The Ridiculous Origin of the Modern Calendar

Summary

Ridiculous History: The Ridiculous Origin of the Modern Calendar
Released on August 5, 2025
Hosts: Ben Bullen and Noel Brown
Produced by Max Williams
iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In the episode titled "The Ridiculous Origin of the Modern Calendar," hosts Ben Bullen and Noel Brown embark on an engaging exploration of the history and evolution of the calendar system that governs our daily lives. Recorded on July 31, the episode delves into the arbitrary constructs of time measurement, the sociopolitical influences shaping calendars, and the eventual global adoption of the Gregorian calendar. Their discussion is peppered with humor, insightful anecdotes, and occasional banter, making complex historical concepts accessible and entertaining for listeners.

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The Arbitrary Nature of Time Constructs

00:44 - 03:02
Ben Bullen opens the conversation by highlighting the arbitrary nature of commonly accepted constructs like days of the week and money. He remarks, "We have to agree on some things, even if we all know they are arbitrary things" (00:58), emphasizing the societal need for standardized timekeeping to facilitate coordination and continuity in daily affairs.

Noel Brown adds, "It's a functional one though, because I think we all do agree or accept the need to have some kind of continuity in terms of measuring time" (02:24), underscoring the practicality of calendars despite their imperfections.

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Origins and Evolution of the Calendar

06:29 - 14:21

The hosts trace the calendar's origins back to ancient civilizations, starting with the Egyptians who developed one of the first practical calendars. They explain how the Romans adapted the Egyptian system into the Julian calendar, which remained prevalent in Western Europe for approximately 1,500 years. Ben states, "The calendar is an approximation for human convenience. I think that's the best way to put it" (02:24), highlighting the necessity yet imperfection of early calendar systems.

Noel Brown adds context by discussing various cultural interpretations of the day’s start, such as dawn, sunset, or noon, before arriving at the Roman decision to count days from midnight, a system that has persisted into modern times.

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Days of the Week: From Mythology to Modernity

20:18 - 25:01

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to explaining the origins of the seven-day week. The hosts delve into the etymology of each day, linking them to ancient gods and celestial bodies:

• Sunday: Derived from Old English sonnenday meaning "sun's day."
• Monday: From Old English monondag, meaning "moon’s day."
• Tuesday: Named after the Norse god Tyr, aligning with the Roman dies Martis (day of Mars).
• Wednesday: Derived from Woden’s day, relating to Odin in Norse mythology.
• Thursday: Named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder.
• Friday: From Frigg’s day, connected to the goddess associated with Venus.
• Saturday: Directly from the Roman god Saturn, dies Saturni.

Ben humorously connects these origins to modern pop culture, stating, "Who are we to say about this wildly popular game? If it sticks around long enough, we can do an episode of ridiculous history about it" (17:37) in reference to the game Fortnite.

Noel comments on the Universal acceptance due to political and religious influences, noting, "the one that gets agreed upon most widely. So not necessarily the most accurate, but it is kind of the one that most folks landed on" (07:46).

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The Julian Calendar and Its Flaws

34:13 - 39:22

The episode transitions to the Julian calendar's implementation by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE. Ben explains, "The Romans gave the third, fifth, seventh, and 10th months, 31 days each. And this is where we get that strange, complicated system" (34:13), highlighting the inconsistencies that plagued the Julian system.

Noel Brown discusses the manipulation of the calendar for political gain: "They realized that because the priest had such political power, they could fiddle with the calendar to lengthen or shorten the term of office of the consuls" (35:40), illustrating how calendars were weaponized in Roman politics.

By the 8th century, significant drift had occurred between the Julian calendar and the solar year, leading to calls for reform. Noel remarks, "Something must be done" (39:22), setting the stage for the introduction of the Gregorian calendar.

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Gregorian Calendar: Refinement and Global Adoption

40:06 - 44:53

Ben and Noel discuss Pope Gregory XIII's pivotal role in reforming the calendar to address the drift issue. The Gregorian calendar introduced a more accurate system of leap years: "Only in years divisible by 100 and not by 400" (42:06). This adjustment reduced the average year length closer to the solar year, preventing future discrepancies.

The hosts explore the resistance to adopting the Gregorian calendar, particularly from Protestant nations wary of Catholic influence. Ben humorously compares potential political manipulation of the calendar to gerrymandering: "What if your favorite or least favorite political party in the country could tell the public how long a year is?" (36:14). They acknowledge the eventual global acceptance, although noting that some regions adopted it centuries later, with Greece being the last European country to switch in 1923.

Noel reflects on the dual usage of calendars in various cultures: "right now, many countries, many belief systems, the people there will have two different calendars... But to do business globally and to speak with outsiders, you have the Gregorian calendar" (44:02).

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Modern Implications and Conclusion

46:13 - 49:49

As the conversation wraps up, Ben and Noel reflect on how the Gregorian calendar has become the global standard despite its convoluted history. They tease future episodes exploring alternative calendars, underscoring their fascination with the topic. Noel shares a personal anecdote about meticulously scheduling his activities, emphasizing the calendar's role in modern organization: "It's just kind of a way to set intentions. I'm just putting that out there. Something that I dig" (32:14).

The episode concludes with acknowledgments to their producer Max Williams and various contributors, maintaining the show's trademark humor and camaraderie. Ben optimistically remarks, "So this is how we got to where we are now. This is also a tease about the alternate non Greg's calendars out there. And that's going to be our next episode" (46:16).

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Notable Quotes

• Ben Bullen (00:58): "We have to agree on some things, even if we all know they are arbitrary things."

• Noel Brown (02:24): "It's a functional one though, because I think we all do agree or accept the need to have some kind of continuity in terms of measuring time."

• Ben Bullen (34:13): "The Romans gave the third, fifth, seventh, and 10th months, 31 days each. And this is where we get that strange, complicated system."

• Noel Brown (35:40): "They realized that because the priest had such political power, they could fiddle with the calendar to lengthen or shorten the term of office of the consuls."

• Ben Bullen (36:14): "What if your favorite or least favorite political party in the country could tell the public how long a year is?"

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Conclusion

"The Ridiculous Origin of the Modern Calendar" offers a comprehensive and entertaining examination of how our current calendar system came to be. Through a blend of historical facts, witty commentary, and relatable analogies, Ben Bullen and Noel Brown illuminate the complexities and absurdities inherent in something as seemingly straightforward as our calendar. This episode not only educates listeners about the calendar's evolution but also invites them to ponder the arbitrary yet essential systems that underpin modern society.

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For more engaging episodes of Ridiculous History and other iHeartRadio podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Ben Bullen]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always, so much for tuning. Tuning in. We are recording this on July 31, which is a Thursday and July and the concept of Thursdays are just things that got made up at some point.

[Noel Brown]

It's true. It's sort of like money. We just agree that it makes sense.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. Oh, and that's a good story for both this show and stuff they don't want you to know. Our sister podcast. Let's welcome to the stage. Of course, big thanks to our super producer, Mr. Max Williams, as well as the one and only Mr. Noel Brown.

[Noel Brown]

It's about time. Get it now, is it?

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, it is about time. Time, Really?

[Noel Brown]

I wasn't being snooty, I was just making a poorly placed time reference because that's what we're talking about.

[Ben Bullen]

The timing was great. They called me Ben Bullen. And folks, as you may tell from today's banter at the top, we looked around and we had the conversation many months ago that that kind of sprang out of earlier conversations on different shows. The calendar. Why? Why is it a thing? It's imperfect. We looked at it in a leap year episode previously. Leap year.

[Noel Brown]

Still can't wrap my head around. Sorry, no, working for me.

[Ben Bullen]

Right, Exactly.

[Noel Brown]

If you say so, Max. If you say so.

[Ben Bullen]

Approximately.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah.

[Max Williams]

Approximate. I know I told you that logic, Noel, and you're like, I still don't get it. I'm like, yeah, I'm just going to keep saying it that way just to compound the issue.

[Ben Bullen]

Approximate. Because look, the calendar, like all the attempts to map Earth on a two dimensional surface like the Mercator projection and everything, the calendar is an approximation for human convenience. I think that's the best way to put it.

[Noel Brown]

It's a functional one though, because I think we all do agree or accept the need to have some kind of continuity in terms of measuring time. Just for keeping appointments and stuff like catching trains.

[Ben Bullen]

Right, right. For civilization to exist, we have to agree on some things, even if we all know they are arbitrary things. That's the reason why you're never gonna be in a conversation and say, well, Ambassador, we said we would have the plan by Wednesday. You're never going to hear the ambassador say, I fundamentally reject your concept of Wednesday.

[Noel Brown]

Exactly, exactly. It also call back to an episode we did in the not too distant past about weights and measures.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes. That one got so weird so quickly.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Unknown]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bullen]

No matter who you are, where you're at in life, or where you're at on the planet, you are going to have the same day as everyone else. The sun is going to rise, it's going to set the evening. We've got a cycle for this. Ancient history has figured out the passage of the heavens to a great degree, and we have to know how to measure business, domestic, and agricultural affairs. The calendar helps us coordinate. That's probably the most important part of the thing, for sure.

[Noel Brown]

And like many things in history, the version of all of this that ends up having the most stickiness usually results from some sort of powerful entity or political figure, ruler, godlike character who, in a burst of humility, names the thing after themselves.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes. Yeah. Way to go, Greg. The first practical calendar that we know about came from Egyptian civilization, and the Romans came back and developed that into the Julian calendar. And that was around Western Europe for a long, long time, like 1500 years or so. And then the Gregorian calendar is an improvement upon that. And ever since the rollout and adoption of the Gregorian calendar that became the gold standard is the best way to put it. Other calendars exist, which we'll probably explore in a future episode, but this one, for one reason or another, became the calendar that all the world, with all its many differences, agreed to hold. Right. We all agreed to practice this one.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Noel Brown]

And I mean, you know, to your point, Ben, other calendars might do a better job of tracking the movement of celestial bodies, but the one that gets agreed upon is important because of the very fact that it is the one that gets agreed upon most widely. So not necessarily the most accurate quote, unquote 1, but it is kind of the one that most folks landed on.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah.

[Noel Brown]

With or without their own consent.

[Ben Bullen]

Right, Right. When you get born in a modern hospital, your parents don't get a worksheet that allows them to check which calendar is the one that applies to you. You can have opt in things like calendars specializing in the cycles of the moon. That's very important in several religious and spiritual belief systems. But before we get to the whole calendar, we're talking about this before we have to look into how measuring time became a thing. Because, you know, I always thought about it. It's so strange that the full week everybody practices is seven days. Why isn't it five? Why isn't it ten? Right. Why isn't something you could easily count.

[Noel Brown]

On one or both hands lucky number seven? Abhi I. Yeah, maybe that seven is the best number.

[Ben Bullen]

I hope that's how the meeting went. I hope a bunch of agent boffins got together and they said, okay, we've got to figure out what time it is. They eventually said, okay, now we have to figure out days. What's a good.

[Noel Brown]

I love that David Fincher murder movie. We'll name it after that, right?

[Ben Bullen]

Exactly. Yes. The basic unit of computation in calendar is, of course, the day. Days are currently measured from midnight to midnight. This obviously wasn't always the case. From about the 2nd century CE until all the way up to 1925, days were counted from noon to noon instead of midnight to midnight.

[Noel Brown]

Right. And if we're going a little bit more primitive, they tribal folks, indigenous folks, measured from dawn to dawn because they were much more morning people, apparently.

[Ben Bullen]

And later Babylonian civilization, practicers of Judaism people in Greek civilization, they would count a day from sunset to sunset. And then if you go to Hindu civilization or the Egyptians, they would say the day begins at dawn. And then if you went over to the Romans, they would say, you guys are crazy. The day obviously starts at midnight.

[Noel Brown]

Not to mention the Teutons, whoever the hell they were. They are apparently a people who lived in jutland in the 4th century BC and fought the Romans in France.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes, yes. Which is where we get the phrase Teutonic and stuff like that. So they counted by knights. And for a lot of us that the most. A lot of us here in the US know about the Teutons, is that they're the reason we group 14 days into something called a Fortnite.

[Noel Brown]

Quick question, pop cultural question. Why is Fortnite called Fortnite? What does it have to do with anything? To do with a Fortnite? The game.

[Ben Bullen]

They want you to play it for.

[Noel Brown]

More than two weeks in one sitting, perhaps.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, it's also a bit of a play on words because I believe it involves fortifying yourself into a bit of a fort.

[Ben Bullen]

Making a fort at night, I guess. Very clever, little on the notes.

[Noel Brown]

Spell it differently.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah.

[Noel Brown]

Who are we to say it's wildly popular game.

[Ben Bullen]

Who are we to say about this wildly popular game? If it sticks around long enough, we can do an episode of ridiculous history about it. Now, another thing that baffles a lot of people, or it's something we've all accepted as normal, is the division of hours in the day. So we have 24 seasonal hours in every day. 12 of those hours are largely considered the daytime hours. 12 are darkness hours. And that gets hilariously incorrect when you live at the poles, right. Or you live in an extreme northern or southern part of the world where the sun can stay up, you know, for days and days at a time.

[Noel Brown]

And this tended to be the practice of the Sumerians, the ancient Greeks, and The Babylonians as well as the Egyptians passing on to the Romans and all of Western civilization as we know it. Christendom, which is a term that I love throwing around. It's got a nice mouthfeel to it.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. And Christendom had its own canonical system of hours for daily worship.

[Noel Brown]

They had seven being the church or the, you know, society part of echelon, Society governed by the church.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. The decision makers in the church said we got our own hours. There are seven of these and they're, you know, they're according to prayer schedule. Right. Daily worship. But in secular affairs, getting along with people outside of that rarefied air, everyone started agreeing. You needed 24 hours in a day. That's how we're going to count it. Yeah.

[Noel Brown]

If that seven hour day thing doesn't compute to you, it's for good reason. It didn't really last.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, we've all heard some phrases that come from that, like vespers.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, no, I don't know about that. Tell me.

[Ben Bullen]

Well, vespers is one of those seven hours that Christendom would have had as the canonical daily worship. Yeah, I think. Not to make us sound like dirtbags, but I think we both associate it with a cocktail instead.

[Noel Brown]

Yep. I was just about to say I just know it is the martini preference of James Theodore Bond.

[Ben Bullen]

What's the difference? So a Vesper is a kind of martini, right?

[Noel Brown]

It's a kind of martini. It involves the aperitif L, which is like a fortified wine, I believe, and a lemon twist.

[Ben Bullen]

Fortified wine.

[Noel Brown]

I think that's right.

[Ben Bullen]

Okay. I just. I often associate fortified wine with things like the not great wines of the world.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, Maybe I'm wrong about that. It is just considered a French aperitif.

[Max Williams]

Jumping in here real quick. I love telling stories about fortified wines because in many ways a fortified wine can be really good or really bad. Like often the history behind them was England and France would be at war. So England was buy their wine from Portugal. But they hated port wine so much that they would fortify in like old brandy barrels. But you could have really good and really bad port wines. They're often dessert wine.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. Lillet is a fortified wine of a sort. It's aged in oak barrels and it is a blend of Bordeaux wines.

[Ben Bullen]

I love a blend foreign.

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[Unknown]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bullen]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bullen]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bullen]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bullen]

I just like saying I love a blend.

[Noel Brown]

I don't know why doesn't love a good blend.

[Ben Bullen]

Do you guys like a blend?

[Noel Brown]

Sometimes. Blends are trash though. Like the ones they sell at Trader Joe's. The what is it? The two Buck Chuck I believe is a notoriously awful blend.

[Max Williams]

Well, I mean you have like stuff like marriages, which is a term often used in talking about rye whiskeys and stuff married to girls. But you can't do a marriage with bourbon because once it's in the barrel. It's in the barrel. You can only add water.

[Ben Bullen]

I just love saying I love a blend. But we should get into the history of fortified wine content that is going to come back to haunt us. I swear one of us is going to prank the other one with that later. I don't know if it'll be on air or in real life and I don't know what day it will occur on, but I know it'll be one of seven days because that's what we've been doing for a while. And do you ever think about again just how weird it is not only that there are seven days instead of five or ten in a week, but also the names that we gave them. I mean, at least they all talk about a blend. Talk about a blend. Well, kick it to us. Where did these come from?

[Noel Brown]

Well, they were named after the planets of Hellenistic astrology in the order of sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. The Romance languages preserved the Latin translations of those exceptions to the blend point of Sunday, which was replaced by Dominicus, which is the Lord's day, and of course also Saturday, which was named for the Sabbath.

[Ben Bullen]

Okay, all right. And our research associate Jeff here indicated that he wanted to stick with the English names at the beginning when we learn more about the days of the week. Right. We do have to mention that most of the Romance languages are still Latin esque and based on those Roman gods and based on therefore some of the astrology that you had just mentioned earlier, Noel. But like you were saying, Noel, we have to remember that a lot of these names have earlier forms. As a matter of fact, all of them have earlier forms based on astrology, religion and deification of various entities. The Germanic people got into this system by substituting German deities for Roman ones, with the exception of Saturday. And this, this kind of religious syncretism happened often enough that it has a phrase interpretatio germanica. Cool.

[Noel Brown]

Or a Germanic interpretation.

[Ben Bullen]

Right.

[Noel Brown]

So why don't we go through them? Yeah, one at a time. These are the days of the week. Sunday, which is always blows my mind. Maybe not blows my mind, but I'm always have to remind myself that it's technically the first day of the week.

[Ben Bullen]

It always feels like the end.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, right, exactly.

[Ben Bullen]

Because out in the Middle east, you know, in other parts of the world, the weekend will differ or what that two day period is, will differ.

[Max Williams]

Working in restaurants for super long, a lot of Hispanic, Hispanic people. Sunday is the last day of the week. So you get used to like looking at calendars where Mondays and starting, like at our job, we at one point try to change the front of house schedule to being Monday through Sunday. And everyone got so mad at us about it. But it's like, I like, it was annoying because we had one schedule, it was Monday through Sunday, and we had another schedule of Sunday through Saturday.

[Noel Brown]

Well, it speaks to the whole need for that kind of uniformity. So starting with Sunday is the first day of the week if we're going, since we find ourselves here in America. The Old English would be sonendyck or sonnendych, which means sun's day, and the translation of the Latin phrase dies solis.

[Ben Bullen]

And for a lot of us, if you just read that typed out, you would think it said dies soulless, which is a pretty cool super heavy metal homonym there, big time. So the next one, Monday, Old English, monondag, meaning moon's day. So you got the sun's day, you got the moon's day, dies lunae, or of course, Diaz lunae. In North Germanic mythology, the moon is personified as mani.

[Noel Brown]

Ah, Manny, love that guy. Tuesday, of course, we've got Tuesday that. Now we're getting into our Canterbury Tales. Yeah, Type pronunciations, of course. And this means two easy day. That's what it means.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, here, of course, in the God of war games, because he is in fact the God of war, which could be equated to the Roman God Mars.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. You know how he's interpreted is that. It's under the Interpretatio Romana.

[Noel Brown]

Well done.

[Ben Bullen]

So the Germans have one. Yes, the Romans got one. Anyway, moving on, we go to Wednesday. In Old English it's Wodenstein, meaning the day of the Germanic God Woden or Woden, known as Odin. Yeah, yeah, Odin known for being a super cool deity. He's friends with ravens, he hangs.

[Noel Brown]

You can identify with Odin. Ben, you're a fan of the Corvids.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, thanks, man. Yeah, we've got some good developments with the murder over in this part of the world. Anyway, Crow news aside, I'll catch you guys up offline about that. What's next? So we've made it through the sun, the moon, Tyr and the All Father.

[Noel Brown]

And, you know, problematic behavior of Neil Gaiman aside, the new season of Sandman is quite good and that writing and the way it incorporates Norse and Greek mythology remains a favorite. Yes, Odin being a very pivotal character in the plot of the Sandman.

[Ben Bullen]

It's also interesting that we start with the sun, we go to the moon, but then the God of war comes before, you know, the higher level, sort of all purpose God.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, it doesn't make a whole hell a lot of sense, does it?

[Ben Bullen]

It's weird. Okay. And then Thursday, you know, this is one of the easy ones, the Norse God that we call Thor. It's so later, depending on how the Marvel movies go, it'll be called Hemsworth's day or something.

[Noel Brown]

If. If you must. Yes, it's true, yeah. Friday, of course, we've got as Frigde, meaning the day of the Anglo Saxon God S. Frige, the Norse name for the planet of Venus, being. I'm gonna do my best here, Frigja or Frigg's star. Frigg.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. And then we've got.

[Noel Brown]

Frig that.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, we've got Saturday rounding it up. Named after the Roman God Saturn, of course, associated with the Titan Kronos, the father of Zeus and many other Olympian deities. Its original name was Saturnisdel and in Latin it was Dies Saturni.

[Noel Brown]

Day of Saturn, 100%. And according to our dearest pals over at Britannica, the month is based on a concept of lunation, which is the period in which the moon completes a cycle, cycle of its phases. And that period lasts around 29 and 1/2 days. And it's pretty easy to recognize visually and short enough for the days to be counted without having to resort to larger, more complex calculations.

[Ben Bullen]

So that means most early calendars were essentially a collection of months. But. But when do we find the first calendar? We know human civilization has always been counting time in one way or another, so there probably are multiple calendars that came and went and never got written down. They were just the understanding of a group of people before writing as a technology was commonplace. In 2013, some quite intelligent British archaeologists announced the discovery of what they said was the world's oldest calendar. It is a. It's a very strange site. You can pull up pictures of it. It's at Warren Field in Scotland. And it's 12 holes, it's 12 pits that align with the southeastern horizon. These pits point toward a hill that is associated with the sunrise on the midwinter solstice. And the archeologists argue that hunter gatherers used the arrangement of these pits and this hill to check the height and stage of the moon so that they could track time in relation to the sun and the change of the seasons.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, and to that point I had this kind of inkling that we had talked about the idea of calendars or marking of time having been discovered in cave painting. And etchings. And that is in fact the case. However, the intent behind some of these findings is still kind of hotly debated. Right. But we do have some evidence showing that 20,000 year old ice age drawings represented a kind of lunar calendar designed to track the fertility of different animals.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. And again, there's a lot of forensics here to give some more numbers. The calendar in Scotland, if calendar be, is about 10,000 years old, making it about twice as old as Stonehenge. And people are on a side note, most familiar with Stonehenge. But there are tons of things like that all spread around. Spinal Taps on.

[Noel Brown]

Is that what we're talking about here? Where the demons dwell and the banshees live? And they do live well.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes, very good. We'll keep it. And also we are hugely excited for the Spinal Tap sequel coming out. We actually interviewed Rob Reiner a while back.

[Noel Brown]

He gave us the scoop.

[Ben Bullen]

He gave us early scoop, nice scoop.

[Max Williams]

I gotta say, that was one of the coolest things I've done in my job because I was filling in on recording that just one day on something, don't you know, I was like, oh my God, this is so cool. It gives that scoop and I'm like.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, that's so awesome. And yeah. And to finish this point real quick before we move on, we were interviewing Rob about the phenomenal work he did on his JFK podcast. And the guy really knows his stuff. I think we're all so very impressed. But we're also going to bug him again when the Spinal Tap sequel comes out. That was such a. Such a strange job. That was a good day for all of us. It's a day we would mark on our calendar, our modern calendar. But how did we get there?

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Unknown]

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Picture this. You're in the garage, hand covered in grease, just finished tuning up your engine with a part you found on ebay, and you realize, you know what? I could use new brakes. So where do you go next? Back to ebay. You can find anything there. It's unreal. Wipers, headlights, even cold air intakes. It's all there. And you got ebay Guaranteed fit. You order a part and if it doesn't fit, send it back. Simple as that. Look, DIY fixes can be major. Doesn't matter if it's just maintenance or a major mod, you got it. Especially when things are guaranteed to fit. So when you dive into your next car project, start with ebay. All the parts you need at prices you'll love. Guaranteed to fit every time. Ebay Things people love.

[Ben Bullen]

We got there because as we said at the top, people had to cooperate and coordinate together across distance. I think that's one of the big deciding points, right? Like if you go to the history of calendars, you'll see that a lot of it orbits around the time the first cities are discovered were formed. The first ones we know about are between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

[Noel Brown]

The cradle of civilization.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes, the cradle of civilization. They originated in the those rivers originate in the Taurus Mountains of southeastern Turkey. They diverge, they run south through Syria and Iraq, and then some more tributaries join the clique from Iran and then they flew to the Persian Gulf. And this natural geography kind of dictated the way these ancient peoples thought about calendars.

[Noel Brown]

Can I just say that in my Twilight years. I've gotten really into my calendar. I schedule everything. And it's just a way to kind of organize my mind in a way that, like, I don't feel overwhelmed and I can sort of, like, know exactly what's going on. And I even will, like, schedule myself for leisure activities or, like, working on music or whatever. It's just kind of a way to set intentions. I'm just putting that out there. Something that I dig.

[Ben Bullen]

But of course, fellow ridiculous historians, we know the question on everybody's mind. Why haven't we gone back to the Julian calendar? Noel, you know, a huge proportion of our listener base are just nuts for the Julian calendar.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. Named after the inventor of the Orange Julius. Julius Caesar.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes. Yep. Because it's a myth. See, the Caesar Salad is not named after Julius Caesar. That's untrue. But Orange Julius.

[Noel Brown]

Wouldn't it be more like Caesar Salad if we were pronouncing it correctly?

[Ben Bullen]

Probably. Orange Julius is definitely named after Julius Caesar.

[Noel Brown]

For sure.

[Ben Bullen]

No one fact checked that.

[Noel Brown]

No, don't do it. Don't fact check anything we say. Ever, actually.

[Ben Bullen]

So the end of the Roman kingdom leads to the growth of the Roman Republic. And now there's a revision of the calendrical system during this time. The Romans, of course, were super big fans of ripping off everything from the Greeks.

[Noel Brown]

They were bullish on ripping stuff off just in general.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. And they were influenced heavily by Greek calendars. The Greek calendars said, we're dividing the year into 12 lunar months. Some of them will be 29 days, some will be 30. The Romans gave the third, fifth, seventh, and 10th months, 31 days each. And this is where we get that strange, complicated system. Every other month, 29 days except February, 28 days. And then absurd, 29 every leap year. So. I know, I know.

[Noel Brown]

It does my head in, bro. I'm sorry. So I get it. Just thank God that we have, like, calendars these days.

[Ben Bullen]

We have people for it. You don't have to think about it. Except once every four years or we.

[Noel Brown]

Do a damn episode about it.

[Ben Bullen]

Right. So after the rollout of the Roman Republic, control over calendar calculation passed on to the high priest of the day. So they were the ones who got to determine the number of days in a month and the organization of months in a year. They did something tricky. They realized that because the priest had such political power, they could fiddle with the calendar to lengthen or shorten the term of office of the consuls. Like the earthly powers that they support or oppose.

[Noel Brown]

Exactly. I was going to make a joke about priests fiddling, but I decided against him.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, okay. Okay, I got it. So this was hugely important. It sounds maybe a little bit academic at this point, but think of it this way, folks. What if your favorite or least favorite political party in the country could tell the public how long a year is? And what if when they, like the folks in office, like, let's say the bull moose party is back in a big way and they're in charge?

[Noel Brown]

Thank God.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, thank goodness some adults got in the room and they're in charge of how long a year is. And whenever a bull moose president is in office, they make the year longer. And whenever a non bull moose guy is in, they make the year shorter.

[Noel Brown]

I mean, not to get political at all, you know, whenever possible, but it doesn't seem like we're super far off from these types of things becoming up for debate.

[Ben Bullen]

Right? Yeah. Because if you could already gerrymander cities and voting districts, why not gerrymander the calendar?

[Noel Brown]

Let's just gerrymander time in general.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, exactly. And if you have a problem with it. Sorry, we've gerrymandered the concept of gerrymandering, so certain people can't talk about it.

[Noel Brown]

If we haven't talked about this on the show, which I'm sure we have. The concept of gerrymandering, that word is like. It was like this kind of like it was a political cartoon, I think, that represented this kind of monster, like the gerrymander, sort of like the Jabberwocky, because of the weird shapes of these redrawn districts for nefarious political purposes.

[Ben Bullen]

So that's one of the interesting parts of the Julian calendar. In its design, it was able to be weaponized politically, which makes it dangerous. In addition to being imperfect. The calendar is named after Julius Caesar. Every fourth year has 366 days instead of 365. And this is because Roman astronomers calculated that a year is around 365.25 days. So they were just trying to make up the average.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, but also we have the heliocentric views and then debates around that that were politically motivated and religiously motivated.

[Ben Bullen]

Think about it. So the Roman astronomers, while many were heliocentric. Think about it. More like they noticed the pattern would repeat after a length of time.

[Noel Brown]

There you go. And whichever one is the center, the timing is the same.

[Ben Bullen]

Great. Yeah.

[Noel Brown]

Okay, cool.

[Ben Bullen]

So Julian calendar, you know, the motto is better than nothing. You know. Yeah.

[Noel Brown]

This is really good tagline.

[Ben Bullen]

It's a really. It's up there.

[Noel Brown]

It's Almost as good as checkers. Gotta eat. Yeah, man. You know the one. You know the one.

[Ben Bullen]

So the. This issue with the calendars, both the political issues and the just mathematical issues, lead some people to a panic, a nerd panic that I know we have talked about in previous episodes. But to quote the White Stripes, it bears repeating because it's kind of hilarious. It's a nerd apocalypse. By the 8th century, Saint Bede, an English Benedictine monk, notices that the calendar has already drifted by three full days. He freaks out. No one listens to him. 500. Can't have that.

[Noel Brown]

Can't have that calendar drift.

[Ben Bullen]

No.

[Noel Brown]

Something must be done.

[Ben Bullen]

Something must be done. Call the guys from Fast and Furious. Five hundred years later, Roger Bacon says, hey, the calendar's like a week ish off now.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, geez, what a mess.

[Ben Bullen]

I know. And this proves to be a problem for the church as well, because of another holiday schedule that thoroughly confuses both of us, I think the celebration of Easter, a real movable feast. It's the date of the spring equinox, which, as the church has earlier established, falls on March 21 for them. But by the 16th century, the equinox is occurring like 10 days later.

[Noel Brown]

And can I just say, there's a source that Jeff found from Masterclock.com that describes the spring equinox in terms that I hadn't fully wrapped my head around prior to this. So I just want to read this quote. We're taught that the spring equinox, when the sun is precisely overhead at the equator and when the day equals the night, everywhere falls exactly on March 20th.

[Ben Bullen]

Okay. Okay. Amazing, right? Great work, guys. As long as we can stop that mission creep and that calendrical drift. And so what we see here is a realization that preciseness matters in these calendrical calculations. Close enough or good enough is not, in fact, good enough. Because over time, the. The discrepancies or the inaccuracies will only expand. And that's why, very slowly, calendars drift out of sync with the seasons. By the 16th century, they had just been adding more and more leap days. About 10 too many leap days.

[Noel Brown]

You're hurting me. You're hurting my brain.

[Ben Bullen]

So this meant that Easter's at the wrong time. And this is where we get our super humble broski from the past, Pope Gregory xiii. Greg says, okay, this is getting cartoonish. I'm the Pope. I got a little bit of juice. All ye best astronomers in the land, come work for me. This is not a choice. It's 1582. I need you guys to figure this out. And now they got together with Greg and they said, okay, we are going to have a calendar. And he's like, great. Love calendars. It's great for my schedule. And they say, awesome, thanks, Greg. We're also going to have leap days in the calendar. And then Greg goes, ah, but only.

[Noel Brown]

In years divisible by 100 and not by 400. Stop it.

[Ben Bullen]

Okay.

[Noel Brown]

Stop it.

[Ben Bullen]

This is where they get Greg back in on the pitch. He goes, okay, okay, tell me more.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. And that would, according to Masterclock, again, be just fine if the year were 365.2425 days.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. Yep. Which they believed it was. It is actually 3.6524219. Anyway. I know, I know, I know.

[Noel Brown]

I'm right there.

[Ben Bullen]

It's.

[Noel Brown]

It's brain breaking as well. If that were the only honey pot that the Pope had his popey fingers in, the plan might have been accepted more universally. But he also made the unilateral stipulation that jumped the calendar 10 days forward. So Easter would be consistent with those previous formulas that were set at the council. The first council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. yeah.

[Ben Bullen]

So this is incredibly wacky and inappropriate. You can get a message from upper management that says, hey, you know how you thought it was Thursday, it's 10 days later from now, and everybody just pretend. So there are these common tales of varying accuracy, actually, about people getting angry and believing that the rulers have stolen 10 days of their lives. Yeah. You'll see somewhat apocryphal claims that there were riots. We don't know how true those claims are.

[Noel Brown]

That's right. So let's move on to when things are more or less righted or more.

[Ben Bullen]

Or less closer to the world we live in now.

[Noel Brown]

Less wronged. Less wronged.

[Ben Bullen]

At least we're all pretending everything's fine. Yeah. So most Catholic countries and colonies played ball with Greg's ideas. But some Protestant nations did object to losing 10 days because they felt that if they went along with this, they would indicate that they were down with the Catholic Church, which was very antithetical to their existence. As a result, some countries didn't switch over to this system for hundreds of years. The British Empire didn't get on the wagon with this until 1752. And I think Japan didn't adopt the Gregg's calendar until 1873. Korea, 1895. It's very strange.

[Noel Brown]

It's super strange. For the next 400 years, we have European calendars disagreeing by half a month. And it wasn't until the Bolshevik revolution took over Russia that the Gregorian calendar was adopted and Greece was to become the last European country to switch. And that was as recently as 1923. As far as calendar adoption is concerned, that's hella recent.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, exactly, because it leads to so many mishaps, so many crossed wires as we say. Saudi Arabia didn't switch its official calendar from the lunar based Islamic calendar until 2016. And right now, many countries, many belief systems, the people there will have two different calendars, right? You'll have your own non Gregorian calendar for one purpose or another. But then to do business globally and to speak with outsiders, you have the Gregorian calendar. It became our sort of lingua franca for measuring time, or lingua franca if you want to be fancy. And this is we all do. Do we all do. I'll have a cravat with my vesper.

[Noel Brown]

Finger sandwiches and my finger sandwiches.

[Ben Bullen]

So this is how we got to where we are now. This is also a tease about the alternate non Greg's calendars out there. And that's going to be our next episode. No, we went in a lot of directions with this and I think it's because we're both so thoroughly fascinated and confused by it.

[Noel Brown]

We got a little timey wimey wibbledy wobbledy with this one, y'.

[Ben Bullen]

All.

[Noel Brown]

So sorry. Not sorry. But this is a fun one, Ben.

[Ben Bullen]

This was a fun one. Thanks to our super producer Max Williams, thanks to our research associate Jeff Factor G Bartlett and then of course thanks to our own Julius, Julius Strickland the.

[Noel Brown]

Quizzter and AJ Bahamas Jacobs the puzzle, Christopher Haciotes and Eve's Jeffcoats, both haired.

[Ben Bullen]

Spirit and of course DC's reigning supervillain the calendar man.

[Noel Brown]

We'll see you next time folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Unknown]

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. Now through August 26th it's back to Deals time where you can enjoy storewide deals and earn four times points. Look for in store tags to earn on eligible items from Dave's Killer Bread, Pilgrim's Best Foods, Hidden Valley, Progresso and General Mills. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings Savings. Shop in store or online for easy drive up and go pickup or delivery subject to availability restrictions apply. Visit Albertsons or Safeway.com for more details.

[Ben Bullen]

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[Noel Brown]

T Mobile has the best mobile Network in the US based on analysis by UKLA of speed test intelligence data 1H2025 ctmobile.comNetwork this is an iHeart podcast.