In this week’s episode, both our storytellers share tales of getting back on their feet, both literally and figuratively.
Part 1: After Natalia Reagan gives up on her dreams of being a scientist, a devastating accident changes everything.
Natalia Reagan is an anthropologist, primatologist, comedian, science communicator, host, actress, producer, podcaster, professor, writer, and monkey chasing weirdo. She was a comedy writer and correspondent on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk, regular host of the StarTalk All-Stars podcast, a science correspondent on Thrillist’s Daily Hit, a skeptic on Travel Channel’s Paranormal Caught on Camera, and she was the co-host on Spike TV’s 10 Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty. Natalia was also a writer and host for Discovery’s DNews, Seeker, and TestTube as well as an animal expert on Nat Geo Wild’s Everything You Didn’t Know about Animals. For her master’s fieldwork, she conducted a survey of the Azuero spider monkey in rural Panama. She has also published chapters in the Wiley Encyclopedia of Primatology (including “The Copulatory Postures of Nonhuman Primates”), ACS’s Hollywood Chemistry, and Congreso de Antropología Panameña. After grad school, Natalia began producing science comedy videos covering such titillating topics as the evolution of boobs, butts, balls, and Bigfoot. Her passion includes combining science and comedy to spread science literacy while inducing spit takes. She currently lives a pants-optional lifestyle in LA and teaches biological anthropology at Cal State Dominguez Hills.
Part 2: As Jaclyn Siegel researches eating disorders she struggles with her own.
Jaclyn Siegel, PhD, is a postdoctoral research scholar at San Diego State University, where she works as the project director of the PRIDE Body Project, an NIH-funded eating disorders prevention program for sexual minority men. Jaclyn holds a PhD in social psychology from the University of Western Ontario. Her research focuses on body image, gender, and sexuality, primarily as they relate to everyday life, including the workplace and romantic relationships.
Episode Transcript
Part 1
Has anyone ever felt stuck? Like your gears are just mucked up and you are paralyzed and in peril? Like Artax in the Swamp of Sadness or Peter Venkman after he got slimed and he's writhing around in a funk. That was me at 25. I was in a full-blown quarter‑life crisis. I was a stand‑in and an extra in TV shows, close to but never really part of the action. We were called second team because we were never first. I was constantly on the bench begging, “Put me in, coach.” This was not the life I envisioned.
You see, I grew up obsessed with animals, especially gorillas. I wanted to be a zoologist. I was convinced I was going to be a zoologist but I started flailing with math and science, so I pivoted. I decided if I couldn't be a monkey chaser, I was going to do the next best thing, comedy.
After a year of theater school, I dropped out to work in the film industry. And instead of starring in my own sitcom, I was an extra in someone else's and then someone else's and someone else's. Let's just put it this way. You've seen the back of my head in a lot of TV shows.
But I missed school, so I went back to community college and took a zoology class. We had to do a zoo project so, naturally, I chose to study Caesar, the 400‑pound western lowland gorilla, and he was a beauty. He was a year older than me and he was the first gorilla delivered by cesarean section, hence the name. He was raised by humans so he didn't want to get down with the female gorillas, so he spent a lot of time with himself, or with me if I visited.
When the zoo was redoing his enclosure, they shipped him off to ‘Hotlanta’ where he finally was getting amorous with the female gorillas and tragedy struck. He died of intestinal issues and I was devastated. At the time, I was working as a stand‑in on a TV show called cold case. So there I was, this weird girl, mourning the death of a gorilla, living a life I did not recognize nor did I want to.
But all that changed on January 22, 2005. I was leaving my boyfriend's house and the last thing I said to him as I climbed into my pickup truck was, “I'm not wearing any underwear.” This will make sense later, I promise. And I took off.
Like a good Californian, I took Alameda to the 134 West to the 101 North and was transitioning to the 405 when traffic slowed. I slammed on the brakes. They locked. I hit the person in front of me. They pulled over on the shoulder, I followed suit. I knew how dangerous this was. They got out of their car, I got out of mine.
Natalia Reagan shares her story at The Story Collider’s Proton Prom at The Bell House in Brooklyn, NY in June 2022. Photo by Zhen Qin.
And I said, “Hey, can we just please get off the freeway? It's so dangerous.”
And as luck would have it, I hit three Japanese men in town on business who didn't speak a lick of English. One guy was holding his neck, so I ran to go grab my insurance. And because I'm a highly organized individual, couldn't find it.
So I called my little brother who had the same insurance and I stood between my pickup truck and the car I rear-ended as far as the freeway as I could. Then I heard it.
It was a loud and low rumble. I turned a look. I just saw a glint of silver and then, boom. I put my arms up and I'd like to think I said, “Not the face,” but it was probably, “Fuck! Shit! Cocksucker!” And in that moment, I knew I was dead. There was no way I was going to survive this, and there's no reason I should have, really. Spoiler alert, I'm still here.
She had the SUV. She hit my truck. My truck hit me. The initial impact broke my femur and then I was pinned between my truck and the car I rear-ended crushing my right leg. And the way she hit me, my truck spun out and I kind of got tossed onto the off-ramp and landed on my head, which explains a lot. I blacked out.
Next thing I know, I'm coming too and it's just so bright. They're loading me into the ambulance and I kept asking, “Where am I? Where am I?” In my head, this was a dream. This was not real. They were like, “Lady, what's your phone number?”
I was bleeding out real bad and needed multiple surgeries so they rushed me to Holy Cross Hospital. When I came to, out of surgery, I just remember being so thirsty. All I wanted was a big gulp of water and they gave me an ice chip.
I remember thinking, “This is a really good metaphor for life. Also, this really hurts.”
What were the injuries? Well, I lost six units of blood, fell on my head so I had a really bad concussion, a broken clavicle, broke most of my ribs, had punctured lungs, every breath hurt, broke my femur. They put this femoral rod in my leg. When they took it out I asked to keep it. Smells like victory. I'll just use it as a pointer.
Every ligament and tendon connecting to my foot was severed and all the muscle was outside of my leg covered in gravel. So they just washed everything off, reattached what they could and shoved it back in and just sort of hoped for the best. I was a hot mess, emphasis on mess.
And my mom, my poor mom was out of town when this happened. I would describe my parents as very divorced. So when she got an unexpected call from my dad, she was terrified. She flew home the next day and she was by my side every day from then on out, and same with my grandma. They were my angels.
I was in ICU for five days and it was touch and go whether or not I'd keep the leg. I was told that it was highly likely I would have an infection and if it spread to the femoral rod, seen here, I would have to have it amputated from the hip down. I made my mom promise that if that was the case, I'd get a peg leg and a pet parrot. She was not amused.
Then the visitors started coming. I worked on so many shows that I had a multitude of friends and family that came in waves and so I was always smiling because I had love around me. And I credit them to getting better so quickly.
Oh, I had also lost my health insurance two months before the accident, but my insurance card was still in my wallet and the hospital thought I had insurance. So it wasn't until towards the end that they're like, “Oh, crap, we got to get her out.”
So my friend did the most American thing and actually started a website to crowdsource paying my medical bills. This is way before Indiegogo so good on you, James.
When the hospital finally gave me the clothes that the EMTs cut off me, my very astute mother said, “Where's Natalia's underwear?”
So I had to explain to her, “Well, at least they weren't dirty.” But, apparently, I gave the folks on the 101 quite a show that day.
One of the most painful things that I felt during this time was when I first tried to walk in the hospital. I had no blood to the lower part of my right leg for two weeks at this point and I swung my leg over the hospital bed. I just screamed, “Ten, ten. Level ten.” It killed.
Other top contenders for this type of pain, initial impact, pulling out the catheter. That's no fun. Pulling out the drain pipes in my leg and the hospital food.
When they let me home, I was hobbling around on crutches and I was told, “Do not touch those bandages until you come back in a week.”
I was like, “Okay. Fine.”
Things were going well until this bad boy started swelling up bigger and bigger and bigger, until it was thicker than this thigh. And, according to my boyfriend, it was starting to smell.
By the time I got to the doctors, his face turned white when he took off my bandages and I knew I was in trouble again. Without saying a word or using any anesthesia, he ripped open the stitches and started scooping out pus and necrotic tissue. Sorry, guys. Sorry, I hope you didn't eat too much.
I didn't think pain went up to Level 11, but it does. It does. My mom was sitting right next to me and I cried to her, “Please don't let them take my leg, please. We've gotten this far.”
I wasn't planning on being a ballerina. I'm not a marathoner. But I equated mobility with freedom. How was I going to be the next Jane Goodall if I couldn't walk? I'd always been afraid of being immobile and now this was a reality.
Natalia Reagan shares her story at The Story Collider’s Proton Prom at The Bell House in Brooklyn, NY in June 2022. Photo by Zhen Qin.
My doctor told me, “You need to get to an ER immediately,” because who didn't have health insurance? I had to work magic to get into that hospital and they wanted me out from day one. The irony, though, was this was the hospital I was born in. They brought me into the world, they can take me right back out.
The infection was really bad at that point and so they started pumping me full of antibiotics but nothing worked. I had a vancomycin-resistant staph infection and they decided they're going to have to do debridement surgery. And if that didn't work, amputation was back on the table. They ended up taking 75 percent of my tibialis anterior or the muscle responsible for balance, that muscle and also embedded my leg with antibiotic beads, which my leg rejected.
The last thing you ever want to hear your infectious disease doctor say is, “Wow! I have never seen anything like this.”
You see this hole? Let me use this pointer. You see that hole right there? That is where Mount St. Tibialis erupted in the face of Dr. Dreyer that day. It was disgusting. It was a moment that I didn't feel attached to my body.
And I had to take the next few months to relearn how to walk, which I can't tell you how frustrating it is that something that comes so naturally is just impossible. Like why can't you just walk? I'd use a cane and a leg brace. It was a time.
And did I mention I have memory issues? Well, I do. And during this time, I had a lawsuit going on and the other side had a neurologist I had to see. He administered a ton of tests, but one stood out in particular. I had to name as many animals as I could in 60 seconds, and I laughed. He looked at me and he said, “What's so funny?” I said, “I'm going to smoke this.”
My lawyer Abe like they tell you that's not the point. Well, I didn't care, and I hit the ground running. I rattled off everything from black-footed ferret to bamboo lemur. At one point, I leaned in and just said, “Komodo dragon.” I think I disturbed him.
By the time I finished, I named 20 more than the highest scorer and I never once said cat or dog. That was a moment. That was the moment I realized maybe you did miss your calling.
Because I had these mounting hospital bills— I'm going to put this rod down. Because I had mounting hospital bills, I had to get back to work quickly. And soon as I was cleared when the wound healed, I went back to work.
Natalia Reagan in the hospital after the accident. Photo courtesy of Natalia Reagan.
Then the exact same day, central casting called me and said, “We have a rush job in San Pedro to be a body double,” and I said, “Okay. That's cool. However, did you know I can't walk, have a leg brace, multiple scars?” They said, “That's fine. Just get to set.” So I rush there.
Wardrobe walks up to me, hands me a string bikini and I just said, “Ehh?” and they gasped. They immediately put makeup on my leg trying to hide everything and took me down to set, which was a speedboat. I shit you not. And it was a night shoot so at this point it's about midnight. My job was to run as fast as I could from the stern to the bow of the boat while the boat went speedboat speeds.
Because I couldn't walk when the director yelled action, I just hopped on one foot as fast as I could while the director screamed, “Faster, damn it. Faster.”
Man, it turns out everybody on that boat was a stunt person, myself included I guess, but that was the moment that it was like a Donkey Kong sucker punch saying, “What are you doing with your life? You just almost bought the farm and now you’re second team again?”
I needed to do something. I needed to change something. So I decided to go back to school, but this time for anthropology. This time, I was going to become a scientist, damn it. And even though I was bad at math and science in high school, I figured, you know what? If you survive getting hit by a truck, you probably will pass stats, probably. And I did, barely.
I fell back in love with gorillas. In fact, I was going to study Grauer’s gorillas in DRC until once I graduated, but it was too dangerous. So, like I do, I pivoted and I studied the coolest monkey out there, spider monkeys.
Folks, did you know that female spider monkeys have a hypertrophied clitoris and that males lack the penis bone or the baculum? How cool is that?
In 2010, I moved to Panama and did my thesis field work in some of the most treacherous terrain out there, that even an able-bodied person would have problems with. But I got to finally do my best Jane Goodall impression with a walking stick and a bad limp, but I was able to do it. I did it.
I just want you to remember that it's never too late until it is. So go do the damn thing. Just do it. And I think some people need a kick in the pants to get their life in gear, and some people need to get hit by a mid-sized truck. Just make sure you're wearing underwear when you do.
Thank you so much.
Part 2
When I was 20 years old, I started my master's degree. It was in psychological and brain sciences at Villanova University. I was the youngest one in my cohort by several years. In fact, one of the first events we had was a happy hour with our whole cohort and I was too young to go.
It wasn't super weird for me to be in a situation like that. I had always been a high achiever, like honor roll, dean's list, and so I really kind of skated by by the fact that I have a bit of photographic memory and I'm also just a huge nerd.
These skills which helped me succeed in academia and in my research career I had kind of honed them for evil during my younger years. I had grown up as a fat kid. As many fat kids do, I was put on a diet at a very young age. I learned very young that being thin was amazing. The best thing you could possibly be. And being fat was the worst thing that you could possibly be.
I used my phonographic memory to memorize every nutrition label of every food that I could find so that I could meet certain calorie counts that were put on me by dietitians, doctors and family members. It comes probably as no surprise then that I developed an eating disorder as a very young child.
I took my eating disorder with me through college. After a really tough first semester, my boyfriend had also broken up with me my first semester, my mother had been diagnosed with ALS, I was diagnosed with anorexia that winter. But as someone who was really interested in eating disorder, someone who was really smart and also someone who had spent so long memorizing every number I possibly could, I didn't really see it as a problem. So I didn't pursue treatment for my eating disorder, but it did get me very interested in eating disorders.
And so I spent the next two years as an undergraduate studying eating disorders, doing research on eating disorders, spending every term paper researching eating disorders. By the end of my second year of college, having sped through the entire program, I was done and I was ready to start the master's program studying, you guessed it, eating disorders.
In psychology and in social psychology in particular, we have a term for this. We call it me‑search when the research you're doing is on the thing that you are experiencing, so I was so excited to start my master's degree by doing me‑search on eating disorders.
I start the program. I'm so excited. I'm working with Dr. Katina Sawyer who is still, to this day, a phenomenal friend of mine. We start this project on eating disorders in the workplace. I was not interested in traditional research. I really wanted to do qualitative research, which there had never been a qualitative thesis in my department before, so I was so excited to tackle this huge project.
But at the same time, having not done anything to address my eating disorder, I was very, very sick. I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa restrictive subtype and I was suffering in every way you suffer when you are experiencing anorexia nervosa restrictive subtype. I had no energy. I was constantly passing out and fainting even in my classes.
When you have anorexia, you develop this very thin, fine hair around your body. It's really cute. Very, very sexy. People really like it. It's called lenugo, so I was dealing with that. Also, at the time, I was abusing laxatives, as many people with anorexia do. Although it's typically associated with bulimia, people with anorexia can experience a variety of symptoms and so I was really having a hard time.
Jaclyn Siegel shares her story in a backyard Peerspace in Los Angeles, CA in May 2022. Photo by Mari Provencher.
But I started this study, I started interviewing people. I had only anticipated interviewing ten people for this study on eating disorders in the workplace, but I put a recruitment advertisement out to everywhere I could imagine. I was born in 1994 and so the internet is like my home base. I knew every corner of the internet where I could put this recruitment flier out. So before I knew it, I had like 80 people reaching out to me to talk to me about their experiences of eating disorders in the workplace and so I was like, whoa. So I got started.
I started talking to these people about their experiences of eating disorders in the workplace and I finally reached interview number ten. I remember it so clearly. I was sitting in my dorm room, a single dorm room, so excited. No roommate. It was great.
But I'm on the phone with this participant, Participant 10. At the end of the interview, we were on the phone so you couldn't see me. It was before Zoom became really popular. She goes, “It's such an inspiration to me that you are now recovered and doing this work. It really makes me feel like I can get over this.”
I was the furthest thing from an inspiration for eating disorder recovery that you could possibly imagine. So much so that later that week, Villanova was in the championship for March Madness. For anybody who knows basketball, it has something to do with that. And we won the championship on campus. It was nuts. It was like the most exciting night of everyone's college career.
We ran from the arena. We're storming the quad. People are like punching horses. It was absolute chaos. It was really one of the wildest nights of my life. That's a true story. Someone did punch a horse.
So we're all huddled. We're cheering. We're screaming. I have on this big puffy coat because I am like the size of a toddler at this point. I was so unbelievably sick. But I feel my legs start to go out.
I lived on the other side of campus and I was like, “Oh, my God. Am I going to be able to get home?”
So I tell my friends like, “Sorry, I have to go.”
“Wait, why are you leaving? This is the most exciting night of college.”
I was like, “I just have to go.”
And so I'm walking back to campus, walking back to the other side of campus where my dorm is, and I realize there are steps that I cannot walk up because I cannot feel my legs. My legs have almost entirely given out.
So I crawl up the steps. Fortunately, everyone else on campus was partying on the quad. But I crawl up the steps and I get into the building and I get up to my dorm room. I take a hot shower. I'm like, “Okay, I'm going to get feeling back into my body.”
Jaclyn Siegel shares her story in a backyard Peerspace in Los Angeles, CA in May 2022. Photo by Mari Provencher.
Eventually, I fall asleep. But I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm having heart palpitations. For those who don't know, anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any psychological disorder often due to cardiac complications. And having studied eating disorders for the last two years, I knew that. And I just thought, “I am going to die here in this bed tonight.”
I didn't, so that's good. But the next day, I went to work. I was working on campus in the theater department. And I was like, “Yeah, I had this weird thing happen last night where I thought I was going to have a heart attack, but I didn't.”
And they were like, “That's not funny. You have to talk to a doctor right now.”
I was like, “Okay, whatever.”
Then I went to the doctor on campus who knew me well because I was constantly passing out on campus. And they were like, “You are so sick. You need to leave the campus.”
I was like, “What?” But I did and I figured I would go home for a little bit, get my bearings and go back.
By this point, I had started the master's program. I was so excited. I was working on my thesis. Nothing was going to stop me.
So I saw my doctor of internal medicine back at home and she was like, “I am not letting you go back to college. You're done.”
I thought to myself, “There's no way.”
So I went to an eating disorder treatment center and they evaluated me there. They're like, “You did it. You definitely have anorexia.” And they told me that I had to go into an inpatient facility.
For those who don't know about the chaos of the US healthcare system, it's very bad. And for me to go inpatient would have been like hundreds of dollars a day as a copay. I was not in a financial situation to consider that as a possibility for an extended period, so I pretty much begged them to let me do a partial hospitalization program, which would have been five hours a day in a hospital and then I would sleep back at home.
But what this meant was that I had to take leave of absence from my master's program. I did, reluctantly. In some ways I'm grateful that I had to, because I don't necessarily know that I would have otherwise.
So I'm doing this program and I'm eating the sandwiches. You have to eat all this very specific food. I was a vegetarian. I ate like one very specific eggplant parm sandwich for lunch for ten weeks straight. I laugh with my partner every time we think about getting eggplant parm. I'm like I can't do it. Never again.
Anyway, I graduated, whatever, from my eating disorder treatment center because insurance cut me off, as they do when you achieve the weight that they say is the weight that you need to be for an eating disorder. But restoring your weight is not the same thing as actually treating an eating disorder. It probably comes as no surprise that I relapsed really hard after this.
But all this time, while I was in treatment, during this relapse, I'm still doing these interviews with the participants. Like I'm in treatment, I'm in the hospital journaling my feelings about my eggplant parm. And then I'm talking to people outside of it doing this really intense research for my master's thesis.
So I go back to school. I'm having this relapse. I get accepted into a PhD program in Canada and I was so excited. I knew that I still had to deal with the eating disorder but I was like, ah, if I just ignore it again, maybe it will just go away. It didn't.
But I started the program. I moved to Canada. I'm so excited. The paper for my master's thesis it gets accepted for publication at this journal, Psychology of Women Quarterly, which is the best journal in my field. I'm so excited. I'm going to go to Chicago and present it at the International Conference on Eating Disorders. I'm a first year PhD student. I'm giving this big talk. I am pumped.
It's after my talk that the social justice and weight stigma special interest group, they decide they're going to go out for deep dish pizza to not just celebrate me but like just, you know, we're all in Chicago together. It's going to be a great experience.
So here I am, a first year PhD student, so excited to network with all these super high‑powered people in my field and I go. Then I was like, “Oh, my God. I have to eat deep dish pizza in front of everyone. I have not eaten pizza since they forced me to do that in treatment.”
So walk up the stairs. If anybody's ever been to Lou Malnati’s in Chicago, it's got this really narrow staircase up to this top area. And so I'm sitting and the pizza comes out and I lost it. I went to the bathroom and I started crying because I could not handle the situation that was happening in front of me. I did not network with anybody when I was there and I left without my supervisor seeing me, because I was mortified. I thought it was the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened. I went back to my hotel room and I just cried.
Anyway, I'm in Chicago. I finish out the conference and I go back to London, Ontario, which is where I'm doing my PhD. I get a text from my supervisor who doesn't text me. She's not much of a texter. And she's like, “Hey, how about we have our next meeting at a coffee shop off campus?”
I was like, “Okay.”
So I meet up with her at this coffee shop and she's like, “Hey, Jaclyn,” she knows I have this history of eating disorder. I've talked to her about it. It was in my admission essay. I explained it was one of the motivations for why I wanted to do the work I was doing in my PhD. She's like, “how is that eating disorder going?”
I was like, “So good. Everything is actually going great. I'm actually very glad you asked.”
She looked at me dead in the eyes and she was like, “No, it's not.”
And I just remember sitting in that little Williams Cafe in London, Ontario and thinking, “Oh, shit. This woman sees right through me.”
I didn't really know what to do at the moment because I was experiencing this profound psychological phenomenon called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling you have when your perception of the world doesn't match up with reality. It's a powerful motivator of behavior change and that's exactly what it did. It got me to think really critically about changing my behavior.
Dr. Rachel Calogero who I was working with at the time was, at that point in my life, the most important person in my life. My mother had already died from ALS. Didn't have much relationship with the dad and so Rachel was in. And her words stung.
So it was after that that I decided to take recovery more seriously. I started working with a no‑nonsense dietitian who could see right through what I was doing and was mean to me in the ways that she needed to be. You kind of got to be mean with people with eating disorders because they'll just lie to you and that's what I was doing. So she was mean to me in a good way.
And I started working with a therapist who was nice to me in a good way, so it was like a good balance. I worked with them for two years and I was really working on the eating disorder recovery.
The first time I went into treatment for my eating disorder, it was because I was afraid of dying. When I started working on it again in my PhD program, it was because I was ready to start living. So I'm doing this work. I'm working on myself. I'm publishing a lot of research. The pandemic happens. I start working with a group of scholars from Johns Hopkins and Hofstra University, a bunch of people all around the country to develop this huge paper about how eating disorders might spike during the pandemic, which they did very badly for a lot of people. That paper kind of made the rounds.
I started talking to radio shows about it. I did a bunch of interviews about it and it got me really thinking critically about how it was that I can leverage my position as a person with an eating disorder to do good work but also to raise awareness.
So I'm going through my PhD program, finishing it out and I'm doing really well. Eating disorder is, for all intents and purposes, in remission. A lot of people's eating disorders really spiked during the pandemic, relapses. I was doing great.
So I finished out the PhD and I took this new position. 27 years old, I start as the project director of an eating disorders prevention program, cognitive dissonance‑based eating disorders prevention program for sexual minority men. That's an R01 clinical trial. I'm working with the NIH and things are going great.
I continue to do work with people with eating disorders. At this point in my career, I've interviewed over 200‑250 people living with eating disorders to try to understand what are the factors that facilitate eating disorder recovery and what are the things that keep people stuck in cycles of eating disorder relapse.
But I'm in a good place. I live here in beautiful southern California with my beautiful partner who is here tonight, who drove me here. And we're going to go get ice cream after this show. Surprise, we're going to get ice cream after the show. You down? I think he's down. He usually is. We love a good ice cream cone.
But as I think back to that first day of my master's program, I wish that I could tell myself one thing and it's to start living sooner.
Thanks.