Told By an Idiot, Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

By James Banakis

July 25th, 2025

Don’t be puzzled by this line from Macbeth. It’s not a commentary on my occasional contributions to John Kass News. It’s going to make more sense later in the article. Let me share with you what I’m rereading this morning. It’s the wonderful biography of William Shakespeare, Shakespeare, by Peter Ackroyd. I first read this about a dozen years ago. As a devotee of great biographies, I enjoy delving into the mundane parts of the lives of notable historical figures. I compare that part of their lives which make them relatable to us. I find it fun hanging out with whoever I choose to read about. Many authors who research biographies will liken the experience to moving in with their subject. The gifted writers can pass on that experience to their readers.

Businessman and self-help author Bob Proctor once said, “If you read a book a second time, you don’t see something in it you didn’t see before, you see something in yourself that wasn’t there before.”  Brilliant! This observation has changed my reading habits and reintroduced me to my most appreciated books. Try it yourself with a book you loved reading but haven’t gone back to in 15 years. Find that something in yourself that wasn’t there before. I know in high school I hated Shakespeare, and now I’m astonished at his mastery of every human condition.

My interest in Shakespeare percolated after viewing the 1998 film, Shakespeare in Love. While the film was not historically accurate, still I was taken with the humanizing of the characters. The premise of the film is that almost everything in life is a mystery, and it unfolds much like attending a play. Sometimes life is a tragedy, sometimes a comedy, and sometimes a romantic tryst. Strange as it may sound, the film reminded me of the experience of opening a restaurant, which I have done many times. Like Shakespeare in the film, sometimes you improvise on the fly, as you develop what becomes the finished product. Most of the time I was surprised that everything comes together in a fun, mysterious, and gratifying way. In time I was able to accept that mystery is a normal part of life and when it pops up in unexpected ways to embrace it and not fight it. When we realize that there is much in life that we cannot control we can just hold on and watch how things turn out. Our lives are but a play.

The Phillip Henslowe character towards the end of Shakespeare in Love, addresses a panicky Mr. Fennyman,

“Allow me to explain the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.”

Fennyman asks, “So what do we do?’

Henslowe replies, “Nothing. Strangely enough it all turns out well. How? I don’t know. It’s a mystery.” 

There was a book I reread for fun recently. It wasn’t a great book by any measure. It was in fact a serious book that became overtime, hilarious. Back in 1980 there were a series of bestsellers, The Peoples Almanac, The Book of Lists, followed by The Book of Predictions, by the same authors.

When this last book was published, I was a 30-year-old and still willing to accept that there were certain learned experts who could reasonably predict the future. This book then compiled hundreds of eminent scientists, historians, and other self-proclaimed geniuses predicting the future in the next 40-50 years.

When I first read the book, I was a new father and very concerned about the future world that my offspring were going to inhabit. I’m happy to report that over 40 years have passed, and 90 percent of the predictions are not only wrong but hysterically wrong.

I’ve never been one to look to the future. I try not to dwell on it. I know human beings are incapable of doing any more than guessing. Today, I’ve learned to reject anyone who acts as if they can predict political outcomes, the stock market, sporting events, Blackjack, and yes even the weather.

It seems that most of the experts in this book had us running out of food, breathable air, oil, and all reason by 1990. The only thing they seemed to get right was that the United States would have a lot more Hispanics. Nuclear War was predicted at some point in most every prediction. Not surprisingly the Soviet Union in so many of the predictions was going to become the most powerful nation surpassing the United States in everything. Most predicted a new ice age by 1990. No one predicted the rise of China. One genius predicted a return to streetcars by 1990, and a rejection of automobiles as a form of transportation. In short, all the experts have been proven to be just silly self-important, condescending idiots. If you happen to find this book in a used bookstore, pick it up. It won’t disappoint.

Why did I digress, and bring up The Book of Predictions? It’s because if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that nobody knows anything that will occur in the future. All of us think we would like to know, yet nobody is promised tomorrow. There are no EXPERTS! Nobody has any knowledge of what is true beyond the very moment you now read this. There’s always been a market for people who pretend to know the future. In the final analysis, it’s a mystery.

Ancient Greeks and Romans, like Julius Ceasar, celebrated in Shake sphere’s play, had a soothsayer examine the entrails of animals to predict the future. Macbeth consulted the three witches. My grandmother would read the coffee grounds of her upside-down Greek coffee cup. She and her girlfriends would entertain themselves as she predicted visions she saw in the remaining grounds. I had coffee with her once and she read my cup and pointed out I was going to be swimming in money soon. Of course, Yia Yia was mistaken, but I’ll always appreciate her confident, overdramatic theatrics. Listening to today’s cable news analysts is just as reliable as having my grandmother read my coffee grounds.

Today, cable TV and podcasts are overpopulated by these predicters. In the last election, all the major polls were way off, as they confidently anticipated a razor thin election. Once proven wrong they have the confused gaze of the losers you can see at the racetrack or sports betting venue. If you’re not familiar with the gaze, it looks like a cartoon bubble is above their heads saying: “What the hell happened? It was supposed to be a lock!” On election night, many forecasters were brought to tears.

Trump derangement syndrome has taken idiotic forecasting to a new level of ineptness. Once the election was over the 90+ percent negative Trump coverage continued only now there were catastrophic predictions which would take place in the first 6 months of his term.

  • Continued massive inflation
  • Members of the press incarcerated in concentration camps
  • Stock market collapse
  • Economic depression because of tariff’s
  • World War III
  • Trump cognitive collapse
  • Unparallel joblessness
  • Trump unable push through his agenda in Congress

As we now know, in each case, the exact opposite has happened. So much for the experts. If I wasn’t such a sarcastic, naive optimist, I’d assume that all these talking heads were merely hoping these outcomes came to pass.

Back to Macbeth. Maybe like the three witches in Macbeth, the media through their omens and prophecies, are attempting to influence actions even if they don’t control the outcome. The witches’ prophecies created unease and drove the plot onward. Isn’t that what the media is doing with their forewarning? Shakespeare used prophesies to build suspense and drama. Isn’t this what the media are doing? The media’s audience is the American public, and we are being manipulated, like a clever playwright controls his audience. Improve the quality of your life and turn off cable news.

Anyway, if we could know the future, would any of us like to see the exact date and time of our own demise? Much like Woody Allen, “I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”   I’ve always found life to be much more interesting when you don’t know where you’re going. Concentrating on the journey and not the outcome is much more enriching. Remember, oddly enough, the story of your life comes together in the final act. We don’t know exactly how. It’s a mystery.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”

– Bob Dylan

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

-Yogi Berra

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Jimmy Banakis is a life-long restaurateur.  He was an honorary batboy for the White Sox in 1964. He attended Oak Park River Forest High School, Nebraska Wesleyan University, and Chicago-Kent Law School.  He claims the kitchen is the room he’s most comfortable in anywhere in the world. He published an extremely limited-edition family cookbook. He’s a father and grandfather, and lives in Downers Grove Il.

Comments 32

  1. Love it! In 1979 while putting away Christmas ornaments my father and I used old newspapers to cushion and protect the older and more fragile balls and figures. In 1980 as we unpacked them I noticed that one crumpled sheet held “Jeanne Dixon’s Predictions for the ’80s.” I made sure to hold on to it and we read it for laughs every Christmas for the next 10 years. For the record, she was 2/85; however, she predicted that both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan COULD be our next president. I’m still waiting to see Canada and Australia dominate the Pacific Ocean.

    1. Thank you Jimmy! You reassured me that I am not losing my mind. I just love all the “so-called experts” who constantly try to sell us gloom and chaos proved wrong again
      and again.

  3. Love it! A lighthearted romp raising great truth to the surface! Very appropriate for me as I embark on a new employment adventure! Thanks, Jimmy!

  4. EXPERTS, yeah I hear you Jimmy. Reading some parts of the reports that Tulsi released had me thinking, somebody gets paid to write this stuff. Orwell made some good predictions and the Dick Tracy watch seems to pass the test but the Jetson’s flying car, not so much. Running a business, I also learned a long time ago that you don’t have problems, just ‘issues’ to adapt to. I’m enjoying the journey and cringe anytime I see a kid at a concert holding their phone up taking video. Hope you and the family enjoy the rest of the summer !!

  6. Predictions, gotta love ‘em.

    I still have a picture of the front page of the Chicago Libune from 1970.

    It was a long story predicting the coming of global cooling and the next ice age by 1990.

    It’s good for a laugh sometimes when people predict we only have X number of years left because of global warming.

  7. ” all the experts have been proven to be just silly self-important, condescending idiots.”-Ain’t it the feckin’ truth! Thanks Jimmy!

  8. Taking up your recommendations I just bought last Amazon copy of ‘The Book of Predictions”. I shall go restock on Orville Reddenbacher microwave popcorn. Thinking back to 1980, however I do recall a book published by Newsweek on the impending breakup of the USSR. I ordered the yellow bound book which had a red dust cover but no longer have it. The book basically described the Soviet ethic turmoil and how the USSR would split due to that. About that era I also watched avidly the movie “Stripes” with the uparmored Army RV crossing into Warsaw Pact countries. It just seemed so unreal. When I retired in 2010 from the USAF, I deployed and returned from Afghanistan via former Soviet base in Manas, Kyrgyzstan and our rotator plane was refueled in Leipzig (former East Germany). In 2000 I was deployed to Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), 2002 and 2004 to Slovakia and now I have toured from Latvia south to FYROM. Wish that I still had the 1980 book which seemed so unbelievable.

  9. I take a bit of pleasure reading about misguided predictions. Jetson flying cars, space travel for all, global warming, Star Trek communicators (well, one had to come true), a flux capacitor in every car/home, etc.
    I do fully agree on the JOURNEY being the gem of travel & thus life not the DESTINATION. I miss the days of being at the airport for a flight – the excitement – but 9/11 ruined that. Every now and then, maybe once or twice a year I try to drift off in my car and try to get lost in an area I’ve never been to before like it’s a childish adventure. Then turn on the car’s nav screen and go get lunch.

  10. Very thoughtful and well written. Shakespeare’s observations on “the human condition” are still relevant after 3-400 years. He’s the most quoted author, as is Lincoln. Read “The Fourth Turning” and “The Fourth Turning is Here” by Strauss and Howe for current predictions based on the regular recurrence of past patterns of western culture. Fascinating

  13. Always enjoy your writing, Jimmy.
    Maybe Shakespeare today would say something like:
    Beware of cable news,
    Beware of social media,
    Beware of sugary drinks and salty snacks.

    Thanks for quoting my favorite line from Bob Dylan, too.

  15. At the same time, if you use objective and rigorous analysis, you can try to formulate a prediction about what will happen. There are a couple keys. First, objective. Is the data you are using biased in any way? Second, rigorous. Tighten the variance on the decision. Stat geeks call this “sigma”. The more variance, the more likely you will be wrong—hence the book is woefully wrong because there is so much variance.

    We can predict two certainties in life. Eventually, we die, and we pay taxes.

  16. Jimmy,

    I am always enthused when I see that you are the writer of a given days edition. You never disappoint, always insightful, and fun too!

  18. During my first college semester (Fall 1972) in my Intro to Business class I wrote a research paper entitled “The Energy Crisis in America.”
    It was just becoming a topic back then.
    My research had to be done in the library. There was no internet.
    After perusing the ‘Readers Guide to Periodical Literature’ an article was found in a reputable publication (I do not remember which) that said that that the last drop of oil would pumped from the ground by 1984.
    That concerned me.
    Missed it by than much.
    The instructor gave me an “A.”

  20. Another great Banakis dish. Not easy to top both Bob and Yogi on the passage of time. But maybe your theme today could.

    “But doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humor? No!”

    – Much Ado About Nothing

  22. God, Jimmy. You’re one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met. Of course I’ve never met you, so I’ll say you’re one of the smartest guys I’ve ever read.

    As far as our society run amok by clueless “experts”, the late great President Eisenhower warned us about this in his 1961 farewell address to the nation:

    “Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

    Old Ike – just like Shakespeare since high school – looks better and better as the years fly by.

  23. Thank you James for a interesting and enlightening column. As to the point of reading books two times for a more enriched understanding of the material, I too have experienced that phenomenon. As background, I was a lawyer/ prosecutor who for many years read not for pleasure but for crafting arguments/counterarguments, and this had to be done day in and day out cramming readings of the case file, relevant law, and other relevant facts. When I retired, as much as I wanted to read for pleasure again, it took many years to attain that. I read James Joyce “Ulysses” three times, once with the aid of a class at Newberry Library. However, “Finnigan’s Wake” by Joyce has left me defeated, I think a might need a Newberry experience again……keep reading.

  25. That the world didn’t starve is due in great measure to the work of one man: Norman Borlaug, an agronomist.

    What did he do? He developed a strain of rice that used fewer resources and produced more grain, and the first ‘dwarf’ strain of wheat, able to survive in drier climates and less susceptible to wind damage.

    For these contributions to the world hunger problem he received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize.

  26. Funny you should write this column, as I agree it applies to most people. Charlatans and soothsayers have played on the gullibility and credulousness of people for millennia. Yet, as a Greek, you must remember that the Oracle of Delphi was both in dramaturge and myth and according to Herodotus and Thucydides, the real deal. Reports of sybils in ancient times seemed to ring true as well. Yet surely 90% of proclaimed psychics are out for your money.

    However, biological conditions, such as traumatic brain injuries to certain cerebral anatomy have been reported by neuroscientists to create time anomalies. And while I am one of these people, in addition to damage in the same cortical spot due to schizoaffective disorder, much like the sybil, I’d rather not use it or be hassled into doing so for “tomorrows, tomorrows, tomorrows.” It’s extra bad for my mental illness.

    That being said, you may want to read Phenomena by Annie Jacobsen, Princeton grad, CBS producer and former L.A. Times editor. It explores what the government did much more gently in the past to the cursed and lucky few with real psi abilities; now they demand and don’t pay. If interested, check out Entangled Minds by Dean Radin, the most mathematically rigorous investigator of parapsychology.

    I agree that mystery (outside of the mystery school secret societies) and releasing control are such wonderful ways to find creative success. In fact, if these stringent, puritanical government contractors whose sound and fury does nothing to potentiate my abilities would just let go of me and my mind, I’d bet more mysteries and mysticism would unfold.

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