The astrology of holidays: Christmas Edition!   The holiday season sparks a feeling of collective cheer, yet it also brings familial tensions, financial stress, and expectations—chief among them, gift-giving. Christmas, more than other winter holidays, has become a celebration rooted in showing love through material exchanges. Even those who do not observe it often feel festive. While religious origins exist, Christmas now thrives on the idea that giving someone a gift demonstrates care and affection.

Beyond Christmas, other holidays, like Hanukkah, also revolve around gift-giving traditions. The suggestion is that holidays might have an astrological pattern influencing their origins. Unspoken rules govern how we celebrate—such as where to place the tree, how to wrap presents, and how much to spend. These cultural norms, never explicitly stated, guide our behavior and gift choices.

In essence, Christmas is about communal goodwill expressed through material gestures, entwined with subtle, invisible social codes that dictate how we participate. It combines joy, expectation, social bonding, financial outlay, and a sense of obligation into a single, widely accepted ritual of holiday cheer.

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Growing up, credit cards were always a thing I feared. It was a way to get in trouble with money. And indeed, like many (I am sure), I got into some credit card debt early on in life. Recently, however, I have been introduced to the world of credit card points and financial literacy more generally. Now, its a whole new world!

To woo new customers, credit card companies have to offer better and better perks like bonus points, airport lounges, upgrades to first class and business class, etc. The result of this is a system that - If you work it right - means that you can get a lot of free stuff. That said, its complicated!

Yet, lucky for me, my friend Darren has become a credit card points wizard. In this episode, I sit down and talk with Darren about how he got into the world of points, what kinds of things he has gotten from points and what you should be thinking about before starting to dive into this world. 

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A few years ago, the woman who taught me much of what I would come to know about astrology told me about her theory on the astrology of death. The skepic in me was, well, skeptical. Yet, what she ended up theorizing made more sense than I expected. In short, she said, where past astrologers had failed, they failed to take in the context of others around the person they were trying to predict. I thought it was a very smart idea. 

Recently, in a bit of random insight and astrological experimentation, I took that idea and applied it to one of my newest favorite curiosities - bitcoin. What I found was, in my opinion, absolutely fasciniting. 

In this episode, I delve into the nuanced art of predicting death through the stars, advocating for a theory that, while intriguing in its own right, shines even brighter when applied to forecasting the future of phenomena like Bitcoin. The secret sauce? Shifting the astrological lens from Bitcoin's chart to that of its staunch advocates, a strategy that promises a richer, more accurate glimpse into its destiny. 

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We had a plan! Then, in true pisces fashion, we threw the plan out the window. 

While I had come in thinking we were going to discuss racial consciousness, our pre-recorded talk went down the road of "what the f*** is going on with the astrological weather right now?!" And so we went with it. (Racial consciousness episode coming soon!)

As two people who think of themselves as in some ways guided by our intuitions, Ayisha and I discuss the challenges we both have recently felt in being able to find the muse, so to speak. What happens when our intuitions fail us? How do we respond when it becomes obvious that we are going to need to work a little harder and be a little more organized with our thoughts and works? 

In short, what happens when Saturn asks us Pisces to get our shit together - just a little bit - so we can make sure everything works well and is clear for everybody. 

This episode works well as a companion to the last episode, "Ep. 5: Lying and Serious Religion" where I take seriously the ways in which we construct our visions, illusions and lies. Take a listen to that first and you may enjoy this episode just a bit more.

Welcome to The Power of Ideas. 

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Ayisha's Podcast: Black Girl from Eugene Ayisha's Website: https://blackgirlfromeugene.org/

Why do we lie? We all lie. So, perhaps a better question is - how do we lie? This question then leads to a different, and even more important one - WHAT IS A LIE? 

In this episode, I tackle these questions through considering what Saturn, the planet of seriousness, moving through Pisces, the sign of vision, means. In other words, what happens when seriousness meets vision. The possibilities are more vast than you may realize. One of the most obvious ones may be religion. But what is a religion?

I delve into film and tv, family and the necessity of lying to those we love, drugs and alcohol, sobriety, atheism, sports and even a careful contemplation on the limitations of medicine and health care. In the end, I even consider my own potential limits - what if astrology is just my own illusion?

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Is there such a thing as the "biracial agenda?" Shortly after my previous conversation with Ayisha, I heard a clip from Van Lathan about what he called the biracial agenda and "biracial supremacy." It was a provocative claim instigated by Michael Porter Jr's comment about jealousy. I thought this clip would be a good one to continue the conversation from last episode about the one drop rule and half black as "just black."

We finish by discussing a form of racism known as tacit racism which I contextualize through the discussion of a chapter of the book called "fractured reflections." This idea relates to how high status black men do not often get their high status identities validated. Ayisha discusses how this is perhaps even more true for black women. Tune in.

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Ayishas Website: https://blackgirlfromeugene.org/

Ayisha's podcast: CLICK ME

Artificial intelligence is changing. More speicifcally, it is rapidly improving. And it may change the world, potentially faster than we can imagine. Over the last year, Chat GPT has made this clearer than ever and abstract conversations about it took on new urgency. In this episode, I talk with my own personal expert, and good friend, Trevor Auldridge. Trevor is a PhD candidate at UC, Santa Barbara where he studies rurality and social mobility. Yet, recently, he became fascinated with Chat GPT and has since become incredibly competent with it and has begun incorporating it into his life and work. 

No one I know understands Chat GPT as well as Trevor and so I wanted to discuss how he became familiar with it, how he uses it and what he thinks others should know about using it.

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In this episode, I want to explore some themes that I expect to come up over the next year and beyond. Astrologically speaking, 2024 marks the beginning of a twenty year period that relates to technology, artificial intelligence and social movements. Yet, an underlying theme that I think will be embedded within conversations about these things to a far more heightened degree is morality. In our everyday speech, I imagine "the greater good" may become a far more common term. And even if it is not, the theme will be. In fact, I think I already see it emerging in places obvious and not-so-obvious. So, in this episode, I discuss in a kind of free associative way about what I think we can all expect over the next year, and potentially the next twenty years. It will be a helpful episode to come back to as I continue the podcast and discuss all sorts of different ideas for the next however-long.

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In this episode, I return with a framework that I hope will accomplish two things. One, help people understand the overly complicated and often misunderstood question of  "what is sociology?" And, second, use it as a framework to help listen to the podcast. 

The sociological Imagination is a concept and framework put forward by sociological C. Wright Mills in which he says that the best way to understand societies is through looking at the intersection of biography and history, or put differently, personal troubles and public issues. 

Here, I make the case that whatever a sociologist tells you sociolgy "is," they all, in fact, use the same framework - the sociological method. With that in mind, it can help us all make better sense of the world, and also help you better understand how to listen to this podcast and what I am seeking to do with the concepts, conversations and ideas in it.

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