new version of my last attempt:

import re

a = [['0    Client Name:'],
     ['0    Client ID:'],
     ['0    Industry:'],
     ['0    SEC:'],
     ['0    Industry Sector:']]

for i in range(len(a)):

    b = a[i][0]
    b = b.split('   ')
    
    print(b[1])

output:

 Client Name:
 Client ID:
 Industry:
 SEC:
 Industry Sector:

Consider using literal_eval:

from ast import literal_eval

txt = ["[21049090, 'AARTIIND22AUGFUT', 'AARTIIND', 850, 1793]", "[21049346, 'ABB22AUGFUT', 'ABB', 250, 3329]"]

result = [literal_eval(i) for i in txt]

print(result)

Output:

[[21049090, 'AARTIIND22AUGFUT', 'AARTIIND', 850, 1793], [21049346, 'ABB22AUGFUT', 'ABB', 250, 3329]]

Edit:

Or eval(). Refer to Tim Biegeleisen's answer.

You were quite close, this is how I would've done it:

result = "('%s')" % "','".join(mylist)

The simplest way, of course, it is just write the assignment statement:

new_list=['title','plays']

But you probably intended to ask a more general question, like "How can I extract the 2nd item from the first two tuples in a list?" Like so:

new_list = [alist[0][1], alist[1][1]]

Or maybe you meant, "How can I extract the 2nd item from each tuple in a list?" Like so:

new_list = [t[1] for t in alist]

If the format is exactly the same you've provided, you'd better go with using re:

import re

file_info = ['{file:file1, directory:dir1}', '{file:file2, directory:directory2}']

pattern = re.compile(r'\w+:(\w+)')
for item in file_info:
    print re.findall(pattern, item)

or, using string replace(), strip() and split() (a bit hackish and fragile):

file_info = ['{file:file1, directory:dir1}', '{file:file2, directory:directory2}']

for item in file_info:
    item = item.strip('}{').replace('file:', '').replace('directory:', '')
    print item.split(', ')

both code snippets print:

['file1', 'dir1']
['file2', 'directory2']

If the file_info items are just dumped json items (watch the double quotes), you can use json to load them into dictionaries:

import json

file_info = ['{"file":"file1", "directory":"dir1"}', '{"file":"file2", "directory":"directory2"}']

for item in file_info:
    item = json.loads(item)
    print item['file'], item['directory']

or, literal_eval():

from ast import literal_eval

file_info = ['{"file":"file1", "directory":"dir1"}', '{"file":"file2", "directory":"directory2"}']

for item in file_info:
    item = literal_eval(item)
    print item['file'], item['directory']

both code snippets print:

file1 dir1
file2 directory2

Hope that helps.