Discussion of Changing Global Time Zones.
ZAKARIA: If it's midnight in Los Angeles, it's 3 a.m. in New York, 8 a.m. in London, 12:30 in the afternoon in Delhi, 5 p.m. in Sydney and 7:45 p.m. in New Zealand's Chatham Isles. Got it? Confused? Well, that's just the way time zones work right now and roughly the way they have worked for almost 150 years. But my next guests want to disrupt all of that and make it, well, simpler. I'll let them explain how and why. Richard Conn Henry is a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins, where Steve Hanke is a professor of applied economics. So just help people understand. What you are proposing is a single time zone for the entire world?</s>HANKE: Absolutely correct. And as things stand now, for example, in China, they have time zones, a single time zone covering a big chunk of China, with big differences in hours. We're going for the entire world on the same time. But of course, it doesn't mean that you'll go to bed in the middle of the day. It means that you will follow the sun as far as your behavior is concerned, but when you're catching an airplane, the time will be exactly the same.</s>ZAKARIA: What is the -- what is the advantage to this, first of all? What is the problem with our current system?</s>HENRY: Well, the current system is one in which you get confused about meeting times, scheduling things. And -- and as a result of -- this universal time is really what Dick and I are talking about. This is spontaneously something that's been evolving and taking a hold because it works and you need it. For example, airline pilots -- in 1972, they all went on universal time because of the safety consideration.</s>HANKE: Worldwide.</s>ZAKARIA: So airline pilots, there's always one time and it's always Greenwich Mean Time?</s>HANKE: Right...</s>HENRY: Greenwich Mean Time -- everyone's watch is set exactly on the same hour. That's all this means, really, is your watch, every place in the world -- if you're in Mumbai, the watch is going to read exactly the same thing as it is here in New York.</s>ZAKARIA: So just to help people understand, because, you know, I think it does confuse people. So they think...</s>HENRY: Of course.</s>ZAKARIA: ... wait a minute, so, you know, when I get up and I'm thinking it's morning and I'm about to go to work and it's 7:00 in the morning and I look and say "No, it's going to say that it's 3:00 in the afternoon"?</s>HANKE: That's correct. And you will know by that time that that's normal for you. Let me give you an example. A decade or more ago, I -- I got a phone call from my mother in Canada and she said, "Oh, Richard, it was hot today, 30 degrees." She had transitioned, an old lady, to Celsius. We would transition to this new system in a year at max.</s>ZAKARIA: So we'd just realize that, you know, when we got up, when we went to bed, this was all determined by the sun, but when we were looking at our watch, we were looking at a -- at a time that...</s>HANKE: The time.</s>ZAKARIA: ... the time that was the same for every human being everywhere in the world?</s>HANKE: Precisely.</s>HENRY: How it would work, for example, in New York, if we were on universal time, the stores would open -- let's say they're opening now at 9:00 and they close at 5:00. So what would that be? It would be 9 a.m. is on universal time 1400 or 2 p.m.; 5 p.m. is 10:00 p.m. or 2200.</s>HANKE: You know, I'd always know what time it is. There's Zulu time. See? Everybody's got it.</s>HENRY: And -- and when we talk about...</s>ZAKARIA: And universal time would be Greenwich Mean Time?</s>HENRY: Greenwich Mean Time.</s>ZAKARIA: The Brits are lucky because they got -- got there first.</s>HENRY: Yeah. They don't have to change anything. They're in the middle of the thing, the zero meridian, right now, at Greenwich. But -- but the time zone thing, for people to get an idea of the history of this thing, we had 300 time zones in the United States.</s>ZAKARIA: So if the president puts out an executive order, he does not require congressional approval to change the time or the calendar?</s>HANKE: That's my understanding.</s>ZAKARIA: And once the United States does it, you think the rest of the world will follow?</s>HANKE: If the federal government of the United States does it, believe you me the states will fall in line on this, even New York and California. Of course, they'll recognize the virtues of it. It's not controversial, really, in any way.</s>ZAKARIA: What is the likelihood of this -- these proposals being accepted?</s>HANKE: Well, we -- we managed to get the metric system accepted -- oh, wait a minute.</s>ZAKARIA: Well, I think that...</s>HANKE: I don't know. I don't know. That's really why...</s>ZAKARIA: But most countries -- I think about 190 countries use the metric system.</s>HANKE: Well, if there's -- a joke I love, and I used it on Steve this morning, that there's two kinds of countries in the world. There are those that use the metric system and there are those that have put men on the moon.</s>ZAKARIA: If you could have just called it Trump Time, you might have a deal.</s>HANKE: Yeah, that's the idea. That's the idea.</s>ZAKARIA: Thank you both. Fascinating -- fascinating idea.</s>HANKE: Lots of fun.</s>ZAKARIA: And we will be back.