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Neil deGrasse Tyson: There's a 13th Zodiac Sign No One Talks About

2026-05-20 Science & Technology
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Dr Brian Keating
Dr Brian Keating
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Description

Neil deGrasse Tyson says astrology has been mathematically dead since the Earth started wobbling on its axis. The kicker: there's a 13th zodiac sign your horoscope app deleted — and the entire billion-dollar industry refuses to acknowledge it. Neil deGrasse Tyson is the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History and host of StarTalk. We cover: why the precession of the equinoxes shifted every sign by an entire month, the constellation called Ophiuchus that astrologers pretend doesn't exist, the Hayden Planetarium encounter where a professional astrologer guessed Tyson's sign wrong eight times in a row, and why human brains are structurally incapable of thinking in probabilities — which is exactly what casinos and astrologers exploit. Get Neil’s new book TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER: https://amzn.to/4nCBft6 The single line from this conversation that should end astrology forever: "It just doesn't matter to astrologers." 00:00 The line that ends astrology in 5 seconds 00:31 The 13th sign your horoscope deleted 01:31 The math that already killed your birth chart 02:16 The astrologer who guessed wrong 8 times 03:10 Why your brain can't do probability 04:09 The casino industry runs on the same trick 04:21 Tyson's favorite quote about astrology ——— 📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt 🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu 🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon — get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating ⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join 📚 My books: Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un 🌐 More: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog 🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #intotheimpossible #briankeating #neildegrassetyson #astronomy #astrology #ophiuchus #science #physics #cosmology #podcast #astrophysics #zodiac

Top Comments (10)

@DrBrianKeating 2026-05-20

Astrologers had one job: predict where the planets are. Then precession slid every sign ~30° off the actual sky, and they just… kept the old chart. The constellation Ophiuchus sits squarely on the ecliptic between Scorpius and Sagittarius — the Sun spends more days there than in Scorpius — and it’s nowhere on your horoscope app. That’s not an oversight. It’s the tell. The deeper point Neil makes at 03:10 is the one worth sitting with: human brains aren’t wired for probability, which is exactly the gap cold readers exploit. Same trick the casino runs. Watch the astrologer guess his sign wrong 8 straight times → 02:16 What’s your sign supposed to be — and does Ophiuchus blow it up? 👇

5 2 replies
@DrBrianKeating 2026-04-29

I'm a physics professor who's spent 25 years at the frontier of cosmology — building the instruments that imaged the universe's first light. Tyson's right that most people can't name a discovery from the last decade, but they've lived through gravitational wave detection, the first black hole image, and a thousand confirmed exoplanets. The stagnation debate (Thiel, Weinstein, Andreeson) is more interesting than either side admits. Full interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson goes deeper: https://youtu.be/aUnkkHuorto Transcript + Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: briankeating.com/yt Free meteorite for .edu addresses (USA): briankeating.com/edu

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@benjaminvanvliet3385 2026-05-21

Astrology? Why don’t you just have Dionne Warwick on the show?

2 1 replies
@EdSceptic-y2e 2026-05-20

I've always wondered who's more qualified between Brian and Tyson to explain the universe to an average person. Or are they equivalent?

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@MetaPhysStore0770 2026-05-25

Scorpio🤔🍀

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@shelonnikgrumantov5061 2026-05-21

I know that astrology is a joke, and what regularly annoys me is that people who believe in it figure out my astrological Zodiac sign a way too often; I even once calculated the cases I could remember and got something around 7 out of 10 correct guesses from the first attempt. Most of the rest zeroed in after the 2n or, at worst, the third one. I have my own revenge in the fact that, in the astronomic reality, the Sun was in a neighboring constellation on my birthday. So, my question is: a human temper cannot be affected by stars but can it possibly be to some extent affected by what is going on on Earth? Seasons (temperature, insolation), seasonal food, habits, etc.?

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@RWin-fp 2026-05-21

A cynic would say modern astronomy is the new astrology. In modern astronomy we take too serious the incorrect consensus view of the universe not unlike we once took serious the influence of the planets on our human lives. We are so sure the images we get to see through our high tech telescopes are WYSIWYG representations of reality outside our galaxy. We are so sure the incoming light of furthest galaxies traversing the fabric of our Milky Way is not fundamentally distorted before reaching our eyes in our tiny spacetime based solar system…we simply ignore we never found dark matter, never found dark energy, never tackled the mature galaxy problem nor the supposed extreme young age of the universe relative to stars. Never mention the dipole quadrupole octupole axes of the CMB are perfectly aligned with the rotation axis of our own Sun and our solar system's motion vector inside our galaxy. All these paradoxes can be solved in one single twist , namely if we finally consider that the interior of our Milky Way (like any galaxy) is dominated NOT by perfect smooth spacetime but instead by a QP backdrop much like the interior of an atom,…just on a larger alternating scale…The visual distortions such a galactic QP backdrop would theoretically create on any incoming images EXACTLY match what we are seeing, thus voiding the need for external pixy dixy fixes like dark matter, dark energy or even the Hubble tension. We can finally restart cosmology as we get an entirely new reality, making much more sense. The good part; even if for incorrect reasons, Brian's inflation argument might still have happened...

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@Masteringthezodiac 2026-05-22

Neil's critique lands on tropical astrology, which ignores precession and skips Ophiuchus. There's a version that does neither. True sky astrology uses the 13 constellations the Sun actually moves through and matches what you'd see in Stellarium. Different system, same sky Neil's defending.

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@kac5599 2026-05-21

When you read a bed time story.. to a child... it doesnt matter that its a story, a fantasy, a fiction.

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@sumeshrajurkar5922 2026-05-23

People studying social behaviour may have a word about it, but I think may be early star gazers spread the astrology lie to popularise their work and also earn some money out of their hobby. 😊

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