Heather Cox Richardson-Superb Historian

If you really want to know what is going on in our country today, set down your New York Times and read and listen to Heather Cox Richardson. You can subscribe to her newsletters or watch her on her You Tube Channel.  I do both. 

Richardson is a professor of American History at Boston College, with a focus on the Civil War, Reconstruction, the American West and Plains Indians. 

I listened this morning to her Nov. 11, 2025 You Tube video about what is really going on with the vote to end the shutdown. It was brilliant. Here is a sentence from her Nov. 10 newsletter:

"News of the terms of the deal to end the shutdown hit the country rather like a cue ball hitting a rack: lots of balls started to move in wildly different directions"

The follow up video takes you deep behind the scenes/motivations/consequences of all that is going on and where those cue balls might be headed. 

What she is able to do is see the patterns. She has Pallas Athena (the goddess of Wisdom) square to her Sun Mercury in Libra. A strong Pallas in your chart gives the ability to see patterns. She can take her knowledge of the Reconstruction Era and apply it to the present time. 

Heather has a Sun Mercury conjunction in Libra. Libra is an intellectual sign. The intellectual emphasis is strengthened by her Moon Saturn in Aquarius. Many brilliant people have Aquarius in their charts, or a strongly placed Uranus. The Moon Saturn is trine the Sun Neptune. 

She lives on the coast with her husband Buddy, who is a lobsterman. She loves the water and posts lovely pictures of water scenes, so one would expect strong water placements in her chart. Indeed she has Venus and Neptune in Scorpio, and Mars in Cancer. Note Cancer is the sign of historians, and her Pallas is also in Cancer. Also Jupiter is in Pisces. Jupiter is strong in Pisces, and Jupiter rules professors, as they serve to expand our knowledge of the world. Jupiter is expansion.

Jupiter is opposite Uranus in Heather's chart.  These two planets together are known as the Thank the Lord combination (Ebertin). Jupiter is associated with optimism and I do believe Heather is an optimist. 

As a Libra, she is balanced, and she can see both sides. Great skills for a historian. 

As to the legacy media, I was given the New York Times as a wedding present and I have been reading it most of my adult life. I am not ready to give it up, but I have had to supplement my news reading to see what is really going on. I read the New Yorker, and Atlantic Magazine but also One First by Steve Vladek, and the Contrarian with Norm Eisen. Of all of these news sources Heather Cox Richardson has kept me the best informed in this key point in history that we are living through. I can't recommend her highly enough. 

NB: I don't have a birth time so this is a sunrise chart. 

sunrise chart