Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Leap Day

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why Leap Day is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode. And hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Leap Day. Known for being extra. Famous for being in 2024. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Leap Days are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks! Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, happy approximately one year until Leap Day. About a year away. I'm so excited for Leap Day. About a year away. I've made a Leap Day chain out of paper and like 365 links. Wait, I don't know. Wait, is it not 365? Is that like, because a leap day, does it make? You got to tear it up, start over. A lot of recycling, a lot of new paper. Damn it. I use fresh paper every time. And this topic, it comes from Greg Lewis. Thank you for supporting the show, Greg,

and for this great idea. And I realized with topics, we can start just starting with our relationship to them. I don't necessarily have to just ask you. And my relationship to Leap Day is very quick. I like it a lot. It's great. And I feel like it especially livens up the second half of February. Like after Valentine's Day, there's sort of no landmarks. But Leap Day year, whole weird day coming. I love it. It's great. Personally, I like routine and I get very scared and confused when that routine is disrupted. So if there's like an extra day or a missing day or daylight savings or daylight unsavings, it gets very confusing for me.

And I would just like every month to be the same number of days, every year to be the same number of days, and every day be the same number of hours. Yeah. That's true. I have a totally different opinion of leap day versus daylight saving. Daylight saving is frustrating either way every time. And leap day, I'm like, freebie, party. I do. I love the 30 Rock imagination of the Leap Day being a holiday where everyone can do anything they want, including, I think, crime.

And it doesn't count because it's Leap Day. Yeah, I'll think about that for people because there's a great Vulture article about the history of it. Late in the run of 30 Rock, they apparently had a season delayed by Tina Fey's pregnancy. And so then they missed Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, all the usual tentpoles for an episode. But then they had an episode coming out on Leap Day of that year. So then they did an amazing episode based around it where there's a character named Leap Day William, who is the Santa Claus of Leap Day, more or less. Because I just get a kick out of it and don't do anything different other than looking at my phone calendar and saying, ah, it says February 29th. Can you believe it? That's fun. And then I go on with

either working or resting if it's the weekend. That's it. Yeah, I guess I should probably celebrate it so that I don't resent the confusion about month lengths. But yeah, I don't know. It's like, I guess I don't understand why we couldn't figure out a calendar system where we didn't need this. Where we didn't need months of different lengths or didn't need Leap Day at

all? Yes, to all of that. Why can't everything be regular? We're going to answer both those questions today, but the month lengths are the bonus show. And then we're going to talk all about Leap Day here. Well, I'm going to have to somehow get in on that bonus. See, you line up now in front of the velvet rope, right? And then my bouncer will gradually let people in as the evening goes on. I like the idea of me being bounced out of the show that I co-host. It's very on brand for me. Like, I think I'm on the list. No, I don't see you.

Okay. All right. Not going to let that happen. Not gonna let that happen And on every episode Our first fascinating thing about the topic Is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics This week that's in a segment called Tonight

We're max fun So let's teach the world numbers We can be brighter and make puns That was perfect. Thank you so much, John from Baltimore on the Discord. And John's a longtime pal of the show. Thank you, John. We have a new name for this segment every week.

Please make them as silly and wacky as possible. Submit to the Discord. There's a link to the Discord in the episode description or go through sifpod at gmail.com. And make Alex work for it. Kind of test out his range a little more. I like that. Yeah, the band fun with a period on the end.

That guy is an opera singer, it turns out. I was not aware until attempting to be him. But we got a ton of numbers this week. There's going to be takeaways plugged into them because this topic of Leap Day, very numerical. And the first number here is five hours, 48 minutes and 56 seconds. Is that how much time is left until the event? Yeah, there's going to be a very, the TV show 24 episode. We're going to be driving instantly across LA a bunch trying to stop something.

Just has a timer that's counting down and it's ominous. It is. It's a weirdly specific amount. Five hours, 48 minutes, 56 seconds, you know, just short of six hours, basically. But that is the annual time difference between an Earth year and a 365 day calendar. Right. Because the Earth year is the amount of time it takes to go around the sun, right? That's right.

And the calendar is a thing that Romans and other people made, wrote down and named months after themselves and stuff. What the Gregorian calendar is somewhat based on the sun, the seasons and the earth and the sun going around it, but probably not scientifically accurate. Yeah, it's kind of not the calendar maker's fault. Because this is, I love leap days, because it's a totally made up thing, but it is adjusting for real things that we don't control and are just part of how the solar system works. Because the solar year is the amount of time it takes for the Earth to revolve around the sun. The solar day is the amount of time it takes for the Earth to rotate.

I see. Right. Right. Like it's a new day each time the sun comes back up. And those cycles just don't happen to terminate at the same point. Right. Like we are having days in a way that is not aligned with an entire year precisely. And the difference is five hours, 48 minutes and 56 seconds. Could we speed up or slow down the earth just a little bit, just a skosh, so we don't have to have an imperfect calendar system? Everyone just kind of lean one way all together.

It's everyone do the electric slide simultaneously. I think that might do it. Right. And the floor on that activity is fantastic, right? We're all going to get to dance. So even if it doesn't work, dance party. Yeah. Then we all had fun together. World peace, probably. Right. Probably. Yeah. So these cycles don't precisely line up and we made up leap days as a way to align it, but we would have needed to make up something if we want to have a calendar based on days, because the year starts and ends at different times in a day. The year starts and ends at different times in a day.

Right. I guess, yeah. I mean, it just, it feels sort of like a bit of a sloppy patch. Like, eh, just every so often we'll have another day. It does, yeah. Yeah, because like with the difference being just short of six hours, approximately once every four years we tack on a day. But that also doesn't quite do it in ways we'll explain. And so, yeah, we were just like, what's a short month? Boom. There you go. Now we fixed it. And another amazing number with that, because this is truly a Universal Leap Day episode. Next number is 668.6. 668.6.

Another very precise, precise number there. Yeah, it's the approximate number of Martian days in a year on Mars. NASA is the source of this. Martian days. Yeah. So Mars rotating once. That's a Martian day. I see.

I see. Like an entire Martian. Wait. Okay. A Martian day is that many hours? No, there's 668.6 days in a Martian year. Ah, okay. Okay. So as Mars is going all the way around the sun, it'll rotate a decimal point amount of days. And so NASA also uses the term SOL, spelled S-O-L. Apparently, a SOL is the technical term for a solar day on Mars. But NASA says that much like Earth, the Martian days don't happen to wrap up in alignment with Martian years. They have an extra three-fifths of a day per year. And if you kept a calendar on Mars,

you would need six leap days per 10 years. I see. Okay. Interesting. So if we have to go work at Elon Musk's penal labor colony on Mars, we'll be getting leap days where presumably on leap day, we have to work twice as hard because that is the rules on Elon Musk's fun space penal work happy time colony. Yeah. I'm having a dark thought that we're supposed to add six leap days per 10 Martian years, but I'm sure he'd do like six leap days per 10 Martian years, but I'm sure he'd do like six leap days per nine Martian years as a 69 bit, you know, he's that kind of guy. It'd be terrible.

And then the calendar doesn't work, but he's smirking about it in his tower while the rest of us break rocks. He's doing like the Mars version of Twitter and joking about it with a lap emoji while like the oxygen tanks are leaking and everyone's kind of hypoxic. Yeah, Total Recall was a good movie. They really figured out what was going to happen. Yeah, very accurate. But this is amazing to me, this thing about the Martian year needing leap days. And it brings us to a takeaway within the numbers. Takeaway number one. Every planet in the universe that we know of has leap days. Oh, come on, guys. One of you get it together.

Like not a single one of them gets the timing right. Yeah, this is like it's, you know, it's such an infinitesimal chance that there'd be a planet where its year wraps up at the precise amount of time where the days wrap up in a round number. So we, you know, basically every planet needs leap days. It's not weird that we have it on the Earth calendar. Well, when I'm when I'm space CEO of space, I want to find the planet that does have rhythm and live on there. Yeah, that's the planet we should electric slide on. The planet that can keep time. No, we don't want to do that because if we all do it at once, then we throw it off the time.

I know it's not the song for the electric slide, but I imagine the Macarena song like, hey, now there's Leap Day. Oh, no. We blew it. We blew it. But yeah, so that's the universe. Like the title of this episode is going to be Leap Day and not February 29th because Leap Day is a universal concept in a way I didn't expect. because leap day is a universal concept in a way I didn't expect. Going back to Earth now, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum says, you know, one Earth year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 56 seconds.

And so another number here is the decimal version. It is 365.242190 days. So nearly a quarter of a day on the end there. I like the zero at the end just to show how precise it is. Yeah, the Smithsonian is flexing. They're like, yeah, we went to six places. That's right. That zero is there for a reason. That number where it's not quite a quarter of a day, that leads us into a whole nother takeaway that was a big surprise to me.

Takeaway number two. Modern leap days do not happen once per four years. That's always how I've understood it. There's one per four years, but that is not quite how the system works, actually. Oh, no. Is it even more irregular? Yeah, we skip it some of the time. Oh, my God. To even out that slight difference between a quarter day and the actual amount.

This quadranual meeting of people who want perfect rhythm on planets is going to go really poorly because one of those years we're going to get messed up. Just mid-dance, we all have to hold to even out the evening out. Awful. the more precise version. And it also turns out our generation and our parents and our grandparents learned once per four years because that has been applicable to our lifespan. The Gregorian calendar that starts in 1582, another number here, 1582, a Catholic pope named Gregory XIII makes adjustments to the existing European calendar. And we'll talk about the origins of all that later. But it turns out one of his main adjustments was to correct for leap days not quite needing to happen once every four years because it's not quite off a quarter day. Oh, my God.

This is, I don't know, it's like that thing where you watch a video and it's like, oh, is this going to be like a perfectly frosted cake or is this cup going to fit perfectly into this slot? And then it's like, no, it's slightly off. Ha ha. And it's the worst, the worst feeling. It's just slightly off. Yeah. You really want that factory assembly line to go perfectly. Yeah. Yeah, man. I'm fine. I'm like, we're exposing all my neuroses during this episode of just needing, needing things to fit together in a perfect way. I guess I'm kind of a coming, coming out as a Thanos-esque, I suppose.

I don't, I didn't really watch those movies. All I know about Thanos is like, oh, everything's got to be balanced and I got to get all the gems and he's purple and he's purple. But if I had, if I had the, the gem glove, I would definitely try to sort out this whole irregularity business with the days and the leap days. And no, it's not every four years. It's like every four years plus some change. So watch out. No, it's not every four years. It's like every four years plus some change. So watch out. When you described him as everything has to be even and he wants all the gems, it made me think about Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

That's not the same guy. But, you know, there's ways they align. Sure. Yeah, the dwarves do like gems. That's true. And there's seven of them, though, which is a that's like not that's not that's an odd number. So but then I guess Snow White makes them an even number. And that's why they're so sad when she gets into an apple coma.

I don't know. Oh, yeah. Man, any anybody super interested in gems, too. That feels like a weird path. Get into anything else. Sports, comics. I don't know. We're really pissing off the gemologists, uh, right now, but yeah, no, it bothers me. I'm the kind of person who like when I was a kid, I would like sometimes take bites of a cereal on like alternating sides of my mouth because it felt right to do that. Yeah, that's true. We all want stuff to just feel aligned to some extent. And I guess I guess I just dislike late February to the point where I want to leap day like it's it's gray and there's not

any holidays coming up really until St. Patrick's Day. Like I want something going on. I'm like, finally, this like sheet gray sky I'm under, at least it's February 29th. That's good. Meanwhile, I'm making sure the amount of Cheerios on each side of my mouth are even and squinting out the window in fury. And then you snap and suddenly it's March 1st. Like, no. snap, and suddenly it's March 1st. Like, no! Yeah, so this Pope changed the whole calendar for the European world, and then basically Europeans forced it on a lot of the rest of the world. But in 1582, Catholic Pope Gregory XIII, one of his main things was to introduce what's called the century rule for leap days. He said over many centuries, we've been drifting because of this difference between a quarter day and the actual amount the year is

off. And so he removed a couple of leap days per 400 years. I see. How did he like, he's like, and this one? Or did he try to do some kind of math to determine which leap days he removed? It's specific math. And I think the cycle is really based on when he was alive because he was doing this 1582. And he made a century rule where we maintain the thing where there's a leap day once per four years. And these land on the big round numbers, too. day once per four years. And these land on the big round numbers too. But he said, we're going to start skipping a leap day in year numbers divisible by 100. And then, it's a lot of math, but I swear it's easy. So he said, still leap day once per four years. We're skipping it on each of

the years divisible by 100, but we're overriding that and keeping a leap day on years divisible by 400. I'm so frustrated. Which means we'll skip three leap days per 400 years. I'm so frustrated. This is so frustrating. Sounds like, this sounds like Calvin ball where it's like, you know, okay, we'll have leap days every four years, except when it's not. And we'll have it when it's divisible by 100, except when it's not. But the way that works is then there was a leap day in 1600.

We skipped leap day in 1700, 1800, 1900. And so then in all of our lifetimes listening to this, we still had leap day in the year 2000. And so most of us don't know this rule about century years because we just had a regular leap day like usual in one of the century years we'll live in. I'm planning on all of us living in 2100, but we're going to skip leap day that year. And watch out. And I'll be older yet still very frustrated and eating Cheerios evenly at that time. They're just called space Cheerios for no reason. You're still on Earth, but it's the future. So, you know, that's the branding.

Musco's on Mars. Oh, no. Yeah, and so we're going to skip Leap Day in 2100, 2200, and 2300, and then do it again 2400. Another number here is 3,300 years. So way more years now. That's a lot of years. National Geographic says that on this updated Gregorian calendar where he put in the century rule, that's how long it will take for leap day to shift the calendar more than an entire day off schedule. So now we're pretty aligned. The new approach to Leap Day does not precisely to every decimal point match the year, but the skipping put us close enough that we'll have a pretty aligned calendar for a long time.

And is the concern with Leap Days that if we get too out of alignment, our Gregorian calendar won't line up with the seasons correctly? That's the main one, yeah. And even with that calendar, but especially before it, calendars would get misaligned very fast. It would suddenly within centuries or even decades not match the seasons anymore. But now that we have global warming upon us, is it really going to matter that much? Because our seasons are going to be whack anyways. And have a little bit of funky business with the calendars. I feel like it could be just a free-for-all and we could not worry about Leap Day so much because it's not like the seasons are going to be normal.

That's true. Yeah. I guess just when we finally got it right. Yeah, now it's just summer all the time. That'll be tough. But, you know, I guess it's electric slide weather is a positive spin to put on it. Yeah. Because the next number is a little under 200,000. A little under 200,000. That is the approximate current population of Americans born on Leap Day. Wow. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that whole thing.

They don't get birthdays, but they do age real slow. Right. Yeah, they'll be here in 2100. And no birthday for you. Nuts to you for living that long. Right, because our telomeres pay attention to when we are celebrating our birthdays. Right. I know I said before, I love how made up and not made up this topic is. It really is driven by the universe, but also it's totally fictional. but also it's totally fictional.

Yeah, no, it's just like all these sort of man-made concepts, but it's also based on planet rotations, but it's our weird sort of interpretation of those things. Exactly, yeah. And that interpretation, it's led to approaching 200,000 American citizens out of a population of 331 million were born on February 29th on the Gregorian calendar. That number, it's from the Atlantic back in 2016. And then I did some math against population growth. So we've got a little under 200,000 leaplings in the United States. Leapling is one name for a person born on leap day. It's a totally normal word.

I love it. But also, if you do want to be taken seriously maybe something other than leapling right yeah i'm a leap adult would be better yeah if you call yourself a leapling i just want to like take you under my wing feed you some biscuits that's how i feel towards you at that point which i know know is condescending, but you are calling yourself a leaping. You sound like Frodo's friend or something, you know, like, come on. Yeah, you sound like a hobbit and I want to like treasure you and save you from Sauron. I guess what do people do, though, because their birthdays don't happen very often? I guess they would have it a day before or after.

So it turns out I found a really fun article from The Atlantic that is written by a leaping. His name is Daniel Nestor. He's a college professor of English, but he also has this experience in his life. And he says that the community of leaplings is divided on the issue of when to celebrate in non-leap years. community of leaplings is divided on the issue of when to celebrate in non-leap years. There are people who are called Februaryans who strictly celebrate on February 28th. They have another name, the Leap Ling Februaryans. Fun. And then other folks wait till March 1st. Like in day-to-day life, states and businesses and countries, they vary on what they consider your birthday in the other years. And then Nestor also had a story of turning 21 in the U.S. in not a leap year. Oh, no.

And so he tried to go to a bar on February 28th, and they turned him away and told him to come back March 1st. Oh, come on. Yeah. I find that very ridiculous, but it's also probably a thing, you know? Like, it's not the 29th yet, sort of, even if's also probably a thing, you know? Like, yeah. Like, it's not the 29th yet, sort of, even if there's not a 29th that year. So, you know.

Yeah. Yeah, that is kind of awkward. It's interesting. I feel like humans really love categories. So it is interesting to me that they have formed sects within the Leapling community and have arguments. That's so people-y. That's what we do all the time. We really do.

And apparently there's a town in West Texas right on the Texas-New Mexico and also country of Mexico border called Anthony, Texas. It declared itself the world capital for Leap Day birthdays. And they have a town festival where people born on the 29th come on the actual day. And yeah, people like have sought community around this thing about themselves. And why not? You know, that's cool. But then the community gets divided because people. And one more pair of numbers here for the numbers, and it's two approximate birth years. The years are 386 AD and 451 AD. So pretty far apart for birth years, 386 and 451. Yeah.

Those are the approximate birth years of St. Patrick and St. Brigid, the two key saints of Ireland. Atlas Obscurus says that those two saints are the origin of an Irish folk practice where women are allowed to propose marriage to men on Leap Day specifically. And it's mainly famous in modern times because of a 2010 Amy Adams movie called Leap Day, where her character tries to exploit this with like a guy who won't commit. I see. Interesting. It's fun and cute, but also come on. Come on.

It's like a Sadie Hawkins dance kind of thing where it's like just maybe you're onto something there, but maybe all the time. Maybe all the time. Right. It's a very pre-feminism thing. And this is a really good-feminism thing. And this is a really good Atlas Obscura article. It's by writer Urvija Banerjee. And she considers, she writes about the idea that this leap day practice has been written up as feminist in the past, but it's probably more anti-feminist in the sense that it presents a woman proposing as like super weird. And it can only happen once every many,

many days. You know, like it would be more progressive to just let that happen whenever. Right. It is an exception that proves the rule sort of like, well, ain't this wacky? But yeah, that's interesting, though. Yeah. And then and the other thing is we think the Catholic saint origin of it is fictional because their birth years don't work. And it's more of a cultural thing than a religious Catholic thing. But the origin story is that this female St. Brigid complained to male St. Patrick that women were forced to wait their whole lives for a proposal if they wanted one. Women were forced to wait their whole lives for a proposal if they wanted one. And so St. Patrick then used his authority to grant women permission to propose occasionally.

And eventually he settled on each leap day they can do it. Also, if the man rejects the woman's proposal, he's required to buy her a silk gown. Ah, now we're talking. A silk gown. So now you get some gowns. Yeah. Ah, now we're talking. A silk gown. So now you get some gowns.

Yeah. But then wouldn't women just like keep asking guys way out of their league to get a bunch of silk gowns? Then you can turn a profit. It sounds pretty good. Yeah. Just load up every four years. Like the system isn't fair. So you got to work it.

You got to think outside the box. Get a bunch of silk gowns. And then, you know, then you got silk gown empire the box, get a bunch of silk gowns. Uh, and then, you know, then you got silk gown empire. Thank you, St. Patrick. And you're just real cozy all the time. Now, is he the, was St. Patrick the snakes one? Yeah. And so there's, there's, this is, it's the same St. Patrick's day, St. Patrick and the snakes and everything. And, and all the lore around these people is fuzzy, but we think that we have sort of evidence that this Leap Day marriage story is made up because theoretically, it's a conversation between Bridget and Patrick, two adults. But when St. Patrick was about to die

is when Bridget was born. We have pretty good birth records for the people. And so it's made up. This little baby, this little baby, like going up to this guy on his deathbed, like, this seems so true. I'm a baby. Yeah, also a little skeptical about the idea of St. Patrick driving out all the snakes in Ireland. But, you know, call me a cynic.

If anything, that's painting him as anti-snake. A lot of snakes are fine. Right. You know? You know, there's a festival in Italy, the Festival of the Snake Catchers in Cocculo, Italy, apparently to celebrate Saint Dominic, a patron saint protecting against snake bites. And they get a bunch of snakes. And these are like harmless, non-venomous snakes.

And just kind of collect them from the local area and then carry them around, put a bunch of them on the statue of the saint, and there's just a bunch of snakes around. And apparently in the past, they would then eat the snakes, but because they're much more humane these days, they just let the snakes go. So they just kind of confuse the snakes and probably stress the snakes out a bit, but they don't eat them. So that's improvement. Between Patrick and Dominic and then all the St. George versus a dragon stuff, I feel like

there's a lot of saints versus reptile stories. That's strange. That's a real fixation of the past. I like that this one nowadays, it feels more celebratory of the snakes especially because people don't eat them uh it's like hey saint here's a bunch of snakes on you and people are just carrying a bunch of snakes and then all right snakes we're done with the party you can go now and i'm not saying the snakes like it they're probably very confused uh but it is it is fun i. I like how snake sort of passionate it is. I really want to visit it someday.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, if you go, we'd need a field report. Right? Yeah. Do an episode on snakes, snake festival. How many snakes do you think are born on Leap Day? Oh. Poor Alex.

He's like flipping through his books on snakes and Leap Day, seeing if there's any crossover. But then a snake lives four times as long because of how we like to joke about Leap Day birthdays working. It's an ancient and powerful snake. It like a smog the dragon horde of gold you know i'm just thinking thinking of a snake birthday now a little snake in a birthday hat and then it like uses one of those like little birthday you know those little uh like what are they called the birthday horns where it like flips out the little paper tootie horn and then but also his tongue coming out as well. We can call those snake horns. They're very snaky.

They are very snaky. And with that product we patented, that's the end of the stats and numbers and two whole big takeaways. Going to take a short break before exploring two more takeaways in the distant past and distant future. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast,

The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney

is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. We've got a couple more takeaways here for the main episode. Next one is takeaway number three. Leap Day has gained global prominence thanks to one astronomer winning over Julius Caesar.

And his name? Leapington. I wish. I have been struggling with the pronunciation of this guy's name, and Leapington would be easy. His name is Sosigenes, as far as I can find. He was a culturally Greek astronomer in the city of Alexandria in the time of Julius Caesar. I see. So he just kind of strolled up to Caesar and was like, hey, calendar's wrong.

Yeah. Yeah, this guy was on a team of mathematicians and astronomers that worked with Caesar to make what became called the Julian calendar after Julius Caesar. And there's really been one main app update on that, which is the Gregorian calendar. But yes, these are more or less made the calendar that we use today based on mostly Egyptian ideas. What did we do before then? Were we using a calendar? Were we just kind of like suns out, buns out, not really paying too much attention to it? What was the deal?

Before solar calendars, most people used lunar calendars, or they used them in parallel. But yeah, so moons out, buns out was the previous system, more or less. Moons out, moons out. Of course, yes. I feel like this is ancient times, so moons were out pretty constantly. Yeah, on the people and in the clear sky. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it varies worldwide and there's all sorts of calendar keeping and amazing ways of doing it. But various cultures have either said, let's do a calendar based on the sun and end on what we think a solar year is, or based on a lunar cycle is about 29 and a half

days, we'll just count new moons, and that's the calendar. So that's been kind of the two ideas for calendars for a long time. Right. Yeah, I mean, makes sense. Yeah. And the Romans before Caesar were on a lunar calendar. So why did Caesar want to change it? Was it this Sereneptones? Leapington, yeah. Leapington? It was Sosigenes is his name.

Sosigenes. Sosigenes. And so Sosigenes had the leap day idea specifically, but in a broader sense, Caesar wanted to change the calendar to help him consolidate power and end Roman democracy. It was a republic, but he wanted to become the emperor. And part of that was, how much can I centralize about all of Roman society across all these places we rule? And one thing was the calendar. I've got it all named days and the calendar after me. Our modern month of July is named after Julius Caesar, and he created the Julian calendar.

And August is named after his later successor, Augustus. Like he really formatted how we do days. It's really him and the perceived birth date of Jesus Christ. That's where we get the calendar. I mean, it makes more sense, like the Italian words for the months, like agosto, Augustus, you know, it sounds a little more familiar than when we say August. True. Yeah. We made it kind of crunchy and Germanic, I guess. Yeah. Over in English here, but they kept it up. Yeah. Italian's like sometimes a little closer to the Latin, but not always. Speaking of these Latin speakers, the key year here is 46 BC. 46 BC. That is when Julius

Caesar is finishing a civil war against his rival Pompey, which will result in him becoming a Roman emperor and later he'll be killed for it. But as he's doing that, he says, what kind of administrative empire building can I do? What can I be in charge of? And a prime candidate was the very messy Roman lunar calendar. That calendar had a 354-day year. Each year drifted about 11 days off of the seasons. And so they frequently added an entire month that was either called Intercalaris or Mercedonius as a leap month to totally reorient the calendar. I might be more into Leap Day if it was called something dope like Intercalaris. It's pretty cool. Yeah.

Yeah. It sounds magical. It sounds like a spell. Or like Russell Crowe's character in Gladiator. He could have been called Intercalaris. Would have sounded right. It sounds like the spell you make to look like Russell Crowe, like to turn yourself into a beefcake. Writing that down to try later. Anyway, on with the show. But yeah, so they would add whole months often. And this wasn't just a ceremonial calendar. This was their doing stuff calendar. Also, apparently there was both like priestly politics and regular politics getting involved.

So some years a leap month would be added because that seemed advantageous to like the people in power and other years it wouldn't. So Caesar hires various people to help him develop a solar calendar. And he's particularly influenced by going to Egypt initially to fight Pompey, and then to romance Cleopatra VII, Philippator, who we just call Cleopatra, who was the queen of Egypt. And so he's spending all this time in Egypt where they have a pretty solid solar calendar. And he says, oh, let's just do that empire wide. We got to do that. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. So the benefits of the solar calendar was you didn't have to do Russell Crowe month. Yeah, apparently the Egyptians, they did a little of one, but the Egyptians were

partly going off of influence from Sumeria. The Sumerians came up with a solar calendar estimate of 360 days. By Socygene's time, Egypt had updated that to a 365-day calendar, which is pretty right on. So they had a solid calendar, but apparently the buildup to that Egyptian calendar involved some calendars that were officially 360 days, but then they would add festival days to the end. And so that helped them gradually calibrate that to 365. I see. I see. Interesting. One expert here interviewed by National Geographic describes the festival days as just extra days of partying. Like pharaohs started putting those in and people were like, yeah, I love partying.

That's good. And so that's how they approved it. I wish we did that. There had also been debate in Egypt over whether to adopt a leap day. Apparently they had a Greek-influenced pharaoh named Ptolemy III Eurgetes, and Ptolemy III Eurgetes tried to install a once-per-four-years leap day in the 200s BC, but the people refused to do it, and so they gave up. I like these people. It makes me want the 30 Rock version of leap day, where it's a party and there's Leap Day William and traditions. But, you know, just have a day.

Yeah, just have a day. A day off to do whatever. And then Caesar got wild about implementing this because he, in order to do his new Julian calendar, he made the year 46 BC way longer. He made that year 445 days long as like a reset. And it became nicknamed the year of confusion in Roman history. And then 45 BC was the first year on Caesar's calendar that we've pretty much kept up with some Pope adjustments. What did they do with all those extra days? I don't know what they called them, but yeah, just 46 BC kept going. Yeah. And maybe realigned the months with the seasons in a way they hadn't been. The other change Caesar makes besides solarizing the Roman calendar is he said, okay, we don't need these leap months anymore. But Socygenes,

he either parallel invents it or remembers the past suggestion in Egyptian culture of a leap day. And so the Julian calendar adds a leap day that they put at the end of the year. It was Gregory's reforms made it specifically an extra day in February. But they added a leap day to their calendar just once per four years, no extra century rules. And that's where we got it, was Socygene suggesting it to Caesar. I kind of like it, like an extra one at the end of the year. That feels more satisfying to me than a random one in February. Why did Gregory want to put it in February? It seems like it's mainly because February is short. But we'll talk more about that and the bonus. Yeah, the shortness of February.

Anti-short month propaganda. February could be a short king, you know? Short and sweet. We cannot help but stay on our short king, February. But also, that's not that great a month. Anyway. Rude. Yeah, rude.

But there's one last takeaway here for the main show about leaping in general. Takeaway number four. Days are far from our only leap unit in global calendars and timekeeping. Oh, my God. We have lots of parts of the world use leap months, sort of like the Romans, and there are also leap seconds and something called leap smears. So it's not just days. That's just one way of doing it.

Leap smears. Leap smears, yeah. The seconds and smears are timekeeping to the precise second units. But it's related to this leap day practice of how do we get the days in the calendar exactly aligned with how the earth moves. Okay. So what is a smear? Like, what is that unit?

I'm going to do the leap month first and then we'll finish with smears. Yeah. All right. Finish with a nice smear. I approve. Yeah. All right. Finish with a nice schmear. I approve. Yeah. Because we were just talking about that Roman leap month. And another like modern execution of that is the Chinese lunar calendar. It's one of the most popular leap months in the world. And in modern China, they officially adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1949 with

the communist revolution, but folks there were familiar with it before that too. And so they've had kind of a two track system of doing business on the Gregorian calendar and also having the lunar calendar for really significant holidays like Chinese new year. It's, it's really important culturally and everything else. And it turns out that because it's a lunar calendar like the Roman one, they need to add a leap month frequently. And so the timing varies, but there's seven leap months per 19 years of the Chinese lunar calendar. And the next one is soon. In what we're calling mid-March of 2023, the year of the rabbit will have a leap February.

Oh, cool. So pretty soon there will be a leap month that'll make that a much longer year than usual. And the next one is in the summer of 2025. They vary across the years and they're a frequent feature. And that's why a lot of why Chinese New Year day varies. I like that this one falls on the year of the rabbit. That feels very appropriate. Oh, wow. Yeah. Can't imagine an ox doing that. it. Oh, wow. Yeah. Can't imagine an ox doing that. Dragon, maybe. It depends on your dragon lore, you know. But so there's still tons of leap months in the year. And then the other thing here is the leap seconds and also the leap smear. This is a timekeeping thing. It turns out for throughout our lives, we've been doing leap seconds as a world to even out the clock with the movements of the Earth.

And the first one got added on June 30th of 1972. They advanced the clock one second. So is this because the Earth is not as regular as a clock or because our clocks are off? as a clock or because our clocks are off? It's a little of both and it's necessary because apparently the rotation of the earth varies a little bit. The speed changes, which is freaky to think about. But the New Yorker reports that there have been recent slight increases in the speed of the earth's rotation.

Just going on. I mean, it's just a big old rock and we're going around a big old ball of turbulent gas. So, you know, kind of makes sense. I guess it's pretty chaotic when you think about that way. Yeah. At least the earth is in something solid, right? No, it's in a void. It's just in a void, man. And it's going around. It's a void that's got a bunch of chunks in it, like a cereal. Granola. I think it's more comforting when you think about the universe is like granola in a bowl of milk. Oh, wow.

But the milk is space. It's the Kashi of existence, right? I think we've invented a new cereal-based religion. Good for us. Yeah, if we don't get a Kashi sponsorship now, nothing's going to work, right? Come on. We've been, that's our white whale. We've been going after Big Kashi for a while. And as far as what the Earth's doing, according to The Verge, we've added a leap second about every 21 months since the 1970s. There have been a total of 27 leap seconds. They do not happen evenly or on a totally regular schedule, but they're determined by an international organization called the International Bureau of Weights and Measures,

which is a group of scientists and governments that meet at Versailles to decide global timekeeping at meetings at Versailles. It sounds very world government and they do this frequently. Do they wear like big powdered wigs and like wear fancy watches and stuff and wear like some kind of jacket with a bunch of watches all over it, like some kind of supervillain? Yeah. I'm imagining them using people as furniture. I know they don't, but it just feels that way when you read the name and the location. Yeah. So is there like a master clock out there, like some kind of master watch that we synchronize

all of our, like all our watches, our phones sync to this one master watch? More or less, yeah. There's a time called UTC, which is, I believe, a French acronym for Coordinated Universal Time. That is based on atomic clocks. And then this organization makes decisions about every few years, do we need to advance it a second to make it correct, more or less? And then also, they're probably going to stop doing that. There have been a lot of digital technical errors with leap seconds. Apparently, adding one in 2012 caused Reddit to go down. And adding one in 2017 caused Cloudflare to go down.

That's another important internet thing. And engineers at various tech companies, most recently Meta, have said we need to end leap seconds because the chaos isn't worth it. And in November 2022, very recently, this International Bureau of Weights and Measures voted to stop adding leap seconds for 100 years, starting in 2035. They're going to do another vote to confirm that or not, but that's the plan is to stop in 2035 and see what happens if we cool it for a hundred years. Do we really need these or not? Oh, but how are they going to meet up in Versailles and have their cool clock parties? It feels like they're leased on Versailles on debt or something, like the

landlords kicking them out. The timeshare. They had kicking the timeshare they finally got out they had a timeshare and they finally got out of it uh and it was ironic given their duty at the timeshare it's like well we're gonna share time with everyone then if we're stuck in this timeshare like calling other spooky organizations like, do you want to leap trade weeks or whatever? I'm busy this year, this time. What if we leap trade? And then like the related thing here is a leap smear. Yes, this is one I'm excited about.

And this is something that was apparently originated at the company Google in 2008. This is something that was apparently originated at the company Google in 2008. Because in addition to like a UTC run by a world government, there's also tech companies trying to align with it, but also setting it their own way, too. So there's slight variation. And a leap smear is an alternative to a leap second. Instead of adding one second in a snap immediately, you take a period of time and temporarily redefine the length of a second. So you take like a chunk of minutes or hours and you say seconds will temporarily be slightly by milliseconds longer.

And so over that period of time, you get the effect of a leap second. And that's supposed to make Reddit not go down? Yes. And then also, it might make that kind of thing worse if we keep doing it, is the thinking. Because then apparently you have different systems that view the length of a second differently for a chunk of time. And there's some risk that in a really substantial way, systems could stop talking to each other. Because New Yorker says there's an industry term called a false ticker, which is a system with a poorly calibrated sense of how long a second is, a false ticker. And some systems have safeguards to stop listening to false tickers so they don't

throw off their own timing. So there's also concerns with leap smears, but Google's been doing them for some years now for various applications. This sounds very ripe for forming a conspiracy theory about Google and their attempts to redefine a second and what nefarious things they are planning with all those seconds they're hoarding. Yeah. Everybody relax is my feeling about leap seconds and smears. Leap month totally makes sense. Leap second, it's not that important at all. Yeah.

I mean, it feels, yeah, like what are they hiding? Like what are they hiding under all these smears seconds? Somebody at Google hears this show, they're like, put out a lot more doodles. We got to distract them. What's the most fun doodle in the world? I do love those doodles. Hey, wait a minute. Where'd my seconds go? Change the seconds on us. Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode. Let's run it back through this week's big takeaways. Takeaway number one, every planet in the universe that we know of has leap days.

Takeaway number two, modern leap days do not happen once per four years, because we skip three of them each 400 years. Takeaway number three, leap days gained global prominence thanks to one astronomer winning over Julius Caesar. And takeaway number four, days are far from our only leap unit in global calendars and timekeeping. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show at MaximumFun.org,

members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is why February is short. Why? Visit SIFPod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of 11 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of maximum fun bonus shows. It's special audio just for members. Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things there you can check out are research sources. They're on this episode's page

at SIFpod.fun. Key sources this week include lots of pieces for National Geographic, in particular by writers Brian Handwork and by Aaron Blakemore. Also a piece about Leapling, Culture, and Life, written for The Atlantic by Daniel Nestor. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location and in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And join the free SIFT pod Discord. We're sharing stories and resources

there about Native people and life and more. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? I know you would. This week's outro, it's the premiere of a new thing I'm doing. I'm calling it Randomly Incredibly Fascinating. Every week, I'm going to use a random number generator to suggest a past episode because they're all numbered. So I'll just plug it in, see what happens. You can enjoy something randomly, incredibly fascinating by following this tip. This week's random number is 53. SIF episode number 53. That is about ampersands, you know, like an and sign. Random fact, ampersands got their English name from students mumbling. I recommend that episode.

I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly Creature Feature podcast. Creature Feature is about animals and science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating

So how about that? Talk to you then. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.