Is Time Just An Illusion?

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[00:00:02.240] - Oliver (Host)

Let me ask you a question. What time is it right now? You might glance at your phone or your watch and say something like 9: 14 or 4: 37. But what if I told you that that number isn't a fact? It's actually a decision. Time, as we live it, is not a natural constant. It's a social agreement, it's a shared illusion that helps us keep things running smoothly. We're so used to checking the clock that we forget what we're really looking at. It's not a window into the universe. It's a system, a human-made system, designed to keep the world organised.

[00:00:53.080] - Oliver (Host)

Welcome back to English and Beyond: Intermediate English podcast. As always, that is a transcript and free flashcards available at www.morethanalanguage.com. These are a great way to consolidate any difficult vocabulary that you haven't quite caught the first time you listen to the episode. And in today's episode, we're exploring one of the strangest truths of modern life: arguably, most of us don't really know what time it is. Even though we rely on clocks for everything from waking up to catching flights, to showing up to a date or a job interview. In fact, much of what we call time was only standardised in the past 150 years or so.

[00:01:46.520] - Oliver (Host)

So first off, what is time? Well, let's begin at the beginning. Time in the natural world absolutely exists. The sun rises, it sets, seasons change, our bodies grow older. The tides move in and they move out. The moon pulls at the sea. There are clearly rhythms in the universe, cycles that no one can ignore. But the idea of measuring time in hours and minutes, that's not something natural. That's us. For most of human history, people told time by looking at the sky. Noon was when the sun stood highest above your head, and that meant noon in one city could be 10 minutes different from noon in the next city over. And that was perfectly fine for the vast majority of human civilization to date. Until very recently, people couldn't call someone in another country, and they didn't need to turn up for a Zoom meeting at, let's say, 1: 00 PM on the dot. Life moved with the light. People worked when it was bright enough, and they rested when it wasn't. The passage of time was something you felt, not something you measured in the way we do nowadays. Ancient cultures divided the day into loose parts: midday, evening, night.

[00:03:18.740] - Oliver (Host)

That was enough for many civilizations. It wasn't about being precise. It was about being in sync with nature. That is, until trains came along, and suddenly, close enough wasn't close enough anymore. The 19th century bought steam engines, schedules, and chaos at the beginning. Trains could travel fast from one town to another in just a few hours. But each town had its own version of time based on the local position of the sun. So imagine this. You buy a train ticket and it says your train departs at 3: 00pm and arrives at 2: 55pm. Of course, you're not going back in time, but the clocks in the two different towns are just out of sync. Confused passengers, missed connections and logistical headaches were constant. British railway companies decided enough was enough. In the 1840s, they created something called railway time, based on the clock at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Eventually, this became known as Greenwich Meantime, GMT, and all train timetables followed it. It was, as you can imagine, a revolution. Instead of local times for every major town, there was one unified standard. Over the following decades, this idea spread over countries and continents, evolving into the time zones we know today.

[00:04:59.720] - Oliver (Host)

But it didn't happen overnight. People, of course, resisted. Local communities refused to change their clocks. Some churches kept ringing their bells at the old times, and others set two clocks, one for railway time and one for God's time. Eventually, this standardised railway time became the norm. By the end of the 19th century, most of Europe and North America had adopted time zones. The rest of the world followed slowly, pulled in by global trade, telegrams, and telephones. What began as a railway fix ended up changing the very way we live our lives. But whole countries managing to compromise on fixed time zones was only a partial solution to the issues that we had standardising time. There's also, for example, the strange and controversial invention of Daylight Saving Time. The idea was simple. In the summer, when the days are longer, we move the clocks forward so people get more daylight in the evening. It became popular during World War I as a way to save energy. Fewer lights meant less electricity used. The same idea returned in World War II, and this time it stuck around. But the evidence for its benefits? Not that convincing, really.

[00:06:31.800] - Oliver (Host)

In fact, studies show that changing the clocks disrupts sleep, increases car accidents, and even causes a small rise in heart attacks. Children struggle with the transition. So do older adults, and many people just don't like it. And yet, twice a year, millions of us adjust our clocks like some global ritual. We lose an hour, we gain an hour, we complain, and we move on because we have no other choice. Some countries have opted out. Japan, for example, doesn't do it. Iceland never did. The EU voted to end it and then quietly delayed the implementation of the decision. In the US, Congress debates it every few years, but nothing changes. Why? Well, maybe because once tradition becomes normal, it's hard to kill. But every time you lose sleep in March or you feel confused in October, remember, this wasn't handed down by nature, but it's instead a man-made social construct. All of this brings us to a deeper tension, the difference between clock time and body time. Have you ever had jet lag? You land in a new place, your phone says it's morning, but your brain says, Absolutely not. That's because your internal clock, your circadian rhythm, isn't ruled by a number.

[00:08:05.840] - Oliver (Host)

It's ruled by daylight and how your body has gotten used to that pattern. Your body knows when it's morning based on the sun, not your alarm. And yet we constantly override that rhythm. We stay up late, we stare at blue-lit screens, we wake up early to catch the bus or log in to work. But our bodies aren't machines. They can't just adjust instantly because we want them to. And it turns out our bodies are still ancient. They haven't caught up to artificial light, 9: 00 to 5: 00 schedules or global Zoom calls. Perhaps they never will. Of course, time isn't just scientific, it's also cultural. Ask someone in Spain when dinner starts, and they might say never before 9: 30. Tell someone in Germany that they have to wait until after that time to eat, and they may look quite horrified. Then there are concepts like island time or mañana syndrome, phrases that might sound dismissive, but they point to something real. Not every culture sees punctuality, sees timekeeping in the same way. In many parts of the world, time is flexible. Being late isn't rude, it's normal, or even a sign that people matter more than the schedule.

[00:09:29.140] - Oliver (Host)

In Japan, on the other hand, a train leaving 30 seconds early is a scandal. And in Switzerland, clocks are almost a religion. But you only have to spend a few weeks in Southern Europe to realise that many people in the world view this addiction to punctuality as unnecessarily stressful. I think that in Britain, we live in between, obsessed with being on time so as not to be rude, but also somehow very fond of being fashionably late. So what time is it really? Well, that depends on who you ask. Is it solar time, tied to the movement of the sun? Is it body time, shaped by your brain and sleep cycle? Or is it GMT, created for ships and railways? Or just your phone's best guess, based on whatever satellite it's talking to? Clocks give us order, but they don't give us truth. They're systems, they're very clever systems. When you're rushing from one thing to the next or feeling like the day is slipping through your fingers, it might help to remember. The modern idea of time, the ticking, the scheduling, the slicing of the day into units is an invention. Useful, of course, but artificial.

[00:10:50.380] - Oliver (Host)

There is no law of physics that says lunch must happen at exactly 1: 00 PM. There's no universal truth that says a 9: 00 to 5: 00 is a natural way to work. These are agreements we have made. They are not absolutes. Sometimes, those agreements feel more like demands. So maybe, just occasionally, it's worth stepping back, not to romanticise the past, not to abandon structure, but just to notice how much of time is a choice. Wherever you are in your day, whatever time it is, I hope you're having a good time. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.