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welcome to amped up this is your host Ryan Knight and our guest today is Justin Peglino.

Justin is running for Congress under the Green Party in Connecticut's third district.

Justin, welcome to Amped Up.

Thank you very much, Ryan.

It's great to be here.

Since this is your first time on the show,

can you just share a little bit about your backstory

and why you're running for Congress?

Well, yeah, I am originally, went to medical school and had a career in medicine and science.

I worked for 15 years in research, getting a PhD and then doing a postdoc.

I studied oncalytic viruses, which are viruses that infect tumor cells and published several papers and I enjoy the work it was

challenging but I kind of came to a point where I kind of wanted a second act as some people say in their life

and I wanted to do something different. I've always been kind of really absorbed by politics and follow politics very closely my whole life and also music.

And so those are kind of two things that I didn't have a lot of time for when I was full time

working in the lab. Also I'm a married with two kids and that takes up a lot of time as well.

So I kind of I made a transition in see 2019 and or yeah

2019 and became a full-time musician, piano teacher, slash activist.

And really I wasn't planning to run for office.

I never planned to run for office. It was just something that kind of everything kind of

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