Survivor Season 40 Recap Podcast: Here's Why Adam's Embarrassing Move Was Actually Genius

Adam Klein made the biggest, dumbest, most embarrassing move on Survivor: Winners at War. It was also an absolutely brilliant play.

Hello again, dear Survivor fans, to another episode of Survivor Brothers: The Ultimate Unofficial Podcast From TV Guide, the show that covers each and every play of Survivor Season 40. Click below to listen to our recap of the crazy episode -- and read on for more of the scoop.

There's no way around it: Wednesday's episode of Survivor: Winners at War, "War Is Not Pretty," was absolute TV gold. First, let us all take a moment to appreciate the sheer absurdity of what we witnessed: Klein, the winner of Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X, attempting to play an immovable, decorative piece of Jeff Probst's voting podium as a hidden immunity idol. Incredible.

Spoiler alert: It wasn't a hidden immunity idol.

Still, Klein had decent reasons to be believe the decoration was a game-changer. It really did look a lot like the idol that Denise Stapley found weeks earlier. Also, Survivor has indeed hidden idols in the set dressing before (Survivor: China), and it's made contestants reach for power in public settings before (as Stephen Fishbach did in Survivor: Cambodia). Plus, as Michael Scott (via Wayne Gretzky) once famously said, "You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take."

On Twitter, Klein shared an even more genius reason for making his gutsy play: As a super fan, he'd seen it happen before ... on the franchise's South African edition.

"I called it the Palesa idol," Klein wrote in the post. "Had my eye on it since my 2nd tribal. Notice how I sat on the far left from then on... I'll never forget the South African camera guys in my confessional dying laughing at the notion that I watched and was influenced by #SurvivorSA."

Want even more insight into this instantly iconic Survivor play? Well, you'll need to check out this week's episode of Survivor Brothers. Click below to listen.

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Survivor: Winners at War airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on CBS. You can watch every season of Survivor on CBS All Access.

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