Guided by the stars and hailing from Chicago, Aubrey and Dani are the co-hosts of the infectiously delectable podcast ASTRO SLUTS. From pop culture compatibility charts and slumber party debriefs to revealing dating confessions, this show has its finger on the pulse of girls with feelings everywhere. Their deep understanding of astrology and undeniable chemistry doesn’t just arm listeners with the comfort of feeling seen, it empowers Aubrey and Dani with the power to become everyone’s instant BFFs. We sat down to discuss their relationship to astrology, their lives online, and their attitude toward modern-day dating.
Hello ASTRO SLUTS! Please introduce yourselves to our readers!
Aubrey: My name’s Aubrey, this is Dani and we are the ASTRO SLUTS! We have a podcast where we talk about astrology, sex, dating, pop culture, and whatever else we have going on in our lives.
Outside of your own podcast, are you podcast fans?
Aubrey: A little bit. Before we started ASTRO SLUTS I would exclusively listen to astrology podcasts, but now that we’ve started our own I’m getting into other genres too. I feel like a lot of podcasts exist in this kind of ‘If you know, you know’ kind of sphere. That space can make it hard to find a new podcast without literal direction from someone, you know?
Dani: Yeah, but we’ve definitely become more interested in other podcasts as our own podcast has expanded and that’s been great.
Do you produce the podcast yourselves?
Aubrey: Yes. I do all the editing. I make music and went to school for theatre so I know my way around a dock.
Dani: Meanwhile, my background is in social media and advertising so independently we have pretty opposite skills, but together it works well for the show.
It’s interesting that you mention social media because I actually discovered your podcast on TikTok. Do you find that you gain a lot of traction via that medium?
Aubrey: Absolutely. For our first season, we had a much smaller listenership. It basically just consisted of people just based here in Chicago. However, for season two we started pushing TikTok and our numbers just skyrocketed.
Dani: Yeah. When we started season two we had maybe 100 TikTok followers and now we’re up to something like 14,000.
When you were making the podcast to a smaller colloquial audience, did it feel more daunting to be vulnerable on your show?
Aubrey: I mean, I had been making online content before we started pushing Astro Sluts so I had already gotten over the fact that people were going to see me doing silly things on the internet, but there definitely is a learning curve to coming to terms with that realization.
Dani: Yeah. I have been saying way too much on the internet since I was in middle school so while I do understand the anxiety that can come with living online, I’m also used to it.
When I was a teenager I had a blog where I would vent about getting broken up with or whatever so everyone in my circle already knew that I was fucking crazy.
in middle school…”
It’s clear from your discussions on the podcast that astrology has a real guiding influence in your lives. How did you develop this relationship with the practice?
Aubrey: Initially, it started by reading pop culture magazines on sleepovers. I literally remember spending hours talking about our crushes’ star signs, analyzing our weekly horoscopes, and filling out compatibility quizzes. Then, at the end of high school, I started creating a lot more space for it and it turned into a type of therapy for me.
Dani: Yeah. My answer is pretty similar. I think, naturally, my passion for it was sparked from a traumatic experience with some psycho boy, but then gradually, I started looking at it as a means to not only understand other people but also myself.
Growing up I always felt so different from everyone else. I found it hard to relate to my peers and struggled to understand my experience in relation to other people. Finding astrology gave me this tool to understand myself, other people, and our differences.
Aubrey: Exactly. I get so much comfort from using astrology to understand my feelings. I never really connected with religion, but my relationship to astrology feels like it’s kind of in the same realm as a religion, you know?
It guides and comforts me to know that there’s some sort of higher power out there. Gaining this solace from something other than conformed religion is important to me.
Like, I have so many negative feelings surrounding the default of relying on some man called God, however, I have no negative feelings towards the sky, stars, and planets, you know?
Aubrey: Definitely.
What do you think is the biggest misconception surrounding astrology?
Aubrey: I think the most frequent misconception that we encounter is that there are good and bad answers to astrological questions.
For example, we get tons of DMs from people asking us whether a certain chart is compatible with theirs or begging us to break down how they should respond to a certain situation because of their sign, and that’s just the wrong way of looking at the marriage between life and astrology.
Astrology is more of a language as opposed to a concrete lifestyle. It’s a tool we can use to understand one another, not a one-way ticket to a hard answer. It’s just a way to identify similarities and navigate differences between people.
Dani: Yeah. I mean, we’re all human beings. We all have free will. We can literally do whatever we want. People get tied up in the hooks of astrology and the characteristics of their sign. They feel like because they’ve looked up their chart and discovered they’re a Sagittarius that they can’t date pieces, but it’s like, no. That’s the wrong idea. We can all do whatever we please. Astrology is just a tool to help us navigate identify our similarities and navigate our differences. It’s not a hard roadblock.
Speaking of compatibility, how do your charts help you both work together as podcast hosts?
Dani: Well I’m a Sagittarius and Aubrey is an Aquarius. In general, that combo equals total ultimate compatibility. We could just talk forever and laugh at anything. I think the strength of our friendship makes the podcast easy and enjoyable to listen to.
Aubrey: Additionally, our interpretation of our charts means we tackle subject matter entirely differently. I love to dive extremely deep into the core of topics while Dani is entirely happy to breeze through topics, giggle, and have fun. This balance makes our episodes flow well.
You frequently discuss your love lives on the podcast. Do you ever find sharing this side of your lives daunting?
Aubrey: Honestly, I think our Aqua/Sag placements just make the whole thing seem kind of camp to us. We don’t think of our lives as these things that need to be so deep that it needs to be a secret, you know? To us, the whole experience is just funny.
Dani: Yeah we’re both chronic oversharers, but honestly, I’m glad that we are.
As humans, we can hold so much anxiety about things that we consider dirty, deep, and secret but doing that doesn’t help us. If anything, it hinders us. It encourages people to feel embarrassed of behavior that just isn’t shameful.
The things we talk about on our podcast are standard human things. We’ve all been ghosted. We’ve all had a crush. We’ve all had embarrassing shit happen to us. Saying that aloud and laughing about it with your friends doesn’t single you out as the only person who has ever experienced those feelings, it just makes handling them easier.
But even if you don’t find it daunting, you must be aware that certain people are listening. Does this impact how you communicate your experiences?
Aubrey: Yeah. I mean people are listening. I haven’t had anyone become very upset by anything I’ve said, but my ex does listen to the podcast. That’s for sure.
Last season I went through a phase of yearning to get back with her and openly talking about those feelings on the podcast, but it never bothered me. I actually found the novelty of my truth being shared so publicly hilarious.
Dani: Yeah exactly. People are generally supportive. However, I once called a guy mediocre on the podcast and he never spoke to me again, but honestly, it was probably for the best. I mean, he was pretty mediocre.
Aubrey: Totally.
It sounds like you’re very self-aware when it comes to your romantic endevaours – do you agree?
Dani: I mean, generally speaking, I think that we’re very self-aware people. We’re aware of the situations that we put ourselves in and where those scenarios can take us, but we also acknowledge that crazy dramatic shit has happened to us on account of nothing we’ve ever done or asked for. When it comes to navigating our feelings, we always try to learn, laugh, and move forward from our experiences instead of digging a person into a deep grave in the ground and our podcast follows that same logic.
As much as our podcast is based on our lives, it’s more so about the way that we explore our relationship with the world and handle our experiences instead of our individual relationships or situations. I think our listeners understand that.
To finish, what is your favorite sound?
Dani: I love an aggressively loud belly laugh. For me, that’s a whole mood. If I hear someone laugh, particularly when it’s sparked by something I said, I can’t not laugh with them.
Aubrey: Mine is less wholesome and very Aquarius. I love the sound of like clicking on a keyboard. There’s no deep meaning to it, I just really enjoy the sound of typing.
interview by Alice O’Brien, for Bear Radio
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