And I'm, and this is what I'm saying. Like she, I do think that there's, there's something to be said about the way you were perceived previously and how, and she's already been forewarned that people have preconceived notions about her and the type of game she's going to play. So it's almost like, well, I'm going to prove them wrong.

I'm not going to do that this time. But I don't think that's what she should have done. I think the reason why Angelina was able to do as well as she was on the last season she played was because she kind of threw, caution to the wind. It was like, this is what I'm doing. And this is what I'm going to attempt to do. And I do think that that was a moment for her, even though she did say in her ex-depressed that she was shutting down. And that's why she was just kind of sitting there. But yeah, that's the moment you need. You need to be like, hey, Ozzy, you're angry, clearly. So am I. So let's do something about it. And let's, let's respond and let's let's shift the gears here. And let's take

control of the game that someone else is clearly taking control of. And I do think, that they could have probably made that happen, but she needed to get back to that, like, I'm going to stand my ground and I'm going to say the things that I want to say right now. And she indicated that she tried to do that, but there didn't seem to be traction, but I just don't think there was enough force behind it.

Right, exactly. That was exactly, you know, she said that she also gave Emily credit for keeping Ozzy on the, you know, more or less straight path. But, and yes, it wasn't uphill battle.

I agree. Mm-hmm. But we saw how much Ozzy really wanted to strike back at Christian. Yeah. We know Angelina can muster a lot of persuasive ability. She needed to take that and focus it and make him understand, don't talk to Emily about this. Talk to me about this.

We can make it happen here. Yep. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder, I mean, there are definitely a lot of blowups that have and on my season, like, after a tribal council where people kind of have emotional reactions. And so I know what it's like seeing that happen.

And I wonder if Angelina saw Ozzie going off. And typically maybe like her previous gameplay would have been a little bit more, like you said, a little bit more less reserved. Maybe seeing how everyone was reacting to Ozzie being very emotional and like a fourth, you know, kind of causing. He was, you know, Angelina was like, maybe I'll just, maybe the tides are shifting to Ozzie. I'm not sure. Like maybe that was something that went through her mind at one point. you're also so gassed after tribal council it's a long day you're tired especially in you sometimes like it's i can see maybe not wanting to start that conversation with ozzy right away

like right at night maybe let's sleep on it a bit but like you got to hit that in the morning at least though you know you got to capitalize on the feelings while they're raw you know come and yeah i don't know yeah i was kind of surprised that i wonder if maybe that just because it didn't gain traction maybe it wasn't shown i'm not sure but like or you know know, I always wonder those things, but yeah. Anyway. So, yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, I, I just, I don't know. I think she just needed to, you know, try harder. And I think instead she went with the, the Emily route, you know. And again, it goes back to, you know, Emily's ability there, I think. But I also want to take a moment to step back. in time, like a day or so in the game, because of something that Angelina told Dalton about the three David versus Goliath players. She said, I think we were all of the mindset that like, you know, let's let this last while it can. Let's have a little fun. Let's have a little joint

success potentially. And I think we all knew it is not going to be forever, but at least let's help each other get to the merge. And here's the thing I would say. That's another reason. Above and beyond everything we discussed last week, that it made sense for Christian to strike when he did. Because I've had some people, either posting comments or respond to my videos saying, oh, it was too soon. But this helps show why it wasn't. Because if you have some unspoken agreement to go on for some vague amount of time, then that means anyone can flip at any point.

And you want to make sure you're the first, especially with her saying, the merge was the time frame. I mean, we now know it was right around the corner. They probably didn't realize it was going to be a 17-person merge. But still, you know, even without worrying about that, if you think you'll all take each other to the merge and then who knows what happens, then you need to strike before the merge.

Yeah. Well, and how about the things that she said about hearing him talk to himself in the hotel room before the game? understand that okay he was talking to himself yeah i but she she heard him like scheming and plotting and and preparing himself for vote splits and and very like like almost like he was already playing the game in the room by himself i think i would have been like hey mike like remember that conversation we had where the three of us were going to help each other along maybe we don't help christian along I mean, maybe that would have been the conversation.

She didn't say she heard names. So I don't think she heard him say, like, I need to get Angelina out or I need to get Mike out. No, she didn't say names. But I do think that when you know someone is coming in with such like gusto and this interest in really representing the game a particular way. And then you see what Christian is doing. I don't know. I might have been like, perhaps we need to take him out first. I don't know.

That was such a funny. That was such a funny sound bite because I did the same thing. You know, I talked to myself a lot. Sometimes just to like air the ideas out and think through. But I'm also very wary that sometimes you're in a room and the walls are thin. And I wonder, I don't know if Christian was this aware of the acoustics. I mean, he's an engineer. He's very smart.

Maybe he clocked how the audio was going to transmit through. the wall. Maybe he knew what he was. I don't know. Sometimes people play crazy head games. Oh, yeah. And like, maybe that was part of it where he's like, I'm just going to make people think I'm crazy. And they're going to be like, okay, well, I don't know. I don't know if that was, maybe, I don't know. There could be so many ways that someone could approach it. I remember, I liked blasting music to drown things out. I don't know if people heard that ever. It was most, yeah, anyway, it's funny. It's funny to think about. But yeah, the game definitely starts, like, when you're,

there. So it makes sense that Angelina was thinking about that. And like, definitely, I don't know, I would be very hesitant to vocalize any real concrete strategy and plans out in an area where I, anyone even had the slightest chance of hearing it. So that's why I do wonder if maybe it was, I don't know, I meant to throw people off a little bit. I don't know. I haven't met Christian in person. Obviously, I'm a big fan as an engineer. I, I relate to him a lot. And I almost poop my pants in my season a few times. So I, I saw that. And I was like, oh, man, dude, that was almost me, like, on four separate occasions. And so I sympathized and I thought he played it off so well.

So, but yeah, I'm also a self-talker dude. I'm in the car. I'm yapping himself. My girlfriend's like, is he losing it? Is this finally the time we're going to commit him now? I'm in the shower. I say, I talk to my dog like he's a human, like the way most people talk. Yeah, so anyway.

Yeah. Yeah, that is an interesting point. Like, actually, to go back on point where you were saying, though, Jessica, like, yeah, like, maybe. that could have given, you know, raised an alarm bell a little bit to be like, maybe we, maybe he's got more going on than he's telling us. And maybe he's playing too hard too fast or something. It seemed like she put too much emphasis or I guess faith in Mike White in that moment too because she really, she indicated that they had had a conversation about Christian. And she's wanted to make sure that Mike was like you, Christian's really with you. Yes, like, because I'm, I'm relying on you because I don't expect him to necessarily be with me.

I expect him to be with you. And if you really think he's with you. And that, too, is it's kind of a scary prospect because it's fine to rely upon someone who you believe is like you're like number one. That's great. But if there is a concern that who is potentially the number three isn't real keen on you as a number three and you have to put your faith into the other individual you're playing with, be like, are we really are we really okay because christian can vote out either of them you don't get to you know you're not voting amount together they're not a package as far as the vote was concerned and so i i do think that she kind of gave up a little bit of the power in that moment as well by

being like mike are we really okay and mike thought they were unfortunately they were not yeah okay when i sell my business i want the best tax and investment advice I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center.

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Listeners can get an exclusive 20% off Iexel membership when they sign up today at Iexel.com forward slash today. Visit Ixl.com forward slash today to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. All right. Well, moving to Charlie, it's strange to say, but he also had a problem of not scheming and plotting enough. And I knew there was trouble. As soon as he said at one point that there just wasn't much strategizing going on in camp. Because Charlie, you should know if you believe there aren't any strategic discussions happening, it just means you're not being included. And that's exactly what the case was. He said on CBS warnings that he should have gone into the swap more wary and with less trust in the people on his original tribe.

And then he expanded in, you know, the actual good interviews by saying his original tribe was made up of three alliances. It was D, Camilla, and Tiffany on one side, coached Jonathan and Chrissy on the other. And then he and Mike were in the middle. But he felt like he and Mike were kind of essentially adopted into the three-way. Women Alliance, which is why he felt solid about having D and Camilla on the swap tribe with him. And he told Dalton Russ, I think also more what did me in was my complacency with D and Camilla. I thought on that swap tribe, I had a little bit more room to play off a bit of emotion and less dialed in strategy.

And he added that he probably had a blind spot with D because he knew her outside the game and thought they would work together. So as he told Mike Bloom, I didn't put enough time into the end. game relationship. I think she was wary of me and just thought I was being shady or something. Yeah, this is why returning player seasons are so fascinating because eerily, this is the same thing that kind of happened with Christian and Mike White and Angelina, right? There was this like, oh, we already know each other and we're friends outside of the game.

So we're fine. We can play together. We'll be okay. And they were relying upon that out of game experience for their in game. And Christian, I think, out of the three of them is the only one that's like, no, no, no, no. That is a ruse. That is a cover story. Yes, of course, I'm playing the game with you.

Of course, of course. When in reality, we know that that wasn't his intention. And so I think the same thing was, it was almost like a very poignant moment when I was going through his exit interviews and heard him say that. That he was almost like, he was just like, oh, well, I know we're outside of the game, so we're good. Like it's fine. I can be a little more complacent, a little more laid back. And it just goes to show that you can never be that way in Survivor, regardless of what your relationships are out of the game. It shifts. It changes as soon as the game starts.

And you can't rely upon something that happened over here to necessarily affect the end game here. Because you don't know what other relationships people come in with and other feelings that people have or other trauma that they're suffering from their season. So I thought that was a really fascinating thing to hear. hear him say because he doesn't strike me as the type of person that would be complacent in how he's playing the game from what we saw last time. So then to know that this is what's happening on a returning season with him, though that was rather fascinating. Yeah, and I couldn't agree more.

I listed Charlie actually in my pregame interviews as one of the players that I saw myself. I saw similarities in myself and I like, I identified with some of the way he, like the way he played the game and saw myself maybe borrowing some or, you know, using it as inspiration. And so, yeah, I definitely agree. Like, I think sometimes you kind of get in your head a little bit, knowing how you were perceived maybe the first time or, and you feel compelled to shake things up. And sometimes if it's not broken, there's nothing to fix.

And, like, I feel like sometimes people feel a need to, like, not do the same thing over again because then it's like, okay, boring, whatever. Let's shake it up. I don't know if that goes through everyone's head, but that definitely surprised me. And yeah, it's like, it's also interesting too, because as you know, people outside the game, that could work for you for sure. Like, we could be BFFs outside. But now I know you really well. And I know how smart you are.

I know. And if you're acting contradictory to how you are in real life, that could be a red flag. And maybe, you know, yeah, that could work against you just as well as it could work for you. And so that's what makes these returning seasons so fascinating to be. Because there's like another layer. There's like an awful level of gameplay. But then there's like this. this like triple double whatever decker of like toppings they can piled on and and uh it's just

it's so interesting and um people come in with you know baggage and hopefully you leave the baggage and ponderosa and go into the game feeling free but that's that we're humans and that's not always realistic so yeah it was that was real i thought i felt the same thing i was like oh man yeah maybe just taking out for granted um you can't get complacent and it's funny this rule in particular the if people aren't working or talking strategy with you, they are most likely talking strategy against you or with other people. That got in my head so much in early game on Hina for my season because we kind of suffered from success.

We didn't have to go to tribal for a very, very long time. And I was really, really, I hit the ground running, expecting it to be a fight for the knife in the mud to quote succession. Like, because the yellow tribes are the disaster tribes. And I was expecting to have to be fighting for my life every single time. And as a result, I played a little too hard too fast, admittedly. And they kind of showed that a little bit in my first episode where I was like locking it in with everyone. But there was one person that wouldn't talk game with me. And that was Sophie Sogretti. And we're really close now and we

worked together later. But I legitimately, like she was just such a, everyone was gravitating towards or everyone liked her. And she was the one person like I'd have one on ones. I'm like, I get a good feeling. You know. look out for each other. She kind of was like, eh, I think it's a little too early to start drawing a line in the sand. Like, we haven't lost yet. Let's not,

let's not, you know, commit. And I remember getting so paranoid. And so, yeah, it was, it was just so interesting that that, that rule almost kind of backfired on me a little bit.

And I had to dial back. I luckily had the awareness to realize, okay, Zeven, maybe you are going a little too hard. And, but yeah, some people don't,

don't clock that, though. And especially in a return, season where it's obvious that pre-gaining happens, if people aren't talking a lot of strategy, that is a huge red flag. And you got to clock that and you got to feel, you know, if you're feeling that in your gut, I mean, I felt it before my boot. You're like, dang it. You're like, things just feel too comfortable or like, oh. And you're like, do I listen to your door? Or am I really just in a good spot? And like, that's the game of Survivor and that's the part that like, until you live it, it's so hard to explain. But, oh, the paranoia. And so I, I feel for Charlie. It's,

It's tough, dude. I don't know. But yeah. Anyway, sorry, that was a tangent. Back to you. I mean, the thing is, we had heard. I mean, I had some people, seen some people say, like, oh, those two are such good friends. They are definitely good on that tribe and that, you know, and on a swap tribe and everything.

And what happens here? So, you know, and Charlie even tried to help Dee out because he said in his interviews that in their original tribe, pretty much everyone told him D was playing too hard. So as a friend and an ally, he told her. But he told Mike Bloom, I remember it was almost like disbelief or very dismissive of it. From my perspective, it was a bit of an awkward conversation. We just really never really synced up. And I find this funny because people who watch the season of Australian Survivor will know earlier in the season, there was a woman who warned another player.

Hey, people are saying your name. and in response that person voted her out because she made her paranoid and it's like she was trying to help you and you voted her out and here it's the same thing he was trying to help D and now it's it's possible that as Charlie indicated in interviews that D thought he was trying to pull something using the old I'm hearing people say trick you know when it's really you doing the saying So maybe that's what she thought was going on.

But he really did hear people say it. He really did want to help her. So no good deed on Survivor goes unpunished. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I'm sorry, Stephen. The fact that like the way that Charlie interpreted so many things, I thought was fascinating that he really seemed to be focusing so much on like, well,

what if that's what the intention is of why they're telling me this thing? And, and like, I feel like, and this is exactly what Dee was doing. It's, it's so hard to just believe the person that they're telling you the truth. Like, hey, this is what's happening right now. Because in Survivor, you want to be suspicious of everything. And you're like, but wait, what if it's actually this thing? And then you get your head spiraling into all of these other narratives that don't actually exist. And you create something that never, was a thing and then it makes you appear paranoid or it makes you make choices that you would have normally not made because you have this thing festering in your brain it really it's so hard

to know like when you can actually believe someone and when you can't and to just hear how people were interpreting the different things that were being told and like no they're just actually telling you the truth they really were and you just turned it into something that it wasn't it's it's a big head game yeah yeah i I went through that so many different times when I was out there. And I mean, it turned out later, I thought Yellow Sophie was not talking game with me because she was talking game against me. I found out later, no, she just legitimately was kind of playing a different type of game. And like that's really hard, especially on a returning season, it's like for me, I was getting to know people.

And so I assumed like everyone else was going to be coming in hot because we were the Yellow tribe. And like historically we are disasters. But for a returning season, you're kind of, you have a baseline of how people are going to play. You probably realize that they're going to adjust. a bit. And so, but that adds like another layer of paranoia. And as an admitted overthinker that I am, that was what I was the most worried about on my season. And luckily, I was able to rain it in a bit. But like, I can definitely, I mean, at night, especially like if you're, it's sometimes it's hard to fall asleep. You're on the beach. You can't get comfortable. Everyone's quiet. And all you have

are your thoughts. And you're looking up at the start. And you're like, I hope I see a shooting star so I could make a wish. And I became superstitious out of nowhere. But dude, I have, I had a ritual every night. I was like, I'm not going to sleep until I see three shooting stars. And I would at least see three, like, because it's no light pollution. It was awesome. But that was so weird. And like, it's crazy the places you go in your head and emotionally when you're like second

guessing every single thing people say the intent. And sometimes it is just very simple. Just like, don't overthink it. And you can play yourself out of the game in that way. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of perhaps overthinking. things a little bit. There was Charlie's

vendetta against Rizzo. Which, let's just say this because it was not as straightforward as it was made out to be on TV. Yes, Charlie was, of course, upset about Rizzo saying he didn't vote for his number one to win, which, of course, we all know, ha ha, not true. He made that up as a lie. I talked about that, you know, several weeks ago. But the upset part of it

we'll get to more in Rule 4. Charlie said there were also good strategic reasons to target Rizzo. And those reasons do make sense. For example, he said in interviews that at the beginning Rizzo was an unknown, which makes him more threatening. But the longer he stays, the less that's an issue because people get to know him. So he wanted to target him right away and just kind of take care of that. But the problem is that Rizzo had been safe and this tribe had been safe for so long that

people got to know him already. It was too late to use that. I mean, he and Surrey got married, for God's sake. Amazing. Can you imagine being a super fan and loving the show as Rizzo does and being as young and just jovial and just excited to be there? And here you are on a hammock with Surrey and you're sharing the most intimate parts of your, like, secret survivor existence, what you have, what knowledge you know.

and then Ceree's like, we just got married. I would just die. I would just absolutely die if that was the moment I had with Ceri. I mean, come on. Amazing. Just incredible. Great for Rizzo that he's able to like pull this off, that he's been able to do so well with the people he's playing with.

Absolutely. I mean, I know Rizzo really well outside the game. And like, obviously, I played the game really closely with him. And he, I loved watching this episode. I love Charlie too. But like, I mean, God. Gosh, you're like, wish that, you're like, dang, I wish it was me playing 50, but like also, like, Rizzo is a good player, man. He's just like, he's so good at building loyalty.

And like, and I will give him credit. Like, he identifies strong players and then he demonstrates loyalty and then stays loyal to them. But in my season, his whole spiel was, I'm, I follow my word. Like, I'm not going to, like, I have nothing. He always was, I always kind of could tell. that it was a lie, but he was like, I would never lie to you. Like, I give it to you straight. Like, you know me.

Like, I have no reason to lie to you. And I'm like, yeah, you're saying that to me. And like, it sounds great. He's very good at pitching it. And that's why he's so dangerous. And so Charlie, I mean, yes, he's an unknown and all the things you just said are totally true. Like, you let someone get farther.

They get a better chance of people get to know them. And he's a free agent. Like, let's scope him up, especially if he's feeding me information. And like the biggest thing that I caught, clocked right away was Rizzo was giving information to D and Surrey before Charlie was. When admittedly, in same with Camilla. When if you're working with people, you got to feed them information right away. And like the worst thing is like some of my alliance members like I started to really doubt Christina at times because I was finding out information that she knew, but like a day late. And so someone would tell me like, oh, so I found out Shannon has an idol.

And I'm like, and then I'd find out the next day, Christine's like, oh, sorry, I meant to tell you. But I'm like, you've been holding onto this info for so long. And you tell me you're my number one. And so I start to wonder, is it incompetence or is it malicious? Like, are you really working against me? Am I no longer you're number one? And the moment you start to doubt that, that's a seed, that's a crack that someone like

Rizzo can come in. And I thought he played it so well, just like reading. Like he identified two very strong players, three. Camille as well, like very strong players and gave them information exchange, you know, and like built loyalty. I was like, he did that on our season. And I was, it was master, he's playing very similar game, which is an awesome advantage. So like someone like Rizzo going in Savannah, going into season 50, such a disadvantage, right? Because they are the easy votes. But I think Rizzo kind of clocked that as like the super fan. And one thing about him that I've learned is that, yes, he fanboys over the greats.

but he doesn't let that blind him from the ultimate goal. And I mean, maybe hopefully this, hopefully that doesn't come back to be incorrect later on. But like, he's, he won Surrey over. And like that is someone that like people just give Surrey information because she's Surrey and like they want to work with her. And to get there first, it just surprised me that when I found out that, yeah, like he was late to get, Charlie was late to tell Camilla. And I'm like, yeah, if I was Camilla too, I'd be like, wait a minute.

I thought we were close, but I'm finding out from this guy I just met. And like, he's much less threatening to me because I feel at some point he's less dangerous. I know you're dangerous, Charlie. Like, you're, you know, I know, I know what you're capable of. But like, you know, so I, yeah, that was that was so fascinating. And I felt that real time because like, yeah, information is currency. Yeah. And someone spends it before you, then you're just getting sloppy seconds.

I don't know. Oh, my goodness. Now, the other main reason that Charlie had to target Rizzo was that Rizzo didn't have any other pregame or outside the game connections. So if you take him out, nobody is going to be mad at you or come for you. And frankly, I think Charlie was overestimating the importance of this one in general. Because I can't think of anyone who was split from their friend in the game and would be so mad at that friend being voted out that they'd go on a vengeance rampage. Like I went through this list of people here and I'm like, no, I don't see it. I don't see it anywhere in this list.

Well, Mike White kind of did. But I said separated. Separated. I see. Okay. They were part of that discussion there. I'm saying like if you don't know what happened and something, someone takes out your best friend on another tribe, you don't know what happened.

So you're not, I mean, you're not going to rampage and risk your own game. No, we did see. I mean, to go back, many, many, many, many seasons with Rob and Amber. When he was like, to save her, he took a really, really big risk. Back when they used to give you pens and stuff. And I don't know if there was, was, did he also write a letter or did he just say it? I don't know, but need to say, he took, he did something that you would normally not do to make sure that she was safe.

And so I do think that there are, that's very, very few and far between, like that someone would actually do something like that. But it's interesting that this was something that Charlie was considering that, oh, well, he doesn't have anyone that would care if he had voted out because he was relying so heavily on his relationship with Dee. That's like, oh, but Dee knows me. And so she and I are going to work this game together. And so it's, again, he's putting like too much emphasis on those. those outside game relationships and significance of those relationships and forgetting, like, no, that's not necessarily as important as it is. If anything, I do think it's more significant that he was a free agent like Stephen mentioned,

you know, that this is someone who, he's a vote. If you can win him over, if you can latch on to him, he's just a vote because if he's got no one, he doesn't have those connections and he's not connected to anyone, then yeah, that's, I think, much more of a threatening reason to keep him around because he is a free agent. Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, I remember when MC was voted out from a slit tribal, you have to trust what people tell you when they come back about how it went down

and you start to like second guess. But if you let that consume you, you lose side of the game. And sometimes you got a roll with things that way. And I mean, you also, I would be thinking someone like Rizzo coming in who it was honestly probably a really great thing for his game when Savannah left because like they obviously they had to have known they worked close together at some point. And so that was probably freeing for him a little bit. And then also in general, too, like you would know that someone like that,

they are probably going to be really chomping at the bit to like prove their loyalty to people. So he was a go get her, man. He was like, I'm going to, I'm going to, I have information. I am going to find the right moment with the right person that I think I can trust and work with. And that's the one thing that Rizzo did in our season that was amazing is he found people early on that were strong, confident players that wouldn't panic under pressure, that wouldn't flip in all these things. And publicly he'd say, like, oh, I'm open for business,

but, like, he was always loyal. And he found those people now, Rizzo's going to do some damage if people don't figure that out. And, like, I guess it's easy to say that in hindsight and, like, us watching it. But, like, yeah, I would definitely wonder, I would think, like, hey, if someone like Rizzo isn't coming up to me and talking strategy with me really hard, I would have to assume that he's doing,

Matt with others because he needs to prove himself and demonstrate himself as a valuable ally. Otherwise, exactly why I think he's a good reason to get out is going to become the narrative that will then send him out. So it's like, I don't know. It's like easy to say woulda show Dakota. But yeah, I don't know. Credit worth credits do. I loved that move for him.

I was like, he was on a hammock. I was like, you got it, dude. Now, you know, one scene that particularly stood out were, Charlie and Rizzo was something I still don't understand even after going through the interviews. What Charlie thought he was doing by waking Rizzo up and asking him who he told about the idols this season. Yeah. As if it was like so super important and urgent week. I can't even wait till the sun rises, you know.

It was, it just seemed weird. But he said he was worried about Rizzo somehow using the idle information and making himself seem more trustworthy than Charlie. Charlie, which he did. But the thing is, well, he did after that, at least according to the timeline we saw. But the thing is, if he was doing that, it's not like he was going to tell Charlie that just by asking him. So, and then by even asking the question, it seemed to plant the idea in Rizzo said that Charlie was being suspicious about the whole idle thing. So it just all backfired. Yeah.

And again, I just think that this is like, we're seeing a different side of Charlie than we saw in his last season as he's kind of putting pieces together and putting the information together. And yeah, information is currency, as Stephen said. And to have that information is very important. He says he told everybody on his tribe about the idol and that everybody, you know, that he had told. everyone about it. But it's also just the manner in which he did it. And then to be accusatory towards the person who shared the information is not going to bode well with the person who shared that information with you. Because there was probably a reason why Rizzo was sharing this information with him because maybe he is trying to pull him in. Maybe he's trying to gain favor.

Maybe he's looking for a lifeline. He's looking for someone to play the game with. And instead, this is what Charlie ends up coming back with. And so, of course, Rizzo's then going to be questioned. And why is he coming at me like that? And I completely agree. It didn't make any sense. And then the explanations provided in the exit press, I don't really understand either.

So that whole thing was definitely not a great decision for Charlie in order to try to know what was being done with the information. Because he, again, was suspicious of why Rizzo was telling him. So then why are you going back to the guy that's telling you and being like, I'm a little suss about what you told me and why you told me. So I want to know what you're doing with the information. Like he's going to tell him. If you're already suspicious about why he's doing what he's doing,

you think he's going to be like, shucks, he busted me, caught me. This is my plan all along. No, he's not going to do that. It's survivor. He's going to get lied to. So, yeah, I don't think it was a good play. In addition to that, I was trying to put myself in Charlie's shoes. And I thought, I mean, you just know Charlie was probably thinking about that.

all night like, okay, I'm going to get up early. I'm going to, you know, so this was a premeditated plan. Like, sleepless nights in Fiji, sometimes you just can't get comfortable and you just think. And like, and you convince yourself, this is brilliant. Or I don't know, but maybe part of it was if I catch him right when he hasn't fully woken up and he hasn't, he doesn't have his like game face on, maybe I can catch him in a lie or maybe he'll let something slip that otherwise he would be more mindful of like keeping inside. So I was like maybe that was the tactic or the intent.

But I think, I mean, Rizzo clocked it right away when he dropped the Jonathan lie that he's like, you know, it's like, yeah, I think you said it so well, Jessica. Yeah, there's not much more to add other than maybe that's what Charlie was thinking when he did it. But Rizzo slipped in the boat during our season two. And I don't know how he did that. Like my back would be killing me. But it's just so funny. Like, he's young. He's young.

Yeah. And like, I just, I'm like, what would I have done if someone had come up and like kind of woken me up and came at me? Like I would be like, bro, what the hell? I gave you info because I wanted to work with you. And now you're kind of like interrogating me about it or like, okay, I guess I can't work with you. Or maybe I misread that situation. So yeah, I don't know. I agree.

What was said in the exercise versus what we saw. Like something is not lining up. And yeah, I don't. Anyway, yeah, maybe that was part of the idea that was let's catch him. Well, he's still snoozing. I don't know. But yeah, I just, yeah, Rizzo was like, what the hell is going on, dude?

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longest. We're, you know, we'll move along a little bit quicker here, but we are also talking about two people. I probably should have mentioned that at the top of the episode. Yeah, it might be a little longer because we are talking about two people here. The second rule says not to scheme and plot too much and to keep your scheming secret. Now, unless either of you can think of anything, I feel like we can probably pretty quickly skip past this for Angelina because we talked about how she didn't do enough. So I certainly didn't see her doing too much. I think that's a very fair point in observation.

Yeah. And maybe we just didn't really see it. She did indicate that she tried. But yeah, it certainly wasn't too much. That's for sure. Yeah. No, I agree. I don't have much ahead either.

Okay. Well, then for Charlie. I mentioned earlier that his last words were, I can only imagine that I might have played a little too hard. But the thing is, it's, it's, I'm not really sure that's true. Camilla said that it made it seem like Charlie was trying to play multiple angles, which would be breaking this rule if he'd actually been doing it and got caught. But the thing is, he wasn't.

He said in interviews that he was playing a different game than Dee and Camilla. He told Don Ross, they were just hard out at the gun, very obvious, like it's going to be us versus them, lock it down, pick aside. And I sort of more had an attitude of, why do we need to be making so many enemies, especially on the season where there are all these different connections. And we're like Sophie Sogretti, like you were describing for her. And then he further noted, if you get on one person's nerves, when they connect with the people they know or have pre-gameed with or whatever it may be,

they're going to be like, okay, it's time to get that person out. So I was more of the mind of try to stay good with as many people as you can until you don't have to do that. And this is probably why Camilla felt that way. because she was locking in and committing to allies and he wasn't. And I could see how that would make a person appear to be doing too much. Like if you're not committing to me, it goes back to what we're saying earlier.

If you're not committing to me, you must be committing to other people over there. And I, but Camilla should understand keeping your options open. Well, and I think that she probably does. And we saw her keeping her options open, right? which is because she knew she was the swing vote and she was going to decide who ultimately was going to go home.

But I think the other part that is interesting is in addition to her thinking that issue with Charlie existed, that he's keeping his options open, which is problematic. And he's coming to her with information that she feels is delayed, just as Stephen had said, like how that can make you feel as someone who's supposed to be in your alliance. and they're learning information. And she's like, wait, now I'm being forced to have to lie to you because I'm telling you like, oh, I don't know. This is new information when actually she's like, Rizzo told me this like yesterday.

You know, and so. Billy Eilish. I know. Like you start to question like what, what part of your game am I really a part of? Because you're telling me this information so much later, whereas Charlie might. have just been trying to pick a moment. But again, because information like that matters so much in this game and when people are sharing information with you and you are supposed to be in an alliance with this person and

you think that they're just, oh, yeah, oh, we, I better go tell her because I think I might have promised her some stuff too. I could see why that would make Camilla question it and just be like, is he just working with everybody to try to keep all of his options open, which is problematic for me because we know how Camilla plays this game. She wants the ride or die, and she's going to stick with that person. So I understand entirely how she had that perception of Charlie, even though that is not what Charlie was necessarily doing.

I think he was just making bad choices. Yeah, I mean, consistency is key. And so if someone has a percept, like, you have to always be mindful of what that person's perception of you probably is. And so if you've been, especially, that's why these returning seasons are so fascinating for me, like having just been out there, but then now watching it for the, because that's another layer that people have a baseline expectation of how you played the game the first time. They might expect that you change it up.

But if Camilla's expectation of Charlie's behavior was going to be one way, but he's doing something different and it's not reliable. And then you have this new unknown entity, Rizzo that's coming in and is saying and doing all the right things, even though you want to work with someone that you think you can trust, that you think you know really well, like that's really, that's difficult. But like someone, like people's perceptions, a Camilla's perception of Charlie might be different than D's. And so you kind of have to be mindful if you're Charlie.

And it's tough of like making sure that you are coming off as reliable. Because the moment that you do things that make people question like your intentions like you were saying, Jessica, that's when you start. That's when the wheels of you getting launched out of here, it start going into motion. And if it gains too much momentum, it's hard to recover. And so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

If I remember too, I don't remember who said it. but pregame, someone was talking about Charlie and just how, how dangerous he was because he's so likable. Like, everybody just, like, Charlie's like, he's just normal. He's like just a normal person who, like, you can just, you can, you can just like. And that makes him very scary and dangerous. And so I think Charlie probably thought that that was like a benefit, right?

Like, oh, well, you know, I'm just, I'm just me and, like people just like me. And I'm just going to get along with everybody. But, no, you really did have to fix us. unfortunately like this is this is a returning season and people know other people they know how they are going to play the game and and yeah you do have to kind of pick a side and if you want to keep your options open you can't let the other side know that that's what you're doing which is what's so beautiful about camilla like nobody knew that camilla was like the swing charlie thought he was a lock with camilla and she was like no not so much and it's just again it's about the way that you

were being one perceived, but also the way you're presenting yourself to the people you're playing the game with. Yeah. Oh, you're muted there, David. Yes, I was. One place that he did draw a line was his anti-Rizzo stance. But he seemed to be keeping that actually pretty moderate when talking to other people from what we saw.

Remember, mostly what we got from him was talking to us in confessionals. Like when Jonathan approached him and D to bring up Rizzo's name, Charlie just kind of agreed rather than jumping up and Dowling yelling, yes, yes, yes, yes, we need to get rid of him, which is probably what was going on in his head. So I do want to at least give him a, you know, props from what we saw. He did keep that in his head and in confessionals rather than blasting that out to people. Because I think, you know, a lot of viewers just to have it in their mind that, oh, this was the reason he left. lost. But if no one else knew that was his opinion, it can't be the main reason that he lost. Right. Right. Yeah. So.

All right. Well, the third rule tells players to be flexible. You know, like not getting too overly focused on one little thing from one person and talking about it constantly in your confessions and harping on it and getting mad about it and having it haunt or every waking moment. Not that anything like that would ever happen. So, yeah, Stephen, you didn't see anything like that for either of these players, did you? No, no, no, no, no, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no general vision at all. Everyone was fluid as a river. Oh, man, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Rizzo's in the boat, rather than that river. This is going with the flow. He's a free agent. I mean, he should be, like, yeah, anyway, sorry. No, that's, yeah, I mean, yeah, obviously I'm, you know, joking here a bit because we already discussed how Charlie had other reasons for targeting Rizzo. And I literally just before saying that entering this rule, I said, well, that wasn't the main reason. And, you know, we will get to the heart of that seemingly core reason in the next rule.

But it did seem like he was so focused on Rizzo that he lost sight of other possibilities. So it wasn't he lost because he schemed and plotted too much on Rizzo. It was part of it was though he just like you said, tunnel vision. So in the second rule, we just talked about how he was purposely trying to keep his options open, which is a good sign in the third rule. So he managed to be flexible in one way and inflexible in another way. Yeah. And I think what's interesting too is that he,

what he could have done by learning that information about Rizzo, right, could have actually worked to his benefit because what does that tell you about Rizzo? That Rizzo is incredibly loyal to those people that he's working with, but he is also going to reward the person who played the better game in the end, and it's not necessarily. So it sounded bad for Charlie because of what Charlie had been through, but it also could have been great for Charlie because it would have been like, well, you know, that could work for me because then I know that this guy,

could be my number one the whole way. And I just have to make sure I play the best game. But instead he was immediately like he can get nowhere near a jury. Like that's it. Like done and done.

Dead to me, he's got to go. And so yes, it's, I do think it clouded so much of his other game mechanics and decisions because it was like he had this nemesis over here that he kept thinking about

as opposed to like trying to determine that it was actually potentially a good thing because you did learn a lot about Rizzo and how he was also very forthcoming and again you have to believe him and nobody saw seasons you have to believe what he's saying however everyone kind of knew Savannah had won Savannah had told people she won so she did confirm that and so it was like okay yeah I voted a different way but I worked with them and so yeah I do think that it definitely left a bad taste in his mouth that he just could not set aside. and couldn't see the benefit in that information

and just focused on the trauma that he was suffering from his season. This is all about trauma. Just all about trauma. Yeah. I mean, we all have baggage that we're bringing into the game. I had, you know, really bad baggage about being left out and, like, feeling like when Yellow Sofi didn't want to talk to me,

I was like, it's because, you know. And so, like, but a returning season, it's so much worse. And the moment you plant your flag down, and that is what you think of that person and you are, your opinion of them is set and like you have set course towards voting them out that that is like it could be a death sentence

in a game like Survivor where I mean the moment you stop seeing at least the duality of every player like yes is someone against me but they could maybe I could find you got to look for the ways that maybe you can work with those people too and and yeah I wonder if like maybe this is where

you know there's Charlie the player and then there's Charlie the narrator and then going on the returning season. I have to wonder if some people, like, they kind of want to avenge their former self, or they want to, like, set the stage and maybe play that up a bit in the, in your confessionals, because that's how you want your story to be. Like, you kind of figure out, like, how your arc might maybe come off to people. And you, you know, so I wonder maybe, yeah, maybe that was in the back of his mind, too. But then it kind of, maybe it over, it clouded the actual player part. And like, in a way that, oh, you're like, oh, man, in hindsight's 20-20. It's hard to watch it happen.

Yeah, so I agree. I don't know. I feel like a lot of what I'm saying to both of you is like, yeah. No, I agree. Yeah. Like it's, no, I, I just think of that. It's nice to be reassured. Just you guys, one of these, you guys got to say something.

Yeah. We're talking right now. Come on. We'll work on that. We'll try. Well, here, maybe this is it. Because as for Angelina, it probably isn't. We talked earlier about how he's,

She didn't really seem to have many options for much of the game. But in her interviews, she gave herself credit here. For example, she specifically called herself flexible, both in her interviews with Robin Dalton. And further said, she's always willing to try to work with people, even if they went against her. And I have to say, we did see that when she tried to work with Christian and Emily right after they blindsided Mike. Now, of course, we already talked about that that wasn't a good idea, but it was a flexible idea. Yes, it was. And I, but I think the same exact thing happened to Angelina that we were just talking about happening with Charlie.

And I hate to keep harping on this, but it's like when you come into playing Survivor, you're so ignorant about everything. The game, the people you're playing with, how anything is going to function, what you're going to do. day to day, you have no concept of anything. And you have people that are telling you to go here, do this. And sometimes you don't even have like, we didn't have her bathing suits for the first like three days or four days. So you're like, I have to walk around in my underwear because that's all I have besides my jeans.

And it's too hot. You know, so it's like these are things that you're thinking about. And so you listen to Angelina and she's talking about how all of this pregame stuff had happened and how the, you know, old school people were hearing that she was targeting them. And so all of a sudden now she finds herself on a tribe with old school players. And so immediately it's like, oh gosh, now do you approach them and go, listen, I did some pre-gaming and I might have heard.

I don't know if that's the, you know, the better approach. But I do think that it puts you in a very difficult place if you are fearing that there's a decision already made about you that like, oh, we can't play with her because she was pre-gaming and wanted to target us. So can you be flexible in that situation? I think she needed to try, but I also feel like she almost shut that down, just like we saw Charlie doing with Rizzo, where it was like, I'm just going to shut down that as an option because I'm only focused on the negative as opposed to the potential positive because there is still a chance to create a relationship there and to work with this person.

if you can try to correct that narrative or that idea, but it's got to be hard for sure. So I don't know if she really could have been as flexible as she necessarily wanted to be with everything that was happening. But I also don't know if she necessarily pushed enough to try to be when the options were presented to her, when she really could have been flexible. And it just didn't, the decision she made was not the right one either.

So there was very similar in this regard. Yeah. And again, I keep talking about that's what makes these seasons like so much more compelling because everyone is coming in with preexisting relationships and you hear things. And I can't speak for, there's no right answer. We have no idea how it would have played out. If Angelina had gone up and said, hey, I just want to get ahead of this. I want you to know, you may have heard this rumor that I was, I'm coming for y'all. But actions speak louder than words. You know, maybe like, and like let me prove it to you that that is not how I'm playing the game. And that that is just me or. camp or however or like maybe they didn't say that I think differently it's um and maybe those conversations happened but they they weren't I don't know it didn't lead to anything so it was left on the cutting board and didn't make the edit but yeah like you've got to be um it's it did come up like if you've seen your name written down once at tribal council like you it becomes that much easier for other people to write your name down in the future because if you if I've written your name down once if I what's the harmed I've already gonna burn I already burn the bridge a little

bit or like then you're not even in the jury phase yet so like I mean you do want to think about the end game and the jury phase but also like at a certain point you've just got to you've got to do what's going to get you to the next phase even if you know you know even if you're playing with even if gives you a little bit more rope it's better than no rope and then you're gone so uh it's it's a hard balance and I think you nailed it you never know if you're actually I mean Charlie said it Like everyone's the hero of their own story. Everyone thinks that they're playing right. And I can tell you firsthand that feeling when you think you know what's going on and you

wrote it out. And then you're sitting there wondering where it went wrong. And you're like, oh my gosh, I had so many overconfident confessions where I thought I was killing it. Was I really just a dumb dumb the whole time? And I'm going to come off like a fool, you know. And like having played once before going in, I can see that being so consuming and like maybe influencing in a way that so I think overcorrecting may have been an issue for for

Angelina a bit going too passive and not leaning into the tendency to be more aggressive and pursue some of those potential off ramps so I don't know yeah it's so easy to say from from where we're at but yeah I think it's interesting yeah I love this game it's so cool all right we can move to the fourth rule which tells players not to let their emotions control them And Stephen, you already kind of branched into this in the last rule here. So let's start with Charlie again because I've already mentioned, you know, a couple times. Well, we'll have more to discuss about him here. Was there, I don't know, anything rattling around in Charlie's emotions that might have caused him to not play optimally?

I think you've actually already answered this question, Stephen. A little bit. And so I'll offer another perspective, too, is. is it's not only act like not playing from an emotional spot, but also not appearing emotional to others as well or kind of in unstable. And I'm leaning into one thing. I think someone mentioned that he was intense. There was like an intensity.

And I'm sure. And they kind of talked about it at tribal how like the, you kind of want to, you never can underestimate like you want to work with people that you can trust that are good. And like sometimes you don't have to get along with everyone. It's like a coworker. You don't have to get along with everyone. not your coworkers, but you have to be able to like them enough.

And like I was thinking about this. Like if I was in the same situation, I mean, on surface value, Charlie and Rizzo, personality wise are like gameplay wise. They're pretty, they're very similar. Like similarish archetypes. But you've got one where at least from the edit seemed like there was a cloud over Charlie's head.

And like every time you talk, there's just like this heaviness to it. And then there was Rizzo doing Mickey Mouse, you know, impersonations. And he's, Rizzo's funny. He grew on me. I went through the same arc that Cole. Ulby did. It was so fun to watch that in episode one where I thought he was the most annoying person in the world. I just was like, I got to get, you know, get him out of here. This guy, you know, and then he grew, he grows on you. And like, he's just very, he's very light. He's very funny. And so that's an emotional part

too, too is like being aware of how your emotions might be coming off to other people as well. And if you're coming in too hot and too intense, you might work with that person for a little bit. But after a while, it gets exhausting. You're like, come on. Like, you know, like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, like, have to tiptoe around you or like you at a certain point you're going to stop being a number and start being an obstacle or start the benefit that you're giving me is going to be outweighed by how frustrating it is to work with you and like you know you just there's enough things that are hard about the game of Survivor to not you know you're like because I have to choose between happy or intense broody it's like I don't know that could it's a small factor I don't

think a lot of people react to it, especially players on 50 that are very good at the game. But like, it's something that whether we're conscious of it or not as humans, you pick up on those things and like it influences you. And yeah. Yeah. Even if he wasn't talking about it to other players, I do think that it was something he wasn't able to hide. If there's a resentment that you're feeling towards someone or if there's like a visceral feeling you have about this person, which became very clear that he did, I would imagine that that is going to come through when the interactions you're having with them

or when you're speaking to others about that person, something that you could kind of feel. You can feel people's emotions when they're talking to you about someone and you're like, I feel like they don't really like this person that much. And Rizzo might have sensed that too when they were talking to each other. And so I do think that Charlie let himself get wrapped up in this. emotional reaction. And I, and then the, the editors just leaned in on it like hardcore.

They were, I mean, all of the cuts and the shots and the, I mean, it just, it really did look very like a PTSD moment for Charlie every time it came up. And so I do think that it's, it's unfortunate that Charlie ended up having such an emotional response to it. Understood. I can understand because of what he had been through. but you got to keep it in check. And so, yeah, I do think that it definitely clouded his ability to play this game

and make the decisions he needed to make with a clear mind because he was so hung up on this idea of Rizzo being another Maria. Yeah, I mean, we talked about Charlie's other reasons for wanting to target Rizzo and our friend Adam Klein also discussed in his RHAP podcast with Rob that he believed that the whole Rizzo thing was most. mostly a bit that Charlie was doing, likely with the encouragement of production once he started. But like you just said, Jessica, you still have to wonder how much it played a role. Even if he's exaggerating it for the camera, he may not have realized that it was also like really in there.

You know, I mean, we are all human after all. And he did say a lot in confessionals about this topic. Like, you know, saying Rizzo not voting for his best friend to win has been, quote, messing with my head. So he continued he has to get rid of him. So he doesn't have to think about that anymore. And that tells me even he knew it was playing a role in how he was viewing the game. And then while voting, he focused on it again. and yes, I know this could still be part of the bit,

but he said, if I had known nothing about your game, it would have been better than me knowing the one thing that is getting you voted out tonight, that you betrayed your number one. So, yeah, maybe he was like kind of pushing his own script for, you know, what he hoped was a Y Rizzo lost podcast.

But he's right. It would have been better if Charlie didn't know that. But it was. would have been better for Charlie, not Rizzo. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, absolutely. Rizzo unknowingly, one of the better game moves he made was just that off comment. They just like he, he doesn't even know what he had just unleashed. And the other thing too is like whether Charlie was aware of it or not, maybe people can tell off like you're off. Your energy's off like something. And like when you ask someone like that, hey, I think's good. And, you know, you're like, oh, yeah, no, I'm good.

People are like, okay, what is he hiding? Like, I don't know. things aren't adding up. And it's all about, like I said earlier, like, remaining like a consistent baseline. And that sometimes is not boring or exciting for the viewers or the audience because like you love chaos. But sometimes if you're looking for a player, like, yeah, if I ask you, you know,

if you can't, you obviously don't trust me enough to maybe tell me what's really eating at you. And maybe he had like, because he said he hid the fact that he was targeting. Rizzle so hard from everybody. But like you said, David, he was probably shining through his actions more than maybe he realized. I mean, everyone is so perceptive in the game. And that's what's scary being out there.

You're like, I'm perceptive. But everyone else is like, you feel like you're constantly being looked at with X-ray eyes. And you're like, oh, my God. So, yeah, you just got to be mindful of that. And it's easier said than done when you're hungry, tired, and stressed. Switching to Angelina, Jessica, how do you think she did here in Rule 4? With the, her emotional component. I don't think so great.

And I say that because, well, it was all the pregame stuff again, right? Like I hate to keep talking about it, but I think that that had such an effect on the way she felt she was going to be perceived by other people that it affected her ability to play the game the way that she should have been. And then the relationship that she had with Mike White

and how significant that was in her game moving forward so much so that it was more important to her than the game itself. And so we have said this at nauseam, you and I, about how you come on to Survivor to win. That is the goal. That's what you do. And Angelina even expressed that she was coming into it differently this time. The last time she came into it to win. This time it was, well, it's an experience and I'm going to be different than I was last time. and then knowing, you know, the Mike White was going to be there.

And then there's the Christian relationship and how that felt and how that affected her. And so I really do think that those outside game moments affected her in-game. The previous game she played affected her in-game. The friendships that she made affected her in-game. And it's not like it was coming from a bad place. There's nothing wrong with having a best friend. And your best friend happens to me, Mike White, and he happens to put you on a television show. I mean, like, all of that sounds great and lovely.

And he made your two-month-old giggle for the first time. I mean, all of that is, like, lovely, but it's still a game for a million dollars. And each of them said separately in their pre-game interviews that they were not going to, like, ruin their own game for the other person. Like, they both kind of talked about how they would, they would separate that out. And then it was like, no, never mind. We can't do that. We were just kidding. Because now we're on the same drive together.

And oh, my God, my best friend. And so it just became this like idea that they were going to get to play this game again seven years later and it was going to be so delicious and fun that they both ended up, I think, unfortunately, causing themselves to get voted out because of it. Yeah. I mean, I mean, it looked like at least from my perspective that like looking at the other side, Christian and Devons, like they hit it off right away. And maybe like that is a maybe a existing relationship that took off. off and like, you know, really came together in the way that maybe Angelina and Mike White thought theirs would maybe flourish in that same way. Yeah, you just never know.

But you can't bank on it. And you got to, yeah, you got to roll with the punches. Yeah. Yeah. I will give her credit for being willing to work with the people who blindsided her good friend. Oh, that is true. Even though, as I said earlier, it wasn't the best thing to do from a strategic standpoint.

But otherwise, yeah, I mean, every. you said. So we can go to the fifth rule, which reminds players they need to pretend to be nice and play the social game. And continuing with Angelina, we just said she, you know,

that her emotions did play a role. But how did it all impact her social game? I don't know. Stephen, what do you think? I think that, like I keep going back to overcorrection. I do think sometimes that if,

sometimes you got a lot of, lean into those feelings and I mean your name was written down once you just got blindsided your your alley went out you got at a certain point like yes you can play nice with everyone but you have to kind of like pick your path forward and um I admire like I think you nailed it like I actually think she did a very good job of remaining open to working with the people that that voted this person out and like biding your time revenge is a dish better sure cold type you know attitude but um you Yeah, I don't know. Like sometimes if you're seen as playing too nice, you're not, you're not taking a stance.

You're not, you're too agreeable. Then you become more expendable. It's like, okay, you're a vote for me, maybe. But like you also seem like you're like that with everybody. And so sometimes like drawing that line in the sand, I don't know. It's not always the worst thing. So I don't know if I have like a concrete like conclusion because I think there's just so much with Angelia's edit that we didn't get to see. And like I, yeah.

with things like this, I only can really go off of what what she's said in some of the exing interviews. So I don't know. I'm just totally speculating. But yeah, I don't know. What do you think, Jessica, like, I don't know. I feel for her a lot because I really do think that she unfortunately was like, this was like a bad high school reunion, right, in a way. Because it's like you have to go back and you're going to be hanging out with all of these people

that you've heard we're talking about you and that you heard we're saying things about you that we're not so kind. In addition to knowing what, I don't know, the world has been saying about you because of posts on social media and commentary like we do on podcasts, right? I mean, this is what you do when you go on reality TV. You become picked apart and talked about. And so here she is having to insert herself into a game which she loves.

And I think the Angelina that we saw on her first season was very just like kind of carefree and jovial. and like, I'm Angelina and this is who I am. And she was someone who came across in a very particular way, but you kind of couldn't help but love her for, you know, like the way that she was, that she was so like, I don't give a shit what you think about me kind of thing. But then she was on the TV show. And then suddenly it was like, oh, wait, no, people said things. And so then she has to play this game with them.

And so I do think that she's someone. who again was at kind of a difficult place to play this game socially because of the preconceived notions that people had about her. But also she might have had some about other people as well. And then you walk into this high school reunion and you happen to see your best friend is there too. And you're like, oh, wait. Like they're here too. So maybe that will be my, maybe that will help me. Maybe that will save me. And so I don't think that she necessarily. was bad here, but I think that the circumstances that she was in were bad. And so it really made it very difficult for her to play the social game the way that I think she would have wanted to play it

because of the circumstances she found herself in. Again, you have to play with the hand you're dealt. And that's what makes Survivor so fascinating. You have to adjust. You have to be flexible. You have to be able to shift. And I think that she was just unable to do so in the way that really she needed. to because of all of this other stuff that that we know was was happening prior to the game even starting. Yeah. All right. Well, switching to Charlie, he seemed to get along well with everyone.

He even had some fun times with his nemesis, Rizzo. You know, some people like Rizzo and D and Camilla felt like he was acting a bit odd like we've talked about. I would say it was a strategic kind of odd rather than a social kind of odd. Yeah, I think that makes sense. Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. All right, then we'll move on to the sixth rule,

which warns against people being too much of a threat. Now, looking at Angelina, most people probably would not consider her a big threat in the game, and I tend to agree. Even with the changes that she made to her own personality and the way she was playing, I just don't think she would be able to convince a jury to vote for her at the end

unless she did some truly spectacular things between now and then. But the problem is she became a threat the moment the others voted out Mike. Yes, she was willing to work with Christian and Emily this time because, of course, she would want to save her own skin. But as Christian said in discussing why Angelina was the obvious target, no one trusts her. She's not going to be loyal to us. And he was right, come the merge, as I mentioned, mentioned earlier, she was going to go off looking for her people. And you can guarantee that didn't include anyone on this tribe.

Yeah. What do you think, though, about the, and this is something that we talked about way at the beginning before the season started, the fact that there was the three of them from David versus Glythe, because we saw Christian lean in on this, right? Christian was like, he told Angelina, Mike had to go because the three of us, it's problematic. I don't disagree. It was also true. It was true, but it wasn't the reason he voted out Mike.

He wasn't going to tell Mike's best friend. I actually voted him out because he was being super manipulative and trying to stab me. You know, so yeah. And I'm not indicating that he was being truthful in that moment, but he leaned in on the idea that other people are going to, they were going to see the three of us. And that was going to be a problem for your game. and my game because that could be seen as a, you know, we're a trio, right? And that could be a threat to other people's games.

And so I don't know if that was something that, I mean, people talked about it pregame, that, oh, well, we do have three from that particular season. And so I'm curious if that also was something that people thought about. And then you have the three of them all end up on a tribe together at the swap. And you're like, oh, well, look at that. Isn't that just fabulous? So I don't know if that had any effect on anyone, but then again, we saw what Christian did. So he really kind of took the reins on that one.

I think if her original tribe had gone to tribal council, it would have been one of the reasons slash excuses used. Right. You know, that, oh, she's going to join up with her pals. So we got to get rid of her before she does that. Now the reason was more, oh, she doesn't have any pals on this tribe. so she's going to join up with whoever she can to get rid of me, you know. Right. Yeah.

All right. That makes sense. Yeah. No, I definitely agree. I mean, actions speak louder than words. And like people can convince you that like, hey, we left you out of the last blindside for X, Y, and Z reasons. We really want to work with you. But like at the end of the day, you're still blindsided.

And I don't know. Like, yeah, like at a certain point sometimes if I, if I'm not working with you, I assume that you're working. You're either going to work with other people against me. Like, if you don't want to work with me now, then, then. then at a certain point, like maybe you're not the biggest threat on this island pre-merge, but you are going to be a problem later. And so it's like, I don't know, I think a lot of times people want to get to the merge because then it opens the game up.

And so if they're expecting, I don't know if they thought or had like caught wind that maybe merge was coming soon, let's get through this one vote and then we can link up. And yeah, like, but like I would be, that would be in the back of my head. if someone looks so obviously in the middle but won't commit one way or the other, I mean, if you can't commit to me now, what's going to change your mind later on? Like, I mean, at least I kind of, I mean, I got a lot of, a lot of people asked me, like, rightfully so, like, why did you all vote Sophie Sogrady out when you had Savannah on the table? And my reaction or my response was, it was, I always knew where Savannah was.

Like, I always knew, like, where her boat was going to go. but Yellow Sophie had lied to me and flipped and flopped and it was always going to do what was best for her. And I could never predict that. And so like sometimes getting rid of the wild card, even though it seems like a boring option or as they said, the most obvious plan is the best plan. Yeah, I think that we, you know, to go back to your season, I think that we saw that when you voted out, Sophie. I think that other people in your tribe may have driven us crazy a few times in not voting out the person they should have voted out. But, you know, I seem to recall that someone who looked a lot like you even brought that up at Final Tribal Council. But so we won't rehash that here.

Now, you know, you talked about the different types of threat. Who's the more immediate type and who's not? Charlie was definitely the more immediate type of threat. And you talked about, you know, if you're not going to commit to me now, why would you commit to me later? So I do think, you know, we've already talked about several players not being happy with the way he was acting and scheming. And he told Mike Bloom, going in.

into the swap tribe, D and Camilla were wary of me, and for the reasons that we discussed earlier. If if they had just gone along with the plan of voting out Rizzo, then you have to look at who was next if the tribe stayed

together. Because then it was like apparently Surrey and it would have left D and Camilla beholden to whatever the group of guys wanted. And so, by taking him out suddenly the whole power dynamic in that tribe shifts now that power dynamics

never going to come into play because it's you know we're merging at 17 but they didn't know that obviously yeah this is this is just insanity I know I mean the fact that we're talking about a double a boot episode and then next week looks like it might be the same let's say yeah all bets are off. Yeah. Oh yeah. Sorry, gosh. I'm getting my things mixed up,

but you know what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. Get out of here. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. All right.

Let's move on to Rule 7, which covers idols and advantages in game mechanics. And Angelina, she didn't really have any dealings with those as a whole. But she did talk about why she didn't play her shot in the dark. Telling Mike Bloom, I was like, do I have a higher chance with Emily being real with me or a higher chance of my shot in the dark playing hitting?

And I had a slightly higher probability of Emily working with me, which obviously was not true. But I took that bet instead of the shot in the dark because I was like, oh, if I play my shot in the dark, then I show her I don't trust her. And if we do merge, then who do I have? Now, we've heard these reasons before. And the second one does make sense. The first one, the higher probability part, well, that's just made up numbers. in the head of whoever is doing the calculations. At least it wasn't like, you know, some people are like,

well, I calculated a 31.2% chance. It's like, no, you didn't. There is no equation, you know, where you can substitute in, you know, oh, well, X equals the number of people who have told me that they are going to keep me here. No. But it is true that if Emily and Christian had been with her and she played her shot, it would have been very telling about her trust. level. What she didn't mention was it would have also tied the vote at two and showed

distrust, which would have been a really bad combination and probably would have led, now this is presuming, let's just say that Christian and Emily were telling her the truth. And they were going to vote with her. And she's like, I don't believe it. I'm playing my shot in the dark. Well, now it's those two against the other two. And, well, after Angelina just showed that she didn't trust them, why would they, what are they good? They're not going to go to rocks for her. So they would have flipped at that point. So she actually, in her interviews, left out the most important reason for not using her shot in the dark. Well, maybe she had left it on the beach somewhere, Stephen.

I also think, too, like it's like an out of sight, out of mind thing. Obviously, it's a mechanic, right? And it's a new era mechanic having the shot of dark. And I wonder if sometimes if you haven't played the game once with the shot of the dark, maybe it's like you kind of forget sometimes. Well, Savannah did. We understand

a few years that she did. She's not relatable. Yeah, no one was talking about it. So she just forgot about it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But like, I actually, I always had mine. I had my buff, uh, wrapped her on. This is when they were smaller. You can find that. but I always had it in my buff.

I'd like wrap it up. So it was like kind of pocketed in. And I remember my first tribal council where it was me and three Uli members. And I remember thinking at the exact same thoughts that we're talking right now where I said, okay, assuming Sage and Jawan are telling me the truth that they're going to vote the way I do, they still have enough votes to vote Shannon. But there is a greater than zero percent chance that maybe they're all really great liars. It makes sense from a number's perspective to keep as many Uli members going forward.

So I was going through the math in my head real time as I was sitting there. And I was trying not to let people know what I was fidgeting. But I was like fidgeting with it. And it was truly a game time decision. And I went the way Angelina did where I said, hey, if I'm going to get, if they're going to turn on me now, I'm kind of dead in the water. I don't know. Like I just was like, I just. And so rather than burning that bridge, I played it.

It turned out great for me because then I had Sage and Joanne that then worked with me. because if I hadn't done that, let's say I'd played my shot in the dark, moving into the merge, Sajan were the swings that kept me over an age. So for me, it was the difference of either, sure, I maybe would have survived for one more vote, but going out. But sometimes it's like that leap of faith. And I think that a lot of times, especially it feels like the old school mentality is a lot more on the loyalty side of things. Like, let's put our trust in people and show that I will play ball moving forward.

but yeah i don't know it's like i i can really relate to that i can really empathize with how that must have felt yeah yeah people you can't do math as much as we much as i wish we could people are it's chaos theory yeah well charlie didn't have any personal interaction with idols but he learned about the billy isleish boomerang idol from rizzo which led to a series of events we've already discussed his handling of this piece of information caused suspicion with at least Rizzo and added to what Camilla already had. So, yeah, as we've already discussed, not great. That was an unfortunate series of events for sure. Yeah.

There's another universe where Rizzo did not say anything about not voting for his number one. And that moment happens between Charlie and Rizzo and they link up and work together. Because without that little seed, I mean, Rizzo was extending an olive branch and giving him info. And like, that's a sign of like, Rizzo was looking for his person to trust into. And without that maybe voice in the back of his head, maybe Charlie would have scooped him up. Yeah. Got on there first. All right.

Well, we could go to Appendix A, which discusses players keeping their end goals in mind when voting. And we talk about voting out the weak, then the strong, then the weak than the strong. And last week, we discussed how there was a clear potential target with very weak alliances, who I said should have been taken out, but Mike went for someone else instead, and it backfired. This week, Fatu recovered itself and did go for that exact type of player who turned out to be a different person now because Mike was gone. So they did come back to their senses once Mike was no longer pushing in the wrong direction.

And I mentioned earlier that it would have been better for Angelina to try to push Ozzy into going after Christian. But I think even Ozzie made the right decision here. if he wants to have any hope of working with Emily in the future. Plus, he likely knows that Surrey was working with Christian, and he, of course, was working with Surrey. So even if he doesn't like it, it may be useful to his overall numbers later in the game. And while Angelina was working with essentially nobody else and had essentially nobody else

and would be looking for people, as we previously discussed, she wouldn't have been loyal to any of them. So even though I was saying earlier, Angelina should have pushed Ozzy, Ozzie made the right decision in not doing that. See, Ozzy did something correct. All right. You got this, buddy. Come on.

Dang that squeaky hammer, Ozzie. I can't believe. You're terrible. Terrible. On the Charlie side, I can easily understand why Camilla went with the women and Rizzo instead of the guys. After her season, she has probably had it up to here with guys. Didn't she talk about that too? Probably.

You know, and she also has to figure that Jonathan, well, she talked about, she said I had a whole season of honor and integrity in 48. Oh, that's what it was. Yes. Okay. It just happened to be that that was mostly guys. I got to. But looking at Jonathan, she had to figure that he was likely to get together with the honor and integrity crew, especially since I've heard they were pre-gaming going on there. And she told us back, well, she told us what I just mentioned in episode one.

Plus, from what Charlie said in interviews, it sounded like she was already aligned with Dee and the original tribe anyway. So I don't think she was quite as much a swing vote as it was made out to be. I mean, it was technically her decision, but it was also D's decision. It was, you know, I don't think she needed much time to think about it because this just put her whole group in a better spot moving forward. Well, yeah, and I do think that Camilla is the type of person that's going to work that permutation pretty quickly in her head and see what's going to have and move. moving forward as opposed to like the immediate like knee jerk kind of reaction that you think that someone might have in the situation. She's a little more calculated.

And I think D is more calculated, but Camilla is more calculated than D would be. So yeah, I do, I do think that long term they made the best decision for their game moving forward for sure. 100%. Yeah. I don't have much to add. I agree. I think it really did come down to if we keep Charlie. it's like do I want to play with Rizzo or honor and integrity?

Like, I mean, Camilla kind of had two paths potentially like when things join back up. And yeah, it's like there's scar tissue. And that's why I love these returning seasons. Is this scar tissue is there and it gets ripped open. Oh, yes. I mean, yeah, I think it's like so funny because I say stuff like that. But then I can also like very, like I'm fresh off my season. So I could completely empathize.

So if you guys are watching this, anyone on 50, I'm just joking around. But I, uh, I totally get it though. Like, it seemed to me like that, if I were putting myself in Camilla's shoes, like that's maybe what she was thinking. I could be wrong. But yeah, it definitely came off that way. All right. Well, it is about time to wrap things up for Angelina and Charlie. So, Stephen, what are your final thoughts on them?

I think it's my final thoughts. So for Charlie, I think we kept it pretty well. I do think that, you know, the narrator versus. the game player seemed like they were maybe at odds. And you can say this about every single episode of Survivor. But what really stuck out to me was if I had to sum it up in one word was trust for this one episode. Really, Rizzo, I think, did an excellent job building trust with the right people at the right time. Timing is so important.

When you get info, you got to jump on it. And Charlie, I think maybe in an attempt to, or maybe he got too comfortable, his timing was a little off. And so people saw that as being distrustful. And then, yeah, I don't know. With Angelina, it's a little harder to say exactly, you know, but I think that, again, like, I think we kind of hit it in the last point that both players were kind of seen as a longer-term risk rather than like a shorter term person

that can get me forward. Like if you're not working with me now, that's someone that you're someone I'm going to have to worry about later. Now's the time to make it, you know, make the move. And I think that's ultimately what kind of ended up being their undoing. I don't know. What are your thoughts? Well, I think it's interesting that in Angelina's pregame press,

she was asked specifically about her season and her edit specifically. And she said, so I always equate watching back one season is like watching game tape. You learn a lot from it. And I think that that is like the resonating theme that I feel. for both Angelina and Charlie is that there was a lot of game tape that was being watched about everybody who was coming back for season 50. And these are two players that did have a lot of moments that made them very memorable, which is why they were likely chosen to be on season 50,

but also moments that really showed who they were or who people thought they were. And so I think for each of them, them coming into this season, they were perceived a very particular way. And I do think that it had some negative effects on their ability to play the game. And I hate to say the word again, but there is some trauma with the game that they both played previously. And I do think that some people who are playing season 50 with them might have leaned in on that just a little bit. Maybe the Maria thing got brought up because someone thought, I wonder how Charlie would feel about this because I do find it fascinating that when it came up, someone actually asked Rizzo,

do you think they're going to call you a Maria? And it's like, whoa, like someone literally put it out there for them to all consider, including Charlie. So I do see that as being an issue that they both had in their games moving forward, that there was a lot of game tape that had been watched, there was a lot of concerns about how they were going to be perceived, and there was a lot of issues that they were both dealing with with their previous seasons. You had Angelina, who got to the final three and she was a no vote finalist you would charlie who people say should have won his season so both of those are really big things to be coming back into the game knowing like angela made it to the end but didn't get any votes charlie maybe should have won his season according to a lot

of people on the internet um and so those those are those are very strong feelings to have when you are asked to come back and you feel like you have a lot to prove and i think that both of them struggle with that very much in this particular season and couldn't really find the appropriate footing that they needed to find in order to have their games flourish the way that they should have because there was too many outside influences and outside things affecting their in-game, whether it be prior relationships, whether it be prior experiences. I think both of them suffered from that greatly and unfortunately it affected their games so much that they saw their games cut short because of part of that.

Yeah, Angelina and Charlie were both pieces of a puzzle that didn't quite fit in their swap tribes. Angelina, of course, knew it by this point after being blindsided last time and made a choice to go in the direction she thought gave her the best chance, even if those were long odds. Charlie had no idea and was himself completely blindsided. Angelina talked about weighing the odds of going along with what Emily told her versus using her shot in the dark. But the one thing she didn't seem to calculate was if there could have been that higher percentage move trying to convince Ani, Ozzy, to turn on Christian.

And yes, she said she tried working with him, but her best bet would have been to turn on that famous Angelina persuasiveness to 11 and really push because she would have been trying to get him to do something that he already wanted to do, voting out Christian. because getting rid of Angelina was, as Emily said, the most obvious plan on earth. So making a big push with Ozzy was probably her only chance of getting past this tribal council. But she just didn't do it. And indeed, Emily was right when she said that about the obvious plan. But, you know, I thought that last week and nobody seemed to even consider it.

So it's nice to see people actually following through on an easy plan rather than overcomplicating it. An initial view of what happened to Charlie made it seem like that was also obvious. We all saw his single-mindedness when it came to Rizzo, apparently because of the jury vote factor. And then Charlie added in his last words, I can only imagine that I might have played a little too hard. But as we discussed, neither of these seemed to actually be the case, or at least not the full case. Charlie had problems in the tribe that he didn't even know about. yes he was overly focused on Rizzo but he thought he had good reasons for that beyond the overly dramatic one meanwhile he was trying not to ruffle feathers even as his potential allies wanted

lines drawn in the sand as i mentioned earlier it's funny that he was trying to stay flexible in that regard while at the same time being inflexible with his choice of target and he thought everything would be fine because of the majority of original Kalo members A big problem for him was neither the original Kalo nor this version of SELA had ever been to tribal council. None of them had ever voted together. So assuming where everyone stood could be a mistake. And in this case, it definitely was. Dee made a comment that Charlie is, quote, the dumbest player here.

That's harsh, especially when we spent so much time talking about Ozzy's reactions and move and Toy Hammer. But plus we have that whole honor and integrity crew and everyone knows what I think of them. I don't think he was as dumb at all. Far more naive than I expected him to be. Yes. Misreading the situation. Also, yes, but not dumb. He just didn't realize where he actually stood in the tribe and wasn't wary enough of those around him to try poking around more.

And when he did poke, specifically at Rizzo, he alerted his target that something was up. Meanwhile, Angelina did know where she stood and just hoped for a way to get herself out. But those who put her in that bad spot continued and put her in the worst spot. And that is why Angelina and Charlie lost. Look at that. All right. Well, before we get to our predictions for next episode, yes, we still have predictions. We know we're running long again, two people.

But before then, I do want to mention next week we are planning to have a very special guest as Adam Klein joins us. And yeah, I know he was just down with Rob, but now he'll jump over and talk to us about whoever is voted out at the merge, whatever one, two or three people are voted out. And get ready. If there's three people, it's going to be a long. It is. It is. Yeah. So also, I do want to remind people that the rules we just mentioned or just discussed are available in a shorter and much more colorful version as a poster. So go to rob has a website.com slash yX lost feed. And you can get the poster or the poster on a t-shirt or again, the checklist on a t-shirt. Yes. So beyond that.

before we get to predictions. Stephen, where can people find you? Yeah, and you can, if you're just looking at the moon, just know we're looking at the same moon at the same time. So you can find it. Realistically, jokes aside. You can find me on Instagram at at somewhat underscore Stephen. I think I'm on Twitter still. It's at Space Ram.

I used that more for professional stuff, but the Survivor fans on there are freaking hilarious. Dude, even when you're dunking on me, like it's great. And then also TikTok, yeah, same thing, at somewhat underscore even. So yeah, follow along. I love interacting with the survivor community. That was one of the coolest parts about being on the show

is afterwards, I feel like we're all super fans and it's really fun talking. So feel free to hit me up anytime. I'm bad at responding sometimes to DMs, but I'll get to them eventually. And I do read them all. Nice. Yeah, there are quite a bit, I will say,

that that is something that becomes a little overwhelming. I am at Jessica Lewis 89 on both Blue Sky and Twitter. I'm at Jessica Lewis 6-789 on Instagram. But my social media has really fallen to the wayside, almost just a little bit. Nothing in comparison, though, to David Bloomberg, who has amped up his social media presence so much. It's so incredible.

He has a link tree in order to find all of the places that he posts his content. So, David, why don't you speak to everyone about your link tree? Yes, you can find all my various accounts at Linktree slash David Bloomberg. You could find me directly on Blue Sky as at David Bloomberg. And on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram is at David Bloomberg TV. I've been posting two or three reality TV short videos every day, almost all about Survivor 50 at this point. But you never know when another show, you know, might have something that strikes my fancy. Also, in the podcasting realm, we have posted a couple of special episodes of the Trader podcast,

where we are giving advice in one for how to win the game as a trader. And in the second episode, which is coming out almost exactly the same time as this one, for those same questions, how to win the game as a faithful. Now, these are not a new version of my rules for winning that we use here, but definitely a lot of overlap there. Nice. So again, that's the T-R-A-I-D-R. You can find that wherever you get podcasts or on your,

You too. All right. Predictions. And this is, yeah, merge. It's already hard to pick things at the merge. And this is going to be even worse because something weird is going on here. And we don't know exactly what.

Because Jeff said it would change the game. And there was a very scary scene of him in hellish lighting. And, you know, My initial thought was it wouldn't surprise me if we lose two people again or maybe Mr. Beast shows up at this point with his coin. But I feel like if it was Mr. Beast coming that would have been in the preview to promote it more. Yeah, I don't think it's Mr. Beast yet. So probably not that last part. But it is two hours.

First of all, everybody note that two hours, not just an hour and a half. And Jeff Pittman of True Dork Times posted on. blue sky that the preview showed how the quote unquote merge vote will work because they're standing in front of the team chimney sweeps apparatus from 49

so you you may be familiar with this uh with team colors so three random teams which means two or even three tribals because as he said because voting people out

and snap random teams is somehow better than on tribes, I guess. And I completely agree with Jeff Pittman that it's ridiculous to claim to have a merge and then randomly split everyone up and then boom, have them vote with no notice. Somewhere along the way, Jeff Probe seems to have forgotten this is a strategic social game because you can't do either strategy or social to vote people out if you don't have time.

I worry it will just be a series of votes based on things like pregame alliances slash friends and the general swap tribes. That's not as interesting. But we still have a job to do here predicting two or even three people leaving.

Of course, how we predict who will be voted out of random groupings that we don't know? That's a bit of a mystery. So I guess the best we could do is try to read the edit and go from there. Looking at the press photos that are out already, I saw that Aubrey and Jen,

Genevieve will be together again. They cannot get away from each other. They're shown in the challenge on the same colored equipment. Coach and Surrey are in the same group as each other, and Chrissy and Jonathan are in the same group as each other. Not a lot of information to go on except for the Aubrey Genevieve thing. Obviously, they will try to go after each other again. And then it just becomes a numbers game.

We don't know who has the numbers. We do know Aubrey has an idol. And she will play it in that situation if she does not feel absolutely locked in, I believe. So I'm going to repeat my previous prediction that Genevieve will be one of the people going out. One way or the other, either Aubrey rallies numbers to her side or she gets idled out by Aubrey. Charlie mentioned that Chrissy and Jonathan were together on their original tribe working together. So that's two right there on whatever that group is. which, you know, could bode well for them.

And I can similarly see Surrey and coach working together in the other group. Looking at everyone else without knowing where they are, I think D may be in the most trouble. She insulated herself in her swap tribe, but now all that's going to be shaken up. It's all going to be random. She's the only remaining previous winner. So in a situation like that, it could be something easy for the others to agree upon. and the third person I'm going to pick almost at random in part because we don't know if there is going to be a third person. But Tiffany has just gotten so few confessionals.

I wonder if it's because she gets picked off with almost no reason due to a bad draw here. I don't want it to happen, but I worry that it will. So my three picks are Genevieve, D, and Tiffany. and as I look at that, I realize it looks like I'm picking on the women. But as Angelina pointed out, that's production's job this season and not mine. And I'll probably be wrong. Oh, wow. Yeah, this is a lot.

I do think because if we're going in with 17, that the likelihood of three tribals happening is very high to get it down to 14 because then they could do one more tribal where they 13 and then actually merge. then it's a real, you know, then you get to be on the jury kind of thing once they get to 13. I do agree with Genevieve as being one of the individuals that's likely going to be either a target or a consequence of an Aubrey Idol. I could see that definitely happening. I, gosh, I also agree somewhat with the Tiffany concept. because we haven't seen very much of Tiffany.

Oh, this is terrible. I don't like any of this. Gosh, I don't know. Can I just pick two? Do I have to pick three? I mean, you're reducing your chances then. Listen, my chances suck all the time anyway. I'm terrible at this.

Remember, you know this. I don't like any of it. uh, Genevieve. Hmm. And we don't know where anyone else falls, right? We don't know where they all go. Oh, goodness.

All right. So I'm going to think pregame. What did people talk about pregame? Pregame? Who were they very cautious of Camilla? Very cautious of Camilla. Very cautious of D.

All right. I'm going to call a timer. Pick. Okay, fine. I'm going to go. Genevieve. Genevieve, Camilla, and D. There.

All right. Those are my three choices. I was pressured into doing that. That's right. Even? Okay. So I agree with a lot of what you guys have said, but I am going to kind of branch off a little bit here. So I do think that if you're, I mean, all we have to go off of are at this point, right?

And I think you nailed that they're clearly building up this Aubrey versus Genevieve showdown. And I think it's a huge bummer that Genevieve has found two. idols that could have saved during a situation like this, but then had to hand them away. And like that, that is a, it's a rough mechanic. In any other season, you have two idols, you're golden. And like, that could be something that could come back. So I agree with, I agree with Genevieve. I, I'm trying, the way I'm thinking about it is who has maybe drawn a line in the sand a little bit that if they are split up with that group where they chose aside, and they're not with those numbers anymore

and they haven't built other connections elsewhere. They could be at risk and I do think Camilla could be one of those players because I think she made the right choice for her game and that moment with getting rid of Charlie but I mean from the tribal council it looked like Devin's and Jonathan were very surprised and so I see a world where they link up with their folks

and then they preview you know maybe Camilla gets swap screwed a little bit there I don't know I could see that happening and then gosh, Who would the third be? I don't know. I mean, yeah, I guess like confessional time, Tiff could be, it could be an indicator that she could be going. However, I think it might be the other way.

Because sometimes when players don't get a lot of confessionals earlier, and this has not been the case so far, unfortunately, for Angelina. But, like, sometimes it's because they know they're going to have an arc that blows up later. Genevieve, right? Yes, in Genevieve season, look what happened to her. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right.

And yellow Sophie, Sophie Soffi. Gosh, I'm sorry, I keep calling your Yellow Sophie. but Sophie Sogretti on my season, same thing. Like she was invisible in the pre-merge. But I knew, I mean, having played with her, I was like, she's going to get her flowers because she played a great game like later on. But so I wonder if maybe for those reasons, that's why I don't know if TIF would be my next person to say was going to go.

I also don't think that she might be viewed as immediately as a threat. She could be more of a free agent. Yeah, Camilla, people might have really fresh in their heads. Like I've seen her play recently. She got really close to winning. So I'm trying to think, like, there could be a recency bias. So we don't get rid of her. I don't know who my next person would be.

Gosh, maybe start the timer. I feel like, I don't know. Rizzo's got an idol. I think Ceres, Ceres. Timers going. Oh, no. I don't know. I'm going to say maybe Jonathan.

But again, like, yeah, it just really depends on what the split ends up being. Maybe Chrissy. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, my. a lot of. My ideal split would have, would, you know,

have the honor and integrity crew split over all three groups and have everyone target them so they don't get back together again. It would be my ideal, but. Your idea. So,

all right. Well, as we wrap up, I want to encourage people to check out the R.JP patron program at rob has a website.com slash patron. Get access to all the special podcasts that are put out just for patrons

plus Facebook groups and discord. And, of course, you support shows like ours and everything on the network by becoming a patron at Rob has a website.com slash patron. Also make sure you're subscribed to all the RJP Survivor podcast by going to We Know Survivor.com.

Yes, and we would like to thank everyone at RHAP for all of the incredible content that you do create and that you put out into the universe. Thank you for all of the editing that is led by the incredible individuals that work there. Thank you to, I'm forgetting names right now. It's been a long time. I apologize. very like my mind is like literally blank right now. Scott St. Pierre, thank you so much for the work that you do.

Thank you to Will from America for the theme song that you created for the audio version of this podcast. Thank you to everyone who listens to this podcast. I know it's been over two and a half hours at this point. So I'm trying to go quickly. But thank you so much. And thank you, Stephen, for joining us today because this was fabulous. And it's so interesting to have someone sit through this process so soon after they actually

experienced this process. So thank you so much for joining us. It's been lovely and great. It's been an incredible opportunity having you here. And thanks. We loved having you. It was great. Yeah.

And thank you again for having me. This is, like I said, it's surreal. It's like full circle. Same time last year, listening to you all talk with other guests and now to be here and get a chance to talk and provide my insight. It's really awesome. So just thank you for having me. It means a lot. And yeah, hopefully I'll see you guys again soon.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you also for me, Stephen, for joining us. Thank you, Jessica, as always. You know, we will see everyone in a week when, as I mentioned, we expect to have Adam Klein on. Until then, you can find us on social media and go, I and I. Bye.

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