Animals are really really really good at being themselves.
Savoring Earth’s weirdness is a resilience tool in incessantly trying times. This newsletter is a celebration of how dang good life is at living itself and a joyous recitation of how every animal alive on earth right now is exactly as evolved, in their own way, as we are. It is a newsletter about animal brilliance, animal strength, and animal interpersonal kink. Developing fluency in animal lifestyles and behaviors can be inspiring, heartening, hilarious, and humiliating. I know most of us feel great pain at the peril our planet faces. I promise you will giggle when you open this newsletter. You might be a little bit moved by what you learn in this newsletter about your fellow animals on Earth. I promise you will be stunned and impressed and maybe a little horrified by the animals described in the illustrations, videos, scientist interviews, and comics I share.
What you get:
An absolutely natural bounty, if I do say so! PAID subscribers ($7 monthly or $50 yearly) get full access to all issues, plus bonus weekly nature comics, or Thirsty Science hooping videos, AS WELL AS the monthly Thirsty Science in-print hand-delivered via USPS edition! All subscribers, paid or free, get the Thirsty Science in-print newsletter digital edition, as well as occasional emails starring one fabulous animal. We learn about a new animal on Earth every day- lucky you! There is so much to learn. But for now, here’s the Who, What, When, Where, and Why, but not in that order.
WHO:
My name is Perrin Ireland, and I doth doodle animal activity all dang day. I’ve spent the last decade exploring how animals make a living- how they make noise, have sex and try to kill each other- using language, line, and color to communicate the shocking realities of life on this planet. My work is a collaboration with the natural world, scientists, and the viewer, whose engagement informs my visual and performance research. I have built an art practice inside scientific and policy institutions, including ten years at the Natural Resources Defense Council, telling stories situated between what we know about the planet and our belonging to it. I began by illustrating a marine biology lab’s research at Brown University while earning a science degree. Past clients include OnEarth Magazine, Discover Magazine, Nature Magazine, Scientific American, Damn Joan, and the FDR Library. This newsletter is an evolution, via email, of the PRI Update, a monthly illustrated science newsletter delivered by USPS to 400 homes for 2 years. Recent experience includes the Format Festival, a Summer 2021 Works on Water residency on Governors Island and ICAMiami/Knight Foundation Art + Research Center's Fall 2021 Oceanic Archive Semester.
WHAT:
An email missive that will not just inform you about the glories of animals—single-cellular and multi-cellular, it’s true—but wrap up that ribald science (I have a proclivity for how the critters poke the squid, it’s true- in colorful illustrations, hula hoop explainer videos, illustrated interviews with scientists, dissections of the dynasties of warring hyena clans, all narrated by yours truly. Don’t be turned off by the “science” of my thirstology: we will be learning together, one marsupial that dies by suicidal sex at a time.
WHEN:
All paid subscribers will get a splash of animal sex in saturated colors weekly, and the good old fashioned print-edition in B&W by your local postal worker monthly. All subscribers will get the digital edition of that in-print newsletter to their inbox monthly.
WHERE:
If you’re a paid subscriber, you get a treat from me every month at home (the print edition!) All subscribers will see me lightning up their inbox with Earth’s eroticism so add the thirst to that address book, baby.
WHY:
Frogs have been on earth 5 million years. Our species has been here only 250,000. We are babies with much to learn.
To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
