No two Survivor players are the same. Well… that’s not entirely true when you consider all the players who have returned to the island multiple times. But you get what we’re trying to say! Everyone has their own special secret sauce that makes them different from everyone else. Sometimes it’s something super specific, other times it’s just something about the way a person goes about their daily life.

With that in mind, we spoke to the cast of Survivor 48 (premiering Feb. 26 on CBS) out in Fiji just days before the game began to find out what makes each of the contestants unique. Here’s what they told us.

Mitch Guerra

In case you haven’t noticed already, I am a person who stutters. So out of 48 seasons, I think I might be the first one out here who has a pretty severe speech impediment. So that’s something that makes me unique. I am an elementary school PE coach and a high school tennis coach, which is probably most people’s worst nightmare, who stutters. But I decided that I love working with people and I’m super passionate about sharing my story as a person who stutters. So I said, “Well, how about we get in front of as many people as possible?”

Charity Nelms

Well, one of the big things that makes me unique and part of my story and journey is that I struggled with my weight my whole life. I’ve had a 100-pound weight loss, and I’ve kept that off for many, many years. So I have been through the journey physically, and it is a huge thing for me just to be able to be here and to compete physically with everyone around me.

David Kinne

I’ve got an interesting history that makes me quite unique. I started as a whitewater rafting instructor, worked in Colorado for a few summers, and that’s given me quite a bit of experience in the outdoors and definitely comfortable in water. Currently, I work as a stunt performer for Disney and Feld Entertainment. So I’m used to swinging myself around on ropes and climbing over things, getting hit, falling on the ground, doing high falls, things like that. And then I also decided: You know what? I want to step away from stunts and I want a family life one day. And so I decided to get my commercial pilot’s license. That’s my end goal right now and I’m kind of making that transition right now.

Eva Erickson

I’d say the thing that makes me the most unique is that I’m on the autism spectrum, and that contributes to a lot of things throughout my life and this has kind of driven me to have other unique interests. I’m the only woman on an all-men’s hockey team. I’m getting my Ph.D. in engineering and fluids and thermal sciences at Brown. I’m also a high-level hockey official. I ref college games as well as national tournaments throughout the country.

Justin Pioppi

Honestly, it’s just growing up in the family business [a pizzeria] and working there all my life and just seeing the hard work my parents put in there. My crazy aunt is up front, whom I love dearly. So that’s a unique experience that not everyone has. Growing up, I just thought it was normal. Friday, Saturday nights I’d be hanging out with my parents down there and seeing all the regulars who have been coming in for years. Their parents came in, now their grandkids come in. It’s just generations of family that they’ve been feeding for so long. So that kind of is a unique experience for me, and it’s hard to replicate unless you’re really in the trenches in the restaurant business.

Kamilla Karthigesu

I’m a mix of a bunch of things where people look at me, and they don’t expect that. I came in here bringing my Nintendo Switch, and I got so many comments from all the staff and they’re like, “You play video games? You’re a gamer. I didn’t expect that from you.” And I want to be like, “Why didn’t you expect that? I’m not trying to get into this type of conversation, but why?” I mean, yeah, I’m very loud and obnoxious, and that’s not a typical South Asian girl thing. Our parents try and shut us up, make us be respectful. I’m the opposite of that. Lucky parents, I guess. And also, I feel like I embody a little Chihuahua kind of thing. I’m 5-foot-1, but my mouth is all I have because I don’t have neither what that one guy has. I don’t know if you saw him, but we have Giga Chad here and he is just insane.

Joe Hunter

I’ve had a lot of loss in my life, unfortunately. I lost my sister to domestic violence. I lost my father shortly after that. I was a single dad for a while, fought through a pretty brutal divorce, came back from that. So my secret sauce is perseverance, overcoming some great loss and really allowing myself to be me again. Get my light back. And what that does is it drives me and motivates me to know that whatever is in front of me, I can overcome it. I’ve been through some hell and back.

Bianca Roses

My secret sauce is the way that I connect with people. My relationship-building mastery. I actually work in public relations. I’ve been in PR for a decade, and I can honestly confidently say that I can connect with any single human on this planet Earth. The way that I can empathize with someone and just find a reason to talk to them and get deep with them or not, read a room, understand the way someone wants to be connected with is what makes me super unique.

Kevin Leung

I was really skinny growing up and I just said, “You know what? I’m sick of being skinny. I’m sick of not being chosen to play football or basketball.” And I wanted to change how I looked. I didn’t want to be the smart guy anymore. So I worked out really hard. I changed my hair, changed my skin, and one day I was walking into the mall and an Abercrombie recruiter reached out to me and said, “Hey, what are you doing?” And I was like, “I work a normal job.” And he was like, “Do you want to work at Abercrombie?” To anybody else, it’s probably just like a, “Who cares? It’s a throwaway job.” But for me, it meant so much.

I was like, “Oh wow. I actually have become something.” And I think working there was such a unique experience because I wasn’t a teen anymore, but the goal was to sell clothes. and to sell clothes, you had to just charm your way to anything. You had to tell people — I mean, I wasn’t blatantly lying — but it was just telling them things that they might not have ever thought about wearing, or just telling them how great they look, or “This would look great with these jeans or this jacket.” So I spent that summer there and I was like, “I’m just going to charm anybody.” And I learned so much social skills, how to deal with customers, how to deal with people who were way too into themselves. And I was like, “Okay, this can prep me well for Survivor.”

Mary Zheng

I contain a lot of diametrically opposed traits, and people are often wrong with their first impression of me because they see one side, but they can’t see all the other opposing sides. For example, the side that they see may be loud, chaotic, and brash, but they might not expect that. I am extremely thoughtful. I’ve kept a diary and written it every day since I was 17. I make daily to-do lists and a handwritten agenda that I am religious about.

Kyle Fraser

I think that people think the word “extrovert” and they probably come across them in their day-to-day lives. But ramp that up 100 percent, and that’s me. I’m an incredibly social person. I love being around people. I could be around somebody 100 percent of the day. I don’t need to recharge. So I would say that my willingness to be around people and meet people, that’s me.

Sai Hughley

I think my personality just reels people in no matter what situation, and my background inspires a lot of people and how I navigate and show up for other people. To be honest, I had the best of both worlds. I like to say it that way because I grew up in South Philadelphia, which is the inner city, but I went to a private high school, which was the complete opposite of living in the inner city. So it was a culture shock, but it also taught me how to navigate different spaces with different people, and not everyone can do that.

I also had to learn how to listen to understand rather than to respond. And I think a lot of people love to talk about themselves, but they don’t necessarily listen to other people and what they need. And I’m kind of a shapeshifter in that way. I become all things to all people, but that’s because of what my grandma used to do. She was the listener. She was the person who was your chef, she was the person who was the neighborhood tailor, she was the person who was literally a bank teller for people. And I show up in the same way. So I’ll be the listener, or I’ll be the person who will rally when you need somebody to rally, I’ll be the person who will make you laugh. All of those things set me apart from everyone else here.

Thomas Krottinger

I’ve been a music publisher for over 10 years now, and I’ve worked in the music business since 2012. I’ve worked at a few different big corporations and I’ve been very fortunate in my career. I’ve signed some big pop stars, I’ve signed some big songwriters, some big producers, and I just feel very fortunate.

Stephanie Berger

I am from New York City, but I’ve spent most of my adult life in New Orleans and I think that combination is unique. I am go-getter, the person who wants to go up the subway steps two at a time. I am fundamentally a New Yorker at my core, but I’ve spent so much time in a culture that is not New York in a lot of ways that forces you to slow down. My first job, I was a public school teacher and I think it was my second week on the job, the principal pulled me aside and was like, “Ms. Berger, you need to say good morning to Ms. Anarey when you come into the office every day.”

And I was like, “I need to get my copies done. I am in a hustle. I’m running late.” And she’s like, “It doesn’t matter, Ms. Anarey thinks that you hate her because you walk right past her in the morning and you don’t say hello. You don’t even just give her a simple ‘good morning.'” And I think that is an experience and a learning that I have had that is unique, which is how to be this ambitious, somewhat cutthroat go-getter who also has this side of her that is very much about making friends with my neighbors and knowing all the people that live on my corner and saying good morning to folks and saying, “How y’all doing?”

Shauhin Davari

People will underestimate my level of understanding. I definitely will surprise people with my ability to be predictive of what they’re thinking, to put myself in their position. I definitely come across a little more intimidating than I ever actually am. I think people see the big beard and the big eyebrows and the big hair, and definitely tons of personality, and they think that I won’t be understanding, that I won’t be empathetic, and that’s my superpower.

My superpower is that I definitely understand other sides of view. I always try and put myself in other people’s position, and I think if there’s any magic sauce at the beginning of a video game when you’re like, “Okay, I want to add this characteristic to my video game character” — that might be the No. 1 characteristic that you add to your video game character that’s coming out here to play Survivor. “What is going on in the other person’s head? What is going to be best for their game?” And then I can act accordingly.

Star Toomey

Something unique about me that makes me different from pretty much the group that I’m here with right now I would say is my background and my personality. That all fits into being who I am. Everybody comes from different places that makes them who they are. We’re not all from the same place, we’re not all the same people. So I feel like my background and personality makes me different from everybody else.

Cedrek McFadden

Well, Cedrek — and I’m speaking in the third person — has a unique ability to connect with people as my profession [as a surgeon]. I am in spaces where I make very quick connections with people that is useful to take care of them, but I think it extends outside of the game because I just have a unique fondness and a unique ability to talk with almost anyone from any background almost about anything. There’s something to learn from people that we encounter in the stores in the mall, or just on the bus or on the subway. We don’t talk to all these people, I understand that. But everyone has a story, and I’m always interested in hearing that story from people.

Chrissy Sarnowsky

I would say what I do for a living. I’m a Chicago firefighter and just made lieutenant paramedic. I’m also a nurse, so I would think that would make me different from everybody else.

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