Is Sandra Diaz-Twine the Survivor GOAT?

[00:00:08] Hey everybody, what's going on? Rob Cesternino, we are back. We're talking about who's the GOAT, who's the greatest Survivor player of all time. And today, we are going to have a discussion about is the greatest player of all time, Sandra Diaz-Twine. And here to talk about it, if the queen does stay queen, here he is. Give it up for Mike Bloom.

[00:00:34] Boom! Thrilled to be here, Rob. I know last week I got the great pleasure of vehemently defending Tony's two-time winning honor. But now, Rob, you get to say, I can get loud too. What the F in this week's podcast. WTF. And so we will be talking about it. I will be telling you why I think that Sandra is the GOAT. Mike will be tasked to give you the devil's advocate, maybe why Sandra might not be the GOAT.

[00:01:03] A.K.A. I don't know about that. I don't know about that, but we are going to talk about that here today. Mike, how are you doing? I'm doing well. It's been a busy first week of June. I feel like the concept of off-season is becoming more and more of a mythical creature. But what I will say is I enjoy the ability to stay kind of firmly swimming in the Survivor waters.

[00:01:29] And especially with 50 being such a celebrational time, I think this is, you know, we're only two people in out of five at this point. Maybe even more because we are continuing to get suggestions as to should so-and-so be included, should so-and-so be included. But it's been a lot of fun to be able to talk through the legacies of some of these people. And I think we got some good reception from our Tony podcast. And hopefully the good times will keep on rolling as the walls get reversed here. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, we're having a lot of fun here.

[00:01:55] Also, Chappelle and I are well underway with our Survivor co-wrong rewatch. And so be sure to check that out Monday, Wednesday, Friday here on RHAP. But, Mike, look, today we're going to talk about Sandra. And Sandra has always been such a polarizing figure. Really, maybe not so polarizing prior to Heroes vs. Villains.

[00:02:20] But after Heroes vs. Villains especially, especially when she became the two-time winner of Survivor, the first and only two-time winner at that point in Survivor's history, that there was discourse of should Parvati have won Heroes vs. Villains? Is Sandra even that good? She's the two-time winner. And it really has been a debate that has gone on for quite some time.

[00:02:46] And then ultimately she comes back and then has kind of like a second act in her Survivor career of her Game Changers and Winners at War run where we see a different side of Sandra. But I really am looking forward to this task today of explaining why I do think Sandra is the GOAT. Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, I think of perhaps all of these players, this is one of the most hotly contested subjects,

[00:03:15] considering that this is the discussion that has been had in the Survivor community for the better part of 16 years. Where, yes, I certainly think in seasons past there were a lot of debates as to does the best player win? You know, is so-and-so a better player than the person that they won over? But yeah, this became a much larger part of the conversation of like, okay, Sandra is certifiably, the check was cleared multiple times over. She is the first two-time winner in American Survivor history.

[00:03:45] Does that automatically make her the best player of all time? And now I think it's an even more interesting discussion, considering that we now have two other people who have also won two times. So, Mike, I'd love to start this discussion, and maybe we could put Sandra just on the back burner. Put her off to the side for a minute. I want to have to do an exercise with you. That's where it always goes wrong, Rob. The minute we underestimate her, the minute she's sitting in the final two or final three. But I think let's get, that's our main course.

[00:04:13] And I want to just do a quick exercise that I want to work with you on the exercise of, let's go into, let's build a player here for Survivor. And what I want to do is sort of like build the perfect Survivor player. And so if we're going to build this perfect Survivor player, I want to ask you some attributes that we should have. Okay. What do we start with in terms of their temperament?

[00:04:42] What kind of temperament ideally would this person have? So this is something that we got into a little bit with the Tony discussion, right? And I don't necessarily think, you know, there is a one size fits all type of personality. This to me kind of goes hand in hand with the social game part of it. So what I would say in terms of temperament is, to go back to the first thing I said, I think they could have the capacity to get loud to what the F,

[00:05:06] but I think they need to have a personality that allows them to seem sociable and likable to a majority of people around them. They may not be able to please everybody, but if they get along with most personalities, that is a winning quality. Okay. What kind of athlete, athletic specimen should we have in this perfect Survivor player? I mean,

[00:05:30] you're picking at one of my biggest spoiler alert arguments in the anti-column with the lovely Sandra, is that I do think when it comes to either the perfect player for this exercise or the greatest player, I do think, you know, if you're trying to like create a D&D character, I don't want any dump stats. I don't want to necessarily, you know, put all into a couple of baskets at the expense of others. And so I do think, honestly,

[00:05:56] challengeability is something that should have a specific level that they should be operating at. We did not talk about this last time, but something that should be mentioned about someone like Tony as an example that I neglected to bring up is the fact that he didn't win any challenges in his first season, but in his second win, he did win four individual immunity challenges. Not to say you need to be a record-breaking all-time challenge performer, but I do think having the ability to hold your own, especially from an individual challenge perspective, is a facet that I would want to have in the perfect player.

[00:06:27] What about in terms of, for lack of a better term, what about book smarts? What do we, like a perceived, like obvious intelligence that you see them and you just go right away, okay, this person is very sharp. Ooh,

[00:06:46] because that is such an interesting question because I feel like nowadays that is such a trope that could be used against somebody, right? We certainly have seen people with that perceived bookishness go on to win in the form of John Cochran. But I also do feel like nowadays with the casting that exists within Survivor, the waters have become a little bit more muddied, or at least the pool has been deepened, where now it isn't like, here's Ryan's shoulders and a bunch of, you know,

[00:07:16] buff hot men. It's more so kind of casting the net wide in terms of that archetype, which does make them seem less threatening. I don't necessarily need to look at a player as being, you know, an accountant in terms of knowing where all the numbers are and what they need to do to figure something out. It is a good skill to have, but I think because Survivor is such an innately personal, social, day-to-day game, I think I would value, honestly, street smarts above book smarts.

[00:07:44] You can study up on everything that you want to, but I think the ability to have that application is honestly more essential than having the smarts in general. All right. Well, you didn't walk into exactly what I was hoping you would, but I do feel like in a lot of ways,

[00:08:01] I feel like you're helping to illuminate my point in that I think that the most perfect Survivor that you could possibly imagine probably does not appear the same as Sandra Diaz-Twine. And I think that what makes Sandra the goat of Survivor is that she is perfectly imperfect.

[00:08:28] And I think that the very things that hold back the players who just get clocked immediately as the threats, the people we have to deal with, the people we can't let them get to the end, we got to do something about these players. I think that Sandra, that her imperfections are a feature, not a bug.

[00:08:51] And I think that that is why that she is able to capitalize on the perceptions that people have about her to become Survivor's most dangerous player. And that is the reason why I believe she's been able to win two times and is such a model prototype for what the ideal Survivor player is. Yeah. I mean,

[00:09:18] you got to do this great panel at Tribeca Festival at this point now, the previous week. And you brought up a very interesting point when you were asked about like, what is Out, wait, out, play, outlast mean in the modern day? Yeah. And you emphasize that Outlast is really one of the most like new era coded concepts where it's maybe it's less so about you need to have your hands around this game at all times, or you need this big room on your resume. Sometimes, especially with some of the stuff being thrown at you as of late,

[00:09:46] it's more so like make it to another day for lack of a better term, as long as it's not me. And so I think from that capacity, from a pure survivability perspective, Sandra does possess that. Now, something I'm intrigued to hear about from you, Rob, is that I personally, from the corner of, again, maybe not completely reflective of my opinions of Sandra, but from this role that I've been thrust into. Sure.

[00:10:10] How would you feel if I said that I feel like the least impressive performances that Sandra has had in terms of a skill set in her Survivor career are from the two seasons she won? The least impressive skill set? Yeah. Well, I almost, I think that what she did that was so impressive in Winners at War and at, and in Game Changers,

[00:10:38] I think that was very impressive to the viewer, but I think that she ultimately got away from the thing that makes her the greatest of all time. Hmm. She, I think that, I think that Sandra in those other two seasons, and I actually feel like in Winners at War, she actually had a really good chance. I had, uh, things not gone awry there with Denise, uh, in that one particular vote.

[00:11:06] I think that she is actually set up particularly well, but I think that there ends up being this pushback of like, okay, well, I, I have to show people what it is that I am capable of doing. And I think that she ends up taking on a role that isn't necessarily the classic Sandra that I do believe personifies the, the goat. So what are those facets? It, does it come down to, as you mentioned,

[00:11:32] like threat management and ability to feel underestimated, not need to necessarily be that, that person dictating the votes. So I almost feel like that. I don't believe that Sandra went before she played survivor. I don't believe that she sat and thought about, you know, what's going to be the ideal strategy for me.

[00:11:55] I don't think that Sandra is somebody who spends a lot of time planning out what's going to happen. I think Sandra is probably one of the preeminent survivors at being able to live in the moment of that. She's concerned with what's happening now. She never gets too far ahead of herself. She's not out there thinking of, okay, then I'm going to do this, then I'm going to do this, then I'm going to do this. Her strategy,

[00:12:22] we all know anybody but me is just about how do I get through today? How do I get through this one vote and advance to the next round of survivor? And we have seen so many survivor players over the course of the years who get really caught up in, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And then they have blinders on, and they're just not focused enough on the present moment of survivor. And I think that's one of Sandra's greatest strengths in the game.

[00:12:51] And so I don't know if she necessarily is the master at perceiving this person is the biggest threat, thus I am going to eliminate them, that her game is not really one of agency. Her game is one of surviving and authenticity, and it's just where if, if she is, if somebody else is driving, and again,

[00:13:19] I don't even think that this is necessarily what she wants to do. I don't think that she comes in and, and this is my plan. I'm going to go and sit in the end with Russell. In that season, in here in Pearl Islands, that that is not even what she wanted. But yet, is that she is a master of, ultimately, when we're talking about if the objective is winning the game,

[00:13:44] that she is built to survive and advance and go to the end and win this game. In the case of Game Changers, I think she does go to like an obscene amount of tribal councils also. And if you were going to call out a flaw anywhere, you know, her lack of challenge ability, which I do think becomes a strength post-merge,

[00:14:09] could lead her to potentially scenarios where she goes to pre-merge tribal councils. And I think that that does play out in Survivor Game Changers. I don't have it open in front of me of how many times she does go to a pre-merge tribal council, but I think she must go to five or six. Yeah, I'm pretty sure she goes to tribal in every episode except for the Beastmo cowboy boot. Yeah, so she does end up getting unlucky that she's not matched up with people who can carry her, where in a perfect world,

[00:14:38] she gets to sit out of challenges. We have the Sandra bench, and that's really is like, oh, that's the best case scenario for her as a player. Game Changers just happened to be the time where she had to go to so many of those tribal councils. And she probably had to take the reins more so than you would want for Sandra for her to have her most successful chances to win. Yeah, that's really the thing I wanted to hone in on. I mean, as I mentioned before, you know,

[00:15:05] I personally believe that the GOAT survivor player is somebody who, again, I don't need to necessarily have a record-breaking challenge performer in that category, but someone who is, you know, if they need to rely on it, or if they need to win something to stymie or help a plan that they are trying to help along, they certainly could. We see this in the case of Tony winning, I think, in a case where like, if he hadn't done the extortion advantage, then Jeremy would have won,

[00:15:33] and that could have shot his whole Sophie plan to sunshine there. So I think for Sandra, it is a bit of a mark against her that she doesn't necessarily have those abilities to be able to rely on. And in fact, I would say like, as we talk about all of her subsequent heroes versus villains performances, it is interesting that like, yes, you could argue that all three times a swap works out in a weird way and she ends up going. But I looked at like her performance on Australian Survivor as an example. And yes,

[00:16:03] it sucks that she had done a few things and put herself in a power position that easily got swapped. But there's a confessional from Jordy where he's listing out the reasons to get rid of Sandra. And one of them is that she is a challenge liability. And so I think that is something that I do agree that I think perhaps some unforced errors have led to Sandra's, you know, not such great success in her latter day seasons. But the pre-merge is always going to be a tough time for her. I would argue the pre-merge for any of these five players we're going to be talking about.

[00:16:33] Sandra is the most consistently vulnerable in a pre-merge scenario. Yes, she is. But, but I will say that, let's, let's talk about, I want to talk about her lack of ability to win immunity challenges after the merge next. Yeah, it is a hole in her game in terms of being able to win challenges in the pre-merge. That being said,

[00:17:01] I think that she has in the past identified this. She doesn't necessarily put herself into positions where she could be the person who's screwing up the challenge. She very willing, although she'll tell you that she can swim better than Johnny Fairplay. She, she's will willingly sit out of the challenge.

[00:17:20] She will often align with strong men in the pre-merge who will help with carrying her through some of these different pre-merge challenges. So the pre-merge challenge can be a liability, can cause her to go to tribal councils. Previous, it, it, it hasn't hurt her too much. Um, you know, game changers is, is just got so,

[00:17:48] you have to go so many times to tribal council. Yeah. I mean, I certainly see that. I do look at game changers as an example where yes, Sandra does go. She stays on the same beach, but now she's in a very disadvantageous position. It should be said though. And this is the same case with, with Australian survivor as well. Like she, it's not like it was only her. And then a bunch of people on the opposite side. There are people around her. Listen,

[00:18:14] I think we'd all love to live in the universe where maybe a Jeff Varner gets voted out there instead of Sandra. But there's a reason why, in my opinion, that in those scenarios, yes, the numbers don't work out in her favor, but Sandra is the first person targeted in both of those scenarios. And it comes from, as you mentioned before, that threat management perspective. I think that again, we can talk about this with Sandra's two wins. I think she is a master of threat management in those regards, but I think something that takes away from it is the fact that that threat management,

[00:18:42] it's weird because we sit there in the first five or six episodes of any given season being like, why is nobody going after Sandra yet? But then once a new group of players get brought in front of her, then they immediately say, oh, that's Sandra. We have to get rid of her. I don't think that's particularly a coincidence. Yeah. You know, by the time we get to survivor game changers, she's already won twice. She is the only, uh, certain, she's the only two time winner in the show. Um, how many winner other winners are still, is she,

[00:19:12] is she the only winner left at that point? I think JT is gone. Tony is gone. Yeah. So at the second swap, yeah, she's the only winner left. She's the only winner left in the game. It just is kind of like an obvious vote there. There's really nothing that she's able to do in that spot. I mean, I don't know any player that in that position that, that would be able to get out of the scenario that she's in. It, there's a lot of swaps going on in, in game changers. It's, it's, I mean, what, what, what else could you say? I mean,

[00:19:42] uh, you could certainly, you know, see on clear display, some of her other talents in this season. Um, she's not going to help you win a challenge. And eventually this just, you know, it, it came up snake eyes for her at, at this particular moment. It's five or game changers. I mean, it makes sense that Sandra is a paralegal because her question of choice every time she goes to a challenge is, may I approach the bench? Yeah. Just, I mean, that,

[00:20:10] that group that she's with, um, she's with, uh, Zeke and Sarah, uh, and Ozzy and Andrea and Ty. And they're like, what are we doing here? Uh, we're going to let Sandra get any further. I mean, and I think that is the question that we need to ask with her ladder three performances is yes, the circumstances work out how they do. And we can certainly talk about the winners at war at its own solitary thing. Cause I think that is a little bit more self-inflicted obviously than the other two seasons.

[00:20:39] But I guess the question is, was Sandra going to walk into any of those three seasons able to replicate her success? Or was this always going to be a manner of at the end of the day, no matter who was sitting in front of her, eventually everyone would be like, well, we can all agree. She's Sandra. She's got to go. Yeah. It becomes kind of a difficult thing to navigate where she's now so successful. I mean, we talked about Tony the other day. We've never had to watch Tony play, uh, or only an Australian survivor as a two-time winner.

[00:21:09] Once you, you reach that level, the burden it becomes on you, uh, becomes maybe insurmountable. I don't know if we'll ever have a three-time winner. I think that you end up having a certain level of success and people are just not going to let you play the game anymore. And so, yeah,

[00:21:28] I'd love to talk more about Sandra and what she brings to the table more so than how has she been able to navigate with the anchor of being the two-time winner, holding her back and, and making her an even bigger target in people's eyes. Because I think that it almost flies in the face of what made her the greatest player, in my opinion, is that she is so perfectly imperfect and she's, and she's rough around the edges.

[00:21:58] And I think that the, the, the, the queen's crown ultimately ends up being kind of a shiny object that, and, and the game changers game ends up becoming, okay, well now I have to play a different style of play. It's not going to work for me to just be the, the, the model of Sandra that was so successful. But I think that that model in particular of Sandra,

[00:22:23] the Sandra 1.0 and even 2.0 is the model of what the, what the perfect survivor ends up being. Because I think that people are, as you mentioned earlier, that it's so easy to underestimate her. Many players have been doomed. They look at Sandra and they see her flaws. They see the, the game is flawed and, and they want to take,

[00:22:53] they want, they're not scared of her. That they don't see her as being sharp. They don't see her as being somebody who can win challenges. And they don't see her potential to win votes with the jury. They see that she's fighting with people. They see a lack of a social game and, and players historically have looked at her and they see all of the things that she's not. And the, and they, and they,

[00:23:21] they don't see that for the, the sum of the parts, which ultimately ends up making her so dangerous. And, and the fact that she's not intimidated. Well, I want to say that in two different ways, that her as a, the concept of her as a player is not intimidating. And so people are not going to put together a big plan or waste a vote.

[00:23:49] There's an opportunity cost to vote out. Sandra will get her and that she's not a threat. She's not going to win the challenges. She doesn't have anything. We'll get rid of her later. It, it helps her. It behooves her that she can't win these challenges in the post merge game, but ultimately that she just gets further and further along until the point where that people took her to the end. Johnny, that Lil took her to the end.

[00:24:19] Russell took her to, they wanted to sit with her at the end because they felt like that they, they could beat her. They, they wanted to, maybe in the case of Lil, it was, I'd rather lose to her than Johnny Fairplay, but, but Russell like went out of his way and felt like that he told Sandra that, you know, I'm going to go to the end with you because I can beat you. And Sandra said, I don't know about that. She's, she gets people to do the thing.

[00:24:45] And we're going to talk about Sari in a couple of weeks and think about Sari. Nobody ever wanted to sit next to Sari. She's too perfect. Yeah. I mean, I think that that certainly speaks to the way she was being perceived out there yet, not that thin line, right? That you hope with every survivor player of like, I want to be underestimated, but I don't want to be counted out. I don't want to be so out of it that I'm looked at as a go. I want to actually have a fighting chance, but I don't want everyone else to know that. I think the question I have though,

[00:25:15] is how was Sandra in those winning seasons able to utilize that positioning to her benefit? Because I think a marker against Sandra's two winning seasons compared to the other people that we're going to talk to or talk about, especially from Tony's two wins, poverty's two wins, Boston Rob's win, and a lot of stuff that Sari has been able to do is the, I'm not even going to say lack of control.

[00:25:40] I would say lessened control compared to others during the post-merge Pearl Islands. She loses Rupert. She loses Krista. And yes, that was a very tumultuous fluidy type of post-merge, but I would argue that Sandra wasn't necessarily dictating or helping a lot of stuff until the final couple of votes. Heroes versus villains. Infamously, she goes to the heroes and says, here's all the information I have. She says at the final tribal council, my goal was to get Russell out.

[00:26:08] And it wasn't something she was able to put the pieces together on. Do you think that her, you know, the fact that she was not able to necessarily take control of some of these moves in the most important portion of the game, does that serve as a mark against her compared to the other people we're talking about in this series? It's one of the most difficult things to untangle when we're ranking survivor players. I know in the evolution of strategy, I did this.

[00:26:36] And it's easy when we can go back and take a look at your, you know, Tom Westman's or Kim Spradlin's or even Boston Rob. It's like, Hey, this is what I want to have happen. I'm going to pull the levers. I'm going to manipulate, and I'm going to make what I want to have happen, happen. And that is a very valid and interesting way to watch a person play survivor. But ultimately,

[00:27:05] it's not the only way to play the game. And it's a very high variance way to play survivor of if everything goes according to plan, then you've got a really good shot to win the game. But it's not always going to work. And I think that what Sandra had proved is that, yeah, is she controlling the votes? No. Is what she wants to have happen happening? No. No.

[00:27:35] But she survives. She, she, she ultimately thrives. And so what's, what's the better skill set to have? Like, would you, would you, would you rather have like, okay, I want to dictate everything that's going to go on, but it's a 50, 50 chance of if it works, great. But if not, uh, I, I'm totally effed, uh, or that, Hey, things are going to go haywire. Things are not going to go well, but you're going to be okay.

[00:28:04] And it's, there's like a reassurance of that. The, you know, Mike, uh, that the bird lands on a branch. Um, and, uh, the bird doesn't necessarily know if the branch is going to hold it or not, but the bird is, the bird is secure because, uh, even if the branch breaks, the bird's going to be okay. Bird's going to fly. Okay. And that's Sandra where she doesn't necessarily,

[00:28:34] uh, have or need the safety net that so many of these other players do that are, you know, going up there and, and taking the big swings because even when it doesn't go well, even when she ends up, uh, you know, uh, going for something, uh, she's willing to reverse course. I guess I'm stuck with Russell. Like I'm stuck with Russell and she can turn around and she can accept it. She doesn't have to like it,

[00:29:03] but she finds a way through the hard times. And there is a perseverance to Sandra that they're just, uh, that these home run hitters that you talk about of, they call their shots. They're going out there and this is the plan. This is the big move. This is the person I need to take out. Sure. Like if it works great. And if it doesn't, you're, you're screwed.

[00:29:27] Sandra is basically your all weather survivor player of no matter what ends up happening. She's able to figure out a way to maneuver through and get by. I mean, it's a God, it's going to be so weird to pull out a baseball reference, but, it's like a comparing like Murakami to Kevin McGonigal this season of like, these are two rookies. One hits a bunch of big bombs, but sometimes they strike out. The other one gets on base a lot. They're not going to hit it out of the park, but they're, you know,

[00:29:56] maybe the more timeless baseball reference is that we're talking like money ball, where that when the Yankees were like, we're paying big money. We need Jason Giambi. We need our sluggers. We need people that are going to, yeah, they're going to, they're going to, you know, hit 40 home runs and they're going to strike out 200 times. And Billy Beans, just give me people that get on base. That's really, as long as that they're not making an out, they, I don't care if they walk. I don't care if they get hit by the pitch. I don't care if they, you know, hit slow grounders and they just beat them out in the infield.

[00:30:26] It doesn't matter because they're not making an out. And that is when we look at Sandra's track record, especially over those first two seasons, that she's just the player that it doesn't look pretty. It's not impressive to watch most of the time, but she doesn't do the one thing that we judge survivor players on is that she doesn't get voted out. So to that point, I do see what you're talking about here.

[00:30:53] But what I think that is going to, to really, you know, bring this argument home is the fact that I don't think any of us are disputing. Like Sandra is an incredible player. There is a reason why we're talking about her right now. I do think the fact that she has won twice is absolutely no coincidence. I think the question is, is she the best among them? And I think when you look at the other people that we're talking about, they have this variability where they also have the capacity to fly.

[00:31:21] There's no ostriches among this group. They yes, are able to build their nest, but they also have the ability to take off the branch if they need to. The issue I see with Sandra is that, yes, I think that she doesn't necessarily need to be the person that is calling the shots. But when we see one very large example of her trying to sort of fit herself into the mold that we have seen with some of these other players, it goes catastrophically wrong. Rob,

[00:31:49] how am I supposed to digest this Denise move in winners at war when it comes to taking on the full meal of Sandra as a possible goat? Listen, it's a ambitious swing that she ends up taking. And I think that may be the fatal flaw that she ends up having here is that she does not see herself as the person that the other players,

[00:32:18] specifically Denise, ends up seeing her as. So if I go back to that vote, let me just give the reminder there to everybody. Come on, Colby, give it to me. Yeah. Sandra in winners at war. And I'm just trying to find the actual vote from that episode. And I am struggling with that right at this moment. But, um,

[00:32:48] so what, what happens, Mike, she ends up giving the, uh, that she, that she has a, an idol. Yes. That was given to her. It was offered to her from the edge. I believe that then she paid for with fire tokens. Yes. And then also Denise already had an idol, but Sandra did not know this. So basically what happened was in the swap tribe, it was her, Tony, Kim, Jeremy, and Denise. And then basically they try to form this quote unquote lions group saying like Tony, Sandra, Kim,

[00:33:18] and Jeremy there, you know, the best of the best. So Denise is an easy, odd one out. Not to mention that Kim, Sandra and Tony all came from the same starting tribe, but Sandra wants to try to, you know, make this lightning strike twice and get Tony out again. And so she sells her own. She tries to basically pay it forward. And have Denise pay her by saying, I'll sell you my idol for two fire tokens. You use it,

[00:33:47] save yourself, and you vote out Tony. Yeah. And not only does this go wrong where, you know, Denise plays an idol on Jeremy plays an idol on herself, uh, and votes out Sandra, but also, uh, remind, um, thing that I forgot about until recently relitigating it is that Sandra asked for two fire tokens. Denise said, how about one now and one later? And Sandra actually agreed to it. So she also left with 50% of what was, she was offering. Listen, she wasn't going to the edge. Fire tokens weren't doing her any good anyway.

[00:34:17] So, that, that, that look, Sam, Sandra knows her way around deals. I'm not going to, uh, quibble with that. Yeah. Look, if it worked, it looks really good. She had a bad read on Denise. And I think that ultimately, I think that Sandra was thinking, yeah, why, why would you get rid of me at this point? I mean, uh, that Denise ultimately goes further into the game. I mean, yes, she was able to,

[00:34:46] as Jonathan coined it in season 50, she put a notch on her belt, uh, by getting rid of Sandra and Denise. Great job. You got out Sandra and you ended up leaving in the person who was going to win the entire game. And so I'm not sure necessarily if it was a good move for Denise. I guess Sandra left herself open to that possibility. And that's probably the, you know, that's, that's survivor baby of that. You can't, you can lead the horse to water.

[00:35:15] You can't make them drink. And it ends up being just too juicy of a move for Denise to ultimately get Sandra out in the, in this move. When I guess looking back, I think that voting out Tony, like Sandra did have it right. You know, Denise ultimately, uh, mainly you, you got to, you know, what, what should she have done? Uh, I mean, Sandra's trying, trying to keep Denise around. Denise is,

[00:35:45] says no good deed goes unpunished. It was a big swing. I mean, it definitely was a big swing and look, it was fun to watch. And I loved Sandra blowing off the edge because she doesn't necessarily need that BS. Uh, she says, listen, I'm going to, when I do extract it, I'm not the one, I'm going to be in the comfy in the bunker. I'm not going to be the one out there roughing it. I don't need to live more on survivor if I can help it. And not for anything that, yeah,

[00:36:12] she ends up getting double crossed by Denise. But when we're talking about Tony, the greatest of all time, Sandra had him dead to rights twice where that she gets him out in survivor game changers. He would have been totally blindsided here. I remember in the real time, I think we were looking at this as potentially an advantage get in for Tony. I think we were thinking like, Oh my God, like Tony, the king of idols. Kim also had an idol. Yeah. That he didn't have an idol. Kim had an idol. And then Denise,

[00:36:42] uh, and Sandra ultimately had one. And I think we were thinking that maybe if Jeremy won individual immunity here, or there was like maybe a scenario where, um, that he, he may have had the safety without power at that point. I can't remember. That's right. That's right. Um, so he had safety without power. Kim had an idol. Denise had an idol. Um, and so we were, we were concerned. Sandra had an idol. Yeah. So I think though, that's, that's perfectly on display.

[00:37:12] The pure irony of where Sandra's journey had gotten her to that point where for succeeding so much from being underestimated and people completely misestimating, not only where she stood in the competition, but how she felt about them, that, you know, they felt that comfortable enough that she's going to want to work with me only to realize that, you know, she'll swear on her kids that she's going to screw you and Burton. Sandra did the exact same thing to Denise here.

[00:37:41] I think that Sandra for someone who, again, puts forward this whole strategy of self-sufficiency, independence, as long as it's not me, I'll dump out the fish. I'll blame it on my closest ally. It's fine. As long as you don't write down Sandra's name here, she is putting herself out there incredibly. So sticking her neck out unnecessarily to be like, I want this thing to happen to the cost of my own game. And that feels like, again, her inability to carry forward with that,

[00:38:09] I think could be a mark against her considering that we have seen other players be able to do that, to make those risks, you know, looking at what Tony has been able to do over the course of his two wins and succeed. Yes, it is one of the only blemishes on Sandra's record, but it is a large blemish at that. I'll say that maybe this is a thing that Sandra needs to work on for future survivor play. I think that she has a bit of body of work dysmorphia.

[00:38:35] And I think that she maybe sees her perception of herself being a little bit more like the original versions of Sandra. And maybe she doesn't necessarily look at herself in the way that the other players see her as, oh, this is this very scary two-time winner of the game. And so maybe in that moment, she just was not thinking about how Denise was perceiving her,

[00:39:06] especially in an all-winner season, that maybe didn't, that she wasn't thinking of herself as the big scary monster that Denise needed to worry about in this spot. And I don't know if Denise and Tony even had a relationship at that point. I think that Denise had been on the other tribe and then Tony and Sandra had played together. So, you know, listen, that she had a bad read on Denise.

[00:39:32] I think that when we talk about all of these players that are up for consideration, I think they all have at least one time, one thing that they wish they would have had back where it doesn't end up going that great. I mean, we haven't gotten to poverty. She gets voted out in this same episode here in Winners at War. And so Sandra took this swing. She is trying to set herself up here in the all-winner season.

[00:39:59] I think if it works, I think she ultimately has a decent shot to get at it. But I think that this was just a little bit of not necessarily adapting how she sees herself with where her resume ended up taking her. So I want to transition here because there is the, as long as it's not me, but I think Sandra is also able to benefit in her first two seasons from, as long as it's not that guy. Because I don't think it's a coincidence that in both of her winning seasons,

[00:40:28] there was this villainous, megalomaniacal hyperstrategist who she had her game largely associated with, who she often had a cantankerous relationship with, but still these men felt like they could utilize her moving forward in the form of Johnny Fairplay, in the form of Russell Hance, both third-place finishers in their own right. You spoke before about how Russell, in particular, was one of the most vocal people to say, like, I'm keeping Sandra in the game because I know that I can take her to the end

[00:40:57] and I can beat her, which is one of the many things he would get wrong in proper jury assessment. I guess the question I have here, Rob, is do you think that in a season that did not possess that specific type of player, would Sandra be able to replicate this success? How much was she able to benefit from the fact that she was able to allow these guys to kind of commit self-sabotage, that there were these types of people that she was able to really supplicate herself in front of seemingly?

[00:41:27] Not just that, I'll also say that she ends up beating Lil in the Final Tribal Council, who is a player who was voted out, who ends up coming back into the game. And I think that that also helped Sandra's case in Survivor Pearl Islands. But I think it is a testament to Sandra and the type of game that she played and that she won when she won, going back until, as they call it,

[00:41:56] the single digis, back in season seven of Survivor, that the way Sandra won was not necessarily the way people won the show. She ends up being, is she the first player to have won the game without winning individual immunity? I'm trying to think. Tina never won individual immunity. I think she did win it. I think she won. Or did she win the perch? She won the perch. She won the perch. She's a,

[00:42:24] and she was a pretty tough lady, Tina Wesson. And I think that Sandra ends up being the, the first winner to end up winning without having won a challenge. And I think that she ends up, her game ends up being more of the model for where Survivor ultimately ends up going than it even was at the time that she played. Russell famously said that

[00:42:51] when Jeff pointed out that Sandra won twice, he said, if, if, if she can win twice, then that means the game is flawed. I think that the Sandra model has become even more of the way that the game is played in the new era. And so when you say that, well, potentially she needs a, an antagonist like a Russell

[00:43:19] or a Johnny Fairplay to really thrive. But I think that even though Aubrey said, Sari was the greatest, not Sandra or Tony. I think that the game that Aubrey played that we just saw in Survivor 50 had a lot of the same DNA that the game, that the classic Sandra game ends up being where that she didn't necessarily have the warm and fuzzy social relationships.

[00:43:48] When things were on her mind, she kind of said what she thought along the way. She was on the bottom. She wasn't necessarily perceived as somebody who was directing things and people didn't really see her as somebody that they needed to worry about. Ultimately, Aubrey does end up winning some motion at the end of this game, but she's able to stand there and she kept it real. She has a great story.

[00:44:15] And I feel like that's the Sandra style of gameplay is all over the new era. Yeah. I mean, I think again, in a mindset, especially where so much is being thrown your way, I think it's incredibly tough. That's why we really pride people like D and Kyle because it's such an unconventional game in this day and age, though you have to wonder how much of that is just spurred upon the ideas that production is putting forward of like, you never know what day will come.

[00:44:44] So therefore you have to go with more of this Sandra motto. So maybe it may not necessarily be a prevalent strategy across all of Survivor as much as maybe modern day circumstances. Yeah. And I think that I know that this is talking about the actual person of who is the greatest of all time. But I think that Sandra, the idea is actually the most powerful thing. And Sandra, the idea

[00:45:12] is the perfect way to be playing Survivor where that you are just completely adaptable and the ability to just land on your feet no matter what ends up happening. And to have this ability where so much of Survivor is taking out the threats. I made a video this past week where I tried to go through and clock everybody's winning percentage over the course of the game and as you got more likely

[00:45:42] to win the game, the players are so smart that they are able to also deduce, oh, okay, so this person is now the most likely player to win the game and so now we have to make sure that they aren't the person who ends up going home. So while Sandra, the person, has collected trophies and accolades and ends up becoming a much more menacing threat because of what she's done in the past, it's this idea of being a Sandra that I think is the most powerful thing where that being

[00:46:11] perfectly imperfect where people look at you and they aren't threatened by you and that they aren't afraid to continue to let you progress on your journey because once everybody decides, hey, you gotta go, there's very little you're able to do at that point. And the thing also about Sandra, and I think also Michelle has this a lot where that they are not intimidating in terms of a body of work.

[00:46:41] But when, if you are to ever imply that they are not intimidating, they will defend themselves with a ferocity that you will wish that you did not ever cross them. And I think that that's a really powerful thing, especially at the tribal councils where we see that the jury looks at that and that person is not a pushover. They're not gonna take any crap from people. And so, the fact that they often are not the person

[00:47:10] who is being seen as the decider and then they're also speaking truth to power often, it becomes a thing where that part of their game really does, even though it is not what you would typically imagine of a perfect, a person being this perfect, charismatic, likable, gets along with everybody, that that feistiness, even though that they have a game

[00:47:40] and a resume that may not necessarily be the type of thing that has, that you can defend greatly, they are very protective over their reputation and they're not going to take any crap from people. And it ends up being this type of thing where it's like, okay, but they didn't do anything. But if you say that they didn't do anything, it's a bad move for you. Well, first off, just to correct the record, Tina did not win

[00:48:10] an individual immunity challenge. She won an individual reward challenge, but now I'm remembering Keith actually very pivotally won that challenge. She could have won it. Yes, that was the big, great move on her part is she purposely threw it to Keith to make sure that he was in the clear for the whole 5-5 tie. But regardless of that, I think, as you talk about that, I want to make a point around who Sandra sat at the end with. Because again, I think when we look at some of these other people on this list, we see scenarios where they were able

[00:48:39] to succeed and mostly win from sort of hand-picked end games. They were able to pick out the people that they wanted to sit at the end with and they were able to systematically eliminate everyone who wasn't on the big guess-who board until they hopefully walked away the champion. That was not necessarily the case with Sandra. How do you react to the argument that in both of Sandra's wins, it was less so a David Murphy, Spencer Bledsoe-esque full-throated yes, you should win versus more so

[00:49:09] an idea of you are the lesser or least of two or three evils? It doesn't bother me that much. you know, I think that she is great at making relationships. People have to ultimately vote for her and I think that she would do well in some of these other final tribal council scenarios as well. I mean, I don't know necessarily who you want

[00:49:38] to put her up against in different scenarios, but I mean, she beat the people that she was next to. Would she have beaten Jerry if it was like her, Jerry, and Russell in the final three of Harrahs vs. Villains? Yeah, I think that that's a fair question. I think that in the same way that Parvati kind of got the, okay, you're associated with Russell, is Sandra able to beat that drum a little bit more of that she was against Russell and that they look at Jerry

[00:50:08] at all as being like along for the ride with Russell. I think that Jerry does have Colby there who is a, you know, longtime buddy. The conventional wisdom is that Jerry had the votes there, but I don't know. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, that's a tough situation, right? And again, I think a bit of the mark against her is the fact that these are situations where, you know, and also, you don't know how much these

[00:50:37] final immunity challenges weighed on these outcomes, right? Like, if Johnny Fairplay wins, Grimm, if I'm wrong here, he would have gotten rid of Sandra at three. He would have gone to the end with Lil. Mm-hmm. And so, if he wins that immunity challenge, Sandra's gone. Maybe if Jerry is one second closer on that blindfold challenge in Heroes vs. Villains, maybe Sandra goes there. Sandra has claimed to me that apparently everyone in the final four approached her saying, you're in my final three. But you don't necessarily know

[00:51:06] if Russell felt like, okay, I definitely have to bring Parvati there if Jerry is no longer an option. And maybe she doesn't end up winning some of these final three scenarios in terms of the matchup, but I think it speaks to her power in terms of when, if she's in the final four and everybody who's there wants to take her, you have these other scenarios where you talk about some of these other players who needed everything to go their way. They need to win the final five, the final four immunity.

[00:51:36] You know, they need to make the fire. They need everything to go right in order to win. And what I love about Sandra and what I love about her, especially just as an idea, is that she can thrive when things did not go her way. And it's almost more powerful. Would you rather have won the challenge and then have to, you know, be able to be the person to make the move? Or would you rather know that no matter who won the challenge, you're going to get to the end? Yeah, I mean, it's a valuable question

[00:52:06] to have of opening yourself up to multiple scenarios, which I think is also endemic of Sandra's game considering the number of times. And it's not a massive amount that she's been blindsided in the various post-merge that she's played in. But I think, again, compared to the other people that we're speaking about over the course of this, again, she loses Rupert. She loses Krista in Pearl Islands. Heroes versus villains. She has an entire sequence where her entire alliance gets wiped out. There's a scenario, Rob,

[00:52:35] where it's her versus Courtney at the final 11. Russell is the one that's really saying Courtney has to go here. If Daniel and Parvati win out, Sandra is second member of the jury and she does not go on to win again. Is the fact that these other players did not necessarily run into as many scenarios where they were left on the outs or left a little bit on the back foot losing close allies? Does that work against Sandra in a major way here? Where the other people were comparing her to

[00:53:04] they didn't have as many times where they lost their allies? Yeah, where they, from a post-merge perspective specifically, they are not necessarily on the outs of the votes as much. Hmm. Well, some of them don't make it to the post-merge as many times as Sandra. Um, so, I think it's just a different play style. I, I think that, you know, there's, that, when we're talking about people that everything has to go their way

[00:53:34] versus people who, you know, Sandra being the exception where that she can thrive when things are not going her way, it doesn't matter if she loses her allies. Hmm. Yeah, I, that's a fair point. I guess what it comes down to is as you mentioned before, differentiated play styles because I do think compared to the other four people, Sandra's is one of the more unorthodox and it is one of the more successful. Again, she's one of three people that have won twice.

[00:54:04] I think what makes the series so interesting is that we are really kind of obfuscating quantity in preference of quality. And so, I guess from that perspective, what makes you feel like Sandra as a two-time winner is better as an overall player than Tony and Parvati if we're just comparing apples to apples? Well, I think that for Sandra, when we take a look at her body of work, especially when it's a body of work

[00:54:33] that the first time obviously is against first-time players and she ends up winning. And then also, she comes back a second time with the reputation as a winner and ends up is able to win a second time. The more times you play, especially the more times you win, the target just starts to become just too big. And I think it's very hard for Sandra. It undercuts what her strengths are as a player

[00:55:01] where that she has this ability to weaponize being underestimated. And now you've taken that away from her and she's had to shift her play style to being more of an aggressive player who needs things to break a certain way for her. And it's been something that's been difficult for her to overcome. And so, I would like to try to separate that out when we talk about

[00:55:30] the Sandra as the greatest. But in terms of that Sandra in her prime at the top of her game that she's been able to just have this ability to and I don't even know if it's premeditated. That's what I think is the most beautiful thing about it. It's that she's able to just be Sandra and this persona of Sandra of the person

[00:56:00] who they just look at her and they don't see her for being the dangerous player that she is and that she's able to just continue to just pass through round after round round after round until ultimately they look up at the end. I just think that it's so impressive when we compare to other players some of them it took them longer to win and it took them longer to figure out what they had to do. More things had to go right.

[00:56:30] They really had to assert their will onto the game and leave their mark. Whereas that Sandra was just Sandra. She did not have to necessarily inflict her will onto the game. She does not insist herself upon the thing, Mike. Okay, Peter Griffin. She's the godfather part two. Godmother, I guess.

[00:57:00] Well, I want to address this argument that I've seen you and other people make as well. Like, Sandra was able to win against newbies and then she won as one of only four winners mixed in with people who did not win. And to that I say, Heroes vs. Villains was not Survivor All-Stars. Yes, there were four winners, but I would not say that Tom Westman or JT was voted out because they were a winner. Both of them survived multiple tribal councils. And in fact, I would

[00:57:29] also say that Sandra won, became a two-time winner, arguably maybe because she was up against another winner in the form of poverty. It was a bit of a Ken Kodos you-have-to-vote-for-one-of-us thing because Russell was entirely discounted. And I would also say that yes, the winners did have these million-dollar checks attached to their name, but of those four winners, Sandra, far and away, had the lowest profile. You hear what poverty was perceived as when you listen to Randy Bailey

[00:57:59] in episode three. Tom Westman, one of the most dominant winners of all time up to that point. JT had the first perfect game in Survivor history and won the fan favorite at that. So even amidst that group, Sandra was able to benefit from this preseason perception from her previous win that she could parlay. People would argue could be a little less impressive than someone like the person she sat next to in poverty who was able to succeed in spite of the way people were looking at her going back to her previous times out.

[00:58:29] Yeah, but Mike, I think you're making the point for me of the fact that she is not considered she did the thing and people were still not scared of her. I think that that is what is making her this amazing elite concept of a player, a player who continues to win and nobody is afraid especially as Survivor becomes more and more of whack-a-mole of who's the biggest

[00:58:59] threat that ideally you want a person who could be successful without being flashy, a person who can get the W without anybody feeling like that they are this perfect player that needs to be dealt with. She's able to move through the game and even though she's not necessarily dictating the outcome it ends up just being where that by sheer

[00:59:31] survival she continues to move on and advance in the game. You mentioned this before but at the end of the last podcast I talked about how when it comes to assessing the GOAT legacy I think should be incorporated. Yes, of course we want to assess their body of work but when it comes to figuring out who is the greatest player I do think it should be factored in how much their presence and their journeys have informed the styles of a lot of players that come afterwards. I know you did it on this earlier but let's formalize this here. What do you think

[01:00:01] is the legacy of Sandra and why does that make her the GOAT? I think the legacy of Sandra obviously there's a lot being the first two-time winner of Survivor. I think that's probably the top line of her Survivor wiki. I'm going to keep that positive. I would hope so. Don't bury the headline Survivor wiki. First two-time winner of Survivor. I think that's ultimately

[01:00:30] the legacy. I think that also being one of the faces of the island of the idols also ends up being a big legacy point for Sandra. But I think that the anybody but me which is absolutely such a valid strategy that we still talk about to this day of what does it matter if why should I lose the game trying to keep my allies in the game especially

[01:01:00] as the game becomes more and more fluid more and more of the squid gamification of survivor continues to advance I think that the Sandra strategy is just as relevant as ever especially as we have entered into this whether it's the new era or the open era that the players are obsessed with the threat levels of the other players and I think that the Sandra play style of anybody but me of not being

[01:01:30] flashy of not necessarily being the person who wins the challenges or dictates the big moves I think that just being obsessed with just getting to another day that I think continues to be the optimal strategy to play survivor yeah I mean I could certainly see that I just the argument that I guess I've been making throughout is that while that is a very prevalent strategy for Sandra I don't necessarily think it's absent from

[01:02:00] some of the other players that we are going to get into so I think throughout this Rob you all time survivor player are they the qualities of the greatest player in survivor history and I think that if we are going to load into the simulator

[01:02:30] of this magical machine that can play out these seasons hundreds and thousands of times I do think that Sandra ends up getting a lot of wins because I think that more often than not she's just a person who ends up lasting to the end there's going to be times where she

[01:03:10] you don't want to piss her off and I think that there's other people that are just going to be pushovers who are going to take it lying down a lot more than Sandra ever is and I

[01:03:40] where it's final threes and it's more of how many times Mike is she going to not win the final four immunity challenge and be the person that players would take into the final four or into the final three by the winner of the final four immunity challenge well it's ironically again you're saying that like you know she is the one in the simulation to win the most times considering that I believe she is the person who has had the

[01:04:09] oldest amount of success right I feel like you know with the exception of Sari obviously we're talking about Tony poverty Boston Rob they have all made it to the end game after she has she has not made it considerably far since that second season yeah I think that her play style is much more in line with the way that people play survivor in the new era especially when I'm talking about the classic play style of

[01:04:51] all right can I also add another common denominator everybody we're going to

[01:05:21] that the traitors and you have poverty there as a traitor who may have been somebody who was not looking for any more smoke although they did come in beefing before peppermint ended up stepping in but that wasn't even Sandra's traitor angel that it was Phaedra who was keeping Sandra safe and Sandra befriended Phaedra knew Phaedra was a traitor sucked up the right people and she

[01:05:52] yeah but I mean first off I think it's a bit of a false equivalency considering that if we compare this to the other people Rob and Parvati were traitors yeah so or arguably harder to do and I would argue easier to do you have the first hand experience the thing that appeals to me so much about Sandra is that Sandra in so many ways is the antithesis of me and not that neither

[01:06:22] of us are going to be a challenge dominant although I have one individual immunity even in those single digi seasons where the challenges were not ultra physical Sandra was not able to take home a

[01:06:52] to get rid of him and what is it about Sandra she's won she's won twice and people are not intimidated about her and she moves through the game and then eventually people will wake up and be like what are we doing she's won twice she's Sandra she's right there we gotta get rid of Sandra but the game will start and more people will point to me and we we

[01:07:22] gotta get rid of him he's too smart he's planning he's strategizing we gotta get rid of him I'm not doing anything they say no no no no no we can't trust him and Sandra they would flock to they would go right to her and so I am envious of that about her and so I think it's incredible I for

[01:07:51] granted and I think that's why she is such a great and then just to speak to I talked a lot about Sandra as a concept but I want to talk about Sandra as a person and just to compare her to many others of the survivors and I've been around them all not to humble brag too much but that in terms of their with the

[01:08:21] I want to say this precisely there are many of the survivor greats that they will interact with people and they will let you be in their warmth but you're not equals you're not necessarily going up to them and feeling like okay they

[01:08:50] are interested in you necessarily Sandra is so humble and yes the queen stays queen but in terms of that Sandra will and you see her friendships are that Sandra has a million friends in the survivor community some of them are winners some of not talking about myself

[01:09:20] she does not necessarily elevate herself over other people she keeps it real she cuts coupons she's won two million dollars playing survivor um she you you could probably find her at walmart on a you know a sunday morning she's she does not in any way ever um

[01:09:50] she's not a gatekeeper in anything and she keeps it real and i think that's one of the reasons why that people gravitate to her she can work with anybody and she's somebody who is just um such a a natural people person it's not it doesn't have to be all about her she's she's interested in in the people she meets also i mean you could also argue that maybe one of the reasons why she's not a de facto first boot in some of those returning

[01:10:20] seasons is perhaps uh from some of those out-of-the-game friendships yeah yeah well what's wrong with that well i mean more more so that uh oh you think that on paper she's such a massive target because of her presence and listen again if we talked about this last time like i'm not discounting any pregame alliances or relationships that are made but listen we know that sandra is incredibly well connected understandably so because she is good people but probably helps if you're going into a situation where even if yes you are looked at as the

[01:10:49] only two-time winner up to that point you may have had some conversations with people that might help you along for the first few votes yeah look she she really was in game changers she was set up really really well and just ran into a buzzsaw very true very true but here we are rob you took a buzzsaw to all of my arguments here and proving why sandra's the goat you know it's a tough spot with all these people because there really is and that's how we started doing this like there's a case to be made for and against every single

[01:11:19] person and you know i think that uh either of us could have uh been on one side or the other and and been trying to you know prove that somebody it's splitting hairs it really is it's it's so subjective yeah and i think as well with sandra especially and again she can only kind of play in a realm of who she is as well that's going to be the case with all these people but as we talked about before i feel like so many points about her have been so

[01:11:49] contested and so much of this is going to be subjective of how much do you incorporate things like challenge abilities into what makes the greatest player of all time i personally do some people might not as you're mentioning here so sandra i feel like in particular i think with her and seri there's going to be perhaps some of the bigger points against but i don't think it obfuscates the fact that there are pros to these arguments as well yeah and i would say and i thought about this a lot in terms of i think

[01:12:18] that sandra and seri have like a similar arsenal of skill sets um and i think that seri though on paper is so much more polished seri is just uh that she smiles at you and you and you light up and that she's so warm but i think that that warmth ultimately ends up being not to do too much of the seri podcast now that it

[01:12:47] and it ends up being a negative when we get to the the just that one spot that seri can't crack where there's very few people in their right mind that's a that's who i want to go to the end with and i think that sandra's is is so i will keep coming back to this so just that her she's imperfectly perfect where that people look at her and say you know

[01:13:16] what i did i could beat sandra in the end cut to three weeks from now when you have to be on the proserite side and refute the exact point you made and look and that'll be a challenge for another day but and i would say that you know seri is so good in so many other areas that you know does does that matter but i think that that in terms of sandra's strengths that i think that the fact that she can survive in advance and and

[01:13:45] still you think you can beat her at the end is the trap that you fall into with sandra all right rob shall we move on should we see what's on the next week what's coming up next next we're gonna go boston rob right yeah that's the good i mean we did not go with uh the b first uh not to be on his little b hat we're going with robert himself here okay a fellow island of the idols denizen alongside sandra all right mike uh so

[01:14:16] today you're on the uh okay you you've been heads and i've been tails okay sorry so rob is heads mike is tails we're gonna flip the coin of who's making the case for boston rob okay all right all right you ready here we go all right and the answer is it's tails okay all right well at least i'm not pissing off both people on the islands of the

[01:14:46] idols yeah over the course of this podcast you know this is this is tricky for me also because i'm gonna get like a noogie i think yeah they were just this is you stand the worst odds of bringing things back full circle to where they were 20 plus years ago you guys have built so much great stuff over the past decades of like we leave what happened in panama in the past this might drudge some stuff up with the discourse that might come out of our conversation next week uh this is why did we do this

[01:15:16] i want to make this podcast we're only 40 percent of the way and we're questioning the very existence of this series i love it yeah okay uh i mean listen you're in the i have to be the one that's arguing that the man who's won one out of five seasons uh is the one that should be clown the goat here so uh listen i'm gonna come in ardent do some research i'm i'm ready to come in guns a blazing here and hopefully by the end people will feel

[01:15:46] as one over and they'll be wearing i heart rob t-shirts much like a certain person was doing in madison square garden back in the year 2004 yeah okay all right mike what else is coming up for you just a lot of stuff going on parade survivor and otherwise uh again otherwise just uh sitting back getting to do these weekly survivor check-ins but i'm sure lots of other stuff will come up in the meantime uh we did a reality flash actually on the re-emergence of big brother canada which

[01:16:16] has been announced to come back for next season are you yeah i'm saying excited about that rob what's your reaction to the news yeah look we're excited there's more big brother exactly come on a little big brother never hurt nobody especially increasingly so especially with canada which has provided some of the most entertaining big brother we've had in recent years yeah let's see what happens exactly let's uh i guess this could be expected more so than the unexpected that is to come our way because we would you rather not have it or would you

[01:16:45] rather have it where it's not exactly perfect we would no i i've heard from people who would rather not have it than not have it exactly what i want or do you respect how i am or do you respect the relationship you have with marsha the moose i've always been uh i'd rather have half a loaf of bread than not eat yeah and i think that again as you mentioned we talked about this with taryn listen low expectations are the key to happiness as you love to say and looking at the production company that is now responsible for

[01:17:15] big brother canada again they pretty much cleaned house and moved on to an entire different company that has worked on big brother before albana in a different variety it may uh you know preclude things that people oftentimes associate with big brother but there's scant details at this point it's a bit incorrect to assume uh so i think it makes sense that we sort of come in with open arms open minds until we hear more information as to what exactly it's going to be but i mentioned this on the podcast i'm just excited for the people who have spent the past couple years

[01:17:44] wanting to be on this show and not having the ability to do so to just even have the opportunity to make their dreams come true that does warm my heart yeah all right so next week we're talking about is boston rob the goat we'll find out and then in the meantime check out all of our survivor co-wrong rewatch uh co-effing wrong how's it holding up for you so far rob you like it oh we love it so much it's it's been really been really

[01:18:14] really fun and you know this was like a real era of survivor a real real vibe yeah i feel like people have been talking about even watching like the 30 seasons and how the editing and jeff's approach and his narration at tribal council like changed a lot in the past 10 years or so and i i think it's something that maybe you don't necessarily realize until you go back and watch a quote-unquote old season so and especially considering like how

[01:18:44] wackadoo co-wrong is from the very beginning i have not had the opportunity to listen yet rob but i can imagine like upwards of 20 minutes in that first podcast dedicated to the brown trout of it all a little bit a little bit all right thank you so much for joining us everybody looking forward to next time when we talk about it was boston rob the goat take care of a good one bye you