Apr 10, 2026 · 15 min · 11 segments
Spring Forward, Fall Back or what if we just didn’t? In this episode of Life Without, Alan Davies looks at how our circadian rhythms would be impacted if we simply stopped changing the clocks. Some…
Alan DaviesHost
Rebecca StruthersGuest
Aarti JagannathGuest
When we all sign up to this shared social time, like summertime, what does that actually mean?
The 365-day year was first discovered by the ancient Egyptians, who also invented the sundial 3,500 years ago.
Clock time actually gave us what we think of as our day-to-day in terms of hours of uniform length.
Before that, we used to have the same 24 hours in a day, but 12 of those would be daytime and 12 of them would be nighttime.
And the result of that was we get 12 longer hours in the summer for daytime and 12 shorter hours for night and the reverse in winter.
But clocks being machines, they want to do the same thing over and over again.
So it's the invention of the clock really that started to drive us towards the idea of having hours of uniform length.
Having the extra hour of sunshine in the evening gives us more time to socialise, whether it's meeting friends after work, going out for picnics.
They've calculated it could benefit the economy by billions of pounds a year.
When we all sign up to this shared social time, like summertime, what does that actually mean?
The 365-day year was first discovered by the ancient Egyptians, who also invented the sundial 3,500 years ago.
Clock time actually gave us what we think of as our day-to-day in terms of hours of uniform length.
Before that, we used to have the same 24 hours in a day, but 12 of those would be daytime and 12 of them would be nighttime.
And the result of that was we get 12 longer hours in the summer for daytime and 12 shorter hours for night and the reverse in winter.
But clocks being machines, they want to do the same thing over and over again.
So it's the invention of the clock really that started to drive us towards the idea of having hours of uniform length.
Having the extra hour of sunshine in the evening gives us more time to socialise, whether it's meeting friends after work, going out for picnics.
They've calculated it could benefit the economy by billions of pounds a year.
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