Episode Transcript
Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.
Use Ctrl + F to search
0:10
Warning. The following episode contains adult
0:12
language, discussion of miracles, arranged marriages,
0:14
Channing Tatum, and disclosure of at least one
0:16
Bible approved stoning. Sensitive
0:18
listeners take care. So
0:36
here's the confession I'm gonna make right at
0:38
the top of the show. I don't
0:40
believe in astrology, but astrology
0:43
keeps happening to me. Now.
0:45
Everyone says podcasting is the most
0:48
visual medium, So I
0:50
made you a slide show to try to explain. This
0:53
is the real skyline drive. It's
0:56
in Delaware, and growing up when
0:58
I couldn't sleep, it's one of the any
1:00
places I would drive to look at the stars. This
1:03
is the moon. It rules our emotions.
1:06
This is mercury in retrograde. You know
1:08
it because it makes life miserable. This
1:11
is Rahu and Kaithu. They're important
1:13
and mischievous nodes in Vedic astrology.
1:16
They're prominent in Donald Trump's horoscope, and
1:18
they're also responsible for Paris Hilton. This
1:22
is me. I was born May first nine.
1:26
This is the sky at the time I was born. In
1:28
Western astrology, it makes me a Taurus.
1:31
These are some other tourists pol pot
1:34
I told Komeni. Saddam Hussein
1:36
Adolph Hitler, Barbara Strice. Then
1:39
the fact that we're all tourises has
1:41
made me doubt astrology for a very long
1:43
time. These are my parents.
1:45
They've been hitched fifty one years and every
1:48
morning my dad makes my mom a cup of
1:50
tea and then they sit and do the spelling being
1:52
pencil. It's adorable, right. These
1:55
are my parents calling in the middle of this recording.
1:58
And I guess you think it goes for is climbing
2:00
back? Give me a club. This
2:03
is India when I was growing up, where
2:05
it's like yoga and meditation and
2:07
turmeric and astrology. These
2:09
are words that were part of my Indian life, but
2:12
they weren't a part of my going to school fitting into
2:14
America one. But now now
2:16
everyone has an opinion about it. I'm
2:19
a Gemini, which I've heard is bad. I'm a Libra,
2:22
so I'm indecisive. That's definitely true.
2:26
I'm a tourists. I find it starts to be beautiful.
2:28
It sucks that we can't see you start in New York because all the lights.
2:30
I know a few people who are kind of into it,
2:33
and they're like, asked, yo, did you see the horoscope
2:35
today? And I'm like, nah, bro, not really,
2:37
I'm not worried about what the horoscope says. I know a
2:39
lot of people don't believe in it, but why
2:41
can't people just believe in things for fun, Like it doesn't
2:43
have to be backed up by anything. But if you believe in
2:45
fantasy football, why can't you believe in astrology.
2:49
A few months ago, my friends and I sat out to make
2:51
this show about astrology. We wanted to run
2:53
around the city and have some wild adventures
2:55
and understand why after so
2:57
many millennia, people still looked the
3:00
sky for answers. This
3:02
is an astrologer I met in Queens. He promised
3:04
me, you're gonna dig this show. I think if
3:07
you do your own show will become a super
3:09
hit, no doubt about it. This
3:12
is a graph of how much I believe in astrology
3:15
before our session. Not that much.
3:18
This is a graph of how much I started believing thirty
3:20
minutes later when something horrible
3:22
he said came true. That's
3:25
why I asked again from the time he started
3:28
a couple of years back. Still now, the
3:30
situation doesn't look good. This
3:34
is me traveling halfway around the world to answer
3:36
the biggest question my entire life. This
3:39
is a shop in India where your fortune is waiting
3:41
for you. It was written centuries ago and
3:43
put on a shelf and the shopkeepers know which
3:45
one to pull because it's coated by your thumb
3:47
print and the time you're gonna walk through that
3:49
door. This,
3:52
this is me walking through that door. I'm
3:57
Mungay Fatigular from Kaleidoscope
3:59
and I heart Radio. This
4:02
is Skyline Drive, Chapter
4:38
one. Leave your acts at
4:40
home. So
4:46
I figured, you know, I do need to sown
4:49
an astrologer. And there are a
4:51
bunch of astrologers on the upper west Side.
4:53
Was set up with these waits. You're
4:55
looking for an astrologer to sewn. Oh
4:58
yeah, well I
5:00
need to check it off the list. I've
5:03
you know already this reporting and starting off weirder
5:06
than I thought. It's ten o'clock on a bright summer
5:08
day and I'm standing here with A. J.
5:11
Jacobs. I am an author and a journalist
5:13
and a pisces. In addition
5:15
to being a pisces or technically on the
5:17
cusp of pisces and aries. AJ is
5:20
a friend and he's one of my favorite writers.
5:22
I've come to meet him in this neighborhood because in two
5:24
thousand seven, he wrote a New York Times bestseller
5:27
called The Year of Living Biblically. The
5:29
book was a phenomenon. It came
5:31
out in multiple languages, There were magazine
5:34
and TV pieces about it. It was such
5:36
a big deal that at one point Marlon
5:38
Waynes was lined up to play a j in
5:40
the Network TV version. The
5:42
premise was that I would follow
5:45
all the rules of the Bible as literally
5:47
as possible, so that man the famous
5:50
ones like the Ten Commandments and love your neighbor,
5:52
but also the lesser known
5:54
ones like you cannot wear
5:57
clothes made of two different kinds of fabrics,
6:00
so I had to get rid of all of my polycotton blend.
6:03
Giving up polygon blends is just one
6:05
of the hardships Aga endured in the Navy journalism.
6:08
He also grew a massive beard, shoved
6:10
wild birds so he could steal its egg
6:12
and say a prayer on it. And he followed
6:14
seven hundred other Biblical rules
6:17
literally in an attempt to understand
6:19
religion. And somewhere along the
6:21
way he decided that to fully appreciate
6:23
the Bible, you actually had to stone
6:26
people who committed these abominations,
6:28
and the abominations included adultery,
6:32
breaking the Sabbath, but also
6:34
astrology, witchcraft,
6:36
divination, they're all sort of lumped together.
6:39
Just the fact that he decided to stone someone
6:41
was a shock to me. I mean, Aj
6:44
is one of the nicest people I know, but
6:46
that's how committed he was. I
6:48
didn't want to go to jail for assault. I
6:51
just wanted to check it off my list, you
6:53
know, stone and astrologer check.
6:55
So I walked by this astrologer
6:58
on the street and just Marry subtly dropped
7:02
the pebble so that it landed
7:04
on her shoe, kind of a drive by
7:06
stoning. And I was
7:09
thinking, she's probably not even gonna
7:11
notice because I just kept walking. Oh
7:13
she noticed, and she's like, what
7:16
what's going on? Why did you do that? And
7:19
so I had to tell the truth. Because I was
7:21
following the Bible. I thought maybe
7:24
she'll think it's funny. She did not think it's
7:26
funny. She was pissed. She started
7:28
yelling at me like, f you go to
7:31
f and hell, I was rattled.
7:33
Even if you're trying to stone someone in
7:35
modern day using pebbles, people
7:38
don't like it. Well that's a lesson, that's a takeaway
7:41
rule. Number one, don't stone
7:44
an astrologer. There wasn't
7:46
the advice I'd come for, but I wrote it
7:48
down anyway. But the thing
7:50
I'd really wanted to know. The reason
7:52
I traveled all the way out here to meet
7:54
with a j was to ask him how
7:56
to make the show, because doing the show
7:58
on astrology it actually makes
8:00
me nervous, like is
8:03
there a way to talk about how accurate
8:05
of fortune telling parrot could possibly
8:07
be? Or is there a way to joke about
8:10
whether an astro curse can make you bald?
8:13
Because even if the show makes
8:15
me look sillate, like, I don't want
8:17
to get disinvited from a family wedding
8:19
because I said something that hurt friends
8:22
or family, or really
8:24
anyone who puts stock in these subjects.
8:27
As I'm trying to uncover threads and things
8:30
like how do you tell a story delicately where
8:32
you're not offending people but still engaging
8:34
with all the subject I had
8:36
that exact dilemma
8:38
when I was writing The Year of Living Biblically, because
8:42
I was coming in as an agnostic writing
8:44
about religion. My big
8:46
overall advice is go
8:49
in with deep curiosity. Don't
8:52
go in with an agenda that you're trying
8:54
to disprove or prove astrology.
8:57
You're just an explorer. So
9:00
go in like with no ax
9:02
leave your axes at home. That
9:04
I think I can do. After
9:09
the break, we talked to an astrologer who doesn't believe
9:12
in astrology, take a subway ride
9:14
to Queen's and hear this from
9:16
my mom. I felt like a juicy
9:18
though. Chapter
9:38
two, just for funds is
9:42
the phone listening? Is that? Are you listening through the
9:44
phone? Pattern? AI? The algorithm?
9:46
That is the pattern? Back in one
9:48
of my friends shot me a text linking to this video
9:50
of Channing Tatum. The actor had
9:53
uploaded it himself after using
9:55
an astrology app called the Pattern, but
9:57
when Channing's readings became a little too
9:59
spot on, he freaked out,
10:01
are you listening through my phone? And then just regurgitating
10:04
the stuff that I'm afraid of? And stuff? You
10:06
know what? Pattern? People? You should
10:08
just call me. I need answers right now,
10:11
poor Channing. I don't know if he ever got
10:13
his answers, but what I do know
10:16
is that astrology is ubiquitous and
10:19
lucrative. One venture capital
10:21
investor told The New York Times that the app co
10:23
star this pattern competitor
10:26
had the potential to be a twenty four
10:28
billion dollar business, claiming
10:30
he could one day be as big as Spotify.
10:34
But if astrology is as big an opportunity
10:36
as everyone's saying, I'm wondering if
10:38
my company should get into the act. After
10:40
all, it feels so obvious that I
10:43
don't know even a nine year old could see the potential.
10:46
So I decided to try to pitch out on my nine year
10:48
old. Hey, why
10:50
are you letting me do this closet? I
10:53
brought you to this closet because I wanted to pitch you
10:56
on an astrology app? Are you ready
10:58
for it? The why
11:02
is that? What do you think about astrology? It's dumb?
11:04
Oh gosh, Well, maybe
11:07
you're not the right person of her. But the reason I came to you
11:09
is because you actually have a
11:11
bank. You spend only my money.
11:14
You seem to hoard all your money, and you
11:16
keep all of Henry's money as well, which you
11:18
charge him a small fee for. So I
11:20
thought you might be the savvaest person in this
11:22
family. Is it okay if I pitch you an astrology app? Okay?
11:26
So here's my case for
11:28
it. These aren't your grandmother's horse ghosts
11:31
right there talking to you in this very fresh
11:33
and fun way. Uh, they're
11:36
up to the minute with the NASA data. They
11:38
look beautiful, and they have
11:41
a chat feature where astrologers
11:43
will chat with you live about your birth charts. Right
11:45
and then by two right, like you
11:47
can see astrology or starting to take over um
11:50
Bumble the dating app. They start allowing you
11:52
to sort your matches by their
11:54
birth signs, so like you could say, like I only
11:56
want to date Toruses or I only want to date Geminis
11:58
or whatever. In actual, astrology
12:01
in two thousand nine was a two
12:03
point two billion dollar market.
12:05
What do you think about that? Mind,
12:12
I can't tell whether you're serious or not, but
12:15
but apps made forty million dollars
12:18
that year, and in fact, the next
12:20
year, when COVID really hit, people
12:22
started searching for birth charts and
12:25
astrology. Both of those searches
12:27
hit five year peaks on Google. So
12:29
it's no wonder that all these venture
12:31
capital funds had started investing
12:34
in astrology apps early and then continue
12:36
to invest um and I'm
12:38
here to ask you to invest in
12:41
my astrology app. What do you think
12:44
I'm spending my money on
12:46
a skateboard, not on you okay,
12:49
Well, Ruby, what type of business
12:52
would you invest in? Bub okay?
13:03
Chapter three, Truth and Poetry.
13:12
When you go out with a recorder in hand, it's
13:14
interesting to see who'll talk on tape. We
13:16
found scientists at NASA who actually wouldn't
13:18
talk about their interest in astrology to us because
13:21
they were afraid of losing their jobs. We
13:24
found PhDs and post docs who are worried
13:26
that if they talk at all to our podcasts,
13:29
even to say that astrology was nonsense, they
13:31
would face professional repercussions.
13:34
I mean, it is insanity what a
13:36
lightning rod astrology can be. But
13:39
luckily we found Jamie Green.
13:42
My grandfather showed me a little
13:44
half of a peanut that had the German it and
13:46
he said, that's going to become a plant. And
13:49
it was just things like that that got me interested
13:51
in the world, which is the same as being
13:54
interested in science. Jamie is a celebrated
13:56
science writer and I'm Sagittarius,
13:59
although you would not know it from looking
14:01
at anything about my life. I've
14:03
got some planet in Capricorn that
14:06
explains why I'm not
14:08
an impulsive adventurer. She
14:11
has a new book coming out called The Possibility
14:13
of Life and she's co editor of the annual
14:15
Best American Science and Nature writing volumes,
14:18
and whether it's chatting about our garden or
14:20
the way we perceive constellations,
14:23
her capacity for wonder is incredible
14:27
and infectious. But perhaps
14:29
what I love most about Jamie was how
14:31
she clarified that science and astrology
14:34
don't actually have to be at odds with one another,
14:37
that we don't need science to disprove astrology.
14:41
Not that she thinks astrology is a science exactly
14:44
scientifically, in terms of astronomy,
14:47
astrology doesn't hold
14:50
a lot of meaning because it's all very human
14:52
centric. From the point of view of looking at the
14:54
stars from Earth, the stars
14:56
are light years apart. They have
14:58
no real relation to each other except in our
15:01
minds. But that relationship,
15:04
the one we make up while looking up at the stars,
15:07
that means something, or
15:09
it can mean something if
15:11
you wanted to. It's like a much
15:14
more eloquent,
15:16
poetic personal fortune cookie.
15:19
And I don't mean that disparagingly. I just think that it's
15:21
for you to take from it what you need. And
15:23
like we don't think it's anti science
15:26
to say a poem is true. I think
15:28
that's where science gets defensive,
15:31
is when people say that astrology as a science
15:33
and has physical roots
15:36
in the stars, It's like, oh, no it doesn't,
15:38
but it's true the way a poem is true. I
15:41
can't tell you how much I love that. I mean,
15:44
as someone who's a skeptic but also
15:46
a romantic, this idea that
15:48
astrology is true the same way
15:50
a poem is true. That
15:52
feels right to me. And
15:54
it's something my friend Pete also said
15:56
when I talked to him, Pete
15:59
Steel is, well, it's
16:01
complicated. So like even
16:03
though I wasn't like a semi successful
16:06
like musician, I was like, I
16:08
need to make money somehow, like
16:11
right now, Like what other skills do I happen do?
16:13
Astrology? T is
16:15
a rock star, like a real rock
16:18
star. He used to be in The Walkman,
16:26
that massive seminal Indie rock
16:29
band, and yes, his
16:31
backup career was professional
16:33
astrology. When he was younger, he
16:35
trained with this big famous guru. He
16:38
was living in his guesthouse and that's
16:40
where he learned to read star charts. You
16:42
would take him back to him and he would say like, no,
16:45
it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, Like you're wrong, you
16:47
know, And then he kind
16:49
of in very traditional
16:52
style, like yell at the apprentice
16:54
sort of thing, master, very
16:57
very karate kid kind of feeling right
17:00
your said, here's
17:02
the other thing. Pete doesn't even believe
17:04
in astrology. He's a rock star
17:06
who does astrology for politicians and
17:09
World Bank economists and all
17:11
sorts of interesting folks, but
17:13
he doesn't believe in it. It's this
17:15
art to me, And I don't mean that dismissively, like,
17:18
but that's like my whole being, Like, that's what I care
17:20
about. What he believes really is
17:22
in a more vivid reality, a
17:24
kind of embroidered view of the world. Pete
17:27
and I both spent formative years in India,
17:30
and we have a certain comfort in the magical.
17:33
If you read like a hundred Years of Solitude or something
17:35
like that, world of like this
17:37
kind of magical Columbia. You know, it's
17:39
like that felt very similar in
17:42
a lot of ways to how we were
17:44
raised. Magical
17:51
explanations have been woven throughout my
17:54
life, like why was
17:56
my family's little community in India so well
17:58
off a century ago? You
18:00
could say it's because of luck or global
18:03
economics. You could say it's
18:05
because when the Civil War was happening,
18:07
in the US England actually needed
18:09
more sources of cotton to replace
18:11
all the cotton that the U s had been producing.
18:14
And my family they just happened to be
18:16
in the right place to manage mills and plant
18:19
cotton on their land. Or
18:21
you could tell the story in a way that's way,
18:23
way more magical, that
18:25
a great great ancestor had this powerful
18:28
vision from a goddess that if he chanted
18:30
a simple string of prayers every single
18:32
night, and he taught all his children
18:35
to sing it, and they taught all their
18:37
children, his people would
18:39
be protected for years. And
18:42
for most of my life, I
18:44
only knew that second story
18:48
Shampaji I am Maslova
18:53
mal
18:57
Ja Jakovambama by ot.
19:00
Yeah about chapter
19:05
four, mopeds and mini
19:07
skirts. Arranged
19:10
marriage has always been this thing that's
19:12
hard for me to talk about. When I first
19:14
moved to Delaware, kids in my elementary school had
19:17
all these questions for me about being Indian,
19:19
right, like does your family sleep
19:21
on a bed of nails? Can you charm
19:23
snakes? Just you know these
19:25
things they've seen on cartoons? And arranged
19:28
marriage was just another one of these questions
19:30
I'd have to field, except this
19:33
one actually bothered me more
19:35
because this time I'd have to admit that, yes,
19:37
my parents did have an arranged marriage, and
19:40
then I'd have to explain that The
19:42
thing is, everyone assumed my mom and dad were like
19:45
forcibly, paired off when they were nine years
19:47
old and then sent away to work and have kids,
19:50
and that isn't true. It's like my
19:52
parents situation was a little more
19:55
like pride and prejudice. Like,
20:00
you come from a good family, your parents want you to marry
20:03
into another good family, so they
20:05
set you up. They make introductions
20:08
to certain people, and if you like each
20:10
other, they kind of fast track the marriage
20:13
or they make more introductions. But
20:16
since this was already super hard to explain,
20:18
I I just left out the part of astrology,
20:21
which also plays a big role in the
20:23
whole arranged marriage thing. It
20:26
was like, I don't know, just too difficult
20:28
or embarrassing something. After
20:32
all, it's it's a weird thing to have to admit you
20:34
only exist because of astrology. But
20:38
I'll let my mom explain. Tell
20:41
me about how your marriage was arranged.
20:43
Oh that's funny, okay.
20:48
Uhm's aunt shout at the cup.
20:51
She came to see Emma because she'd heard that,
20:53
you know, I was available. I guess
20:55
this story starts, of course, with two
20:58
families dusting off their kids horse hopes
21:00
and handing them off to a trusted astrologer,
21:03
not some low level quack. So they
21:05
matched it, and it matched perfectly.
21:08
The traditional Indian matching system is way
21:10
more complicated than just saying is he a scorpio?
21:13
A proper celestial marriage is supposed
21:15
to be a union of souls, so the astrologers
21:18
inspect all the vagaries of your chart and pressure
21:21
test everything like your personalities,
21:23
your feelings about class and status,
21:26
even how a couple's health will be affected by
21:28
one another. It's all on the scale
21:30
of thirty six points, and any
21:33
match under eighteen points shouldn't
21:35
be considered. But anything over thirty
21:37
two, that's something you want to lock down
21:39
immediately. My badness want to
21:41
make sure that the man and it did not really
21:44
let me share. Asked the astrology you
21:46
know, how is this nature? So the
21:48
astrologer to Nama, that was a gently
21:51
creature you know, never loss
21:53
system. But so this part is as
21:55
true. I've only ever heard my
21:58
dad yell a handful of times, and
22:00
most of that was when our dog
22:02
Lupani would just race out of the house
22:05
and he would run after her with this like
22:08
slice of craft, singles cheese, just
22:10
waving it to try to tempt her back. And it
22:13
always worked because she was
22:15
super greedy. But one fault he'd
22:17
have has never come on time to the table to
22:19
have dinner. And we thought
22:21
it was a big joke and that came true. We couldn't
22:24
believe that astrology could be that powerful
22:28
to tell a quote like that. Wasn't
22:30
there something else with the mother in law? The
22:33
mother law? Yes, they said that I would be best
22:35
for a boy that did not have a mother. I
22:38
really don't know. They said was something to do with
22:41
the stars, and if I had
22:43
a mother in law, it wouldn't go ahead. So
22:46
here who had lost his mother when he
22:48
was under a year, I think, I'm just
22:50
about to you. So it was perfect.
22:53
This is something I think about a lot, how
22:56
astrology accounts for everything. My
22:59
dad had aya or a nanny, but
23:02
he never had a mother. His life
23:04
was a series of hostels and boarding
23:06
schools, sometimes in cities
23:08
hundreds of miles from his home. It
23:11
makes me sad to think about. But if
23:13
his mom had survived, my
23:15
parents would never have been together. Astrology
23:18
would have made sure of that. Anyway,
23:22
back to my mom. Even though my grandmam
23:24
was working really hard to set her up, my
23:26
mom was not keen to get married. I
23:29
wasn't ready. I was still studying and
23:31
it was in my final year for master's studying
23:35
linguistics. I didn't want to give that up,
23:38
and they didn't want to get married that fast. So
23:41
I felt like a juicy though I
23:44
wasn't happy, and things
23:47
were really moving faster than I ever expected,
23:50
so I said, I'm going to foil this. So,
23:52
just to get the picture, a typical woman
23:55
hoping for a match would be waiting, sitting
23:58
by her parents, dressed in a sorry or
24:00
something traditional like making
24:02
a big show of what a quiet
24:05
and obedient wife they could be. And
24:07
instead at a ministerton and
24:10
I had lambretta. I
24:12
wrote that and came, oh, and she's
24:14
also late, Like my mom is
24:16
the most punctual person I know. She
24:18
gets to the airport three hours ahead of time, and
24:21
that since I was a kid, so she's
24:23
clearly trying to tank this thing. And
24:27
my hair had let it loose and curly
24:30
wasn't done. But instead, you
24:32
know, said, oh, that's no
24:34
problem. We love more than girls. What
24:36
type of woman do you think Mama was
24:39
expecting to present. She
24:41
wanted them to know that I was absolutely
24:44
sensitive and very loving, very
24:46
kind and gentle with everyone,
24:49
and animal lover. But my Grandmam
24:51
was also incredibly honest, so
24:54
she was sure to tell my dad's family this. I
24:56
had no interest in cooking anyway.
25:00
Despite my mom's lack of interest in the kitchen and
25:03
her dramatic attempt to topple
25:05
this whole affair, she somehow
25:08
still won my dad's family over. So
25:10
I must say, here's the deal. Let him
25:12
write to you. If you don't like him, it's fine.
25:15
He was a charming writer. He was a charming
25:17
writer. So they wrote letters back
25:19
and forth for a year, and when they
25:21
finally met in person, you know, he looked
25:23
so vulnerable that I said, oh, this
25:25
is great. I can handle him. My
25:28
parents don't have a perfect marriage, but there
25:31
are lots of wonderful bits things
25:33
that make me think those thirty two points meeting.
25:35
Something like once when
25:37
they were young, they visited Paris, and
25:39
they went to dinner at this fancy restaurant
25:42
with a ballroom, and an orchestra
25:44
started playing and no one was
25:46
dancing crickets. So
25:49
my dad just whisked my mom onto the
25:51
dance floor and then slowly everyone
25:54
in the place joins in. And when
25:56
my parents went back to their table, the band leader
25:58
had actually sent them this gorgeous bottle of
26:00
brandy to say thank you for livening the place
26:02
up, then forgetting everyone dancing.
26:05
I mean, if astrology can promise you those
26:07
sorts of scenes, it's like who
26:09
wouldn't listen. Of course,
26:11
astrology has done damage in the family too.
26:14
Here's my mom telling me about an arranged marriage
26:17
gone wrong. My cousin Nana. The
26:19
girl that they looked for the
26:22
horoscope matched with him. Who's your cousin,
26:24
Nana? Nana from Manglo, So
26:27
there was a danger of his brother dying if
26:30
the girl married Nana. The
26:32
strologers are predicted that if the couple went
26:34
through with the marriage, even though their
26:36
horoscopes matched, it could lead
26:39
to Nana's brother's death. I
26:41
mean, who wants that on their hands, even
26:44
if it's putting your chances for love at
26:46
risk. So to this day, he
26:48
still a bachelor. Really, well,
26:52
what do you think about that? It's
26:54
a shame. Yeah, they
26:57
could have found other girls, but he
26:59
just was dejected. His sig normals
27:02
normal horoscopes says about you,
27:04
that's heartbreaking, and it is really is.
27:07
Yeah yeah.
27:18
After chatting with my mom, two things occurred
27:20
to me. First, the chasm
27:22
between the way Americans and Indians use
27:24
astrology. That only felt wider,
27:27
like no app was going to tell you to quit
27:29
your NBA, to marry some guy in America, or
27:32
to break it off with this girl because it
27:34
could bring bad luck or death to another family
27:37
member, like the starkness
27:39
of the way Indian astrology can be used to control
27:41
lives. It felt so dark,
27:45
but also pretty intriguing,
27:48
like it only made me want to dig in more.
27:51
And the second thing I remembered is this piece
27:53
of advice A J gave me about
27:56
really embracing the show. I
27:58
think you gotta go all in, So you got
28:01
to hire an astrologer
28:04
to help you with the show. I figure
28:06
out when you should start, When should the air
28:08
date be, Who should you hire to
28:11
help you it? Should it be a Virgo or a Capricorn?
28:14
Like, go for it, because that's
28:16
one way to test it's to see does
28:19
it work for you. So I
28:21
decided to find an Indian astrologer and
28:23
solve both problems. I could lean
28:25
into my Indian side and also
28:27
have some fun with it. But what
28:30
I didn't know was that that visit
28:33
was going to change my life. M
28:43
m M. Chapter
28:50
five, We go to Queens. On
29:01
April nine, I headed to Queens to meet an astrologer.
29:04
He's someone my friend and showrunner for the show,
29:06
Mary recommended that I reached out to, and
29:09
coincidentally, he happened to be an astrologer that
29:11
my cousin Aditya had used. Hey hey,
29:14
how is
29:17
another rational type. He's kind
29:19
of this white shoe lawyer masters from
29:21
Cambridge, and he used this astrologer in
29:24
a difficult time and apparently the
29:26
predictions had proven accurate. So I
29:28
just actually wanted to see him again. So
29:30
I took a train to Jackson Heights to meet Dr
29:32
Rockets Kamar and we entered his white
29:34
wood frame office. From the outside, it's
29:37
kind of nondescripts like this row
29:39
house, but when you opened the door, you
29:42
immediately sensed these temple like vibes.
29:46
So I took off my shoes at the entrance,
29:49
walked through a fog of sweet
29:51
sandalwood, and there
29:53
were these massive photos of his guru
29:55
on the wall. And then I turned
29:58
into this tiny room with a wood desk, and
30:00
it had a giant stack of books on it with
30:03
a little black laptop on top. Looking
30:06
around, I realized how fun this is.
30:09
I'm here on this field trip with my cousin, this
30:12
astrology adventure, and I'm
30:14
so ready to hear some ridiculous things
30:16
and enjoy this experience. Dr
30:22
Kamar very sweetly welcomes me, and he closes
30:25
his emails, and then, using the information
30:27
I sent him a few days before, he
30:29
pulls up my chart and turns on his
30:31
recorder. So I'm
30:34
just looking at the choke at me. First before
30:38
in the afternoon in summer New Jersey, you're
30:40
born on a Tuesday, you
30:42
have the sign cancer rising. I've got to
30:45
say I was a little surprised by how quickly
30:47
Dr Kamar dives in. It seems
30:49
like he's just staring at a bunch of numbers on his screen,
30:52
but he's interpreting them, kind
30:54
of like Neo from the Matrix. And
30:56
I'm curious to hear my reading. But what I
30:58
really want to do is asked Dr
31:01
Khmar about the show. I thought
31:03
it would be fun if there were these auspicious
31:05
dates for my podcast, or if you could predict
31:07
something about how many people would listen.
31:10
But first you had some questions
31:13
for me. So how's what been
31:15
since January? Um,
31:19
that's when I decided
31:23
to quit my job, so
31:25
that you would have quit your job where the job would
31:27
have quit you one of the things because the
31:30
times of such because it impacts
31:32
your converciate work. Here, it's
31:34
so ironic. You come here today, who days
31:37
from now? It onwards?
31:39
There after a new chapter of your
31:41
life begins, another beginning of
31:43
your life, which will be very good. This
31:46
is what I came for. I write down
31:48
April thirteenth in my notebook and I circle
31:51
it big. Four days from
31:53
now. That's the date I'm going to get
31:55
started on my show. Dr
31:58
Khmar continues with more work related things.
32:00
He says foreign travel is in the cards,
32:02
which is super exciting, and
32:05
that I should wear an emerald to improve my communication
32:08
skills, which is funny. I
32:10
make a note to do an episode on gems
32:12
and vedic astrology down the line. But
32:15
the best part is that Dr Kamar seems
32:17
to think this whole podcast will go really
32:20
well, so it's very profound,
32:22
so you'll make it big in life. You'll be very successful
32:25
in everything, because your planets showed
32:27
that. I'm so excited about
32:29
all this tape, getting a start gate for the show,
32:32
the talk of gems, this prediction that everything
32:34
might go well. That I'm
32:37
caught off guard by Dr Kamar's next
32:39
question, which comes out of nowhere. Gotta
32:42
be something about your father, um,
32:46
like what he did for work or it still does.
32:49
He's a chemical engineer, he's
32:52
retired. He's ill
32:55
right now listening back, I
32:57
don't know why I mentioned my dad was ill. Dr
33:00
Kamara hadn't asked, and maybe
33:02
it's because I was trying to participate fully, like
33:05
I thought I should let him know. Years
33:08
ago my dad was diagnosed with cancer,
33:11
but he actually sailed through that treatment
33:14
and he's been cancer free for a while now. But
33:17
recently he broke a rib reaching for something,
33:20
which was odd, and then
33:22
he also had the slight boost and some liver counts
33:25
which his doctor told him not to worry about.
33:27
Because that's why I asked again,
33:30
from the time he started a couple of years back. Still
33:32
now, Uh, situation
33:34
doesn't look good for father. There is
33:37
risk to father. This thing about
33:39
my dad. It was a throwaway line
33:41
in the middle of an hour and a half interview. I
33:44
don't even know how closely I was listening. By
33:47
the time we hit stop on the recorder, I was thrilled.
33:50
I had over an hour of material and I
33:52
was cutting tape my head as I was asking
33:54
questions, and I know I felt good.
33:57
I thanked Dr Khmar for his time, and I
33:59
let him run off to feed his mother lunch, which
34:01
he does every day, and my
34:04
cousin and I walked off to get fresh dosas
34:06
and Italy's, one of the many canteens
34:08
that dot this area of Jackson Heights. Thank
34:14
you, And
34:18
then twenty minutes into chatting
34:20
and laughing and debating what's
34:22
real about astrology and what isn't and
34:25
how can you even tell right? I
34:28
received this email from my dad. It
34:31
read we just received the results
34:34
of the MRCP testing. Unfortunately,
34:37
the news is not as good as it could be. We'll
34:40
talk to Dr Thomas and Dr Shakour
34:42
and let you know as soon as we can. Study
34:46
results diffuse metastatic
34:49
disease throughout the liver and bones
34:51
from unknown primary. The
34:56
cancer had metastasized through my dad's liver
34:58
and bones. I don't
35:00
know what it means, but I've forgotten
35:03
about astrology. I
35:05
don't care about emeralds or whether
35:08
any of this feels embarrassing anymore. My
35:11
stomach drops. I can't
35:13
finish my chie I
35:16
don't know what to write, so I just tap out. I'm
35:19
so sorry, Dad, I'll call you back
35:21
in a bit. And
35:24
all I'm thinking now is
35:27
how fast can I get to Atlanta? Next
35:51
week? On Skyline Drive, we take a train to Bay
35:53
Ridge, meet a therapist who secretly
35:55
uses astrology behind your clients backs,
35:58
and hang out with the seventy four year old
36:01
who just wants to know am I ever
36:03
going to have sex with somebody again?
36:06
And we use astrology to get her an answer.
36:14
Thank you so much for listening. I
36:16
have so many people to thank. Skyline Drive
36:18
is a production of Kaleidoscope and I Heeart
36:21
Podcast. The show is hosted and written
36:23
by me Mongish Fatiguler with a
36:25
ton of help, like so much
36:27
help from these wonderful people. Mary
36:30
Philip Sandy is our cat loving supervising
36:32
producer. Metra Bunshah. He produced
36:35
this whole thing despite my constantly
36:37
getting in the way. Mark Lotto is
36:39
our incredible story editor who
36:41
even suffered a trip to India with me. This
36:44
episode was mixed by my pal at Soundboard
36:46
with scoring from Botany. The
36:49
song Yola Mango is my absolute
36:51
favorite um the Insane. Music in
36:53
between is courtesy of Azadi Records,
36:56
him Manchu Suri and Peter Matthew
36:58
Bauer. If you want to hear or we made
37:00
you a mixtape, just check out the show
37:03
notes. Additional production and research
37:05
support from the wonderful Anna Rubinova
37:07
through Chivao Lucas, Riley,
37:10
Bethan Macaluzo, aditya
37:12
bus thrower, and my wonderful wife
37:15
Lizzie Jacobs. There's also my superstar
37:17
Aunt Sumon, the Woman Buckshee,
37:20
and my cousin Argent Bucy, who helped
37:22
me out of a giant pinch abroad.
37:25
The show is executive produced from I harp On, my good
37:27
pals Nikki Etur and Katrina
37:30
Norvelle. This show would not have happened
37:32
without the support of my friends at Kaleidoscope,
37:34
starting with my good pal Oswalsian,
37:37
who believed in this show. He's also my partner
37:39
at Kaleidoscope. Also Kate Osborne
37:42
for her spot on notes, cost Us
37:44
Lenos for his encouragement and Fahini
37:46
Shory for her delightful
37:48
suggestions. I also want to give a little
37:50
special thanks to all the kiddos who bore with
37:53
us through this production, Henry Ruby,
37:55
Julian Grendel, Lou and Little
37:57
Enzo Eatur all my friends
37:59
I heart, including Bob Connall will carry
38:02
Nathan Jason, Jerry My New
38:04
York and Atlanta Cruz. There are
38:06
too many to name. Also
38:08
Chanta Sara, my family in India,
38:10
my family in the States, my friend Noel Brown
38:13
who read this episode's warning
38:15
check out his show's ridiculous history
38:17
and stuff they don't want you to know. And just
38:20
one last thank you to my Amma
38:22
and my dad is Lolita and am
38:25
Fatiguler, who I thank my
38:27
lucky stars for thank
38:29
you so much for listening. Dum
38:36
dum dim dodim dum dum
38:39
dm dum dum dim DoD
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More