The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 487, titled:
Venus Retrograde News Part Two
With Chris Brennan, Lindsey Turner, and Nick Dagan Best
Episode originally released on April 27, 2025
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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 Teresa “Peri” Lardo
Transcription released May 15th, 2025
Copyright © 2025 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. Joining me today are astrologers Nick Dagan Best and Lindsey Turner, and we’re gonna be talking about Venus retrograde repetitions in the news in part two of my series where I’ve been providing some updates where we’re tracking ongoing repetitions of the eight year Venus planetary cycle which repeats every eight years and how that often connects events from past Venus retrogrades in Aries and Pisces with the current Venus retrograde in Aries and Pisces which we’re getting towards the end of right now.
So hey, Nick and Lindsey. Thanks for joining me today.
LINDSEY TURNER: Hey, Chris.
NICK DAGAN BEST: Thanks for having us!
LT: Good to be here.
CB: Yeah. So Nick, this is a followup to our episode from January, which we first recorded on January 10th where we went back and looked at the past century of Venus retrograde in Aries which started all the way back in 1905. And we noticed that there kept being these repetitions and connections of events in these eight year increments every time Venus would repeat. And what was interesting is we noted a bunch of stories that happened in the past century. And then after we recorded those episodes, many of the things that we mentioned in that episode came back in the news again in different ways under the current Venus retrograde cycle, which was really fascinating to see. And that’s part of what I wanted to document in this episode. But that was pretty – has that been blowing you away as much as it has been me?
NDB: I mean, it has been for over 20 years now! Yeah, I’m getting used to it. But that being said, it never ceases to blow my mind because it just keeps happening. And yeah, it’s a really interesting cycle to follow. And the Venus retrograde in Aries in particular is the one that got me interested in studying Venus cycles and planetary cycles in general. So it kind of feels like coming home for me; it’s a very comfortable, familiar space.
CB: Nice.
NDB: Even though it’s all about being uncomfortable and unfamiliar, but that’s the paradox.
CB: Yeah. I don’t know. “Comfortable space” is not how I would describe this Venus retrograde, but I get your meaning in terms of coming —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — you know, seeing things come back from the past. And Lindsey, thanks for joining me. You and I did this amazing episode like, was that a year ago? On Saturn transits and Saturn signs in music that you had researched extensively. I think this is the first one we’ve done since that time. But you’ve also been paying attention to this Venus retrograde and some of the stuff that’s been going on lately as well, right?
LT: Yeah, totally. Yeah, that was back in November 2023, I think, so it’s nice to be back! And yeah, I mean, Venus is my Ascendant ruler so I’m kind of always paying attention to her. And especially when she’s retrograde, there are, yeah, always really big chapters in my life, so been very tuned in, yeah.
CB: Okay. Yeah. For sure. All right. So in terms of starting places, you know, I’ve done a few follow up episodes at this point. Like we recorded the original episode on January 10th, and then like, three weeks later there had already been a bunch of repetitions in the news, so I already recorded a short like, hour-long follow up then I think in like, early February or something like that.
So Venus just recently stationed direct last weekend, and maybe I should show the graphic for that just to refamiliarize everyone with the time frame involved even though I’ve been talking about this a lot the past few months. So Venus first went into Pisces, which is the sign it would retrograde back to, on January 2nd, and that kind of opened up our broader let’s say Venus retrograde time period that we’re looking at here once it enters into one of the retrograde signs. Then it entered its pre-retrograde shadow degree at 24 Pisces on January 28th. It went into Aries, which is the sign it would retrograde, on February 4th. It stationed retrograde at 10 Aries on March 1st, then retrograded back into Pisces on the 27th of March. It stationed direct last weekend on April 12th at 24 Pisces, and now we are recording this on – what is today? It’s April 17th, THursday, starting at right now it’s 3:23 PM in Denver, Colorado. So we are just days before Venus will go back into Aries, the sign that it retrograded in, on April 30th. And the whole cycle won’t finish up until early June when Venus finally departs from Aries for the final time and moves into Taurus. So we still have a ways to go, so there might be a third episode of this. But I wanted to catch up on everything that’s happened in the news since early February.
So that’s one of the things we’re gonna be talking about. And so much has been happening; so much has happened in the news. And I’ve done so many follow up episodes. I feel like I learned a lot about Venus retrograde during this specific cycle, not just by looking at the history, but just seeing all the different things that have been coming up lately. Most recently at the beginning of this month, I did that amazing episode with Elly Higgins where we went through and Elly had researched a bunch of things tied in with important turning points in queer history over the past century that related to this Venus retrograde. And Nick, you and I had picked up on some of them. Like, there were some in the original episode, so we could see that that was a recurring theme, but it turned out to be much more prevalent and important than we even realized in the historical research we’ve done. And then of course, that’s been one of the main things really, if not the main thing, about this Venus retrograde just in terms of the United States and some of the different things happening in the news that this one really coincided with. And I wanted to bring that up, because one of the keywords that we came to towards the end is Elly was using the terms – sorry, I’m spacing it out right now —
LT: Normative and non-normative?
CB: Yeah, it’s in the document.
NDB: Oh, right.
CB: Thank you. So Elly was using the terms “normative” and “non-normative.” And one of the realizations we came towards the end was – that made a lot of sense symbolically – is that the Venus retrogrades were sometimes pertaining to non-normative things, which made a lot of sense since the retrograde cycle is itself something that Venus does that sets it apart from the direction that all of the other planets are moving. And I thought that was really interesting, because it actually ties back to your original keyword, Nick, where in the very first Venus retrograde episode we did back in like, 2015, you said that Venus retrograde – we titled it “Venus Retrograde: Challenging Consensus.”
NDB: Consensus. Yeah.
CB: Because that was actually your original terminology —
NDB: Yeah!
CB: — for Venus retrograde like, way back then, right?
NDB: Yeah. And consensus meaning like, sort of what we all agree on as being the rules of propriety. How we’re supposed to engage with each other. This is why this time when Venus was stationing retrograde, of course, this time the retrograde station was tied in with the solar eclipses – both the one we had in October in Libra and the one that was coming up just after the Venus retrograde station in Aries, because the station was at the same degree. And for this reason, when Venus went retrograde, we got the key phrase coming right out of the Oval Office, because I don’t think there’s anything more Venus retrograde than someone saying, “Why aren’t you wearing a suit?”
CB: Okay. So somebody was doing something that stood out in that sense.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: But —
NDB: “Why are you not dressed for this occasion in the ceremonial garb of this function?”
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Yeah, why are you not conforming?
CB: Yeah. So but I mean, the notion of widening that not just challenging consensus but things that are – setting up a paradigm of normative versus non-normative was really interesting to me. And that’s been especially important in terms of some of the erasure and the rollbacks and things that are happening in the queer community and also with respect to a bunch of other communities right now. And that’s something I know you’ve been following really closely, right, Lindsey?
LT: Yeah, of course.
CB: Yeah. What – so I’m just, because with the episode with Elly, we focused especially on some of the erasure and the pushback and the rollback of things related to obviously to trans rights is like, one of the things that’s most sort of under attack right now, but also about gay and lesbian rights in general, but also other things related to diversity and inclusion, which relates back to – Nick, you and I had talked about some of the different civil rights things that this Venus retrograde had coincided with in history related to especially, you know, civil rights when it came to Black people in the United States. And yeah, there was a lot of – there was a broader scope of this Venus retrograde that seemed to be pertaining to the rollback of different things like that that’s been very striking and very disturbing in different ways.
LT: Yeah, for sure. I mean, just yesterday, this is really recent news, and even since the episode with Elly came out, which was fantastic by the way. I really loved that. That one’s so good. But the UK Supreme Court, you know, made a judgment defining what a woman is. And you know, making a pretty rigid definition of the gender of woman being based on biological sex, which is super problematic. I mean, it’s just wild and it’s in all likelihood going to create all sorts of problems for all sorts of people, not just trans people. And so yeah, that’s like, a really recent one. Also seeing the SAVE Act which just passed the House and is going to the Senate in the US, which will really affect primarily married women and trans people who have had a name change. And then also poor folks, too, and I think of Venus as really having to rule anyone who’s kind of gender marginalized or maybe even economically marginalized. So yeah, just in really recent days, we have had big developments in these areas of life.
CB: Yeah. Well, and you had pointed out how that thing with the voting rights especially as it pertains to women then ties back into how Nick and I had discussed under the Venus retrograde in Aries in 1913 was that huge march on Washington for women’s suffrage and getting the right to vote, which is eventually accomplished by the next Venus retrograde eights year later when —
LT: Right.
CB: — the first Congress was sworn in who women had had the right to vote for for the first time in history in the United States. And so now, with this new act, it was potentially threatening the ability of a lot of women to vote because it has to do with like, what your name is listed as essentially, right?
LT: Yeah. So if your… You basically are going to have to, if this passes, to register using papers that prove your citizenship. And if you’ve been married and your name doesn’t match, say, your birth certificate or passport, you will have to provide a marriage license. And this could potentially affect 69 million women. I mean, it is a huge swath of the voting population. And very clearly a move to, I think, foster voter suppression. Because the amount of people who are non-citizens are voting is like, such a small, small problem, but the amount of disenfranchisement that this could potentially create would be huge.
CB: Right. Yeah. I mean, voter disenfranchisement seems to be a large part of the push that’s happening among other things.
Even more broadly, like, something I didn’t – I don’t know that we mentioned, but I meant to mention is just with Trump being swept into office and pressuring universities now but also corporations and obviously the government to remove things related to diversity and equity and inclusion and all programs related to that, there was in the corporate area a bunch of companies that backed off their previous embracing of like, queer folks and different things like that. Like, especially one that I noticed was Target. On March 5th, which was just a few days after Venus stationed retrograde in Aries, a 40-day boycott of Target was announced and began. And I thought that was incredible because, you know, Venus has a 40-day retrograde period. And with that boycott starting around that time, Target had previously I noticed in 2015 during around the time of the Venus retrograde in Leo, they had first rolled out a line of like, queer-freindly merchandise and stuff in like, a section of their store. And then one Venus retrograde later in 2017, which is the current retrograde we’re in, I found some articles from this time period where one of the articles says, “Target doubles down on Pride celebrations despite anti-LGBT boycott.” So one eight-year cycle ago, what was happening is that it was the conservatives who were boycotting Target for Target having some small section on, you know, LGBTQ things. But now eight years later, it’s been reversed, and not just Target but obviously many other companies have removed some of those things but now are facing backlash as a result of that from the other side.
LT: Yeah. It’s chef’s kiss, the timing and the length of the boycott. Really, really good. And yeah, I remember that 2017 like, shenanigans when everyone was really upset about all the apparel. Not everyone, but some folks were upset.
CB: Right.
LT: Yeah, it just makes me think, be careful the names that you choose for the companies that you built, because it’s a really like – Target does seem to get kind of centered in a lot of these conflicts, which is really interesting.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Rather on the nose.
LT: Too on the nose!
CB: On the nose. And I just saw, now that Venus has stationed direct, I just saw a headline today on CNBC that said, “Target CEO to meet with Al Sharpton to discuss DEI rollback as civil rights leader considers boycott,” so.
LT: Wow.
CB: You know, so they’re trying to figure out what to do there and we’ll see if any progress comes out of that or if protests continue, or if there’s any shift in that now that Venus is direct.
LT: Well, and that’s super interesting with Al Sharpton, you know, being a minister, because I think that Black churches have been really organizing around this particular boycott. Yeah, that’s like, a theme that’s come up. I think I’m just thinking about the role of Black churches in like, Selma and things like that and these kind of civil rights movements. So yeah, interesting to see that come into play.
CB: Right. Because that’s actually important, because even though, you know, I did that episode because Elly – he had compiled all that research because that’s his area of specialty and expertise in compiling queer histories and then tying that together with astrology. You know, there’s also especially related to civil rights right now, there’s a bunch of things that are being rolled back, and that’s probably a whole specialty thing that somebody could research as well. And that, Nick, you and I like, found a bunch of stuff already in the history. Like, we focused especially on the early 1960s one; I remember… Was it the early 1960s one which was the Freedom Riders bus rides, or was that —
NDB: Yeah, 1961. No, that was —
CB: ‘61? Okay.
NDB: — 1961. The Freedom Riders. Yeah. Absolutely. It’s all over the place. I think the thing that’s happening right now in the news with regard to human rights and civil rights that reminds me of past Venus retrogrades is the people being carted off to prisons in El Salvador who may or may not have this or that affiliation and certainly some of them do not. Back in 1977 during the Venus retrograde in Aries, this gathering of Argentinian women who were mothers of young people who had disappeared because of their political affiliations, they gathered together and formed this what became a very large and powerful organization of voice for, you know, these mothers of disappeared children, which is something that I can imagine happening fairly soon. Like, I mean, you know, right now they’re taking away people who had green cards and what have you, but you know, before long it’s just sort of regular, as Trump put it, “home grown” citizens who can also find themselves on a plane to El Salvador or some place like that in no time.
CB: Right. Yeah. So yeah, there’s so much going on there. So we’ll return back to some of this, but what I wanna do – maybe we should do now – is transition to talking about some specific repetitions. Because I have a list of repetitions that I’ve been sort of compiling over the past couple of months, and one of them that was sent in by a listener that actually ties in with what we’re talking about now was that everybody’s noting how the final season of The Handmaiden’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is airing right now and how that series started – it was first aired back in 2017 during Trump’s first term, ironically. And then I just looked it up, and it turns out that the first book of The Handmaiden’s Tale was actually published April 17th, 1985 —
LT: Wow.
CB: — so it’s deeply like, tied in with that.
NDB: I’m sorry, it’s Handmaid’s Tale.
CB: Oh right, not handmaiden. Handmaid’s Tale. Thank you.
NDB: Yeah. Gotta stand up for Margaret Atwood. Yeah, I was aware of that 1985, that it was published then, and yeah, that’s hilarious that I’d forgotten about the show airing in 2017. That’s how this stuff works!
CB: Yeah. So have either of you watched like, the entire series?
NDB: No.
CB: Okay.
LT: It’s too real.
CB: It’s a little too on the nose.
LT: I could like, never really – I was like, I’m glad that it exists. I’m glad people are watching it, but yeah, it was a little too intense for me. I read the book, though, when I was 12.
CB: Okay.
LT: So it made an impression.
CB: And it’s about like, a dystopian like, society where like, women have no rights is the like, premise?
LT: And like, forced to breed.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: Yeah. So it’s really, there’s a really like, strong kind of sexual violence component to it as well.
CB: Yeah. That’s something actually that surprised me about this retrograde is the ways especially that women have come up, but like, in ways that have been negative or undermining. Like, even around when Venus stationed retrograde, one of the news stories I saw that day was there were like, two separate instances of women streamers that were like, attacked on their livestream like, on that day. It was like, there was one who was being approached by some guy that was asking for her number, and then she said no, and then he lunged at her and said, “I’ll kill you.” And that was like, live streamed to thousands of people, and they were able to grab the guy and stop him, luckily. And then there was a separate one of another streamer who was robbed for like, cryptocurrency in this like, violent robbing by three men. And I was really struck by how that was like, right on the Venus retrograde station at the beginning of March.
LT: Oh my gosh. Wow. It was like, a home invasion, right?
CB: Yeah. It was like, three guys show up with guns and then luckily she stalls and brings them to the other part of the house where her husband is, and her husband like, starts shooting them and hits one of the guys, but they run off. But everyone was a little skeptical at first because she was almost like, tweeting about it almost as it happened. But then she released the security camera footage and it was like, real. Like, that had actually happened, and it looked really, really scary.
LT: Gosh. Yeah, there’s like, this whole retrograde having this kind of undercurrent of being ruled by Mars in fall – I don’t know, it just adds this extra layer of, yeah, of violence and terror to some of these events.
CB: Yeah. Ruled by Mars, Mars in Cancer, Venus being in Aries and in the sign of its antithesis or detriment or exile or whatever you wanna call it. There was a lot more layers of challenge to Venus, I feel like, that came up this time in the sign-based condition of Venus as well as everything else going on with the eclipses and everything else that added a much different tone to this, compared to like, the Venus retrograde in Leo of 2023.
LT: Right.
NDB: Yeah. For sure. The fact that all the stations triggered these eclipses – because like I said, the Venus retrograde was triggering the two solar eclipses, the direct station that’s just happened is conjunct the lunar eclipse of last September and opposite the lunar eclipse that we had a few weeks ago. So yeah, all four of the – rather, the Venus direct and retrograde stations triggered all four of the most recent eclipses. And that’s extraordinary. You know, I’ve studied a lot of Venus retrogrades. In 1969, you had one in the same sign as the eclipses; that was amazing enough. But this is really unique. Already, 2025 astrologically speaking is a very unique year by virtue of the three central outer planets changing sign within six months of each other. But then also the Venus stations being right on the eclipses like this. The Mercury retrograde station was also triggering those solar eclipses, but that’s just, you know, another layer. But this really is extraordinary and unique and not something that I’ve seen happen in the past centuries.
CB: Speaking of extraordinary and unique, one of the repetitions I noticed was Lady Gaga like, released this new album, and you know, everybody immediately started talking about how it was like, a throwback. How she was like, reaching back to an earlier era from like, her 2009 era, and I thought that was really funny because Nick, I think you and I mentioned this, because I noticed that she blew up originally under the 2009 Venus retrograde, and that’s when like, “Poker Face” and like, some of her early big singles like, first really popped on the charts. And so I was expecting her to have another moment again under this Venus retrograde. And one of the funny things is she not only like, released that album and that single, “Abracadabra,” which sounded a lot like some of her earlier songs, but there was this phrase that went viral that she was “reheating her nachos.” And that’s become like, my favorite like, Venus retrograde phrase of this, because – it’s funny because it has kind of like, a double-edged like, thing to it. Because it’s like, you can take it – there’s a positive side to it, it has a positive ring to it, and there’s like, a slightly negative ring to it. But like, it’s actually it’s still appropriate. Because it’s like, something good – like, a good food that you have that you can reheat and it’s like, not quite as good as like, the first time you had it, but it’s still pretty good. And that’s like, actually very descriptive. But it was so much – it went so viral that an interviewer asked her about it, and she actually ended up addressing it. And she said, I know that that phrase can be used in both positive and negative ways, but she said, “my nachos are mine. I invented them, and I’m proud of them.”
LT: Can we make t-shirts?
NDB: I’m gonna, I’m about to say the most probably the most bourgeois thing I’ll ever say on the podcast. Chris, you obviously have not entered the golden age of the air fryer, because —
CB: Oh. No, I haven’t.
NDB: — in this day and age, okay. Because with an air fryer, I’m sorry, reheating sometimes it is better than the original.
CB: Oh, they’re —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: They’re just as good? Okay.
NDB: Oh yeah, yeah. No, no. It’s a different world now, Chris.
CB: So maybe yeah, there’s levels of like, cultural understanding of this depending on what —
NDB: Yeah yeah.
CB: — area you’re from.
NDB: Reheating your nachos, it’s not your mama’s nachos, Chris. These are 2025 nachos. And reheated in an air fryer, they’re even better than the first time.
CB: I am not gonna be reheating any nachos from 2025, I can guarantee you that. Like, this is not gonna be a vintage year.
NDB: You might be right.
LT: I love it.
CB: So she goes on later and she says, “I was claiming music and imagery that is my own invention, meaning the combination of those things is my invention. I wanted to own that for myself. As a woman in music, we are told someone else made us who we are, that somehow it didn’t come from us, and that we were made that way. This is who I am.”
So anyways, I just thought that was amazing. One critic called it the return of recession pop, a wave of popular dance music that came out between 2007 and 2009. Yeah. You like that?
LT: I am just thinking – I mean, thinking back to that time, because these are like, callbacks to our own lives, too, right? Like —
CB: Right.
LT: — and Chris, you and I are about the same age, and I was graduating college at this time. I could not find a job, and then when I got a job… It was just a very sloppy era for me personally as like, a young 20-something. And Lady Gaga’s music was the soundtrack to that sloppy era. And so it is really interesting for me personally to be hearing this music that’s like, a callback to that time and to be like, wow, look how much has changed. Look how far we’ve come. And I love that about these retrograde cycles, right? You can look back at your own life and how it maps onto the cultural moment as well.
CB: Absolutely. Yeah.
NDB: I’m reminded that – not to show my age, but it was during the going into the Venus retrograde in Aries of 1969 that the Beatles were trying to make a record called Get Back, where they were gonna like, go back to their roots and I mean, of course that big miniseries that came out that turned into the movie – at first Let It Be and then eventually the full miniseries Get Back – but that was what they were doing. And they even – during the retrograde, they took a photo that was gonna be the album cover that was them in the same pose that they had been on their first album cover, and now we know those photos in the Blue and Red compilation albums, because it’s a picture of them – they’re on a balcony, and they’re looking down at the photographer. So there’s a picture of them in their suits in 1963, the original sort of moptops doing that pose, and then a picture of the four of them in 1969 with the, you know, long hair and beards in the same pose in the same order doing that photo. And that was taken during that Venus retrograde in Aries. So that’s something that artists do is, yeah, try to sort of hit a kind of reset button.
It reminds me in 2009, when Obama became president and Hillary was the Secretary of State and she brought this reset button to the Russian foreign minister for him to press. But the Russian word for “reset” wasn’t written properly; it was classic Venus retrograde. She got literally a reset button to reset American-Russian relations that didn’t go so well. So yeah, it’s a very reheating-the-nachos, hitting the reset button, get back to where you once belonged, all that kind of stuff is, I think, yeah, part of the transit.
CB: Yeah. The backwards-looking notion of retrogrades pertaining to the past like, has never been so obvious to me as this retrograde. Not just because of the Venus retrograde, but also the Mars retrograde, and then we were seeing how the years in which both of those overlapped were even more intensely like, reminiscent of right now. So that was one of the themes that has been coming up hugely, and it’s been brilliant seeing that in this one.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: All right. Let me – one of the things I need to do is I need to share a chart really quickly. Chart of the moment. And the only reason I’m doing this is to – it’ll bump up the resolution in Zoom. But here we can see the Venus – Venus has stationed direct; it’s at 25 degrees of Pisces right now and it’s conjoining Saturn. And that’s actually gonna come up as well. Well, actually, no – that comes up right now because that’s actually really funny – one of the things that just happened was the Amazon spaceship where there was a spaceship full of women that was like, launched into space a few days ago. And it was like, you know, the singer Katy Perry was on it. Gayle King was on it. Like, Jeff Bezos’s girlfriend and like, a few other people were on it, and it was supposed to be this big – they wanted it to be like, this big moment. But it’s been getting – I feel like it’s been getting a lot of pushback. Like, and at first I was trying to check to make sure I wasn’t just like, seeing parts of the internet or it wasn’t just like, the manosphere being assholes. But it seems like it was just generally not well received from my impression. Was that what you were seeing, Lindsey? What did you think?
LT: Oh, I pretty much only saw backlash.
CB: Right.
LT: I wasn’t exposed to any of the celebrations of it. But yeah, lots of really good memes came out of that moment, and then yeah, I think people just thought it was in poor taste. Or honestly like, they don’t really care! They’re like, “I don’t care what wealthy people are doing right now in this moment.”
NDB: Well, like, millions of Americans are apparently losing their social security. So it’s just, it’s sort of —
LT: Right.
NDB: — a contrast thing. You know, on a better news day, it’s like, oh, okay, good for them, you know? I was happy for William Shatner when he went into space. Hey, good for him! But yeah, it’s just when everyone’s lives are coming apart in this way, it just, the contrast is a bit off.
LT: Yeah.
CB: Right.
LT: It reminded me of the submersible incident which happened when Venus was in shadow —
NDB: Right!
LT: — before the Leo retrograde in 2023, and just thinking about the – I mean, on one hand, that was a tragedy, and on this there was sort of like, self-purported like, heroism or this is like, such an inspirational thing. But people just being like, I don’t – this is so out of touch, I can’t connect with this in a personal way, which is so Venusian, right? And so that was like, a callback to me, too, of the submersible.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely. I thought it —
NDB: I was just gonna say I think there’s something about Venus with sympathy in some way. Like, you know, someone’s either relatable or they’re not. And there’s an element of that in what Venus does.
LT: Well, and the fire signs are not like, notably sympathetic signs, so.
NDB: Sure.
CB: I thought it was funny, because if you listen to me in the forecast episodes for the past few months, probably going back to the year ahead forecast, I kept trying to come up with an image and describe symbolically what like, Venus retrograde and stationing direct in Pisces conjunct Saturn was, and I kept trying to describe like, a woman who’s like, raised up and is exalted at the height of something, but that she’s set back by like, age or health issues or criticisms or something like that. And then when this happened, like, I laughed, because it perfectly fit the symbolism, which I’ve come to understand from exaltations over the past few years that it sometimes literally just means like, raised up to the highest point that you can get for something. And usually, that’s like, socially or career-wise, but in this instance it was actually like, women taken —
LT: Space!
CB: — into space like, as high as you can possibly go in a spaceship, essentially, but then getting a lot of criticism as soon as they got back from it. And yeah, I was just like, happy that it didn’t blow up, because Katy Perry was born, you know, right before me and has the same chart. And she’s like —
NDB: Yeah!
CB: — my canary in the coal mine, so if like, Katy Perry like, blows up in a spaceship, like, I would get very nervous.
LT: We’d have to wrap you in a bubble.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Yeah. No space shuttles for you, sir!
CB: No.
NDB: I’m reminded that, of course, Yuri Gagarin was the first human being in space during the Venus retrograde in Aries of 1961. He himself was born during a Venus retrograde, the one in Aquarius. A lot of notable Russians are. And I believe – Lindsey, didn’t you find the first woman in space was also born with the Venus retrograde in Aries, or during the period —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — of it?
CB: I found that; that was what I was about to say.
NDB: Oh, did you find it? Okay.
CB: I remembered this was a repetition because we had talked about Yuri being the first human in space under this Venus retrograde in Aries. But then I went looking after the thing with what just happened with the women like Katy Perry and everyone going into space if there was any repetitions there. And the first woman in space was not Venus retrograde in Aries, but she was born March 6th, 1937, which was —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — Venus in late Aries getting ready to go retrograde. So that’s —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — an incredible repetition.
NDB: I consider that to be – yeah. That’s well within the perimeter I use to gauge a Venus retrograde, you know, interval.
LT: That’s really cool.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So that’s a nice repetition. We’ll probably see further repetitions of that, then, in subsequent Venus retrogrades in the future related to like, space or different people related to like, gender or other things like that, you know, in space and having different milestones, basically, in the future.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: All right. So moving on. The next repetition that I wanted to talk about is… Oh yeah. Conan and the Oscars. So we had talked about, in our original episode, Nick, how this Venus retrograde was so important in the history of Oscars and there’s always a lot of firsts, and there’s always a lot of sometimes there’s snafus and also sometimes there are like, risque things that are given awards during this Venus retrograde. And it’s like, all of those happened in striking ways. I’ve done a whole episode basically talking about this already, so we don’t have to go into in detail. But one of the ones that I was really impressed by that we mentioned in our original episode was I talked about – I had noticed that under the 1993 retrograde, that Conan O’Brien was picked to host The Late Show, and suddenly became like, a household name overnight —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — and that was a super important turning point for him. And that was just like, a throwaway thing at that point when I found that in our episode on January 10th. But it turned out that he was gonna be the host of the Oscars, and then he hosted the Oscars and he did such an amazing and like, widely celebrated job that they’ve already invited him to come back to host the Oscars again next year.
And then later in the same month, I think later in March after he hosted the Oscars, he was also given the prestigious Mark Twain Award. So —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — that was also really notable in terms of this being a super important turning point in his chronology that ties back into that moment when he was first chosen.
NDB: Yeah. Yeah, it’s really wild to watch. But good for him. I’m totally Team Coco, so.
LT: And he’s having his solar return! His birthday’s April 18th.
CB: Oh, I love that!
NDB: Happy birthday, Conan!
LT: Yeah!
CB: Yeah. Nice. I love that.
NDB: His podcast is killing it. He is so good. And —
LT: I didn’t even know he had a podcast. That’s great news!
NDB: He’s got a podcast, and it is so funny. He just sits around a table and berates his employees in a comical – but it’s very funny. And he also like, sometimes he does, you know, he did this one interview with Mark Lewison, who’s the – here I go with the Beatles again, but – he’s actually kind of in a way involved with or responsible for the way I do astrology. He’s the guy who made the Beatles chronology books, and he’s writing like, the definitive biography. But it’s sort of like, the idea of studying chronologies like I did as a young Beatles fan was part of what crafted me to being the astrologer I am. So the fact that Conan interviewed him, just because like, Conan, like me, was really interested in this man’s work, I was just like, oh wow! I could actually be this guy’s friend. Like, he and I actually like the same things. So yeah. Go Conan.
CB: Yeah. It is a good podcast. And it’s interesting, because it’s important because, in you know, 2009, under that Venus retrograde, that’s when he stopped doing The Late Show that he started in 1993 and he made the transition to doing The Tonight Show and taking over for Leno. But then there was this huge debacle and Conan was kind of like, robbed after only doing it for, you know, a few months or whatever. And then he went through this whole dark night of the soul and had to reinvent himself doing another talk show, I think possibly until 2017. But by launching – having that setback and losing basically his dream job that he had aspired to get for so many years, it eventually put him on a path where now he’s started a podcast over the past eight years that’s become widely successful so much that it’s completely reinvigorated his career and reinvented him and made him like, relevant during this time frame in which podcasts are having this like, renaissance. And that wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t had that hardship of like, losing. Because like, by now, you know, maybe he would have retired from being the host of The Tonight Show or something; who knows if he would still be —
NDB: Right.
CB: — doing it at this point 15 years later.
NDB: And also he was losing this show at the tail end of a golden age. You know, that show format, I mean, there are still talk shows. But it’s just not the same cultural thing in the internet age. It was something that, you know, you watched at 11 at night and sort of, you know, talked about with your coworkers the next morning. That culture is gone. So it’s just as well the show was taken from him, because that format was riding out. Like, you know, it’s had its best years.
CB: Yeah. So I just wanted to mention that, because I’ve noticed that coming up in other areas as well. Like, when I did the episode with Elly that sometimes there would be setbacks or challenges or things that would undermine and push progress or set you back; sometimes it would seem like setting you back even decades. But then those hardships would be the foundation for future like, milestones and accomplishments done under subsequent retrogrades. So I wanted to mention that just as something I’m learning from this Venus retrograde in terms of the give and take that sometimes occurs in terms of these repetitions and cycles.
LT: It’s like that motivational quote – a setback is a setup for a comeback.
CB: Yeah! I mean, that’s a great phrase, I think, for this Venus retrograde, honestly.
NDB: And everybody loves a comeback. You know, everybody wants to knock a winner off their pedestal, but everyone loves to see someone – like, you know, a loser rise back up and fight again and win again. So yeah.
CB: I mean, that’s – we’ve also learned during this Venus retrograde that’s not always true, though, because we had a —
NDB: Yeah. That’s true. Some people should stay down, I guess.
CB: I mean. You know, generally speaking, though, I take your —
NDB: There are no absolutes.
CB: — point is relevant.
NDB: Yeah, my point is relevant, but there are no absolutes. Fair enough.
CB: For sure. All right. So moving on. Another repetition I noticed that ties directly back into something we mentioned in the original episode was on March 8th, the rapper Lil Nas X announced a new single, and he ended up releasing this album under this Venus retrograde on March 11th. And the entire theme was he had this like, Ken doll aesthetic in his music and his visuals where it had like, a pink-themed music video and art direction, but also a video with him like, in a box, like, in a Barbie doll, like a Ken doll box. And just this like, recurring aesthetic he was trying to put forward of the Ken doll, basically. And this was hilarious, because as we talked about during the 1961 Venus retrograde, that’s when the Ken doll was originally released. So Ken doll was having a Venus retrograde repetition and we had it showing up in this like, notable, the aesthetic of this notable rapper.
LT: I don’t – did you see a couple days ago that he was in the hospital with like, Bell’s palsy? Like, half of his face was paralyzed. It’s wild. I was like, oh man, this —
NDB: Oh no.
LT: — really got him. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. That was honestly really scary. And then —
LT: Yeah.
CB: — everyone was like, speculating about why that was, and then, you know, I – there’s been like, different celebrities over the past five years where suddenly people are having these random, crazy health things like, happening and like, speculation sometimes about like, long covid or other things like that or like, what’s influencing some of these sudden things.
LT: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t – do we have a timed chart for him? I don’t know. But he has an Aries Sun, too, it looks like.
CB: What degree?
LT: 19.
CB: Okay. Yeah. A lot of the Aries Sun people, especially first decan people, were majorly hit by this Venus retrograde in different ways. Mikey Madison was the one with I think the Sun at like, nine Aries or something and winning the Academy Award for Best Actress as Venus was like, stationing there for Anora.
LT: Wow.
CB: Yeah. All right. So moving on. All right, we mentioned the SAVE Act —
NDB: I was just gonna say, Lil Nas X has a C-rated birth time in Astro Databank, but it’s not terribly reliable, so there you go.
CB: Okay.
LT: Thanks.
CB: Great. All right. Moving on. Trump gave his like, “liberation day” speech on April 2nd where he introduced all of these like, terrible extreme tariffs like, across the board to everybody. And what I thought notable is when he gave his speech announcing this, which then immediately just like, started wrecking the economy and the stock market and everything else, is he mentioned actually some of our previous Venus retrograde periods in his actual speech when he was announcing this. So he said, “in 1913, for reasons unknown, they established income tax so citizens rather than foreign countries would start paying the money necessary to run our government.” Then he continues; he says, “Then in 1929, it all came to an abrupt end with the Great Depression. And it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy. It would have been a much different story.” So he’s invoking like, 1913, which we had talked about because that was the creation of the Fed under that Venus retrograde as well as when they started shifting from, you know, from doing tariffs as the primary income to doing income tax and introducing that. And then 1929 was another Venus retrograde in Aries; ‘29 was also Mars retrograde in Cancer, as well, so it was a double repetition.
LT: Wow.
NDB: Yeah. It’s wild. I mean, with regard to Trump, of course, remember he’s got Venus and Saturn copresent in Cancer in his 12th house, and he was inaugurated when Venus and Saturn were conjunct. That was one of the several features on inauguration day that made me think he would win. And so with Venus stationing direct alongside Saturn, the whole freedom day or whatever it was he called it was pretty amusing to me. So yeah, I mean, this is what we get. That Venus direct station with the Saturn, this is what he’s been – if you follow his life, this is what he’s been waiting his whole life to do. He wanted to do this during the first term. But you know, everyone around him held him back, you know, as far as he’s concerned. So now he’s doing this, you know, crazy thing that he’s had in his mind for decades. And that’s what the Venus direct station with Saturn means to him is that he’s, you know, he’s made his dream come true!
CB: Right. Well, that’s —
NDB: I mean, you know, I know – I realize this is a terrible and sour thing, but with regard to him and how he’s feeling in that moment, you see the astrology.
CB: Yeah, I mean, it’s – that’s the thing that was like, backwards-looking that I also realized is that it’s not just like, reminiscing about the past sometimes, but sometimes people literally try to take society back to the past and back to some —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — idealized era in the past oftentimes that coincides with the turning points when the same Venus retrogrades and the same planetary alignments were happening. So —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — a big one that we talked about that this overlaps with was the 1929 and early 1930s time frame where you had the Venus retrograde in Aries, and you had the stock market crash later that year. But also there were two Mars retrogrades in Cancer in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s, and that’s the last time they tried to institute tariffs as high and aggressive as the tariffs they’re putting in now. And then it just completely wrecked and fucked everything up. But for ideologically reasons, it’s like, there’s a group of people – not just Trump – that’s trying to take us back to those past eras, not just fiscally but also in terms of, you know, socially as well.
NDB: Yeah. I’m reminded also in 1937, Roosevelt was involved in his whole struggle with the Supreme Court over the, you know, the court packing thing. Because they were voting out some of his New Deal, you know, thing. So yeah. Like, it’s sort of – that’s also coming up as well, where a president is asserting a kind of extraordinary execution of his powers, and then there’s a sort of some kind of pushback on that that seems to be in the end futile. Roosevelt didn’t have to pack the court, because the judges he was fighting wind up – all of them retired within two years of that whole, you know, kerfuffle, so.
LT: Wow.
NDB: It just kind of fell away.
CB: Yeah. So that’s really important and notable. And then there’s been all sorts of, you know, side things then that have affected that, because as soon as you put the tariffs into place, it just started really wrecking the economy and leading towards not just a market correction but the potential for like, creating a new economic depression. And then he eventually had to back off, but he hasn’t backed off fully. He left 10 percent of tariffs for all countries still in place. And a lot of companies that ended up affecting immediately – one of the ones that tied in with a repetition that we had mentioned in the original episode is I had pointed out how during the Venus retrograde in Aries in 1985, that Nintendo unveiled the first Nintendo Entertainment System. And I thought that was really notable. And then what happened under this one is that as Venus started slowing down to station retrograde, Nintendo unveiled its latest system, the Switch Two, and it was originally gonna release it during the Venus retrograde, I think, or just after in like, early April. But because of the tariffs, there’s a headline on April 4th that says, “Nintendo Switch Two preorders paused due to Trump tariffs,” because the tariffs are so high currently that it’s actually delaying now the release of this new Nintendo system as a result of that due to, you know, imports from Japan and things like that.
NDB: It’s kind of funny —
LT: I imagine there are a lot of bummed out kids. And adults!
CB: I mean, yeah, a lot of bummed out 40-year-olds, too! But yeah, more bummed out kids and like, Mario fans and things like that.
LT: Yeah.
NDB: It strikes me like, post-war America was that one place in the world where, you know, life seemed really nice. Everyone had TVs and cars and people around the world – particularly in places like Europe that were recovering from the war, or you know, even Canada that was more backwater – the United States seemed like that one place in the world that had it all, that was sort of living a dream, had all the appliances and all these newfound things in the post-war era. And now we’re heading into some – I can imagine like, a couple of years from now where like, the US is the only place in the world that doesn’t have all the sort of mod cons that everyone else is lapping up as they roll out. It’s a very sort of strange turnaround.
CB: Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s the other biggest – besides the social things. Historically, like, the biggest thing that’s happening in this time is the US is like, isolating itself. And it’s severed and break – this retrograde especially in early March, I was noticing how much due to Trump’s foreign policy, he was severing relationships with other countries that used to be some of the US’s closest allies. Like Canada all of a sudden, there’s like, an open animosity that’s occurring.
NDB: Oh yeah.
CB: Or also with Mexico. Also with Europe. But even with some of the tariffs and stuff, it’s doing this interesting thing where it’s isolating the US, and now it’s causing some of the different countries in Asia to form their own trade blocs together. Or with like, China, I think, and like, Korea and Japan or like, other countries like that. So on the one hand, the Venus retrograde is doing what we sometimes see in interpersonal relationships, which is it’s leading to breakups and the sudden like, rupturing of friendships and alliances and things like that. But then it’s also as a result of that creating new alliances between different countries that maybe weren’t as strong previously or didn’t exist before.
LT: And I think with this copresence with Saturn and the North Node that – I was hearing, I think, like, a commentator say that even if we went back to the way things were before all this, it would take years. It’s going to take years to reestablish these relationships that have been ruined. And so I just think of Saturn and the kind of longevity of Saturn and how it just gives these, you know, really kind of long-term insurmountable difficulties. So there’s this added flavor, like, not only did we have an international breakup, but also it’s gonna take forever to fix it.
CB: Yeah. For sure. And Nick, you and I had talked about how the US and Russia… Well, Russia especially, but some of the interactions between US and Russia had been tied in with this Venus retrograde. And then of course, that was —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — one of the things that happened in early March was the US essentially like, stops supporting Ukraine and immediately cuts off intelligence sharing and like, other things that it had been helping Ukraine with. And that actually ties back, I noticed, into the 1993 Venus retrograde, because that’s when the US was originally negotiating with Ukraine to give up its nuclear arms, and then it signed an agreement later that year saying that it would provide military support to Ukraine in return for getting rid of its nukes if it did that, and they signed an agreement later that year after negotiating it in early 1993 during the Venus retrograde. So now this repetition was, you know, especially at the very beginning of it just days before Venus stationing was that terrible Oval Office meeting where Trump and Vance and some of their lackeys like, jumped and started berating Zelenskyy like, in the Oval Office for different things and —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — severing that relationship while at the same time cozying up to Russia, essentially, over the course of this Venus retrograde. So there’s been a complete inversion of both relationships between the three countries.
NDB: Yeah. And it was a very Venus retrograde meeting. Like I said, the whole, “Why aren’t you wearing a suit” thing was right out of the, you know, page one of the Venus retrograde textbook that doesn’t exist. And the nature of the whole argument – they’re getting on his case for, you know, not expressing the right level of gratitude. So in other words, not performing. Not acting according to the, you know, the expectations of ritual and protocol – another great little Venus retrograde word. So yeah. It was a very Venus retrograde meeting. And apparently, the reporter who asked Zelenskyy why he isn’t wearing a suit, apparently that’s Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend. I’m trying to —
CB: Yeah, I mean —
NDB: — find his date of birth, but —
CB: Yeah, it was completely a setup. Well, and I watched the whole thing, but it started even before that. Like, as soon as like, Trump met Zelenskyy outside of the White House before that, and when they first shook hands, like, he already said some snide comment about how he was dressed. So it’s like, it seems like they planned to do that, or that was some sort of planned thing to manufacture outrage, basically —
NDB: Right.
CB: — from that meeting and to try to turn the US public against Ukraine, which was their goal, it seemed like, with that meeting.
NDB: Yeah. Whereas it’s actually —
LT: Like, lowkey entrapment.
NDB: Yeah. And it’s actual —
CB: Right.
NDB: It is generally protocol for a wartime leader to wear a sort of military outfit while in wartime. Churchill was always wearing a sort of military garb when he came to meet Roosevelt, you know, during the Second World War, because the country was at war. It’s the reason, you know, Castro was always wearing military garb was, you know, there was a symbolic thing to it. So yeah, for Zelenskyy to put on a suit would be to tell the people in Ukraine like, you know, I’m not fighting the war right now; I’m doing something else.
LT: Wow.
NDB: Yeah, you know, it actually – I think it’s just been so long that any of these, you know, none of these guys know what that part of government is all about, so. Yeah. Really unfortunate.
LT: That’s so interesting, too, thinking about Venus and clothing and adornment and how, you know, those are such Venusian topics. And so not only did they berate him for not wearing the right thing, but he was wearing the right thing, and it was to singal something.
CB: It’s funny that you mention that, because that was actually two other Venus news stories I wrote down. One of which was that during the Venus retrograde, it was announced that JoAnn Fabrics was closing down, which is like, a nationwide fabrics chain in the United —
LT: It’s where you go!
CB: — States. That’s where you go if – yeah, for like —
LT: If you sew. If you wanna sew something or make something, yeah.
CB: Okay. Yeah.
LT: Yeah. Like, clothing or whatnot. Yeah, it’s super household kind of place to go get fabric, for sure.
CB: Yeah. So all of a sudden, that’s disappearing. And then similarly,t he popular fashion store Forever 21 also announced that it was closing during this Venus retrograde.
LT: Not “forever.”
CB: Not Forever 21? Yeah.
LT: Temporary 21!
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Speaking of Forever 21, this is just occurring to me – the whatchamacallit, the people who take your DNA and find your ancestry. One of those places is —
LT: Is it Ancestry or 23andMe?
NDB: It was one of those.
CB: It was 23andMe, wasn’t it?
NDB: Yeah, I thought – yeah. Anyway. One of those places.
LT: Yeah, they filed for bankruptcy, 23andMe.
NDB: Right. Now their DNA is out there for the bidding is the problem.
CB: You know, what’s funny about that is that’s actually a repetition then, because that was one of the weird ones I thought we found was wasn’t it like, the 1953 that the DNA was first sequenced or something like that, Nick?
NDB: Right! Right, yeah, that’s right! Yeah!
LT: Whoa!
NDB: Yeah, no, you’re right. You’re right. I’d forgotten about that!
CB: Yeah. It’s all over the place. I was telling – because Lindsey found another good one earlier we can mention next, but I was like, it’s like that Oprah meme, but it’s just the universe is just like, “You get a Venus retrograde repetition!”
NDB: Yeah.
CB: “And now you get a Venus retrograde repetition!” And they’re just handing them out all over the place right now.
NDB: I love seeing this. I used to be the only person like, feeling like, I’m the only person seeing this! I love that it’s like when everyone can finally see Snuffleupagus on Sesame Street and Big Bird doesn’t feel so, you know, isolated and yeah.
LT: You’re not alone anymore, Nick.
CB: Yeah. Now we’re all —
NDB: It’s really nice.
CB: You used to be like, the only – the old man, like, yelling at the sky —
NDB: I was young when I found this shit, man!
CB: Right. About the Venus —
NDB: I was young and handsome when I found this.
CB: You’re like, “Events keep repeating every eight years!” Like, “Don’t you see that this is?” It was like, you know, the meme of the guy with the wall that has like, all of the papers and the different like, strings across —
LT: Yes.
CB: — or like, conspiracy theory meme.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: Or the “Sure, grandma, let’s get you to bed” meme.
CB: Right. Yeah.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: But now I’ve become that, and now we’ve all become that, Nick. So —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — thank you.
NDB: No, I love it. Because it is – it’s such a powerful part of astrology that doesn’t get discussed enough. You know, just the way these planets operate on their own system or no.
CB: Absolutely. Okay, so that brings one – that’s the one, since I just mentioned it, Lindsey, that you found. You just found —
LT: Yeah.
CB: — one like, literally today, right?
LT: I was just scrolling on Instagram for a moment and saw this reel pop up that was kind of an overlay of the 1985 movie Breakfast Club with a full reunion of the cast that just happened on April 12th, which was the day that Venus stationed direct. And I saw it was like, 40 years later, and I was like, oh, that’s a Venus number! Right? And so I looked back, and sure enough, that film, The Breakfast Club, it was released on February 15th, 1985. Venus was in Aries in her pre-retrograde shadow. And apparently, this was a big deal, this reunion, because I guess Emilio Estevez like, never came to any of the reunions, but he came to this one. And so it was the first time that like, the full five people of the cast were reunited. And, you know, that movie is said to have defined a generation. And you know, when we think about Venus retrogrades and this topic of like, normativity and non-normativity and kind of belonging, you know, I think it’s an interesting movie because the five characters each play a different archetype. Right? Like, the brain, the beauty, the rebel, the jock, and the recluse. And then they all kind of figure it out and learn to like each other. They’re in detention all day. And what I thought was also really interesting was that they asked if they would do like, a reboot of the movie, and Molly Ringwold who played the like, the popular character, was basically like, this is a very white movie, and we have no business doing a reboot in this day and age. Like, it does not speak to, you know, like, our culture of like, the moment that we’re in. It’s not racially diverse; it doesn’t address issues of gender. And so I thought that was very interesting for her to kind of push back and be like, no, why would we do something that like, in this day and age would actually not advance any like, social causes or awareness or what’s going on?
CB: That makes sense.
NDB: Yeah. And of course, the theme song – “Don’t You Forget About Me.”
LT: Don’t you…
NDB: And because 40 years ago was a Venus and Mercury retrograde – although when the movie came out, Mercury wasn’t going retrograde yet, but it might have already been in Aries. So it’s a repeat of both of those.
LT: Wow.
CB: Yeah. So that’s the other one. It’s like, we’ve seen when Venus and Mars overlap, which is every 32 years, so like, 2025, 1993, 1961, 1929. And then we’ve seen a bunch when Venus and Mercury overlap, which Mercury has a 20-year repetition period, so that’ll happen at the 40 year anniversary and the 80 year anniversary, right?
LT: Wow.
CB: And then there was one more. So Mars, Mercury, maybe that’s it. And then sometimes eclipses. There’s also like, an eclipse recurrence cycle.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, Jupiter, of course, every 24 years the Venus retrograde will interact with the Jupiter as well.
CB: Right. That actually reminds me – I meant to show… Here’s our original list of all the Venus retrograde in Aries years. So it’s like, if you’re watching the news lately, any time you see one of these years come up, you know you’re seeing a repetition of something related to Venus retrograde in Aries that’s happening right now.
All right. So I just got some breaking – well, actually, no, before – let’s wrap up the Breakfast Club thing. That’s amazing that Emilio came back for it so that sometimes on the stronger repetitions maybe even those who were reluctant during earlier repetitions have an even greater pull to look back, if it’s like, both a Venus retrograde and a Mercury retrograde, for example. But I’ve seen other people around doing that looking back thing, as well. Like, what’s his name, Stevie Muniz – I don’t think that’s his name. Who did —
LT: Oh, from Malcolm in the Middle?
CB: Malcolm in —
LT: Frankie Muniz?
CB: — the Middle. Frankie Muniz posted like, during this Venus retrograde that he was going back and he was rewatching Malcolm in the Middle because I think they’re talking about doing a possibly of doing a reunion or something like that. And so —
LT: Wow.
CB: — during this Venus retrograde, he was actually going back and watching this series that he was on as a kid, which would be wild to do that kind of thing. But in both instances, it’s like, you’re seeing people looking back to the past but also looking back to their youth in some instances and like, reliving it.
LT: Wow. Yeah, and with the Breakfast Club reunion, Emilio Estevez was like, he had heard that one of the cast members was like, well, maybe Emilio doesn’t like us. And he was like, I can’t let that like, be what they think, and so I have to come, and so – that’s like, a very Venusian thing, too. Like, “I want them to know that I like them, and I’m gonna come back around.”
CB: Nice. I like that. We just got a breaking news one. I just got a text literally as we were recording this from our mutual friend Camille Michelle Gray who just texted me to say that it’s just being reported right now that Beyonce just released her birth certificate with a birth time of 9:40 —
NDB: Whoa!
CB: — 9:47 PM that has, get this, Aries rising.
LT: No!
CB: So I do wanna caution that Camille is a little – she’s not quite sure, like, this is real and she sent me a picture of it, the birth certificate. As part of her tour book, she says, you know, we should be a little careful because Beyonce’s so private, Camille says, that it’s kind of a slightly out-of-character thing to do. But she says, “Who knows? This is the closest we’ve ever been to knowing her birth time.” There’s been huge debates about this in the astrological community. But if she is Aries rising, like, that would make – it would make us understand why this Venus retrograde has been so important for her historically as well as the current one. And that would be a perfect – because Nick, you and I talked about this. Because what did we hit on? Like, 2001 especially?
NDB: I’m having a flashback. 2001 is when I first – that’s when “Survivor” came out.
CB: Well, that’s the one we talked about in the first episode.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: Wow.
NDB: Yeah. You know, I remember reading my – because I was living in the Netherlands, and I’d bought a magazine with an article about Beyonce. And then “Survivor” came out. And I’d only just sort of been tangentially aware prior to that, but yeah, that really was like a pretty huge moment. The first album had been released during the Venus retrograde in Aquarius in ‘98, and so this was the new, revamped trio, and “Survivor” came out then in the spring of ‘01, yeah.
LT: Wow.
CB: Yeah. So and I think I might have already talked about Beyonce during the Part Two episode, because I think some other events had already happened where – yeah, with the Grammys, because she won —
NDB: Right.
CB: — the Grammy for Best Album of the Year, finally, under this one, I believe, right? Or was it for just Best Country Album of the Year? Because I know —
NDB: Well, the country album is the one I know, and it’s the meme is the look on her face when they announced her win.
CB: Right. Because I know – because it was hard because like, Kendrick was winning so many as well, and that’s what’s… Grammy… Did… Beyonce… Win.
NDB: So what was her time again?
CB: 9:47 PM. Yeah, yeah, she won the coveted Album of the Year Award for Cowboy Carter, and this —
NDB: Okay.
CB: — marked her first win in this category after numerous nominations. And that was what I mentioned during some previous episode was that a lot of people felt like she was robbed in 2017 because everyone feels like she should have won for Lemonade, but she didn’t; she lost to somebody else that year. So this repetition had even more meaning to have a recurrence and then have her finally win.
NDB: Okay.
CB: And that would make now more sense if she happens to be Aries rising. So here is the chart for Beyonce, if – let’s just say hypothetically, even though this is still tentative, but let’s say this is the real chart, then this would be the chart. And she would have I guess 29 Aries rising.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: Wow!
CB: Yeah. So this retrograde started early in her 1st house and then retrograded back into her 12th house. But it would have, of course, like, opposed part of her Libra stellium where she has Mercury at three Libra, Saturn at nine, and Jupiter at 12. Yeah. And winning Best Album of the Year and finally hitting that as a important career highlight.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: Wow.
NDB: Yeah. I’m curious about like, the Mars retrograde station in 2020 was at 28 Aries. So that would be an interesting time to look at her life. I know she released like, a nonprofit album at that time, but yeah. Worth a deep dive. It’s so nice to finally have this. Such an important chart for our time.
LT: It’s kind of a bombshell, too, because the – I don’t know, I feel like the astrology community’s been arguing over Libra and Scorpio rising as long as I’ve been in the game, so this is really like —
CB: Yeah.
LT: But it’s kind of a nice, happy medium, right? Because we get the Libra-Aries axis, but it’s a Mars-ruled sign. So we can all be right!
CB: Yeah. I mean, it’s like, in terms of debates in the astrological community, it’s like, house division debate, Beyonce debate —
NDB: Right. Yeah.
CB: — and then it’s like, tropical/sidereal debate.
NDB: It puts the Ascendant ruler in the whole sign house 5th with the North Node. So yeah, definitely a very proactive, creative person, you know. So yeah, it speaks to me.
CB: Well, I mean, what jumped out to me immediately is I always wondered where her stellium was. And it puts it in the 7th house. I just think that’s fascinating, given her long and very public, you know, partnership with her husband basically —
NDB: With Jay-Z, yeah.
CB: With Jay-Z, yeah.
LT: And Destiny’s Child and like, all the members. I mean, it’s sort of like, there’s like —
CB: Right.
LT: — a girl group in there, right?
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So it’s not just a Libra thing in terms of the recurrence of like, partnership being an important thing in her chart. It might actually be like, a 7th house thing.
LT: Wow.
CB: Interesting. And then, of course, you know, her ruler of the Ascendant in the 5th and how important her children are to her, but especially her first child.
NDB: Yeah. But also even – I mean, you know, when Destiny’s Child were getting started, she’s the songwriter; she’s… You know, she’s not just the lead singer. She’s like, the creative force behind the group – the visionary, yeah.
CB: Just reminded me of something I need to look it up. Okay, no. Oh yeah, no, it was a good one. She revealed her second pregnancy with twins on February 1st, 2017. So her first pregnancy was like, 2011, but that is what I was remembering is that this Venus retrograde eight years ago was when she revealed that she was about to have twins, and that’s just kind of interesting.
NDB: Okay. 2011 is when Jupiter and Uranus were in Aries, so you know, there would have been stuff going on in her 1st house then.
CB: Got it. Okay. Well, shout out to Camille Michelle Gray for sending us that breaking news; I can’t believe what good timing that was. I asked her if she wanted to join us real quick, but she said she couldn’t, so. Next time!
NDB: Watson’s gonna be stoked!
CB: Watson. A lot of people, a lot of astrologers. This is probably… All the social media sites are going crazy on the astrology threads as we’re speaking.
So moving onto not as exciting, but, I mean, potentially just as exciting depending on your persuasion, but I’ve got some important bridge news that’s happening where the biggest bridge in the world in China is being completed in June. So pretty close to this Venus retrograde. And the only reason I like, noted that, but I remembered there was a bridge thing actually in our original Venus retrograde episode where we noted that first on March 2nd, 1929, the longest bridge in the world at the time – the San Francisco Bay Toll Bridge – opened, and then exactly eight years later there was a repetition where the Golden Gate Bridge opened in the 1937 retrograde. So we again have a Venus retrograde thing and bridges, and originally I didn’t really get the symbolic rationale; I just added that because it seemed like an interesting repetition. But maybe it’s very literal. Like, how Venus connects people —
NDB: Yes!
CB: — in unions, it’s like, it’s connecting two land masses together through a bridge.
NDB: Yeah. That’s what how Schmidt always put it – Venus’s essential function is to join two things that are not, you know, that are separate.
CB: Yeah. To unify and reconcile.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: Also really interesting with this particular retrograde, like, crossing from Aries into Pisces and kind of bridging these two signs that are like, the beginning and the end of the zodiac where there’s like, a real – I don’t know. I feel like that demarcation between these two signs is sort of in some ways like the biggest gulf between any two signs, so it’s like, a big bridge over those two is, I don’t know. Is something, I’m imagining.
CB: Yeah. That’s a great point.
All right, so moving on. The Super Bowl happened and this happened I think after the last time, so I wanted to mention it briefly, which is that Kendrick Lamar gave this amazing performance at the Super Bowl. He became the first solo rapper to headline the Super Bowl halftime show. And what was interesting as a repetition is it broke the record for viewers that was set by Michael Jackson in 1993, which was back when Venus was retrograde in Aries and Mars was retrograde in Cancer. And I actually noticed that around that time, Jackson did an interview on February 10th, 1993, with Oprah, and it was like, his first major interview since 1979, which was, yeah, a while ago prior to that. But it was seen by about 60 million viewers so that it still stands as possibly the single most watched television interview in US history. So I thought that was really interesting in terms of his chronology and the repetition and connection there with Michael Jackson. But then the last thing is I noticed in Kendrick’s chronology – I haven’t been able to narrow down the date, but I’m pretty sure during the 2009 Venus retrograde that Kendrick changed his stage name from K. Dot to Kendrick Lamar. I know that for sure by the end of that year in an interview, he was going by Kendrick Lamar at that point and had dropped K. Dot. And I think that means that it happened just a little bit earlier in 2009, basically.
NDB: Okay.
CB: Yeah. So that was pretty cool.
LT: Incredible performance and so politically charged and so – like, there was this undertone of – I mean, not even undertone. Overtone of resistance, political resistance, in it which also feels very Venus Aries retrograde.
NDB: Yeah. Kind of anticipated the whole US-Canada schism, though, which is kind of interesting as well. Just because of the cities. Personally, as someone born and raised in Montreal, I kind of think of it as, you know, ragging on Toronto is supposed to be what we do, but you know. There you go.
CB: Yeah. Well, and it just had this really amazing undertone of like, subversiveness and like, going as far as he could to push the boundaries of what he could say versus like, what he couldn’t say while still slipping in some pretty profound things to that large of an audience. Like, he referenced like, the 40 acres and a mule thing in terms of American history and the lack of reparations after the Civil War. You know, he had Samuel L. Jackson, you know, acting playing as Uncle Sam, and that Super Bowl with that Venus retrograde was also unique because it was the first time a US president attended a Super Bowl and like, Trump for some reason like, showed up to attend it because he didn’t have anything better to do in the early weeks of his presidency. And then that performance happened with Kendrick, you know, giving this amazing solo rap performance that had was infused with so much like, political undertones. And then of course, Trump takes off not long after and like, leaves for the second half of the Super Bowl for some mysterious reason.
LT: Wow. Also one of the dancers jumped onto frame, right, and unfurled a huge Palestine flag.
CB: Right. Yeah.
LT: And then got promptly, you know, ripped out of the scene.
CB: Right. Yeah. That was a big moment. And that actually reminds me in the Oscars, there were so many firsts and maybe – I know I mentioned already but maybe this would be a good time to mention that to bring that full circle, because one of the firsts was that the first Palestinian to win won an Oscar ever at this Oscars and that was one of the firsts where it was a joint – a documentary made by a joint team of an Israeli and a Palestinian. And he won that award for that documentary pretty much right when Venus was stationing retrograde, because Venus stationed on the 1st and then the Oscars was on the 2nd. But then later in the month when the Venus cazimi happened, when Venus conjoined the Sun, he was – the Palestinian director – was assaulted by settlers in the West Bank and beaten up. And then I think he was on the way to the hospital in an ambulance or something, and it was stopped, and then he was arrested and taken to jail. And he was later released like, a few days later in very bad condition. But there was a connection there in terms of the retrograde and him getting that award at the station, and then having that event happen around the cazimi. And the Academy and I think it was like, 300 or 600 members of the Academy of Actors issued a statement about it and ended up issuing a statement when he was arrested.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: Wow. It’s just so profound how like, extremely good and extremely bad his experience was over the course of just a few weeks.
CB: Yeah. Well, and also just that and the great highs and lows and bringing attention to things. But then it was also, it was like, we were getting a lot of the news from his Israeli codirector basically who was like, concerned for him and was trying to let the world know what was happening and that his friend was being assaulted and that you had something like that that was a production between two people on, you know, sort of different sides that had tried to do something together, but then yeah, having one of them like, assaulted like that.
LT: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So other stuff with the Oscars, just to list it really quickly. It was the first time it was streamed on Hulu, which was a repetition because Nick, you and I had noticed that – had noted – you had noted that a lot of the firsts, like the first Oscars ceremony, the first radio Oscars, the first televised Oscars all happened during this Venus retrograde in Aries. So it was streamed on Hulu, but then what was hilarious is that there was a huge mess up because I watched the entire thing on Hulu where it was streamed for the first time; it got to the very end to the Best Actress category, which is like, the biggest category that I was the most interested in because there had been so many like, controversies and different things about who would win and so much drama about who would win. And I’m watching it, and they’re about to announce the winner, and the stream cuts out, because the entire awards ceremony had lasted longer than they expected, and as a streaming service, they set like, an end time for the stream. And they accidentally like, hit that, and then it cut the stream for just like, millions of viewers literally as they’re announcing the Best Actress award so that I didn’t know who won. It really sucked, because they couldn’t fix it. Like, they couldn’t resume the stream, and they couldn’t release clips, so you were just left to like, wonder what happened. I had to like, go to social media to find out that Mikey Madison had won for Anora and that this was after, you know, there was a lot of speculation about whether Demi Moore would win for her performance in what’s it called? The —
NDB: The Substance.
CB: The Substance. Okay. And then also that earlier in the awards season, the other actress who was the first trans woman that was nominated for an award, there was a huge controversy after some like, racist tweets that she had made over the past few years came out. So suddenly she went from the leading possible contender to becoming like, persona non grata, essentially.
LT: Yikes. Well, and how it’s so apt, right, that it cut out when the femmes – when it was time for the femmes to get the recognition. It’s like…
CB: Right.
NDB: Because it is often – I mean, that was one of the other threads with the Oscars and the Venus retrograde is something goes up with the actress. Like Hepburn and Barbra Streisand being cowinners in 1969. You know, those kind – or sorry, Elizabeth Taylor in 1961 winning a role because, you know, she had just beaten pneumonia and it was for a role that wasn’t very good, although she had been, she had lost Oscars for movie roles that were really good. And you know, just like, those sort of yeah, Oscar snafus or what have you involving actresses is one of the things that seems to pop up a lot over the years as well. So that’s funny that it was that category that got cut off.
CB: Yeah. It was really funny. So and then Anora ended up winning Best Picture, and I thought that was really interesting because it was kind of, it was a movie about a sex worker and it was kind of like, a risque topic, which is something we had seen under previous Venus retrograde repetitions. And both Mikey Madison as well as the – hold on a second.
NDB: Sorry.
CB: Mikey Madison as well as the director gave a shout out to the sex worker community onstage like, when they were accepting their awards. And apparently, somebody told me later there were two sex workers that they had consulted with that came up onstage with them as part of the film crew when they won the award for best picture. So that was reminiscent to me where we had talked about like, some previous instances of like, kind of risque films winning in the past, right?
NDB: Yeah. Elizabeth Taylor won her award for playing a sex worker in 1961, Butterfield Eight, which she didn’t think was a very good movie or very good role. But like I said, she had just nearly died of pneumonia, and so she got kind of a sympathy vote. And that was after she had sort of been canceled; it was sort of a funny Venus retrograde for her, because she had been sort of canceled, you know, at the time because of her marrying Eddie Fisher and all that stuff. And then the Venus retrograde happened, and it sort of because she almost died, there was this, you know, surgence of sympathy and she won the Oscar, and her public image was somewhat rehabilitated.
CB: Got it. Okay. Yeah. So I thought all that was notable. Other firsts were like, first nomination and win for the country of Brazil. First Latvian film to win an Oscar. First Black man to win the award for Best Costume. And finally, first indigenous filmmaker from North America to be nominated for an Oscar. So we sort of had seen that it was oftentimes firsts and there were a lot of firsts at this Oscars.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. All right. Let’s see, moving onto other repetitions.
One of the really funny ones was – I think we mentioned the Fyre Festival occurred during the 2017 Venus retrograde in the original —
NDB: Right.
CB: — episode, and then all of a sudden, in late February, tickets went on sale for Fyre Festival Two, and the like, the creator of the original Fyre Festival which was this famous like, debacle where this guy sold a bunch of tickets to go to this like, fancy island place that would have a lot of celebrities and big musicians and nice food, but then it turned out when people got there, they had spent all the money, so people just got like, the worst lodgings and there’s like, no celebrities, and it was just a terrible disaster that they made entire like, documentaries about. And the creator went to prison, I think, for like, fraud or something related to this. He suddenly like, came out and was like, announcing that he was gonna do a second festival during this Venus retrograde.
NDB: Okay, this is —
CB: And the interviews with this guy are just hilarious, because every… He just sounds like a con artist, and like, every interviewer is just like, super skeptical. And he’s just like, yeah, it’s gonna be great! But it sounds like it might be like, another scam that’s happening right now.
NDB: This is —
LT: Fool me once.
CB: Right.
NDB: This is reminding me a little bit of the story of Studio 54. I mean, Studio 54 wasn’t a failure; it was a success. Celebrities did come. It opened in March of ‘77 during the Venus retrograde in Aries. Steve Rubell – I forget his partner, Ian Trader I wanna say – opened this club. It was this notorious club with everything happening behind closed doors – very Venus retrograde in that the doorman would only let you in if you looked right. You know? You were sized up and, you know, there’s a story like, a newlywed couple showed up and the bride was let in, the groom was not let in and that kind of thing would happen. So it was very Venus retrograde. But the club was eventually, they were – the owners were busted for tax evasion. They did go to jail. The club was closed. And then around March or April of ‘85, eight years later, Rubell was out of jail and opened a new club. And you know, it’s kind of like, there’s that same kind of like, open this big sort of fanfare thing that’s really scandalous and gets a lot of press. Go to jail. Get out of jail. And go and open a new thing, you know, is I’m seeing that pattern pop up again.
CB: Right. Yeah, that makes sense.
LT: When I saw the news, I thought it was —
CB: A joke? Yeah.
LT: — satire. I was like, no way.
CB: Right. Yeah, and I laughed out loud, because we had talked about it on January 10th. And like, you don’t know, because like, how could I anticipate that like, that he’s gonna attempt to do that again? The only reason is just like, it’s Venus retrograde again! And sometimes the same things happen over again. There’s a repetition for bizarre reasons.
NDB: It would be like, what was that woman? The theramall or whatever? you know, the medical scammer in the black turtleneck, blonde woman – I forget – you know, documentaries made about her. Surely you know who I’m talking about. This woman who was running this scam operation with some kind of medical technology, like a drop of blood and they can do all these tests, and it was a big scam. I’m just saying it would be funny if she tried to do it again eight years later. Like, it’s almost like that. But anyway.
CB: Right. Totally. Another big one in February was Saturday Night Live did a big 50th anniversary show, and it involved like, a lot of past cast coming back on the show and just like, reliving a bunch of really important moments from the past. Some of the highlights were Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard did a cover of Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which famously was tied in with like, more the Mars retrograde of 1992 when she famously like, performed and ripped up the picture of the pope.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: But it was still a really stunning like, callback to that. And then they also ended the tribute with a callback to a famous Chris Farley sketch that was aired in 1993 when Venus was turning retrograde in Aries where he like, interviewed Paul McCartney and he asks him about a lyric in a Beatles song. And then Paul played that song, you know, at this reunion performance to culminate, so it was a great callback.
NDB: Yeah. And even the Chris Farley routine is very Venus retrograde, because it’s like, “Hey, remember when you did this? Wasn’t that great?” You know, like, it’s like, it’s all —
CB: Right.
NDB: You know, that’s the joke of the interview is he’s just asking him to remember this or that, like, you know, event in the Beatles career.
CB: Yeah. Totally. And he was asking about the line – he said, “In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make,” so even like, that is like, a little Venus-y. I thought that was really striking, because there was a lot of themes that came up in that several day like, anniversary series where it was about like, looking back to the past, reflecting, reuniting, reminiscing, reliving good times from the past and connecting the past with the present, because there was a mixture of like, old cast and new cast.
NDB: Yeah. And even like, that line from the Beatles song, “The End,” “in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make” – that’s coming out of, like, they were working on that album during the Venus retrograde in Aries as well. I think that song is a little bit after it, but yeah, a lot of Abbey Road was also done during the Venus retrograde in Aries as the Beatles were wrapping up their thing.
CB: Got it. Okay. Another one connected with that is Bill Murray made an appearance in that SNL reunion, but he was also doing some sort of whole press tour to promote a movie during this Venus retrograde. And one thing that I noticed is on March 6th, which was just days after Venus stationed, he went on the show Hot Ones to promote it. And Sean asked him a question about the movie Groundhog Day and whether he was actually bitten by the groundhog, and Bill said yes, that he was like, bitten through the glove and it left this like, huge mark. But I ended up looking that up then, and it turned out that Groundhog Day – which we’d mentioned, actually – that’s why I’m mentioning this is I’m pretty sure I mentioned this, that in —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — the January 10th episode, I mentioned that Groundhog Day came up during this Venus retrograde in Aries in the first part of 1993. And what I didn’t know then was that, you know, that was a big movie for me, but I didn’t realize that was one of the highest grossing movies of 1993. So it actually did kind of stand out more in his chronology than I realized. And I thought it was interesting that there was this callback there. He also like, went on Joe Rogan, which was released —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — on March 1st when Venus stationed, and he talked about like, Jim Belushi who was one of his friends that —
NDB: John Belushi.
CB: John Belushi who died in the 1980s of an overdose. And you know, it was tricky, because there’s a lot of super sketchy, kind of sleazy things surrounding Bill Murray and like, his conduct. But nonetheless, it was interesting in terms of just some of the callbacks that were happening and that it was again one that we mentioned in January that just – and then he just like, comes up randomly doing biographical discussions and callbacks to the past during this retrograde.
NDB: Yeah. He was talking about – there was a biography of John Belushi written by Bob Woodward, the journalist who, you know, did the Watergate thing, who incidentally – Bob Woodward, born during the Venus retrograde in Aquarius, 1942. But he was referring to this book, which I’ve read and it really is terrible. And anyone who knows – I’ve heard Jim Belushi, who is John Belushi’s brother who is alive and who was later also on the cast of Saturday Night Live, he’s also denounced that book pretty strongly. Anyone who knew John Belushi has. And so what Bill Murray says to Rogan is like, you know, if they’ll write this about John, they must have like, lied about Nixon, is Bill Murray’s take. So yeah. Murray has some hot takes is one thing. But certainly he’s not the first one to say that Woodward book about Belushi is trash.
CB: Right. But then also he said in the same interview that he didn’t actually read the book. He said he read like, a little bit, and then he threw it down after reading —
NDB: Right.
CB: — a few pages or something like that. So who knows.
NDB: Right. Yeah.
LT: Thinking about how the plot of Groundhog Day’s so interesting, because he has to keep reliving the same day because he has to learn how to love and how to like, be a loving person. And so that feels to me very Venus retrograde, too. Like, you have to go back until you figure out the right way to love.
CB: That’s a great point. That’s a really great point; I hadn’t – I’d thought about the reliving, but I didn’t think of that point that he had to learn how to love and how to genuinely like, care for people, not just like, his love interest in the movie but also like, other people around that town.
LT: Yeah. And he also becomes like, a master of arts during – like, he learns how to play the piano and like, sculpt ice.
CB: Right.
LT: Things like that. So there’s this sort of like, he also has to become this like, connoisseur of art and music and good taste.
CB: I read this like, dark trivia thing once that the director was asked and the director said that in the script or something originally that they thought that he lived for like, a thousand years like, in the repetitions or something like that. Like, he’d actually been stuck there for like, much longer than you see in the movie, which puts like, a much different spin on it.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: It’s like going to hell and coming back, which is also very Inanna and yeah.
NDB: Yeah. Definitely. Tarantino made the observation that Bill Murray movies, there’s always a character redemption, whereas Chevy Chase movies like, you know, nothing changes. Like, any Chevy Chase movie, Chevy’s the same guy at the end that he was at the beginning, whereas in the Bill Murray movie, there’s always like, he’s a cad at the beginning and somehow redeemed by the end. You know.
CB: Right. Absolutely.
All right. In like, other not fun news, one that I saw that was a callback to I think one that we mentioned is that in an interview in February, on February 15th, Trump’s – actually, Trump said on the social media sites, he said, “He who saves the country does not violate any law.” And people were, you know, attributing this and saying it was, like, a quote from Napoleon. But it actually sounded to me like that famous line from Nixon in the —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — Frost/Nixon interviews, which happened during the Venus retrograde in Aries in 1977 where Frost asks Nixon whether the president could do something illegal in certain situations such as against anti-war groups or others if he decides that it’s “in the best interests of the nation.” And Nixon replied, “Well, when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.” And that’s, you know, in the Frost/Nixon like, biopic movie —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — that came out within the past decade, that’s like this important – that’s almost like, the culmination of the movie is like, that very line in some sense is him saying that and it just obviously being so authoritarian in its tone. And I thought it was really wild to see essentially like, a repetition of that coming up in this retrograde.
NDB: Yeah. And I mean, it’s true. In the movie, it’s used as a focal point. And in the public memory, you know, because there were eight interviews done. The Frost/Nixon interviews were really long and extensive and eight broadcasts – well, eight sittings and I think a number of broadcasts – and so but that one line is what stayed with people for years that they would be quoting 10, 15, 20 years later. So you know, it’s fitting in a movie sense to make that line the fulcrum of the plot. But yeah. Absolutely it’s the line that stayed with people from the interviews, and there were a whole lot of things discussed in those interviews. And yeah. I don’t remember Napoleon ever saying anything like that, but it is what Nixon said, so. The only thing Napoleon said that’s anything like it, but it’s nothing like is, is l’etat, c’est moi, la revolution c’est moi, you know – the revolution is me. So that’s not the same thing.
LT: Chris, I don’t know if it would be jumping ahead too much, but it sort of falls in the category of scary things the President is doing.
CB: Okay. Which is a big category.
LT: I know, right? We could… But I was really fascinated by this little bit that I found. I was researching this; you had made a note of the gay man and the hairdresser that was taken by ICE and sent to Cecot, and his name is Andry Hernandez Romero. And so he’s a Venezuelan man, and he was seeking asylum and had like, a very credible asylum case in the US. And basically, Trump called – this happened on I think March 14th, and then on the 15th they posted it onto the White House website that he is invoking the Alien Enemies Act to send these Venezuelan men to Cecot. And I just wanted to see when the Alien Enemies Act came – like, was created, and it was 1798, which was also the same year that the Sedition Act was created. And I believe that 1798 was a Venus retrograde in Aries year; I looked on my —
NDB: 1793.
LT: 1793. Okay. Well, then I —
NDB: Oh, no, no, wait, actually, you know what? No, no, no. You are right.
LT: Okay.
NDB: You are right, because – yeah, yeah, no, no, you are right. My bad. I’m thinking of the cycle. But you’re thinking of the sign. And yes, in 1798, there would be a Venus retrograde in Aries. My apologies.
LT: That’s okay. I’m glad that there was, just for the point, but yeah. So it’s like, a wartime authority that allows the president to detain or deport natives or citizens of an enemy nation. And this was invoked in 1812, World War One, and World War Two, and it was used for like, the Japanese internment camps. And so he is invoking this, which has been sort of widely regarded as a really unjust, unlawful act. And so I went a little bit deeper, and just like, about when it had been invoked, and I thought this was really interesting that President Truman in 1945 issued Presidential Proclamation number 2662, and it authorized the Secretary of State to remove enemy aliens that had been sent to the United States from Latin American countries. So 1945, also a Venus retrograde in Aries year, but also this specific part of the world – region of the world – Latin America – was being invoked at that time. And so we’re seeing a repetition of that. And I just thought that was really a profound repetition there.
CB: Yeah. That’s incredible. That’s a really good find.
NDB: Yeah. And John Adams, incidentally, America’s first Venus retrograde president. Venus retrograde in Scorpio, as I recall.
LT: Wow. Yeah, it makes me a little nervous that the Sedition Act was also that same year, 1798, which basically just makes it illegal to criticize the government. And so that was a piece that I was like, ew. Don’t love that!
NDB: Yeah. They were —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — virtually seen as a pair at the time. Like, the Alien and Sedition Acts were like, a joint scandal of the —
LT: Right.
NDB: — era.
LT: Right.
NDB: Yeah. And Jefferson used it against Adams in that 1800 election, which was ugly.
LT: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And the – I think that’s notable that so much right now of the focus is on those I think three men that were mistakenly, or wrongly, sent to the prison in El Salvador. But especially the one you mentioned who is like, a gay hairdresser and just obviously is not like, a hardened criminal. And I watched the other day this – because on the one hand, it’s like, there’s this – it’s very similar in a way to like, the Venus Inanna story which is just this descent into the underworld, and she loses everything, like, as she goes down there. And I was watching this video the other day of a documentary that was made… Released earlier this year, but it was made before Trump came to office, but it was about that prison in El Salvador. And like, I really recommend people watch that, because it’s way more horrifying than you actually even realize. Like, I was actually like, sickened after watching that, thinking that they’re just like, sending random people, like, random guys to this – not hardened criminals. I mean, really, even watching hardened criminals experiencing this level of dehumanization and just extreme in terms of like, prison’s already hard – especially let’s say like, a maximum security prison for the most hardened or violent criminals. But like, the level of just removing all traces of like, humanity and dignity from people was to such an extent that I’d never seen that before, especially on such a large level. I mean, I actually I guess not since – even though it almost sounds like a cliche analogy to make, but I guess the only closest thing I can think of is almost like a concentration camp from like, World War Two, essentially. It’s really bad. And like, I didn’t – I couldn’t – I already understood the issues with like, the political context and everything else. But there’s this whole separate component of actually truly understanding what this place is like that these guys were sent to that you can’t understand the full story until you see what life is like there. It’s really, really bad.
LT: It’s sickening. You’re right. And I think prison is like, too gentle of a word to describe it, and I think concentration camp is absolutely accurate. I mean, or like, a gulag. Like, you know, it’s… Yeah. It’s just horrifying, and it’s horrifying that people who have legal status are just being picked off the street and sent there for… I mean, they sent him there because he had tattoos.
CB: Of like, his mom and like, his dad and stuff.
LT: Yeah.
CB: Basically it was like, of a crown for his mom and dad. And —
LT: Yeah.
CB: — they tried to say that that was like, a gang symbol, which it’s not.
LT: Yeah. And this person had gone through this full process of seeking asylum and was like, you know, an asylum seeker with an attorney, you know. And apparently the government has some sort of information against him that they’re not sharing, and it’s just a whole thing.
CB: Right. Well, supposedly. They’ve said that. But he was legitimately already granted, you know, entry due to – or granted a case for asylum-seeking because his case was so credible as somebody that was fleeing persecution as a gay man.
LT: Right. And so they’re understandably worried about his survival in this place. But you know, I think it’s also important to note that this isn’t a place that anyone should be, no matter what they’ve done. And these are conditions that no humans should be kept in.
CB: Yeah. And then to your point about the Sedition Act, though, Trump is already saying… He’s already talking about sending other US citizens there. And he whispered that to the, I think it was to like, the president of El Salvador just like, a few days ago in the past, like a week ago or something like that that they’re gonna need more space. He said something to that effect, because he wanted to send homegrown people there, I think is the phrase —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — that Trump used.
NDB: Yeah. That’s what I was referring to earlier when I was talking about the Argentinian mothers. You know, this is something that the CIA was setting up in other countries that had coups like Indonesia and Argentina, Brazil, Chile. Dissidents disappear. You know? It’s part of the game plan.
CB: Yeah. And it was creepy, because the video – the audio’s there, and he was like, whispering it to them, whispering it to the president when he made that comment about homegrown criminals. So anyway. A lot of bad stuff happening. But I think there’s just something important about that one of the central people that a lot of the eyes are on is a gay man and some connection there with the Venus retrograde of him being part of the focal point during this time.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: Yeah.
NDB: Yeah. I think it – I mean, it is important. You alluded to this earlier, but just to restate the point. The whole thing about Venus retrograde and, you know, consensus or conformity or normativism is – I mean, it really applies to everyone. So it applies to the most progressive and the most regressive people, and you know, whatever their agendas might be. So you’ll see Venus retrograde present in events when some great breakthrough is made, when someone does something for the first time that, you know, someone that they would not have been allowed to do not long before. But you also see the reactionaries also come alive during Venus retrogrades. In 1978, when you had the Venus retrograde in Scorpio with Uranus in Scorpio, that was the Iranian Revolution when women who wore Western clothing, you know, virtually overnight suddenly had to wear scarves and burkas and what have you. So it goes in both directions, and Venus retrograde absolutely like, applies to that whole spectrum of people trying to sort of reshape the world in the way they think it should be.
LT: Feels very Saturn-Neptune, too, and Venus, you know, this retrograde covering that degree and the sort of, yeah. These kind of really sudden, abrupt changes in lived experience and the way that philosophies are applied and practiced to groups of people or ideologies.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely. That was the other combination of recurrence that we’re in now that I forgot that I was searching for earlier at the beginning when I was trying to mention is the Saturn-Neptune as a recurrence now and how that relates back to previous retrogrades like what was it? The 1953 one, and other time periods like that.
NDB: And yeah, 1881.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Which was close to the 1882 one, and yeah. 1953 is – because that was also Venus retrograde in Aries, and back in 1881 it was still in Taurus. But yeah. There’s a lot of stuff I think that ties into 1953. In particular, I mean, I mentioned the CIA and, you know, all this stuff going on. But there have also been, you know, these revelations, details on the JFK assassination coming out and things of this nature. The dismantling of the FBI and things like this, you know, under the whole sort of DOGE adjacent operation. So there are some things going back to like, ‘53 is when a lot of this – like, the CIA already existed, but the CIA that we talk about is the one that comes into effect when Eisenhwer becomes president and he puts the Dulles brothers in charge. That’s the CIA that’ll have coups, that’ll have Project MKUltra, and you know, so on and so forth and do all the stuff that is now coming home to roost, that now makes a reference, that finds itself in Trump saying that he’s going after the homegrown, if you will.
CB: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s the repetition of ‘53 is that you had a new administration come in that let some of the darker sides of some of these organizations run rampant in starting to do secret things that ended up not being good, both around the world as well as in the US itself. And that you also had this heightened sense of paranoia based on then it was like, the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare, but then in the 1881, ‘82 Saturn-Neptune repetition, it was the, you know, Chinese Exclusion Act and completely shutting off the ability of Chinese immigrants to have citizenship or rights or other things like that.
NDB: Yeah. You’re actually, you’re reminding me – the Lavender Scare and the Red Scare and the way they intersect, and it reminds me of a Venus retrograde story from 1913 when an Austrian security official was caught selling Austrian military secrets to Russia. And this was, of course, just a year before Austria would go to war with Russia. And the reason he was selling these secrets to the Russians is because they had intel on him, you know, because he was gay and obviously closeted in 1913 Austria. And it was this thing that goes into the Cold War where gay men were suspect not just because of homophobia itself, but because they were prey to blackmail. Because a gay man could be blackmailed into doing things that he wouldn’t otherwise do, like this Alfred Redl guy in Austria. And some of that does come up in the Cold War, you know, espionage game is the sort of the intersection of homophobia and Communism-phobia or whatever the, you know, the Red Scare phobia.
CB: Yeah. That was some of – Elly and I talked about that actually in the last episode, and I mentioned —
NDB: Okay.
CB: — that, I found the Austrian in 1913. I think I started the whole series with him.
NDB: Oh, okay.
CB: Hey, just a quick note I wanna throw in in post, which is that this example of The Handmaid’s Tale was actually sent in by a listener named Andy Kerlin who sent me a message through Instagram noting some of the repetitions and who found that the book was originally published in 1985, and then there was that repetition in 2017 and 2025. So I just wanted to mention that, even though I think a few people had noted The Handmaid’s Tale, Andy was the one who noticed the book originally being published during that. So I just wanted to give them a shout out in this episode.
All right, we’re back from break, and let’s transition to finishing up the repetitions section and then we’ll just talk about some other news stories that were related to the Venus retrograde in general.
So the first one is this was a little one, but I thought it was really funny. On March 13th, just a week and a half or so – almost two weeks – after Venus stationed retrograde, the actor and comedian Kevin Hart went on the show Hot Ones to promote a new animated series that he had just released called Lil Kev. And what’s funny about it is it’s actually set in 1993 when he grew up, which is —
LT: No!
CB: — of course – I’m not even joking. Which is a Venus retrograde and a Mars retrograde year. So literally he set it in 1993, and he’s releasing that show now set in that era. Like, I thought that was so funny. It blew me away.
NDB: Hilarious.
CB: Yeah. It was a good one. In less hilarious ones, on March 3rd, I noticed – I wrote it down on March 3rd, although the video itself may have been released on March 1st. But basically like, right on the Venus retrograde station, Casey Anthony came out of nowhere and released a video where she said she was gonna launch a new video series to like, start advocating for herself and her daughter. And this was like, a bizarre like, you know, we talk about like, exes or people coming back from the past, and this was not a coming back from the past person I think that was on anybody’s BINGO sheet. Because this tied back to the early 2009 Venus retrograde, because at that time, she was accused of murdering her daughter who was only like, a few years old. And during that Venus retrograde in 2009, the prosecutors actually announced that they were seeking the death penalty against her. And it was this huge media sensation case, especially around late 2008, early 2009 because it was one of those cases that like, the 24-hour news networks picked up on and people like Nancy Grace and the ones that like, hyperfocus on sensationalistic criminal cases. It became kind of a whole circus. And there was honestly like a lot of evidence against her, including like, internet searches that made it look like she was actually searching for like, how to possibly kill her daughter before it actually happened. And then the prosecutors were – it’s usually regarded as they were like, overzealous and they went for a higher charge than they could prove, and they fumbled the case, basically, and she wasn’t convicted and couldn’t be retried, so she was freed. But it’s always been looked at as this thing of like, at least in terms of the public, that she may have actually done that. And so her coming back all of a sudden during this Venus retrograde and resurfacing in the way she was doing it, where she was trying to say that she was gonna be – she was like, a proponent of the LGBT community and also the legal and women’s rights community, like, it was like, very bizarre. And it made me think of the Venus retrograde that we talked about last time, Nick, which was the woman whose mother was like, keeping her sick and infirm so that she ended up murdering —
NDB: Right.
CB: — her mother and going to jail for it, but then being released and becoming like, a minor celebrity for a while.
NDB: Right. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: As a member of the LGBTQ comunity…
CB: Do you claim Casey Anthony?
LT: Yeah, no thanks!
CB: Okay.
LT: God!
CB: Good. I’m glad we can have somebody that speaks on behalf of the entire LGBT community.
LT: I mean, I think it’s fairly a safe bet for me to do that.
CB: Okay. You’re not like, going out on a limb here.
LT: I don’t think so! God.
CB: Yeah. So that was – but it just reminded me sometimes of, yeah, that. Just that we discovered in that last Venus retrograde sometimes that Venus can relate to the mother and things like that, but sometimes when Venus —
NDB: Sure.
CB: — is retrograde or in bad shape, sometimes bad relationships with the mother or bad mother type dynamics can become prominent in different ways.
NDB: Venus retrograde is unwed mothers; it’s people shaming unwed mothers. And then or – yeah, you know, someone not doing what’s expected of them. You know, what their role is supposed to be. So in any of these ways, or even just in interactions, again, you know, Venus is the planet of diplomacy that oversees all our interactions between people. So if someone is, you know, rude or doesn’t show the expected deference or whatever things can go wrong between two people and certainly between a parent and child, yeah.
LT: Yeah. I think a lot of people were just shocked that someone would like, come back into the public scope after such a near brush with, you know, lifelong imprisonment or the death penalty. Yeah, it’s pretty shocking. And also seems to just go into this category of like, criminals coming back to like, you know, do the next thing.
CB: Right. That’s a good point, like the Fyre Festival guy like —
LT: Right.
CB: — coming back. Well, because you also wonder – when I was watching and I was like, is she so… Because, you know, I don’t know who knows ultimately what happened. But like, in one scenario I was thinking, I was like, maybe, what if a person was like, so ultimately in denial in like, the lies that they tell themself and those around them that they actually like, try to do that on social media and like, pretend? Because she hasn’t posted since then because it really did not go over well and she got huge hate and pushback. So I think she may have changed her plans. But it made me wonder about sometimes like, states of denial about what we tell ourself and then when that gets shattered when the reality of a situation becomes clear.
LT: Yeah. I mean, I’ve seen a few people refer to this time of this year as like, the delulu spring, and it seems a little delulu spring to me.
CB: Right. Yeah.
NDB: I guess the other person being released was Andrew Tate, right, and he was released from custody in Romania and wound up in Florida.
CB: Yeah, the, you know, he was being prosecuted for human trafficking and a number of other things in Romania. And then suddenly, it was speculated – and I don’t have confirmation of this, who knows – but that somebody after Trump came into office like, pressured the Romanian government and he was released. He comes back to the US, and then around the time around the Venus retrograde, and then around – I think it was around the cazimi, like, a story came out that he had assaulted like, one of his girlfriends while he was back in the United States before he left and now I think has gone back to Romania. So that was actually another terrible like, Venus retrograde story that happened.
LT: Gross.
CB: Yeah. So —
NDB: Yeah. He’s 1986; he’s coming out of the Venus retrograde in Scorpio. He was born just after it went direct. He and Lauren Boebert are born like, a week or so apart, so there you go.
CB: Okay. Yeah. So anyway, that was a bad one. Sadly, like, I put off some of the bad ones until later, so I got a string of like, kind of depressing ones. But you know, we gotta recognize the full spectrum of like, the haha like, entertaining ones and the serious ones and sometimes the really dark ones. But one of them —
NDB: We had a Breakfast Club moment, so we can move. Yeah.
CB: We did. We played the song. I wish I could just play songs like that, because that would have been even more striking, but all right.
NDB: The whole Simple Minds discography.
CB: So moving on. One of them that I wrote down around March 14th is there was this clip – a video clip in the news that was released that went viral, and I don’t know how to explain it, but basically there were these two young girls that were murdered in February of 2017. And the killer… They were only 13 and 14, and they were – the killer was later apprehended, and he was only recently in like, November of 2024 convicted on two counts of murder. But somehow during the process of whatever ongoing litigation is still happening right now or attempts to free him or whatever is happening, a clip was released of one of the girls’ phones where they were walking on a train track and then they’re talking with each other and then they turn and there’s this guy that’s following them basically. And that clip was released during this Venus retrograde, and it related back to basically the day of these terrible murders eight years ago during the last Venus retrograde. So that’s a really like, grisly example, but I wanted to note it just because it’s like, the memory of what happened in terms of their lives and how it ended was coming back and was prominent in the like, public consciousness all of a sudden in terms of their story and what happened to them during this time. But also in public – the public becoming aware of it and therefore, you know, probably helping to ensure that this guy never is free again from jail.
NDB: Yeah. Well. Brutal.
CB: Yeah. There was another one, weirdly – so I noticed that story on March 14th, so this is just two weeks into the Venus retrograde which started on the 1st of March. There was another really brutal story on the same day on March 14th where there was this story that there was a woman that held her stepson captive for 20 years. And he set a fire in his room in order to alert the authorities, because he’d been imprisoned and malnourished in this room for like, two decades. And then he set a small fire which brought the fire trucks and the police there, and he was finally freed after this long imprisonment. And what they were saying in the news is that he was 32 years old, which means that he was born in 1993. So this was – he was born in the year of that Venus retrograde and Mars retrograde, and then he was finally freed 20 years after being imprisoned after he was pulled out of school at age 11. So —
LT: Wow.
CB: — that’s, you know, thinking about being born with those configurations, losing most of your life being trapped, and then finally being freed when those natal configurations recur at the age of 32.
LT: Wow. I mean, this is so tragic, and also what a badass move!
CB: Right. Totally.
LT: Like —
NDB: Yeah.
LT: — so creative, right? Like, how am I gonna get noticed in this situation? And really, I mean, probably like a really dangerous and potentially life-threatening risk to take, too, to like, set your room on fire. But yeah. I mean, so, so Aries. So – yeah, the fire energy is just…
NDB: Yeah. I mean, I guess if you’re that desperate, you know, after two decades. I wonder if he was taken out of school when he was 11, that would have been in 2004. I wonder like, the school year in June of 2004 would have ended with the Venus retrograde in Gemini. So I wonder if that’s, how that coincides for him. Just a thought.
CB: Okay. Yeah. Well, and the other thing it was – why I bring it up and in connection with other stories, it’s another kind of like, fucked up mother type situation like we talked about with the Casey Anthony case —
NDB: Right.
CB: — and just sometimes that comes up in the news at these times. You know, the part that really pissed me off, I’m shocked about not even more, but pretty much higher at that level – they released her on bail. Like, she’s actually out on bail right now despite doing that, which is absolutely bizarre. Like, I have no idea how that’s possible, but that’s like, apparently the case.
LT: Oof.
NDB: These are good times to be a criminal it seems.
CB: Yeah.
LT: Apparently! Soon she’s gonna be offering legal advice and LGBTQ support.
CB: Right! Yeah. She just like, becomes a prominent —
NDB: Not necessarily in that order.
LT: Subscribe to my Substack!
CB: Yeah. That’s so crazy. All right. Let’s see, so moving on. That was actually the last depressing one for repetitions, and that was actually the last major repetition story that I think I had. So what’s left is just some general Venus retrograde stories that were not necessarily repetitions, yet still seemed like interesting thematically in terms of the Venus retrograde that I wanted to talk about and see if you two had any. Yeah, so let’s get into some of those. One of them I just noticed today like, Nick, I know you’re a big comic book fan, so maybe you can fill me in on this, but like, a trailer for the new Fantastic Four movie just dropped. And there was footage for the first time of the new Silver Surfer. And in the previous incarnations, like in the movie in 2007 I remember it was like, a guy – it’s like, a bald guy who was the Silver Surfer in 2007. But here suddenly everyone – not everyone, but it’s a woman. So the Silver Surfer is like, a woman this time, and of course all the like, incels are outraged. But I thought it was a funny —
NDB: The DEI hire, oh no! Yeah.
CB: Right.
NDB: Yeah. Okay. Well, when you say I’m a comic book fan, I read them in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. And so most of my – you know, that’s where my knowledge lies is what I read in those years.
CB: Okay.
NDB: A lot of which is the stuff that did get made into Marvel movies. I know like, the thing about The Fantastic Four is they’ve tried a few times to make Fantastic Four movies, and they’ve never really measured up to the rest of the Marvel oeuvre. So I don’t know if they’ll succeed this time insofar as… You know, they already went through this with, you know, Captain Marvel and what have you. You know, a portion of this audience is rigidly orthodox and very likely just resent the intrusion altogether. But that is – that’s the, you know, Venus retrograde is again, when we’re talking about how women surface in stories relating to Venus retrograde, it’s very often like, what’s she doing here? you know? You’re not in your place. These sort of things come up, and it’s again, same sort of thing. Like, you know, Venus retrograde and the arts is very much about like, sort of subverting the art form in some way. So you know, even if it’s just sort of changing a character in this way, and then the response —
CB: Yeah.
NDB: — that’ll happen, you know, in these situations.
CB: There’s something core, though, I’m realizing about Venus retrograde, and I discussed this with Elly in the other episode, you know, but it made me remember this Venus retrograde – especially when trans issues have been so prominent – the last Venus retrograde when Demetra and I did a episode on the myth of Inanna and the descent of Inanna and the story of that that goes back three or four thousand years which is tied in with Venus retrograde. And it was like, a myth that encapsulated the astronomical reality of what happens with Venus retrograde. But one of the things in some of the hymns associated with Inanna from back then is there was this passage about Inanna having the power to change women into men and men into women, and I thought that was interesting and I opened that last episode with that, because I thought it set a precedent where discussions about trans issues and gender swaps in different ways that goes back to the very beginning, essentially, of the astrological tradition and is not a new phenomenon at all. And we had discussed that in the original episode where we talked about Chrstine – I believe her name was Christine Jorgensen who was like, the first sort of celebrity trans woman in the US that came back in I think it was 1953. It was that retrograde, right? She had gone to Sweden, I believe, for like, the – which had one of the first places where they were able to do medical gender transitions —
NDB: A reassignment, yeah.
CB: Yeah. So anyway. I bring that up because here I feel like it’s just an instance of sometimes gender switching heere with a character. But now that I think about it, there’s actually a abroader thing with that happening right now, because also they’re in the process of putting together like, a new Harry Potter series. And it was announced recently that Snape would be played by a Black man, by a Black actor. So there’s another instance there where it’s like, people in fiction who are, you know, associated with a specific gender or ethnicity or what have you and having a shift or a change to that. And then you have some people that are like, annoyed by that, and you have other people that don’t care because it’s like, a fictional character in the first place.
NDB: Right.
CB: But that the topic sort of arising in different ways. Does that make sense?
LT: No, you’re doing great! And the —
CB: Okay.
NDB: Yeah!
LT: It’s like, very subversive, too, right? So it’s not just like, an inconsequential like, gender change. It’s this thing that’s like, you know, pissing people off, but in kind of a like, a good constructive way. I remember when they did the Ghostbusters film with the all-female —
CB: Oh yeah.
NDB: Right!
LT: — cast —
NDB: Yeah. Right.
LT: — and there was that great meme where someone was like, “I’m an adult virgin!” Like, making fun of the guys that were like, really upset about that. And but yeah, these are the moments that I think yeah, like, change the norms – what we’ve been talking about – around like —
NDB: Yeah.
LT: — what’s acceptable in terms of like, gender norms and, you know, like, can a character just be a character kind of independent of the gender of the person who is playing them?
CB: Right. Yeah.
NDB: Yeah. And I mean, the Silver Surfer is this cosmic character. Like, there’s no… The idea that the Silver Surfer even has a gender, you know, I mean, drawn in the comic books in a male form. But the character itself is, you know, not really a person as such. There’s a human-like form, but yeah. I mean, it becomes even sort of sillier because of that. Or that much sillier because of that, because this isn’t really… You know, it’s not like they made, you know, whatever. Yeah. Moving on. Enough.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Enough!
CB: Yeah. Anyway, I thought that was an interesting one that just happened. Other little ones I wrote down roughly chronologically – on February 21st, Hunter Schafer, who is a famous trans actress that was on Euphoria, announced that their passport had been reverted to male. And I thought this was really notable; it was a newly issued passport, but it was due to a change under the Trump administration that now forced it to list whatever a person’s biological gender that they were born with was supposed to be or assigned at birth. And it was due to one of the executive orders that he put in right away, so I thought that was an interesting important one just in terms of what’s happening more broadly right now, but in a specific case.
LT: Yeah. It’s terrible. Not only this policy is not only just dehumanizing and, you know, not recognizing the gender that people are living into, but also puts trans people in danger. Because if you’re traveling to a country or something that is not so friendly, and you appear – it appears that you’re a woman but your passport says that you’re male, right? Like, this is scary.
CB: Right. Because Hunter Schafer in the announcement about this noted then they’ll have to out myself to border patrol agents more than is necessary, and that they were thinking about other trans women or other trans people who this might happen to and the position that that could put them in in different ways. So and that was also one of the other big Venus retrograde things that happened is as soon as Trump got into office, he put out an executive order like, a declaration saying that there’s only two genders. So again there’s just this huge, this Venus retrograde has been so massive and that’s why I sort of attempted to open this episode with a discussion of that even though I sort of did that in the previous one is it’s just a big, looming thing that you can’t get away from is just that gender has been a huge part of this specific Venus retrograde in different ways.
LT: Yeah. Well, and I think we’ve arrived at a point in human history where the ways that we even conceive of gender are – we have like, there’s a pretty stark binary about it, right? Like, it’s not that everyone agrees on how we conceive of gender and people are just like, interpreting it differently. Like, we have completely different conceptions of gender. And so it’s yeah, I see this, the passport stuff, like being echoed in the UK with the Supreme Court decision about defining like, what a woman is. And I read through that judgment, and I was like, oh, this isn’t even the way that, you know, I conceive of gender or a lot of my friends even conceive of gender, right, as being this like, there’s your gender and there’s your biological, and there the two will meet, and they can be different and all this stuff, and it’s just… It’s getting kind of like, silly and old-fashioned as much as it is also dangerous.
CB: Yeah. One of the things Nick and I talked about in the Saturn-Neptune conjunction episode is we kept seeing this recurrence of like, humans sometimes putting these – or wanting things to be a clear distinction between two things that is sometimes ambiguous where – or sometimes putting arbitrary divisions on things, which we found like, funny examples of – like, creating time zones, for example, was a Saturn-Neptune conjunction.
LT: Oh! That makes so much sense!
CB: Right? It’s like, an invisible arbitrary boundary that you’re just like, here is where the time changes by an hour. And then I had talked about that, about how Saturn-Neptune has come up in like, 2017 with important work that was done in debates about like, house division in the astrological community, which is also one of those where it’s like, people try to find sometimes hard distinctions about like, one house begins here and ends here. But sometimes it might be an issue where there’s more ambiguity where multiple systems may have meaning in different ways and there may be more subtlety and nuance even though people want it to be like, a binary, either/or thing sometimes.
LT: Totally. Yeah, the judgement of the case in the UK was really like, clearly it makes sense to, you know, qualify people who are assigned female at birth as females, unless they present too masculine because of their transition, in which case there may be some room to discriminate. You know, it’s just like, they couldn’t even… Yeah, they couldn’t even clearly delineate something that they were saying was a clear delineation.
CB: Okay. Yeah. So anyway, that was a big one. We’ll come back to that. Moving on. On February 28th right before Venus stationed retrograde on March 1st, Skype announced that they’re shutting down in May. And I thought that was really interesting because literally it’s like, it was one of the first – it was the first successful video call internet service that was like, connecting people, you know, across large distances. You know, in a different city or state or different countries, and like, kind of bringing the world together through direct one-on-one audio or video chats. And you think about like, how many like, long-distance relationships probably happened through Skype or other things like that, and to have it announce that it’s shutting down during this Venus retrograde is pretty striking.
NDB: Yeah, it’s breaking my heart. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
LT: I honestly was surprised that Skype was still in business. I thought that Zoom had kind of like, taken it out a while ago, so.
NDB: Well, I think that is what’s ultimately happened. I still have a Skype account for now until it goes away in May.
LT: Aww!
NDB: Yeah, I was notified. It broke my heart.
LT: Aww.
CB: Yeah, I mean, unfortunately we all basically began the process of breaking up with Skype like, eight years ago was when Zoom really started to take off and that’s when I started using it for The Astrology Podcast because it was so much obviously like, better than Skype. But —
LT: Wow.
CB: — still an interesting end of an era.
LT: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. Let’s see. Moving on. There was this funny headline on like, March 5th where the first headline like, one day was like, “Ben Affleck interested in getting back together with ex-wife Jennifer Garner.” And then like, the very next day, there was like, a followup headline and it was like, “Jennifer Garner not interested in getting back together with Ben Affleck.” And it made me laugh. It was like, such a great encapsulation of one version of Venus retrograde, which is like, sometimes your ex comes back into your life or you start thinking about your ex or you start idealizing or romanticizing things. But then sometimes like, you think about that, and then you decide like, no, like, that is not a direction that I do not plan to go backwards in time. You know, I’m good leaving that in the past.
LT: He’s like, the king of getting back together with his exes.
CB: Right. That’s true.
NDB: Yeah, with his exes named Jennifer, like, for that matter.
CB: Oh.
NDB: Yeah, I remember actually it’s winter 2002, like, November, December, right when I’m getting very into Venus retrogrades and studying them. Venus is going retrograde in Scorpio, and I’m really fascinated with studying them. And it’s right then that Ben and J. Lo are breaking up and the Gigli movie comes out and all that stuff. So it’s funny like, for that all to be coming up again. And of course, Garner and Ben were born on opposite ends of the Venus retrograde in Gemini of ‘72.
LT: Oh wow.
NDB: And J. Lo is a little while after the Venus retrograde in Aries; she’s born in July of ‘69, so she doesn’t really fall into the retrograde herself, but yeah, that whole relationship, both of those women, loads of Venus retrograde stuff going on.
CB: Nice. All right, moving on. On March 3rd, the actress Millie Bobby Brown released this statement that I was kind of surprised at, because I thought it was actually more powerful and pointed than I was expecting after she started doing a press tour to like, promote a movie. And people started criticizing her appearance, because she’s only like, 21 and she grew up in the spotlight because she first became famous being like, a child actor —
NDB: Stranger Things.
CB: Yeah, that’s what I was about to say. On the Netflix show Stranger Things. But she was only like, 11 or something when she started that, so she’s like, grown and become an adult, you know, before people’s eyes. But she was receiving this huge amount of like, weird hate and criticism of her appearance during this press tour, so much so that she put out a statement. And I wanna read part of it, because I thought it was so striking and well-spoken and well made, and also because she got like, very direct with it and like, directly criticized some of the people that were writing these really gross articles about her. So she said,
“I wanna take a moment to address something that I think is bigger than just me. Something that affects every young woman who grows up under public scrutiny. I think it’s necessary to speak up about this. I started in this industry when I was 10 years old. I grew up in front of the world, and for some reason, people can’t seem to grow with me. Instead, they act like I’m supposed to stay frozen in time like I should still look the way I did on Stranger Things season one, and because I don’t, I’m now a target. Let’s talk about the articles, the headlines, the people who are so desperate to tear young women down.”
And then she quotes like, the title of an article, and it’s titled, “Why are Gen Z’ers like Millie Bobby Brown aging so badly?” by Lydia Hawkin. And then she like, names like, the actual author of this, you know, terrible article. Then she quotes the title of another article; it’s titled, “What has Millie Bobby Brown done to her face?” by John Eli. Then another one she quotes, “Millie Bobby Brown mistaken for someone’s mom as she guides younger sister Ava through LA” by Cassie Carpenter. And then she quotes one more – “Little Britain’s Matt Lucas takes savage swipe at Millie Bobby Brown’s new mommy makeover look,” written by Bethan Edwards.
And then Millie continues writing, I believe, and she says, “Amplifying an insult rather than questioning why a grown man is mocking a young woman’s appearance – this isn’t journalism. This is bullying. The fact that adult writers are spending their time dissecting my face, my body, my choices – it’s disturbing. The fact that some of these articles are written by women – even worse. We always talk about supporting and uplifting young women, but when the time comes, it seems easier to tear them down for clicks. Disillusioned people can’t handle seeing a girl become a woman on her terms, not theirs. I refuse to apologize for growing up. I refuse to make myself smaller to fit the unrealistic expectations of people who can’t handle seeing a girl become a woman. I will not be shamed for how I look, how I dress, or how I present myself. We have become a society where it’s so much easier to criticize than it is to pay a compliment. Why is the knee-jerk reaction to say something horrible rather than to say something nice? If you have a problem with that, I have to wonder what is it that actually makes you so uncomfortable? Let’s do better. Not just for me, but for every young girl who deserves to grow up without fear of being torn apart for simply existing.”
So I thought that was like, a super interesting and like, powerful and like, compelling statement for her to put out like, literally right as Venus has like, stationed retrograde in Aries.
NDB: Yeah. And her natal Venus is at 12 Aries.
LT: Whoa.
CB: Right. So right on top of where it stationed at 10 Aries.
NDB: Yeah. And her birthday’s February 19th, so her solar return is really, really close to that station as well. Like, a week —
LT: Wow.
NDB: — or whatever.
LT: Wow.
NDB: Yeah. That’s powerful. Powerful as hell.
LT: I think it’s a really – I mean, she doesn’t say this explicitly, but my takeaway from this is that she’s really raising this issue of the like, infantilization of women and how that plays into violence against women. So even though this is about like, being criticized for what she is wearing and stuff, there’s to me such an obvious tie-in between what women are wearing and the way that they are victims of violence. Right? So like, oh you had it coming, like, based on what you were wearing; you deserved that. Right? That sort of thing. But then also like, under the male gaze, this kind of expectation of women to dress like girls or the sexualization of girls and certainly that was something that she dealt with as a child actor, you know, being sexualized. And she’s – the subtext to me here is like, oh, like, now that you can’t sexualize me as a little girl anymore, like, you’re criticizing me. Right? And you’re not actually allowing me to grow up because that makes me less desirable or something to this like, fucked up way that you see women in the first place, so yeah. I think it’s really amazing that she named that.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely. And getting in people’s face and like, calling out specific people who wrote this and like, shaming them. Because you know, there’s such a huge – and I don’t know if it was the Venus retrograde in Aries or if it was the fact that this Venus retrograde crossed over Saturn in late Pisces as much as it did, but it brings to mind in this instance part of the central focus is age and her aging and becoming a woman, and the criticism she receives from simply like, getting older. But we saw like, a similar version of that earlier in the retrograde with Demi Moore, who as soon as Venus went into Pisces and began our retrograde period, Venus conjoined the ruler of her Ascendant which is Jupiter at three Pisces in her first house, and she won a Golden Globe for The Substance. And that movie – so much of the focus of that movie was about age and aging and beauty standards and different things like that. So I’m just seeing like, this interesting connection between those two stories coming from different angles there.
LT: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That’s such a great insight.
CB: Yeah. All right. So that was a really good one. Another one that came and went but I think is gonna actually be more notable – it could be more notable – in the future, it sets up a premise for future retrogrades is on March 14th, Kim Kardashian posted this photo of her like, sleeping next to and having kind of like, an intimate moment with like, a Tesla robot for Perfect magazine. And this image was like, so striking of a woman like, laying – I think she was in like, a bathing suit like, laying next to like, a robot that… I don’t have like, a repetition for this, but I feel like it could be the foundation of some repetitions for the future as like, goofy and kind of like, weird as it now, as well as like, sort of sinister in some ways in terms of like, the promotion of Tesla, which has become so terrible due to Musk and everything he’s doing. But there was something about it that just like, set a mental note with me because it was like, right not that long after Venus stationed just a couple weeks later.
NDB: Yeah. Specifically the robot and all that stuff is new, but what isn’t new is Venus retrograde coinciding with a sort of sensational or provocative or seductive types of imagery. We were just talking about Demi Moore. When Venus was going retrograde in Virgo in July of 1991, she was on the cover of Vanity Fair, I think it was, or one of those magazines, naked and pregnant. You know? It was this thing that was very scandalous at the time. Since then, dozens of actresses and other celebrities have repeated that kind of photo. But it was really groundbreaking at the time; it was very Venus retrograde.
So those types of things, you know, someone does something to sort of provoke a reaction or does something that presents an image that has this kind of effect like Demi Moore’s image did or like this one does. Yeah, these are very Venus retrograde ideas. Again, it’s sort of like how art – it’s when art will go through a phase of subversion, you know, just like society is. And you know, you’re subverting some form of art or some idea in art or using art to subvert, to present subversive ideas, I suppose in this case.
CB: Or art that makes people uncomfortable for some reason. Let me —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — share the image just so we have like, a reference point. But this is the image that was posted. I don’t know if either of you had seen it before.
NDB: No.
LT: I saw I think the cover image where she’s in like, lace and like, fur or something like that, and the robot’s in like, a lawn chair by a pool. But yeah, this is even more provocative, for sure. I —
CB: Yeah. It’s like, they’re lying on the beach. Like, she’s wearing maybe a bathing suit bottom or like, bikini bottom and like, a jacket, and it’s like, the evening and they’re like, lying on a bed near the beach in a romantic pose, basically, for those listening to the audio version.
LT: Yeah. And I think there is a – go ahead, Nick.
NDB: No, you go ahead.
LT: I think there is a, there’s a subversive element of the photo of like, where is love headed and relationship headed in terms of like, our relationship to AI? Like, I’ve heard people just be like —
CB: Right.
LT: — oh, I checked in with my bestie, AI, to like, ask them this – you know, about like, my whatever my problem that I’m having. And I’m like, wow, people are really starting to form bonds with AI. And so I think that’s really telling. But also these images, I think they’re kind of saying the quiet part out loud of the like, in bedness of the wealthy with like, Musk and just like, the kind of oligarchy and like, you know, it’s been such a buzzword, right, is oligarchy and like, what are we dealing with right now on a political level in terms of the wealthy. So yeah, that was my first reaction when I first saw it is I was like, oh! That’s a little on the nose.
CB: Right. Totally. Yeah. I mean, I was really struck by it because I feel like in the future, in some point in the future, I’ve been saying this for years, one of the social issues of the day – you know, because in a few decades, we’ll be past people having issues with like, people being gay or lesbian. We’ll be past like, the trans issue of that will become normalized in society. There will be some other issues that come up where even people that were formerly marginalized who have become normalized will have differing opinions about. And I think this is gonna be one of them, which is whenever AI gets to the point where like, humans and artificial intelligences, however you define that, start having actual relationships, there’s gonna be some sort of like, social divide in society where people argue and trot out some of the same arguments about like, that’s not natural, et cetera, and people debate it. And I think this is like, a little omen of that happening during this Venus retrograde. And I would bet you that at some future Venus retrograde in Aries, we’re gonna revisit this, but it’s gonna be more advanced. It’s gonna like, progress each time in terms of it coming up as an actual like, social issue.
LT: Very Star Trek coded.
CB: Star Trek coded? Yeah.
NDB: Maybe when it happens again on a repetition, it’ll be the robot who’s the celebrity.
LT: 40 years.
CB: The robot who’s the celebrity?
NDB: Yeah. The robot’s the celebrity lying next to a random human as opposed to the other way around.
CB: Well, or it’ll be the couple, the robot and the human that just got married. And then that’ll be the provocative photo is like, the photo of —
NDB: Sure. Yeah.
CB: — of, you know, human and non-human relationship. Yeah. Just something I was thinking about the end of – we sort of alluded to at the end of the episode with Elly, but I meant to mention that more explicitly here just because it was something that was in the back of my brain. And it was something where you’ll have an issue at some point possibly in terms of whether there’s any issues of marginalization there that become a tension or a source of even oppression in society, which I know starts getting like, pretty sci-fi discussion at the level that we’re at now. But just trying to like, think about a century in the future, like, where we’re at with the progress of technology and things like that.
LT: Yeah. What are the rights of AI?
CB: Right. Yeah, exactly, and like, if people don’t think that AI is human… If people think that because AI is not human that it doesn’t deserve the same rights as human, does that mean that you can mistreat it or oppress it even if it has a human-like consciousness of some sort? Like, all of those issues I just feel like are obvious, inevitable things that we’re gonna be dealing with at some point. But that where, you know, one of the questions Elly and I were discussing at the end of the episode, which is just will – Elly’s hope was that groups that are formerly marginalized will learn to not marginalize like, other groups, and we were having like, a mini-debate about that, about what happens when a non-normative group becomes normative, and do they repeat some of the same dynamics ultimately because they’re simply human dynamics that sometimes play out? Or at some point, can we transcend like, certain things like that was like, an interesting broader discussion we were having.
LT: Yeah. Really interesting. I’m also thinking about how like, trans and even just like, gender conceptualization shows up a lot in sci-fi. And so almost like a kind of reversal of that that we have so many like, books and pieces of art and things that engage those issues like, well into the future with like, AI and robots and alien races and that kind of stuff. And we’re almost having like, a collapse of those two things in real time right now where we are starting to think about, like, okay, like, what does it mean to be human? What does gender mean? And you know, yeah, it’s all kind of getting into one big soup here.
CB: Right. Absolutely. That’s a good point.
Okay. Let’s see, other little ones. On March 23rd, which is like, right on the Venus cazimi, Trump was like, complaining about this portrait that was done of him that he claimed was like, distorted. It was actually in Colorado state capital’s Gallery of Presidents, and —
NDB: Did you go see it, Chris?
CB: I didn’t – I mean, I’ve seen it. I’ll pull it up here in a minute. But it’s like, what was funny is like, he – it almost like, warms him. Like, it makes him look softer but more approachable. But ironically, like, that’s what he doesn’t like. Because in his current official portrait, it’s really like, intense and like, kind of scary like, in his official portrait. And I remember that being everyone’s initial reaction when he first unveiled that. But it was interesting that he didn’t like the way this presented him, and I thought it was just an interesting little microcosm in terms of sometimes like, Venus retrograde things that can come up in terms of representation or one’s appearance or other things like that.
NDB: I guess that’s the other part of this Venus-Saturn recurrence transit is he doesn’t like the painting of him.
CB: Yeah. It was pretty goofy.
NDB: He got to launch his Liberation Day, his lifelong dream, and they go and paint him as some kind of new wave popstar.
LT: He’s not ready for his soft boy era.
CB: Here’s the picture. I mean… Like, it looks a little puffy around the cheeks, and it is a —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — specific like, style. But it’s not like, I don’t know, it’s not a terrible portrait.
NDB: It looks like he’s about to tell you “Pepperidge Farm remembers” is what he’s…
CB: Right.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: It’s not like, the – what was it? Like, the Ecce Homo restoration.
CB: Oh, right! Where like, the image of like, Jesus or like, a saint is just like, completely smeared.
LT: Yeah. It’s not that bad!
CB: Yeah. Trump…
NDB: I miss the old days when he was posing with the orb and the Saudi prince and, you know…
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Because that was also Venus retrograde; that was 2017. That was his weird image of 2017.
CB: Right. Yeah. Because here’s the official portrait is like, he’s just kind of looking… I don’t know. Like, he’s looking kind of like, menacingly at the camera in this portrait. So obviously it’s just interesting to think about like, obviously there’s issues with that, but to take it outside of his context of people and the way they want to present themself and their self image, versus what happens when something else runs aside from that or into that when your self image and there’s a disconnect and you don’t like how you’re being represented in some way. I don’t know.
LT: It makes me think of there was a trend like, maybe about a month ago of JD Vance was just in like, every meme. Like, every meme of JD Vance, and he was just wildly distorted in every single one. But there was like, a few days where you just couldn’t scroll without seeing JD Vance —
NDB: He’s very memeable.
CB: That’s a really good point. I wish I had written down the days of that, because you’re right – that was like, a thing where they kept distorting his image like, more and more each time so that it got more and more outlandish each time. I wonder if that was also around the cazimi or something or if I even didn’t notice.
LT: Yeah. It was like, right around March 5th, I think actually. Like, early March.
CB: Oh really?
LT: First week of March.
CB: Nice.
LT: Yeah. So.
CB: Nice. All right. That’s good. So similarly, kind of adjacent, but on March 27th, OpenAI or one of the AI companies released some new tool where you could feed a picture into it and tell it to turn it into an animation style. And the one that went viral was people were taking images and memes and turning it into Studio Ghibli style, which was a very specific Japanese animation studio style. And people were posting all these like, iconic images of it, and this was the day that Venus retrograded back into Pisces and exactly conjoined Neptune. So it was retrograde Venus conjoin Neptune, and then there was all these broader discussions about that of like, ripping off the style of artists and like, how did the creator of this feel in terms of having his work used in this way as somebody who had spoken out against AI before? And it was something pretty notable.
LT: Didn’t that happen a couple of years ago under a Venus-Neptune conjunction too? And people were like, really upset. There was – I forget – people were using AI for to develop some images, and it was like, a whole thing. I remember.
CB: Okay. Yeah. Probably – it’s all moved like, so fast over the past few years; it’s been crazy —
LT: Yeah.
CB: — keeping up with it all.
LT: Yeah.
CB: Okay.
NDB: You’re telling me.
CB: Yeah. Okay. Let’s see. Other Venus retrograde stories. March 13th, Donatella Versace announced that she stepped down as Creative Director of Versace after nearly three decades. I don’t fully know how this ties in; there’s probably some repetitions here. But I thought it was notable because she was just a very prominent woman leading one of the most prominent fashion companies in the world deciding to step back and step down from her place during this Venus retrograde.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: That’s a big deal. I think – aren’t she and Gaga really close, too?
CB: Oh really? No, I don’t know – that would be interesting.
LT: I feel like I’m trying to remember who – there’s a celebrity that has – or maybe it’s Britney. It might be Britney.
CB: Right. One funny one that I only got a little bit of, but California Pizza Kitchen evidently faked a rebrand where they did this funny thing where they tried to like, rebrand as a extreme like, hip new place with these really goofy pictures. And I’m trying to understand how to describe it, but basically they did this rebrand; it looks really extreme and kind of goofy. But then they announced that it was like, a joke, and they were calling it off. But it seemed to actually have been a joke, because it was so extreme and kind of weird and goofy. But it was a funny little microcosm of like, a rebrand, but then also something that was done sort of like, deliberately.
LT: That’s great. Was it for April Fools?
CB: I think it may have been. Yeah. Like, something —
LT: That’s a great combo.
NDB: It’s almost like the launching of New Coke during the Venus retrograde when what they really wanted to do was get people all excited about Classic Coke and they could reintroduce it a few months later.
CB: Well, you know what’s funny about that is we talked – yeah. 1985. We talked about that in our original episode on June 10th. Coke did release a new flavor under this Venus retrograde; they released this orange cream flavor, and I started seeing it everywhere when I would go into stores as soon as Venus stationed and went retrograde. They actually rolled it out during the course of this. And like, I tried it just to try it for like, purely astrological like, scientific research purposes —
LT: For science!
CB: For science! And it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was gonna be when I heard the name of that. It was actually better than I thought it was gonna be, but still not amazing. But yeah, so that was a Venus retrograde repetition to 1985 when they not only rolled out New Coke but they also launched Cherry Coke under that retrograde as well.
NDB: Why is it whenever there’s a new sort of authoritarian regime, the Coke company decides to release an orange soda? You know, the story of Fanta, right? How Fanta came to be?
CB: I am not a Fanta expert; no, I don’t.
NDB: Okay. So during the Second World War, of course, no one can trade with Germany. But the Coca Cola company wanted to still sell soda in Germany. So they created Fanta, an orange soda that was sold in Nazi Germany. It was originally like, you know, to get around the embargo or whatever. That’s why Fanta was created, the orange soda.
LT: Oh my goodness.
NDB: Yes.
LT: Wow.
CB: Nice. So and I meant to mention so yeah, the dates on that were, yeah, around late March, early April. So that was California Pizza Kitchen. Another little one that came up that made me laugh in the news was around mid-March, around March 26th, there were these stories about the supermodel Emily Ratajkowski revealed “the worst haircut she’s ever had,” and it was just this huge like, sort of like social media story about how one of the biggest like, supermodels over the past decade like, got a really bad haircut and how she was both showing it off and how bad it was, but also like, you know, having a bad hair day. And I thought that was a good little Venus retrograde one, because all the people in the comments were like, “Emily, it’s Venus retrograde! Like, we told you not to do a haircut during this time!” And she’s like, now I believe. I think she said like, “Now I believe,” or something —
LT: “I believe in astrology now!”
CB: Yeah, exactly! That was good.
LT: That’s so good. Poor thing. Bad haircut is the worst.
CB: Oh yeah, that’s what – somebody said, “Queen, we aren’t supposed to get haircuts during Venus retrograde,” and Emily responded, “I believe in astrology now,” and it got like, 7,000 likes.
Let’s see. On April 1st, a fashion startup who raised over 534 million in venture capital declared itself broke in “one of the biggest startup frauds ever.” And the founder was involved in financial misconduct, and I thought that was just really striking because it was a fashion startup that happened during that time.
LT: Wow. And more fraud!
CB: More fraud, yeah. More fraud like the Fyre Festival type thing, but also crossover with like, fashion.
LT: Fraud and like, entrapment – I just… Like, even kind of like, different levels of like, subtle trickery or, you know, kind of like trapping something, but then also yeah, like, big fraud and entrapment. Really interesting. Almost like, luring someone in with something sweet and then like, you know, getting them or something just going terribly wrong.
CB: Good point, yeah. Totally. Another one – did you two see this woman who was from New York that went to Pakistan? Her name was Onijah Robinson, and she went viral for like, several weeks because she like, went to Pakistan supposedly to meet and marry this 19-year-old that she met online. But she had lied, basically, and she’d misrepresented herself. And then she was like, harassing this guy, and this kid basically – this young man, 19 years old, and then his mother and family like, picked up and took off and like, left and went to a different city. And she stayed there, and then she was like, staying outside of his house like, protesting. And it was bizarre, because she just had this really wild sort of disconnected personality, and did either of you see this?
NDB: Yeah, I did. And she became something of a celebrity. Like, people were now like, seeking her out and yeah. She does seem to have a sort of manic like quality to her. I’m, you know, not in any position to diagnose. But yeah, she’s become this sort of big figure in Pakistan as a result of this.
CB: Yeah. I mean, that was the part that was like, sort of funny or sort of entertaining was she became like, a celebrity in Pakistan even though she was acting so like, obnoxious and kind of crazy. But they were kind of like, entertained by it, and sort of like, took care of her. But then she went on this whole journey. She ended up like, going to Dubai and then eventually getting arrested and then now I think she’s back in New York. But it was this whole, it was probably one of the more striking like, Venus retrograde things if you followed it through TikTok and like, other places.
NDB: Okay. Yeah, I haven’t – I got the Pakistan part of the story. I didn’t know about Dubai and getting arrested. Dubai is not a place you wanna get arrested.
CB: No. That’s the thing is like, she kind of got disappeared, because in Pakistan —
LT: Oh god.
CB: In Pakistan, she was being a jerk to people, and that was kind of the thing that was interesting is that they were kind of putting up with it and still treating her well as a guest because she was a guest in their country. And so it was like, interesting for a lot of Westerners seeing Pakistani culture and like, being almost surprised at how well they were treating this woman who was acting so poorly. But then, yeah, she went to Dubai and they weren’t having it, and she got arrested and people were concerned about her, including the people – some of the social media people back in Pakistan. But then apparently now she’s back in the US now that it’s towards the end of the retrograde, so. Yeah. Journeys.
LT: Wild.
CB: Yeah. There was that. In March, there was a bunch of stuff about Justin Bieber not being over his ex who got engaged recently, and he started posting like, snide Instagram stories referencing it, it seemed like. I don’t know if either of you caught any of that.
LT: Was it about Selena, or a different…
CB: Yeah, it was specifically seemed to be about —
NDB: Oh, okay.
CB: — Selena Gomez.
NDB: I remember Selena Gomez making a joke to David Letterman years ago about making Justin Bieber cry. And this would be like, when they were dating, you know, teen stars or whatever. That’s what I remember about Selena, making him cry 20 years ago.
LT: Aww.
NDB: Look, the guy’s a Pisces. You know? Like, isn’t he? As I recall.
CB: Yeah, Pisces Sun.
LT: That sounds right.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: I think she’s a Cancer.
NDB: Or Leo? Isn’t she a Leo? Or like —
LT: I think she has Leo rising.
NDB: Okay. Yeah, very late Cancer – maybe like, July 22nd or something.
LT: Yeah. Yeah.
NDB: Yeah. So okay.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Not much to say about that, but it’s just a little one. Similar little one, April 8th, CNN had this headline – “Madonna and Elton John have made amends after a notorious years long feud that saw the two publicly trading barbs against each other since 2004.” So reconciling of old either enemies or friends who had a falling out or what have you.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: Those are two very strong personalities!
CB: Right. Yeah.
NDB: Yeah, I wouldn’t wanna be messing with either of them.
LT: No.
CB: There was a story – a headline, actually, on April 8th I wrote down from The Washington Post where it said, “Hollywood’s intimacy coordinator field facing growing pains. Gwyneth Paltrow and Mikey Madison are among the stars who recently declined intimacy coordinators on set. Many in the industry disagree.” And there was just a bunch of stories about this, and I thought it was really interesting because many of the studios started using intimacy coordinators after the MeToo movement started later in 2017, which was, you know, after the Venus retrograde in Aries that year. And then a lot of the studios started integrating this. And I think I found… It looks like I don’t have it linked. But one of the women who started one of the first intimacy coordinator like, studios or consulting businesses, it seemed like she started that 2015, which I thought was interesting because that would have been the Venus retrograde in Leo that year.
LT: Wow. Such a like, interesting – another interesting manifestation of like, consent and the cultures of consent and yeah, like… Yeah, arguments around – I think Gwyneth Paltrow was like, it like, ruins the moment! It like, ruins the onscreen chemistry, and you know. And other people are like, it keeps actors safe! Like, you know, so.
CB: Yeah. I mean, it’s a brilliant encapsulation then having the tension between those two of like, of wanting to have better safety and protocols to make sure people aren’t abused or like, taken advantage of in a sensitive setting versus like, some of them having tensions with their artistic freedom or other things like that.
LT: Totally. Yeah. Very Venusian.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Very much.
CB: All right. On March 1st, like, I don’t know how to relate this, but it was notable that it was the day of the Venus retrograde – a new golden statue of Genghis Khan was enshrined at the National Genghis Khan Museum of Mongolia. And yeah, it’s like, this huge golden statue. So I don’t know how it relates, but it just like, had a twinge of like, Venus retrograde right on the day of the station.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, dude killed a lot of people, and he’s responsible for a lot of the problems we have in the world today. Some of the advantages, too, but you know, like, I mean, Russia would not be Russia if the Mongols hadn’t invaded and occupied them, unlike the rest of Europe. That’s like, the big thing that makes Russians different is that they went through that. Or if you think about what happened in Baghdad, you know – the destruction of intellectual capital that they had there. You know, just a lot of destruction. The Black Plague we were talking about during the Saturn-Neptune conjunction episode that they —
CB: Right.
NDB: — had and spread.
CB: So maybe that’s it. I mean, maybe that’s part of it that it’s like, a statue for – I mean, it’s hard because on the one hand, you have issues of like, cultural heritage and like —
NDB: Sure.
CB: — past leaders and different things like that. But then on the other hand, it is a golden statue for somebody that killed a lot of people for a military dictator, essentially, and creating a gold statue to him on the day that Venus stations retrograde.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: Killed and also – isn’t there like, a huge amount of the population that can trace their lineage back to Genghis Khan because of all the sexual violence that was enacted —
NDB: Oh yeah.
LT: — by his army and him? And so I mean, that’s kind of interesting too. He was kind of like, one of the —
CB: Right.
LT: — most successful perpetrators of sexual violence in human history, and so then we have this statue being erected to him.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, I never —
CB: That’s a really good point. I hadn’t thought of that, but that’s actually an excellent point because that is like, a commonly like, known fact that you hear about pretty often.
NDB: Yeah. I mean, it’s what happens in all wars. It’s just it’s how widespread his war and empire was that makes that a fact. I’ve never read the history of any war that didn’t involve sexual assault, literally. You name a war and it happened.
CB: No, this was unique, though. Like, he’s actually specifically like, him known for like, his genes being I thought being —
NDB: Okay. Sure. Okay.
CB: — much more widespread.
LT: And it’s very like, Saturn coded, too. Like, he’s the biggest daddy.
NDB: Right. Yeah. You know, the biggest daddy, the biggest empire. Yeah. That’s the controversy, I guess.
CB: It’s claimed that one in 200 men are direct descendants of Genghis Khan, but somehow this is an oversimplification is what Google search is telling me right now.
NDB: Okay. Yeah.
CB: It says, “a more accurate statement is that a specific Y chromosome lineage likely originating from Genghis Khan’s time is present in approximately eight percent of men in a vast region of Asia, potentially representing about 16 million individuals. This means that many other men have also left significant genetic legacies, and the claim about Genghis Khan’s descendants is more about a shared Y chromosome lineage than him being the sole ancestor of all of these men.”
NDB: Okay.
CB: So I don’t know. I would have to refine that search to – like, I would wanna ask other things like, you know, did he have many children and things like that as a singular person and other things like that. But I think that is relevant, just bringing that up, because it is widely discussed as like, a factoid.
NDB: Sure. Yeah. I mean, like I said, just regular sexual assault, it’s as common in war as men getting shot or stabbed. It’s always happening.
CB: Yeah. So that actually is relevant, weirdly, with the next topic, which is also a hard one. So it’s like, you know, sort of like trigger warning because it’s the same discussion we were just having relative to assault. But apparently – and I didn’t document this extensively, but – I saw a story on April 12th where it said that there was a game that was put on the one of the largest gaming networks where you can buy and download video games, computer games, where the objective was somehow like, assaulting women, and that it got removed around April 12th due to outrage that had been sparked over it. And this was right as Venus was stationing direct in Pisces conjunct Saturn that they got it removed. But one of the like, lingering questions was like, why was this even allowed on that platform in the first place?
LT: Good question.
CB: Yeah. Very good questions. And then one of the last ones was I had been trying to track like, how much this is real, but over the past few days, I noted specifically on April 12th and 13th, which is right when Venus was stationing direct and the Full Moon in Libra happened the same day – a bunch of like, there’s all these viral stories coming out of like, Chinese manufacturers of luxury goods that are putting out these things saying that they are the actual manufacturers of supposed like, major brands that are supposed to be European or manufactured in Europe like Louis Vuitton or Gucci or other things like that that make handbags. Or one of them was like, for cosmetics or for Lululemon, and saying that you could buy from their directly now. And this almost seemed to be like, coming up in the context of Trump’s new trade war with China and these crazy tariffs he’s putting on Chinese goods. But I thought it was a striking discussion that’s like, happening right now so much so that The Washington Post covered it on April 15th. And it said, “Viral TikToks say to buy direct from Chinese factories; don’t do it. Video claims to expose the secrets of high-end products made in Chinese factories. Please step away from your screens.” So I don’t know. They’re trying to like, discourage people or whatever, but it’s like, a weird viral phenomenon that’s happening right now about counterfeit goods. Or not counterfeit —
NDB: Yeah, I saw —
CB: — about who is the origin of actual goods that are produced and them actually coming from different places than are claimed. Because one of the videos was claiming that like, Gucci or Louis Vuitton purses that like, 80 percent of it was constructed in China and then they would just ship it to Italy to put a stamp on it. And then by doing the stamp, then they could claim that it was produced in Italy.
NDB: Yeah. The same thing is true of olive oil. If you see olive oil that says “made in Italy,” you don’t get it, because it’s gonna be something like that – made in some farm somewhere and then shipped to Italy and stamped. These things happen in trade, and I did see a piece of these TikTok videos on The Daily Show. They did a bit about it. Yeah, they’re selling things like Tide pods for, you know, pennies a pod or whatever, or a whole barrel for a cheap amount of money, and all these different things that they’re selling.
Yeah. Very strange. And it’s all coming amidst, speaking of Venus retrograde and China – JD Vance referred to Chinese consumers as peasants, or Chinese manufacturing workers as peasants. And China fired back with some very strong retaliation videos that, you know, pointed out that China’s got the high speed rail and the this and the that and that actually probably the United States is, you know, not on the stronger side of that counterargument. So yeah, that all got very interesting, you know, in terms of again a Venus retrograde being about who’s being polite, who’s being rude.
LT: Yeah.
NDB: You know, there’s been a lot of rudeness, definitely. Not least coming from Mr. Vance.
LT: Yeah, it sounds like some Venus retrograde comeuppance.
CB: Yeah, well and that’s another good example of a severance of a relationship that’s happened under this retrograde, because the US and China had completely over the past – what was it, like, 40 or 60 years now like, integrated their economies through this intense trade relationship. But all of a sudden, that’s being completely severed right now because Trump has initiated a war – like, a trade war – it’s starting with a trade war. It may develop into something else, but that’s then starting to cause the possible separation of the relationship between these two things. But what’s terrible about this is that that was the entire system of global trade networks and connections between countries that was set up after World War Two in order to ensure that something like World War Two never happened again by making it so that different countries’ interests were interlocked through these trade networks which ensured that they would never have a major, direct conflict like that because it’d be too devastating for each of their economies. But now all of a sudden, we’re returning to a pre-World War Two situation by Trump initiating these Mars retrograde in Cancer tariff things that are supposed to be isolationist and self-interest oriented, but in doing so it’s gonna set us back to where we were before World War Two where the lack of integration in countries creates greater antagonism and animosity and the potential for war. So it’s like, the removal of Venus with Venus going retrograde and separating from the cazimi with the Sun is almost indicating like, opening up the potential for war and conflict more than existed prior to this time.
NDB: Yeah, indeed. Maybe something else about the Venus retrograde, you know, crossing the Aries point – the fact that it is crossing that line that Lindsey was referring to earlier. You know, of all the sign divides, you know, this particular one.
CB: Right. As well as the Saturn-Neptune conjunction and the way that that – you know, we related that back as we found, too, sometimes empires running into difficult points like, later in their life cycles where —
NDB: Right.
CB: — sometimes there’s decay or things falling apart. Or Lindsey, you were actually the one that came up with the keyword of like, a power vacuum after something collapses that was a brilliant insight that I mentioned in that episode.
LT: Thank you. Yeah.
CB: There was only one more story, but it’s actually not a particularly good one. It was just on April 10th, Michelle Obama had to address rumors that came up that supposedly she was getting a divorce with Barack Obama because she hadn’t attended several high-profile events with him, including – but it was like, President Carter’s funeral or, you know, the inauguration. But then she ended up addressing it on a podcast saying that, “People couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself, and that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing.” You know, because the implication is like, you know, that she doesn’t wanna attend Trump’s inauguration and somehow that has any implication about her relationship with her husband. It has implication for like, who’s being inaugurated at that time. I thought it was notable just because the last – we had learned during the last Venus retrograde that Obama, that Barack proposed to Michelle when Venus stationed retrograde in Virgo in 1991, I believe. And then during that last Venus retrograde in Virgo and in Leo in 2023, there were similarly like, rumors about their relationship that were false at that time. So it was just an interesting recurrence of that.
LT: A big keyword for this Venus retrograde in Aries for me has been autonomy. And you know, it plays out in just so many of these stories that we’re talking about. But this is a striking example of she’s like, “I get to run my own life.” And that autonomy or like, self-governance, self-law seems to be really coming up here.
CB: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s a great especially keyword for Venus retrograde in Aries. Yeah.
All right, that was actually the last major story that I had. Did either of you have any that you noticed that came up that we didn’t talk about, or didn’t reference at this point? We’ve actually covered so much; I’m actually surprised at how much we covered in this like, three hours.
LT: I had one that really struck me that sort of like, side-by-side emergence, which is that RFK made some really, I have to say like, judgmental comments about people with autism. I think it was like, maybe on the 16th or something. And it kind of was a callback to the eugenics stuff that you and Elly were talking about on that episode. So he said like, “These are kids” – he’s talking about children with autism – “who will never pay taxes, hold a job, play baseball, write a poem, go on a date, use a toilet unassisted.” And what’s happening simultaneously and for the last two weeks, so the last kind of week of Venus retrograde and through the station, there’s a show called Love on the Spectrum on Netflix that’s been in the top 10 on Netflix for this time. And it’s a show that depicts people with autism dating and falling in love, and these people are getting a lot of traction on social media. They’re becoming celebrities – you know, like, reality stars. And my perception of it is that it’s like, a very wholesome like, again, like, the norms around who can be cool, who can be popular, who can be seen as funny are shifting. And we’re getting more expansive about like, disability and neurodivergence and things like that. So I just thought that that it was a really stark contrast between what RFK was saying about autism and then this Love on the Spectrum that’s kind of like, taken Netflix by storm.
CB: Right. And especially in terms of the like, the denigration of that or something that is, you know, reality for so many people.
LT: Right. So many people, and I’ve seen just today so many people coming out against those remarks and saying like, I have autism! I pay taxes! I, you know, have a spouse and children and like, what is this even about?
CB: Right.
NDB: Well, I mean, there are – I’m an uncle to two autistic nephews who are low-functioning. I mean, it’s just, you do get – first of all, RFK Junior, I don’t – I never agree with anything he says. But just a point of clarification, there are autistic people who are low-functioning who do need to be looked after who will never be dating because they can barely form sentences. So those people do exist. The context of RFK’s remarks is altogether something else, but.
CB: Well, the context of his remarks is that he’s trying to convince everybody that it’s due to vaccines as part of his anti-vaccine —
NDB: Right.
CB: — agenda and releasing the study recently where autism numbers have increased, which he’s gonna try to argue is due to vaccines. But —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — a lot of the experts are saying is due to just increased ability to diagnose autism as well as recognition of different things and different classifications surrounding it.
NDB: Right. Yeah. I first heard RFK talk about that vaccine relationship – supposed relationship – to autism in 2006 on The Daily Show. I think I was sitting next to you, Chris; we were watching The Daily Show and he was a guest and he said that. And then I checked with my brother – my nephews were young at the time – and he’s like, no, one of them’s had that vaccine and one of them hasn’t. And so I’m like, oh, and yet they’re both like, equally low-functioning autistic. So I knew right there and then, oh, okay, so that vaccine thing isn’t, you know, trustworthy. And of course, you know, my estimation of him has slipped ever since. No, I just – it was a point of clarification. There are people who are low-functioning that, you know, that it’s true; they’re not gonna be able to do much. But that’s beside all the points that he’s trying to make.
CB: Yeah. Because this also came up – this was one I wasn’t sure about going into, but there was a girl – one of the stories that came out really recently is the father – there was a girl who died of measles recently during the Venus retrograde. She passed away on April 3rd. And she wasn’t vaccinated for measles. And then because her father is one of these people that’s been convinced by people like RFK that vaccines are bad and cause autism, so he didn’t vaccinate his kids, and then one of his kids died of measles because now there’s an outbreak that’s happening in Texas as a result of low vaccination levels. And the story was from the father, that the father doesn’t have any regret or doesn’t care, and basically doubled down on his belief that vaccination is bad. And that if he has any other kids in the future, he’s not gonna vaccinate them despite one of his kids just dying from something that could have been easily avoided through a simple vaccine. Yeah, so it’s part of a broader thing that’s happening right now that’s really —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — hard that’s happening in this country in terms of some of the changes and some of the terrible policies that are being implemented. But also I think Lindsey’s point was denigrating an entire group of people, you know, and painting all of them with the same brush regardless —
NDB: Yeah.
CB: — of the severity or what have you, while that’s being tied in with efforts that are gonna lead to the deaths of like, many, many more people and are leading to the deaths of people right now.
NDB: Yeah. And there was also another sinister element to that remark was, you know, Lindsey mentioned that eugenic kind of angle to it. Like, he’s almost suggesting that they’re just, they’re not, yeah, that autistic people aren’t worth, you know, care.
LT: Yeah. Placing someone’s value in their ability to like —
NDB: Yeah.
LT: — pay taxes.
NDB: Exactly. So yeah, it’s pretty disgusting.
CB: Yeah. So that is – and that was the point is that the little girl that died who’s only now the second, I think, child or person that’s died of measles recently, she was eight years old. So I wasn’t able to find a birthday, but if she’s eight years old, that means she may have been born around 2017 around that Venus retrograde and then passed away during it eight years later. So that is another depressing possible sort of like, eight-year repetition.
NDB: Yeah.
LT: Really sad.
CB: Yeah. So I think we’ve learned there’s a lot of things – were there any other stories that either of you meant to mention besides those?
LT: That was my big one.
CB: You got anything, Nick?
NDB: Maybe we should have closed with The Breakfast Club, but —
CB: Yeah. Maybe. That’s a fair point. Sometimes we plan these things out. Sometimes we don’t as much. But yeah, trying to stick a good landing is always tricky, but I feel like I’m really glad we had this discussion and I was able to have it with the two of you, because yeah, I think we learned a lot of different things about Venus. We’ve always known that Venus is very multifaceted, and I think we’ve seen here the many different facets of Venus and Venus retrograde and Venus in Aries or other things like that. But we’ve also seen a lot of – we’ve identified a lot of commonalities. But I think in terms of understanding Venus retrograde and what it’s about through these stories, the good ones and the medium ones and the bad ones, as a community I think we’ve learned a lot about what Venus retrograde means archetypally at its core on some very fundamental level. So I’m glad we were able to cover as much as we did today and get a much deeper level of insight into what that’s all about.
LT: Me too. Really —
NDB: Yeah. This was great and —
LT: — fascinating.
NDB: Sorry about the crosstalk! I’m particularly bad offender in that part, but and thank you for your research, Lindsey. It’s been really wonderful. You know, just, yeah, there’s always more to find. I’ve known that for some time, but your work is continuing to prove that point.
LT: Thank you! Thank you.
CB: Cool. All right. Tell me, both of you – Lindsey, what are you working on? What do you have coming up? What’s your website?
LT: Yes. So you can find me – my website is BadPastor.Me – M E – and I am at Bad.Pastor on Instagram. And I’m actually about to head to LA to speak at LA AstroFest, so I’m part of the lineup of astrologers who are presenting at that conference. And I’m really excited! I’m gonna road trip out there with Sam Reynolds, and road trip back with Sam and Jonah Emerson Bell, so it’s – I think we’re gonna have a great time, and I’m just really looking forward to seeing folks, and to being part of this first iteration of this conference.
CB: Awesome. What were the dates on that again?
LT: So it is the last weekend in April, which I think is the like, 25th, ‘6th, ‘7th if that’s… Yes. 25th —
CB: Nice.
LT: ‘6th and ‘7th. Yeah.
CB: Okay. Cool.
LT: And I think that you can get tickets to stream it online. So you don’t have to just show up in person.
CB: Got it. Okay. So people can Google LA AstroFest to find more about that.
LT: Yes.
CB: And I’ll put a link to your website in the description. But that’ll be exciting, yeah, because Sam and also Diana are gonna be doing workshops there as well, I think, right?
LT: They are, yeah. It’s a really nice group of people who are presenting; I’m excited to be a part of it and honored.
CB: Yeah. Well, and it’s cool also to be helping revive and pump up the LA astro community in the aftermath of the fires and like, all the stuff that’s happened there this year over the Venus retrograde.
LT: Completely. Yeah. Really interesting that it’s kind of starting at this last iteration of the Mars-Pluto opposition, which seemed like such a key signature of those fires, so yeah. I’m happy to be going and contributing to some positive energy there.
CB: Absolutely. Nice. Awesome.
NDB: That’s great that they’re having an astrology conference there. In 2013, Austin Coppock and I did an astrology talk at a bar in LA; that was like, the place we could book. It was like, a literal like, nightclub place with a stage. And Austin and I did our astrology talks there, so —
LT: Oh, that’s so fun!
NDB: — so —
CB: Nice.
NDB: — to have an actual conference in LA would be, that’s gonna be a great time. I envy you.
LT: Aww.
CB: I can imagine Austin taking like, a long swig of like, whiskey and talking about the decans like, in 2013.
NDB: Yeah. And we could give astrology talks and we could swear!
CB: Okay. Well, 2013 – were you promoting the Uranus in Gemini book?
NDB: I was on my Uranus book tour, speaking tour, yeah. And that was the LA stop. Austin and I did – oh god, we had a great name for it, too. What was it? I forget the… We had the whole tagline and what have you. We did it again in Seattle, but that was at this like, theatre that had a bar. It was a little more upscale than LA, but yeah, it was —
CB: Well, and —
NDB: — those were good times.
CB: — Uranus in Gemini is like, prophetic at this point.
NDB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
NDB: Yeah, that’s right. I spoke in 20 cities that year, talking about Uranus in Gemini and what had happened so far, and a bit about what I thought might be coming, so yeah. Some people remember me giving those talks 12 years ago.
CB: Yeah. Well, and I have a recording have our probably discussion about it; we’ve done multiple Uranus in Gemini discussions on the podcast. But one going back then. But that aside, what do have going on? What do you have coming up? What’s your website?
NDB: My website is NickDaganBestAstrologer.com. I’m doing consultations regularly, but I am taking a break after May 18th because I have to focus on my software project. So and I’m not sure how long I’ll be off, but yeah. If you do want a consultation with me, NickDaganBestAstrologer.com, and you’ve got exactly – from today – 30 days.
CB: Awesome. The clock is ticking. All right, I’ll put links to both your websites in the description —
NDB: Thank you.
CB: — below this video or on the podcast website. This is episode – the second installment of this, but Venus isn’t gonna completely finish until it goes into Taurus in June, so I may do a third installment collecting stories that happen in the tail end of the shadow period. So if anybody sees a good story, please post it as a comment in the YouTube comments for this episode on YouTube, because that’s the best place to compile all submissions and observations of other Venus retrograde repetitions. But otherwise, I think that’s it for this episode. So thanks everyone for watching and listening. Thanks, you two, for joining me. And that’s it for this episode, and we’ll see you again next time.
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