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To say that Jeff Probst is a fan of the group of 18 contestants we are about to meet on Survivor: Worlds Apart (which premieres Wednesday on CBS) would be an understatement. He doesn’t just like them; he thinks they may comprise the show’s best cast…ever. “Person for person and pound for pound, I will say that this is the best group of people I think we’ve ever had,” the host told us back in December. “Just based on my experience, this was one of my favorite seasons of all time.” High praise, indeed. So it should be no surprise that when we asked Probst to name some of his favorites from this upcoming season, he picked out over half the cast. Here’s the intel on some of the players (divided by tribe) to keep a eye on, delivered straight from the Hostmaster General.

WHITE COLLAR TRIBE

MAX

“Max is a true Survivor fan, to the point that he taught a college course on Survivor and has met a lot of Survivors and has had them speak at his class and participate. I love having a guy like him on the show because he knows the show so well that he may know it better than I do. And I really like that. And he’s a very bright guy. He’s a great interview. He has a very good sense of the history of Survivor so he’s a guy that can tell you, ‘Listen, if you look at the number of people that stood up and offered to be a leader, 70 percent of them were voted out in the first three episodes.’ So he has that encyclopedia of knowledge to draw on. And I really like having him on the show.”

SHIRIN

“Shirin is a Yahoo exec. Big career and another super fan. SUPER fan—underlined. She knows the game. And it comes into play. Her knowledge of the game and what is going to happen impacts the game. She tells certain people at certain times, ‘This is what we should do because this is what is going to happen.’ And we’ve never had anyone quite like that before. Obviously people that play the game tend to know the game for the most part, but Shirin has the combination of being very bright and being a very good student of the game and those two together made her an interesting and very unique player this season.”

BLUE COLLAR TRIBE

DAN

“Dan works for the Unites States Postal Service. He’s also a big fan of the game and has wanted to be on since, I think, the premiere. Dan has big opinions. I think people are going to misjudge him or prejudge him based on his size and age, but he is a Blue Collar. And that means something. It means he’s not afraid of hard work, and he is not afraid to get dirty, and he is not afraid to speak his mind. And that’s one of the most interesting elements this season is watching these three different groups play against each other, because they are different. Shirin is very different from Dan, and Max is very different from Mike, another Blue Collar. So Dan I think is going to be a guy people at first might say ‘Early out.’ But if he can live up to the gusto that he presents, he might surprise people.”

MIKE

“Mike is an oil driller. I would say Mike is in many ways the personification of a Blue Collar. He gets out every day and he gets dirty. He comes home at the end of the day and he cracks a beer and says, ‘I worked hard. I deserve this beer.’ And I love that kind of a guy. I think what Survivor has always been is about those kind of people. They’re the people that watch our show and they’re the people that drive our country and I bet if we looked at the amount of winners I wonder how many would be White Collar, how many have been Blue Collar and how many have been No Collar.”

SIERRA

“We also have a rodeo barrel racer. A pro barrel racer. Really beautiful, tall, she’s like 6-feet-tall, and clearly gifted as an athlete. But again, you look at the kind of work she does—she is her own company. She drives her truck with her horse to the rodeo. She gets everything ready. Then she rides in the rodeo. Then she gets everything loaded up and she drives to the next one. And if she gets a flat, she changes it. How can you not like a girl like that? It’s awesome.”

LINDSEY

“Lindsey is single mom hairdresser. Really interesting story about a point in her life where she was an employee and was given this opportunity to step up and take over a leadership role in the beauty salon, and she did, and what that did for her. She is a girl that when you look at her you think No Collar because she has tats everywhere. She’s tatted her face and she is just a beautiful woman. But when you talk to her you realize she is not a No Collar. She is absolutely Blue Collar. This is a girl who works hard every day and she’s doing a job that is so hard to do, which is raising a child on your own while having a career. And she speaks in the first few minutes in a way that makes you understand what Blue Collars are all about. There’s no question after three minutes in this show who is who and why are they here.”

NO COLLAR TRIBE

VINCE

“We have Vince, who literally sells coconuts down on Venice beach. He wears feathers in his hair. He couldn’t care less about your rules or your established ideas. He wants to live his life the way he sees fit for him, which is seeking the truth in any given moment. And that is how he plays this game. He’s not going to conform so that you like him better or to seem less weird. ‘This is me, and if you think I’m weird then maybe I think you’re weird.'”

JENN

“She works on sailboats. Jenn is another perfect example of a No Collar. She’s a twentysomething girl who likes to have fun with life and so she’s going to make whatever her job or her career or where she makes her money—she’s going to make that fun as well. She’s not going to sit in a cubicle and listen to someone next her drone on about what she’s supposed to do. She’s going to find a way to make a living on a boat, or making jewelry, or whatever it is that she’s into at the moment and her passion at the moment.”

JOE

“There’s another guy on the No Collar tribe named Joe who’s an athlete, a jewelry maker, a bartender—I think kids are going to love him. He’s kind of in the vein of Malcolm and Ozzy and Woo—that guy that at first glance you’re like, ‘Maybe he smoked a little too much pot.’ But then you start talking to him and you’re like, ‘Nope, he’s actually super bright, extremely athletic, and a big threat.’ And his biggest problem is going to be the fact that once you get to know him you’re gonna be like, ‘Oh this guy could absolutely win this game and therefore we must get rid of him as soon as possible.'”

HALI

“Hali wants to be a criminal defense attorney, and when you look at Hali’s credentials—law school, crime—you think White Collar. She’s going to be a lawyer. But when you talk to Hali, what you find out is, she’s getting into the establishment to break the rules. She wants to change the way the underprivileged are dealt with. And she feels the only way to do it is to get into the system to blow the system up. That’s a No Collar.”

NINA

“Nina is really interesting because Nina spent most of her life as a White Collar, and when she lost her hearing suddenly it was a dramatic life shift and it changed her priorities. She became more concerned about speaking out and sharing information about the cochlear implants and that you can have a life even though you’ve lost your hearing. And so she became a No Collar, but she’s new to No Collar. And her first days were really interesting and tough for her because the No Collars are a little more laid back. They’re not so worried about building the shelter right this minute—but we’ll get to it in the next couple of days.

And then on top of that she’s the oldest one on her tribe. And on top of that, she has this hearing issue that makes it very difficult because Survivor is a game about nuanced conversations and often it’s whispers in the brush, and if you don’t hear somebody, you don’t know what’s happening. It’s hard enough when your hearing is sound, but when you add this additional obstacle for Nina, it became very difficult. And the challenge for her was, how do I get people on my side to not exclude me but to include me and turn that into an advantage—turn what appears to be an obstacle into something that could actually help me.”

For more ‘Survivor’ scoop, follow Dalton on Twitter @DaltonRoss.