Daylight Saving Time has Always Been a Mess

Amy Shira Teitel
8 min readNov 8, 2022

I hate the Daylight Saving time change, and odds are, you do, too. That extra hour of sleep in the fall is lovely, but shifting your body clock is a huge pain. There’s even evidence that the lost hour in spring is a health hazard; hospitals have reported a rise in heart attacks and traffic accidents in the days after we spring forward. If no one likes it and it’s dangerous, why do we do it? Contrary to persistent myth, it has nothing to do with farmers or trains. It’s all about energy conservation, war, and consummerism.

Amy Shira Teitel

Historian and author of Fighting for Space (February 2020) from Grand Central Publishing. Also public speaker, TV personality, and YouTuber. [The Vintage Space]