Ira Madison — Pure Innocent Fun - with Dan Zak

You can recall the first TV show, movie, book, or song that made you feel understood--that shaped how you live, what you love, and whom you would become. It gave you an entire worldview. For Ira Madison, that book was Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, which cemented the idea that pop culture could be a rigorous subject--and that, for better or worse, it shapes all of us.In Pure Innocent Fun, Madison explores the key cultural moments that inspired his career as a critic and guided his coming of age as a Black gay man in Milwaukee. In this hilarious, full-throttle trip through the '90s and 2000s, he recounts learning about sex from Buffy the Vampire Slayer; facing the most heartbreaking election of his youth (not George W. Bush's win, but Jennifer Hudson losing American Idol); and how never getting his driver's license in high school made him just like Cher Horowitz in Clueless "a virgin who can't drive."Brimming with a profound love for a bygone culture and alternating between irreverence and heartfelt insight, Pure Innocent Fun, like all the best products of pop culture, will leave you entertained and surprisingly enlightened.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593446188?ic_referral=4IkohOtCueOkTM5TrD3wZeNB_5hP5Q2qndgAsHPY9ecwM4C1S-2fs1mUA51pnrz7DBwlg1SOXhbQb-lmMf7DGx6eUf1R6UW6vLOCJwtwHxB8r4f7leauFapxLAx32uXa3jdfLXMIra Madison III is the host of Crooked Media's pop culture podcast Keep It. His television writing credits include Uncoupled, Q-Force, Nikki Fre$h, and So Help Me Todd. He has written for GQ, New York Magazine, Interview, MTV News, and Cosmopolitan, among other publications. Nylon named him one of the "most reliably hilarious and incisive cultural critics writing now." He has appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Watch What Happens Live, The Wendy Williams Show, and the second season of the Netflix drama You. Ira Madison III lives in New York City.Madison is in conversation with Dan Zak, a journalist for The Washington Post, where for nearly 20 years he has covered everything under the sun. He is the author of the 2016 nonfiction book Almighty, about an 82-year-old nun who broke into a nuclear weapons facility in Tennessee. He lives in Northeast D.C. and these days he's an editor in the features department of The Post.*recorded 3/2/2025