When Survivor premiered in 2000, it was an instant sensation that helped usher in a new era of reality television.

Now it's an institution that's airing its 50th season.

So we thought this was a good time to look back on the show's five greatest seasons as chosen by some weird nerd. It's me.

I'm that weird nerd. You sure are. I'm Linda Holmes. It's just the two of us today here at NPR's

Pop Culture Happy Hour now. Stephen Thompson, before we get to your ranking, for those who have remained

unaware of Survivor's core concept, it's a reality competition in which a bunch of

people are marooned in a theoretically exotic location where they vote each other out one by one

until a single winner remains. But the game has evolved substantially from its roots as a

survival competition. Now it involves complex social strategy, ever-shifting

alliances, and so many twists, gimmicks, immunity idols, advantages. This is sort of what has

alienated me from this show, which I'm sure we will talk about. Survivor is currently airing

an all-star season. It's called Survivor 50 in the hands of the fans.

That's the last thing we need. It's the last thing we need. Stephen, you used this round number

milestone as an excuse. And I want to stress, I didn't make you do this. Nobody made you do this.

This was voluntary, I promise. This was voluntary. You used

this milestone as an excuse to write a full exhaustive ranking of all 50 seasons that will go up on

NPR.org later this month. But we thought it would be fun to talk about the five best seasons as you

ranked them. They are all

available right now via Paramount Plus. Let's kick it off with the season that you have at number

five. Well, I didn't intend the ranking to work this way, but it has worked this way. That in fifth

place is a season where I think if you were Survivor curious, but maybe you haven't

watched Survivor since that first season, maybe the first couple of seasons, the first

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