Thank you Yolanda D., Anto diNetto, Karen S, Zach Keeshin, Naomi, and many others for tuning into my live video with Perrin Ireland yesterday—what a fascinating and WILD conversation on what we can learn from animal sex and the animal kingdom, all documented in Perrin’s cheeky and brilliant debut book coming out this week, a graphic novel called, Poking the Squid: What We Can Learn from Animal Sex.
Perrin is an artist, environmentalist, and the great-granddaughter of THEE Eleanor Roosevelt. Her watercolor artwork has appeared in Nature, Scientific American, Discover, and The Rumpus, and she spent a decade as a visual storyteller at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
During our interview we explored her work studying animals during a biodiversity crisis and her Substack, Thirsty Science, which centers on bringing joy, humor, and the ‘naughty’ back into “naughty by nature” through radical environmental storytelling. Perrin argued that environmental messaging has become too dire, too fatalistic, and that the antidote is falling back in love with the earth we so love and desperately need. She emphasized telling the stories of science rather than just studying it, and we giggled teenagers about her “Brand of Filth”—whales literally keeping each other afloat while they ride each other’s pony (wink wink.) We talked about moving out of climate grief into connection with others doing this work, pleasure activism, and of course a nod to Eleanor Roosevelt herself as a kind of feminist science icon and “first lady of the world.”
