Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned in Brief. I’m Preet Bharara. Today we’re going to take a look at a highly charged debate, and it may not be the one you expect.

Should daylight saving time stay or should it go? We turn the clock ahead, just this past Saturday, which probably is why I’m so groggy. It’s a perennial question that accompanies the ritual of changing the clocks an hour back in the fall, and one hour forward in the spring, as we just did.

In 2022, the Senate unanimously approved the Sunshine Protection Act to keep daylight saving time, permanent. Meaning, the clocks would no longer change twice per year. A similar bill remain stalled in the House. The current practice has been used for more than a century. But do the pros outweigh the cons?

Doctors, sleep scientists and average citizens across the nation have varied opinions on the matter. Maybe you do too. My guest this week, Dan Diamond, is a national health reporter for The Washington Post who has covered both the tug of war on Capitol Hill and other factors that inform this debate. Dan Diamond, welcome to the show.

Dan Diamond:

Preet, thank you so much for having me and on an issue that is so sunny compared to some topics like that.

Preet Bharara:

I have noticed in your work, and I have read some of your reporting on this, you like to use the clock and sleep and weather puns. You are not shy about that.

Dan Diamond:

I’m not alone. I was talking to a senator’s staff, Senator Markey at Markey from Massachusetts, his staff, and we were debating whether this is the issue that gets the most puns and they agreed. Senator Markey, every year he comes up with new jokes about it. I think it lends itself, especially given how dry so many things that come out of Congress are.

Preet Bharara:

Yes. So we are recording this in advance, but at the time people will be hearing this, we have just turned the clocks forward. Is that daylight saving time or is that standard time? What are we in right now after we’ve put the clocks forward one hour?

Dan Diamond:

Great question and a good place to start. As of mid-March, we are in daylight saving time. We have moved the clocks forward in an effort to, per the name, save more daylight, capture more daylight to go to school and have outdoor activities, to have outdoor CAFEs. To just live our lives in the sun more during the spring, summer into the fall.

Standard time is the fallback, literally the fallback as the hours get pushed back in the winter where it might be more sun in the middle of the day still, but it’s more natural to our sleep schedules. Doctors would argue.

Preet Bharara:

So time is time. And depending on where you live, the sunsets at a certain time, depending on the season. If you live very up north, if you live in Alaska, there’s not that much sunlight. What started this process or this ritual in the United States of moving the clocks twice a year? Why do that at all?

Dan Diamond:

This really begins with the invention of time zones in the first place. The railroads in the 1800s and telegraphs, which began to crisscross the United States, began to link us together in real time. There’s the saying, “Having the trains run on time.” Today, it means being prompt, being reliable, but back then the railroad companies were basing their schedules on dozens of different local times based on where the sun was in the sky.

Preet Bharara:

Were there places that were eight minutes ahead of other places?

Dan Diamond:

That’s exactly what it was. That’s exactly what it was. In New York and Washington were 10 minutes apart. Chicago was 19 minutes away from Columbus. So trains leaving these cities would run on the local time and that just made for a hornet’s nest of trying to schedule travel, shipping.

Preet Bharara:

And when did that get reformed?

Dan Diamond:

That was the late 1800s. The railroad companies pushed for time zones. Ones that we would recognize today, Eastern, Central Mountain and Pacific, and states generally went along. There’s even an event called The Day of Two Noons, the first formal time change where Americans around the country spent a Sunday in November, turning back their clocks to try to standardize them nationwide.

Preet Bharara:

Sounds like a good movie. The day… I think, it sounds like a horror movie. The Day of Two Noons.

Dan Diamond:

Well, back then there were folks who were horrified as just like any change. There were people saying that this is going to lead to anarchy. There were editorials written about the scourge of, quote, “railroad time.” There are holdouts, there are cities like Cleveland that ended up in the Central Time Zone and fought to be in the Eastern Time Zone. It’s just fascinating stuff. I would recommend a book called Seize the Daylight, that’s where I’m getting some of this from.

Preet Bharara:

That’s another pun. I like that. Okay, so we have time zones now established. There’s a little bit more uniformity in how we take account of time. In the US, where did this idea arise of turning the clock backwards or forwards in the spring and fall?

Dan Diamond:

So 30 or 40 years into this time zone experiment with the railroads, there had been the second effort building about moving the time zones, moving, or at least the clock an hour a day or some portion of the day to maximize sunlight. And that had stalled until World War I.

Congress got very interested in the time rules. There were claims that maximizing daylight would allow for more food production for the war effort or save fuel at night. So in March 1918, Congress passed what’s known as the Standard Time Act. It formally turned those railroad time zones into regional clocks overseen by the government, and almost immediately began the first daylight saving time a few weeks later.

Those are rules that the Congress has amended several times since. But to underline the point, Preet, the US Congress for about a century has effectively controlled the nation’s time. Maybe a scary thought when I put it like that.

Preet Bharara:

A little better than the railroads, probably.

Dan Diamond:

A little more oomph and enforcement behind the railroads for sure.

Preet Bharara:

So I want to talk about the various ways that people want to change this potentially, and then get your expertise on who the stakeholders are, who cares about it, what the arguments are, pro and con.

Now, one way you could do this is maintain the status quo. We roll the clocks forward an hour, in the spring and back in the fall. So you have periods of time when the clock is a little bit different and there’s more or less sunlight because we’re doing this manual act, and then you have to change the clock on your car because the car doesn’t automatically change the time. That happens in my car at least. Or you could decide as the Senate seems to have decided that you make daylight saving time permanent.

So we maintain the time that we have now and we never change it again. And then other people say, “We should make daylight standard time permanent.” Describe what the difference is in each of those, and who cares about doing what.

Dan Diamond:

Sure. And that third option, it wouldn’t be daylight standard time. It would just be permanent standard time.

Preet Bharara:

Permanent standard time. Sorry. And by the way for the record, is a daylight saving time or daylight savings time?

Dan Diamond:

It is saving. I wrestled with this as the reporter who did not want to make the mistake, but you are saving daylight. That’s the way to think about it.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. All right. So let’s go through the three options.

Dan Diamond:

Okay, so let’s talk about those options. But first starting with the push for permanent daylight time, which as you’ve noted passed the Senate unanimously last year.

Someone in a fluke Preet, I think it’s hard to boil this down, but essentially senators used a procedural move to get this through very, very quickly in a way that surprised some lawmakers who said they didn’t even know this vote was coming. So while it passed unanimously, it was because some creative staffers, short circuit of the debate process.

Preet Bharara:

At whose behest, whose behest?

Dan Diamond:

This was a bipartisan effort. So Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida.

Preet Bharara:

Are there outside interests that had a big stake in this bill getting passed or not?

Dan Diamond:

There are groups, retail associations, the Gulf lobby in Florida specifically that have made the argument, the more daylight we have all year round, the more we will be able to play outdoors, go shopping. It will benefit commerce, it will save fuel. All the arguments that have kind of kicked around with daylight saving time for years.

And the theory would be, if this was something that states could take advantage of all year round, many would choose, if not all, would choose to opt in and maximize the sunlight for their residents.

So Marco Rubio in Florida and some other Florida lawmakers have really pushed for this, but this is not partisan. Senator Patty Murray, the top Washington State Democrat is a major advocate. Ed Markey in Massachusetts. Democrat has pushed-

Preet Bharara:

It’s like the various corners of the United States.

Dan Diamond:

It would benefit some of the corner states more than some of the central states based on where the sun is. And let’s put a pin on that and get back to that in a second. But this push for permanent daylight time made its way through the Senate last year. It was a big win for these advocates, but almost immediately paused in the House, and that’s partly because of the second option. Permanent standard time.

Doctors have argued, sleep medicine specialists have said, it is not natural for us to be going on daylight time at all. If it was up to our natural circadian rhythms, we would be on standard time year round. We would not make this shift.

And lawmakers debating taking next steps last year, were inundated with complaints from these physicians, from some voters who said, “We don’t want to be on daylight time.” From people in cities like Detroit where if you shift to permanent daylight time, in the winter, that means the sun might not be coming up until after 9:00 AM. There would be kids-

Preet Bharara:

That’s terrible. And I’m not a scientist nor a sleep lobbyist.

Dan Diamond:

But you are a parent, right? And if you’re a parent, sending your kid to school, waiting for the school bus in the dark.

Preet Bharara:

I mean, by 9:00 AM they’re in second period.

Dan Diamond:

The way things are now, maybe we’d have to shift everything, in a daylight world. We also had tried permanent daylight time about 50 years ago, during the Nixon administration. This was an experiment that failed quickly, within months.

There were all kinds of anecdotal complaints, reports of car accidents where kids waiting for school buses, were run into or groggy drivers making mistakes. So the Congress moved quickly 50 years ago to get rid of permanent daylight time. And that’s an argument that lawmakers brought up to me last year.

They said, “Look, we tried this 50 years ago, it failed. We’re not sure of the right path forward.” So that brings us to the status quo, where we move forward, we move the clocks forward for the spring and summer and into the fall, move them back.

It’s not a perfect system, but it’s seen as the best compromise in a large country where depending on where you live, you may benefit from some daylight hours in the spring and you might lose some based on the system in the fall.

Preet Bharara:

Can I ask a dumb question? There are some places in the United States, even within a state where the time change sometimes. So Arizona, can you explain Arizona to me? Because I was there and I didn’t know what time it was once.

Dan Diamond:

Was that because of the time zone change or was that a political thing?

Preet Bharara:

No, no. The time zone change.

Dan Diamond:

So there are two states that have opted out of daylight saving time. Hawaii-

Preet Bharara:

You can do that?

Dan Diamond:

You can do that. You can do that under our current system. You don’t have to shift and maximize daylight, Hawaii and Arizona. So they’re immune from all of this.

What the bill debated in Congress would do, is continue to let those states opt out if they want. But many more states have said, “We just want to move to daylight time all year round.” And right now under the current rules, they can’t do that.

Preet Bharara:

And how do other countries handle this?

Dan Diamond:

It’s a variety of tactics. I think first, other countries don’t have the same challenges we do in the US, Preet. You mentioned Alaska.

Preet Bharara:

We’re very big.

Dan Diamond:

We’re big, we’re broad, we would cover all these different things.

Preet Bharara:

This is not a problem in Liechtenstein?

Dan Diamond:

If it is, it hasn’t come to the attention of The Washington Post.

Preet Bharara:

Or Vatican City. The one time zone.

Dan Diamond:

Yeah, yeah. There are countries that have smaller challenges, frankly, when it comes to daylight saving. But some have experimented with permanent daylight, others do the shift as well.

Preet Bharara:

And I think you’ve written about Mexico. What didn’t Mexico do away with the changing of times?

Dan Diamond:

Mexico did last year move forward with us, and they had their own debate, but it went out there, and some lawmakers in the US have said, “If Mexico could do it, why can’t we?”

Preet Bharara:

So I know you’re a journalist and you’re neutral, but could you provide some sense of which arguments are more meritorious than other arguments? Or is it just a matter of different constituencies, feel different things about the matter?

Dan Diamond:

That’s a great question. You’re asking a Post reporter to go on the record with whose got this right.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I am. And barring that, you can dodge it, but give us some sense of at least how the various constituencies and their arguments are fairing.

Dan Diamond:

If you ask the average American, “Do you like changing the time?” Overwhelmingly the answer is, “No.” People hate it. You’re groggy twice a year. It’s confusing. You might miss-

Preet Bharara:

Do they hate? See, because I hadn’t really thought about it in this way. What I’m annoyed by just as a person who luxuriate and sleep and doesn’t get enough of it, I don’t like the changing of the time. It’s confusing. It messes up schedules.

But I had not given deep thought to which time we should have permanently. Permanent standard time or daylight saving time. With respect to those two options, how do the arguments fair and how should we think about it?

Dan Diamond:

The arguments for a permanent daylight time are strong from a, we all could benefit from more sunlight. I love in the spring, once I’ve gotten over my initial grogginess, that we can eat out later at night, that there’s more time to go for a run through Rock Creek Park here in DC. So I love the extra sunlight.

But I take the argument from the sleep physicians because I’m a health reporter, that this is just ultimately not natural and especially not in the winter. The trade-off to me, the current system we have, the compromise. I’ve talked to folks like Josh Barrow about this.

To me, the compromise is the best approach. And there are folks who have studied this for years. The author of that book, Seize the Daylight, has essentially made the same argument. This is the guy who’s the greatest historian of daylight saving time in the country.

We can’t make a solution that will work for everybody. So how do we make this compromise work the best? Congress has over the years lengthened the amount of time that we’ve been in daylight saving. I do have my own personal theory.

Preet Bharara:

Tell us.

Dan Diamond:

Which as a reporter, I feel a little weird talking about, because you’re right, I’m not supposed to have bias. But I think the compromise makes sense, I would just change how we do it. So we change time, it takes effect essentially Sunday mornings and then we go back to the work on Monday. I would move it a day earlier, so the time shift happens-

Preet Bharara:

So you get the whole benefit of the weekend.

Dan Diamond:

And then I would add, I would time it to a three-day weekend. So Mondays would be whatever federal holiday in the spring and the fall. In that way we just have that much longer to adjust to the time change, that might do away with some of the grogginess and accidents and other health problems that we see.

Preet Bharara:

I think, I would vote for you, man. That’s pretty good. I saw someone else in your writing had suggested a different compromise, which is changing the clock twice a year, but only half an hour. What do you make of that?

Dan Diamond:

Well, no, no. So it was a little different. It was Frank Pallone, who at the time was the chair of the House Committee that oversees this. He said, “Let’s just meet in the middle. We’ll move it 30-”

Preet Bharara:

Or do it one time. Do it one time and have that right. Does that have any chance of success?

Dan Diamond:

No.

Preet Bharara:

Okay.

Dan Diamond:

It’s like a Washington compromise, but it would make no one happy.

Preet Bharara:

Can I ask a dumb question?

Dan Diamond:

You keep saying that. It’s your podcast, asks whatever question you want.

Preet Bharara:

If it’s a dumb question that doesn’t merit an answer, then we’ll just cut it out of this thing.

So we spent all this time thinking about changing the time. Has there any thought been given to, for schools and workplaces, when the days get shorter and the days get longer to accordingly change the work schedule or the school schedule? Why do we have to go to school and go to work at the same time, 365 days in the year? Does that make sense?

Dan Diamond:

That’s a great question.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, good!

Dan Diamond:

I think what you’re getting to is can we be more flexible in how we think about schooling, about work? And part of this debate is bound up in teenagers who are waking up at hours that are not natural for them. Moving up the time in the spring is even worse. I’m sure you have some listeners who will know this.

The teenagers who didn’t want to get up anyway and now you’re waking them up an hour earlier because of the spring forward. I don’t think that is being seriously considered. This flexible schedule you’re talking about. Because frankly, as COVID showed, we don’t have that amount of creativity among leadership.

Preet Bharara:

Yes. We don’t.

Dan Diamond:

I mean, we could have taken, this is a tangent, but I’ve covered COVID a lot more than I’ve covered daylight saving. There could have been a more creative approach to say, in-person education during COVID, where you get the movie theaters that nobody’s using or the auditoriums that would’ve been used for business conferences that were canceled and you bring kids back, but do it in a more spaced out way.

And of course, nobody really engaged with that idea seriously. So I just don’t think American education is prepared to move its schedule as flexibly as the sleep medicine doctors would like.

Preet Bharara:

So I think I know the answer to this because you’ve hinted at it in describing what the current landscape is with respect to legislation. But make a prediction. Do you think anything will change in the next year or two?

Dan Diamond:

Next year? No, and I’ll tell you why. Next two or three years, maybe. Next year, we are still waiting on an analysis that Congress outsourced essentially to the Department of Transportation. It’s just kicking the can down the road. The Department of Transportation oversees time zones. The transportation department has said, “We’re going to come back to you-”

Preet Bharara:

Wait a minute, just I’m going to need to interrupt you. So Pete Buttigieg is going to decide time? I mean, I have a lot of respect for the guy. That’s a big responsibility.

Dan Diamond:

Yeah. Look for the Fox News segment any minute on Buttigieg and our calendars and peril. But the Department of Transportation oversees these time zones. It’s not setting the time. Again, that’s Congress’s responsibility, but because of transportation intersecting with shipping, business, et cetera, it falls to DOT and they have promised Congress an analysis by the end of 2023.

So my prediction is no one in Congress is going to want to move until that analysis has come. And that way they can put some blame on DOT if the transportation department says a certain path makes sense.

But down the road, could we see movement? Sure. I mean, I was surprised when the Senate passed this bill last year. I know folks in the House and the White House were surprised because I immediately went to my sources and asked, “What do you think is going to happen?” And they were shocked by the passage. So this has been a legislative debate that has simmered, but there have been surprises and breakthroughs in the past. I think it’s possible we could see that again.

Preet Bharara:

Dan Diamond, this has been great. Thank you so much for your time. See what I did there? I say that to every guest, but it has special import and meaning given this conversation. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

Dan Diamond:

Well, Preet, thanks for having me. I’m going to spring forward with a…

Preet Bharara:

Okay.

Dan Diamond:

That was some nice stuff. Thanks for this conversation.

Preet Bharara:

That’s enough. Thanks, Dan.

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Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producer is Adam Waller. The editorial producers are Sam Ozer-Staton and Noah Azulai. The audio producer is Nat Wiener. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Jake Kaplan, Nama Tasha and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Dos. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.