In 2017, for better or worse, politics was pop culture. (Former) heads of the FBI had secret Twitter accounts. A late night talk show host became one of the most public faces protesting the healthcare bill. Teen Vogue and a Twitter account for a dictionary spearheaded a backlash against a former reality TV star, who just happens to be our commander-in-chief. And already in 2018, meaty issues like the wage gap and sexual harassment dominated one of the entertainment industry’s biggest award shows. Also, we might have galvanized Oprah’s campaign for president?

In wild times like these, we need frank and smart conversations about politics, pop culture, and how they intersect more than ever. Here to help is Crooked Media, a powerhouse podcast studio founded by former Obama staffers that shot to the top of every listening chart this year with its take-no-prisoners conversations about Washington. Crooked’s latest addition to its lineup? Ira Madison III, culture writer at The Daily Beast and Twitter aficionado, who drops a new podcast today called “Keep It.”

In honor of the release of the eagerly anticipated first episode (which we’ll be playing on loop in the office today), we talked to Ira about how the podcast came to fruition, the relationship between politics and pop culture in 2018, and who the Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney of Crooked Media are.

Ira on Lovett or Leave It. Credit Ira Madison III on Twitter.

TuneIn: Hi Ira! So how did ‘Keep It’ come to be?

Ira Madison III: ‘“Keep It” started as a Twitter catchphrase that I was using, and it became a succinct, nicer way to say “F off” to the news that you didn’t really like. One of my earliest uses of it was when NBC announced that Megyn Kelly was joining from Fox News, and I remember retweeting that news from, like, The Hollywood Reporter and writing “Keep it.” That spun off into its own thing, and then I started regularly appearing on the Crooked Media podcasts. I had an appearance on Ana Marie Cox’s show first, and then that led to me being on Lovett or Leave It, and literally after that first performance on Lovett, one of the producers at Crooked, Tanya Somanader, said, “Let’s figure out how we can work together.” And from then on, I sort of always knew that I wanted the show to be called Keep It, but we didn’t really have a format for it until after the summer.

We figured we wanted a show that was similar to Pod Save America in regards to the seriousness with which it would discuss pop culture and Hollywood, but also something with the levity of Lovett or Leave It, because that intersection demands seriousness and gravitas but also a sense of humor. I remember the boys at Crooked launched their show because they felt like they really needed to do something once Trump was elected and give people ways to resist, ways to cope with the election. For me, I feel like with everything that’s happening in Hollywood and was a big conversation at the Globes, it’s important now to have these conversations about Hollywood and pop culture and what’s going on, what we can do, and where we’re going in the future.

“With the way social media is now, you might see a tweet about Donald Trump and North Korea followed by a tweet about Harvey Weinstein followed by a tweet about Justin Timberlake’s new single.”

T: How would you describe the relationship between pop culture and politics and how do you think this relationship has evolved since the 2016 election and the events of the last year?

I: I always feel that politics and pop culture have been intertwined. Our politics are informed by pop culture. A lot of the pushes in society toward diversity, acceptance, and even abortion rights have been dealt with in popular culture: in TV, in films, in movies, in music. It inspires people to have conversations among themselves that then inform how we interact with one another. Popular culture has always informed how we act in culture at large, going back centuries. Shakespeare’s plays were references to popular culture. It’s something that’s just always been a push and pull, because our politics are the laws that we create to govern ourselves, and our pop culture is how we express how we feel about our everyday lives. And it’s usually artists and people on the forefront of pop culture who are pushing necessary conversations that we need to be having.

I think that the 2016 election made it a lot more abundant, that connection. Mostly because everyone uses Twitter and social media. Before the election, it used to be that you could keep pop culture separate and you could keep politics separate, at least in your daily consumption of it. You could watch the news, or a talk show; you could read People magazine, but then you could also read The New York Times. But with the way our social media is now, everything is coming at you rapidly, and you may see a tweet about Donald Trump and North Korea followed by a tweet about Harvey Weinstein followed by a tweet about Justin Timberlake’s new single. It’s impossible to separate any of these things in your mind anymore, and because so many people got aggressively political on social media in the last year because of how divisive things became, I feel like it’s also translated into people becoming more aggressively opinionated in how they consume pop culture and respond to it

T: One thing that I thought of when you were talking about the longstanding relationship between politics and pop culture was your article on Dynasty. Do you see any Dynasty-like shows in our current television lineup that you feel are really representative or saying something about culture?

I: You know, it’s interesting. Dynasty was an ‘80’s primetime soap, and it always reminds me of the quote from TV creator David Milch who said that, “Every show is Falcon Crest.” Dynasty is a lot like Falcon Crest in the sense that, although Falcon Crest was a soap that was set in a vineyard and Dynasty was about oil, it reminds me of these lavish primetime soap operas that usually end up reflecting the culture that we lived in. And Dynasty felt very ’80s, a show like Melrose Place felt very much like what the ’90s was about: youth culture and a new sexual boom. I don’t think we have a new one yet, but a show that’s mostly mirrors Dynasty for me right now is Game of Thrones.

I feel like it follows the same format of the show. It’s very soapy — the boardroom deals are just replaced by people playing chess with war maneuvers. And when you look at Game of Thrones, it’s very connected to our current political climate. There’s constant conversations being had about women leaders on Game of Thrones, there’s conversations about portrayals of rape and sexuality on that show, particularly because it is a show being written by men. And so I think that Game of Thrones is reflective of the conversations that we’re all having right now. It’s these wild, outrageous things, and we see how women are being depicted on this show. It’s bringing us back to that conversation now about how women are depicted in politics and how we write about women when they run for office, and maybe the misogyny that Hillary Clinton experiences is maybe the misogyny that’s being written for characters like Daenerys. I think that Game of Thrones is the show that is in the pop culture consciousness for a reason.

Credit: HBO

T: You are going to be hosting a podcast at a time when we see a lot of companies ‘pivoting to video.’ What role do you think audio and podcasts have as an entertainment medium and what role do you think that they play in our current entertainment and media space?

I: I think podcasts are a obvious continuation of radio conversations that have existed since the early onset of the media, and I think that people are responding to programs where they can get real conversations and really consume something substantial and feel like they’re informed. Traditionally we’ve done that with the radio, and it’s what we do when we watch video, but usually it’s television programs. I think one of the problems of the shortsightedness of ‘pivots to video’ is the fact that video content isn’t being created as an alternative. It’s being created as a ‘here’s something we can do quickly to cash in on the fact that advertisers believe that video is the future.’ But I feel like so many people know that videos don’t get as much traffic as advertisers would believe that they do, and more people listen to podcasts than are watching a 30-second video clip of someone talking about a news item that they could just read a quick headline of on Twitter. It’s great to be doing audio now at Crooked Media because I was doing audio at MTV News, and I don’t feel that MTV really put a lot of care and attention into audio endeavors there. It’s a shame.

“So many people got aggressively political on social media, and I feel like it’s also translated into people becoming more aggressively opinionated in how they consume pop culture and respond to it.”

T: What do you think you wanted most as a creator and as a host going into this?

I: I just wanted to be someone who took the medium seriously and someone who was seriously looking forward to having real conversations. It’s easier to do it at Crooked, because they are an independent company and not attached to a media company that can’t have conversations about the Golden Globes or musicians like Justin Timberlake when they’re under attack for, say, working with Woody Allen while also wearing the Time’s Up pin at the Golden Globes. Their bottom line was always, ‘We need to be nice to Justin Timberlake so he’ll show up at our awards show.’ So, I love the opportunity to be me, frankly. That’s all I wanted, and it’s worked so far everywhere else I’ve been, and I look forward to doing more of that in 2018.