Talking with T-Bird: Lex van den Berghe

For everyone who wanted more T-Bird in the Survivor off-season, your wish has been granted as we once again start up the series “Talking with T-Bird.” Each episode, Rob Cesternino (@robcesternino) and Survivor: Africa‘s Teresa “T-Bird” Cooper (@tbirdcooper) will catch up with a former Survivor player and talk about anything and take listener questions. In the thirty-fifth episode of “Talking with T-Bird”, Rob and T-Bird’s guest is none other than Lex van den Berghe.

Rob and T-Bird speak with Lex van den Berghe, a castaway from Survivor: Africa and one of the first eighteen returnees in Survivor history on Survivor: All-Stars. On Survivor: Africa, the third season and the season featuring our very own co-host Teresa “T-Bird” Cooper, Lex started out on the Boran tribe, quickly putting himself in a good position by aligning with Ethan Zohn and “Big Tom” Buchanan. On day 13, he survived the first-ever swap in Survivor history as he was swapped over to the Samburu tribe with Tom, surviving up to the merge. His game kicked into another level after the merge when he received two votes at the first post-merge Tribal Council and became increasingly paranoid afterward trying to find out who voted for him. After mistakenly accusing Kelly Goldsmith of voting for him, he ended up getting her out of the game and using this paranoid gameplay to make it to day 38, where he was voted out by Kim Johnson because she felt Ethan deserved a spot at the Final Tribal Council more than him, ending in third place and being the seventh and final member of the jury.

A few years later, he was invited onto the cast of the show’s eighth season, Survivor: All-Stars, alongside our very own co-host Rob Cesternino, where she was placed on the Mogo Mogo tribe, initially making strong alliances with Kathy Vavrick-O’Brien and Shii-Ann Huang. Despite starting out with a tribe on a winning streak, the first tribe swap led to them losing more, where he betrayed his close ally Colby Donaldson and voted out his friend Ethan Zohn. After the second swap, he made an infamous deal with “Boston Rob” Mariano to vote out his new close ally Jerri Manthey instead of Amber Mariano (Brkich at the time). He managed to make it to the merge but his move to save Amber backfired when Rob reneged on their deal. Early in the post-merge, Rob betrayed him, voted him out on day 27, leaving him as the first member of the jury in ninth place.

You can check out Lex’s statistics on the Survivor Wiki from his Survivor career here: Lex van den Berghe’s Survivor Wiki Profile.

Get your hands on some custom Talking with T-Bird merch! 

Past Episodes of “Talking with T-Bird”:

* Talking with T-Bird: Helen Glover – May 30, 2019

* Talking with T-Bird: Stephenie LaGrossa Kendrick – June 20, 2019

* Talking with T-Bird: Gretchen Cordy – July 2, 2019

* Talking with T-Bird: Kelly Goldsmith – July 11, 2019

* Talking with T-Bird: Judd Sergeant – July 22, 2019