Hello listeners welcome to another edition of

Politico's nerd cast I'm Scott Bland your host.

This week on the nerd cast we're gonna talk about Nancy Pelosi taking a big

big step toward reclaiming the gavel as Speaker of the House.

How did she manage to turn back so many vocal critics in this round of the speakership fight?

That's one key question we're going to answer, but we're also going to talk about the hurdles that remain in place in front of her in her battle to reclaim that Speaker's gavel.

Plus, the Mueller investigation seems to be heating up in a big way again. The president's

one-time lawyer was back in court. This time, admitting he lied to Congress about Donald

Trump's business dealings in Russia.

So we're going to connect some of the dots on stuff that happened with the Mueller investigation

this weekend.

There's a lot more besides that that we're going to talk through.

As always, and given that we're talking about the Mueller investigation,

this feels particularly important.

We're taping this a little bit before noon, eastern on Thursday.

That's November the 29th, so it's all up to date as of then.

All right, let's jump right into it.

I want to welcome our first guests.

Joining us from Capitol Hill, we have two intrepid members of

Politico's congressional team, Rachel Bade.

Thank you for joining us.

Hi.

...