Who’s the Survivor GOAT Preview

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[00:02:30] Hey, everybody. What's going on? Rob Cesternino back here and we've got a kickoff show for a brand new podcast series that we are taking a little bit of a gamble on in more ways than one because I am here with the great Mike Bloom. Yes, thrilled to be joined by, in my opinion, the goat of Survivor Podcasting to talk about some other goats.

[00:02:58] And I want to talk about the ones that Sandra killed in Game Changers. Yeah, we don't talk about that. Okay. So we had an idea. Mike and I were like, what should we do? What should we talk about in the Survivor offseason? What are we doing? What are we doing? What's the rule now? And we came up with this idea that we think you're going to like where we're going to go on a journey here and we're not going to lose our votes. I think you lost a lot of people when you said we're going on a journey. Yeah, we're going on a journey.

[00:03:24] And you know that there's been a lot of talk about who's on the Mount Rushmore? Who's the goat? Who's the best Survivor player of all time? And we want to have that discussion here with each other and with you. And that's what we plan to do here over these next couple of weeks with a podcast series that we're calling Who's the Goat? Do you think this is just Tony Danza's soft reboot of an iconic sitcom, Rob? Yes.

[00:03:55] That Jonathan, that's who I would vote for, not Aubrey. But so that's my Tony Danza impression. Yeah, I think he's a big fan of Angela Perkins from Survivor Ghost Island. Yeah.

[00:04:12] Yeah, so this is it's a very fun idea because I think especially in the wake of Survivor 50 where Aubrey, you know, lovingly votes off Sari and says that in her opinion, she is the greatest Survivor player of all time. Better than Sandra. Better than Tony. This is obviously a very loaded topic. I have certainly, you know, put out a couple of pieces on my own over the course of this season that has propagated a lot of responses. A lot of people have opinions about it.

[00:04:39] So I think, Rob, no time like the present after 50 seasons of Survivor to try to litigate who is the greatest of them all. So here's the pitch of what we want to try to do. We've got a five part series coming up. This is the prequel. Okay. This is the setup for what we plan to do. And maybe maybe it's six parts ultimately. And maybe there's a results show of that. We have the list of potential Survivor goats down to the list of five.

[00:05:06] And that list of Survivor goats are... You want to give them in alphabetical order? We can give them in an alphabetical... Well, yeah. I think let's go perhaps in order of... We'll go with the Mount Rushmore first and then perhaps save the topic of this du jour for last. Because as you mentioned, Rob, I think people's Mount Rushmores will vary. Again, there certainly has been a lot of social media content around there. But I put out a cover story about this for Parade.

[00:05:34] I think there are sort of four names that the majority kind of revolve around, which are Boston Rob Mariano, Parvati Shallow, Sandra Diaz-Twine, and Tony Vlachos. Yes. Okay. And to me, I feel like that that's kind of settled in terms of the Mount Rushmore. I was asked that when I went to go to the CBS Morning Show about that. But there's also, I think, an interesting conversation around Sari also being part of that. Should she bounce somebody off of the Mount Rushmore?

[00:06:04] She has gone on deep runs more than any of the other people in the Mount Rushmore. Is Sari possibly the greatest of all time? And so here over these five weeks, we're going to, one at a time, we're going to have a discussion about why each person is or maybe isn't the GOAT. Yes. And this is a little bit of a debate podcast.

[00:06:33] I want to have Corey Wurtenberger perhaps adjudicate behind the scenes. Because this is just going to be maybe something a little bit different. This is going to be basically dissecting a person's entire body of work for either four, five, sometimes six survivor seasons. And trying to assess the pros and cons as to whether or not they are the greatest player of all time, especially compared to their competition. Yeah. And so Mike and I were talking about this and how are we going to do this.

[00:07:00] And we thought that what might be fun is if each week on The GOAT, one of us took the position of making the case why somebody is the GOAT. Why they are the greatest of all time. While the other person has to play devil's advocate and tell us the reasons why they think that this person may not be the GOAT. Now, survivor devil's advocate would be advocating for Ben Drebergen, right?

[00:07:29] No, he's back. He's back. He's almost a decade old at this point. He never left. Yes. Yes. And so that's what we're going to do here. And I think that while it would be hard for each of us to sort of like, we don't want to both be like some episodes making the case. Both episodes saying, no, I don't think so. So we're sort of forcing each of us because I think that we could make the case why any of these people are certainly the GOAT.

[00:07:59] We're going to bring in the help of the Mr. Beast, not the Mr. Beast coin, but a coin. And each week before we bring you the discussion, we will flip the coin ahead of time. And that one of us will be making the case why somebody is the GOAT.

[00:08:19] And the other one will be put into the unenviable position of being the bad guy, of not necessarily being a hater, but maybe poking some holes in the arguments. Exactly. So let this be said, I think we'll say it a few times that the opinions that will be expressed over these podcasts are not necessarily reflective of the opinions of Rob Cesternino and Mike Bloom. This is part of a debate exercise, like anyone who participates in debate.

[00:08:47] Sometimes you are taking stances that you personally do not agree with for the entire exercise. But I do think that especially over the years, and especially with this Mount Rushmore in particular, there have been so many arguments for and against all of these people that I think it is a fun way to kind of lay out the arguments that have been made for or against and see how they stack up against each other. Yeah. And so after this is all done five weeks from now, then we will let you all vote.

[00:09:17] And then you can decide. In the hands of the fans. Yeah. And then after you've listened to our debates and hopefully people, maybe we'll just give like a crazy link of that. Only the people who listen to the podcast will have the link to vote. Oh, it's like those old days. Remember when we used to get like hashtags at the end of podcasts to be like, shall us know you listen the whole way through? Yeah. So don't give the vote. There's going to be no casual listeners of this podcast.

[00:09:42] Only the people who made it through each week will give you one letter in the URL. All right. That was be sure to drink your little routine dot bit dot L Y. Yep. So we'll see. We'll figure something a fun way out of how to do that. But Mike, did we set the stage well enough? I think so. Yeah. Essentially, this is going to be a fairly simple podcast in construction. It'll be just general arguments for or against why this person is the greatest player of all time.

[00:10:11] Of course, we'd love to hear from you all in the comments. Again, if the past few months have been any indication, it is a very charged opinion that all of you possess. So we want to hear from you all along the way as well, because I'm sure there are arguments that neither one of us have been brought up. But yeah, I love putting it due to the fate of a coin flip. Now, I guess the question is, if the coin lands on its side, what happens? Yes. OK, that we do not have the lawyers on hand to be able to tell us what that's going to be.

[00:10:40] So a couple of things that we're going to do and we're going to flip the coin right in this podcast to determine in our first episode, who's going to be making which side of the argument we were trying to decide what order should we do these five podcast episodes? And so we did. We want to start in alphabetical order from first name or go in reverse alphabetical order by first name.

[00:11:06] And to that, I said, why don't we keep on theme and flip this coin? I realize in retrospect that in podcasting with a man who famously brought a magic eight ball into his first survivor season, that we would, of course, be leaving things up to an inanimate object most of the time. Sure. And I could get out the magic eight ball if you would prefer to do that. No, I mean, I could brag one as well. I told you this offline, but Asher has acquired a magic eight ball since my time away in L.A.

[00:11:37] General queries. Now he's mostly using it. He's trying to still trying to figure out the whole yes, no mechanic. But, you know, he's trying to use it also for slander. I would say live is my dad a poo poo head. So the magic eight ball has yet to be on my side. I think I could win it over. You know, listen, if that's what it says, that's what it says. You know, what are you going to do? I know I have to obey. Yeah. OK. All right. So, Mike, first order of business of will the order be alphabetical

[00:12:05] by first name starting with three or alphabetical by first name in reverse order and ending with three. Yeah. So I think it makes sense. Heads would be alphabetical order because we start at the head of the alphabet. Tails start at the tail of the alphabet. OK. All right. And we don't have to call. We can't confirm this is a legal coin. Yes, it's a legal coin. We can confirm this. I'll see if I'll text it to Rick Devins after. OK.

[00:12:31] OK. OK. And I see tails. So we will end on Sari. And I think that's more dramatic. It also gives us a little bit of time. It'll give us, you know, a few weeks away from 50 to let us clear our heads a little bit instead of just diving right in. Yes. OK. So and really that all of our Mount Rushmore players outside of Sari are all that the Dr. Sean would hate this are all at the end of the alphabet.

[00:13:02] Exactly. Listen, we're just reversing his own curse. What he brought to which also mentioned this is coming out on May 31st. Speaking of Survivor Borneo. Happy 26th birthday, Survivor. Happy 26th birthday to Survivor. Any milestone for 26? Well, you can rent a car in most states. So we're going on a nice row trip ourselves over the course of the next month. No, Brian Heidek for the who do you think is going to be the person that people are going to be the most upset we're not including on the GOAT list?

[00:13:30] Yeah, we were talking about this a little bit offline. It's like, OK, do we extend it out more? I mean, I think definitely before Tony won the second time, I think there was a lot of talk about Richard Hatch. I think especially when you talk about like a Mount Rushmore, is he like the George Washington? Right. In terms of like what his, you know, gameplay and his win meant to the importance of the franchise as a whole. Surely I've heard the name Russell Hance as well. I would say in the Mount Rushmore, he's more of like a Ben Franklin. He's more of like he's a founding father, but not making the Mount Rushmore.

[00:14:00] Yeah, I think that that makes sense. And much like Ben Franklin, you know, was able to produce many different inventions in our lifetime. So was Richard Hatch and his many offspring. Sure, sure, sure thing. Yeah. OK, so. Poor Richard's Almanac written by Ben Franklin as well. OK. All right. So then that by my calculations, sounds like Tony is going to be the first person we talk about. So what would it be? Tony, Sandra, Rob, Parvati, Sarina.

[00:14:28] Yeah, we're not we're not doing we're not going by B for Boston, Rob. We're sharing with his his name is Robert. Yeah. OK, so that works out good. OK, so Tony is going to be up first on who's the goat. And so, Mike. All right. This one, should we should we do you want to call it? I was going to say, do we want to call it or is it more so like you're flipping for yourself, you know, pro or con and then I'm taking the opposite? Hmm. OK.

[00:14:58] But basically, do we want to leave it entirely up to chance or are we giving ourselves some semblance of a free will here? Rather than having to unless you would like to make a choice, I think we could just say, hey, I'm on that. Rob is heads. Mike is tails. Let's just flip the coin of who's making the case for Tony. OK, I like it. I like it. Let's leave things again entirely up to fate here. OK. All right. Here we go. All right. Who is going to be arguing that Tony is the goat?

[00:15:28] Mike Bloom. Oh, I'm pro Tony. OK. OK. I'm excited about this because, yeah, I get to talk about a not only a two time winner, but someone who won a season against the other people, except for three that were in this very discussion. But Tony's going to be so mad at me if I if I if I don't make the case for him. Rob, clean those glasses. OK, no excrement on them. I don't like this already. I don't like this.

[00:15:57] Again, people, please don't take these out of context. Please, please be cool about this type of stuff. OK, we're doing this as a pure discussion worthy exercise. Yes, I will be arguing pro Tony being the goat or the llama and you'll be arguing against. OK, I don't know if I'll be arguing against. I think I'm going to be a devil's advocate. There we go. Devil's advocate of trying to refute the logic that I'm presenting. Right. OK. All right. So that's what's going to be coming up next time on the podcast is Tony the goat.

[00:16:25] Find out when Rob and Mike get back together. In the meantime, so much more stuff for you to be listening to. It was a bit very busy past week on the podcast between I talked to Marianne. I caught up with Steven. We did a mailbag club condo. We had a wand off. So lots of Survivor 50 stuff in the rearview mirror. Mike, what have you been up to? I actually just got off at the time of recording this with a really nice mini deep dive AMA.

[00:16:51] Not even a medium dive, a real shallow dive, but still a luxurious swim in the pool. Nonetheless, with the one and only Rick Devins on chat BCC. We got the chance to chit chat on chat BCC for a little bit about some of the stuff around his time in Survivor 50. I asked him, you know, why he voted for Aubrey, you know, how he looks upon Rizzo's game after the fact. A couple of nice little fun factoids. So very much recommend you check that out. Otherwise, you can check out all the other great stuff I'm doing at Parade.

[00:17:17] Yes, Survivor is coming to a close, but scripted TV is still thrumming with an excitement and energy. And before we know it, Rob, I mean, the entire purpose of like this particular podcast series is that it's going to bridge us all the way to Big Brother. And it's fitting we end with Sari, considering that that is a Big Brother contestant in her own right. Bridge to Big Brother, of course. Who could forget? Yeah. All right. It's a very odd bridge to Big Brother. You know, you walk across it and you're like, I don't know why I went across here, but we go across every single year and we love it. Right.

[00:17:47] And then if you missed the announcement this week, we also mentioned that we're going to have Love Island Daily here on RJP. Kirsten McInnes is going to be taking you every step of the way on Love Island. And I have not talked about this widely too much, Mike. I too will be jumping in once a week to talk about Love Island. Did Rob Roush get you into it? No. Did he put you up for it? No. But maybe he'll want to like text me some of his thoughts.

[00:18:16] That'd be fun to get some voice notes from Rob Roush about, because that, I mean, as someone who came in, I'm a Love Island fan as well. And I will admit, last season I was kind of hooked because there was like a semi-strategic component of it. So if they keep going along those lines, you could bring your know-it-all knowledge in a much more unexpected way than you may think to a different Fijian Villa. Yeah. I suspect I might be one of the only reality Robs that is watching this season of Love Island, but you never know. I mean, we found out last year Boston Rob was a Big Brother fan. Who knows?

[00:18:45] He might be a Love Island fan as well. Sure. Sure. All right. Thank you so much for joining us. And come with us on this journey to find out who's the GOAT. Take care, everybody. Have a good one. Bye. Bye.

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