unpacking vars from list of tuples

[Ross]

I'm inexperienced with some of the fancy list slicing syntaxes where
python shines.

If I have a list of tuples:

   k=[("a", "bob", "c"), ("p", "joe", "d"), ("x", "mary", "z")]

and I want to pull the middle element out of each tuple to make a new
list:

myList = ["bob", "joe", "mary"]

is there some compact way to do that?  I can imagine the obvious one
of

myList = []
for a in k:
   myList.append(a[1])

But I'm guessing Python has something that will do that in one line...

Any suggestion is appreciated...

Ross.