Quickie Post #4 ... Nicole Is Not a FLOP
July 7, 2026
This one’s for RHAP fans … (an excerpt from my book)
… so I’m watching S21 and after Dr. Jill gets the boot she does an AMA of sorts on Sucks. Turns out she was a Suckster before going on the show. She and I are around the same age, so I D/M her a few questions and she tells me, “I just had an in depth conversation on Rob Has A Podcast.”
“No shit, they podcast about this show?” is my reply. Followed by, “Who is Rob and why does he have a podcast.”
I need to remind the reader here I didn’t start watching Survivor until halfway through S7 Pearl Islands. I hadn’t seen Amazon (but I did see Jenna and Heidi thanks to Playboy). I only saw Rob C. on All Stars where he flamed out in the first few episodes. However, I commute to work 45 minutes each way and average an hour of cardio a day so I’ve got the time to listen to some Survivor talk.
Listening to a podcast after watching an episode is like tuning in to sports radio the day after your team plays. RHAP allows you to be a Monday morning, armchair quarterback. Probst called Cesternino the smartest player to never win the game and when listening to his insights I get it. Many listeners dubbed him “the Rob that Sucks” and he was self-deprecating enough to laugh it off. The early episodes included great banter with his then girlfriend, now wife Nicole.
She had a genuine NY Italian American,
no bull shit,
yeah, I drank Zima on Jones Beach when I was 15,
you got a problem with that, attitude that kept Rob in check.
Before she was the first lady of podcasting, Nicole Palmeri was not just the co-host, she was the voice of tri-state sanity unfiltered by the west coast reality tv community. Rob was PC and wouldn’t rattle the SEG / CBS applecart. Nicole would call it like she saw it with the intuitive street smarts only found in the NY/NJ area.
Rob would spend minutes describing how something should play out and reference a Venn diagram. He’d compare and contrast two players and where they stood in a tribe. What their alignments were, how they should move forward. Nicole would call it a Dork-A-Gram and follow it up with, “I’d vote ‘em off.” (Often her gut reactions were spot on.)
I met Nicole once at a bar in West Hollywood the night before the RHAP Roast in 2014. I ate a burger and she taught me to use my first iphone while most everyone else was fanboying Rob. We talked for less than 10 minutes, but I’d bet my chance of getting cast on her remembering who I am.
If you're a casting person reading this, get Nicole's opinion of me.