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[female narrator] Thousands of years ago,
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when our ancestors looked up
at the night sky,
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they saw a field of lights.
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[crickets chirping]
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They didn't know what they were,
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but they noticed
something amazing about them.
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Their movements were predictable,
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and they had clear effects.
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The seasons, the tides, the harvests.
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It seemed logical that these lights
shaped everything else in our lives.
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Almost every ancient culture in the world
invented astrology.
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And we still love astrology.
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People are drawn
to all kinds of mysticism.
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But only astrology gets a regular column
in major newspapers.
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In India, astrologers have regular shows
on major news networks.
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[speaking in Hindi]
Cancer the crab: Be vigilant.
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An important job might be put on hold.
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[speaking in Hindi] Pisces:
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Your day is looking good.
Good luck is on your side.
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[speaking in Hindi] The auspicious time
for Bhopal is 5:26 to about 7:07.
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[narrator] In Taiwan,
where the Chinese zodiac is popular,
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lots of women plan their births
for lucky years.
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2010 was the year of the tiger.
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Not a lucky year.
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2012 was the year of the dragon.
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That's lucky.
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Even if we know it's not scientific,
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why do so many people
across so many cultures
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still look for meaning in the stars?
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[man, old recording] Many people believe
that the positions of planets
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and constellations affect life.
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[man #2] We know much about the Universe,
yet this knowledge is only the beginning.
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[man #3] Nowhere do mystics and cultists
find such an enthusiastic following.
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Your love life is not very satisfactory,
is it?
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[reporter] Mr. President,
will you continue to allow astrology
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to play a part in the makeup
of your daily schedule, sir?
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[news anchor] What they are trying
to say is the fault, dear Brutus,
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is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
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[narrator] Today, in the West,
being into astrology
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usually means reading your horoscope.
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That's a personal forecast
based on your zodiac sign.
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Horoscopes themselves
are like a gateway drug.
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Obviously, they're not going to be
incredibly specific
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because I'm writing one horoscope
for 1/12 of the population.
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[narrator] The idea of 12 Zodiac signs
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goes back more than 2,000 years...
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to ancient Babylon or modern-day Iraq.
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They noticed there were roughly
12 new moons over the course of a year.
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So they divided the path of the Sun
into 12,
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each one marked by a constellation.
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Mapping symbols onto the stars,
like a bull
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or a scorpion.
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helped keep track of them year to year.
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That's how they came up
with your Sun sign.
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Originally, it was the constellation
the Sun was in when you were born.
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But your Sun sign
was just one of your signs.
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And that's mapped out
on what astrologers call a birth chart.
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[Nicholas] The birth chart
is a snapshot of the sky
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the moment you took your first breath.
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[narrator] So there's your Sun sign,
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but also your Moon sign
and your rising sign,
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which is whether the Sun was rising
or setting when you were born.
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Your chart is divided into 12 houses
for different areas of your life.
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And they include
the position of the planets
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and the degrees between them.
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Your Sun sign mattered, of course.
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But it also mattered if, for example,
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you're born with Mars, the planet of war,
in your house of romance.
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Charts like this are ancient
and have been used to forecast the fates
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of notable figures throughout history.
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In a world where we thought everything
in the universe orbited us,
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astronomy was mapping out the stars
and planets,
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and astrology was interpreting
their influence over us.
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It was very common for people
to combine these studies.
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In fact, there's no reason to think
they were in any way different.
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[narrator] So, naturally,
it was an astronomer
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who spread this version
of astrology around the world.
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Not just any astronomer, Claudius Ptolemy.
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He was a big deal.
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In second century Egypt,
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he wrote one of the most important
astronomy books in history,
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the first to accurately map
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the speeds and rotation of the planets
around Earth.
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[Richards] Which was the way
people calculated calendars
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for the next 1,500 years.
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It was very accurate.
It was beautifully done.
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[narrator] Ptolemy also wrote
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one of the most influential
astrology books of all time,
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called Tetrabiblos.
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He's certainly not dividing the world
into science and not science.
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Ptolemy's world is one
in which astrology is common sense.
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[narrator] Tetrabiblos help spread
Greek astrology across the Middle East
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and over to India.
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One of the few places it didn't take off
was China.
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They already had their own popular
zodiac system based on your birth year.
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That system
goes back thousands of years, too.
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By the 16th century, royalty across Europe
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had long employed astrologers
to make predictions.
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Shakespeare referenced astrology
in nearly every ill-fated plot.
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And his words are still with us.
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In King Lear, eclipses of the Sun and Moon
foreshadow death.
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Romeo and Juliet are star-crossed.
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In other words, doomed.
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[gunshot]
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In Julius Caesar, Cassius tells Brutus...
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-The fault...
-Dear Brutus...
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Is not in our stars...
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But in ourselves that we are underlings.
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[narrator] But around this time, two ideas
were starting to revolutionize the world.
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And astrology's place in it.
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For all of history, humans had assumed
we were the center of the Universe.
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Then, scientists like Galileo Galilei
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helped establish
that we actually orbit the Sun.
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[Richards] This astrological notion
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that everything is connected
to human beings
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becomes disrupted.
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[narrator] Astrology as a legitimate study
didn't go away overnight.
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Even Galileo would cast horoscopes
for his family
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or for wealthy clients to pay the bills.
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But then came the real knockout punch.
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In the 17th century,
we made radical scientific discoveries.
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Gravity. The spectrum of light.
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That blood moved through things
called veins.
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And we invented telescopes
that allowed us to discover new moons. And we started developing a system
for determining what was true.
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You made a hypothesis, you tested it,
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and you tried to replicate the results.
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If something couldn't be tested
by the scientific method,
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it wasn't science.
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Studying the planets and stars...
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that passed the test.
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But predicting
how they guided world events did not.
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Astrology and astronomy
were forever split.
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In the West, astrology fell out of fashion
for hundreds of years
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until the invention
of the horoscope column.
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[train whooshing]
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-[jazz music playing]
-In 1930, a London newspaper
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published a column
by the astrologer R. H. Naylor
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to mark the birth of Princess Margaret.
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He wrote that the princess would grow up
to have a "scorn of restraint,"
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which was reportedly true.
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He also predicted that when the princess
was around seven years old,
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there would be events
of tremendous importance
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to the royal family.
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Amazingly, just before
Margaret turned seven,
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her uncle abdicated the throne
to her father.
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[Edward VIII]
I have found it impossible
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to carry the heavy burden
of responsibility.
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[narrator] Making her older sister
next in line.
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That would be Queen Elizabeth.
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After that uncanny prediction,
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the newspaper gave Naylor
a regular column.
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But, instead of writing
about royalty and world events,
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he started casting horoscopes
for ordinary readers
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based on just their Sun signs.
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The idea caught on with other papers too.
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[news anchor] Hardly any newspaper
dare go to press nowadays
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without the horoscope feature.
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[narrator] Another new trend
around this time
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gave astrology a big boost.
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[news anchor] He is placed on a couch
and urged to let his mind roam freely.
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[narrator] Psychoanalysis.
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One of the founders of psychoanalysis
was Carl Jung.
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We are not of today or of yesterday,
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we are of an immense age.
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[narrator] Jung popularized the idea
of personality types.
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And his ideas inspired personality tests
like Myers-Briggs.
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Which, even today,
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some major corporations
give their employees.
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Jung was also a passionate student
of astrology.
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As he wrote in his correspondence
with Sigmund Freud,
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"My evenings are taken up very largely
with astrology.
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I dare say
we shall one day discover in astrology
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a good deal of knowledge
that has been intuitively projected
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into the heavens."
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And then, in the late 1960s,
we entered into a new age.
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You might have heard of it.
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[narrator] Also known
as the New Age Movement,
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The 5th Dimension sang
that love was in the stars.
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And they weren't the only ones.
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[narrator] No one popularized astrology
in the age of Aquarius
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like Linda Goodman
in her 1968 book, Sun Signs.
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It was the first astrology book to make
the New York Times best seller list.
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In total, her books sold
more than 30 million copies
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and were translated into 15 languages.
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The book promised to help readers
recognize people's hidden dreams,
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secret hopes, and true characters,
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by understanding other people's Sun signs,
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writing that Sun signs
will literally change your life.
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The book informed
what we all recognize today
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as our zodiac sign's personality.
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[Nicholas] She was able to relay
so much incredible information.
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I think that further popularized
the idea of Sun signs.
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Astrology is rapidly gaining popularity
in the United States.
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More than 180 prominent scientists
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have decided to speak out on the subject.
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A group of scientists and scholars
sent out letters today
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asking all the daily newspapers to print a warning
with their astrology columns.
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It reads...
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Former White House Chief of Staff
Donald Reagan
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writes in his forthcoming book
that President and Mrs. Reagan
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sometimes consult astrologers
when making difficult decisions.
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[narrator] In the '80s,
you could call a hotline
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to get some cosmic guidance.
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We all wonder
what our day has in store for us.
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What our future holds.
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Go on blind dates or job interviews
on a Thursday.
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That's the luckiest day of the week.
It's ruled by Jupiter.
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If you call 1-9-7-6-1-9-7-6 you get me,
Darren Martinez, the Cosmic Muffin.
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Think of it as a divinatory art. It's definitely more art than science.
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[narrator] For example, our Sun signs
aren't even accurate anymore.
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In the more than 2,000 years
since the zodiac signs were created,
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the Earth has tilted.
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So your Sun sign has shifted,
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and there's technically a 13th sign
called Ophiuchus.
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Ask astrologers
about the scientific arguments,
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say, at the world's
largest astrology conference,
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and you get a lot of shrugs.
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I don't care.
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I don't have anything to prove to anybody.
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I use tools when they work
and when they stop working, I don't.
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The scientific community is really just...
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looking at it from only their perspective.
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Maybe astrology doesn't fit
into that modern definition of science.
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That doesn't mean it doesn't have
a lot of value to people's lives.
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[narrator] Studies show that's true.
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That people
who feel less in control of their lives
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are more drawn to astrology
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and see themselves more
in their horoscopes.
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And that the positive outlook
you can get from reading a horoscope
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can even make you preform better
on cognitive and creativity tests.
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And that's because something doesn't need
to be real to have real effects.
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It's called the placebo effect.
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That belief in something can be enough.
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And that is proven by science.
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Some placebo studies have even shown
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when a patient knows
they're taking a fake pill
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instead of the real thing,
it can still work.
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A lot of people believe their horoscopes
because of another psychological effect.
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The reason why people see themselves
so easily in their horoscopes
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is because the person wants
to see themselves in it.
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The person becomes an accomplice
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in the project of fitting themselves
into the horoscope.
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This is called the Barnum effect,
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named after the famous circus showman
P.T. Barnum.
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It's based on a 1949 study
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in which 39 college students
were given personality profiles
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and were told that they were based
on a psychological exam.
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But all the profiles
were actually identical.
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And described generic traits like,
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"your sexual adjustment
has presented problems for you."
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All but one of the students said
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they mostly agreed
that the traits described them.
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The Barnum effect
suggests that, basically,
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everyone sees themselves
in any horoscope presented to them.
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These descriptions in the horoscopes
tend to be very ambiguous.
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And they tend to be more or less positive.
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[narrator] Like advising an Aquarius that
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"holding on to negative emotions
will cloud your intuition."
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Or that a Taurus
"shouldn't get caught up in the details
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because you need to focus
on the bigger picture."
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And whatever a person wants
out of a horoscope column,
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they can probably find it...
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online.
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I'm the founder of astrologyzone.com.
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Susan Miller started writing horoscopes
online in 1995.
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[Miller] They wanted a short column
for women every day.
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And I said no, no, no.
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I'm going to write long and detailed
so people will keep coming back.
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[narrator] And millions of people
around the world do.
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They're so devoted
that if Miller publishes late,
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which she often does,
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her fans revolt online.
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I think the internet is really
what made astrology
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much more popular.
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I think people always want to know
about the future.
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That's embedded in our DNA.
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The problem is... [laughs]
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that it's so democratic that anybody
can say they're an astrologer now.
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The internet has exploded
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with so many astrologies, astrologers.
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Has made it much more accessible.
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They can be all talk. That's the thing
with Virgos sometimes.
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Uranus has moved into Taurus...
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The Sun in Gemini is your identity...
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[narrator] From 2016 to 2017,
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views for astrology videos on YouTube
increased by 62%.
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On Facebook, they increased by 116%.
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And on Twitter there was a nearly
300% increase in engagement.
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You guys are now at a place
where you can manifest.
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The struggles have been cleared.
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The universe is waiting on you.
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[Vyse] I think
that the great appeal of astrology,
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even in the age of science,
even among educated people,
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comes from the fact
that it offers something
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that you can't get easily in other places.
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[narrator] For one,
it can offer a type of spirituality
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for people who don't get
that from traditional religion.
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Research shows Americans
are less religious,
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but more spiritual than ever.
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And so astrology can fit that bill.
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It's personal because you get
your personal horoscope and chart.
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And in that way,
it may do something different
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than a traditional religion
where you are one of a large flock.
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But I think another aspect of divinatory
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really applies to the idea
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of reaching for or understanding
the divine.
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Whether we think of those as gods, as God,
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as the grand mystery.
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Anything that brings us out of...
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what we think of
as our human frail selves.
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People reach out to me about
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times to get married,
about breakups, about cancer,
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about losing a job,
about losing hope and faith in life,
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about coming up
against the most extreme pain
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they've ever been in
and not knowing how to hold it.
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[Miller] You have to have faith...
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that the bad things that happen to you
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can have good outcomes.
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The more I study astrology,
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the more I realize
the universe is on your side.
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[narrator] And astrology appeals
to the desire to find
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a tiny place in a vast universe.
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Even if we're not the center of it.
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The constellations, which before were drawn on the inside of a sphere...
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that was rotating around the Earth
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now all of a sudden become
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stars which are scattered
all over the place
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in a huge, infinite Universe.
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And so to see Orion's Belt
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is to project ourselves
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onto a reality
which is really quite chaotic.
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Orion is not out there.