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Speaker 1: Warning. The following episode contains discussion of Ronald Reagan, pro wrestlers, Ronald Reagan talking to pro wrestlers Johnny Carson, and a disastrous late night pizza party. Also astrology sensitive listeners. Keep your tones handy.
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Speaker 2: Sometimes I got games.
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Speaker 3: Sometimes I'm mad shots, Sometimes I'm mad lame. Sometimes I'm mad flying. Sometimes I'm so flying the Bay. I'm Hella fly. Sometimes I'll get fraud and it'll be televised. Okay, we're gonna start this out with another slideshow, and this time it's about hul Cogan. This is hul Cogan's Rock and wrestling. As a kid, I knew everyone was supposed to like Hulkogan, and sometimes I even pretended to like Hulkogan, even though I was not a fan, But I often watched his cartoons on Saturday mornings because they were on. This is the only rock and wrestling episode I remember.
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Speaker 4: The President wants to speak with you.
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Speaker 3: Yes, sir, your country is depending on you, Holster. Don't let us down in it. The President like this cartoon. Ronald Reagan asked Hulkgan to go to space to rescue astronauts before a shuttle explodes. The cartoon is seared in my brain because it aired not long after the Challenger disaster.
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Speaker 2: Well, what was it like being wrestler in space?
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Speaker 3: I tell you, bang, it was more awesome than a combat song. I also remember thinking, why do they think Hulkogan can probably open a cargo bay door? Because I mean, I know, oh he's strong. But even in cartoon form, this seemed dumb. And I was seven at the time. But maybe the makers of Rock and Wrestling thought they were doing something to help calm kids nerves.
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Speaker 5: And I want to say something to the school children of America. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen.
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Speaker 3: That's the actual Ronald Gray again. The day after the Challenger exploded, our first grade teacher wheeled a TV into our classroom so the President could talk to us directly.
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Speaker 5: It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance of expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the faint hearted, belongs to the brave.
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Speaker 3: The future belongs to the brave. Those words embody America right and to preserve hope in the face of something so devastating, so visible, anyway, what does any of this have to do with us? Well, the Challenger wasn't the only time Reagan was thinking about the intersection of space and the future. That's right, I'm talking about astrology, and it turns out in the nineteen eighties there was a full on astrology scandal in the Reagan White House.
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Speaker 6: I don't mean to offend anyone who does but believe in it, or.
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Speaker 5: Who engage in Do you believe in it?
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Speaker 3: From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts, I'm Mongay's shitigither, Welcome to Skyline Drive chapter one. When God's powerful word came.
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Speaker 5: Let's start with the part that is the most controversial. A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, But the facts and the evidence tell me it is.
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Speaker 3: Not. Thing about Ronald Reagan is that he was unknowable, like frustratingly unknowable. When the famed biographer Edmund Morris got three million dollars to do an official biography, he spent fourteen years interviewing and shadowing Reagan, but when he turned in his book, he switched it from a biography to fiction, and when he was asked why he did that with his manuscript on sixty Minutes, Morris said, he was truly one of the strangest men who ever lived. Nobody around him understood him. I every person I interviewed, almost without exception, eventually would say, you know, I could never really figure him out. Think about that. Fourteen years of access and Morris couldn't figure out how to accurately write about the man and what he stood for. And maybe that's why my mom and dad had such different opinions of Reagan. To my dad, a newly minted American, Reagan was proof that anyone could make it in America, an actor becoming president. I mean, that's the optimism of an immigrant, someone who genuinely believed his son's potential was limitless in this new land. But to my mom, who was not a fan of his policies, reagan supposed interest in astrology made her like him more because it made him more like us. And Reagan's interest in astrology was just this thing I always knew about growing up, but as I grew older, I began to question it, like it kind of seemed too outlandish to be true. So I asked my pal Mary if she could find anything more concrete about this whole story. Actually, before we dive into the controversa, I just wanted to ask you. I feel really lucky to have you in this project, but I'm curious why you did it because you don't believe in astrology.
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Speaker 4: Well, you're very persuasive.
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Speaker 3: I guess We're sitting in a studio in Midtown and I'm laughing because it's true. Mary was not convinced when I pitched this tour.
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Speaker 4: But I can. I can learn about things without believing in them. I figure it's an opportunity to go down a path I would not ordinarily go down.
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Speaker 3: Do you know what your sign is?
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Speaker 4: I found out I'm a cancer. I thought I was a Gemini. Oh, really, turns out I'm a cancer.
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Speaker 3: So I roped you into this thing with astrology, and then I said, hey, I really want to look into Ronald Reagan.
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Speaker 4: You did, and I like Ronald Reagan about as much as I like atrology. I grew up being terrified of Ronald Reagan. I remember being like three years old and seeing him on the TV and being genuinely frightened. My parents were dragging me to defense spending protests during the eighties, so I had a very different experience. So it didn't seem to really add up my understanding of Ronald Reagan and my understanding of astrology. That didn't really make any sense. And so that was why I figured it would be really interesting to find out what actually happened.
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Speaker 3: So, like, what was the big sort of controversy that made everyone suddenly start talking about it? So this is really juicy.
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Speaker 4: There's this guy Don Reagan who had been chief of staff for Ronald Reagan, and he had been the chairman of Merrill Lynch for a long time. He was Treasury Secretary. He was like the architect of Reaganomics. And then he became chief of staff and he left the White House. He got kicked out, and he basically was thrown out in disgrace from his job. And so he turned around and wrote a tell all book in nineteen eighty eight, called for the record, and apparently he got a million dollar advance, which was huge money at the.
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Speaker 3: Time, million dollars.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, but he made this huge revelation that while he was in the White House, Nancy Reagan was asking him to change the president's schedule based on astrological advice from a friend, quote quote. He even said he had to keep a color coded calendar of like good days, auspicious days, bad days, if he days for the president's travel, his public appeerings. All of this and the press went crazy.
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Speaker 2: The Reagan's and their stars astrologically speaking, Did Donald Reagan get his ex bosses Capricorn?
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Speaker 3: That is goat? Or is it all a load of Taurus?
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Speaker 1: If President Richard Nixon?
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Speaker 3: Towards the end, the claim was I am not a crook with Ronald Reagan. Last week it was more like I am not a nut. Is that like a gift from heaven for a cartoon as a story like that? Yeah, it is.
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Speaker 2: I consider that it's just too good, too good to be true.
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Speaker 4: There's a Reagan library. They have archives, and I thought, well, maybe there's something in there about astrology. Turns out they actually have a finding aid labeled astrology. Oh really yeah, yeah, because they have files that are, you know, touch on the scandal. I asked them if I could see them, and they said that they would have to take some time to take all the staples out, but then they could scan them and send them to me. And a lot of it was just newspaper clippings, you know, cartoons when it came out. Yeah, And there were transcripts of press conferences where the White House spokespeople were just getting slammed. All the reporters wanted to talk about was astrology. What is the deal? You know, are they just deciding everything based on this? You know, what can you tell us? And they didn't want to answer. But what I thought was really fascinating was they had saved all of this correspondence from the religious right, basically evangelical Christians who had helped elect Ronald Reagan. Evangelical Christians do not like astrology. This is May twenty seventh, nineteen eighty eight, at the height of the controversy from Don Reagan's book. This radio preacher named George Otis, who was a friend of the Reagans, wrote directly to the White House. Dear mister President, you've been a great chief of state. You will recall how in October nineteen seventy God spoke directly to you through myself there in your Sacramento home. When God's powerful word came you were to become president of the United States. This may have been the most remarkable visitation from the Lord of any president in history. You were hand packed for leadership in one of our nation's most pivotal hours. Wow, no pressure, right, And so he was saying, I beg you to renounce the practice of astrology in the White House. To make a statement now would be an act of courage and pleasing to God. But if you fail to do so, you legitimize astrology and the occult and set our nation on a collision course with God.
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Speaker 3: I don't know why, but I always sort of bristle when I hear things like this. There is such hypocrisy on what sort of magical thinking we're okay with as a country. Like if a televangelist goes into tongues and prophesizes that Reagan has to be the next president because God told him, that is totally okay. Western miracles don't bother the base, But if an astrologer makes a prediction that's blasphemy. It just feels silly that a president should be lauded for believing in one of those ideas but threatened for believing in the other. It reminds me of this feeling I had as a kid, totally the opposite of my dad's optimism about who was allowed to be president. The fact that I was born brown and Hindu, that I had a name that was unpronounceable. It seemingly crippled my chances from the start. I mean, the Indian kids who were ten years older than me and wanted to be politicians, the Bobby Jindles and Nikki Haley's, they always seemed to convert to Christianity and change their names along the way. You know, I wish I could tell you I had this son to epiphany.
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Speaker 5: There was no moment on that road to Damascus was that easy for me.
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Speaker 7: Christianity spoke to me at a time where I needed a connection, and so no political pressure should never change a person.
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Speaker 3: I am my parents' daughter. Maybe that's why I'm so interested in Ronald Reagan, because even though he's seen as this ultimate American, this American mascot for those who.
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Speaker 5: Have abandoned the whole, we'll restore hope and we'll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again.
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Speaker 3: By dabbling in astrology, he got away with something that doesn't feel American at all.
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Speaker 4: So right after Don Reagan's book came out and broke this story of astrology. In the White House, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, who was then Vice President, were walking to a press conference in the Rose Garden.
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Speaker 3: Look, the President, will you continue to allow astrology to play a part in the makeup of old ChEls.
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Speaker 7: Kock it off man?
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Speaker 5: You asked for it? I can't because I never did.
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Speaker 3: This is not the man I watched in first grade reminding us that science can be heartbreak but is always progress. I mean, this man is struggling. Like, listen to this from May seventeen, nineteen eighty eight.
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Speaker 6: This was all once again smoke and mirrors, and we made no decisions on it, and we're not binding our lives to this. And I don't mean to offend anyone who does but believe in it.
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Speaker 3: So right there, he takes a moment to make sure he's not offending anyone who believes in astrology, and then a reporter pounces.
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Speaker 6: I don't guide my life by it, but I won't answer the question the other way because I don't know enough about it to say is there something to it or.
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Speaker 3: Belief is hard to talk about. It's confusing. Sometimes belief is just the collective sway of these tiny tendrils of influence. Like it's not some hard and fast tenets. I mean you hear it in Reagan's words, right, Like talking about belief is so hard that one of the most gifted politicians stumbles through his answer and he twists his words into some things so convoluted it barely has meaning anymore. Except Reagan is not being honest here, because astrology had definitely played a role in his daily and his political life. And you don't have to take our word for it, you can take his straight from his nineteen sixty five autobiography. So let's turn back the clocks and investigate right after this break about the hearty got get you chum head chapter two, what would Nancy do? The strange thing is, for decades, Ron and Nancy's interest in astrology was an open secret, or at least it had been. Astrology was this California thing, and it was also a showbiz thing, and the Reagans and their friends they enjoyed rubbing shoulders with people like La Times astrologer Carol Ryder because, like People Magazine put it, writer was the confidante of the rich and famous, who saw him less as a backdoor Suthsayer than as social equal. His zodiac parties in the fifties were highlights of every season. Fish for swimming in his pool for the Pisces party, and he rented a liveline for a Leo party. As Ronald wrote in his nineteen sixty five autobiography Where's the Rest of Me, every morning Nancy and I turned to see what he has to say about people of our respective birth signs, horoscopes, and astrology. It was no big deal and a part of their daily morning routine. They liked to check in and contemplate how the stars might affect their day, and they embraced the culture. Around that same time, Nancy started paying writer for his astrologically. Then came the election in late nineteen sixty six. After Ronald Reagan won the governor's race, he scheduled his oath to take place, specifically at twelve sixteen am on January second, nineteen sixty seven. The timing of this did not make any sense unless you were looking at the stars. It turns out that exact time corresponded to Jupiter rising, and if you're a believer, starting your term at that moment would make it blessed prosperous. When the outgoing governor Edmund Brown got win to the story, he leaked it to the press and Reagan's team immediately went into spin mode. Right, so, Reagan had a spokesperson tell reporters that he didn't believe in astrology. The staffer even took it further. He said Reagan was so averse to astrology that he had only ever seen a horoscope by accident, which obviously wasn't true. But the craziest part of all this, like the reason we're talking about this, It means that Don Reagan's book wasn't even the president's first astrology related scandal. But let's talk about Nancy.
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Speaker 4: When I started looking into this, the first place I looked was Nancy Reagan's memoir because I wanted to hear her side of the story. It's called My Turn, and it was very pointedly a rebuke to Don Reagan's book the year prior, and she basically disputed everything he said and down played the role that her astrologer friend played in the president's life, in her life, in everything, and she said it was only minor schedule changes and it only came about because she was so worried for her husband's safety after the assassination attempt in nineteen eighty one, and that she was driven to do this out of a sense of duty and guilt.
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Speaker 3: If you really want to trace the influence of astrology on the White House, this is the moment that Nancy Reagan started casting about for help. And it was her friend MERV Griffin.
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Speaker 2: Good morning everybody, and welcome to we report you.
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Speaker 7: I'd like her to Susan Stafford, our.
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Speaker 3: Host is come on, yes, game show legend MERV Griffin who introduced her to Joan quickly.
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Speaker 4: Joan quidly was this Vasser graduate. She was very smart. She came from a very wealthy knob Hill, San Francisco family. Initially, Joan really tried to downplay her role in the Reagan's lives because Nancy had asked her to do that. As all of this controversy was boiling over, Joan really stuck to the party line that well, no, I didn't have that much influence. But when Nancy's book came out, I think at that point Joan was like, screw you, Nancy. You know it's me time now.
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Speaker 3: Uh huh.
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Speaker 4: She became briefly the most famous astrologer in the world right, she was going to take advantage of it, and so she started telling the story that in fact she had controlled everything.
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Speaker 3: It's true Nancy's astrologer would take credit for helping to appoint some justices, keeping the president safe, and even thawing the Cold War. But the question in just how influential was she and how much did she have the president's ear on foreign policy. But before we talk about Nancy's friend, Chapter three a short and incomplete list of modern politicians who used astrology. If Joe Biden was consulting an astrologer on major American issues, how would you feel would you vote for an astrology believer? We interrupted the New York City dinner party to ask that very same question.
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Speaker 5: It would feel more like the president was just rolling the dice if that was how he was making decisions.
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Speaker 3: Yes, I would vote for a presidential candidate that used astrology to guide their decision making, and I would think that they were very wise.
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Speaker 4: Absolutely not.
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Speaker 3: I think that is absolutely no connection between being a great president and the reading d the stars.
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Speaker 6: It's just not politically correct.
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Speaker 3: But the truth is, Reagan's interest in astrology does not make him an outlier. Here's a list of modern politicians who read their horoscope and checked it twice.
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Speaker 6: Why where.
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Speaker 3: Nixon was a quirky guy. Not only did he band soup in the White House and eat cottage cheese with ketchup, but he also valued the advice of astrologer Jene Dixon, who, to be fair, also gave advice to Franklin Roosevelt, JFK and the Reagans. But Nixon called her his soothsayer, and not only did Jean visit him in the White House, but she sent the president copious letters on national security predictions. In fact, in nineteen seventy two, when she warned of a threat on American soil after the Munich Olympics, Nixon used her intel to alert Kissinger and to assemble a counter terrorism unit for Yes, the only thing I remember about Boris Yelson is that one time when he was visiting Washington, he almost caused this international incident because he left the White House grounds drunk in just his underwear, desperate to find some late night pizza. This is true, which I can respect. But Yeltsin was also an astrology head. During his presidency, a naval captain revealed to the economists that Russia had a secret institute that employed quote military astrologers. Three friend when the French president's wife made accusations that Midrand was only interested in his astrologer because he was sleeping with her. The astrologer a former model and actress. All these tapes of their conversations show that they had a purely professional relationship, And on these tapes were incredible things like Mitteran trying to understand the power struggles in Russia through astrology. He was using the stars to vet cabinet members, and most curiously, he was taking astrological advice on how to handle France's role and entry into the Gulf War. Anyway, all that's to say that a handful of astrologers have had way more sway on world events than any of us would like to think.
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Speaker 5: You know, I know, you know, you.
00:23:43
Speaker 3: Know. Chapter four. What would Joan do? If we're to believe Joan? Quickly? What are the many thing she helped make happen was Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's appointment. She also claims to have planned the president's debate times and delayed the timing of Reagan's cancer surgery, But perhaps most importantly, Quickly takes credit for changing the president's opinion about Soviet leader Mikhyle Gorbachev, As reported in the New York Times, quickly battled to the map for three hours to convince Nancy Reagan that her husband could trust Gorbachev. As Quigly said, quote, the placement of his ruler Mercury, symbolizes to me that despite his Russian training and origins, Gorbachev has the instincts of a humanitarian. Joan also convinced the President to work towards disarmament and to extend his trip in Europe to hammer out in agreement.
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Speaker 4: The one thing everybody agrees on is that Joan Quickly actually did help decide when the president traveled, because that was Nancy's big fear after the assassination attempt. And so I think everybody is pretty much in agreement that, yes, Joan quickly helped identify days where maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to go anywhere that you, for safety's sake, you might not want to fly on that day. Maybe fly the next day, or fly a couple hours later, and that'll be safer for you. And nobody really had a problem with that. Then it kind of shades into this thing of like, well, if he's not making a public appearance for a week, that's a big deal, right because that affects what he's able to do as president. And certainly Joan coming out and saying that she literally told him that, based on his chart and Gorbachev's chart, that they should sit down and talk. I mean that's really explosive.
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Speaker 3: Well, especially at the time, right like where height of the Cold War, there's like nuclear proliferation on both sides in a massive way, and people are worried that someone will hit a button and cause the end of the earth. Like that's the idea of talking with your enemy at that time was pretty significant.
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Speaker 4: People were very upset at the idea that this random astrologer was influencing such big decisions when there was so much at stay.
00:26:05
Speaker 3: Do you think Reagan was actually using this advice? Was this just going to his wife? What's the deal here?
00:26:10
Speaker 4: So that was sort of the other question. Was this Nancy's fault? Because everything back then was Nancy's fault. She had this image of being this evil puppeteer of her hapless husband who loved her so much he would just do whatever she wanted, just.
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Speaker 3: To quick aside. Nancy Reagan was indeed ambitious for her husband, incredibly ambitious. Jimmy Stewart once said that had Ronald been married to Nancy earlier, he would have won an Academy award, and Reagan's aids admit this too. They say that without Nancy there would have been no Governor Reagan, no President Reagan.
00:26:46
Speaker 4: She absolutely took a lot of heat for allegedly being the power behind the throne, and so when this came out that it was Nancy's friend making these calls, that was more evidence that she was actually controlling him.
00:27:13
Speaker 3: Chapter five, Sympathy for the Devil. Earlier in the show, we skimmed over the fact that there was an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. As he was leaving a speech and walking to his limo. John Hinckley Junior, a delusional individual who was trying to impress Jodie Foster, pulled out a Rome RG fourteen twenty two caliber and he shot it six times in less than two seconds. The first five shots missed their mark. One hit Reagan's press secretary Jim Brady in the head, another hitden agent in the stomach as he put his body on the line. But as the Secret Service pushed the President into the limo, final bullet bounced off the car, ricocheting into the President's lung and lodging just twenty five millimeters from his heart. A few people would know just how close he'd come to death.
00:28:12
Speaker 2: Confirm the presidential it's currently where.
00:28:26
Speaker 7: The president at the hospita.
00:28:30
Speaker 3: It happened early in his presidency, on March thirtieth, nineteen eighty one. And the truth is, in most discussions of Reagan's legacy, it's glossed over. In his obituary in the New York Times, the shooting isn't even mentioned until the twenty fifth paragraph. So in the scope of things, it just isn't thought about that much. But for Nancy Reagan, it was something entirely different. Right, This was something she could ever ever forget. As I was trying to sort through all of this and put Nancy in context, Mary sent me one more clip Nancy's appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
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Speaker 5: Can I ask you about the astrology? You get tired of answering that question? No, that's one of the things you know that I want to hit the papers.
00:29:31
Speaker 3: Wow, I know if you're looking at the video. Nancy so clearly doesn't want to talk about this, but she will. I know she's a trained actor, I know she's good at playing the role of first lady. But still hearing her say why she put faith in astrology, why she needed to put faith in it, Well, it breaks your heart where it breaks mine.
00:29:55
Speaker 7: You can't really describe what you go through, uh, when your husband is shot and almost dies. And most people didn't know that there were there were there were two times that they came to me and said they couldn't find his pulse. He was very close to going in to shock and if he had, and that would have been in Now, everybody has their way of handling that particular kind of trauma, and that particular kind of trauma is it's is very special. And I talked to my minister, I talked to friends, and then I had a friend call me and say, gee, they she he had talked to this girl and woman and she could have told me that Ronnie shouldn't have done a thing on that day, right, And I thought, my Lord, I could have prevented it, you know, And so I called her. I didn't think I was doing anything, so wrong, and I still don't think I did anything so wrong. It helped me through a very really a very rough time, very tough time.
00:31:06
Speaker 3: There's so many things about the ways the Reagans tell their story, the way they talk about astrology that doesn't really add up, from the governor's oath to the idea that Ronald had never seen his horoscope except by accident, to dozens of other inconsistencies. Quickly had met the Reagans before she actually worked on Ronald Reagan's governor's campaign. But none of that stops this part from being true. Nancy was desperately trying to keep her husband safe. That same year, there would be an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul the Second's life. Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat would be killed, and world leaders really were under threat. Nancy's guilt it kicked in because of all this, like why wouldn't she try everything in her power to do that?
00:31:52
Speaker 7: But the changes there were made were things like would be better to leave that two o'clock or I mean, you know, there wasn't any great and there were no political decisions ever made on astrology. I didn't hurt anybody except I embarrassed, Ronnie. I was sorry for that.
00:32:21
Speaker 3: It's not that I'm enamored with Nancy Reagan all of a sudden, but I don't laugh at her anymore because faced with the option to do nothing or do something, Nancy picked up the phones and work. Then she found the best astrologer she could. She color coded her husband's calendar. She feuded with Reagan's chief of staff over the details of his schedule, and she fought fiercely to keep her husband out of harm's way. And seeing the love she poured into protecting him, it makes me feel guilty because I didn't do everything I could for my dad. I really didn't sure. I raised to see him, I tussled his hair, I kissed his head, I dressed and shaved him. I walked him to him from the bathroom. When he was too weak to lift himself up from his chair. I helped his frail body in and out of bed and stuffed a pillow under his knees. I pulled his socks off his shiny, hairless legs to keep him warm when he napped, and I fetched his pulp mystery books and refilled his bowl of shelled pistachios. I sat in the hospital trying to decipher his mumbles and his moans, and I put chips of ice into his mouth just to watch him crunch at it and then smile. And when he could barely respond anymore and the treatments weren't working, I signed his life away. I ordered the morphine and brought him home in an ambulance so he could breathe his last breadth at home. I tried, I really did, but I didn't do enough. I didn't pray, not the way my mom and sisters did. I didn't hunt for an ira a cure or research alternative medicines. I didn't place a bet on the magical because my belief is limited to what I understand, and I'll live with that guil, not that there's any logic to it, because even if I didn't believe, my dad did and couldn't, I have put aside my pride to give him everything because everything is what he gave me. Next week on Skyline Drive more Being Sad next week is one hundred percent fun. We are talking to moneyball statisticians who use astrology CNN's house astrologer. They used to have a house astrologer. Astrology in law School and BTS. That's right, We're going to use astrology to figure out Korean supergroup BTS's next steps. Maybe I don't know. I can't see into the future, but I can promise it will be fun.
00:35:37
Speaker 6: Bonetta Pictures, Sari Kendrick Becker.
00:35:42
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening. This show is written by Taffy Prodessor Akner, Executive produced by Tappy Prodessor Acner, based on a book by Tappy Prodess. I'm so sorry these are credits for Fleischman is in trouble and reading the wrong credits. That's a fantastic show. Go stream it after this. This show, Skyline Drive is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcast. It's hosted and written by me Mongish particular. But you would not have made it to the third episode if it wasn't for all these lovely people. Mary Philip Sandy is our Kanki loving supervising producer, and she's now read every book in the world about the Reagans. Go Quizzer. Mitro Bunschaii is our delightful senior producer and gets the best wild tape seriously. Mark Loto is our story editor and made me move Nancy Reagan from a single paragraph in episode one to her own episode, and this show is so much better for it. This episode was mixed and mastered all the way in Bangalore by the talented groove Shiva Rau, with scoring as always from Botany. Check out his SoundCloud the insane music in between his courtesy of the dopest Indian record label, Azabi Records, and my pal Jimanchu Suri and so many other musicians. If you want to hear all of this music, we linked to a mixtape in the show notes. Go listen in the kids. The kids were so great, right Numbers and politicians voiced by my Dean Street neighbors Reese, the resident pizza expert, Leav the resident panda expert, Miriam who does the best Broadway show tunes in my backyard, and Yuki, who is very very good at pointing out snails. Also my very sweet and very noisy roommates, Henry and Ruby. Special thanks to my remarkable neighbor and counsel Rachel Strom for vetting this episode, and the Reagan Library, the fo Your Ears Only Newsweek on Air collection, and Carson Entertainment Group for all of their incredible archive. Thank you so much. Additional production and research support from the wonderful Anna Rubanova Soundboard, Lizzie the Natural, QB Jacobs, my talented aunts, Simon Buckshie and notorious snooker hustler ur Jun Bucksheet. This show is executive produced from iHeart by my good good friends Nicki Toour and Patrina Norvel. Also all my brilliant power Else Like Kaleidoscope, Ozwa Listen, Kate Osbourne, Costos Linos Buying Shor and also Cheesy it feels like Cheesy needs a shout out right Kate Special. Thanks to all my friends of iHeart, Shanta and Soros, my family everywhere. Dan Tabirsky. Dan Tibirsky read this episode's warning. Today I got into podcasting true story. I binged all four episodes of Missing Richard Simmons because there were only four out at the time, and I've binged every one of his other shows to Running from Cops, Surviving Y two, k the Line. It is all so incredibly good and just one last thank you as always to my Amma and my dad, Lalifa and Umesh, who I have to thank my lucky stars for Thank you so much for listening,
Speaker 1: Warning. The following episode contains discussion of Ronald Reagan, pro wrestlers, Ronald Reagan talking to pro wrestlers Johnny Carson, and a disastrous late night pizza party. Also astrology sensitive listeners. Keep your tones handy.
00:00:36
Speaker 2: Sometimes I got games.
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Speaker 3: Sometimes I'm mad shots, Sometimes I'm mad lame. Sometimes I'm mad flying. Sometimes I'm so flying the Bay. I'm Hella fly. Sometimes I'll get fraud and it'll be televised. Okay, we're gonna start this out with another slideshow, and this time it's about hul Cogan. This is hul Cogan's Rock and wrestling. As a kid, I knew everyone was supposed to like Hulkogan, and sometimes I even pretended to like Hulkogan, even though I was not a fan, But I often watched his cartoons on Saturday mornings because they were on. This is the only rock and wrestling episode I remember.
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Speaker 4: The President wants to speak with you.
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Speaker 3: Yes, sir, your country is depending on you, Holster. Don't let us down in it. The President like this cartoon. Ronald Reagan asked Hulkgan to go to space to rescue astronauts before a shuttle explodes. The cartoon is seared in my brain because it aired not long after the Challenger disaster.
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Speaker 2: Well, what was it like being wrestler in space?
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Speaker 3: I tell you, bang, it was more awesome than a combat song. I also remember thinking, why do they think Hulkogan can probably open a cargo bay door? Because I mean, I know, oh he's strong. But even in cartoon form, this seemed dumb. And I was seven at the time. But maybe the makers of Rock and Wrestling thought they were doing something to help calm kids nerves.
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Speaker 5: And I want to say something to the school children of America. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen.
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Speaker 3: That's the actual Ronald Gray again. The day after the Challenger exploded, our first grade teacher wheeled a TV into our classroom so the President could talk to us directly.
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Speaker 5: It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance of expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the faint hearted, belongs to the brave.
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Speaker 3: The future belongs to the brave. Those words embody America right and to preserve hope in the face of something so devastating, so visible, anyway, what does any of this have to do with us? Well, the Challenger wasn't the only time Reagan was thinking about the intersection of space and the future. That's right, I'm talking about astrology, and it turns out in the nineteen eighties there was a full on astrology scandal in the Reagan White House.
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Speaker 6: I don't mean to offend anyone who does but believe in it, or.
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Speaker 5: Who engage in Do you believe in it?
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Speaker 3: From Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts, I'm Mongay's shitigither, Welcome to Skyline Drive chapter one. When God's powerful word came.
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Speaker 5: Let's start with the part that is the most controversial. A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, But the facts and the evidence tell me it is.
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Speaker 3: Not. Thing about Ronald Reagan is that he was unknowable, like frustratingly unknowable. When the famed biographer Edmund Morris got three million dollars to do an official biography, he spent fourteen years interviewing and shadowing Reagan, but when he turned in his book, he switched it from a biography to fiction, and when he was asked why he did that with his manuscript on sixty Minutes, Morris said, he was truly one of the strangest men who ever lived. Nobody around him understood him. I every person I interviewed, almost without exception, eventually would say, you know, I could never really figure him out. Think about that. Fourteen years of access and Morris couldn't figure out how to accurately write about the man and what he stood for. And maybe that's why my mom and dad had such different opinions of Reagan. To my dad, a newly minted American, Reagan was proof that anyone could make it in America, an actor becoming president. I mean, that's the optimism of an immigrant, someone who genuinely believed his son's potential was limitless in this new land. But to my mom, who was not a fan of his policies, reagan supposed interest in astrology made her like him more because it made him more like us. And Reagan's interest in astrology was just this thing I always knew about growing up, but as I grew older, I began to question it, like it kind of seemed too outlandish to be true. So I asked my pal Mary if she could find anything more concrete about this whole story. Actually, before we dive into the controversa, I just wanted to ask you. I feel really lucky to have you in this project, but I'm curious why you did it because you don't believe in astrology.
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Speaker 4: Well, you're very persuasive.
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Speaker 3: I guess We're sitting in a studio in Midtown and I'm laughing because it's true. Mary was not convinced when I pitched this tour.
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Speaker 4: But I can. I can learn about things without believing in them. I figure it's an opportunity to go down a path I would not ordinarily go down.
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Speaker 3: Do you know what your sign is?
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Speaker 4: I found out I'm a cancer. I thought I was a Gemini. Oh, really, turns out I'm a cancer.
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Speaker 3: So I roped you into this thing with astrology, and then I said, hey, I really want to look into Ronald Reagan.
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Speaker 4: You did, and I like Ronald Reagan about as much as I like atrology. I grew up being terrified of Ronald Reagan. I remember being like three years old and seeing him on the TV and being genuinely frightened. My parents were dragging me to defense spending protests during the eighties, so I had a very different experience. So it didn't seem to really add up my understanding of Ronald Reagan and my understanding of astrology. That didn't really make any sense. And so that was why I figured it would be really interesting to find out what actually happened.
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Speaker 3: So, like, what was the big sort of controversy that made everyone suddenly start talking about it? So this is really juicy.
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Speaker 4: There's this guy Don Reagan who had been chief of staff for Ronald Reagan, and he had been the chairman of Merrill Lynch for a long time. He was Treasury Secretary. He was like the architect of Reaganomics. And then he became chief of staff and he left the White House. He got kicked out, and he basically was thrown out in disgrace from his job. And so he turned around and wrote a tell all book in nineteen eighty eight, called for the record, and apparently he got a million dollar advance, which was huge money at the.
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Speaker 3: Time, million dollars.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, but he made this huge revelation that while he was in the White House, Nancy Reagan was asking him to change the president's schedule based on astrological advice from a friend, quote quote. He even said he had to keep a color coded calendar of like good days, auspicious days, bad days, if he days for the president's travel, his public appeerings. All of this and the press went crazy.
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Speaker 2: The Reagan's and their stars astrologically speaking, Did Donald Reagan get his ex bosses Capricorn?
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Speaker 3: That is goat? Or is it all a load of Taurus?
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Speaker 1: If President Richard Nixon?
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Speaker 3: Towards the end, the claim was I am not a crook with Ronald Reagan. Last week it was more like I am not a nut. Is that like a gift from heaven for a cartoon as a story like that? Yeah, it is.
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Speaker 2: I consider that it's just too good, too good to be true.
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Speaker 4: There's a Reagan library. They have archives, and I thought, well, maybe there's something in there about astrology. Turns out they actually have a finding aid labeled astrology. Oh really yeah, yeah, because they have files that are, you know, touch on the scandal. I asked them if I could see them, and they said that they would have to take some time to take all the staples out, but then they could scan them and send them to me. And a lot of it was just newspaper clippings, you know, cartoons when it came out. Yeah, And there were transcripts of press conferences where the White House spokespeople were just getting slammed. All the reporters wanted to talk about was astrology. What is the deal? You know, are they just deciding everything based on this? You know, what can you tell us? And they didn't want to answer. But what I thought was really fascinating was they had saved all of this correspondence from the religious right, basically evangelical Christians who had helped elect Ronald Reagan. Evangelical Christians do not like astrology. This is May twenty seventh, nineteen eighty eight, at the height of the controversy from Don Reagan's book. This radio preacher named George Otis, who was a friend of the Reagans, wrote directly to the White House. Dear mister President, you've been a great chief of state. You will recall how in October nineteen seventy God spoke directly to you through myself there in your Sacramento home. When God's powerful word came you were to become president of the United States. This may have been the most remarkable visitation from the Lord of any president in history. You were hand packed for leadership in one of our nation's most pivotal hours. Wow, no pressure, right, And so he was saying, I beg you to renounce the practice of astrology in the White House. To make a statement now would be an act of courage and pleasing to God. But if you fail to do so, you legitimize astrology and the occult and set our nation on a collision course with God.
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Speaker 3: I don't know why, but I always sort of bristle when I hear things like this. There is such hypocrisy on what sort of magical thinking we're okay with as a country. Like if a televangelist goes into tongues and prophesizes that Reagan has to be the next president because God told him, that is totally okay. Western miracles don't bother the base, But if an astrologer makes a prediction that's blasphemy. It just feels silly that a president should be lauded for believing in one of those ideas but threatened for believing in the other. It reminds me of this feeling I had as a kid, totally the opposite of my dad's optimism about who was allowed to be president. The fact that I was born brown and Hindu, that I had a name that was unpronounceable. It seemingly crippled my chances from the start. I mean, the Indian kids who were ten years older than me and wanted to be politicians, the Bobby Jindles and Nikki Haley's, they always seemed to convert to Christianity and change their names along the way. You know, I wish I could tell you I had this son to epiphany.
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Speaker 5: There was no moment on that road to Damascus was that easy for me.
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Speaker 7: Christianity spoke to me at a time where I needed a connection, and so no political pressure should never change a person.
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Speaker 3: I am my parents' daughter. Maybe that's why I'm so interested in Ronald Reagan, because even though he's seen as this ultimate American, this American mascot for those who.
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Speaker 5: Have abandoned the whole, we'll restore hope and we'll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again.
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Speaker 3: By dabbling in astrology, he got away with something that doesn't feel American at all.
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Speaker 4: So right after Don Reagan's book came out and broke this story of astrology. In the White House, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, who was then Vice President, were walking to a press conference in the Rose Garden.
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Speaker 3: Look, the President, will you continue to allow astrology to play a part in the makeup of old ChEls.
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Speaker 7: Kock it off man?
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Speaker 5: You asked for it? I can't because I never did.
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Speaker 3: This is not the man I watched in first grade reminding us that science can be heartbreak but is always progress. I mean, this man is struggling. Like, listen to this from May seventeen, nineteen eighty eight.
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Speaker 6: This was all once again smoke and mirrors, and we made no decisions on it, and we're not binding our lives to this. And I don't mean to offend anyone who does but believe in it.
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Speaker 3: So right there, he takes a moment to make sure he's not offending anyone who believes in astrology, and then a reporter pounces.
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Speaker 6: I don't guide my life by it, but I won't answer the question the other way because I don't know enough about it to say is there something to it or.
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Speaker 3: Belief is hard to talk about. It's confusing. Sometimes belief is just the collective sway of these tiny tendrils of influence. Like it's not some hard and fast tenets. I mean you hear it in Reagan's words, right, Like talking about belief is so hard that one of the most gifted politicians stumbles through his answer and he twists his words into some things so convoluted it barely has meaning anymore. Except Reagan is not being honest here, because astrology had definitely played a role in his daily and his political life. And you don't have to take our word for it, you can take his straight from his nineteen sixty five autobiography. So let's turn back the clocks and investigate right after this break about the hearty got get you chum head chapter two, what would Nancy do? The strange thing is, for decades, Ron and Nancy's interest in astrology was an open secret, or at least it had been. Astrology was this California thing, and it was also a showbiz thing, and the Reagans and their friends they enjoyed rubbing shoulders with people like La Times astrologer Carol Ryder because, like People Magazine put it, writer was the confidante of the rich and famous, who saw him less as a backdoor Suthsayer than as social equal. His zodiac parties in the fifties were highlights of every season. Fish for swimming in his pool for the Pisces party, and he rented a liveline for a Leo party. As Ronald wrote in his nineteen sixty five autobiography Where's the Rest of Me, every morning Nancy and I turned to see what he has to say about people of our respective birth signs, horoscopes, and astrology. It was no big deal and a part of their daily morning routine. They liked to check in and contemplate how the stars might affect their day, and they embraced the culture. Around that same time, Nancy started paying writer for his astrologically. Then came the election in late nineteen sixty six. After Ronald Reagan won the governor's race, he scheduled his oath to take place, specifically at twelve sixteen am on January second, nineteen sixty seven. The timing of this did not make any sense unless you were looking at the stars. It turns out that exact time corresponded to Jupiter rising, and if you're a believer, starting your term at that moment would make it blessed prosperous. When the outgoing governor Edmund Brown got win to the story, he leaked it to the press and Reagan's team immediately went into spin mode. Right, so, Reagan had a spokesperson tell reporters that he didn't believe in astrology. The staffer even took it further. He said Reagan was so averse to astrology that he had only ever seen a horoscope by accident, which obviously wasn't true. But the craziest part of all this, like the reason we're talking about this, It means that Don Reagan's book wasn't even the president's first astrology related scandal. But let's talk about Nancy.
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Speaker 4: When I started looking into this, the first place I looked was Nancy Reagan's memoir because I wanted to hear her side of the story. It's called My Turn, and it was very pointedly a rebuke to Don Reagan's book the year prior, and she basically disputed everything he said and down played the role that her astrologer friend played in the president's life, in her life, in everything, and she said it was only minor schedule changes and it only came about because she was so worried for her husband's safety after the assassination attempt in nineteen eighty one, and that she was driven to do this out of a sense of duty and guilt.
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Speaker 3: If you really want to trace the influence of astrology on the White House, this is the moment that Nancy Reagan started casting about for help. And it was her friend MERV Griffin.
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Speaker 2: Good morning everybody, and welcome to we report you.
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Speaker 7: I'd like her to Susan Stafford, our.
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Speaker 3: Host is come on, yes, game show legend MERV Griffin who introduced her to Joan quickly.
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Speaker 4: Joan quidly was this Vasser graduate. She was very smart. She came from a very wealthy knob Hill, San Francisco family. Initially, Joan really tried to downplay her role in the Reagan's lives because Nancy had asked her to do that. As all of this controversy was boiling over, Joan really stuck to the party line that well, no, I didn't have that much influence. But when Nancy's book came out, I think at that point Joan was like, screw you, Nancy. You know it's me time now.
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Speaker 3: Uh huh.
00:19:41
Speaker 4: She became briefly the most famous astrologer in the world right, she was going to take advantage of it, and so she started telling the story that in fact she had controlled everything.
00:19:51
Speaker 3: It's true Nancy's astrologer would take credit for helping to appoint some justices, keeping the president safe, and even thawing the Cold War. But the question in just how influential was she and how much did she have the president's ear on foreign policy. But before we talk about Nancy's friend, Chapter three a short and incomplete list of modern politicians who used astrology. If Joe Biden was consulting an astrologer on major American issues, how would you feel would you vote for an astrology believer? We interrupted the New York City dinner party to ask that very same question.
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Speaker 5: It would feel more like the president was just rolling the dice if that was how he was making decisions.
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Speaker 3: Yes, I would vote for a presidential candidate that used astrology to guide their decision making, and I would think that they were very wise.
00:20:55
Speaker 4: Absolutely not.
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Speaker 3: I think that is absolutely no connection between being a great president and the reading d the stars.
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Speaker 6: It's just not politically correct.
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Speaker 3: But the truth is, Reagan's interest in astrology does not make him an outlier. Here's a list of modern politicians who read their horoscope and checked it twice.
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Speaker 6: Why where.
00:21:30
Speaker 3: Nixon was a quirky guy. Not only did he band soup in the White House and eat cottage cheese with ketchup, but he also valued the advice of astrologer Jene Dixon, who, to be fair, also gave advice to Franklin Roosevelt, JFK and the Reagans. But Nixon called her his soothsayer, and not only did Jean visit him in the White House, but she sent the president copious letters on national security predictions. In fact, in nineteen seventy two, when she warned of a threat on American soil after the Munich Olympics, Nixon used her intel to alert Kissinger and to assemble a counter terrorism unit for Yes, the only thing I remember about Boris Yelson is that one time when he was visiting Washington, he almost caused this international incident because he left the White House grounds drunk in just his underwear, desperate to find some late night pizza. This is true, which I can respect. But Yeltsin was also an astrology head. During his presidency, a naval captain revealed to the economists that Russia had a secret institute that employed quote military astrologers. Three friend when the French president's wife made accusations that Midrand was only interested in his astrologer because he was sleeping with her. The astrologer a former model and actress. All these tapes of their conversations show that they had a purely professional relationship, And on these tapes were incredible things like Mitteran trying to understand the power struggles in Russia through astrology. He was using the stars to vet cabinet members, and most curiously, he was taking astrological advice on how to handle France's role and entry into the Gulf War. Anyway, all that's to say that a handful of astrologers have had way more sway on world events than any of us would like to think.
00:23:39
Speaker 5: You know, I know, you know, you.
00:23:43
Speaker 3: Know. Chapter four. What would Joan do? If we're to believe Joan? Quickly? What are the many thing she helped make happen was Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's appointment. She also claims to have planned the president's debate times and delayed the timing of Reagan's cancer surgery, But perhaps most importantly, Quickly takes credit for changing the president's opinion about Soviet leader Mikhyle Gorbachev, As reported in the New York Times, quickly battled to the map for three hours to convince Nancy Reagan that her husband could trust Gorbachev. As Quigly said, quote, the placement of his ruler Mercury, symbolizes to me that despite his Russian training and origins, Gorbachev has the instincts of a humanitarian. Joan also convinced the President to work towards disarmament and to extend his trip in Europe to hammer out in agreement.
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Speaker 4: The one thing everybody agrees on is that Joan Quickly actually did help decide when the president traveled, because that was Nancy's big fear after the assassination attempt. And so I think everybody is pretty much in agreement that, yes, Joan quickly helped identify days where maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to go anywhere that you, for safety's sake, you might not want to fly on that day. Maybe fly the next day, or fly a couple hours later, and that'll be safer for you. And nobody really had a problem with that. Then it kind of shades into this thing of like, well, if he's not making a public appearance for a week, that's a big deal, right because that affects what he's able to do as president. And certainly Joan coming out and saying that she literally told him that, based on his chart and Gorbachev's chart, that they should sit down and talk. I mean that's really explosive.
00:25:37
Speaker 3: Well, especially at the time, right like where height of the Cold War, there's like nuclear proliferation on both sides in a massive way, and people are worried that someone will hit a button and cause the end of the earth. Like that's the idea of talking with your enemy at that time was pretty significant.
00:25:56
Speaker 4: People were very upset at the idea that this random astrologer was influencing such big decisions when there was so much at stay.
00:26:05
Speaker 3: Do you think Reagan was actually using this advice? Was this just going to his wife? What's the deal here?
00:26:10
Speaker 4: So that was sort of the other question. Was this Nancy's fault? Because everything back then was Nancy's fault. She had this image of being this evil puppeteer of her hapless husband who loved her so much he would just do whatever she wanted, just.
00:26:26
Speaker 3: To quick aside. Nancy Reagan was indeed ambitious for her husband, incredibly ambitious. Jimmy Stewart once said that had Ronald been married to Nancy earlier, he would have won an Academy award, and Reagan's aids admit this too. They say that without Nancy there would have been no Governor Reagan, no President Reagan.
00:26:46
Speaker 4: She absolutely took a lot of heat for allegedly being the power behind the throne, and so when this came out that it was Nancy's friend making these calls, that was more evidence that she was actually controlling him.
00:27:13
Speaker 3: Chapter five, Sympathy for the Devil. Earlier in the show, we skimmed over the fact that there was an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. As he was leaving a speech and walking to his limo. John Hinckley Junior, a delusional individual who was trying to impress Jodie Foster, pulled out a Rome RG fourteen twenty two caliber and he shot it six times in less than two seconds. The first five shots missed their mark. One hit Reagan's press secretary Jim Brady in the head, another hitden agent in the stomach as he put his body on the line. But as the Secret Service pushed the President into the limo, final bullet bounced off the car, ricocheting into the President's lung and lodging just twenty five millimeters from his heart. A few people would know just how close he'd come to death.
00:28:12
Speaker 2: Confirm the presidential it's currently where.
00:28:26
Speaker 7: The president at the hospita.
00:28:30
Speaker 3: It happened early in his presidency, on March thirtieth, nineteen eighty one. And the truth is, in most discussions of Reagan's legacy, it's glossed over. In his obituary in the New York Times, the shooting isn't even mentioned until the twenty fifth paragraph. So in the scope of things, it just isn't thought about that much. But for Nancy Reagan, it was something entirely different. Right, This was something she could ever ever forget. As I was trying to sort through all of this and put Nancy in context, Mary sent me one more clip Nancy's appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
00:29:25
Speaker 5: Can I ask you about the astrology? You get tired of answering that question? No, that's one of the things you know that I want to hit the papers.
00:29:31
Speaker 3: Wow, I know if you're looking at the video. Nancy so clearly doesn't want to talk about this, but she will. I know she's a trained actor, I know she's good at playing the role of first lady. But still hearing her say why she put faith in astrology, why she needed to put faith in it, Well, it breaks your heart where it breaks mine.
00:29:55
Speaker 7: You can't really describe what you go through, uh, when your husband is shot and almost dies. And most people didn't know that there were there were there were two times that they came to me and said they couldn't find his pulse. He was very close to going in to shock and if he had, and that would have been in Now, everybody has their way of handling that particular kind of trauma, and that particular kind of trauma is it's is very special. And I talked to my minister, I talked to friends, and then I had a friend call me and say, gee, they she he had talked to this girl and woman and she could have told me that Ronnie shouldn't have done a thing on that day, right, And I thought, my Lord, I could have prevented it, you know, And so I called her. I didn't think I was doing anything, so wrong, and I still don't think I did anything so wrong. It helped me through a very really a very rough time, very tough time.
00:31:06
Speaker 3: There's so many things about the ways the Reagans tell their story, the way they talk about astrology that doesn't really add up, from the governor's oath to the idea that Ronald had never seen his horoscope except by accident, to dozens of other inconsistencies. Quickly had met the Reagans before she actually worked on Ronald Reagan's governor's campaign. But none of that stops this part from being true. Nancy was desperately trying to keep her husband safe. That same year, there would be an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul the Second's life. Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat would be killed, and world leaders really were under threat. Nancy's guilt it kicked in because of all this, like why wouldn't she try everything in her power to do that?
00:31:52
Speaker 7: But the changes there were made were things like would be better to leave that two o'clock or I mean, you know, there wasn't any great and there were no political decisions ever made on astrology. I didn't hurt anybody except I embarrassed, Ronnie. I was sorry for that.
00:32:21
Speaker 3: It's not that I'm enamored with Nancy Reagan all of a sudden, but I don't laugh at her anymore because faced with the option to do nothing or do something, Nancy picked up the phones and work. Then she found the best astrologer she could. She color coded her husband's calendar. She feuded with Reagan's chief of staff over the details of his schedule, and she fought fiercely to keep her husband out of harm's way. And seeing the love she poured into protecting him, it makes me feel guilty because I didn't do everything I could for my dad. I really didn't sure. I raised to see him, I tussled his hair, I kissed his head, I dressed and shaved him. I walked him to him from the bathroom. When he was too weak to lift himself up from his chair. I helped his frail body in and out of bed and stuffed a pillow under his knees. I pulled his socks off his shiny, hairless legs to keep him warm when he napped, and I fetched his pulp mystery books and refilled his bowl of shelled pistachios. I sat in the hospital trying to decipher his mumbles and his moans, and I put chips of ice into his mouth just to watch him crunch at it and then smile. And when he could barely respond anymore and the treatments weren't working, I signed his life away. I ordered the morphine and brought him home in an ambulance so he could breathe his last breadth at home. I tried, I really did, but I didn't do enough. I didn't pray, not the way my mom and sisters did. I didn't hunt for an ira a cure or research alternative medicines. I didn't place a bet on the magical because my belief is limited to what I understand, and I'll live with that guil, not that there's any logic to it, because even if I didn't believe, my dad did and couldn't, I have put aside my pride to give him everything because everything is what he gave me. Next week on Skyline Drive more Being Sad next week is one hundred percent fun. We are talking to moneyball statisticians who use astrology CNN's house astrologer. They used to have a house astrologer. Astrology in law School and BTS. That's right, We're going to use astrology to figure out Korean supergroup BTS's next steps. Maybe I don't know. I can't see into the future, but I can promise it will be fun.
00:35:37
Speaker 6: Bonetta Pictures, Sari Kendrick Becker.
00:35:42
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening. This show is written by Taffy Prodessor Akner, Executive produced by Tappy Prodessor Acner, based on a book by Tappy Prodess. I'm so sorry these are credits for Fleischman is in trouble and reading the wrong credits. That's a fantastic show. Go stream it after this. This show, Skyline Drive is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcast. It's hosted and written by me Mongish particular. But you would not have made it to the third episode if it wasn't for all these lovely people. Mary Philip Sandy is our Kanki loving supervising producer, and she's now read every book in the world about the Reagans. Go Quizzer. Mitro Bunschaii is our delightful senior producer and gets the best wild tape seriously. Mark Loto is our story editor and made me move Nancy Reagan from a single paragraph in episode one to her own episode, and this show is so much better for it. This episode was mixed and mastered all the way in Bangalore by the talented groove Shiva Rau, with scoring as always from Botany. Check out his SoundCloud the insane music in between his courtesy of the dopest Indian record label, Azabi Records, and my pal Jimanchu Suri and so many other musicians. If you want to hear all of this music, we linked to a mixtape in the show notes. Go listen in the kids. The kids were so great, right Numbers and politicians voiced by my Dean Street neighbors Reese, the resident pizza expert, Leav the resident panda expert, Miriam who does the best Broadway show tunes in my backyard, and Yuki, who is very very good at pointing out snails. Also my very sweet and very noisy roommates, Henry and Ruby. Special thanks to my remarkable neighbor and counsel Rachel Strom for vetting this episode, and the Reagan Library, the fo Your Ears Only Newsweek on Air collection, and Carson Entertainment Group for all of their incredible archive. Thank you so much. Additional production and research support from the wonderful Anna Rubanova Soundboard, Lizzie the Natural, QB Jacobs, my talented aunts, Simon Buckshie and notorious snooker hustler ur Jun Bucksheet. This show is executive produced from iHeart by my good good friends Nicki Toour and Patrina Norvel. Also all my brilliant power Else Like Kaleidoscope, Ozwa Listen, Kate Osbourne, Costos Linos Buying Shor and also Cheesy it feels like Cheesy needs a shout out right Kate Special. Thanks to all my friends of iHeart, Shanta and Soros, my family everywhere. Dan Tabirsky. Dan Tibirsky read this episode's warning. Today I got into podcasting true story. I binged all four episodes of Missing Richard Simmons because there were only four out at the time, and I've binged every one of his other shows to Running from Cops, Surviving Y two, k the Line. It is all so incredibly good and just one last thank you as always to my Amma and my dad, Lalifa and Umesh, who I have to thank my lucky stars for Thank you so much for listening,
