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Our American Stories

The Story of How Railroads Created America's Time Zones

Our American Stories

iHeartPodcasts

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6817 Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode of Our American Stories, China runs on just a single time zone—but in America, we have four: Pacific, Mountain, Central, and Eastern. But we used to have thousands! Here's our own Greg Hengler with the story of how our time zones came to be.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This is an IHeart podcast.

0:04.5

Adventure should never come with a pause button.

0:07.1

Remember Movie Pass?

0:08.4

All the movies you wanted for just nine bucks?

0:11.1

I'm Bridget Todd, host of There Are No Girls on the Internet.

0:13.9

And this season, I'm digging into the tech stories we weren't told.

0:17.4

Starting with Stacey Spikes, the black founder of movie pass who got pushed out of the company

0:21.6

he built.

0:22.8

Everybody's trying to knock you down and it's not going to work and no one's going to like it.

0:27.3

And then boom, it's everywhere.

0:29.3

And that was that moment.

0:30.7

Listen to there are no girls on the internet on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

0:34.7

You know, oh. or wherever you get your podcast.

0:50.4

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your stories, send them to Our American Stories.com.

0:55.3

They're some of our favorites. Up next, here's Greg Hengler with a story of how time zones

1:01.2

came to America. What time is it? It's a seemingly easy question, but depending on what time

1:08.5

zone you live in, your time will be different.

1:12.1

The development and spread of the railroads across the United States in the 1800s

1:16.5

brought a wave of changes to American life.

1:20.0

It's a heroic chapter in American history, but the most interesting transformation is least known.

1:26.9

Each town in the United States had its own time,

1:31.3

depending on when the noonday sun was directly overhead. Here's American popular science author

...

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