Ep. 109 Transcript: Sam Reynolds on Talking Astrology with Bill Nye

The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 109, titled:

Sam Reynolds on Talking Astrology with Bill Nye

With Chris Brennan and guest Samuel Reynolds

Episode originally released on May 16, 2017

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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com

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Transcribed by Andrea Johnson

Transcription released February 13th, 2025

Copyright © 2025 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. This episode is recorded on Wednesday, May 10, 2017, starting just after 4:00 PM in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 109th episode of the show. In this episode, I’m going to be talking with astrologer Samuel Reynolds about his recent appearance on the new Netflix series by Bill Nye in order to defend astrology. Before we get started with the interview, just a couple of announcements about our sponsors and giveaway prizes this month.

Our sponsor this month is a software company called Astrolabe, which produces an astrology software program called Solar Fire. Solar Fire is one of the most popular astrological programs on the market today and is used by many professional astrologers. The program covers the full range of astrological techniques, including natal astrology, synastry, electional and horary astrology. It also provides tools from a wide variety of different traditions, from the Hellenistic and Medieval astrological traditions to Uranian and cosmobiology. Listeners of the podcast can get a 15% discount on Solar Fire by entering the promo code ‘AP15’ when purchasing the program through the Solar Fire website. You can find out more information about Solar Fire at alabe.com. Our other sponsor this month is the mobile astrology software app called Astro Gold. Astro Gold was made by the creators of Solar Fire and is essentially the mobile version of the popular desktop astrology program. Astro Gold features natal, transit, progression and synastry modules resulting in a remarkably comprehensive but easy-to-use app for doing astrology on the go. The application is clear, clean, and precise and uses the latest Swiss Ephemeris and ACS Atlas files, ensuring that the charts cast using the app will be as accurate as possible. The application is available on both iPhones and iOS devices through the iTunes stores, as well as on Android devices by using the Google Play Store. For more information about the program, visit astrogold.io. More details about our sponsors and the giveaway we’re doing this month can be found on the description page for this episode on theastrologypodcast.com. All right, with those announcements out of the way, let’s get started with the interview. Hi, Sam. Welcome back to the show.

SAMUEL REYNOLDS: Thanks for having me, Chris.

CB: Hey, so you’ve been busy over the course of the past year. I was actually very surprised. So I think this just happened, what, like a couple of weeks ago. I opened up Facebook one day, and you’ve posted a photo of you standing, taking a selfie with Bill Nye, and announced that you’re gonna appear as a panelist on this new Netflix series that he has, titled, Bill Nye Saves the World—which was released on April 21, 2017—and you had a short segment. How did that come about? Or what’s the backstory with that?

SR: So it actually started in October. We actually filmed it in October. And it came about because some of the people behind the scenes heard about the ISAR conference in LA. And specifically, I guess there was an article published in the LA Times featuring astrologers talking about the panel, in which you were one of the panelists. So they started canvassing—they being from Bill Nye Saves the World show—and trying to get in contact with people who were at the conference. And somehow Shelley Ackerman directed them towards me. I talked to one of the people behind the show, and they were very interested in some of the things I had to say and had me come out and do a taping for the show. And that’s pretty much it, from October. I pretty much had to keep mum about it until April, when the show would premiere.

CB: Wow. That must have been difficult to stay quiet about it for that long. You recorded it in late October or something?

SR: More like, yeah, maybe the third week in October. Just before the fourth week, yeah.

CB: Okay, got it. All right, so it’s like many people—especially younger people—are familiar with Bill Nye as a science promoter, who’s a little bit more of a skeptic and science promoter in recent times. And this entire series is largely about skeptical topics or topics related to different things that skeptics deal with, as well as just general promoting and giving a platform for scientific things and discussions. So on the Wikipedia description, for example, it says: “The series focuses on science and investigates its relationship with politics, pop culture, and society. The first season explores topics such as climate change, alternative medicine, and video games from a scientific point of view, while also refuting myths and anti-scientific claims.” So your episode—you actually appeared on Season 1, Episode 11, which was titled, “Malarkey.” It seems like the majority of this episode was focused on issues related to confirmation bias, which is one of the common skeptical criticisms or scientific criticisms—especially against forms of divination such as astrology—that are used to explain why something like that could appear to work, but in fact doesn’t work. And it was just like a short, 10-minute segment that you appeared in, but it was basically a panel with two other skeptics, plus Bill Nye. And so, it wasn’t very long. How much of the final time did you guys actually spend recording it versus how much actually ended up on tape?

SR: We did 13 minutes. Maybe three minutes more than what you say. Or maybe it was even a little less. I think they got most of it. There were a couple of moments that I had with Bill Nye that weren’t recorded. I guess they were gearing up. But yeah, I think they got most of it.

CB: Okay. So it was a pretty brief segment. I mean, there were a lot of quick exchanges and sometimes there were interruptions and stuff. I mean, how did you feel like it went? Or what has the feedback been so far? What were your expectations going into it versus how did you feel after the fact?

SR: Well, some people behind the scenes talked with me. Considering that this was the eleventh episode of the show, what had been observed is that Bill Nye—and I haven’t watched all the other shows. It seemed that with panelists, Bill would usually hang back. So the expectation would be that Bill would hang back and let my two co-panelists trade their barbs with me, and that maybe Bill would guide it along. So he was portrayed as more of a moderator, or that he would be a moderator. I had my hunch that that may not be completely true. Considering what you read from Wikipedia, as an ex-preacher myself, I see Bill Nye as still an evangelical for ‘science’. No, ‘evangelist’ might be the better frame. But there’s still an evangelical spirit, his zeal there.

CB: Yeah, I think ‘science’ evangelist is not even a label that he would reject.

SR: Right.

CB: But they labeled his show ‘Bill Nye Saves the World’ under that premise.

SR: So I actually had some reservation about how much he would hold back, but I was going by what folks who seemed to know the show better would think. Well, anyone who watches the show will know that that didn’t happen. Bill was very much involved in the discussion, maybe too much so. And so, I was a little disappointed that it did become three-on-one and that there really wasn’t enough time for me to explain. I think I had the assumption, and erroneous assumption, that Bill would ask questions and give me space to answer. I probably would have been a lot more ‘froggy’ in terms of jumping in and—I won’t say cantankerous. Cuz I didn’t want to come off aggressive on his show, but I did want to come off clear, and I would have probably been a lot more assertive or active. But I was like, okay, he’s gonna ask questions and maybe reasonably expect me to answer. But that’s not quite what happened.

CB: Sure, sure. So yeah, I thought we could talk about it, do sort of an overview or recap a little bit of some of the exchanges that happened and maybe some of things that astrologers could learn from it, or could take from the whole experience.

SR: Sure.

CB: Yeah, as I said in the forecast episode—a few episodes ago—these things rarely go well for astrologers. And so, when I watched this, I wasn’t expecting it to go that well, and I didn’t feel like it did, ultimately. Although I was happy that they chose you, who’s actually a professional astrologer, and this is your full-time profession. Sometimes there’s been other episodes of different things where they just grab some random astrologer, who it may or may not even be their primary focus in life, or they may not have been doing it for that long, and that becomes the stand-in for somebody that’s supposed to be representing the entire astrological community. But at least with you, this has been your primary profession for quite a while, right?

SR: Right. Exactly. And I was glad it was someone from our community. You know, a visible member of our community. Not that it was just me, but someone who is still present within the community of astrologers and can talk about astrology—and I hope I did—intelligently.

CB: Yeah. Well, ironically, the last time you were on this show, or the first time maybe, the title of the episode—actually I’m not even sure what the number was. But the title of the episode was “Responses to Common Scientific Criticisms of Astrology,” where you and I did that double-header. Originally, it was gonna be one show, but we ended up breaking it up into two, and one was talking about astrology and science, and the other episode was talking about astrology and religion. So it was kind of ironic that you then ended up being the spokesperson for astrology on this episode, or on this panel with Bill Nye.

SR: Well, it’s not that ironic in the sense that one of the things that I’ve benefited from, from being on Twitter and social media, is I’ve talked to a lot of skeptics over the years. And so, I knew that there was a risk of going into the lions’ den. I did expect the lions not to be the same number. Maybe I expected one or two. I got three.

CB: Right.

SR: But even the particular tack I took—even though I do subscribe to it—I also knew it would be harder for them to process, which I think sort of proved true. They were just ready for me to kind of go like, “Well, no, astrology is science,” and seem like Yosemite Sam and ‘rootin’ tootin’ shootin’ in the air’ saying, “It’s a science. And I’ll fight you in an alley.” And I knew some of that would defend them in terms of where they could go. I know you have a particular view on that, but I also knew that the argument usually shifts when you don’t take the claim that it is decisively a science. Yeah, I won’t steal any of your thunder, but I know what could come next. But I did have that knowledge, or at least the idea. One of them would be like, “It’s a pseudo-science.”

CB: Yeah, we had talked about some of those different responses that you can have to common criticisms, because the criticisms are pretty standard. I mean, that’s one of the things you and I noted—a lot of the same criticisms have been around for a while. What’s common in the skeptical community is that—in almost every instance, and this panel was no exception—the people that are protesting the most loudly against astrology, or the skeptics that are saying things against it, are typically not people that have much background in the subject. But instead they’re skeptics of many different things, and they have a somewhat shallow understanding of a number of different fields, and Some of the common, stock arguments—at least on the surface—appear to be relatively straightforward or rational arguments for why some subject doesn’t make sense or why it shouldn’t work or other things along those lines. And so, because those same arguments have been recycled for decades now, it’s relatively easy to anticipate some of the things that they’re gonna throw at you. And he pretty much did right out of the gate.

SR: Absolutely.

CB: Let’s see, so the focus of the panel was pseudo-science. So Nye—basically right at the beginning—threw out a few different statements right from the start which kind of confused the discussion. He opened up by saying: “You know, I don’t believe in any of it.” And he said, “Do you know why?” And then he sort of goes on this string where he introduces three different points, and he says, “It just never has anything to do with anything.” So that was point number one, or that was an argument that he was making or trying to make, but didn’t articulate very well. Then he moved onto point two, and he said, “You’re telling me that there’s only 12 types of people,” and that’s something that you guys would come back to later. Then he moved onto the third argument in the same sentence, where he says, “What about the wobbling of the Earth, and what used to be a Sagittarius is now a Capricorn?” referring to precession. Somehow this led to a few comments about Ophiuchus and the 13th sign that didn’t really go anywhere. But it’s like right off the bat, you had to contend with three completely separate arguments against astrology that were being thrown at you. And it was interesting, cuz one of the things you did—and I could see what you were trying to do—was you were trying to disarm him by being casual or being sort of playful in some sense, right?

SR: Yeah. It’s interesting, even though those were three arguments—and they came so rapid-fire—do you expect me to take that seriously? I wanted to figure out his tone. So there was no sense to me to come off aggressive or match his banter from the gate for a couple of different reasons. One, I think that would have been the expectation. I mean, if I were in his position—I mean, I often think from my opponent’s position—I would want to see someone get riled up, because that’s a complete suggestion of losing control. So one thing I was clear on was not losing my head and control, and one of the ways to sucker a potential debate partner is to be a little more casual. Especially in the beginning, in the opening, because we’re all starting off as friends, and this can be a cordial discussion. So I was hoping more for a cordial conversation. And I didn’t take his arguments seriously because he hadn’t actually come with anything meaningful. He just came with three darts, and I was like, are you gonna come to a central point, maybe? And I think that’s really hard for him. Now having looked at it a few times, I don’t think he ever really came with a clear focus. You know, one thing I’ll say—I think some of this got edited out. I think Timothy Caulfield, who was the Sagittarian on my right—

CB: One of the panelists?

SR: Yeah. I think he had—it’s been edited out—some better questions and thoughts. Jamila Bey, who was one of the other panelists, I felt like she was more into the banter. And she also, interestingly enough, got really off-topic. So it was more like a joke rather than really trying to get into something substantive. And I was hopeful. But if I got really, “Well, no, blah, blah, blah,” you know, we can always say, I could’ve/should’ve/would’ve. But the one thing I probably would do differently is I probably would have still kept up some of the banter, but I would have shifted the topic and say, “Well, let’s talk about this.” And I think that’s where I could have been a little more assertive.

CB: Yeah, I understand why you did that. And even the show itself has this kind of casual or joking vibe, and of course you’re on a panel. I think that is a good strategy, to not appear overly-aggressive or defensive. But on the same token, he was making some pretty strong criticisms and pretty strong attacks on you, and by extension, the rest of the astrological community. And so, there were some points there where I definitely felt like I wished that you recognized in the moment what he was saying and how insulting it was in some sense, and responded to it by not being a jerk to him, but being a little bit more serious about directly responding to some of those criticisms and refuting them, essentially.

SR: Yeah, I mean, one of the ones that I’ll just tell the audience both my wife and I bristled at, so hearing was, “You make a good living, don’t you?” And of course my wife was like, “Well, yeah, kind of, no.” And she can testify more than anyone how much of a ‘good living’ I don’t make in that sense, which is not to say I’m not living. And even when he said, “You make a good living,” I make a living. But when he was going into that, I think probably I should have wrestled a little bit more with him on that and say, “Well, you’re making the implication that astrologers are fleecing people and making a huge profit. I don’t know any astrologers like that.” But I thought he was going to ask me a question, or he was really asking, but it really just more a rhetorical sidebar.

CB: Yeah, I mean, most of it was statements. Cuz he opened up earlier in the show—or at least the beginning of the episode in the finished product—you have to contextualize the entire episode and what happens on the panel with a couple of statements he makes at the very beginning. He said, and this was before you were on the panel: “Charlatans use confirmation bias to sell us nonsense. And once you buy in, that same bias will keep you in the dark.” And then he goes on later, and he says: “People take your money often when you’re at the most vulnerable—when you’ve had a death in the family, when you’re concerned about something—and that’s when they prey on you.” So it’s like that’s where he was coming from later in the conversation.

SR: Right.

CB: When you get on the panel, his point is, a) what you’re doing is bogus, and b) you’re ripping people off, and those were sort of recurring themes for him. So the first time he really gave you a chance to speak, he looks at you and he says: “But what’s your deal?” And he says: “You don’t believe it.” By that, he’s saying ‘astrology’ either. So opens it up by saying, what’s your deal? You know that this is bogus, and that this isn’t a valid phenomenon. But you’re just using it as a way to rip people off, and he’s basically asking you if you acknowledge that. And then, at this point, you respond. And you continue to try to be a bit disarming and respond by saying that you use astrology, but you think that it’s like a language. And you say right from the start that you don’t believe that astrology’s a science. And when they ask what is it, you say: “It’s an interpretive art.” And then you quoted, at one point, Shelley Ackerman saying that it’s: “The marriage between math and myth.” So this is our first point of discussion, or maybe our main point of discussion. Part of the strategy that you went for in this panel was to take the tack that astrology is not a science and that it’s a language in order to sidestep this issue of their accusations of it being pseudoscience or not scientific or not valid. So why did you take that approach? I’m trying to think of how we should frame this discussion. I was kind of disappointed in some sense because I felt like by saying that, that you were fundamentally, or for all intents and purposes, just conceding the point or almost agreeing with their point that astrology has no actual validity, or that there’s no truth to it, but instead you see it as entertainment or something like that.

SR: And I appreciate your honesty. I mean, that’s something that you and Kelly and Austin talked about a few weeks ago. And Austin had some thoughts as well, and questions about science, so I think that’s a good segue for me to talk about what my intention ultimately was. So I do believe that. Someone even asked me privately—another astrologer asked me privately—on Facebook was that really a chess move.

CB: Right. Well, yeah, cuz that’s an immediate question. Is that just a rhetorical strategy that you’re using? Cuz it appears to be that you’re saying there’s no validity to astrology.

SR: Well, I don’t see that as equal to that. So in answering that—both to you and to what I said to the astrologer—it is both. So the chess move—I anticipated going into the lions’ den. Like I said, I always think in terms of my opponent’s perspective. Well, they’re expecting me to defend astrology as a science. And I don’t, and I have never to date or to my acknowledge ever purported astrology as a science in all the years I’ve been studying and teaching and using astrology. Having come from a social science background, studied science as a central focus in high school, I know that astrology doesn’t usually fulfill the demands, the needs for replicability, the needs for control groups. All those particular aspects, astrology struggles with that. In terms of looking at it as a language, I know you felt like my response, “It’s like Hamlet,” is bogus, I want to explain that. I mean, it’s all related to that sensibility. I don’t think when we’re talking about art and the importance of how we know things that that becomes a statement of it not being valid. In fact, it can be even more valid, and I think that’s what we should be challenging science on the most. And this is where I felt like I wish the conversation had gone deeper here, and maybe I would have been a lot more aggressive and assertive in this particular point. When he said, “I can show you things that science has discovered and you see through science (essentially to paraphrase) are beautiful,” that’s the point where I said, “But will it provide meaning? Human beings need meaning.” This is where I have the fundamental problem with our vested interest—when I say ‘our’ as astrologers or ‘our’ as a collective society—in scientism. And ‘scientism’—just to be clear for your audience—is the idea and the belief that science is central to the understanding of all human knowledge, and the scientific method and empiricism are the means by which we can rightly understand human endeavor. And that’s a lie. Most of what we have valued in our culture, most of what we value in terms of the construction of our society doesn’t have to be literature. But let’s be clear, we made it all up, the sexagesimal system that we use, even as we’re registering how long we’re gonna talk for this podcast. An hour. An hour-and-a-half. 60 minutes. There’s no empirical evidence for why we use it that way, none, or why today is a particular day. It’s all kind of fabricated by a notion of how we’ve conceived time, how we’ve conceived of the experience of anything. So when I talk about it as an art, I’m actually subtly saying that on some level, we’re not Homo sapiens sapiens. We might be ‘Homo fabricus’ where we make up things. And I think that is unsettling to the mindset of those who kind of bought into scientism and science, because we believe that we’re discovering the world as it is, not recognizing that we’re discovering the world more as we’ve created it in culture.

CB: Yeah, and the discussion we had prior to this episode, that was the point that we started talking about. Because my issue was I felt like you were conceding that there’s no objective validity or reality to astrology by saying it’s purely an art. And your response was partially that you—in your personal philosophy of life—don’t think that there’s any such thing as an objective reality at all. And so, that’s where you’re coming from partially with that argument.

SR: Yes. I would say that there is an inter-subjectivity, right? And that is used in epistemic terms to mean that as much as I might say there’s no objective reality—which is not to say there’s no reality—there is a reality by which we have constructed. For instance, if you say to me—as you have—that we’re gonna talk for about an hour, an hour-and-a-half, I will not have expectations that I’ll be talking till the Sun comes up, right? Unless we were talking that late, which we’re not. So there’s a construct of time that we’ve agreed upon, and that I’ve learned and that you’ve learned and we can jointly understand. So if someone were to ask me literally if there is something empirically as 60 minutes, yes and no. More so the ‘no’. Another culture, another time, another place could easily conceive of an hour in a completely different way than we do. In fact, we know for a fact that’s true. Anyone who’s studied planetary hours knows that an hour doesn’t have to literally be an hour.

CB: Uh, yeah, I mean, I’ll take that to some extent. But to some extent, I think that’s an argument that’s not gonna work in that format. If you’re arguing with a group of scientists, and you try to say there’s no such thing as objective reality, that’s not gonna win anybody over or convince anybody for one. Two, different cultures have developed independently different measurements of time, like the year, which is the amount of time it takes for the Earth to go around the Sun. I mean, that’s an objectively-measurable form of time measurement.

SR: Well, I mean, they have and haven’t, right? I mean, there are ways in which we’ve conceived of the idea of the year in completely different terms, whether they’re the solar or lunar calendar, or it’s an intercalary set of days, as the Egyptians had. There’s intercalary days or even exceptions of time, or even different years. That’s even used in Ethiopia. Ethiopia doesn’t even have the same year. Muslims don’t even use the same year. So you’re right, there is a way in which we’ve had a meshing of culture. Even the sexagesimal system that we use—you know better than I—coming from the Babylonians, we’ve adopted, and has been adopted from cultures for over 2,000 years, but that still doesn’t mean, by virtue, that becomes something that is objective. I mean, that goes along to the same frame where Jungians believe there’s something empirically that we can call archetypes. I don’t know if that’s true. I think it sounds metaphysical.

CB: Yeah. Well, maybe let’s bring it back to one of the points that he made. So you make this response that it’s just an art. And then the conversation continues, and he responds saying: “So what service do you provide to people with your ‘art’?” And you say: “I use the cultural imagination of what we know as astrology to talk to them about how their idea of themselves, based on their birth chart, syncs up with their life experience, basically using biography.” And then he interrupts you, and he says: “In other words, you get them to tell you stuff about themselves, and then you reinforce it with these astrological things in the background.” So he charges you with cold reading, which is one of the common criticisms of astrology. And I don’t think you quite responded to that, but you tried to go back to your previous point. You said: “No, it’s actually about using the language of astrology as a means of talking with them about or dialoguing with them about their lives and about themselves. So it’s a language.” I mean, there’s a real issue here where he’s raising the point that what you’re doing is just cold reading, and that you’re just picking up statements about the person; that because you’re acknowledging astrology doesn’t have any objective validity, and therefore, doesn’t have any objective truth to it, a person’s birth chart doesn’t actually have any relevance really or explain anything about the person in any objective sense. You’re in fact just picking up things from the conversation and then using that to give the appearance that astrology says something. My issue with the tack that you took in that argument is that you’re almost kind of acknowledging that by saying it’s an art. And saying that it has no objective validity, you’re saying that you’re almost just using the chart as a jumping-off point for counseling or for the dialogue, without the astrology itself having any sort of truth to it.

SR: Well, let me ask you a question. When you say ‘the astrology having truth to it’, what do you believe? It sounds like you do believe it does have a ‘truth’ to it, which I can agree with. But why? Is it metaphysical? Where does that come from?

CB: Because there’s an observable correlation between celestial movements and earthly events.

SR: I agree, but why?

CB: Well, no, you don’t. If you agree on that point, then you would agree that there must be some objective—

SR: There is a correlation.

CB: Then you would agree that there would be some objective validity to astrology. Cuz there should be no correlation—in objective reality—between celestial movements and earthly events.

SR: Well, I think there’s a reason why. But I want to understand your perspective, why. Since it’s your show, I mean, you can come to that when you want to. But my perception of it—and this is going back to someone else who has appeared on your show, Geoffrey Cornelius—I believe the reason why we have a correlation between the heavens is not because the heavens bespeak something independent of us. I think it’s because of the significance that we’ve assigned to them.

CB: Right.

SR: I don’t think it’s something independent of us. I don’t think it’s something independent of our conception of ourselves and constructions of our culture over time. I mean, you could look at that correlation as a way in which we see and have constructed a partnership between our projections onto the heavens, and our conceptions of what—

CB: I mean, I think it’s probably a mixture of both, and that it doesn’t necessarily need to be all one or the other. But there can be some objective validity to astrology where different cultures could independently observe the same things regardless. Or something could be happening independent of culture, in addition to there could be ways in which culturally astrology is relative or our conceptualizations of astrology are outgrowths of the culture or what have you.

SR: And I’m glad you brought that up. Because this is the conversation you and I can have because we know astrology, right? And here’s where I’m gonna take on the reins of a skeptic of sorts. Now I know you’ve studied many different cultures and histories of astrology. The question becomes—independent of the inter-penetration between the Hellenistic models and the Babylonians and the Greeks—is what you’re saying true? Did multiple cultures come to some of the same/similar conjectures about the heavens without this cross-fertilization? I mean, Aztec astrology is very, very different from the conceptions of Western astrology. Chinese astrology—in its conception and its use—is very different. So what is the data to support what you’re saying?

CB: Uh, yeah, I mean, I think it’s hard to say because most cultures had some interaction, and so you can’t study them completely independently. But, for example, the one that you mentioned, in terms of Mayan astrology, they ended up focusing on the Venus retrograde cycle as being important and seeing that as something notable. But so did different astrologies in Mesopotamia and in the Greco-Roman period that developed independently. They also found that to be a useful cycle, and in some instances, did interpret some parts of it very similarly. So, to me, that evidence of some sort of external validity of astrology.

SR: Right. We can say that objectively. I’m not saying that the planets don’t exist independently of us, they do. I mean, the cycles of the Sun, as we perceive it from the geocentric perspective, that’s true. But as you just said, I mean, there’s some parts of the Venus cycle that Mayan astrology—Mesoamerican we might be able to say better—devised, but had also a very different conception of Venus than maybe even what developed in Hellenistic or even from Babylonian conceptions of it. Definitely, what happened in terms of the conceptions of Jupiter in Chinese astrology is different from the conception of how we use it in the same way. So the question becomes then, is there really an underlying pattern of consciousness and ideas in astrology, as astrologers purport? And I think that’s where it shows more so as a cultural framework that has been infused and then cross-fertilized with different cultures over time. But is there something beyond that? That’s where I would question just by knowing the history of astrology. You know what I mean? It’s not the same empirical—

CB: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a whole other topic that we’d have to deal with. Cuz we’d also have to be much more well-versed than I think either of us are, independently, in Mesoamerican astrology in order to make a full comparison.

SR: That’s fair.

CB: Let’s see, so moving on, Bill interrupted the third panelist at one point. Because after moving onto the next panelist, after you gave your response, he looked a little unimpressed. Because basically the way you were framing astrology as having essentially no objective validity—just being something like a mode of using language for counseling—it didn’t really counter his accusation of cold reading, so that kind of went unchecked. And so, then it came to the next discussion point where he interrupted the third panelist as she was introducing herself, and he went back to you, and he said: “Can you make a prediction?” And the point of that is that they’re trying to bring it back to their core point of whether there’s any objective validity to astrology, whereas you’re saying essentially that there doesn’t need to be, or sort of sidestepped the question. At that point, you redirect it by saying: “Sure, I could make a prediction.” But then you said you don’t think that every aspect of knowledge needs to be replicable. And then Bill responded, quite rightly, that it does in science. And, Sam, you responded by saying: “Is all knowledge sequestered to science?” and there was sort of this back-and-forth. And this is where Austin’s point from the forecast episode is kind of relevant. He pointed out that basically the word ‘science’ is being used as a stand-in or a substitute at this point for ‘truth’, and that’s one of the issues I have in terms of taking that tack with them. By right out of the gate saying astrology is not a science, as far as they’re concerned, that’s basically the equivalent of saying it’s not truth, or it’s not valid. And I think what you were saying—that was accurate as part of that—is that astrology or astrologers do not use the scientific method, and they do not do proper controls or experiments in terms of how they develop techniques or come to conclusions on certain things. But I don’t necessarily think that we need to go as far as saying that it’s not a science in the broader meaning of the term, as a field of knowledge that has some validity or some external truth to it.

SR: Well, see, that’s kind of the thing. I mean—oh, I’m sorry, I interrupted you. I mean, I don’t know if you finished your point.

CB: No, that was it. Was it really necessary to go as far? I understand that it almost puts you in a better position rhetorically if you just agree with them and say it’s not a science, so that’s fine. You almost agree that it’s a pseudo-science on some level then. But is it necessary to go that far, to say that it’s not a science, when they’re essentially using the term ‘science’ as a stand-in for something that is a valid phenomenon?

SR: Two things and two levels of responses. Well, one, I’m really, really glad that Austin said what he said a few weeks ago in terms of looking at science as a stand-in for truth, but I’m gonna go even a step farther with that particular statement. I realized that we, astrologers, have not realized or fully—in our pursuit, for over a hundred years, maybe even starting from Alan Leo—gained the trust of the public through acquiring some dimensions of the trappings of science, by also adopting some of the principles that have been outlined by science in terms of astronomy, including the outers as rulers. I think we have done ourselves an immense injustice because we haven’t really seen where the war—and I’m gonna frame it that way just for a rhetorical level—is being waged, and the war is that science and scientism has hijacked the very notion of where we experience truth. And I think me kind of stepping into the lair that way—I get the reading, and I get what you’re saying, “Oh, you’re seeming to acquiesce to their claim that there’s nothing true about astrology”—what I’m really saying is that you don’t have a province on the truth. The only way by which we can understand truth is not just through science. And I think to see the collapse between truth and science is to kind of buy into scientism’s claim that the only way by which we can experience truth is through science, and I don’t believe that at all. I don’t think you do either. But in the question that you’re framing, it almost seems like that, and I think that is a common idea among many astrologers. So we have to realize and challenge how science has really laid a claim on truth, but there’s a deeper issue. The second layer of this is realizing that we kind of lost control of how we talk about our notion of truth. And when I say ‘we lost control’, I can go to something very forthright.

Astronomers will find new planets, name them, and then name them inspired by myths, right? Eris or Quaoar. Sedna. They will come up with these names, and then we will look at the myths—we, being astrologers—and then we will kind of assign a whole mythos, an astro-mythos, based on the names that astronomers have given it.

CB: Wow. And we’ve talked about that before, but that’s a relatively recent development in history. I know we’ve argued about this before. Even though that’s commonplace now, we have to be careful, because that approach may be much more recent than astrologers realize.

SR: Define ‘recent’.

CB: Like the past few decades of astrologers taking—

SR: No, no, no. What about Pluto?

CB: Well, Pluto didn’t really come into wide usage until the 1950s and ‘60s. But prior to that, like Uranus, for example, we evidence of astrologers who were studying that empirically.

SR: Wait. We have evidence of one astrologer, right? You mean Farley?

CB: Yeah. Well, one influential astrologer who took notes, who studied it in charts over and over again, and made empirical observations. And so, he wasn’t just going from the mythology and saying Uranus indicates this. Cuz even if he went that way, one of the points that Richard Tarnas has made is that the mythology of Uranus, or Ouranos, doesn’t really even fit with the significations that astrologers give to that planet.

SR: But realize what that blows up, okay. It blows up even the aspiration. And this is what is always mind-blowing for many of my students. The description and how we understand and assigned rulership—even from the classical rulers, and you know this as well from your book and the work that you’ve done—is more inspired by the geometrical and even the geometrical layout of time and space of the Thema Mundi, which is very different than the assignment of rulership that came about; you know, we talk about affinity. So that’s a different issue. But in terms of the significations of the planets, that comes from something that’s a lot more intuitive, and then as you said, there’s at least one astrologer who came along with an empirical set of ideas, with a planet that was named Uranus that—as Richard Tarnas says—may have been misnamed. But that’s one. That’s not science. That’s not something that goes along with our traditional notion of science, to talk about one astrologer. The same thing for Neptune. The same issue for Neptune.

CB: That’s a sort of empiricism, right?

SR: Right. I mean, empiricism and science. So I think that gives astrology—whether we want to acknowledge that or not—a leg up on pursuing a different aspect of knowledge or a different pathway to knowledge that is not just embedded in empiricism. But yet, and still, we want to lay the foundation of the development of our art in a certain different field, on science itself. We’re not making and staking our own claim in our own field. Now I’ve posed this to other astrologers. Going back to Geoffrey Cornelius, he had an interesting answer which kind of surprised me. This is where he kind of went into his own, I want to say, metaphysical idea. He was like when scientists name these planets, they may be tapping into a collective consciousness, that we can use the names that are given, that do kind of meet and correlate to a societal need. I kind of don’t know what to do with that, because that’s not even the history of our field.

CB: Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of tricky, just cuz there’s a lot of things going on there when you’re talking about the discovery of the outer planets and the societal changes that are going on and how that developed. Especially cuz astrology was going through that low point after the 17th century, when it sort of died out and fell out of the universities. Modern science was growing and being developed and established at the same time things like astrology were falling by the wayside.

SR: Right. And we haven’t come back. To go back to my original point, that low point is still there, because we still have a certain ‘beholden’ sensibility to science without challenging it on its terms, that it has exclusive province towards the truth. It doesn’t. And I think it is high time for us to say there are different ways by which we can understand human experience that are very distinct from empiricism and very distinct from how we know knowledge. I mean, it’s one thing, yes, to say it’s art. But even in art there’s ways in which we can understand things that are experiential, that at the same time have a consensual reality that we can understand, that’s not the same-level empiricism. It almost seems that any aspect of human endeavor that engages behavior runs into this problem: psychology, economics. What’s amazing to me is that people can get a bachelor of science in economics, and there’s nothing scientific about economics, nothing.

CB: Yeah, and that is a broader issue where that’s very clear in the social sciences, that there’s certain things—like with psychology—that are hard to validate through the scientific method, or can be more tricky to validate, that still may be valid forms of knowledge or valid fields that can be helpful or can be useful or effective, even if they’re sometimes difficult to pin down. But they still acknowledge that there’s aspects of that that are valid or are empirical. I mean, I want to push back on that a little bit, because astrology and astrologers, to me, are highly empirical. I mean, we’re constantly looking at and observing different correlations between, let’s say, placements in a person’s birth chart or certain transits. Or a Mercury retrograde happens, or something like that, and astrologers will note that, and they will write it down, and they will add that to a collection of observations and data that they’re building about what types of things happen in the world when that astrological correlation or placement takes place. And even though astrologers are kind of lazy or kind of sloppy in some sense in that we don’t typically apply the same constraints that would be necessary within the context of the scientific method to make it as clean as it could be, there’s still an empiricism there, and there’s still an assumption that there’s something objectively out there that’s happening.

SR: But if you listen to what you just said, I mean, literally thinking as a scientist, it comes out the same. You literally just said almost nothing. What I would say is not there’s empirical data, there’s anecdotal data. And I think that’s fair, and I think anecdotes have meaning and have meaning. But empiricism—there is a certain regimented rigidity to it and demand of it that astrologers—as you just said—don’t meet.

CB: Well, there can be, but there’s different levels.

SR: But where is it? I mean, occasionally we have it, right? And what’s interesting is—and this is where the work of David Cochrane is very interesting, and other harmonic astrologers—when we do get into big data and looking at the collection of data, it looks very different than how we normally talk about astrology. And this also goes into the heart of other things that we believe. For instance, I was just having a discussion on Facebook with someone who seemed hellbent on believing that astrologers had empirical reasons for why, for instance, Venus is the ruler of Taurus, or Mars is the ruler of Aries. You and I both know from reading Ptolemy and other sources there’s no collection of data for why planets were assigned rulership. I mean, it’s basically on the Thema Mundi, and it’s more geometric. It has nothing to do with a mass of data for rulership, but he was intent on really thinking there must be some data. The idea is that Venus must behave better in Taurus, right? Or Mars must behave better in Aries. But none of that’s true, but it’s anecdotal.

CB: I mean, astrologers widely believe that that is true, though.

SR: Yeah. But do we have empirical data that’s true?

CB: Yes.

SR: We have anecdotal data.

CB: We have empirical data. What you mean is we don’t have not applied the scientific method consistently in order to prove objectively and without a doubt that, taking a certain sample size, there’s a greater percentage than chance that would show that Venus does ‘x’ when it’s in certain signs.

SR: Correct. But that’s anecdotal. That’s not empirical, that’s anecdotal. That would be, but we don’t have that.

CB: It’s still a type of empiricism, even if it’s anecdotal.

SR: That’s fair. We do have anecdotal. I mean, we’ve had anecdotal for thousands of years. Whether we’re talking about Masha’allah, whether we’re talking about Ibn Arabi, whatever astrologer we’re talking about, they have stories, they have anecdotes, they have even principles; whether we’re talking about Bonatti specifying particular things that happened. And of course when we look at Lilly—what’s great about Lilly and what we love about Lilly is that we have charts and we have the stories. Even when the charts are off—

CB: He has chart examples to show his empirical studies of astrology.

SR: But you’re using that word. I don’t think it’s empirical. I think it’s anecdotal, which doesn’t mean it’s not valid, but it’s not empirical.

CB: I did some other definitions that I wrote down in the notes, but let me look it up. So a Google definition of empirical says: “Based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than by theory or pure logic.” So the idea is that you’re developing information on something, or you’ve come to some kind of conclusion based on observations rather than just theory or logic. To that extent, when astrologers have case studies—like Valens did in the 2nd century, or Lilly did in the 17th century—when they show hundreds of different example charts, that is a type of empiricism where they’re trying to demonstrate their conclusions through example charts.

SR: Right. But in terms of how we talk about empiricism in science, in the modern sense, we don’t have that fulfillment.

CB: Well, yeah.

SR: And that’s why I would prefer ‘anecdotal’.

CB: Well, I’m not gonna concede that point and call it anecdotal.

SR: That’s fair.

CB: I’ll say you are right, that astrologers—when they’re doing their empirical studies—do not typically apply the scientific method. And they don’t do it because the scientific method has certain tools and certain restrictions and ways that certain things are supposed to be done in order to eliminate potential false-positives and things like that, or issues like confirmation bias. But just because astrologers do not apply the scientific method consistently does not mean that part of what they’re doing, and part of the way that they develop knowledge is through empiricism.

SR: But I guess my point with that—I mean, there’s empiricism in art. Or I can say there’s the idea of the empirical—as we were talking about it—in all dimensions of human endeavor. And that’s the problem with empiricism. It kind of reduces and doesn’t recognize there are aspects of human endeavor that have used some of the same ideas. Even the scientific method is used in all aspects of human knowledge and has even been used in astrology. It’s just not used with the same rigidity and the same claims. And the scientific method really even comes more out of a religious background, and it comes from the work of Francis Bacon and Al-Quisen, from other thinkers dealing with optics, trying to figure out things, who didn’t have this antithetical basis of mixing theoretical or deductivist models or deduction models with more experiential or actual fact. So it was really the challenge to see what is God’s handiwork through actual observation. And then control groups and all these different things that we developed has become something more that’s developed over time. I mean, that’s one thing to appreciate. The scientific method didn’t start off with the same rigidity that it’s come to be. And it’s important to look at the history of science itself and recognize that what science has become is not what it’s always been. And what that really highlights is that there’s a different notion of truth, and truth is always evolving. I think actually Austin even made that point. I mean, we talk about racism, there are people who did actual studies, who concluded that races and certain things are real, and there’s actual empirical data that says this race is inferior. I mean, they had their own confirmation bias.

CB: Yeah.

SR: And I think why I’m getting into this is, really recognizing that the ‘anecdotal’, even though I know you don’t want to use that phrase—even life experience, the counting of living through a moment, the experience of something, being moved by something (which is why I made the correlation to Hamlet and art)—these can be valid on their own. We don’t need objective truth to be the only basis by which we understand something as valid.

CB: But astrologers don’t, largely. The objection I would have is that the way that you presented it—that astrology is like Hamlet, or like a work of literature—99% of astrologers do not believe that astrology is just fictional or can be likened to literature, because they do think that it’s objectively true. They do think that the sign of the zodiac—Scorpio, for example—has some certain qualities or properties that can be observed in different individuals when they have different placements in their birth chart there. Or they do think that when Mercury goes retrograde—or Venus goes retrograde—that there’s some observable period of time that will coincide with certain things that will exist there. I mean, and that’s the issue. I understand where you’re coming from, and I think, to your credit, the metaphor of astrology as a language is one that’s been around for thousands of years. But I think you’re going too far with it in presenting it in a way that I’m not even sure is true in terms of how you practice and believe in astrology. Because you still treat it like it has some objective truth, even if you’re saying that it doesn’t.

SR: Well, I think it has objective truth in the same way that we might talk about literature. For instance, let’s talk about that. Caesar was real. How we understand dimensions of the story of Julius Caesar, the Ides of March, some of those historical details we do have access to, but a lot of it was embellishment. And I think the embellishment, the fiction of even biography—which is 99% of the case in almost anything we watch about a person’s life—some measure of that embellishment exists not so much because we have to have the truth, but we have an approximation and some means of the experience of the truth, which I think is valid and important. So when astrologers say, well, there is a correlation between a Venus cycle and what happens on Earth, here’s what astrologers also don’t say—and this is where skeptics usually fail because they don’t know what astrologers say. But this is where I can be the a-hole and say, “Okay, this is what astrologers say.” Astrologers will say that it means ‘x, y, and z’. It also could be ‘x’ prime, ‘y’ prime, and ‘z’ prime. There are other things that might manifest that puts it within a range of interpretation, not that it spells out particular things. And I think that still is cultural. Because you could talk to someone from a different culture and they have a whole different measure—they may not even use the same measure—for a planet or how something may happen. It also brings up an interesting question. You can use different metrics or different variables in different aspects of astrology and somehow come upon a similar answer. I can go to a Vedic astrologer who will talk about my Aquarius rising—which means it has a different ruler—and still have resonance with something about my personality versus going to a tropical astrologer, a Western astrologer, who will talk about Jupiter as my ruler. Who’s right? Both.

CB: I mean, that comes down to two separate issues. I mean, one of the issues that you’re talking about is the overwhelming complexity of astrology. And that’s one of the issues why there is an interpretive art to astrology, especially at this point in time. Because when people ask ‘why don’t you just computerize this’ or something like that, ‘could a computer do the same delineations’, there’s a level of skill, and there’s an additional factor that goes into it, because there are so many possible variables. There is a judgment call that takes place at different points in terms of how to combine those variables into a delineation that’s gonna be accurate and consistent. So that’s a separate issue. But then there’s another separate issue of—what was the point you were just making? So you were talking about the complexity on the one hand and that being an issue for astrologers. And then the second point was, what?

SR: The variables. The fact there are different metrics that you use, that can come up to the same—

CB: That’s just more of this broader issue in astrology about can there be different frames of reference that can still be valid. Even if you’re looking at it from different perspectives, or you’re using different tools, does that make it mutually-exclusive, so that having one approach work makes it so that other approaches don’t work? Because then the common answer to that—or the one that I’ve talked about on the podcast that’s a good way to conceptualize what’s happening there—is the ‘astrology as language’ metaphor, and why different traditions of astrology can work, as if you have different languages that can still be valid. And just because French works doesn’t mean that German doesn’t work or is an invalid language because it approaches things differently. But that’s separate.

SR: But I don’t think it’s separate. It’s only separate if you have this faith, this hope that there can be an objective aspect that’s separate from the languages that we use. And on some level, to some reasonable level, there might be a little bit, but not as much as we would like or hope. For instance, what’s interesting in terms of language is it deals with the conception of it. For instance, I can say in English ‘I’m hungry’ versus I’d say in Espagnol Yo tengo hambre, ‘I have hunger’, which is a whole different conception of how we talk about hunger than how it is in English.

CB: I mean, is it, though? Or is it just different ways of conveying the same meaning?

SR: In nuance. I mean, as an English speaker, it sounds the same, because it translates as ‘I am hungry’. Whereas to say ‘I have hunger’ means that I don’t become the state. You know, that’s what’s interesting about Spanish, for instance, in terms of dealing with language. There’s two different verbs for ‘to be’; there’s ser (to be) and estar. So one is transitory and one is more fixed. This is not something that happens in the same way in English. So there’s a whole different set of being. You know, one thing I told you, I was inspired to watch Arrival thanks to your show with Adam Elenbaas, cuz you guys were talking about it. And I’m really glad I did because that movie does touch on this very same issue that your conception of language or dealing with a language rearranges your whole perception of time, space, and how you live your life. Now it’s a movie, but I think there’s some essence and truth to the experience of it. So I think there’s some culturally-derived aspects for how we approach something, and I think that’s true in astrology. But for astrologers to say, “No, we transcend the idea of language, and we can come to an objective reality,” I’m sorry, I think that’s a delusion. And I can press any astrologer, at any point, including you, that you won’t be able to fully demonstrate that as true.

CB: Okay. But I want to say—just to bring this back around to the focus of the Bill Nye episode—I think 99% of astrologers would disagree with you, to the extent that you were taking a tack that is an outlier or is very unique from the astrological community in terms of how you were presenting astrology in saying, “It’s not a science, it doesn’t have any objective validity or truth. I completely concede all of the points that you guys were making about it right from the beginning.” I don’t know that that was an accurate representation of the astrological community, and that’s a little bit problematic to me.

SR: But at the same time that’s not what was said.

CB: Well, it’s what they heard. If you go onto a science show and you say there is no validity to astrology by saying it’s not a science, it’s just literature—

SR: Right. But that’s not what I said. I didn’t say it didn’t have any validity. I think literature has immense validity as a human endeavor and source of knowledge.

CB: They wouldn’t deny that. But they’re using the term ‘science’ to mean ‘is it valid’, and you said, no, it’s not science. So you’re saying it’s not valid.

SR: But that’s why I think we should challenge them, Chris.

CB: But you can’t in a 10-minute show, that’s the problem.

SR: Well, that’s fair. I mean, I willingly will concede that. If you’re saying that I probably should have used the word ‘validity’ more than ‘science’, yeah.

CB: If you turn around and say, “If by that you mean, do I think that astrology has no validity, and yet, I still practice it and apply it to client charts, then no. The answer is I think it is a valid phenomenon, and I’m helping my clients and the people that I teach astrology to. And I personally believe that this is a valid form of study, however you want to contextualize it.”

SR: Right. And I agree with that point. My point, though, to flip it with that, is not to singularly believe that science is—as I asked—the only way by which we can understand the validity of human endeavor. And I think your concern about that’s the only way they can hear it, I think the key thing is recognizing they’re not gonna hear you. As a skeptic, they’re not necessarily gonna hear you if you say it’s valid. You could say it’s valid until you’re blue in the face, but the only way by which they measure validity is through their understanding of the scientific method. And what’s fascinating to me is that it’s often the people who are not scientists who take this hardcore approach. Bill Nye is not a scientist. I don’t know even if Neil deGrasse Tyson is practicing as much as a scientist. I think they’ve become more evangelists. Any scientist I’ve talked to, what has been interesting is that they recognize the politics, they recognize the other things in science that have nothing to do with science. But there’s a certain purity that people who advocate for science insist on, and they often talk about any means of validity is through something that’s testable and replicable and replicated in a lab, which is exactly what Jamila said, which was fascinating, cuz she’s not a scientist. She’s a reporter. So I think as much as you can pull me on the carpet gently—as you have—that I could have talked about validity, have no delusion to think that if you had gone on that show and talked about “I think it’s valid as a source of knowledge” that they would agree with you.

CB: No, of course they wouldn’t. But you have to still do it, and you have to go through the motions. Because his follow-up questions—one of the things he says is: “But here’s my thing, astrology makes no provable predictions. In fact, in our opinion, it’s a little bit of a waste of time.” But then he turns to you, and he says: “But you make a living on it, right?” And then you say: “Yes.”

SR: Right.

CB: And then he says: “You make a good living because people come to you for advice. Is that right?” And then you say: “Yes.” And then there wasn’t any response there. Cuz on the one hand, it seems like you’re conceding that there’s no truthfulness to it, and then he’s allowed then to push his next point, which is that there’s no truth to it and you’re charging people for it, which then by implication—as he said at the beginning of the show—means you’re just ripping people off.

SR: Well, I mean, he had an agenda, and his agenda was not really to interview his guests. I mean, that’s where I would put the fallacy on him. I understand where you’re coming from. The argument is valid to say I could have been assertive and said, “No, blah, blah, blah.” At the same time, I think where he is gonna bear the brunt of maybe some pushback—he didn’t give me a chance to because he didn’t really ask me a question. He was leading the witness, so to speak.

CB: Yeah, he was giving leading questions. I guess just the purpose of this discussion—just to provide a statement about that, because I didn’t at the beginning—I mean, we’re friends, and I wanted to talk with you about this to give you a chance to expand on some of the points that you made on the show, to talk about the areas where it went well and where you did a good job, and where I was happy that you represented us, but also to talk about some of the areas where I disagreed, or I thought it could have been better, or where we could have grown and learned from it. But the point of this discussion is to help other astrologers—and us, as a community—to have these discussions with skeptics and with the public in the future by really having some of these internal debates and getting things worked out, so that we can be—

SR: Sharper.

CB: Yeah, sharper. And just more effective at presenting what it is that we do as a community.

SR: And that’s why I’m really grateful for the opportunity to come on your show. And I take it as a debriefing. You know, even my best friend came at me and was like, “Eh.” He was disappointed by me taking the stance of it as not a science. He couldn’t articulate as clearly as you have why he was disappointed, but I think those are valid things to bring up. There’s some point in which I felt like I wish I had been a little more assertive here and there. I mean, especially at that particular point where he was going with that leading the witness. I was really expecting another follow-up question that he would allow me to answer. But that was my mistake, rather than seeing, okay, this is the trap. So I fully agree with you that that’s where I missed an opportunity. But I thought it was an opportunity that would come—not because I didn’t see some sense in what he was doing—but I thought he would give me the opportunity to address it. I thought he would be an honorable host.

CB: It’s just important to understand where he’s coming from. He thinks that people like us don’t believe in astrology, that we think like him that it’s completely bogus and false. But despite knowing that, somehow we still try to make money from it by seeing clients and from using other alternative, nefarious means—like cold reading—in order to rip people off. And from that perspective, part of what he’s trying to do is expose you, or expose us, as doing something that’s not only harmful to clients, but harmful to him, to the entire world, because he actually concluded the entire segment with a statement to that effect. So at the very end, he randomly transitions into talking about climate change, which seems like it has no relevance to the discussion, but it actually becomes relevant. This is his last statement, he says: “My claim is that lack of discipline, lack of searching for true cause and effect is inherently bad.” He says: “It’s bad for you that just moseying around trying to figure things out and claiming there are connections which are provably unconnected is troubling for us on the skeptical side.” And then he applies that to climate change where he shows people denying climate change or going against the scientists who have demonstrated that this is a valid phenomenon and how this is having real, tangible, negative effects on the world—and he’s transferring that to astrology and other things that appear to be not sciences or anti-sciences or pseudosciences in some sense.

SR: Yeah, yeah. But one thing I do want to bring up that’s a counterpoint to some of what you’re saying is one anecdotal piece I have to share, which could be empirical. I’m just having fun. One of the writers—I’ll just say someone who is viewed widely as a source for science, and a scientist himself—did come to me privately afterwards and said: “Thank you for coming on. You gave me a different perspective than I expected. And I actually will have to think more about it.” And what’s interesting is that the same person talked about looking at the Cassini probe and some other discoveries that have come up about Saturn and was inspired to take a symbolic view of a discovery—I believe it was with one of the Moons—and used that to extrapolate the significance of that discovery to something that was happening on Earth. That’s astrology, and he talked about it. And I was like, that’s amazing. I don’t know if he recognizes it as astrology, but that’s kind of what we do. And I think it did reach him in that sense to realize that when we talk about celestial poetry—I have to disagree with you. I don’t know if it’s 99%. You’ve had people on your show. I know Geoffrey Cornelius who has said—almost exactly verbatim—what I said. I mean, if I framed astrology as ‘celestial poetry’, that’s where I got that from, by the way. He asked a skeptic once, “If I said that to you, what would you think?” He was like, “I wouldn’t have any problem with that.”

CB: Well, because you would be conceding the point that it’s not objectively true.

SR: But that’s where I think you have a limitation. I don’t think it means that it’s not true. I mean, I don’t have any hope of objectivity, but I think it can be true in a way that poetry rings true. And there are people who read poems. You know, I read and I’m moved by particular poems—whether you’re looking at Emily Dickinson. And that’s why we’ve kept them for hundreds of years, because somehow they resonate and ring true. I mean, this idea that it has no objective measure or inter-subjective measure of validity I think is erroneous and too fueled by scientism and its empiricism.

CB: So that one guy did: “I will take your side to make an argument more in your favor for a moment.” I can see where this originated or where parts of this thinking came from. Some astrologers, Sun sign astrologers like Rick Levine, for example, when he writes his horoscope columns for each of the 12 Sun signs, he sometimes says that these are partially to be viewed like that, that there’s an artistic or a poetic element in there. And even though he’s only using one part of the chart—and therefore acknowledges that it’s necessarily incomplete or only partial, or that it’s only gonna apply to some people—there will be some people that it does really speak to on certain days. Or when somebody like Michael Lutin writes a column like that—when he writes a daily or a weekly column—he invokes art and myth and other things in order to invoke what the planetary weather is, or what some of the alignments are that are relevant to people at that time; there’s an artistic element to it. But I just think we need to be really careful about taking that argument too far, especially with the public, in pretending that that’s all that it is, or that it’s all that we’re doing. I mean, there’s so much more to it than that to reduce it down to this is the same as literature, or this is the same as a novel, like 50 Shades of Grey or something. You keep using Hamlet as an example, but I’d like to use something more contemporary in order to really drive that home.

SR: You mean like Hamilton? What do you mean ‘contemporary’?

CB: Well, something that’s not based at all or connected to a historical event. Because when you say ‘literature’ or ‘novel’ or a play or something like Hamlet, that’s what a normal scientist’s mind goes to, something that’s just fiction that somebody just came up with off the top of their head—because that’s what they already think that astrology is. So when you say that it’s like literature, they think 50 Shades of Grey, or they think of the Twilight novels or something like that, or Harry Potter. So you’re saying astrology is like Harry Potter?

SR: In the sense that it’s literature, right? But I would say that Harry Potter is also something like life. It’s almost the same as how we might look at any particular piece of thing that we might read in terms of literature. Whether we’re looking at the biography of Winston Churchill, even though that’s been well-researched, there are some parts of it—

CB: But that’s non-fiction, though. You can’t switch genres.

SR: I can. But here’s the interesting thing. You read any historical piece, or any tale of a life—have you done readings on multiple stories of someone’s life?

CB: Yeah.

SR: There are some points where it really lines up beautifully, and by virtue of research, there’s other things that don’t line up, that’s one.

CB: But they’re writing about an objective person who actually existed.

SR: Right. But that doesn’t mean by virtue of the reading of it and then what is put in it—in terms of the story and the arc—that that isn’t some measure of either embellishment or how you create the arc of a story. It’s still story-making. And that’s kind of the problem that we have when we talk about literature. Literature doesn’t have to be completely as we describe it, fictional. I mean, there’s even aspects of things that are non-fictional in terms of literature, in terms of a novel. You can read a historical novel. There’s some measure of embellishment. I read Nietzsche Wept, which is using historical characters, but the arc of the story and how it works, that’s fictional.

CB: Yeah, but there’s certain things—if you’re talking about a biography—that all the biographies are gonna use. Einstein was born on a certain date and then he died on a certain date. He released his paper on relativity on a certain date.

SR: That’s true. So there’s astronomical data that is verifiable, independent of anything we might say about it. But the moment we start talking about the significance and meaning, we’ve gone beyond the idea of just what can be completely verifiable as data. The same thing with Einstein. It’s one thing to say Einstein was born—I think he was the second child of a particular family. It’s another thing to extrapolate from that, well, Einstein was troubled by his relationship with his sister. You would only have to have that from data. And even if you extrapolated from the data, that would be your conjecture, which is what biographers do all the time.

CB: Well, there’s some level of conjecture, but there are events that happen in a person’s life. If somebody goes to jail during their Saturn retrograde, I mean, that’s an objective event that occurred within an objectively-occurring astronomical phenomenon, and that doesn’t require any interpretation. And there’s astrologers out there—like our friend, Nick Dagan Best—who really thrive on that. Just pointing out correlation after correlation with celestial movements and events happening in people’s lives and then not providing any interpretation, but instead just letting the correlation speak for itself.

SR: But the correlation doesn’t speak for itself. The correlation has significance because we know the language, right? And also, the correlation is not what has caused the event, right?

CB: Right.

SR: It’s using the words. We’ve learned enough to say even the word ‘correlation’. You know, astrologers have struggled for all of our history even with the use of the word ‘influence’. This is something I wrestle with everyday when I talk on Twitter or I’m talking about horoscopes. Are we talking about causation or correlation? And so, there’s some that would argue that, well, he went to jail because of his Saturn return, which is not generally what we believe.

CB: Right.

SR: So it’s still a challenge for us. And correlation doesn’t mean then that becomes the absolute manifestation of the story. There are plenty of people who have Saturn returns. And one of the things I appreciate about what Leisa’s work is doing—Leisa Schaim—what her work is doing is trying to figure out if looking at Saturn by virtue of its sect can give us an understanding about the nature of your Saturn return. Cuz why is it that some people have Saturn returns that are abysmal, and others it’s like, “I don’t remember what happened at 29 or 30 at all?” I mean, they had a Saturn return, but the significance of it is something they see as unusual. But talk to me about 23-24, my Jupiter return, oh, my God. That was amazing. That was crazy.

CB: Right. I mean, that varies based on the birth chart. And then her argument with the sect thing is that there’s this objective variable, that if astrologers take it into account, they’ll see that it’s applying very consistently among every Saturn return chart that you’re looking at. There’s a distinction where people who were born at night tend to experience that period of their life in a way that’s more challenging versus those people who were born during the day, that don’t experience that period of their life as challenging. And then she backs it up by showing a bunch of examples from client files and from other research that she’s done on how that works out in practice. So again, it’s trying to take something that’s an objectively-occurring phenomenon—was the person born during the day or were they born at night—and say that that actually has some objective validity in terms of how that person’s life goes and the events that take place during the course of it.

SR: And again, I think that objectivity, that empiricism is useful. I look at it as more—using the word you don’t like—anecdotal, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have validity. But to say it’s empirical means then—first, I’ll go with the dictionary definition. It is observable, I’m not gonna argue that. But it’s one thing to say that the correlation leads to a consistent measure of behavior that we can kind of give a number to—like it’s 85% statistically true, it’s 65% statistically true—but we don’t know. We haven’t done that data. We don’t know the research. We haven’t constructed that level of research. So to kind of say then this is something that can be consistently true, the only things we can talk about individually—what we’ve done as astrologers—is what we have found. And I know you probably have had this gripe, too. Many astrologers have had the gripe, you go to a conference, and someone has discovered a particular—and I’m not saying Leisa’s in this category at all. Cuz I actually have looked at it and found some correlation, too. But there are people who also find work or do work and they come up with their own pet theory on how things work based on observing charts, and come up with a method associated with that, that doesn’t work consistently for anyone else.

CB: Right.

SR: And this is something that we discovered even with classical methods, whether they’re from the Hellenistic period or even in terms of the Medieval period. Okay, so there are many people—without isolating them—who are sold on firdaria, for example. I have tried variations of the firdaria system, cuz I learned it with profections. And I’ve tried various forms of using the firdaria with different charts and clients, and it doesn’t work as consistently for me as people who work with it and love it. It just doesn’t happen. Now does that mean the system doesn’t work? No, I wouldn’t even go that far. But I do think that sometimes—in a way that we don’t fully understand—there’s a subjectivity to our experience of method that isn’t as empirical as we would hope.

CB: Right. But you arrived at that. And I don’t disagree, because I think there is a hugely subjective element. And I also agree that astrologers don’t put the controls in place when they do most of these experiments or these attempts at empiricism in order to make it truly scientific, using the scientific method. But it’s really important to note that your conclusion—the way that you came to that conclusion was through an empirical approach of testing it out on your own and deciding you couldn’t get it to work well enough; therefore, you would not continue to use that technique.

SR: That’s correct.

CB: Right.

SR: I mean, empirical on the level that we both know—from the dictionary—is observable, which we agree.

CB: But that’s really crucial. Because I feel like if you had said to them on this panel, that would have been much more compelling than saying it’s just an art. Which to them, they think that means you’re just coming up with it off of the top of your head. Because typically artists are inspired, and it comes from a place of inspiration rather than purely a place of developing something based on testing.

SR: Well, I mean, the artist does come with a sense of method, right? So there is a sense of discipline and method by which they approach their inspiration that is still observable in terms of effect. And the effect usually is to please the artist, but it also could be to please the audience, or to please someone who kind of registers with it. I mean, that goes back even to—I’m reading this great book. I’m sure you’re familiar with him. I’m blanking on the title or the author. Influences, which is looking at the astrological idea of art through the Renaissance, and particularly, Renaissance thinking or even more antiquity in terms of Neoplatonic thought. Have you heard of this book? Do you know what I’m talking about?

CB: What’s the title?

SR: I’ll get the author’s name in just a second. That’s the great thing about doing things when you’re near your computer. But one of the things that it really talks about is it isolates the idea that perspectivism—when we learn about perspectivism in art—that really comes out of a certain kind of thinking. The method by which we construct perspective—in terms of how you might look at a building or the side of a building—is based on the conception of using the rays; and then even using the idea of rays with the planets in that thinking and from that particular history from Ficino. And the book is Influences: Art, Optics, and Astrology in the Italian Renaissance. It’s by Mary Quinlan-McGrath. She is not an astrologer, she is more of a historian. So not anymore, she’s not an astrologer. I mean, what it does lay bare is that even the idea of method in art doesn’t mean it’s divorced from a certain—as you’re framing it—empiricism; from a certain kind of way in which we kind of detail things.

CB: Sure. So this leads into one of the last discussions we haven’t covered, that took place on the panel. There was this exchange where, at some point, Bill says to you—well, no, it was leading in from the previous discussion about it not being a science. Timothy made this point where he says: “What’s interesting here is that he’s providing a service to people that think that they’re getting something from him, and that builds on something you said earlier (he’s talking to Bill) which is these cognitive biases we have that allow this kind of pseudoscience to thrive. And it is the causal illusion, right, that he makes some kind of prediction, something happens, and some have suggested that that kind of causal illusion is the foundation of pseudo-science. Whether you’re talking about Wi-Fi causing cancer, whether you’re talking about this kind of phenomenon (referring to astrology) or whether you’re talking about any other kind of”—and then you turned to him, and you interrupt. You said: “What is the first thing I said about astrology?” He responds: “You said that it’s not a science.” And then you said: “There you go.” And then he says: “I’m gonna come over to your side a little bit here,” and he says, “I like the fact that you’re saying that it’s not a science. Because Bill, I think a horrible trend that is happening is that people are claiming things like this are science.” So I don’t know.

And then it goes on eventually, and Bill interrupts, and he says: “Of what use is it?” And he says: “That’s what I’m saying.” And you respond, saying; “It’s the same use of any kind of art. It touches the imagination. It touches the human heart. People can relate to some things that are said through astrology, just like they relate to seeing a film, just like they relate to poetry. It’s celestial poetry. It’s seeing the stars come alive as it relates to your heart.” And then Bill responds, saying: “I have to say that as a scientifically-literate guy, or I try to be, when you realize what’s really happening in the universe, what’s really happening in the cosmos, it’s far more inspiring.” And then you guys go back and forth about that. I mean, it really just raises those two points, which is just when you say it’s not a science, they think you’re conceding the point that it’s not a valid phenomenon that’s actually occurring in the world, which they think then just confirms their assumption, which is that you are ripping people off deliberately. And then, two, this other side question about some of the skeptics and some of the science promoters are trying to do this thing—I’ve noticed recently cuz it came up a few times in the Cosmos series—of trying to reframe science and skepticism and scientific promotion as being beautiful or illustrating the majesty of the cosmos without needing to resort to what they see as negative things about science and superstition and stuff like that.

SR: Yeah. Bill—as I mentioned to you before we started the show—sent me a note and was like, “I have questions next time I see you.” If it’s not on the show, and it’s just like somewhere else, I doubt it would be on the street. But if it is somewhere else, where I would challenge him—especially on that last point—I have heard, as you have, but not necessarily from Cosmos, from other things, there’s this belief that science is doing far more good than most other things. And it provides a lot more context, and beauty is one of the things, utility. But one of the key arguments that people will frequently make to me is you should thank science for your ability to be able to type on your computer, or your technology, which is really fallacious. I mean, it’s mostly fallacious because human invention has been around for pretty much as long as we have. So the inventiveness that we have is not exclusive to science. In fact, we’ve actually stumbled more on things from even a certain lack of science rigor than we have from science rigor. I mean, we’ve done a lot in the last 200 years, but we can’t negate the fact that it’s predicated on knowledge that wasn’t arrived at by scientific means. I’ll give you a very specific example that we know from astrology, the doctrine of signatures, when we can correlate particular shapes of plants and qualities of plants and we assign particular meaning to them based on our understanding of the planets. Take certain plants, like nettles, and nettles having an association with Mars and the hot and dry nature of it. That wasn’t from scientific experimentation or control groups. That was really inspired thinking by analogue, which has been most of our history. And I think that really does bespeak a point that scientists and scientific evangelists really miss. They think that looking at the Hubble telescope and looking at the wonders of different nebulae—I mean, those things are beautiful, and I’m appreciative. They’re on my screensavers, I love them. But to think that could supplant the beauty that comes from looking at your life through the lens of astrology, I can’t see how there’s any comparison. They’re delusional. That’s wrong.

CB: I mean, I don’t have any problem with the point that they’re making, that there’s something majestic or beautiful about the cosmos, and I can understand the perspective that they’re coming from.

SR: Well, I didn’t disagree with that. I mean, I agree. I just don’t think that’s enough. To think that we don’t need to have specific other meanings from astrology or these ‘pseudo-sciences’ (looking at tarot), or any any aspect of art—I mean, they’re actually saying something dangerous. They’re trivializing other aspects of human endeavor like art and saying science really is the majesty of all human endeavor because, look what it can do in terms of giving us the cosmos, curing diseases, and all these other things; not recognizing it’s not literally these ways which can connect A to B, it’s the journey between A and B that’s most inspired for human endeavor. I mean, we can’t lose sight of that, as astrologers, especially, because we can get lured into that trap.

CB: Yeah. And I guess that’s how scientism is usually defined. It’s defined as the excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques, or sometimes the over-application of science to areas where it doesn’t do as well or is not as appropriate, like philosophy or religion, or in some instances, sociology or other things like that.

SR: And don’t lose sight of the fact, Chris, that’s the show I went on. The name of the show is Bill Nye Saves the World. I mean, I get what you’re saying, and I think many of the criticisms that you levied are fair in terms of certain ways in which I could have tweaked the conversation or had been differently prepared. But at the same time recognize that scientism does have this perception of itself that really doesn’t make much allowance for anything outside of itself, really.

CB: Yeah, and that’s fine, and I guess that’s an argument or that’s a discussion that could be had. I think it would have been more productive to answer some of his criticisms very directly and counter them very clearly to say, “No, I do believe this is a valid phenomenon, no, this is not something I’m primarily doing just for money, and no, it’s not even something that I make a lot of money off of. I do it because I am passionate about the subject, because it actually seems to be a valid phenomenon in the world. And the fact that that works at all just blows my mind and is amazing. So I wanted to direct my life towards studying it and using it to help other people, even though it’s not something that otherwise makes me a rich person or a super-successful person or what have you.” And you did respond to one of his criticisms. It was probably the best exchange that you had with him, where they start going back and forth. He starts going back and forth with one of the panelists at one point, joking about Sun signs. And you responded really briefly saying: “But that’s not astrology. Astrology isn’t just reducing people to 12 signs. It’s looking at the complex relationship between the planets. It’s looking at the complex relationships between the signs.” And then you said: “People read their horoscopes and think, ‘Well, that’s all that astrology can do.’ But that’s just entertainment.” And that was a really great exchange, because that’s one of his presumptions and that’s one of the ways that they try to portray astrology because that’s largely all they know about it; that it’s just this very simplistic thing that reduces people and carries all of these problems along with it. But even just pointing out that that’s not the case is really important. So sometimes I feel like with these exchanges, it needs to be more about, right out of the gate, just addressing the criticisms head on versus trying to critique their entire worldview or something like that. That’s not gonna necessarily be an effective strategy for trying to approach the subject, and in some ways it might backfire.

SR: That’s reasonably fair. But the question I have for you—which is where I guess we’ve had the meat of our conversation—would be, what really does become the better tack, not just for these people—being the scientist evangelists—but even from a genuine perspective? Because what you and I have gone back and forth about is, is there a way that astrology, as it purports to, tap into an objective truth? And I’m a skeptic about that. I don’t believe that is really, ultimately true. Again, I think we’re part of the machination of culture. You know, astrology is not clear, even on its own workings. The base level of astrologers—and I’m talking about this in terms of thought, not in terms of where they are in the pecking order of astrologers—kind of have a pseudo-mechanistic view of the cosmos. Like the Moon affects the tides and works on us, so the other planets work similarly.

CB: Right.

SR: Which becomes laughingstock for anyone who’s scientifically-minded at all. Meaning it doesn’t make any sense. So that’s one element to it. Then there’s the metaphysical element of it, like the planets are alive, and this goes into Neoplatonic thinking, right? And then the other dimension of it is it goes more metaphysical. It’s something that’s more tied to some Theosophical thinking, and maybe even how we have drawn in some thinking from Vedic thinking, karmic, anything other aspects of it which is more Jungian/Freudian dealing with human impulses and archetypes and a particular archetype’s habits. So the mechanisms of astrology—in terms of how it works—as an ‘objective’ measure are suspect. When I say ‘suspect’, I’m meaning even in our community, we’re not clear. So I hear what you’re saying. For these people, they’re not gonna be satisfied, so it is important to have this sort of melancholic/dry approach and say, “No, this, this, this, and this, and these factors.” I hear what you’re saying and that’s fair. But realize, too, when I talk about about astrology as an art, I am also saying a statement about even our conception of astrology. And maybe that’s where we differ, that’s fine, and we’ll go back and forth about it. But I think it’s important to start having a conversation rather than assuming we’re all on the same page, even at the 99%, which I take issue with. I don’t think that’s true, but that’s fine.

CB: There’s such a lack of standardization in our field because it fell out of academia and because it’s largely studied by hobbyists and studied as a side thing rather than a primary profession, and it’s not taught. And there’s a great deal of disorganization in the field because it exists on the outskirts of society. I mean, to me, that’s why a lot of that stuff that you bring up is almost byproducts of that, of the societal status and the low status that it has in society as to why more astrologers aren’t on the same page about certain things, or why there’s so much, not just diversity, but there’s so much disorganization or disunity when it comes to certain things about the philosophical and technical principles of astrology. It’s a byproduct of falling out of high society a few centuries ago and never really recovering except in pop culture where everybody knows their Sun sign, but that’s only one small piece of astrology. But I think you could have just said to a group like that there is this incredibly weird phenomenon, where for some reason there appears to be an observable correlation between celestial phenomena and earthly events, we don’t fully know why that is yet, but it seems to be something that different cultures have been observing for hundreds of years now. While astrologers have not done a very good job so far of demonstrating the validity of this in a scientific context, it still seems to be something that’s deserving of further study. Most of the arguments that you put forward here on this show demonstrate a lack of familiarity with the subject, or at least a familiarity with only the most surface level, consumer version of astrology that there is. And I think that instead of continuing to argue against it and put out these somewhat shallow arguments against it, despite not having learned much about it, that it would be more useful to look into the subject more earnestly to see if there’s anything there of value. And if there is, to help us to explore it further so that we can eventually take the parts of it that do represent something valid, that could expand scientific knowledge of the cosmos and incorporate that into our collective knowledge of humanity in general.

SR: Okay, now I have a better framework for some of the things that you believe. Where I think on some level you may have done a different job is I think you still have the hope of empiricism to some degree, and a hope of scientific collaboration in that sense.

CB: Well, I don’t know. I think there are certain elements.

SR: Well, yeah.

CB: The astrologers I know supposedly did the scientific tests during pretty much the 1960s. Well, the 1970s and ‘80s. I came into the astrological community and realized most astrologers don’t know anything about the history of astrology. Most astrologers don’t know where the techniques come from or how they were originally developed. Most astrologers don’t have any background in science or scientific training. They have very little background in other approaches to astrology besides their own. When I think about those groups of people being the ones collaborating with the scientists, or in some instances, being the ones doing their own scientific testing in the 1970s and ‘80s, that does not fill me with a lot of hope or a lot of confidence that we gave it our best shot in the 1970s and ‘80s. Now I still agree, to some extent, and I understand the counterarguments that came out of the failure of those tests in the 1990s—such as Geoffrey Cornelius’ complete rejection, saying that astrology is not a science, and we shouldn’t even attempt to test it scientifically. But I still think there might be some possibilities there that have not been looked into, even if astrology is not completely on that level where there could be some small pieces of it that could be demonstrated or validated in some way. I don’t have confidence that we gave it our best shot a few decades ago before everybody gave up.

SR: Yeah. And I’m more in Cornelius’ school of thought, but this is a point where you and I may also collude and connect rather than collide. My thought process on this is that if there is any hope in terms of marrying more scientific empiricism—because we have already clarified there is a way in which some aspects of astrology is empirical in the broad sense of it. But if there’s any hope of scientific empiricism, I think we may end up looking at a very different astrology than how we currently understand it. If we’re using houses, and using some aspect of the chart idea—whether that becomes Gauquelin’s sectors, especially with some of the research that David Cochrane is stepping into and other harmonic astrologers like David Hamblin—if they’re looking at data, it’s gonna be more along the spectrum of harmonics. And I do incorporate harmonics into my practice. Like I teach aspects before I teach houses to my students and that comes from where I see more stronger, consistent correlations with aspects than I see in terms of the interpretation and the emphasis on houses. That doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention or use houses, I do. But I just think we may end up seeing a very different notion of astrology; an astrology that’s a lot more robust and flexible in its understanding than we might recognize. And I think that may have been the problem, also, with the modern astrologer from the ‘70s and the ‘80s. They didn’t fully understand and recognize the fluidity. Something as simple as you can look at the Part of Fortune and look at the second house from the Part of Fortune and it has interpretive measure. That kind of fluidity of understanding of what a second house signifies—whether it’s from the ascendant or from the Part of Fortune—is not something that our immediate predecessors had.

CB: Right. Yeah, I mean, astrology has grown and changed a lot just in the past few decades, and our understanding of it has developed a lot. And that’s important because in those few decades it was coming out of that low point after a couple of centuries where it largely stopped being practiced by professionals and fell out of academia and everything. And so, it was recovered and revived through the New Age community, through the Theosophical Society, and basically religious individuals like that in the early 20th century, and then it eventually becomes popular with the counterculture movement and the hippies and some of the New Age movement in the 1960s and ‘70s. But it’s like, I don’t know, those were steps that were being taken in the revival of astrology, and there’s still work that’s being done now. You know, we’re having a debate right now even about the nature of astrology and the extent to which it’s objectively valid or the extent to which it’s based on empiricism. And if astrologers are still having debates like that, it’s not like all things will be resolved or that we’ll cease to have debates at some point in the not too distant future. But if we’re still debating very basic things like that, then certainly we still have a lot more that we have to get together before demonstrating or attempting to put astrology on a more solid footing and validate it in society or be very effective.

SR: Well, that’s where I don’t know if I completely agree with that. I think there are ways in which we can establish a different meaning. You know, one source of inspiration I have—and I understand some of your pullback or even resistance, pushback in terms of looking at astrology as literature, related to literature; and I think also this was something Austin had some issue with. A source of inspiration for me is the pragmatist Richard Rorty. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Richard Rorty. He’s a pragmatist—somewhat along the spectrum of the American pragmatist William James—but he was a thinker from pretty much the ‘80s. I wouldn’t say he was influenced by postmodern thought, but he definitely had some connection to the sensibility. Long story short, he’s a philosopher who left the philosophy department to go into literature. And where I’ve drawn some measure of inspiration from Rorty is that he saw the real test of philosophy through literature. Cuz musing about philosophy in complete abstraction and separated from aspects of literature really, he argued, was more of a private enterprise than something that was public. And so, his whole thing was how to broaden public discourse. And I think that’s one of the things that astrologers really are struggling with, cuz it has an insularity. Not just in terms of who’s in astrology, but it has an insularity in terms of its history—whether it’s this esoteric science, an esoteric art—or whether it’s something that’s influenced by something that we can look at publicly, whether it’s like collecting a lot of data, whether it’s open to the public in this discourse. And it struggles with that in terms of figuring out where is the public arena in which we have a conversation about it. But philosophy has definitely changed because of people like Richard Rorty. It’s become much more robust in terms of where it engages the idea of the public intellectual. It engages even ideas of philosophy. So it does it in terms of politics. It does it in terms of literature. It does it in terms of all these different things that were not the traditional province of philosophy. And philosophers were clouded by arguments and debates of whether we’re empiricists, whether we’re going along with what Hume thought, or Schopenhauer, or how we’re looking at things in terms of Kierkegaard. So it’s kind of come into a little more of its own without worrying about the resolution of all of its previous arguments. I think astrology is vast enough to be able to accommodate that without feeling like we have to get our stuff together in order to face the big dragon of empiricism or scientific empiricism. I don’t think that has to be true.

CB: Yeah. I mean, I think we’re rapidly getting things together. And seeing astrology move in the directions that it has been, has been really positive and really heartening. But yeah, it’ll be interesting to see. So I guess maybe some of our final points here should just be, did you learn anything from this experience of going on that show, that either you’ll do differently in the future, hypothetically, if you were to do it again? Or if there’s somebody listening to this show right now that hears this, but maybe ends up in a similar position in the future, is there advice that you would give them in terms of how to do it?

SR: Sure. I’m calling it the ‘melancholic/dry’ approach. I think it’s important to really hear the subtext. I was going along with the point I wanted to make about science and not the point that challenges what the scientist or the scientific evangelist was trying to say. So I think it would be going in knowing that you’re gonna have to deal with the assumptions that, one, someone thinks astrology’s bogus, that you’re just fleecing people, and it’s all confirmation bias, and that it has no real validity. The key thing is to debunk the idea of validity, and there’s a couple of different ways you can do that. You can do it the way you were talking about it, which is from observable phenomena that we don’t fully understand. So you believe at some point we will come to something. You know, there are many people who share this. My friend Robert, and your friend Robert Currey, is one of those people who believes that we will come to a point where we can better understand this crazy, odd phenomenon that we call astrology in a way that does align itself better to some of the ideas of science. Again, I don’t have your faith, but I do believe that is one way to debunk the idea that it has no validity. But I think another way is to question how we really establish validity, which is what I was trying to do. Now it may have been too much of a big journey to make in a short period of time, but that’s what I was trying to do. I think the other thing that’s important is to really deal with the other things that people are gonna say, like “You’re just fleecing people,” and to never to step in the trap. I guess you’ll give me some measure of kudos for this. No one should ever step in a trap of trying to prove astrology on the spot. Never ever fall for that. And that’s one thing someone will try. “Well let me give you my data, and let’s see what you say about me.” Or, “Well, let’s pull someone from the audience,” you will not win.

CB: Yeah.

SR: There’s no way you can win. So I knew and I was ready for that trap. But do not ever step into that because that’s one of the things they may try.

CB: Yeah. I mean, it’s not a parlor trick or something like that, that you whip out.

SR: You can’t be cocky enough to think, “Oh, well, I can look at someone’s chart.” The problem is you can’t vouch for who’s gonna be honest. You might say something that really is spot on, but it’s like, “Oh, that’s pretty general. Isn’t everyone?” So you never will have any room even when you’re very specific. And the more you might try to be specific, you can’t tell whether you’re feeling the pressure to be specific because you’re on a radio show or a television show, or because you’re really kind of reading it correctly. So if someone has a Mercury-Saturn square, to say, “You may have had trouble speaking when you were younger,” that may absolutely be provably false and that may not be the manifestation of the Mercury-Saturn square, but you can talk about particular manifestations. But again, I would stay away from it completely, on-the-spot readings. Let me see if there’s anything else. One thing I will say—and I talked about this with you—is the people who work with us behind the scenes may have really good intentions to have an open conversation. But when you get on the show and the cameras go live, and they’re flashing the red lights, everything changes. So just be prepared for that, even when someone is receptive to you. I mean, I went on a show recently—a TV show, not Bill Nye—and they wanted me to talk about things that were happening with the Venus retrograde and whatever, so that was what I talked about with the producer. But it ended up like, “Well, talk to us about Leo.” I couldn’t even start from going through Aries through Pisces. They were like, “No, let’s start with Leo.” Luckily, I had some thoughts in my mind for each of the signs that I rehearsed pretty cleanly and clearly to be able to have sound-bites for that. But just because a producer or a set of producers say one thing, be prepared for the fact that it may become a different thing when the actual media gets on. Because the problem with astrologers engaging the media is that they do have a sort of agenda, which is more sound-bite. So the only way in which we can completely convey the aspect of art is when we have a good amount of time. I did think we were gonna have a full 15 minutes. I did not know that I was gonna be dealing with three people. I knew there was talk of a panel, but it was just gonna be the two of us and then moderating with Bill. But it turned out to be like three-on-one. So I didn’t have even enough time. I didn’t even feel like I had enough time to expand on my points. So those are some things that kind of—

[crosstalk]

CB: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, one of the things that’s interesting, that I observed in terms of the three panelists, is they weren’t necessarily people that specialized in astrology or had any background in the subject. They were just people that were good at talking about broader issues dealing with science and skepticism and broad accusations or issues with pseudo-science. And even Bill Nye, himself, of course, his main thing was just getting in some of those pretty common statements and pretty common accusations about astrology. And maybe one of the things that as astrologers, we need to do a better job of developing is just very concise responses. If they say this, what is your concise response to that, that accurately and adequately refutes the point? If they say you got into this just to rip people off, you say, no, I actually got into it because I was surprised that it seems to work, and I found it interesting and decided to keep studying it. And eventually it became the primary thing that I do, or whatever. So each astrologer maybe thinking about some of these questions that were posed to you, or thinking about other questions that come from skeptics and how you would respond to those if you were put on the spot and thought you only had a couple of sentences to respond.

SR: And that’s true. I mean, that’s kind of the thing to realize. You will only have seconds.

CB: Right. And to know not just how to make an argument or how to respond with how you would say it, but also how that person’s gonna hear, or what they’re gonna hear based on what you say. And I think the main thing we’ve been talking about for most of this episode is just if you had a chance to make your full argument and how you would say it and how you would articulate it versus what that other person is gonna hear when you use certain words, and whether those words are gonna have the intended effect, or whether the person’s gonna interpret them maybe slightly differently than what you intend.

SR: Or, if you’re like me and have a slightly different point, realize that you’re gonna have to pick and choose very carefully how you might even come to develop that point, or if you have enough time. Again, I mean, I am comfortable still with saying ‘astrology as an art’ because that’s what I believe. But I definitely would make the point that art, or even things that are not scientific still can have validity. And I think the keyword to throw in is ‘validity’. So the thing that I do feel bad about is people heard from that, from the show—or even people who are rooting for astrology—that I don’t think it’s really valid. That’s not what I meant at all, cuz I do believe it’s valid.

CB: Okay, good. Well, yeah, that’s the main point that I wanted to talk about. Just to give you a chance to clarify that point and expand on some of those. I’m glad we got a chance to have this discussion.

SR: Me, too. Thank you.

CB: Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on the show. I guess I’ll see you in a couple of weeks at NORWAC, right?

SR: That’s right.

CB: Awesome. And people can find out more information about your website, which is at unlockastrology.com, right?

SR: That’s correct. And if they want to reach me directly, by email, the easiest way is unlockastrology@gmail.com.

CB: Okay, perfect. All right, well, thanks for joining me today.

SR: Thank you for having me, Chris. And I’m glad we had a good, passionate conversation during this Full Moon, so that’s cool.

CB: Yeah, Full Moon in Scorpio. A couple of Scorpio Sun people, I think it was fitting. We got two hours in, so we’ll save the rest for next time. And I’m sure we’ll be back again for more before too long.

SR: All right, thank you.

CB: All right. And thanks everyone for listening, and we’ll see you next time.