Austin Li Coon is a current MBA student at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Austin just finished competing on the most recent season of Survivor, where he finished in 2nd place. And of course, he wore Xero Shoes for the entire adventure.

Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Austin Li Coon about competing on season 45 of Survivor.

Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:

– What it was like for Austin to apply to be on the show Survivor.

– How contestants on the show struggled with basic tasks and mental acuity due to extreme hunger.

– Why Austin used Xero Shoes while getting ready for the show and for the entirety of the season.

– How dealing with comments on social media can be challenging when you’re on reality tv.

– How wearing Xero Shoes played a significant role in his success on survivor.

Connect with Austin:

Guest Contact Info
Twitter
@austinlicoon

Instagram
@austinlicoon

Connect with Steven:

Website

Xeroshoes.com

Twitter
@XeroShoes

Instagram
@xeroshoes

Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes

Episode Transcript

Steven Sashen:

Can Xero Shoes help you survive the zombie apocalypse or the upcoming nuclear meltdown? I don’t know what that is, or something else that you might need to survive. Well, we’re going to talk to an expert about that in a weird way. On today’s episode of The Movement Movement, the podcast for people who like to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first, those things at the end of your legs. We break down the propaganda, the mythology, and the sometimes outright lies you’ve been told about what it takes to walk or run or play or do yoga or CrossFit or whatever it’s you like to do and to do those things enjoyably and effectively and efficiently. Did I say enjoyably? I know I did. It’s a trick question for anyone who’s watched this podcast because look, if you’re not having a good time, you’re not going to keep it up. So make sure you’re having a good time. Simple as that.

I’m Steven Sashen, co-CEO Co-founder of Xero Shoes. I’m wearing the T-shirt to prove it. And we call this the Movement Movement because we, and that includes you. I’ll tell you how in a second. It’s really easy. It doesn’t cost anything. We are creating a movement about natural movement, having your body do what it’s made to do, not getting in the way and interfering and the way you can participate is really easy to spread the word. So give us a thumbs up, like us. Hit the bell icon on YouTube. Review us and give us five stars of course, or head to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com.

There’s nothing you need to do to join, although you can subscribe to hear about new episodes. You can find all the previous episodes. You can find out where to interface with us on social media, and you can find if you’re not happy with where you’re getting this podcast, other places you might be able to get it. So that’s the gist. In short, look, if you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. All right, let us get started. Austin, do me a favor, tell people who you are, what you’re doing here, and what they may recognize you from.

Austin Li Coon:

Hello? Yeah, I’m Austin. So you might know me from Survivor Season 45. It just came out. Finale aired in December. I also have a shirt to prove it, 45 on it. But yeah, honestly, Xero Shoes is a huge reason why not only I was able to do really well on the show. I ended up getting second place. Spoilers if you haven’t seen anything.

Steven Sashen:

Oh man.

Austin Li Coon:

Sorry, I should have said spoilers first off, but I’m assuming anyone who’s listening to this who knows who I am has already finished the season, and that’s on you if you listen to this without seeing the ending. But I got second place and I honestly, truly owe a lot of it to Xero Shoes. I didn’t even think I could compete a few years ago. The challenges, they’d freak me out. I’d always be … literally, I’d watch these challenges and I’d be like, I would twist my ankle there. I would break my ankle there. It wasn’t until wearing Xero Shoes for about four years where I was like, okay, I’ve got this. My ankles, I feel perfectly fine. Was never really worried about it going in. Happy to talk all about that going forward. But yeah, that’s a little bit about who I am.

Steven Sashen:

We’ll talk about all that stuff, but normally I would say if they’re talking about me till last, but since you brought it up, I got to ask this question. Wait, I had a question. What the hell? Where did it go? So talk about the things that you were seeing that you thought, oh, this isn’t going to work. I’m just dying to know. Here, let’s just do it this way. I’m dying to know about that process from watching the show to, I think I can do it, to the audition. I would definitely want to hear about that. Then as we talk about the show, I can’t keep a secret. In other words, I have to ask all the questions at once, so they fall out of my head. As a fellow reality TV show person, and of course, we can talk about what it’s like to keep a secret forever.

Austin Li Coon:

Oh my goodness.

Steven Sashen:

But also just what are the ways that it was completely different than what you imagined. So take any or all of those, wherever you want to take it.

Austin Li Coon:

Let’s start. I have a pretty bad memory, so there’s no way I’ll remember all those questions.

Steven Sashen:

That’s okay. Between you and me forgetting it all. That’s perfect.

Austin Li Coon:

Perfect. Okay, we’ll work through it. We’ve got the whole podcast. We’ll get through them all. But let’s start back with the, I guess process of watching the show, falling in love with it, and then applying and believing that I can actually compete on it. So I’m actually pretty late to watching Survivor. So to those of you who’ve been fans of Survivor, it’s been a show that’s gone on for 45 seasons. I’m season 45. There’s two seasons a year. There’s a little gap during COVID. It started in 2000. My mom, she’s who got me into Survivor, so she started watching Survivor day one episode one, season one Borneo. From there, watch every single episode. Huge, huge super fan. But as a kid, because I’m 27 now, so when that came out, I was four years old, and so I wasn’t really big on Survivor.

Growing up as a kid, I was like, I would rather play video games. I’d rather watch hockey games. I didn’t really care too much about reality TV, had no interest. But then 2019 came around and finally, I remember coming back home for winter break. I see my mom sitting on the couch. She would always watch all these reality shows by herself, Survivor, Big Brother, Amazing Race, everything. She would always watch it alone because no one wanted to. She had two boys and a husband. None of us were interested in watching reality TV. So I remember one winter break, I came home, I just felt a little bad. I was like, all right, I’ll sit and I’ll watch Survivor with you. So I sat and watched Survivor and immediately got hooked. So I was like, this is the greatest show, the greatest game in the world.

I started from the beginning and I’ve watched every single season, and it took one season after I watched my first season, I was like, I need to play this game. This is the ultimate adventure. I feel like it’s my life calling almost to play this game. But one thing that kind of held me back, and that’s kind of where Xero Shoes came in, is I played a lot of volleyball growing up, and I would always mess up my ankle. Not always. It kind of happened my junior year of high school, I got a really bad tear where I tore three of the ligaments in my ankle. The other one was already partially torn too. It took several months to fully recover, but even still, I had just instability in my ankle. Then I would play pick up basketball and then just the slightest tweak, I’d step on someone’s foot and immediately bam, I’d go down and it’d mess it up. I just never was able to fully heal my ankle for the longest time. I always wanted to obviously get it healed up.

But then now watching Survivor, there’s an extra reason. It was like, I need to improve my ankle if I were ever to play this life dream of mine of a game. So then I looked into ways to sort of strengthen your ankle kind of passively just by walking around, just doing everything that you normally do while also just working to strengthen the muscles around. I kind of got introduced to Barefoot Shoes to Xero shoes, put those on, and then wore it for about almost three years until I applied for the second time in 2022. So I applied for the first time, 2020. At this point, I’d watched 10 Seasons, didn’t get a callback. Spent the next two years kind of working on myself, training, obviously also strengthening my ankles. Applied again in 2022, and yeah, the rest is history.

Steven Sashen:

Well, actually, let’s talk about the history for a second. Thank you for all the name-dropping for us or the name checking for us. Mike Gabler was wearing his Xero Shoes in his season.

Austin Li Coon:

Yeah, I love that.

Steven Sashen:

And FYI, the way that I got introduced to Mike is the same way that I got introduced to you by someone like freeze framing on their VCR. Who the hell has a VCR anymore, on their DVR, and then taking a picture and sending it going are those Xero Shoes? So that’s how it began for me and Gabler, and you and me. Man, I can’t talk this morning.

Austin Li Coon:

It’s funny because the shoes I wore were, it’s like an older style that I don’t think is being sold anymore on the Xero Shoes website.

Steven Sashen:

Which one?

Austin Li Coon:

It kind of looks like the Denver. It’s mid-top. It was green, it was kind of hemp.

Steven Sashen:

Oh yeah, Toronto.

Austin Li Coon:

Toronto, yeah.

Steven Sashen:

So yeah, we’re bringing that back in a new and improved version.

Austin Li Coon:

Yes. I’ve been dying to get some more of those.

Steven Sashen:

We’ve wanted a high top sneaker for a while. We had that one. Here’s the thing, everything that we … this is just about me for a second. Every shoe that we’ve had to discontinue, typically because we ran in a warehouse space, has been somebody’s favorite, not infrequently mine. So we’re at a point now where we’re revisiting some of those, especially on the casual side, but blah, blah, blah, blah. So when you said you auditioned twice, what’s the audition process for people who … See, here’s the thing, a good reality show does exactly what you described. Some people just watch it because they like it, but when it’s really good, people watch it either imagining … They just imagine doing it, and they often imagine doing better than whoever’s on the show. Same thing for Shark Tank, same thing for Survivor. So the audition for me was pretty straightforward.

There’s two ways you could do a live audition at an event or you could just send in an email. I sent in an email. I then made a video that I sent in. Nobody saw that one. Then we had a two-hour interview and they said, fill out this big ridiculous form, this big application form. In fact, after that, they asked us to make a different video. I’m shortening the story dramatically. Then they sent us the contract. And in the contract, one of the lines is that we are indemnifying, we’re holding the production company harmless if we die on set. Land is like, how would we die on set? And they said, no, no, Mark Burnett. It’s the same company that does Survivor. So a lot of the stuff in the contract is from Survivor.

Austin Li Coon:

That’s so funny.

Steven Sashen:

So you signed me, you’re not going to-

Austin Li Coon:

Yep, yep. And for Survivor, it’s almost expected. It’s like, okay, of course they’re going to have a death clause because it’s Survivor. We’re starving. We’re throwing ourselves over these massive obstacles. We could die. But luckily they’ve got a good track record. So we all felt

Steven Sashen:

Yeah, I don’t want to actually make this a suggestion, but boy, if they want to increase a viewership, someone’s got to kick the bucket.

Austin Li Coon:

I don’t know. I don’t know about that. That could be trouble.

Steven Sashen:

Human beings are not kind. I came up with an idea. I worked at an amusement park performing for a couple of years, and I thought one of the ways they can really increase ridership and attendance is that at the beginning of the season, they get a sniper, like a million bullets, but only one of them is a live round. And every time that people are coming down in the rollercoaster, he has already randomly selected one seat that he’s going to shoot at, at the bottom of the hill.

Austin Li Coon:

You’re saying that would make you want to ride roller coasters more?

Steven Sashen:

Well, no. It’s going to make people want to go to the park because the odds of you actually getting hit are infinitesimally small. But the odds of you seeing someone feels like it’s much greater.

Austin Li Coon:

You’re saying you’ll go to stand in front of the roller coaster to watch it?

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. Then of course, they’re already in the park. So that’s my completely insane thought that now is going to get me canceled from something.

Austin Li Coon:

Well, I feel like that could work for a specific type of small … like a Halloween special.

Steven Sashen:

Oh, you go.

Austin Li Coon:

Music park opens up, has this thing. Maybe no one dies. Maybe not a million shots will be fired over this weekend, but we’ll see.

Steven Sashen:

Right. Well, no, it would be one time every time the rollercoaster goes. So basically it’s like, I don’t know what it’s, let’s call it 20 a day, something like that. Again, the odds seem really low.

Austin Li Coon:

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Steven Sashen:

Anyway, backing up. So what’s the audition process like for Survivor? What do you have to do?

Austin Li Coon:

So a lot of what you said, there’s a lot of overlap. So it starts out, we send a three-minute video. I actually sent mine, it was five minutes and it was okay. They watched it through, but then they ended up editing it down. You start with a video you send in and you wait for a callback. If you get a callback, they’re like, Hey, we like you. We need more information about you. They give you an initial 20-page packet that you answer with all of these questions that range from sort of who’s your favorite past player, who do you think you’ll play most like, all the way to what do your friends describe you as? How do you describe yourself? What are you going to miss most on the island? Who would you bring on a loved one’s visit? It kind of dives into, so they kind of understand who you are, how you want to play.

They’ll ask obviously, why do you want to play Survivor? Stuff like that. Then also just basic bio things about yourself. You submit that in. And if they like you, they continue calling you. You have hours of phone calls with the different casting producers. Afterwards they kind of pitch you to the whole team and they create a list of semi-finalist applicants. I don’t know how many of those. But once you get through that, then it’s like, okay, now we’re going to have the psych test, the IQ test. You have to do some blood work, you’ve got to have Zoom call interviews with the producers, like the Jeff Probes and the like up there. You make it through all those. You have a few more hour long Zoom calls, and then they narrow it down to their final list or the final round.

You make it as the final round. You then fly to LA, you go through a few more interviews. We did a little swim test. It’s really basic. Then afterwards you kind wait. In between it kind of goes like you have a spur of a bunch of interviews, then you don’t hear anything for three weeks. Then during that time, the entire time you’re like, okay, are they ghosting me out of the process or they ghosting me? They’re still considering because they don’t really tell you anything.

Steven Sashen:

Right.

Austin Li Coon:

That could be pretty annoying for them having a hundred people in their messages, non-stop, what’s the update? What’s the update? What’s the update? So they just don’t say anything until they have something to say and you’re just waiting on the edge of your seat. For the process for me went from August all the way until March.

Steven Sashen:

Oh my God.

Austin Li Coon:

Yeah.

Steven Sashen:

That’s crazy town. So for us, we had the first interview in the end of May, and then we got through all that process, I don’t know, by middle of June maybe. They said, it’s going to be like seven or eight weeks till we call you, and then two weeks later, we need you here in three days. It’s like, whoa. We don’t know if that was because television’s disorganized or they just wanted to keep you on your toes and have you a little off center. It could be a combo. I don’t know.

Austin Li Coon:

I feel like it is a combo. I think they like us to be surprised.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah, I think there’s definitely that component. So when did you end up actually taping?

Austin Li Coon:

So we filmed in April and May, so it’s a month or so filming. They fly us out to Fiji five days before to transition to get onto the show and to make sure we’re not going to get pneumonia and stuff, get used to the climate sleeping outside kind of deal.

Steven Sashen:

So the finale was December. So you had, let’s call it five and a half months or so of if you say a word to anybody, you owe us $5 million.

Austin Li Coon:

Exactly. You even got the money.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah, same thing for us.

Austin Li Coon:

Yeah. Perfect.

Steven Sashen:

So what was that? Look, people knew you were gone. You were gone for a month. So for us, we were just gone for a couple of days. We couldn’t tell anybody. We couldn’t use our phones, we couldn’t tell we were in LA, but then that was it. We were just gone for a couple of days. You were gone for a month. People must have suspected something.

Austin Li Coon:

Actually my story for this is a little unique because I was told I was not going to play. I was told I was going to be the alternate for my season. So basically there’s nine guys and nine women who are casted onto each season. There’s one guy and one woman alternate. So the 10th guy, 10th woman. And basically we have to do everything that the actual players do. We have to send in wardrobe, get that all approved, do all the blood work, get all our vaccines, go to Fiji and go through all the orientation stuff. Then when everyone starts the game, us two leave and we just go back home. So I thought I was only going to be gone for 10 days or so. So I was telling all my buddies, I was like, Hey, I’m going to a wedding in China.

I’m not going to have my phone or reception, so I’ll just be back in 10 days. I had midterms coming up, so I brought my study material. So when I was preparing for the game, I was just studying for my midterms until I was told three days before the game started. I was already in Fiji, like, Hey, this dude who was going to play, he’s not playing anymore. You’re in. I had a five-minute phone call with my mom being like, “Hey, I need you to drop me out of school right now. I’m not coming back.” My roommates knew that I was going to be an alternate on Survivor because they also signed the NDA and I was able to tell them. So I kind of relied on them to figure out how to keep it on lockdown until I got back. Thankfully nothing spread, nothing got posted online, nothing too crazy happened. So I was able to keep that hidden.

Steven Sashen:

We had a thing where we are at a family event and friends of our family who are entrepreneurs who were coming up to us and saying, “You should be on Shark Tank, that’d be really great.” Now we had already taped, but of course for us, after you tape Shark Tank, you don’t know if you’re actually going to be on because they tape more segments than they actually use.

Austin Li Coon:

Oh wow.

Steven Sashen:

So it’s like you guys should be on Shark Tank, and we are just going, wow, that sounds like a great idea. I wonder how you apply. I don’t know how this works. Meanwhile, my mom who can’t keep a secret is just sitting there going, hehe. Like shut up lady. So that was pretty entertaining. The first time I encountered that … here, we’ll talk reality for a while was on Top Chef. So one of the guys who was on one of the early episodes of Top Chef early seasons is a guy who’s got a restaurant here in town, Jose Rosenberg. So we weren’t really following the show until he was maybe four shows left till the end of the season. We all started watching, and then he decided to have a watch party for the finale. So we all show up at this bar and he’s sitting right behind me and we’re kind of checking him out through the whole thing. He just looks like the most depressed guy you’ve ever seen in the world.

Austin Li Coon:

Oh no.

Steven Sashen:

Was not looking happy at all. Just sat there, didn’t drink his drink, didn’t eat his food, and everyone’s kind of happy around him, but he’s completely morose. And literally the commercial break before they announced the winner, we’re thinking we should leave because this is going to be a nightmare once they announced that he didn’t win. They announced that he won and the place goes insane, and the people who went the most insane were his roommates who had no idea.

Austin Li Coon:

Holy, that is next level. Hiding it from people that you live with 24/7 is tough.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. He had been keeping that secret for six months and no idea. It was brilliant. It was utterly brilliant.

Austin Li Coon:

Wow, that’s awesome. See, I almost had that. I didn’t tell my family, my parents didn’t know. We watched the finale together and I was getting votes at the end. For people who were watching who’ve seen the season, I was two votes away from getting first place. The votes are coming out, they’re like, oh my gosh, has Austin been lying to me this whole time? Does he actually win? Then I lost, but yeah.

Steven Sashen:

No, I heard an Olympic silver medalist refer to herself as the world’s best loser.

Austin Li Coon:

I kind of felt like that a little bit.

Steven Sashen:

I’m sure.

Austin Li Coon:

I was very close. Especially this kind of goes deeper into Survivor. The past several seasons, oftentimes the final vote at Final Tribal Council is seven votes to the winner, one vote to second place. But as a second place finisher, I got three votes. So felt like a good on that.

Steven Sashen:

There’s interesting research on that for Olympians that the happiest person is not the gold medalist. Happiest person, bronze medalist.

Austin Li Coon:

I think I’ve read that because then it’s like you’re so close to not getting any medals.

Steven Sashen:

Right.

Austin Li Coon:

Then the least happy second place, because they’re like, I almost won. But I was happy with everything, especially because I didn’t know I was going to play until three days before.

Steven Sashen:

No, that’s awesome. Well, here’s another semi reality thing. I don’t know how I found this out. I talked to someone who had been on Jeopardy and didn’t do well and said, the secret is the button. Because what happens, what people don’t know is after the question is read, there’s a little light that goes off and you can only hit the button after the light goes off. If you hit it before, they lock you out for something like a quarter second.

Austin Li Coon:

Whoa.

Steven Sashen:

So I told this to a friend of mine. He was a writer, a nonfiction writer, and he liked to explore really interesting things, and he was a very smart guy. So he got on Jeopardy after I told him about this, and he came back afterwards and said it was the button, man. It was the damn button. People have since reported that, but the point of my bringing that up is there’s always some unexpected thing. That’s what makes the thing work that no one knows about until you get there and no one can really relate to because they haven’t been there. So what was that? What’s the analogous version of that for Survivor?

Austin Li Coon:

So Survivor, a lot of the people who watch Survivor and who want to play it and who play it now are super fans. They study the game, so they know. They’re like, okay, I’m going to get into this and I know I’m going to have to break some hearts. I know I’m going to have to deal with being starved. To train, I didn’t eat for three days just to see what it would be like and stuff. So people are taking this really seriously and they’re trying to get as mentally, physically prepared as possible. I think there’s a couple things that once you go into the game, it’s completely different than when you’re watching it. And one of them, it’s like with keeping secrets. When you’re at home on your couch, it’s like, okay, obviously you want to lie about this, you want to lie about that.

You don’t tell anyone. If you find an idol, it’s obvious like duh. When you’re there, every lie you say, it puts another weight on your shoulders. You have to hold it for a month to everyone who’s talking to you. You have to keep track of all these lies that you have in your head. You have to figure out who and when you can tell the truth to. It’s so much pressure, it makes it so much harder to just be like, I’m going to keep this a secret from everybody because it is draining to keep a secret from everybody and keeping these different stories straight. So that’s one thing. The mental toll is immense for sure. The hunger, we all expect it, we all practice and try to prepare for it. But you don’t realize that 10 days in, you’re still running on a thousand calories total and you are caving in.

You can’t even move. I remember we were laying in camp once and we were playing … Have you ever played 20 questions where you come up with an idea and everyone … We would be in question number 50 and we would have no idea what this word is. The word was like flower. We could not get to it because our mental ability was just so depleted. We couldn’t even think of the word flower after 50 questions. It was crazy. So just like that level of degradation and then also holding these lies and stories while being in that mental state was so much tougher than advertised.

Steven Sashen:

Well, if it makes you feel better, I think this is probably not true, but it’s a good story. Anyway, someone near the end of Freud’s life asked him if he had to sum up everything he knew in one sentence, what would it be? And the answer was, secrets will kill you. Actually, I think it was secrets make you sick. That’s what it was.

Austin Li Coon:

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. I resonate with that for sure.

Steven Sashen:

I can’t remember because the episodes I saw I didn’t see. So what kind of secrets were you having to keep?

Austin Li Coon:

Yeah, so pretty early on in the game I found this beware advantage, which is this new mechanic in the past five seasons or so of Survivor. Basically what it says is, if you do this series of tasks, you can upgrade this for an idol, be safe at any Tribal Council, use it on. But until you upgrade it, you don’t have a vote. If you ever go to Tribal Council, you have no say in who goes home. So at first it’s like, okay, I’m going to keep this to myself. I’m not telling anyone, so then I can upgrade it, do the task. I have an idol no one knows about, which gives you insane power in this game.

Steven Sashen:

Total power, yeah.

Austin Li Coon:

But the tasks were really brutal and tough. I first had to decode this message, this puzzle that was on our tribe flag with this slip of paper that had the decoding pattern on it. The only issue was it was right in front of camp. And like I said, we’re starving. We’re not leaving camp much. So I had to figure out a way to get everyone away decode it. Afterwards, the next one was like, you have to dig at the fallen palm tree X. That’s what the clue was. I was digging and digging for days, and you can’t really get alone time because on Survivor, you leave for a second, everyone’s like, oh, this person’s gone. They must be looking for idols.

So you usually have to go in pairs and in groups and in different groups, and you can maybe get time away for five minutes if you’re like, I’m going to go to the bathroom and I’m just going to go on a walk, I need to clear my head. You maybe get five minutes before people start getting really anxious about what you’re doing. So trying to balance all that, eventually I was like, I just need to get some help on this. I need someone to serve as a watchman while I dig. I need someone to just be able to help me figure out how to get this idle. Because the days were going by, I still didn’t have a vote. We were just, yeah. So that’s one of the many lies and one thing that just started weighing on me.

Steven Sashen:

Well, that one’s a bitch because you bring anyone else into the equation, they know you’re trying to do the tasks, that’s when they could kick you out and you have no say. Yeah, that’s the thing about the show when I watched it. I’m just not good at lying to people or more accurately they can tell if I’m trying to hold something back. I’m just not good at that.

Austin Li Coon:

There’s some players who are like that, and they do well. Emily, on our season, she would always say she’s a really bad liar. I don’t think she’s a terrible liar, but people own up to those things. When you’re known as someone who can’t lie, it’s way easier to get friends because they’re like, okay, this person’s going to shoot me straight and I’ll know if they’re lying to me. So you can work most things to your advantage. But I think with this game, what makes it so cool is that every advantage is a disadvantage and every disadvantage is an advantage in another way.

Steven Sashen:

No, that’s the thing. For me, watching the show, it’s like I can imagine myself doing all the challenges, but everything in between, it’s like my brain just doesn’t go there. It’s kind of like obstacle course races. I like all the obstacles. I just don’t want to do the race part because the race involves up to 5K worth of running, and I’m a sprinter man. I don’t do that. Just give me all the obstacles. In fact, this weird memory that just popped in my head. Way before your time, there was a TV show. It was Network Battle of the Stars.

Austin Li Coon:

Oh yeah. Okay.

Steven Sashen:

So handful of celebrities doing these contests, either one team against the other, sometimes individual, but it was crazy shit. But the whole time as a kid watching, it’s like, I want to be famous just so I can be in that show. I could crush that event. It was just the events. There was nothing else.

Austin Li Coon:

Yeah, the challenge is so much fun. So I understand it. That’s what originally got me hooked on Survivor. I was like, I want to run through these adult size obstacle courses when you get that opportunity.

Steven Sashen:

Right. Well, one of the episodes that I watched was after someone said, oh my God, Austin’s on this thing, and he’s wearing your shoes. I don’t remember what it’s called, but after he came back from a swim, he had to do one of those little slidey puzzle things. Do you remember the thing, whatever it’s called.

Austin Li Coon:

Is that the one where we’re on the barrels and we’re going through the-

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. That part. Yeah. I’m looking at everybody. I’m thinking, that’s not hard. Everyone’s brain is gone.

Austin Li Coon:

So slide puzzles is one of the puzzles that you really prep on before going on Survivor at least for me.

Steven Sashen:

Oh really?

Austin Li Coon:

Because one of those, it’s accessible through apps on your phone to just do slide puzzles while you’re on the train or something. That one, they did a little twist where it’s not a typical slide puzzle. You had to fit this thing into the middle, like this square. So I would say that one is kind of a difficult slide puzzle, just because it’s something that none of us really practice. But yeah, I think had we been fed and well slept, it would’ve been a little faster.

Steven Sashen:

So here’s the other thing. So on Shark Tank, of course, when people see our episode, and by the way, for anyone listening who hasn’t seen it, Xeroshoes.com/shark Tank, one of the things is every time somebody went out, they cut to us going like, what? Which never really happened because we just didn’t even care. They have 12 cameras running and you can’t see any of them. So they’re always capturing something. In fact, wait, I’m going to do an inside Shark Tank thing that you’ll get a kick out of. Other people might like to. So there’s a thing they do, you walk out, you hit your mark, and before you start and do your little pitch, they go, just wait for a second until we tell you to go, because we’re going to make sure all the cameras are in the right place doing the right thing.

They don’t care. All the cameras are totally fine. They’re doing it just to see how much you get twitchy and what kind of weird expressions you make, and what kind of crazy that you could do with your face that they’re going to then cut in later. Now, I knew this going in, so I said to Elena, when we get there, hit the mark and just look at everyone and smile. Just remember how really cool it is that we’re here and that’s it. Just happy, happy, happy. That’s what we did. And after 10 seconds they went all right, start.

Austin Li Coon:

Didn’t get what they wanted. I love it. I love it. Yeah. See, that’s one of those things where I didn’t know any of those types of things until I was actually playing it afterwards. Watching the episodes back on my TV, it’s like, okay, wow. So they’re kind of clipping in facial expressions from different time periods a little bit, just for dramatic effects. It’s like, okay, you got to watch your face because they’re recording 24/7.

Steven Sashen:

Right. Well, so that’s the question is when you watch the episodes. Well, let me start with this one. Have you watched your whole season?

Austin Li Coon:

I have. I haven’t watched it back. I need to do a binge watch from episode one to the end. I’ve watched it when they come out, and I’ll usually watch it one more time. I haven’t rewatched the finale yet, but besides that, I’ve watched everything twice.

Steven Sashen:

What was your experience watching?

Austin Li Coon:

I would say watching it was almost as intense as playing it. You’re really, after you play the game, everyone comes up in their head of those different storylines, especially their own storyline and what it’s going to be told. The thing is, it’s like when you’re taking three days of content where they’re filming on 15 different cameras and 24/7, and they’re condensing that into 65 minutes of TV time, they cut so much out. The first couple episodes I think was a huge shock to everyone just being like, wow, they didn’t show that. They didn’t show that. They didn’t show that. They didn’t show that. And then once we get used to that, then it’s like, oh my gosh, what are they going to show this next episode? Where are they going to show the next episode? And you’re kind of just at the mercy of the editors for a while.

So that’s been kind scary. My season in particular, I think for my story, I had some really high highs, really good moments that were appreciated by fans. I was getting praised and stuff. Then I also had moments where I got a lot of hate from fans, not because I did anything mean or anything like that, but because I made a move that a lot of people felt was emotional, irrational. I stand by it, but that’s besides the point. Dealing with fans, commenting on your Instagram, saying mean things, making all these crazy posts about you on Twitter and on Reddit, that was a whole experience trying to get over that, being like, listen, these are just some people. I shouldn’t let myself get affected by that.

So there was definitely ups and downs. I think now I’m in an awesome place. I’m really happy with how everything turned out, but it was an intense experience, and I would do a lot of big watch parties and usually watching the episode itself, I would get so invested in the moment in the experience, and I would just be like, it’d be so intense that I had only registered about half the episode. So I’d end up going back home at night watching it again in my bed alone, away from people to really understand what happened.

Steven Sashen:

Well, I’ll be curious to see, how do I want to put this? Here, I’ll do it this way. So there’s a private Facebook group that someone started for people who’ve been on Shark Tank.

Austin Li Coon:

Oh yeah.

Steven Sashen:

I don’t know if they’ve done anything like that for you guys. No, they didn’t do it. I mean, it was someone who was on the show and that person did it because they had made a deal, had signed the NDA, they weren’t allowed to talk about anything and were not having a good experience. After the show, they were emotionally a little wrecked, which we’ve seen a lot. Even with people who made deals that they were happy with, they were still kind wrecked after the show because of the NDA. They just needed someone to talk to and just reached out to other people who’ve been on the show. That was someone who was on season two or season three I think. I can’t remember. I was season four. So now there’s a whole lot of people who are in it. But at one point someone said, how many of you’re still watching the show? Anyone who is more than two seasons out said, nope.

Austin Li Coon:

Wow.

Steven Sashen:

In part because you know how the sausage is made.

Austin Li Coon:

Exactly.

Steven Sashen:

And for some people it was just traumatic going back. But I think for Elena, and for me it was mostly, it’s like, yeah, we know what’s going on here. We can’t imagine being on the show. We can’t imagine either being the shark or the bait or the chum because we know too much. So I’ll be curious to see what happens for you afterwards. Did they offer or make you do any psychological counseling after the show? Because they did for us.

Austin Li Coon:

It wasn’t necessary. We have a therapist that meets with us throughout the airing of the season, so we are kind of set in once a month, but if you need to do more, you can do more. It ends after the season ends. But I think once again, if you want to do more, you can do more. Nothing was required. It was just a resource that we had available. So that was really helpful. I think to some people, they obviously use it a little bit more than others. Other people didn’t really need it and didn’t use it. Similar to what you’re saying though, I think there is sort of a period after playing the game where we’re like, I’m Survivored out. I don’t want to watch anything. I can’t. I’ve noticed now whenever I watch any show, any reality show, not just Survivor, my mind immediately goes to editing to production.

Steven Sashen:

You can tell.

Austin Li Coon:

Exactly.

Austin Li Coon:

It’s less so watching it as enjoying the game. I still do that, but it’s also every time I notice my mind wander and be like, oh, I wonder if this is what actually happened. I wonder when they filmed this, I wonder what they asked to get this kind of thing. So that’s been interesting.

Steven Sashen:

I had a weird version of that back in the, let’s call it late nineties, I can’t really remember. Yeah, it was late nineties. I co-hosted a television show that was like Car Talk. So answering questions about car problems, but it was about computers. It was called Disc Doctors. The way we did the show is that the questions that people were asking, we had a producer who would figure out who they wanted to talk to and have asked their questions, or more accurately, people were calling in with questions. They would vet who was going to be on the show. And more often than maybe half the time, we didn’t know the answer to the question off the top of our heads.

We had to do the research to figure it out, and we knew what our answer was going to be. So when I watched it, it was like it’s a little stilted. I could tell the difference between one that I knew and one that I didn’t know. Then I listened to Car Talk and I went, son of a bitch, they’re the same thing. I thought you guys knew everything. I can hear it in the tone of your voice. You had no idea. You’re reading that off a card. It just ruined the show for me.

Austin Li Coon:

Wow. Wow. That’s interesting. Yeah.

Steven Sashen:

Just something you mentioned. I didn’t even think about it. So we taped in 2012. We aired in 2013. We continued to air in reruns, but in 2013, people were not as willing to express their completely unasked for opinions and ignorant opinions for the sake of being kind of rude as they are now. So we didn’t have … The only thing we had was people going, Hey, you guys were idiots because you turned down $400,000. Or hey, that thing’s just a piece of rubber and string. But it was nothing personal. But now, holy crap, they come after you.

Austin Li Coon:

Yeah, they treat whatever they see, some people, whatever they see on TV as like, this is Austin at his core and he is a flawed person in this way, this way, this way, and this way. Anyone who thinks differently is an idiot.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. It really is wild how everyone thinks their usually horrible opinion is so important for everybody to know. It really blows my mind. I have a little short film video thing that I want to do, and I’ll give away one of the jokes that’s in it. It has to do with time travel. So some people go to the future and some at one point says, oh my God, when we go back, I’m going to put this all over the internet, and one of the people from the future says the internet, and the other one goes, it’s that cat video thing that almost ruined everyone’s minds.

Austin Li Coon:

Oh my gosh. Solid. It’s what it started with. Now look at it.

Steven Sashen:

So any other things that after you were watching or just any other kind of behind the scenes things you’re legally allowed to talk about that were surprising?

Austin Li Coon:

That was surprising? Let’s see.

Steven Sashen:

Surprising to you or surprising to people who … Look, we had people who thought that Shark Tank was live. They were stunned that they called us that we answered the phone. It’s like, wait, aren’t you on TV? It’s like, no.

Austin Li Coon:

Yeah, that happens also with Survivor. Some people think that it’s filmed live almost. But luckily, I mean, I don’t know. I guess not luckily, but because so many of the fans have been following it for so many years, I think most people are kind of aware that that’s not the case. But yeah, I guess one of the behind the scenes thing that was way tougher than expected, it kind of goes hand in hand a little bit with the lying, is you form really tight bonds with the people. You’re there for a month … because recently survivors switched the format. It used to be 39 days and you’d get rice every day, stuff like that. They switched it now 26 days, but they made especially the first half of the game much harder where you don’t get any food or assistance.

You lose your flint whenever you lose a challenge. They try making it really tough at first, and people are like, oh wow, 26 days. This is baby Survivor. They don’t have enough time to make real friendships and bonds. But that’s not true. I obviously haven’t played 39 days. Maybe 26 is baby Survivor. It was very, very difficult. And we had some really intense friendships and bonds that we made out there that it made it so much harder to make moves against them.

Steven Sashen:

Have you been in touch with people from other seasons?

Austin Li Coon:

Yeah, so I think similar to … so we don’t have a Facebook group like you all did for Shark Tank, but there is a very active alumni community. A lot of them will come to our season’s watch events and watch it with us. I’m planning on going to at least a couple for the following season, just to sort of meet the new cast, hang out with a few of my cast members again, because yeah, I guess you trauma bond in a way. It’s always fun to go back, share stories and kind of talk about the new seasons coming up and your takes on that. So it’s all fun and I’m really excited now that the season’s done. So much relief with it being over now that, A, I can stop keeping secrets, but B, also I can just be a fan again, I can rejoin the community, I can hang out with these awesome people who’ve also played, who’ve also been following Survivor. So I’m excited for this part a lot.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah, it’s a similar thing. You have lived through something that very few people have that no one else can really understand, and whether it’s trauma bonding or just without the trauma part, just something about that. It’s just such a weird situation to be in. Here’s the other one. So you haven’t had a lot of time to do this, but how often are you recognized when you’re just out and about?

Austin Li Coon:

Yeah, so as the season went on, definitely more and more and more. I think now it’s sort of after the finale, it was at its peak and I’d go out for a couple drinks. I’d be recognized five times in 10 minutes essentially. Then now I restarted grad school, so I’m back in classes. So I’m in my room right here a lot, either grinding on homework or trying to work on some content stuff for my social medias and stuff. I’ve just been staying inside a lot. So I don’t know, it’s hard to tell now, but whenever I go on a walk, anything more than five, 10 minutes, I’ll usually get stopped at least once. But I’m trying to enjoy it now. I love when fans come up and I know it’s going to end pretty soon.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah, no, it’s great because no one’s going to come up. Well, they may, but it’ll be a rare, completely horrible human being who would come up to say something mean to you. If they do, it’s like, wow, you got some horrible shit going on in your life. So it’s easy to be compassionate. But I guarantee to the extent that you keep a similar look to what you had on the show, which you have, then you will not be able to make it through an airport without being stopped. It’s a blast. Look, I’m 10 years out. In those 10 years, I have not made it through an airport without being recognized.

Austin Li Coon:

Wow. Now you also got Xero Shoes though.

Steven Sashen:

Well, there’s that too. There is that. But also, look, I’ve had a thing. It’s the hair thing. I’ve had times where I’m standing with Lana and somebody will come up and say to her, wasn’t he on Shark Tank? And she’s like, I was standing right next to him, but she was sort of just the generic, beautiful woman. I’m the freaky looking, hippie looking dude. So it just has-

Austin Li Coon:

It works out.

Steven Sashen:

It’s a different thing.

Austin Li Coon:

Yeah, no, that’s interesting. I do think that I have kind of a more distinct look with the hair. I never had facial hair until Survivor, and then I didn’t shave for a month, and I came out afterwards, I was like, this doesn’t look too bad. I pulled the rest of my cats and be like, should I keep it? Shave it? They’re like, keep it. I was like, all right. So now it’s my new look ever since May when it finished filming.

Steven Sashen:

The hair part is very entertaining. I was at a trade show and there’s a guy walking out of the bathroom as I’m walking into the bathroom who had hair just like mine, except he was he about six three. As we pass each other without even making eye contact, he just goes nice locks.

Austin Li Coon:

That is awesome. Your hair is very distinct, especially with the different colors and layers and the curls. I’m a fan.

Steven Sashen:

I would shave my head, except Lana said she’d leave me if I cut it.

Austin Li Coon:

Well, Survivor casting told me that too.

Steven Sashen:

Oh, absolutely. My dad said to my wife, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars for every inch that he cuts off and keeps off.” And she went, “I don’t think you get it. If he did that, I’d stop sleeping with him.”

Austin Li Coon:

Wow. All right. Well, there’s your answer. You’re never cutting it. Never cutting it ever.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. She knew how to stop him in his tracks. It was good. So back to grad school, what are you grading?

Austin Li Coon:

So right now I’m a MBA student at the University of Chicago. So I graduate in June and figuring out what to do afterwards. Last quarter was the time where most people are really figuring out their full-time job plans, but I was just so wrapped up and invest in this whole Survivor experience that I spent no time doing that. So now I’m going to be playing catch up in the next few months and figuring out what to do. But that’s fine.

Steven Sashen:

No, that’s great. Good luck. Good luck with that. So anything that I left out, just either about Survivor things or whatever else you’re doing that’s keeping you happy and healthy?

Austin Li Coon:

Right now it’s just sort of the transition back to non Survivor life. The past several months, pretty much the entire last year was like Survivor. The only show I ever watched was Survivor because I was always studying, taking notes, trying to figure out how to play better. Then playing Survivor and then prepping for the premiere and then watching it through and reading everything online and just getting … So now I’m excited to finally get a little bit of a breath, be like, okay, I can focus now a little bit on figure out what my career is. I can rehang out with my friends that I’ve had to stop seeing for a while because I’ve been in Fiji, I’ve been doing all these watch events and just not being able to spend as much time in Chicago and with family too in San Jose. So really excited to just get back to things and figure out what the move is from here. It’s kind of exciting time because I didn’t think I would be here.

Steven Sashen:

After all of that deprivation, what was your first meal when you got back?

Austin Li Coon:

Oh, okay. My first actual meal that I got when we got back was In-N-Out. We went as a cast. We stopped because we flew into LAX, we went to In-N-Out. A lot of the cast had never had In-N-Out before. So we were like, okay, you want to get double, double. You want your animal style fries and then you want to get a milkshake. So we did that. But the first real food that I had was actually the last day on Survivor, the final three, you get this amazing breakfast and they bring out this tray and it was food for eight people.

They had literally 12 bananas. They had over a dozen different pastries. They had a liter of pancake mix. They had bacon. They had a whole over a dozen eggs. And we ate the entire thing. Three people; me, this girl named Dee, who’s five two, and then Jake, who’s similar size to me. But we destroyed the entire thing and we were … yeah. So that was amazing that breakfast was the best thing. We had some champagne and orange juice too. They had a bunch of toast. I think back to that day a lot.

Steven Sashen:

Which raised the obvious question. What was your weight going in? What was your weight coming out?

Austin Li Coon:

Going in … I lost 20 pounds. I went in 185, came out 165, gained it back within a month, month and a half, because that was one thing. Coming back, I had this psychological need to eat everything in front of me. So I would go to restaurants and then I’d be with two other people. I’d eat all my food, I’d be full, I’m happy. But then I notice my friends don’t eat their french fries or their salad or whatever, and I can’t stop looking at it. I’m trying to focus on the conversations, but my brain is just like, there’s food, there’s food, there’s food. I’d end up eating it too. So I very quickly gained back the weight.

Steven Sashen:

How long did it take for that to wear off?

Austin Li Coon:

So I gained my weight back within a month and a half. I think the food thing lasted a little bit longer than that, and I had to sort of force myself to be like, Nope, I’ve already gained my weight back. I’m fine. I don’t need to eat more. But I think it lasted for two, three months.

Steven Sashen:

Talking your brain out of something is a weird thing. Just FYI, or for whatever it’s worth. I had something like that. Lane and I did an anniversary vacation. We went to Cuba. So we went to cigar, well, tobacco farm where they then of course make cigars. I’d never had a cigar before. So I have one of these Cuban cigars and after doing that, we’re on the bus heading somewhere. I started arguing with my brain because I got really pleasantly high from that cigar.

Austin Li Coon:

Yeah.

Steven Sashen:

Different kind of high that I’ve ever had. I don’t do drugs, but unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. My brain is saying, you got to get some more of those cigars. I’m saying, yeah, the taste was horrible and that kind of high, that’s the kind of thing I really easily get attached to. This is not a good idea. No, seriously, just get a case of no big deal. I’m literally arguing with my brain.

Austin Li Coon:

Oh my gosh.

Steven Sashen:

A couple of days. So there’s that part, but there’s other one that just you’ll obviously relate to. You had a longer version of this. I did a glucose tolerance test in a hospital where they literally injected 150 CCs of sugar into my veins and my blood sugar of course spikes like crazy. Then they gave me a little bit of insulin, half of what they should have given me, to see how quickly I came back down. And when my blood sugar got down to 40, I tapped out and I ate six, whatever they are, frozen breakfast kind of things. I can’t remember the healthy harvest or whatever they were. And five things of orange juice. And for the next week, to your point, I ate everything I could get my hands on. My brain was going, you almost died from not eating, so you have to eat everything.

Austin Li Coon:

Wow.

Steven Sashen:

So you had a longer term, slightly more, different kind of intense version of that same thing. But it’s fascinating. You put your brain in that situation and it does not like it.

Austin Li Coon:

Exactly. You could be as full as you could possibly be and still want to eat more food, which is such a weird feeling.

Steven Sashen:

It’s really weird. You’re sitting there going, I am not in control of this thing. Watch yourself eat the fries.

Austin Li Coon:

Yep. But at least we both got over it. That’s what matters.

Steven Sashen:

Well, kind of. Yesterday we were brunch and there were some fries going around and if they went by me, I couldn’t say no. But that’s different because french fries, potato chips, I have no willpower. I’m very well aware of that.

Austin Li Coon:

Mine is desserts, the brownies, the cookies. Oh gosh. I think I came back and I ate an entire pan of brownies, actually.

Steven Sashen:

Well, if you’re ever this way in plus or minus Denver, the restaurant we went to is called D Bar, and D stands for a number of things, but one of the things that stands for arguably is dessert. They make the best desserts I’ve ever had. I had a long talk with the owner yesterday because I’ve been going to this place since the day they opened, and they have a chocolate layer cake that is by far the best thing anybody that I know has ever eaten. He was talking to me about it. We’re both chocolate freaks. He said, the icing on the cake costs more than a prime rib.

Austin Li Coon:

What? I need to try this now. Oh my goodness.

Steven Sashen:

There’s three different varieties of cacao beans and the rarest and most amazing one is the bean is called Criollo, and it’s the ones from Madagascar are the killer. So it’s Madagascar Criollo as part of the icing and it is spectacular. So yeah, so my treat when you come.

Austin Li Coon:

Down, I’m coming to Denver then.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah, just get on a plane today. I was there yesterday. I’ll go tonight. It’s not a problem.

Austin Li Coon:

They’ve got the Frontier headquarters in Denver, right? I was actually thinking of doing their little annual pass thing, so maybe.

Steven Sashen:

There you go. You know where to find me. Well, Austin, once again, first of all, congratulations just to endure being on the show at all and walk away as a sane human being. It’s quite an accomplishment, let alone second place, which is nothing to sneeze at. It’s a big deal. So congrats on that. Thanks for sharing the whole story. It’s been a total, total pleasure. If people do want to track you down to say things arguably nice things, where will they find you?

Austin Li Coon:

Oh yeah, so I guess I have Instagram and Twitter. Instagram is just Austin Li Coon and then Twitter. I actually don’t remember the handle, but I think it’s either that or something similar.

Steven Sashen:

And just so people know, it’s Austin Lee, A-U-S-T-I-N-L-I-C-O-O-N. So yeah, hopefully people will find you and say wonderful things and hopefully if you guys haven’t seen the show, go watch it. Again, I haven’t gotten to see every episode because it’s been crazy busy around here. But the couple that I watch were again, that kind of thing, like wow, this is amazing and thank God I’m not doing that.

Austin Li Coon:

Oh, what I think most people, they’re going to watch it be like, this is amazing. I need to do this. So you’re one of two. They’re extremes.

Steven Sashen:

I know my limits is what I’m saying.

Austin Li Coon:

Fair. Yeah, I highly recommend it.

Steven Sashen:

But this is the other part. If I did it, I’d be the oldest guy ever on the show, I think. I’m pushing 62. What’s the oldest?

Austin Li Coon:

So season one, they had someone in their seventies. They’ve had it a couple times, but you’re a very fit. I think you would do excellent

Steven Sashen:

Except for the not eating part, man. I don’t handle that well.

Austin Li Coon:

You kind numb out. It’s tough days five and six and you kind of numb out until day 10, and then it’s really bad. But then after that, then it gets good.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah, it gets bad, then it gets really bad, then it’s only a little bad, then it’s bad again. Then it’s only medium bad and yeah, it’s bad.

Austin Li Coon:

But then when you get … because sometimes you win a reward and you get a feast and that’s the best day of your life ever. It’s like you’re just eating and you’re so happy and you’re laughing together. It’s the most amazing thing and it’s worth this time.

Steven Sashen:

That’s how they get you. It’s called Stockholm Syndrome, baby. Anyway, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For everyone else, thank you as well. Just a reminder, head over to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. Previous episodes, places you can find us on social media, other places you can find the podcast if you want to find somewhere else. And of course you have any comments, questions, requests, recommendations, people who should be on the show, as I always say, I’m still looking to have a nice conversation with someone who thinks I have cranial rectal reorientation syndrome. You can drop me an email, just send it to move@join themovementmovement.com. But most importantly, just go out, have fun and live life feet first.

Austin Li Coon:

Amazing. Amazing.

 

 

 

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