WEBVTT - Minisode 2: Sam 0:00:00.480 --> 0:00:05.519 Warning. The following episode includes talk of magical texts, boxing 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:09.200 the mafia, and how a child preacher who railed against 0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:14.720 astrology found his path in the stars. Sensitive listeners take care. 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:34.680 At the very beginning of the show, we set out 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:38.760 to find people with unusual stories biographies that up ended 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:42.960 our understanding of astrology. And so my colleagues Mary and Mitra, 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:46.520 they went looking for all sorts of folks, right like 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:51.360 finance bros who believed in astrology, cheesemongers used the stars 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:54.760 to guide their process, towns that have built their entire 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:58.920 identity around astrology. And then one day Mary said to me, 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:02.200 I think that is a community of ex evangelicals who 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:05.400 fled the church and now they put their entire faith 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:10.480 in the stars. And you know, I was immediately fascinated, 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:13.360 right like, how do you walk away from one set 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:17.240 of really strong beliefs and then dive headfirst into another. 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:20.080 What type of person decides to do that? And what 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:23.479 are the circumstances that help you find your faith again? 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:27.959 And that's how we found Sam Reynolds. I went to 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:32.440 an astrologer, a gemini. Sam is an extraordinary person, and 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:35.160 the truth is, he's got a story I can't stop 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:38.680 thinking about at birth, his parents were told he wouldn't 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:41.240 walk as a child. He wasn't supposed to become a 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:44.119 preacher in college. He wasn't supposed to question his faith 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:47.360 or take comfort in astrology. But Sam is kind of 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:51.320 defied expectations at every point of his life. And what 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:54.840 makes him so fascinating to me at least is that 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:58.280 in this search for faith and love and a truer 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:02.920 understanding of humanity, he moves with such grace and assured 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:05.960 nous and the past. For him it never seems to 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:10.200 be a mistake, like just a stepping stone to where 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:14.480 you were always meant to be. From Kaleidoscope and I 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:52.600 Heart Podcast, I'm Mangesh Hattikudur. Welcome to Skyline Drive: Minisode Two. 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:57.440 Sam. My name is Sam Reynolds. I'm from Buffalo, New York. 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:01.480 I currently live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I have 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:07.239 been a practicing astrologer for twenty years, and I got 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:11.040 into astrology trying to disprove it. I was born with 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:15.520 multiple birth defects and being able to function, to walk, 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:18.120 to do the things that the doctors predicted I wouldn't 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:20.359 be able to do. They said that I would be 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:25.640 developmentally delayed. I wasn't, and so I became assigned as 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:27.640 a miracle baby by my family. 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:30.959 Sam was raised as a Southern Baptist, so he grew 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:33.280 up knowing that on Judgment Day he would have to 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:35.640 stand before God and account for his life. 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:41.080 I did feel a calling, literally, hearing a voice in 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:43.600 my head, you know, a calling into the ministry saying 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:47.360 I went you to preach. So I went to my 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:50.600 mother's friends church, and the pastor took me under his wing. 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:56.640 My father didn't fully believe me because I actually was 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:59.760 a boxer at the time, and so I was boxing 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:03.760 and he kept arranging fights for me, and I was like, no, 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:06.760 I don't think it's right to kind of beat people 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:09.360 up on Saturday and then go preach about love on Sunday. 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:13.600 And he um didn't believe me. So my mother suggested 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:15.360 would write him a letter of resignation. And I wrote 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:18.000 him a letter telling him that I was going against 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:19.840 the ministry, and he was like, oh, I guess this 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:25.560 is real. I preached my first sermon on my mother's birthday, 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:31.480 septem maybe. There were about seventy people there. My parents 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:34.880 were there, and I saw something I had never seen. 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:39.839 After I preached, my father stood up and testified and 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:44.440 he started to cry. My father didn't cry. I knew 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:48.680 my father had a complicated life. When I say a 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:54.240 complicated life, my father was into the numbers racket. Before 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:59.080 we had state lotteries, there was an underground mostly seen 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:02.640 as criminal ne work of people who would give people 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:06.159 to play the numbers for money. I mean it's tied 0:05:06.240 --> 0:05:08.719 to the mob, to the mafia, and so my father, 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:15.560 my father killed people. So for him too to cry, 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:17.440 I mean that was you know when you talk about 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:20.920 Tony Soprano, you see it on TV. He literally lived 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:24.919 that life. And I think that was probably just the 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:27.960 first time out of maybe two times I ever saw 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:29.920 my father cry in his life. 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:32.760 Sam was only twelve when he became a preacher, and 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:36.800 he fully absorbed this evangelical lesson that astrology is a sin. 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:41.360 He even preached a sermon warning against its evils. Besides, 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:43.600 the one time he did look up his horoscope, he 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:47.159 couldn't tell which sign he really was because his birthday 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:50.360 fell on the cusp of Scorpio and Sagittarius, And as 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:52.960 far as he was concerned, it was a sin that 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:54.200 didn't even make sense. 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:56.520 By the time I went into the ministry, I was 0:05:56.640 --> 0:06:00.320 already convinced that astrology was hogwashed. You know, people asked 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:02.480 me what signer? You know, I'm the sign of the Cross. 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:21.640 My first year of college, I thought it would be 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:25.359 cool to take religion classes. Technically that was a mistake 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:29.200 because it made me start questioning my religion. I started 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:32.560 to have a crisis of faith. I started talking to 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:34.520 different ministers because I was like, well, how can I 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:40.600 really preach sincerely when I'm confused. Some of the ministers 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:43.840 I talked to, they were like, and it comes with 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:46.880 the job kit. My idea was to take a step 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:49.719 away from the ministry until I would recoup my faith. 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:52.240 But my faith never came back. By the time I 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:54.200 was twenty two, I had become an atheist. 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:58.600 Newly liberated from his old beliefs, Sam headed to Temple University, 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:02.600 where he enrolled in the Africa An American Studies graduate program. 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:05.280 While he was there, he felt for one of his classmates. 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:09.039 There was just one problem, and she was really into astrology, 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:11.400 and I was like, uh, you know, well, if I 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:14.360 had to choose between being an arachnid, a scorpio, and 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:16.040 a centaur, clearly on a centaur. 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:19.920 How could Sam possibly impress this woman a Gemini who 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:22.160 teased him about not knowing his own sign. 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:24.320 She's like, no, I think you're the bug. 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:26.000 Finally he remembered something. 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:29.600 There was a book when I was younger that my 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:34.520 great grandmother had. It's called the sixth and seventh Books of Moses. 0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:37.040 It's a supposedly a magical text. 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:39.600 He figured his crush would be blown away by a 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.560 copy of this strange book, so he starts making calls 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:45.600 and finally tracks it down at a North Philly bookstore. 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:47.560 But when he goes to pick it up, 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:50.280 This guy starts talking to me about astrology and he's 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:52.280 an astrologer. At first I was like, and let me 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:54.480 just get the book, man, but then he's like, oh, 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:56.880 you ever had your chart done? It was like okay, 0:07:56.880 --> 0:08:00.440 I agreed to get the reading. For the first fifty minutes, 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:03.080 I was convinced this is BS and he's like, oh, 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:05.680 it looks like your mom had some problems while carrying you. 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:08.360 In my head, I said, no, shit Sherlock, I mean, 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:12.600 I'm four, nine chances are I didn't have the normal birth. 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:15.000 And then he said, oh, well, it looks like you're 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:17.760 a pretty smart fellow. But again I was thinking, I 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:20.400 told you I was in the PhD program, and then 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:23.240 it happened. He said, it looks like the complications they 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:27.440 talked about what your mom may have been from some 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:30.960 involvement with your mother, your brother, and your father. What 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:34.439 do you mean, And he's like, yeah, some issues with 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:39.480 your father and your brother happened and then adversely affected 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:43.280 your mother. What I had learned two months before is 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:49.560 that my brother, when he was eight years old, my 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:52.400 mother was making kissing faces at him and playing with him. 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:56.520 And he said, oh, you're doing me like Daddy was 0:08:56.559 --> 0:09:00.120 with that white women last night. And she's like, what 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:03.400 are you talking about, And she's like, Daddy was in 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:05.319 the front seat with this white woman making U kissing 0:09:05.360 --> 0:09:07.400 noises and doing all this stuff and huffing and puffed. 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:08.760 He thought I was asleep, but I was just in 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:12.720 the back of the seat listening and looking at them. 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:19.360 And she was devastated. She caught the flu early in 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:24.439 her pregnancy with me. I guess compromised immune system from 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:28.920 emotional distress. So what that astrologer was describing was pretty 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:33.160 much exactly as it happened. And I don't know how 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:35.960 he did that, you know, I was blown away, and 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:42.880 so for me astrology became this other way of understanding 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:47.440 oneself that was independent of the political sphere. Even I 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:49.760 was like, well, maybe it's an interesting way of asking questions. 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:05.120 These days, Sam still uses astrology to ask questions, but 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.920 he's found a lot of answers too. He's a mentor 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:12.080 to young astrologers just starting out and a co founder 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:15.960 of the International Society of Black Astrologers. He's developed a 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:21.560 perspective that's totally him, thoughtful, intellectual, and most of all, 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:23.560 driven by a desire to connect. 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:31.040 Astrology is the net cultural experience of thousands of years 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:34.960 of looking at the heavens and their correlations in terms 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:38.640 of finding significance in our life. Now you could say, well, 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:43.959 you're just manufacturing it sure like everything else in your life. 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:49.480 I'm curious about people. I always have been. I wanted 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.319 to understand how people think, why they make the choices 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:55.599 that they do. So astrology gives me a way to 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:02.080 have discussions with people about themselves. It becomes a conversation 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:08.439 about how the astrology illuminates their lives rather than I 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:12.839 would say dictates their lives. The word consider it comes 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:17.040 from Latin for con which means with and sidire stars, 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:20.520 but means to think with your stars. So I see 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:23.400 astrology as a way to have a conversation, which is 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:26.080 more way of reflecting on yourself and your desires and 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:33.280 your character. The young Sam would be horrified by me 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:40.439 being an astrologer. But what I think would soften him 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:45.000 is recognizing some measure of his dream for his life, 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:52.800 which was to be communicating and messaging people around the world, 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:55.479 being able to do what I do and support myself. 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:58.880 I think that was making proud, but he probably like, well, 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:05.200 why can't you do that for Jesus? So um, I'd 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:07.600 probably like, you know, that's a longer conversation. 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:26.520 Often there's a finality to the way people read astrology, 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:33.080 that what's destined to happen will happen. But Sam, as 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:35.679 he puts it, he doesn't use an astrological chart to 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:40.280 read your life as a finished biography, but instead as 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:44.040 a work in process. I love how there's an openness 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.880 to Sam, the way he believes so deeply, but how 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:51.320 he'll always listen with an open mind, how he doesn't 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:54.360 hesitate to take in your questions and your qualms and 0:12:55.440 --> 0:13:00.000 to truly consider them because he isn't afraid to change 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:13.199 in his mind as long as he's thinking with the stars. 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:19.600 That's it for this week's episode of Skyline Drive. Special 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:22.720 thanks to my team here, Mary, Mitra, Mark, Anna and 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:25.680 Drew for working so hard over the holidays to pull 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:30.199 the show together, and Botany as always for the incredible soundtrack. 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:32.959 Also thank you to the wonderful Sam Reynolds for making 0:13:33.000 --> 0:13:35.880 time for us to visit Sam on the web or 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:38.400 book reading with him. Be sure to go to Unlock 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:43.079 Astrology dot com. That's Unlock astrology dot com. Also a 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:45.320 quick shout out to my pal Laura Mayer, who did 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.040 this episode's warning, Laura not only helped us set up 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:51.559 things when we started Kaleidoscope, but also dropped one of 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:54.679 the biggest shows of the year, Shameless Acquisition Target. It 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:57.160 is so funny and if you want to know everything 0:13:57.200 --> 0:14:00.400 about the podcast industry from one of its consummate insiders, 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:05.280 it is essential listening. We'll be back with full length 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:08.280 episodes next week, starting with a writer who just wants 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:10.480 to know. I had a question about like who's going 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:15.480 to die first, my mom and my dad, because there's 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:21.320 an answer that I want it's so dark. I mean, 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:24.520 it is dark, but it's also way more fun that 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:27.920 it sounds. That's it for this week's minisode. Thank you 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:29.040 so much for listening.