Hearing the forest for the trees

Abstract: Before the start of their current and fourth observing run (O4), the LIGO and Virgo detectors had already collected an impressive census of compact binary mergers in the local universe. By the end of O2 in August 2017 the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration claimed a total of 10 binary black hole mergers and one binary neutron star merger. O3 spanned April 2019 through March 2020, included many significant discoveries (e.g., neutron star-black hole binaries, surprisingly massive black holes), and culminated in the third catalog of compact binary mergers, GWTC-3, raising the total catalog of confidently detected binary mergers to 90. I will present some of what ground-based gravitational wave astronomy has taught us about compact binaries over the last nine years, and what may lie ahead.