We regularly see mainstream media shows dedicated to political humour, but how often do you see science comedians? For the last decade primatologist, actor, producer, writer, host and comedian Natalia Reagan has been working to change that. “Comedy is the perfect opportunity to democratise science, kind of like what Jon Stewart has done for politics. He brought American politics to the mainstream – that’s what I want to do with science,” Reagan told The Brilliant.
Forging a new path is no mean feat, but Reagan has made some solid ground. She’s created viral science communication videos, was a correspondent and comedy writer on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk, a regular podcast host on StarTalk All-Stars, has appeared on Nat Geo Wild’s Everything You Didn’t Know About Animals and she’s co-hosted acclaimed podcast Curiosity Daily.
From an early age Reagan was surrounded by both science and arts. “I grew up in Los Angeles, so I lived in the film industry, but my mum is also a professor with a PhD in psychology. So, I grew up in these two worlds,” she says.
Despite her love for animals, particularly primates, Reagan wasn’t a star science geek. “I don’t want to speak ill of my science teachers, but I wasn’t excelling in math and science. But I loved doing comedy, and so I threw myself into that,” says Reagan, whose comedy heroes include Mel Brooks.
Reagan studied theatre at the University of California Irvine for a year before dropping out. But in that year she took an anthropology class. “I fell in love with anthropology and the idea of understanding how we got to where we are and how we continue to evolve. I was absolutely hooked,” she says.
While working in acting and doing commercial production, Reagan continued to take anthropology classes at community college. For a while there she thought anthropology would be a side passion. “At the time I didn’t really know how to actually pursue it,” she says. As an actress, Reagan has appeared in My Name is Earl, The Drew Carey Show, Better Off Ted, and Sex Drive.
But then in 2005 she got hit by a truck – literally. “I almost died, I lost six units of blood. It was one of those accidents where it was the big, ‘Come to Jesus’, like what are you doing with your life? I always joke that some people need a kick in the pants to kind of get their life in order. I needed to get hit by ’94 Ford Ranger,” she says wryly.
So Reagan decided to stop putting her science studies to the side and make it the main gig. She steered her course to primatology, studying spider monkeys on the Azuero Peninsula in Panama.
“I went to Primate Field School in Costa Rica, which essentially is a school that teaches you how to hack it in a forest, put together a field project, ask the right research questions, come up with methodology. In graduate school, I moved to Panama for three months to basically count monkeys in trees and get as much data as I could about, you know, their age, their sex, and any distinguishing characteristics. It was a magical time. We would go out every day, oftentimes on horseback to get to the actual forest,” she says.
The passion for primates remains. Reagan is currently applying for grants to build a nature bridge for safe passageway for the monkeys to avoid cars and powerlines. And the plans to buy land there to set up a field station and surf school. She’s also passionate about communicating that becoming a scientist isn’t just about being good at maths and science. “That is a huge discovery I made since becoming a scientist – you don’t have to know all the other STEM fields; you can always just use a calculator!”
Google ‘anthropology and boobs’
In the last year of her Master’s degree, Reagan decided to combine her two passions – science and comedy. She had made a video, ‘The Story of Boobs: The Breast Tale ever told’ where she talks about why breasts evolved. It’s sassy and fun, and Reagan’s skills as a comedian and a scientist shine through. “I am fascinated with how the environment shapes us, and then even our mode of locomotion shapes the way we look. I became obsessed with the idea that we got our uniquely human butts from walking on two legs and the same with getting larger boobs,” she says.
The video was popular but not viral. “The joke was: Your video doesn’t have to go viral, but it definitely needs to be seen by the right person,” says Reagan. And a few months after it was published on YouTube, Reagan got a call from producer the Today Show who wanted to do a segment about America’s obsession with breasts. “They found me because they googled ‘anthropologist and boobs’,” says Reagan.
The experience solidified for her how uneasy Americans feel about sexuality and bodies. “I admitted to watching Skinemax (a soft porn channel) every once in a while as a kid, and the other female guests gasped at my willingness to talk about my sexuality and got really uncomfortable,” she says. “It drove home the point that America is just as puritanical as ever.”
Not long after The Today Show segment, Stephen Colbert featured excerpts of the video asking about butts. In response, Reagan did ‘Butt Week’, talking about the evolution of the human butt. “Being a biological anthropology professor, I get to talk about this all the time. So it’s kind of fun to be able to talk about it in a sort of cheeky – pun intended – way,” she says.
Reagan uses her platform to create videos encouraging people to get to know their bodies and to check for health issues. Her most popular video, ‘Play with your balls’ was created after a friend’s younger brother got testicular cancer at age 26. “There are all sorts of ways to communicate about health and cancer prevention, but I feel humour is the sugar to help the medicine go down,” she says. “With the boob video and ‘Play with your balls’ videos, they are a bit salacious and click-baity, but they tackle serious issues with humour,” she says.
“There was an episode Sex in the City or something, where I think it was Charlotte looks at her vagina – or her vulva, technically – for the very first time. You know what I mean? There’s so much shame associated with it.”
On the frontier of a new genre
Reagan’s focus is to push the boundaries and take science comedy mainstream; this is a whole new genre for both traditional television and streaming, so it’s a big challenge. “StarTalk was kind of a foray into trying to be more of a late-night science comedy show. My friend created kids’ science show Emily’s Wonder Lab for Netflix, which was just fantastic. There’s not really other science comedy shows out there – Adam Ruins Everything which was pretty close,” says Reagan.
Reagan’s portfolio of work across science comedy and communication is impressive. Alongside writing and performing her own work, she’s co-hosted Spike TV’s show ‘10 Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty’, produced a web series called Talking Shit with Dr. Todd and Natalia, been a regular animal expert on Nat Geo Wild’s Everything You Didn’t Know About Animals and been a regular writer and host for Discovery Communications’ DNews, Seeker, & TestTube. She’s a regular contributor to a range of television and radio shows and was more recently featured on Alie Ward’s Ologies, talking about… butts.
Pitching to networks and production companies is incredibly competitive, says Reagan, and it’s required a lot of patience and resilience. But she’s driven by a duty to educate people about science – in a relevant and fun way. “I’m a big believer that scientists have an ethical responsibility to share what we know about the natural world, to hopefully help make it a better place,” she says. “I’m trying to really combine my understanding of anthropology – the study of humans – with comedy to promote more tolerance, and a better understanding of how we can just…not be schmucks to each other.”
Follow Natalia Reagan on Twitter | Instagram | Tiktok | Website
Article by Kylie Ahern
Photo Credit: Photo supplied
Comments are closed.