November 18, 2017 • 34 mins
In this week's SYSK Select episode, Benjamin Franklin first came up with daylight saving time in 1748, and people still practice it today. But how does it work? What are the pros and cons? Join Josh and Chuck as they turn back the clock to explore the origins of daylight saving time.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody. Chuck here with How Daylight Savings Time works
my select pick of the week from December six, two
thousand and eleven. And in real time, we have just
sort of recently done the opposite where we fall back
with our clocks annually, which is kind of a depressing
(00:21):
time of the year, to be honest, means on your
clock it's dark really early. Then, on the other hand,
is light a little bit earlier in the day, and
daylight savings time and the whole concept of it, it's
always just been a little weird to me, and there
are many false rumors out there about why we do it,
how it started. In this episode will clear it all up,
So please to enjoy How Daylight Savings Time Works. Welcome
(00:50):
to Stuff You Should Know from house Stuff Works dot com.
M hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles have you, Chuck Bryant, He's on his iPhone. Chuck, No, no, uh,
that makes this stuff you should know? Huh the fully
(01:12):
attentive podcast. You're saying, Yeah, I can't really say anything.
You always say stuff and then I repeat it like
thirty seconds later and then get a look of death
from the Chuck, we'd like to cover our bases twice.
Sometimes it's important stuff like you know, um, the digestion
that's right, that thing which comes out next right? All right? Introman, Oh,
(01:38):
I'm sorry? Am I am? I stalling? Yeah? Okay, frankly, Chuck,
have you ever heard of a methuselah? Trust? No, but
I have something being old? Uh, well you're not old. Instead,
I say, a bequeathment grant that you've put in a
(01:59):
an account earning compound interest for five hundred or a
thousand or a hundred years, should conceivably were it's still legal,
grow into a staggering amount of money, very like, very quickly.
For example, UM, there was a guy who you might
(02:20):
have heard of named Ben Franklin, Benny Ben Franklin. Uh.
In his will left a thousand pounds each to the
city of Boston in the city of Philadelphia, both of
which he considered his hometowns UM. And these these moneys
were meant to stay in a private trust that earned
(02:40):
compound interests, and by Franklin's reckoning, UM, within so after
a hundred years in eighteen ninety that it was supposed
to be cracked open, a bit was supposed to be
taken out and then the rest was supposed to be
left in until years after his death. So by his reckoning,
it would each city would get about the equivalent six
(03:02):
million dollars apiece uh by which is when it was
supposed to and and finally mature. Um. It didn't quite
work out. Franklin's calculations. Didn't take a new account, lawsuits
to stop this, to stop the idea of him enthusela
trust in general, um, trustees, fees, lawyers, fees, all this stuff.
(03:24):
So what it came down to was about three and
a half million each, So he was off the market
a little bit. But he made his point, which was,
if you put a grand in and you have enough foresight,
you can give some money to the city of Boston.
Did that really happen? Yeah, they got there, They got
their three and a half mill Yeah each tounded um.
What this demonstrate is probably more than anything, though, is
(03:45):
that Franklin was, above all else an idea man. Right.
He was pretty good. I mean he invented spectacles. He
had like some really good uh some good inventions under
his belt, the electric kite. But more than anything else,
he was all about ideas. And he was more aware
than anybody that his ideas weren't always He didn't see
(04:06):
him through to fruition all the time. Not not all
ideas were meant to be. But another good example of
that is his idea for daylight savings time. He was
the guy that came up with this saving daylight saving time.
I think most people say savings, but it is in
fact saving, but we're gonna mess up and say savings,
(04:26):
so yeah, just prepare for that, s people. Franklin was
an ambassador to France four, which is a pretty crushed
job back then. I'm sure the Enlightenment. Come on, it's
a job now. Um woke up one morning all this
uh fellow per Parisians were sleeping, and he said, hey,
(04:49):
we should change the time and get these people up earlier.
Did he talk like he was from New Jersey. He
basically proposed it in an article, but it's generally dismissed
this satire. But it wasn't a real idea, right. His
whole idea was to um that basically everybody was like
sleeping in late while it was still daylight and then
(05:10):
staying up late long after sunset. It was a waste
of daylight. A great way to fix this is to say,
let's get everybody up at the crack of dawn, and
we'll do that by shooting off cannons that wake everybody up.
It was sort of a jab at the French, a
friendly jab. Well, he was a friend of the French,
but like I said, generally dismissed his satire. Not really
(05:32):
like the seed of the idea for daylight savings. No,
but other people about a hundred or so years later
came up with similar things and they meant it. And
it's I don't know if we can say that Franklin
didn't mean it, but he was just he he didn't
think it was a very important idea necessarily, but it's
so ingrained in our society here in the United States,
(05:53):
here in North America, and most likely if you're listening
to this in Europe or Australia, you know what we're
talking about all over the world. Really, um that it it?
You're you're kind of like, oh, yeah, daylight savings. I mean,
it's peculiar, but of course we're going to do it.
Of course it makes sense. Um. These this is from
people who really can't even tell you whether it's spring
(06:14):
forward or fall back. So let's let's set that straight
right now, because I think if we just stopped there
and said it is spring forward where you said the
clock forward an hour, and it's fall back where you
said the clock back an hour, we've just done a
tremendous public service. People really not remember that. I'm among them. Really, Yeah,
(06:35):
I will always remember it now because I've studied this article.
But no, I always had trouble with it. Well, that's
why they say spring forward fall back. You can also
fall forward and spring back. You can't spring back. Hold on, Josh, Josh,
just sprung back, sprung back. All right, Well, here's the
(06:57):
other public service announcement here in the US. Second Sunday
in March you're gonna spring forward. The first Sunday in
November you're gonna fall back. I didn't know that because
every year I'm on the internet's going, well, when do
we do this? When do we do it? I didn't.
I thought it fluctuated. Second Sunday in March, first Sunday
in November. Boom, Yeah, I thought it fluctuated as well.
(07:20):
It's yeah, um, it's standard now thanks to a lot
of um legislation. That's taken place over the over the
years here in the United States, um most recently, the
Energy Policy Act of two thousand five set the rules
as you just describe them. Right. We should also say,
chuck to our friends in South America, you have the opposite.
(07:43):
We're not exactly sure when it starts for you, but
we can tell you that you do spring forward and
fall back. No, fall forward and spring back, because it's
the the seasons are the opposite. So they go on
to daylight savings time in the fall and then change it.
(08:04):
They go off of it in the spring. And also
one more thing, Uh, daylight saving time, right is not
I find it confusing in that the mind wants to
say it's it's like daylight time saving. It's like daylight
saving time, right, like your time saving. But really it's
(08:29):
daylight saving time, so it's like a period of the year.
So I've always had trouble wrapping my mind around how
they're just saving daylight. Everything about this is so confounding.
I know because I'm one of those people that's like
what the clock says is arbitrary in a way. Unless
you have a shift job, you would have made a
(08:50):
great farmer. Yeah, that's kind of bunk too, from what
I hear. Okay, so let's talk about this, man. Um.
You just gave the deets on when to do it. Um.
In the United States, it's the Energy Policy Act of
two thousand five that establishes that. But if you are
Arizona or Hawaii or Guam, and you say, I don't
(09:12):
want this to apply to me, already feel cut off
enough from this country, Um, from the rest of the world.
I'm going to apply for an exemption. You're probably gonna
get it. Yeah. Indiana has had a mixed history with
daylight saving. Uh. They've kind of fluctuated back and forth
over the years, and at times only some counties had
(09:36):
it and some didn't, and they finally went all in.
I think it doesn't six recently. Yeah, if you're an
Indiana you know what I'm talking about. Um, And it's
not just the United States. Apparently, as a two thousand
and eight, seventy six countries observed daylight savings time. They
also seventy, but I don't know which sources newer, So
(09:57):
we'll go with seventy to seventy six. Just after reading this,
I could see six countries falling. Yeah, I mean it's
a very it's a surprisingly contentious thing setting the clock
back an hour basically. I saw one source that calls
it the arrogance of humanity to to set time period well, no,
(10:18):
to adjust the clock. It's like it is now two
and not one, right exactly, and it is a little
bit loony if you think about it. Um. I think Japan,
India and China are the only major industrialized nations who
do not observe. And it's getting more and more difficult
to to, um be a country like that in this
(10:40):
globalized world to not daylight savings. So, I mean it's
kind of problematic. Sure, yeah, imagine that's why most countries
do it now, well not most, but a lot. So.
Europe has long observed what's called summertime. Um, but it
wasn't until the EU said, hey, let's all just stop
(11:02):
this patchwork thing. Here's the standards now, um and it's uh.
The European Union says it runs from daylight saving time.
The time of daylight saving summertime. Yeah, it's the last
Sunday in March of the last Sunday in October. That's
the the EU. Yeah, good for them. No, um, we
(11:52):
you mentioned earlier than another couple of guys that proposed
this um. One of them was a New Zealander named
George Vernon Hudson, and he was actually the first dude
to genuinely propose this, and he gets overlooked a lot
of time by the other guy we'll talk about. But
Hudson was an entomologist and astronomer and he had a
(12:17):
shift job that allowed him I guess he worked at
night because allowed him extra daylight hours that his friends
weren't getting to go out and hunt for bugs. And
he was like this is great. He's like, we ought
to really try and do this. But William Willett of
England is the guy that a lot of people credit
with it, and I think it's because it was kind
(12:38):
of his passion in life, Like he really really tried
to get this push through. Yeah, he was an avid
golfer and his whole premise for it was that it
would extend time for leisure after work, After everybody got
done working for the day, there's still daylight hours. The
links um and he wrote a pamphlet that's online. It's
called The Waste of Daylight. It's online and it's in already.
(13:00):
If you searched that, um, and he lobbied the House
of Commons to institute this, and in nineteen o eight
they officially said na. But he kept lobbying him until
his death and I think the twenties died in nine
fifteen actually, so he did not get to see it
because a year later, insultingly enough, a year later, it was.
(13:22):
It was brought on in England thanks to a little
something called World War One. Yeah, and actually it was
Germany that was the first country to ever institute daylight
savings time. Yeah, they called it wartime though, Yeah, so
did FDR later on. Yeah, um, but the Germans, the
Germans started it. The English quickly saw the value in
(13:42):
it and they started it. And it was all the
preserved coal supplies during the war, um, because if you
are were up earlier, you'd be tired earlier and you
wouldn't stay up as late earning precious coal needed to
pound the Kaiser into oblivion. That's right. And uh, a
lot of a lot of nations got on board because
of World War One, thirty one in total, including the US,
(14:07):
and then World War Two. Well after the war, I
think most of these countries got rid of it. It
was just for war. And then World War two came around,
the same thing happened, but in more abundance. Fifty two
nations this time, right in the US actually kept daylight
savings year round for three full years uninterrupted from what
is it February September nine. And apparently FDR he called
(14:33):
it war time too. He had no problem with it.
He was just going to leave it like that indefinitely. Um.
And he finally acquiesced to farmers, which, um, if you
know much about farmers at that era, they were really
effective at striking, overturning like um, scab trucks, and like
(14:55):
dealing with communists, like being pro communist um. And they
were a force to be reckoned with. They called it
God's time, did they really? Yeah, we'll talk more about
the farmers in a minute. Um. Go on. Uh, Well,
we we had it for three years solid, like you said,
and then after the war they said, you know what,
you don't have to do it, but it's up to
(15:15):
your state if you want to keep doing this or not.
Some did, some didn't. So that's the history. Actually, no,
it keeps going. In nineteen sixty six, history does keep going,
doesn't it. So the States are. It's all patchwork and
everybody's just kind of doing what however they want. But
we have this thing called the Interstate system that comes about,
which links states more and more and there's more trade,
(15:38):
and really people need to know what time it is
in another state that they're sending stuff to UM. So
the Uniform Time Act of nineteen sixty six finally said,
you guys can decide whether you want to do it,
but if you're gonna do it, you have to do
it along these guidelines UM. And it stayed that way
uninterrupted until except for the arab Um oil embargo, where
(16:02):
the US said, you know, we're gonna extend the daylight
savings to UM through winter as well. Yeah, I went
from six months to eight months in nineteen seventy three
because they found that doing so saved the equivalent of
ten thousand barrels of oil a day and six hundred
(16:23):
thousand in those two years. So that's what they said.
It is is it true? Who knows about that? Definitely
up for debate. Whether it's say, ten thousand barrels of
oil a day, I'm sure it's for debate. The weird
thing about daylight savings is it's largely been intuitive for decades.
(16:45):
It was practiced for decades before anybody finally put it
to the test. Right. Well, the whole point behind it
is this chuck that there are more people asleep at
sunrise and more businesses are closed at sunrise than at
and set. So if you look at electrical demand right um,
as a whole over the course of a single day,
(17:07):
you're gonna see in the afternoon, in the evening it
starts to peak if you take an hour. If you
take the whole day and shift it backward by an hour,
people are gonna get up earlier, and it's going to
spread that electrical demand over the day. They're also gonna
go to bed earlier, so they're gonna use lamps less,
they're gonna stay up less late to watch TV. Um,
So the overall demand should decrease to And this is
(17:30):
the whole reason that daylight savings time has always been
UM kind of championed by most people. That's the whole
reason that they want you to think, Well, that's some
part of it. The other is to get people outside more. Yeah,
I mean I read up on this and what I
found out was that it really comes down to money.
They want you spending money more. Yeah, and that is
(17:52):
going to happen more if you're out and about dropping
or playing golf, exactly like the golf lobby. And EIGHTI
six the last time before two five, then anybody tinker
with it, Reagan said in Public Law ninety nine. He
started at the first Sunday in April, which was where
before in nineteen sixty six, that was from the last
(18:13):
Sunday in April, so a full month. He added to
daylight savings time. Um, But the golf lobby said that
an extra month or an extra hour. I think an
extra month was like four million dollars to just that
industry alone. I don't see there. Yeah, money talks, uh.
And the reason I say that, that's the main reason
(18:36):
is because they've done studies. And in fact, in seventy
three when they did the oil embargo, they didn't just
study oil barrels, they studied utilities and they found that
it's a pretty negligible difference about one percent energy savings.
But that's for the whole country. That's a lot. That
is a substantial amount of that's a lot. See I
(18:59):
read it's a negligible, So say so say it is
one percent. Say it is negligible, but say that it's
zero percent. If you don't do anything, you automatically have said, well,
there's a there's a savings and energy, especially in this
eco conscious society that we're growing into. Um, that's it
right there, Okay, daylight saving time. Do it. You will
(19:21):
save one percent of all the energy expended. Fine, do it.
It's better than not. Right, What else could possibly go wrong?
And I was very surprised from this article to find
that there's actually counter arguments todaylight saving time. Well, yeah,
because they basically I think people have challenge these studies.
That's what I've seen. In two thousand one, they did
another study the California did where they actually doubled it
(19:45):
to a two hour shift, and in the end they
found that electricity savings of about point oh three for
the year, right, which is substantially less, But you can
also say it's still better than nothing. Why not just
do it. There's also other arguments to things like, um,
there's fewer traffic accidents in the evenings because it's lighter out,
(20:10):
that's what they say on the evening commute. UM crime
is decreased because criminals preferred darkness and if you're out
taking a walk after work and it's light out still,
you're probably not going to get mugged. Um. And then
of course the golf industry said everybody needs to get
off their rears and get outside and play more golf,
golf fever catch it and um, they are big on
(20:33):
that as well. Well, I got most of my info.
You should know from that skeptward guy. Let's hear it, Dunning. Well, no,
that's what he said. He said, basically, it's all about money.
He said, don't be fooled into thinking this is some
energy plan. And he said that the numbers are suspect.
And then it really comes down to spending money as
a as a consumer. I'm sure it does. But the other,
(20:56):
the other aspect of it, the you know, who's the
big against it now these days? They used to be farmers. Well,
he said, that's bunk took everything though. So here's the thing, farmers.
From what I understand, it used to be farmers. And
I've seen this elsewhere that farmers had a problem with
it because daylight savings added a day and an hour
under their day. They had to get up with the
(21:17):
with the at the crack of dawn no matter what
time it was. So if it was actually if they
had an extra hour, they had to extend their business
hours because they had to deal with the public who
was running on an hour later time. So farmers hated
daylight savings and they railed against it. That's my understanding
with modern technology that that where a lot of the
farm processes are automated, they don't have to worry about
(21:39):
the the sun time or God's time as much. They're
not as opposed to it. The problem is with airlines
now when they're flying to places that don't have daylight savings,
they apparently have a lot more trouble getting a slot
at an airport when the time doesn't quite match up
because the airport's we're not going to the trouble of
(22:01):
figuring this out. Go lobby your government to stop screwing
with time. So apparently those that's the big industry that's
opposed daylight savings right now. Interesting. Yeah, um, Like I said, though,
he's that's his job. He's the skeptalid debunking. He said.
The farmer thing is he thinks is somewhat of a
myth because he can't find any He said, all the
(22:23):
sources are the exact same and he can't find any
like origin source that he thinks is valid. That's a
that's a pretty good evidence that something is a myth.
But he's trying to prove a negative. He should be
opposed to that. Maybe he is. Huh m hm uh.
(23:08):
There was a new study though, um recently by a
guy named Matthew Coaching. He's an economist at cal Gobarts
and um, you know, I said, Indiana has kind of
been back and forth over the years, with like half
the state doing it. When they finally went all in
and oh six, he said, hey, it's a great opportunity
to check this out and study it. And he found
(23:30):
that it led to a one percent rise. He figured
that lamp usage went down overall across the daylight savings,
but that there is a peak in energy demand that
was an increase over when you don't observe daylight savings
in the fall when it was cold in Indiana in
the form of heating, like people had their heat went
(23:53):
up because they weren't under the blankets as early as
when they when they just observe standard time year round.
And that act really cost nine million dollars for the state. Well,
I think that's part of dunning thing too, is these
studies that were done in the seventies, they didn't have
you know, computers and iPods and Blu ray players, and
we have way more things besides lamps these days to
(24:16):
take into account, and air conditioners and things like that.
So he's saying it's kind of an outdated there are
no lamps in the seventies and outdated model. The U
and daylight savings Chuck also kind of strikes me as
like a really good example of for every action there's
an equal and opposite reaction, so like there's fewer fender
(24:36):
benders during the evening commute. But apparently parents are also
like parents groups are also a post daylight savings in
part because kids accidents involving kids waiting for the bus
in the darker mornings increase really and then crime goes
down during the summer, but then it increases in the fall.
(24:56):
Now there's no there's no figures to support that necessarily,
but there's also the only study ever conducted about how
daylight savings creates a decrease in crime was a single
study of the District District of Columbia in the seventies
that found a ten percent reduction, but no one's ever
backed it up. Yeah. Well, and think about it too.
(25:20):
Carrex are good for industries like tow trucks and mechanics
to the auto industry that wants to sell you a
new bumper. I don't know. It does everything. You're right,
everything hasn't an opposite reaction. And also apparently chronobiologically, it
can be very problematic for us. So says was he German? Yeah,
(25:42):
I didn't see his name. He's just referred to as
a German chronobiology. I couldn't find him or her. Yeah,
that's true. He or she says that your body never
even adjusts period to the circadian rhythm, and so you're
just out of whack for eight months day year or
I guess it depends on which one he thinks is right.
(26:04):
So yeah, and the big problem is going back and back,
like going back and forth. Like if we all just said, okay,
the whole world's gonna set their clocks back one hour forever,
and that will be referred to from here on out
as the hour the moment, and then we're just gonna
forget about daylight saving time, it would conceivably have the
same effect right, but it would not have that jet
(26:27):
lag problem that the German chronobiologist describes um. And even worse,
there's other people that propose um extended daylight savings through
throughout the throughout the year or throughout the winter as well. Right,
if we did that once eight quid conceivably be fine.
Our bodies could adjust. It's going back and forth. Other
(26:48):
people are proposing double daylight savings, where you go back
two hours, which would probably reak havoc if are if
the chronobiologist is correct, and there's actually data that support
this idea that like our bodies are disrupted by it,
like the Swedish heart attack study. Yeah, I'm sure they are.
(27:08):
I never thought of it as losing an hour though,
because it happened at two am on Sunday and I
would just wake up and whatever the clock said is
what it said. Yeah. I never felt like, you know,
I guess I don't get up Sunday morning at seven
for a shift job. No, that's a big part of it.
I saw in the consumers some guy wanted to know
about getting paid um on because he worked at a
(27:28):
late night on November this past November for Sunday in
November when he had an extra hour, because there's actually
twenty five hours in that day, right one one am
is counted twice. Interesting, isn't that there's a twenty five
hour day that we just went through. That's got to
mess us up somehow, and it does. The Swedish study
I was referring to found um that since the number
(27:51):
of heart attacks rose about five during the first week
of daylight savings time every year. And then Australia, some
Australians looked at some data between nine two thousand one
and found that male suicides increase um in the weeks
following daylight savings time. And they're controlling for everything else
and it appears to just be daylight savings really affects
(28:13):
people with bipolar disorder and they are more men are
more prone. Australian men with bipolar disorder are more prone
to commit suicide in the weeks immediately preceding the change
over to daylight saving That's sad It is sad. Um.
There have been some kind of interesting things that happened
(28:34):
over the years because of d ST and nine the
West Bank was on daylight savings. Israel had just switched
back to standard time, so a group of West Bank
terrorists were preparing some time bombs, smuggled them to their
counterparts in Israel and UH as they were planning the bombs,
(28:54):
they blew up. No, yes, no, it's what it says.
Is that from skeptoid? Is that from Snopes? I'll take
snops too. I think I think that's real. Wow, I
think that happened. That is, Minneapolis and St. Paul were
on different uh different times in which kind of whack
things out. AM track a train cannot leave the station
(29:18):
before it's scheduled to. Obviously, I can't leave early because
everyone's gonna get on. So when you fall back in October,
if you're running on time, you stop and sit there
for an hour November. What did I say October? I
think it used to be in October when when this
was written. So you sit there for an extra hour
if you're on amtrack on that day, that's right, that's crazy.
(29:40):
And then in the spring, apparently they don't do anything
but try and catch up, like everything's a little late
for a little while, and they just try to like
drive faster. Can you imagine being a low a logistician.
I want to hear from logisticians. I have a deep
respect for your profession. Yeah, I agreed. That's tough stuff.
(30:00):
Who knew, you know? Is it arbitrary? What the clock says?
It's just a number. I I tend to go with
just the the rise and fall of the sun and moon.
You know, are you kidding me? Like you could throw
away every clock in the world and nothing would really change.
And you know in uncivilized parts of the world and
(30:20):
the civilized world everything runs on the clock. But it's
just time. The number was invented by man, I know
what you mean. Man, you know what I'm saying, abstract.
Thanks for that, Chuck. I think that was an excellent
way to kind of put everybody to sleep. But he
just put him on a little cloud and went yeah. Man.
(30:41):
You know, Um, if you want to learn more about clouds,
about daylight savings, time, about Chuck Brant, you can type
in those words in any search bar at how stuff
works dot comm and it will bring up some very
cool stuff, I assure you. Um, and I said search
bart how stuff works dot com. That means it's time,
Chuck for listeners, that's right, not listener mail. We have
(31:05):
a contest. We have nothing to do with Yeah, this
was sprung on us, but we like it. We're in
favor of it. Yes, if you are interested in coming
to Atlanta, all expenses paid, Yeah, that's the that's the kicker. Actually,
I'm not gonna say all expenses paid. Yeah, I don't
know if we should legally say that certain expenses are paid.
(31:25):
They'll you can come here toward the studio, hang out
in the office. We'll even go to lunch with you
with Jerry. Yeah, Jerry will be there and you'll get
to see your face like we won't make her wear
like a paper bag. You can enter this contest. Uh.
It runs now if you're in America. Yeah, yeah, we
get the United States. As I always saw everyone from
(31:47):
Canada and elsewhere that's mad about this. I can't win
your contest either. I don't think that makes anybody feel
better if you're American. If you're in the United States,
it runs through December third you first winners will be
announced the week of January. One grand prize trip to
Atlanta includes one night hotel, air fare up to Bucks,
(32:11):
and then American Express gift card for incidentals like taking
me and Chuck out to lunch. I think we'll pick
that up uh. And if you refer somebody like you,
go to Facebook the house stuff works dot com not
the stuff you should know. Go to the house stuff
works dot Com Facebook page to enter and you have
to like it and then you enter. But it's the
(32:32):
only way to enter as far as I know. Yeah,
I think so. But if if you refer someone um
and they win, I'm sorry. After person a enters the contest,
he or she can share the contest link with friends
via Facebook and Twitter, and if a friend of their's wins,
then you win. A kindle fire that's not too shappy?
(32:54):
Does that make sense? And I would I would give
you the link, but it's like three thousand characters long.
So just go to Facebook, How stuff Work, how stuff
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up with us. Yeah, let's launch. Let's do lunch before
(33:15):
we go. I wanna correct myself big time. Correct myself
about patent trolls. In the gene Patents Okay episode, I
mentioned patent trolls and I don't even remember what I
said they were, but I was way off. Patentrols are
people who go around buying patents with no intent of
(33:35):
manufacturing these things or what the patent is for. I
figured that's what it was like line of website domains. Sure,
but then they sue. The whole point is to own
the patent so that they can sue anybody who infringes
on it. So basically they're keeping any kind of innovation
from coming about along the same lines of what they
own the patent to by suing people who try to
(33:58):
do it, and they're they're basically just whatever, this great
idea that's patented is just never going to see the
light of day because they have no interest in you
and that they just want the money from suing people.
That's a patentrol I apologize for to all the patentrols
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Hi, everybody. Chuck here with How Daylight Savings Time works
my select pick of the week from December six, two
thousand and eleven. And in real time, we have just
sort of recently done the opposite where we fall back
with our clocks annually, which is kind of a depressing
(00:21):
time of the year, to be honest, means on your
clock it's dark really early. Then, on the other hand,
is light a little bit earlier in the day, and
daylight savings time and the whole concept of it, it's
always just been a little weird to me, and there
are many false rumors out there about why we do it,
how it started. In this episode will clear it all up,
So please to enjoy How Daylight Savings Time Works. Welcome
(00:50):
to Stuff You Should Know from house Stuff Works dot com.
M hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles have you, Chuck Bryant, He's on his iPhone. Chuck, No, no, uh,
that makes this stuff you should know? Huh the fully
(01:12):
attentive podcast. You're saying, Yeah, I can't really say anything.
You always say stuff and then I repeat it like
thirty seconds later and then get a look of death
from the Chuck, we'd like to cover our bases twice.
Sometimes it's important stuff like you know, um, the digestion
that's right, that thing which comes out next right? All right? Introman, Oh,
(01:38):
I'm sorry? Am I am? I stalling? Yeah? Okay, frankly, Chuck,
have you ever heard of a methuselah? Trust? No, but
I have something being old? Uh, well you're not old. Instead,
I say, a bequeathment grant that you've put in a
(01:59):
an account earning compound interest for five hundred or a
thousand or a hundred years, should conceivably were it's still legal,
grow into a staggering amount of money, very like, very quickly.
For example, UM, there was a guy who you might
(02:20):
have heard of named Ben Franklin, Benny Ben Franklin. Uh.
In his will left a thousand pounds each to the
city of Boston in the city of Philadelphia, both of
which he considered his hometowns UM. And these these moneys
were meant to stay in a private trust that earned
(02:40):
compound interests, and by Franklin's reckoning, UM, within so after
a hundred years in eighteen ninety that it was supposed
to be cracked open, a bit was supposed to be
taken out and then the rest was supposed to be
left in until years after his death. So by his reckoning,
it would each city would get about the equivalent six
(03:02):
million dollars apiece uh by which is when it was
supposed to and and finally mature. Um. It didn't quite
work out. Franklin's calculations. Didn't take a new account, lawsuits
to stop this, to stop the idea of him enthusela
trust in general, um, trustees, fees, lawyers, fees, all this stuff.
(03:24):
So what it came down to was about three and
a half million each, So he was off the market
a little bit. But he made his point, which was,
if you put a grand in and you have enough foresight,
you can give some money to the city of Boston.
Did that really happen? Yeah, they got there, They got
their three and a half mill Yeah each tounded um.
What this demonstrate is probably more than anything, though, is
(03:45):
that Franklin was, above all else an idea man. Right.
He was pretty good. I mean he invented spectacles. He
had like some really good uh some good inventions under
his belt, the electric kite. But more than anything else,
he was all about ideas. And he was more aware
than anybody that his ideas weren't always He didn't see
(04:06):
him through to fruition all the time. Not not all
ideas were meant to be. But another good example of
that is his idea for daylight savings time. He was
the guy that came up with this saving daylight saving time.
I think most people say savings, but it is in
fact saving, but we're gonna mess up and say savings,
(04:26):
so yeah, just prepare for that, s people. Franklin was
an ambassador to France four, which is a pretty crushed
job back then. I'm sure the Enlightenment. Come on, it's
a job now. Um woke up one morning all this
uh fellow per Parisians were sleeping, and he said, hey,
(04:49):
we should change the time and get these people up earlier.
Did he talk like he was from New Jersey. He
basically proposed it in an article, but it's generally dismissed
this satire. But it wasn't a real idea, right. His
whole idea was to um that basically everybody was like
sleeping in late while it was still daylight and then
(05:10):
staying up late long after sunset. It was a waste
of daylight. A great way to fix this is to say,
let's get everybody up at the crack of dawn, and
we'll do that by shooting off cannons that wake everybody up.
It was sort of a jab at the French, a
friendly jab. Well, he was a friend of the French,
but like I said, generally dismissed his satire. Not really
(05:32):
like the seed of the idea for daylight savings. No,
but other people about a hundred or so years later
came up with similar things and they meant it. And
it's I don't know if we can say that Franklin
didn't mean it, but he was just he he didn't
think it was a very important idea necessarily, but it's
so ingrained in our society here in the United States,
(05:53):
here in North America, and most likely if you're listening
to this in Europe or Australia, you know what we're
talking about all over the world. Really, um that it it?
You're you're kind of like, oh, yeah, daylight savings. I mean,
it's peculiar, but of course we're going to do it.
Of course it makes sense. Um. These this is from
people who really can't even tell you whether it's spring
(06:14):
forward or fall back. So let's let's set that straight
right now, because I think if we just stopped there
and said it is spring forward where you said the
clock forward an hour, and it's fall back where you
said the clock back an hour, we've just done a
tremendous public service. People really not remember that. I'm among them. Really, Yeah,
(06:35):
I will always remember it now because I've studied this article.
But no, I always had trouble with it. Well, that's
why they say spring forward fall back. You can also
fall forward and spring back. You can't spring back. Hold on, Josh, Josh,
just sprung back, sprung back. All right, Well, here's the
(06:57):
other public service announcement here in the US. Second Sunday
in March you're gonna spring forward. The first Sunday in
November you're gonna fall back. I didn't know that because
every year I'm on the internet's going, well, when do
we do this? When do we do it? I didn't.
I thought it fluctuated. Second Sunday in March, first Sunday
in November. Boom, Yeah, I thought it fluctuated as well.
(07:20):
It's yeah, um, it's standard now thanks to a lot
of um legislation. That's taken place over the over the
years here in the United States, um most recently, the
Energy Policy Act of two thousand five set the rules
as you just describe them. Right. We should also say,
chuck to our friends in South America, you have the opposite.
(07:43):
We're not exactly sure when it starts for you, but
we can tell you that you do spring forward and
fall back. No, fall forward and spring back, because it's
the the seasons are the opposite. So they go on
to daylight savings time in the fall and then change it.
(08:04):
They go off of it in the spring. And also
one more thing, Uh, daylight saving time, right is not
I find it confusing in that the mind wants to
say it's it's like daylight time saving. It's like daylight
saving time, right, like your time saving. But really it's
(08:29):
daylight saving time, so it's like a period of the year.
So I've always had trouble wrapping my mind around how
they're just saving daylight. Everything about this is so confounding.
I know because I'm one of those people that's like
what the clock says is arbitrary in a way. Unless
you have a shift job, you would have made a
(08:50):
great farmer. Yeah, that's kind of bunk too, from what
I hear. Okay, so let's talk about this, man. Um.
You just gave the deets on when to do it. Um.
In the United States, it's the Energy Policy Act of
two thousand five that establishes that. But if you are
Arizona or Hawaii or Guam, and you say, I don't
(09:12):
want this to apply to me, already feel cut off
enough from this country, Um, from the rest of the world.
I'm going to apply for an exemption. You're probably gonna
get it. Yeah. Indiana has had a mixed history with
daylight saving. Uh. They've kind of fluctuated back and forth
over the years, and at times only some counties had
(09:36):
it and some didn't, and they finally went all in.
I think it doesn't six recently. Yeah, if you're an
Indiana you know what I'm talking about. Um, And it's
not just the United States. Apparently, as a two thousand
and eight, seventy six countries observed daylight savings time. They
also seventy, but I don't know which sources newer, So
(09:57):
we'll go with seventy to seventy six. Just after reading this,
I could see six countries falling. Yeah, I mean it's
a very it's a surprisingly contentious thing setting the clock
back an hour basically. I saw one source that calls
it the arrogance of humanity to to set time period well, no,
(10:18):
to adjust the clock. It's like it is now two
and not one, right exactly, and it is a little
bit loony if you think about it. Um. I think Japan,
India and China are the only major industrialized nations who
do not observe. And it's getting more and more difficult
to to, um be a country like that in this
(10:40):
globalized world to not daylight savings. So, I mean it's
kind of problematic. Sure, yeah, imagine that's why most countries
do it now, well not most, but a lot. So.
Europe has long observed what's called summertime. Um, but it
wasn't until the EU said, hey, let's all just stop
(11:02):
this patchwork thing. Here's the standards now, um and it's uh.
The European Union says it runs from daylight saving time.
The time of daylight saving summertime. Yeah, it's the last
Sunday in March of the last Sunday in October. That's
the the EU. Yeah, good for them. No, um, we
(11:52):
you mentioned earlier than another couple of guys that proposed
this um. One of them was a New Zealander named
George Vernon Hudson, and he was actually the first dude
to genuinely propose this, and he gets overlooked a lot
of time by the other guy we'll talk about. But
Hudson was an entomologist and astronomer and he had a
(12:17):
shift job that allowed him I guess he worked at
night because allowed him extra daylight hours that his friends
weren't getting to go out and hunt for bugs. And
he was like this is great. He's like, we ought
to really try and do this. But William Willett of
England is the guy that a lot of people credit
with it, and I think it's because it was kind
(12:38):
of his passion in life, Like he really really tried
to get this push through. Yeah, he was an avid
golfer and his whole premise for it was that it
would extend time for leisure after work, After everybody got
done working for the day, there's still daylight hours. The
links um and he wrote a pamphlet that's online. It's
called The Waste of Daylight. It's online and it's in already.
(13:00):
If you searched that, um, and he lobbied the House
of Commons to institute this, and in nineteen o eight
they officially said na. But he kept lobbying him until
his death and I think the twenties died in nine
fifteen actually, so he did not get to see it
because a year later, insultingly enough, a year later, it was.
(13:22):
It was brought on in England thanks to a little
something called World War One. Yeah, and actually it was
Germany that was the first country to ever institute daylight
savings time. Yeah, they called it wartime though, Yeah, so
did FDR later on. Yeah, um, but the Germans, the
Germans started it. The English quickly saw the value in
(13:42):
it and they started it. And it was all the
preserved coal supplies during the war, um, because if you
are were up earlier, you'd be tired earlier and you
wouldn't stay up as late earning precious coal needed to
pound the Kaiser into oblivion. That's right. And uh, a
lot of a lot of nations got on board because
of World War One, thirty one in total, including the US,
(14:07):
and then World War Two. Well after the war, I
think most of these countries got rid of it. It
was just for war. And then World War two came around,
the same thing happened, but in more abundance. Fifty two
nations this time, right in the US actually kept daylight
savings year round for three full years uninterrupted from what
is it February September nine. And apparently FDR he called
(14:33):
it war time too. He had no problem with it.
He was just going to leave it like that indefinitely. Um.
And he finally acquiesced to farmers, which, um, if you
know much about farmers at that era, they were really
effective at striking, overturning like um, scab trucks, and like
(14:55):
dealing with communists, like being pro communist um. And they
were a force to be reckoned with. They called it
God's time, did they really? Yeah, we'll talk more about
the farmers in a minute. Um. Go on. Uh, Well,
we we had it for three years solid, like you said,
and then after the war they said, you know what,
you don't have to do it, but it's up to
(15:15):
your state if you want to keep doing this or not.
Some did, some didn't. So that's the history. Actually, no,
it keeps going. In nineteen sixty six, history does keep going,
doesn't it. So the States are. It's all patchwork and
everybody's just kind of doing what however they want. But
we have this thing called the Interstate system that comes about,
which links states more and more and there's more trade,
(15:38):
and really people need to know what time it is
in another state that they're sending stuff to UM. So
the Uniform Time Act of nineteen sixty six finally said,
you guys can decide whether you want to do it,
but if you're gonna do it, you have to do
it along these guidelines UM. And it stayed that way
uninterrupted until except for the arab Um oil embargo, where
(16:02):
the US said, you know, we're gonna extend the daylight
savings to UM through winter as well. Yeah, I went
from six months to eight months in nineteen seventy three
because they found that doing so saved the equivalent of
ten thousand barrels of oil a day and six hundred
(16:23):
thousand in those two years. So that's what they said.
It is is it true? Who knows about that? Definitely
up for debate. Whether it's say, ten thousand barrels of
oil a day, I'm sure it's for debate. The weird
thing about daylight savings is it's largely been intuitive for decades.
(16:45):
It was practiced for decades before anybody finally put it
to the test. Right. Well, the whole point behind it
is this chuck that there are more people asleep at
sunrise and more businesses are closed at sunrise than at
and set. So if you look at electrical demand right um,
as a whole over the course of a single day,
(17:07):
you're gonna see in the afternoon, in the evening it
starts to peak if you take an hour. If you
take the whole day and shift it backward by an hour,
people are gonna get up earlier, and it's going to
spread that electrical demand over the day. They're also gonna
go to bed earlier, so they're gonna use lamps less,
they're gonna stay up less late to watch TV. Um,
So the overall demand should decrease to And this is
(17:30):
the whole reason that daylight savings time has always been
UM kind of championed by most people. That's the whole
reason that they want you to think, Well, that's some
part of it. The other is to get people outside more. Yeah,
I mean I read up on this and what I
found out was that it really comes down to money.
They want you spending money more. Yeah, and that is
(17:52):
going to happen more if you're out and about dropping
or playing golf, exactly like the golf lobby. And EIGHTI
six the last time before two five, then anybody tinker
with it, Reagan said in Public Law ninety nine. He
started at the first Sunday in April, which was where
before in nineteen sixty six, that was from the last
(18:13):
Sunday in April, so a full month. He added to
daylight savings time. Um, But the golf lobby said that
an extra month or an extra hour. I think an
extra month was like four million dollars to just that
industry alone. I don't see there. Yeah, money talks, uh.
And the reason I say that, that's the main reason
(18:36):
is because they've done studies. And in fact, in seventy
three when they did the oil embargo, they didn't just
study oil barrels, they studied utilities and they found that
it's a pretty negligible difference about one percent energy savings.
But that's for the whole country. That's a lot. That
is a substantial amount of that's a lot. See I
(18:59):
read it's a negligible, So say so say it is
one percent. Say it is negligible, but say that it's
zero percent. If you don't do anything, you automatically have said, well,
there's a there's a savings and energy, especially in this
eco conscious society that we're growing into. Um, that's it
right there, Okay, daylight saving time. Do it. You will
(19:21):
save one percent of all the energy expended. Fine, do it.
It's better than not. Right, What else could possibly go wrong?
And I was very surprised from this article to find
that there's actually counter arguments todaylight saving time. Well, yeah,
because they basically I think people have challenge these studies.
That's what I've seen. In two thousand one, they did
another study the California did where they actually doubled it
(19:45):
to a two hour shift, and in the end they
found that electricity savings of about point oh three for
the year, right, which is substantially less, But you can
also say it's still better than nothing. Why not just
do it. There's also other arguments to things like, um,
there's fewer traffic accidents in the evenings because it's lighter out,
(20:10):
that's what they say on the evening commute. UM crime
is decreased because criminals preferred darkness and if you're out
taking a walk after work and it's light out still,
you're probably not going to get mugged. Um. And then
of course the golf industry said everybody needs to get
off their rears and get outside and play more golf,
golf fever catch it and um, they are big on
(20:33):
that as well. Well, I got most of my info.
You should know from that skeptward guy. Let's hear it, Dunning. Well, no,
that's what he said. He said, basically, it's all about money.
He said, don't be fooled into thinking this is some
energy plan. And he said that the numbers are suspect.
And then it really comes down to spending money as
a as a consumer. I'm sure it does. But the other,
(20:56):
the other aspect of it, the you know, who's the
big against it now these days? They used to be farmers. Well,
he said, that's bunk took everything though. So here's the thing, farmers.
From what I understand, it used to be farmers. And
I've seen this elsewhere that farmers had a problem with
it because daylight savings added a day and an hour
under their day. They had to get up with the
(21:17):
with the at the crack of dawn no matter what
time it was. So if it was actually if they
had an extra hour, they had to extend their business
hours because they had to deal with the public who
was running on an hour later time. So farmers hated
daylight savings and they railed against it. That's my understanding
with modern technology that that where a lot of the
farm processes are automated, they don't have to worry about
(21:39):
the the sun time or God's time as much. They're
not as opposed to it. The problem is with airlines
now when they're flying to places that don't have daylight savings,
they apparently have a lot more trouble getting a slot
at an airport when the time doesn't quite match up
because the airport's we're not going to the trouble of
(22:01):
figuring this out. Go lobby your government to stop screwing
with time. So apparently those that's the big industry that's
opposed daylight savings right now. Interesting. Yeah, um, Like I said, though,
he's that's his job. He's the skeptalid debunking. He said.
The farmer thing is he thinks is somewhat of a
myth because he can't find any He said, all the
(22:23):
sources are the exact same and he can't find any
like origin source that he thinks is valid. That's a
that's a pretty good evidence that something is a myth.
But he's trying to prove a negative. He should be
opposed to that. Maybe he is. Huh m hm uh.
(23:08):
There was a new study though, um recently by a
guy named Matthew Coaching. He's an economist at cal Gobarts
and um, you know, I said, Indiana has kind of
been back and forth over the years, with like half
the state doing it. When they finally went all in
and oh six, he said, hey, it's a great opportunity
to check this out and study it. And he found
(23:30):
that it led to a one percent rise. He figured
that lamp usage went down overall across the daylight savings,
but that there is a peak in energy demand that
was an increase over when you don't observe daylight savings
in the fall when it was cold in Indiana in
the form of heating, like people had their heat went
(23:53):
up because they weren't under the blankets as early as
when they when they just observe standard time year round.
And that act really cost nine million dollars for the state. Well,
I think that's part of dunning thing too, is these
studies that were done in the seventies, they didn't have
you know, computers and iPods and Blu ray players, and
we have way more things besides lamps these days to
(24:16):
take into account, and air conditioners and things like that.
So he's saying it's kind of an outdated there are
no lamps in the seventies and outdated model. The U
and daylight savings Chuck also kind of strikes me as
like a really good example of for every action there's
an equal and opposite reaction, so like there's fewer fender
(24:36):
benders during the evening commute. But apparently parents are also
like parents groups are also a post daylight savings in
part because kids accidents involving kids waiting for the bus
in the darker mornings increase really and then crime goes
down during the summer, but then it increases in the fall.
(24:56):
Now there's no there's no figures to support that necessarily,
but there's also the only study ever conducted about how
daylight savings creates a decrease in crime was a single
study of the District District of Columbia in the seventies
that found a ten percent reduction, but no one's ever
backed it up. Yeah. Well, and think about it too.
(25:20):
Carrex are good for industries like tow trucks and mechanics
to the auto industry that wants to sell you a
new bumper. I don't know. It does everything. You're right,
everything hasn't an opposite reaction. And also apparently chronobiologically, it
can be very problematic for us. So says was he German? Yeah,
(25:42):
I didn't see his name. He's just referred to as
a German chronobiology. I couldn't find him or her. Yeah,
that's true. He or she says that your body never
even adjusts period to the circadian rhythm, and so you're
just out of whack for eight months day year or
I guess it depends on which one he thinks is right.
(26:04):
So yeah, and the big problem is going back and back,
like going back and forth. Like if we all just said, okay,
the whole world's gonna set their clocks back one hour forever,
and that will be referred to from here on out
as the hour the moment, and then we're just gonna
forget about daylight saving time, it would conceivably have the
same effect right, but it would not have that jet
(26:27):
lag problem that the German chronobiologist describes um. And even worse,
there's other people that propose um extended daylight savings through
throughout the throughout the year or throughout the winter as well. Right,
if we did that once eight quid conceivably be fine.
Our bodies could adjust. It's going back and forth. Other
(26:48):
people are proposing double daylight savings, where you go back
two hours, which would probably reak havoc if are if
the chronobiologist is correct, and there's actually data that support
this idea that like our bodies are disrupted by it,
like the Swedish heart attack study. Yeah, I'm sure they are.
(27:08):
I never thought of it as losing an hour though,
because it happened at two am on Sunday and I
would just wake up and whatever the clock said is
what it said. Yeah. I never felt like, you know,
I guess I don't get up Sunday morning at seven
for a shift job. No, that's a big part of it.
I saw in the consumers some guy wanted to know
about getting paid um on because he worked at a
(27:28):
late night on November this past November for Sunday in
November when he had an extra hour, because there's actually
twenty five hours in that day, right one one am
is counted twice. Interesting, isn't that there's a twenty five
hour day that we just went through. That's got to
mess us up somehow, and it does. The Swedish study
I was referring to found um that since the number
(27:51):
of heart attacks rose about five during the first week
of daylight savings time every year. And then Australia, some
Australians looked at some data between nine two thousand one
and found that male suicides increase um in the weeks
following daylight savings time. And they're controlling for everything else
and it appears to just be daylight savings really affects
(28:13):
people with bipolar disorder and they are more men are
more prone. Australian men with bipolar disorder are more prone
to commit suicide in the weeks immediately preceding the change
over to daylight saving That's sad It is sad. Um.
There have been some kind of interesting things that happened
(28:34):
over the years because of d ST and nine the
West Bank was on daylight savings. Israel had just switched
back to standard time, so a group of West Bank
terrorists were preparing some time bombs, smuggled them to their
counterparts in Israel and UH as they were planning the bombs,
(28:54):
they blew up. No, yes, no, it's what it says.
Is that from skeptoid? Is that from Snopes? I'll take
snops too. I think I think that's real. Wow, I
think that happened. That is, Minneapolis and St. Paul were
on different uh different times in which kind of whack
things out. AM track a train cannot leave the station
(29:18):
before it's scheduled to. Obviously, I can't leave early because
everyone's gonna get on. So when you fall back in October,
if you're running on time, you stop and sit there
for an hour November. What did I say October? I
think it used to be in October when when this
was written. So you sit there for an extra hour
if you're on amtrack on that day, that's right, that's crazy.
(29:40):
And then in the spring, apparently they don't do anything
but try and catch up, like everything's a little late
for a little while, and they just try to like
drive faster. Can you imagine being a low a logistician.
I want to hear from logisticians. I have a deep
respect for your profession. Yeah, I agreed. That's tough stuff.
(30:00):
Who knew, you know? Is it arbitrary? What the clock says?
It's just a number. I I tend to go with
just the the rise and fall of the sun and moon.
You know, are you kidding me? Like you could throw
away every clock in the world and nothing would really change.
And you know in uncivilized parts of the world and
(30:20):
the civilized world everything runs on the clock. But it's
just time. The number was invented by man, I know
what you mean. Man, you know what I'm saying, abstract.
Thanks for that, Chuck. I think that was an excellent
way to kind of put everybody to sleep. But he
just put him on a little cloud and went yeah. Man.
(30:41):
You know, Um, if you want to learn more about clouds,
about daylight savings, time, about Chuck Brant, you can type
in those words in any search bar at how stuff
works dot comm and it will bring up some very
cool stuff, I assure you. Um, and I said search
bart how stuff works dot com. That means it's time,
Chuck for listeners, that's right, not listener mail. We have
(31:05):
a contest. We have nothing to do with Yeah, this
was sprung on us, but we like it. We're in
favor of it. Yes, if you are interested in coming
to Atlanta, all expenses paid, Yeah, that's the that's the kicker. Actually,
I'm not gonna say all expenses paid. Yeah, I don't
know if we should legally say that certain expenses are paid.
(31:25):
They'll you can come here toward the studio, hang out
in the office. We'll even go to lunch with you
with Jerry. Yeah, Jerry will be there and you'll get
to see your face like we won't make her wear
like a paper bag. You can enter this contest. Uh.
It runs now if you're in America. Yeah, yeah, we
get the United States. As I always saw everyone from
(31:47):
Canada and elsewhere that's mad about this. I can't win
your contest either. I don't think that makes anybody feel
better if you're American. If you're in the United States,
it runs through December third you first winners will be
announced the week of January. One grand prize trip to
Atlanta includes one night hotel, air fare up to Bucks,
(32:11):
and then American Express gift card for incidentals like taking
me and Chuck out to lunch. I think we'll pick
that up uh. And if you refer somebody like you,
go to Facebook the house stuff works dot com not
the stuff you should know. Go to the house stuff
works dot Com Facebook page to enter and you have
to like it and then you enter. But it's the
(32:32):
only way to enter as far as I know. Yeah,
I think so. But if if you refer someone um
and they win, I'm sorry. After person a enters the contest,
he or she can share the contest link with friends
via Facebook and Twitter, and if a friend of their's wins,
then you win. A kindle fire that's not too shappy?
(32:54):
Does that make sense? And I would I would give
you the link, but it's like three thousand characters long.
So just go to Facebook, How stuff Work, how stuff
works dot Com, how stuff Works official Facebook page and
you will find the information there and lunch, lunch it
up with us. Yeah, let's launch. Let's do lunch before
(33:15):
we go. I wanna correct myself big time. Correct myself
about patent trolls. In the gene Patents Okay episode, I
mentioned patent trolls and I don't even remember what I
said they were, but I was way off. Patentrols are
people who go around buying patents with no intent of
(33:35):
manufacturing these things or what the patent is for. I
figured that's what it was like line of website domains. Sure,
but then they sue. The whole point is to own
the patent so that they can sue anybody who infringes
on it. So basically they're keeping any kind of innovation
from coming about along the same lines of what they
own the patent to by suing people who try to
(33:58):
do it, and they're they're basically just whatever, this great
idea that's patented is just never going to see the
light of day because they have no interest in you
and that they just want the money from suing people.
That's a patentrol I apologize for to all the patentrols
out there. Yes, it's all the people who corrected me.
Thank you for that. Yes. Uh. If you want to
correct us, we are always up for that. You can
(34:20):
send us a tweet at s y esk podcast. You
can join us on Facebook. We have our own page
two it's stuff you should know, uh, and you can
also send us a good old fashioned email. Stuff podcast
at how stuff works dot com for more on this
(34:42):
and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
dot com,
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Josh Clark
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