You know, I wanted to get into politics. My political formation was from my father's side, italian relatives. They were all unreconstructed gramscian communists. And so that was like my political upbringing. I remember going to visit my aunts and uncles and seeing the books on their shelf, and it's like, oh, they have this beautiful collection of bound books. And I talked to my aunt, and I say, what is this, Zia? What is this book? It's like, oh, this is the collected works of Lenin. Not ironically, not as a historical thing, but as this is the father of our revolution. And so that was my political formation. I went to get my undergraduate degree at Georgetown with the intention of being involved in left wing politics. The first thing that really disillusioned me was finding out that left wing politics in the United States is not for the common man. It's not to uplift the downtrodden. It's about maintaining their own status and prestige with the institutions. It's like a McKinsey consultant kind of worldview with the trappings of the left. It's the Harvard student who's wearing the Palestinian Kefiyyah, who then goes on to become an investment banker. And it's like, to me, it was so phony. I mean, it was a profoundly phony and empty political movement run by the sons and daughters of american elites for their own benefit. The second thing that really changed me, I spent five years. Well, first I traveled around the world making documentaries. I saw how marxists and communist governments actually work out in practice. Not great. And then I made a film for PBS, of all places, looking at three of America's poorest cities and by then, kind of center left views, which was, oh, you know, the great society, you know, public welfare programs trying to help people. When you actually see how those programs manifest in the south side of Memphis, south side of Youngstown, south side of Stockton, California, the poorest places in the country, you realize that many of those ideals that are presented to you as care, compassion, concern, equality, reparations for our racial past are at best cynical and at worst deeply destructive to the people that they're supposed to help. And so I spent so much time getting to know people and thinking about people's lives and then how politics affects them. And you realize that the project of the left is human disaster, even if, rationally speaking, it should produce something that is good. And then the final change was in the run up. And then after 2020, I mean, 2020 radicalized me because you realized how profound this cultural capture is, and you realize that the consequences are no longer abstract. They're no longer just destroying poor neighborhoods in South Memphis, let's say, that are totally run by the state, but actually it's now proliferated to the middle classes, the upper classes. This is something that wants total domination. And so I got canceled out of my documentary career once I became known as a conservative. I lost funding, I lost relationships, I lost broadcast distribution. And then it's like I'm out. Kind of launched into the wilderness, like, all right, well, that career is done. What do I do next? And then say, all right, well, let's get into politics. Let's use some of the skills that I've developed as a filmmaker. I'm not a traditional conservative. Like, I'm not a college Republican. I don't own a bow tie.