Episodes
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Actor and producer Johnny Sibilly is known for his roles in the hit show Pose, the reboot of Queer as Folk, and the award-winning HBO show Hacks. As a pre-teen, stumbling across the original Queer as Folk on his family’s TV helped him to understand himself more fully, and ever since Johnny’s carried a commitment to the fullness and mess that real representation requires. Isa Nakazawa sits down with Johnny to talk about how his Virgo sun makes him a powerful study of character, and how his Gemini rising expands his vision beyond binaries.
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Vanessa Benavente currently plays none other than Mary, the mother of Jesus herself, on Netflix’s The Chosen. Vanessa describes the years that led up to this role as “the typical overnight success that takes 15 years.” Working on the show has been more than a career highlight, it’s expanded her views on spirituality. Isa Nakazawa sits down with Vanessa to talk about how her Sagittarius sun has allowed her the flexibility to take bold risks, while her Aries moon propels her to action and passion.
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As an award-winning poet, writer, and performer, Danez Smith’s words are always right on time. This year they released their latest poetry collection BLUFF, calling out the dualities and contradictions alive in all of us, including themself. As one reviewer wrote, they demonstrate that we all contain “protest and police, cowardice and commitment, money and kindness, looting and food drives.” Isa Nakazawa sits down with Danez to talk about how their Leo Sun keeps them grounded in childlike wonder of the world, while their Sagittarius rising drives their endless curiosity.
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DJ, producer, and musician Jahi Sundance’s Cancer Rising allows him to build sonic and emotional worlds for his listeners. His Cancer’s sensitivity balances his more angular earth placements in the house of Gemini, which Isa Nakazawa says could make the birth chart of a “con artist.” But Jahi is anything but as his star map also provides equilibrium. Isa catches up with Jahi at the Blue Note Jazz Festival, and together they discuss how his Capricorn Sun and Virgo Moon have steered him through the business of being a working artist – helping him to build stability where none exists.
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Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is the award-winning author of two books: her nonfiction debut, The Undocumented Americans, and her latest, a novel called Catalina. Catalina follows a Latine senior at Harvard who feels stuck between the opportunities an Ivy League diploma offers and the limiting realities of being undocumented in America. Though Catalina may be loosely autofiction, Karla deftly gives her readers what they think they want, while, as she says, ‘making them regret it.’ Isa Nakazawa sits down with Karla to discuss how her Cancer sun shines through in her ability to write storylines that reflect a more honest and messy set of realities.
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A writer, therapist, and political organizer, Prentis Hemphill moves through the world with the intensity, depth and the tenderness of their Scorpio moon. Host Isa Nakazawa spoke with Prentis shortly after the publication of their deeply moving book “What It Takes to Heal.” The book is full of the learnings from their time as Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network and from their own life-- from childhood to parenthood. With a questing, playful Sagittarius sun and a rhizomatic rebellious Aquarius Rising, Prentis lives out their star map in all of its generative abundance.
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From making history as the first Indian woman to perform at Coachella to revitalizing the Desi-futurist genre across three studio albums, Raveena Aurora blends the intensity and devotion she pours into her career with an intuitive softness only an Aries moon and Cancer rising can stir together. Raveena’s music is deeply connected to her past and future memories, which she nurtures through ancestral channeling, meditation, and a strong bond with her family. The love Raveena Aurora offers her community is characteristic of a Libra sun, ruled by Venus, the planet of love and value. She joins host Isa Nakazawa to discuss visions of her future child, reinventing the pop genre, and the intergenerational wisdom offered by heartaches.
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For our six-month anniversary, we’re bringing you a special edition of Stars and Stars with Isa! The one and only award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa interviews our host, Isa Nakazawa, on her lineage of Aquarians, how she developed her gift for astrology and the risks of astrology. Isa shows us how we are in charge of our own lives and destinies and how we can use astrology to enhance and understand ourselves in a changing world. Isa also reads Maria Hinojosa’s chart. Together they see how Maria’s Virgo Rising and Cancer Sun inform her ability to tell the stories that really matter.
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For the writer, podcaster and social strategist Peyton Dix, diving into the messy corners of the internet feels like second nature. Her work centers on Black and queer stories with, as she says, “the occasional sprinkle of internet mess.” As co-host of the podcast “Lemme Say This” with best-friend Hunter Harris, she takes the pulse of today’s cultural zeitgeist. With a double-dose of earth energy in her Taurus sun and Virgo rising, Peyton opens up to host Isa Nakazawa about her struggle to receive rather than provide for others, and how this showed up in her childhood. Isa also reveals how Peyton’s flirtiness (she has a running joke of being “for the streets”) and almost Leo-like energy is characteristic of her Libra moon.
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Nella Rojas is a Latin Grammy winning singer and songwriter whose music is a fusion of folk sounds from her home country of Venezuela, with flamenco, jazz, and pop. Her powerful voice mesmerizes listeners with its fierce energy. Her latest album, “En Otra Vida,” honors the sounds of Latin American musical giants across ten covers and guides listeners on a journey to the origins of her inspirations and rediscovering the reasons she chose to become a singer. With Mars in Libra, Nella exudes the sociability and charm of an air sign in her personal life. The influence of Aries, from her Scorpio Sun and Rising signs, infuses her stage presence adding to the many dualities informing who she is. Isa Nakazawa sits down with Nella to discuss how her chart guides her with determination and also strives for security, love, and desire.
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Comedian, writer and actor Jes Tom has worked on HBO’s Our Flag Means Death and voice acted on Adult Swim’s Tuca & Bertie. Their solo show, Less Lonely, was featured in the Netflix comedy special Gender Agenda, hosted by Hannah Gadsby. Jes’ work plays with their movement through queer worlds since coming out at 13. With seven placements in Capricorn, Jes tells host Isa Nakazawa about their struggle to differentiate between how their audience sees them and their own internal sense of self. Jes also talks about their romantic life and how listening to their body is bringing new flexibility and vulnerability into their relationships.
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Born in ‘90s Havana, Cuba, Daymé Arocena has been surrounded by music her whole life. The singer, composer and arranger is deeply influenced by the voices of the legendary women in her family. As a Cancer Rising, her music moves fluidly from jazz to latin pop. She defies the exclusion of Black women from the music originated by global Black cultures. Isa Nakazawa sits down with Daymé to discuss her Aquarius sun and moon and how her most recent album Alkemi reflects a season of profound personal transformation including an awakening to her own sensual power and a reclamation of her identity as an Afro-Caribbean woman.
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For Bay Davis, a community organizer, poet, and model from South Central L.A., beauty and justice are deeply intertwined. Her advocacy for those silenced by mass incarceration, addiction, and violence is informed by her own identity as a Black trans woman — who resists the politicization of her being. Her Libra rising and Aquarius Sun balance outward charm with introspective depth, while her Venus in Capricorn reflects the independence and responsibility she felt at an early age. With a moon in Sagittarius, she fulfills her inclination to spiritual exploration through her practice crown priest and the connection she nurtures with her ancestors, erasing the boundaries of what is past and what is to come.
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Stephen Satterfield is an award-winning food writer and sommelier, and you may know him as host of the Netflix docu-series “High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America.” A self-proclaimed origin forager, Stephen starts his journeys with food from a place of pleasure and quickly goes deeper, seeking to understand a cuisine’s cultural roots. This Aries stellium joins host Isa Nakazawa to talk about his relationship to risk and his passion for transmitting stories of reclamation.
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Musician Mireya Ramos is a Latin Grammy winning singer, composer, and founder of Flor de Toloache, an all-female mariachi band. Flor de Toloache went from busking on the New York City subways to reaching a global audience. As an Afro-latina in mariachi, Mireya knows what it means to be a trailblazer in a narrow industry. She talks with host Isa Nakazawa about the work ethic and enduring spirit of her Capricorn Sun and how her Aquarius Moon honors her family’s Mariachi roots while adding her own unique twist.
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In her nearly 25 years in the music industry Kathy Iandoli has become known for showing the humanity of musicians behind the sheen of fame. She’s written some of the most intimate biographies of Black women in hip hop, from Lil’ Kim and Eve to Aaliyah. Kathy’s connection to the spiritual world runs deep and she envisions her work as an offering to the music she’s long admired. In true Pisces fashion, Kathy doesn’t see herself as a critic but a cultural memory keeper. She joins host Isa Nakazawa to discuss her relationship to spirituality and the tender rigor she shows in her music writing.
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Benjamin Earl Turner is a recording artist, actor, writer, educator and multi-hyphenate on shows like Blindspotting, Rap Sh!t and Snowfall. Ben captivates in any medium he chooses as an insatiably curious soul, guided by an exquisite ethics of love. Isa Nakazawa sits down with Ben to discuss how as a Scorpio Sun, Scorpio Moon, and Pisces Rising, he is always seeking ways to subvert stereotypes – whether it’s in his art or his relationships. Isa and Ben reflect on the different forms of water his chart holds and what it means to heal through “maintaining the ugly.”
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Jessica Dore's skepticism of fate is the culmination of her roles as a writer, tarot reader, and licensed social worker blending the secular with the spiritual. In her book Tarot for Change, featured in The New York Times, The Cut, and Vogue, she radically converts tarot from prophecy into a foundation for growth and movement. Host Isa Nakazawa sits down with Jessica to explore how the constant evolution of herself and her life’s work is informed and complicated by the fixed signs dominating her chart as an Aries Sun, Aquarius Moon, and Aquarius Rising, and how these paradoxes are a fundamental part of both tarot and astrology.
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Gaby Moreno is a Grammy-award-winning Guatemalan singer-songwriter and guitarist whose bilingual lyrics take listeners on vivid journeys. She was awarded the Grammy for Best Latin Pop Album in 2023 for X Mi (Vol. 1). Her decades-spanning career is defined by a tenderness for her home of Guatemala, as told through folklore in her songwriting. Her ninth studio LP, Dusk, released earlier this year, is a testament to her evolution and transition, from light to dark and dawn to dusk. The desire for change and exploration found in Gaby’s Sagittarius sun is rounded by its placement in the Fourth House, associated with family and tradition — manifesting in both her attachment to memory and her constant refinement of archiving the ache and triumph of her ancestors through her music. Gaby joins host Isa Nakazawa to discuss how the presence of each element in her chart conjures balance.
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Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a widely celebrated international speaker, teacher, author, and self-described "recovering psychologist.” As a Virgo Sun, Aquarius Moon and Pisces Rising his chart is full of beautiful contradictions—dealing in the details and seeing the big picture, searching for meaning and knowing there is no singular answer, and often existing most comfortably in the liminal. Bayo joins Isa to talk about how grief has traveled alongside him since the death of his father when he was a teenager. This traveling led him away from the Christianity that his Yoruba parents raised him in, and toward other frameworks to think about healing and grief. Bayo’s Pisces rising poetics refuse neat binaries of good/bad light/dark and instead speak in the tongue of the trickster, winking at modernity’s logic and surfacing conversations about neurodivergence, identity and faith.
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