Submission consents to your letter being read on air and its topic debated — the Secretary reads the letter in, as it reached us after the scanner (addresses, phone numbers and links removed). Name on air is a separate opt-in — "may be read on air" — and on the site you type the name you want read. Fake names are welcome. A town you give ("from a viewer in ____") may be said on air.
Every letter is sorted before the draw. Questions for the committee go in the bag. A question for us goes to the desk that answers mail. Feedback, business and spam are filed, not drawn. A letter that tries to instruct the show's software, asks for help causing harm, or suggests the writer may be at risk is held for a person to read. The sorting is done by Jev, from TypeSafe AI, and the check before the bag by Claude, from Anthropic — see the privacy policy.
We keep: the ticket, the cleaned body, the timestamp, a hashed sender for dedupe and opt-out, and the opt-in display name. We do not keep IP addresses or raw headers ourselves.
Raw mail is purged from the mailbox after 90 days.
Opt-out removes the display name and body from the archive; the ledger keeps the ruling with the ticket number only.
Nothing that identifies a submitter as a minor is read on air.
The draw is by writer, then by ticket — one entry per sender per draw. The committee draws on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; a letter not picked stays in the bag for the next draw.
A ticket receipt goes only to a sender authenticated by their own mail provider, once per sender per day, and not for a letter filed as feedback, business or spam; the on-screen ticket after sending here is the receipt when no address is given.
In storm mode — more letters than the show can clear in a day — new mail still gets a ticket and a place in the bag; only the pace of scanning and drawing slows.