Thirst Aid Kit is a podcast about celebrity lust and sexual desire hosted by journalist Bim Adewunmi and writer Nichole Perkins. The podcast premiered on November 1, 2017 and was officially produced by BuzzFeed until January 2019. The podcast was named to "best podcast" lists by Time and Entertainment Weekly. The podcast was picked up by Slate, and returned on September 26, 2019.
History
Adewunmi and Perkins worked together at BuzzFeed and mutually enjoyed discussing pop culture and their celebrity sexual interests. This encouraged them to pitch the idea of a podcast about celebrity crushes to BuzzFeed executives. The purpose of Thirst Aid Kit is to openly discuss celebrities they find attractive and do so in an unabashed manner. According to Perkins, "It's really important to give women a space to show what we are interested in and what women want." They also use TAK to highlight people whose work may be well known, but their face is less familiar, such as director Ryan Coogler. The name Thirst Aid Kit refers to the slang meaning of the word thirst, which refers to sexual desire. The first episode premiered on November 1, 2017. On January 25, 2019, it was announced that BuzzFeed would no longer produce the podcast and the hosts are currently looking for a new sponsor. One day prior, BuzzFeed announced company-wide layoffs which eliminated 15% of their staff. In August 2019, it was announced that Slate had picked up the podcast. It relaunched through the company on September 26. In addition to the return of the podcast, TAK also hosts live events such as "Thirsty Movie Nights." In February 2020, BFI announced a forthcoming series curated by Christina Newland called Thirst: Female Desire on Screen that had similar artwork to the TAK logo and a similar description. Journalist Musa Okwonga and Twitter users accused BFI of stealing the concept. Perkins and Adewunmi stated that they had been called "deluded narcissists" for noting the similarities. Newland denied the accusations of plagiarism and stated she had been working on the topic since October 2017 and had not heard of TAK until 2019, after which she approached Perkins twice to collaborate on her book. BFI released a statement apologizing for the similarities and promised to change the series imagery "as we accept that it was too similar to their logo when coupled with the word Thirst."
Format
Each episode typically focuses on a single actor who the hosts find sexually attractive. The podcast begins and ends with either host reading an original short passage of fan fiction, which they call a drabble. The short reading features the focal actor in an intimate, and sometimes sexual, situation with the writer. Next, they explain what makes the actor desirable. Finally, they dissect the actor's persona in the context of Hollywood and society at large.
Guests
Thirst Aid Kit sometimes features the person who the episode is about, such as Charlie Cox and Rahul Kohli. On January 28, 2018, the hosts had a phone interview with Chris Evans who was on the set of . Evans made comments about not perceiving himself as "hot," which were picked up by media outlets such as E!, W, and InStyle.
