Welcome to Pod Meets Twirl, a podcast that once chronicled two guys who had never seen Dancing with the Stars, but watched a season and somehow walked away experts. From there, we ventured into Traders, a show I'd never seen but Will swore he could win. And now we turned to Survivor season fifty, the Big One, and this time the roles are reversed. Will has seen exactly one season, the
first one. Meanwhile, I've watched for years. We are Wilfordell, who prefers his wilderness with room service, and right or Strong, who will hike any mountain but hates the beach. Two best friends, one devoted to the comforts of civilization, one who would never leave the woods if he could. Both reality competition scholars join us as we dive into alliances, blind sides, fire making, sand related misery, and twenty five years of television history culminating in a single massive season.
This is Pod Meets Twirled, Seeking Immunity.
How you feeling, Will, I'm excited, cautiously excited, I guess, and you're.
Completely right with what you said in your intro.
As my wife often says, if I'm in the woods for three days.
I've been dead for two of them. So yeah, but you grew up kind of didn't you camp when you were a kid? Oh? Every weekend.
I was in the woods every weekend growing up. I was a boy scout. I can start fires once. You were never going out.
Hell no.
Once you sit in a nice hot tub, you never want to have to scrounge for water again.
Would you do like an r V? Would you do like a camper van? Yes, briefly and a big one. Right, But what is it that scares you or what is it that is it just a discomfort? Yes?
I like I like things like showers and hot water. And yeah, you being on a mattress and shower.
Like twice a day?
Right? Yeah?
At least wait, really like every every day you shower twice a day. At least you at least you have to keep in mind. I also work out twice a day.
So I wake up in the morning and I work out and I do cardio or lift weights with with the trainer, and then at night I do cardio again.
Do you shower after you poop? Are you one of those people?
No? God, no, I couldn't I be showering eleven times? A day with my stomach.
Are you kidding?
I'm a I'm a prodigious pooper. My friend, very healthy body, that prodigious pooper, Wilde, I am.
I've got a very healthy scholar and prodigious pooper. Okay, So it's not about it's not about like the animals or fear of the woods or exposure to the element.
I don't mind. But hugs, I don't mind. Uh you know, Oh a bear is gonna get me. I'm not scared of the woods. I just I like being comfortable and I like not having to you know, again, there's a novelty to that stuff. I get, no like I feel like with you, there's a piece to it and almost a philosophy to it which is completely and totally lost on me, the idea that I'm getting in touch with nature. And yeah, that doesn't do anything for you nothing.
See. I think that there's something so profound that happens when you look at an amazing stars, you know, like sky filled with stars or I've.
Got telescopes put him right outside, right next to the awe, in the face of nature.
That is really important to me. And that and I feel like is even better when it's slightly earned in other words, like you get high to it, to it and and and there's there's something terrifying, genuinely terrifying to me about the solitude of the woods that, in that terror, actually makes me feel good, Like I feel like I am somehow closer to reality or like closer to the real nature of things. Does that make sense?
Are you one of those people where it's like the closer you get to tasting death is really makes you feel like you're alive.
Oh, I guess I need to do and a motorcycle. I don't want that. No, it's more about the like, you know, the the slight panic that comes from like being alone in the woods looking around and being like, yeah, if I ran into a bear, it would it would just kill me. And it's not it's not because the world's an evil place. It's because the world is just a place where things happen, and you are a physical
body in it. That as much as we like to think of ourselves as important, we're not, And that that feeling of like not being important is really profound to me, and I I cherish it even though it scares me right, Like I want to be important. I want to be the center of my own movie. And getting into the woods is a sort of shortcut to that sense of inconsequence of your own life. And I think that that's healthy and fun.
And I like to sit at home knowing how important I am. That's that's that's what I.
Like, watching your own TV show, watching You like to sit at home watching Boy Mets World. You all the time, and Susan's next to you applauded, You're amazing.
No.
As a kid, I did all that stuff by Heights Mount Washington, and we camped every weekend. I would get home from school and we all had We were without the karate or being cool in any way, shape or form. My couple friends and I in seventh and eighth grade, we were like Johnny from Karate Kid. We all had dirt bikes. We built a track in the woods. We were in the woods every weekend.
We loved it.
There's a we found an old band in Chicken Coop and we spent every weekend and all the weeks we had off like rebuilding it into this great fort we had. I mean, I loved the woods and stuff like that. But then I got to a point where I'm like, Okay, I don't. I don't need to do that anymore, and I'm not gonna there's no I find no peace in it. So there's no active like, oh, this is the best thing in the world. I get to go and be
in the woods by myself. Like no, I'd rather go have a nice massage somewhere and get a nice meal and watch a show and go to sleep in.
A nice band. And now you have you watched the one season of Survivor, the very first one, but you have watched Alone, another Survivor reality. Yeah several times.
Okay, we've seen a bunch of episodes of Alone, and now that is way more badass than this, way.
More bad ass. And yeah, that one is, yeah that you know, that one is true survivalist skills and they have to carry their own camera gear. They are truly alone. Yep, it's hardcore. And you see that that Actually the survival skills, which are difficult but are manageable. The real thing is the loneliness, right, Like to watch people start to go crazy being in the wilderness by themselves after you know, thirty days or whatever.
That would be the easiest part for me by far, do you think so? Really, dude, I was alone in my house by myself with my anxiety for like seven years. I didn't see anybody, So being alone, I was able to completely compartmentalize the difference between See. That's why the show is called alone and not loneliness, right, because being alone and being lonely were two very different things.
I love being alone. I almost never get lonely really. Even now now that's a little different because I have Susan.
Yeah without Susan, like yeah, yeah, twelve year and I want to be twice.
Yeah, you're talking about your mid twenties when you were sire. Well, I I think it would be very different now, because that's what you say is like on that there was one season of Alone where this guy was doing great. He even made like his own the toy wifim out of here going home, and they're like, dude.
Are you see Like he locked up his fake garage that he had built and every like going home.
Yeah. The best on that show are the ones that have either just been through divorce or or they they need the money so bad. I said, they have something so important that they were like, and they're doing it for somebody else that they're just going to do it there.
I remember that that one season where the guy built rock rock House, Yes, and he was eating and soon and I looked at each other and he.
Saved he he killed the.
Muscock and then and then he's eating the stomach and we looked at each other like, Okay, when you're eating warm contents of muscogs, no.
One's gonna beat that guy. He's going to eat his own leg before he leaves. No one's going to beat that guy. And he dug a fire pit too, right, like he dug he dug.
It's called it was called rock House where the whole thing was made of stoney, found the cave and then built everything around it.
And so I mean, you're not going to beat that dude. It's just not going to happen.
Whereas Sue always says, I would have tapped out on the on the boat right over yea where I would have literally been on the phone and the guy, the producer's phone would have rung and he would be like, I'm standing next to you, like, yeah, I'm tapping out, turn around and tapping out. But it wouldn't be from loneliness. It would have been probably from boredom more than anything else.
Well, so survivor. You know, it's having watched most of the seasons, I have to In are some of our promotional material for this season. It said on the social medias that I had seen every season. I actually haven't watched every season. What what's happened is I started watching it when my wife was pregnant and we started devouring every season, and then I watch it with my son
and her. Now the problem is they watch it sometimes when I'm out of town, so I've missed either half of a season or I know they that's not allowed. I know, but well I couldn't, you know, hold them back from what you know, the season without me and
then I'll jump in. I So it's a little confusing, and it's been especially confusing coming into this season fifty because there's a lot of people that I do know or a scene, but I can't remember what they did in their season because in part sometimes I didn't finish the season in or I only came in fifty seasons. How could anybody remember what everybody did in every single I know, it's it's a lot.
Do you have a favorite from the season, whether they wont or not. Do you have a favorite Survivor that was your favorite the whole time.
Ozzy's just the man, the guy who's in this one. Yes, he's the best of all time. Is Ozzie's not Coach, No coaches.
No. Ozzy is the guy who looks like the drummer from a Okay, yeah, he looks like the drummer from Total.
He is by far the best survivalist ever on Survivor. He like, y oh, yeah, he's I think I told you about him. He's the guy who like will fish for everybody. That's yes, dude, did you notice he already found like that. He provides for everybody. He is and he's never won. He's been on the show I think four or five times, and he's the nicest guy. His problem is he gets too cocky and he thinks that by being providing for everybody that they won't stab him in the back, and they always alway.
He's the one who had a problem with Coach, who I guess said that it was because of him the coach didn't win a million dollars.
Coach is my the villain that I love to hate. Coach. He's a villain. Knowing nothing about this, I thought everybody coaches first season, So what happened coaches first season? And some people do love him, but it's mostly because they have mixed feelings about him because he's a very good player, but he's also very socially manipulative. There's the season that really turned me against him, which I believe was his
first season. He was on a tribe with somebody. I'm blanking on this guy's name, but this guy was not very stable mentally and very religious, and Coach made a partnership with this guy and like four other people and said we're gonna go all the way to the end. Like day one, he was like, the best, the only way to win this game is if we never break alliances.
And then this guy was really off his rocker and like targeting women because they were enticing him, you know, like saying like that woman is a is sent here from Satan and because she's dressing and you're like, dude, you're just attracted to her. Let it go. It's not her fault. And Coach didn't draw the line and say like, oh, this guy is probably He instead leaned into it, used religiosity to keep them tighter and said, let's all pray before every challenge. Is and I find that really despicable.
And he agreed. He made it to the end. He made it to the end. He did not win. The jury did not get him. It was a woman who also just sort of attached herself to him, knowing that he might get to the end, and she was smart and you want but that's always turned me against coach. He's he's manipulative and he I think he crossed the line there, you know, going too far into like using religion to rally this team of people on his side.
They did very well though, they want and he and by sticking with that group of five, because it is true if you have a group of five and you never, no matter what, turn on each other, you can make it all the way to the end pretty much, especially back in those days. Now it's gotten more complicated because of the rules that they've introduced with advantages.
Well, this is what I want to talk to you about, because there's there's basic things that I as somebody who didn't watch your vivor that I don't know. And since I watched the first season, all I remember is naked guy. That's all I remember. And I actually remember the girl from this one, Jenna I think her name was I remember that. So first of all, what is you're talking about new rules? So what is the new era?
I actually don't know that distinctions technically. I believe there was a it was it was a shift in the way the game. I don't know technically, but yeah, So I honestly I had this same question. I was sort of like, okay, one of our parisiers could jump in the thought. But I believe it has something to do.
I believe the problem with Survivor when it started was that the men would dominate the entire first half of the game because they were The challenges were so physical, right, and the men would end up winning, and so women were getting eliminated like just you know, even the first couple rounds and challenges. And so I believe at some point they decided to institute more puzzles and to make the social learn more. Yeah, so it wasn't just and then because at a certain point, you know, if your
tribe is losing, you just decimated. There's like one person left. And what was ended up happening is people would never want to vote their big powerful men off, so they would they would just keep winning with their men and
vote the women off. So I believe the new era has something to do with that shift, because the game is way more balanced now in terms of like the teamwork involves like a puzzle always or some sort of like throwing challenge that doesn't need brute strength or physical ability. It's much more balanced. And then also this, you know, when it gets to the individual challenges, a lot of the challenges are physically tough, but they're often about perseverance
in your own strength, like with your own body. In other words, you're like beholding on holding onto something just by your fingertips, and it's like it's your own weight, do you know what I mean. So it's not like it's like it's vary to the person. It's not like we all have to lift the same amount or whatever. It's like it's all scale to you. So it's really about challenging to yourself. So yeah, I believe that has something to do with a new era or the old era.
So here's the thing that I find I think is a big mistake.
You should never start a new season of a show assuming everybody that watches the show has seen it before. Yeah, so one thing this did not explain to me in any way, shape or form, which I have no idea, is what the does an idol do?
Okay, So an idol protects you at tribal So if you can't be voted out and voted out, but you only play it after everyone's voted, so essentially they're wasting their vote. And so if you feel like everybody's going to vote for you and they don't know you have an idol, or only certain people on your team, on your tribe know you have an idol, you could then bust the after the vote, you say hey, I'm playing this idol, and then the person who gets the next level of votes is the one out. So it can
be a real turnover. So they have to they have to always be suspicious that somebody is playing the game with an idol in their pocket. And that's why like Ozzie got voted with, he got voted out with an idol in his pocket because he didn't he didn't play it, which happens often people will just be so trusting of
their team. The team might know they have an idol, convince them, oh no, we're not voting for you tonight, blindside that person, and then they walk out with the idol in their pocket, so you can be voted out. Even if you have an idol, you have to just for you ever, yes, you have to play it at after the vote is but before it's before they replay it, yes,
before they read it. And then you have things like multiple idols, like people will play I'm playing an idol and you're like okay, and then the other person who's like the next in the line will be like, I'm also playing an idol. You're like, oh my god, and it'll go down. They've had like tons of weird things like that. The main thing with idols is that if it's if it's played, or if it leaves the game because it's in their pocket, it gets hidden again on the island.
And are these always hidden or are there are? Do you ever win one? When you win?
It's changed every season you got you don't. Yeah, you win when you're Yeah, you win immunity through the challenges, either as a tribe or when they get to the individual game, you individually win immunity. But yeah, the idols are and there have been seasons with no idols, and then there have been seasons where you get clues that can lead you to an idol, and then you have weird rules like this time they have that boomerang idol that got introduced. Yeah, the game is you know, it's.
Oh my god, I just realized if you take your middle name out, it's literally a billy idol. How did nobody else pick that up that it's.
A billy idol? I got it. Yeah, it's a complicated game, and yeah, it's pretty manipulative in terms of like how the rules change season to season. You know, they're they're they're ultimately going to go for the best television and there have been times when you're you can tell that they're kind of tilting the challenges to sort of favor a certain person or to give certain But yeah, it's
it's a it's a tricky game. The main thing is, you know, the three the three rules, outwit, outlast, and outplay. So those are the three things you really you you know you that you you want to outwit your fellow players, you know, because you're gonna have to eventually be voting against each other, even if they're on your tribe or working against another tribe. In the in the early half of the game, let's see outlast obviously, just surviving and severe.
Yeah.
One of the Outwit Outlast out play is that it.
Yeah, that's it.
What's been interesting for me is, like going back to the early seasons, there was a lot of emphasis put on the actual survival factor, like how they got food, right, if that's what I remember, building fires, stuff like that. That has really for the large part been edited out. Now the game is now, I mean, I think people's psychological stuff. It's all the social stuff because they are
still doing all the physical stuff. I mean, you see in this one they figure out how to make a fire, which was great, and you're still having to build shelters. You see them working hard. They're just not focusing on
that in the editing at all anymore. So it's really just about who's partnering with who, who's going with who, And then the challenge is becoming the sort of showdown and the immunity the tribals to be like the reveal of what's actually going to happen, So you don't get like there would be whole seasons where you'd just be listening to people complaining about how hungry they were or that they were cold, and you don't get that much anymore.
And I don't know how much of that is because it's not as hard as it used to be because they did like one season in Africa which was truly devastating, like people were like near death because they were starving and the key was doing to death. And they used to do a lot of seasons where they would do in like a culturally specific area, so you'd have like the Philippines and you'd learn about Filipino culture, they'd eat,
you know, or whatever. They kind of now just limited it to Fiji for the last like ten years, just like it's kind of a standard set of circumstances, like there are fish, there are coconuts, you get a certain amount of rice, and you can get flint if you work for it, so you can start a fire.
And that was the other thing is I didn't again because I didn't know. When they're like one team wins flint, I was like, Okay, does that mean the other teams can't just build a fire if they want to they just And I didn't know if that meant it's like one one tribe gets fire, the other two you can't have fire, right, But that's not what it means.
But it means you can you can you could make a if you knew how to make a fire, right.
But you figure everybody going on something called Survivor would know how to make a fire.
Dude, you are will every season, not every season, Almost every season there comes down to a challenge between two people where they have to build a fire after because they like split the votes or there's no other way to determine, so they have to build a fire at the tribal council and I shit, you not have The people that get there do not know how to build a fire with flint. At the end of the d Alex and I are talking about this all the time. We're always like, how toy, It's like not knowing how
to swim. It's dude, you have to figure this out, like get you know? So, yes, I agree with you. Like the first thing I would do is figure out how to make fire under any conditions, but especially the Fijian conditions, right, like knowing what my resources are called, how to make a fire and fee exactly exactly, And then I'd learn what I can eat and what I can hunt and what kind of fish I could eat.
And then I would also starve myself leading up to going because you watch these people and there's they lose so much weight, and also their bodies are so used to regular calorie intake. You see like big guys crash because they have such requirements their bodies require, so which is why weird. That's the opposite of a loan.
Everyone on a loan they put on as much weight as they possibly can before they go into a loan. So you see these women that are like, I just put on sixty pounds before I.
Go because they just know they're going to lose it.
They know that they're going to lose all the body fat, so they're like fat is fuel on a loan, so they're like put on as much weight as you can. It said, it seems almost like a bit of a vanity project on Survivor, where it's like I need to look good with my shirt off.
Mike White worked really hard to make sure he abody for this moment for months, like yeah, with your fifteen personal trainers.
But at the same time, it's like, I think I'd rather go in thirty pounds overweight and carry a whole bunch of that.
No, I don't, because there's because they're so physically stretched, like the challenges you want to be in really good, like lean fighting shape and also not be hungry, you know, So like to me, I would I would be like restriction going like the month before. I'd go to like a really low calorie diet because what that does is it trains your body to be more efficient with less food because you're only getting so much rice, You're only getting so much stuff. So yeah, be used to it.
Here we goes. Maddie just said the player that won last season since she was fasting for months before going to the show, so we're a body.
Yeah, that's exactly what I would do, which is totally the opposite of a loan.
Everybody and alone is like we're just sitting around and in cold weather and trying to survive that. It's different. This is like, yeah, this one you just want to be because you're working hard. I mean those challenges you see them insane. It's really tough, man Like, it's not light, you know, and you're doing that.
Okay. My last question is a basic one. Are these people hot or are they cold? Because when you've got somebody just in shorts with no T shirt next to a woman with a parka and a sweater, what the is happening. Are they hot or are they cold because.
Weather extremes man without shelter, and I think at night, like when you saw them on Exile Island, they were all bundled up in whatever they could have because I think they're talking at the same time.
You've got a woman there literally in like a trench coat and a turtleneck next to a guy with shorts on. I'm like, temperature wise, help me out what's happening on?
Yeah, I think it's tropical, which is just very you know, and it's like whether you've been in the water or not, or like right, yes, without shelter, Man, it's intense. Like that was confusing.
I know.
Well, I mean I think the game has gotten a lot better since, and maybe that's what the new era is is locking it in in Fiji and sort of controlling those conditions because like they did an Australian Outback one, which was brutal, Like you get into situations where like the survival question overtakes the gameplay because it's like we're literally starving and you know, or our shelter gets blown away by a hurricane wind, you know, like that shit
like that has happened, so I think now they've they figured out the beaches, Like now they're repeating using They're using the same beaches that you can reckon from season to season.
It's interesting that's their set. Yeah, I mean it's basically become a set. Yeah, they figured out what they can control. There has to be a point where you've done enough seasons there where you've depleted the natural, right, like the coconuts aren't going to be as plentiful, and the trees that you can use to make shelter aren't going to be as plentiful, and eventually they're gonna have to move it, right, I know, I don't know.
How they rotated or how they figured it out. Would you go on? Yeah, I think this is the one reality show that I would But again, like Traders, I would probably be bad at it the same way that like Ozzie's bad at it, Like, I mean, I'd be way worse than him physically number one. But number two, I'm just too trusting. I'm just too like I would be like I would want to play with honor and integrity,
but you said you can't do that. Yeah, but it's hard, man, you know, like you eventually somebody is gonna have to say, let's take advantage of you know, right, honor and like his word.
Which but you would also have to you would have if you wanted to play honorably, you would have to go in in ripping shape because what you would essentially be saying is I'm going to play honorably, but I have to win every challenge that I can possibly win so we're not voted off.
Yes, And I mean I think I would do exactly what Ozzie is doing, which is partner up with the Machiavelli and genius like SII and just be like, hey, you're gonna you're gonna help tell me who to vote for and help me and watch my back and be the strategic mind for me. Well, I'm just like here to help and like support and provide like and I could never be that provider, but I hopefully I would offer other help, you know, in terms of like moral support or leadership skills or whatever. But I yeah, I
would not be I'm not a good liar. I'm not a no you're not and I'm really uncomfortable with you know, and I just would ultimately be like, Nope, just take me out, vote me out.
If I you know, have to Well, here's the last thing I'll say before we get into this. And you told me about this, you said this several times, but it wasn't until I really watched.
Jeff Probst is a phenomenal host. He's the man, dude, phenomenal part. At times he's doing sports commentary.
At times he says all of their names, it's he's it's great.
And I assumed that he had an ear piece on, you know, that his producers were helping him. Turns out Emily Longoretta, who's writing our Podny's World book and she's a journalist and she went and covered Survivor this season. He does no earpiece. He is fully on his own. That man is like, because I look at like amazing race and Phil what's his name?
Who has that?
Oh, I'm like, dude, your job is like you got the coucius job in the world because he just like literally gets a fly around the country or the world and meet people in beautiful places and be like you made it, you didn't. Like, that's all he has to do, whereas like Jeff Probes is actually engaging them and and monitoring and and like over refereeing and overseas a referee. He's doing sports. A trial judge. He's like a trial judge, dude.
He is great an entertaining host, yes man, and like, yeah, I just think.
He's empathetic, dude. He keeps everybody on track. Halfway through the show, was like, my god, this man is a good host. Yes.
And when Indy like became a fan of Jeff Probes, you know, when he was a little little like five year old six years watching him, like it's a good person to look up to.
Dude.
Yeah, Like he's the guy is a really good it's it's like one of the few like reality show hosts that I'm like, he deserves every cent that he goes because that's not easy.
He's entertaining, he's yeah, I mean he's it's really.
And everybody feels like it's on their side, like it doesn't matter how they behave like for the most like every single person that's part of the game. They never turn on him. They never are like, Jeff, you really messed this up? Or Jeff, how dare you talk to me like that? They he's always very upfront, he's personable. Yeah, he's the best. Was great. Yeah, all right, So We're gonna pause here before we get into the actual recap of the episode, because it turns out we've had a
lot of survivor back history to cover and discuss. You've been listening to pod meets Twirled. The torches may be snuffed, but our questionable analysis burns on. We'll see you next time. A Tribals wa