Speaker 1: Warning. The following minisote includes discussion of broad to sources,
Speaker 1: fortune telling, Larry King, the Flintstones, and America's first licensed astrologer.
Speaker 1: It's also conveniently packaged in a list format for listeners
Speaker 1: who don't like their information presented in numerical order. Please
Speaker 1: take care for anyone who listens. You know, Skyline Drive
Speaker 1: isn't that political, but there's sometimes a person just has
Speaker 1: to stand up for what is right. And during the
Speaker 1: course of our reporting, it occurred to us here that
Speaker 1: there aren't any famous astrologers honored on us post stitch stamps.
Speaker 1: There are, however, brought to sources which were famously considered
Speaker 1: real when I was a kid, then were declared not
Speaker 1: real when my cousins were kids, and then maybe they're
Speaker 1: really good. I really can't keep track. Also, there are
Speaker 1: stamps with Confederate generals on them, which is confusing because
Speaker 1: why exactly are we honoring a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: try to overthrow the government, mostly because they wanted to
Speaker 1: keep slaves. But maybe most confusing of all, we have
Speaker 1: the Pony Express on stamps. This was a failed startup.
Speaker 1: It barely lasted a year and a half and it
Speaker 1: was never part of the US postal system, so it's
Speaker 1: kind of like Google issuing a Google Doodle to honor
Speaker 1: Alta Vista or Ask Jeeves or some other long dead competitor.
Speaker 1: So unless you think astrology is worse than fake dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: racist generals, and complete business failures, I think it's okay
Speaker 1: to put an astrologer on a stamp. And if we're
Speaker 1: gonna pick just one astrologer, I nominate Maxine Taylor from
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and I heart podcasts. I'm mongish, fatigular, welcome to Skyline,
Speaker 1: dry many sod one. Three reasons we should put Maxine
Speaker 1: Taylor on a stamp already. To be honest, Maxine Taylor
Speaker 1: shouldn't have had time for me. She spends her day's writing,
Speaker 1: collaborating on books, and taping predictions for YouTube channel, and
Speaker 1: also filling the extra space in between with zoom consultations
Speaker 1: for clients. But I think what she heard I was
Speaker 1: from Brooklyn and visiting my parents in Georgia, she just
Speaker 1: couldn't resist. Maxine happens to be tethered to those two
Speaker 1: places too. She was born and raised in Brooklyn and
Speaker 1: has lived most of her adult life not too far
Speaker 1: from where my folks live. And I'm so glad she
Speaker 1: made time for me, because after just an hour with her,
Speaker 1: I realized how much she's done for the art and
Speaker 1: practice of astrology here in the United States. One Maxine
Speaker 1: made it legal to be an astrologer. I said, listen,
Speaker 1: I want to legalize astrology and at some point become
Speaker 1: an astrologer. Back then, you practiced to orology in hushed whispers,
Speaker 1: because we're in the Bible Belt, for goodness sake. In
Speaker 1: nine nine, soon after Maxine had moved from Brooklyn, Atlanta,
Speaker 1: she realized that you couldn't get a business license for
Speaker 1: astrology in Georgia. It wasn't just Georgia, it was the
Speaker 1: entire country. One of the distinctions that seems to be
Speaker 1: made is between fortune telling and astrology, and so what
Speaker 1: is it that doesn't sit together with those two ideas.
Speaker 1: Oh well, first of all, there's a negative connotation to
Speaker 1: fortune telling. It's it's like a gypsy, it's like a
Speaker 1: rip off, et cetera. It's not I think it's a
Speaker 1: term used to denigrade. But if you're able to put
Speaker 1: people's mind at ease, put their hearts at ease, answer
Speaker 1: their questions, and if you come from love, this is
Speaker 1: a mission. It's a it's a labor of love. And
Speaker 1: I think a word fortune telling is insulting. Maxine had
Speaker 1: a vision that she was meant to bring astrology to
Speaker 1: the forefront. It came to her in a dream that
Speaker 1: one of her purposes here on earth was to make
Speaker 1: people see the worth and astrology and to legitimize it.
Speaker 1: So she took her case to the Cobb County Commissioners.
Speaker 1: The only problem was no one would give her an appointment,
Speaker 1: So for weeks she waited in the lobby without anyone
Speaker 1: calling her name, and finally she saw an open door.
Speaker 1: So she sneaks into the commissioner's office and politely asked
Speaker 1: him herself, and to her surprise, he invited her to
Speaker 1: a commission meeting the following week, just to plead her
Speaker 1: case in front of a panel. So Maxine, who's just
Speaker 1: in her twenties right now, is super nervous about this.
Speaker 1: I was scared to death because it was very imposing.
Speaker 1: The commissioners were sitting on a dais a pie like judges,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know how am I going to convince
Speaker 1: these people. Also, the mood in the room is not great.
Speaker 1: The Marietta Daily Journal was there and they covered the
Speaker 1: event and they wrote, quote, it had been a long
Speaker 1: Tuesday afternoon full of sewer angry and water angry and
Speaker 1: highway angry people, and the clock on the walls showed
Speaker 1: nearly five pm when the girl walked in. Anyway, she
Speaker 1: finally gets return and she starts by trying to show
Speaker 1: how astrology is prominent in the Bible, but she soon
Speaker 1: realizes that this tack isn't really working well, so she
Speaker 1: changes her strategy. So what I did was I started
Speaker 1: talking about each sign, and I asked each commissioner what
Speaker 1: their sign was, and I described them and introduced humor,
Speaker 1: and the whole nine yards long story short and Maxine's
Speaker 1: charm quickly wins them over. She explains how the charts
Speaker 1: take real work, like it takes her nearly twelve hours
Speaker 1: of study before she presents one to a client, and
Speaker 1: she explains how she doesn't want to do this as
Speaker 1: a hobby out of her house, how she wants a
Speaker 1: proper office and a business license to go with it,
Speaker 1: and one of the commissioners get so intrigued that he
Speaker 1: asked her if she could predict the best days for
Speaker 1: going hog hunting. In the end, the panel was so
Speaker 1: tickled by the way she sussed out their personalities and
Speaker 1: connected the stars to their life stories that they decided
Speaker 1: to give her a license and they only charge her
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars. I was able to buy the very
Speaker 1: first license, uh for astrology, not entertainment, not miscellaneous, not
Speaker 1: fortune telling, and so what I did was historical. Two
Speaker 1: Maxine put astrology on TV. Now. One of the things
Speaker 1: I strongly believe is that pop culture has the ability
Speaker 1: to sway all culture. So take how we sleep. For example,
Speaker 1: middle class couples in America used to sleep in separate
Speaker 1: twin beds, the way Lucy and Daisy did until sitcoms
Speaker 1: of all types from Assie and Harriet, I thought you
Speaker 1: went to bed, well I did, but to the Flintstones,
Speaker 1: to the Brady Bond, Marsha Marsha Marsha started depicting couple
Speaker 1: sharing a bed, and this actually affected American bedrooms and
Speaker 1: buying habits. But that isn't the only case. Like when
Speaker 1: sixteen and Pregnant aired on MTV, the teenage birth rate
Speaker 1: went down by five point seven percent. Joe Biden claimed
Speaker 1: will Engrace did more to pave the way to shift
Speaker 1: America's opinion on gay marriage than nearly anything else. So
Speaker 1: if any one thing could make astrology more acceptable to Americans,
Speaker 1: it's got to be an astrologer on CNN. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me how you ended up on the networks? In
Speaker 1: the earlier UM, CNN was an experiment, was like the
Speaker 1: United States. It was a grand experiment. At the time.
Speaker 1: CNN is just a startup and the channel is throwing
Speaker 1: ideas at the wall, trying to figure out what will stick.
Speaker 1: And the truth is, Maxine sticks. Maxine is kind of
Speaker 1: built for this. Not only she charming and fun and bubbly,
Speaker 1: but she's also beautiful and composed. In college, Maxine had
Speaker 1: been a regular and beauty pageants and a finalist from
Speaker 1: Miss University of Florida, And before she switched to doing
Speaker 1: astrology full time, she'd been an elementary school teacher, so
Speaker 1: she kind of knows how to wrangle outside personalities. In fact,
Speaker 1: when I was on Larry King Show, he was a
Speaker 1: gentleman and he was wonderful, but they felt they had
Speaker 1: to present a disclaimer. When I was on, well, I
Speaker 1: tend to rebel and you might have figured that one out.
Speaker 1: UM and I really would get irritated with them. And
Speaker 1: this was live TV, and I realized I love live
Speaker 1: TV because whatever you say, you can't take back, and
Speaker 1: in the way Maxine always does. It wasn't long before
Speaker 1: she started winning people over. What happened was my predictions
Speaker 1: who are accurate, and so they stopped criticizing, and a
Speaker 1: couple of them asked me to do their charts. She
Speaker 1: won't reveal who, but big anchors on the network who
Speaker 1: would kind of mock astrology or who would publicly distance
Speaker 1: themselves from it were regularly asking her to do their charts.
Speaker 1: I loved being on that team. Um and I did
Speaker 1: political predictions, but at that time I was totally non political.
Speaker 1: I didn't even watch the news. It was too negative.
Speaker 1: Maxine was such a joy that the station still brings
Speaker 1: her back to comment on astrology scandals and occasionally to
Speaker 1: make sense of the news. What in the world's going on?
Speaker 1: Oh honey. Every couple of years, some Yahoo rediscovers the
Speaker 1: fact that there are two zodiacs. It's that simple, Really, yes,
Speaker 1: it's that simple. Three she convinced an entire country that
Speaker 1: things would be okay. I got a call in something
Speaker 1: and it was from a reporter who also worked for CNN.
Speaker 1: I couldn't understand what he was saying, because then we
Speaker 1: had and I don't know if we still do what
Speaker 1: was called coaxial cable. It was undersea and there was
Speaker 1: an echo, was like talking into a tin can. And
Speaker 1: he said, um, I would like you to do the
Speaker 1: chart of Hungary. This soon after communism fell in Poland
Speaker 1: and a pro democracy revolution was spreading across Eastern Europe.
Speaker 1: And as protests were breaking out in Hungary, a CNN
Speaker 1: reporter based in Budapest reaches out and I laughed because
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, well, when was this country born? So I said, well,
Speaker 1: if you can get me their birthtime, because you need
Speaker 1: an exact birth time to cast a chart, and the month,
Speaker 1: day and year, I'll do the chart. And he said okay,
Speaker 1: and I said goodbye and kind of chuckled, thinking I'll
Speaker 1: never hear from this guy again. Well, a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks later he was back, and he was so excited.
Speaker 1: He said, we were born today. October the Republic of
Speaker 1: Hungary officially came into being, ending communism there. The Berlin
Speaker 1: Wall would actually fall two weeks later. It was really
Speaker 1: an exciting period in history he gave me the moment
Speaker 1: it began and said, okay, will you do the chart?
Speaker 1: And I did the chart for the entire country. A
Speaker 1: country is an entity, a living, breathing entity. Um, and
Speaker 1: we interpret that chart a little bit differently than we
Speaker 1: do a birth chart, because we're dealing with not just
Speaker 1: say short trips, but transportation, communication, the press, etcetera. Maxine's
Speaker 1: reading was pretty thorough. It addressed different areas of how
Speaker 1: Hungry would evolve, and it not only aired on Radio Budapest,
Speaker 1: but it was printed in newspapers across the country. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there was a rebellion going on. People were fighting for principles.
Speaker 1: Hungary wasn't free, and uh so it was quite an event,
Speaker 1: quite an event. I considered that the highest honor, and
Speaker 1: that was what I realized I wanted to do. Two
Speaker 1: Hug the world. Maxie Taylor broke all sorts of areas
Speaker 1: for astrologers in the US. She created space in this
Speaker 1: world for professional astrology. She brought it into the news cycle,
Speaker 1: and she put the citizens of Budapest at ease by
Speaker 1: getting the entire country or reading. Also, she's a total sweetheart.
Speaker 1: I love humanity and I love the diversity people who
Speaker 1: are so bigoted. It's like, can't you see we are
Speaker 1: all one. We come in different colored packages, different shapes,
Speaker 1: different sizes, different beliefs, and when you touch base with
Speaker 1: somebody on that level, to me, that's heaven. I love
Speaker 1: how astrology provides a way for us to connect and
Speaker 1: how it lets us see people not just in their
Speaker 1: instagram perfect lives, but to appreciate them for all their complexity.
Speaker 1: In two thousand twenty three, we're getting new postage stamps
Speaker 1: to honor snow globes, sailboats, school buses, and pinatas. And
Speaker 1: while I'm very much for those things, astrology figures into
Speaker 1: a out of our daily lives. From the Reagan episode,
Speaker 1: we know it's shaped our world and country, and in
Speaker 1: a strange way, it gives a lot of us comfort
Speaker 1: and purpose. Stamps are a symbol of what we value
Speaker 1: and what we want to celebrate. So don't you think
Speaker 1: between all those sailboats and the snow globes and the pinatas,
Speaker 1: there might be a little room for an astrologer too,
Speaker 1: I like to think. So that's it for this week's
Speaker 1: minisode of Skylind Drive Special Thanks to my team here,
Speaker 1: Mary Nitra mark Anna and Drew for cabbing this together
Speaker 1: over the holidays, and Botany as always for the soundtrack.
Speaker 1: Also thank you so much to the lovely Maxim Taylor.
Speaker 1: To see her predictions for America or to book a
Speaker 1: consult with America's first license astrologer, just visit maxim Taylor
Speaker 1: dot com. Also a big thank you to my good
Speaker 1: pal Ben Boland for doing this episodes morning. Ben used
Speaker 1: to sit across from me at How Stuff Works. He's
Speaker 1: the co host of Ridiculous History and Stuff they Don't
Speaker 1: Want You To Know, to excellent programs, and he just
Speaker 1: put out a phenomenal new book by the same name,
Speaker 1: Stuff they Don't Want You to Know. Go pick one
Speaker 1: up immediately. We'll be back with more full episodes very
Speaker 1: very soon. I know you have so many shows to
Speaker 1: choose from, but I want to thank you from the
Speaker 1: bottom of my heart for spending your time with us.
Speaker 1: See you soon.