Day Light Saving: The surprising story behind why we change our clocks

Brains on Universe. Rubber band please. Here you go. Thank you. Pass the yoyo. Here you go, go. Bucket of slime. Ugh. This thing is heavy. You're right. But we're going to need it all. Remind me again. What are you planning to do with all this? I have to do it. I'm going to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it. Elizabeth. But I simply won't get got this time. Not on my watch. My watch that has to spring forward, which I will remember thanks to my handy dandy alarm. How's it gonna work? If all goes according to plan, I'm imagining it'll go a little something like this. My alarm bell goes off. It'll launch a rubber band to hit the yo-yo, which will swing around and hit that globe, which will travel down my xylophone, hit the cushion releasing the pulley and... Slime everywhere! Slime all over my head. There's no way I can snooze my alarm and forget to wind my clock back with slime on my head. A foolproof plan. Yeah, I just gotta make sure my alarm doesn't go off too soon. Oh, oh no, no, wait. Oh, no! Oh, pfft. Good news. Our contraption works. Bad news? We're gonna need more slime. And maybe a shower. You're listening to Forever Go from Brains On Universe. I'm your host, Joy Dolo, and I'm here today with my co-host, Raheema, from Dallas, Texas. Hi, Joy. Hello, hello. Today we're talking all about daylight saving time. It happens every spring when we move our clocks forward an hour. That way, more of daylight is in the evening hours instead of the early morning. Then, in the fall, we move the clock back an hour. And daylight saving time ends. That also means it gets dark earlier. Today's episode was inspired by this question. Hi, my name is Uzam from Kitchener, and my question is, why do we have daylight saving time? Thanks, Uzam, for sending in that question. Raheema, have you ever noticed this time of year? Oh yeah, not long ago, my phone broke down and my watch uses my phone to change time zones. You were in North Carolina then, which is an hour ahead of Texas. So when I came home, my watch was an hour ahead of the real time. But thankfully, when daylight saving came around, everything shifted forward an hour, and my watch was back on track. Go daylight saving! Go daylight savings, agreed. So you notice the difference between the daylight saving during the fall versus the spring? I go to dance every class at Thursday at 6 p.m., so I can always see drastic light changes at the start and end of daylight savings. It happened on a Sunday this year, slap bang in the middle of two classes. The class before, it was pitch dark at my studio. But after, it was so light out that it felt like the studio shouldn't have been open yet. Does it ever mess with you when it gets too dark too early or too light for too long? Not really, not really. I like to consider myself something in between a morning bird and a night owl, and so I can be alert early in the morning if I need to, but I can also sleep in really late if I feel like it. So when the daylight saving happens, then usually I'll just sleep through it and end up getting like 13 hours of sleep that night or something. That's so long. So if you could choose to jump forward one hour every year, what would you like to skip over? As any time that is sometime during allergy season, allergies are really brutal right now. Yes. As long as you don't skip my birthday because my birthday is also during allergy season, which I hate so much, because every time I have my birthday outside, then my eyes are puffy and my nose is running. I can barely see anything. It's horrible. It's horrible. Clocks aside, you might have noticed there's just more daylight overall during the summer months compared to the winter months, and you might be wondering why. The reason is the earth is tilted. You can picture it like this. Imagine earth is like a ball, and the sun is like a big bright lamp. The earth might as well be a ballerina because it loves to spin. The earth is constantly spinning in a circle like a ballerina spinning on their tippy toes. So picture that ball spinning in circles. Each full spin marks one day, but the spin doesn't stop there. Yep, because the earth also circles around the sun. So it'd be like if the ball is spinning in circles while also spinning around the giant lamp. So that's lots of little spins while also making one big spin? I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it. Each time earth circles the sun, that equals one year. So if earth was circling the sun straight on, the amount of sunlight wouldn't change. Every day would have the same amount of sun all year long. But earth is actually a little tilted, much like how Gumpy wears his fedora. So imagine if that ball was tilted at an angle towards the lamp. The top half would get more light, just like the northern part of our planet during the summer when days are longer. But remember, earth keeps spinning around the sun. Eventually it spins to the other side of the sun. The earth is still tilted, but now the southern part is angled toward the sun and the northern half is angled away. Which means winter in the north and summer in the south. If you want to learn more about the science behind daylight saving time, our pals at Brains On made an episode all about it. We'll have a link to that episode in our show notes. So we know why summer has more daylight than winter. And humans have been trying to make the most of those daylight hours as possible for thousands of years. They would even change how they measured time. Take the Romans for example, an hour of time was different depending on the season. The Romans divided the day into 24 hours, just like we do now. However, their days were split so that there were always 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. To make that work in the summer with more daylight, each daytime hour had to be about 75 minutes long. Meanwhile in the winter there was less sunlight, so an hour of the day was only around 45 minutes long. So this means throughout the year the time of a so-called hour would shift a little bit, just like the amount of daylight would shift in a given day, which is confusing to my modern brain. Today our hours are always 60 minutes no matter the season. But other people realized it would be helpful if we changed the clock so we got more light in the evenings. And the first person to really push this idea was a bug scientist. His name was George Hudson. He was an entomologist from New Zealand. Entomologist is a fancy name for a person who studies bugs. And boy oh boy did George love to study bugs. Bugs, bugs, beautiful bugs. I'm gonna find bugs and give them hugs. Ooh, look at this one. But George was running into problems. There's just not enough daylight to study all these incredible insects. I spend all the bright hours of the day at work. I need more light outside of work so I can go hunting for my beloved creepy crawly creatures. So George made a proposal to some fellow scientists. Okay, hear me out. What if we moved our clocks by two hours so we had more light outside of working hours. You know, so everyone can look for more bugs. Oh, here we go with the bugs again. George, that is ridiculous. Well, not just bugs. Yeah, I mean we'd have more daylight to enjoy the great outdoors. Cycle, sports, you know. Oh plus we'd save energy by not using all those artificial lights. Huh? Hard pass, George. No thanks. George's idea was rejected. But the idea of daylight savings would come back around a couple decades later and we'll learn more in a little bit. But first it's time for... This is the game where we take three things from history and try to put them in order of which came first, second, and most recent. So since setting our clocks back is a big national event, I picked three other big national events. These are unofficial holidays. You have to tell me which order they come in the year. So their Strawberry Ice Cream Day, Make a Hat Day, and Lost Sock Memorial Day. So, Rahima, what do you think comes first, second, and third in a year? I think that the one about socks came first because I feel like socks in and of themselves came first in history compared to the other two. And then I think Make a Hat Day came next. And then Strawberry Ice Cream Day because I feel like Strawberry Ice Cream is the most recent thing in those three. Okay, so just to recap, the most recent in the year is Lost Sock Day and then Make a Hat Day and then Strawberry Ice Cream Day? Yes. All right, let's plug it in. We'll hear the answers at the end of the episode right after the credits. So stay tuned. Hey, we're doing an episode soon all about slang words. You know words like Riz, Slay, Skibbity, Sixth-Even. Are we still doing Skibbity? It's all slang. Did you know you can just make up your own too? Like Liberty Gibbets. Oh, Liberty Gibbets. I miss the bus. We want to hear your slang words too. Make up a word and tell us what it means. Then send it to us at BrainsOn.org slash Contact. Bonus points if you use it in a sentence. Can't wait to hear what you dream up. You're listening to Forever Go. I'm Raheema. And I'm Joy. Today we're talking about daylight saving time and figuring out why we move our clocks forward every spring and back every fall. Earlier we learned how Romans changed the length of an hour depending on the season. We also learned about a bug scientist who wanted to rewind the clocks back each summer. These ideas didn't really stick around though. That is until World War One. In the early 1900s there was a huge war across the globe between many different countries. People were encouraged to do lots of things to save energy and resources, so more of that stuff could be used in the battle. There were limits on how much wheat, sugar, and meat people could buy. Folks were encouraged to grow their own food and preserve it too. Governments also wanted to save energy. This is where the idea of daylight saving came back into play. So governments thought by moving the clock forward by an hour, there'd be more daylight in the evening. That meant after work people could do more stuff using daylight instead of electricity. Which in turn would conserve more energy during the war. Germany and Austria were the first countries to shift their clocks back. Soon enough other countries joined in, including the US. But when the war ended in 1918, the US stopped using daylight saving time. But then World War Two started and they went right back to using it. They called it wartime. It was marketed as the patriotic thing to do. Wake up early, save energy, wartime. Then World War Two ended in 1945. After the war ended, states got to choose if they wanted to keep moving the clocks twice a year or not. Some states decided to keep doing daylight saving time. But others said nope, pass. This made things complicated. Much like Hermes' drink order, a double half-calf pineapple juice with coconut, cold foam, light ice, pink umbrella, and curly straw on the side. It's extremely important that the straw is on the side. I like an elephant, who knows what they want. Yeah, me too. But you gotta admit it's a bit complicated. And that's how it was when different states started picking and choosing whether or not they wanted to use daylight saving time. And some states were doing both. Okay, so take my home state of Minnesota, for example. Minneapolis and St. Paul are two cities right next to each other. But for a short period back in 1965, each city followed a different time zone. It's like if your neighbor's clock was one hour ahead of your own clock. Weird. Right. And this sort of thing happened all across the country. An hour-long road trip could mean passing through seven different time zones. Jimmy, don't forget to wind that clock back. But I just changed it. New city, new time zone. Gee, will occurs, pops. It's like the fourth time this trip. And believe me, it won't be the last. All of this time zone confusion caused a lot of chaos. I can imagine, especially for railroads, airlines, bus drivers, and travelers. Yeah, timetables were easy to get mixed up. Hotels and airlines had to have multiple clocks just for the different times in their own states. It was so bad, America got the nickname. The world's worst timekeeper. So in 1966, the U.S. did something about it. Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which made daylight saving time standard across the whole country. That meant everyone would change their clocks back twice a year. Once in the spring and once in the fall. Well, almost everyone. Two states decided not to partake. Arizona and Hawaii. But around the world, it's super common not to change the clock. Most other countries don't use daylight saving time anymore. Why is that the case? We'll learn more right after we check the mailbag. I love hearing from fans. So let's see what we got today. Ooh, a note from a listener named Stella. Okay, let's open it up here. Stella says, we love the mayonnaise episode of forever ago. We tried mayo. We tried mayo on a grilled cheese sandwich and it worked wonderfully. And then there's actually a beautiful picture of a grilled cheese sandwich that looks like it's just grilled to perfection. If I ever questioned my hate of mayonnaise, it would be looking at this yummy cheesy sandwich. It looks so good. Thanks so much, Stella, for writing in. If you want to tell us what you thought of an episode or send a drawing, picture, or a poem, just go to brainson.org slash contact. Thanks. Want our show with no breaks? Join SmartyPass. You get ad-free versions of forever ago. Brains on, Smash Boom Best, and bonus episodes, invites to virtual hangs, and more. Plus, you'll support me and the crew. It's a great investment considering all the smarts you'll get in return. Thanks, y'all. I'm Joy. And I'm Raheema, and we're talking about time changes. Today, only about one-third of countries worldwide change the clocks for daylight saving time. Most countries in Asia, Africa, and South America don't do it. Many U.S. territories like Guam and Puerto Rico don't do it either, which means Bad Bunny doesn't use daylight saving time. Not even every U.S. state uses daylight saving time. Right. Hawaii and Arizona stopped using daylight saving time almost 60 years ago. In Hawaii, daylight hours don't vary that much during the year because it's so close to the equator. The equator is the invisible belt around the middle of the Earth. Remember how Earth is tilted? For places along the equator, like Hawaii, Guam, or Puerto Rico, the effect of the tilt isn't as noticeable, and so there's a pretty similar amount of daylight from season to season. So winding the clocks back doesn't make that much of a difference. And in Arizona, a state that is mostly desert, it can get really hot. If there are more hours of sunlight later in the day, that means there are more hours to keep the AC running and the fans blasting at schools and businesses. Which ends up using more energy. Ironic! So daylight saving time was supposed to save energy, but that's really not the case in Arizona. And in fact, researchers think changing our clocks doesn't really save much energy in the rest of the country anymore either. Some scientists also say that daylight saving time is bad for our health. Winding the clocks back can mess with our sleep. The switch up can make us feel groggy or confused. Rahama, have you ever felt this way after you switched the clocks? Not really. I felt it this time around, but that was because I had an event and I had to wake up super early. But in general, then the switching of the time doesn't really bother me. Oh, I get sleepy even like sometimes when the hours change, it like makes me feel like I miss something, you know what I mean? Like you wake up and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm an hour late, or I'm an hour early. And so it makes me do that thing where you like to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. It just makes me feel out of sorts, you know. Yeah. And because of the watch situation that I said earlier, then I was reading my watch and going back on it an hour. So if it said 5.25pm, then I was thinking, okay, this is 4.25pm. But when daylight saving time came around, then I'd completely forgotten. And so I woke up and I was reading the clock wrong, and then I realized that the time was right and I'm like, oh no, I'm late. That's what they're talking about. It's like, oh my gosh, it's so confusing. The good news is us humans are pretty good at adapting to new things. We usually adjust within a week or so after we change our clocks. Who's that? Yoo hoo, wakey, wakey joy. Elizabeth, is that you? I think you mean, oh Elizabeth, thank you for waking me up. What would I do without you? You're the best knocker-upper I've ever met. Well, I was already awake. Also, it's not even morning anymore. The sun has been up for hours. You've almost recorded an entire episode. Oh my goodness, I totally forgot to wind my clock back to the right time. I was in Bali for vacation, so it looks like my watch is 15 hours ahead. Whoopsie, Daisy. Classic Elizabeth. Classic Elizabeth. We have more daylight in the summer months and less in the winter months because the earth is tilted. The idea of daylight saving time started with the bug scientists who wanted more daylight to hunt for bugs. But it didn't catch on until during World War One and World War Two when governments claimed it saved energy during the war. Daylight saving became official in the U.S. in 1966, excluding Arizona and Hawaii. Today, only about one-third of countries worldwide use daylight saving time. It's still a huge debate. This episode was written by Ruby Guthrie. It was produced, in fact, checked by Nico Gonzales-Wistler and edited by Sandin Totten. Engineering help from Devin Clark with sound design by Rachel Breeze. Original music by Mark Sanchez. Special thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Kuria. And if you are accessed to add free episodes and special bonus content, subscribe to our SmartyPass. Okay, Raheema, are you ready to hear the answers for first things first? I'm nervous. I'm not very confident in my answers anymore. I know now that we're at the end of the episode, it's like, wait, wait, is that right? Okay, so just to say, so first it was La Sock Day and then Make a Hat Day and then Strawberry Ice Cream, yes? Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Okay, so this was a tough one. You did great. The first one is January 15th and that one is Strawberry Ice Cream Day, actually. So Strawberry Ice Cream Day is celebrated on January 15th in the United States and it's been a popular flavor for centuries. President James Madison served it back at an inauguration banquet in 1813. 1813? 1813, yeah. Wow, that is a long time ago. The largest scoop of Strawberry Ice Cream was made back in 2014 and weighed over 3,000 pounds. 3,000 pounds? That's about as heavy as, what's something that's 3,000 pounds? A car? What? Yeah, like a car. I can see it now. A car made a Strawberry Ice Cream. Could you imagine eating a car's worth of Strawberry Ice Cream? Oh my gosh, the tummy ache. No way. Stomach equating to happen. Yeah. So that was January 15th. Next up, it's May 9th and that one is Lost Sock Memorial Day. Oh my gosh. No. So it's a day to mourn all the socks you might have mysteriously lost to the washing machine, but also a day to let go of all the single socks that remain. Oh, so it's like, you know, you can mourn this thing and then also let go of. That's beautiful. If you're not a mismatched sock kind of person, you can repurpose your lonely single sock into cleaning rags or better yet, a choir of sock puppets. Have you ever made sock puppets before? Yeah, I remember that when I was little, I think I was seven and my little sister was like four, five, then we actually made sock puppets out of mismatched socks and we put on a puppet show and like the couch was our stage and we were just telling jokes. That's awesome. That's great. So last but not least, September 15th is Make a Hat Day. Make a Hat Day. Make a Hat Day. So you celebrate by making a hat out of anything you want. You can do a beret of bottle caps or a felt fedora or a paper bag top hat. Hey, maybe you could repurpose all those single socks into a sleeping cap. So fun fact, the world record for tallest hat is for a Santa hat measuring almost 18 feet tall. 18 feet? Yeah, so that's about as tall as a giraffe. So we have an ice cream car that's 3,000 pounds and we have a Santa hat that's as big as a giraffe. We need to find a world record for socks. I bet socks are feeling kind of left out right now. I bet you I could do it for most lost socks. I never know where my socks are. Join us next week for a new episode all about the Titanic. Thank you for listening.