Stuff You Should Know - Farmer's Almanac: Literature to Poop To

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

The 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. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is ICT. Over the years, I've compiled thousands of inspiring and thought-provoking quotes. And now, I'm passing that knowledge onto you and my new daily podcasts. ICT's Daily Game. In less than five minutes, I'll break down why these words matter and reveal personal stories that show them in action in my life. Listen to ICT's Daily Game every weekday on the I.Hard Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and start your morning with me. Hey, I'm Womor Madramax, I could have produced a new podcast day by Avalita First. Each week, the incredible Vico Ortiz and fabulous Avalita Lillana Montenegro will play matchmaker for a group of hopeful romantics, right Vico? You know it! Listen to Dave, my Owelita, first!

Thursdays on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or whatever you get your podcasts. And remember, don't do anything I wouldn't do. Just do it better! Visit us! Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. 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 homie folksy types ready to spin a good yarn for you about the old farmers. That's right. You know why I commissioned this one?

Why Chuck? Why? Because I thought it would be fun to put a old farmers almond-ac in the outhouse at my camp. Okay wait first you have an outhouse? I have an outhouse. 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 what does the fan do?

The fan moves air through to provide aerobic interaction. Next to us? With the poop and the composting peat. I just made a compost tea like that, but I used to submerge 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 I don't use it. I use it to go poopy if I'm there for more than a couple of days. But largely I put it there. So, you know, some of some of the ladies in my life and friends, wives and things don't like to squat in the woods. Some of them don't mind. 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 see the conversation between the couple and the kitchen back in Atlanta, like, one now he's got a composting toilet. Well, now you can count me in. Well, and now I got to say, 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. It's from a couple of years ago. I need to get a new one. I should change it every year. You know, that's sort of the whole point of an all-man action. It's pretty slack. And so I thought I was reading it the other day when I was up there cutting grass.

And I was like, I don't 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 is not very interesting for a kid. Sure. I could see. 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 Farmers 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 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. And it was Midwest, but to Georgia, Ohio was the north. Yeah, still, but there was corn, corn everywhere around where I lived.

Oh, sure. 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 Farmers Allmanek when she was a little kid. Nothing you ever tell me about Yumi will surprise me. It's true. You just never know.

No, you really don't. That's great. For those of you who've never met Yumi, you wouldn't consider her a Farmers Allmanek type. That's pretty safe to say. Yeah, so I thought that was neat. She's very well rounded. But I, in like Chi Pat Fashion went on order,

just by 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 it. Oh, look at you, very smart. Also, I've made a joke about, you're from the North, as it turns 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 who's plenty of farming that went on all over the country. By God, they even covered 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. Mm-hmm. We're gonna talk mostly about the old farmers, Almanac, but we will talk a little bit about its rival, the farmers, 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 30th. Oh, this is for next year? Yes. Very smart. Or do you hear an advance? Well, I mean, what am I gonna do?

Be like, well, what happened two weeks ago, when I'm getting this years, you know, I mean, like, I want to get you from August to December. You could surely gain some insight now. I don't like to waste money to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want

I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want I want to, 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 Karant, which started as the Connecticut Karant in 1764. Not too much sooner than the farm was Almanac, but then if you look for the world, the Swiss have us beat by a mile. They have a, what's called the post in domestic times, the post-Occ-Inrich-Tid-Nin-Gar. And again, that means the post in domestic times, which has been printed continuously since 1645.

Amazing. But still, that's nothing to sneeze at. 1792 and they never missed an addition pretty good. Yeah, yeah, totally. And these books basically, I mean, those sort of an Almanac craze at one point. Lots of small family farms all over the country. Pre-industrialization, there were hundreds of farmers, Almanac's 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 Farmers 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 are 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, ground advice tips and raw data for farming.

Yeah, but the big draw is the long range weather forecasts. They essentially forecast the weather generally for the entire United States and Canada a year in advance. Yeah, and we'll talk about that. And they say that they're 80% accurate, which is mind-boggling. 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 folk lore even, things like if you want to have turnips in the winter and there's no such thing as refrigeration, keep them in packed and sawdust during the summer or whatever. Just like that. It's useful. But then there's also astrology, like horoscopes and that kind of thing. Then it's alongside 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 13th century, although they said that it was an Arabic word, Almanac, 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 Almanents 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 live 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, and 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 1532, there was a French satirist named Rable-A, 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. The

most famous parody almanac was poor Richard's Almanac, which was published by Benjamin Franklin from 1732 to 58. And what's neat is, even though it was a parody and they made stuff up and it was funny and a satire of Almanac's, 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 he said, it was around for what, 20 something years, 25, 26 years. I'm guessing like 30 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 ass-onders 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 man healthy, wealthy, and

wise. Very nice. All came from poor Richard's, Almanac. Yeah. From the noodle of Ben Franklin himself, because he rode and Very nice. All came from poor Richard's, Almanac. Yeah. From the noodle of Ben Franklin himself, because he rode a 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 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 that kite and the key.

I feel like we have talked about that before. Yeah, I can't remember which episode, but I think really that's not didn't happen. Yeah. But his poor Richard's all maniac. 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 Robbins, he kicked off like that Almanac craze that you talked about. And I think the late 18th century, which is when Robert Bailey Thomas came along

and said, I'm getting in on this all-man-ex 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. Music Music Music Alright, so Robert Bailey Thomas is an entrepreneur, all men acts are all the craze.

Like he said, he wanted on get in on this action He was a dude from Massachusetts who was a farm guy But a farm guy raised by educated parents and 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 Almanac's and astronomy and Science journals and kind of it 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 book binder, and he said,

nope, I'm going to do this Almanac thing. I've been putting it off long enough. Bye, guys. I'm going to chase my dream. And he did. So he went to Boston. He went and studied at Osgoog Carlton School of Mathematics in Boston, which today, it does.

Like if you're, if you're taking classes from Osgoog Carlton School of Mathematics today you should unenroll and ask for your money back. Boy I hope that's still around. I hope not too because those are 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 book binder 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 1793, or I guess the year before, for the year 1793, he put out, because people like, I don't know, Josh Clark, like to buy things a little early. You know, buy 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 calendar every year and I think I always got it on my birthday in March for an animal. That's hilarious. That's pretty funny. I got a calendar in the mail from being a cannibalist. Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah, it's pretty funny. I got a calendar in the mail from being a member of the Audubon Society and I was like,

what the hell am I gonna do with this? 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. Sure. It hangs in the the wall and I find a great deal of value in A month that 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 just I could silly food point calendars and you changed my mind I'm gonna put it up somewhere because you're right. And I knew that just seeing the little pretty birds every month is great. I was gonna 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. All right, so where are we? He finished his mathematics in 1793, put out the first edition which was called the farmers 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 farmers almanac containing besides the large number of astronomical calculations and farmers calendar for every month of the year

as 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 46-page book, which is much slimmer than the ones you get today from what I understand. Yeah. And that, that, uh, what do you call that a slogan, I guess? I guess. Clubs still on the cover. Is it still? Yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, you'll see very soon. It's been on there for 230 straight years, as well as pictures of, or 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 noticed three names and there was a Thomas in there, I think. I don't know. Oh, you mean the actor? Yeah, Rico Tubbs from Miami Vice. Yeah, I thought, what's his nibbles is really, Don Johnson and... Yeah, him. Remember what happened in that guy? See you around?

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 hominac. Yeah, like he said, 46 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 is just coming off of the snake oil sort of period or maybe it'll still write in

the middle of it, actually. Yeah. I think that lasted well into the 19th and even early 20th 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

almond acts and this one became the most popular because he was good at doing it. He was a for the time. He was sort of a witty and clever guy and people like just like his writing. Yeah. That's really important that he wasn't like this innovative, amazing, like he didn't invent the whole thing. I mean, he came along centuries after the first one started being published, but he was just that interesting that his publications have been around 230 years. That's pretty remarkable if you really stop and think about it. That's how much of a nerve that guy touched. And the list of stuff that you talked about, that's essentially exactly what you're going to find today.

And I went and looked up some of the math problems. I'm like, I'll bet I can do this. Sure. There was a renowned mathematician. I found from the 1974 edition. 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 and you 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, it didn't show you though.

No, it just said seven. That's it. And then it went into the next answer. It's really annoying. Someone will send in an answer. Some, we have plenty of math help. I don't want to onto the next answer. It's really annoying. Someone will send in an answer. We have plenty of math help. I don't want to know a different answer.

The answer is two. Oh, all right. OK. So one example, 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 in 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 10 pages I get the recipe. Thank God for that jump to recipe button 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 in my 2024 edition. But it would say at the top of the month, October, half 31 days. And for some reason, it just makes it seem so ominous. You know, like something bad's going to happen in October because they said at half 31 days. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. I hope it does have 31 days. You know it was the ominous if it said October half 28 days. Yeah. It's the year.

Yeah. The Almanac would know. Thomas himself did 53 editions of the Farmers Almanac before he died in 1846. He apparently died editing as the story goes for the next edition that was ready to be shipped to your house. And that's the story of the old farmer's almond-ack. But what about the old? Well, the old part actually came all the way back in 1832 when Philip Seymour Hoffman was still editing the Almanac. He changed the name to the old Farmer's Almanac

because it had been around for 35 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 Philips Seymour Hoffman joke, but I don't get it. Robert Bailey Thomas. Okay, just three names.

You're gonna call him John Wayne Gacy next? Well, no, no, I call them Philipsy Morehawp and because the Rico Tubbs has Philip, and I think, Philip Michael Thomas. Philip Michael Thomas. Yes, it is, it's Philip Michael Thomas. Woo. And we didn't look it up either, did we?

We did it, I didn't look it up, but you said Philip, I did play 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. Ha ha ha. 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. his publication from the competition. That's right.

I'm sorry, John Jinks, I want to call him Richard for some reason, probably because of Richard's Almanac. Thomas died. John Jinks was the guy who changed it to old and that cover art started because of Jinks in 1851 and that's the same cover that they still use today they were talking about. Yeah, and apparently Thomas, he used the one who introduced old, stopped, he took it away three years later and then his successor said, no, we're gonna go back to the old farmer's almond egg.

Yeah, that was jinx. Yeah, Mr. Janks. I think we just got really confusing then, but hopefully people figured out. Yeah, eventually. 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 typed in Farmer's Almanac, you're going to see probably both the old Farmer's Almanac and the yellow and then just the farmer's Almanac and it's sort of orangey and it looks more modern than the other one. Yeah, I guess more modern is a relative term. They both look pretty old-timey to me. Yeah, that's true. I think the other one looks older though. Okay, but it was founded in 1818. So it's pretty old itself, but because the original Farmers Almanac, the old Farmers Almanac was from 1792, they just have to acquiesce and say, yes, we're just the Farmers Almanac. But there's a, I think she doesn't edit anymore. Janice Stillman, she was the first woman editor of the Old Farmers Almanac, 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 where it is emulate everything we do. And this is like, she's saying this in like 2018 or 19. 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 farmers on the neck 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. Well, no, just millions.

Okay. One of the big gifts, 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 at an office. Who is 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 1994 or 5 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 West of his movie. That's where you would get like a bank branded farmers all well. Yeah. Sure. Like a hasty bank. Sure. I wouldn't call it that. But we should have a stuff you should know branded farmers all men at this in those out. It would be that'd be. Awesome. I wonder how much that costs. It's not much, I can't remember. It came up in Google search and I was like,

that's reasonable. It wasn't much at all. I think $25 or something for a hundred of them or something crazy. Did you get the fill of Michael Thomas branded Farmers Almanac? Yeah. So the regular Farmers Alman act, the one that's newer, um, that's in scare quotes, uh,

uh, guiding Ray, uh, Geiger ran that for about 60 years. Uh-huh. And he was a big marketing whiz and he, he used to refer to himself as the most interviewed man in America. And he may be right. He, he apparently was interviewed more than 18,000 times in his career. And he seemed to really, really enjoy sitting down and talking about the farmer's

almond neck in himself. Yeah. And one of the other things he did to Chuck was in addition to giving interviews to just drum up business for the farmer's almond neck or keep it interested. And this is like, he's working from 1934 to 1994. 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 to. 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 Farmers All-Manakki and to get people talking about things that was Farmers All-Manakki and the Farmers All-Manakki itself. Yeah, I mean, this is a guy who went from the Lindy Hop to Grunge. Yeah, for sure.

Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's 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 she'd do that though, right? 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 daylight savings 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, town and state, whatever, with a code, a numerical code.

And he started this campaign to say, no, 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, it says,

you know, Atlanta, Georgia, or something that shows where it was sent from. Yeah. We're gonna replace it with, you know, OO329 or something like that. This is like robot talk, you know? Yeah. 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. So one thing I did not realize, Chuck, is that there's actual lower surrounding Almanac's, which makes sense in retrospect. We're talking about a couple hundred years plus of additions of two different Almanac. So, of course, they're going to play

to roll 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 claim 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 almond egg when it arrived. Pull 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 rack that I screwed into the wall, and I'm going to change that next time

I go up there, I'm going to put a nail in the wall and a string through that thing so we can hang it up. That's apparently how it's done. That's how it's, are you going to do that? Yeah, I'm going to hang it right next to my bird calendar. Right. You've got to go back in time. That's right. So they both said they came up with that, Right. You got to go back in time.

So they both said they came up with that, but apparently the one distinction is the regular farmers, 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 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 farmers' almanac and old farmers' almanac rivalry. Like they both have the audacity to 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 Almanac's 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 Mr. Brady, there was, I think the guy suing or something, had a neck brace on. So he had whiplash from being re-rended by Mr. Brady. Right, that's right, that's what it was. And no one believed the guy. And during the middle of the court scene, Mr. Brady throws his briefcase on the floor

and lands with a thud. And the man twists his neck, which he would not be able to do, had he had a stiff neck. Yeah, 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 believe the prosecution said, I saw the

defendant beating a victim over the head at 11 p.m. Lincoln said, well, how did you know it was him at 11 p.m. And the witness said the moon was high and bright in the sky. And Lincoln said, aha. And through his figurative 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. Exactly.

And apparently it was neither. Yeah, there was the foreman of the jury said it was a Jane's almanac. Spelled like Thomas Jane. Exactly. Who knew who was gonna make an appearance in this episode? Not me. Or the Brady Bunch.

This is all over the map. My Amy Vice. I read a little kind of brief on the Almanac trial. And apparently Lincoln's, almost said host host his client. And I am not on top form today, I'll tell you that. His client was just guilty of 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 ask 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 just don't ask know if he did it. Exactly. So he knew that this guy was guilty and he still defended him and got him acquitted, which is not Lincoln asked, but apparently after he became president, kind of made some moves to get another guy who had been convicted as an accomplice 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 link and stuff that's just, it's not in his character, or at least the character we understand. 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 people can excuse things anything Lincoln did we'd 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 going to be a murder trial. Wow. Isn't that crazy? 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, what year? Is that what it was? Yes. Yeah, yeah. Nice to meet you. She went, yeah, she went through that process and had never been that far before, so it was fairly interesting.

Yeah, so 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, Almanac's together, it seems like so between 10 and 12 million copies a year. Is that right? 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 Omnix, 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 50, or I'm sorry, an percent eighty accuracy rate that's crazy i think you said earlier eighteen different regions in the u.s six regions in canada

for the year ahead of time a year a full or in your case uh eighteen months ahead of time yeah and the old story was is that the old farmer's almond act had a secret formula that Robert Thomas created himself, locked in a black box in the offices in Dublin, New Hampshire. Yeah. Apparently, editor Janice 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 hurrah on them on that. And apparently, farmer's almond act also says but not a secret formula. That's like a hurrah-dome moment. And apparently, farmers on the neck 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 farmers on the neck, the younger of the two, has a pseudonymic pseudonymic? Yes, pseudonymic, yeah, exactly. I was about, I was porcupig in it. Yeah. Um, his name is Caleb Weatherby 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 to.

Um, so again, it's the exact same thing, but finally in the last 50 years, I guess, the old farmer's almond egg 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 Almenex 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 Almeneck 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 Farmers Almanac, the old Farmers Almanac, excuse me, 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 80% success rate, and we'll get to whether or not that's even true, is they just do sort of a historical average, like a peak at historical averages, I think over 30 years of rain.

Yeah, they're called climate normals. Yeah, temperature and precipitation, basically. And then for each region, for each season of the year, they're going to 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 30-year average? Yeah, they don't go into like on, you know, July 28th, it's going to be, you know, 92 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 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 30 year climate normal average, they're like, we were correct. Yeah. The count it is 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, they hit that 80% mark. The thing is, is there've been studies meteorologists love to take pot shots at The farmers all men X any farmers all men X because they're like it's impossible to predict the weather a year out Noah has 90 day forecasts

They're 60% accurate these guys are using every available technology to create these forecasts and they can only hit 60% 90 days out. Their meteorologists are like nobody can predict the weather anywhere accurately, especially for a whole season in an entire region of full year out. And so people have done studies on just how accurate they are and they usually come up short of 80%. Yeah, they always come up short of 80 and it sort of ranges I think by year I think in 2021-22 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 21-22 that for precipitation, the Almanac was 40% correct, and for temperature, only 6% correct. Yeah. At the old farmers' Almanac offices, they call it Jan Nol, the nullifier. 50 to 52% is what they found, I think, generally, and the University of Illinois was behind that one. So that's like, it's sort of in flip-up coin territory. Yeah, and Tim Clark says people want them to be right. That it's basically just confirmation bias.

That when they're right, people remember it, when they're wrong, 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 farm's almond neck 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 farm's almond neck 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 Almenex are keeping it going. And so it's almost, to me, the reason I ordered it, is like a respite from the modern world. Yeah. And just kind of stepping through like this 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 just draws your attention to an important part of the world, which is nature. It's still there.

And it just makes you focus your attention on it for a little while. And that's great. 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, Kenneth Goofy, folksy charm and jokes and poetry, like, I guess they could say, like, we had to 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 one's living or dying by this thing.

I mean, the very fact that we have that technology means we should keep the farmers all men as just as a reminder of other ways to be in think too. 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. 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 mail. I'm going to call this as known Chomsky Lives. And since I said outhouse, that means it's time for a listener mate. I'm going to call this known 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 known Chomsky was alive or dead and we don't like to stop and look things up while we go.

Who wants to do that? Nobody likes that, by the way. Uh, 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 Annak- bro's syndicalist thing. That's wow. It's worth reading at least one of his political books

to get 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 Bernays and his ilk and all the fun things that the CIA has done abroad. And then it's from Sam. Thanks a lot, Sam. Much appreciated. Still alive, huh? 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 Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.

For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is ICT. Over the years, I've compiled thousands of inspiring and thought-provoking quotes. And now, I'm passing that knowledge onto you in my new daily podcast. ICT's Daily Game. In less than five minutes, I'll break down why these words matter and reveal personal stories that show them in action in my life. Listen to ICT's Daily Game every week day on the I Heart radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and start your morning with me.

Hey, I'm Worma Madramac, executive producer of the new podcast, Day of My Avalita First. Each week, the incredible Viko Ortiz and fabulous Avalita Lilliano Montenegro will play matchmaker for a group of hopeful romantics, right, Vico Ortiz and Fabulous Avelita Lillana Montenegro will play matchmaker for a group of hopeful romantics, right Vico? You know it! Listen to Dave, my Avelita first! Thursdays on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts or whatever you get your podcasts.

And remember, don't do anything I wouldn't do. Just do it better. Pesitas! I'm Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets. It's hard to believe we're entering our eighth season, and yet we're constantly discovering new secrets. The variety of them continues to be astonishing. I can't wait to share ten incredible stories with you, stories of tenacity, resilience, and the profoundly necessary excavation of long-held family secrets.

Listen to season 8 of Family Secrets on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.