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When I first heard that Jon Lovett, the prominent political podcast host and former speechwriter for Barack Obama, would be a contestant on the new season of “Survivor,” I pleaded with my editor to write about it.

(To answer your question, yes, “that show” is still on.)

Covering politics during a tense election year in a closely divided country is often deadly serious, and rife with animosity. This seemed like an opportunity to write something lighter.

To my surprise, my editor was game.

I have vague memories of watching “Survivor” as a kid with my parents in the early 2000s, somewhere around the tail end of the show’s initial run of popularity. I rediscovered it when I started high school in 2012 — season 25 was airing — and was hooked. I began watching religiously, first on my own, and now with a group of friends on Wednesday nights, when the episodes air on CBS.

It’s a remarkable run for a series with a relatively simple premise: A group of strangers are marooned on a remote tropical island and must work together to build shelter, forage for food and endure the elements, all while forming alliances and voting someone off the show each week. Though “Survivor” has, on occasion, injected new twists to keep seasons feeling fresh, something about the original format has stuck with viewers like me.

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For all the various real-life societal issues that have played out on the “Survivor” beach — racial tensions, discussions over gender and sexuality, generational divides — the announcement about Mr. Lovett, one of the hosts of the liberal podcast “Pod Save America,” made me realize that partisan politics had never been prominently featured on the show.

I knew my colleague on the Politics desk, Alexandra Berzon, was also a “Survivor” fan, and would be eager to collaborate. At a Wisconsin bar one night in July, after a long day covering the Republican National Convention, Ali and I huddled in a corner, geeking out over “Survivor” factoids while our colleagues swapped political gossip.

We didn’t need to rewatch old seasons to find the rare political moment; our brains were already crammed full of useless — until now — “Survivor” trivia.

We instinctively knew of the few times politics had come up in an episode. The two moments that came to mind were on “Survivor: Philippines,” when one contestant, after being voted off, complained that the prize money was “not even a million bucks, it’s 600 grand by the time Obama takes it,” and on “Survivor: One World,” when a player said he was “a Republican, I am not a Democrat; I do not believe in handouts.”

As the new, 47th season premiere grew near, we began working in earnest. We had to track down former players and ask them whether political discourse among contestants had been common. If not, why? If yes, why did they think CBS had cut it?

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The reporting was complicated by the fact that I was traveling with Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, reporting on their campaign. It was jarring to switch between jumping in and out of the governor’s motorcade, surrounded by Secret Service agents, and calling former reality television contestants to ask about conversations they had years earlier while stranded on an island in Fiji or Samoa.

Speaking on the phone with the people I had watched on TV was surreal. In particular, calling Parvati Shallow, a four-time contestant and one-time winner, who is often considered the greatest player out of the franchise’s 700-plus contestants, was thrilling.

Friends asked whether I was nervous to ask the potential future vice president questions. But to be honest, I felt more pressure to nail my phone interview with Jeff Probst, the show’s longtime host and showrunner.

Ali and I unearthed a few interesting political moments that hadn’t aired, but the consensus from our reporting was, perhaps, unsurprising: “Survivor” players largely stayed away from political talk on the island, loath to say anything that might alienate other contestants or provide a reason for them to be ousted. Also, as they filmed far from civilization and dealt with monsoons and hunger, politics felt trite, they said. Mr. Probst suggested the show was somewhat of a “detox” from the typical barrage of current events and politics.

Some former players did speculate that Mr. Lovett could potentially bring a little more partisan energy to the show.

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Our article was published a few hours before the premiere last week, and I sat down to watch whether Mr. Lovett would shatter any “Survivor” norms.

It was a good thing we wrote it when we did.

Mr. Lovett briefly mentioned his podcast on the show, but he did not get the chance to get political.

He was voted off the island in the first episode.super game

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