Stuff You Should KnowThe Farmer's Almanac has a long rich history that is more than just moon phases and long-term weather patterns. Tune in to learn all about it.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Howdy and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here too, and we're just some homey folksy types ready to spin a good yarn for you about the old farmer's almond.
That's right. You know why I commissioned this one, why, Chuck?
Why?
Because I thought it would be fun to put a old farmer's almanac in the outhouse at my camp.
Okay, wait, first, you have an outhouse.
I have an outthouse.
Is it just a pit like a latrine with a log over it.
No, it's a composting toilet okay, with a little solar panel outside that runs a fan.
Okay, and there's the fan.
Do the fan moves air through to provide aerobic interaction. Next the uh with the with the with the poop and the composting pete.
I just made a compost t like that, but I used to submerged little fountain pump to create the air movement. Yeah, pretty neat.
It is neat. So yeah, I got a composting toilet.
It's good.
It helps. Uh, I don't use it. I use it to go poopy if I'm there for more than a couple of days.
Uh huh.
But largely I put it there so, you know, some of some of the ladies in my life and and friends, wives and things, I don't like to squad in the woods. Some of them don't mind, sure, But I put that there so everyone would want to go camping at the camp and be like, yeah, you got a composting toilet. I feel good about.
Using it, right, I can. I can see the conversation between the couple and the kitchen back in Atlanta, like, well, no, he's got a composting toilet. Well, now i'm you know you can count me in.
Well, and now I gotta He's got a composting toilet and an old farmer's almanac in that outhouse because I thought it would just be sort of a fun thing, because I knew from growing up as a kid that an old in the South, that an old farmer's almanac was quite a common thing to find in a bathroom or an outhouse to read while you're there on the john. So I have one there from a couple of years ago. I need to get a new one. It should change it every year. You know. It's sort of the whole point of an ominac. And so I thought I was reading it the other day when I was up there cutting your grass, and I was like, I really don't even know the history of these things, and so let's find out.
So did you read them when you were a kid too?
I mean a little bit here and there. It's not very interesting for a kid. Sure, I could see that, But my grandmother, Bryant, my dad's mom, was a backyard farmer her whole life, and you know, she was one of these people that put a lot of stock in the Farmer's Almanac, and so it was just something I knew about in my life as a kid. Probably didn't read it a ton, though.
I was never exposed to it, I knew it existed.
You were from the north, yeah, I was Midwest, but to Georgia, Ohio was the north. Yeah.
Still, but there was corn corn everywhere around where I lived, So it is a little surprising. But the biggest surprise that I received since we started researching this is that you me apparently used to read the Farmer's Almanac when she was a little kid.
Nothing you ever tell me about Umi will surprise me. It's true. You just never know.
No, you really don't. It's great for those of you who've never met you mean, you wouldn't consider her a farmer's almanac type.
That's pretty safe to say.
Yeah so I was. I thought that was neat. She's very well rounded. But I, in like chia pet fashion, went on and ordered this time myself a Farmer's Almanac. I was going to order you one, and I was like, I'll bet he's already got one on him.
Oh look at you. Very smart. Also, I've made a joke about you're from the North as it out. As we'll see, the Old Farmer's Almanac came from New England originally. Yeah, so I was, you know, people from the north. There's plenty of farming that went on all over the country.
By god, they even cover the weather forecast for the year.
In California exactly. They don't discriminate, all right, So big thanks to Dave Ruse who helped us out with this one. We're going to talk mostly about the Old Farmer's Almanac, but we will talk a little bit about its rival, the Farmer's Almanac. But we're talking about the Old Farmers Almanac the one that's looked the same since its inception, with that yellow cover, the four seasons. It's very Did you get yours in the mail yet? No?
I pre ordered it. I won't arrive until August thirtieth.
Oh, this is for next year. Yes, it's very smart. Or do you hear in advance?
Well, I mean what am I going to do? Be like, well, what happened two weeks ago getting this year's you know? I mean, like why that.
You could one from August to December? You could surely gain some insight.
Now, I don't like to waste money. I'd rather just wait.
Yeah, but it's been the same. We'll talk a little bit more about the cover and its presentation and all that. But it's very iconic looking if you've ever seen one. It's been around since seventeen ninety two. That's amazing, which means it's the oldest continuously published periodical in North America.
Yeah, and I looked it up. That's the oldest published anything that's been continuously printed in North America. Is the Hartford Kurant or sorted as the Connecticut Kuran in seventeen sixty four, not too much sooner than the farmer's almanac. But then if you look for the world, the Swiss have us beat by a mile. Yeah, they have a what's called The Post and Domestic Times, the post ach inrich tid Niningar Okay, And again that means the Post and Domestic Times, which has been printed tinuously since sixteen forty five. Amazing, But still that's nothing to sneeze at seventeen ninety two. And they never missed an addition.
Pretty good, Yeah, yeah, totally. And these these books, basically, I mean those sort of an almanac craze at one point, lots of small family farms all over the country. Yeah, pre industrialization, there were hundreds of farmers almanacs all over the place, a lot of regional ones, even local ones. And what you would find in them if you were like, well, guys, what the heck is a farmer's almanac?
Good? Good, walk back.
What it is is there are books that will say things like, here's when you should plant things, here's some tips on cattle. Very importantly, here are astronomical charts. This is when the sun is going to rise and set in the spring and throughout the year. These are the phases of the moon. Here are some recipes. Maybe here's some jokes, here's some poetry. So they would mix in some folksy fun stuff and entertaining stuff along with sort of boots to the ground advice tips and raw data for farming.
Yeah, but the big draw is the long range weather forecasts, like they essentially forecast the weather generally for the entire United States and Canada a year in advance. Yeah, we'll talk about that, and they say that they're eighty percent accurate, which is mind boggling. It's it's almost unbelievable.
Yeah, And it's things like I remember my grandmother referring to it for her crops later in the year to see like how rainy is it going to be this fall, how rainy will it be six months from now exactly? And people put a lot of stock in it, and some people still do even Yeah.
So it's an unusual and unique combination of folksy folk wisdom and folklore. Even things like if you want to have turnips in the winter and there's no such thing as refrigeration, keep them in packed in sawdust during the summer or whatever. Stuff like that. It's useful. But then there's also like astrology, like horoscopes and that kind of thing. But then and then it's alongside like actual legitimate astronomical data that is accurate. So it's a weird combination of really stuff. And apparently it grew out of the medieval era, and the word almanac itself seems to have been invented by medieval French astronomers in the thirteenth century. Although they said that it was an Arabic word almanach and that meant calendar of the heavens, and apparently these astronomers just totally made that up.
Yeah, it was, yeah, like you said, invented by the French. These medieval almanacs were they were just handwritten, this before the printing press, and they did some similar things though they talked about like celestial bodies and moon phases and stuff like that. Eventually, when the printing press comes along, they were some of the first things to be printed. Like, people lived their lives by these a lot of times, so they were some of the most popular early books and periodicals that existed in the world.
Essentially, Yeah, because of their popularity and because even back then they were just kind of bizarre creatures their own thing. They were also widely satirized too. As early as fifteen thirty two, there was a French satirist named Rabelai who created a parody almanac and he prognosticated stuff that's quite obvious as a way to just kind of mock what almanacs do. But he started a trend that lasted for hundreds of years. And the most famous parody almanac was Poor Richard's Almanac, which was published by Benjamin Franklin from seventeen thirty two to fifty eight. And What's neat is Even though it was a parody and they made stuff up and it was funny and a satire of almanacs, it also contained like actual helpful, useful information.
Too, Yeah, it did. He wrote under the pseudonym Richard Saunders. And it's famous for a lot of things, one of which, like you said, it was around for what twenty something years, twenty five, twenty six.
Years, I'm guessing like thirty something.
Yeah, but it was like the best selling for that long. But it was very famous now for these a lot of turns of phrase that Franklin invented a s. Saunders, such as we still use today. Hase makes waste as one fish and visitors smell after three days. And of course the old standard early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
Very nice.
All came from Poor Richard's Almanac.
Yeah, from the noodle of Ben Franklin himself, because he wrote it and published it.
That's right.
What a renaissance dude he was.
He really was. We've kind of danced around Franklin here and there. I wonder not that if we could ever he's annoying podcasting sprites. I wonder if we should ever just dive in and just cover him in earnest.
I think we totally should.
You probably should, or at the very least that kite and the key. I feel like we have.
Talked about that before. Yeah, I can't remember which episode, but I think we're like, that's not it didn't happen. Yeah, but his Poor Richard's Almanac, everything Franklin touched basically turned to gold. He was just good at everything. And his his parody almanac, which was apparently inspired by a European almanac called Poor Robins, he kicked off like that almanac craze that you talked about in I think the late eighteenth century, which is when Robert Bailey Thomas came along and said, I'm getting in on this almanac stuff myself because I find them thoroughly fascinating.
I think that's a great place for a break. Okay, we'll come back if you agree and talk about who Robert Bailey Thomas was right after this.
Learn and stuff with Joshua John stuff Fushion.
All right, So Robert Bailey Thomas is an entrepreneur. Almanacs are all the craze. He's, like you said, he wanted to get in on this action. He was a dude from Massachusetts who was a farm guy, but a farm guy raised by educated parents, an educated farming family who very much valued reading. They had a very big library, and he would just you know, he was quite taken with almanacs and astronomy and science journals and kind of all sort of makes sense that he would one day want to do an almanac when you look at his upbringing.
Yeah, and it's pretty remarkable that his parents had a library in their house. But they were educated farmers and they made sure that their kid was educated as well. Before he became an almanac publisher, he was a school teacher, a bookbinder, and he said nope, I'm gonna do this almanac thing. I've been putting it off long enough. By God, I'm going to chase my dream. And he did so. He went to Boston. He went and studied at Osgood Carlton's School of Mathematics in Boston, which today it does like, if you're taking classes from Osgood Carlton School of Mathematics today, you should un enroll and ask for your money back.
Boy, I hope it's not still around.
I hope not too, because that was a pretty harsh insult. But at the time, I mean, it was a legitimate school. It just had a silly name. And that's where Robert Thomas went to go figure out how to create these astronomical charts that he was going to publish in his almanac.
Yeah, so, like all the things are there. His parents are farmers, he was into science. He worked as a bookbinder and a teacher. He took these math classes like it is all sort of coalescing into a pretty obvious thing to do. And that year in seventeen ninety three, or I guess the year before. For the year seventeen ninety three, he put out because people like I don't know Josh Clark like to buy things a little early. Yea, you know, by this year's calendar in July.
What a waste exactly you buy next year's calendar in July.
My mom might do that when I was a kid because they were on sale.
I have price calendar.
I'm not saying that that's the way forward for all humanity.
That's hilarious. I'd be an idiot not to buy this.
I think I got my I got a calendar every year, and I think I always got it on my birthday in March. For an hilarious it's pretty funny.
I am. I got a calendar in the mail from being a member of the Autumn Society, and I was like, what the hell am I going to do with this? Like an actual legitimate calendar these days is like it's just not handy, Like it just doesn't have a place in the world. So I have to figure out what to do with it.
I disagree. Is it a daily calendar.
No, it's a calendar monthly thing, like what you got for your birthday?
My friend, we still get calendars, Emily. I wish I could remember the the artists, but these very beautiful month calendars, these artists draws these very beautiful pictures, and sure it hangs on the wall, and I find a great deal of value in a month at a glance without getting out my phone and all the distractions that come with that.
I feel like I'm a big enough person to admit when I'm wrong.
Hey, no, not everything works for everyone.
So no, I was trying who pointing calendars and you change my mind. I'm going to put it up somewhere because you're right. And I knew that just seeing the little pretty birds every month is great. I was going to do something with it, but I was still just astonished. I haven't seen an actual calendar for a very long time.
No, I'm with you. I'm with you, all right. So where are we? He finished his mathematics and in seventeen ninety three put out the first edition, which was called The Farmer's Almanac. And we'll talk about the word old, coming and going as it comes and goes.
So he apparently in the first cover he said that the Farmer's Almanac, containing besides the large number of astronomical calculations and farmer's calendar for every month of the year, has great a variety of new, useful and entertaining matter, which is not the best sentence ever, but it really gets across. It's just jam packed with stuff, and he fitted all into a forty six page book, which is much slimmer than the ones you get to today from what I understand.
Yeah, and that that uh, what do you call that a slogan?
I guess, I guess I'm.
Still on the cover.
It is it still?
Yeah? Yeah, well, oh yeah, you'll see very soon. It's been on there for two hundred and thirty straight years, as well as pictures of uh, I guess, portraits of Ben Franklin on one side, yeah, and Robert Thomas on the other.
Why am I thinking of Rico Tubbs every time we say Robert Bailey Thomas's name? What was his name? I know it is three names? And there was a.
Toss and I think Thomas, Oh you mean the.
Actor, Yeah, Rico Tubbs from Miami Vice.
Yeah, I thought, uh, what's his what's his real name? Don Johnson? And yeah him, Remember what happened to that guy? Is he around? Oh?
I'm sure he's around. He got super rich off of Miami Vice and said, so long, suckers, I'm going to become a Farmer and he subscribed to the Farmer's Almond Neck.
Yeah, like you said, forty six pages, and it had all the things you would expect. It had all those sunrises and sunsets and moon phases. It had all the advice, It had home remedies for you know, little ailments and things like that. This was just coming off of the snake oil sort of period, or maybe it was still right in the middle of it actually, Yeah.
I think that lasted well into the nineteenth and even early twentieth century.
Yeah, so all this kind of stuff was very popular, and he put it in print gardening advice, all the poetry and the little jokes, and he had math puzzles and things like because he was a math guy from that amazing college that he went to, and he apparently was a good writer. And that's why it became because, like we said, there were hundreds of ALMANACX, and this one became the most popular because he was good at doing it. For the time. He was sort of a witty and clever guy, and people like it just liked his writing.
Yeah, that's that's really important. That he wasn't like this innovative, amazing like he didn't invent the whole thing. He I mean, he came along centuries after the first one started being published, but he was just that interesting that his publication has been around two hundred and thirty years. That's pretty remarkable if you really stop and think about it. That's how That's how much of a nerve that guy touched. And that list of stuff that you talked about, that's essentially exactly what you're gonna find today. And I went and looked up some of the math problems. I'm like, oh, I'll bet I can do that. Sure, there was now now mathematician I found from the nineteen seventy four edition. Huh, And it was it has three circles and they're separate from one another, okay, And the question is how many circles can you draw that touch all three circles in just one point? And I'm like, well, you can draw one in the center of them, he can draw one on the outside, so two. And I went and flipped forward to see what the answer was, and the answer was seven. And I still have no idea and I probably never will how how you could possibly draw seven circles that fulfilled that criteria? And I'm just sticking with two. I think it's a misprint.
No, someone didn't show you though.
No, it just said seven. That was it, and then it moved on to the next thing.
Really annoying. Someone will send in an answer, so we have plenty of math help.
I don't want to know a different answer the answers too.
Oh all right, okay. So one example, you know we talked about people liking his writing and him being a little more creative than maybe your average almanac at the time, was he did one on cider making, but instead of just leaving instructions and a recipe, he made it more of a story about he and a farmer with some witticisms and jokes and stuff. Kind of like maybe he started that recipe trend of having the scroll for ten pages before you get to the recipe.
Thank god for that jump to recipe.
Amen.
But that cider making thing, that's a good example of what you'd find. That was for like the month of October. So each month would have you know, some information or some suggestions on what you should do around the farm that month, and it's making cider is what you would do in October. And then on the opposite page, I love this. I hope they still use it so I can get it my twenty twenty four edition. But it would say at the top of the month, October half thirty one days, And for some reason, it just makes it seem so ominous. Yeah, you know, like something bad's gonna happen in October because they said it half thirty one days.
Yeah. I love that. Yeah, I hope it does have thirty one days. You know, it would be ominous if it said October half twenty eight days.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the almanac would know.
Thomas himself did fifty three editions of The Farmer's Almanac before he died in eighteen forty six. He apparently died editing, as the story goes, for the next edition that was ready to be shipped to your house, and that that's the story of the Old Farmer's Almanac. But what about the old.
Oh well, the old part actually came all the way back in eighteen thirty two, when Phillip Seymour Hoffman was still editing the Almanac. He changed the name to the Old Farmer's Almanac because it had been around for thirty five years already and it had enough competition that he wanted to be like, hey, don't forget this is the original Farmer's Almanac, but instead he used Old.
Yeah. I'm trying to find the Phillip Symore Hoffman joke, but I don't get it.
Robert Bailey Thomas.
Okay, just three names. You're gonna call him John Wayne gace Enox Well, no.
No, I called him Phillip Seymore Hoffman because the Rico Tubbs has Philip, and I think Philip Michael Thomas. Michael Thomas, Yes it is, it's Philip Michael Thomas. If we didn't look it up either, did we?
We did it. I didn't look it up, but he said, phill.
Up there, Yeah, we did it, Chuck. We just connected brain waves.
I know. I feel like we should just stop, sure, I mean retire. Okay, so you talked about Old, right you finished that part.
Yeah, he was distinguishing his publication from the competition.
That's right. And Richard. I'm sorry, John Jinks. I want to call him Richard for some reason, probably because of Richard's Almanac. Thomas died. John Jenks was the guy who changed it to Old and that cover art started because of Jinks in eighteen fifty one. And that's the same cover that they still used today that I was talking about.
Yeah, apparently Thomas changes to he's the one who introduced old stopped. He took it away three years later, and then his successor said, now we're going to go back to the old Farmer's Almanac.
Yeah that was Jinks.
Yeah, mister Jenks, I think we just got.
Really confusing then. But hopefully people figure it out.
Yeah. Eventually, it just keep listening to what we said over and over and you'll eventually discern the truth.
All right, So we should talk a little bit though about the other Farmer's Almanac, because I'm sure when you went online, unless you just typed in old, if you just type in Farmer's Almanac, you're gonna see probably both the Old Farmer's Almanac and the yellow and then just the Farmer's Almanac and is sort of orange e and it looks more modern than the other one.
Yeah, I guess more modern is a relative term. They both look pretty old timing to me.
Yeah, that's true. I think the other one looks older though.
Okay, but it was founded in eighteen eighteen, so it's pretty old itself. But because the original Farmer's Almanac, the Old Farmer's Almanac was from seventeen ninety two. They just have to acquiesce and say, yes, we're just the Farmer's Almanac. But there's a I think she doesn't edit anymore. Janis Stillman. She was the first woman editor of the Old Farmer's Almonds, and she was editing as recently as a few years ago, if she isn't still And she said that there's one other publication, a Farmer's Almanac, that seems to the kind word is emulate everything we do. And this is like she's saying this in like twenty eighteen or nineteen. These publications have been like rivals of one another for centuries now, and they still throw shade at one another every chance they get.
Yeah, yeah, I mean they're the two big ones. And I think the Old Farmer's Almanac outsells the regular right.
Yeah, but I don't think it's necessarily by too much. I think they both sell a pretty decent amount.
They both sell millions, still.
Millions, maybe even billions, No, just okay.
One of the big discs, though, and I think I even remember this growing up, is that you could buy an Old Farmer's Almanac in a store if you went to get to a bank or maybe to get your insurance, like to an actual insurance agent and an office.
Who was also a part time farmer.
Perhaps then you might get a farmer's almanac branded by that business, because that is what they did. That was their strategy is, let's not sell this thing to retail stores. Let's sell it to businesses. Let them put their stamp on the front of it and give them out instead of a toaster.
They still do that, and only since nineteen ninety four or five edition they started selling them in retail stores. But they also still offer it as like a branding thing for banks, the kind of banks that like John Wisdom Robbed in Wisdom, that Emilia Westevez movie, that's where you would get like a bank branded Farmer's almost Wow.
Uh yeah, sure, like a ha seed bank.
Sure I wouldn't call it that, but.
We should have a stuff you should know branded Farmer's Almanac and send those out. That'd be pretty fun awesome. I wonder how much that costs there.
It's not much. I can't remember it was. I came up in Google search and I was like, that's reasonable. It wasn't much at all. I think twenty five dollars or something for one hundred of them or something crazy.
Did you get the phillim Michael Thomas Brandon Farmers Amena. Yeah, so the regular farmers Almanac, the one that's newer, that's in scare quotes. A guy named Ray Geiger ran that for about sixty years and he was a big marketing whiz and he used to refer to himself as the most interviewed man in America. And he may be right. He apparently was interviewed more than eighteen thousand times in his career, and he seemed to really really enjoy sitting down and talking about the Farmer's Almanac and himself.
Yeah. And one of the other things he did too, Chuck, was, in addition to giving interviews, to just drum up business for the Farmer's Almanac or keep it interested. And this is like he's working from nineteen thirty four to nineteen ninety four. That is a tough period to remain at the helm of a Farmer's Almanac and keep people interested in it as the world is changing like it is. And that's what he dedicated himself too. And one of the other things he would do in addition to interviews. Is create like national campaigns to do something that was kind of Farmer's Almanaki and to get people talking about things that was Farmer's Almonaki and the Farmer's Almanac itself.
Yeah, I mean this is a guy who went from the Lindy hop to grunge. Yeah for sure, isn't that crazy? Yeah?
It is crazy?
And those campaigns, and I think a lot of this was to get attention. I'm not sure how many of them he really really wanted to get accomplished, or maybe he wanted them accomplished and it was a pr thing, but it seemed to get attention I think was maybe the point. But like, hey, let's move Thanksgiving to October.
Sure more in line with Canada.
Forget paper dollars, let's use coins, stuff like that.
The one that I can get behind, by golly is the extending daylight savings time year round.
I wish her.
They talk about every year and I don't know what who's dragging their heels on this. It drives me nuts every year. Twice a year I go totally bonkers because of the daylight saving time coming or going. It just stinks, you know, So I really wish he would have been successful. But he was successful with one campaign apparently. I don't know what decade it was, but the USPS was planning on replacing on postmarks the place name or town or in state whatever with a code and numerical code. And he started this campaign to say, no, no, let's keep the place names. It's way more interesting than a numerical code. And the USPS listened. So that's why there's still place names on postmarks. Oh okay, you know when you get it stamped at the post office that says you know, Atlanta, Georgia or something that shows where it was sent from. Yeah, they were gonna replace it with you know, three two nine or something like that. And this is like robot talk, you know, and he saved the day. Who needs that robots?
All right, we're gonna take another break. We're gonna talk about more lore and finally get to the bottom of whether or not those weather predictions are really right.
Learn and stuff with Joshua John stuff you shine up.
So one thing I did not realize, Chuck, is that there's actual lore surrounding almanacs, which makes sense in retrospect. We're talking about a couple hundred years plus of editions of two different Almanacs, so of course they're going to have played a role in something other than their own publications, and they did a few times over. One of the things that does have to do with their actual, like the actual physical Almanac, is that there's a hole in the top left corner of both of them, and both Almanacs claimed to have been the originator of that. And the reason that both Almanacs say they created this hole is because they found out their customers were doing the same thing. They were nailing a nail, hammering a nail through the almanac when it arrived, pulled the nail out and put a piece of strength through it so they could hang it from a hook wherever they wanted to keep it handy.
Pretty cool. They both have the same story. Like you said, that's the one thing that I after reading this, I have mine in my outhouse, just sitting in the magazine wreck that, my goodness screwed into the wall, and I'm gonna change that. Next time I go up there, I'm gonna, you know, put a nail on the wall and a string through that thing so we can hang it up.
That's apparently how it's done.
That's how are you gonna do that?
Yeah, I'm gonna hang it right next to my bird calendar.
Right, you gotta go back in time. So they both said they came up with that. But the apparently the one distinction is the regular Farmer's Almanac is the one that they sort of claimed that you could hang it up in the outhouse specifically so you could use it as a reference or to wipe your butt.
So both of them said, well, we started drilling this, you know, beforehand, drilling the hole in beforehand, so it arrives pre drilled. Whoever started it will probably never know. And that's just a really good example of Farmer's Almanac and Old Farmer's Almanac rivalry, Like they both have the audacities say nope, it was us, and here's the identical story. The other one is telling of why we started doing it.
Yeah, totally.
There's another. There's a trial that Abraham Lincoln was a part of called the Almanac Trial, where almanacs played an outsize role in it too.
Yeah, this is kind of fun. Lincoln was defending a friend of his son who was accused of murder. Didn't do a lot of these criminal trials, but since it was a pal, he was like, sure, I'll step up. And in the trial there was this very Brady bunchy kind of thing that happened. He did not throw his briefcase on the floor.
Man. That was a good episode.
That was a good episode if you've never seen The Brady Bunch, it's a great trial scene where mister Brady there was I think the guy suing or something, I had a neck brace on.
Said he had whiplash from being rear ended by right.
That's right, that's what it was, and no one believed the guy. And during the middle of the court scene, mister Brady throw his briefcase on the floor and it lands with a thud, and the man twists his neck, which he would not be able to do had he had a stiff neck.
They jerked over to look to see what that sound was. Mike Brady stood up and shook his fists and screamed this primal scream. It was one of the most bizarre moments in TV history.
It was really great. But Lincoln did something similar when the I believe the prosecution said I saw the defendant beating a victim over the head at eleven PM. Lincoln said well, how did you know it was him? At eleven pm? And the witness said the moon was high and bright in the sky, and Lincoln said aha, and through his figure into a briefcase by holding up a farmer's almanac and pointing out that no, no, no, we can actually see that the moon was not bright and high in the sky on that night. And Lincoln won that case. And both almanacs say, yeah, that was us. Apparently it was neither.
Yeah, there was a The foreman of the jury said it was a Jane's Almanac, spelled like Thomas Jane. Yeah, exactly who knew he was going to make an appearance in this episode?
Me or the Brady Bunch. This is all over the map. That was Miami vice.
I read a little kind of brief on the Almanac trial, and apparently Lincoln's almost said host his client and I am not in top form today. I'll tell you that his client was just guilty a sin. Apparently one of his own defense witnesses said, you can put me on the stand, but you want to be careful what questions you asked me, because you're not going to want to know. You're not going to want to hear what I have to say, so he done exactly, so he knew that that this guy was guilty, and he still defended him and got him acquitted, which is not Lincoln ask But apparently after he became president kind of made some moves to get another guy who had been convicted as an accomplished released from prison because he knew that it was actually the guy who he had gotten acquitted. Oh well, that's nice, it is, but it's some shady Lincoln stuff. That's just it's not in his character, or at least the character we understand. And the author of this post on it said that they kind of chalked it up to he was presented with one of those terrible moral choices that you know sometimes come along in life, where he had to choose between his own, you know, principles and a friendship that he really cared about, and he chose the friendship. So wow, people can excuse things anything Lincoln did. We love him in the United States. For those of you who live abroad.
Really quickly, you might like to know that Emily was called to jury duty this week.
Oh yeah, how's it going.
Well, she was excused, but it was it was going to be a murder trial. Wow, not crazy, and she did not want to be on it, I can imagine. And she was excused. But she went down to the you know, the what's the vore? Is that what it?
Yes? Yeah, yeah, nice, she went.
Yeah, she went through that process and had never been that far before, so it was fairly interesting.
Yeah. Does she know why she was excused?
She does, and I'll tell you later.
Okay, great, I can't wait to hear.
She didn't she didn't like make up stuff that made her sound like a bad person or something like that, which is a common thing.
Okay, okay, that's out of her character.
That's out of her character. All right. So let's get to the bottom of this weather thing. The two farmers Almanacs together, it seems like sell between ten and twelve million copies a year.
Is that still wow?
Which is unbelievable. Yeah, three to five million for the old and it said I think six or so for the newer one. So I guess it's outpaced the old Farmer's Almanac sadly. So one of the reasons people still buy this and still depend on it is for these long range weather forecasts, and they have long touted a fifty or I'm sorry, an eighty percent eighty accuracy rate. That's crazy, I think you said earlier. Eighteen different regions in the US, six regions in Canada for the year ahead of time, a year a full or in your case, eighteen months ahead of time. And the old story was is that the Old Farmer's Almanac had a secret formula that Robert Thomas created himself locked in a black box in the offices in Dublin, New Hampshire. Apparently editor Janis Stillman that you referred to went to this box at one point found a bunch of handwritten notes from Thomas about the weather, but not a secret formula.
It's like a Heraldo moment.
And apparently Farmer's Almanac also says they have a secret formula. It's everyone. They just keep copying one another.
I know, it's crazy. So finally, so the Farmer's Almanac, the younger of the two, has a pseudonymous pseudonymic yes, pseudonymic, Yeah, exactly, I was about I was porky pigan it yea. His name is Caleb weather Be. And who knows who Caleb Weatherby actually is or how many people have been Caleb Weatherby over the years, but they say that Caleb Weatherby has a secret formula that's used from their founder too, So again exact same thing. But finally, in the last fifty years, I guess the Old Farmer's Almanac said, we actually use modern technology to make these forecasts too. One of the things that they use that both seem to use apparently that is not necessarily part of typical meteorology, is sunspot activity. They take that into consideration when they're making these projections, and it's not entirely clear how much of an effect sunspot activity has on the weather, although it's agreed upon that it probably has some effect, but whether it has any effect or not. Both almanacs almost are duty bound to include considerations of sunspot activity in their weather forecast because that is what the readers want from them.
I mean, that's kind of explains everything about why the Farmer's Almanac is still around. They don't want it changed, they want it to be what it is. There's a guy named Tim Clark who wrote for about four decades in the Farmer's Almanac, the Old Farmer's Almanac excuse me, yeah, and did a lot of lectures and interviews about it. Died a couple of years ago, and he very specifically talks about the fact that like people want it to be the same. People have been disappointed when they know we use more modern ways to predict weather, and even when we're not right, people want us to be right, so they sort of either remember us as being right or think we're right even when we're not right exactly, which is kind of funny. But when you look at what they're doing as far as an eighty percent success rate, and we'll get to eat whether or not that's even true. Is they They just do sort of a historical average, like a peak at historical averages I think over thirty years of rain they.
Called climate normals.
Yeah, temperature and precipitation basically, and then for each region, for each season of the year, they're gonna say, all right, is it going to rain a little more or less? And is it going to be hotter and cooler than it has been over that thirty year average.
Yeah, they don't. They don't go into like, on you know, July twenty eighth, it's going to be you know, ninety two degrees in the South. They don't do that. As far as I know, I haven't gotten my first copy yet, but from what I understand, they make these generalizations, not actual forecasts. And so what they say is if it's even if they say that it's going to be hotter than normal, even if they say much hotter than normal, if it's even a half a degree over that thirty year climate normal average, they're like, we were correct. Count it as.
Correct, and they are technically they are.
Technically, especially if you just take any qualifier out, like much hotter and just go with hotter than average, they are correct. And that's how they say that they hit that eighty percent mark. The thing is is there've been studies. Meteorologists love to take potshots at the farmer's almanacs, any farmer's almanac, because they're like, it's impossible to predict the weather a year out. Noah has ninety day forecasts, they're sixty percent accurate. These guys are using every available technology to create these forecasts, and they can only hit sixty percent ninety days out. The meteorologists are like, nobody can predict the weather anywhere accurately, especially for a whole season in an entire region, a full year out. And so people have done studies on just how accurate they are, and they usually come up short of eighty percent.
Yeah, they always come up short of eighty and it sort of ranges, I think by year. I think in twenty twenty one twenty two, over that winter, those the woman from the Golden Gate Weather Service named Jan Null calculated this one out and she found for the winter twenty one twenty two that for precipitation the almanac was forty percent correct and for temperature only six percent correct.
Yeah, at the Old Farmer's Almanac offices they call her Jan Noll. The nulla fire.
Fifty to fifty two percent is what they found. I think generally the University of Illinois was behind that one. So that's like it's sort of in flip a coin territory.
Yeah, and Tim Clark says people want them to be right, that it's basically just confirmation bias, that you know, when they're right, people remember it. When they're they forget, and it's I can't speak for everybody. I mean people who are like gardeners and like small farmers and stuff, they'll buy the Farmer's Almanac and maybe plan when they're going to start their garden or harvest crops based on those predictions. But there's not like hard feelings at the farmer's almanac if they get it wrong, because it means so much more than that. It's like this last outpost, this last bastion, holding down, like an agrarian past that just refuses to give way because the almanacs are keeping it going. And so it's almost to me the reason I ordered it is it's like a respite from the modern world. Yeah, and just kind of stepping through like this a wardrobe, if you will, and entering a new world where there's acorns everywhere and you can predict how bad the weather's going to be by how many squirrels are gathering those acorns on any given day in the fall. Just things that like, it doesn't matter if they're scientific. It's draws your attention to an important part of the world, which is nature. It's still there and you it just makes you focus your attention on it for a little while, and it's it's that's great. That's all that's all it needs to do to exist happily. As far as I'm concerned.
I agree. It's not like, oh, well, we have modern technology now to work correctly predict weather, So we should get rid of this long the longest standing periodical in North America, right, and all that, you know, kind of goofy folksy charm and jokes and poetry like I guess they could say, well, like, yeah, do all that, but don't do the weather. But I mean, who cares. Yeah, no one's living or dying by this thing.
I mean, the very fact that we have that technology means we should keep the Farmer's Almond out just as a reminder of other ways to be in think too.
I agree, you don't know your past, you don't know your future.
Man, well put chuck. You know who would love that as a slogan on a T shirt, Philip Michael Thomas. I agreed, Thank you, Chuck. If you want to know more about the Farmer's Almanac, the Old Farmer's Almanac, any almanac really, you can just go look online, ironically and find them and order them and hang them up in your outhouse and get all retro. And since I said outhouse, that means it's time for a listener.
May I'm gonna call this Noam Chomsky Lives. Okay, Hey, guys, love the show. It's one of those things that can comfort me when times are tough. And thanks for all you do. And I remember we weren't sure if Noam Chomsky was alive or dead, and we don't like to stop and look things up while we go.
No who wants to do that.
Nobody likes that. By the way, Chomsky is very much alive, you guys. Yeah, he changed my view of the world when I stumbled upon YouTube videos of his talks in high school. He's incredibly well read, more so than any other public intellectual I've heard of. And even if you're not down with the whole and neck pro syndicalis thing nice. Wow, it's worth reading at least one of his political books to get a more thorough grasp of how the US empire works. For instance, he was actually the first one who taught me about our old buddy Edward Burnes and his ilk and all the fun things that the CIA has done abroad. And that's from Sam.
Thanks a lot, Sam much appreciated. Still alive.
Huh, still alive?
Did not know that? Well, if you want to let us know that somebody's still alive, we want to hear that kind of thing, especially if we thought they were dead. You can send it to us via email like Sam did to stuff podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
