Stuff You Should Know - How Daylight Saving Time Works

Episode Date: December 7, 2011

Benjamin Franklin first came up with daylight saving time in 1748, and people still practice it today. But how does it work? What are the pros and cons? Join Josh and Chuck as they turn back the clock to explore the origins of daylight saving time. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. He's on his iPhone. Chuck. No, I'm not. That makes this Stuff You Should Know, the fully attentive podcast. Huh? You were saying? Yeah, I can't really say anything. You always say stuff and I repeat it like 30

seconds later and I get a look of death from Chuck. We like to cover our bases twice sometimes. It's important stuff. Like, you know, the digestion. That's right. That thing, which comes out next. All right, intro man. Oh, I'm sorry. Am I stalling? Yeah. Okay. Frankly, Chuck, have you ever heard of a Methuselah trust? No, but I have something to do with being old. Well, you're not old. Instead, say a bequeathment, a grant that you've put in an account earning compound interest for 500 or 1,000 or 100 years should conceivably, where it's still legal, grow into a staggering amount of money very quickly. For example, there was a guy who you might have heard of named Ben Franklin. Benny. Ben Franklin in his will left 1,000 pounds each to the city of

Boston and the city of Philadelphia, both of which he considered his hometowns. And these monies were meant to stay in a private trust that earned compound interest and by Franklin's reckoning within, so after 100 years in 1890, it was supposed to be cracked open. A bit was supposed to be taken out and then the rest was supposed to be left in until 1990s, 200 years after his death. So by his reckoning, each city would get about the equivalent of $6 million a piece by 1990, which is when it was supposed to end and finally mature. It didn't quite work out. Franklin's calculations didn't take into account lawsuits to stop this, to stop the idea of him with Thuselah trust in general, trustees fees, lawyers fees, all this stuff. So what it came

down to was about three and a half million each. So he's off the market a little bit, but he made his point, which was if you put a grand in and you have enough foresight, you can give some money to the city of Boston. Did that really happen? Yeah. They got their three and a half mil. Yeah, each counted. What this demonstrates probably more than anything though is that Franklin was above all else an idea man, right? Yeah. He was pretty good. I mean, he invented spectacles. He had some really good inventions under his belt. The electric kite. But more than anything else, he was all about ideas and he was more aware than anybody that his ideas weren't he didn't see him through to fruition all the time. Right. Not all ideas were meant to be,

but another good example of that is his idea for daylight savings time. He was the guy that came up with this saving daylight saving time. I think most people say savings. Yeah. But it is in fact saving, but we're going to mess up and say savings. So yeah, just prepare for that s people. Franklin was an ambassador to France 1784, which is a pretty good job back then. Oh, I'm sure the enlightenment. Come on. It's good job now. Sure. Woke up one morning. All this fellow peresians were sleeping and he said, Hey, we should change the time and get these people up earlier. Did he talk like he was from Jersey? He basically proposed it in an article, but it's generally dismissed as satire. Yeah. It wasn't a real idea. Right. His whole idea was to

basically everybody was like sleeping in light while it was still daylight and then staying up late long after sunset. It was a waste of daylight. A great way to fix this is to say, let's get everybody up to the crack of dawn and we'll do that by shooting off cannons that wake everybody up. It was sort of a jab at the French, a friendly jab. Well, he was a friend of the French. But like I said, generally dismissed as satire, not really like the seed of the idea for daylight saving. No, but other people about a hundred or so years later came up with similar things and they meant it. And it's, I don't know if we can say that Franklin didn't mean it, but he was just, he didn't think it was a very important idea necessarily, but

it's so ingrained in our society here in the United States here in North America. And most likely if you're listening to this in Europe or Australia, you know what we're talking about all over the world really, that you're kind of like, oh yeah, daylight savings. I mean, it's peculiar, but of course we're going to do it. Of course it makes sense. This is from people who really can't even tell you whether it's spring forward or fall back. So let's set that straight right now because I think if we just stopped there and said it is spring forward where you said the clock forward an hour and it's fall back where you said the clock back an hour, we've just done a tremendous public service. Did people really not remember that? Yeah.

I'm among them. Really? Yeah. I will always remember it now because I've studied this article, but no, I always had trouble with it. Well, that's why they say spring forward, fall back. It's a... You can also fall forward and spring back. You can't spring back. Let me see it. Hold on. Josh just sprung back. Sprung back. All right. Well, here's the other public service announcement. Here in the US, second Sunday in March, you're going to spring forward. The first Sunday in November, you're going to fall back. I didn't know that because every year I'm on the Internet's going, well, when do we do this? When do we do it? I thought it fluctuated. Second Sunday in March, first Sunday in November. Boom. Yeah. I thought it fluctuated as well too.

At 2 a.m. Yeah. It's standard now thanks to a lot of legislation that's taken place over the years here in the United States. Most recently, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 set the rules as you just described them. Right? Yes. We should also say, Chuck, to our friends in South America, you have the opposite. We're not exactly sure when it starts for you, but we can tell you that you do spring forward and fall back. No, fall forward and spring back because the seasons are the opposite. That's right. They go on to daylight savings time in the fall and then change it. They go off of it in the spring. Also, one more thing, daylight saving time is not... I find it confusing in that the mind wants to say it's like daylight time saving. It's like

daylight saving time. Right? Yeah. Like you're time saving. Yeah. But really, it's daylight saving time. It's like a period of the year. Yeah. I've always had trouble wrapping my mind around how... You're saving daylight not time. Everything about this is so confounding. I know because I'm one of those people that's like what the clock says is arbitrary in a way, unless you have a shift job. You would have made a great farmer. Yeah, that's kind of bunk too from what I hear. Okay, so let's talk about this, man. You just gave the deets on when to do it. Yes. In the United States, it's the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that establishes that. But if you are Arizona or Hawaii or Guam and you say,

I don't want this to apply to me, I already feel cut off enough from this country, from the rest of the world, I'm going to apply for an exemption, you're probably going to get it. Yeah. Indiana's had a mixed history with daylight saving. They've kind of fluctuated back and forth over the years. And at times, only some counties had it and some didn't. And they finally went all in. In 2006. Was it 2006? Yeah. Pretty recently. Yeah. If you're in Indiana, you know what I'm talking about. And it's not just the United States. Apparently, as of 2008, 76 countries observed daylight savings time. Yeah, also 70, but I don't know which sources newer. So we'll go with 70 to 76. But just after reading this, I could see six countries

following. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a very, it's a surprisingly contentious thing, setting the clock back an hour. Basically, I saw one source that calls it the arrogance of humanity. Oh, to set time, period. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, to adjust the clock. Yeah. It's like it is now two and not one. Right, exactly. And it is a little bit loony if you think about it. I think Japan, India and China are the only major industrialized nations who do not observe. And it's getting more and more difficult, too, to be a country like that in this globalized world to not observe daylight savings time. I mean, it's kind of problematic. Sure. Yeah. I imagine that's why most countries do it now. Well, not most, but a lot. So Europe has long observed what's called

summertime. But it wasn't until 1996 that the EU said, Hey, let's all just stop this patchwork thing. Here's the standards now. Right. And it's the European Union says it runs from daylight saving time the time of daylight saving summertime. Yeah. It's the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. That's the the EU. Yeah, good for them. Yeah. Stop stuff you should know. On the table. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They

just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington, the news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg opinion. And I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Every week on Crash Course, I'll bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition

collide with competition and power. Each Tuesday, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporters around the world, as well as experts and big names in the news. Together, we'll explore business, political and social disruptions and what we can learn from them. I'm Tim O'Brien, host of Crash Course, a new weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You mentioned earlier that another couple of guys that proposed this. Yeah. One of them was a New Zealander named George Vernon Hudson. And he was actually the first dude to genuinely propose this. And he gets overlooked a lot of times by the other guy

that we'll talk about. But Hudson in 1895 was an entomologist and astronomer. And he had a shift job that allowed him, I guess he worked at night because allowed him extra daylight hours that his friends weren't getting. He'd go out and hunt for bugs. And he was like, this is great. He's like, we ought to really try and do this. But William Willett of England is the guy that a lot of people credit with it. And I think it's because it was kind of his passion in life. Like he really, really tried to get this pushed through. Yeah. He was an avid golfer and his whole premise for it was that it would extend time for leisure after work after everybody got done working for the day. There's still daylight hours.

Get the links. And he wrote a pamphlet that's online. It's called The Waste of Daylight. It's online in its entirety if you search that. And he lobbied the House of Commons to institute this. And in 1908, they officially said, but he kept lobbying him until his death in I think the 20s. I died in 1915 actually. So he did not get to see it because a year later. Oh yeah. Insultingly enough, a year later it was brought on in England thanks to a little something called World War One. Yeah. And actually it was Germany that was the first country to ever institute daylight savings time. Yeah. They called it war time though. Yeah. So did FDR later on. Oh, did he? Yeah. But the Germans started it. The English quickly saw the value in it and

they started it. And it was all the preserved coal supplies during the war because if you were up earlier, you'd be tired earlier and you wouldn't stay up as late earning precious coal needed to pound the Kaiser into oblivion. That's right. And a lot of nations got on board because of World War One 31 in total, including the U.S. And then World War Two, well after the war, I think most of these countries got rid of it. It was just for war. Yeah. And then World War Two came around. Same thing happened. But in more abundance, 52 nations this time. Right. And the U.S. actually kept daylight savings year round for three full years uninterrupted from what is it? February 1942 to September 1945. And apparently FDR, he called it war time too. He had no problem

with it. He was just going to leave it like that indefinitely. And he finally acquiesced to farmers, which if you know much about farmers at that era, they were really effective at striking, at overturning like scab trucks and like dealing with communists and like being pro-communist. And they were a force to be reckoned with. They call it God's time. Did they really? Yeah, we'll talk more about the farmers in a minute. Go on. Well, we had it for three years solid, like you said. And then after the war, they said, you know what, you don't have to do it, but it's up to your state if you want to keep doing this or not. Some did, some didn't. Yeah. So that's the history. Well, actually. No, it keeps going in 1966. History does keep going,

doesn't it? Yeah. So the states are, it's all patchwork and everybody's just kind of doing whatever they want. But we have this thing called the interstate system that comes about, which links states more and more and there's more trade and really people need to know what time it is in another state that they're sending stuff to. So the Uniform Time Act of 1966 finally said, you guys can decide whether you want to do it, but if you're going to do it, you have to do it along these guidelines. And it stayed that way uninterrupted until 1986, except for the Arab oil embargo, where the US said, you know, we're going to extend the daylight savings to through winter as well. Yeah, it went from six months to eight months in 1973 because

they found that doing so saved the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day. That's a lot. And 600,000 in those two years. So that's what they said. It is. Is it true? Who knows? Are there conspiracies about that? Definitely up for debate. Whether it saved 10,000 barrels of oil a day? Yeah. I'm sure it's up for debate. The weird thing about daylight savings is it's largely been intuitive for decades. It was practiced for decades before anybody finally put it to the test. Right. Well, the whole point behind it is this, Chuck, that there are more people asleep at sunrise and more businesses are closed at sunrise than at sunset. So if you look at electrical demand as a whole over the course of a single day, you're going to see in the afternoon

in the evening, it starts to peak. Yeah. If you take an hour, if you take the whole day and shift it backward by an hour, people are going to get up earlier and it's going to spread that electrical demand over the day. Yeah. They're also going to go to bed earlier. So they're going to use lamps less. They're going to stay up less late to watch TV. So the overall demand should decrease too. And this is the whole reason that daylight savings time has always been championed by most people. That's the whole reason that they want you to think. Well, that's a part of it. The other is to get people outside more. Yeah. I mean, I read up on this and what I found out was that it really comes down to money. They want you spending money more. Yeah. And that is going to happen more

if you're out and about shopping or playing golf. Exactly. Like the golf lobby in 86, the last time before 2005 that anybody tinker with it. Reagan said in public law in 99, he started it the first Sunday in April, which was where before in 1966, it was from the last Sunday in April. Right. So a full month he added to daylight savings time. But the golf lobby said that an extra month or an extra hour, I think an extra month was like $400 million to just that industry alone. Well, see there. Yeah. Money talks. It does. And the reason I say that that's the main reason is because they've done studies. And in fact, in 73, when they did the oil embargo, they didn't just study oil barrels. They studied utilities. And they found that it's a pretty

negligible difference, about 1% energy savings. But that's for the whole country. That's a lot. That is a substantial amount of, that's a lot. See, I read it's negligible. So say it is 1%. Say it is negligible, but say that it's 0% if you don't do anything. You automatically have said, well, there's a savings in energy, especially in this eco-conscious society that we're growing into. That's it. Right there. Okay. Daylight savings time. Do it. We'll save 1% of all the energy expended. Fine. Do it. It's better than not. Right? Sure. What else could possibly go wrong? And I was very surprised from this article to find that there's actually counterarguments to daylight savings time. Well, yeah, because they basically, I think people have challenged these

studies is what I've seen. In 2001, they did another study the California did where they actually doubled it to a two hour shift. And in the end, they found that electricity savings of about 0.03 for the year. Right, which is substantially less. But you can also say it's still better than nothing. Why not just do it? That's true. There's also other arguments too. Things like there's fewer traffic accidents in the evenings. Yeah. Because it's lighter out. That's what they say. On the evening commute. Crime is decreased because criminals prefer darkness. And if you're out taking a walk after work and it's light out still, you're probably not going to get mugged. And then, of course, the golf industry said

everybody needs to get off their rears and get outside and play more golf. Yeah. Golf fever, catch it. And they are big on that as well. Well, I got most of my info you should know from that skeptical guy. Let's hear it. Well, no, that's what he said. He said, basically, it's all about money. He said, don't be fooled into thinking this is some energy plan. And he said that the numbers are suspect. And then it really comes down to spending money as a consumer. I'm sure it does. But the other aspect of it, you know who's the biggest against it now? These days, there used to be farmers. Well, he said that's bunk too. He bunks everything though. So here's the thing. Farmers, from what I understand, it used to be farmers. And I've seen

this elsewhere. That farmers had a problem with it because daylight savings added a day and an hour under their day. They had to get up at the crack of dawn no matter what time it was. So if it was actually, if they had an extra hour, they had to extend their business hours because they had to deal with the public who was running on an hour later time. So farmers hated daylight savings and they railed against it. That's my understanding. With modern technology, where a lot of the farm processes are automated, they don't have to worry about the sun time or God's time as much. They're not as opposed to it. The problem is with airlines now. When they're flying to places that don't have daylight savings, they apparently have a lot more trouble getting a slot at an

airport when the time doesn't quite match up because the airport's like, we're not going to the trouble of figuring this out. Just go lobby your government to stop screwing with time. So apparently that's the big industry that's opposed to daylight savings right now. Interesting. Like I said though, that's his job. He's the skeptoid. Debunking. He said the farmer thing is he thinks is somewhat of a myth because he can't find any, he said all the sources are the exact same and he can't find any like origin source that he thinks is valid. That's pretty good evidence that something is a myth, but he's trying to prove a

negative. He should be opposed to that. Maybe he is. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes they can do that and I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff.

Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackmove or being

robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. From Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington, the news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg Opinion and I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Every week on Crash Course, I'll bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur.

And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Each Tuesday, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporters around the world, as well as experts and big names in the news. Together, we'll explore business, political and social disruptions and what we can learn from them. I'm Tim O'Brien, host of Crash Course, a new weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. There was a new study, though, recently by a guy named Matthew Cochin.

Yeah, he's an economist at Cal Go Bears. And you know, I said Indiana's kind of been back and forth over the years with like half the state doing it. When they finally went all in in 06, he said, hey, there's a great opportunity to check this out and study it. And he found that it led to a 1% rise. He figured that lamp usage went down overall across the daylight savings. Right. But that there was a peak in energy demand that was an increase over when you don't observe daylight savings in the fall when it was cold in Indiana in the form of heating. Like people had their heat went up because they weren't under the blankets as early as when they when they just observed standard time year around. And that actually cost $9 million for the state.

Well, I think that's part of Dunning Singh, too, is these studies that were done in the 70s. They didn't have computers and iPods and Blu-ray players. And we have way more things besides lamps these days to take into account and air conditioners and things like that. So he's saying it's kind of an outdated. There are no lamps in the 70s. An outdated model. And daylight savings Chuck also kind of strikes me as like a really good example of for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. So like there's fewer fender benders during the evening commute. Yeah. But apparently parents are also like parents groups are also opposed to daylight savings in part because kids accidents involving kids waiting for the bus in the darker mornings

increase. Oh, really? And then crime goes down during the summer, but then it increases in the fall. Now there's no figures to support that necessarily. But there's also the only study ever conducted about how daylight savings creates a decrease in crime was a single study of the District of Columbia in the 70s that found it a 10% reduction. But no one's ever backed it up. Right. That's the only one. Yeah. Well, and think about it, too. Car wrecks are good for industries like tow trucks and mechanics. The tow truck lobby. The auto industry. Yeah. That wants to sell you a new bumper. I don't know. But it does everything. You're right. Everything has an opposite reaction. And also apparently chronobiologically it can be very

problematic for us. So says was he German? Yeah, I didn't see his name. He's just referred to as a German chronobiologist. Only one. I couldn't find him or her. Yeah, that's true. He or she says that your body never even adjusts period to the circadian rhythm. And so you're just out of whack for eight months out of the year. Or I guess it depends on which one he thinks is right. So yeah. And the big problem is going back and back like going back and forth. Right. Like if we all just said, okay, the whole world's going to set their clocks back one hour forever. And that will be referred to from here on out as the hour, the moment. And then we're just going to forget about daylight savings time. It would conceivably have the same effect, right? Right.

But it would not have that jet lag problem that the German chronobiologist describes. Right. And even worse, there's other people that propose extended daylight savings throughout the year or throughout winter as well. Oh, okay. Right. If we did that once, it could conceivably be fine. Our bodies could adjust. It's going back and forth. Okay. Other people are proposing double daylight savings where you go back two hours. Right. Which would probably wreak havoc if the chronobiologist is correct. Right. And there's actually data that supports this idea that like our bodies are disrupted by like the Swedish heart attack study. Yeah, I'm sure they are. I never thought of it as losing an hour though, because it happened

at 2 a.m. on Sunday and I would just wake up and whatever the clock said is what it said. Yeah. I never felt like, you know, I guess I don't get up Sunday morning at 7 for a shift job. No, that's a big part of it. I saw on the consumer, some guy wanted to know about getting paid on because he worked late night on November, this past November, for Sunday in November. Oh, yeah. When he had an extra hour. Because there's actually 25 hours in that day. Right. One a.m. is counted twice. Interesting. Isn't that there's a 25-hour day that we just went through. That's got to mess us up somehow. It's got to. And it does. The Swedish study I was referring to found that since 1987, the number of heart attacks rose about 5%

during the first week of daylight savings time every year. And then Australia, some Australians, looked at some data between 1971 and 2001 and found that male suicides increase in the weeks following daylight savings time. And they're controlling for everything else. And it appears to just be daylight savings really affects people with bipolar disorder. And they are more men are more prone. Australian men with bipolar disorder are more prone to commit suicide in the weeks immediately preceding the change over to daylight saving. Wow. Yeah. That's sad. It is sad. There have been some kind of interesting things that happened over the years because of DST and 99 at the West Bank was on daylight savings. Israel had

just switched back to standard time. So a group of West Bank terrorists were preparing some time bombs, smuggled them to their counterparts in Israel. And as they were planning the bombs, they blew up. No. Yes. No. That's what it says. Is that from Skeptoid? No. Is that from Snopes? I'll take Snopes too. I think that's real. Wow. I think that happened. That is crazy. Minneapolis and St. Paul were on different times in 1965. That's crazy. Which kind of whacked things out. Amtrak, a train cannot leave the station before it's scheduled to, obviously. Can't leave early because everyone's going to get on. So when you fall back in October, if you're running on time, you stop and sit there for an hour.

November. What did I say? October. I think it used to be in October when this was written. So you sit there for an extra hour if you're on Amtrak on that day. That's right. That's crazy. And then in the spring, apparently they don't do anything but try and catch up. Like everything's a little late for a little while and they just try to like drive faster. Can you imagine being a logistician? I want to hear from logisticians. I have a deep respect for your profession. Yeah, I agree. That's tough stuff. Time. Who knew? Yeah. You know? Is it arbitrary? What the clock says? It's just a number. I tend to go with just the rise and fall of the sun and moon. Are you kidding me? Like you could throw away every clock in the world

and nothing would really change in uncivilized parts of the world. In the civilized world, everything runs on the clock. But it's just time the number was invented by man. I know what you mean, man. You know what I'm saying? A little abstract. Thanks for that, Chuck. I think that was an excellent way to kind of put everybody to sleep. Just put them on a little cloud and went, yeah, man. You know, if you want to learn more about clouds, about daylight savings time, about Chuck Bryant, you can type in those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com and it'll bring up some very cool stuff. I assure you. And I said search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. That means it's time, Chuck, for Listener Contest.

That's right. Not Listener Mail. We have a contest. We have nothing to do with. Yeah, this was sprung on us, but we like it. We're in favor of it. Yes. If you are interested in coming to Atlanta, all expenses paid. Yeah, that's the kicker. Actually, I'm not going to say all expenses paid. Yeah, I don't know if we should legally say that. Certain expenses are paid. You can come here, tour the studio, hang out in the office. We'll even go to lunch with you, with Jerry. Yeah, Jerry will be there and you'll get to see her face. We won't make her wear like a paper bag. You can enter in this contest. It runs now. If you're in America.

Yeah, yeah. The United States. As I always tell everyone from Canada and elsewhere that's mad about this, I can't win your contest either. I don't think that makes anybody feel better. If you're American. If you're in the United States. It runs through December 31st. Winners will be announced the week of January 1st, 2012. Grand Prize, trip to Atlanta, includes one night hotel, airfare up to 500 bucks and an American Express gift card for incidentals. Like taking me and Chuck out to lunch. I think we'll pick that up. Oh, okay. And if you refer somebody, like you go to Facebook, thehousestuffworks.com, not the stuff you should know. Go to thehousestuffworks.com Facebook page to enter.

Yeah. And you have to like it. Yeah. And then you enter. And that's the only way to enter as far as I know. Yeah. I think so. But if you refer someone and they win, I'm sorry, after person A enters the contest, he or she can share the contest link with friends via Facebook and Twitter. And if a friend of theirs wins, then you win a Kindle Fire. That's not too shabby. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And I would give you the link, but it's like 3000 characters long. So just go to Facebook, housestuffworks.com. Housestuffworks official Facebook page. Yeah. And you will find the information there. Yeah. And lunch it up with us.

Yeah. Let's lunch. Let's do lunch. Before we go, I want to correct myself, big time correct myself about patent trolls in the gene patents episode. I mentioned patent trolls and I don't even remember what I said they were, but I was way off. Yeah. Patent trolls are people who go around buying patents with no intent of manufacturing these things or what the patent is for. I figured that's what it was, like buying up website domains. Sure. But then they sue, the whole point is to own the patent so that they can sue anybody who infringes on it. So basically they're keeping any kind of innovation from coming about along the same lines of what they own the patent to by suing people who try to do it. And they're basically just whatever this great idea that's

patented is just never going to see the light of day because they have no interest in doing that. They just want the money from suing people. Gotcha. That's a patent troll. I apologize for, to all the patent trolls out there. Yes. It's all the people who corrected me. Thank you for that. Yes. If you want to correct us, we are always up for that. You can send us a tweet at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook. We have our own page too. It's stuff you should know. And you can also send us a good old fashioned email stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff.

Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's today's Fortnite weather report. iHeartland has been hit by a major blizzard. The snow has turned iHeartland and Fortnite into a winter wonderland with new festive games, including a winter themed escape room, a holiday obstacle course, ice skating, hidden holiday gifts and more. Look out for upcoming special events from your favorite artists and podcasters all month along with scavenger hunts

and new how fan are you challenges. So embrace the holidays at iHeartland and Fortnite. Head to iHeartRadio.com slash iHeartland today.