00:04:37.040And the good news about that is that I actually do what I love for the works.
00:04:40.160So the capitalism is still as much on my terms as it can be for any woman in 2024.
00:04:46.060But my twin sister and I did not mean for this to be our career path, but we have bizarre photographic memories and were introduced to astrology when we were 21, when my Virgo, like you.
00:05:15.060No, I mean, clearly I'm surrounded by people who love Virgos, but yeah, I don't think that we're appreciated enough in the world.0.87
00:05:23.560And maybe you're surrounded by Virgos because of that very fact that people are not appreciative enough of you and your gifts and your, you know, typecast as these pencil pushers.
00:05:35.800I mean, you're pushing a pencil across a page to write, but I think Virgos are among the most creative people.
00:05:42.820So I will just sing your praises as much as you need.
00:05:47.140Yay. I need it a lot. I like a lot of validation.
00:05:51.760Well, my Virgo boyfriend in college, we're still friends 30 years later, got my chart done for me, my birth chart.
00:05:59.820I didn't even know such a thing existed. And it was this 30-page printed document that basically told me so much about me, I thought the KGB had planted themselves in my apartment or my dorm room.
00:06:14.380So I got obsessed with astrology, brought my twin sister along, we worked in publishing, and then it turned into a long career of writing horoscopes for Elle and 21 books and counting and all kinds of shenanigans with the stars.
00:06:32.400With the stars. With the stars. I love this. I love this journey. You never know what your Virgo college boyfriend is going to inspire in you.
00:06:39.860totally we actually like predicted that the trad wife era was going to be on the rise
00:06:47.040this uh past year in our 2023 book so go figure go figure go figure um oh see my kids have just
00:06:56.720popped in they have oh good it's what happens yeah it's what happens this is just pets it's
00:07:01.940just life you know it's like i think we actually need to fold that into i think we just need to
00:07:07.140fold that in we do indeed it's just impossible well i want to talk a little bit about what can
00:07:13.680astrology tell us about this era about what's happening right now like what can we read in
00:07:20.340the stars to figure out this weird place we're in in 2024 it is weird place and we've been saying
00:07:28.420like describing it as humanity being in the middle of a giant ios update so and we are because
00:07:37.600we're one of the bigger trends that's happening is that we're ending the 16-year cycle that
00:07:45.140started in 2008 when pluto which is the transformational kind of generational planet
00:07:52.880It moves every 12 to 30 years. So it leaves a big imprint on everything. So it's been in Capricorn since 2008 that Pluto destroys in order to rebuild. So it went through the sign that rules government, the economy, hierarchies, all the things that have been, you know, since 2008, such a huge, huge issue for us.
00:08:19.740So 2008, we got Obama, midway through Trump, now it's the end, 2024, and, you know, I mean, who knows what's going to happen.
00:08:30.660I have some thoughts and theories, but I also think it's up to us.
00:08:34.320So Pluto is leaving, not to return for another 254 years.
00:08:41.420Yeah. And it was last in Capricorn when the Declaration of Independence was signed and the country was founded. So it's very I mean, I don't like to be apocalyptic and I'm not being apocalyptic, but it's it's sort of like astrology is is an interesting predictor of the future.
00:08:59.420But when you look at the past and see eras and how it shaped those, that's when it gets really like, oh, OK, creepy, creepy, creepy, creepy, just creepy is what it gets.
00:09:09.840totally yes wow wow okay uh so interesting so you get this chart read and you're like okay
00:09:20.680i want to get into this i want i want to get my identical twin sister into this also do you guys
00:09:26.120have weird twin languages i have to ask that oh yeah i ask all twins that okay we had our own
00:09:30.320language as as uh until like the age of three our mom actually like recorded some of the words and
00:10:06.900Oh, crazy. It's craziness. So you get this chart read. How do you go from that to being like a hobbyist to being a professional astrologer whose stuff is in all of the women's magazines? And you guys are big. You guys are very serious astrologers. How do you do that?
00:10:25.100I mean, over a couple of decades, but it was, you know, it's probably the way anyone who has an obsession gets where they are. I was like, this is so useful. I'm, you know, we'd be in college, people would be coming over.
00:10:41.160I found a little piece of software at the time, because like I said, I was a tech nerd working in IT at the University of Michigan to make some side cash. So I would, people would come over, friends, and they'd be complaining about their love lives.
00:10:56.540would be like let's look up their chart or your chart where's Venus where's Mercury and I'd read
00:11:01.800read out of a book soon committed to photographic memory but yeah I was just like wow this is so
00:11:08.260true time and time again so we kind of developed a reputation and um a few years later I was
00:11:15.700working at Ms. Magazine for Gloria Steinem. Oh yeah Ms. with Gloria yes I love me some Gloria
00:11:21.840i do i got to meet her recently ah she's i mean she i met her i met her in her 60s i was working
00:11:29.060and she was she was so awesome she was like so an advocate for the next generation which yeah
00:11:35.560unfortunately ms struggled to make that yeah but i got hired to try to bring some gen x voices
00:11:42.940into ms in the 90s so i did my best but gloria was always so so awesome and um i would have stayed
00:11:51.660just for her but but it was it was still a publishing job so anyone who works in publishing
00:11:57.480knows that like the front of the house is way more fun than the back of the house truth yes
00:12:03.580yes like can we upgrade past these gray freaking cubicle no hell holes yeah no like every man like
00:12:11.300i love movies about magazines because they always make it look so pretty and i'm like oh my god
00:12:15.700Like a magazine newsroom is just like a hellscape of sad gray walls.
00:19:52.220are the end of the season signs so they are the ones that polish and craft you're actually at
00:20:00.080quite pretty balance so you're you're three three four and three for fire earth air water so you're
00:20:06.660mostly air but still pretty even so you can play in all of them and then four five four for innovator
00:20:13.640authority and maintenance you're predominantly authority you're an air authority and that is
00:20:19.920called we gave there's 84 possible types so you're the observer curious and analytical thinker who
00:20:27.100values knowledge and skillfully gathers data to make informed decisions so um a lot this is a lot
00:20:35.220like the zodiac sign aquarius that's the air fixed sign so even though you're a virgo you're actually
00:20:41.520a lot like an aquarius which is very uh very unlike virgo so your dominant energy is really
00:20:49.560to be with the people out there spreading a message, getting people to question things,
00:20:57.980look at politics, look at social phenomenon. Does that sound like you?
00:21:04.020It sounds a lot like me. It does. And I love that we're talking about Aquarius,
00:21:06.860the water sign, as my son literally flushes the toilet beneath us. He's just, and I'm like,
00:21:11.240get out. And he's like, whatever. Yeah. So that does. It does. But it also sounds like me
00:21:16.360more as i've become a grona um which do we grow into our signs more yeah we can i mean in the
00:21:25.420traditional astrology or a virgo with you know because probably some of your listeners will
00:21:30.160want to know a virgo with a cancer rising and a libra moon so yes we i think are you familiar
00:21:38.420with like internal family systems parts work yes yes so i think of this as kind of like a
00:21:45.340cosmic version of that like each planet in your chart represents a part of you like mercury is
00:21:52.080the part of you that communicates the you know venus is the part of you that loves and decorates
00:21:58.300things um you know the moon is a part of you that emotionally responds and gets triggered by stuff
00:22:05.080pluto is a part of you that wants to you know run someone down on the street when they piss you off
00:22:11.520Yeah. Yeah. OK. OK. That's making sense to me. That's making sense to me. Yeah. You recently in in an interview compared. The AI system to you recently compared chat GPT to astrology and spiritual technology. Dive into that for a minute for me.
00:22:34.580Yeah, I came up with a name to kind of encompass all the spiritual, woo-woo, whatever you want to call them, tools that people are tapping into.
00:22:44.340I think it was a combination of the pandemic and people having a lot of time to learn stuff, all the apps, CoStar, a lot of astrology apps in 2019 got VC funding.
00:22:57.320Oh, I remember CoStar. Are they still around?
00:22:59.680They're still around. They're all over the world.
00:23:01.740Yeah, they got they were and, you know, they had the funding to get PR. So, you know, they they got placed stories placed telling how they got five million dollars or something and how the apparently the astrology business is going to reach twenty eight billion dollars by 2032.
00:23:21.200There's some story going around like that. So it's a phenomenon. But yeah, so I wrote I wrote an article for Fast Company about how like knowing your chart is kind of like putting something into chat GPT and getting feedback on who you are.
00:23:39.140It's like there's always going to be nuances to who you are. But if you can kind of human beings are our own biggest blind spots. And the only thing we're worse at than understanding ourselves is understanding each other. We just are just walking projectors, just assuming everyone sees the world the way we do.
00:23:58.820So but in order to not like fight each other, hate each other, cancel each other and worse, like having a system that helps us objectively understand each other, I feel it's that's getting very philosophical.
00:24:15.740but, you know, it's we need that now. I mean, you again, you as a writer do that as the observer
00:24:21.940are doing that all the time. You're watching people and understanding their motives so that
00:24:27.160we can find compassion through the characters you create. This is like doing it without a novel
00:24:32.560having to be written. Right, right. Well, and I think about that a lot, too. I think about how
00:24:38.540understanding each other's stories can make us more compassionate to other people, right? And so
00:24:44.920If we understand people's signs, if we understand, like, anything else about them, we can create better empathy and learn how to be with people in the world a little bit easier.
00:24:56.760I think so. I mean, you know, some people will use it to typecast and stereotype, and that's why there are people that hate astrology. And, you know, I always like to try to clear up the misconception that it's a belief system. To me, it's a tool. I say it's a tool, not a rule.
00:25:12.720So just use it exactly the way you describe, like, huh, through the lens of this person being a Gemini, let's maybe try to reverse engineer why they might have made that decision that way.
00:25:27.160So, you know, people roll their eyes at it. But, you know, I think that's also sexism. Someone pointed out like nobody makes fun of, you know, predominantly male groups that like paint their faces for March Madness or insane around sports.
00:25:44.720Or alchemy. I like to think about alchemy a lot because, you know, a lot of men were alchemists and it was like crazed as a high science for a very long time.
00:25:56.180Meanwhile, when a woman does it, they're like, she's a fucking witch.0.99
00:26:00.760God, that is so good. I'm going to be quoting you on that forever.1.00
00:28:15.380And you said a Sag, so that's a fire sign.
00:28:17.660So I imagine that your Sag may be the one that is a little bit untamed and, you know, does, well, it really depends.
00:28:27.400So cancer's sensitive and have a lot of emotions, of course, through their bodies.
00:28:34.820They grow into their emotions, but when they're little, the emotions, I think Scorpios too, like the emotions have nowhere to go so they can act out very physically.
00:28:53.900Your Sag might actually just be out, like, off on a bike ride, ignoring them.
00:28:58.500I don't, I mean, yeah, well, she's the third baby, so she's just sometimes wanders off and plays alone in, like, a patch of dirt somewhere.
00:29:07.400I'm a Sag, and I can attest that we are very self-entertaining.
00:29:12.340She's going to be, like, a little bit of the unicorn in the family.
00:29:14.780Like, just give her give her a book. Give her something. She'll she'll take care. She's got it. She doesn't need anyone. Self-sufficient. So this is true. This is true. I mean, I say that we do feed her table scraps like a dog. Just wandering around our feet.1.00
00:29:53.320So the Cancer and Scorpio need a lot of hugs and emotional reassurance.
00:29:58.080But the Scorpio, like, you know, do them wrong and you will be punished for at least a day.
00:30:03.740Oh, yeah. She'll kill us. She will murder us in our sleep. That's what she'll do.0.98
00:30:08.680Oh, my gosh. Yes. But she is the alpha female.
00:30:12.320So just but just, you know, she's got the look probably from the baby, baby stage on when you get that Scorpio look.
00:30:19.840It's like, oh, I'm not in charge here.
00:30:22.160so yeah exactly exactly well and i feel like maybe we could just use this as a as a tool
00:30:29.860and a guide right it's just like oh this is just this is yet another interesting thing to learn
00:30:34.000about my child yeah i'll send you a copy of the book because it's i went through every age and
00:30:39.320stage from infancy to sending them off to college and because each of them needs like a different
00:30:46.900type of educational methodology sometimes i'm not saying you have to send them all to different
00:30:51.280private schools i'm just saying like what might work for one like oh this play-based learning
00:30:56.660co-op was perfect for my scorpio who doesn't like crowds but your sag is there like i want to go to
00:31:03.940public school and be with people who are nothing like me and throw me right in the ring of it so1.00
00:31:08.740you know a lot of parents the real goal was that you know women are just so freaking hard on0.93
00:31:13.920ourselves and we blame ourselves on we blame ourselves for everything that doesn't go perfectly0.97
00:31:20.480and according to script and it's just such a waste of our life force energy we have books to write we
00:31:25.980have uh elections to win and that sort of thing so we need to keep our vital energy elsewhere so
00:31:34.380it's like so many people just need that little bit of validation like it's not you okay like
00:31:40.780mercury retrograde messed with us it really did it really did yeah you know so many times so many
00:31:46.960times so many calendar links and then my microphone just broke and i'm in the catskills so what what
00:31:51.140am i gonna do make another microphone out of like a toilet paper roll yeah i mean and i do i mean i
00:31:58.020think as women we don't want to just be told it's not our fault but we want to be given permission
00:32:05.380to you know realize that we don't have to have to get it all done that it's not all on us
00:32:12.680necessarily yeah maybe we need a nice male alchemist to show up funny that they're a nice
00:32:18.540alchemist to make some gold out of a rock exactly yeah funny how they're never available when you
00:32:23.540need real alchemy right but not to sound bitter here i love love a man but i love a man here's
00:32:30.080the thing i'm not a man hater it's so funny because when i talk about trad wives and then
00:32:33.080i get attacked by by um trolls on instagram like why do you hate men i'm like i don't i'm raising
00:32:38.420I'm raising a good man. I'm married to a good man. I just don't like douchebags is the thing. And it's just it's it's hard to explain that. Like, no, I love men who love women and who are supportive of women.
00:32:51.220And that looks like. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's not all men, frankly. And I would like it to be. It's not. No, it's not. No. And those little micro douchery moments are like when they, you know, do something that we do and then want a, you know, a building named after them and a hospital wing, you know, or something. It's like, no, no, we're not.
00:33:16.060That is still the patriarchy and toxic masculinity. And, you know, no, those are cliches. I try not to use them, but like it's got a cliches exist for a reason, though.
00:33:26.800They do. They do. And so I think I don't even know how we got there, but we never know how I get anywhere. I don't know how I get anywhere on this podcast.
00:33:36.400Oh, we're talking about women and permission, women and permission. And yeah, I mean, I think we're constantly trying to find new ways to understand ourselves, especially, you know, in this age of the constant scroll on social media where we're seeing all of these fake lives.
00:33:55.520I mean, people are just presenting, essentially, we were talking about magazines earlier, magazine versions of themselves, and nothing's real, and everything looks so perfect.
00:34:05.840And I think we get anxious and exhausted and depressed because our lives don't look like that, because real life doesn't look like that.
00:34:13.940But, ah, the curated, you know, there's, and that's, I think, the issue with the trad wives, that they would just let us just, I mean, I know Ballerina Farm,1.00
00:34:41.400Because it just, it does, they really do cut out a lot of the messiness.
00:34:46.660And most influencers cut out a lot of the messiness.
00:34:49.500They never show the help that they have.
00:34:51.680And I'm not just talking about Ballerina Farm as a brand. I'm talking about all influencers. And I try to be, I get asked constantly because I am a woman and a mother of three children, how do I write books? And I'm like, well, it's my full-time job and I have full-time childcare. And we work with an au pair who lives with us, who travels with us, who is with our children right now. I have a husband who is supportive. I have a mother who lives down the street.
00:35:15.940We don't see or talk about any of that on social media. And I think that just it discounts caregiving in such a dangerous way.
00:35:26.840It really does. I mean, that's it's I hope I mean, I really hope that in this next cycle of leadership that this finally gets addressed because it's just it's the it's the height of injustice to women that were told to have as many babies and have one even if you don't want one and have no child care and have no help.
00:35:51.620And you're supposed to figure it out and make a sourdough starter and be a breeder, but also like the breadwinner and be a breeder, be a breeder, a breadwinner and get no outside support.
00:37:40.180I mean, it's no coincidence that I concurrently worked at Ms. Magazine and all the heavy duty politics of the world and then turned to astrology simultaneously because I felt like it gave a space where you could talk about things, where it could be a little lighter, could still talk about all the issues and the problems of the world, but like be part of engineering a solution.
00:38:05.160So we are entering, I believe, the age of Aquarius. Cue the music. Cue the hair. Because, as I said earlier, Pluto is just finishing up a 16-year run through Capricorn, reforming all of our leadership.
00:38:28.340And now for the next 20 years, starting November 19th, right after the election, you can make this stuff up. It's going into Aquarius, which is a sign of community, humanity, justice, social justice for 20 years until 2044.
00:38:45.840So that is going to shape the next 20 years of our lives, the next two decades. And it's fitting and timely. Like, we have got to work together on stuff and stop being so polarized somehow, someway.
00:39:02.560I love that. Let's just end on that beautiful, beautiful note.