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SYSK Selects: How Daylight Saving Time Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. Chuck here with How Daylight Savings Time works
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Speaker 1: my select pick of the week from December six, two
0:09
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven. And in real time, we have just
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Speaker 1: sort of recently done the opposite where we fall back
0:17
Speaker 1: with our clocks annually, which is kind of a depressing
0:21
Speaker 1: time of the year, to be honest, means on your
0:23
Speaker 1: clock it's dark really early. Then, on the other hand,
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Speaker 1: is light a little bit earlier in the day, and
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Speaker 1: daylight savings time and the whole concept of it, it's
0:31
Speaker 1: always just been a little weird to me, and there
0:33
Speaker 1: are many false rumors out there about why we do it,
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Speaker 1: how it started. In this episode will clear it all up,
0:40
Speaker 1: So please to enjoy How Daylight Savings Time Works. Welcome
0:50
Speaker 1: to Stuff You Should Know from house Stuff Works dot com.
0:59
Speaker 1: M hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
1:02
Speaker 1: There's Charles have you, Chuck Bryant, He's on his iPhone. Chuck, No, no, uh,
1:09
Speaker 1: that makes this stuff you should know? Huh the fully
1:12
Speaker 1: attentive podcast. You're saying, Yeah, I can't really say anything.
1:18
Speaker 1: You always say stuff and then I repeat it like
1:20
Speaker 1: thirty seconds later and then get a look of death
1:23
Speaker 1: from the Chuck, we'd like to cover our bases twice.
1:25
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's important stuff like you know, um, the digestion
1:32
Speaker 1: that's right, that thing which comes out next right? All right? Introman, Oh,
1:38
Speaker 1: I'm sorry? Am I am? I stalling? Yeah? Okay, frankly, Chuck,
1:43
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of a methuselah? Trust? No, but
1:48
Speaker 1: I have something being old? Uh, well you're not old. Instead,
1:53
Speaker 1: I say, a bequeathment grant that you've put in a
1:59
Speaker 1: an account earning compound interest for five hundred or a
2:05
Speaker 1: thousand or a hundred years, should conceivably were it's still legal,
2:11
Speaker 1: grow into a staggering amount of money, very like, very quickly.
2:16
Speaker 1: For example, UM, there was a guy who you might
2:20
Speaker 1: have heard of named Ben Franklin, Benny Ben Franklin. Uh.
2:25
Speaker 1: In his will left a thousand pounds each to the
2:28
Speaker 1: city of Boston in the city of Philadelphia, both of
2:31
Speaker 1: which he considered his hometowns UM. And these these moneys
2:36
Speaker 1: were meant to stay in a private trust that earned
2:40
Speaker 1: compound interests, and by Franklin's reckoning, UM, within so after
2:46
Speaker 1: a hundred years in eighteen ninety that it was supposed
2:51
Speaker 1: to be cracked open, a bit was supposed to be
2:52
Speaker 1: taken out and then the rest was supposed to be
2:54
Speaker 1: left in until years after his death. So by his reckoning,
2:59
Speaker 1: it would each city would get about the equivalent six
3:02
Speaker 1: million dollars apiece uh by which is when it was
3:08
Speaker 1: supposed to and and finally mature. Um. It didn't quite
3:11
Speaker 1: work out. Franklin's calculations. Didn't take a new account, lawsuits
3:15
Speaker 1: to stop this, to stop the idea of him enthusela
3:18
Speaker 1: trust in general, um, trustees, fees, lawyers, fees, all this stuff.
3:24
Speaker 1: So what it came down to was about three and
3:26
Speaker 1: a half million each, So he was off the market
3:27
Speaker 1: a little bit. But he made his point, which was,
3:30
Speaker 1: if you put a grand in and you have enough foresight,
3:33
Speaker 1: you can give some money to the city of Boston.
3:37
Speaker 1: Did that really happen? Yeah, they got there, They got
3:39
Speaker 1: their three and a half mill Yeah each tounded um.
3:43
Speaker 1: What this demonstrate is probably more than anything, though, is
3:45
Speaker 1: that Franklin was, above all else an idea man. Right.
3:50
Speaker 1: He was pretty good. I mean he invented spectacles. He
3:52
Speaker 1: had like some really good uh some good inventions under
3:55
Speaker 1: his belt, the electric kite. But more than anything else,
3:58
Speaker 1: he was all about ideas. And he was more aware
4:02
Speaker 1: than anybody that his ideas weren't always He didn't see
4:06
Speaker 1: him through to fruition all the time. Not not all
4:09
Speaker 1: ideas were meant to be. But another good example of
4:12
Speaker 1: that is his idea for daylight savings time. He was
4:16
Speaker 1: the guy that came up with this saving daylight saving time.
4:20
Speaker 1: I think most people say savings, but it is in
4:23
Speaker 1: fact saving, but we're gonna mess up and say savings,
4:26
Speaker 1: so yeah, just prepare for that, s people. Franklin was
4:31
Speaker 1: an ambassador to France four, which is a pretty crushed
4:35
Speaker 1: job back then. I'm sure the Enlightenment. Come on, it's
4:38
Speaker 1: a job now. Um woke up one morning all this
4:44
Speaker 1: uh fellow per Parisians were sleeping, and he said, hey,
4:49
Speaker 1: we should change the time and get these people up earlier.
4:53
Speaker 1: Did he talk like he was from New Jersey. He
4:55
Speaker 1: basically proposed it in an article, but it's generally dismissed
5:00
Speaker 1: this satire. But it wasn't a real idea, right. His
5:03
Speaker 1: whole idea was to um that basically everybody was like
5:07
Speaker 1: sleeping in late while it was still daylight and then
5:10
Speaker 1: staying up late long after sunset. It was a waste
5:14
Speaker 1: of daylight. A great way to fix this is to say,
5:16
Speaker 1: let's get everybody up at the crack of dawn, and
5:18
Speaker 1: we'll do that by shooting off cannons that wake everybody up.
5:22
Speaker 1: It was sort of a jab at the French, a
5:25
Speaker 1: friendly jab. Well, he was a friend of the French,
5:28
Speaker 1: but like I said, generally dismissed his satire. Not really
5:32
Speaker 1: like the seed of the idea for daylight savings. No,
5:36
Speaker 1: but other people about a hundred or so years later
5:39
Speaker 1: came up with similar things and they meant it. And
5:42
Speaker 1: it's I don't know if we can say that Franklin
5:44
Speaker 1: didn't mean it, but he was just he he didn't
5:47
Speaker 1: think it was a very important idea necessarily, but it's
5:50
Speaker 1: so ingrained in our society here in the United States,
5:53
Speaker 1: here in North America, and most likely if you're listening
5:56
Speaker 1: to this in Europe or Australia, you know what we're
5:58
Speaker 1: talking about all over the world. Really, um that it it?
6:02
Speaker 1: You're you're kind of like, oh, yeah, daylight savings. I mean,
6:05
Speaker 1: it's peculiar, but of course we're going to do it.
6:07
Speaker 1: Of course it makes sense. Um. These this is from
6:11
Speaker 1: people who really can't even tell you whether it's spring
6:14
Speaker 1: forward or fall back. So let's let's set that straight
6:18
Speaker 1: right now, because I think if we just stopped there
6:22
Speaker 1: and said it is spring forward where you said the
6:24
Speaker 1: clock forward an hour, and it's fall back where you
6:27
Speaker 1: said the clock back an hour, we've just done a
6:30
Speaker 1: tremendous public service. People really not remember that. I'm among them. Really, Yeah,
6:35
Speaker 1: I will always remember it now because I've studied this article.
6:39
Speaker 1: But no, I always had trouble with it. Well, that's
6:42
Speaker 1: why they say spring forward fall back. You can also
6:45
Speaker 1: fall forward and spring back. You can't spring back. Hold on, Josh, Josh,
6:54
Speaker 1: just sprung back, sprung back. All right, Well, here's the
6:57
Speaker 1: other public service announcement here in the US. Second Sunday
7:01
Speaker 1: in March you're gonna spring forward. The first Sunday in
7:04
Speaker 1: November you're gonna fall back. I didn't know that because
7:07
Speaker 1: every year I'm on the internet's going, well, when do
7:10
Speaker 1: we do this? When do we do it? I didn't.
7:12
Speaker 1: I thought it fluctuated. Second Sunday in March, first Sunday
7:16
Speaker 1: in November. Boom, Yeah, I thought it fluctuated as well.
7:20
Speaker 1: It's yeah, um, it's standard now thanks to a lot
7:24
Speaker 1: of um legislation. That's taken place over the over the
7:28
Speaker 1: years here in the United States, um most recently, the
7:32
Speaker 1: Energy Policy Act of two thousand five set the rules
7:35
Speaker 1: as you just describe them. Right. We should also say,
7:39
Speaker 1: chuck to our friends in South America, you have the opposite.
7:43
Speaker 1: We're not exactly sure when it starts for you, but
7:46
Speaker 1: we can tell you that you do spring forward and
7:51
Speaker 1: fall back. No, fall forward and spring back, because it's
7:56
Speaker 1: the the seasons are the opposite. So they go on
8:00
Speaker 1: to daylight savings time in the fall and then change it.
8:04
Speaker 1: They go off of it in the spring. And also
8:08
Speaker 1: one more thing, Uh, daylight saving time, right is not
8:15
Speaker 1: I find it confusing in that the mind wants to
8:18
Speaker 1: say it's it's like daylight time saving. It's like daylight
8:23
Speaker 1: saving time, right, like your time saving. But really it's
8:29
Speaker 1: daylight saving time, so it's like a period of the year.
8:34
Speaker 1: So I've always had trouble wrapping my mind around how
8:38
Speaker 1: they're just saving daylight. Everything about this is so confounding.
8:42
Speaker 1: I know because I'm one of those people that's like
8:45
Speaker 1: what the clock says is arbitrary in a way. Unless
8:47
Speaker 1: you have a shift job, you would have made a
8:50
Speaker 1: great farmer. Yeah, that's kind of bunk too, from what
8:53
Speaker 1: I hear. Okay, so let's talk about this, man. Um.
8:56
Speaker 1: You just gave the deets on when to do it. Um.
9:00
Speaker 1: In the United States, it's the Energy Policy Act of
9:02
Speaker 1: two thousand five that establishes that. But if you are
9:08
Speaker 1: Arizona or Hawaii or Guam, and you say, I don't
9:12
Speaker 1: want this to apply to me, already feel cut off
9:15
Speaker 1: enough from this country, Um, from the rest of the world.
9:20
Speaker 1: I'm going to apply for an exemption. You're probably gonna
9:23
Speaker 1: get it. Yeah. Indiana has had a mixed history with
9:29
Speaker 1: daylight saving. Uh. They've kind of fluctuated back and forth
9:32
Speaker 1: over the years, and at times only some counties had
9:36
Speaker 1: it and some didn't, and they finally went all in.
9:39
Speaker 1: I think it doesn't six recently. Yeah, if you're an
9:43
Speaker 1: Indiana you know what I'm talking about. Um, And it's
9:46
Speaker 1: not just the United States. Apparently, as a two thousand
9:49
Speaker 1: and eight, seventy six countries observed daylight savings time. They
9:53
Speaker 1: also seventy, but I don't know which sources newer, So
9:57
Speaker 1: we'll go with seventy to seventy six. Just after reading this,
10:01
Speaker 1: I could see six countries falling. Yeah, I mean it's
10:06
Speaker 1: a very it's a surprisingly contentious thing setting the clock
10:10
Speaker 1: back an hour basically. I saw one source that calls
10:13
Speaker 1: it the arrogance of humanity to to set time period well, no,
10:18
Speaker 1: to adjust the clock. It's like it is now two
10:21
Speaker 1: and not one, right exactly, and it is a little
10:23
Speaker 1: bit loony if you think about it. Um. I think Japan,
10:26
Speaker 1: India and China are the only major industrialized nations who
10:30
Speaker 1: do not observe. And it's getting more and more difficult
10:35
Speaker 1: to to, um be a country like that in this
10:40
Speaker 1: globalized world to not daylight savings. So, I mean it's
10:46
Speaker 1: kind of problematic. Sure, yeah, imagine that's why most countries
10:51
Speaker 1: do it now, well not most, but a lot. So.
10:53
Speaker 1: Europe has long observed what's called summertime. Um, but it
10:58
Speaker 1: wasn't until the EU said, hey, let's all just stop
11:02
Speaker 1: this patchwork thing. Here's the standards now, um and it's uh.
11:09
Speaker 1: The European Union says it runs from daylight saving time.
11:13
Speaker 1: The time of daylight saving summertime. Yeah, it's the last
11:17
Speaker 1: Sunday in March of the last Sunday in October. That's
11:20
Speaker 1: the the EU. Yeah, good for them. No, um, we
11:52
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier than another couple of guys that proposed
11:55
Speaker 1: this um. One of them was a New Zealander named
12:00
Speaker 1: George Vernon Hudson, and he was actually the first dude
12:05
Speaker 1: to genuinely propose this, and he gets overlooked a lot
12:09
Speaker 1: of time by the other guy we'll talk about. But
12:12
Speaker 1: Hudson was an entomologist and astronomer and he had a
12:17
Speaker 1: shift job that allowed him I guess he worked at
12:21
Speaker 1: night because allowed him extra daylight hours that his friends
12:24
Speaker 1: weren't getting to go out and hunt for bugs. And
12:26
Speaker 1: he was like this is great. He's like, we ought
12:29
Speaker 1: to really try and do this. But William Willett of
12:33
Speaker 1: England is the guy that a lot of people credit
12:35
Speaker 1: with it, and I think it's because it was kind
12:38
Speaker 1: of his passion in life, Like he really really tried
12:42
Speaker 1: to get this push through. Yeah, he was an avid
12:44
Speaker 1: golfer and his whole premise for it was that it
12:47
Speaker 1: would extend time for leisure after work, After everybody got
12:51
Speaker 1: done working for the day, there's still daylight hours. The
12:54
Speaker 1: links um and he wrote a pamphlet that's online. It's
12:57
Speaker 1: called The Waste of Daylight. It's online and it's in already.
13:00
Speaker 1: If you searched that, um, and he lobbied the House
13:04
Speaker 1: of Commons to institute this, and in nineteen o eight
13:08
Speaker 1: they officially said na. But he kept lobbying him until
13:11
Speaker 1: his death and I think the twenties died in nine
13:14
Speaker 1: fifteen actually, so he did not get to see it
13:16
Speaker 1: because a year later, insultingly enough, a year later, it was.
13:22
Speaker 1: It was brought on in England thanks to a little
13:25
Speaker 1: something called World War One. Yeah, and actually it was
13:28
Speaker 1: Germany that was the first country to ever institute daylight
13:31
Speaker 1: savings time. Yeah, they called it wartime though, Yeah, so
13:35
Speaker 1: did FDR later on. Yeah, um, but the Germans, the
13:39
Speaker 1: Germans started it. The English quickly saw the value in
13:42
Speaker 1: it and they started it. And it was all the
13:44
Speaker 1: preserved coal supplies during the war, um, because if you
13:49
Speaker 1: are were up earlier, you'd be tired earlier and you
13:52
Speaker 1: wouldn't stay up as late earning precious coal needed to
13:56
Speaker 1: pound the Kaiser into oblivion. That's right. And uh, a
14:00
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of nations got on board because
14:02
Speaker 1: of World War One, thirty one in total, including the US,
14:07
Speaker 1: and then World War Two. Well after the war, I
14:10
Speaker 1: think most of these countries got rid of it. It
14:12
Speaker 1: was just for war. And then World War two came around,
14:15
Speaker 1: the same thing happened, but in more abundance. Fifty two
14:19
Speaker 1: nations this time, right in the US actually kept daylight
14:22
Speaker 1: savings year round for three full years uninterrupted from what
14:27
Speaker 1: is it February September nine. And apparently FDR he called
14:33
Speaker 1: it war time too. He had no problem with it.
14:36
Speaker 1: He was just going to leave it like that indefinitely. Um.
14:39
Speaker 1: And he finally acquiesced to farmers, which, um, if you
14:45
Speaker 1: know much about farmers at that era, they were really
14:48
Speaker 1: effective at striking, overturning like um, scab trucks, and like
14:55
Speaker 1: dealing with communists, like being pro communist um. And they
14:59
Speaker 1: were a force to be reckoned with. They called it
15:02
Speaker 1: God's time, did they really? Yeah, we'll talk more about
15:04
Speaker 1: the farmers in a minute. Um. Go on. Uh, Well,
15:08
Speaker 1: we we had it for three years solid, like you said,
15:10
Speaker 1: and then after the war they said, you know what,
15:13
Speaker 1: you don't have to do it, but it's up to
15:15
Speaker 1: your state if you want to keep doing this or not.
15:18
Speaker 1: Some did, some didn't. So that's the history. Actually, no,
15:22
Speaker 1: it keeps going. In nineteen sixty six, history does keep going,
15:25
Speaker 1: doesn't it. So the States are. It's all patchwork and
15:29
Speaker 1: everybody's just kind of doing what however they want. But
15:32
Speaker 1: we have this thing called the Interstate system that comes about,
15:35
Speaker 1: which links states more and more and there's more trade,
15:38
Speaker 1: and really people need to know what time it is
15:41
Speaker 1: in another state that they're sending stuff to UM. So
15:45
Speaker 1: the Uniform Time Act of nineteen sixty six finally said,
15:49
Speaker 1: you guys can decide whether you want to do it,
15:50
Speaker 1: but if you're gonna do it, you have to do
15:52
Speaker 1: it along these guidelines UM. And it stayed that way
15:57
Speaker 1: uninterrupted until except for the arab Um oil embargo, where
16:02
Speaker 1: the US said, you know, we're gonna extend the daylight
16:06
Speaker 1: savings to UM through winter as well. Yeah, I went
16:10
Speaker 1: from six months to eight months in nineteen seventy three
16:14
Speaker 1: because they found that doing so saved the equivalent of
16:19
Speaker 1: ten thousand barrels of oil a day and six hundred
16:23
Speaker 1: thousand in those two years. So that's what they said.
16:27
Speaker 1: It is is it true? Who knows about that? Definitely
16:34
Speaker 1: up for debate. Whether it's say, ten thousand barrels of
16:36
Speaker 1: oil a day, I'm sure it's for debate. The weird
16:41
Speaker 1: thing about daylight savings is it's largely been intuitive for decades.
16:45
Speaker 1: It was practiced for decades before anybody finally put it
16:48
Speaker 1: to the test. Right. Well, the whole point behind it
16:50
Speaker 1: is this chuck that there are more people asleep at
16:57
Speaker 1: sunrise and more businesses are closed at sunrise than at
17:00
Speaker 1: and set. So if you look at electrical demand right um,
17:04
Speaker 1: as a whole over the course of a single day,
17:07
Speaker 1: you're gonna see in the afternoon, in the evening it
17:09
Speaker 1: starts to peak if you take an hour. If you
17:12
Speaker 1: take the whole day and shift it backward by an hour,
17:15
Speaker 1: people are gonna get up earlier, and it's going to
17:17
Speaker 1: spread that electrical demand over the day. They're also gonna
17:20
Speaker 1: go to bed earlier, so they're gonna use lamps less,
17:22
Speaker 1: they're gonna stay up less late to watch TV. Um,
17:26
Speaker 1: So the overall demand should decrease to And this is
17:30
Speaker 1: the whole reason that daylight savings time has always been
17:33
Speaker 1: UM kind of championed by most people. That's the whole
17:37
Speaker 1: reason that they want you to think, Well, that's some
17:39
Speaker 1: part of it. The other is to get people outside more. Yeah,
17:43
Speaker 1: I mean I read up on this and what I
17:46
Speaker 1: found out was that it really comes down to money.
17:49
Speaker 1: They want you spending money more. Yeah, and that is
17:52
Speaker 1: going to happen more if you're out and about dropping
17:55
Speaker 1: or playing golf, exactly like the golf lobby. And EIGHTI
17:59
Speaker 1: six the last time before two five, then anybody tinker
18:03
Speaker 1: with it, Reagan said in Public Law ninety nine. He
18:06
Speaker 1: started at the first Sunday in April, which was where
18:11
Speaker 1: before in nineteen sixty six, that was from the last
18:13
Speaker 1: Sunday in April, so a full month. He added to
18:16
Speaker 1: daylight savings time. Um, But the golf lobby said that
18:20
Speaker 1: an extra month or an extra hour. I think an
18:24
Speaker 1: extra month was like four million dollars to just that
18:27
Speaker 1: industry alone. I don't see there. Yeah, money talks, uh.
18:33
Speaker 1: And the reason I say that, that's the main reason
18:36
Speaker 1: is because they've done studies. And in fact, in seventy
18:39
Speaker 1: three when they did the oil embargo, they didn't just
18:41
Speaker 1: study oil barrels, they studied utilities and they found that
18:47
Speaker 1: it's a pretty negligible difference about one percent energy savings.
18:51
Speaker 1: But that's for the whole country. That's a lot. That
18:55
Speaker 1: is a substantial amount of that's a lot. See I
18:59
Speaker 1: read it's a negligible, So say so say it is
19:02
Speaker 1: one percent. Say it is negligible, but say that it's
19:04
Speaker 1: zero percent. If you don't do anything, you automatically have said, well,
19:09
Speaker 1: there's a there's a savings and energy, especially in this
19:12
Speaker 1: eco conscious society that we're growing into. Um, that's it
19:19
Speaker 1: right there, Okay, daylight saving time. Do it. You will
19:21
Speaker 1: save one percent of all the energy expended. Fine, do it.
19:24
Speaker 1: It's better than not. Right, What else could possibly go wrong?
19:29
Speaker 1: And I was very surprised from this article to find
19:31
Speaker 1: that there's actually counter arguments todaylight saving time. Well, yeah,
19:36
Speaker 1: because they basically I think people have challenge these studies.
19:39
Speaker 1: That's what I've seen. In two thousand one, they did
19:41
Speaker 1: another study the California did where they actually doubled it
19:45
Speaker 1: to a two hour shift, and in the end they
19:48
Speaker 1: found that electricity savings of about point oh three for
19:54
Speaker 1: the year, right, which is substantially less, But you can
19:59
Speaker 1: also say it's still better than nothing. Why not just
20:02
Speaker 1: do it. There's also other arguments to things like, um,
20:05
Speaker 1: there's fewer traffic accidents in the evenings because it's lighter out,
20:10
Speaker 1: that's what they say on the evening commute. UM crime
20:13
Speaker 1: is decreased because criminals preferred darkness and if you're out
20:17
Speaker 1: taking a walk after work and it's light out still,
20:19
Speaker 1: you're probably not going to get mugged. Um. And then
20:23
Speaker 1: of course the golf industry said everybody needs to get
20:26
Speaker 1: off their rears and get outside and play more golf,
20:29
Speaker 1: golf fever catch it and um, they are big on
20:33
Speaker 1: that as well. Well, I got most of my info.
20:35
Speaker 1: You should know from that skeptward guy. Let's hear it, Dunning. Well, no,
20:40
Speaker 1: that's what he said. He said, basically, it's all about money.
20:43
Speaker 1: He said, don't be fooled into thinking this is some
20:44
Speaker 1: energy plan. And he said that the numbers are suspect.
20:49
Speaker 1: And then it really comes down to spending money as
20:52
Speaker 1: a as a consumer. I'm sure it does. But the other,
20:56
Speaker 1: the other aspect of it, the you know, who's the
20:59
Speaker 1: big against it now these days? They used to be farmers. Well,
21:03
Speaker 1: he said, that's bunk took everything though. So here's the thing, farmers.
21:07
Speaker 1: From what I understand, it used to be farmers. And
21:09
Speaker 1: I've seen this elsewhere that farmers had a problem with
21:11
Speaker 1: it because daylight savings added a day and an hour
21:14
Speaker 1: under their day. They had to get up with the
21:17
Speaker 1: with the at the crack of dawn no matter what
21:19
Speaker 1: time it was. So if it was actually if they
21:22
Speaker 1: had an extra hour, they had to extend their business
21:24
Speaker 1: hours because they had to deal with the public who
21:26
Speaker 1: was running on an hour later time. So farmers hated
21:29
Speaker 1: daylight savings and they railed against it. That's my understanding
21:32
Speaker 1: with modern technology that that where a lot of the
21:36
Speaker 1: farm processes are automated, they don't have to worry about
21:39
Speaker 1: the the sun time or God's time as much. They're
21:44
Speaker 1: not as opposed to it. The problem is with airlines
21:49
Speaker 1: now when they're flying to places that don't have daylight savings,
21:53
Speaker 1: they apparently have a lot more trouble getting a slot
21:56
Speaker 1: at an airport when the time doesn't quite match up
21:59
Speaker 1: because the airport's we're not going to the trouble of
22:01
Speaker 1: figuring this out. Go lobby your government to stop screwing
22:05
Speaker 1: with time. So apparently those that's the big industry that's
22:08
Speaker 1: opposed daylight savings right now. Interesting. Yeah, um, Like I said, though,
22:13
Speaker 1: he's that's his job. He's the skeptalid debunking. He said.
22:17
Speaker 1: The farmer thing is he thinks is somewhat of a
22:20
Speaker 1: myth because he can't find any He said, all the
22:23
Speaker 1: sources are the exact same and he can't find any
22:27
Speaker 1: like origin source that he thinks is valid. That's a
22:30
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good evidence that something is a myth.
22:32
Speaker 1: But he's trying to prove a negative. He should be
22:34
Speaker 1: opposed to that. Maybe he is. Huh m hm uh.
23:08
Speaker 1: There was a new study though, um recently by a
23:10
Speaker 1: guy named Matthew Coaching. He's an economist at cal Gobarts
23:15
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I said, Indiana has kind of
23:18
Speaker 1: been back and forth over the years, with like half
23:20
Speaker 1: the state doing it. When they finally went all in
23:24
Speaker 1: and oh six, he said, hey, it's a great opportunity
23:26
Speaker 1: to check this out and study it. And he found
23:30
Speaker 1: that it led to a one percent rise. He figured
23:33
Speaker 1: that lamp usage went down overall across the daylight savings,
23:39
Speaker 1: but that there is a peak in energy demand that
23:42
Speaker 1: was an increase over when you don't observe daylight savings
23:46
Speaker 1: in the fall when it was cold in Indiana in
23:48
Speaker 1: the form of heating, like people had their heat went
23:53
Speaker 1: up because they weren't under the blankets as early as
23:56
Speaker 1: when they when they just observe standard time year round.
23:59
Speaker 1: And that act really cost nine million dollars for the state. Well,
24:03
Speaker 1: I think that's part of dunning thing too, is these
24:05
Speaker 1: studies that were done in the seventies, they didn't have
24:09
Speaker 1: you know, computers and iPods and Blu ray players, and
24:12
Speaker 1: we have way more things besides lamps these days to
24:16
Speaker 1: take into account, and air conditioners and things like that.
24:20
Speaker 1: So he's saying it's kind of an outdated there are
24:22
Speaker 1: no lamps in the seventies and outdated model. The U
24:25
Speaker 1: and daylight savings Chuck also kind of strikes me as
24:28
Speaker 1: like a really good example of for every action there's
24:31
Speaker 1: an equal and opposite reaction, so like there's fewer fender
24:36
Speaker 1: benders during the evening commute. But apparently parents are also
24:40
Speaker 1: like parents groups are also a post daylight savings in
24:43
Speaker 1: part because kids accidents involving kids waiting for the bus
24:48
Speaker 1: in the darker mornings increase really and then crime goes
24:53
Speaker 1: down during the summer, but then it increases in the fall.
24:56
Speaker 1: Now there's no there's no figures to support that necessarily,
25:00
Speaker 1: but there's also the only study ever conducted about how
25:04
Speaker 1: daylight savings creates a decrease in crime was a single
25:09
Speaker 1: study of the District District of Columbia in the seventies
25:13
Speaker 1: that found a ten percent reduction, but no one's ever
25:16
Speaker 1: backed it up. Yeah. Well, and think about it too.
25:20
Speaker 1: Carrex are good for industries like tow trucks and mechanics
25:25
Speaker 1: to the auto industry that wants to sell you a
25:29
Speaker 1: new bumper. I don't know. It does everything. You're right,
25:32
Speaker 1: everything hasn't an opposite reaction. And also apparently chronobiologically, it
25:37
Speaker 1: can be very problematic for us. So says was he German? Yeah,
25:42
Speaker 1: I didn't see his name. He's just referred to as
25:45
Speaker 1: a German chronobiology. I couldn't find him or her. Yeah,
25:50
Speaker 1: that's true. He or she says that your body never
25:53
Speaker 1: even adjusts period to the circadian rhythm, and so you're
25:58
Speaker 1: just out of whack for eight months day year or
26:01
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on which one he thinks is right.
26:04
Speaker 1: So yeah, and the big problem is going back and back,
26:08
Speaker 1: like going back and forth. Like if we all just said, okay,
26:11
Speaker 1: the whole world's gonna set their clocks back one hour forever,
26:15
Speaker 1: and that will be referred to from here on out
26:17
Speaker 1: as the hour the moment, and then we're just gonna
26:20
Speaker 1: forget about daylight saving time, it would conceivably have the
26:23
Speaker 1: same effect right, but it would not have that jet
26:27
Speaker 1: lag problem that the German chronobiologist describes um. And even worse,
26:32
Speaker 1: there's other people that propose um extended daylight savings through
26:36
Speaker 1: throughout the throughout the year or throughout the winter as well. Right,
26:41
Speaker 1: if we did that once eight quid conceivably be fine.
26:44
Speaker 1: Our bodies could adjust. It's going back and forth. Other
26:48
Speaker 1: people are proposing double daylight savings, where you go back
26:51
Speaker 1: two hours, which would probably reak havoc if are if
26:56
Speaker 1: the chronobiologist is correct, and there's actually data that support
27:01
Speaker 1: this idea that like our bodies are disrupted by it,
27:05
Speaker 1: like the Swedish heart attack study. Yeah, I'm sure they are.
27:08
Speaker 1: I never thought of it as losing an hour though,
27:10
Speaker 1: because it happened at two am on Sunday and I
27:11
Speaker 1: would just wake up and whatever the clock said is
27:14
Speaker 1: what it said. Yeah. I never felt like, you know,
27:17
Speaker 1: I guess I don't get up Sunday morning at seven
27:19
Speaker 1: for a shift job. No, that's a big part of it.
27:21
Speaker 1: I saw in the consumers some guy wanted to know
27:23
Speaker 1: about getting paid um on because he worked at a
27:28
Speaker 1: late night on November this past November for Sunday in
27:33
Speaker 1: November when he had an extra hour, because there's actually
27:36
Speaker 1: twenty five hours in that day, right one one am
27:39
Speaker 1: is counted twice. Interesting, isn't that there's a twenty five
27:42
Speaker 1: hour day that we just went through. That's got to
27:44
Speaker 1: mess us up somehow, and it does. The Swedish study
27:47
Speaker 1: I was referring to found um that since the number
27:51
Speaker 1: of heart attacks rose about five during the first week
27:54
Speaker 1: of daylight savings time every year. And then Australia, some
27:58
Speaker 1: Australians looked at some data between nine two thousand one
28:02
Speaker 1: and found that male suicides increase um in the weeks
28:07
Speaker 1: following daylight savings time. And they're controlling for everything else
28:10
Speaker 1: and it appears to just be daylight savings really affects
28:13
Speaker 1: people with bipolar disorder and they are more men are
28:18
Speaker 1: more prone. Australian men with bipolar disorder are more prone
28:22
Speaker 1: to commit suicide in the weeks immediately preceding the change
28:26
Speaker 1: over to daylight saving That's sad It is sad. Um.
28:31
Speaker 1: There have been some kind of interesting things that happened
28:34
Speaker 1: over the years because of d ST and nine the
28:38
Speaker 1: West Bank was on daylight savings. Israel had just switched
28:41
Speaker 1: back to standard time, so a group of West Bank
28:45
Speaker 1: terrorists were preparing some time bombs, smuggled them to their
28:50
Speaker 1: counterparts in Israel and UH as they were planning the bombs,
28:54
Speaker 1: they blew up. No, yes, no, it's what it says.
28:58
Speaker 1: Is that from skeptoid? Is that from Snopes? I'll take
29:01
Speaker 1: snops too. I think I think that's real. Wow, I
29:04
Speaker 1: think that happened. That is, Minneapolis and St. Paul were
29:07
Speaker 1: on different uh different times in which kind of whack
29:14
Speaker 1: things out. AM track a train cannot leave the station
29:18
Speaker 1: before it's scheduled to. Obviously, I can't leave early because
29:21
Speaker 1: everyone's gonna get on. So when you fall back in October,
29:24
Speaker 1: if you're running on time, you stop and sit there
29:27
Speaker 1: for an hour November. What did I say October? I
29:32
Speaker 1: think it used to be in October when when this
29:34
Speaker 1: was written. So you sit there for an extra hour
29:37
Speaker 1: if you're on amtrack on that day, that's right, that's crazy.
29:40
Speaker 1: And then in the spring, apparently they don't do anything
29:43
Speaker 1: but try and catch up, like everything's a little late
29:46
Speaker 1: for a little while, and they just try to like
29:49
Speaker 1: drive faster. Can you imagine being a low a logistician.
29:53
Speaker 1: I want to hear from logisticians. I have a deep
29:55
Speaker 1: respect for your profession. Yeah, I agreed. That's tough stuff.
30:00
Speaker 1: Who knew, you know? Is it arbitrary? What the clock says?
30:04
Speaker 1: It's just a number. I I tend to go with
30:08
Speaker 1: just the the rise and fall of the sun and moon.
30:11
Speaker 1: You know, are you kidding me? Like you could throw
30:14
Speaker 1: away every clock in the world and nothing would really change.
30:17
Speaker 1: And you know in uncivilized parts of the world and
30:20
Speaker 1: the civilized world everything runs on the clock. But it's
30:23
Speaker 1: just time. The number was invented by man, I know
30:27
Speaker 1: what you mean. Man, you know what I'm saying, abstract.
30:31
Speaker 1: Thanks for that, Chuck. I think that was an excellent
30:33
Speaker 1: way to kind of put everybody to sleep. But he
30:38
Speaker 1: just put him on a little cloud and went yeah. Man.
30:41
Speaker 1: You know, Um, if you want to learn more about clouds,
30:44
Speaker 1: about daylight savings, time, about Chuck Brant, you can type
30:48
Speaker 1: in those words in any search bar at how stuff
30:51
Speaker 1: works dot comm and it will bring up some very
30:53
Speaker 1: cool stuff, I assure you. Um, and I said search
30:56
Speaker 1: bart how stuff works dot com. That means it's time,
30:59
Speaker 1: Chuck for listeners, that's right, not listener mail. We have
31:05
Speaker 1: a contest. We have nothing to do with Yeah, this
31:10
Speaker 1: was sprung on us, but we like it. We're in
31:13
Speaker 1: favor of it. Yes, if you are interested in coming
31:15
Speaker 1: to Atlanta, all expenses paid, Yeah, that's the that's the kicker. Actually,
31:20
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say all expenses paid. Yeah, I don't
31:22
Speaker 1: know if we should legally say that certain expenses are paid.
31:25
Speaker 1: They'll you can come here toward the studio, hang out
31:29
Speaker 1: in the office. We'll even go to lunch with you
31:32
Speaker 1: with Jerry. Yeah, Jerry will be there and you'll get
31:35
Speaker 1: to see your face like we won't make her wear
31:37
Speaker 1: like a paper bag. You can enter this contest. Uh.
31:40
Speaker 1: It runs now if you're in America. Yeah, yeah, we
31:44
Speaker 1: get the United States. As I always saw everyone from
31:47
Speaker 1: Canada and elsewhere that's mad about this. I can't win
31:50
Speaker 1: your contest either. I don't think that makes anybody feel
31:52
Speaker 1: better if you're American. If you're in the United States,
31:57
Speaker 1: it runs through December third you first winners will be
32:01
Speaker 1: announced the week of January. One grand prize trip to
32:06
Speaker 1: Atlanta includes one night hotel, air fare up to Bucks,
32:11
Speaker 1: and then American Express gift card for incidentals like taking
32:16
Speaker 1: me and Chuck out to lunch. I think we'll pick
32:18
Speaker 1: that up uh. And if you refer somebody like you,
32:23
Speaker 1: go to Facebook the house stuff works dot com not
32:25
Speaker 1: the stuff you should know. Go to the house stuff
32:27
Speaker 1: works dot Com Facebook page to enter and you have
32:30
Speaker 1: to like it and then you enter. But it's the
32:32
Speaker 1: only way to enter as far as I know. Yeah,
32:34
Speaker 1: I think so. But if if you refer someone um
32:39
Speaker 1: and they win, I'm sorry. After person a enters the contest,
32:43
Speaker 1: he or she can share the contest link with friends
32:47
Speaker 1: via Facebook and Twitter, and if a friend of their's wins,
32:50
Speaker 1: then you win. A kindle fire that's not too shappy?
32:54
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? And I would I would give
32:58
Speaker 1: you the link, but it's like three thousand characters long.
33:02
Speaker 1: So just go to Facebook, How stuff Work, how stuff
33:05
Speaker 1: works dot Com, how stuff Works official Facebook page and
33:08
Speaker 1: you will find the information there and lunch, lunch it
33:11
Speaker 1: up with us. Yeah, let's launch. Let's do lunch before
33:15
Speaker 1: we go. I wanna correct myself big time. Correct myself
33:19
Speaker 1: about patent trolls. In the gene Patents Okay episode, I
33:23
Speaker 1: mentioned patent trolls and I don't even remember what I
33:26
Speaker 1: said they were, but I was way off. Patentrols are
33:31
Speaker 1: people who go around buying patents with no intent of
33:35
Speaker 1: manufacturing these things or what the patent is for. I
33:40
Speaker 1: figured that's what it was like line of website domains. Sure,
33:43
Speaker 1: but then they sue. The whole point is to own
33:45
Speaker 1: the patent so that they can sue anybody who infringes
33:48
Speaker 1: on it. So basically they're keeping any kind of innovation
33:52
Speaker 1: from coming about along the same lines of what they
33:54
Speaker 1: own the patent to by suing people who try to
33:58
Speaker 1: do it, and they're they're basically just whatever, this great
34:01
Speaker 1: idea that's patented is just never going to see the
34:04
Speaker 1: light of day because they have no interest in you
34:05
Speaker 1: and that they just want the money from suing people.
34:08
Speaker 1: That's a patentrol I apologize for to all the patentrols
34:11
Speaker 1: out there. Yes, it's all the people who corrected me.
34:15
Speaker 1: Thank you for that. Yes. Uh. If you want to
34:17
Speaker 1: correct us, we are always up for that. You can
34:20
Speaker 1: send us a tweet at s y esk podcast. You
34:24
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook. We have our own page
34:27
Speaker 1: two it's stuff you should know, uh, and you can
34:31
Speaker 1: also send us a good old fashioned email. Stuff podcast
34:34
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this
34:42
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
34:44
Speaker 1: dot com,