I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingiones show. Look, I can barely talk today. Just wait. This is Wednesday. On Friday, we're starting the preparation for a whole bunch of dental reconstruction I'm having. So wait until, let's see how I'm talking on Friday night when I have a scheduled recording on Friday night.

But yes, this is the Pekignano show.

And this is Michael Rectinwald.

Are you doing, Michael?

I'm doing well.

Thanks.

Good to be here.

At last, I should say, I've been waiting for an invitation for you for years for years.

You've been on the show before no never yes

you have i have yeah talking about w f talking about w f yeah oh no kidding okay sorry about that i

you know i've done so many no no i forget i have people who are who i'm interviewing and I'm like, um, my friend, um,

not me, not you the other day, uh, a couple weeks ago. I'm like, come on. First time on. He's like,

I was on like three months ago. Yeah. So, so this is, um, your your journey from where I first, I guess I first heard about you in 2017.

So why don't you tell everybody your journey to what's today, the August 20th, 2025?

Okay. Yeah, that's, it's been a long and winding road.

Shall we say that in 2016, let me just give you a slight recap.

In 2016, in the fall of 2016, or in the late summer of 2016, I was still a Marxist.

By October, I had already transitioned to a libertarian and voted for Trump.

And so, yeah, I mean, you know, having gone through academia and all that, I was in a, you know, I went through

a PhD program and a master's program in English.

And in the course of that process, you know, got turned into a Marxist.

You know, I can't really explain how it happened, except that there's kind of an

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