Hi, everyone, I'm Joanna.

This is hyphenated, the podcast about living in the hyphen.

And today I have an incredible co-host while Jenny is off at her sister's wedding.

Akela Hughes is one of my favorite people in the world.

She is outstandingly intelligent, incredibly funny.

And one of my first internet crushes that became a real life friend.

And I am just so excited to have Akela here co-hosting today's episode with me.

Hi, honey. Hello. Thank you for having me.

Oh my gosh. What an intro. I love you. Even more than what you said about me. I love you the same.

I was also like, wow. How dare you insinuate that, Akela? I also had an internet crush. So this is,

you know. It's kind of crazy because me and you sort of lived similar career paths, I guess.

It's, you know, we were in the comedy scene in New York, but we sort of very much found our

footing and what we wanted to say and our point of view through the stuff that we made on

the internet. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there was, you know, I mean, I guess like what I talk about your career

path, I do think that like you had more of a legit comedy thing in New York.

Like you were on like real sketch teams at UCB and stuff, you know, like you were like

doing it.

And I think that like I was such a fan in that regard. But yeah, your internet

presence and the stuff that you wanted to talk about and the things that you could bring so much

clarity to and so much levity to, that was always online. And I think that like, I think it's,

that's the beautiful thing about the internet is we actually could like say the real stuff.

You know, we don't have to try to, I think, fit in with whatever comedy is doing at the moment.

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