"So that story sounds like bullshit."

I remember saying that to Akilah Hughes early in our first production meeting about the podcast that would become Rebel Spirit, which launched last week and released its second episode today. Akilah had just relayed the story she'd been told of how her high school got its name "the Rebels": the students of the founding class in the mid-1950s were so enamored with the film Rebel Without a Cause that they named the team after it.

It is a story, like I said, that sounds like bullshit.

But there's a big difference between something sounding like bullshit and being able to prove that it is bullshit. And so one of the first things I embarked on with Akilah when we started working on Rebel Spirit was trying to figure out if a story from 70 years ago was true or not. The small number of people who were there at the time are either dead or extremely elderly. There's no archive of the school's newspapers, if there even was one at the time. And nobody at the school today will talk to us, so if there's some information about the name held there, we couldn't get it. So we dug.

Today's episode, "History Lessons," is a result of that digging and it's some of the best reporting I've ever done. It ends up not just being about the school mascot, but about what it was like to be black during desegregation, about the domestic terrorism that followed the Civil War, and about how, when you start digging, you never quite know where you're going to end up.

The winding path that accompanies good reporting is what I've always loved about journalism. Following the facts wherever they might lead is what's kept me involved in this business for so long (it's certainly not the money).

And that's been the most rewarding thing about producing Rebel Spirit: the journey has brought us so many unexpected places, talking to so many people we didn't expect to, and learning so much about not just a small school in Northern Kentucky, but about the lies that America is built on. (And yes, we expose those too.)

But also, it's hilarious. And poignant. And pretty goddamn amazing. Every episode we finish I'm like "this is the best one," and then we do the next one. I can't wait for you to hear all of them.

If you haven't started listening to Rebel Spirit yet, today's the day. If you have, thank you, and please spread the word. Tell a friend, post about it, leave reviews. Podcasting is a wild medium in that it really does need you to help get it out there. I'd love your help. Thanks.

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