Join Akilah Hughes and Josie Duffy Rice in conversation about Hughes’ new podcast, how history affects the present, and how real change happens.

Rebel Spirit is a limited-run podcast about Hughes’ return to her small town of Florence, Kentucky with a mission to change her high school’s mascot from a Confederate general to an inclusive symbol of Southern pride: the biscuit. The show features in-depth interviews with dozens of people including historians on race in America, the artist behind Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers’ viral mascot, sports journalist Jemele Hill, and people at schools across the country who have made the move away from problematic mascots. In its own unique vibe and sense of humor, Rebel Spirit makes the process of correcting historic wrongs less of a bummer.

Hughes is a true multi-hyphenate. The founding, award-winning host of Crooked Media’s What a Day daily news podcast, a WGA Award-nominated writer of a climate-conscious web series for Steven Soderbergh, and the author of Obviously: Stories from my Timeline for Penguin Random House, this Sundance Episodic Story Lab Fellow and USC Civic Media Fellow does just about everything in her own unique, comedic style.

Rice is a journalist, writer, law school graduate, and podcast host whose work is primarily focused on prosecutors, prisons, and other criminal justice issues. She is the host of the Peabody-nominated podcast UnReformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children and co-hosts What a Day, Crooked Media’s daily news podcast, two days a week. She was also the president of The Appeal, a news publication that publishes original journalism about the criminal justice system, and was a USC Civic Media Fellow.

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