Humorists make the best futurists

Finding out what's going to happen next could be as simple as tuning in to <i>The Simpsons</i>

A few weeks ago, when Walt Disney Co. announced its $52.4 billion acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox Inc., lots of people took to Twitter to point out that the merger had been foretold almost two decades earlier.

This was far from the first case of a joke from The Simpsons coming true. In the March 2000 episode, “Bart to the Future,” for example, newly inaugurated president Lisa Simpson complains that “we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump,” thus anticipating not only the presidency of Donald Trump but the now-almost-certain increase in the federal deficit during his