A Clockwork Origin: How Humanity Learned to Tell Time

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Remember the days when waiting for your favorite TV show seemed like an eternity? In this episode of "The Uncannery," Don, Ron, and Doug take a nostalgic trip down memory lane, recounting how childhood TV shows like Rugrats helped shape their early understanding of time. These personal stories set the stage for a fascinating exploration of time measurement throughout history, from the anticipation of recess in school to the sophisticated systems of the ancient Babylonians. 

Prepare to be amazed as we uncover the genius of ancient Babylonian timekeeping. The Babylonians, leveraging a 19-year lunar cycle and a base-60 counting system, devised ways to synchronize their calendars with astronomical cycles. You'll discover the origins of our 360-day calendar and the clever methods used to keep it in phase with the solar year. We'll also trace the roots of our days of the week back to ancient gods, revealing how Babylonian, Greek, Roman, and Norse mythologies have influenced the names we use today.

Finally, we reflect on the bold attempts to reform time measurement, such as the French Revolution's proposal for decimal time and a 10-day week. We'll discuss the practicality and cultural impact of these changes, touching on how significant life events and modern epochs, like the COVID-19 pandemic, influence our perception of time. Join us as we examine how the passage of time feels different across various stages of life and challenge you to contemplate your own temporal experiences. This episode promises a rich tapestry of historical insights, personal reflections, and thought-provoking discussions on the nature of time.

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Episode Transcript

Don (00:15):
welcome back to the uncannery everybody.
I'm don and I'm here tonightwith ron and doug.

Ron (00:22):
Hey, it's us again, it's us yeah, Very excited to be
invited back.
I didn't think you would keepme on the podcast this long.
We're still.

Doug (00:31):
I mean, there's still a vote, that's right.
Yeah.

Don (00:33):
The draft is coming.
I think yeah.

Doug (00:36):
That's right, yeah, Everybody listening.
Please vote in on yourfavorites Text.
Take out your Nokia.

Don (00:43):
Absolutely uh take out your Nokia type R O.

Doug (00:47):
N 2, 1 800.
We need that sponsorship fromNokia.
No, that's right.

Don (00:54):
Well, um it, it does happen to be, uh, just the young days
of the new year.
So, happy new year to uh, toboth of you, um and uh, and
thinking of the new year, I, Iwanted to uh to both of you, um
and uh, and thinking of the newyear, I wanted to, um, uh wanted
to start tonight by uh, bytalking about apologizing.
Well, by asking about the, thepassage of time.

(01:19):
Have you ever like, when youwere little, like before you had
a concept of time?
How did you measure your days,or your, or your events in your
life?
How did you?

Ron (01:31):
So I definitely remember.
I don't know if this wassomething that just my family
did or if other people did thesame thing, but I would measure
time frequently by the length ofcartoon episodes.
So if we had to go visit afamily member and they were
further away.
We'd be like how long will ittake, mom?
And she'd say, like it'll betwo Rugrats episodes.

(01:53):
And that was like I couldunderstand that If she said like
it'll be 45 minutes to an hour,I'd be like I don't understand,
but I can picture sitting infront of a TV for that amount of
time.

Don (02:02):
And did you actually have Rugrats playing in the car on
the way there?

Ron (02:06):
No, we didn't have televisions and cars yet.
I don't think, yeah, but it wasjust like.
That was how my brainunderstood the passage of time.
It was immediate.

Doug (02:17):
Wow, and does that mean because Rugrats would often have
two episodes inside of a singleepisode?

Ron (02:27):
Are we talking a storyline?
I want to say it was probably afull, like two episode or two
storyline block of rugrats soit'd be four.
Well, if it's two episodes,four storylines, it's true, I
mean one episode of twostorylines and it probably was
your mom hedging on, not knowingwhether it was right.

Don (02:44):
So yeah, she was just like it could be anywhere from a half
hour to three hours and, and itwould fit, exactly and it, like
you said, it is a unit of timethat can be easily broken or
extended into whatever pastperiod you need yeah

Doug (02:57):
yeah, to pull us completely off topic, I was uh
really weirded out looking at,um, apparently they're trying to
reboot rugrats or they have,but now it's all 3d kind of
knockoff, pixar-ish typeanimation and it uh can't be.
I'm just old, but yeah, Icouldn't do it.
At least it's not live action.

(03:18):
Oh yeah, the babies cgi theirmouths.

Ron (03:25):
Yeah, the babies CGI.

Doug (03:29):
It's like real adults, but CG babies, like they're
Scooby-Doo.

Don (03:33):
Just thinking about that True pain.
So, doug, how about you Anyspecial ways that you marked
time?

Doug (03:42):
Ways that I marked time.
I think that I thought thething that felt the longest when
I was younger was maybe aschool day, so probably thinking

(04:13):
of how much time till recess,then lunch, then break, then
leaving home.
I mean, I think that that'sgenerally how I started to
organize time, because I thinkbefore school I I don't think
that I was thinking about thatas much.
I even remember, uh, when myyeah, like my mom and dad would
ask me like okay, we'll do thatin five minutes, I would be
asking has it been five minutes?
Yeah, within seconds of themsaying that, Before you go to
school.

Ron (04:23):
That's a very like paradisiacal time.
Right, that's Eden.
Right, there is no sun andthere is no moon, Not, at all.
All the world is a garden to beexplored.
And then you go to school andit's like what are these
structures humans have built?

Don (04:38):
Yeah, I'm even trying to remember, like I remember
distinctly keeping track of timein high school, like how many
minutes until this period isover, oh yeah, but in elementary
school I, I really don't like Idon't remember.
I don't remember paying thatclose of attention to a clock
back then, like there wereclocks.

Doug (04:55):
I know there were clocks in all the rooms, but I don't
remember yeah yeah, and I didn'tthink about a good point, I
didn't think about the clock.
I just began to get a certainrhythm, for it's going to be
lunch in just a second, I feelit, and I was pretty right on
most of the time, yeah.
So I think that I started tothink about things in those

(05:17):
types of increments and I kindof remember asking parents like
is it about the time for whenschool starts to lunch?
And then they would give me anidea of what it would be.

Don (05:27):
Yeah, that's a it's a good segue that you have just given
us, talking about, um, aboutgetting into a rhythm and just
sort of, I think, intuiting how,the passage of time and how
cause.
What I'd like to talk about, uh, in this episode is the
measurement of time and how wehave come to rely on a system

(05:48):
and how that system was sort ofdeveloped.
So we want to get into ourspecial uncannery magic bus that
we have.
We'll go all the way back tothe beginning of civilization.

Ron (06:01):
Oh my gosh, that was worth every penny we spent on that.
I know right.

Don (06:08):
And I want us to try to see if we can figure out.
How did we figure out tomeasure the passage of time?
Measuring distance is one thing, because we've got body parts
that are all certain lengths andyou hold out your arms and
that's how tall you are.
Cubid is from the-.

Ron (06:25):
How tall is he?
He's two and a half arms.

Don (06:28):
But that's, I mean it's.
I'm six foot, Like it's, likeit's the same.
Somebody's foot was that foot,you know Right, and that's how
tall I am.

Ron (06:36):
Wow, I find that guy.
Is that what we're doing today?

Don (07:11):
no-transcript tell us oh, it's three o'clock, not three 15
.
For most of human history wewould have no idea it was three
o'clock, it just was.
It was still daytime, it wasnighttime.
Those were the two sort ofdivisions, and beyond that it

(07:31):
didn't matter, because if it wasnighttime I got to sleep and it
was daytime I had to go to work, and you don't have to work
again until daytime again, andthat was all that anybody had to
care about, right, Right?
So how did we get from there toall of the complications that
we have now?
What do you think like?
What would be the first thing,what would be the first rhythm,
that, um, that would get noticed, you think well, I feel like

(07:55):
you mentioned, it has to be thethe day right like it has to be.

Ron (07:59):
Oh, this is the daytime, this is the nighttime.
In the daytime I work and I'mhot and I'm sweaty, and in the
nighttime the leopards come out,or saber-toothed tiger yeah, I
would agree with that.

Doug (08:11):
I think about this is coming back like the bus is
coming back to minecraft intoday's world, um, but I think
about that for um, the fact thatit's so successful, that video
game is so successful amongstall age groups, and I think it's
because it drops you onto anisland and you have to figure

(08:33):
out how to start constructingstuff before night happens,
because night is when all of thebaddies come out and whatnot.
Um, and I think I mean I'vewatched three-year-olds play
minecraft before and I theyintuitively understand.
I have to get this done beforethis time she just loves life

(08:55):
indeed, um, all right, so then,so, so I agree.

Don (09:01):
I think day nine is the most obvious rhythm that gets
picked up.
So then, what comes next?
If we're not administrators ofgovernment, we're just Joe Blow
cavemen.

Ron (09:16):
My favorite movie.

Don (09:20):
What rhythm is going to matter to us next?
What are we going to have tofigure out?

Doug (09:24):
We're hunter gatherers.
Is that what we're thinking?

Don (09:26):
Yeah.

Ron (09:27):
Um so you want to know when , when, when's the good time for
the animals, right, like like?
When are the the water Buffalogoing to be in the in the Valley
and when are the other types ofwater Buffalo?

Don (09:41):
in the Canyon.
So animal migration wouldmatter, right, and, and the the
gathering part, it would be theseasons that would affect us.
So we'd have to figure out howcan we?
So?
So how would you, how would wego about figuring out when those
things would happen?

Ron (10:01):
is it too?
Is it too difficult to startcreating, uh, like to start
recognizing and recordingpatterns of weather, right?
So I mean, you got, this is thesnowy time, this is the monsoon
time, right, this would be.
So you'd be like, oh, usuallyaround this time of year, this
is when we can expect thesesorts of things.
And then that also probablyties in with the animals.

Don (10:26):
But is animals.
But is that also too?
Is that too big?
Do we need to think smaller?
I don't think so.
I mean because we're, you know,in our, in our magic, our magic
bus, we're all the way backwith hunter gatherer times, like
we're, we're, uh, I thinkthat's, I think that's about
right.
But the thing that that kind ofweirds me out a little bit is
we've grown up knowing thatthere's a cycle.
We know that yeah that when it'shot, you know six months later
it will be cold and then sixmonths later it will be hot.

(10:47):
And we know physically thatthat's how it's going to work
because of the physics of thegravitational pull of the sun
and the solar system.
But hunter gatherers like Iwonder how long it was.
Just a mystery.
Like you know it's cold now,how you know it's cold now, how
much longer will it be cold andand you know how long would it
take to get a sense of thatrhythm Right, and can you pass

(11:09):
that rhythm on to your children?
or is that something that theyhave to experience for
themselves?
Cause we can pass it on becausewe've got calendars and clocks
and stuff like that, but whenwe're, when we don't have any
way to record the passage oftime, we're just experiencing
the passage of time.
Can you pass that on, or do youthink that's something that
just has to be experienced?

Ron (11:28):
I think you can pass it on, but it's a crap shoot if the
kids believe you or not yeah soit's just like today yeah, yeah,
trust me, there's gonna bethat's still hot.

Doug (11:44):
Told you it's hot again.

Ron (11:49):
Yeah, I don't know.
I wonder if those, if that's mybrain is going to like,
probably that starts to tie intolike early mystical experiences
or perceptions of nature,spirits and things like that
Right when it's like, yeah it's,it's freezing and terrible and
all my cows are dead.
I better start praying toanything to you know, bring the

(12:11):
spring.
And you pray long enough andeventually the spring does
arrive.
You're like, wow, it worked.
So maybe sort of religioustradition is a way to record and
pass on that kind ofinformation.
Mm-hmm.

Don (12:24):
What about the?
Somebody has to be there thatthey can figure out, and it's
attached to those religious, um,I think, uh, um significance
though is, there's a way we canfigure out how long it's going
to be before it gets cold andbefore it gets hot again, like,
like.
Even the hunter-gatherers canfigure it out, like oh we got it

(12:47):
.

Ron (12:47):
What is it?
It's the good old moon.
Yeah, because the moon changesshape in the sky.

Don (12:53):
It does.
It changes shape in the sky andit does so in a very
predictable way, um, andunfortunately it's a super, uh
inconvenient amount of time.
It's like 29.6 days or whateveris is a cycle of the moon, but
that's um, that's pretty closeto uh to to to a month.

(13:14):
So that's that passage of timethat we can figure out.
If we can count the number ofmoons until we get to summer,
right, or whatever we calledsummer back then, then it
wouldn't be cold anymore andthen, uh, the moon's going to.
So the uh, the original um, theway the time was counted was
was through that, that, the moon.
But then how do we get from themoon to a year to uh to then,

(13:42):
of course, having to get tohours in a day.
How many moons should there bein a year?

Ron (13:55):
How many would be convenient.
I do like the possibility of aworld where we don't have these
answers and we get to decide andwe're like there are going to
be 36 moons in a year and then ayear just becomes this really
long period of time.
Like it could be the reign of achieftain or something right.
Like that's a unit of humanlife right.

Doug (14:14):
How long did?

Ron (14:14):
this guy or something.
But if you're thinking for,like, how do we find a rational
or like a way to explain this tomany people?
Um, I don't know.
That's my answer, yeah.

Don (14:33):
Let's not put Ron in charge of this.

Doug (14:35):
And you're wait.
No, you're asking how it askone more time.

Don (14:43):
How many?

Ron (14:43):
moons in a year is the question.
Well, I feel like if you, ifyou would follow the moons until
you find a repeat in thequestion, well, I feel like if
you, you would follow the moonsuntil you find a repeat in the
pattern, right, so likeeventually a winner would arrive
again I think that that's whyI'm having trouble with it is
like how they would know a yearbecause it's been cold and hot a
certain amount of times, andthen they would divide that by
moons.

Doug (15:02):
Is that what we're thinking?

Don (15:05):
Yeah, we're trying to figure it out.

Doug (15:08):
I wouldn't be in charge of weather.

Ron (15:10):
Let's ask Joe Blow Caveman Joe Blow Caveman, what do you
make of all these moons?
Let's go to the higher glenicsMoon scary.
Pale, white face of death insky.

Don (15:24):
Because here's the problem.
So the babylonians figured thisout, and they figured it out by
about 500 bc, but thebabylonians started well before
500 bc.
The babylonians go all the wayback to to 1800 bc, so it took
them some time to uh to figurethis out.
But the, the lunar cycle, theycould predict the start of the

(15:46):
month on a 19 year cycle.
So exactly 235 lunar monthsworks out in the, the, the
regular scheme.
But that's a that's like toolong of a time to conceptualize,
like if we made a year theequivalent of 19 years.
Right, right, like our brainwouldn't like that's not the way

(16:06):
a cycle would work yeah so, um,so they divided those, uh, that
19 year cycle up into um sevenlong years that had 13 months in
them, and 12 short years thathad 12 months in them, and so
you had to wait for theastronomers to tell you every
year whether it was going to bea long year or a short year, and
then sometimes it had 12 monthsand sometimes it had 13 months,

(16:29):
depending upon how many moonsthere were in the year, to try
to keep us in the ballpark of intime with the astronomical
cycle of the Earth around thesun.
And that happens to be alsowhere our degrees come from too.
That's why we have 360 degreesin a circle.
Uh, this comes from thebabylonians counting the uh, the

(16:52):
movement of the sun across thesky.
Wow, yeah, but, um, they thendecided to divide the uh, the
babylonians did the, the day,into 12 equal parts, so sundown
to sundown went 12 equal parts,so instead of 24, they were
basically two-hour parts andthose were called the ru, and

(17:16):
then they divided the ru into 30equal sections, called us.
So you had 360 us in a day in a24-hour period.
Yeah, um, which?
Uh, again, it's not quite, notquite our time keeping right,
but you can see the.
The base 12 is in there um andthe uh, the, the base 60 is in

(17:37):
there.
Um, both of those numbers arekind of odd, though, like right,
if you're going to startcounting something like most of
us wouldn't choose, hey, let's.
Let's count by 12s, or let'scount by 60s.
Right um any ideas why theywould choose those weird numbers
like we.
We count things like we counteggs by 12s, we count it dozens

(18:01):
you've got a word for it.

Ron (18:04):
Is it a passionate and unruly king?

Don (18:07):
The whims of a passionate ruler the mad Babylonian king 12
wanted everything named afterhimself.

Ron (18:18):
I've read this Christian Anderson tale.

Doug (18:22):
Let's see, yeah, it it.
I find it confusing because weusually count digits you know,
like that's a big part of, so Iwould imagine that they'd be
thinking of something, but Idon't know what.
We have 12 of all, 10 fingersand two nipples.
That's it.
All 10 fingers and two nipples.

(18:44):
Everybody's got them.

Don (18:52):
Some people have more than two.
Ah, the 13 is here.
That's how we got a baker'sdozen.

Doug (19:01):
You do what your job was going to be if you woke up with
that.
Yeah, we're burned with thatthird nipple He'll bake like
crazy.

Don (19:09):
Actually, it's funny that you mentioned your fingers.
We do usually count by tensbecause we've got ten fingers.
It's easy to count that way.
But actually this is one of thereasons that we have the 12 as
the basis for some of thecounting, as well as 60.
Because the Babyloniansinherited from the Sumerians a

(19:32):
numerical system that was base60.
So rather than base 10, it wasbase 60.
And the way that they wouldcount those was using the
fingers.
So usually we would count asingle number on each digit
because the sumerians wereancient aliens.

Doug (19:51):
Aha, now we're taking that's next podcast.

Don (19:54):
So, as I was saying, usually we count, uh, on our
fingers one number per digit.
But if you look at, take yournon-dominant hand, usually, and
if you count with your thumb and, rather than counting your
digits, count the space betweenyour knuckles, like on your
pinky finger, you'll have one,two, three on your pinky finger,
four, five, six on your ringfinger, seven, eight, nine on

(20:16):
your middle finger, 10, 11, 12on your index finger.
You can count a dozen with yourhand.
So apparently this is the waythe Babylonians would count
their I don't know sheaves ofwheat or eggs.
So you can count a dozen andthen, with your dominant hand,
you have five fingers, you cankeep track of those dozens,
which five dozen would count?
60.

(20:36):
60.
That's cool.

Ron (20:39):
That's clever.
We should still do that.

Don (20:41):
Yeah, if you were only Babylonian, you could.

Ron (20:44):
Yeah, I've we should still do that.
Yeah, and if you were?

Doug (20:45):
only Babylonian you could.
Yeah, yeah, I've only beenstuck on 10 the entire time.

Ron (20:48):
I'm sorry what happened to you Babylonians.

Don (20:57):
So that's actually what happened, though, with the way
the calendar got invented so youhad this they figured out that
they could divide the sun'secliptic arc into 12, and then
they could divide those 12pieces into 30 additional pieces
, which is about a month, andthat's how they wound up with
the 360-day year, which ofcourse, put them out of phase a

(21:19):
little bit with the astronomicalcycle, but it wasn't that
important.
Back then People didn't havepaper calendars in their
household that they were keepingtrack of days.
They could just say, hey, atthe end of the, at the end of
the year, we need five more daysin order to get back on track
with the uh the.
Usually they were measuringfrom the uh the spring equinox,
and then they just would waitfive days, and then they would

(21:39):
say now we're starting a newyear, and it was fine, because
there was only a few thousandpeople and nobody had a calendar
to like correct somebody andsay no, it's Thursday, cause it
wasn't Thursday, it just wasanother day.
I had to go to work.

Ron (21:55):
That's really cool.
Imagine getting everyone onboard with hey, we're just
throwing five more days on thisone, right, can't even get on
board with time zones.

Doug (22:01):
No.
People hate time zones.
Yeah, absolutely Call you ahead.

Don (22:11):
So the Egyptians are credited with dividing the day
into 24 hours instead of the 12.
, and I don't know how those twomerged, but somehow those
merged, so we had a 12-hour day,and the hours, though, were
just a division, a fractionaldivision of the amount of

(22:33):
sunlight in the day.
So it wasn't a passage of 60minutes.
Like you couldn't have astopwatch in ancient Egypt and
say, oh, it's been an hour.
You just would say, well, it'sbeen one twelfth of the movement
of the sun across the sky, um,which they would measure with a
stick, um, and so that wouldmean that your day was longer in
the summertime than it was inthe wintertime.

(22:53):
So, um, but how would you getpaid back?
Then you said paid, like yeah,if you were a paid worker, how
would you get paid?
clamshells yeah right like aflintstone yeah you wouldn't get
paid by the hour.
Is the point you get paid by bythe day, right?
So I would want to only workwinter days, because winter days

(23:17):
are shorter, that's right ofcourse in egypt they don't
change as much as they do inNorthern Europe Right right.
But anyways.

Ron (23:30):
Would you get time and a half on a summer day?

Doug (23:33):
Mm-hmm.

Ron (23:33):
Is that where time and a half comes from?

Doug (23:37):
It's not Get the bosses in here, yeah.

Don (23:43):
Then we have to move forward quite a bit of time
before we actually get minutesbeing counted, um, uh, so a
minute is a one 60th division ofthat hour, right, so we got an
hour is one 12th of a daytime orone 12th of the nighttime.
We would divide that into 60,mostly based because of that's
how the Babylonians andSumerians were dividing things,

(24:07):
but the 60 was kept because ofhow fractional it is.
So apparently the Babyloniansand the Sumerians didn't have a
concept of fractions, so youcouldn't have by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
without any fractions.
The only number you can divideby is 7.

(24:33):
And the same is true for 360.
So 7 kind of becomes thismystical, magical number that
doesn't work, but all the othernumbers do work.
Number that doesn't work butall the other numbers do work.
Um, and they think that thatmight be why seven is, uh, one
of the reasons it's been givensort of that mystical, magical,
um reputation.
Yeah, um, but then how manydays did we wind up within a

(24:57):
week?
Seven, oh my gosh, right.
So like it's weird the wholething.
uh maps out just why do we haveseven days in a week, though?

Doug (25:10):
Because we got the 10 digits to count and then we've
got the knuckles, and so whenyou get fingers removed for
doing bad things, let him cook,he's on it, it you better, not
it's not going well is it one ofthose holdovers?

Ron (25:33):
but I mean, like it kind of works out right, what's we give
?
What's seven times four, 28,eight.

Don (25:40):
So it kind of works into our, our 30-day approximate
months that we've created it'sclose to our 30-day month, it's
closer to our 29 point, somedays lunar calendar as well, but
it's still not perfect foreither of those right right.
So the the moon cycle keepsmoving a little bit if we, if
we're counting by sevens, um, uh.

(26:03):
Oddly enough, the reason wehave seven days in a week seems
to be because people liked itbetter.
There was actually an eight-dayweek that was used by the
Etruscans that the Romansinherited, and the eight-day
week was used by ancient Rome,um and uh, um.

(26:26):
It was uh, um, a market system.
And so the days of the week,the eight days a week where they
didn't have names, they justwere lettered Um, so it was a, b
, c, d, e, f, g, h, um and um.
Each little town would havemarket days on a different
letter.
So if you were a traveling ummarketeer, you would be able to

(26:48):
have a circuit of, like, eightlittle villages you could visit
and uh, you would have, uh, havea different market experience
on each one of those days, andyou can.

Ron (26:57):
So um, that's a real small business-minded society.

Doug (27:01):
They're really out there helping them out sorry, little
billy, you're not gettingoranges until d, that's right
when does the orange man come,but the?

Don (27:16):
the Romans encountered a seven day week from Egypt and
and others and, and apparentlypeople liked seven days better
because one of those days was aday without a market.
So you had six days of marketand then a day without a market
for festivals and religiouspurposes, and then, um, so we
just sort of landed on seven.

(27:37):
Wow yeah.

Ron (27:38):
Can we do that again?
Can we bring that back up fordebate you?

Don (27:42):
bet how many days?
How many days?
Let's just try six.

Ron (27:45):
I mean, I'm not to try on anything crazy, but six sounds
okay.
How many to try on anythingcrazy, but six sounds okay?
How many work days in yoursix-day week?
Four, baby, no three, I'm goinghard three on, three off, would
you?

Don (27:58):
go every other day or would you go three in a block and
three in a?

Ron (28:01):
block.
I like three in a block.
I'm kind of glad we work in ablock.
I would, because I want the.
I want the block of time offand then like I think, I think,
the, I think you live really big.
You know, and you have, youknow, big tragedy block of
working.
You got big, big joy.
Block of not working.
Hmm, big tragedy.

Doug (28:22):
Big tragedy, big joy.
That's my new rap album.
We'll be plugging that at theend of the cast, good.

Don (28:33):
Um, but then we needed to name them because A, b, c, d, e,
f, they weren't very inventivenames.
That wasn't cool with everybody.
So we needed to come up withnames for the days of the week.
Do you know what the days ofthe week are named after?

Ron (28:46):
they're gods right, at least in English.
Many of them are like norsegods right thursday thursday
according to neil gaiman, right?
Yeah, you got thursdaywednesday's like woden's day,
right?
Right friday, freya orsomething uh-huh, and then, uh,
sunday is.

(29:07):
Everyone knows the famous god,famous god Sun of the Norse
pantheon.
Saturday would be the famous MrTubness.

Doug (29:19):
Tubness Day Narnia show, though I was not expecting that.

Ron (29:26):
That's as far as I got.

Don (29:28):
You skipped Monday.

Doug (29:29):
Yeah, Monday is the one that I'm going.

Ron (29:32):
Moon.
You got, moon you got sun IsSaturday, like star day or
something like that.

Doug (29:38):
Or the day to sit.

Don (29:41):
I sat on day.

Doug (29:44):
The day of sitting, my favorite Tuesday, tuesday is
very strange.

Ron (29:50):
Tear.
Tear is a Norse god, tews isTyr that's Tyr's day.
Tyr's day, tyr's day you'regrinning, like you know.
I do, he does, you're grinninglike a man watching Apesadon
well, think about my responseearlier.

Don (30:06):
Apes would probably be more articulate well, you're right,
they're named after gods andthey were named after the
Babylonian gods, actually,originally because the
Babylonians had that seven-dayweek that the Etruscans messed
up.
So they named the days of theweek after their seven favorite
gods, and then the Greeks tookthose and just changed the names

(30:29):
to their seven gods.
And then the Romans took thoseand just changed the names to
their seven gods.
And then the Romans took thoseand just changed the names to
the Latin gods.
And so in most languages, so inSpanish and French, you can see
the names of the Latin godnames there.
So, for example, miraculous inSpanish is named after the god

(30:51):
Mercury, who's the messenger god.
When the Anglo-Saxonsencountered the Romans, they
basically said, hey, theseven-day week thing is kind of
cool, you've got a way to countthat.
But we don't have Mercury as agod, we have Woden, who was, of
course, the head god in theNorse and Anglo-Saxon pantheon,

(31:15):
but he also was a messenger.
He would deliver messages.
So Wednesday became as Woden'sday.
Like you pointed out, thursdaydoes come from Thor in the Latin
.
That's jueves, in Spanishrather rather uh, which is jove.
So it's for jupiter, who wasthe god of thunder in greek and

(31:39):
then.
So, rather than taking the headgod and making it the head god,
we just took the thunder partof it.

Ron (31:45):
Um, curious coincidence, almost like the gods were given
to us by an ancient species ofextraplanar beings.

Don (31:57):
It's funny.
You should mention that I justsaw, actually, a post that had a
picture of the oldest pair ofsocks that exist in the world
that apparently were produced inEgypt in the 5th century and
they just have two toes in Egyptin the fifth century.
And uh, they just have two toesin them, like two equal piece.
It's right, like so.
It's very strange.
Indeed, it seems to be umthey're out there.

Ron (32:20):
Yeah, they don't buy the official narrative.
People I want to believe by mybook All right so uh, do you
know spanish or french?

Don (32:30):
do you know what friday is?

Ron (32:32):
um, I used to definitely took german oops free talk, yep
friday's viernes yes, which issimilar to spring.
It is yeah yeah, it's.

Don (32:48):
Venus is the is the latin god, so it's the only day of the
week named after um.
Well, it's not true.
It's a day of the week namedafter um, goddess of beauty, so
it's named after a, a female god, and so um.
The female god in theanglo-saxon is freya, freya,
which is, so it's freya's day umsaturday.

(33:09):
You guys don't know whoSaturday is named after.

Ron (33:11):
Saturn.

Don (33:12):
Oh, of course.

Ron (33:13):
It is Saturn, horry old Saturn, with his great white
beard, who is the father ofJupiter.

Don (33:20):
And Anglo-Saxons didn't have anybody, so they're like,
well, we'll just keep the name.
So Saturn is named after theRoman god, saturn, but the
others they switched over to uhto Anglo-Saxon, so um in Latin,
uh, now the in Spanish.
The Sunday is named after theholy day, the Domingo Um, but it

(33:42):
is named after the sun.
Monday is named after the moon,there's like.
So where do we get the name ofthe moon from?
Might be from a goddess namedmona um, who was a goddess of
the moon um.
And tuesday is named after uh,two uh which is a brother up
here I think okay um.
Two is the god of war, but sothe, the positions, like the,

(34:04):
the positions of the days of theweek all line up.
So, uh, two is the god of war.
From the Anglo-Saxons, which uhis Martis, in in the Latin,
which is for Mars, the God ofwar, um, so, uh, um, the days of
the week all come from the, uh,the, the Pantheon, but um, it's

(34:24):
actually, um, they named eachhour of the day after each one
of those gods.
So the day was named after thegod of the first hour of the day
, and because there's seven ofthem and we've got 24 hours in a
day, when you put that together, every day moves three gods
over, and so we wind up withseven different gods, luckily,

(34:51):
over that pattern, um, but uh, Idon't know what they did with
that knowledge.
Like, why would you know?
Like, at 10 o'clock it's venustime, like I don't know it's
venus testers in my house youknow.

Doug (35:04):
Going back to german, I feel like they kind of had a
figure like wednesday is mitvokthe day of the middle folk yeah
middle of the week.
Couldn't have been easier.
They knew what they were doing,but then it gets weird, like
dean's tog is tuesday I don'tunderstand dean's tog.

Ron (35:22):
Yeah, who's dean?
What's it mean?
Yeah?

Doug (35:26):
don't know.
Yeah, the tog is always day,but um yeah, I don't have
anything for dint, so I gotcarried away with wednesday um,
all right, so then we need todivide our hours down into to
smaller pieces?

Don (35:44):
um, and, and what do we divide them into?

Ron (35:48):
minutes.

Don (35:49):
Minutes, yeah, and then minutes are divided into seconds
.

Doug (35:54):
Seconds this we know, Don't do milliseconds, though.
That's where it gets weird.
Why do we switch back?

Don (36:03):
So the division of the hour into 60 minutes, the, the, what
does minute mean?
Well there's, you guys bothhave studied english before.

Ron (36:16):
Yeah, I used to use this word and people looked at me
like this is not a word, but itis minute right.

Don (36:21):
It's like a small, small it is, and a minute is a small
part of an hour, and that'sactually where that comes from.
It's and and it's again.
It's another pattern thatpeople don't pay attention to,
but actually the the way thatyou place the emphasis in the

(36:42):
word changes it from anadjective to a noun, or vice
versa.
Yeah, so so minute is theadjective meaning small, and
then if we wanted to make it anoun, we would change it to a
minute.
Same thing you do with produceand produce, um, so uh, it
always gets the blue squiggliesin Microsoft word.

Ron (37:00):
Minute does minute that they don't like you using my new
.
They're like that's not right,that's not.

Don (37:06):
Hmm, computers take over the world.
I guess we'll.

Ron (37:09):
Yeah, grammarly AI, I think they shrink the vocabulary.

Don (37:12):
They do.

Doug (37:13):
Yeah, they do.

Don (37:14):
So the official Latin name for it is pars minuta prima, the
very first small part.
And that actually is important,because if we divide it into 60
small parts, then we're goingto divide each of those small
parts into a further 60 smallparts.
Those would be our seconds.
That would be pars minutasecunda, which is where our

(37:37):
second comes from.
So my minutes are calledminutes because they're small
and seconds are called secondsbecause they're the second small
part, the second small partthat's crazy Mm-hmm that's crazy
.

Ron (37:56):
Why do education is so designed to just make you
remember things like with whenyou're probably someone's
teacher was cool and taught themthis stuff, but like when
you're a kid.
That's like.
I just need you to understandthat there are 60 seconds in a
minute.
You know right like who careswhat any of these words mean?
Just Just know, that but fullcircle.

Doug (38:10):
Going back to that conversation of how I started to
look at time, I think it'sbecause, systematically right,
you're in situations where it'slike I need you to have the base
level of knowledge that all ofus do so you can just interact,
and so a lot of that fun stuffgets in the way, because at five
I think you just want to play,but you also need to learn what
seconds are in the way, becauseat five, I think you just want

(38:31):
to play, but you also need tolearn what seconds are.
So you're not going to get thefun at five.
I'm like who's miraculous?
I'm not even I'm not evenhearing that word.
I'm just thinking about recess.
I still want to know who deanis.

Don (38:40):
Yeah, and why did he get a whole day?
Yeah poor dean.
Yeah, but mean it's a goodpoint because the and and I
think it's a point that'srelevant because it it goes to
like the whole new math and youknow, and now the common core
has come in and is trying tochange things again.

(39:01):
And uh, and we're not.
Uh, students are not beingtaught times tables, because
that's just memorization.
They want, uh, you know, to beable to, to do the mathematical
reasoning, to arrive at whatthose solutions are.
So which is the like, which isthe more relevant?
Should you just know the fact,or do you need to know the
history of where the fact camefrom?

(39:22):
Is it?

Ron (39:25):
I mean the.
The first one is definitelymost relevant, right, like, just
have the fact right, becausethat's the information you need
to draw to mind.
But I feel like the second ismaybe you know, this is maybe
dumb, but like, I feel like ifyou, if you arm someone with the
knowledge of the, of where itall comes from, that's how you

(39:45):
start to engender like aintellectual curiosity, right,
yeah.
I feel, and that's like a it'slike I feel and that's like it's
like a teach a man to fish orgive him a fish sort of
situation.

Doug (39:57):
I for sure do not retain things without the second part.
The second part, if I canunderstand how it fits into the
lore or the, that's when Ibecome ingrained or it becomes
engrossing for me of like.
I would like to know about thatnow because I see how it's part
of a larger thing.

Don (40:16):
And I agree with that, Like that's.
It's one of the reasons why.

Doug (40:19):
Etymology of words is so interesting to me because it
helps me remember new vocabulary, except for the Dean talk,
which apparently I don't get toever know that's

Ron (40:31):
the Germans and like etymology, you start to realize,
like, how much of our knowledgeis based on things that no one
really understands anymore, likeit's so far removed, right,
like we think of, like, oh, theancient world, oh, those
Babylonians, sure, maybe theyexisted, right, but the fact
that we're like still likethey're, they're, they're sort

(40:53):
of base level systems, still areintegrated into our daily lives
in such a degree and we don'teven recognize or know that says
a lot about, like, howknowledge uh, passes through
generations.
Right, and like what is keptlike yeah, it was useful, what,
why that's not important?
Right, what is kept like yeah,it was useful, what, what, why
that's not important.

Don (41:10):
Right, and that's I mean, and that's what's crazy to me is
cause, literally like 3000years ago, Bob the Babylonian
said hey Joe, blow, let's count.
That's the caveman.
Oh yeah, sorry, oh yeah.

Doug (41:23):
Later man.

Don (41:25):
Let's, and now we still are .
Yeah, but nobody knows.
Well, like it's impossible toknow who Bob the Babylonian
actually was, that came up withthat idea.
But like, how does that last3,000 years?
Right, and you know, peoplecan't remember.
You know, I don't know.

(41:46):
Last week's meme, exactly Likeeverything to now seems to be
moving so fast.

Ron (41:50):
So yeah, and I used to actually as a Last week's meme,
exactly Like everything to nowseems to be moving so fast and I
used to actually, as a kid,always hate that it was 60, that
like an hour was 60 minutes anda minute was 60 seconds.
I was like why?
Why can't it just be 100?

Doug (42:04):
Money is 100.
Money is 100.

Don (42:07):
So you're a milliseconds guy, got it, which is an
innovation in british money, ofcourse.
Like just before our lifetimes,right in the early 1970s, they
moved from old british money tothe decimal system that the
american money has been using.
But, um, what do you think?
What do you think about decimaltime, like would that?
Would that solve a lot of ourproblems if we had a hundred

(42:28):
minutes in an hour, and I meanwe would have 10 hours in a day
um, I mean, I can't make a realargument against it just because
it's so ingrained in me.

Doug (42:39):
Like I'm not, I'm not eight anymore, you know.

Ron (42:42):
So, like I don't know, I've dropped my qualm with time
right but um uh, no, I don'tthink it actually adds anything
right Like the base idea that100 is such a beautiful easy
divisible number is, I think,again related to our anatomy,
right.
It's like, well, because westare at these, you know two

(43:02):
groups of five digits all day.
So we're just sort of like ourbrains are programmed to think
of that as easily.
But I don't see why it's anyharder now that if you just look
at your hands in a differentway right like we're using the
spaces between the knuckles, thesame kind of thing count doug's
nipples, lincoln, I'll tell you, I'm not a baker because there

(43:26):
have been attempts to improve,to improve both timekeeping and
calendar design by making it adecimal system.

Don (43:35):
And decimal time does exist today in certain computer
applications, oh yeah.
But what's strange about thosedecimal times?
I don't understand theparticular purpose that they
serve in computer, in thecomputer world, but a lot of
them are based off just like youknow, Bob's birthday from 1973.

(43:56):
, like they all count from aparticular event that happened
in the past and they just arecounting the number of minutes
since that event happened.
Yeah, but to the.
The French revolution actuallytried to improve on the, the
calendar keeping and timekeeping, um, and if you think about it,
well, what was I mean?

(44:17):
So this is a test.
You guys weren't warned wascoming.
Um, what uh, what was the?
What was the purpose of theFrench revolution?
What were they trying to uh toto improve in in, in general
overall?

Doug (44:29):
We're not loving the aristocracy, let's just start
there.
Yeah.

Ron (44:33):
Don't like them, don't like their clergy friends either.

Don (44:36):
No, the first two estates, right so?
And the first estate, theclergy friends.
They're all in charge of thereligious stuff, and we just
talked about all the days of theweek being named after Clergy
stuff right.

Ron (44:49):
Well, after God right.

Don (44:54):
And granted they're clergy stuff, right, well, after gods
right, and granted their godsthat that the clergy in the
french revolution would for surehave said we're, we're pagan,
yet we're still using them.
Even today they still use them.
But, uh, but we needed to finda way to remove all of those
religious references.
And what's the purpose of a, ofan annual calendar to record
history and to keep track offestival days?
oh, yeah, yeah because, wheredoes our current calendar like?

(45:16):
Who was in charge of developingour current calendar?
The church, it was, and thewhole purpose of the church, uh,
developing a process of thecalendar was to find the day of
easter actually was, was theoriginal goal of the development
of the AD BC time system in thesixth century.
Um and uh.
So all of that in the Frenchrevolution, if we're, if we're,

(45:39):
you know, purist in, you know,trying to eliminate all
influence of religion on oursociety, which was one of their
goals we have to completely redoeverything, because the whole
calendar is based on religiousfestivals, like the placement of
christmas, the placement easter, saints days, the names of the
days a week are all so uh, sothey basically just like went

(46:01):
blank slate and started over.
So, think, metric system, howmany days you're going to have
in a week?
10, yeah, 10 days in a weekthat's not going to fly, is it?
how many?
Well depends how many work dayswould you have?

Doug (46:16):
oh, five easy so basically at work week non-work yeah yeah
, um, they went nine what so yougot nine work days and then you
have one day off.

Don (46:30):
That was not a work day, but of course it replaced sunday
, but it wasn't really sunday,because sunday would have been a
religious day.
It just was a non-work day.

Doug (46:39):
Um so how many people like I think I do?

Don (46:41):
they probably didn't like this very much well, I wonder,
like again, like every day, youknow I I know uh, forever,
jacques, a peasant in the, um,the, the street, um, like, did
they even know what day it was?
Like the only reason they wouldknow is because somebody at
church told them today'sChristmas or whatever.
Like they didn't ever have areason to.

(47:04):
I wouldn't think the majorityof them um merchants and things
like that that have shipmentsand and things like that, of
course they, of course theywould have.
But but the general population,I wonder if they they would
have?
Um, so they've got a 10-dayweek.
So how many days are how many?
How many days we're going tohave in a month?
30?
So yeah, we got three weeks ina in a month.

(47:26):
So that sounds better.
Sure, yeah, three weeks in amonth.
How many months in a year?
Twelve.
There are yeah, I don't know why, because it doesn't fit the
whole metric system.

Ron (47:39):
You can't go around changing everything too fast,
right.

Doug (47:41):
People will lose their minds, that's enough.
I think that people would.

Ron (47:46):
And so what?
We have 30 hours in a day too.

Don (47:49):
We'll get to that.
We'll get to that.
So let's, let's get thecalendar worked out first.
So we've got 12 months of 30days.
That's do we need to do the newmath.

Doug (48:02):
Oh, I'm sorry 360, 360.

Don (48:03):
So we're going to be short five days, five days we are.
So we're going to add thosefive days at the end of the year
and those are going to be theonly holidays we get all year.

Ron (48:16):
All next to each other.
Uh-huh, it's like having yourbirthday on Christmas, yeah.

Don (48:22):
Well, and they're all smushed together, they all
happen at the same time and, uh,the whole purpose is to, um, um
, get us back on track with the,uh, the, the movement of the
sun across the sky.
People would be going wild,like absolutely nuts those are
your purge days.

Ron (48:43):
Oh yeah, those five days that don't exist yeah well, and
they placed them in September aswell.

Don (48:50):
I'm trying to remember what they started.
It was like the Septembermassacres was the day that they
started counting from.
It was like September 22nd.
So you get the middle ofSeptember, you get five days off
and that would be your onlybreak from work for the whole
year.
All right, so let's come forthe whole year, but all right,

(49:12):
so let's come back to to the daythen.
Yeah so, yeah.
So how many hours in a daywe're going to again thinking
metric system, like it's notmetric system but thinking?

Ron (49:21):
maybe 20, maybe 25, 25.

Don (49:24):
That seems more round to you than than 24.

Ron (49:27):
Yeah.

Don (49:28):
Yeah, if we're staying decimal 20, maybe back to 20.
No, they chose 10.
Ooh, yeah, uh, which means that, uh, an hour is like three
hours long, like our sense ofthree hours would be.
How long an hour is?
because they had 10 hoursdivided into 100 decimal minutes

(49:49):
and each decimal minute wasdivided into 100 decimal seconds
.
So the actual count like onedecimal hour is 144 conventional
minutes.
So it's like two hours and ahalf or so.
That's a lot of Rugratsepisodes Too many.
Just seems like it would makethe day go so slow.

(50:11):
Right, like looking at the clock, like it would take forever for
it to move, uh, even thetiniest little bit.
Yeah, um, so, uh, they um,there you go.
Um, not surprisingly, as youpointed out, this was not super
popular.
It only lasted about eightyears.
And then popular only lastedabout eight years and then they

(50:36):
eight whole years, that's a longtime decided to pull it off.
They, um, they had to changethe names of everything too.
We, getting back to the, thecalendar, um, they didn't want
to name any of the months after,uh, any of the things that what
are we never talked about this?

Ron (50:43):
do you know?

Don (50:43):
what?
What did our?
What are our month?

Ron (50:45):
some of they're like very roman right july j.
July is Julius and August isAugustus and September is famous
.
Septiembre is the traitor.

Doug (51:01):
December is kind of confusing oh.

Ron (51:03):
Sept is a numerical right Seven.

Don (51:05):
Sept is seven.

Ron (51:06):
So it's not the seventh month.
It's not, they screwed it upsomewhere.
September, October does makesense, though, yeah, eight
November is.

Doug (51:17):
November, but yeah, then they skip, and then we're in
December, which is 10 again.

Don (51:21):
December is 10 again.

Doug (51:22):
Yeah.

Don (51:23):
It's true, but it's the 12th month.
It gets weird, Holy cow.
What about January?
January?

Ron (51:30):
January.

Don (51:37):
I cow.
What about january?
January, I feel like I know, Iwant to know, I don't know.
January's janice oh yeah, therehe is.

Ron (51:40):
And february fabulous, they don't know febru is a mystery.

Don (51:50):
Lost the time.
Yeah, there's a possiblefestival of forgiveness that
occurred that may have had aname similar to February.

Doug (51:59):
February is when you give up those grudges March the.

Ron (52:04):
Ides, yeah, big Ides time Mark.

Don (52:08):
All the months had an Ides, though, I know, but March,
march, the I'ds wereparticularly potent.

Ron (52:16):
But what was March named after I got?
Either Mars or Mark was a bigname back then.

Don (52:23):
Mars.
Okay yeah, april's Aprilis,which is a springtime goddess,
may is Maya and June is probablyJuno, makes sense, and Julius,
as you point out, is JuliusCaesar and Augustus was Augustus
Caesar.

Ron (52:43):
Those must have replaced prior months.

Don (52:46):
They did, they did.
Julius replaced Quintilius,poor Quint, oh, they did, they
did.
Uh, julius replaced quintilius,and uh, and sextilius for uh,
august.
So, but you've already, you'vealready kind of landed on um, on
something uh important aboutthe way that we number the
months um, because September isthe ninth month of our year, but

(53:10):
September means um 7th month,october, 8th, november, 9th, 9th
, and December is Big 10.
Big 10, yeah, so we squeezedthem in.
How did we get them off?
How did we get off counting?

Ron (53:29):
Did they?
If you've been listeningcarefully.

Don (53:32):
I gave you the answer earlier tonight.

Ron (53:35):
I haven't been but here's my guess Julius didn't want his
month happening in the winter,so he went and he shoved, he
moved it two months over yeah,and they moved everything back I
could see him doing that.

Don (53:50):
That's, that fits the profile for sure, but that's not
what happened?

Ron (53:54):
you told us I did.
What did you tell us Doug Doug?
Consult your notes, please.
Let me see here.

Doug (54:03):
Drawn a blank, quite literally.

Don (54:06):
What is the first day of the year, january 1st?
Now it is January 1st, but ifwe go all the way back in time,
we need something.
January 1st has no astronomicalmarker on it, so we don't have
a way to say it's january oh,did we start the calendar at
spring?

Ron (54:27):
we did what?

Don (54:28):
what's the marker?
What's the astronomical marker?

Ron (54:31):
oh the equinox.

Don (54:33):
So march was our first month.
If you count from March, thenSeptember is the seventh month
and July is the fifth month,quintilis.
So all of the numbers work outfine if you count from March,
because originally, prior toJulius Caesar getting his hands
on it, the Romans were doing thesame thing that the Etruscans

(54:55):
were doing, where they wouldhave 10 months, uh, they would
have, uh, 10 months, and thenthey would have, like winter,
yeah, so between December andthe first day of spring was just
like dead time.
Um, they didn't have a name forit, they didn't count the
months, it just was.
It was.
The year is over and now we'rewaiting for the astronomers to
tell us that it's the springequinox and we would start again

(55:17):
and the Romans actually wouldcount from the start of the new
moon and they would count thenumber of days prior to.
So the way they would expressthe date would be it's like six
days before the new moon inMarch.
Like it's super.
You can think Roman numeralsare confusing.
Roman calendaring would havebeen even worse, but that's

(55:38):
where our names of the monthscome from.
So we're still recognizing theRoman gods and a couple of
Caesars thrown in there, but theFrench Revolution.
Of course we're trying to getrid of all religious references.
So they named their monthsafter the I don't know the, the

(55:59):
quality of the time of year.
So, uh, they had vintage.
Uh, of course they would say itin french, but uh, vintage, uh
cold and frost, they would havesnowy, rainy and windy.
Uh, their springtime monthswere um flowery, andy and meadow

(56:20):
, so they all were sort of I'mborn in meadow, that's right.

Ron (56:26):
Can you imagine being born in windy?

Don (56:32):
I think I had an aunt who was born in windy.

Ron (56:35):
I think I had one who should have been.

Doug (56:39):
Oh, no names here.

Don (56:43):
The British, of course got a hold of that though.
So the British of course got ahold of the names, and they came
up with their own parody names.
So the British would call itWheezy, sneezy and Freezy.

Doug (56:54):
Slippy.

Don (56:55):
Drippy and Nippy, showery, flowery Bowery, and then Hoppy
Croppy and Poppy.

Ron (57:00):
All 12 dwarves, that's right.
Those biting British satirists.
You can't escape them, nomatter what you do.
Always around the corner, allright.

Don (57:14):
So what would we do to make time better?

Ron (57:19):
the measurement of time, freeze it, stop it.
Um, it's a very like fun kindof question, because when you
started talking about the howthe, the french tried to change
their day and their calendar andyou said like, yeah, 10 days in
a week, yeah, my heart, myheart, my heart sank, you know.
And so that I think, how youreact to that kind of a thing

(57:42):
tells you a lot about how muchwe we feel about time and how
time isn't really just a sort ofit's not just a rational,
calculated, necessarymeasurement, right, but we have
a lot of like emotional stakestied into the way we think about
time, right?
So, yeah, do you want the dayto move fast?

(58:03):
You want it to move slow?
Um, you know, by speeding downan hour, maybe you know time's
really flying, but then you havemore hours in a day.
I'm trying to think back, likewhen, like you were saying, doug
, as a kid right, you're a kidwhat do you?
What do you want time to be?
And I don't, I don't know if itreally matters, right, like,
hey, uh, you know you got fourhours until until lunch.

(58:26):
Is that that different from twohours?
Because you've reduced theminutes in an hour like as a kid
does that sound better soundworse.

Doug (58:35):
Well, I think of the fact that you, you literally
described the time before,knowing what time is, as Eden,
as John.
Yeah, I mean that tells youeverything.
Um, I suppose, thinking abouttime, everything is based on
efficiency, isn't it?
I mean, realistically, Ifrequently have yeah

(58:57):
connotations of efficiency tiedto time.

Ron (58:59):
I measure how effective or productive I am being based on
the amount of time somethingtook, an activity took right and
even every society mentioned.

Doug (59:09):
We're looking at these are market days, these festival
days.
We're eliminating this becausewe're creating a new system that
is even identifying the waythat we're doing things so we
can be more efficient.
And then French Revolution it'sabout how many work days and
then days off that you have.
So it seems that almost everyconstruction of time is based on
the efficiency of times thatyou should be working and

(59:32):
resting, in a sense, so makingtime better.
I guess the next question wouldbe like in terms of overall
happiness, because I thinkmoving away from that would be
the greatest way to do that.

Don (59:46):
But and that's what I'm wondering if, going back to the
idea that for the majority ofhuman history people haven't
been keeping time the way thatwe had do in our, in our culture
?
Right, yeah it, it, there'srecords from, uh, from ancient,
uh, roman times, of the romanswould name their years after

(01:00:06):
whoever was the consul, um,administratively.
But the person in the street,like they, wouldn't have a
reason to say, oh, it's thefirst, you know the fourth year
of of marcus aurelius, or likeit just wouldn't matter.
They would mark it fromimportant events oh, it's the
fourth year of Marcus Aurelius,or like it just wouldn't matter,
they would mark it fromimportant events Like, oh, it's
the fourth year from the GreatFamine, or it's the fourth year
from the major earthquake, orright, there would be these

(01:00:29):
important markers in their livesthat then became the delineator
of time, as opposed to thisarbitrary measure of you know
progress, right, and I thinkit's still actually that.

Ron (01:00:41):
It is like, when I think about time, I can't, I can't
tell you what happened in 2011,but I do mark a major like.
I mark the relationship ofdifferent, of myself and other
things, two major milestones inmy life.
So so like in 2011,.
Uh, I did graduate.
So like that's a like thingsthat happened after I graduated

(01:01:03):
is like a easy for me to figureout.
Uh like, uh, you know what wasgoing on there.
And like the COVID-19 pandemichas been the latest big
culturally X years since thenRight.

Doug (01:01:15):
I was just going to say people big culturally.
Oh, it's been x years sincethen.
Right, I was just gonna saypeople.
I I've thought a lot about thisrecently.
People now say it was covid,yeah, which is like I mean,
that's not even a sentence thatmakes sense if we're talking
about time, but people call itthat because that's it's a new
epic?

Don (01:01:32):
yeah, it is yeah I had a moment tonight where I actually
earlier before, uh, before youguys came, uh, came to do the
podcast tonight where, um, I was, uh, I was at an event that uh,
I've been uh, uh, a work eventthat I've been doing for a
number of of years, and what Irealized tonight was that I have

(01:01:54):
almost been doing it for halfof my entire life, was that I
have almost been doing it forhalf of my entire life.
That was one of those momentsthat I'd never thought about it
in that term before.

Doug (01:02:03):
Right.

Don (01:02:03):
Like, um, like I agree with you.
I think there's major momentsin in my life that kind of like
mark new starts of a of a periodof my life and uh, and I've
never thought of it, though interms of a fraction of my entire
life, the way that it struck metonight and uh, and it, it, it

(01:02:25):
didn't make me happy to think ofit that way.

Ron (01:02:27):
Actually, it was rather foreboding, because it depends
on which side of that of the ofthe that calendar, if you will.
You're on right, like um.
I think we were talking onceand you were like when you're a
kid, you know, it's it'sNovember, it's it's September,
cause that means it's almostChristmas time, right?
And then how?
Like, oh my gosh, it takesforever to get to Christmas and

(01:02:49):
the anticipation of everyChristmas and Christmas is like
it's may as well be three monthslong in your head, and now at
34.

Don (01:02:57):
It is three months long because it starts in August.

Ron (01:02:59):
Yeah, we fixed that.
But now, at 34, it's like, oh,it's Christmas and it flies by
and it doesn't have the sameimpact.
And you correctly pointed out,don, to me that the reason this
is is because Do you remember, Ido I was one of your.
No, no, no, I want you.

Don (01:03:19):
Yeah, and it wasn't me that found it, it was a.
It's a, it's a research study,so it's it's officially somehow
determined, but it has to dowith the fraction of your life
that it is.

Ron (01:03:30):
Yeah.

Don (01:03:30):
Right when you're five years old.
Next Christmas is 20% of yourlife away.

Doug (01:03:35):
Right, that takes forever to get there.

Don (01:03:37):
I'm 50 years old.
Christmas is, you know, 2% ofmy life.
Until we get to the next one,like it'll, it'll be here
tomorrow, yeah, so yeah, it's uh.
It all moves much more quicklythan uh than I think we want it
to.

Ron (01:03:50):
And I think there are times where, uh, we choose to be
cognizant of time as it is kept,and then we forget it entirely.
And for me it's every day whenI'm at work, I know exactly what
time it is, and as soon as Iget home, you know.
You look at the clock.
Oh my God, it's 945, right,like you've, completely you know
you no longer are ruled by timein that way.

(01:04:13):
And I think that goes back toyour thing, doug, which is
because particularly tellingtime during the day is is an
invention of a, of a societythat works right and is paid by
the hour and has to produce bythe hour and et cetera.
Right, and when I'm not doingthat, I don't care what time it
is, as long as I have more of it, so I can keep doing fun stuff
on my own, right, yeah.

Doug (01:04:34):
In expression, time flies when you're having fun goes.
Yeah, kind of outlines thatyeah.

Don (01:04:42):
Well, thank you both for a good discussion about about the
passage time next time that Iwill be hosting, so it won't be
the next time that our listenersare listening, but the next
time around I'm going to monkeywrench this.
So I'm I I hope that y'allenjoy your, your calm sense of
of existential time right now,cause uh, uh, we'll see what

(01:05:05):
happens next.

Ron (01:05:07):
Okay, I'm excited, I'm, I'm .
I'm open to exploring newperceptions of time and new
feelings about it.
Thank you so much, don, forbringing this to our attention.
I'm a much wiser person now.

Don (01:05:20):
All right, thanks, join us next time.
Thanks.