The Weekly with Charlie Pickering

- Season 3

(2017)

Topics: Australia Day date change (with Adam Briggs); Macquarie Dictionary names "fake news" as its Word of the Year; One Nation's Western Australian candidate David Archibald calls for the single parents support payment to be scrapped claiming single motherhood would lead to lazy and ugly people; the ABC ends its shortwave transmission service in the Northern Territory and to international audiences; Tropfest's 25th Anniversary (with George Miller); The Pub Test (with Kitty Flanagan).

Topics: Cory Bernardi leaves the Liberal Party to form his own political party called the Australian Conservatives; a sinkhole has opened near Malcolm Turnbull's Sydney harbourside mansion; Derryn Hinch's Justice Party; Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Sapphire jubilee; Pamela Anderson rumoured to be romantically linked to Julian Assange; Earthing movement and products as a pseudoscience (with Kitty Flanagan); Australia follows European countries responding to Donald Trump's "America First" slogan in his inauguration speech by releasing satirical videos mimicking ...

Topics: Jacqui Lambie introduced a bill to ban the burqa for national security and public safety reasons; homelessness increases as public housing crisis worsens; the High Court ruled Rod Culleton was never eligible to be elected to the Senate and the Federal Court has declared he was bankrupt; Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull blames renewable energy for South Australia's power outages despite emails citing the state's extreme storms were the cause.

Topics: Sutton United's goalkeeper Wayne Shaw was forced to resign after eating a pie in a betting stunt during the match between Sutton United and Arsenal which led to an investigation by the Gambling Commission and The Football Association; Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara arrived in Sydney for a 4-day visit to Australia; Malcolm Turnbull arrived in New Zealand last week to meet with Bill English for the annual leaders' meeting in Queenstown; the Coalition wants to avoid another Mediscare campaign by making it a criminal offence to impersonate or purport to act ...

Topics: La La Land was announced as the 89th Academy Awards Best Picture winner until the acceptance speech was interrupted to announce that Moonlight actually won; Malcolm Turnbull blamed Tony Abbott's outburst last week for poor polling by Newspoll which showed the Coalition trailing Labor 55-45 in two-party preferences; a US research study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior show Millennials are having less sex than Generation X did at the same age (with Kitty Flanagan); Philippine's recently elected president Rodrigo Duterte gained an approval rating of 86 percent ...

Topics: Trump accused Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower during the 2016 election without providing evidence and Trump requested Congress to launch an investigation a day later; the Coalition proposed reforming section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act by introducing a reasonable person test where a member of the community judges whether or not the racist behaviour breaches the standards of ordinary Australians; the AANA amended its Advertiser Code of Ethics to require social influencers to be more transparent about sponsored posts and commercial connections ...

Topics: Wikileaks released data to the internet about CIA's hacking tools that exploit iPhones, Android phones, Windows computers and Samsung televisions to spy and listen in on conversations; Tony Blair was invited to the unveiling of a new UK war memorial honouring Britons who fought in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars while families of war heroes were not invited (with Jonathan Pie); Labor wins the Western Australian state election by a landslide with Mark McGowan becoming the state's new Premier; The Book of Mormon (with Matt Stone and Trey Parker).

Topics: Queenslander Lee de Paauw ended up in hospital after a drunken attempt to impress British backpacker Sophie Paterson by jumping into a crocodile infested river and fought off a saltwater crocodile; Prince William was caught on camera dancing daggy dad moves in a Swiss nightclub; String theory and physics (with Brian Greene); a short history of the Australian Grand Prix (with Francis Leach, Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki, Raoul Mulder and economist Rod Campbell).

Topics: the Coalition's 10 year tax plan to cut company tax rates to 25 percent for all businesses has passed the Lower House; Trump abandoned his election promise to overhaul Obamacare after he failed to gain support from members of his own political party; Durban will no longer host the 2022 Commonwealth Games due to financial constraints and failure to meet deadlines (with Loyiso Gola); Better Call Saul (with Bob Odenkirk); news media reported that Prince William narrowly avoided a helicopter crash despite Prince William not being onboard the helicopter at the time...

Topics: Sky News Australia fired Mark Latham after he made a series of offensive comments during broadcasts; Malcolm Turnbull caused an uproar after he refused a sausage in bread from a volunteer while visiting flood victims in Lismore, New South Wales; the latest polls from Fairfax-Ipsos and Newspoll showed support for the Coalition continued to drop; making sports accessible for the visually impaired (with Maurice Gleeson).

Topics: Trump launched a military missile attack on a Syrian airfield; aspiring rapper Terry Peck consumed a meal worth $620 at a Gold Coast restaurant and fled without paying before he was captured by police; Herd immunity (with Kitty Flanagan); drugs at music festivals (with Adam Briggs).

Topics: North Korea threatens nuclear war against USA; ABC's music video programme Rage celebrates 30 years; Perth Glory's goalkeeper Liam Reddy committed a blunder which enabled Melbourne City's Nick Fitzgerald to score an open goal; Super bugs (with Kitty Flanagan); The Weekly celebrates 2 years since its first episode (with Sam Neill).

Topics: The Coalition announced a new Australian citizenship test based on Australian values; global March for Science protests called for action against Trump's dismissal of climate science and his calls for large cuts to scientific research; a 3-month old baby was refused a US visa and summoned to the US Embassy in London for an interview after his grandfather made an error on a visa waiver form; using forensic entomology to solve crimes (with Paola Magni); Elections in France (with Andy Zaltzman).

Topics: Cassandra Sainsbury was arrested at El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá, Colombia after 5.8 kilograms of cocaine was found in her luggage; Murdoch media accused the ABC of being out of touch with ordinary Australians (with Mel Buttle); Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (with Geoffrey Rush); Trump's first 100 days in office as President of the United States; Decluttering (with Kitty Flanagan).

Topics: Scott Morrison delivered the 2017 Australian federal budget; Sam Dastyari released a video on social media titled '$1 million in Sydney' in a bid to address the housing affordability crisis; news broke on a Royal Announcement causing confusion regarding Prince Philip's health which turned out to be an announcement of his retirement from public activities; Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right rival Marine Le Pen to become president after winning the French elections; being the first female Wiggle (with Emma Watkins); the Coalition bans gambling advertising during...

Topics: Global WannaCry ransomware attack; US media reported that Trump had put national security at risk when he revealed highly classified information to a Russian foreign minister and ambassador; rumours emerge that Mark Zuckerberg has aspirations of running for US president; scientists may have found a cure for baldness by accident while studying cancer tumours; Theoretical physics (with Lawrence M. Krauss); understanding LGBTIQ (with DeAnne Smith); Fidget spinner (with Kitty Flanagan).

Topics: 60 Minutes and Sunday Night compete for ratings with reports of Cassandra Sainsbury's drug bust; Lisa Wilkinson celebrated 10 years as host of The Today Show.

Topics: Trump tweets the word covfefe instead of the word coverage on Twitter; Schapelle Corby returned to Australia after 12 years in an Indonesian prison; Cardinal George Pell could still be charged with child sex abuse offences dating back to the late 1970s; Unmasked by Turia Pitt with Bryce Corbett (with Turia Pitt); Margaret Court declared she will no longer fly with QANTAS because the airline's CEO Alan Joyce supports Same-sex marriage.

Topics: Boris Johnson calls Jeremy Corbyn a 'mugwump'; UK election (with Jonathan Pie); a study has found that Airbnb has an adverse impact on Australia's housing affordability and rental market by listing more properties once available to local long-term renters and raising the prices for rental accommodation; data journalism and analysis (with Mona Chalabi); Panda pornography (with Kitty Flanagan).

Topics: The 2017 UK election resulted in a hung parliament forcing incumbent Prime Minister Theresa May to form a coalition with the Democratic Unionist Party (with Andy Zaltzman); the Saint Petersburg Stadium (with Loyiso Gola); understanding experiences of young Muslims in the contemporary multicultural Australian context through art (with Abdul Abdullah).

Charlie Pickering and the Weekly team look back on 2017, the year when President Trump, postal surveys, Kim Jong-un, bike share schemes, and undercover Kiwi MPs plunged us all into la-la land. Er, sorry: Moonlight.