Keeping Time

Today, Chuck and Josh walk you through the history of keeping time, from sticks in the sun to atomic clocks. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, on January 27th, 28th, and 29th, we're going to be in your towns, Denver, Seattle, and San Francisco, and tickets are still available. You can go to stuffyoushouldknow.com, click on the on tour button, and you can click on get tickets, and it will take you to go get tickets. And we hope to see you guys soon.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  That's right. Denver, you're doing great. Seattle, we love you guys. San Francisco, we love you guys. So come on out and see us. How about that?

• 1:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we'll see you guys very soon.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:54Josh Clark?

  Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And we're just hanging out and we decided, hey, let's do some talking about timekeeping. So that's what we're doing today.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, Olivia helped us put this one together. I think the charge was, hey, how about something on the history of timekeeping without getting too in the weeds about how all of these things work?

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Cause that's a whole other thing. Like if you want to really break down clocks and watches, but I think she did it just right. The Goldilocks zone, as they say.

• 2:28Josh Clark?

  Oh, nice. Nice astronomical cosmological reference there.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Well, I think that is a reference for a lot of things, right?

• 2:36Josh Clark?

  Nope, just that.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:39Josh Clark?

  Where'd you get this idea? Cause this was one you came up with.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  You know, man, I don't know. I think I was maybe thinking about a watch on my wrist.

• 2:48Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  And then wondering, or no, maybe I saw someone had a, what do you call those things?

• 2:55Josh Clark?

  A clock?

• 2:56Speaker 02

  An hourglass.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  And I was wondering about just hourglasses. And then I started thinking about like just, you know, the concept of time and when people started keeping time. And I was kinda had a hunch that I was right that, you know, the need to keep time didn't come around till much later. So like, as we'll see, early timekeeping was more like seasonal or astrological.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  And it didn't get to be a thing like, hey, I have an appointment at a, at a certain minute until much, much later.

• 3:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but earlier than you'd think, or earlier than I thought at least.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, agreed.

• 3:31Josh Clark?

  So, speaking of timekeeping, you really can kind of say the whole thing just started out with the sun. And one of the neat things about life on earth is that you can cast a shadow. Most things cast a shadow with the exception of maybe like amoeba or something like that. But if you put like a stick in the ground, it's going to cast shadows that move throughout the day. And if you really pay attention to this kind of stuff, you can actually use it to track time throughout the day. And that is almost certainly the earliest way that humans track time. And the stick they put in the ground is widely known as a gnomon, G-N-O-M-O-N.

• 4:12Josh Clark?

  I think it means rod in Greek, maybe? I also saw that it was slang in Greek for penis.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 4:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And that just, just.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Like, hey, check out the nomad on that guy?

• 4:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, almost exactly that. If not that, but just said in ancient Greek.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Okay, gotcha.

• 4:32Josh Clark?

  In Hellenic.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:34Josh Clark?

  But just tracking the shadow that the nomad cast, hopefully just a stick in the ground.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:41Josh Clark?

  That's, that was early timekeeping.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Oh, man. I have a thousand jokes I'm just gonna walk right past. At this point.

• 4:49Josh Clark?

  Good for you, buddy. You're a pro.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  I know, I'm growing up here at 54. Uh, so that was, yeah, that's what people use for the longest time. And that eventually, as we'll see, would carry over to things like sundials. But it's no surprise that China was way ahead of the game as far as type, timekeeping goes, because the oldest surviving sort of actual thing that we have comes from northern China, from an archaeological site that they found dated back to 2300 B.C. Uh, and again, as you'll see, this is a recurring theme like I mentioned. It wasn't necessarily like, hey, we gotta keep the time from day to day. It's more like, let's calculate the seasons or, you know, the things happening up in the sky.

• 5:31Josh Clark?

  Right. Cause it was snowing in the middle of China and somebody said, what season is it? And somebody else said, let's find out with this nomad. And the other person's like, no, no, pull that out. And they're like, no, I mean the stick.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  They said you can get cancelled for that.

• 5:47Josh Clark?

  So if you're like, well, that sounds a lot like a sundial. You're right. The, the thing that sticks up for the sundial is a nomad. There's another version of it that's even earlier than the sundial, it seems, from ancient Egypt called the shadow clock.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:02Josh Clark?

  It's actually really hard to describe. It's much easier to just go look up, but imagine a capital T laying flat on its back on the ground. And it's raised its head and neck up to look at its feet. That's essentially.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  That's kind of perfect, actually.

• 6:16Josh Clark?

  Thank you. I really thought about that one for a while, I have to admit. But the, the shadow that that crossbar, the top of the T casts on the rest of the T over the day is demarcated. So you can track six hours a day as the sun is rising in the east. And then you turn it around at noon and then you track the next six hours of the, the sun is setting in the west. Pretty spectacular considering that's close to 3,000 years old.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. For that descriptor, did it help you that you were laying flat on your back with your neck raised up, looking at your feet?

• 6:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah, sadly, I have to admit that I had to go lay down and figure it out myself.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Okay, that's good.

• 7:00Josh Clark?

  But yes, I was.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, nice work. Finally, to the sundial, the first round sundial that we kind of know as a sundial seems like it was created by a Greek philosopher named

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Anaxander, very cool name, not Alexander, but Anaxander of Miletus. This was 6th century B.C. But again, probably still tracking seasons at this point. The first sundials out of Greece that actually marked hours, like when people started keeping track of the hourly time, and as we'll see, it, you know, it just gets more specific until we eventually, much later, we'll get to minutes, but the hourly timekeeping started in 350 BCE.

• 7:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and then very quickly after that, around 280 BCE, they came up with the hemicycle, which is imagine like a cube block of stone with a basin, a bowl carved out of the middle, and then they managed to cut it perfectly in half, so that you just have half of a bowl. That's a hemicycle. Because it turns out, all you need is half a bowl to make a sundial like that. And I really do wonder if somebody built them like that, like they'd make the one, split it in two, and then all of a sudden, they had two hemicycles to sell.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  I bet. You're getting really good at describing things at this juncture in your career.

• 8:17Josh Clark?

  It took me long enough. We're almost to year 18. It is, it's dismaying to try to explain something and then just make it even more confusing than it was initially. I finally got dismayed enough that I decided to do something about it. And what I did was lay down naked and think it over.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  By the way, quick correction, because a listener just wrote in about this. We're about to be at year 19, completed year 18, technically.

• 8:44Josh Clark?

  No, really?

• 8:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, because year 19 and year 20 are the, are, you know, the two next years.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Does that make sense?

• 8:54Josh Clark?

  It does, but I feel like it's wrong because started in April 2008 and going to April of 2026, that's 18 years.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Completed.

• 9:06Josh Clark?

  I see. Yeah, I should have known, right when somebody busted out math, I should have been like, yeah, that's right.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  The cool thing about the the Hemi cycle, besides the fact that people back then probably said, is that thing a Hemi when they walked by?

• 9:22Speaker 02

  You know, couldn't resist that one, but they they knew at that point, it's a pretty smart thing that the sun's position changes over the course of the year, over the course of those seasons. Obviously, shorter winter hours, which we're going to get to. But they they accounted for that. They had sundials that would show the time using multiple arcs carved into the hemisphere to account for that sun changing over the course of the year.

• 9:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so like the lines of the hours went up like longitude and then the seasons were like latitude. And I guess just depending on how high up or how shallow the the shadows were, you could tell what season it was because it was within one of those arcs or two of those arcs or three or four, right?

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, I mentioned the seasonal hours. When Greek sundials started dividing daytime into 12 equal parts. Obviously not hours because we eventually ended up at 24, like not hours as we know it. But they would depend on the length of the season, so it's not like they accounted for it. So they were all uniform. It was just like, hey, sometimes during the year, what they will one day call an hour is longer than others, which would lead to some kind of a cool thing where ancient texts in Greece would refer to that, like a winter hour is something that could be done in a shorter amount of time. Like that'll just take you a winter hour.

• 10:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and this was, so this was the ancient Greeks. This lasted well into the medieval period. That's how people did hours. The hour was longer in the summer, the hour was shorter in the winter. And it was essentially their way of what we do for daylight savings time by adjusting.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, except we're just, you know. Modern humans are way too anal to just let it kind of flow like that. Still gotta be exact, you know?

• 11:03Josh Clark?

  Right, right. Okay, so you got the sundial and everybody was like, well, we move around a lot and not every place has a sundial, but I always want to know what time it is. And what humans do is take a technology and figure out how to shrink it down into a portable size. And they did that with sundials too, usually made of bronze. And because they were mobile, they would also have settings and often instructions on how to adjust it depending on where you were in the world. Like some of the ancient ones that have been found have like, just put it to this setting if you're in Constantinople or put it in this setting if you're in Luxor, right? And then other ones, you kind of have to figure it out a little more based on latitude.

• 11:46Josh Clark?

  But they were portable and essentially they were like pocket watches, but amazing bronze spheres sometimes.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like, once they could do that, they would hang it facing the sun so that that little pointers, I guess it was, was it still called a nomon at this point?

• 12:05Josh Clark?

  I would think so. I think some people still call them nomons when they're referring to sundials.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're right. But they would face the sun so that that pointer's shadow would hit the correct hour. Later on, they had different types that had like a pinhole that let the beam of sunlight come through and actually shine a mark on the hour, which was like super advanced at the time.

• 12:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was like the Staff of Ra model.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:27Josh Clark?

  So there were, there was a big reason that people were keeping track of the hours in ancient Rome, especially by the time Rome came around. It wasn't necessarily to keep appointments, although they certainly had that kind of thing, or to keep time on stuff. One of the big things over the years in different cultures, it turns out, was they needed to time things, especially for something like drawing water. Like water was a communal resource and everyone had a certain allotment and they would divvy up those allotments, not by measuring how much water was taken up, but by you take as much water as you can within this, you know, before this beam of sunlight reaches this, this little line essentially, right?

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:11Josh Clark?

  But in Rome, they had an extra reason for it. And that was because the hours of every single day, or the first 12 hours of every single day, because it wasn't initially that they were also like, let's track the nighttime, too. They just tracked from sunrise to sunset typically.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:28Josh Clark?

  Each of those hours was associated with the different astrological sign. It was called planetary hours. And it was because, so you could maximize whoever you were worshiping. So like if you were worshiping Celine, the moon goddess, you wanted to do that three hours after sunrise on Monday. And so you would use some sort of timekeeping device to keep track of that.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the same, of course, is true in Islam. Once that became a big thing, the Muslims adopted sundials because they're, you know, have to pray in different increments at different times. So it was really to kind of keep up with their prayer hours. And they are the ones who came up with, like if you have a sundial in your garden, it's a little thing, which we have one of those, I bought one for Emily a few years ago.

• 14:13Josh Clark?

  Cute.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  That kind of sundial is what the Muslims came up with, that the one that's got the flat circular base. And that nomad is, am I saying that right? Yeah, the nomad is parallel to the polar axis of the planet Earth.

• 14:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they also laid trigonometry on the whole thing and came up with a bunch of different kinds of sundials. There's one that was conical. And remember the hemicycle? Imagine taking that and just kind of squishing the bowl and adjusting it at an angle. That's what a conical sundial is. They look amazingly cool. So I say look one of those up.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  And then finally, I think before we break, we should give a shout out to early 13th century Moroccan mathematician, Abu al-Hazan al-Marakoshi. Because this is the dude that was finally like, you know what? Uniform hours is where it's at. And we should start kind of keeping track of this stuff in a uniform way, like actual, real timekeeping. And that kind of spread out all over the world from there.

• 15:18Josh Clark?

  Very nice.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:20Josh Clark?

  All right, well, let's take that break then. It's time.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  All right, we'll be right back.

• 15:35Speaker 03

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• 16:29Speaker 04

  Hey, it's Nile Rodgers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by my friend, John Legend. So you're helping Will.i.am write hooks. What made "Ordinary People" become the one song from those sound checks you knew you had to make your own?

• 16:57Speaker 05

  I was just writing for the Black Eyed Peas. I wasn't expecting to write something for myself in that session. But I wrote the hook for "Ordinary People," and I recorded a demo. And I'm like, I would rather keep "Ordinary People" for myself. This station in Chicago, WGCI, they start playing it before we're promoting it. The song spoke for itself. It became the defining song for my first album. I knew it was special, but you never know how special it's going to be and how much impact it's going to have in people's lives. And you never believe that you're going to actually change people's lives with a song.

• 17:26Speaker 04

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:36Speaker 06

  Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with IBM's Ana Paula Assis about what digital sovereignty actually means in the age of AI.

• 17:46Speaker 07

  AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making decisions. So you have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing, and where.

• 18:03Speaker 06

  Hear the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.

• 18:15Josh Clark?

  Okay, Chuck, so we're back. And before we move on, I want to say that I finally got it. Reggie Watts, a Reggie Watts.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Did you listen to it in QA?

• 18:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, when I was QAing it, I got it. And I was like, man, that zoomed right past me.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Well, you were in a thought, and I slipped it in there very stealthily.

• 18:30Josh Clark?

  It was very great.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  All right, nice little treat for you.

• 18:32Josh Clark?

  We're talking about the National Radio Quiet Zone episode, by the way, everybody.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 18:37Josh Clark?

  So you got sundials. Next thing that we moved on to was water.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 18:43Josh Clark?

  A bunch of different cultures came up with water clocks. It's not clear if, again, it started in China, it moved to Greece, and then moved to the Muslim countries. Who knows? But it's also possible that people came up with this. There were just so many things available to you to use to try to keep track of time. And there were really simple water clocks. Water was eventually used to run mechanical clocks. But the first ones essentially were like almost hourglasses made of water.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, essentially what you're doing is you're either keeping track of time by water draining out of something that's marked by increments or filling something up that's marked by increments, right?

• 19:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, pretty much. I mean, that's essentially it. You could supplement sundials with these because on a sundial, if it was really overcast,

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:37Josh Clark?

  You had no idea what time it was. At night, these things worked as well. Though, really, there were two problems with them. One was that they would freeze if it was freezing. Your water clock probably wouldn't work quite as well. And then also, the viscosity of water can change depending on variables like temperature and stuff like that. So they weren't entirely accurate or reliable all the time. But they did the trick for enough time that people started to improve on them and add different kind of engineering principles like floats and valves and siphons to regulate water more accurately.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wonder if there was ever like, sorry, I'm late, you know? We had a cold snap, my water clock froze. Like, you gotta move those things inside, buddy.

• 20:27Josh Clark?

  I guarantee somebody used that excuse.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. But because of the issues with water and temperature and stuff like that, mercury became a pretty reliable substitute. This was in 10th century CE. And it was a Chinese engineer who figured this out. And that basically, you know, solved a lot of the problems because mercury wouldn't freeze. It wouldn't have different viscosities at different temperatures. And it would ensure that you're on time to that appointment.

• 20:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and that engineer was Zhang Sijun.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Let me show off. I was just gonna walk right past that.

• 21:00Josh Clark?

  Here's my favorite kind of early.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Ooh, me too.

• 21:03Josh Clark?

  Is it? Yeah, I'm not surprised. Incense clocks.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I'm not even into incense anymore. I was in college, I think, like most people are.

• 21:12Josh Clark?

  Same here. I used to burn some frankincense, man.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too. But I really love this one. This existed in China at least since the 6th century CE. Also in other parts of Asia and Korea and Japan, for sure. But it's, I love the idea because essentially it's, it's almost like a fuse. And as we'll see, it sometimes was a literal fuse. But the incense was burned and used as a timer. Like, how, how quickly does that thing burn down and stop burning?

• 21:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the coolest ones, though, were incense clocks that were like a box. And it was essentially like an intricate maze that you would pack with incense and then light it. And there were different, I guess, stencils that you'd put on top of the box to create different times. So like if you wanted an hour, there was a very simple maze. If you wanted the whole night, it was a much more intricate maze. And that's another thing I would say to look up. There's a lot of stuff you should go and look up throughout this episode, and incense clocks are definitely one of them.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I'm glad you saved this one for me because I think it's the coolest part about all of the incense clock stuff is that they had different scents, and it just makes sense over the course of a night where you could smell the time. So you knew when a certain smell came up, what time it was, which I think is super ingenious in its simplicity. And also, like, you know, you know what happens at Sandalwood time.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  The sexiest time.

• 22:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I've got jokes that I'm keeping to myself.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, good.

• 22:47Josh Clark?

  There were also alarm clocks. You could use the heat from an incense stick, I guess, or whatever, to basically burn through a thread and drop a bunch of like bells or something into a metal dish. That'll wake you up for sure every time. And apparently Chinese messengers would take incense and light one end and put the other end between their toes and wake themselves up like that, which is, man, just drink a bunch of water. That's all you need to do. Don't burn your toes.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. But like I said, that's like literally lighting a fuse and it like, you know, you get the hot foot and you know it's time to get up and deliver the mail or whatever.

• 23:25Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  We also have candle clocks that came along. This is the medieval era, notably Alfred the Great supposedly would get his day together and time it by six candles.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Each would burn for about four hours, so six times four, 24.

• 23:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you could also take, say, a four-hour candle and break it, like, just mark equal lines across it and basically keep track of time like that, too. Then there's astrolabes. I'm not even going to try to really describe an astrolabe. Go look those up. They are incredibly intricate mechanically. They were invented by Muslims in, I think, the 6th century CE. So it's just amazing that they were able to do this. And astrolabes were used at sea until the Sexton came along about 1,000 years later, essentially. That's how effective they were. But you could navigate with them, you could survey with them, you could also keep time with them because you just adjust the astrolabe to mimic the stars or something like that. And you can be like, oh, it's 2:30.

• 24:28Josh Clark?

  It's Sandalwood time.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  That's right, it's Sandalwood time. Then we finally get to the hourglass. But later than you think, and especially, and I'm glad Livia dug deep because she's a great researcher, but if you just sort of do cursory internet research, you might find a lot of people saying it's ancient Egypt. But that's probably not the case. It's actually much later than that, probably the late medieval period that hourglasses came along and actually after the mechanical clock.

• 24:55Josh Clark?

  That's nuts.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  The earliest known reference is in Italy in 1338. And you think an hourglass is pretty easy to make, like, you know, you just blow the glass in a certain way and throw the sand in there. But sand is finicky, as you know, as far as humidity and moisture go. So you had to get the sand in there and you had to seal it up, but you couldn't seal it up with any kind of moisture because it would clump up. So it's a little trickier to make an hourglass than you might imagine.

• 25:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, when it's humid out, the soap opera days of our lives never get started.

• 25:29Josh Clark?

  It's sad.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Was that the one you watched in college?

• 25:32Josh Clark?

  I think that's what people wrote in and said, yeah, I'm pretty sure.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  I couldn't remember. Okay.

• 25:36Josh Clark?

  So, one of the other things humans do when they have an invention that's popular and widespread, they don't just shrink it down to a miniature portable size, they also just show off.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:48Josh Clark?

  They do whatever they can to make it even cooler. And there were a succession of inventors in different parts of the world over the years that did some really neat stuff with, say, like, water clocks. One was a guy named Andronikos. He was from Macedonia, and he built what's called the Tower of Winds in Athens. It's this, I think, hexagon or octagon made of marble that's 15 meters or about 45 feet tall, still standing. But when it was in use, it had water clocks, it had sundials, you could, you could gauge the wind, you could tell what was going on celestially. He just basically packed every neato timekeeping invention that was around

• 26:33Josh Clark?

  at the time into this thing.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And like you said, a lot of people just started getting, just sort of fancy with it, and actually just really creative. In 8th century CE, there was a Chinese Buddhist monk who, along with his colleagues, created a clock that was a water-powered wheel, had a gear system. This is when gears really started becoming a huge thing in timekeeping.

• 26:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  And it did a single rotation every 24 hours, which you think, like, all right, that just sounds sort of regular. But it also had, like, bells chiming on the hour, and it had a drumbeat that chimed every quarter hour. So, this is when, like, kind of hearing chimes and things to tell you what time it was came in.

• 27:12Josh Clark?

  It went budge every 15 minutes.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 27:16Josh Clark?

  There was a guy named Su Song who was very famous for his 35-foot, I also saw it described as 40-foot clock tower. One of the things it did were, there were mannequins that came out and rang gongs.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:29Josh Clark?

  Like, you usually associate this with, like, maybe some sort of cuckoo clock or something like that. This is from the 11th century. So, it's pretty, pretty impressive that he came up with this. And again, it was a water clock. Like, this is

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:42Josh Clark?

  running on water. And then someone else who put water clocks to great use was a, just this amazing inventor and engineer. His name was Ismail Al Jazari. He was from Upper Mesopotamia and his whole thing was not just accurate clock timekeeping, but just essentially delightful little add-ons that did some cool stuff. He created what's called the castle clock. That's pretty neat. But for my money, look up the elephant clock. There's a life-size replica of it in a museum, I think in Saudi Arabia. And you can see, you know, how it works and what it does. But essentially,

• 28:24Josh Clark?

  water just moves from part to part. There's a scribe in the middle riding on the elephant. There's another person on the front of the elephant driving it. There's another guy way up that plays cymbals and stuff. It's just amazing, especially when you learn about how every single step works.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. That thing you sent that to me, that was super cool looking. Yeah, very ornate. Now we kind of get to the point. Should we break or can we keep going?

• 28:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's take a break.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  All right, we'll be right back.

• 29:04Speaker 08

  This live check-in is brought to you by State Farm.

• 29:10Speaker 08

  Okay, real talk. I'm about to become a dad again. And wow, it hits different the second time. Hi, I'm Wilmer Valderrama and I've done, you know, I've done the red carpets, the long days on set and all that, but nothing prepares you for that moment when you're building a crib and you realize you're building a future. Familia is everything to me. The laughs, the chaos, the unconditional love, but also the pressure, la responsabilidad. If you're stepping into something big right now, starting a family, getting engaged, moving cities, you're not alone. Take one step at a time. Why breathe, be present, and lean into the people that got your back. Y disfruta. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel.

• 30:14Speaker 09

  That last year, finishing that record was the hardest experience of my life. To find your creativity and to believe in yourself, because somewhere in the midst of it, I stopped believing that my voice mattered and that I could find it again. That's a challenge. I was not feeling very confident creatively, only, again, defiant in my belief that what this is about is express something honest, say something honest.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 31:00Speaker 06

  Hello, hello, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable, so over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party systems: cloud platforms, data pipelines,

• 31:44Speaker 06

  AI models, software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background, but when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift, organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility they actually have. So to understand the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to speak with IBM's Anna Paola Assis and acts as CIO, Giovanni Daniele, two people who think about these questions every day.

• 32:16Speaker 06

  Hear the full conversation at IBM.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  All right, so we're back to wrap it up on clocks and eventually, spoiler, watches. But we're at the point now where clocks kind of start ticking and we're getting closer and closer to keeping track of seconds, although that'll be a second till we get to it. But as for mechanical clocks go, those water-powered Chinese clocks arguably were the first mechanical clocks. And again, it's one of those things where they don't know if people invented these in Europe or their Muslim world at the same time, or if it kind of spread out from one place to another. Another origin story is maybe mechanical clocks came from Europe with, is it, would it be Gerbert?

• 33:16Josh Clark?

  I think so.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Gerbert of Arlak, who was a French scholar, but you might know him a little better as Pope Sylvester II.

• 33:24Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Because he would become Pope later on. He developed, I guess in his pre-Pope days, a mechanical timekeeping device, like truly mechanical in 996 CE. But then it took a few hundred years for it to become, like for mechanical clocks to become a real thing. It didn't really catch on.

• 33:43Josh Clark?

  Right, which makes some people suspect that that he might not have actually done that.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:48Josh Clark?

  So what's happened here, I guess, we've transitioned from tracking the movement of water to track time, to actually using the kinetic energy in water that's, say, flowing downhill to run gears and stuff like that. Those are, those are the mechanical time devices that were, that were some of the original mechanical ones. Like, the Chinese came up with this a very long time ago. When Europe got involved, they removed water to run gears and replaced them with weights, but it's the same principle at work. Like, if you hold a weight up on a rope and let it fall down, gravity's going to pull it towards The earth and it's releasing kinetic energy.

• 34:29Josh Clark?

  If you can control its descent, you can use that to turn gears and to keep track of time in a very specific way. I mean, it's not nearly as accurate as anything we we track time with today. But it was still pretty impressive that they were making these in like the 13th century.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. There was a monk in 1271 named Robertus Anglicus. Who he talked about, there was actually a Latin term, horologia, which is the Latin term for time measuring device. And they were using weights to turn wheels like exactly one time over the course of one day. And again, they would get kind of break that down and get more specific as they learn more about gears and how the weights work. But you know, the weights, if you look at a grandfather clock or a cuckoo clock, like these things all have. And we'll get to the pendulums, not only pendulums in a grandfather clock, but it's weights that are still operating this thing.

• 35:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and one of the inventions that really kind of, it was a game changer. It's called the virgin foliot mechanism. Essentially, you remember in Krati Kid two, where all of those Okinawan villagers are sitting there, playing their hand drums?

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:43Josh Clark?

  Okay, so that's essentially a virgin of foliot, kind of. Imagine the drum part is the, I think, foliot and the verge is the handle. And when there's like a crown wheel, the gear, the main gear that operates a clock. When it turns, it turns the foliot. And the foliot turns like slowly one way and then slowly back another. And when it moves back in position, the gear is allowed to turn. So you're actually controlling the kinetic energy of those weights that's falling and making the whole thing move. And by doing that in a precise way, that's how you can keep track of time.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, it stays constant because that thing is constantly stopping and starting. So it's going to keep that weight from picking up momentum as it as it goes down and descends. So that's how you get the constant speed. And that's also how you can create a ticking sound. It's just that little, you know, constant intermittent movement.

• 36:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and the, but you wouldn't, it doesn't move like a Okinawan hand drum moves. I mean, it moves not as fast, I should say, that'd be, it'd be an out of control clock.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, didn't that drum move faster and faster the more intense that the scenes got in that movie? Yeah?

• 36:57Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. Man, it really helped build the suspense, I think, during the main fight, maybe?

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, this is a pretty smart device for a movie.

• 37:05Josh Clark?

  It was a good sequel. As far as sequels go, it was, they didn't just, you know, build on the last one. They really kinda went all out in recreating things.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and one of the great bad movies of all time, and I'm lobbying to get on a friend of the show, The Flophouse, the best bad movie podcast out there, in my opinion, to do Karate Kid 3, which is hugely entertaining as a bad movie.

• 37:30Josh Clark?

  Is that even worse than Jaden Smith's Karate Kid? Cause I heard that was pretty bad.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  I didn't see it, but Karate Kid 3 is... Oh, man. If you're into a fun, bad movie to watch with people, Karate Kid 3 is one. And that was one where, I thought I talked about on the show at some point, but where, um, god, Ruby was probably like

• 37:51Speaker 02

  six years old and, and came up with like legit her first quality joke watching that movie.

• 37:57Josh Clark?

  Can you share it?

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't know if it would translate. I'll tell you later.

• 38:02Josh Clark?

  Okay, that's fine. But good for her. Six is a good age to come up with a quality joke, bye.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Actually, I, I think I could, actually. There, there's a recurring thing in that movie that happens where every time the bad guys come into a place, they turn the light off. Like they'll come into a warehouse to fight and they turn the light off. It happened like two or three times. And I kept going like, what is going on? It's so weird. And then later in the movie, they, they rush out and find Daniel-san and Miyagi in a forest. And Ruby said, "That'd be funny if they reached over to a tree and turned the moon off."

• 38:35Josh Clark?

  That's good. That is a quality joke.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  It's a pretty good joke.

• 38:38Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:39Josh Clark?

  Um, yeah, I haven't seen the Karate Kid 3. I, I know of it. I know Hilary Swank's the Karate Kid in that one.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no. Uh, well, maybe I'm getting the number wrong. Karate Kid 3 was, was actually, uh, Daniel and Miyagi still.

• 38:53Josh Clark?

  Oh, was it?

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, unless I have it out of order, it's not, but I know it's not the Hillary Swank one, obviously.

• 38:59Josh Clark?

  Okay, alright.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's either three or four.

• 39:03Josh Clark?

  Well, I haven't seen the one you're talking about either. I don't remember anybody turning off any lights anywhere.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's truly bad in a great way.

• 39:10Josh Clark?

  Okay, so just-

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Back to clocks.

• 39:13Josh Clark?

  Just like in the Muslim world, timekeeping pieces in Europe were initially to keep people on track for daily prayers. Apparently monks in monasteries prayed seven times a day, but there were also meals, there was also beer brewing time. And so these early clocks, using the virgin folia mechanism and weights, they helped keep the monks on track.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:38Josh Clark?

  Monks are associated with churches, so very soon after that, churches started keeping clocks as well. And fun fact, one of the reasons that churches often have very, very tall steeples, often with bells on top, is because those used to be parts of the clock. To run a clock so big that it can ring that bell, you need to have very heavy weights there coming and descending from a very high place.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Nice little factoid there.

• 40:08Josh Clark?

  I love that one.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  And the oldest surviving mechanical clock is in a church. It was built for the Solis Berry Cathedral. That was in 1386, but these clocks didn't have a face yet. It was still, you know, like ringing a bell kind of thing to know what time it was. And in fact, the word "clock" comes from the French word, is it "cloche", I guess?

• 40:33Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm, like that glass thing dome you put over stuff?

• 40:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is a bell, but you know, it wasn't too long after that that they said, hey, if we can have a clock turning gears- How hard would it be to actually put a sundial kind of like thing on the front of it? And turn the gears of a hand so people could actually see what time it was?

• 40:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  And they went, eh, not that hard. We can do that.

• 40:57Josh Clark?

  They're like, are you talking about a moving Gnomon? And the monk said, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 41:04Josh Clark?

  So there's this really interesting take on all that. The fact that clocks started tracking time in monasteries and then churches and the cities that were built around churches would all hear the bell. So people knew what time it was all of a sudden. It wasn't like, um, uh, the, the sky's purple, so I better milk the cows. It was like, oh, it's one in the afternoon, so I better milk the cows, right? Cause apparently the sky would turn purple at one in the afternoon in medieval Europe. And there's a philosopher named Lewis Mumford. I think he was working in the 1930s. And he says, that, that is the birth of the modern era. Not steam power that came hundreds of years later.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:47Josh Clark?

  Removing people from the rhythms, uh, the natural rhythms of the day and imposing time on them. All of a sudden you could be like, be at my, uh, blacksmith shop at three or else you're fired, you know?

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:01Josh Clark?

  That.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  What a drag.

• 42:03Josh Clark?

  Exactly. I think that's a really good, um, case that he makes.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, totally. I mean, it was a real game changer and that's when everyone got a little bit more uptight, I imagine.

• 42:13Josh Clark?

  I imagine as well.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  You know, uh, and we still didn't have minutes at this point, like those clocks, uh, that we were talking about, you know, grinding those gears around. You could still have a, you know, a decent hour, um, as far as accuracy goes. The word minute actually to mean what we meant, it didn't even come around until the late 14th century. So minutes are, um, a relatively modern thing, if you consider 14th century modern.

• 42:38Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 42:40Josh Clark?

  And thanks for letting me take that Lewis Mumford little tidbit.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Did you like that one?

• 42:45Josh Clark?

  I love it. It's almost as good as the, um, the different smells of incense.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you know, we like to scratch each other's back.

• 42:57Josh Clark?

  Another joke skipped. Uh, so you can take weights and their kinetic energy and really now you can do, you can take anything that has kinetic energy and use it to control its release. And you can use that to do things like drive gears and things like that. And you can use those gears to keep time with. Well, a coiled spring has a lot of kinetic energy.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:20Josh Clark?

  Replacing the weights in clocks with coiled springs meant they became portable because of course, humans love to make things portable.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they were still pretty inexact because friction is a thing. So depending on like how well it's made, how well it was lubricated, if it was hot, if it was humid, that would, that would make just change the way clocks work. So they were still pretty inexact at this point. So sundials were still kind of preferred. Water clocks were still preferred for a long time. And actually more precise. Uh, if you really want to jump forward in precision, you can look no further than Galileo Galilei and the turn of the 17th century. And he was the one that kind of came up with this idea of a pendulum. When he started measuring the movement of lamps swinging on a cord,

• 44:12Speaker 02

  using his own pulse beat as a reference. Pretty cool.

• 44:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So he, he found like you can use a pendulum to keep time. The reason why is a pendulum swing is divided in exactly in half time wise, right? So, um, that's what's called the harmonious oscillator. Each swing to the left or the right is the exact same amount of time. And even more than that, when a pendulum loses energy, that doesn't change. The arcs just get a little shorter, but they're still equal to one another. Right? So Galileo figured out that you could use that information to build a clock. He developed a clock. Uh, he never built it because he kept, um, being called away by the indigo girls to help them get through life.

• 44:57Josh Clark?

  So he wasn't able to build it. His son started to build it, but as Galileo always said, that boy never finished anything that he started, so he didn't complete it. And finally, in 1656, the Dutch mathematician Christian Huygens, the son Galileo always wanted, he ended up creating that clock, the first pendulum clock that Galileo had kind of come up with.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was in 1656. And almost right after that, there was an English scientist named Robert Hooke, with an E at the end, said, you know what, I can make that thing better. And he replaced the verge with, you know, that we mentioned earlier, with a, something called an anchor escapement, which was just a new mechanism to regulate the swing, I guess. But that allowed the arc of the pendulum to be reduced from about a 100, I'm sorry, 100 degree swing to four to six degrees, which again, meant you could pack it in a packageable size.

• 45:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And also, they found that less of a swing, they found that the less wide the arc, the more accurate the timekeeping was. Anchor escapements are almost impossible to explain unless you see it actually happening. And then you're like, oh, okay, that totally makes sense. But I say, go look up a video of how anchor escapements work, because it's pretty amazing. And so because you have slower moving pendulums, they require less power, which means you need less weight. And eventually, there was a guy named William Clement, who put all of this stuff together. And in 1680, he came up with what we now call grandfather

• 46:36Josh Clark?

  clocks. And because of everything that had kind of developed from Galileo on, Clement was able to add a minute hand. And now all of a sudden, you knew what minute it was of the hour, thanks to William Clement.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  That's right. And of course, you're referring to the long case clock. It didn't get the name grandfather clock until 1820, I'm sorry, 1876. And that's actually from a song called My Grandfather's Clock. That's where it's about, I mean, it's kind of a sad song about a clock that this this guy had who, or his grandfather had and it quit working when he died. And it was a really popular song. So long case clocks became my grandfather's clock. And the singer, and I think writer was a guy named Henry Clay, not Henry Clay people, but Henry Clay work.

• 47:25Josh Clark?

  You know, that's a redux of our first short stuff.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  I thought we had talked about that, right?

• 47:32Josh Clark?

  That was the very first.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  The very first one, huh?

• 47:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, grandfather clocks.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Man.

• 47:37Josh Clark?

  So pendulum clocks, everyone said, this is great. I love these long case slash grandfather clocks. But finally, in the 20s, people had figured out, I guess centuries before, in the 19th century, a century before, that you could keep time with a crystal. They produced reliable oscillations that you could track for time. And people figured out how to use that on watches. For that, I would say, go listen to our atomic clock episode.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good one.

• 48:08Josh Clark?

  Out from crystal quartz came atomic clocks. And from atomic clocks came things like GPS. It's how your iPhone or, you know, Google phone keeps track of the time, knows exactly what time it is, thanks to an atomic clock. So we went from sun to water, to pendulums, to crystals, to atoms.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  That's right. And by the way, I bet I made that same dumb Henry Clay joke in that short stuff, didn't I?

• 48:39Josh Clark?

  I'll have to go back and listen, but anytime you get a chance to mention Henry Clay people, you do. And I support it fully.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  Of course. For those of you don't know, the Henry Clay people was a great band and friends of the show from our good pals Joey and Andy Ciara, the brothers. Musical brothers, screenwriting brothers, and they did the theme song to the Stuff You Should Know TV show.

• 49:01Josh Clark?

  That's right. It was a great theme song, very catchy.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  And they're still great friends. I see Joey all the time because he lives in New York now and Andy's still in LA.

• 49:09Josh Clark?

  That's awesome. Shout out to those dudes.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  That's right. So we're back, or not we're back, we're all of a sudden headed toward watches, everyone. Uh, and I mean, this again could be an entire episode on watches. So we're not going to get too in the weeds. But, uh, those spring based clocks, of course, that, that spring was kind of the key in the 15th century. Uh, eventually involved to wearable clocks like Flava Flav. And then, then eventually we got to watches by the 16th century. Uh, of course, we're talking about pocket watches initially, kind of thing you, uh, hang from your vest or your belt or something. And it was a real fashion statement at the time. Uh, but as that technology progressed, they got smaller and smaller. Uh, maybe not more accurate, but just smaller enough to where you could finally put one on your wrist.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  If you were, uh, the, the Countess of Hungary in 1868.

• 49:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Um, or one of, uh, Emperor Wilhelm the second's German naval officers in 1880.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Um, right.

• 50:06Josh Clark?

  Because before that, watches were women's jewelry. That's what they were considered. Wilhelm the second said nine, now it's going to be a military gear.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:16Josh Clark?

  And from World War one, which came a little later, um, the American and other allied troops who came back home were like, you should see these hand clocks these guys have. And, um, those became very quickly, starting around the twenties fashionable in the United States. And I think Great Britain, um, and in the twenties, because they became fashion, all of a sudden there was a lot of attention on hand clocks. And they became, um, a lot of innovations just kind of started to build very quickly, starting in the twenties.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you know, a lot of this stuff that, that you, a lot of features that you have on a watch, if you're a watch person, uh, comes from military usage. Um, like the, of course, I can't remember any of this because it's off the dome and I'm a forgetful person. But you know, the watches that have the little, uh, buttons on each side of the winder. And you can like click it to, to start it, something, and then click it to stop it.

• 51:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Stopwatch?

• 51:12Speaker 02

  No, it's a stopwatch, just like on a regular wristwatch. There's a name for it. I mean, I have one of them. I just can't think of it right now.

• 51:19Josh Clark?

  But it's for a stopwatch function though, right?

• 51:22Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, essentially, but as it pertains to the the regular time. But that that was essentially, I think initially, to keep track of like when you would launch a not a missile, like the kind of bomb you drop in a tube and it shoots somewhere.

• 51:37Josh Clark?

  A torpedo?

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Sure. No, like, you know, when you drop it in a tube and it shoots up in the air, those things? Yeah, drop a shell into a tube and then like when it would make the explosion, you would keep track of like, you would time that out. So you would know like how far it's going and calculate that.

• 51:53Josh Clark?

  Oh, smart.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  I think that's the deal. I hope I'm not wrong. Someone will correct me.

• 51:58Josh Clark?

  Um, well, what about water resistance?

• 52:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, if you if you want to dive or just frolic, then you're going to need a waterproof watch. And that came along with the Rolex, the Oyster specifically in 1926. Uh, and then in the 1950s, that's when stopwatch functions. Although that was around during the war. So I'm not sure the difference between what I was talking about in an actual stopwatch. Uh, and my favorite feature, which is luminescence. Um, as you know, I kind of became a bit of a watch guy and I don't have a ton of them, but I've got like seven watches and one of them is a is, oh, not for real watch people.

• 52:38Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  They have like dozens and hundreds. Uh, but I have one called a Lume Tech. Uh, and that is the the most luminescent that you can get, I think. And that thing is so bright and cool. I just love it.

• 52:50Josh Clark?

  Does it leave like floaters on your vision after you look at it?

• 52:54Speaker 02

  No, but if it's like fully charged and go into a dark closet or something, it's like it's super bright green and it's awesome. I love it.

• 53:03Josh Clark?

  So you can really time out your spin the bottle?

• 53:05Speaker 02

  Oh, you know it. Cause I don't want to be in that closet for any longer than I have to be. I was raised Baptist.

• 53:11Josh Clark?

  Making awkward conversation?

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 53:14Josh Clark?

  Um, so if you are like, I want to hear more about, uh, watches. TS, we're pretty much at the end of the episode, but I would recommend going and listening to our swatch episode. Cause we talked a lot about the transition from mechanical watches to, um, uh, digital watches in that episode, if I remember correctly. It was pretty interesting.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, chronographs, that's what I'm talking about with the watches, by the way.

• 53:40Josh Clark?

  But what does it do?

• 53:43Speaker 02

  Uh, it's like a sub dial for the seconds and minutes and hours, I think. So the, the, the top button will be a start, stop, and the bottom is a reset. So it, it did, it would function as like a stopwatch.

• 53:54Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  But I, but I think they got their start with timing out shells.

• 53:59Josh Clark?

  I got you.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  And when they exploded, if I'm not mistaken.

• 54:01Josh Clark?

  But not torpedoes?

• 54:03Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I think, but again, off the dome. So if I'm wrong, all apologies.

• 54:06Josh Clark?

  You saying chronograph, chronograph reminded me of, um, one little tidbit I forgot to mention. Remember how we talked about planetary hours and the Romans were like, this is when you, when you worship, you know, Mars or whatever?

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:21Josh Clark?

  Um, that is where the word horoscope came from. Horoscope means hour marker.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 54:28Josh Clark?

  Pretty neat, huh?

• 54:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like that.

• 54:30Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  Nifty.

• 54:31Josh Clark?

  I like it too. And since Chuck said he likes it, that obviously means it's time for listener mail.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  Uh, that's right. And we read this from Bill, uh, I guess he would pronounce this Ruschlein. Uh, because he asked a question about the appropriateness of our live show. And we've gotten a few emails, so we thought we'd kind of get the word out. Uh, hey guys, been listening for, uh, for 10 years since commuting from Erie to Pittsburgh for a new job. Uh, you fill countless hours of boredom with education and smiles as my family. And I now listen to your show almost weekly. And my now almost 11 year old son has grown up listening to you guys uh, since shortly after he was born.

• 55:10Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  Uh, so we're coming to your show in Akron, Ohio, and we're pretty ecstatic about that. We can't wait to come, but I was hoping you'd respond and let me know if the content is appropriate for our 11-year-old to come. We're loose with what he's allowed to listen to and don't try and shield him too much from the world. Everything you put out is educational. For instance, the Operation Mint's Meat episode is one of our favorites. But if there's anything particularly mature, like murder stuff, or like the Lizzie Borden episode, we should probably be responsible parents and Bill and others, we're here to say that we're not going to reveal the topic, but this one is very much kid appropriate. The only thing you might hear, we like to delight people with a few odd curse words

• 55:53Speaker 02

  here and there because we don't do it on the show, but it's still, what do you call it? PG? PG?

• 55:59Josh Clark?

  13.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  PG 11, maybe?

• 56:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, okay.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  These days?

• 56:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I would even say depending on the kid, maybe PG 8. We get some fairly young kids at our shows and I've never seen a parent leave with the child. They usually just leave them behind.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  I think in Scotland, didn't that one, Family Leave?

• 56:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I still don't understand that. We didn't say anything even remotely offensive.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:24Josh Clark?

  And I think they just didn't like the sounds of our voices or something like that. I don't understand, but I don't think it was anything we said.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Okay, good. Well, content-wise, though, this one is super on the up and up and kid appropriate. Nothing scary at all, super pop-culturey, historical, kind of interesting. But just maybe a curse word or two, or three.

• 56:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, maybe a blue joke here or there, but hopefully over any kid's head.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what we like to do, is confuse children so their parents can explain on their way home.

• 56:54Josh Clark?

  Exactly right. That's great, Chuck. That was a good idea. If you're like, wait, you guys are going on tour? We absolutely are. I would direct you to stuffyoushouldknow.com and click on the on tour button and it will show you all the places we're going to be. And if you click on those, it will take you to go buy tickets. So you can come see us. This is the first time in years and years, I guess, since we've been on the road. So we're kind of excited about coming back. We may be a little rusty.

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:22Josh Clark?

  But that also usually means that those first couple of shows get some high-flying hijinks.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, get ready, Denver, the mile-high city. How appropriate.

• 57:29Josh Clark?

  That's right. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Bill, right?

• 57:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 57:34Josh Clark?

  Bill did. Thanks for that email, Bill, and we'll see you in Akron. You can email us at [email protected].

• 57:46Speaker 00

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• 58:02Josh Clark?

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