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The cut, the cut, cut, cut, cut, the cut, the cut. We've been cooped up for so long now, there's this desperate need to know when we'll be out. What is twenty twenty one going to look like, when will this be over? I feel like every conversation I have starts to veer into the speculative territory, even if you know that the future is unknowable. Which is to say. If you're someone like my colleague Sangita, I'm really, really, really fascinated by all things occult and supernatural and fantasy, I don't believe in any of it, but I think it's very fascinating sensitising.

Kurts is not a superstitious person or a religious person or really who in any way a lot of my friends are into tomorrow.

I'm friends with witches. They fully believe in all of this stuff. And I think it's awesome, but it just doesn't click with my psyche. I was thinking before we talk, like, why do I have this aversion to the supernatural?

Sangita never bought into spiritual stuff. In fact, she resented it. It goes back to like I had a complicated relationship with religion growing up, my sister and I were the only Sikh people in any of our schools. And it's a very sort of visible religion. So like the men wear turbans over their unshorn hair and then the women, some of them also wear turbans, but generally they just grow their hair long. So between, like, having extremely, like, sit on it, catch it in lockers, the longest fucking hair in the world, like down to my ankles, like it was not good.

We did it was difficult to hide leg. And you want to do at that age like you want to do anything you can to fit in and be normal. And like the jig was up because like my name is Sangita, you know, like obviously and in a way I started to like, reject anything that was intangible, like God or any supernatural thing, like it just seemed with any sort of like divination or torro or like evil eyes or palm reading.

And I was just I wanted to reject it all and I have grown to reject it all.

But Sangita is currently at a crossroads in her life and is ready for some divine perspective.

So I'm going with my boyfriend to L.A. We got a one way ticket. We're going to stay there for a couple of months with family, basically to avoid paying rent in New York, but one thing that we've talked about is moving to L.A. permanently. And I'm like, am I going to leave New York for good? Am I going to change career paths? Am I going to pursue other things that I'm interested about screenwriting and novel writing?

My mom always told me that life has three pillars supporting it who you love, where you live and what you do.

Sangeeta has had all three pillars on really solid ground for a while cool job, long term relationship and a life in New York City. But suddenly she was questioning all three, if I should like, marry this person that I've been with him for like four years and only twenty five. Like, what the fuck? Everyone who gets married at twenty five gets divorced. David So it feels like a critical juncture where I would like some insight as to whether or not like I'm going to fuck up my life.

And so I thought, what if we try a fun experiment for this episode the day after Election Day, which we do not know how it will or won't turn out, Sangeeta volunteered to finally give the occult a try to get her fortune told and learn what the future holds for her job, her partnership and her move from three different tarot readers.

I have my kitchen table here where my tarot cards are. I do have different dives. I'm going to pull ten cards.

These were three really different approaches to the future, how much we want to know about it, how much we can know about it, how much we can change it. And as I was listening to Sangeet as readings, I was just like, damn, these are kind of intense. I don't know.

I mean, there was a lot that was a lot is a lot. Right.

I want to apologize for because I don't know if you, like, really wanted all of that.

Oh, my God. No, I definitely didn't. I know especially over what I realized was that like. Doing this when you are making really big life changes, some of it sort of stuck in my head.

And let me just make this clear. This was all my idea. I thought Tara would be fun for Sangeeta because, I don't know, I have a pack of tarot cards and I've just found it.

One of the more approachable forms of divination, because Tara doesn't say you are this way. It doesn't prescribe you a sign in the stars or look at the lines on your hand. It's analyzing a deck of 78 cards and each tarot card has a unique meaning and an image on it and can be interpreted a number of different ways. It's very much a subjective art. So this is why I wanted to see how three different tarot readers would interpret Sangeet as questions.

And after each reading, I interviewed each of the Tarot readers about their philosophies around predicting the future. And of course, I followed up with Sangita, how does it feel to know the future? Do you do you feel like you know the future? And how does it feel to know the future?

Oh, man, I'm. Do you want to talk about the differences between the tarot readers because they were all very different, like the first one, it felt more therapeutic then, I guess mystical, which maybe that's not what tarot is. I came in with the biases of what I thought it was based on seeing it movies.

My reading with Sangeeta wasn't very cinematic because I didn't make it cinematic.

This is Tarot Reader one.

Jessica Leonardo, a psychic based in Oakland, I guess is a sort of career and personal. But the question is, should I move to L.A. and will I find different career opportunities there? Great question. Great question. Wrong question. Wrong question. Excellent. Great start for us. So the problem with the should should is predicated on this idea that there's a right and wrong and that you're supposed to do the right thing.

I no longer allow my clients to ask a question without my support because most people most of the time are not asking the right question. So I ask my client to say out loud what the question is and then I say, OK, but what you really mean is X, right?

So let's reframe this question so that you get the answer you're actually seeking.

So should I moved to L.A. is the wrong question.

Answering the question for just for your own edification is if you move to L.A., will it bring you the kind of career opportunities that will allow you to blossom in the way you want to? It's a very enthusiastic yes. Yes, it will. What's the next question you have for me?

I want to know, is my boyfriend the right person for me? Like, basically, is he the person that I'm going to spend my life with? Why is that something you need to. Why are you wondering about that? Are you happy now? Yes, I'm happy now. My take on it is this. You've already decided if you move, you're moving with him, right? Am I right? Yeah. Yeah. So the decision's been made.

First of all.

So let me just start with that, because all you're doing is you're engaging that part of you that is compulsively looking until I failed and I failed and I felt did it fell.

And now you're going to ask a psychic about it. Terrible fucking idea.

I think prediction is a tricky, sticky enterprise. And I will often point people away from prediction, because if I tell you, no, you're not going to fall in love, you are not going to be partnered. That's not going to help you. It's going to ruin your damn life. It's going to ruin your day. It's going to make you scared. It's going to bring all of these negative thoughts and emotions.

Can you tell me what I'm going to die? How is it going to help you live your life? What can you do about it? If I answer the questions you asked, you wouldn't give me a very good reason because nobody asks the right question. Just so you know, it's not just you. Nobody asked the right question.

Nobody wants to fail. Nobody wants to make a mistake in their lives that will harm them. No one wants to be unhappy. No one wants to be lonely. And every single thing anyone has ever asked me and people have asked me some banana nut and banana salad questions over the course of time, every single question anyone's ever asked me has ultimately been, if I do X, will I be happy?

If I get X, will I be happy if I don't get X, will I be unhappy? That's it, the only reason why we want things is because we believe that having those things will make us happy. She kind of told me off for like having a scarcity mindset and the questions I was asking being like very fear based, which I didn't realize. And she also didn't answer some of my questions, like around whether my relationship would last. And she would say, if I do answer these questions, you will not stop thinking about it.

And I was like, OK, sure. And the second reader, I did have those questions answered. And I was like, holy fuck.

So do I think that this is going to be a relationship that lasts forever now based on these cards? I would say no. I'm just straight up now. Sorry. Oh, my God. I'm a little food reader.

Number two, Nancy Hayes is a bruhaha based in Colorado.

I just told her, hey, this is what's going on. This is what you should watch out for. These are things that you should be aware of. Nancy was the reader who just answered all of my questions. And it felt like a really traditional torro experience, like as I'd imagined it.

Well, sorry, it's not going to be like the person you end up with for the rest of their life, but it is a very important relationship for you, for your development. So I'm not telling you to let go and talk about it right now.

She is my boyfriend going to break up with me. I thought that if I was told those things that I would be like, fine, because I don't believe in this stuff. But when it's presented as an option, you do start to think about it. Sort of hard to get out of your out of your head.

But just because Nancy told Sangeeta a prediction of the future, that still isn't necessarily the future.

At the end of the day, we have to remember we are creatures of free will. We have free will. And so if you have free will and I have free will, we're constantly influencing what can happen.

Essentially, Nancy is saying we are all Michael J. Fox and back to the future and our actions are making our hands disappear or reappear. Different futures happen or not happen. The answer Sangeeta gets might be different in a month or in a year, depending on what she does. We have a lot of opportunities to either walk down the same path that we always have and continuously do the same things or we can be someone that chooses. That's enough. I want to do something different.

I think like that also kind of plays into people getting upset with terror or whatever thinking that they can make. Not very good choices for their life and then not suffer the consequences of it or not be told that, hey, if you keep going down this path, these things are going to happen. A forewarning gives us an opportunity to be forearmed.

We have to open ourselves up to wanting to create the changes that we want.

Although for Sangita, this knowledge mostly just weirded her out. I thought I would just like let it roll off like water and feathers. But yeah, I fucked with me, definitely fucked with me.

I was pretty upset, you know, like I'm like, fuck this.

Like, I was not looking forward to that third reading yesterday morning because reading one taught Sangeetha that she wasn't asking the right questions and reading to taught her that she maybe didn't want to know the answers.

But then the third tarot reading was a bit of a curveball after the break.

Hey, the listeners, I'm Rachel Thomas, CEO of Leanin. If you're interested in exploring the intersection of gender and culture. Check out our podcast. Tilton will dig into topics we are curious about, highlight people who inspire us to push for change. We'll talk about how women are expected to use humor and how they're challenging the status quo in the workplace. We tend to joke around about things that we are serious about when we're scared, and I would love to encourage women to say how they really feel.

We'll talk about different expressions of gender identity. Let your kid lead. Every child knows their gender. And if they don't know it exactly in that moment, it's because they're exploring. And if they're exploring, that's a wonderful thing.

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So are skeptical heroine sensitising Kurtz was feeling pretty exhausted by this experiment, and then came the final reader.

OK, so the last one she didn't tell me anything about the future was completely floored me.

I think part of the hesitation a lot of people is the idea of tarot as fortune telling.

And I don't use cards in that way.

She wasn't a predictive reader, which I didn't know was a thing. So I'm using them to illustrate ideas. I don't know, dude, I got so emotional in that she is she a therapist.

So I'm Jessica Dor and I am a I'm a writer. I'm a social worker.

Jessica, dear reader, three uses tarot cards almost as a therapeutic tool, as a way to dive into your present or your past.

You know, you can pick up a deck of cards and it can be just that, a deck of cards, you know, pieces of card stock with images printed on them.

You can just look at the pictures like you would look at film or like you would look at a piece of art and just sort of see what comes up for you. In that moment.

She would take a card and she would say, does this bring anything up for you? She would sort of explain what X, Y, Z meant. And she would be like, does this land for you?

Imagine you're in a museum and you're looking at a piece of art on the wall and you're what are you feeling? What's sticking out to you? What do you notice?

When I was looking at these cards and then looking at the king of ones and the top left hand, she showed me one card of the king and it was this guy like chilling in a chair with a crown and a scepter and like a first store. And he is like obviously a wealthy and successful person. But she was like, what I see in this card is how uncomfortable he looks.

The thing that I always notice about this illustration is that the king looks very unsettled, that he looks like he's about to jump out of his chair.

And I'm like, oh, he's like I get that. I get the feeling of getting all of the success that you had been pursuing, but then also feeling like you need to fucking do the next thing like tomorrow.

So you see that. And I think it's I mean, I think most of the cards, you know, around, just like what happens if I start moving? What happens if I sit still for a minute? How does that feel like? How does that sit with you? What I'm saying.

Yeah, I mean, what's that about? Like stopping moving. Like, I can't even imagine doing that. I haven't done that since, like. I don't know. I don't think I've ever done that. I'm afraid that if I do that, I think, like, I'll feel like it all fall apart.

I have been chasing a future version or future goal of myself literally for years, and I haven't stopped moving or giving myself a chance to reflect on my present successes. It just made me realize more than anything that I need to sign up for therapy and how much of an advantage it would be for me to just like, confront this sort of. Issues that I have, things that Jessica and Yaddo actually brought up around like scarcity and a need for security and and.

This sort of fear I have around stopping moving, which is something that just like a door like very, very clearly pointed out for me, I mean, I definitely told this person that I've never spoken to before, like things about myself that I I have never said out loud it wasn't predictive, but it helped me realize things about the president that I think would be really a lot more useful for my future than getting information about whether or not I'm going to break up with my boyfriend.

And I don't know. I don't think I need to know those things. I think I need to deal with issues in the present and then maybe I can start thinking about that stuff. I thought that I was going into this and I was going to learn about the future. But what she made me realize is that I need to stop fucking thinking about the future, that I need to, like, start being more introspective and doing work on myself.

The cards, like, forced me to talk about it, which was helpful.

Ultimately, I'm relieved that this was ultimately helpful to Sangita in some way, because I don't think Sangita quite knew what she was signing up for and I didn't know what I was signing her up for. And then on top of it, like asking her to broadcast all of this, I was really there.

There were times when I was really like thinking about what I was told and sort of really buying into it. And then I'd have to catch myself and be like doing, you know what I mean?

I feel so guilty now. I'm still thinking, please don't feel guilty. I actually like the fact that my relatives. That I that I grew up around these sort of like intense superstitions and in this culture that's very steeped in superstition, I don't want to roll my eyes at that as much, whereas before I sort of felt like, oh, this is crazy, but like, I don't know anything like I really do. And I knew that before, but I think I really know that now.

So are you going to come back to New York? Oh, my God, Avery, I don't know. I don't know anything about the future.

Huge, thank you to all three tarot readers for their insight and their time, Jessica Lanata is the host of Ghost of a Podcast, and you can find her work at Love Leonardo Dotcom. That's Leonardo L.A. And why a duo? You can book readings with Nancy Hayes at Astrology and Angel Mediums dot com that's fully spelled out Jessica Doorposts and analyzes a tarot card every day on social media. And you can follow her at the Jessica Dorje. Bob Parker is our lead producer at.

It's from Allison Deringer. Special thanks to Corrine's achiness. And of course. Of course. Special thanks this week to Sensitising Kurtz. Thank you so much for sharing your journey to the future and back Sangeeta. This episode was mixed and scored by Brandon McFarland, who also made our theme music. Our executive producers are still Buckbee and Nashat Kawa, I'm afraid.

Trevillian still listening. I'm Sean Rameswaram, host of Today Explained four years ago, Donald Trump from reality TV won the presidency and our shared reality hasn't been the same since we struggled to remember what this president said or did last month, let alone in twenty seventeen. This week, we're wrapping up our effort to help you remember our series on the Trump years. I do think it was a really powerful harbinger for what not only was going to come, but what had to come.

Rebecca Traister from New York Magazine will run through the awakening of protest under President Trump. And Vox's editor at large, Ezra Klein, will explain what comes next. This story has not ended and the verdict we get on Election Day will not be the final verdict either. The final episodes of the Trump years this week and today explained wherever you listen.