Jesse Hansen Interview: Australian Survivor

0:00 Welcome back to the nullify tech where we've got the tnt takes for you on australian survivor blood versus water i'm joined here today by jesse aka the kid from australian survivor jesse how are you doing i'm doing good man how you doing i am doing really good really excited didn't even need coffee to get onto this podcast this morning i was ready to go because i'm so excited to have you here a fellow fan of the show who got to play it and actually live out their dream do you sometimes have a little bit of like you know that imposter feeling almost like wow i've crossed over to the other side now and i'm getting interviewed by the fans this is so surreal yeah definitely i think for me particularly i find it when i meet past players i'm like oh my gosh massive fangirling like did a podcast with johnny fairplay a couple days ago and i was like oh my gosh i'm speaking to johnny fairplay and yeah just meeting past australian survivor players i you know i'm a massive fan of the show and so getting to meet these people and but then realizing that they're just absolutely normal humans that have issues in their lives like me and then yeah i love i guess because i've experienced being a fan and you know what it is to want to interact with past players i really enjoy being able to give back to fans and when fans come up to me like i'm love

1:20 Having a chat with them and i think sometimes people are a little bit you know concerned to come up but yeah i love having a chat with the fans and stuff because i know how much i appreciated that when i was a fan yeah i mean once again thank you so much for you know being open to jump on a new podcast like the one i've got here the season i reached out to you prior to the season starting you were one of the first people to get back to me i always make it clear i don't want any spoilers so for anyone listening to this i was completely spoiler free this season i didn't know anything that was going on but i really appreciated you being willing to do this and even after the season is over now that you're a celebrity over there in australia and people know who you are you're still willing to do this also wanted to ask you know you've got a bit of a sporting background you know doing triathlons and things like that did that sort of play into your factor coming into the show i mean both yourself and jordy you guys seem to be very competitive coming and playing a show like this you know how did that sort of play and how did being a triathlete you know sort of help you i guess in the game yeah definitely i think you know i would say what i've found interesting is a lot of people have thought okay he's a triathlete he's going to be good at the challenges and it's the biggest load of ball ever you know that the people that you

2:40 Saw were good at the challenge yeah i'm not saying i was bad at the challenges you know there was quite a few that actually suited me and i did quite well but they were often the longer endurance kind of i guess sufferfest ones whether that was the sandbag challenge or you know the bicep hold first one emerge or you know a couple other little ones i had a slumdog millionaire moment with the barrels at one stage because i actually worked in worked in a winery moving barrels for quite a while so that actually worked in my favor but actually what i found was really hard was you know i've trained my body to be i guess an endurance lean machine for many years now and so my body shriveled on the show and plus you know i didn't really get any rewards for the time i was there i got two rewards while my brother ate every flipping thing on the show which was hard to watch so my body like really chewed through that i guess excess weight so i put on five kilo before the show but that was gone so quick for me and my body really shriveled because yeah i have trained it to be lean and an endurance machine but what most of the challenges especially early they are super explosive physical strength based challenges and so you saw that you know the ex rugby players the jordan the josh the mark the croc they're just explosive big

4:00 Boys that have that strength and i think that's definitely where you needed to be this season i think you know if i was to look back i would probably if i was to play again the season that i just did with the challenges that just happened i would have been aiming to add an extra five kilo of like so 10 kilo all up and i would have i would have probably trained in a different way i would have trained far i would have trained far less and far more explosive and it definitely would have helped me but what i did find definitely helped me in my with my sporting background was simply them it was the mental endurance and my ability to push through mental discomfort so you know come tribe swap you've been out there for two weeks yeah that and that's a long time you know i have full respect to everyone that you know played a flippin day out there because it's tough but you know lasting tribe swap that's two weeks of not eating being out in the beating sun and suffering and it's really when you get to that 10 to you know 14 day stage where you start to see people break down yeah you start you've got that mental decision where you go okay this is the current situation i'm not eating and you have to make the decision that's okay

5:20 You have to make the mental decision that you're not going to think about food and you're just going to focus on the job you have at hand and winning being the self survivor means you've got to be able to put up with that discomfort and a lot of people broke and a lot and that you know it wasn't really shown how many people truly broke their will to live broke out there because of the food and the lack of food and i think actually my mental competitive side really kicked in when i started to see people break it really excited me because i was like great you know i've spent years and years and years pushing myself past a point and that's i think a lot of people probably haven't been to and that i guess gives me the confidence and gave me the confidence out there to know that if i'm uncomfortable i know everyone else is a lot more uncomfortable than i am and so i think that was one of the key things for me that definitely helped was the ability to go to just keep moving forward and know that if i'm hurting other people are hurting more than me and i think that's something of survivor we don't really see or you know those kind of games that we don't really see is what actually happens in people's minds when food starts to break people down and

6:40 I guess we saw a glimpse of it and i think a couple confessionals when i was talking about voting benny off and you know i love benny but definitely there were some games being part that played that i was playing with him there and you know he was really struggling with the lack of food he's a big boy and that was yeah definitely something that helped me my passporting background is the mental ability to push through that suffering yeah so the ben relationship was an interesting one for me that i obviously observed as a podcaster that was recapping about the show and i thought your edit really came forward there and i was like wow jesse is here to play a game like i mean the fact that you got close to this guy became friends with him slept next to him you know made him feel real comfortable but you're like i'm gonna slit your throat when the time comes was really interesting to see you know you played a very low-key game and one of the things that i found very interesting is i had brianna on for an interview earlier this week she was really fun to talk to and she said that her and sam had a conversation after the season finished and sam said to her with hindsight now obviously having played this game twice that when you go out on australian survival or survivor your strengths becomes your weaknesses

8:00 Out there and people actually hold that against you now in your case i'm kind of wondering if your weakness became your strength here because your weakness was the fact that you were seen as the young guy you know you're probably not going to play a big game can you talk to that a little bit yeah for sure like i'd say my whole life people have you know and i'm sure a lot of young people out there have experienced the same thing a lot a lot of my life i've been you know told i can't do something or assumed to not have the ability to do something or assume to not fit into a certain room with a group of people because of my age and you know i you know i guess i'm i was 21 on the show i guess my appearance probably would suit the characteristic of a standard stereotypical you know 21 year old yahoo or whatever when really that couldn't be further from the case you know like i think what it comes down to is life experience and i feel like i've you know had enough trying times in my life from quite an early age that accelerated my maturity and accelerated my need to grow up i guess

9:20 And that has meant that yeah i've experienced a lot and i've done everything from you know like i finished an international high school and you know i like i was had prefects there and so that kind of you know gave me a lot of interaction dealing with different cultures and different people and i really enjoyed that and i found i had an ability to make friends with literally everyone you know i was friends with the nerds because i love studying and i love achieving i was friends with the footy blokes because i love footy like i have a lot of different parts of me i guess you know like i then went to you know australian national university and like study there you know and i'm living amongst high very high level academics but then i've got my sport on the side and then i feel like i've had a lot of different life experiences i've traveled around the world i've traveled around like outback australia a lot since we were young you know camp we grew up camping done stuff life saving you know just i guess i went to cambodia when i was 16 by myself to volunteer in an orphanage lots of things like this that just kind of i felt like have added up in my life to give me life experience and i would say i've had i'm very

10:40 Lucky to have had experienced a lot in life and perhaps a lot more than some people twice my age and so i think as a result when people meet me they can often underestimate me and you know leading into survivor some of the interview questions i was getting was very quickly around my age and you know they were like interviewers were like you know so you're young do you think you know people are gonna underestimate you or whatever and at first i was kind of like i don't think so you know and then you know the questions kind of kept coming and it made me really start to think you know leading into survivor and you know kind of responding to these questions of you know if people underestimate me it's going to be at their own detriment and what do you know like day one i walk in and they start calling me the kid and i'm literally like pissing myself laughing going like are you kidding me you idiots like i guess is what i was thinking and it really worked and i instantly recognized it and i instantly played up to it if they're gonna call me the kid i'm gonna be the kid and i think it really worked you know we had motherly figures around camp we had fatherly figures we had and so i was able

12:00 To really play into you know to the big boys alliance the croc jordan and ben and you know i was just the kid to them jordan recognized early on my ability and we started to build a really strong i guess strategic alliance that wasn't actually shown barely at all jordan and i were actually really close on the show and shared a lot of strategy moving forward in that game but also sam recognized me straight away and she gave me the respect and that's where i like we formed that click super early and so yeah day two i was like sammy let's start a type 2 alliance and you know that's a big risk obviously you know yeah you're already playing the game and that's a risk but sam recognized in me what no one else really recognized in me and it was it was not to underestimate me you know i'm here to play i have physical abilities but i have a strategic mind for this game and it really worked because it meant i was able to always have options because people underestimated me as the kid and so i was able to you know i was a key part of that sophie blindside you know sam and i flipping to the other side like really that was you know the deciding and so that meant soph went home so

13:20 We flipped on the big boys we were able to then flip back to sit under the big boys you know then we went into tribe swap and still but instantly i saw okay i've got to butter up to benny here because you know benny's gonna big boy be the big boy that sits at the front and if you know if i can get him to think that you know i'm just the young kid as well that's just along for the ride and i want to sit with him then great meanwhile yeah my blind side and benny started from tribe swap really a moment one of tribe swap and i was able to butter up to you know of course like i love chrissy i love her to death and she was so amazing to me out there and you know we really did develop a real relationship but the hard fact is it's survivor and she has such a strong motherly desire and i was the kid so you know that suited me really well you know so much so that you know we saw with the crock vote she literally chose me over her loved one and yeah i guess i was really able to use that underestimated the kid factor basically throughout the entire game really that really only i guess came to an end you know in merge when i think i recognized early that josh was smart even though we really didn't get much time to play with each other

14:41 I saw and there was an interview i did which that they didn't show where i said very early on in merge i said josh is the only one here that's going to recognize my threat level apart from sam and he did he recognized that and hence why i left the game but yeah you know mark saw it as well and is a pity i would have liked to play more under the radar game come merge but unfortunately i didn't really have much choice and as a result yeah i wasn't really underestimated as much anymore i'm gonna i'm gonna ask you about a lot of that i've got a few questions lined up around where your game sort of i guess went downwards and the involvement that geordi would have had and that going in a different direction we'll definitely ask some of those questions sort of interested just to backtrack here to the bin vote a lot of the times when it comes to voting someone out on survivor you know you hear the stereotypical he's a physical threat but let's be honest this was early game i mean the guy wasn't going to win every single immunity going to the end of the game that was the excuse used but you know there must have been more to the fact that you just felt like you couldn't work with him going into the endgame of this so can you talk to that yeah look so

16:01 I'm gonna be honest i'm competitive ben's competitive you know i walked in on day one and i saw an alpha male and there's nothing more i like in life than taking down the alpha male and showing them that actually i'm the alpha male you just didn't realize it and you know so day one benny it told me that you know he was here to be the sole survivor and it was that moment that just rubbed me the wrong way because obviously we're all there to be the sole survivor but you know what you don't do you don't go increasing your threat level on day one by telling everyone you want to win the game and my eyes kind of lit up from that moment and had me thinking and you know there were times throughout the game you know i was chatting to my brother and my brother was building a relationship with shane you know he kind of urged me to work with benny and so you know there were moments where you know i tried genuinely to see whether this relationship could work and but i didn't feel strategically that we were going down the same path he was beginning to be disruptive and starting to irritate some people with his actions around camp

17:22 And i just couldn't see us moving forward together and i knew that he was a he was a big dude he was a big figure and i think the edit didn't really show how much he was kind of talked about i guess no one really thought of him as too much of a physical threat or too much of a strategic threat he was just he was a large figure in the game and was it because there was like an element of an unwillingness to move with people or give in like was it on the highway kind of yeah look he yeah he was a big character out there he was a big character big personality and yeah that's a better way to put it he was a big personality and so i knew that blindsiding him and being the driving factor behind that and you know i guess there'd been a status quo and he was comfortable in the majority or whatever and so i knew that being able to blindside him and would be massive for my resume and especially so early on you know like

18:42 People can say what they want everyone's gonna have their own opinion but really the benny blind side i believe was the first major blind side where the sole credit was mine you know every other blind side you know there was arguments while it was on tv of like you know was it was it josh jordan or mark that you know got sandra out or was it all for you know like all of them played a strong contributing factor to it whereas the benny blind side was me and me alone you know like obviously i had to have others come along for the vote but it all started with me and so it was something that i knew that if i started early on in tribe swap and you know really it was a it was a seven day like process of getting him out and starting to plant seeds in people's minds to get him out that it was going to be something it was going to be a massive blind side that come final tribal i would have a lot to talk about and be able to show to the jury just how strategic i was without anyone noticing and you basically threw a challenge to get it done as well which is something that a lot of people may overlook and unknown australia culturally it probably isn't the greatest thing to throw a challenge like you always go hard all the time but

20:02 You know as a massive fan of survivor i realize that is a legitimate strategy and something that you push from your aim to actually make this vote happen but i do want to move on and ask you a question about you know yourself and sam were involved in two major blind sides before the merge both blew up in your face because of twists in the game how do you feel about these twists that we see an australian survivor where i know geordi benefited from a twist similar to that later on in the game but if you take that out of your thinking you know and you don't have the loyalty to your brother as someone that benefited from one of these twists how do you look at these twists as a player and how does it influence your ability to play a more fluid game in all honesty i absolutely hate the twists when a player's voted out the players voted out i hate the twists and i was on the receiving end of yeah copying a lot a lot of others got rewards and received you know stayed in the game even like and it was me that did all the hard work to get them out and that is so dangerous like that first benny blonde you know obviously you got sophie first up then you've got that benny blindside you know i not only was that so devastating for me

21:22 It was so risky it was such a horrendous situation they showed him one of my confessionals beforehand i was like the worst possible situation for me tonight is that benny somehow is saved and what do you know he was saved that yeah that vote really cooked me like afterwards emotionally do you feel like it's counter sorry for interrupting your train of thought do you feel like it's counterproductive to have these twisting because josh spoke about it a little bit we said jonathan kept asking them when are you going to make these big moves but they were so afraid of when someone was going to be safe nick so it kind of prevents you from making that next big move yeah exactly it makes you start to seriously think because it puts you at a major risk of whether you are going to perform a blind side again or if you just sit in the majority and you know there was a lot of talk about there being far too many twists and impacting the game too much it really does start to affect your train of thought but for me in the end you know as we saw you know the first benny blind side next day i throw another ch like i throw another challenge to and so i guess i got over it if i'm going to be honest you know what i mean it's survivor build a bridge get over it you can't control it the production is gonna do what they're gonna do to build a tv show they're gonna try

22:42 To make it interesting i don't like the twists but at the end of the day i can't control that's that's survivor i think yeah they are counterproductive for the game and they do the pure survivorists out there i think understand that it affects the game in a poor way and yeah i was on the receiving end of a lot of bad luck if yeah it's yeah it's a shame and i mean obviously now when you go into australian survivor you expect that i so hope that there is a better way for them to do things i saw them improving on what they did on brands versus braun's the previous season which i thought was even more twist heavy but yeah again it's one of those things now as a big fan of the show obviously you've seen some of these players play before what was your feeling about these players returning and you know obviously the biggest one of them all sandra you know the two times queen being out there as well what was your thoughts when you realized you were gonna play with him yeah thankfully i'd done you know like my brother and i prepared you know you get an opportunity to play survivor you prepare you know we prepared physically we're prepared mentally and we studied a lot the show and thankfully i knew sandra and i knew her game and i think there were

24:02 Quite a few players out there but they hadn't even watched australian survivor but yeah thankfully i knew sandra and look i never felt too threatened by her because early on you know she really made it clear her only goal was to sit in the majority that's it you know as long as the vote wasn't on her she didn't care tell her where the vote's going and that's all she cares about you know and that's good and that's predictable you know better the devil you know than the devil you don't so i was never too worried about it but 100 i did want to go on you know because she does have a side to her that you don't know what's gonna happen because she's won the game twice you know what i mean that you can't have that sitting around camp you can't have someone that's played seven times won the game twice in this game and so i was one of the few advocates to get her out there was very few of us that were willing to risk that i guess people were scared to vote her out like legit like she had such an aura about her or whatever and they were so scared to vote her out and i just didn't understand that and so yeah literally that first vote that first night when kate went home sandra

25:23 Was supposed to go home but juicy blew himself up and decided to blindside himself and so we tried to put the votes on him and he played his idol flushed his own idol and i think people wanted to keep her around because they felt that moving on in the game she would be a threat and a shield but sandra's not the kind of person you want to keep around as a threat and a shield like she's smarter than you like times 10 so yeah i didn't really understand that but look she was always going to leave the game she was always going to leave the game it was just a matter of when finally some enough of the majority got on the same page to get her out and you know that came in what day 16 so i wasn't too worried about her you know i first saw first saw andy when i was on the when we were you know walking in and i was like oh my gosh it's andy which is kind of yeah funny as a fan of the show you know if you know you know his story you know why it was funny and so i kind of immediately i saw him and i thought okay he could be a good guy to butter up but yeah we were split we were put on opposite tribes and then he was gone anyway and mark and sam i thought i thought they played phenomenally in terms of their ability which again i explained at final tribal was kind of what the part

26:43 Of my speech that they showed was that mark's ability to remain underestimated and not a major threat and you know sam's the same is the fact that they just straight up you know they owned look yeah we've played the game before but you know what we're here we're meeting new people just like everyone else and so they did a really good job at removing that threat and so much so that i felt that you know with sam that i would rather be aligned with her because i felt like i wanted to work with someone smart to get through this game and so yeah me and her clicked and i was able to use that ability of you know that her having played the game before used that knowledge to progress my game and i think it was similar for mark on the other side you know others like to work with him because he was smart and you know it worked well for them yeah did you learn anything from playing with sandra that you would keep i mean there's the sandra lessons were throughout the season everybody kept saying sandra told us this what did sandra tell you out there that you sort of think you know maybe you could use this in the future the ghost of sandra yeah honestly firstly the biggest thing i flip and hate was however you know the amount of times they showed people going oh sandra told us not to tell someone about an idol

28:03 Like are you kidding me bro like have you watched this show before like why do you need sandra to tell you that like i was i was just embarrassed for the show and the fans at home that kept coming up but the one good piece of advice i got from sandra oh there's a couple one i can't really repeat on air because it wasn't really appropriate for public consumption number two was when we are walking out to challenges basically her lesson to me was walk really slowly you know it's 40 plus degrees out there you've got no fuel she really taught me to not give about the cameras and the tv production basically do what i have to do to look after my body to get myself to the end don't care if they tell you to hurry up if they tell you i don't know whatever it is that you're doing something wrong don't listen do what you've got to do push the boundaries of tv production to the absolute limit to benefit you because that's part of the game too looking after yourself and that was yeah definitely something i picked up early on and i probably would have you know i don't want to do the wrong thing you know i understand it's a tv

29:23 Show i feel lucky to have gotten on and obviously i want every chance of going on again as well so i want to do the right thing by them but yeah learning that you know that's coming from sandra someone that's paid you know however many times that yeah that was a really important lesson and one thing i would you know for people that potentially may get to play the game in the future is look after your body and as your number one priority you know what that sounds like to me it sounds like my managing director at work when he says to me chris you don't need to be in meetings if it was your time just walk out of it i'm not the managing director i can't just walk out of it but i mean she obviously has this aura about herself where you know and she's played it so many times well i'm sure she could have pushed the limits on that stuff a little bit more than yourself like you mentioned being new and potentially wanting to be in the good books of production i did want to ask you know obviously you played a phenomenal i thought you played a phenomenal game a game that would have taken you a normal season a lot deeper than what it did but this season was a little bit more complicated because you went out there to play with your brother geordie and when you and jordy got back together there was a urgency about both of you to make big moves play hard very fast you might only get one chance out there to play the game so as a fan

30:43 I appreciate that do you feel like playing with geordie he was a bit of a bad influence on you in regards to that and like if you didn't have geordi there how would you have played it differently at that stage in the game yeah look this is such an interesting i guess feature of blood verse water and i think what you got to see between you know and why i guess sam and mark and me and my brother were featured so much and that storyline was featured so much was because we captured blood verse water i guess you know coming tribe swap sam and i played a flipping hectic game and we were fighting tooth and nail to stay in the game and to execute blindside and you saw that you know we had five blue members and they had eight red members you know they'd gone to tribal council two or three times through tribe swap we've been however many times they'd been every award we hadn't eaten a thing like you know you couldn't get two different game types and so what you had was my brother who'd been sitting in the majority the entire time and hadn't really been a part of a move yet whereas i was approaching merge going i've got the biggest resume in this game by far i'm now ready to chill but

32:03 Yeah my brother felt like he needed to make some moves and so coming into merge he'd already started to plant seeds in people's minds and or had already started to you know he told mark that josh wanted him out and he told josh that mark wanted him out so he'd already started to i guess spin a few tales and as we saw and i learned to post the show is my brother isn't the greatest at keeping his mouth shut and isn't the greatest liar and if i may say so isn't the greatest i guess understated strategic player of survivor and so but i trusted him with everything you know we went into the game saying we're going to stick together to the very end our goal is for both of us to sit at the end and i think you know if you're going to get the chance to play survivor like don't go on there and play safe like we were like if we're gonna get this chance let's flip and do something that will be remembered forever and that's two brothers sitting at the end and so you know we were willing that if one of us makes a mistake the other goes home we can live with that and so coming to merge i was super keen to go great you know i'm going to jump into this majority that you know we already had kind of forming because i had my brother over there sam had mark over there i'd been working

33:24 With jordan previously in the game you've got josh over there great we've we already had merge majority sorted you know in tribe swap and so we knew we just had to get to merge and sam and i were gonna you know plan on chilling for quite a few votes and just sit in that majority because we knew that our threat level had increased and that needed to reduce for a while and i didn't need to make moves because i already had enough to sit at final tribal and explain that i should be self-survivor i felt so i was a bit shocked when i came into merge and you know my brother kind of comes to me and he's like mark wants josh out josh wants mark out mark has an idol he then goes and tells sam about it sam didn't know about it that starts to fracture relationships and trust and i instantly had to jump on board right i had to jump on board my brother's plans and he was beginning to i guess panic a little bit you know he had a lot on his cards and i had gone okay i've executed however many blindsides very close to perfection i feel like i can execute another and once a plan kind of gets out there if you don't chop the head off the head will come back and bite you

34:44 You know we'd kind of pass that point where we i could kind of tell my brother no this is not the right time i'd already gotten him to wait a few votes you know we almost when mel went home we almost did it then and i had to get him to hold back you know it was a little bit too soon and so i kind of had to jump on this plane and try to execute it with him and i had to keep him calm and focused on the job at hand and i had trusted that sam and mark would vote with us but i knew that my relationship with sam was beginning to be strange because she saw me moving to my brother and that my allegiance was to him and that's again you know why i gave her that idol why i trusted her in that moment was i knew that our relationship was being strained and so i wanted to show her one last bit of trust and show you know really we are working together and you know obviously that didn't work but i recognized our relationships were being strained but what i didn't know i didn't know market mark did not trust my brother because i didn't know the previous history that had happened on the other side and so i knew i was coupling votes that night but i trusted that sam and mark were going to stick with us and we were going to form a new majority so look in the end

36:04 My brother's previous game and my lack of knowledge about that game impacted the outcome and that was you know really difficult and frustrating for a little while you know post returning from the game you know i had moments where i wished i was selfish and i wished i had not shown such allegiance to him and i had played my own game because i truly do think that you know if i'd stuck closer with sam and kind of like yeah i see but then i can't even say it like the idea of letting my brother destroy his own game can i add something to this can i add something to this because obviously there's some really big things that happened even before you went on to survivor with losing your stepmother and that pulled you closer to your brother out there as well i think people may forget that and then i've got a brother as well you know i've got a younger brother and my younger brother always used to look up to me quite a lot when i was a kid like because i was i was i'm about two years older than him and you know wherever i went he would follow kind of because that's just the one that brothers had so obviously those kind of things would have like i mean i think it's so difficult to look at this and say man like i wish i did some different things here because i think i would

37:24 Have like me and my brother fight all the time but if someone tries to come in between it like we would have each other's back it's just that brotherly thing you know so i get it yeah like everything you know my brother and i have always been close you know we've gone through a lot of things in our life together and i think you know with the passing of you know our stepmom who really was our mum you know i hate the word stepmom but she really was our mum and that just brought us so much closer together and you know it's this moment of realizing that family is all you've really got in this life and it can be taken away at any moment and it was just this shared moment of you know we've been through things together that no one else will ever know and you know again you know yeah we fight yeah he pisses me off so much sometimes you know like we both rub each other the wrong way but like there is nothing i wouldn't do for that bloke and i guess that came out on the show you know like we were willing to do anything for each other and you know i'm so glad that i stuck to that and you know yeah it cost me arguably cost me my game and maybe i could have stayed longer in the game but you know what like i wouldn't change a thing quick question and we're going to talk about the sam steele because to me it's going to go down as obviously the biggest move ever an australian survivor one of the biggest moves

38:44 Ever in any survivor so both yourself and sam are cursed with this because you're going to be remembered for either her pulling the move off or you being on the receiving end of it has eric reichenbach spoken to you at all have you spoken to him like you guys are kind of i look at you as almost like it's different situations but there is some similarities in both being what fans would see as outplayed but i mean you had your reasons for why you did what you did like you said you wanted to build trust and you know it's 50. we've got we look at the fishbowl from outside and we know everything that's going on as a player you don't have all the information i guess what i wanted to come to is like eric reichenbach in my opinion is forever going to be remembered he came back he played another time i don't think you know even though you've been on the receiving end it's too juicy a storyline to steal juicy's nickname here not to have you come back and redeem yourself in a redemption season in a second challenge season yeah i mean i would obviously love another chance to come play i think you know to be honest one my biggest concern you know post the game was how this was gonna air and i really wanted to approach it as gracefully as possible you know like obviously fans and stuff are gonna have their opinion out there but you know what no one wants to hear about and no one wants to care is someone go and defend themselves publicly like at

40:04 The end of the day i have my reasons for what i did out there and the thing is no one's ever really going to understand that because it firstly sam and i were the only ones there in that moment and you know i guess plus the cameraman and sam and i had a 30-day relationship and i had strategic plans for the way i wanted to move forward and for me again it's just one of those moments where i'm willing to it was one of those moments where i'm like if this pulls off we've won this game and you know it's a 50 flip of the coin and you know even sam has said you know time and time again that she was still trying to toss up her options you know right to the end and you saw that at tribal council she didn't know whether to flip or not and so if that had pulled off you know i'd be sitting here going you know i took made one of the ballsiest moves in survivor history and it worked and now i'm sitting here at south suburban i'm bringing like a another big move up i know we go back to this guy quite a lot because he had some ballsy moves while he was out there russell hands plays idol for poverty and heroes versus villains like two or three votes in if that didn't play off him convincing tyson who is a great player of this game he full tyson that season so i mean does this make tyson not a great player no it doesn't so he convinced tyson to basically effectively vote himself out of the game you know which could have been seen as

41:25 One of these big mistakes in the game but if that didn't go his way russell hans looks like a fool for the rest of his survivor career and he's out you know what i mean like so that's how thin the margin is between being successful at this game and being a legend like tony blackwell's two-time winner one time first vote off you know like it's just it's so you can't in my opinion any case is a fan you can't look at it as results only like what happened results wise it's understanding the intent behind what it is that you try to do and one of the other things i wanted to also talk about was you remained extremely calm like even when blindsided at tribal council which i thought took massive restraint like i mean it could have been so easy for you to just blow up sam's game right there what went through you hit the in regards to not blowing her game up yeah i think what was interesting was we actually we saw well in that moment we saw the two differences between my brother and i so you know obviously i was starting to see the votes i knew i was coughing boats that day i knew i was coughing boats and you know i was scared but again i was willing to risk that and even if i had the idle i wasn't playing it so i started to see the votes read out and you know i saw for josh for me or whatever and they showed a clip of me smiling because i was

42:45 Like i love this i'm playing survivor i'm risking it you know i'm about to pull off a massive blind side you know i've sorted my brother's rubbish out and about to pull off a massive blind side and send josh home and then i see that with vote come out and yeah like my brother just leans forward and you know he's like ah but instantly my brain's just gone into upside overdrive and i'm like okay i am technically still in this game i'm still around these people i still have an influence in this game and all of a sudden and again if it wasn't by this water things may have gone very differently but i knew my brother was still in this game and i have knowledge that no one else does and i know that sam has that idol and so i wanted to my brother already knew because i told him during tribal council but i wanted to reassure him and let him know sam does have this idol so i could give him a piece of knowledge that was that was power in this game and he could use as a weapon either against sam and mark or with sam and mark and so i was just trying to ensure that you know no bridges were burnt my approach to sami was i wanted to threaten her to the absolute limit so that she understood that me showing her this grace and this

44:05 Respect for her move because again i didn't really hold any you know i had no personal bad feelings to her i knew she was a good player and i didn't expect her to pull off that move so early but i knew that there had to be a reason for it you know she doesn't make stupid like for such a big move to happen like that there had to be a massive reason for it so i respected that and so i wanted to let her know that i have knowledge about her about her game that she has an idol and i could severely negatively impact her game right now but i wanted to use that as a threat for her to know she has to now work with my brother you know my brother's no longer a threat in this game you've removed me my brother used him as a number was all i was thinking was i need to buy my brother some time because if i don't you know he'll be gone quickly and so yeah i wanted to show sam and mark some grace in the way i exited by not blowing their game up and i wanted to give my brother that knowledge and some power to use moving forward so again my mind just went into overdrive strategic mode and doing all i could in that moment to keep my brother safe move him forward in the game and let mark and sam know that you better work with my brother or yeah it's interesting because i feel

45:25 Like they once again at that point in the game would have underestimated you because they were targeting jordy not you became the vote because jordy won the immunity and i do feel like you know i'm a big geordie fan i love the drama and the chaos that the joker brought to the screen you know but i feel like if you were in that same position and jordy left you had a better ability to ingratiate yourself back and with the tribe and potentially go further what would have been the plan of jordi was voted out at that point and you would have had to scramble how would you have strategized from that point forward and who would you have worked with yeah moving forward again what really you know depending on who you ask or whatever was happening again i don't really know what was happening but from what i've been told anyway that the edit may not have been truly accurate there and actually i was the target okay but yeah my brother did win immunity so it kind of solidified that i don't really know what was happening there but either way moving forward i would have 100 kept working with mark and sam i think i would have just had to play that under

46:45 The radar game and you know i'd already shown my allegiance to sam and you know mark and i got along and mark trusted me and i would have just had to re i would have receded to that number place and just bided my time because i still had i still had numbers on my side kj michelle they were numbers that i had and people you know i mean really sam knew that you know i was great months with jordan so i've got that option i had an old relationship with juicy dave from og red you know i would have felt like i still had options in this game and i could have moved forward and i would have taken a different approach to my brother or i wouldn't have tried to cause chaos i would have tried to build trust and you know chaos worked for my brother for quite a while and he got a bit lucky with that you know being saved and redemption and a couple other things and a good few mindy wins but you know in the end his untrustworthiness kind of led to his downfall and i think that would have been something i probably would have approached slightly differently and i would have tried to build trust and be a safe number and yeah you're the first person that i've got on at the moment that i'm interviewing that i've actually been on the jury so i'm really interested to ask you a little bit about the jury

48:05 Portion of this game when the end vote happened obviously you had mark that went in there and i think everybody knew he played the best game so i wasn't surprised to see the amount of votes he got but thinking about josh as a player this season i was a very big fan of josh i actually rated josh probably the most capable player out there that we just didn't see we didn't see on the edit how big of a player he was if josh made the end i take it as a foregone conclusion if we you know took mark out and josh is in there josh wins again also probably pretty close to unanimous i would assume or he would win at least what would have happened if josh and mark went up against each other what was the thoughts in the jury about that because to me that would have been the ultimate showdown yeah this is a common question and mark and josh mark you know obviously you're gonna have some different opinions i'm guessing mark v josh mark wins still because throughout the and again we didn't see a lot of it and again that's the other thing is you know people can have their opinions eating their chips sitting down on the couch right but we're flipping ones out there playing and we have the relationships we know all those all those things that happen in the in the other 47 hours you know that aren't shown on tv and

49:26 There were times at tribal council when josh would rub the jury the wrong way you know he's a confident guy and i respect that but often it would come across in a way that negatively influence the jury and again people do we're given half a million dollars to someone yes we respect the game we you know most of us respect the game that it's outlast out with our play but at the end of the day we also do want to give the money to someone that's not only going to benefit from the money but that we like you know and he did start to rub some people the wrong way you know i think strategically again mark's argument of being able to use josh as a shield is just a brilliant argument you know when you start to analyze his game and the moves he was able to play from behind josh was phenomenal i think i think mark had a greater hand in removing key players from the game than josh did i think josh was simply a part of a strong majority and you know there's arguments both way you know i respect again i said josh was the one that i thought was going to recognize my threat level

50:46 Early on and so you know i recognize that he's a really smart guy and i think you know he could perform well in the challenges he clearly lasted and he's very smart but yeah just to me that mark's ability to play a second time and be so underestimated is something when you start to think about it is pretty phenomenal you know ex-special you know like that ability how did he do that you know and apparently you know one of the things i had josh on yesterday actually for an interview and josh actually himself said listen mark probably played the jury better than i did and he said that the way that mark would have pitched the end he's a great talker and i don't know if i would have been able to counteract that so josh also kind of leaned the same way that you're sort of explaining it here one of the things that to me that was interesting is josh mentioned that there was a whole different site to mark that we as an audience because i love mark don't get me wrong like both of them like i couldn't key less who of them won i thought they both were great representation obviously you want a great player to win this season but he said there was a whole different side to mark that we didn't see like him being a lot more emotional not emotional but more emotionally aware and more vulnerable out there which i think we saw a snippet of it at the end with the river story but that was pretty much it yeah

52:06 I'm amazed by you know like obviously with my idol situation or whatever first like i guess i'm grateful i didn't come out looking too stupid or whatever and pretty much everyone that sees me they're like oh are you dressing from survivor and i'm like yeah and then they're like oh that's sam and they hate her and it's similar with mark you know people's first thing that you know when they talk to me they're like why did you vote mark like we hate him and i'm like i guess because as well i've got my understanding of mark i've played the game with him i've been friends with him for however you know long i know mark i know his heart i know sam i know sam's heart i know they're ripper people are super generous super loving super caring we had a great time with mark out there he's funny as hell he's a great bloke but clearly a lot of that did not come across to the viewers which i didn't really i guess gauge because again i'm looking at it through my lens of my knowledge of them but yeah i think it's a i think it the edit makes for breakthrough sometimes because they gave him such a one-sided edit like you know if it moves i can kill it or having a concealed weapon it was a lot of this military talk where i think maybe it didn't translate well to the everyday joe watching the show and then obviously i think mark is guilty by association because what happened to sam this season i am still up until today

53:27 Shook to my call that people can go that hard on someone for making a game move out there and i mean if there's anybody who should be pissed off it's you should be the one out there being angry but you've got all these people going so hard at sam that i'm really gutted by it because like i've reached out to sam not this season previous season when i was podcasting for a different channel and we were doing recaps on the previous season and she was the nicest person like one of the nicest australian survivors to deal with she didn't end up coming on which i now understand why because she was lining up to come onto this i probably didn't want to get a lot of his strategic thinking out on a podcast but you know nice person mark has been nothing but kind to me this season as well having a chat with him in between like again i didn't know anything but you know he was willing to come on he was the first person to do this podcast so i can tell just genuinely great people and the people who listen to those podcasts i don't think there are those people i've got a theory that it's very casual viewers that also watch maths over there you know and that's the type of yeah that's the type that has that type of hate like in their heart that's what i think yeah for sure like you know one of the key things i you know i recognized early that sam could cops yeah and one of the funny things is sam and i played a very similar game you know what like i was pretty flipping ruthless out there too and you know if i'm honest a lot of the ruthless they didn't

54:47 Show a single one of my reading outs because most of them were far too ruthless for public consumption so i was saved by the edit in a lot of ways you know like i could have been on the receiving end for a lot of that brutality but the fact is game respects game you know like you can't be mad at sam you know she a lot of stuff happened around that situation which really you know wasn't aired because there's some discrepancies and so you know she i wanted to i knew she was gonna cop hate for it and so again like i've tried hard you know i've tried consciously to publicly demonstrate to people that you know we are good we are friends you know if any exactly as you said if anyone deserves to hate sam it's me and me and my brother again at the end you know when you know we're both asking questions to mark and mark's explaining you know me and him cocked at the worst from sam and mark out of anyone you know like we were on the receiving end of going to war against them out there in survivor and they got the better of us so if anyone deserves to hate them it's flipping us

56:07 So if we can show them love if we can respect them if we can understand that there's game and then there's personal lives no one deserves a death threat no one deserves to have their kid threatened to be killed like it's honestly ridiculous and the mental you know my brother copped a lot this season i copped a lot at the end there's people don't understand we are just humans trying to live our lives you're seeing a tv edited show and you think you have the right to contact us and tell us we deserve to end our lives like i just can't even begin to fathom that and the mental impact and toll that it has taken on a lot of the players and the impact it's gonna have for months to come is devastating and i don't think people understand the impact that they're having on human lives and it's very negative what's your advice to people like myself or others out there that still want to play survivor in the future like what should we do to prepare ourselves for the onslaught that is going to come our way yeah so obviously prior to surviving you know yeah you have a couple interviews with the show psychologist and you know one of the key topics that you kind of cross over and you know he's trying to check

57:27 Is are you in a mental place that you can cope with the aftermath and of course you know i still remember where i was and still remember doing that interview and i still remember being like oh yeah for sure man like you're just trying to get on the show so of course you're like yeah man i'll be fine you know like i've got my support around my family around me and stuff and button i just guarantee you there is nothing on earth that can prepare you for firstly watching the show and realizing that it's not a documentary about your experience it's a tv show that's been produced based off your experience you know that's the first major shock for everyone and understanding that being able to learn to separate your reality you know we've got our experience and only us 24 will ever know what that experience was out there you've then got the experience of watching a show but what you need to you need to learn and you need to develop the skills very quickly is to not give a about anyone's opinion you know and the sooner you can do that the better you will be and you know i'd say only towards middle slash end of the show did i feel like i was in a place where i really don't care you know like still i get people coming up to me in the street and they feel very free to rip into

58:47 Me and share their opinion and i think you yeah once you understand and i guess you almost have that self-confidence and go you know what i was the one out there playing you weren't you know like and trust that you know they don't know what your experience was so learning to you can't read comments don't bite don't ever bite you know like you feel very tempted especially early on to start responding to people and defending and then you have a look and i got seven followers who honestly cares you know i think yeah just you can't read the comments turning off your instagram notifications you go onto instagram you do a post you share something because you don't want to share with the public you know some of your thoughts and then you turn your notifications off you don't look otherwise you're going to go into a rabbit hole and also i think you know as someone that's managed a lot of contact centers and customer services people in the past like we always used to say you get the negative people on google reviews you get the negative people online like you hear more of that and it can form this warped reality where you think everybody feels this way but it's like you said that's that troll account with seven followers that are biting at you and i think another thing for people who are listening to this podcast about 70 of my listeners are from the us believe it or not we don't know how they get the episodes but they get it

1:00:07 And i think for those that are in the us that are listening to this just put it into perspective the user's got over 300 million people australia's got what 20 or 30 million people so you're a lot more recognizable in australia compared to a survivor player over in the us where no one will know afterwards because only 6 million people out of a 300 million people country watch the show over there which is it's just phenomenal i mean that ratio is completely off yeah for sure you know like and i mean in saying that you know there's also been a lot of positive stuff you know i think my brother and i got very solid edits that you know what we're grateful for because honestly you're at the mercy of the production and i think i think we did come across as you know mostly who we actually are and so i think people who you know do i'd say 90 of time in public people are very nice and they're like oh like excited to speak to you and i love that because again i'm just a 22 year old bloke at uni like i like all the other uni students out there so i'm very happy to chat and you know same for my brother it's it's you do cop most of it online most of the trolls and yeah once you realize that it blows over and you know you're never going to see this person in real life

1:01:28 They don't actually care you know you're going to go back to your normal life they're going to wake up tomorrow and not even remember that they've decided to tell you to kill yourself and yeah just remembering you know bringing grounding yourself bringing yourself back to your family you know that's why i like i'm so glad i've lived with my brother you know through all this you know we're able to be there for each other remind each other what matters in life you know and i think surrounding yourself with your family and your close friends who really know who you are and you'll be fine one last question i always like to end this on a positive what will you remember about the show what's the positive thing you know 10 years from now 20 years from now when you've got your first kid on the way what would you sit down and talk to them about yeah so there was this scene which we so thought was gonna be shown because like literally the cameramen were pissing themselves laughing and maybe that's why because the cameras were jumping up and down but so jordan i have the clue for the idol and where george just like you know he was quite paranoid and it was very funny and so we're at the well we're chatting and my brother like it was far too obvious but he just wanted to he was like got gollum he just wanted to go off and find the ring like he just all he cared about was finding this idol

1:02:48 And it was just this moment of us standing around the well we're wearing our murder bus we've got a clue to an idol you know this moment of like not taking it all too seriously and kind of going like how nuts is this like we are playing survivor two ordinary blokes we're at merge we've got a clue to an idol you know we're right on the edge i know i'm coughing votes like this moment of like we are living like this is living and yeah just this really special moment that i think i'm so glad to have gotten to share with my brother and you know we're going to be telling kids grandkids for years and years and years and they're going to get so sick of hearing about the time we played survivor but it was funny has he has he allowed you to drive the isuzu yet we don't even have it yet you don't have it yet we're hoping it comes in the next week or so because yeah we were told we were supposed to get it when the episode aired and then we didn't get that and now like when the show finishes and then they're like mid-april and so oh i hope jordy applies for a sales role at isuzu ben the way he sold that thing like he's got a talent it's so funny because literally going into the show we were just like we've always watched the car rewards and just been like oh you know we do love cars and how epic it would be to win and say you know as well you saw my emotion at final

1:04:08 Tribal like that was fully genuine like i started crying like i was like this is just incredible like my brothers actually won the car and yeah we were so flipping stoked that's awesome listen jesse it's been great talking to you