Rob Cesternino Built a Podcast Empire After 'Survivor'—Now He’s Entering 'The Traitors' Castle (Exclusive)

For more than two decades, Rob Cesternino stayed away from the game that made him famous. After Survivor: The Amazon turned him into one of the show’s earliest defining strategists back in 2002—and after a brief return for All-Stars a year later—Cesternino didn’t chase another comeback. Instead, he built a second act, dissecting reality television from the outside–helping define how fans watch, debate and analyze competition shows.

For years, that distance felt almost permanent. The Long Island native, 47, had built something stable, profitable and influential, showing little interest in trading it once again for the chaos of competition.

Then The Traitors came calling.

“For me, this was such a great opportunity to go and get the chance to go play this great game, the hottest show on television,” Cesternino exclusively tells Men’s Journal ahead of his return to TV on Season 4, premiering Thursday, Jan. 8 on Peacock. “This was just a once in a lifetime opportunity to get to go to the castle and get the chance to put my money where my mouth is.”

He’s not just arriving as a former reality star, but as the founder of Rob Has a Podcast, a long-running reality TV podcast network built long before podcasting became an industry buzzword—and less a résumé highlight than a reflection of how his relationship with reality TV has evolved.

“I love that you called it a business when I started it, because it was not that,” he laughs, reflecting on the more than 15 years he’s spent building what has become one of the most influential voices in the space. “It was just something that I did hoping somebody would see that I was doing it and would give me a job.”

In its early years, the podcast was more of a passion project than a revenue play. “It was really over a year of doing it before I even put an ad on the website,” he says. “And it was about almost four years into it when I started doing it full-time.”

That leap coincided with a personal crossroads. “I had been laid off from the job that I had… my son, Dominic, who’s now 12 years old, had just been born, and I was out of work,” the father of two says. “But I was unemployable because there is no job I could have gotten where I could have said, ‘Okay, I need off on this day. I need to do an exit interview on Thursdays.’”

Instead of chasing a traditional media role, a key turning point came in early 2014. “I was an early adopter on Patreon,” he explains, referring to the membership-based platform that allows creators to earn recurring income directly from their audiences. “I put up the Patreon membership in January of 2014 and the rest is history.”

That direct audience support fundamentally changed what was possible. “I had such a great response from people who said, ‘I don’t want you to stop doing this. So here, I want to support you in what you’re doing.’”

Even now, he jokes that the scale of what he’s built can be hard to explain outside the reality TV bubble. “I just say, I do a podcast. I try not to give too much information,” he tells MJ. “People meet my wife and think this poor woman who has to like this loser husband who’s like in a basement somewhere, doing this horrible podcast that nobody listens to.”

That perception couldn’t be further from the truth: RHAP, as fans call it, regularly draws hundreds of thousands of listeners across its many shows and has become a staple for fans of Survivor, Big Brother, The Traitors, and beyond.

The irony is that the very platform that kept him off reality TV for so long is what ultimately made going back feel possible. That mindset also explains why The Traitors felt like the right return. Unlike Survivor, it didn’t carry the same emotional weight of legacy or expectation. “I never saw Traitors as that type of an issue,” he says. “To me, this was such a great opportunity.”

He adds, “I felt like, to go back to Survivor, I was chasing redemption. Whereas I always just looked at Traitors and this opportunity as a reinvention.”

Cesternino has been open about being in the casting mix for the upcoming milestone season—news that excited longtime fans—but ultimately, it just didn’t come together. “I did have trepidation about going to go do Survivor 50,” he explains. “I love Survivor. Survivor is in my heart, and it would be a dream to one day play Survivor again.”

But the downside felt real, professionally as much as personally. “If it didn’t work out for me on Survivor...what will people think about what I have to say about Survivor, and could I lose my credibility if I go out and really flop on Survivor?” he says. There was also a practical concern: “I would not be able to podcast about Survivor 50 to be on Survivor 50…and I’d hate to be on the sidelines.”

That self-awareness shaped how he approached The Traitors—not as a former legend trying to relive the past, but as someone fully grounded in who he is now, which is how he planned to arrive in the Scottish Highlands. “I’m a guy. I was on Survivor 20 years ago. Now I’m a full time podcaster, and I get to interview all sorts of different reality TV stars,” he says. “I’m a dad from North Carolina, and you know, that’s really who I am.”

Before leaving for filming, he sought advice from someone who understands reality TV longevity better than most: Boston Rob Mariano, a longtime friend, Survivor: All-Stars castmate, and former Traitors player. “Rob has been a very supportive friend to me for quite some time," he says. "His advice to me was, ‘just don’t say anything. Be quiet. Don’t talk. Just talk in the confessionals. You’ll do great.’”

Cesternino says he entered the game knowing the experience itself would be worth it. “One hundred percent, I absolutely have no regrets about the decision to go and do The Traitors,” he says. “Win or lose, I felt like that this was going to be such a cool next chapter in my story.”

Beyond The Traitors, 2026 also brings another milestone: his forthcoming book, The Tribe and I Have Spoken, which chronicles the evolution of Survivor from its earliest seasons through the modern era, all through his lens. “What I tried to do with the book was to take a look at the journey that Survivor has been on from that point in 2000 when I first found the show,” he explains, “to ultimately where we are now in the new era, heading into the 50th season.”

He describes the perspective as “a unique vantage point…being this super fan turned player, ultimately turned a podcaster and historian of the show,” and promises it’s not just a retrospective, adding, “It’s also presented in hopefully a very comedic way."

As for whether The Traitors scratched an itch or opened the door to more, Cesternino keeps the answer intentionally open-ended. “I hate it when reality stars are like, 'That’s it. I’m retired. I’m out of it. I’m over it,'" he says. “Going on reality TV is fun.”

And if this does end up being his final time competing, he seems at peace with that, too. “If I never get to play another reality TV show again, I had a blast doing the reality TV that I got to do,” he says. “And if there are more opportunities, I would be very excited.”

For someone who once hoped reality TV might lead to a job, Cesternino ended up building something far more long-lasting. That freedom is what made returning possible. And not because he needed the spotlight again, but because, this time, he didn’t.

Related: 'The Traitors' Season 4 Trailer Promises Its Most Brutal, High-Stakes Season Yet