PodcastComing soon
The Time Revolution
Revolutionizing time for health & well-being.
In 1883, the railroads gave us time zones. Factories gave us the shift and the 9-to-5. Twice a year, daylight saving time moves the clock whether our biology agrees or not. The Time Revolution, from Owaves, looks at how timekeeping is changing and how clocks, calendars and schedules can be rebuilt around human health.
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What the show covers
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History and culture of time
Sundials, water clocks, monastery bells and railroad time: how every era has kept time, and how the clock reshaped the way we live, work and pray.
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Clocks vs. biology
Daylight saving time, school start times, shift work and the costs of living out of sync.
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The next generation of timekeeping
Visual calendars, wearables and BodyClock AI™: tools that plan around your body, not just your meetings.
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The people rebuilding time
Founders, scientists and physicians redesigning the calendar, the workday and the school day.
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Your 24 hours
Practical timing for sleep, meals, movement and focus, grounded in the research.
Sample topics
From tic-toc to lub-dub
A few of the stories on the list, from the first clocks to the clock inside us.
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Ancient Mesopotamia
Why is an hour 60 minutes?
Sumerian and Babylonian base-60 math, which still runs every clock you own.
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Before clocks ticked
Shadows, water and smoke
Egyptian obelisks and water clocks, and the East Asian incense clocks that let people smell the hour.
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Ancient Greece
Chronos and Kairos
The Greeks had two words for time: sequential time and the moment. Only one made it onto the clock face.
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Medieval Europe
The monks who made time tick
Mechanical clocks rang the prayer bell on schedule. Time stopped flowing like water and started ticking.
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1800s
Time becomes money
Dollar watches, factory shifts and the 1883 railroad time zones: the industrial clock and the workday it built.
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1959
The clock inside us
Franz Halberg coins “circadian.” Melatonin, body temperature, blood pressure and alertness all run on a 24-hour schedule.
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1967
The day the second left the sun
The second is redefined by the cesium-133 atom, not Earth’s rotation. Precision went up; biology dropped out.
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2006
Social jetlag
Till Roenneberg’s team names the gap between the body clock and the social clock, and who pays for it.
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Now
Three clocks, one circle
The solar clock, the social clock and the body clock, and timekeeping that finally puts all three in one view.