Co-Star and the Making of a Popular Astrology App

The Astrology Podcast

Chris Brennan

Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture, Philosophy, Spirituality

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2021

⏱️ 127 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 286 features an interview with astrologer Banu Guler about the popular astrology app that she founded called Co-Star. Co-Star is an app for iPhone and Android that calculates your birth chart and provides some basic interpretations, as well as daily transit notifications. The app was launched in late 2017, and quickly became one of the most popular astrology apps in the world, with Co-Star estimating that approximately 20% of young people in the US have downloaded the app. Despite its popularity, the app has also been the subject of criticism within the astrological community, for things ranging from the appropriateness of certain delineations, to questions about the extent to which astrologers were involved in its creation. Last month Banu did an impromptu Ask Me Anything thread on the astrology page on Reddit, to answer some questions about the app. I myself noticed the AMA and asked some questions, and I was impressed enough with the answers that I asked Banu if she wanted to come on the podcast to talk about the history of the app and address some of the controversies. It ended up being a really interesting two-hour conversation where we talked about a range of different topics. You can find out more about Co-Star on their website at: Costarastrology.com This episode is available in both audio and video versions below. Watch the Video Version of This Episode You can watch the video version of my interview with Banu on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN0AtSHxN6Q - Transcript A full transcript of this episode is available: Episode 286 transcript Listen to the Audio Version of This Episode You can either play the audio version of this episode of the podcast directly from the website or download it as an MP3 to your device by using the buttons below:

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you're listening to the
0:02.1	Astrology Podcast. Today is, what is it, Friday, Monday,
0:08.0	January 4th, 2021, starting at 120 PM here in Denver, Colorado, and this is the 286th episode of the show.
0:17.0	So in this episode I'm going to be interviewing Banu Guler, who's the founder of the co-star astrology app. So hey, welcome to the show.
0:26.3	Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. You're obviously someone we've all looked up to for a very long time.
0:35.0	Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on this show. So part of the genesis of this was that last month, about a month ago, I think it was on December 1st,
0:41.0	you did an AMA and asked me anything on Reddit, on the astrology
0:45.8	subreddit where you were just answering questions from different random users and
0:50.9	I happened to notice it actually relatively early on that day and I asked some questions
0:56.5	from just generally things I was curious about that I'd heard in the community and I really liked your
1:01.2	responses and so I offered if you ever wanted to come on the show that we could do an interview and you accepted.
1:07.0	So here we are today, so thanks for doing that.
1:10.0	Yeah, of course.
1:12.0	I believe that when I realized that you were Chris Brennan, I wrote in all caps,
1:17.0	Oh my God, is this Chris Brennan?
1:20.0	Right. Yeah, I thought that was really funny and endearing.
1:24.1	So, yeah, so one of the things we were doing on the AMA
1:28.8	was to clear up some misconceptions about the app and to talk a little bit about its development as well as its future
1:35.9	plans and I thought those would be good discussion topics for us today so we'll get to just about everything.
1:50.1	So before we get there though, first I wanted to introduce this by talking about the rise of popular astrology apps over the course of the past decade in the past few years as you know mobile
1:55.1	phones and smartphones have become more ubiquitous it seems like it was only a matter of
2:00.2	time before somebody created a popular astrology app that took off, but it almost seems like it could have happened sooner than it did, and for some reason it's more recent that some apps have really exploded in popularity and co-stars seems to be one of them.
	...

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