Speaker 1: Hey there, podcast listeners, It's Mango here and over the
Speaker 1: next few weekends, we are revisiting season one of my
Speaker 1: show Skyline Drive, and today we are up to episode two.
Speaker 1: So in this episode, I'm going to introduce you to Jeane,
Speaker 1: who is one of the coolest people I've ever met,
Speaker 1: and I say that as someone who's met a ton
Speaker 1: of cool people. Jeane has this fascinating life growing up
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. Her parents were Communists, she gets out of
Speaker 1: a bad marriage, and now she's in her seventies and
Speaker 1: she has decided to turn to astrology for some help
Speaker 1: with romance. She really is so wonderful, and I actually
Speaker 1: connected her with an astrologer named Janelle, who spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: kind of blew her mind. We also talk in this
Speaker 1: episode to an anonymous therapist who secretly uses astrology in
Speaker 1: her practice, which is insane to me but also kind
Speaker 1: of incredible. I really hope you enjoy it, and I
Speaker 1: hope you stay tuned for episode three next Sunday.
Speaker 2: Warning. The following show includes discussion of escorts, drugs, septagenarian tinder, eclipses,
Speaker 2: star powered therapy, and Donald Trump's former former former lawyer.
Speaker 2: For listeners with Victorian sensibilities. Please keep a fan and
Speaker 2: smelling salts nearby.
Speaker 3: So, I guess my biggest question is am I ever
Speaker 3: going to have sex with somebody again?
Speaker 1: We're sitting in Jean Lebec's third floor apartment right off
Speaker 1: the ninety third street stop in Bay Ridge. Jean is
Speaker 1: a former teacher, just like my mom, roughly the same age,
Speaker 1: seventy four, but Jean's a New York City before. She's
Speaker 1: got that city girl edge.
Speaker 3: My name is gean Ane Lebec and I am a storyteller.
Speaker 1: The sex question. It's big for Jean because she was
Speaker 1: married for forty one years and she expected to stay
Speaker 1: married forever. But right before the city went into lockdown,
Speaker 1: her marriage dissolved, and it's taken her about three years
Speaker 1: to get to this point.
Speaker 3: Jesus, I don't want to marry anything. I'm not looking
Speaker 3: for that, and I don't want to live with anybody.
Speaker 3: I'm not looking for that.
Speaker 1: But she is craving something, some form of intimacy.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: So my daughter is my biggest support and fan, and
Speaker 3: when I've told her these stories about you know, guys who.
Speaker 4: Just really want to sex text to you.
Speaker 3: They don't really want to go further than that, all
Speaker 3: the weird men that I have had a date with
Speaker 3: just Okay, here's where we're at right now. I think
Speaker 3: what you need to do is call of inness court service.
Speaker 5: An.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's early on a Saturday morning. I am
Speaker 1: barely awake, haven't even had my cup of coffee, and
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I'm hearing her right, Like, is this
Speaker 1: sweet seventy four year old woman really asking permission to
Speaker 1: hire somebody?
Speaker 3: You're there and it's a very clear cut relationship, you know,
Speaker 3: hire them for four hours.
Speaker 1: I don't know if an astrologer can help with that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if any astrologer has ever been asked
Speaker 1: whether it's the right time to hire an escort. But
Speaker 1: we're about to find out. From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcast,
Speaker 1: I'm Monga's Shatika thear Welcome to Skyline Drive Chapter one,
Speaker 1: pound Cake and Chemo. So let's talk a second about
Speaker 1: Jean's question and questions like these.
Speaker 6: Well, I ever have a partner that feels safe and secure?
Speaker 1: Why do scorpios get such a bad wrap?
Speaker 5: I'm kind of curious how many dogs I will have
Speaker 5: in my life?
Speaker 1: Is it insane to consider trying to be a stand
Speaker 1: up comedian as a.
Speaker 5: Man who is rapidly balding.
Speaker 1: Will any of my hair e grow back? That's what
Speaker 1: the show was supposed to be, finding people with questions
Speaker 1: I'd never think to ask, pairing them with an astrologer,
Speaker 1: then generally having a good time. And I was going
Speaker 1: to take this anthropological view of it all like stand back,
Speaker 1: watch without judgment, try to understand and enjoy. But just
Speaker 1: as our production was about to get off the ground,
Speaker 1: I travel to Queen's to get a reading from a
Speaker 1: random astrologer. And that astrologer he warned me that my
Speaker 1: dad's health would soon take a drastic turn. Within twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: my dad had emailed me that a cancer had spread
Speaker 1: through his liver. So now a few days later, I'm
Speaker 1: in Kanye's, Georgia. Kanye's is mostly famous for being a
Speaker 1: speed trap on the road between Atlanta and Athens, and
Speaker 1: my parents settled here because my dad took a job
Speaker 1: down the road a few years back. But there's a
Speaker 1: little else that would have drawn them here, Like there
Speaker 1: are strip malls and waffle houses, banks, targets, and then
Speaker 1: these quiet, winding roads that veer off it with names
Speaker 1: like Christian Circle. The doctor's office is tucked away on
Speaker 1: one of these winding roads, and we're waiting for the
Speaker 1: doctor in a little exam room. It's actually the way
Speaker 1: my dad wants it. All of us here, my mom, sister, me,
Speaker 1: and I'm a little surprised when the doctor walks in
Speaker 1: and he's Indian.
Speaker 7: So the pathology report still says preliminary.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that they had more of us out
Speaker 1: in conyers. I like him immediately. He seems to really
Speaker 1: know and care about my dad, and he's concerned for
Speaker 1: us too, But when he starts, it's clear the news
Speaker 1: isn't good.
Speaker 8: Show that then Dialima was started by small tumors, numerous tumors, Bawns.
Speaker 1: It turns out it's an aggressive small self cancer, going
Speaker 1: to need an aggressive response.
Speaker 8: The painting is okay, but your disease is behaving way too.
Speaker 4: Now it's wonderful.
Speaker 1: I've turned on my voice recorder, not for podcasting, but
Speaker 1: because I'm feeling lightheaded, uneasy about how much of this
Speaker 1: information I will retain, and so far it sounds like
Speaker 1: the chemo can only do so much.
Speaker 5: Why did I say it's not that great news?
Speaker 8: Because small si lung cancer is notorious not.
Speaker 7: To stay in control with chemotherapy.
Speaker 5: It goes away, but it comes right back.
Speaker 8: So not a good diagnosis at all, but very treatable
Speaker 8: in its current situation.
Speaker 1: This whole thing is basically cancer. Whack them all. You
Speaker 1: can bat the cancer back, cheer a little, and then
Speaker 1: start again until time runs out. The only time I
Speaker 1: smile is when my dad asks timidly, oh, yes.
Speaker 4: I've heard that, medical Mario and I.
Speaker 1: Can help with And I remember my friend Howard when
Speaker 1: his dad got cancer. Howard got him a pound cake
Speaker 1: loaded with THHC and they spent the night laughing as
Speaker 1: his dad shared memories along with these ridiculous life goals,
Speaker 1: like how his one regret as a young man in
Speaker 1: China was that he'd never taken a shit on the
Speaker 1: doorstep of the French embassy. Anyway, I daydreamed a little
Speaker 1: about sourcing some edibles and playing my dad's favorite records
Speaker 1: as we chat through the night before I hear this.
Speaker 7: You really don't want Eellly parents to be dealing with
Speaker 7: metastatic cancer.
Speaker 5: Three hundred miles away. It's just not.
Speaker 8: Invariably, no matter how smold the treatment goes as lonely marts.
Speaker 1: In the best case scenario, we'll get three to four
Speaker 1: more years with my dad. That's if the treatment takes.
Speaker 1: It's something to hope for, but it's more likely we'll
Speaker 1: get three to four months. The thing is there's no
Speaker 1: time to waste. A nurse wheels my dad to a
Speaker 1: different wing to begin the chemo immediately. My mom is
Speaker 1: trying to be brave, but she's still dazed. I tug
Speaker 1: at her arm and hold it as we walk to
Speaker 1: the car. Everything is daunting, but it also feels manageable.
Speaker 1: So instead of worrying, I focus on our wish list.
Speaker 1: My dad still speaks some Portuguese from his childhood in Goa,
Speaker 1: and I know he wants to see Lisbon. I know
Speaker 1: he wants to see his grandkids more. He wants to
Speaker 1: see my sister get married. So I'm thinking, what can
Speaker 1: I do? What money do we need? How can I
Speaker 1: move my schedule around? Four months is not a lot
Speaker 1: of time, but I'm going to make it feel like enough.
Speaker 1: Chapter two, Secrets and Lies.
Speaker 4: I lived in a family with a lot of secrets.
Speaker 1: Secrets are the thing that shaped Jean and I have
Speaker 1: a feeling it's what's driven her to tell these beautiful,
Speaker 1: unvarnished stories about herself. Inside her place, past the entry
Speaker 1: and the kitchen doorway and the hallway lined with photos,
Speaker 1: there's a living room filled with vintage furniture stuff you'd
Speaker 1: cover it from your favorite thrift store. Jeane tells me
Speaker 1: to sit anywhere, make myself comfortable, and so I do,
Speaker 1: first on this bright, beautiful sofa, and then on an
Speaker 1: ottoman just a little closer, doer.
Speaker 3: I grew up right here in Brooklyn, matt and bay Ridge,
Speaker 3: Wet and Crown Hearts, which is now a groovy, groovy.
Speaker 1: Place to live.
Speaker 3: But during those days it was a hard working Irish Catholic.
Speaker 4: Neighborhood, and we were the only Jewish families.
Speaker 1: Kids playing marbles by nickel con, hanging out on studs,
Speaker 1: running around the neighborhood until the lamp posts flicker and
Speaker 1: you just know it's time to raise home. It all
Speaker 1: sounds so idyllic, but her childhood was also cloaked in
Speaker 1: something darker because of her parents' political leanings.
Speaker 4: We lived this kind of life of secrets and lives.
Speaker 3: They couldn't tell anybody they were American Communists. They couldn't
Speaker 3: tell anybody they knew Julison Ethel Rosenburg.
Speaker 5: It runs for me, oh refresher on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
Speaker 1: Julius Rosenberg, a Taurus and Ethel Rosenberg A Libra met
Speaker 1: and fell in love at the Young Communist League.
Speaker 5: When Torus and Libra got together in a love affair,
Speaker 5: it can be the unification of two halves of a whole.
Speaker 1: Julius had a steady job working for the Army Signal
Speaker 1: Corps as an engineer, but he was fired for being a.
Speaker 5: Socialist Communism what is it?
Speaker 8: Who are the apostles of a system that attempts to destroy.
Speaker 5: The American way of life?
Speaker 1: In the nineteen forties and fifties, a communist panic swept
Speaker 1: across America, set off by a Scorpio named Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Speaker 1: McCarthy was known for his wild and sensational attacks.
Speaker 8: The Scorpio zodiac sign concerns itself with beginnings and endings
Speaker 8: and is unafraid of either. They also travel in a
Speaker 8: world that is black and white and has little use
Speaker 8: for gray.
Speaker 1: At the time, Hollywood directors, prominent politicians, and government insiders
Speaker 1: were terrified for their lives and careers In nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: the couple was put on trial for passing atomic secrets
Speaker 1: to the Soviets. The Rosenbergs claimed innocence, but they still
Speaker 1: got the electric chair. The man who prosecuted them, a
Speaker 1: twenty three year old pisces named Roy Kohane. One witness
Speaker 1: from the trial, tried to take back his testimony. He
Speaker 1: said the reason he lied on the stand was because
Speaker 1: con had threatened to lock up his wife and make
Speaker 1: life hell for his family.
Speaker 8: Many people associate pisces with dreams and secrets as a
Speaker 8: mutable sign ICs holds, adaptive, fluid, and sheep shifting qualities.
Speaker 1: Anyway, back to Gene, it makes sense that her family
Speaker 1: hid the fact that they were close with the Rosenbergs,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't the only secret they were hiding.
Speaker 3: My sister's gay Being gay during those times was really
Speaker 3: a horrifying thing.
Speaker 4: And I remember when she told me she was gay.
Speaker 4: I thought this was the greatest thing I ever heard,
Speaker 4: and she was like, you can I tell us so
Speaker 4: nobody can.
Speaker 1: Know about this, Like being Communist, being Jewish, being gay
Speaker 1: was just another thing she couldn't talk about. As she's
Speaker 1: telling me about her past, it makes more sense why
Speaker 1: Jean's welcomed me in. Why she's agreed to talk. The
Speaker 1: thing is a total romantic.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite stories that I told was the
Speaker 3: time I had my first orgasm. I had been married,
Speaker 3: I had a baby, and still didn't know my own body.
Speaker 1: It's the nineteen seventies and Gina is in her twenties,
Speaker 1: a single mom with a kid. She had briefly been
Speaker 1: married to her high school sweetheart, and now she's working
Speaker 1: at this daycare center where she has this colleague named Mona,
Speaker 1: and they are a lot alike. They're both putting themselves
Speaker 1: through school in the evenings. They both have little girls
Speaker 1: that are the same age.
Speaker 3: We formed this friendship with each other, and then one
Speaker 3: night we went to see this movie and we're sitting
Speaker 3: in the car and she looks at me and says,
Speaker 3: you know, I really feel like kissing you.
Speaker 1: I said, so kiss That kiss was like fireworks.
Speaker 3: I mean, Mona and I had been intimate, but I
Speaker 3: never had an orgasm.
Speaker 4: After this orgasm, she put on candles and everything, and
Speaker 4: she looked at me and.
Speaker 3: She said, you know, Sweedie, you could do this anytime
Speaker 3: you want. I mean, the whole idea of that kind
Speaker 3: of power, and so I begin to be kind of
Speaker 3: a crazy masturbator, you know, I would like go through
Speaker 3: my job at the daycare center, and it was lunchtime,
Speaker 3: NiFe went back, and so it was this whole description
Speaker 3: of just feeling giddy with this kind of new fountain.
Speaker 1: No Mona would move away not long after leaving the city,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't long before Jean would fall in love again.
Speaker 1: In fact, in some ways, her next love would hit
Speaker 1: her even harder. Here's a story she told at the Moth.
Speaker 4: It's assembly day and I am so nervous.
Speaker 9: My class is putting on a play for the entire school,
Speaker 9: and I'm walking down the auditorium the center aisle carrying
Speaker 9: all these props. And takes my hand to help me
Speaker 9: navigate up the stage steps, and my hand melts into his,
Speaker 9: and his hand melts into mine. Our fingers linger, never
Speaker 9: wanting to let go. And as Miss Hall crosses the
Speaker 9: stage to go to the piano and kids are getting
Speaker 9: their assembly seats and the ring is beating against the window,
Speaker 9: we fall madly in love.
Speaker 1: Geane and that teacher I don't want. They get married,
Speaker 1: raise their daughter together, and then a son too. They
Speaker 1: become grandparents together and then one morning, forty one years later.
Speaker 4: Over coffee, said I'm.
Speaker 1: Leaving her husband came clean about another woman he'd been seeing,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't long before Jean realized there were more.
Speaker 3: He was having copious amounts of affairs. It was almost
Speaker 3: like a house of cards fell down. He's an expert
Speaker 3: con man. He swept me off my feet. It was
Speaker 3: almost like that love that you know you think you're
Speaker 3: never ever going to find again, and then it all
Speaker 3: just kind of crash and I had to kind of
Speaker 3: weed through the betrayal.
Speaker 1: It didn't take much detective work for Gane to realize
Speaker 1: he'd been cheating since the start of their relationship, with friends, colleagues,
Speaker 1: random women along the way. Jean was heartbroken. She still is,
Speaker 1: and it's tainted the way she looks at the.
Speaker 3: Past because I see a happy family, but I think,
Speaker 3: was he involved with this woman then?
Speaker 4: Or who is he involved with?
Speaker 1: Then? Jeane is done grieving. She no longer wants to
Speaker 1: look backwards.
Speaker 3: What is this next journey about for myself? Because I
Speaker 3: feel like I'm at the brink of something. I just
Speaker 3: don't know what the break gets.
Speaker 1: I don't know what something is The truth is, Jean
Speaker 1: does not believe in astrology. She's had opportunities before to
Speaker 1: have her chart read, but she's never really seen the point.
Speaker 3: You know. My sister was into astrology, but you know,
Speaker 3: we all thought it was bullshit, you know, and I
Speaker 3: always thought, like, please have a glass of wine, relax,
Speaker 3: it's more meaningful than this.
Speaker 1: But that was then Today, at seventy four, Jean recognizes
Speaker 1: how precious her time is over and over. She tells me,
Speaker 1: I've got ten years, ten good years to drink in
Speaker 1: all the richness of life already.
Speaker 2: Joes, you lyin't even down.
Speaker 1: And if there's any chance that astrology can unlock that secret,
Speaker 1: she's open to it. Oh and there's still the matter
Speaker 1: of the escorts. More on that after the break. Chapter three.
Speaker 1: Wheels that Work.
Speaker 7: You know, I don't think humans hang on two things
Speaker 7: that don't work, Like the wheel is awesome, like we
Speaker 7: still use it. We don't say, oh, this wheel is
Speaker 7: out of date, Like, no, it's functional, right. So that's
Speaker 7: the same thing with astrology, Like we don't study this
Speaker 7: stuff because it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: Over the summer, my friends and I started the search
Speaker 1: for a house astrologer for this show. We thought hard
Speaker 1: about using Doctor Kamar, but I was reluctant. Looking back,
Speaker 1: it's obvious why Doctor Kamar's predictions had set off a
Speaker 1: chain of events that I just needed to compartmentalize away
Speaker 1: from this show. I needed a different experience, and Janelle
Speaker 1: Belgrave is definitely that. She is sunny and relentlessly encouraging,
Speaker 1: and the first time I chatted with her, I was
Speaker 1: smiling the whole time, like I love the way she
Speaker 1: peppered the conversation with this secret knowledge of just how
Speaker 1: pervasive astrology is.
Speaker 7: If you don't think there are multi billionaires using astrology
Speaker 7: to get ahead, let me tell you something. They're out there.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what my whole show was supposed to
Speaker 1: peek into, but it was actually something more than that.
Speaker 1: As my little team of skeptics here talked about the production,
Speaker 1: we decided that using Janelle almost seemed faded. Like when
Speaker 1: Mary Amitra set out to find an astrologer for the show,
Speaker 1: they dependently made lists and somehow not only did they
Speaker 1: both find Janelle, but they both had her as their
Speaker 1: top choice. So we chalked it up to destiny and
Speaker 1: rolled with it. Janelle's real New York too. She's from
Speaker 1: Queen's and her parents are immigrants from Panama. Janelle's doesn't
Speaker 1: sugarcoat things. So when I asked her about the birthdate
Speaker 1: for the show and the show's timing, well let's just
Speaker 1: say she was less optimistic than doctor Kamar, who told
Speaker 1: me this show was going to be a mega hit.
Speaker 7: So you guys said that it was May sixteenth, nine
Speaker 7: thirty nine am in Brooklyn, New York. Correct, Yeah, yeah, right, okay, okay,
Speaker 7: So you guys are a torres sun, a cancer rising
Speaker 7: moon in Sagittarius. You guys planned this right under an eclipse,
Speaker 7: which is really interesting, not necessarily bad, but eclipse energy
Speaker 7: can be very volatile.
Speaker 1: Right, I guess I've got a temper my expectations. But
Speaker 1: even when Janelle's prepping you for a turbulent time ahead,
Speaker 1: I like how she's still encouraging.
Speaker 7: You're starting under a lot of retrogrades and that's okay,
Speaker 7: but you just have to know that you can have
Speaker 7: to be patient use that to your benefit.
Speaker 1: Now this isn't aside, but last year I started giving
Speaker 1: monsterra plants away to people who have been going through
Speaker 1: hard things. It is a super instagrammable plant, but that's
Speaker 1: not why I like it. The monster is unusual. If
Speaker 1: left in the dark, exhibit something called negative phototropism, where
Speaker 1: all the new stems will actually grow into the darkness.
Speaker 1: It's a clever trick. In the jungle, darkness signals the
Speaker 1: presence of a larger tree, so the monster trusts that
Speaker 1: it can lean into the shadows and pool all of
Speaker 1: its energy into climbing that trunk because it believes sunlight
Speaker 1: will come. I like that reminder because I've needed that reminder.
Speaker 1: And that's what's so great about Janelle. The beauty she's
Speaker 1: found in reminding people that hope still exists.
Speaker 7: There's always hope in the darkest moments of our life.
Speaker 7: And when you look back and say, yeah, there was
Speaker 7: that some person that came to me that day and
Speaker 7: said something, and that was the thing I needed to
Speaker 7: get to the next day, and that next day was miraculous.
Speaker 1: There's a joy in pairing up a couple you have
Speaker 1: a good feeling about. Jane is so clearly yearning, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to witness what magic might come out when
Speaker 1: you put Jeanne and Janelle and all their.
Speaker 6: Stars and their stories in a room together. Chapter four.
Speaker 1: You don't want to waste a minute. It's months before
Speaker 1: I see Gene again. We are sitting in her apartment.
Speaker 1: This time it's my producer, Mitra and me, and we've
Speaker 1: set up a consult with Janelle. But twenty minutes in,
Speaker 1: everything is going wrong. Sound waves are flashing across laptop,
Speaker 1: but apparently it hasn't been taping. Worse, the backup recorder
Speaker 1: got jammed and then our batteries died. It's like this
Speaker 1: taping is jens. Of course, Janelle doesn't miss a beat.
Speaker 1: She makes a crack about eclipses and the universe, showing
Speaker 1: us just how real astrology is, and she reminds us
Speaker 1: that if we've tried this a few days from now,
Speaker 1: everything would have gone smoothly. We all laugh, but we
Speaker 1: try again.
Speaker 7: Okay, so where should we start?
Speaker 1: In my head, I'm screaming escorts. We've got to talk
Speaker 1: about s courts. If you listen to the tape from
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes ago, it is all static, but what you
Speaker 1: would have heard, what I wish we still had was
Speaker 1: the discussion and wear it again. Before Jean had even
Speaker 1: said the word escort, Janelle basically said, Jeane, your chart
Speaker 1: is telling me that you're meant to go enjoy yourself.
Speaker 1: The universe wants you to enjoy yourself. So go on dates,
Speaker 1: go on hikes, go have sex, go do the things
Speaker 1: that feel fun. But I don't have that tape because
Speaker 1: I started this show in an eclipse, and somehow it's
Speaker 1: easier to tell myself that to make that the excuse
Speaker 1: than to stop Gene from taking the conversation in the
Speaker 1: direction she needs it to go.
Speaker 3: I have been feeling like I'm on the edge of something,
Speaker 3: but I don't know what that looks like.
Speaker 7: Huh, I gotcha. Okay, So I actually want to take you
Speaker 7: back to your last new moon that you had. So basically,
Speaker 7: this is just to show you that there's no such
Speaker 7: thing as like linear time in astrology. So when we
Speaker 7: are at a new moon phase in our life, it's
Speaker 7: when we're starting a brand new chapter. We've ended one chapter. Okay,
Speaker 7: So back in twenty eleven, April twenty eleven, you had
Speaker 7: a new moon happen in your progressed chart at nineteen
Speaker 7: degrees of aris. So if you can think back to
Speaker 7: what was happening in your life in twenty eleven, I
Speaker 7: can tell you.
Speaker 3: I know exactly what was happening because that was so
Speaker 3: I can't believe you just said that.
Speaker 7: I'm blown away. Really Okay, hold that thought, don't give
Speaker 7: don't give it away just yet, because I want us
Speaker 7: to kind of flow through it. So back then you
Speaker 7: plant it seas right, then you're going to track the moon.
Speaker 1: As she continues, Janelle traces her cursor over the flow
Speaker 1: of the moon through Jane's sign, and she shows her
Speaker 1: how the moon is moved with her over the years.
Speaker 7: So around probably, I would say twenty sixteen or so
Speaker 7: is when things probably got a little bit rocky, especially
Speaker 7: when it came to marriage. Oh yeah, so September of
Speaker 7: twenty nineteen maybe would have been a time where things
Speaker 7: might have got a little bit tough.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, yeap, I have the chills. I do
Speaker 4: have the chills.
Speaker 7: Showing you how astrology works to show you the timing.
Speaker 7: So we're seeing this moon hit with Pluto, right, so
Speaker 7: possibly endings, deaths, changes, transformations, endings, endings.
Speaker 1: The scene reminds me of what my friend Pete the
Speaker 1: rock Star astrologer told me, this concept of Joe TISHMATI
Speaker 1: what you're going for in a great reading like that
Speaker 1: shared connection between astrologer and the person being read passing
Speaker 1: the light of awareness.
Speaker 3: I'm really sitting here completely overwhelmed. I have to tell
Speaker 3: you because when you, like, say a specific thing like September,
Speaker 3: you know, twenty nineteen, September twenty fifth, twenty nineteen looked
Speaker 3: me in the face and said bye bye, I'm leaving
Speaker 3: you for another woman. And so that's a month, that's
Speaker 3: a time. I don't really no one really knows, like, oh,
Speaker 3: that happened. But then when you just said it was
Speaker 3: like you did not just say that, but yeah, right.
Speaker 7: Sometimes it's very literal. Pluto is the planets, the planet
Speaker 7: of death and transformation and saying this is the end.
Speaker 1: I'm watching the two of them, and it's clear something
Speaker 1: has clicked. In just a few minutes, Gene is transformed
Speaker 1: from this person who is I guess, willing to give
Speaker 1: astrology a chance, to someone who's sitting on her hands
Speaker 1: to stop herself from waving them so excitedly. Despite the screen,
Speaker 1: there is an intensity between them. Every month or date
Speaker 1: Janelle throws out seems to provoke this avalanche of memories,
Speaker 1: and each time Gene is about to let out this
Speaker 1: rush of words like just let them spill it from
Speaker 1: her mouth. Janelle smiles like a chest Shire cat, and
Speaker 1: she tells her to hold it in just a little more.
Speaker 1: Janelle is confident there's power and astrology. She's felt it
Speaker 1: for decades now, but in this moment, that power is
Speaker 1: so clear. It's animating every dopamine receptor in Jean's brain
Speaker 1: and she is buzzing, glowing with electricity.
Speaker 7: But I know, but I have two and a half
Speaker 7: years to make use of this energy. I have to
Speaker 7: do it otherwise it's not going to come back for
Speaker 7: another fourteen years. I don't want to have to waste
Speaker 7: that time, right exactly, No, I don't.
Speaker 3: I at seventy four, you don't want to waste a minute.
Speaker 1: About the gully Gully just a heart of Buddy the
Speaker 1: Getty John head Off, chapter five, A Couch with a View.
Speaker 1: My sister's a psychologist, a PhD. And we have this
Speaker 1: line we use about Indians. It's okay to be a psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: but it's not okay to see a psychiatrist. Years ago,
Speaker 1: when my wife and I were looking into international adoption
Speaker 1: from India, the forums indicated that if you'd ever seen
Speaker 1: a psychiatrist, you'd be disqualified from adopting. I'm ashamed to
Speaker 1: admit that. For years it kept me from seeing a
Speaker 1: grief counselor. I mean, along with all the other stresses
Speaker 1: of life. I lost a cousin to a suicide and
Speaker 1: a best friend to an overdose, and I struggled. I
Speaker 1: was a shell of myself. The truth is, in those years,
Speaker 1: I was not a great dad or a great husband,
Speaker 1: and I could have used the therapy, but I also
Speaker 1: didn't want to limit our options as potential parents anyway.
Speaker 1: For Indians, including the Indian government, the stigma is real.
Speaker 1: So things like religion and astrology they fill the gap
Speaker 1: and it makes sense right. Astrology allows you to put
Speaker 1: a symbol on something that's hard to name and to
Speaker 1: reframe your problems from a different lens. It's therapy for
Speaker 1: people who just don't want to go to therapy. What
Speaker 1: happens when those notions are flipped? Like what if your
Speaker 1: therapist was secretly powering their sessions, using the stars to
Speaker 1: amplify their understanding of you? Because that's what Ava does.
Speaker 10: Oh my god, I feel like I'm a little bashful.
Speaker 10: I'm a licensed therapist.
Speaker 1: Ava, which is not her real name, is a successful
Speaker 1: trauma therapist from the Midwest, and she's keenly aware of
Speaker 1: the baggage that astrology carries.
Speaker 10: Do I worry if I bring it up, people don't
Speaker 10: take me seriously. Of course, for younger clients, I think
Speaker 10: it's kind of almost a way of connecting. But yeah,
Speaker 10: my clients who are older, it's a little bit more
Speaker 10: of a finesse.
Speaker 1: So before she dives in with a new client, she
Speaker 1: floats a few questions to see just how open she
Speaker 1: can be with them.
Speaker 10: It's something that I kind of test the waters to
Speaker 10: see are they into astrology? Is it something they're not
Speaker 10: at into right? And if they are, it's wonderful because
Speaker 10: we can fold that into our understanding, like holy shit,
Speaker 10: like Saturn and Mars are being true as and advice
Speaker 10: Saturn that from what you're telling me, that makes a
Speaker 10: lot of sense.
Speaker 1: Of course, even when they're not into astrology, AVA still
Speaker 1: keeps an eye on their chart.
Speaker 10: I still have their birthdays. I can see where their
Speaker 10: planets are. Which isn't to say that that changes how
Speaker 10: I show up to them. My number one job is
Speaker 10: to be here with the client therapy. Existing in this
Speaker 10: world of diagnoses and insurance and all these things that
Speaker 10: are trying to make it be short and get people
Speaker 10: back to work and make people legible in this really
Speaker 10: fucked up system, right, So much of that is not
Speaker 10: helpful in the actual work of therapy. But I think
Speaker 10: astrology just it allows me to kind of ground back
Speaker 10: into the trust of having this big perspective in this
Speaker 10: small perspective. At the same time.
Speaker 1: There are so many people who see therapy and astrology
Speaker 1: at odds with one another, but Ava, she hopes there's
Speaker 1: new ways about thinking about both because both have the
Speaker 1: ability to give you agency. I mean, isn't that what
Speaker 1: we go to therapy for. Isn't that what we want
Speaker 1: from astrology, to access perspectives big and small, because so
Speaker 1: much of what we're looking for is someone to tell
Speaker 1: us what really matters, what we can set aside, and
Speaker 1: to teach us what to spend our precious time on.
Speaker 10: This idea of human progress is linear just boggles my mind, Like,
Speaker 10: what the heck? That makes no sense to me, And
Speaker 10: with astrology it is not at all.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 10: Planets are coming into places and then going back and
Speaker 10: you're like, this is so frustrating, and I'm.
Speaker 7: Back to where I was, And then it.
Speaker 1: Moves forward again, Deva. There's something very human about acknowledging
Speaker 1: that in the fog of healing, things are often more
Speaker 1: complicated than just trying to move forward.
Speaker 10: We are trying to understand things that are leond comprehension
Speaker 10: in some ways, right how humbling to know that we
Speaker 10: don't always have to I think that astrology and trauma
Speaker 10: therapy really hold that capacity in a really beautiful way.
Speaker 1: Chapter six, Mike check Jeane and I sat in her
Speaker 1: apartment after the reading and we talked for a while.
Speaker 1: What's spinning in your head? Like? What are you thinking about?
Speaker 10: First?
Speaker 4: I feel I don't know if I could could. I
Speaker 4: feel stoned on my mind.
Speaker 3: I feel as though I want some acid trip or something.
Speaker 1: Coming into this reading, I thought we'd devote a good
Speaker 1: bit of conversation to the salaciousness and fond of hiring
Speaker 1: an escort, But so much of this, to me felt
Speaker 1: like Jane just needed to be seen. What she needed
Speaker 1: from the astrologer, and what she actually wanted from the
Speaker 1: escort was the same thing. She needed someone from the
Speaker 1: outside world to remind her just how much she mattered.
Speaker 3: I think what was most empowering about this for me
Speaker 3: was at seventy four and living alone, you often feel
Speaker 3: very invisible, you know you do. And it's like I
Speaker 3: say to myself, oh my god, I could die right now.
Speaker 3: No one's even gonna know, you know, that kind of feeling.
Speaker 3: And what she did by saying, hey, wait, you know
Speaker 3: this is what's happening. I mean I could not repeat
Speaker 3: now to the moon in the house and the but
Speaker 3: there was an overall sense of you are part of
Speaker 3: the flow of the energy of the earth, my dear,
Speaker 3: and you are on a ride, you know, and you
Speaker 3: have been since you were born, and you will continue.
Speaker 3: And so by saying you have the power to do that,
Speaker 3: it was like I'm not invisible, you know, I'm not
Speaker 3: and I and that was that was very big.
Speaker 1: I'm envious of Gene because whatever you think of astrology,
Speaker 1: she got to feel seen and then she had the
Speaker 1: luxury of time to process it, to decide for herself
Speaker 1: what she wanted to take out of it and what
Speaker 1: she wants the rest of her life to be. It's
Speaker 1: a gift. On May seventh, twenty twenty two, exactly a
Speaker 1: month after I got a warning about my father's health
Speaker 1: in the form of reading, he passed away. I won't
Speaker 1: tell you the details yet. I'm just not ready, but
Speaker 1: I will tell you this. That list I made for
Speaker 1: my dad, we hardly got through it, and all that
Speaker 1: time I thought I'd been promised, it slipped through my
Speaker 1: clenched fist. Sitting in Jean's room listening to this talk
Speaker 1: of moons and whether this is the close of a
Speaker 1: chapter or just another middle I am not present. But
Speaker 1: before I can slip too far away to adjust my hand,
Speaker 1: she moves the mic I'm holding just a hair away
Speaker 1: from my face, but that touch, it pulls me back
Speaker 1: into the moment, and then it makes me smile, because
Speaker 1: whatever else I've been through, I'm so lucky to be
Speaker 1: here to get to work on projects. I love to
Speaker 1: meet people like Gene. And as much as my days
Speaker 1: now will be divided between longing for a past that
Speaker 1: I cannot have and divining what the future can be,
Speaker 1: I know she's right when she says things, this is.
Speaker 3: The only moment. This is the only moment. I know
Speaker 3: one the moment will be greater or less that, It's
Speaker 3: just this is the moment.
Speaker 1: Next week, we tackle an unsolved mystery in the Reagan
Speaker 1: White House.
Speaker 5: President for You, continue.
Speaker 7: To allow us drama need to play a part in
Speaker 7: the make up a not at all.
Speaker 1: So did Ronald Reagan use astrology to guide his foreign policy? Also,
Speaker 1: we get distracted watch on Saturday Morning cartoons, We dig
Speaker 1: up some televangelist beef, we learn about Boris Yelson's late
Speaker 1: night cravings, and we find an incredible gem hiding in
Speaker 1: an old Johnny Carson Cliff. It's eighties week here on
Speaker 1: Skyline Drive, so be sure to tune in. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Skyline Drive is a production of
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcast. This show is hosted and written
Speaker 1: by me Mongaish articular. But the show it would be
Speaker 1: a bad idea sitting in a drawer somewhere if it
Speaker 1: were not for all these incredible people. Mary Philip Sandy
Speaker 1: is just the best. She's our supervising producer and I
Speaker 1: don't know how she pulled us off with everything else
Speaker 1: going on. Nietscha Binshahi Senior produced this whole thing and
Speaker 1: brought the delightful Jean Lebeck into our world. Mark Lotto
Speaker 1: is such a mench and story editor who really made
Speaker 1: this whole story incredible. This episode was also produced and
Speaker 1: mixed by the wonderful Anna Rubanova. Thank you so much, Anna,
Speaker 1: with scoring as always from Botany. Check out a SoundCloud
Speaker 1: the insane music in between This courtesy of a Zadi Records,
Speaker 1: Ragender Himanshusuri, Monsoon Ciren, and also Peter Matthew Bauer. This
Speaker 1: song playing right now is off his beautiful new album Flowers.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear all of this music, we
Speaker 1: linked to a mixtape in the show notes. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: the fifties narration so funny, right that was Adam Bozar.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Adam for doing that Rosenberg section
Speaker 1: and making me laugh so hard. Also, the descriptions come
Speaker 1: from astrology dot Com. Jeene's story about falling in love
Speaker 1: is from the Moth. Go download their wonderful show immediately.
Speaker 1: Additional production and research support from the Wonderful through Chevarrao,
Speaker 1: Lizzie Jacobs, who is my wife and my rock, my superstar,
Speaker 1: aunt somanaka the womanaka Bukshi, and my cousin Arjinbucchi who
Speaker 1: helped me out of a giant pickle. This show is
Speaker 1: executive produced from iHeart by my good pals Nikki Utour
Speaker 1: and Katrina Norvel. Also got to thank my partners from Kaleidoscope,
Speaker 1: just the best team Oswolish and Kate Osborne, Costas Linos
Speaker 1: and this super dynamic viny Shori who made the crazy
Speaker 1: Swee Kalajah. My family on Insta ts Vinny My mom
Speaker 1: loved it special. Thanks to all the kiddos who bore
Speaker 1: with us through this production. All my friends at iHeart,
Speaker 1: Shanta and Sara, my family everywhere, my pal Holly Fry
Speaker 1: who read this episode's warning. If you haven't listened to
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history class, you're missing out, Or
Speaker 1: you can check out her excellent podcast Criminalia go down
Speaker 1: her boat immediately. And just one last thank you as
Speaker 1: always to my Amma and my dad, Lalitha Enimation Tickelar,
Speaker 1: who I thank my lucky stars for Thank you all
Speaker 1: for listening. Your friends, it's where you grew up. Oh there,
Speaker 1: not your friends, It's where you grew up.