The sweatiest place on Earth is the CBS Studio Center in Los Angeles — at least it is on May 20, 2015, the night of the Survivor: Worlds Apart finale. On this night, three people wait with bated breath to find out which one of them will be named the 30th winner in Survivor history. There are two obvious frontrunners — Carolyn Rivera, the White Collar corporate executive and two-time immunity winner, and Mike Holloway, the oil-drilling challenge beast from Texas — but there’s a catch: Carolyn and Mike are two of the 30+ veterans in the mix for Survivor: Cambodia — Second Chance, the show’s 31st season, and the first time ever that the casting process has been handed over to the audience. In the two weeks leading up to this moment, fans have been voting in support of 32 former Survivor contestants, a group that represents the full spread of the show’s 30-season history, from original runner-up Kelly Wiglesworth all the way through five potential candidates from the latest season. Thirty-two men and women, many of them legendary in the hearts of Survivor fans, but all of them losers in the eyes of the Survivor gods — and at least 12 of them will remain that way. Only 20 will make it onto the Second Chance cast, revealed in front of an audience of hundreds in person and millions at home. They will start their journey for Cambodia immediately after the Worlds Apart finale, while a disappointed dozen remain right where they are in Los Angeles, licking their wounds. So, you can go right ahead and add these 30 former and potentially future Survivors to the list of Sweatiest People On Earth For A Night, right alongside Mike and Carolyn. While you’re at it, add me to that list, too. I’m in the room when Mike wins Worlds Apart, removing him from the Second Chance running. I’m there, teeth clenched tight, doing my best to survive the unbelievably uncomfortable Dan Foley segment. More than anything, I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for the imminent Second Chance cast reveal. I’m as invested as any other fan; I’ve been voting for my 20 favorites every single day since the polls opened, just like countless other Survivor junkies. What’s more, I’ll be hopping on a plane for Cambodia in just a few days, walking along the same white sands of Koh Rong that the Survivors will call home throughout Second Chance. I’ll interview every single player before the game begins, and I will witness their first three days of adventure. I’m in this. My heart is full of hope and dread, my stomach is in knots with anticipation, and believe me: I am sweating. Jeff Probst is not sweating; at least, he does not appear to be sweating, based on what I can see of him from my seat at the back of the auditorium. The ever-present Survivor host looks as cool, calm and collected as ever in the moments leading up to the Second Chance cast reveal, cracking jokes with the audience, setting the stakes for the upcoming season, bracing everyone in the room for the big moment to come. It turns out, looks can be deceiving. “There was a time about halfway through [the Second Chance process] where I second-guessed the whole thing,” Probst tells me, several days after the Worlds Apart finale, the two of us speaking in an office on the set of the new season. “I wondered if this was a terrible idea, turning our franchise over to the fans. I had a lot of friends of mine who produce TV calling me to say, ‘You’re nuts! You should never do that!’ But I said, ‘I don’t know. I trust it. I feel like we’re going to get legitimate fans voting for what they want to see happen.'” Nuts or not, Probst and his team pushed forward with Second Chance, a concept that he’s been thinking about for years. “Once we got the high sign to go, we started in December, putting our first list together,” he says. That first list eventually slimmed down to the final 32, and in the final ten minutes of the Worlds Apart finale, it becomes an even 20. Among the casualties who don’t make the cut: the aforementioned Carolyn, who not only lost Worlds Apart against Mike, but also missed out on a second shot at the title; flight attendant Teresa Cooper, the Survivor: Africa fifth-place finisher and fan-favorite darling for many early adopters of the show; and Season 12’s Shane Powers, the cigarette-smoking mad man who many fans believed was a lock for the Second Chance cast. “You get surprises, like Shane not getting on,” says Probst, “and you think, maybe it’s because the people who like Shane don’t vote. It’s that simple, maybe.” Shane’s name comes up a bunch when I speak with the contestants in Cambodia. Many of the players, like many of you, are surprised he didn’t make the cast. But their shock is trumped by what they’re feeling about the road ahead: joy, adrenaline, nerves, fear. For 39 days across late May and early July, Cambodia is the new sweatiest place on Earth. Before we get there, though, there’s Probst, sweat unseen if present at all. With a whole season ahead of him, the Survivor host already feels the “really gratifying” success of Second Chance, between the validating fan participation (“One thing I’m really consistent about with this team is this: Never, ever don’t do something out of fear. Do it. In fact, if you’re afraid, that’s probably a good reason to do it”) to the final cast of 20. “I felt it at the live show,” he says. “I felt the culmination of the vote. Now the vote is over, and now we kick into the show.” And so the show begins, with the Cambodia cast hooting and hollering together on a big bright stage. This group of 20 that endured the two-week pressure-cooker of winning a return trip to the island, all smiles and laughs right now, will be tearing each other apart in a matter of days. Within minutes of making the cut, they leave for their adventure, and I follow, leaving for mine. ON THE NEXT PAGE: Inside The Marooning

Fifteen years after Survivor premiered, Survivor: Second Chance begins. The first day of filming for the new season is the 15-year anniversary of the show’s very first episode, a fact that Probst makes sure to tell the surrounding crew out on the water with only a few minutes to go until the game truly begins. There’s a sense of ancient history in the air — and an even stronger notion that history is in the making. Kelly Wiglesworth is the lone representative of the original Survivor season on Second Chance, but she’s far from the only old school player in the mix. Jeff Varner and Kimmi Kappenberg, returning from 2001’s The Australian Outback, lived together on Kucha, one of the most beloved Survivor tribes of all time. Andrew Savage hails from 2003’s Pearl Islands, the show’s seventh season, which is still considered by many fans to be one of the very best. Shane may have missed the cast, but the vote worked out in favor of his fellow Exile Island cast mate Terry Deitz, a fighter pilot from Connecticut and one of the most distinguished challenge performers Survivor has ever seen. These are names that few die-hard Survivor fans ever expected to hear again in a current events context. And yet, here they are, rowing up to an impressive cargo boat in the middle of the sea, about to be marooned all over again. Amazing. Hours later, Probst and I sit down to talk about the new season, and the first item on the agenda is the cast — especially the aforementioned veterans who have waited a decade or more for their second chance. “This is probably the most motivated group of players we’ve ever had,” he says. “I think after 12 years or 10 or 15 years, you get over the idea of, ‘I’ll do anything to get back there,’ and you get to a place of, ‘If I ever get back there, here’s what I’m going to do.’ That’s where they’re at, and they’re ready to play. You feel it.” He’s right; you can almost feel steam coming off of the players on opening day — though that might have less to do with their anticipation, and more do to with the fact that they are practically cooking in the sun. Remember what I said about sweat? Yeah. Cambodia is hot. The Survivors are already divided into two tribes — Ta Keo in green and Bayon in purple — and the tribes are separated into two long boats each, four boats total. They are stationed in front of a much larger vessel that contains everything they will need in the days ahead. Probst, standing high above them like a divine lord before his kingdom, like Bobby Jon Drinkard and Stephenie LaGrossa looking down upon Yaxhá and Nakúm, explains that the Survivors will soon have as much time as they need to raid the vessel’s supplies — but they have incentive to work quickly. Further out, there’s a second, smaller boat containing a bag of rice. The first team there gets the bonus rations. Without spoiling what happens after Probst’s signature “Survivors, ready? Go!” war cry, it’s safe to say that the host’s assessment of this cast is spot on: “They are ready to play.” “It’s hard to know until you play,” he says, “but it seems like there’s an abundance of riches. I look at all these cards, and I personally would want to play with 75% of the people here. That’s pretty unusual.” The words “pretty unusual” do not even begin to describe the sensation of watching 20 Survivor legends working with and against each other in a mad dash to get everything they need to kickstart their game on the right foot. It’s absolutely stunning and surreal, seeing the old and new schoolers alike competing at their fullest capacity. For some, that capacity is not so big; for others, it’s bigger than ever. For all, it’s clear how much these people want to be here. “I’ve been very touched by how good natured they’ve been about this process,” says Probst. “They’ve already played once. Sometimes when we have returning players back, they kind of whine and moan and go, ‘I know the routine.’ These guys have been gracious.” I wonder how gracious they would be if they knew what lies ahead. ON THE NEXT PAGE: The Past Comes Back To Haunt Second Chance

On Survivor, when Jeff Probst snuffs your torch, you’re out of the game for good — except when you’re not. Four previous seasons of the show have included the “resurrection” of fallen players. For instance, Andrew Savage famously fell victim to the Outcast twist on Survivor: Pearl Islands, where the first six people voted out returned for a shot to re-enter the game, blindsiding contestants and viewers alike. Two Outcasts returned, and within days, one of them — scowling scout leader Lillian Morris — helped send Savage packing. Even more recently, Survivor dabbled with a format change called Redemption Island; instead of getting voted out for good, contestants were voted onto an island where they would compete for a shot to return to the game. Redemption Island was last seen during Survivor: Blood vs Water, the home season for Second Chance contestants Ciera Eastin and Vytas Baskauskas. For those of you seeing red right now, relax: I’m trolling you. When I ask Probst if Redemption Island is in play for Second Chance, he responds with one of my favorite words: “Nope!” Despite the Second Chance theme, there are no do-overs when voted out of Season 31. In fact, for the most part, Probst and his team are steering clear of too many twists from the past. “We will never see the Medallion of Power again,” he says, for instance. Sorry, Nicaragua fans. But that does not mean the past won’t come back to haunt the Second Chancers. The driving concept behind the season’s challenges revolves around revisiting what’s come before. Probst explains: “One of the big things we want to accomplish is to bring back as many old challenges that the people on the show participated in.” The idea of resurrecting old challenges presents itself in the season premiere’s immunity challenge, Quest For Fire — a physical competition tasking Survivors with lighting up torches and carrying a heavy raft all along the way. “It’s the challenge we did 15 years ago in episode one, season one,” says Probst. He explains that it was always the plan to begin Second Chance with the show’s first-ever immunity challenge, but “what we didn’t know is if Kelly Wiglesworth would make the cast. She did! So now it’s great, because Kelly did that challenge and lost, so here’s a perfect first second chance. We couldn’t script that, but everything worked out.” Unlike the Quest For Fire challenge from Survivor: Borneo, however, the Second Chance version features a new ending: Jailbreak — another classic Survivor challenge where players must tie sticks together to create a pole long enough to grab a key and use it to open a gate — has been tagged on as one final obstacle standing between the tribes and safety from the vote. “Andrew Savage participated in Jailbreak in Pearl Islands and lost, and it was [part of] the Outcast twist that got him voted out,” Probst says. “So we have two Second Chance stories right out of the gate.” In other words, challenges are designed to haunt the competitors. Will Joe Anglim have to balance a block on his head? Will Kimmi Kappenberg be confronted with a gross food eating challenge? Will Stephen Fishbach have to win immunity by giving a compelling and relatable speech? Who knows! If it’s in their past, it’s fair game. Of course, by Probst’s own admission, “a lot of things have to line up for the trend to continue — people have to stay on the show long enough to get the challenges for them,” but it’s certainly the idea. There’s one more thing you need to know about the immunity challenges. But first, let’s talk about immunity idols. ON THE NEXT PAGE: The Hidden Immunity Idol Gets A Makeover



Gary Hogeboom found Survivor‘s very first hidden immunity idol in a Guatemalan jungle in 2005. It was affixed to the back of a tree, despite New York City door man Judd Sergeant telling Gary that the idol is “definitely on the ground, man.” In the seasons since Gary’s triumphant discovery, the hidden immunity idol has undergone some revisions. When Gary found it, the idol was envisioned as a preemptive strike, played before the votes were cast. One season later, Second Chancer Terry Deitz found a version of the idol so powerful that it could nullify all votes cast against him after the ballots were cast and read aloud. Those powers lasted for one more season (and then once more many seasons later, but we don’t need to go there) before we arrived at the current rules: The idol can only be played after votes are cast, and before they are read. This has been the state of the hidden immunity idol for 17 seasons of Survivor, and while those rules aren’t changing, there are some very important changes on the way for Season 31’s idols. First and foremost are the differences between the idols themselves. Because the Survivor gods are cruel and unusual, the hidden immunity idols on Second Chance will look different from one another. “We’re making every idol unique, which means there will never be two idols that look alike,” says Probst. “That’s already going to screw people up. They’re going to say, ‘But the idol doesn’t look like this. This has to be a fake!'” The danger does not end there, as Probst adds, “On top of it, one idol might look beautiful, and the next idol might look like a kid made it in a craft room — but both are equally powerful.” Remember the stick that Micronesia prince Jason Siska found in the jungle and thought was an immunity idol? Yeah, it wasn’t. But in Second Chance, it could be. “If you extrapolate all the ways you can now play this,” Jeff says, “you can have a real idol, play it to somebody as a fake that you made, sucker them into thinking it’s not real and then sabotage them when they find out that it is — or you can make a fake idol and say it is real. ‘Didn’t you see the other one? This is just as bad as that one!’ So you don’t know which way it’s going to go.” Instantly, every stick and stone in Cambodia is under extreme scrutiny, or ought to be. The revamped idol presents huge potential for disaster, and also huge potential for a glorious comeback. In either event, it’s a wrinkle that Probst feels the Second Chance cast is prepared to handle. “For years, I wanted to play with the idea that an idol doesn’t look like an idol,” he says. “We’ve talked about doing some crazy ideas that never really made it. What we’re doing this year, under the guise that Second Chancers really want to play, is giving them the room to play.” But there’s only room to play if the contestants find the idols — and that’s another challenge entirely, literally. ON THE NEXT PAGE: The New Challenge Of Getting An Idol



Six of the twenty Second Chancers have never won an individual immunity challenge. The remaining 14 have won a combined total of 30. In other words, the competitors in Cambodia mean business — but there’s some brand new business to attend to this season, as far as the challenges are concerned. In the past, immunity idols have been hidden in all kinds of spots in and around the Survivors’ camp. The idol has been the lid on a box of rice. It was once concealed inside the tree mail’s skirt. (Don’t ask.) For Second Chance, the idols will pop up somewhere they’ve never appeared before — at the immunity challenges. Probst says that each camp contains a clue to the whereabouts of the hidden immunity idol, but “you won’t actually find the idol at camp.” Instead, “the clue will tell you that the idol is waiting for you at the next challenge. So you have to grab the idol while participating in an immunity challenge, under the eyes of all your tribe mates, and hope you don’t get caught.” So, not only do the idols look different from each other this season, they’re also hidden in a way they’ve never been hidden before. In fact, Probst doesn’t even think of the idols as hidden; the clues will contain drawings of the challenges, and the exact location of the idol. “So it’s not that the idol will be hard to find,” he says. “What’s going to be hard is, you will have nine tribe mates with you as you try to pull that idol out and put it in your pocket.” In a sense, then, the show’s decision to put the idol at immunity challenges heightens the drama built into some of the other early season choices we’ve seen on Survivor — such as Tocantins, Cagayan and Worlds Apart presenting players with a day one decision to look for an idol or help their tribe. In the case of Second Chance, the idol’s new “hiding spot” will put the Survivors to the test under an even more intense lens. Are you willing to slack on challenge performance in order to get your hands on an idol? Are you too afraid, or too focused on winning, to seize the opportunity? Are you savvy enough to find one of these things without alerting the surrounding players — all of whom have played Survivor before, many of them with excellence? No pressure! The question Probst wants the idol to ask this season is this: “Do you have the guts to try to get it? And what if you get caught? What if somebody sees you? Now everyone knows you have the idol, and your big powerful thing is rendered useless!” When I ask Probst if this is how the idols will be hidden all season long, he says it’ll hold “at least for the first round of idols.” Beyond that? “Every idol will have to be found a different way,” he teases. “There will be a twist to finding the idols.” If you thought the presence of a hidden immunity idol amps up the pressure for the first immunity challenge, just wait — it gets deadlier. ON THE NEXT PAGE: The Sun Sets On The First Second Chance Victim



Few Survivors are ever happy about losing immunity challenges, unless it’s day 15 and you’re on the Boran tribe and your name isn’t Silas Gaither. The Survivors who lose the first Second Chance immunity challenge will feel the sting of defeat more than most. Just like the original Quest For Fire in Borneo, the Second Chance version of the challenge will run at dusk. “We’ll have this beautiful light,” Probst tells me, thinking ahead two days into the future. He’s right; when the day arrives, it’s beautiful. But for ten of the Second Chancers, beauty is a beast. “There’s no time to go back to camp,” says Probst, “so the losing tribe will leave directly from the challenge and go right to Tribal.” It’s bad news for anyone on the losing tribe, especially anyone without solid partners or plans in place ahead of running the immunity challenge. “Normally, they have hours to go back and start talking to their alliance,” Probst says. “Now, you’re going to have to hope that you talked earlier — because if not, you’re screwed.” This is not the first time Survivor has served immunity challenge losers with a straight-to-Tribal card (I salute you, Michelle Yi!), but it’s perhaps the earliest instance of the twist in the show’s 31 seasons. Probst says that beyond believing the Second Chancers can handle the pressure, he wants to make a big statement with the first immunity challenge of the season. “The big goal is to set in motion the idea that this season will be unique and that you better be on your toes, because anything can happen,” he says. “I think that’s what they’ll do. I think the losing tribe will go back to camp after Tribal and say, ‘Oh my god. We can’t rely on anything.'” Probst is forecasting, of course. He has no idea how the losing tribe will react — the challenge is still two days away. Then again, Jeff Probst knows a thing or two about time travel. ON THE NEXT PAGE: The Time Travel Season



Hours after the marooning, and minutes before my conversation with Jeff, I’m standing on a beach, staring out at the same green sea the Survivors will see every morning when they wake up for the next 39 days, or however long their torches are lit. I’m trying to process the fact that I just watched Survivor history unfold before my very eyes — a fact I’m still grappling with months later, honestly — when a strange thought hits me: Survivor history has already unfolded where I’m standing. Indeed, Survivor: Cambodia is not Cambodia’s first Survivor rodeo. Although it’s being billed and aired as the show’s 31st season, it’s actually the 32nd season filmed. The season that will air as Season 32 taped in the months before the Second Chancers arrived in Koh Rong, and it will air in the spring of 2016, almost a full year after filming. In other words, even though Second Chance was filmed after Season 32, it will air first. Confused? Don’t worry, you’re in good company. “The creative [for seasons 31 and 32] was kind of an interesting jigsaw puzzle,” says Probst. “I had a whiteboard in my room at all times showing what we’re doing in the season that will follow Second Chance, so we won’t repeat a lot of that in this season, because it needs to be fresh for that season.” “It also required us to think, if we want to evolve how the idol play is going to happen, then [Season 32] has to be more evolved,” he continues, “and then we have to take a step backward and show the origin of that evolution here in [Second Chance], so when the audience sees it [in 32], it looks like a natural progression.” See? Like the relationship status of so many lovelorn Facebook users, it’s complicated. “It was a constant game of going, ‘Wait, we’re doing that there, which means here, we should be doing something like this… okay, that works,'” he recalls. “Then you would look at the board and go, ‘Okay, does that make sense? Are we crazy? We’re shooting this now, but it doesn’t air until here…’ It was a little bit of a mind game.” As Jeff explains the process of shooting Season 32 first and Second Chance second, a couple of things happen: (1) My brain leaks out of my nose, and (2) I realize that the Survivor team is only halfway through navigating the complicated maze involved in keeping the current season from stepping on the subsequent, already-filmed season’s tip top toes. It’s not that it was a juggling act, it’s that it is a juggling act, an ongoing tight rope walk that Probst and friends will dance on in the 39 days ahead. The question that launched this whole chronologically confusing conversation was, I thought, a fairly simple one: Does the fact that Survivor 32 already exists give production a boost of creative confidence going into Second Chance? Flashing back to the start of the answer, Probst’s response was equally simple, and exciting: “Yeah, we had a really good season.” Of course, Jeff thinks they have a really good season on their hands with Second Chance, too — and once again, he looks ahead into the future, when asked what he thinks the cast of this season will think of one another when all is said and done. Will they be as happy as they were on the Worlds Apart finale stage, or will they be at each other’s throats? “I don’t think it’s going to be a vicious season,” he predicts. “I think it’s going to be a season of really big highs and devastating lows. But we will end up with a jury that’s going to be saying, from the get go, ‘I’m giving my money to the best player. So you better play. If you come in here and you do not have a resumé, you will not have a shot at getting my vote.'” “That’s what excites me,” he continues. “Everybody knows, with maybe one or two exceptions, whoever wins this game is going do so by getting the votes based on how they played, so they better start playing right now.” With that, Jeff and I start playing a game of our own — predicting our winners of the season, and waging guesses on where others will wind up. But before I tell you about that, let’s meet our contestants. Let’s take another dip into the time stream, and dial it back to 36 hours earlier, when I had the chance to speak with every single player on the Second Chance cast — the day before the game began. ON THE FINAL PAGE: Welcome To Ponderosa