Akilah Hughes on YouTube, podcasting, and the uphill battle of book-writing

Comedian and writer Akilah Hughes first started posting videos on YouTube over a decade ago as a way to hone her voice, especially when it felt like no one in her suburban Kentucky hometown would listen. As the YouTube community grew, so did her audience, and so did her world. Now, she’s got a brand new memoir with Penguin Random House called Obviously: Stories From My Timeline, which connects the dots between her small-town childhood and her current status as a revered presence across the internet. We spoke with Hughes ahead of her book’s launch to talk the challenges of essay writing and the reason why YouTube culture has “gone off the deep end.” But it’s not all doom and gloom, we also had Hughes share some of her favorite follows on Twitter, and recommend a few podcast essentials, including The Read, Hysteria, and The Bradshaw Boys.