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How Daylight Saving Time Works · Stuff You Should Know

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