I chat to statistician, Dr Alethea Rae, about how statistics and mathematics can help give us perspective on general topics we discuss in public discourse.Alethea gives some background on how someone ends up with a PhD in statistics. We discuss the importance of testing assumptions when discussing difficult issues and get into why no one needed be surprised when Trump was elected in the US and the UK voted to leave the EU. We also get into education and why it is so important for educators to arm students with robust tools to engage in the complex and nuanced world without reducing it to its simplest form.