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