Nichole Perkins on the Healing Power of ‘Frasier,’ the Exclusive Whiteness of Brat Pack Movies, and the Complications of Miss Piggy

Pop Literacy

Nichole Perkins knows the power of pop culture: She has seen how Frasier’s Niles Crane inspired her to overcome her own professional hang-ups, how Prince taught her critical lessons about sex, and how Miss Piggy served as both a role model and a cautionary tale about modern femininity. She writes poetically about all of that and more in her essay collection Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be.

Writer and poet Saeed Jones said of the collection: “Hear the dark liquor of her laughter rippling behind her sentences in this magnetic memoir as it explores a journalist’s obsession with pop culture and the difficulty of navigating relationships as a Black woman through fanfiction, feminism, and Southern mores.” In this episode we talk to Nichole about why we should take pop culture seriously, how it helps us discuss difficult issues, and why both Niles and Daphne and Kermit and Piggy are kinda messed up.

Read more:

• Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be by Nichole Perkins
• Nichole Perkins online
• Nichole Perkins on Twitter
• Vanderbilt by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe
• Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
• The Anatomy of Story by John Truby