he mathematical analysis of Coulomb gases, especially in dimensions higher than one, has been the focus of much recent activity. For the 3D Coulomb, there is a famous prediction of Jancovici, Lebowitz and Manificat that if N is the number of particles falling in a given region, then N has fluctuations of order cube-root of E(N). I will talk about the recent proof of this conjecture for a closely related model, known as the 3D hierarchical Coulomb gas. I will also try to explain, through some toy examples, why such unusually small fluctuations may be expected to appear in interacting gases.