The hottest reality TV show abroad? Election 2024. Seriously.
Australian TV hosts John Barron and Chas Licciardello explain how American politics has influenced government and culture in their homeland; and which single feature of Australian politics – if adopted – could fix many of America’s biggest problems.
Last week, Playbook co-author and Deep Dive host Ryan Lizza was in Australia talking to people about American politics.
And something really weird happened. Some of the Australians he encountered knew more about US politics than most Americans.
It got really weird when he went on a popular Australian news show and one of the hosts started asking him about the internals of some state poll he’d never heard of.
Why the heck did these Australians know so much about what goes on in Iowa, or Trump’s criminal trials, or the potential effects of Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. making it onto the ballot?
Why the hell are there so many American politics junkies in this country?
It turns out there are some good reasons for this obsession. When you dig into those reasons, you’ll actually learn a lot about American politics.
Ryan sat down with John Barron and Chas Licciardello, the hosts of “Planet America,” a popular show on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s main news channel that dissects American politics with the same obsessiveness as, well, POLITICO.
John and Chas have spent years studying America with the detachment that only foreigners can bring to the subject. They have some terrific insights into our system, including the one simple feature of Australian politics that, if adopted, could fix many of our biggest problems, though it would make things a lot more boring.
