People: Sep. 4, 2006

Q & A: Jeff Probst The tribe has spoken: Survivor's 13th season, set to begin Sept. 14, has drawn ire for grouping teams by race. Host Jeff Probst defends the choice. The show has divided previous teams by gender and age. Why separate by race?

The idea was born out of the criticism that we weren't ethnically diverse enough. We had to solve the problem by finding people from different ethnic groups. Then when we started interviewing those people, many of them kept bringing up their ethnic pride. That's where the idea to separate them came from.

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