September 14, 2025 • 15 mins
Why do people still believe in horoscopes, even when we know they’re not true? (If this is you, I'm curious, not judging.)
For nearly a century, people have turned to horoscopes for all sorts of advice, and they’re actually more popular now than ever. But how is this still so widespread when it’s been clearly debunked time and again?
Turns out, there are a lot of reasons - and the story is more complicated (and fascinating) than you might think.
In this episode let's get into:
- The ancient history of the zodiac signs
- How astrology and zodiac systems differ across countries
- How science eventually outpaced astrology
- Why zodiac signs got out of alignment - and why no one seemed to care
- How astrology reinvented itself to stay relevant and believable
- The ways astrology sneaks into modern life that you might not even notice
- Why astrology is booming right now
- The psychology behind why we want astrology to work
- How the wording of horoscopes subtly manipulates us
- How horoscope writing has been tailored to target women
- Why you can’t convince astrology fans they’re wrong
- How celestial bodies really do affect us (just not in the way horoscopes claim)
Thanks for joining me on this episode of Because Why?!
Mā te wā - see you next week.
You can get involved with the podcast online in the meantime, of course.
Find our full podcast via the website here: https://www.nowthatwhatsicall.com
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
There is something that determines your love life, your
bank account, whether you will ever become an astronaut, or
even how grumpy you're going to be tomorrow.
And it's not your choices or your genes or the economy.
It's the exact minute you were born and what planets were
hanging around. Yes, welcome to an episode about
horoscopes. Don't run away.
Honestly, you may not believe inthis stuff.
(00:21):
I mean, cars on the table, I certainly don't.
But it's all very interesting. Welcome back to Because Why.
I'm Brianne West, and my favorite word is why, which is
why I'm asking today's question because why do people still
believe in horoscopes even when we know that they're not true?
For nearly a century, people have turned to horoscopes for
all sorts of advice, and they'reactually more popular now than
(00:44):
they ever were before, which is clearly evidenced by TikTok
because I swear half of my TikTok algorithm is freaking
horoscopes. Before we get started and
therefore anybody asks, I am a Taurus.
So according to the closest thing I could find to a
consensus, this apparently meansthat I am grounded and practical
and stable, That I'm materialistic and I love routine
(01:05):
and hate change and I can hear my friends infano laughing right
now. I have never been described with
any of those words, certainly not stable or practical, and
routines legitimately make me want to die.
Seriously, thinking about how for the rest of my life I have
to get up, have a shower, get dressed, clean my teeth every
day of the rest of my life. Honestly, that gives me a little
(01:27):
bit of an existential crisis. I am quite stubborn, though, so
I guess there's one trait that it's got right.
But if we go back way, way back about 4000 years ago to
Mesopotamia, which is of course now the Middle East, most of
Iraq, parts of Iran, Syria and Turkey, priests and scribes
watch the skies because their lives depended on it.
(01:47):
Also, they thought flooding, planting, harvesting, all of it
hinged on knowing when things would happen.
And they recorded everything that did happen.
So if Mars was glowing red, it was a sign that war was coming.
If there was an eclipse, it might have been trouble for the
king. And they carved these
observations into clay tablets, creating massive records like
the Enuma Anu Enlil, which I'm sure that I'm saying wrong, but
(02:09):
I can't find the proper pronunciation anywhere.
That contained about 7000 omens.And before you say, yeah, well
there weren't really known for their critical thing you make
then these guys, they invented the wheel.
They invented time as we used ittoday with the 60 seconds per
minute. They invented maths.
These guys were not shallow level thinkers.
The Babylonians divided the sky into 12 sections which the
(02:31):
Greeks later named and linked toconsolations as we get Aries,
Taurus, Gemini and so on from. They also gave us the word
Zodiac which means circle of animals.
By the 2nd century CE Ptolemy spelled with AP but you don't
say it. He codified this into his book
The Tetrabiblos, which I'm sure is a riveting read, and that
shaped astrology for the following centuries.
The Romans expanded further uponit, spreading astrology across
(02:53):
their empire, and of course after that fell, Islamic
scholars preserved it and expanded upon it further.
Astrology and astronomy. Never get them confused because
you're really annoying astronomer.
They were studied side by side in places like Baghdad, next to
things that you might consider more sciency, like maths and
medicine. And even joining the
Renaissance, scientists like Johannes Kepler and Galileo
(03:14):
Galile cast horoscopes while still making groundbreaking
astronomical discoveries. Was it because they believed in
it? Maybe.
Or was it because it made lots of money?
Who knows? Astrology was big everywhere in
China. Astrology is also based on
animals, and of course, each year has an animal.
It's currently Year of the Snake, and do with that what you
will, but it is usually regardedas auspicious.
(03:37):
In India, astrology was integrated really deeply into
spiritual and social life and still influences important life
events today. The Maya in Mesoamerica also had
astrological calendars, and thatgutted everything from
agriculture to politics to rituals.
It was everywhere. But eventually, of course,
science outpaced astrology. Telescopes improved, we got to
grips with maths, and standardized observations pushed
(04:00):
astronomy ahead because of course astrology didn't have a
great foundation of actual science.
The discovery of Earth's axial precision, which is the tilt on
our axis. That actually meant that Zodiac
signs didn't match up anymore because they had shifted out of
alignment with the constellations they were linked
to by about a month, but astrologers just ignored this
(04:22):
discrepancy. When science really got involved
and started studying astrology, that's when it really started to
fall apart because repeated controlled research failed to
find any link between Zodiac signs and personality traits or
life outcomes. There was a landmark study in
1985 that was published in Nature which showed that
astrologers predictions were actually no better than chance.
And yet it's because we all knowthat just because something is
(04:44):
disproven doesn't mean it goes away.
To quote Startup Bros, astrologypivoted and it was actually
helped by the royal family because in 1930 a British
astrologer by the name of RH Naylor was asked by the Sunday
Express to create a horoscope for Princess Margaret who had
just been born. Naylor promised that she would
have an eventful life and that something dramatic would happen
around his 7th year. Readers found that absolutely
(05:07):
fascinating and of course that made the newspaper keeps
inviting him back and soon he had a weekly column called What
the Stars Foretell. That lead to the trend you see
today of most newspapers having some version of a horoscope.
Of course, nowadays those don't really have any link to the
ancient astrological scholarly guidelines, but a more sort of a
popular culture vibe. Astrology even found its way
(05:29):
into high level politics. Nancy Reagan is famous for
consulting astrologer Joan Quigley, who helped to shape
President Reagan's daily schedule after his assassination
attempt in 1981. Apparently her guidance
influenced the timing of speeches and travel and
alarmingly important political decisions.
And now, of course, it has seeped pretty deep into a lot of
(05:50):
life, even when you may not see it.
It's particularly big in mainstream celebrity pop
culture. A lot of movie stars, musicians
influence. They actually openly use
astrology as part of their personal brand.
Lifestyle magazines will often pair star science with fashion
and diets and dating advice. If you're a Cancer, don't wear
trousers today. Those sorts of things.
(06:11):
And every generation has reinvented astrology for its
life. Baby boomers cheeks daily
horoscopes and newspapers over the morning coffee.
Whereas millennials turned astrology into Tumblr memes and
and turn it into that particulartype of humor that us
millennials have. Gen.
Z with their truly unhinged sense of humor made it into
skits on TikTok. There are BuzzFeed quizzes and
(06:34):
who doesn't love finding out what type of cheese sandwich
they are? We have gamified something that
was sacred to ancient cultures into something that a lot of
people take seriously and a lot of people use as entertainment.
I think the Babylonians would bepretty horrified.
Now, as I said, astrology is actually more popular than ever
before with mainstream people, and that's because astrology
thrives during uncertain times. And has there ever been a more
(06:57):
uncertain time, belief and interest spike during things
like pandemics or or the period before the next World war, which
is what it sometimes feels like at the moment when the world
feels chaotic. We want stability, we want
predictability, we want patternsand meaning, even if those
patents come from somewhere that's not particularly solid.
History has shown that during the Great Depression, World War
(07:18):
One and Two stories on astrologydid the best.
And I find the psychology behindastrology's persistent appeal
fascinating because deep down, the vast majority of us know
that there is no real basis for this, right?
And yet so many of us still readour horoscopes.
We read into them and think, oh,is that likely?
Is that something that could happen?
Is that something to look forward to?
(07:38):
Oh, no, I better not do that tomorrow.
Even though normally we're pretty logical thinkers, or so
we think. And one major factor behind this
is called the Barnum Effect, which is a psychological
phenomenon that we've known about since the 1940s.
Psychologist Bertram Forer gave his students personality tests
and then handed them back supposedly personalized
analysis. In reality, they all got the
same thing, but all of those students rated those analysis as
(08:00):
highly accurate. And this is how horoscopes win,
right? If they use broad statements,
like you enjoy social situationsbut you sometimes prefer
solitude, or you can be confident, but you'll have
moments of doubt, Yeah, obviously that's called the
human experience. There is a highly relatable
statement that everybody experiences, yet they somehow
feel deeply personal. It's a very effective, somewhat
(08:23):
manipulative trick. They also create a sense of
order and identity that a lot ofpeople like to identify with.
A lot of people like to be categorized.
If we go back to the popularity of those BuzzFeed quizzes, how
many people did quizzes on what kind of fruit they were or what
Spice Girl they were? Categorization, sense of
identity, it's all really important to our brains.
Then you can use phrases like I'm such a Virgo, which acts as
(08:44):
quick shorthand for being a painin the ass.
Sorry, I mean, tidy. Research shows that people
strongly identify with their Zodiac traits even when they're
aware that those traits are generic.
So we know, and we still don't care.
And there's a bit of a self identity trigger in there,
right? Even when we know that the
horoscope content is nonsense, it still triggers us to think
about ourselves, think about habits and relationships and
(09:06):
lifestyle choices. And arguably a little self
reflection is not a bad thing. Finally, the way they're written
and linguistic choices matter. I talk a lot about how the
language we use matters, and that even when you don't think
you're being manipulated by the way something is worded, you
almost certainly are. This is a perfect example.
Multiple studies in psychology and communication have found
that when you use second person pronouns like you or emotionally
(09:30):
charged but universal language like you often feel
misunderstood or change is coming that enhances a message's
perceived relevance. So those very specific language
strategies make it feel more accurate and most importantly,
emotionally significant. The tools used to make
horoscopes feel relevant are actually deeply rooted in real
(09:50):
psychological scientific principles.
But unfortunately it doesn't mean that strategy itself is.
Another interesting part of astrology is the gender dynamic,
right? So historically, astrology
wasn't gendered. It was scholarly, it was
considered important, it was political, it was broadly
cultural. Nowadays, not so much.
In the 20th century, it found its way into women's magazines
(10:12):
and into lifestyle publications.Marketers became very
specifically targeting it towards women, and they embedded
stereotypical feminine interests.
They put it into stereotypical feminine spaces, and now a lot
of the criticism associated withastrology sort of lines up with
the mocking of interests associated primarily with women.
Obviously genuine skepticism of astrology is entirely fair and
(10:36):
warranted, but a lot of it comesacross as sort of sneering at
hysterical dumb girl stuff. I always think it's so
interesting. You look at the differences
between the way people talk about like say, Taylor Swift
fans and the hysteria associatedthere, which is primarily
teenage girls, and then you lookat the wording around sports
fans, which are primarily male. One group is made to look
(10:56):
hysterical and ridiculous, the other group is made to look
passionate. It's still very interesting, but
that's another episode. If you've tried to argue with
someone who believes in astrology, you'll probably have
noticed it's a waste of your time, a little bit like arguing
with the climate confused. If you aggressively try and
debunk it, you probably sound joyless and condescending and
boring. You're told you've got no sense
(11:17):
of imagination or of course, that old favorite, you're a
sheep. And psychological research on
cognitive dissonance shows that when people have really deeply
held beliefs, especially when it's tied to something as
important as yourself identity, you're actually more likely to
make them believe it more. You can throw facts like the
tilt of the Earth's axes having totally thrown off the whole
theory. You can throw that at them and
(11:39):
they'll actually believe it more.
All that would happen is they will feel personally judged and
end up disliking you. And you know what?
As astrology doesn't really do any harm, let them believe what
they want. It's not like arguing with the
climate change confused, who areof course genuinely slowing any
climate action. It's one of those things that if
people want to believe in it, it's good for them.
Of course, the stars and planetsdo actually affect us, which is
(11:59):
probably not in the way that astrology claims.
There is actual measurable science behind celestial bodies
and how they influence our lives.
A circadian rhythm. So that's the body's internal
clock that's obviously tied to the sun's 24 hour cycle.
And when you mess with that rhythm, you regret it.
That's jet lag for you. And those sorts of things have
real proven impacts on your health, your mood, even your
(12:20):
brain function, which is an areaof increasing research.
The seasons, of course, play a huge role in our lives.
This one sounds a bit more woo woo, but does appear to be true
from numerous studies that have shown that the time of year
actually influences health outcomes like susceptibility to
asthma and allergies, mental health conditions like seasonal
(12:40):
affective disorder. It's not about your Zodiac sign.
It's not that Capricorns are more likely to be depressed.
It's that being born in that period of time is tied to
sunlight and seasonal changes that affect your biology.
Fascinating. Then there's the moon.
Obviously that has quite an impact on the planet.
It's tides, it's coral reef breeding, it's so much it
affects our waterways and and multitude of ways.
(13:02):
So no one's arguing that the stuff out there doesn't have
some impact. It's just not necessarily going
to tell you if you're going to have a particularly fortunate
Tuesday. Then there is a more anecdotal
stuff like the gardening that follows the phases of the moon,
or the idea that people are moreinclined to act strangely around
the full moon, which is something my mum is absolutely
adamant is true. Now, planting by lunar cycles is
a pretty traditional practice that has been followed by
(13:23):
farmers for generations, and thebelief is that planting in a
certain phase leads to a better crop.
Scientifically, the evidence is pretty mixed.
Most research indicates there islittle to no measurable impact,
but it's persisted through generations.
There are hardcore believers. Maybe that's because it's a
comforting routine. Maybe it's because it connects
people with natural cycles. Maybe people have genuinely
(13:47):
noticed a difference. Again, there's no harm.
As for the full moon's effect onhuman behaviour, it's another
interesting one because there iscountless anecdotes from
emergency workers, from teachers, bartenders, police.
People act differently during a full moon.
Research hasn't really found enough evidence to support this
either, so multiple studies havetried and generally found no
(14:07):
link between how crazy we're acting and the moon's cycle.
If there is an effect, it's subtle enough that pretty
rigorous studies haven't yet defined it.
It's all very interesting. One of my favorite papers at
university is the History and Philosophy of Science.
And it talks a lot about where these things began and the
history behind them and why people believed them.
But it also talks about how whenmore scientific, robust
(14:28):
processes developed, how as someof these beliefs started to fall
to the wayside. Because of course, if there's no
evidence to support something, aproper scientist, a true
skeptic, which we should all be,starts to drop some of those
opinions. But you know what?
For those who believe in astrology, go for it.
You know, it doesn't do any harm.
It's a fun enough hobby. Please don't pay people
thousands of dollars to predict some future based on it.
(14:50):
But it's one of those pseudosciences that's just not
really causing issues. So because why are horoscopes
still a thing? Well, it's much nicer to blame
your eccentricities on being a Virgo or your temper on being a
Scorpio rather than considering that actually it might just be
you. Hopefully that was a little bit
more interesting than you anticipated.
Next week I'm going to be talking about superfoods and how
(15:11):
they're not really that super, but maybe something else is.
Ma Teba, see you next week.
There is something that determines your love life, your
bank account, whether you will ever become an astronaut, or
even how grumpy you're going to be tomorrow.
And it's not your choices or your genes or the economy.
It's the exact minute you were born and what planets were
hanging around. Yes, welcome to an episode about
horoscopes. Don't run away.
Honestly, you may not believe inthis stuff.
(00:21):
I mean, cars on the table, I certainly don't.
But it's all very interesting. Welcome back to Because Why.
I'm Brianne West, and my favorite word is why, which is
why I'm asking today's question because why do people still
believe in horoscopes even when we know that they're not true?
For nearly a century, people have turned to horoscopes for
all sorts of advice, and they'reactually more popular now than
(00:44):
they ever were before, which is clearly evidenced by TikTok
because I swear half of my TikTok algorithm is freaking
horoscopes. Before we get started and
therefore anybody asks, I am a Taurus.
So according to the closest thing I could find to a
consensus, this apparently meansthat I am grounded and practical
and stable, That I'm materialistic and I love routine
(01:05):
and hate change and I can hear my friends infano laughing right
now. I have never been described with
any of those words, certainly not stable or practical, and
routines legitimately make me want to die.
Seriously, thinking about how for the rest of my life I have
to get up, have a shower, get dressed, clean my teeth every
day of the rest of my life. Honestly, that gives me a little
(01:27):
bit of an existential crisis. I am quite stubborn, though, so
I guess there's one trait that it's got right.
But if we go back way, way back about 4000 years ago to
Mesopotamia, which is of course now the Middle East, most of
Iraq, parts of Iran, Syria and Turkey, priests and scribes
watch the skies because their lives depended on it.
(01:47):
Also, they thought flooding, planting, harvesting, all of it
hinged on knowing when things would happen.
And they recorded everything that did happen.
So if Mars was glowing red, it was a sign that war was coming.
If there was an eclipse, it might have been trouble for the
king. And they carved these
observations into clay tablets, creating massive records like
the Enuma Anu Enlil, which I'm sure that I'm saying wrong, but
(02:09):
I can't find the proper pronunciation anywhere.
That contained about 7000 omens.And before you say, yeah, well
there weren't really known for their critical thing you make
then these guys, they invented the wheel.
They invented time as we used ittoday with the 60 seconds per
minute. They invented maths.
These guys were not shallow level thinkers.
The Babylonians divided the sky into 12 sections which the
(02:31):
Greeks later named and linked toconsolations as we get Aries,
Taurus, Gemini and so on from. They also gave us the word
Zodiac which means circle of animals.
By the 2nd century CE Ptolemy spelled with AP but you don't
say it. He codified this into his book
The Tetrabiblos, which I'm sure is a riveting read, and that
shaped astrology for the following centuries.
The Romans expanded further uponit, spreading astrology across
(02:53):
their empire, and of course after that fell, Islamic
scholars preserved it and expanded upon it further.
Astrology and astronomy. Never get them confused because
you're really annoying astronomer.
They were studied side by side in places like Baghdad, next to
things that you might consider more sciency, like maths and
medicine. And even joining the
Renaissance, scientists like Johannes Kepler and Galileo
(03:14):
Galile cast horoscopes while still making groundbreaking
astronomical discoveries. Was it because they believed in
it? Maybe.
Or was it because it made lots of money?
Who knows? Astrology was big everywhere in
China. Astrology is also based on
animals, and of course, each year has an animal.
It's currently Year of the Snake, and do with that what you
will, but it is usually regardedas auspicious.
(03:37):
In India, astrology was integrated really deeply into
spiritual and social life and still influences important life
events today. The Maya in Mesoamerica also had
astrological calendars, and thatgutted everything from
agriculture to politics to rituals.
It was everywhere. But eventually, of course,
science outpaced astrology. Telescopes improved, we got to
grips with maths, and standardized observations pushed
(04:00):
astronomy ahead because of course astrology didn't have a
great foundation of actual science.
The discovery of Earth's axial precision, which is the tilt on
our axis. That actually meant that Zodiac
signs didn't match up anymore because they had shifted out of
alignment with the constellations they were linked
to by about a month, but astrologers just ignored this
(04:22):
discrepancy. When science really got involved
and started studying astrology, that's when it really started to
fall apart because repeated controlled research failed to
find any link between Zodiac signs and personality traits or
life outcomes. There was a landmark study in
1985 that was published in Nature which showed that
astrologers predictions were actually no better than chance.
And yet it's because we all knowthat just because something is
(04:44):
disproven doesn't mean it goes away.
To quote Startup Bros, astrologypivoted and it was actually
helped by the royal family because in 1930 a British
astrologer by the name of RH Naylor was asked by the Sunday
Express to create a horoscope for Princess Margaret who had
just been born. Naylor promised that she would
have an eventful life and that something dramatic would happen
around his 7th year. Readers found that absolutely
(05:07):
fascinating and of course that made the newspaper keeps
inviting him back and soon he had a weekly column called What
the Stars Foretell. That lead to the trend you see
today of most newspapers having some version of a horoscope.
Of course, nowadays those don't really have any link to the
ancient astrological scholarly guidelines, but a more sort of a
popular culture vibe. Astrology even found its way
(05:29):
into high level politics. Nancy Reagan is famous for
consulting astrologer Joan Quigley, who helped to shape
President Reagan's daily schedule after his assassination
attempt in 1981. Apparently her guidance
influenced the timing of speeches and travel and
alarmingly important political decisions.
And now, of course, it has seeped pretty deep into a lot of
(05:50):
life, even when you may not see it.
It's particularly big in mainstream celebrity pop
culture. A lot of movie stars, musicians
influence. They actually openly use
astrology as part of their personal brand.
Lifestyle magazines will often pair star science with fashion
and diets and dating advice. If you're a Cancer, don't wear
trousers today. Those sorts of things.
(06:11):
And every generation has reinvented astrology for its
life. Baby boomers cheeks daily
horoscopes and newspapers over the morning coffee.
Whereas millennials turned astrology into Tumblr memes and
and turn it into that particulartype of humor that us
millennials have. Gen.
Z with their truly unhinged sense of humor made it into
skits on TikTok. There are BuzzFeed quizzes and
(06:34):
who doesn't love finding out what type of cheese sandwich
they are? We have gamified something that
was sacred to ancient cultures into something that a lot of
people take seriously and a lot of people use as entertainment.
I think the Babylonians would bepretty horrified.
Now, as I said, astrology is actually more popular than ever
before with mainstream people, and that's because astrology
thrives during uncertain times. And has there ever been a more
(06:57):
uncertain time, belief and interest spike during things
like pandemics or or the period before the next World war, which
is what it sometimes feels like at the moment when the world
feels chaotic. We want stability, we want
predictability, we want patternsand meaning, even if those
patents come from somewhere that's not particularly solid.
History has shown that during the Great Depression, World War
(07:18):
One and Two stories on astrologydid the best.
And I find the psychology behindastrology's persistent appeal
fascinating because deep down, the vast majority of us know
that there is no real basis for this, right?
And yet so many of us still readour horoscopes.
We read into them and think, oh,is that likely?
Is that something that could happen?
Is that something to look forward to?
(07:38):
Oh, no, I better not do that tomorrow.
Even though normally we're pretty logical thinkers, or so
we think. And one major factor behind this
is called the Barnum Effect, which is a psychological
phenomenon that we've known about since the 1940s.
Psychologist Bertram Forer gave his students personality tests
and then handed them back supposedly personalized
analysis. In reality, they all got the
same thing, but all of those students rated those analysis as
(08:00):
highly accurate. And this is how horoscopes win,
right? If they use broad statements,
like you enjoy social situationsbut you sometimes prefer
solitude, or you can be confident, but you'll have
moments of doubt, Yeah, obviously that's called the
human experience. There is a highly relatable
statement that everybody experiences, yet they somehow
feel deeply personal. It's a very effective, somewhat
(08:23):
manipulative trick. They also create a sense of
order and identity that a lot ofpeople like to identify with.
A lot of people like to be categorized.
If we go back to the popularity of those BuzzFeed quizzes, how
many people did quizzes on what kind of fruit they were or what
Spice Girl they were? Categorization, sense of
identity, it's all really important to our brains.
Then you can use phrases like I'm such a Virgo, which acts as
(08:44):
quick shorthand for being a painin the ass.
Sorry, I mean, tidy. Research shows that people
strongly identify with their Zodiac traits even when they're
aware that those traits are generic.
So we know, and we still don't care.
And there's a bit of a self identity trigger in there,
right? Even when we know that the
horoscope content is nonsense, it still triggers us to think
about ourselves, think about habits and relationships and
(09:06):
lifestyle choices. And arguably a little self
reflection is not a bad thing. Finally, the way they're written
and linguistic choices matter. I talk a lot about how the
language we use matters, and that even when you don't think
you're being manipulated by the way something is worded, you
almost certainly are. This is a perfect example.
Multiple studies in psychology and communication have found
that when you use second person pronouns like you or emotionally
(09:30):
charged but universal language like you often feel
misunderstood or change is coming that enhances a message's
perceived relevance. So those very specific language
strategies make it feel more accurate and most importantly,
emotionally significant. The tools used to make
horoscopes feel relevant are actually deeply rooted in real
(09:50):
psychological scientific principles.
But unfortunately it doesn't mean that strategy itself is.
Another interesting part of astrology is the gender dynamic,
right? So historically, astrology
wasn't gendered. It was scholarly, it was
considered important, it was political, it was broadly
cultural. Nowadays, not so much.
In the 20th century, it found its way into women's magazines
(10:12):
and into lifestyle publications.Marketers became very
specifically targeting it towards women, and they embedded
stereotypical feminine interests.
They put it into stereotypical feminine spaces, and now a lot
of the criticism associated withastrology sort of lines up with
the mocking of interests associated primarily with women.
Obviously genuine skepticism of astrology is entirely fair and
(10:36):
warranted, but a lot of it comesacross as sort of sneering at
hysterical dumb girl stuff. I always think it's so
interesting. You look at the differences
between the way people talk about like say, Taylor Swift
fans and the hysteria associatedthere, which is primarily
teenage girls, and then you lookat the wording around sports
fans, which are primarily male. One group is made to look
(10:56):
hysterical and ridiculous, the other group is made to look
passionate. It's still very interesting, but
that's another episode. If you've tried to argue with
someone who believes in astrology, you'll probably have
noticed it's a waste of your time, a little bit like arguing
with the climate confused. If you aggressively try and
debunk it, you probably sound joyless and condescending and
boring. You're told you've got no sense
(11:17):
of imagination or of course, that old favorite, you're a
sheep. And psychological research on
cognitive dissonance shows that when people have really deeply
held beliefs, especially when it's tied to something as
important as yourself identity, you're actually more likely to
make them believe it more. You can throw facts like the
tilt of the Earth's axes having totally thrown off the whole
theory. You can throw that at them and
(11:39):
they'll actually believe it more.
All that would happen is they will feel personally judged and
end up disliking you. And you know what?
As astrology doesn't really do any harm, let them believe what
they want. It's not like arguing with the
climate change confused, who areof course genuinely slowing any
climate action. It's one of those things that if
people want to believe in it, it's good for them.
Of course, the stars and planetsdo actually affect us, which is
(11:59):
probably not in the way that astrology claims.
There is actual measurable science behind celestial bodies
and how they influence our lives.
A circadian rhythm. So that's the body's internal
clock that's obviously tied to the sun's 24 hour cycle.
And when you mess with that rhythm, you regret it.
That's jet lag for you. And those sorts of things have
real proven impacts on your health, your mood, even your
(12:20):
brain function, which is an areaof increasing research.
The seasons, of course, play a huge role in our lives.
This one sounds a bit more woo woo, but does appear to be true
from numerous studies that have shown that the time of year
actually influences health outcomes like susceptibility to
asthma and allergies, mental health conditions like seasonal
(12:40):
affective disorder. It's not about your Zodiac sign.
It's not that Capricorns are more likely to be depressed.
It's that being born in that period of time is tied to
sunlight and seasonal changes that affect your biology.
Fascinating. Then there's the moon.
Obviously that has quite an impact on the planet.
It's tides, it's coral reef breeding, it's so much it
affects our waterways and and multitude of ways.
(13:02):
So no one's arguing that the stuff out there doesn't have
some impact. It's just not necessarily going
to tell you if you're going to have a particularly fortunate
Tuesday. Then there is a more anecdotal
stuff like the gardening that follows the phases of the moon,
or the idea that people are moreinclined to act strangely around
the full moon, which is something my mum is absolutely
adamant is true. Now, planting by lunar cycles is
a pretty traditional practice that has been followed by
(13:23):
farmers for generations, and thebelief is that planting in a
certain phase leads to a better crop.
Scientifically, the evidence is pretty mixed.
Most research indicates there islittle to no measurable impact,
but it's persisted through generations.
There are hardcore believers. Maybe that's because it's a
comforting routine. Maybe it's because it connects
people with natural cycles. Maybe people have genuinely
(13:47):
noticed a difference. Again, there's no harm.
As for the full moon's effect onhuman behaviour, it's another
interesting one because there iscountless anecdotes from
emergency workers, from teachers, bartenders, police.
People act differently during a full moon.
Research hasn't really found enough evidence to support this
either, so multiple studies havetried and generally found no
(14:07):
link between how crazy we're acting and the moon's cycle.
If there is an effect, it's subtle enough that pretty
rigorous studies haven't yet defined it.
It's all very interesting. One of my favorite papers at
university is the History and Philosophy of Science.
And it talks a lot about where these things began and the
history behind them and why people believed them.
But it also talks about how whenmore scientific, robust
(14:28):
processes developed, how as someof these beliefs started to fall
to the wayside. Because of course, if there's no
evidence to support something, aproper scientist, a true
skeptic, which we should all be,starts to drop some of those
opinions. But you know what?
For those who believe in astrology, go for it.
You know, it doesn't do any harm.
It's a fun enough hobby. Please don't pay people
thousands of dollars to predict some future based on it.
(14:50):
But it's one of those pseudosciences that's just not
really causing issues. So because why are horoscopes
still a thing? Well, it's much nicer to blame
your eccentricities on being a Virgo or your temper on being a
Scorpio rather than considering that actually it might just be
you. Hopefully that was a little bit
more interesting than you anticipated.
Next week I'm going to be talking about superfoods and how
(15:11):
they're not really that super, but maybe something else is.
Ma Teba, see you next week.
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