February 29, 2024 • 48 mins
Let's be honest: leap year sounds pretty nuts when you explain it. We have the regular 365-day year three times in a row, but every fourth year we add one extra day in February. (With... several other notable caveats.) Join Ben, Noel and Max as they figure out where leap year came from, why it's a thing, and whether it's still genuinely better than nothing.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Shout out to our super producer mister
Max Williams on this of all days.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, Max leap Year Williams, Quantum Leapier Williams.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
And shout out to thirty Rock for Leapier Williams. Shout
out to Noel Brown. I am Ben Bollen. We have
a little bit of a poem that we would like
to perform for you at the top of today's show.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Can I first ask, though, do we have intel on
who this Mother Goose character really was?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
It wasn't one person, Okay, they're pretty sure of that.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Okay, Yeah, probably Gary Oldman could definitely play a Mother
Goose type figure. Do you remember that Mother Goose show
with Shelley Duval where it was she would like.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Very racy for Disney.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, it was a little bit I suppose, but she
would like I guess she sort of hosted it and
there was like different nursery rhymes and fables that would
be played out by various actors. But yeah, Mother Goose
a sort of I guess Hodgepodge amalgam of the childhood
lore and brother rock and Rhyme.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
That's a good one.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, the way was it? Well, the Shelley devaal one
was different though it was just called like right dang
right rock and rhyme. Holy cow, I know, yeah, I
remember that hat. She has this big, giant like beetlejuice
like type has.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Yeah, a little Richard Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I'm sorry, Ben, I wasp in my mind, I was
picturing something less rockin and Ryman.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I was such a I remember being such a straight
waisd kid that when I saw Mother Goose's rock and Rhyme,
I immediately thought it was too racy. And I told
my parents I snitched up. Oh my god, yeah, I know,
I know, And they said something like thirty days half September, April, June,
(02:31):
and November. All the rest have thirty one excepting February.
A lawn and that has twenty eight days clear and
twenty nine in each sleep year.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
You know, you had me until the last two lines,
and then it just felt like a little convoluted, a
little overstuffed.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
You know, you didn't like rhyming a lawn with thirty one.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I mean that was a youth thing. No, no, no, no,
I no, I was sold up until that lone. It's
the last two. I always felt like this. The last
two lines of this poem felt very tacked on, and
honestly I thought for the longest time.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
That they were, like, not part of the original poem.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
This is some addendum to explain leapier to idiot children,
and that has twenty eight days clear at twenty nine
and each I guess it does rhyme leapier. What the
hell is a leapier? I've never fully understood, And I
know I probably know enough at least to shepherd my
part of this episode through, and I will, but for
the sake of questions out in the audience and the
(03:32):
ridiculous historians of the world, Leapier is always, I think
too many been a little bit of a daunting kind
of head scratcher, like what is it about? What is
its purpose? When is it?
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Why is it?
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Why? Where do you get off work?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
You don't? Actually is it like an eclipse. It is
an interclarie date. It is added every four years to
make up for the imperfections of the human calendar.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Except for the four years where it doesn't get at it.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Except for those four years.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Now, Yeah, I understood, and now I no, No, it's okay, man, No,
we'll get to it, don't right, We're getting to it.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah, so okay, there you have quite astute observation about
that nursery rhyme, because you're not the only one who
feels it is weird. Yeah, once they add February Max,
Max also doesn't get it.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I do love No, sorry, bet, it's only just not
hitting me or rhyming of thirty one with Alum.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
That's very English, great tales of you.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
We're working with what we have, I know, which is
also a statement about the calendar system. The thing is,
February has always been one of the most anomalois of months.
It is typically the shortest month, with only two twenty
eight days, and then every once in a while they
(05:05):
add a twenty ninth day. And if you are listening
to this episode, the day it comes out, welcome to
leap Here, it's February twenty ninth. Happy birthday. I guess
to a small percentage of the population, that's got.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
To be real.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Talking to someone recently, I don't remember who was, but
it's like they had a sibling who's anniversary of the
twenty ninth.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
What do they do other years?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Exactly? This is the day that doesn't exist. It's it's
it's like the thirteenth floor, you know.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
That reminds me of what is it? Sideways Stories from
Wayside High right?
Speaker 2 (05:42):
That was one of those good Scholastic series kind of right, yeah,
book fair fodder. But no, I didn't look okay. I
think my I'm sorry, I'm coming in hot on this.
I seem like I'm really mad at leap here, and
I guess I kind of am. But I'm also just
kind of mad at America's I me guess it's more
than just America. But it's certain things that just remain
(06:04):
the same because they always.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Were, because they were normally.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Right, you know, like like not using the metric system
for example, that is a gripe against America.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
It makes no sense and it makes us look look foolish.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I don't know, I'm gonna say this right now. After
researching this, I came into it with that stance, and
then seeing the alternative, I'm like, no, actually, I'm kind
of fine keeping with the Greg Goryan calendar.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
I don't mind the leap year.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
I don't want to know mostly products that I read
an article written by the person who really wants to
change it. I'm like, you are so petty. I want
to keep the Greg Goryan calendar to spite you.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
It's sort of like it's sort of like that old
quote about democracy, democracy, and the worst one except for
all the other one.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And then you read my mind. It's almost like we
hang out a lot. I was literally thinking the same thing.
That is very accurate.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
It is.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, I mean sometimes you got it, like you said,
like we do here on the show. You got to
do the best with what you've got, and even if
it is imperfect, sometimes imperfect is many times better than
the alternative.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
And we're gonna find out why.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Honestly, I'm gonna learn along with you guys here because
I know the basics, but some of the details I'm
kind of keeping as a surprise.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
We should also do, by the way etymology or providence
of the names for days of the week. Oh love
that that's gonna be a fun way. Yeah, yeah, of course.
Right now, we're all learning together here. We want to
start with Alan Longstaff, who writes for the National Maritime
Museum in two thousand and five and says the following.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
All human societies have developed ways to determine the length
of the year, when the year should begin, and how
to divide into manageable units of time, such as months, weeks,
and days.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
And then he talks about how people have always tried
to do this with I'm gonna be honest, midling success.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I bet Alan Longstaff has sort of a big jumbo
type situation.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
What do you guys think? I hope so much.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
Is.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
He also notes that people don't really as a species
remember when folks started counting the passage of time. It
is such an old trend, such an old impetus. That
is earliest civilization since time immemorial.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Dare we say, because yeah, it does make sense, because
without some sort of codified way of keeping track of time,
the mind almost loses form, you know what I mean,
Like it loses it's a sense of self and sense
of order of operations and just things like it really
(08:49):
is such a we're so used to it being, you know,
just a staple of human civilization that think about the alternative,
like what if there was no way of counting time?
Speaker 4 (08:59):
You just becod of like floating willy nilly in space.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Like that deep time experiment we talked about a little
while back, maybe last year, when a bunch of French
researchers locked those folks in a cave.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Remember how'd that go? Flies each other? It went?
Speaker 1 (09:21):
It got weird because for most of human history people
existed growing, gathering, and hunting food. So you moved with
the seasons, right you Before the advent of the electric light,
there was one big light. It was the sun. And
when when the sun was gone, you know, you were
(09:44):
you were kind of done for the day, unless you
were up to skullduggery.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Nothing good happens after the sun goes down, or all
the good things happen after.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
The sun goes down, depends on who you are.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
But it even reminds me of like, you know, the
idea of being shipwrecked perhaps or in prison?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
What did people do?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
They mark the passage of time like with tick marks,
you know, on a stone or on the wall or whatever,
because it keeps you sane. It's a way, it's just
a very human impulse. And the question is sort of
a chicken or the egg thing, like do we keep
track of time because we always have kept track of time?
Or do we keep track of time because our minds,
(10:23):
and you know, constitutions kind of crave it.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
That's true. Right, to what degree does the mind require structure?
And to what degree does the mind impose structure? Right?
And how closely related are those things? We know that
for early civilizations they were vary in tune with the
passage of the natural world. So they would know that
a winter was coming up, right, and they would be
(10:48):
able to predict to some degree how difficult that winter
might be. They would definitely know they needed to conserve
food or figure something out before the weather turned on them.
It's also weird because the idea of a year being
three hundred and sixty five days long dates all the
(11:11):
way back to four thousand and five hundred BCE. We
don't know exactly when it happened, but we know by
that point Egyptian civilization had already said, okay, this is
what a year is. They were like, everybody, be cool,
there'll be eclipses, there'll be a solstice or two.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
It's interesting to the need to compartmentalize time in that
way too, like, isn't it enough just to measure it
day to day? At what point did someone realize, no,
we need to catalog history, and in order to do that,
we have to have larger units of time. So good
on the Egyptians because we're still rocking that three hundred
(11:49):
and sixty five day a year calendar to this day.
And again, this is a level of precision and thought
that is well beyond that of what you were talking
about Ben just tracking light for purposes of crops and
hunting and whatever. You know, the way the conditions changed,
this was something that was very tied to seriously religious
(12:10):
beliefs and you know, being able to have certain benchmarks
in the year that would involve worship, you know, of
deities and festivals and things like that.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, the sun is mad at us. We have to
keep sacrificing people. What if it never comes back.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
I'm sure ancient civilizations there were plenty of folks that
worried about that.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Do you guys know in the in Skyroom how the
Thalmore got the Khajit to ally with them? I do
not they take credits for bringing back the moons, because
the moons decide what type of Khijit you are. There's
like fifteen different we only see one of them in
the games. Was kind of kind of lay well, So far,
(12:55):
so far, so far. Aren't the kajit the ones that
are all hopped up on that moon sugar? Yeah, well
moon sugar in it, but it's may use it to
make schooma correct. They are profiled as move as drug dealers.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
So you're saying that I'm I'm being stereotypical for fictional video.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Not you, not you.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I'm just saying that's like.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Also, they almost went they almost went extinct when pellan
Ol White Strike was running through just killing everyone and
streaming weird things out in the first era because you
thought they were all else.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Episode.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
No, we're friends. I know. Look, I will say this.
I got the the new version of.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Skyrim and there was some update and all of a sudden,
it wasn't loading, and I thought my save game had
been corrupted.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
But it turns out because of all the little add ons.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Where you can do these customized things and creator whatever
content created, there was some kind of glitch where it
was trying desperately to connect to the internet and it
wasn't working, and so it would just hang up, and
when I turned internet connection off it worked like a charm.
But boy, am I loving replaying that game and I'm
gonna finish it by God this time.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
But yeah, no, it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
I mean, Skyrim is a depiction in video game form
of an ancient ancient civilization with superstitions and religion and rituals.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
There we go. Yeah, it's squaring the it's squaring the
spirituality and the science.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
It's actually, if you look at the big picture, it
is a relatively recent development in human civilization to separate
the idea of secular science and spirituality or religion. So
when people are figuring out calendars, they are looking at
the passage of the heavens, right, and they're assigning any
sort of cultural framework to it. The three primary calendar
(14:50):
types are gonna be the solar calendar, how does the
sun move? The lunar calendar what's going on with the moon?
And then the loney solar calendar, which is, how can
we make this more accurate or more complicated or.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Both I'm sorry, the Looney solar calendar.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
The other the one where the sun has like a
crazy face drawn on him.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Yes, he's okay, cool, that's the one. The it's the
inspiration for the ancient religion of Looney Tunes.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, exactly, classic religion and This was again developed in
a different part of Egypt and northern Egypt, and this
was in order to keep tally of when the birth
of raw came back around.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, he was. He was pretty popular. He's kind of
like the tailor Swift of his day.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
He's the sun god, right mm hm yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Early Hunters would migrate from Spain through France into what
we call the British Isles today, and those folks are
credited with creating a type of lunar calendar around thirty
four hundred to thirty three hundred BCE before Common Era.
And then there are other Obviously, the oldest calendars are
(16:02):
in places like Mesopotamia, right, like Sumerian stuff. You can
also see it in Greco Roman history. Of course, you
can see it in ancient Chinese kingdoms. But it wasn't
until Max maybe laugh here. It wasn't until one guy
in particular took over the Roman Empire that humanity got
(16:25):
their very first calendar that we're focusing on today. His
name Julius Caesar. He died, but a salad remains. You
can kill a man, but not an idea, dude.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I thought for the longest time that the Caesar salad
was something to do Julius Caesar. Not in the case,
not at all, was invented in Tijuana, Mexico, at a
hotel unrelated to Julius Caesar.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
The guy may well have never eaten a green in
his life.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Like archimedies. Screw right, Archimedies had very little to do
with that. The Julian A lot.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
Of people think the same thing about the Caesar salad, right.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Of course, yeah, I think we both did so. I
think that's otherwise. The Julian calendar is the predecessor of
the Gregorian calendar. So before salad our salad Dad becomes
the emperor, Roman society had been using something called the
Roman Republican calendar, and it was you know, obviously it's
(17:32):
pre Christian, and the way they explained it was through mythology.
That's how they rationalized their scientific observations. They said, hey,
you guys, remember Romulus, the guy who founded Rome. He
also said this is how time works.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Yeah he did, and once again, being first to market
with an idea, you know, it tends.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
To take hold. So this is around seven thirty eight PC.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
The dating system was actually, though likely the product of
evolution from the Greek lunar calendar, which was in turn
stolen from the Babylonian calendar. I guess I don't know.
Can you steal an idea for a calendar? Is it
just about giving credit? I'm sure they didn't give credit
to the Babylonians.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
They probably felt that the preceding systems of time measurement
were normalized, and they they in each iteration, they felt
they were improving on it, even when that was not
necessarily the case.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And sometimes it was the case, but yes, not always necessarily.
So this is the thing they did. They did in
this case, they did somewhat improve it. They made it
a little less incorrect. However, they did not make it
exactly right.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, yeah, so they this lunar calendar. It's a real
it's a real thward in the side of people who
are obsessed with time because as lunar calendars don't match
up with seasonal cycles of the earth. Weird thing about it,
and shout out to our friends at Encyclopedia Britannica. The
(19:10):
original Roman Republic calendar had ten months, had a total
year of three hundred and four days, and then they
had sixty one and one quarter leftover days.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
And they over days, call us you need some extra days,
no rules.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
So they had a gap, a pretty prominent gap during
the winter season. It took a couple of centuries for
everybody in Rome to say, hang on a tick.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
This time I talked right.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
At least if you're watching the television series Rome, wherever
explicably has British.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Accents, right, they're like something not quite ticktyboo hit.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
They called each other governor all alls not right? The
agora right.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
So, uh, there's a ruler you may or may not
have heard of. Numa Pompilius.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Numa Pompilius is credited with being the inventor of January. Basic,
what a flex that is. He's like, I'm inventing a
month and they're like which one. He's like, the first one.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
Yeah, I'm guessing it's named after Janis. Yeah is that right?
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Just yes, Okay, it makes sense, and most of these
are named after gods for the most part, but yeah, Janus.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
I know.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
The film Imprint makes put out some excellent films. What
was Janus the god of is the god of beginnings
gate duality? That's two faces right, Yeah? Actually the logo
Janus Films Criterion baby, check it out.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
But Numa didn't stop there at all. He also said,
we're putting February in the calendar. And at first it
was like, we're putting it at the end, and they
were like the Emperor's crazy man.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
But who's what? What's February named after? I have no idea.
I know a lot of them, but I don't know
that one.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
So the original name FEBRUARYUS, you know, like Aquarius, FEBRUARYUS is.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Generally roll off the tongue, doesn't.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
It's not, you know, maybe it's our American accents, but
it comes from the Latin term februm purification.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, it was a festival actually of purification. For some reason,
a festival of purification sounds potentially nasty, clean yourself up exactly.
The idea was for it to be at the end,
but then it was initially in four to fifty two BCE,
moved between January and March, which, you know, that makes sense,
(21:53):
that's that's the one.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
Sure, that's what we know.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
And once again, all of these things, when you when
you examine them, you know, the way we are here,
they seem so arbitrary. But then something like the months
of the year it's like heresy to think that February
would be at the end, Like, what an idiotic idea?
Speaker 4 (22:13):
But is it an idiotic idea?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
It's just kind of a thing that it was a
choice that could have been made.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
And it's like cleaning yourself up at the end.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Yeah, it's just I guess was it was it political
pressure that led to it being moved.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
It was another attempt at accuracy and a great reckoning
of how to how to better quantify the passage of
the Earth in space, which is a very difficult question
to ask, you know.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
So they and they barely understood any of the science
of it, and they're literally looking at sun up sundown
gets cold around this time, but they don't know anything
about the Earth being round or rotating, or what the
celestial bodies represented, or how the tides worked or anything
like that.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Right, some people did, but but there was not a uniform,
agreed upon consent, Like there wasn't a consensus about this.
There were a lot of very smart people at the
time who were able to measure these things, but they
didn't have the benefit of the global communication network that
humans enjoy today. So that's why it would take like
(23:20):
centuries for people to agree that something was screwy with
the calendar. I mean, this pursuit of accuracy, which is
noble and well intentioned, had a lot of bumps along
the way. The Roman calendar, by the first century BCE,
was a messy bull of spaghetti. It was super confused.
(23:42):
They said, Okay, we're making it a lunar calendar. It's
going to be three hundred and fifty five days long.
But that's like a little more than ten days shorter
than the solar year. So every so often they would
just add an extra month called Sedonius, just to just
(24:02):
to keep the calendar I did, sort of in step
with the seasons.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Having it have a name, a special name, makes it
feel a little more festive to me.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yes, well, no, you might like the alternate calendar proposition
that's going around now.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
We'll get to that later though.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Oh I see, Okay, there's this other thing too.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
There's a lot of like investment in state or spiritual
powers and institutions. Who gets to say what day or
what year it is? Who gets the futs with the calendar?
The College of Pontiffs, the Pontiffects Maximus, those folks had
the authority to change the calendar.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Well, you know, maybe you know, a lesser scholar, perhaps,
you know, you could, you could certainly give your pitch like, hey,
I got this, I got this new calendar.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
You know, check it out. Here's my power point, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
But ultimately, the authority to adopt a new calendar lay
with like the you know, the high mucketymunks of the time.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yes, it very much. Pontiff is what is a pontiff?
A pontiff is like an ecclesiastical figure, like a bishop
of pope. It's like a uniformed officer for a church.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Isn't it funny though, how the passage of time has
a tendency to be associated with religion.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Because because again like all of the connections to the
various phases of time and the nature and all of that,
and then the way they are connected with religious deities,
and that carries on to things like the Gregorian calendar of.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Course, ah Greg yeah, classic, classic Greg. So they still
have all these problems with the Julian calendar. Uh, the
by the forties, sorry the forties BCE, the Roman secular
calendar is three months ahead of the solar calendar. It
(26:08):
doesn't make sense, it's bad for business. Caesar himself talks
to astronomer from Alexandria who introduces the Egyptian solar calendar,
and then they agree based on the thing the Egyptians
had already figured out that the year should be three
hundred and sixty five and wait for it, one fourth days.
(26:31):
Wait a minute, hang on a tick.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I guess, I guess a quarter leftover days is better
than like sixty some odd But what how does how
doth one measure a quarter of a day? I mean,
I know that you you know, you guess, of course
you can, but how does that figure in? And it
seems like an unfortunate remainder.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Right, right, But it's fortunate for us because we're doing
an episode on leap here.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
So al right, leap Day does fill time and give
the people the content they crave.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Shout out to Leap Day, Williams and thirty Rock. The
Julian calendar is at this point, it's divided into twelve months,
and all of these months asterisk have thirty or thirty
one days. The asterisk is February it has twenty eight days,
and every fourth year asterisk it gets an extra day,
(27:29):
So every fourth year a February twenty ninth occurs. There is,
it's a leap year of three hundred and sixty six days. However,
as our pal Max points out, they used to make
it even more complicated.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I still don't understand why, Like, why can't it is
to account for variations in the light and the way
seasons occur over long timeline. Yeah, the idea is they're.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Trying to reconcile earlier calindrical miscalculations.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
I see.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Okay, Well, hopefully by the end of this we will
all understand. But I think it's a whole tenet of
this topic is that it is by its very nature
kind of obnoxious and convoluted.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
So, like you said, the year.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Was divided into twelve months, all of which had thirty
or thirty one days, except February, which contain twenty.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
This is a quote, by the way, from long Staff,
which can.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Take twenty eight days in common years and to twenty
nine in every fourth year, a leap year of three
hundred and sixty six days. But there was a much
exactly like you said, Ben, there was just a much
more idiotic application of the leap year than when we
see today. Back then, according to long Staff, leap years
(28:50):
repeated February twenty third, there was no February twenty ninth
in the Julian calendar. But though this correction was included,
who correct this problem going forward? It did not, however,
fix the whole thing. Much like the various new improvements
upon the calendar, they fixed a few things, but there
(29:11):
were some problems that remained on the table.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
So what's the deal, Ben, What did it not quite get.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Right most things? Okay, yeah, I don't know. It's just
like Noel, it sounds. The way this sounds reminds me
of those really overly complicated tabletop board games exactly where
someone's like, hey, this is really fun, but the first
night we hang out, it's going to be four hours
of us trying to understand the rules Wingspan.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
You guys ever played Access to Allies before?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (29:42):
So much fun? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Well yeah after that first time.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
Yes, that's what they call the learning curve.
Speaker 6 (29:47):
But I would argue, though, Ben, at the end of
the day, those games are understandable, and you know, you
have to take you a little time to wrap your
head around it, but once you do, it kind of
becomes second nature.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
We've been talking about this for forty five minutes now,
and I still have no idea why any of this
calendar stuff matters.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
So the Julian calendar to get out of the weeds here.
The Julian calendar had a lot of problems. It was
definitely more accurate than the previous lunar calendars.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
But accurate to what though? Is what? I don't quite understand.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Less bad would be a better but no, But but
what are we going for?
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Why can't we just say three hundred sixty five days
and it starts over at the end of three hundred
sixt five days? Like what are we trying to account
for or match up with? Is it about we have
that peasc quarter? No, No, I understand, guys, But I
guess my question in general is just about the necessity
for calendars, Like what are we tracking? Like what as
(30:49):
long as we know it's three hundred and twety five
days and we can roughly predict this is around when
winter is, like, what is the purpose of it being
perfectly tracked to seasons?
Speaker 1 (31:01):
The inaccuracies are like compound interest. They add up over
time such that if they if it's not continually corrected,
then at some point the calendar will be so off
base that.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Yeah, it'll be all completely I okay, thank you, Ben.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Of all the scholars and writers and very smart people,
you are the one. Not that I'm saying you're you're
among those ranks, but you are the one that finally made.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
A click for me. So I appreciate them.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Hey man, we're still not fixing the problem.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
I've literally wrapped my head around that. Though it makes sense.
It's compound problem that over time would cause the measurement
of all time before to be irrelevant or to be
in some way like there's no more continuity.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Right, And popes are super pissed about this. Yes, coots
in general, one of their big things is that holy
days and religious observations have to be made to a
pattern at the same time, so you can't just sort
(32:15):
of vibe out the birth of Christ or whatever. So
they start trying to improve the Julian calendar, which lands
them fifteen hundred years later at something called the Gregorian calendar.
And it's all because this guy gets pissed about Easter
being moved and Easter is still just very confusing to me.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Well that's another thing too, about a lot of this
stuff is it can be highly political, politicized.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Right, And just to jump in here, the Julian calendar
wasn't really that far off with the Gregoran calendar. The
number of finals eleven minutes and fourteen seconds too short.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
A lot negligible. But I guess over time, over time
that all that up.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
M hm, you know, you'll let eleven minutes slide next thing,
you know.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
And also correction, I said too short, too long, I
said that too long.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Oh, I thought it was a shout out to too
short love.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
It just occurred to me, you guys, what's up? You
know what pontiffs do.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Pontificate? Damn right, nice, I love this language. So it's
February twenty fourth, fifteen eighty two, and as you said, Noel,
the Pope has pontificated a bit. And the Pope dropped
a papal bull he did, yeah, yeah, because back then
like a papal bull was sort of the equivalent of
(33:39):
elon musk tweety exactly. So the Pope puts out this
all gas, no breaks proclamation and it's uh, it's called
inter gravismash and this this idea is, Look, we got
to get these calendars in order, and we got to
figure out Easter. So we're gonna we're going to reassess
(34:03):
the stuff. We concluded at the first Council of Nicea
and they said, okay, Easter is a movable feast, shout
out to so much American literature written about that.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Let's just move it. Then, what's the problem, right, Let's
just move the feast.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
And so they said, okay, the problem is that because
we got it off by eleven minutes, we're encountering religious
implications because the most important days in our religion, in
our school of spiritual thought, are not going to be consistent.
(34:38):
So we have to figure out what's happening. The Pope
is saying, you know, about one day every one hundred
and thirty years, Easter's going to be messed up, and
there will be a domino effect. If Easter is messed up,
Pentecost is going to be messed up the seventh Sunday
after Easter. You know that might touch on these non
(34:58):
Christian pagan festivals. I gotta fix this, and they, you know,
his his boys were like, well, Greg, if you're the pope,
you should.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
Just fix it. Man.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Remember that really offensive pope voice I used to do.
I liked it did aswell, and it's kind of like
the Mario voice. But I do love the idea of
the pope kind of being an Italian cartoon.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
You know, there have been a lot of Italian cartoons
about ill Pope up as we called them on the show.
We'll always Love It and Pope Greg's real name is
Ugo Bagnini.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
Ugo bon Campangni, bum.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Eyes back back. Uh. So there is a weird panic
amidst the populace when Greg says, all right, all churches,
which are basically the community seats. At this point, he says, okay,
all churches get rid of ten from the calendar, just
give it up for God.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
What do we do with it? Papa?
Speaker 1 (36:05):
But what do we do? Is that super specific on
that point. Immediately he says, look, we've talked about this
on stuff. They want you to know. He says, all right, Thursday,
October fourth, you're going to go to sleep. When you
wake up tomorrow, it's going to be Friday, October fifteenth.
(36:25):
So he chose this cut because it was a relatively
quiet time for the spiritual calendar. Right there. Weren't big, big,
you know, big ticket items. And then he said, also,
we're going to have we're going to fix the calendar.
We're going to take this opportunity to clean things up.
And here's where the rules get complicated. I suggest one
(36:50):
of us just through.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah, it's not much different than the earlier description of
what leap year was.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Buckle up, y'all.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Rather than adding a date of the month of February
every four years, as the Julian calendar did, the system
would add a leap day only in those years whose
numbers can be evenly divided by four, with the exception
being those years that are also divisible by one hundred.
Last they are also divisible by four hundred. For example,
the year's sixteen hundred.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
Oh my god, I want to die. It reminds me
of likeho after CE. Except for all the times that
we do this after C and F.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
You you know, it reminds me of like a Monty
Python sketch.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
And again again I want to say, these are good
faith efforts. These are very smart people doing the best
they can get it. Man, but still right. So this
is this is where we want to go to. What
years are leap years? From our neighbors up north, our
good friends in Canada.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
Literally Canada, literally just from Canada.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Actual Government of Canada says the following, the year two thousand,
like the years nineteen ninety six and two thousand and four,
is a leap year with twenty nine days in February,
but the years nineteen hundred, nineteen ninety nine, two thousand
and one, two thousand and two, two thousand and three,
two thousand and five, and twenty one hundred are not
(38:17):
leap yeers, I have only twenty eight days in February.
If I were an extraterrestrial and I landed on this
planet and somewhat explained that to me I would.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Leave, I would vaporize everyone like Mars attack style.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
I might get out of my face with this nonsense.
You do not deserve to live so.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Because of this, because the weird rules about being divisible
by one hundred or divisible by four hundred.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
But where does the is that just arbitrary? Where does
that come from? What purpose do these these maths.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Play descended from a kind of descended from an awkward
compromise between religious observances and secular or scientific observances of
the heavens. So they're trying to square two things that
don't necessarily vibe.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
To get pretty unsquareable.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Now that makes sense, and I guess that honestly, if
at the end of the day we had to really
account for where all of this nonsense comes from. Like
many things, that is that push and pull between science
and faith.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yeah. You know what, now that we know this, we
don't have to agree, but we as a group understand
why the year's twenty one hundred or twenty two hundred
will not be leap years. Let's go back to our
buddy Greg when he releases his new like manifesto about
(39:51):
the calendar. A lot of Europe instantly goes along with
it because they are Catholics, and so the state RELI.
So if the Pope says it is so, it is so.
The wave of a hand, the wave of a hand,
the tip of a fancy hat. The issue is not
all countries in Europe by this point are Catholic. They're
(40:14):
Protestant countries. And they say, well, who is this Pope
Greg guy to tell us what to do? Where are
members of the c Exactly? Yeah, And so this is
where we uh, this is where we see other people
coming up with their own pitches. John D. Famously a
(40:34):
servant of Queen Elizabeth. He says, hey, I'm pretty smart
alchemy and he is super into it.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
Yeah, I thought so. Mystical pursuits.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah, likely a bit of a secular fellow, I would think,
with you know, being that he was a man of
science but also a man of mystics. Perhaps a little
devil worship on the side, well, you know, just a
just a healthy dose, healthy, healthy dose of the devil.
He does claim, though, to have improved like many before
him on the calendar. That's true, like many before So
(41:10):
I don't think he got picked up though for whatever
reason it despite his buddy buddy ness.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
With the Queen. Do we know about it? Like, was
it good?
Speaker 2 (41:18):
This guy, for all, by all accounts that we've looked into,
was a pretty sharp Can you be a sharp cookie?
Speaker 4 (41:24):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, he definitely was. He was kind of, to be
quite honest, he was kind of a double O seven
right to day. He was a spymaster. Yes, so he
had other stuff going on, but he was a sharp,
smart cookie. And his calendar, although it never really got
the widespread approval that other calendars got, his was more
(41:48):
scientifically accurate.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Isn't that fine?
Speaker 2 (41:50):
That's the thing about calendars, right, it doesn't really work
like I've got my own calendar and everybody else is
done like this, you know, globally adopted calendar, but not me.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
I go my own way. I marched to the beat
of a different drummer.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
North Korea, various religious calendars.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
Oh yeah, as an individual, if I love it.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
As a citizen of the United States, decided to adopt
a different calendary, it would just not be functional because
nothing would line up.
Speaker 4 (42:15):
I wouldn't be able to make appointments in my diary.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
You wouldn't say, for instance, oh, do you mean Knowles day? Yes,
you mean the FARTI starts of septilembern there is. I'm
gonna adopt my own NU medical system too. It's all
gonna sound like a Kia furniture. We see this often happen,
by the way, in human social revolutions, like in the
French Revolution.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Symbolic like, you know, you don't want to use the
calendar of the oppressor, right.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Yeah, For like twelve years the French government had their
own revolutionary calendar and it did not work out. Spoiler.
By the way, you go to France, they were using
the same calendars most people, unless you were in North
Korea more a couple of other places in the world.
But this idea becomes it becomes like a back and
(43:10):
forth of bureaucracy. Catholic countries have already dated their new
year from January first for some time, and Scotland eventually
adopts January first as the beginning of the new year
in sixteen hundred. England stays with March twenty fifth for
(43:31):
a while until until England and Scotland have to cooperate
more closely and they have to adopt the same calendar.
It just goes on and on and on and on.
Happy February twenty ninth. Everybody, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (43:46):
It's a twenty second What are you doing your own
calendar thing?
Speaker 4 (43:50):
Man?
Speaker 1 (43:51):
We are all calendars of our own, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
I guess this begs the question, though, is the modern
version of leap year quote unquote right? Though I still
don't fully understand what right would even entail. I'm I'm
not a math surgeon.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
So the problem is it's it's kind of like the
same problem with representing continence on a map, because Earth
is round and presenting a three D surface on a
two D medium leads to accuracy.
Speaker 5 (44:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
Right, So with the Gregorian calendar, it's pretty good, but
it's still not perfect. The difference isn't huge, but the
interest and the discrepancies compound. So according to folks like
Brad Plumber over a vox, by the year four thousand,
nine hundred and nine, there will be a whole extra day,
(44:50):
just like left over time.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
They get it. I do get it. The over long
enough timeline. This stuff adds up and causes things to
shift if you don't taken into account that extra time.
And so it's almost like the periodic maintenance time. Maintenance
is what Leapier is.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
And the conversation continues today. We're past the ridiculous history part.
We're into the ridiculous present. As you may understand. Now, folks,
if you're getting a spidery sense about this, you're absolutely correct.
People are still beefed up.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
About the calendar.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Well, Max, I can't remember if we were saying this
on the air or not, but you apparently found an
article from Forbes that was so that's what's the word persnickety,
I guess are so kind of nagging the idea of
Leapier that it basically made you decide to accept it
despite this individual.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
So there's these two guys or I think they used
to be at John Hopkins University, named Steve Hank and
Richard Henry who devised this calendar that's like it's called
the Hank Henry Permanent Calendar, where it's like it's it.
Speaker 4 (46:02):
Would make every year. Henry isn't Hank short for Henry.
That's sorry, that's just funny. Yeah, it's pretty funny. But
it's just like, you know, there's a lot to it.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
I'm not going to break it down, but I found
an article and forms from Hank, and he's so.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
Angry that I'm kind of like.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
The fact that we're not going to accumulate it another
day until nearly the year five thousand, which I, as
the guy who wrote the episode about nuke's being lost
in multiple places of our world, pretty sure we won't
make it that far. So it's just like, I don't
really think I don't really think I care anymore about this.
(46:40):
It's just like we got a no. I'm kind of
with you, like we got it good enough. That's fine
with me. I don't think we need to change. It's
good enough.
Speaker 4 (46:47):
Just just tell me what to do, just tell me
what not, you know.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
And you know, now we've got computers and they update automatically,
so it's not like you really have to be that
tuned into what's going on. Is it that big a deal? Honestly,
it's less agree just in daylight savings.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
That's the get rid of daily saving time.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
And I'm fine, guys, I'm gonna do my own calendar.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
I think you should.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
The ben Cow, the Bolland Brown Calendar, Bolander, the bolandert yees.
Speaker 4 (47:14):
Well, a happy leap Day, Happy Leap Year today?
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Right?
Speaker 4 (47:19):
We did We did this coming out Okay, okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
This is the first time we've ever I think, done
this where we have the episode coming out on the
actual day.
Speaker 4 (47:28):
It's called a tent pole episode. Yeah, so this is
for you. We do these.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Things and we cannot do them without so many people
that we want to thank. First off, you ridiculous historians
for tuning in. Secondly, our super producer research associate mister
Max Williams. You know who I bet absolutely loves going
back and forth on nitpicky things about calendars.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Is it Jonathan Strickland the Quistern, It is Jonathan strickly
Deka the quister I bet aj Jacobs, the puzzler would
also enjoy doing that, would do it in a much
more good natured way.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
A little bit more of the way of the open
hands with that guy. Yeah. Thanks also do Alex Williams,
who composed this slapping bob. Thanks to Christopher osiotis Eve's
Jeff cot Gay Blues Yer, uh got carrot talk. I
don't know why not?
Speaker 4 (48:18):
Oh, why, but.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Why Julian Caesar, Julian Lennon, No, oh, let it go,
Bonocampia or whatever his name was, no Hugo the film
The Amanda appreciate this film by Martin.
Speaker 4 (48:32):
Scorsaza and Noel.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Thanks to you. Happy Happy leap heer buddy.
Speaker 4 (48:37):
Is it a holiday though we're working? No?
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Really, I'll see it next time, folks. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Shout out to our super producer mister
Max Williams on this of all days.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, Max leap Year Williams, Quantum Leapier Williams.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
And shout out to thirty Rock for Leapier Williams. Shout
out to Noel Brown. I am Ben Bollen. We have
a little bit of a poem that we would like
to perform for you at the top of today's show.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Can I first ask, though, do we have intel on
who this Mother Goose character really was?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
It wasn't one person, Okay, they're pretty sure of that.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Okay, Yeah, probably Gary Oldman could definitely play a Mother
Goose type figure. Do you remember that Mother Goose show
with Shelley Duval where it was she would like.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Very racy for Disney.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, it was a little bit I suppose, but she
would like I guess she sort of hosted it and
there was like different nursery rhymes and fables that would
be played out by various actors. But yeah, Mother Goose
a sort of I guess Hodgepodge amalgam of the childhood
lore and brother rock and Rhyme.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
That's a good one.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, the way was it? Well, the Shelley devaal one
was different though it was just called like right dang
right rock and rhyme. Holy cow, I know, yeah, I
remember that hat. She has this big, giant like beetlejuice
like type has.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Yeah, a little Richard Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I'm sorry, Ben, I wasp in my mind, I was
picturing something less rockin and Ryman.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I was such a I remember being such a straight
waisd kid that when I saw Mother Goose's rock and Rhyme,
I immediately thought it was too racy. And I told
my parents I snitched up. Oh my god, yeah, I know,
I know, And they said something like thirty days half September, April, June,
(02:31):
and November. All the rest have thirty one excepting February.
A lawn and that has twenty eight days clear and
twenty nine in each sleep year.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
You know, you had me until the last two lines,
and then it just felt like a little convoluted, a
little overstuffed.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
You know, you didn't like rhyming a lawn with thirty one.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I mean that was a youth thing. No, no, no, no,
I no, I was sold up until that lone. It's
the last two. I always felt like this. The last
two lines of this poem felt very tacked on, and
honestly I thought for the longest time.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
That they were, like, not part of the original poem.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
This is some addendum to explain leapier to idiot children,
and that has twenty eight days clear at twenty nine
and each I guess it does rhyme leapier. What the
hell is a leapier? I've never fully understood, And I
know I probably know enough at least to shepherd my
part of this episode through, and I will, but for
the sake of questions out in the audience and the
(03:32):
ridiculous historians of the world, Leapier is always, I think
too many been a little bit of a daunting kind
of head scratcher, like what is it about? What is
its purpose? When is it?
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Why is it?
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Why? Where do you get off work?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
You don't? Actually is it like an eclipse. It is
an interclarie date. It is added every four years to
make up for the imperfections of the human calendar.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Except for the four years where it doesn't get at it.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Except for those four years.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Now, Yeah, I understood, and now I no, No, it's okay, man, No,
we'll get to it, don't right, We're getting to it.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah, so okay, there you have quite astute observation about
that nursery rhyme, because you're not the only one who
feels it is weird. Yeah, once they add February Max,
Max also doesn't get it.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I do love No, sorry, bet, it's only just not
hitting me or rhyming of thirty one with Alum.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
That's very English, great tales of you.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
We're working with what we have, I know, which is
also a statement about the calendar system. The thing is,
February has always been one of the most anomalois of months.
It is typically the shortest month, with only two twenty
eight days, and then every once in a while they
(05:05):
add a twenty ninth day. And if you are listening
to this episode, the day it comes out, welcome to
leap Here, it's February twenty ninth. Happy birthday. I guess
to a small percentage of the population, that's got.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
To be real.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Talking to someone recently, I don't remember who was, but
it's like they had a sibling who's anniversary of the
twenty ninth.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
What do they do other years?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Exactly? This is the day that doesn't exist. It's it's
it's like the thirteenth floor, you know.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
That reminds me of what is it? Sideways Stories from
Wayside High right?
Speaker 2 (05:42):
That was one of those good Scholastic series kind of right, yeah,
book fair fodder. But no, I didn't look okay. I
think my I'm sorry, I'm coming in hot on this.
I seem like I'm really mad at leap here, and
I guess I kind of am. But I'm also just
kind of mad at America's I me guess it's more
than just America. But it's certain things that just remain
(06:04):
the same because they always.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Were, because they were normally.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Right, you know, like like not using the metric system
for example, that is a gripe against America.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
It makes no sense and it makes us look look foolish.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I don't know, I'm gonna say this right now. After
researching this, I came into it with that stance, and
then seeing the alternative, I'm like, no, actually, I'm kind
of fine keeping with the Greg Goryan calendar.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
I don't mind the leap year.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
I don't want to know mostly products that I read
an article written by the person who really wants to
change it. I'm like, you are so petty. I want
to keep the Greg Goryan calendar to spite you.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
It's sort of like it's sort of like that old
quote about democracy, democracy, and the worst one except for
all the other one.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And then you read my mind. It's almost like we
hang out a lot. I was literally thinking the same thing.
That is very accurate.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
It is.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, I mean sometimes you got it, like you said,
like we do here on the show. You got to
do the best with what you've got, and even if
it is imperfect, sometimes imperfect is many times better than
the alternative.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
And we're gonna find out why.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Honestly, I'm gonna learn along with you guys here because
I know the basics, but some of the details I'm
kind of keeping as a surprise.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
We should also do, by the way etymology or providence
of the names for days of the week. Oh love
that that's gonna be a fun way. Yeah, yeah, of course.
Right now, we're all learning together here. We want to
start with Alan Longstaff, who writes for the National Maritime
Museum in two thousand and five and says the following.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
All human societies have developed ways to determine the length
of the year, when the year should begin, and how
to divide into manageable units of time, such as months, weeks,
and days.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
And then he talks about how people have always tried
to do this with I'm gonna be honest, midling success.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I bet Alan Longstaff has sort of a big jumbo
type situation.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
What do you guys think? I hope so much.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
Is.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
He also notes that people don't really as a species
remember when folks started counting the passage of time. It
is such an old trend, such an old impetus. That
is earliest civilization since time immemorial.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Dare we say, because yeah, it does make sense, because
without some sort of codified way of keeping track of time,
the mind almost loses form, you know what I mean,
Like it loses it's a sense of self and sense
of order of operations and just things like it really
(08:49):
is such a we're so used to it being, you know,
just a staple of human civilization that think about the alternative,
like what if there was no way of counting time?
Speaker 4 (08:59):
You just becod of like floating willy nilly in space.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Like that deep time experiment we talked about a little
while back, maybe last year, when a bunch of French
researchers locked those folks in a cave.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Remember how'd that go? Flies each other? It went?
Speaker 1 (09:21):
It got weird because for most of human history people
existed growing, gathering, and hunting food. So you moved with
the seasons, right you Before the advent of the electric light,
there was one big light. It was the sun. And
when when the sun was gone, you know, you were
(09:44):
you were kind of done for the day, unless you
were up to skullduggery.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Nothing good happens after the sun goes down, or all
the good things happen after.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
The sun goes down, depends on who you are.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
But it even reminds me of like, you know, the
idea of being shipwrecked perhaps or in prison?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
What did people do?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
They mark the passage of time like with tick marks,
you know, on a stone or on the wall or whatever,
because it keeps you sane. It's a way, it's just
a very human impulse. And the question is sort of
a chicken or the egg thing, like do we keep
track of time because we always have kept track of time?
Or do we keep track of time because our minds,
(10:23):
and you know, constitutions kind of crave it.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
That's true. Right, to what degree does the mind require structure?
And to what degree does the mind impose structure? Right?
And how closely related are those things? We know that
for early civilizations they were vary in tune with the
passage of the natural world. So they would know that
a winter was coming up, right, and they would be
(10:48):
able to predict to some degree how difficult that winter
might be. They would definitely know they needed to conserve
food or figure something out before the weather turned on them.
It's also weird because the idea of a year being
three hundred and sixty five days long dates all the
(11:11):
way back to four thousand and five hundred BCE. We
don't know exactly when it happened, but we know by
that point Egyptian civilization had already said, okay, this is
what a year is. They were like, everybody, be cool,
there'll be eclipses, there'll be a solstice or two.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
It's interesting to the need to compartmentalize time in that
way too, like, isn't it enough just to measure it
day to day? At what point did someone realize, no,
we need to catalog history, and in order to do that,
we have to have larger units of time. So good
on the Egyptians because we're still rocking that three hundred
(11:49):
and sixty five day a year calendar to this day.
And again, this is a level of precision and thought
that is well beyond that of what you were talking
about Ben just tracking light for purposes of crops and
hunting and whatever. You know, the way the conditions changed,
this was something that was very tied to seriously religious
(12:10):
beliefs and you know, being able to have certain benchmarks
in the year that would involve worship, you know, of
deities and festivals and things like that.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, the sun is mad at us. We have to
keep sacrificing people. What if it never comes back.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
I'm sure ancient civilizations there were plenty of folks that
worried about that.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Do you guys know in the in Skyroom how the
Thalmore got the Khajit to ally with them? I do
not they take credits for bringing back the moons, because
the moons decide what type of Khijit you are. There's
like fifteen different we only see one of them in
the games. Was kind of kind of lay well, So far,
(12:55):
so far, so far. Aren't the kajit the ones that
are all hopped up on that moon sugar? Yeah, well
moon sugar in it, but it's may use it to
make schooma correct. They are profiled as move as drug dealers.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
So you're saying that I'm I'm being stereotypical for fictional video.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Not you, not you.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I'm just saying that's like.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Also, they almost went they almost went extinct when pellan
Ol White Strike was running through just killing everyone and
streaming weird things out in the first era because you
thought they were all else.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Episode.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
No, we're friends. I know. Look, I will say this.
I got the the new version of.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Skyrim and there was some update and all of a sudden,
it wasn't loading, and I thought my save game had
been corrupted.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
But it turns out because of all the little add ons.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Where you can do these customized things and creator whatever
content created, there was some kind of glitch where it
was trying desperately to connect to the internet and it
wasn't working, and so it would just hang up, and
when I turned internet connection off it worked like a charm.
But boy, am I loving replaying that game and I'm
gonna finish it by God this time.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
But yeah, no, it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
I mean, Skyrim is a depiction in video game form
of an ancient ancient civilization with superstitions and religion and rituals.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
There we go. Yeah, it's squaring the it's squaring the
spirituality and the science.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
It's actually, if you look at the big picture, it
is a relatively recent development in human civilization to separate
the idea of secular science and spirituality or religion. So
when people are figuring out calendars, they are looking at
the passage of the heavens, right, and they're assigning any
sort of cultural framework to it. The three primary calendar
(14:50):
types are gonna be the solar calendar, how does the
sun move? The lunar calendar what's going on with the moon?
And then the loney solar calendar, which is, how can
we make this more accurate or more complicated or.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Both I'm sorry, the Looney solar calendar.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
The other the one where the sun has like a
crazy face drawn on him.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Yes, he's okay, cool, that's the one. The it's the
inspiration for the ancient religion of Looney Tunes.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, exactly, classic religion and This was again developed in
a different part of Egypt and northern Egypt, and this
was in order to keep tally of when the birth
of raw came back around.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, he was. He was pretty popular. He's kind of
like the tailor Swift of his day.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
He's the sun god, right mm hm yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Early Hunters would migrate from Spain through France into what
we call the British Isles today, and those folks are
credited with creating a type of lunar calendar around thirty
four hundred to thirty three hundred BCE before Common Era.
And then there are other Obviously, the oldest calendars are
(16:02):
in places like Mesopotamia, right, like Sumerian stuff. You can
also see it in Greco Roman history. Of course, you
can see it in ancient Chinese kingdoms. But it wasn't
until Max maybe laugh here. It wasn't until one guy
in particular took over the Roman Empire that humanity got
(16:25):
their very first calendar that we're focusing on today. His
name Julius Caesar. He died, but a salad remains. You
can kill a man, but not an idea, dude.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I thought for the longest time that the Caesar salad
was something to do Julius Caesar. Not in the case,
not at all, was invented in Tijuana, Mexico, at a
hotel unrelated to Julius Caesar.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
The guy may well have never eaten a green in
his life.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Like archimedies. Screw right, Archimedies had very little to do
with that. The Julian A lot.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
Of people think the same thing about the Caesar salad, right.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Of course, yeah, I think we both did so. I
think that's otherwise. The Julian calendar is the predecessor of
the Gregorian calendar. So before salad our salad Dad becomes
the emperor, Roman society had been using something called the
Roman Republican calendar, and it was you know, obviously it's
(17:32):
pre Christian, and the way they explained it was through mythology.
That's how they rationalized their scientific observations. They said, hey,
you guys, remember Romulus, the guy who founded Rome. He
also said this is how time works.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Yeah he did, and once again, being first to market
with an idea, you know, it tends.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
To take hold. So this is around seven thirty eight PC.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
The dating system was actually, though likely the product of
evolution from the Greek lunar calendar, which was in turn
stolen from the Babylonian calendar. I guess I don't know.
Can you steal an idea for a calendar? Is it
just about giving credit? I'm sure they didn't give credit
to the Babylonians.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
They probably felt that the preceding systems of time measurement
were normalized, and they they in each iteration, they felt
they were improving on it, even when that was not
necessarily the case.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And sometimes it was the case, but yes, not always necessarily.
So this is the thing they did. They did in
this case, they did somewhat improve it. They made it
a little less incorrect. However, they did not make it
exactly right.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, yeah, so they this lunar calendar. It's a real
it's a real thward in the side of people who
are obsessed with time because as lunar calendars don't match
up with seasonal cycles of the earth. Weird thing about it,
and shout out to our friends at Encyclopedia Britannica. The
(19:10):
original Roman Republic calendar had ten months, had a total
year of three hundred and four days, and then they
had sixty one and one quarter leftover days.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
And they over days, call us you need some extra days,
no rules.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
So they had a gap, a pretty prominent gap during
the winter season. It took a couple of centuries for
everybody in Rome to say, hang on a tick.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
This time I talked right.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
At least if you're watching the television series Rome, wherever
explicably has British.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Accents, right, they're like something not quite ticktyboo hit.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
They called each other governor all alls not right? The
agora right.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
So, uh, there's a ruler you may or may not
have heard of. Numa Pompilius.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Numa Pompilius is credited with being the inventor of January. Basic,
what a flex that is. He's like, I'm inventing a
month and they're like which one. He's like, the first one.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
Yeah, I'm guessing it's named after Janis. Yeah is that right?
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Just yes, Okay, it makes sense, and most of these
are named after gods for the most part, but yeah, Janus.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
I know.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
The film Imprint makes put out some excellent films. What
was Janus the god of is the god of beginnings
gate duality? That's two faces right, Yeah? Actually the logo
Janus Films Criterion baby, check it out.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
But Numa didn't stop there at all. He also said,
we're putting February in the calendar. And at first it
was like, we're putting it at the end, and they
were like the Emperor's crazy man.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
But who's what? What's February named after? I have no idea.
I know a lot of them, but I don't know
that one.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
So the original name FEBRUARYUS, you know, like Aquarius, FEBRUARYUS is.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Generally roll off the tongue, doesn't.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
It's not, you know, maybe it's our American accents, but
it comes from the Latin term februm purification.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Yeah, it was a festival actually of purification. For some reason,
a festival of purification sounds potentially nasty, clean yourself up exactly.
The idea was for it to be at the end,
but then it was initially in four to fifty two BCE,
moved between January and March, which, you know, that makes sense,
(21:53):
that's that's the one.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
Sure, that's what we know.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
And once again, all of these things, when you when
you examine them, you know, the way we are here,
they seem so arbitrary. But then something like the months
of the year it's like heresy to think that February
would be at the end, Like, what an idiotic idea?
Speaker 4 (22:13):
But is it an idiotic idea?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
It's just kind of a thing that it was a
choice that could have been made.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
And it's like cleaning yourself up at the end.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Yeah, it's just I guess was it was it political
pressure that led to it being moved.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
It was another attempt at accuracy and a great reckoning
of how to how to better quantify the passage of
the Earth in space, which is a very difficult question
to ask, you know.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
So they and they barely understood any of the science
of it, and they're literally looking at sun up sundown
gets cold around this time, but they don't know anything
about the Earth being round or rotating, or what the
celestial bodies represented, or how the tides worked or anything
like that.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Right, some people did, but but there was not a uniform,
agreed upon consent, Like there wasn't a consensus about this.
There were a lot of very smart people at the
time who were able to measure these things, but they
didn't have the benefit of the global communication network that
humans enjoy today. So that's why it would take like
(23:20):
centuries for people to agree that something was screwy with
the calendar. I mean, this pursuit of accuracy, which is
noble and well intentioned, had a lot of bumps along
the way. The Roman calendar, by the first century BCE,
was a messy bull of spaghetti. It was super confused.
(23:42):
They said, Okay, we're making it a lunar calendar. It's
going to be three hundred and fifty five days long.
But that's like a little more than ten days shorter
than the solar year. So every so often they would
just add an extra month called Sedonius, just to just
(24:02):
to keep the calendar I did, sort of in step
with the seasons.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Having it have a name, a special name, makes it
feel a little more festive to me.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yes, well, no, you might like the alternate calendar proposition
that's going around now.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
We'll get to that later though.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Oh I see, Okay, there's this other thing too.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
There's a lot of like investment in state or spiritual
powers and institutions. Who gets to say what day or
what year it is? Who gets the futs with the calendar?
The College of Pontiffs, the Pontiffects Maximus, those folks had
the authority to change the calendar.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Well, you know, maybe you know, a lesser scholar, perhaps,
you know, you could, you could certainly give your pitch like, hey,
I got this, I got this new calendar.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
You know, check it out. Here's my power point, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
But ultimately, the authority to adopt a new calendar lay
with like the you know, the high mucketymunks of the time.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yes, it very much. Pontiff is what is a pontiff?
A pontiff is like an ecclesiastical figure, like a bishop
of pope. It's like a uniformed officer for a church.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Isn't it funny though, how the passage of time has
a tendency to be associated with religion.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Because because again like all of the connections to the
various phases of time and the nature and all of that,
and then the way they are connected with religious deities,
and that carries on to things like the Gregorian calendar of.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Course, ah Greg yeah, classic, classic Greg. So they still
have all these problems with the Julian calendar. Uh, the
by the forties, sorry the forties BCE, the Roman secular
calendar is three months ahead of the solar calendar. It
(26:08):
doesn't make sense, it's bad for business. Caesar himself talks
to astronomer from Alexandria who introduces the Egyptian solar calendar,
and then they agree based on the thing the Egyptians
had already figured out that the year should be three
hundred and sixty five and wait for it, one fourth days.
(26:31):
Wait a minute, hang on a tick.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I guess, I guess a quarter leftover days is better
than like sixty some odd But what how does how
doth one measure a quarter of a day? I mean,
I know that you you know, you guess, of course
you can, but how does that figure in? And it
seems like an unfortunate remainder.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Right, right, But it's fortunate for us because we're doing
an episode on leap here.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
So al right, leap Day does fill time and give
the people the content they crave.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Shout out to Leap Day, Williams and thirty Rock. The
Julian calendar is at this point, it's divided into twelve months,
and all of these months asterisk have thirty or thirty
one days. The asterisk is February it has twenty eight days,
and every fourth year asterisk it gets an extra day,
(27:29):
So every fourth year a February twenty ninth occurs. There is,
it's a leap year of three hundred and sixty six days. However,
as our pal Max points out, they used to make
it even more complicated.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I still don't understand why, Like, why can't it is
to account for variations in the light and the way
seasons occur over long timeline. Yeah, the idea is they're.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Trying to reconcile earlier calindrical miscalculations.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
I see.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Okay, Well, hopefully by the end of this we will
all understand. But I think it's a whole tenet of
this topic is that it is by its very nature
kind of obnoxious and convoluted.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
So, like you said, the year.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Was divided into twelve months, all of which had thirty
or thirty one days, except February, which contain twenty.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
This is a quote, by the way, from long Staff,
which can.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Take twenty eight days in common years and to twenty
nine in every fourth year, a leap year of three
hundred and sixty six days. But there was a much
exactly like you said, Ben, there was just a much
more idiotic application of the leap year than when we
see today. Back then, according to long Staff, leap years
(28:50):
repeated February twenty third, there was no February twenty ninth
in the Julian calendar. But though this correction was included,
who correct this problem going forward? It did not, however,
fix the whole thing. Much like the various new improvements
upon the calendar, they fixed a few things, but there
(29:11):
were some problems that remained on the table.
Speaker 4 (29:13):
So what's the deal, Ben, What did it not quite get.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Right most things? Okay, yeah, I don't know. It's just
like Noel, it sounds. The way this sounds reminds me
of those really overly complicated tabletop board games exactly where
someone's like, hey, this is really fun, but the first
night we hang out, it's going to be four hours
of us trying to understand the rules Wingspan.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
You guys ever played Access to Allies before?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (29:42):
So much fun? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Well yeah after that first time.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
Yes, that's what they call the learning curve.
Speaker 6 (29:47):
But I would argue, though, Ben, at the end of
the day, those games are understandable, and you know, you
have to take you a little time to wrap your
head around it, but once you do, it kind of
becomes second nature.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
We've been talking about this for forty five minutes now,
and I still have no idea why any of this
calendar stuff matters.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
So the Julian calendar to get out of the weeds here.
The Julian calendar had a lot of problems. It was
definitely more accurate than the previous lunar calendars.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
But accurate to what though? Is what? I don't quite understand.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Less bad would be a better but no, But but
what are we going for?
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Why can't we just say three hundred sixty five days
and it starts over at the end of three hundred
sixt five days? Like what are we trying to account
for or match up with? Is it about we have
that peasc quarter? No, No, I understand, guys, But I
guess my question in general is just about the necessity
for calendars, Like what are we tracking? Like what as
(30:49):
long as we know it's three hundred and twety five
days and we can roughly predict this is around when
winter is, like, what is the purpose of it being
perfectly tracked to seasons?
Speaker 1 (31:01):
The inaccuracies are like compound interest. They add up over
time such that if they if it's not continually corrected,
then at some point the calendar will be so off
base that.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Yeah, it'll be all completely I okay, thank you, Ben.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Of all the scholars and writers and very smart people,
you are the one. Not that I'm saying you're you're
among those ranks, but you are the one that finally made.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
A click for me. So I appreciate them.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Hey man, we're still not fixing the problem.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
I've literally wrapped my head around that. Though it makes sense.
It's compound problem that over time would cause the measurement
of all time before to be irrelevant or to be
in some way like there's no more continuity.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Right, And popes are super pissed about this. Yes, coots
in general, one of their big things is that holy
days and religious observations have to be made to a
pattern at the same time, so you can't just sort
(32:15):
of vibe out the birth of Christ or whatever. So
they start trying to improve the Julian calendar, which lands
them fifteen hundred years later at something called the Gregorian calendar.
And it's all because this guy gets pissed about Easter
being moved and Easter is still just very confusing to me.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Well that's another thing too, about a lot of this
stuff is it can be highly political, politicized.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Right, And just to jump in here, the Julian calendar
wasn't really that far off with the Gregoran calendar. The
number of finals eleven minutes and fourteen seconds too short.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
A lot negligible. But I guess over time, over time
that all that up.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
M hm, you know, you'll let eleven minutes slide next thing,
you know.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
And also correction, I said too short, too long, I
said that too long.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Oh, I thought it was a shout out to too
short love.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
It just occurred to me, you guys, what's up? You
know what pontiffs do.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Pontificate? Damn right, nice, I love this language. So it's
February twenty fourth, fifteen eighty two, and as you said, Noel,
the Pope has pontificated a bit. And the Pope dropped
a papal bull he did, yeah, yeah, because back then
like a papal bull was sort of the equivalent of
(33:39):
elon musk tweety exactly. So the Pope puts out this
all gas, no breaks proclamation and it's uh, it's called
inter gravismash and this this idea is, Look, we got
to get these calendars in order, and we got to
figure out Easter. So we're gonna we're going to reassess
(34:03):
the stuff. We concluded at the first Council of Nicea
and they said, okay, Easter is a movable feast, shout
out to so much American literature written about that.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Let's just move it. Then, what's the problem, right, Let's
just move the feast.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
And so they said, okay, the problem is that because
we got it off by eleven minutes, we're encountering religious
implications because the most important days in our religion, in
our school of spiritual thought, are not going to be consistent.
(34:38):
So we have to figure out what's happening. The Pope
is saying, you know, about one day every one hundred
and thirty years, Easter's going to be messed up, and
there will be a domino effect. If Easter is messed up,
Pentecost is going to be messed up the seventh Sunday
after Easter. You know that might touch on these non
(34:58):
Christian pagan festivals. I gotta fix this, and they, you know,
his his boys were like, well, Greg, if you're the pope,
you should.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
Just fix it. Man.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Remember that really offensive pope voice I used to do.
I liked it did aswell, and it's kind of like
the Mario voice. But I do love the idea of
the pope kind of being an Italian cartoon.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
You know, there have been a lot of Italian cartoons
about ill Pope up as we called them on the show.
We'll always Love It and Pope Greg's real name is
Ugo Bagnini.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
Ugo bon Campangni, bum.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Eyes back back. Uh. So there is a weird panic
amidst the populace when Greg says, all right, all churches,
which are basically the community seats. At this point, he says, okay,
all churches get rid of ten from the calendar, just
give it up for God.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
What do we do with it? Papa?
Speaker 1 (36:05):
But what do we do? Is that super specific on
that point. Immediately he says, look, we've talked about this
on stuff. They want you to know. He says, all right, Thursday,
October fourth, you're going to go to sleep. When you
wake up tomorrow, it's going to be Friday, October fifteenth.
(36:25):
So he chose this cut because it was a relatively
quiet time for the spiritual calendar. Right there. Weren't big, big,
you know, big ticket items. And then he said, also,
we're going to have we're going to fix the calendar.
We're going to take this opportunity to clean things up.
And here's where the rules get complicated. I suggest one
(36:50):
of us just through.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah, it's not much different than the earlier description of
what leap year was.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Buckle up, y'all.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Rather than adding a date of the month of February
every four years, as the Julian calendar did, the system
would add a leap day only in those years whose
numbers can be evenly divided by four, with the exception
being those years that are also divisible by one hundred.
Last they are also divisible by four hundred. For example,
the year's sixteen hundred.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
Oh my god, I want to die. It reminds me
of likeho after CE. Except for all the times that
we do this after C and F.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
You you know, it reminds me of like a Monty
Python sketch.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
And again again I want to say, these are good
faith efforts. These are very smart people doing the best
they can get it. Man, but still right. So this
is this is where we want to go to. What
years are leap years? From our neighbors up north, our
good friends in Canada.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
Literally Canada, literally just from Canada.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Actual Government of Canada says the following, the year two thousand,
like the years nineteen ninety six and two thousand and four,
is a leap year with twenty nine days in February,
but the years nineteen hundred, nineteen ninety nine, two thousand
and one, two thousand and two, two thousand and three,
two thousand and five, and twenty one hundred are not
(38:17):
leap yeers, I have only twenty eight days in February.
If I were an extraterrestrial and I landed on this
planet and somewhat explained that to me I would.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Leave, I would vaporize everyone like Mars attack style.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
I might get out of my face with this nonsense.
You do not deserve to live so.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Because of this, because the weird rules about being divisible
by one hundred or divisible by four hundred.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
But where does the is that just arbitrary? Where does
that come from? What purpose do these these maths.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Play descended from a kind of descended from an awkward
compromise between religious observances and secular or scientific observances of
the heavens. So they're trying to square two things that
don't necessarily vibe.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
To get pretty unsquareable.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Now that makes sense, and I guess that honestly, if
at the end of the day we had to really
account for where all of this nonsense comes from. Like
many things, that is that push and pull between science
and faith.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yeah. You know what, now that we know this, we
don't have to agree, but we as a group understand
why the year's twenty one hundred or twenty two hundred
will not be leap years. Let's go back to our
buddy Greg when he releases his new like manifesto about
(39:51):
the calendar. A lot of Europe instantly goes along with
it because they are Catholics, and so the state RELI.
So if the Pope says it is so, it is so.
The wave of a hand, the wave of a hand,
the tip of a fancy hat. The issue is not
all countries in Europe by this point are Catholic. They're
(40:14):
Protestant countries. And they say, well, who is this Pope
Greg guy to tell us what to do? Where are
members of the c Exactly? Yeah, And so this is
where we uh, this is where we see other people
coming up with their own pitches. John D. Famously a
(40:34):
servant of Queen Elizabeth. He says, hey, I'm pretty smart
alchemy and he is super into it.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
Yeah, I thought so. Mystical pursuits.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah, likely a bit of a secular fellow, I would think,
with you know, being that he was a man of
science but also a man of mystics. Perhaps a little
devil worship on the side, well, you know, just a
just a healthy dose, healthy, healthy dose of the devil.
He does claim, though, to have improved like many before
him on the calendar. That's true, like many before So
(41:10):
I don't think he got picked up though for whatever
reason it despite his buddy buddy ness.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
With the Queen. Do we know about it? Like, was
it good?
Speaker 2 (41:18):
This guy, for all, by all accounts that we've looked into,
was a pretty sharp Can you be a sharp cookie?
Speaker 4 (41:24):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, he definitely was. He was kind of, to be
quite honest, he was kind of a double O seven
right to day. He was a spymaster. Yes, so he
had other stuff going on, but he was a sharp,
smart cookie. And his calendar, although it never really got
the widespread approval that other calendars got, his was more
(41:48):
scientifically accurate.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Isn't that fine?
Speaker 2 (41:50):
That's the thing about calendars, right, it doesn't really work
like I've got my own calendar and everybody else is
done like this, you know, globally adopted calendar, but not me.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
I go my own way. I marched to the beat
of a different drummer.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
North Korea, various religious calendars.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
Oh yeah, as an individual, if I love it.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
As a citizen of the United States, decided to adopt
a different calendary, it would just not be functional because
nothing would line up.
Speaker 4 (42:15):
I wouldn't be able to make appointments in my diary.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
You wouldn't say, for instance, oh, do you mean Knowles day? Yes,
you mean the FARTI starts of septilembern there is. I'm
gonna adopt my own NU medical system too. It's all
gonna sound like a Kia furniture. We see this often happen,
by the way, in human social revolutions, like in the
French Revolution.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Symbolic like, you know, you don't want to use the
calendar of the oppressor, right.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Yeah, For like twelve years the French government had their
own revolutionary calendar and it did not work out. Spoiler.
By the way, you go to France, they were using
the same calendars most people, unless you were in North
Korea more a couple of other places in the world.
But this idea becomes it becomes like a back and
(43:10):
forth of bureaucracy. Catholic countries have already dated their new
year from January first for some time, and Scotland eventually
adopts January first as the beginning of the new year
in sixteen hundred. England stays with March twenty fifth for
(43:31):
a while until until England and Scotland have to cooperate
more closely and they have to adopt the same calendar.
It just goes on and on and on and on.
Happy February twenty ninth. Everybody, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (43:46):
It's a twenty second What are you doing your own
calendar thing?
Speaker 4 (43:50):
Man?
Speaker 1 (43:51):
We are all calendars of our own, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
I guess this begs the question, though, is the modern
version of leap year quote unquote right? Though I still
don't fully understand what right would even entail. I'm I'm
not a math surgeon.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
So the problem is it's it's kind of like the
same problem with representing continence on a map, because Earth
is round and presenting a three D surface on a
two D medium leads to accuracy.
Speaker 5 (44:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
Right, So with the Gregorian calendar, it's pretty good, but
it's still not perfect. The difference isn't huge, but the
interest and the discrepancies compound. So according to folks like
Brad Plumber over a vox, by the year four thousand,
nine hundred and nine, there will be a whole extra day,
(44:50):
just like left over time.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
They get it. I do get it. The over long
enough timeline. This stuff adds up and causes things to
shift if you don't taken into account that extra time.
And so it's almost like the periodic maintenance time. Maintenance
is what Leapier is.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
And the conversation continues today. We're past the ridiculous history part.
We're into the ridiculous present. As you may understand. Now, folks,
if you're getting a spidery sense about this, you're absolutely correct.
People are still beefed up.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
About the calendar.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Well, Max, I can't remember if we were saying this
on the air or not, but you apparently found an
article from Forbes that was so that's what's the word persnickety,
I guess are so kind of nagging the idea of
Leapier that it basically made you decide to accept it
despite this individual.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
So there's these two guys or I think they used
to be at John Hopkins University, named Steve Hank and
Richard Henry who devised this calendar that's like it's called
the Hank Henry Permanent Calendar, where it's like it's it.
Speaker 4 (46:02):
Would make every year. Henry isn't Hank short for Henry.
That's sorry, that's just funny. Yeah, it's pretty funny. But
it's just like, you know, there's a lot to it.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
I'm not going to break it down, but I found
an article and forms from Hank, and he's so.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
Angry that I'm kind of like.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
The fact that we're not going to accumulate it another
day until nearly the year five thousand, which I, as
the guy who wrote the episode about nuke's being lost
in multiple places of our world, pretty sure we won't
make it that far. So it's just like, I don't
really think I don't really think I care anymore about this.
(46:40):
It's just like we got a no. I'm kind of
with you, like we got it good enough. That's fine
with me. I don't think we need to change. It's
good enough.
Speaker 4 (46:47):
Just just tell me what to do, just tell me
what not, you know.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
And you know, now we've got computers and they update automatically,
so it's not like you really have to be that
tuned into what's going on. Is it that big a deal? Honestly,
it's less agree just in daylight savings.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
That's the get rid of daily saving time.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
And I'm fine, guys, I'm gonna do my own calendar.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
I think you should.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
The ben Cow, the Bolland Brown Calendar, Bolander, the bolandert yees.
Speaker 4 (47:14):
Well, a happy leap Day, Happy Leap Year today?
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Right?
Speaker 4 (47:19):
We did We did this coming out Okay, okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
This is the first time we've ever I think, done
this where we have the episode coming out on the
actual day.
Speaker 4 (47:28):
It's called a tent pole episode. Yeah, so this is
for you. We do these.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Things and we cannot do them without so many people
that we want to thank. First off, you ridiculous historians
for tuning in. Secondly, our super producer research associate mister
Max Williams. You know who I bet absolutely loves going
back and forth on nitpicky things about calendars.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Is it Jonathan Strickland the Quistern, It is Jonathan strickly
Deka the quister I bet aj Jacobs, the puzzler would
also enjoy doing that, would do it in a much
more good natured way.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
A little bit more of the way of the open
hands with that guy. Yeah. Thanks also do Alex Williams,
who composed this slapping bob. Thanks to Christopher osiotis Eve's
Jeff cot Gay Blues Yer, uh got carrot talk. I
don't know why not?
Speaker 4 (48:18):
Oh, why, but.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Why Julian Caesar, Julian Lennon, No, oh, let it go,
Bonocampia or whatever his name was, no Hugo the film
The Amanda appreciate this film by Martin.
Speaker 4 (48:32):
Scorsaza and Noel.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Thanks to you. Happy Happy leap heer buddy.
Speaker 4 (48:37):
Is it a holiday though we're working? No?
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Really, I'll see it next time, folks. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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