Hi, everyone, I'm Joanna, and this is hyphenated, the podcast about living in the hyphen.

And today I'm really excited because, although Jenny couldn't be her today, I have invited back one of my very good friends.

She's already been on the show, Akila Hughes.

She is an incredible comedian, writer, actor, everything.

We came up in the New York scene at the same time doing internet comedy.

And she's just honestly an absolute, an absolute doll.

Is that a good introduction of you?

Yeah.

Honestly, it's incredibly sweet.

Yeah, we know we definitely came up together and now we're languishing in LA together.

Linguishing in L.A.

It's interesting because New York in like the 2010s, I felt like it was me and you trying so hard to make it while making little

videos on YouTube. A thousand percent. It was like, well, maybe someone will pay me real money

while I make all of this stuff. And then it was like, look at all these places paying us to make

our little videos. Yes, yes. And me and you, like, connected immediately.

I felt like very rarely, my dad always talks about how there's something called chemistry

and that there's people in the world that you just click with and people that you, you don't.

And I have like people in my family I don't click with.

And then there's random strangers I meet and I'm like, oh my God, are you,

are you my soulmate? You know? Yeah. Seriously. And last time we had you on the show,

we talked about health. We talked about your health struggles. We talked about my health

struggles. We talked about how struggling actually makes for good comedy. But one of the things

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