Keep It! Crooked Media

Amazing podcast. Funny and full of cultural references. I was hoping Rae Sanni would be Kara’s replacement because Aida is truly...not a great fit.

I’m sure Aida is a lovely person and I want her to succeed in life, but she kind of exemplifies the problem with assuming someone is charismatic and spontaneously clever because they have a truly wild twitter. The problem isn’t only that she’s young, it’s that she seems expressly disinterested in thinking about pop culture in a textured, interesting, honest way. When Ira and Louis have a ~hot take~, they appear to deliver it from a place of being genuinely driven to further understand their complicated attraction to pop culture’s myriad lures, disappointments, etc. Not so much with Aida, who I find often digresses into the milquetoast tumbler-politics critique of running down a list of what a culture artifact “did right” and then weighing that against what it “did wrong” — a really boring way of getting at the political resonances of something and a method of criticism that, ironically, Ira Louis and Kara used to excel at unpacking. Again, I’m sure she has many talents. This just seems like a deeply wrong forum for showing them off.

Idk how this stuff works, but is it really too late to get someone else? I neverrr put my Yelp reviewer hat on and air my grievances like this, but the recent turn seriously has me feeling desperate and deeply bummed out. I still compulsively listen because I’m riding the feeling of giddiness (built up over years of solid programming) of waking up on Wednesday and being *thrilled* to listen to Keep It. But it leaves me feeling deflated now, and I don’t think I’m alone in that feeling.

Love Louis & Ira! I liked when they had a rotating third guest host and they did a great job choosing different people. I wish they’d go back to that format. I’ve been listening less lately. Interview guests are always excellent.