Citation Needed - The Gregorian Calendar

Episode Date: January 2, 2019

The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used civil calendar in the world.[1][2][Note 1] It is named after Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced it in October 1582. The calendar spaces leap years��to make the average year 365.2425 days long, approximating the 365.2422 day tropical year that is determined by the Earth's revolution around the Sun.    Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Okay, cool. So this recording gets us up to the second of December. No of January of January. Oh, okay. Okay, we have the Dallas show on the 12th. So we can do the 14th. Hello everyone. It's me, calendar man. Of December? No, no, no, January. Guys. Right. Yeah. So I've got my boys through the 28th, which means I can do the second one. Okay. Of January. No, we're good until the second, or the second of the thing that you said. I made a calendar costume. I don't know if you guys saw it. I'm counting them.

Who's it? Well, you mean the 14, right? No, he said January. I mean, he said January. Yes, the 14. I covered the walls and calendar pages. Not sure if you guys saw it. 14.

We were doing two and then the monthly many on the 14. Did we do December? Yeah, in November. Oh, that's right. That's we did two in November. You're right. You're right. Cut out.

Alright, some poster board. I made a costume. So we do need one for January though. No, I'm not. Right, but not in December. We don't. Right, you're right. You're right. Right, not in December, exactly.

I'm running on my face in Sharpie. Got it. Okay, great. You know, why are you dressed like a... What was that? A numbers sandwich? I hate you guys. Hello and welcome. Citation needed.

The podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Heath, and I'll be trying to come up with exciting action words to describe the passage of time, which is literally what we're gonna be talking about. Um, basically I'll be a metronome with segue questions, says the host is gonna fun. And of course I'll be joined by the usual suspects.

First up, we have two men who forgot to become quiet riot to justify their physical appearance. Cecil and Noah. Yeah, I wear this weird metal hockey mask for your comfort, not for mine. And to be fair, he's after people meet you, they're often inspired to have as much hair as possible while they can. Also, joining us, to men who forgot to do anything to justify Elyse physical appearance. Elyse and Tom. I didn't forget, but how does one improve on a statue of David in Velcro shoes? Thank you. Thank you, Tom. I also think of myself as the sex symbol of our podcast. You know how the sex symbol is podcast.

It's me. That is who it is. Circle with a line. Through. All right, before we get started, just want to give a big thanks to our patrons who give us money on patreon.com. So if you're anti-nazzi like them, maybe give us some money too. Or continue hating Jewish people. It's all up to you.

You do you. And with that out of the way, tell us Cecil, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event, are we gonna be talking about today? Well Keith, today we're gonna be talking about the Gregorian calendar. Oh, different, fuck sake, Noah, really? Yeah, I did it just for you, Tom. I just think it's back at me. I don't blame you, but, calendar.

Calendar. I don't know. I don't know. Calendar. You read an article about day grouping and got a raging erection. Are you ready to explain yourself? If I live in a constant state of explaining myself, but not erections, so. All right.

I guess I'll ask the obvious question first. Why would you pick this topic? That's a great question. He'd because eventually the robot overlords are gonna take over. And when they do, the first thing they're gonna do is demand an explanation for this stupid fucking calendar.

So at some point in the future, one of our listeners, maybe in our archives, could very well find themselves in a robotron-like situation where an enforcer says, explain this dumbass system to me or I turn you into a flesh basket. So in a sense, this essay is saving lives. Okay, wait, guys, our flesh basket's an option. Nobody told me there was going to be flesh baskets. I, great. Now I'm hungry again. I was excited.

All right. Lovely. Well, since you're clearly gonna rage-splain your issues with the Gregorian calendar now, regardless of what I say here. Yes, somebody as well ask, what are your issues with the Gregorian calendar now? I am so glad you asked, Heath. It would be quicker, honestly, to tell you what my issues aren't.

Can we have a mask that question so short and things don't we can't because he already asked the other one I wrote down the answer great so first of all we have this ridiculous hot pot hot pot of 30 and 31 day months that have grown adults reciting nursery rhymes and counting their knuckles like a bunch of fucking idiots and meanwhile February is over here sitting in a corner going no May and August needed an extra day I get it. It's fine. It's fine. It's September, she'll in fuck you February My name literally means seventh month and I'm the ninth fucking month and look at it This all no absolutely no, I got it. I got I usually boycott September through December just out of pure Linguistic integrity. I'm with you. This is thank thank you. Important stuff. Times up. Man, times up.

Okay, I got it. I got it. Message is loud and clear, guys. We should start approving each other's topics. Okay, that's the thing. So funny. All right. First, he does only stories about his gross sex life.

And now we have whatever this fucking thing is. Great. Well played, gentlemen. Okay, you got me. All right. We can submit these things for approval. You don't have to continue to know it. You've made your point. We can back off. No, played, gentlemen. Okay. You got me. All right. We can submit these things for approval. You don't have to continue. No, you've made your point. We can back off.

No, no, no, no, but I say I'd like to keep things related. So we do heath sex life. And then I do the thing that he times his sex life by another issue. Oh, God, he wasn't even kidding. He's gonna be like, calendar is for real about. So as if just being confusing for the fun of it wasn't enough, we've also managed to work out a calendar where the seasons just start like two thirds of the way through the month and the year starts a week and a half after one of those. That's fucking stupid.

Yeah, and we're also gonna have a whole episode about naming things badly by a man whose pseudonym is a bad pun. It is a good pun. Tom, sure. Tom, pay attention. Heath's not doing the essay this week. No way is doing the essay. Okay, so where's the story of the Gregorian calendar begin?

With pre-Gregorian calendars, Heath. Oh, fucking course it does. So calendars go at least as far back as writing, but we know the concept predates writing by thousands of years. Obviously, even before humans started getting into their agricultural phase, it was in our best interest to keep track of the year, even in places that don't have to deal with snowy winners, right? You still have to keep track of like migrations and the rainy season and shit. So pretty much by the time you have home, Europeans, you probably have some conception of the calendar. How do they name strippers back then if they had no names for months?

That's... He's welcome to the stage, time when the sun is angry and goes to sleep early. All right, so no earth gives us humans three universal natural timekeepers. The rotation of the earth gives us the days, the orbit of the earth gives us the years. The phases of the moon give us months. Now the day and night cycle and the moon's phases are pretty easy to observe but the orbit of the earth as represented to early humans meant peg in the sun at its highest and lowest points which was a little bit trickier to eyeball. Yeah, you end up with your dick out after Labor Day. You're like, you're sick. You're so angry. Everyone right. Yeah. I don't even want to meet the woman pegging the sun.

That's, that's fucking right. I mean, I'll take our numbers, but not promising. I don't you though. Anything's gonna happen. All right. So now we've all seen the ruins of various annual clocks made by early humans. Yeah. No, no, we haven't because some of us don't spend our free time staring at broken clocks

Noah. That's not what we all do with our free time. Okay. Everyone, but Tom has seen Stonehenge. Not even true. I hope. Okay. All right. So, so, so, but that's the thing, like the Stonehenge and and this stuff, like they, they, they, they certainly had other ritual meanings, but largely they were derived as a means of keeping track of the shadows changes throughout the year. Uh, in Atlanta, ancient South American and Mesoamerican ruins, they would have a series of like lined up windows such that the sun would go directly through them at the solstice. You know, there was some ancient Celtic guys wife standing there, little to the left,

little more too far. Yeah, too far. That's what all the right wingers that used to listen to this podcast say about you It can be both Guys, this would just be a great place to like take a break and you know Talk about something else my cats like to lie down in the sun. That's, we talk about cats now. Everyone likes cats. See an Topic idea, sleeping preferences of cats. Yeah. Okay.

I just can't, for most of human history, this was basically enough to do the trick. If you had a pretty good idea when the summer and the winter solstice is where you could wing the rest of it, right? So for early humans, it mattered when the rainy season was, or when you had to get the harvest going, but it didn't matter whether it was May 19 or June 2nd. It just mattered that you had a general idea of when in the year it was. Now all this lack at Aysikl season tracking was fine for a while, but eventually end up with commerce and writing and statewide civilizations, and you have to get a little more specific.

So you make full blown calendars where people can say, okay, everybody has to come to the Kings Court like next Wednesday or whatever. You said three sunsets. I thought you said four sunsets. There has to be a better way. Exactly. Sunset it and forget it.

Who wants anything that isn't full blown? That just seems, it kinda seems fucking rude. Come on, April finished the job. The fuck. All right, now this creates a problem because worldwide people are going into this with a general sense of solar years and lunar months, but those things don't line up, right?

So a lunar month is 29.5306 days. So not only does that not divide into the year, correctly, it doesn't even divide up into days correctly. Now, some societies decided that to fix that problem by ignoring the moon altogether. Uh, grog, will you please tell the moon to pass the tides? Tell the moon yourself, don't do this. I'm not speaking to the moon right now. Not exactly, but yeah, kind of like that.

So they would just, if those societies just divided up the adamant, call those divisions months and didn't really give a shit whether they applied to lunar months or not, the other societies were fucking stupid. Larry, we're not doing three moon rises. That's fucking dumb. Okay. No, no, no, if you calculate the least common multiple club to the face All right, so the Gregorian calendar the one that we use today has its roots in a pre-attrushkin. Oh my god with the Patrushkins again or whatever the

Can you write one essay without an atrushkin in it. I don't know why I would try, but maybe I'm not. All right, so that got under divided the year into 10 months. We're not 100% sure how those divisions worked most likely. It was not an even division of months with like 36 and 37 days, but rather the whole winter was just seen as that shitty part of the year where most of us die and the part of the year that they used was divided into the 10 months. And let me caveat that whole statement with a quick reminder that on this show, we only pretend to be experts.

I don't. Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure everyone figured that out when I changed why the Titan missile silo exploded because the real reason was boring. But thank you for your honesty. You know, I'm going to note that you added a missile explosion and we're going to go ahead and leave the calendar episode as is. All right. Great.

And then the calendar exploded. Now are you happy, Tom? Oh, it's so much better. It's so much better. Tell me about the tits on the calendar, please describe. So, of course, calendars arose over time in multiple areas that didn't intermix immediately. And they weren't always formalized. And when they were, it wasn't always by the best qualified people. Right. So in a lot of cultures, the religious authorities controlled

the calendar and tracked shit meticulously. So they'd sacrifice the right megafauna on the right day. So when it came to make an official decisions about the month since shit, the guy with the last word usually got his job by being the best at eating questionable mushrooms. Stupid ancient people. Side note, I booked the LA theater for March, so we need to talk flights and hotels, which I will also book after the book.

And you guys get a second. You know, there is no way. You're gonna get a newbie calendar if you keep with this intermixing. I'm just saying. Well, I wouldn't say no way. It'll be a struggle. But I'm saying the mixing is good.

I'm like, it's a better, better Uber. All right. So fast forward to the fall of the Roman Republic where they're using this calendar that's been thrown together over generations by people with silly hats. Now the calendar has a lot of problems, but the biggest one is that it doesn't account for leap years. As we all know, the orbit of the earth doesn't neatly divide into days either. The actual orbit or the tropical year is 365.2422 days long.

Now if your calendar doesn't account for this, it gets thrown out a whack by about a quarter of a day a year. You use the same calendar for a couple hundred years. And suddenly your worst at predicting the start of winter than the marketing department for Game of Thrones. Old timey Donald Trump tweeting about how this is the coldest June on record. Yeah. Old timey James Inhoff winds up to throw a fucking snowball to be an asshole. He's engulfed in flames by a dragon. Shut the fuck up.

I would kiss Poison James Inhoff so hard. And I don't even know which he'd be more pissed about, right? I guess it's a quick note here that the Romans were worried about solving problems that wouldn't plague them until hundreds of years have passed. Whereas today, if it doesn't fit into the quarterly earnings call, nobody cares. Right? Even if the it in it is the destruction of our planet in measurable gasps. All right, speak it to which. So this is the part of the story where a long comes Julia Caesar and reminds us that sometimes it's good to have an emperor.

Okay, so by then the astronomy was advanced enough to identify the problem and hashed out a solution. You just need to add one day every four years and it would more or less balance out. So all they needed was a guy who could say, damn it, everybody. The calendar is this now and Julia Caesar was happy to do it. So long as he got to stick an extra month in there and name it after himself. And then Augustus did the same shit because once October wasn't the eighth month anymore, who gives a fuck where anything goes?

To be fair, this does offer a lot more insight into his death. Guys, I've been, step, step. Step, step, step. Boom. Nern, did you guys step? It's the out of breath part. All right, so this brings us to the Julian calendar, which was the standard

in Europe for another 1500 years or so. Oh my God. But then a long came a maverick named Pope Gregory III, before he was done, he would change everything. I doubt that. Okay. I mean, you can't just like talk as if your movie preview guy and it becomes suspenseful. It's still just a list of days is what we're talking. Just cute, cute, just scared. Bro, this is not the time for notes. All right, well on that note, let's take quick break for some opera pove nothing.

I need a point. Okay, you want next available or other one? What one next available? Uh, I have one open at half moon, two suns at sunrise. No, that no work. I have very gathering at sunrise. I can do three moons, four suns and one darkness. That date night.

Well, Dr. Thalaw go on vacation after that. If you want, we can do any time after bunnies and flowers. Okay. How's Third Moon after flowers? Third Moon is fine. You want crickets or roosters? Let's do her crickets. And what do you need? I need whole drilled-in head in head so let out the demons. Okay, we have you done for third moon after flowers at crickets. Yes. See you then Larry King

And we're back when we off, Noah was trying to make calendar reform on Roman C-SPAN sound exciting. So, Noah, how's that working out for you? Oh, for Noah, was it working out for Noah? It's working great. I'm sure, because he's boring. For me, I'm cleaning my gun to make sure it doesn't jam when I need it. And I need it. I need it right now, guys. Oil line. All right. You're boring. So the year was 1582 and something was a mess. Guys, if we don't stop making fun of Noah's essay, he's going to make us stick our hands and throw forward peel drapes.

I'm going to make a sticker hands. The drill hole will peel the grapes. I feel it coming. I'm going to do that anyway. Mine is one of the essay. So as you recall, the actual year isn't 365.25 days. It's 365.2422 days because there is no God in any effort to ascribe intentionality to the universe is doomed. So the reforms that Caesar made were fine for the span of a couple of centuries, but after 1627 years, even that 0.0078 day error was starting to crop up. Now, it wasn't much over all that time, the Julian calendar was only off by about a week

and a half, but still that was not acceptable. Yeah, still not that big a deal for Delta too, actually. No, for Delta, that's fine. All right. So I had a plan. Have you guys seen the core? Yeah. So yeah. What if we you guys seen the core? Yeah. So yeah.

Um, what if we get Del Roy Lindo, take us inside the door, and we install a little like, uh, like a breaking system on the spinny part of the axis, like, on the spinny part. So, you know, we knock down the days to a nice round number, like, you know, like 360 or something. That actually, yeah. That's a good plan. Actually, down with that. And it's more exciting than this, that's it. So let's try it.

And more plausible than the core. Yeah. No. So, okay, so this is papal reform. So I want to be super clear up front that this was not done for like, for like a sane reason. Okay, so the Pope wasn't looking ahead to a time two millennia later when the calendar was going to have some real problem. Yeah, the calendar can't have problems.

That's just nothing would be different except the name on something. Like if winter were in June, nothing changes, except when we say, burr, June. Unless you have to plant crops or anything. So, but he wasn't worried about that. He was not worried about harvesting crops at optimum time or anything. The impetus for the reform and the thing that made this an international emergency was that people were celebrating Easter on the wrong day. And that was about to piss off God eventually. Right. And it's pronounced Passover.

It was saying it around you. Of course, as we all know, Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the Vernil Equinox as determined by the Council of Niceia in 325 CE. And holy shit, does that sound like something that only a committee could land on? Just like Jesus in 10. Right. Anyway, no surprise. This wasn't super easy for the average medieval peasant to calculate. And the whole panoply of Catholic celebrations are keyed into this one particular date. So telling people which Sunday Easter was going to be on an any given year was a big part of the church's job.

I love that that was some guy's job. I'm just like, okay, that 13 year old father of six listen closely Three sunsets from now. I need you to celebrate your zombie god king rising from the grave because and you died damn it Okay, oldest son of 13 year old You know, I'm still not a house sure how this changes anything. I mean like you're going to church anyway, you're telling you can stay home if the man with the money tells you today is Easter and you're a dirt-eating peasant dying slowly of tooth decay. What fucking difference could this possibly make in your life? It's Easter. Okay. We'll fucking care. Honestly, you only can say that because you don't know the ridiculous amount of shit

that Catholics have to do all around the Easter. Oh, I actually don't. Yeah. All right. So eventually it comes to the attention of the Pope that the old calendar is off by more than seven days. So for centuries now, all the Catholics have been celebrating Easter on the wrong day. And rather than say, huh, and that's made no discernible difference, Tom's right, our religion must be nonsense. The Pope swung into action and tried to fix

everything before the omniscient guy noticed. And this led to what we now call the Gregorian reforms. Oh, good. Because you know, the Gregorian reforms come up so often. You know, I'm glad we finally have a mind numbing series of details that tie that old chestnuts. Oh, man, that's going to come in handy. Yeah. Well, this is actually kind of exciting. This is when the great calendar wars began.

But that's for a different episode. So know what to be an exciting one. So know what to the nearest 10,000th of a day, how to do workout the math of this point. Since we're not going to talk about the calendar. But go to the audience guys, set your sleep timers to stun on this episode. That's great. All right. Now, obviously, I can say the goal here is to get the average as close to the tropical year, the 365.242 days as possible. The Julian calendar gets you to 365 and a quarter, but the proposal from Gregory's council was to hold back a leap day on years that were

divisible by 100 and accept on the ones that were divisible by 400. So like 17, 1800, 1900, those don't get a leap day, but 2000 what? And that gets you way closer. The average year under that system is 365.2425 days long, only 3 1,000ths of a day from perfect. That was enacted in October of 1582, ushering in the Gregorian calendar that most of the world uses today.

But there was still a problem. Oh my God, I am glad we didn't do some other boring medieval story. Like the plague. Oh, that's great. These calendar negotiations are riveting. I agree. But continue.

So with that. So okay, so this happened in 1582, but the Protestant reformations started in 1517 and was in full swing by the time Gregory made his proclamation. I'm loving all this calendar talk. This is great. Hey, guys, do you know duck penises or shape like corkscrews? So cool. I don't even know if that's true.

I don't know if that's true. I don't care at all. You knew that too fast. Just like this like the audience. New to they are shaped like a corkscrew though. It's fucking cool. They are. Yeah. So they don't even know the. The genus have little like divergent little fake vaginas in it. So crazy shit. All right. So sorry. All the loyal Catholic states right away after these reforms, switch their calendars over because the Pope just told them to, but the Protestant majority countries were going to be damned if they were going to use that evil, slightly more accurate calendar that

the papacy endorsed. So for centuries after that, the calendar you used in Europe would vary from country to country. Yeah. And the French calendar kept surrendering a day to literally any other calendar. Just like, no juice day. We lack the sound of that. Tuesday. Oh, yeah, that's good to. We can still hand over to Jews at every opportunity. Including right now. So the transition from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar started in 1582 and didn't

wrap up until Turkey officially abandoned the Julian calendar in 1927. So for all those years, you have this weird dual dating system. When you study European history, at least to all kind of fucked up stuff. Like for example, the fact that the October revolution started on November 7th, the fact that the October revolution started on November 7th. I said, next week, two weeks ago, last week was the next week. This is the next week. I said, next, this is very more important than the fucking leap day thing. Next means next. I can't even remember to get to work on time when we move over to daylight savings.

Like, can you imagine the fucking hat? Aang on that guy's face when he's just like in the middle of his own revolution, he stops and looks around, he's all low, and it's just him, he's like, oh, I got it. Damn it. Damn it.

You guys are going by the old fuck, the old, yeah, right, right. Oh, and by the way, I should mention to you that the switch over to the Gregorian calendar wasn't always peaceful. I mean, once religion gets interjected into it, it's no longer just a case of, yeah, this calendar is obviously better. It's a matter of cultural pride, right? So even now, a lot of countries still use a hybrid system where they use the Gregorian calendar for civic purposes, but the Julian calendar for religious shit.

So they wanted us with calendars, but they Gregorian cans. I'll show myself out. I'll just show myself out. Oh, hey, Cecil, can you check the date? Oh, no, I'll just check my own calendar. It looks like it's time to drink a new coat and kill Noah. That's what it says. I'm a calendar now. All right. Well, then I better finish this quick. So it's a surprise. nobody that among the least reasonable cultures when it came to the adoption of this new calendar was great Britain and its colonies, which still included the U.S. at the time. This is in 1752. And at this point, the two calendars had drifted apart by 11 days. It was increasingly difficult for the crown, which was heavily engaged in international commerce across the continent

of this point, decling to their outmoded calendar. And just to show you how bad they were at calendaring by now, the switch was made in 1752 by an act called the calendar act of 1750. All right, but to be fair, we're going to end up doing two censuses in 2030. Like a pastup test. Give him a pass on that one. Yeah, like we're gonna live to 2030. Okay, Willie won't go.

20 30. I'm over the age of 30. How would the fuck does a calendar being off by 11 days from the other calendar equate to a two year gap? Like was one of the calendars using a dog's ear multiplier. What is that? How does that be possible? You want me to do the more math? You want me to do more? I was that take back the question. Okay. There are persistent historical rumors. And honestly, this is like the whole reason I chose this

topic is because I heard these before and I thought they were true. There were these persistent rumors that during this transition, British subjects and rioters took to the streets, shouting, give us back our 11 days as though they were missing a marathon on TV or something. But unfortunately, modern historians have shit all over that. That's probably never happened. But regardless of the veracity of the riot stories, it's still hilarious to look at the act itself and see how far out of their way they went to never call this their Gregorian calendar or acknowledged Pope Gregory. And

anyway, instead they called it the new style calendar. And then they came up with their very own calculations that just happened to look exactly like the one that Gregory had acted back in the 16th century. Oh my God. No, you're right. This is hilarious. Tell me another of your tall tales of wacky chronological hygiene. So my size, my face hurts from all the laughing, you guys. I love that they call that the new style though.

You know, there were a bunch of stupid moms on yield Facebook complaining about the new style calendar. In my day, we used the sex and shut up, Alan. Shut up. All right. So it's worth noting that the move to the Gregorian calendar, at least within the British Empire, also included changing the calendar start date to one that made last sense. So through most of human history, at least in the places where it snow, as people consider the end of winter to be the start of the year. The Roman calendar started in March. And it's actually moving this back to January that fucks up the translation of those month names. The calendar, the brits were using in 1752 started on April 5th, except in Scotland,

where they changed it to January 1st back in 1600, just to piss the British off. But when they made these reforms in 1752, they changed everything back to like a January 1st back at 1600 just to piss the British off, but when they made these reforms in 1752, they changed everything back to like a January 1st start date too. All right. So is this just like the calendar we're stuck with now or can we fix it? Probably. It's like Quirty, you know, there's no reason DeVoreac is better, but you're just, it's just we're too used to it. But it's not because there aren't better alternatives.

For example, the world calendar, which was first proposed by Elizabeth Achilles of Brooklyn, New York in 1930, would swap around the number of days in each month to make four even quarters, each of them exactly 13 weeks long. January, April, July, and October would each get 31 days. Everything else gets 30. The year would always begin on a Sunday and we get four Friday the 13th of the year. Try to pitch this to a culture that still builds buildings with a 12 a and a 12 b floor right before 414.

See how that fucking works for you. All right. Well, no, just start each month on the zero with. And those are all Thursday, the 12th. Yeah. Where's that? He just. We just stopped. They're just thing things to get through this. All right.

So now to make this work, if you're doing the math in your head, you're like, wait, that doesn't work. Yeah. In order to get here, you need what are called intercalorie days. These are days that just kind of exist outside of the calendar. They're not in a month. Like, you would put the calendar on hold for one day between June and July, and again, between December and January for leap years. And that would be weird. I mean,

not only with those days, not be part of a month, but they couldn't even be days of the week either. So that might take a minute to get used to, but it would make it a hell of a lot easier to calculate future dates. Since February 30th, for example, would always be on a Thursday, like me easy to calculate. Are you easy to calculate? Because I have a, I have a a abacus. I don't calculate my calendar. The fuck. What are you talking about days that are on hold? How would that even work? Like, Hey, man, what day is it? Oh, it isn't. Huh? No, I mean, just tell me the day, man, I just want to know what to write down on this. No, no. Okay. Well, it's, it's the isn't Zith of flusterberry.

Technically fucking hate you. I hate you. Dude, don't blame me. People always get so fucking moody and flusterberry. I didn't invent flusterberry. All right. So once you add the concept of intercalorie days, you can actually do a lot better than the world calendar. Cool. Do you have a favorite? I do have a favorite. He said, if it's not puppies, I don't want to know. My favorite.

It's better be Dilbert or puppies or any other. My, it's certainly not fucking Dilbert. So my favorite is the international fixed calendar. Also known as the fuck out of right? Right? It's good. My favorite too. I'm also known as the Cotsworth plan, the Eastman plan, the equal month calendar or the 13 month calendar. So, okay. The

problem here is 365 doesn't divide neatly into any reasonable month divisions, but 364 divides equally into 13 months of 28 days each. And for fuck's sake, that already works with that arbitrary seven day week shit. Right. You end up with one day at the end of the year. You call that year day. It's intercalerates. Not a Monday or a Tuesday or whatever. You attack on another one for leap years and bam, you've got a logical, easy to use calendar.

Where nobody has to count knuckles anymore. And the seventh of the month is always a fucking Saturday. Yeah. And you can make year day voting day. There you go. I see it. Now I see why big calendar is suppressing this. This makes it a good idea.

I don't know, man, like I feel like counting on my knuckles is a lot easier than having an unassigned year day, which just comes around once in a while with a fucking identity crisis or whatever. It would be doing nothing though, like real. Yeah, you think it's doing nothing. nothing okay the one day off a year for free We'd work all right The international fixed calendar Proposes that the 13th month be called Saul and be inserted between June and July

But that's fucking that's stupid instead you should move September through December back to where they belong Yes, and then we could vote on the name of the extra month online fucking that's stupid instead you should move September through December back to where they belong. Yes. And then we could vote on the name of the extra month online so we get like monthy mc month face or something fun. And also renamed July and August too because fuck genocidal Roman dictators. Yes. Okay. No, let's not open that can of worms because knowing the internet we're going to end

up with self care and Hitler month like it's not open that can of worms because knowing the internet we're gonna end up with Self-care and Hitler month like it's not Oh my god, can you imagine the fucking statuses like Tom is feeling loved today. I got drunk and watched Netflix all day in my pajamas and didn't even conquer the task to basic hygiene It's just my little way of caring for me. I love yourself, Terremont. Hashtag fierce school. It's spring. Timber. I'm allowed to. All right. So of course, not every proposed change to the Gregorian calendar is sane. There's also apparently a push by some group of people to adopt the halicine calendar, which is exactly the same as the

one we have now, except we add 10,000 to all the year numbers so that it better corresponds with the start of the Neolithic revolution. I mean, look, I'm a huge fan of not pagan our start year to the incorrect calculation of the birth of Jesus. And it actually would make it a little less confusing when you start talking about shit that happens at or year, near one, or when you have to calculate the difference between like a BC date and an AD day. But mostly that would just be extra syllables. All right.

If you had to summarize what you've learned today in one sentence, what would it be? That I'll never make Tom happy unless I find an article about like famous historical farts. That would be amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Just something class. A tie vote.

A tie vote. All right, are you ready for a quiz from the panel? By every conceivable method of time keeping yes sir. All right Noah, since we're smart talking stuff, I don't understand about calendars this episode. A, why does Wednesday have the D before the N? D? Wait, why does some people start their weeks on Sunday and some people on Monday?

What's going on there? Yes. See, when you have a flight that's at midnight on a day, why isn't there an international symbol for, come on the night of the day. You know what I mean? No, that is not a day. D, what is mountain time?

The symbol, the symbol of the day that it's on. There's 24 hours in a day. I'm going, I'm going now. I feel like you've missed the point of like, like, I feel like your question is backwards, but I'm going to go for it anyway. It's named after Odin, Christians are bitchy about it. And then stuff, the rest of us already know what midnight means. And mountain time. Oh my God. Oh my God.

Oh my God. Great essay. No, it really cleared up so many things I've wondered about so long. I had some topics to jump to mind though while you were babbling away, which is my next step as a result. Hey, the layman's guide to quarterly corporate tax filing that that intrigues me. B, what bugs might be thinking? That's possible. Or see suburban lawn mowing a history. Those are. Oh, okay, so it can't be seen because I already have that on my reserved list Probably not be because you don't like to do thinky stuff Yeah, we get Smith we base the whole career on it

But no one's not making that up lawns are on his list They are they really wait? Jesus Christ. We're now we're talking about we're gonna take off weeks guys. I can't even unintentionally make a hyperbolic joke about how boring this is. You'll have it being on your fucking masturbation list. No, pose laws that shit out of you if you know I'm ready. Yeah. Holy shit. All right, one more question now.

If we're going to name a new month after our current leadership, what we call it, a, name it after Pence and call it gay, b, name it after Trump and call it gay, b name it after Trump and call it you lie. And see name it after the Saudi prince and call it dismember. And he name it after the American people and call it disgust. Uh, secret answer, e something with you, Janet. I wrong. Yes, I am wrong. Oh, he's so nice.

That's me. Good work. It was one of the other ones. You just can't get ever put you, Janet. You're the winner. You get to choose who you want next week. Well, clearly, Tom was just he was itching to go next here. Yeah, super exciting.

So tax filing it is next week, Tom. Dust, mites, and tax filing. Alright, well for Noah, Cecil, Tom and Eli. I'm Heath, thanking you for listening. We'll be back next week, and by then, Tom will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear Tom and Cecil on cognitive dissonance, and you can hear Eli, Noah, and myself on God-Off-A-Movies, the Skating Atheists, and the Skeptocrat.

And if you don't hate all the black people and all the Jewish people, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod. Or you can go with the other option, either way. Again, you're welcome. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, listen to past episodes, connect with us on social media, or take a look at the show notes, check out citationpod.com. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

Okay, and taxes are due in April. Uh, allegedly. Nope. Uh, not allegedly always. It's just, it's every April. So you say. So the government says, no uh... not allegedly always it's just it's every April so you say so the government says