Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Daylight Saving Time

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by podcasters/producers Anna Hossnieh and Shereen Lani Younes (‘Ethnically Ambiguous’ podcast) for a look at why Daylight Saving Time is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Daylight Saving Time. Known for... wait, is it really said like that? Famous for... same question. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Daylight Saving Time is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Two wonderful returning guests this week, Ana Hosnier and Shireen Lani Yunus, are back on the show. They co-host their own fantastic podcast.

It's called Ethnically Ambiguous. It's over on iHeartRadio. And it's a podcast about being Middle Eastern and about being immigrants in America. And it's got a about being Middle Eastern and about being immigrants in America. And it's got like a huge range of guests, people with that experience and people with experiences beyond it. And these two folks are many other things too. Anna is a super producer and frequent guest on shows like The Daily Zeitgeist and Will You Accept This Rose? And then Shireen is a writer and a filmmaker and lots more things. I am thrilled they added this

in too. Really great. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledge Ana recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielina Wartongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Shireen recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Shireen recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and Chumash and Fernandinho-Taraviam peoples. And acknowledge that in all our locations, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about Daylight Saving Time, which is probably better known as Daylight Savings Time, and we're going

to call it that a lot. Also, if you're in Europe, this might be known to you as Summertime, either as British Summertime or Central European Summertime or another name like that. The general thing we're talking about here is a seasonal shifting of the clock. It's usually by one hour, twice a year, and it's in some countries, but not all countries. I think it's a perfect topic for this show. I also think these are the perfect guests because Anna and Shireen were on the previous episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating about time zones. As we made that, we realized there's like a whole separate podcast just about daylight saving time, which I keep wanting to call Daylight Savings

Time. Doesn't matter. So I'm thrilled we could kind of bring this full circle. Also, you totally don't need to hear the time zones episode to like understand this one or whatever. You've experienced the concept. So you're all set. And also they stand on their own. It's just fun that it could happen. And that's all you need to know. So please sit back or check your hemisphere before changing your clock. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Ana Hosnier and Shireen Lani Yunus. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Anna, Shereen, so good to have you back. And of course, I always start by asking guests

their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. We also kind of talked about this topic a lot when we taped before, but either way, how do you guys feel about Daylight Saving Time? Well, first of all, thanks, Alex, for having us back. Yes, thank you. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What I did mention right before we started recording is that I think Daylight Saving Time is stupid. And I don't understand why we still have it. I think it's archaic and dumb.

And I don't understand why we still have it. I think it's archaic and dumb. And not everyone adheres to it, so it makes it confusing. But I also left open the opportunity that maybe you'd convince me otherwise. So that's where I stand on daylight savings as of now. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I don't have a lot of thoughts about it, honestly. I've never thought too much about it. Really? It's, I guess, the most critical thinking I'll do. I don't know why. I just think of it as kind of like a thing we do. I don't fully understand. I know it has something to do with farmers having to rise, but I don't even know if that's just a myth that's been perpetuated.

I don't know anymore. I don't like the idea of losing an hour of sleep i'll tell you that yeah and that's as far as my opinion on the matter goes i just hate being told what to do and how to think about time in the day you know what i mean like i don't i don't like being tossed around like that and like i've also heard the farming thing and i appreciate that but we gotta just stop playing god here you know we can't control time but that's just my opinion when we will uh we'll get into why it's a thing later and i i think i had heard farming being an element of it but as far as i I know, farmers mostly don't like it. And it's not really the cause of it.

But either way, I think I definitely took daylight savings as it's almost like a government obligation. It's like the DMV or taxes or something. It's just something we have to do. And even if it's a good idea, it bugs me. You know what I mean? Well, especially now with technology. Before, we had to do it ourselves, right? But now if you have an iPhone, it does it automatically. You have no choice.

You can't even go against the grain because your time is set already. I do. And I find it super frustrating still having to change the oven clock. Like, come on, oven. Why aren't you wired yet? Why aren't you from Apple? Microwave. Microwave.

Sometimes your car, if it's not fancy. But yeah. But yeah, I know. I think those feelings about it make sense. I can just pre-say that I came out of researching this not being way more or less excited about it being a practice. Like I'm not, I'm not like super on board with it now or something. You're still indifferent. Yeah.

You're still indifferent. Perfect. Perfect. But it's also very interesting. So there you go. And I think, I think from here, we got, we got a bunch of stuff. Let's get straight into the set of stuff about daylight saving time. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And it's in a segment called

I can show you the stats, data, cipher and numbers, probability wonders on a graph of plotted lines, a whole new stats thank you and uh and that name was submitted by arthur f padua thank you arthur you have a new name for this every week please make him as silly and wacky and bad as possible submit to sifpod on twitter or to sifpod at gmail.com there's's only a few numbers, but the first one is two. And two is the number of like accepted names grammatically for daylight saving time. According to dictionary.com, there's a lot of other sources with other beliefs about it. But they say that the the practice of advancing the clocks ahead an hour is called daylight saving time. But because daylight

savings time is used so frequently, that term is also considered acceptable. So a plural and non plural is both. Is that that's what you're saying? Interesting. Yeah, I think I've pretty much always called it daylight savings time. Yeah, same. But it turns out it's daylight saving time. And it also turns out in Europe in particular, they call it summertime. And there's other things other people in the world call it. Like in the UK, they call it British summertime when they do daylight saving time. Interesting.

That just sounds so normal. Like just like, oh, it's winter. Oh, no, it's summertime. But it means something else. Never mind. I'm rambling. But saving rather than savings does make technically more sense you know like you're saving your savings like savings is like money yeah right we messed

that one up right we are like trying to keep and use daylight but we I guess we're not putting it in an account or checking the interest rate or whatever. Yeah. So daylight saving time is officially what it's called. There's also some people who say that there should be a hyphen between daylight and saving. The AP style book says you don't hyphenate it, but Minion Fogarty, who hosts the podcast Grammar Girl, says she prefers a hyphen because then it makes daylight saving a compound modifier that is modifying the word time. I know that's all just grammar stuff, but there are a lot of ways to write and spell and say this thing that I always just said kind of wrong before. I don't even understand. Daylight saving time. That's how you say it?

Yeah. Not daylight savings time? It turns out. Yeah, I don't know if it's an American thing in particular or something, but I always called it daylight savings time. Yeah, I've never heard the opposite. That's the thing. I think maybe everyone else said it like we did.

And like you said, like it just became acceptable. But yeah, that's interesting. There's something dark going on here and I don't trust it. I'm sorry. What do you mean daylight saving time? Okay, I guess I'll take your word for it, Alex. What is this? Shireen, what is this podcast we're doing

i don't know what's going this is like i don't know why like that's the thing that really shakes me i'm like wait what there's no s at the end of that it's like the berenstein bears yeah yeah what is it yeah you know it's like where what planet have i been on yeah yeah can't remember now you know when you think about a word so hard that you're like okay now it just sounds foreign in general yeah yeah now it's like a strange series of sounds yeah yeah who knows what it is yeah but yeah but that's so we'll we'll probably keep calling it daylight savings time as we go but it's officially daylight saving time it. It's days where you save daylight. And the next number here is a date. It is Sunday, September 26th of 2021. Sunday, September 26th is when New Zealand did its annual switch for daylight saving time. And timeanddate.com says that on that day, New Zealand turned their clocks forward.

And that gets us into a basic thing with daylight savings time where it's different in the northern and southern hemispheres because the seasons are flipped there. And that means that the daylight saving time switch is flipped there. Yeah, you lost me already. Five minutes into this podcast. But why? Like, why? Is it because of where it is on the planet like does it make sense that way for them for us yeah the uh it turns out the whole purpose of daylight saving is

to take a society that is clock driven so this is all like industrial revolution and on kind of thing to take a clock driven society and make more like industrial revolution and on kind of thing to take a clock driven society and make more of the stuff we do happen during daylight like make more of the main part of the day happen during daylight by moving the clock and because days are longer in the summer shorter in the winter that means since the seasons flip with the hemispheres, the daylight saving flips with the hemispheres, which is confusing. But so if you're in the Southern hemisphere, you're doing it on the reverse of our schedule here in the North. That's interesting. I like that phrase,

clock-driven society. I've never heard that. You're trying to make a clock-driven society, which we are very clock-driven, versus into a sun-driven society, which we are very clock-driven, into a sun-driven society. You have to adhere to the sun. Go back to our roots before we made clocks. Wow, that's deep. Yeah, this whole daylight saving thing only exists because we started being based on clocks. Before that, just the sun shifted around and so did people. And that was

it wow wait what this whole conversation is so above my head i'm like what i've literally never ever thought critically about regions like this and like how the sun works because like i will say i was recently in mountain Time and that was huge for me to really I finally I felt like I understood Mountain Time for the first time in my life because as a child I have spent a lot of time in Utah and as a child I'd get very frustrated because like I'd have to go spend long periods of time there and I would always miss the starts of my TV shows that I wanted to watch because I couldn't figure it out. And my parents, you know, of course, they were like pro me not watching TV.

So they were like, well, I guess you missed it. You didn't know it's Mountain Time. It's different here. It starts like an hour earlier. And I'd be like, what is that? And so I've come a long way, I would like to say to understand the concept of mountain versus central time two different things who knew it's like created to make kids confused uh so mountain is one hour from the west coast and central is two is that the whole thing okay yeah but mountain is random

because mountain is like only kind of like literally the mountains it's just like who even thought of that yeah interesting i guess you could say i'm still mad you still sound like you haven't processed it fully no i'm still pretty annoyed all those shows i know researching this helped me like line it up in my head time zones it's a very east to west thing right like it's it's bands of land east to west or each of the different time zones. Daylight saving is more of a north to south thing because it's aimed at sort of managing the difference in sunset getting earlier and later as the seasons change across the year. And so also depending on whether you're further north or closer to the equator or further south,

on whether you're further north or closer to the equator or further south, that kind of determines how helpful it is to do daylight savings. For example, there are some countries near the poles that don't bother because their sunlight across the year is so weird. The one hour wouldn't make any difference. Well, that's what I was thinking. There are parts, like in Moscow, for example, I feel like I always say this because I've been to Moscow one time but in the summer the sun sets at 11 and it goes up at 2 so it's like uh did I get that right wait like 11 11 p.m sunset and 2 a.m sunrise yeah yeah there's only like a couple hours of night time so that wouldn't make any sense like you can't that that's too much daylight. You know what I mean? So I wonder if they adhere to anything at all or any part, like not just that,

but like all the cities or countries that are like so close to the upper part of the planet kind of thing. I don't know. Yeah. I believe Russia does not bother with daylight saving time because they have, they have so much. They don't need to save extra. Right. Yeah. Right. And Bloomberg picks out Iceland as an example of a country that tried it in the mid-20th century, abandoned it by 1968 because they're so far north and get either so much or so little sun that, like, bothering to change the clock by an hour is silly. Like, why?

There's no point. Yeah. Oh, that's funny. You think they'd try and save that daylight though you know if they're if they're that's like a place i would understand like you've got two hours of daylight but like that's the thing i think what irritates me is the concept that we can save the daylight like literally like in those places the sun is out for however like three hours however however time is divided in reality or whatever.

And then it's gone. You know, like there's no way to save that daylight. There's no way to save daylight in general. You know what I mean? I think that concept has always bothered me because it's so, it sounds so like elitist to think like we're going we're gonna save some daylight you know like as if we're like capable of being that powerful i don't know i don't know why that bothers me but it does it's like it's like playing god almost yeah yeah exactly it's like we're not

that powerful or cool to have power over this just let it happen um question so if to opt out like is that a thing they vote on like arizona or whatever yeah like you vote to opt out or like how does that happen yeah we'll get into the details later but the under u.s law places are allowed to opt out of daylight saving time at a local level and so yeah most, most of Arizona is not on it. Yeah. That is so confusing. Arizona is driving distance from us. So it's like, on one side of the border, it's 5pm. And the other side, it's like 6pm. Like, no, let's no, I don't know. I hate that. Yeah. And then part of the year, it's the same o'clock. Because it flips. Yeah,

it's a whole thing. Well, I'm already angry, Alex. Yeah, let's let's get into the culprits of this because there's one more number. It goes into the first takeaway. It's about 200 million U.S. dollars in today's money. About 200 million U.S. dollars is Benjamin Franklin's estimate of the cost savings if the city of Paris did daylight savings time back in the day. And that brings us into takeaway number one. Takeaway number one. Daylight saving time started as a Ben Franklin joke and became a World War I strategy.

What? So there's going to be the whole progression of it. It started as Ben Franklin joking around and then other people sort of parallel invented it and around world war one countries started doing it wow it started as a joke that is that's so absurd just imagine just you offhandedly say something randomly just like imagine if uh oceans were i don know, I can't even think of something that would be so weird. Like, imagine if in the summertime, 6 p.m. was 6 a.m. And it's like, oh, haha, Ben, you're so funny. And then suddenly, however many years later, it becomes, oh my god, that's absurd.

Only a white man can do that. Only a white man can joke around and change the world forever. Yeah, what's a comedy bit that became real? Like those Bubba Gump shrimp restaurants or something? Like, oh, this was in a movie and now people actually eat here and do it. Great. Wow, it's a wild concept right there. But yeah, there's a few sources here.

The main one is a book called Seize the Daylight, Theious story of daylight saving time that's by writer david perot and then also national geographic and the conversation.com but i uh i i didn't know this till researching but there's like a general factoid out there that's kind of true which is that benjamin franklin invented daylight saving time he he jokingly thought about it and then also other people put it together later on i have this joke what if we just like we just like slept in longer give us more rest maybe that was his joke oh god i would love that maybe i didn't have to get up ever i could sleep anyway it's just a thing to think about i'm so tired yeah i honestly that's actually a really good point that's probably how he said it

yeah that's probably he was like he's probably so tired coming into wherever work or whatever he was that morning with his friends it was like imagine if we had another hour of sleep and everyone was like go fine and then... You're crazy for that one. Maybe we should do it. Yeah, and let's blame it on the farmers. No one's going to look at them. Farmers be farming, am I right, guys? I don't even know.

Yeah, the farmers are so spread out we can blame them for anything. They won't get together. That, the farmers are so spread out, we can blame them for anything. They won't get together. That's so funny that this whole time, I feel like everyone thinks it's the farming thing. And I could just imagine every person that's ever been a farmer is just like, stop talking about us at Daylight Savings House. We have nothing to do with this. And they're always blamed for it.

But that's Ben's fault that's ben franklin's fault yeah yeah him and and world war one leaders basically did it to him yeah and with franklin's thing he sketched out as like a funny written piece basically he sketched out the idea in 1784 and in 1784 he was the u.s ambassador to France, he was living in Paris, he had the germ of an idea of like, what if we did all of our stuff during daylight? So we used fewer candles? Right? Like we're using up all this wax and whatever else candles are made of? What if we saved candles? Sustainability, bro. Sustainability. He was the head of the game. Basically, yeah. Sustainability, bro.

I like that. And David Perrault says, quote, because candlelight was much more expensive than sunlight, Franklin's love of economy induced him to muster up what little arithmetic he had mastered to calculate how much the city of Paris could save by using sunshine instead of candles. the city of Paris could save by using sunshine instead of candles. And he did rough math of 183 nights from March 20th to September 20th. If we adjusted the clock and people used sunlight instead of candles, he believed Paris on its own would save over 96 million livres tournois, which is an oldtimey currency that today would be worth about 200 million us dollars also i love that this person was like the little arithmetic he had mastered like way to be a little mean about ben's math abilities but okay um that's interesting that's very interesting yeah famed d plus student, Ben Franklin, made the attempt.

Wait. Candlelight is more expensive than sunlight. Sorry, can you say the name of that? Currency? Currency again? Yeah, I don't know if I pronounced it right. Livre tournois. Livre tournois, huh.

Yeah, it was some old French currency. Yeah. Yeah. More interested in that. Shall we pivot? What is that about? Wait, so what you're saying is that it always comes back to capitalism. Like literally, he was just trying to make us more efficient during the daylight and that's it.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Ben Franklin's on my shit list. Not that I'll ever see that. And I think he, like, would kind of find that funny, too, because, like, he wrote this all out and then the rest of it had suggestions that that have to be jokes. Like, he also said that we could enforce this by taxing anyone who put shutters on their windows because shutters block daylight and you're wasting daylight so it's like you know it's like you're you're carbon

taxing them or something and then out with the emos okay they can't have darkness no more goths get out of here yeah that's that's actually genuinely absurd it's like uh maybe i just like you know i would like to not like overheat in the sunlight right maybe is that wild a whole city of people just squinting all the time like i'm not allowed he just made he just made one joke after another and he had so much power imagine having so much power that every joke you make becomes national, international law. Wow. Yeah. Because the most extreme joke, which they didn't do, was he said that in order to help get people up for the daylight, they should ring all of the church bells in every city at sunrise.

And then quoting him, if that is not not sufficient let cannon be fired in every street to wake the sluggards effectively oh my god he's just he's like just goofing around i think it's like a jonathan swift eat all the babies thing like it's all it's all just ridiculous he's just saying everything and it's hoping something will catch like whatever you know what i mean like you just one of them will actually happen yeah wow what is what a um what a prankster what a jester what a tool just has a business card that says like prankster jester tool you know do it all do it all but yeah so he he was goofing around and then other people separately actually proposed this idea but in around the turn of the century the 19th the 20th according to aaron blakemore writing for national geographic the first recorded serious pitch for daylightaving Time was written up by George Hudson, who was a person from New Zealand and was an entomologist.

He studied insects and he proposed a two hour time shift so he would have more after work hours of daylight to catch insects in the summer because he studied insects. He wanted to catch them. Oh, wow. It takes everything in my being not to say nerd alert. But I won't do it because I will not create any disdain towards nerds. I have done it in the past, but I have learned and grown. So I won't do it. But I want to make it very clear.

It is hard for me not to say that when you tell me you gave us daylight saving times so you can go catch your little insects yep right but also what a selfish thing like my job would be easier and i would love this if i had more day daylights let's like let's make everyone else do the same thing because my bug catching obsession is more important than whatever xyz right yeah like just trying to make everybody else live different so it can be on your clock for for pinning butterflies to boards or whatever just adhere to your schedule that's all it is every all the world has to adhere to my bug catching schedule yeah it's absurd what if they were like one guy's like i just want to surf earlier you're like exactly exactly it could be literally anything yeah so yeah we all

maybe every once in a while you need some more daylight for something it's like any excuse at this point i'd be annoyed at the it doesn't even matter they're just like i just So yeah, we all, maybe every once in a while you need some more daylight for something. It's like, ugh. Any excuse at this point, I'd be annoyed. It doesn't even matter. They're just like, I just like looking at the sun early in the day and I'm like, how dare you. Making me switch my oven for you. Making me switch my oven. For your surf.

I have 44 microwaves. Do you know how much time that takes up? The idea of 44. Why? Why would you need that many? Well. Imagine every time the power went out. You would have to do the whole thing.

Just like there's so much flashing the whole room level of light changes like yeah 12 o'clock 12 o'clock 12 o'clock and like we spoke last time i like to do my clocks you know because my mom would do it 15 minutes early i like to do my clocks all three minutes early because i can't do 15 is actually absurd in my opinion now that i've lived the three three to five five is my max so then i have to go like figure that out as well right strategy it's frustrating but that just proves how much clocks control us as humans and us as a society like we are really uh uh, like I was going to say, nevermind. We are just at mercy of clocks

is what I wanted to say. Um, and that's kind of, uh, sad in a way, you know what I mean? It's kind of sad. Well, and it is like daylight saving. The idea is something we could do without changing clocks. Like we could just build a habit or a practice of people start to do things an hour earlier in the summer and then switch that back. You know what I mean? You could just do different hours for activities and businesses and leave the clocks the way they are. But yeah, we are so clock driven at the clock level that you have to change it there. Otherwise people are like, oh, why'd that switch? Even though the sun is setting at different times. Right.

But yeah, so this New Zealander proposed it and then separately in the UK, a home builder named William Willett published a July 1907 pamphlet called The Waste of Daylight with the same basic idea. All these old timey dudes. And that pamphlet had the same basic idea. But also he

tried to get it like through Parliament, and people like Winston Churchill were in favor of it, but they didn't quite get it set up. And then the thing that finally made daylight saving time pretty common is Germany in World War One. In 1916, the Germans mid war, adopted daylight saving time in the hopes of saving energy for the war effort. Like they would do more stuff by daylight instead of electricity. And then everybody else felt like they needed to compete. So Britain adopted it the next year, the U.S. the year after that, a bunch of other countries too. And then from there, there's kind of been a patchwork of countries doing it or not doing it. But World War I electricity savings was the thing that really pushed the world to at least think about it and consider doing it. It all started as like a pissing contest.

Yeah. It's like, oh, they're doing it? Now I have to do it. Well, they're all bros but yeah so this all kind of came from the kaiser because world war one germany was very top down and uh so yeah when they did it everybody else like you said pissing contest they were all like well if they're doing it we got to keep up even if it's silly that doesn't make sense look at us now i wonder if they knew just the impact of all of their they don't they didn't there's no way they all they care about is their surf and their and their bugs their surf and their bugs I don't actually know if the surf thing was real I just want to make that clear I'm kidding I just love that joke I also like sometimes because my boyfriend's a surfer so sometimes he's always

like well he's like talking to me about something about the waves and i'm like oh my god dude what are you what are you a fan of daylight saving time i just assume you find out that zach is behind daylight savings time i just think the way he talks about i wouldn't be surprised if he's like you know we do need that extra day of dude that hour of daylight so you can get in and you know surf i just wouldn't be surprised if he ever said that to me because it's just the way they talk in general about like the wave and the times that you need to go i'm like kill me yeah yeah that is outdoor activities are one of the few things not driven by this because you're maybe just looking at when the sun is rising and when the temperatures will be such and such. And so so you're like free of daylight saving. You've defeated it, you know. But then the rest of the world is either on your schedule or not because of this. Right.

So you're not free. Never mind. No, no. But yeah. And so then then from there, places adopted it or not. And then with the U.S. specifically, the country mostly adopted it in 1966 with a federal law called the Uniform Time Act. And after World War I, places were allowed to adopt it or not. And that led to a weird US patchwork, where before this law passed, there were 18 US states that observed daylight saving time, 12 states that did not, and another 18 that at a state level didn't, but had local areas and cities that did. So it was incredibly confusing to know what time it was in the U.S. until they ironed this out in the mid-60s.

It was all a joke. It was all a joke. Yeah. Can we just wrap our heads around that? We all have this global system that we have to do. Our phones make it happen regardless. And it was a joke. See, I stopped myself. I was going to say a curse word. I could tell.

Thank you. But it all started as a joke. And that irritates me because not only do I not like being told what to do, or I don't like feeling controlled, but feeling controlled by a white man's joke? No, that's where I draw the line. I'm going to, when my phone changes time, I'm going to change it back. That's what I'm going to do.

You can't do that. You can't stop me. I think you'll get struck by lightning. That's against the rules, Shireen. Didn't it kind of feel like back in the day, some of these guys, they were like, you know, one guy makes an invention. Then all of a sudden all the guys are like, well, I could do that. And then next thing you know, they're just innovating just to innovate. Yeah.

And then some things like I feel like there's just random inventions that like there would be like random inventions that you're like, well, why? And it was almost like people got the invention bug in them. And then like, boom, baby, you're like, now we have this. Now we have that. Now we have this. And then it's like they couldn't stop themselves. It was like a white privilege party back then where they just were like yeah then we'll do this and then we'll do that oh my god and now this it picks leaves for you why i don't know why would you

use your hands like it's like all this like random stuff that i don't i don't know what i'm describing when i say it picks leaves for you just to be clear but like i feel like a lot of things just came out of the fact that like it was it was a hot time for inventing concepts and ideas because the world was so in quotes new. Yeah. I don't know. The first season of Shark Tank. That was it. That was the first season of Shark Tank.

Yeah. That's actually. Yeah. It was like Shark Tank season all day, every day. Shark Tank. Industrial Revolution Edition. Just like King Tank. There's one king.

And then you come to him with a little thing. He's like, I'm into it. Okay, what else you got? And if you're not, like, off of your head. Guillotine. Interviewing him after, like, I was hoping the sharks would not behead me. But, you know, if that's the way it goes, guess that's oh i have to go now okay camera interview yeah it's like off in the pit you go i still believe in the product

i still believe in the product they're like well no one else does you loser get out of here famous last words. Yeah. Well, and also it turns out it probably wasn't totally driven by actually being a good idea or a good product. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway. Before that,

we're going to take a little break. We'll be right back. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney,

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Which brings us into takeaway number two. Which brings us into takeaway number two. Observing daylight saving time is probably a waste of energy. Because the origins are people trying to save candles or save electricity or something like that. But at least in modern times, it actually probably burns a little more energy than it saves to bother to do it. Interesting. How so? How does it use more? You would think just the not using electric lights so much would help, but they're not such a huge energy burner anyway.

Oh, right. Because like LED and all that, like it's come a long way. Yeah, right. And then also, according to Laura Grant, who's an economics professor at Claremont McKenna College, recent studies indicate that just for many reasons, people end up using more energy. She and colleagues were looking at the state of Indiana, which had actually partly opted out of daylight saving time until 2006. Then they made the whole state do it. But when Indiana did that switch, they looked at the counties that hadn't been doing it and the counties that had, and they found that month after month, energy use went up after adopting daylight saving time by a range of 1 to 4%. they're out there using the daylight, they do something that uses a bunch of energy, like driving their car across town back and forth to go to parks or to go play sports or something like that. Oh, interesting. Like if you just stayed in your house with one light bulb on, maybe that's actually better

for the environment. You know, it's a surprising thing, but that seems to be the situation. That makes sense, I guess. Yeah. thing but that that seems to be the situation that makes interesting sense i guess yeah and there's also there's like a wrinkle within it where it turns out daylight saving time increases the amount of golf people play in a huge way because it makes it more convenient clockwise to get in more golf and uh and this sounds like the surfing thing to be honest like come on it's almost like i don't yeah uh adhering to someone's golf schedule like are you serious i don't care oh my god yeah like

gotta get a couple rounds in you know how it is daylight saving time right i can't get over that saving time gotta remember let's say it that way all the time when things flip i probably will have to because the concept that there's no s at the end has really ruined me yeah but imagine like you keep saying it and everyone's like i think you mean daylight savings i'm like and you keep saying yeah are you full you know nothing they're like and it's kind of an asshole about daylight saving times don't you know that's your Joker origin story is yeah daylight saving time is my

you ruined me Alex she was never the same after that we live in a daylight saving time society I'm ruined ruined forever and yeah and golfers they really like it in 1920 the washington post reported that golf ball sales in the first year of daylight saving time increased by 20 percent and then in 1986 congress extended the amount of months we do daylight saving time

and the golf industry estimated that that extra month was worth as much as $400 million in equipment sales, green fees, nationwide stimulation of the golf industry. Yeah, I hate this. I hate this. And golf is like broadly bad for the environment, like what we do to the land and the water usage and then people driving back and forth to do it. And so that kind of thing is worse. It just cancels each other out, if not makes it worse. Yeah.

But yeah, and then there's one more takeaway for the main episode here, and it's about potential changes. Takeaway number three. Most U.S. states and the European Union are both trying to stop changing their clocks. They're each running into some obstacles, but most U.S. states and the whole European Union are trying to get out of this cycle of changing the clocks every year. So who would be left? I thought it was an American thing. Yeah, it's most common in a lot of North America and then the European Union and then like New Zealand, part of Australia and Chile.

And there's a few other countries that do it, too. But you said that the European Union and a lot of American states want to opt out. So that mostly eliminate a lot of places it is. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. It sounds like it's about to go extinct.

That's what I'm hearing. Like it's just going to trickle away. It's like possible. Yeah. Wow. It sounds like it's about to go extinct. That's what I'm hearing. Like, it's just going to trickle away. It's like possible. Yeah. This years from now, this episode might be an artifact. Yeah. Prophetic. But it won't happen right away.

So kind of good news. I don't know. Like I, like I said, I didn't come out of this like hating daylight saving time or anything, but I'm not enthusiastic about it existing. I don't think it's a good idea. Oh, I loathe daylight saving time even more than I did before. As soon as you mentioned golf, I was like, I'm out. I'm out. That's my point of no return. No. The golfers, yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, so each place, US and Europe, there's a different situation and obstacle. In the US, there's a different situation and obstacle. In the U.S., Congress allows states to exempt themselves from daylight saving time if they just want to, if they just want to stay on standard time year round. And so Hawaii took them up on it. Most of Arizona, except for the Navajo Reservation, took them up on it. And then most U.S. territories, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Marianas, lots of islands like that are not on it. And then other states have gone on and off it. But there are a few U.S. states attempting bigger changes, and they would need like actual congressional approval to do it. And the bigger changes, they're just like bogged down in Congress, then can't make that happen yet.

And the changes are mainly aimed at not doing the clock switch anymore. Some of them would be year-round daylight saving time. Some of them would be year-round standard time and like a new time zone. But the overall idea is let's stop switching clocks twice a year. It just like feels weird and we don't need to bother. Yeah, agree. Hard agree. And the biggest examples of the potential change, National Geographic says that Florida passed a law in 2018 that would put the state on permanent daylight saving time. And that means a lot of the year

they would be an hour ahead of Eastern time. Oh, no. They wouldn't be in Central time. They'd be like an hour in front of the rest of the East Coast. What? No. Yeah. You know what? I was going to say why why but then a part of me is like god i mean maybe we should just let florida have it maybe this is part of the the trickle effect that

like florida secedes and becomes a thing you know like maybe this is what has to happen for it to be separate from the rest of the continent i'm willing to let florida go yeah it would sorry anyone that's a student sorry to all the floridians but that's on you goodbye see you four hours from now yeah because they they would function kind of like arizona where they're in and out it feels like they're in and out of different time zones. But one time zone would be an hour ahead of the continental US time zones. So it would feel very novel, yeah, if they did that.

That is so strange. Imagine just driving down from DC to Florida or wherever, and you're going south, and time is going forward. Like, that's... Yeah. No. No, that doesn't make any sense. No, thank you.

Yeah, like Mickey Mouse is just in the future, like a science fiction character. And then the other place that would be in even more of this situation, there's a group of New England states that are passing bills that would put them on what they call Atlantic Standard Time. So they want to be on year-round standard Time, but one hour ahead of Eastern Time. And that's New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut have all roughed this out. Yeah, I think they just feel the daylight would make more sense than it does on regular Eastern Time. And then also, they wouldn't have this clock change anymore. But with Florida and with all these New England states, Congress has to let them do this because it's not just a normal switch back to standard time. And so far, Congress will not let them.

And it doesn't seem to be a party line thing either. The main people pushing for this are Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic Senator Ed Markey from Florida and from Massachusetts. Like it's just kind of not a priority for anybody. And then a few people from both parties are into it. Yeah. You haven't convinced me. You haven't convinced me. Like, while I do respect the desire to not have to go back and forth all the time, it just if you if you make it more complicated for everyone else, you're still not helping. You know what I mean?

It's, I get that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You said Marco Rubio and I'm just like, okay, that's a bad idea.

You know? Yeah. I do. I do have that belief in my bones. Like, oh, he likes it. Probably bad,

but it could be okay. I don't really know. I'm sorry. You said Marco Rubio? Burn it down. Yeah. But yeah, so that idea is just out there. And I also think it's sort of like that TV airtime thing that Ada, you had as a kid. I feel like so many of us in the U.S. have based

our national scheduling around eastern time and then grades from that on the time zones yeah if we start adding an Atlantic one past it uh you know everybody will be frustrated we won't like it oh man I don't even know how anyone keeps up with any of this like who even has the mental capacity after everything else that's going in this country to be like, and what are your thoughts on doing daylight saving all the time? Like who even cares that much? I don't know. You're right. I don't know. I don't work in politics.

What am I talking about? That is like that's kind of what's happening in the U.S. Congress. And then that's like super what's happening in the u.s congress and then that's like super what's happening in the european union because it turns out i i missed this news but i'm sure our european listeners know in march of 2019 the european union parliament voted to end daylight saving time for the whole european union like done we did it okay that's cool but for a couple reasons mainly everybody being exhausted by from from mid-2019 to now uh they just haven't gotten around to implementing it and then also they still might not so what's the point of it passing like it's like just technically what everything just takes forever that's all i've learned they're like it passed

and you're like okay and they're like all I've learned. They're like, it passed. And you're like, okay. And they're like, mm-hmm. They're like, what now? They're like, mm-hmm. Yeah. They're like, are we going to do anything? And they're like, mm-hmm.

And then that's it. Like, there's no real, you're like, what are the next steps? Yeah, exactly. And according to Bloomberg City Lab, the next steps are super hard with European Union government, because apparently what happened is they passed this and then the change was supposed to be implemented by the European Council, which is an EU steering body comprised of heads of state in Europe. But they said they couldn't do anything until another part of the government called the European Commission spent a bunch of money and time doing an impact assessment, like figuring out statistically what this would mean and financially. And then the European Commission kicked it back to the European Council because they said they needed more details on how it would work in general before they could break it down. And so then these two parts of the European government, the council and the commission, are just kicking it back and forth. They're not actually doing anything.

Sounds like this should have been discussed before you passed it. But what do I know? You know, I'm just some person. Are there just so many institutions just to prevent anything from ever happening? You have to think about it that way right like it's that's absurd european council commission all stuff like like what does that even what do you know what i yeah no everything makes me annoyed at this point uh but i'm sure you can figure that out just by listening to me talk.

It is like a lot of logistics on top of logistics. And then that back and forth happened. And then the pandemic happened. Everyone's busy with that. And then the other thing with Europe is that they passed this March 2019. But then that whole time Brexit is on the way and then Brexit kicks in January of 2020. And so now that Britain left the EU, apparently they are not interested in dropping daylight saving time. They want to keep it. And so then if Europe drops it, you have like a weird time

difference across the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland. And you have like a whole bunch more wrinkles now that Brexit happened. And so for all these reasons, they may never actually follow through on getting rid of it. It's just a wrinkle in time. That's what Ben Franklin did. One, like I can't wrap my head around

how all of this messiness and confusion, is it necessary? It has just become so normalized and standardized since stupid Ben Franklin and all the people that came after him that implemented it or whatever. Yeah, the Kaiser. But look at us now. This is so confusing. We've created multiple wrinkles in time. Like, very literally. Like, on the Kaiser. And yeah. Look at us now. This is so confusing. We've created multiple wrinkles in time, like very literally like on the globe. I don't know.

Yeah. It's, it's very, very wonky. Just all of the time keeping and, and for like interpersonal reasons. Yeah. It's not,

it's not very driven by how the earth is structured or how the sun works. It's all, it's all other stuff. And that's a shame because that's what it should be driven by. Like fundamentally as a planet and earth and human beings that are on this planet, it should all be adhering to the sun and nature. And like, maybe that's like hippie dippy, but I really believe that. Like at the very end, we're just like creatures on a planet.

And we're just trying to make it more complicated with clock driven society and that's very hippie dippy of you you know what i mean it's like i like that hippie thank you thank you i don't know yeah trying to give the sun marching orders and put it in a box and stuff yeah get it can't do it who are we who do we think we are yeah that's absurd why and i want to know how the farmer rumor started because everyone believes the farming thing every single person that i've known thinks it's about farming you know what i mean like how did that they're like very mean rumor not mean but misinformation mean rumor blaming the farmers the innocent farmers come on the people that do everything for our society we'd be lost without them i think it's the golfers people that play golf are to blame right and they put the blame on people that are like peasants to

them farmers you know what i mean no no yeah off with the golfer's heads french revolution let's do i'm into that i'm gonna make a t-shirt yeah folks that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Ana Hostier and Shireen Lani Yunus for tolerating the Parisian phase of Ben Franklin's comedy career. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the forgotten U.S. state of Franklin, as in named after Ben Franklin. Yes. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus

show, for a library of more than five dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring Daylight Saving Time with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, daylight saving time started as a Ben Franklin joke and became a real World War I strategy. Takeaway number two, observing daylight saving time is probably a waste of energy. And takeaway number three, most U.S. states and the European Union are both trying to stop changing their clocks. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Ethnically Ambiguous is on the iHeartRadio network every week, hosted by Anna Hosnier and Shireen Lani-Yunus. Also linking, you know, a bunch of other podcast appearances and writing and so much more from both Anna and Shireen. Just wonderful guests all around and really did a lot to bring this full circle with the

time zones and everything else. Really appreciate it. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A very interesting book. It's titled Seize the Daylight, the Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time. That's by writer David Prurow. Also a great article from theconversation.com by Michael Downing.

A couple pieces from National Geographic, one by Aaron Blakemore and another by Maya Wei Haas. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you'll love this week's bonus show about a whole secret

U.S. state. Amazing. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Thank you.