Boswell Book Company and Milwaukee Film present a ticketed evening at the Oriental Theatre with cultural critic, TV writer, and Milwaukee native Ira Madison III, host of the beloved Keep It podcast. Madison III visits with his debut book, Pure Innocent Fun.
Tickets for this event cost $40 ($35 for MKE Film members) and include admission to the event and a signed copy of Pure Innocent Fun.
In his nostalgic and raucous new collection of original essays, Ira Madison III combines memoir and criticism to offer a brand-new pop-culture manifesto. Most of us remember the first TV show, movie, book, or song that made us feel understood, shaped how we live, and gave us an entire worldview. With his new book, Madison explores the key cultural moments that inspired his career as a critic and guided his coming of age as a Black, gay man in Milwaukee.
From Grammy, Emmy, Tony, and Pulitzer winner Lin-Manuel Miranda: “This is the most fun I’ve had reading all year. Like Chuck Klosterman before him, Ira Madison III takes seriously and analyzes the pop culture detritus that took up hours of our lives as byproducts of the late 1900s. From Coldplay to Family Matters to Passions and everything in between, it feels like Ira has taken apart every dumb thing I’ve obsessed over and put it back together again - all my ‘roman empires.’ I laughed and cried and felt so, so seen.”
Ira Madison III’s television credits include Uncoupled, Q-Force, Nikki Fre$h, and So Help Me Todd. He has written for magazines including GQ, New York, and Cosmopolitan, and 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, The Wendy Williams Show, and the Netflix drama You.
Ira Madison III, host of the beloved Keep It podcast, in conversation with journalist, comedian, and New York Times bestselling author, Charlie Berens.