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I like to say that this podcast is driven by three principles: curiosity, rigor and a sense of humor. You, dear listeners, share those qualities, certainly when it comes to curiosity.

I collected all the questions you submitted since we last recorded a mailbag episode at the end of November and even if I just limited us to the best ones, we’d be looking at a three hour podcast at least.

I didn’t want to let your questions go unanswered, so I decided to sort them into two categories and we are doing two mailbag episodes. The theme of the first is current events and the second is esoteric political questions. Next week we’ll go esoteric; today we are doing current events and there’s a lot to discuss.

There’s the ICE surge in Minneapolis, shooting of Renee Good and related protests, the federal investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, major protests in Iran and threats of military action by President Trump, Democrat Mary Peletola is running for Senate in Alaska, the White House met with Denmark and Greenland, and there’s the story that was the only thing anyone could talk about just last week: Venezuela.

We seem to be cycling between a different major headline just about every hour and with me to help make sense of it all is dear friend of the pod and senior data scientist at the Washington Post, Lenny Bronner.

Also, a couple quick updates: 1) Our live show on January 27th is sold out. We can’t wait to see you there! Paid subscribers will get a recording of the show after the fact. 2) Our seasonal merch shop is going away at the end of the month, so get your merch at gdpolitics.com/merch. 3) A reminder to submit your own questions on Substack, on social media, or at [email protected].