37. Survivor Part 2 w/ Henry Hickman

Part 2 of my 3 hour long conversation with local up and coming comedian Henry Hickman all those weeks ago is now live! We continue on with the Survivor chat, I reckon probably go back and listen to part 1 to get yourself up to speed before this, or just dive right in, I'm not the boss of you. In this episode we get into the middle years of survivor where things got really nutty and they tried some absolutely insane social experiments when deciding to come up with the tribes. I hope you enjoy it!

Part of the Survivor Trilogy of podcasts, catch part 1 here, part 2 here and part 3 here.

If you want more Henry in your life, check him out on Facebook or catch him at comedy gigs around Christchurch!

If you're joining us from attending Henry's recent talk at Nerd Nite, welcome! I hope you enjoyed this episode and come back in a couple of weeks for the next one, or while you're here, why not check out some of my older episodes? If you're into the Nerd Nite concept of people explaining he hell out of a specific topic, then you'll love Ruddle Me This!

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Intro Music:
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Transcript

Hello friends, we are back for another episode of Ruddle Me This. I am as always your host, Taylor, the pun dance kid, Ruddle. Welcoming you back to part two of three of my discussion with my very good friend, Henry Hickman, a local stand-up comedian about the television show Survivor. Believe in this episode we get into the middle years of Survivor and Henry was telling me about some of the absolutely nutty... what would you call it? Stipulations that this television show set up for its contestants. I think we begin to learn how Survivor, as well as being quite an entertaining thing, is also a rather interesting reflection of society at the time. If I'm remembering correctly, this might serve as a little bit of a content warning for some of the listeners out there, but I think some of the things we discuss... about the making of Survivor were very much products of their time and the attitudes of the times. So just bear that in mind. Some of the stuff I remember we were talking about that they did on Survivor hasn't particularly aged well with modern sensibilities, which is a good thing, but just something to be aware of when you listen to it. You might, your jaw might be on the floor for some of these wacky ideas that they had. the middle years of Survivor. So with that let's get into the episode welcome back for part two of three to the show Henry Hickman everybody. Welcome back to the podcast, Henry. Thanks for having me. You're very welcome. Um, I, we don't need to waste any more time because you, you are very well prepared for this, so where do we leave off? Um, we left the last one. We left off talking about how survivor was bad for a bit. And that's where I got into survivor. Funnily enough. Yeah. Uh, I'll talk about how I got into survivor. That could be a bit of an interesting tangent. What was your current interest there? Well, have you heard of the show Total Drama? Oh yeah, I know that. It was a cartoon that was a ripoff of Survivor and I watched Total Drama Island and I thought, this is funny, this is kind of cool. And I was watching TV in my parents' room and an ad came on for Survivor South Pacific and I was literally like the meme, oh my god, they've made Total Drama into a real thing. And I begged my parents to let me watch Survivor even though it went on after my bedtime. I've been in that situation myself before. And they let me and I bet now they wish they hadn't let me do that. Is it not a passion that you share with your parents? You mentioned you have friends who are into Survivor, please tell me who they are. I've met about two people in New Zealand who give a shit about Survivor. I can, I'll see it, I'll set up a connection. We'll throw a little Survivor party and I'll pretend it's all spontaneous and... I went... to a Scared Scribbler show recently because they had a Survivor themed show. Yeah. And I got told to shut up by the host because I was giving them too much information about Survivor. That's brilliant. So what is it that you love so much about Survivor? Like, was it an immediate connection or did it take several episodes? What kind of, what do you love about it? When I first got into it, the way they edit the show is so captivating because they somehow take 72 hours of 18 people just living on an island and turn it into a story over the course of an entire season, 72 hours per episode. How do they condense that into 40 minutes? I will never understand. Yeah. Because they basically got a camera recording, each person. So let's say you have 18 people, each of them with their own unique 72 hours that they go through. That's a number. Yeah. Let's put that into a number. So that's 1296 hours of footage. Yeah. So 54 days of footage, and they condense that into a 40 minute story. they do a bloody good job because essentially I just immediately became obsessed with one character Ozzy because he was this cool surfer dude who won lots of challenges and all of a woman loved him and I was like yeah that's just like me that's me you really related to that character it's not me wish it were me. We can call it aspirational yeah and I watched this entire season and I'll spoil it because no one who has listened to this podcast and hasn't gotten into Survivor should actually regarded as one of the worst seasons of all time. Oh, there you go. But I watched this entire season of Ozzy being an underdog. He gets all the way to the final four. He is one win away from being in the final three and basically guaranteeing that he wins the entire season. And he fumbles, he fumbles the bag and he loses. Yeah. And something in my 12 year old brain just went, but that's the good guy. Yeah. He's meant to win. Yeah. And something about having these hopes of mine built up and crushed by survivor of all things. I was like, now surely I can understand this, surely maybe I watched it wrong. Right, right. And here I am still watching it, probably still watching it wrong, trying to figure out what are the editors trying to tell me from that 12 days of footage per episode, you know, they're trying to tell a story. nothing is in the episode by accident, and there's this thing called the winner's edit, where you look out for things that sort of show you this guy might be the winner, this might be a contender. One of my favourite ones is if you ever see someone laying down during the daytime, they're probably not the winner, because they don't show the winner sleeping or like being lazy, they never do that. Interesting. It's such a weird thing. It's a little bit of that the history is written by the winners in that as the as the show's happening, they don't necessarily know what's going to happen and they probably don't have an idea for a storyline, right? Yeah. But then after they filmed everything and the show's happened, I guess the editors have to create like an arc or something for what has happened, right? They have to take the 39 days on the island, the thousands of hours of footage. and they have to turn it into 14, 40 minute episodes that tell a cohesive story about why someone won. Although sometimes they choose to tell the story of why someone lost instead, or why everyone else didn't win. The idea that they never show the winners lying down or sleeping. Is that an unofficial rule that the fans of Survivor have managed to kind of noodle out or is... Like I could just imagine it was like the secret, like producers guide that got leaked or something. And it was like, you know, we never show this, we never show that. Oh, I wish. I'd love to see that. That'd be the whole agree, I wouldn't know. Yeah. No, it's called it's the winners edit and Jeff Probst has gone on his own podcast that I do listen to and gone, guys, there is no winners edit. You're crazy. And it was like, okay, but look at these 20 years of correlating events. Like, no, you're crazy. Like another one. never show the winner failing to make fire. They might show them succeeding, but they never show them failing to make fire. And so if someone makes fire, it's often a good sign because in survive, if fire represents your life, when your fire goes out, you're voted out. Because they don't want to see the winner failing to create the thing that represents their life in the game. It's wild. There's a lot more subtle ones. Like if someone has just not shown in an episode, they're probably not winning. Yeah, because one of my friends, she was telling me about the winners edit and I believe she eventually meant to explain what that was to me, but we'd never get around to it. And so I, when you said winners edit, I was like, yes, that's a thing. I don't know what it means, but I know it's, I know it's relevant. And okay. So your friends are super into Survivor. Got it. Yeah. They are on the same level, on the same level as you. Let's go. So then what else after, was there anything else we could add to the winners edit or should we continue going through the errors that we were kind of talking through? I might shelve the winners edit for now because it's actually one of those things I wish I didn't know about. Yeah. Because it almost ruins what's in the show. You watch it and you see someone take a nap and you're like, well, they're out. It's, I know I've seen this phenomenon and other things before as well. It's a bit like the, is that TV trip Chekhov's gun or something like that? Like they won't show you something that's going to be relevant later. Yeah. Um, that has both ruined and made movies for me because noticing it and then, yeah, it's an interesting one. Um, so yeah, let's, let's keep going through the errors. What was after the, uh, they kind of went through the dark ages after Russell mania and then what happened next? So we hit. the themed ages where they decided to do a bunch of themes. And they've done themes before, they've done men versus women, they've done fans versus favorites, they've done young versus old. And these are all sort of themes that make sense. They've done the heroes versus villains. But now they start going insane with it. Season 27, blood versus water. So they bring back a bunch of returning players and each returning player also brings a family member. And the family members compete against the returning players to see if, I don't know, to see if blood is thicker than water, to see if they'll betray their family members for a million dollars. I don't quite get why they did that one because it just sort of ended up with people strategically voting off people who had a family member still in the game until there were just no family members left in the game. Yeah. And then 28 they did Brain versus Brawn versus Beauty. That one actually makes sense. That's a good idea for a season. And it's also a season I highly recommend. Yeah, check it out. Yep, Kageyan, season 28. Season 29, they did Blum vs. Water again. Because it worked so well the first time. It's a good season, but it wasn't a good season. It was a good season sort of in spite of the theme. Not really because of it. Yeah. The theme brought a bit of drama at the start and then everyone sort of forgot about it near the end. Yeah, yeah. also did bring us the most obnoxious thing Jeff ever talks about where someone voted off their mum, sort of. Like there was going to be five votes on this person's mum and Sierra could either vote with her mum and make it a five to two vote or vote against her mum and make it a six to one vote. Yeah. And so she voted against her mum and Jeff goes, oh my God, she voted her mum out. No, her mum was going to get voted out anyway. They'll do anything to stir up drama, won't they? Yeah. If an entire season goes past without Jeff mentioning that time Sierra voted out a mom, it's not a real season of Survivor. So you could play bingo with certain events on a Survivor season. Yeah, you could see that happening. So season 30, they do Worlds Apart, which is a weird name for a theme of white collar versus blue collar occupations, but they also throw in no collar, which I believe is just a thing they made up. It's meant to be the people who are like hippies and sort of rebelling against society. Rebelling against society, yeah. Okay, yeah. So white collar versus blue collar versus no collar. If you know about the winner's edit, I won't say how, but that season has one of the most obvious winner's edits of all time. Okay. Season 31, they did another theme, they did second chances where us, the viewers got to vote for who would be on the season. That was really cool. That was fun to take part in. Yeah, yeah, that was cool. We're still in the themed season. They really didn't slow down at all. No, we did. I think the theme season literally lasts right up until season 40, but I'll go through all of them anyway. Yeah. And if any of them make you go, what the fuck? Oh, try and explain. I don't know if I can with some of them. There's one in mind that I know for a fact you're going to go, what is, what are you on about? Season 31 was second sensors. Season 32, they did Brain versus Brawn versus Beauty again. That one's also a pretty good season. Season 33, they did Millennials versus Gen X. Yep. And that actually has a fun contrast to season three, where season three was basically Boomers versus Gen X. Right, yeah, that's cool. And all of the Gen X were shown to be like these lazy, carefree people and all the Boomers were these really hardworking, like, six in the mud. And then you get to season 33 and they do Millennials versus Gen X and all of the Millennials are shown as these lazy sort of carefree people go with the flow. And all of these boomers, all of these Gen X people are shown to be these hardworking people who complain about participation trophies and stuff. And I'm sure in season 63 when they do Millennials versus Zoomers or whatever, all of the Millennials will be these super hardworking and all of the Zoomers will be these carefree. youngins. That's a commentary on society though, which is the point of Survivor. I suppose that's the point. Yeah, well, I think the fact that they make seasons so quickly means that they can go for a kind of shotgun or throwing shit against the wall approach. You have to admire them for that, I say. They might not all be bangers, but at least they're trying something new. So, I have to I have to cat them on the back for that. Yeah, I mean, we mentioned in part one the... season divided by race, they certainly tried everything. I don't know if I like that. I don't know if you can applaud them for that. Oh yeah, that's definitely a, that would be definitely a mess, I think. But, you know. That season actually used to be my favorite back when I didn't understand what racism was. Right. Oh man. You know, I was just like, yo, because it had Ozzy on it from the first season. I was like, yo, Ozzy is so cool. Yeah. I was the, because that happened, that was a season that happened. before I was into Survivor. I was like, what season's Ozzy on? He's on season Cook Islands, I was divided by race, who gives a shit? I get to what Ozzy be cool. Do you know, I remember seeing the commercials for Cook Islands. I remember the TV commercials for it. So I did not realize that was the race one. Wow. How did they advertise that? They're like, oh, look at this diverse cast of characters. Yeah. Which race is going to win? Did they ever in that series, did they ever state like... it was so blatant as race or were they like yeah do they really yeah right at the start they were like you are the latino tribe you are the african-american tribe you are the asian tribe and you are the caucasian tribe at least they used i guess the correct names rather yeah you guys are the black tribe you're the white tribe you know that that's yeah that season got torn to shreds by a bunch of parody like snl type stuff oh yeah if you've had enough mad tv is still a It's not, but yeah. They have an extremely racist parody of Survivor Cook Island. Oh god. It's probably funny at the time, I can't watch it now. Yeah, I think that's a good thing though. It means we've shown progress as a society that we look at that and go, oh dear. Oh dear. Yeah, that's the one that we want to move on from. Survival would throw anything at the wall. Yeah. Season 34, they wanted to do All-Stars again, but they couldn't call it All-Stars, so they just called it Game Changers and bought back. fucking anyone. That was a terrible season. You might have heard of that season. That season made headlines around the world because a contestant outed another contestant as transgender on the season. I feel like I do vaguely remember hearing something about it, but I never watched anything. So these are actually fairly recent ones we're going through now. Yep. We're talking about when was game changes. That would have been 2017. Oh yeah. Okay. So really recent. Yeah. And that was a big thing at the time. The dude lost his job and then tried to profit off of... That was, was it during the voting or something? They- It was at tribal council and this dude, Jeff Varna, he said, look, I know I'm going to be voted out, but as a Hail Mary, you need to know that Zeke is hiding stuff from you. He's transgender. Right. And everyone was like, what the fuck does that have to do with Survivor? Yeah. Interesting. Get out. So that was his move. He thought that it would show- Hail Mary would be the correct, like, what do he expect to happen, right? He would have been fine. Not fine, he would have still been voted off, but he would have kept his job and not been, you know, a complete hate, hated online if he just used some critical thinking skills for a second. Yeah, no kidding. That must be a wild to go back to like the real world after being on Survivor. Like you just did an office job, you know, like you were on a beach like last week. Yeah. Yeah, lots of people talk about that. They talk about how... Well, he didn't go back to his job. Yeah, he was... He didn't go back to his job. No, he was on his couch for the foreseeable future after that. You know what I mean? Yeah, fuck him though. People talk about like, they... The people lose a lot of weight on Survivor. The record is someone lost about 80 pounds, I think. Man, maybe I should go on Survivor then. Oh, same. I genuinely sometimes I'm like, you know, if I want to survive, I might not win, but I'll probably lose that last five kilos. And there is a look in itself, I guess, right? If you smash out your body goals, but you get voted off of that one. But the problem is most people come back to society are like scared of not having food because they went, you know, only having one cup of rice per day. The metabolism has become completely fucked from being on the show. And so they actually end up gaining all of the weight back. and more most of the time. Yeah. I can imagine. Do you remember that other reality show called The Biggest Loser? Yeah. Oh God, that show is so fucked. I think that show is a bit more fucked up than Survivor to be honest. Yeah. I would say so. Like, um, was that, what was that? The 90s, late 90s kind of thing. It's not, I mean, it's still a thing because fun fact, the first winner of Survivor was on The Biggest Loser, Richard Hatt. He was on season... 2017 which when was season 17 of the biggest loser that was in 2016 did they make 17 seasons that show too They made 18 seasons of it and a Peter have stopped now Wow reality show is really are cheap to make out there Well, they're really easy to act I guess yeah Because people gain weight gain more weight than they lose after eating Oh, I'm I would almost guarantee that happened to the people in that show right? Yes, they're just like yeah working out for eight hours every day and then you go back to your normal life. And yeah. Um, so yeah, people complain that like their beds are too soft. They can't sleep on their beds because they used to sleep in a bed and boo for the entire month. This is survivor people. This is survivor, not big slizer. They get super paranoid. They worry that everyone's lying to them all the time because they spent the entire time living in an environment where everyone was lying to them all the time. People develop like massive trust issues. One dude got a parasite that completely. put him in the hospital for two months after being on Survivor. Jesus. Some other dudes, some of the challenges, one challenge back in season 10 went on for 12 hours, they had to stand on a pole and the producers were like, this challenge will go at most maybe four hours. But the people sat on the pole for so long that they got nerve damage in their feet. Oh man. They just had like this metal disk digging into their feet the entire time. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Another person. I always wanted to be... I was wondering that kind of, okay, sorry. Sorry. One more. Uh, someone that Italians where they held weight over their shoulders. Sort of like you were doing a squat at the gym. I don't know if you did those at the gym. Yeah. Um, and someone dislocated a vertebrae, I want to say, or something like that happened because they were holding the weight wrong and it got like 300 pounds just sitting on their back. Oh, wow. Yeah. Those, um, I was like, I was watching early. fear factor. Because I just wanted to see the difference between kind of like what I'm interested with Survivor, see the difference between the early days and the sort of nowadays. And when you're talking about Jeff Probst just hanging out with them and the early Survivor, it was a bit like that. Like Joe Rogan is just kind of standing with the contestants and he's like asking them like, hey, so what was that like? And it was just like, he was just like another person on the thing. But the first challenge they did was like, they were dressed as cowboys and they would... It sounds ridiculous to say that they were dragged behind horses, like they just had to hang on to a rope. And like, I thought like, oh, surely like, they'll kind of like, you know, maybe the, it'll be special, like they will have sorted the mud out so that it's not going to really mess them up or anything. And like, you know, maybe it's like, maybe this is an attraction people do at a theme park or something like, because they were in like an old shantytown kind of thing. Yeah. Like the people were ending it up with like cracked sternums and like... forearms were all cut up from the ground and I was just like, wow, that's like, yeah, the things people put their body through for money, eh? Yeah, one of my favorites, this is completely unrelated to anything except sternums. One of my favorite Jackie Chan facts is that he once dislocated his sternum. How do you do that? How do you dislocate your sternum? I wonder what film that was from. Cause he's sort of historically broken every single bone in his body. I think you would dislocate your sternum by all the ribs detaching from it because if you've ever seen those chiropractor videos, people, their ribs are like, they call it ribs being out, which I think just means they're not like, not lining up properly or something. So like, maybe that's what it was. Maybe they're just all detached. Yeah. It was in Filming Armor of God 2. Operation Condor. So it'll be the tree fall. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It was the tree fall. Yeah. Because that was where he, he did a lot more than just the sternum and that forward, didn't he? Yeah. Yeah, he did. He did everything. He's actually- People get messed up on Survivor. He's, Jackie Chan's had a bit of controversy. Like have you seen that scene that kind of went viral with him and his daughter watching a bunch of his movies, like the Armour of God tree jump was in it. And then, uh- Everyone was like, Oh, that's a beautiful scene. Cause his daughter's crying and they're watching it. And then it turns out that was just a scene from a movie and his relationship with his actual kids is horrible. Like nowhere near like that. So anyway, tangents upon tangents was this rattle me this tangents. Um, so where were we? We were, uh, we're talking about people get fucked up on surviving. They certainly do. People come back and they can't return to their normal lives. They. It's like being in prison, right? You hear about how that changes your mental, your mental state. Yeah. Well, I'm not going to say that they're exactly analysis, but like, you're always looking over your shoulder. Yeah. That's what I mean. It's like, yeah, not literally like, but just the fact that it changes you. Yeah. Or being a soldier, you could argue as well, you know, back to a civilian life for lack of a better word. Um, no, it's wild. What season did I get up to? I season 34 game changes. Yep. which had the controversy of getting out of this. Survivors shockingly, I don't want to call it progressive, but the first winner of Survivor was a gay man. The second winner was a woman. The fourth winner was an African-American woman. It's pretty much, it takes all sorts. Like anyone can win Survivor. Yeah, yeah, no kidding. Cause the fact that they have those alliances, cause... You said something in the first part of the podcast about like people who know how to play survivor versus people who don't know how to play survivor. Um, evidently there are some skill, there are some skill involved. It's not just winning the physical challenges. Like have there been any, have there been any winners who were not that athletic? Let's see, you know, not that physically capable, but just through scheming and, and everything they've managed to come out on top. I would say most of them, to be honest, like Richard Hatt's the first winner. beat someone who won four immunity challenges. Yeah. Tina, the second winner, beat someone who won five immunity challenges in a row. They say that survivors split into three games, physical, social, and strategy. Yeah. But most would argue that social is king because of how the jury vote works. The jury wants to vote for someone who they like. Yeah. It's why Russell, even though he was a massive character, has never won the survivor because everyone hated him. Yeah. But there have been physical people who have won Survivor. Yeah. We sort of get into later seasons with that. I don't want to do too many spoilers for all of the budding viewers who are going to turn into massive Survivor fanatics after this. Yeah, totally. They'll, um, we might've kicked off a new, a new sort of a Survivor fandom. Um, yeah, so we'll get into season 35. I want to hear your reaction to this. Please. Yeah. The season was called Heroes versus Healers versus Hustlers. Okay. So off the bat, I love it. Anything with hustlers in it is like, yep, I'm there for it. Triple eights, am I right? Yeah. It's time to play the game. So heroes versus healers versus hustlers. So my guessing there is, is hero the like, quote unquote, good guy kind of arch type that they've used before or is it heroes in the sense of like, you know, like war heroes and stuff like that? It's occupation and so it's it was a weird group though. There was a marine vet. Yeah a uh lifeguard um like fire people and stuff like that. Yeah an olympic swimmer was a hero I think because it's a sports hero I suppose. Yeah yeah and my favorite one an actuary so like an accountant was an accountant was on the hero's tribe. They claim that that's because you know being a mom makes you a hero. Yeah yeah well. That's sort of the claim there. Yeah why not. And then so healers and guessing, was that medical professionals? Yeah, pretty much. So then hustlers is an interesting one. Is that like Vegas card counters and like the dude playing dice in the alleyway and that kind of thing? You're not too far, it was like a bellhop, a YouTube assistant. Sort of people that have to hustle, which is everyone, everyone has to hustle. That's life. Am I right? It was such a weird season. I do like that name though. Probably my favorite name so far. All right. What do you think of Ghost Island? I love it. I love the ghost episodes they do on this podcast. I don't. Yeah. So every, uh, little quick self plug there, maybe a few episodes, I do an episode called Phantom files where I have people from around New Zealand that have had like potentially paranormal experiences, they just record, uh, like a short kind of five to eight minute clip and then send it to me and I'll do like a little bit of an intro in between and play some spooky ambience and it's all kind of like lo-fi sort of. MR James horror if you get that reference. So yeah Ghost Island is I'm up there. What was the deal with that season? It's really weird. They so I feel like I need to explain the hidden immunity idol at some point. Yeah, go for it. With the hidden immunity idol, if you find that it's hidden in the jungle somewhere, sometimes they give you clues as to where it might be. But more often than not, you just need to go and look for it. Yeah, yeah. It's very hard to find. If you have that, you can play it. After the votes have been cast. but before they've been read, any votes that have been cast for you do not count. Gotcha. So you might play it and everyone's voted for you, or you might play it and no one's voted for you. Yeah. And so with Ghost Island, they brought back artifacts from survivors past to give people the chance to try and redeem them. That's cool. And so there were a bunch of idols that got misplayed. There were like some immunity necklaces that people had given up and then they got voted out. Yeah. There was. There was a fake idol, which was a stick with a face carved into it that back in season 16, someone legitimately thought was a real idol. It was one of the most iconic lines. That's not the idol. That's a fucking stick. And this dumb surfer just goes, it's got a face on it though. So was that made by another, um, that was Ozzy. So he, he bamboozled this other player with a... That's cool. I like that. Um, so what did that, what did that artifact do in the ghost island season? It, it, it matured as they put it into a real hidden immunity idol. They made it sound like the stick had been sitting in Fiji growing power over time to become an immunity idol. Even though season 16 was in Micronesia and not in Fiji. So I don't know how the stick got there. You're gonna... Someone threw it in the water, I guess. In fact, no, no one threw it. Cause when... when someone plays a fake idol, Jeff goes, this is not a hidden immunity idol. And then he throws it into the fire. So someone had to dig it out of the fire, hold onto it for, I'm going to do the math real quick, hold onto it for a decade and then put it, I think it's more likely they just made a new stick. I don't know if I believe the storytelling going on in Ghost Island. I do like the, like, I'm a big fan of when, I don't know what exactly the phenomenon is retroactively working with things from the past to make them kind of come full circle. So I quite like that actually. What other artifacts, were there any other interesting ones from that season? So when someone wins immunity, they normally get a necklace and it's like a big necklace. It's large. And so that in one season, someone gave up the immunity necklace and then got voted out the exact same night. If you win immunity, you can give it to someone else. And he got so will redeem you for all of the evil things you did, even though you didn't actually do anything evil. I think the evil thing that he did was promised two different people he would take them one reward and he was only allowed to bring one person. Man, what a fiend. Yeah, I know, right? And so they were like, will it'll redeem you? And he got so mindfucked that he gave them the necklace and then got voted out unanimously. And so that was on... The idea of... We were just talking about people's mental state and stuff like that. Like, I guess when you're watching it, you think like, man, I would never fall for that. That's so dumb. But I guess when you've been eating a cup of rice every day and you've been in like the height of like a tropical Island and like you said, everyone's lying constantly, like I guess you're not at a hundred percent like capacity with your mental thinking and stuff. So stuff like that could work on you. Yeah. Well, one of the things that gets me like, if you didn't see I don't know how close they are with your family, but if you didn't see your family for like three weeks, how would you react when you saw them again? You'd probably go sup. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But with On Survivor, when they do the family visits, you've got people like sobbing on the floor because of how much they've missed their family. Right, right. You've got people like proposing to their girlfriend on the island because being on Survivor made them realize how much they really love them and stuff like that. Interesting. Meanwhile, if I did three weeks away from my family in normal conditions, I'd be like Hey, how's it going? Yeah. I suppose if I did it in surviving conditions, I'd probably get completely mentally fucked up. Cause it's the one, it's like a one friendly face that you know is not trying to, not trying to mess with you. Yeah. I can understand that. They only get that once a season, I guess. Yeah. And sometimes none, none of season. Yeah. Oh, very interesting. So we, so that's what happened on ghost island. Season 37 is probably the best modern season if you believe you can keep up with all of the changes that have happened over the course of the show. So season 37, probably in my top three seasons, David versus Goliath. I heard of that. I saw the promo for that, yeah. Yeah, that one had Mike White on it. He was a Goliath. And that had... What was the criteria for being a David or a Goliath? It wasn't quite occupation. It was almost just sort of how your life has gone. You're sort of stature in life. Yeah. So Mike White's a celebrity. There was a policeman on the Goliath tribe who was like a body burning dude, John Johnny Nitro was on the Goliath tribe. Yeah. But then on the, on the David tribe, you've got like a robotics professor, which is pretty cool in my opinion, but apparently he looks super nerdy. So they put him on the David tribe. Oh, okay. On the David tribe, you've got a public defender. Yeah. You know, he sticks up for the little man. That's a good fight. Yeah. You've got this one. Oh, actually, I doesn't quite be became a Senator in Kentucky for the Republicans and massive heel turn. Yeah, no kidding. Right. But we don't talk about that. No, just think if he wants to seize it, just ignore that fact. Just enjoy it for what it is and ignore the fact that one person is actually a massive piece of shit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Why? He passed a bill banning gender affirming care in Connecticut. Yeah, right. Bad is going to be my stance on that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Not to get too political, but I like it when trans people are treated with respect. Yeah, that's always a plus there. That is quite interesting that it's come up. Like, does any of that come up? Like, let me try and, were the signs there when they saw him on Survivor? No, because one of his closest allies was a lesbian Latina person. Yeah, yeah. And she was like, I had no idea. Yeah. Like I knew about his, I knew that he was Republican, but we bonded so well on the island and it really seemed like I was getting through to him and making him reevaluate his biases and whatnot. Yeah, yeah. And then after the season, he just becomes a, goes back to being a massive person banker. I guess, I guess... Well, there's a whole idea of like, you know, when someone's like with the boys, they're kind of more peer pressured or whatever is the wrong, maybe the wrong word, but, um, now that's really interesting. And how old is this guy? Well, I'm not entirely sure. I would say he's just a ballpark figures. Like, is he, you know, white haired Republican old fellow? No, no, he'd be about 30 ish, I think. Wow. That's really surprising. Yeah. Uh, yeah, he's 33 now. And so when he was on the survivor, he would have been. would have been about 28, I think. Wow. What a heel turn then. Yeah, wow. You've got the whole, if you want to get into America, so much of your identity just comes down to were you born in a red or blue state. It's wild. Yeah, I suppose it would do. Does that kind of thing ever come up where people refuse to form an alliance because of political differences or is it like fairly, that does happen? It happened back in season six. So this is in 2003. this guy demanded that everyone vote out a gay person because he was gay. Once even more fucked up is that they went along with it because it was 2003. But also it does spring beautiful friendships from different walks of life. Rittenhats, the first gay winner and the first winner, had a lovely friendship with Rudy, who was a 70-year-old Navy SEAL, and Rudy actually said, you know, meeting Richard made me realize that gay people are just people. Yeah. He put it in sort of a bit of a 70 year old way. You can cut this out if it's not right to say, I'm just quoting Rudy here. Rudy said, he's queer, but he's all right. I think that's fine to say. Queer has been reclaimed by the LGBT plus community. That's very true. Yeah. But I mean, I mean, there's a lot worse of words he could have used for a 70 year old Marine. Yeah. That's I would say that's fairly progressive. It's so wild. What's in specifically season 11 and hearing people say the arse slur just super casually like you used to back in the day. Yeah. I was acting so, you know, like, yeah. Yeah. I watched it and you go, oh, yeah, I watched something recently that had that and that where you go, oh. The times have changed since then a little bit haven't they? Yeah, my friend was watching Friends in the lounge and I was like, is that allowed? No, no, that's not right. That's like, it almost, people didn't even think about it back in those days I think. Oh shit, we got a minute left. Have we got enough content for a part three or what do you reckon? I've only hit season 37 out of 44. All right folks, looks like we're gonna do a part three so... Oh, whoops. Thanks again for joining me, Henry. If you've got time, we'll do a part three. Thanks for having me. Yep. I'll be around. Perfect. Thank you. And we are back again. So that was part two out of three. The final part will be coming in two or three weeks, depending on how the upload schedule goes. If you're joining us from either Reddit or the Nerd Night talk that Henry gave, welcome along. I hope you enjoyed that first listen. Give me a subscribe and keep your eye on, keep your eye out, excuse me, for the next part. And while you're at it, why not check out some of the older episodes too? If you'd like to see more Henry Hickman in your life, you can find his performer page on Facebook, just search for Henry Hickman Comedian. He also hosts a few of the Quiz Nights that we run under Can Do Comedy, so if you've enjoyed listening to him talk about Survivor, why not listen to him read out some questions in a pub. As always, I am on all the social media networks except for Twitter at TaylorRuddleComedy. If you haven't given me a little five-star review... or whatever amount of stars you feel is fair for this free podcast that I put out. I'd love a five star, but you know what? I'll take a four. And I don't have too much pride to turn down any level of stars, frankly. So any amount of stars you feel comfortable parting with, I would be more than happy to receive them. In terms of gigs, all we've got on at the moment, we are actually entering a relatively quiet and stable phase of running shows with Can Do Comedy. Every Tuesday at 7.30 p.m. at Bridie's Bar and Tavern, we have the G Quiz Night. And new time of 6.30 for the Wednesday night quiz at Moi Moi. These quizzes are both free to play. And then as always, every Thursday, except for the last Thursday of the month, we are at the Laugh Cellar. We've had a few changes coming up to that. It's now going slightly longer. And they aren't doing table service, which should make for a better show, as well as a couple of more comedians on the lineup for you to enjoy. Still a core heart entry. But I think moving into 2024, we are going to look at charging $10 or $15 per ticket for that one, just to make it a little bit easier for me to give the comics a fair wage for their mahi. I've got a couple of private gigs coming up this weekend. Both of them are Christmassy sort of functions. But there's no real benefit to me telling you about that except to flex. And if my parents are listening to remind them that I am indeed keeping busy. We'll wrap it up there, hope you enjoyed that episode and I hope you'll stick around and come back for part 3, the final part of the Survivor interview. But until then, thank you so much for listening, we'll catch you next time. Ruddle out.