Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: That means the vault door creak it open, and we
Speaker 1: bring you an older episode of the show. This one
Speaker 1: originally published on March third, two and it is a
Speaker 1: part one of our series on the seven day week.
Speaker 1: What do we have seven day long weeks? And where
Speaker 1: does that come from? What are the effects of it?
Speaker 1: So I recall the series being quite interesting, and uh,
Speaker 1: here you go with the beginning of it. Welcome to
Speaker 1: s About to Blow your Mind production of My Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Rob Today,
Speaker 1: I wanted to start off by hitting you with one
Speaker 1: of my tenth greater thoughts. All right, let's have it.
Speaker 1: What do you guys? This is an idea had in
Speaker 1: high school. I can't remember if I've ever talked about
Speaker 1: this with you or not. Maybe maybe, maybe not, But anyway,
Speaker 1: I remember when I was in sophomore year of high school,
Speaker 1: I was sitting in a U S history class and
Speaker 1: I was suddenly hit with a notion it was very
Speaker 1: much like a like a stoner thought, though of course
Speaker 1: I was. I was a very good boy, and I
Speaker 1: was very sober in class. But um my thought was,
Speaker 1: wait a second, why do we think about history in
Speaker 1: terms of multiples of ten years? So in terms of
Speaker 1: decades and centuries and I guess millennia, but primarily decades
Speaker 1: and centuries. Why are those like the units of time
Speaker 1: on which historical trends are judged to make sense or
Speaker 1: or be valid. And if we used a different base
Speaker 1: counting system, like if we didn't have ten fingers and
Speaker 1: thus didn't count with base ten, would we think about
Speaker 1: history in a totally different way with different sort of
Speaker 1: groups of associations if it was like, you know, on
Speaker 1: the basis of sixty three year periods or or eighteen
Speaker 1: year periods or something like that. Yeah, like what what
Speaker 1: would the nine seventies be without without decades? You know,
Speaker 1: how would we think about that time period? What would
Speaker 1: be the um you know, the barriers to it? And
Speaker 1: how would we package that up? And I guess I'm
Speaker 1: still prone to this kind of thinking because the idea
Speaker 1: that I started uh getting getting really interested in like
Speaker 1: last week was another question basically along the same lines,
Speaker 1: which is like, how are we affected by the the
Speaker 1: time units that we use to organize our lives And
Speaker 1: if those time units were actually different lengths of time,
Speaker 1: how different would our lives be? And this is going
Speaker 1: to lead into the subject that we're going to be
Speaker 1: looking at for the next couple of episodes at least,
Speaker 1: who knows how many we'll go to. But but right
Speaker 1: we're getting into the subject of the week. And I
Speaker 1: think this this one has a really interesting peg because
Speaker 1: if you think about the major units of time that
Speaker 1: divide our lives from say like day length and above.
Speaker 1: So the day is of course twenty four hours long,
Speaker 1: and it is roughly the time it takes the Earth
Speaker 1: to make one full rotation on its axis. But then
Speaker 1: you've also got the year. The year is of course,
Speaker 1: you know, it's three six five days, and this is
Speaker 1: roughly the time it takes the Earth to make one
Speaker 1: full orbit around the Sun. And then you've got the months,
Speaker 1: and the month also has an astronomical basis this one
Speaker 1: a little more roughly than the other two. There there's
Speaker 1: a there's a larger difference, but you know, our months
Speaker 1: are roughly thirty days long, and it takes roughly thirty
Speaker 1: days for the moon to complete one full orbit around
Speaker 1: the Earth. I think it's like twenty nine point five
Speaker 1: three days or something. And then of course we we
Speaker 1: make up for that with little adjustments, you different numbers
Speaker 1: of days and stuff like that. Yeah, and now at
Speaker 1: this point is probably worth remembering here for every for everybody,
Speaker 1: that most ancient calendars were based on direct observation. So
Speaker 1: uh so, yeah, it makes total sense that these uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of these ideas about how we
Speaker 1: should divide out our time are based on what we're observing,
Speaker 1: saying the night sky, sure, and there are somewhere. It's
Speaker 1: pretty much inevitable. I mean, like you, we kind of
Speaker 1: can't help but organize ourselves around day lengths, right, because
Speaker 1: like what time of day it is or time of
Speaker 1: night makes a dramatic difference on the way we interact
Speaker 1: with our environment because of things like temperature and light,
Speaker 1: so that that's almost just totally imposed on us. We
Speaker 1: really have no choice but to live by days and nights. Uh.
Speaker 1: You could make the case that maybe months are different,
Speaker 1: but but you know, there's some natural rhythms that come
Speaker 1: with the lunar cycle, and uh, and and certainly there
Speaker 1: are things that come with the yearly cycle because of say,
Speaker 1: like the rotations of harvests and the seasons and stuff.
Speaker 1: But then we come to the week. We look at
Speaker 1: look at the seven day week, and if you look
Speaker 1: for the seven day week and the stars and the
Speaker 1: planets or the movement of the earth, you come up
Speaker 1: with absolutely nothing. The closest I've seen is that some
Speaker 1: people have said, well, uh, the seven day week is
Speaker 1: a fairly rough quarterly division of the lunar month. So
Speaker 1: if you take the length of a month and you
Speaker 1: divide it by four, that gets you close to seven days.
Speaker 1: That's like the closest whole number. Uh. But but then again,
Speaker 1: like why would you do that? Like why would you
Speaker 1: not divide the month by five or divide the month
Speaker 1: by six or something else. So so I don't think
Speaker 1: that the length of the week is really something that
Speaker 1: you can say naturally flows from anything that is physically
Speaker 1: true about the world. I think we'd have to say
Speaker 1: though there might be you know, historical, cultural, religious reasons
Speaker 1: that feed into it. It's it's a somewhat are a
Speaker 1: treary length. It's based on culture, and it's a human
Speaker 1: invention it's not just a a an approximation of something
Speaker 1: that's happening in the skies, right, and and I believe,
Speaker 1: I believe all the evidence where we've looked at really
Speaker 1: backs that up. Though It's always worth remembering that if
Speaker 1: you stray too far into the wilds of numerology just
Speaker 1: about anything, it's possible, right. Sure. I'm always reminded of
Speaker 1: the bid and Um. I forget which number too echo
Speaker 1: work it was. It might have been fucos pendulum. It
Speaker 1: might have been one of his essays. Perhaps you remember
Speaker 1: this Joe where he's um he's talking about like all
Speaker 1: the various numerology computations about the Great Pyramids and how
Speaker 1: those you know, numbers relate to other aspects of life.
Speaker 1: And the example was made that you can also torture
Speaker 1: the numbers enough regarding I want to say, a phone
Speaker 1: booth or something h even something far more mundane compared
Speaker 1: to the Pyramids. But yeah, if you start getting wild
Speaker 1: with what numbers mean and so forth, then you can
Speaker 1: go crazy with that as well. Yeah. I think the
Speaker 1: way I'd put it is that if you look hard
Speaker 1: enough for patterns, you can find patterns in anything, and
Speaker 1: that includes numbers. And like numerical relationships and say, like
Speaker 1: the ratios of length and width of objects in the world,
Speaker 1: or the length of different periods of time within one
Speaker 1: another and stuff. Yeah, I mean, you can always find
Speaker 1: patterns if you look hard enough, and some people work
Speaker 1: really hard. But as far as meaningful patterns and meaningful connections, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think almost all the evidence we're looking
Speaker 1: at here today and the next episode, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: comes back to the fact that, yes, seven seems to
Speaker 1: be this thing that is not written in the in
Speaker 1: the heavens, and and it isn't even like really written
Speaker 1: inside us either, but it's something that emerges from other directions,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into, right, So I don't know that
Speaker 1: that start me is just like a really interesting fact
Speaker 1: that our lives are guided by this this seven day
Speaker 1: length of time, that we organize our lives into these
Speaker 1: blocks of seven days, and that so much what we
Speaker 1: do is based on the recurrence of those blocks and
Speaker 1: the timing of the days within those blocks. And yet
Speaker 1: it's not a necessary fact of nature. So what is
Speaker 1: the seven day week? Where does it come from? How
Speaker 1: culturally unique or culturally universal is it um? And what
Speaker 1: is it doing? To us, like how does it work
Speaker 1: on our brains? And how does it change the way
Speaker 1: we live? And it is hard to imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly for us, it's it's hard to imagine living without
Speaker 1: the seven day week, Uh, just because we're in it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like trying to imagine recent history without decades.
Speaker 1: It's like it's just such a part of the fabric.
Speaker 1: It's the this grid that we've we've we've we've we've
Speaker 1: laid across reality, and it's just like, how how would
Speaker 1: we function if we didn't have Monday's, Tuesday's, Wednesday, Thursdays, Friday,
Speaker 1: Saturdays and Sundays. You can't take my Wednesdays away from me? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if we don't have the hump day, right, the magical
Speaker 1: hunt day that is the day where our victory over
Speaker 1: the week be a parent on Tuesday, I guess you
Speaker 1: know that it just seems impossible. Well, so, I want
Speaker 1: to say, one of the first things I read on
Speaker 1: this subject when when I was first getting interested in
Speaker 1: it last week, actually was an article in Eon magazine
Speaker 1: by a UC Berkeley professor of history named David Hankin,
Speaker 1: who has written on this subject, who has written on
Speaker 1: the artificiality of the week and it's and it's cultural
Speaker 1: precedents and effects. And he starts off this Eon article
Speaker 1: by mentioning something. So you may have noticed, I think,
Speaker 1: especially like in but maybe more commonly over the last
Speaker 1: two years, a lot of kind of hack jokes on
Speaker 1: the internet, uh, made especially by the subset of people
Speaker 1: who had previously been working in an office but then
Speaker 1: we're lucky enough to be able to convert to working
Speaker 1: from home during the pandemic. And the joke was, nobody
Speaker 1: knows what day it is, Like I, I can't keep
Speaker 1: track of days. Every day is the same, it's blurs.
Speaker 1: Day is the yuck yuck expression. Uh. And and I
Speaker 1: noticed that this connects to things in some movies, like
Speaker 1: you remember there's a scene in The Big Lebowski where um,
Speaker 1: where I think Jeff Bridge's landlord comes to him and
Speaker 1: is telling him what day something's gonna happen. Maybe is
Speaker 1: when he's gonna come see his dance recital or something,
Speaker 1: and uh, and he says what day it is? And
Speaker 1: um uh, and it's clear that you know that the
Speaker 1: dude does not know what day of the week it is.
Speaker 1: And this is like a standard uh deployment of this
Speaker 1: observation about a person, somebody who doesn't know what day
Speaker 1: of the week it is is usually taken to be
Speaker 1: sort of disoriented or disconnected from society or maybe unproductive.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um, and you know you can make that
Speaker 1: argument for the dude, but I don't know for my
Speaker 1: own part. I would say there are rare moments, perhaps
Speaker 1: during say vacation or travel, where I might have to
Speaker 1: remind myself what day it is. More commonly, however, I'll
Speaker 1: find that if there's a disruption in the week, it
Speaker 1: may momentarially feel like today is a different day, you know, like, um,
Speaker 1: if it's a Monday on a three day weekend, then
Speaker 1: that Monday kind of feels like a Sunday. But these
Speaker 1: feelings generally don't hold up to even halfway you know,
Speaker 1: close scrutiny. You know, it's it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that immediately fades away. Um. So yeah, I you certainly
Speaker 1: encounter it in media and you hear people make jokes
Speaker 1: about it, but generally, I feel like the calendar mindset
Speaker 1: is not far away. Well, I mean, the fact that
Speaker 1: people were like posting on Twitter about this often enough
Speaker 1: in that it was a thing people. It was a
Speaker 1: trend people could observe seem to mean something. And I
Speaker 1: think the standard assumption, the widely presumed explanation, was that
Speaker 1: telecommuting was to blame. This is because, oh, well, now
Speaker 1: a larger percentage of people are telecommuting. But you know,
Speaker 1: more people were telecommuting than had been before, and people
Speaker 1: who were freshly telecommuting, uh, we're we're experiencing this. I
Speaker 1: don't know what day it is feeling as a result.
Speaker 1: But Hankin actually goes back against that and says that
Speaker 1: he doesn't see telecommuting as a as a very good
Speaker 1: explanation for people since of the days blurring together. And
Speaker 1: I have to say, as as somebody who often worked
Speaker 1: from home even before COVID, that has never been my
Speaker 1: experience of telecommuting, and I I also would be skeptical
Speaker 1: of that explanation. Yeah, I would agree. I mean, though
Speaker 1: part of that might be that we're typically I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we've always been part of a publication schedule,
Speaker 1: so uh, you know, there's always what day it is
Speaker 1: still matters even if you're not in the office, at
Speaker 1: least in our line of work. Sure, but I would
Speaker 1: I would think that would generally hold true with a
Speaker 1: lot of different professions. Yeah, And the point that Hankin
Speaker 1: makes at least is that telecommuting really disrupts normal divisions
Speaker 1: of time within the day more than does across the
Speaker 1: span of a week. Right, So, like it doesn't change
Speaker 1: usually which days of the week people were working. I mean,
Speaker 1: it might in some cases, but that's not generally understood
Speaker 1: to be how it worked. It would change like where
Speaker 1: you were working within the day. Um, And of course
Speaker 1: nobody was complaining about like not knowing what hour of
Speaker 1: the day it was. And it's also interesting that the
Speaker 1: line was not I don't know what day of the
Speaker 1: month it was, it was I don't know what day
Speaker 1: of the week it is. And ultimately the explanation that
Speaker 1: he gives is that quote, weekly counts are reinforced by
Speaker 1: the habits and rituals of other people. When those habits
Speaker 1: and rituals were radically obscured or altered in the week,
Speaker 1: itself seemed to unravel. And I think I agree here.
Speaker 1: This seems likely to me that for people who felt
Speaker 1: this way, like I don't know what day of the
Speaker 1: week it is, I would suspect it probably had less
Speaker 1: to do with telecommuting, and more to do with the
Speaker 1: disruption in schedules of other things that people would normally
Speaker 1: do at regular, recurring times throughout the week. So maybe
Speaker 1: for example, recurring social get togethers or classes, or religious gatherings,
Speaker 1: or going out to dinner on Saturday night or things
Speaker 1: like that. You know, people have pretty strong weekly rituals.
Speaker 1: Not everybody obviously, but lots of people do. And when
Speaker 1: when those things get interrupted, I think that probably has
Speaker 1: a strong effect on reckoning with the cycle itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that makes sense because obviously there are two
Speaker 1: To a certain degree, many people were able to transition
Speaker 1: these things into the like the zoom age. They're able to,
Speaker 1: you know, do their game night online to to turn
Speaker 1: a particular in person social hour into a virtual social hour.
Speaker 1: But in other cases things simply went away, um you know,
Speaker 1: after school practices and so forth. You know, in many
Speaker 1: cases these just didn't happen for a year or more.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a totally different thing that I wonder
Speaker 1: about that. It makes me wonder if if, um, confusing
Speaker 1: which day it is in the week has become maybe
Speaker 1: a little more common in recent years, and this would
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with the pandemic, but it would
Speaker 1: be um shifts in patterns of media consumption among people
Speaker 1: getting a lower percentage on average of their media from
Speaker 1: scheduled live broadcasts that are that occur at regular dates
Speaker 1: and days and times throughout a week, like you know,
Speaker 1: you know that the TV show that you like comes
Speaker 1: on at this time on this day, and instead shifting
Speaker 1: towards more on demand uh consumption of media or just
Speaker 1: algorithmically supplied media entertainment, which is, you know, always there
Speaker 1: waiting for you and always on, rather than scheduled at
Speaker 1: particular days and times. Mm. So that sounds like a
Speaker 1: point in favor of what are they calling? And now
Speaker 1: I'll meant television versus uh, like you know, just a
Speaker 1: binge streaming and so forth. Oh, finally it's Friday and
Speaker 1: I can watch this trash I've been waiting on. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, growing up very much in the TV age,
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember that feeling that you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's Friday or Saturday night, you know exactly you
Speaker 1: know what, uh, you know what's going to be on
Speaker 1: television Sunday morning, you know, you know what's gonna be
Speaker 1: on then uh, you know there's a different character or
Speaker 1: whatever's on TV. And if you did not have a
Speaker 1: clock and did not have access to clock time, you
Speaker 1: could tell if you know what you're doing, you know
Speaker 1: what time it was, just based on what's happening on
Speaker 1: NBC or what's happening on TVs. Uh, what what happens
Speaker 1: to be playing on MTV, that sort of thing. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to forget it Saturday because I know that
Speaker 1: that at one am on the USA network, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get to watch Friday the thirteenth, Part eight. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: this this is a leads to an interesting question that
Speaker 1: I don't think we did not We certainly did not
Speaker 1: prepared to answer. Are there any franchises that that have
Speaker 1: seven entries, like an even seven? Oh? And then they've
Speaker 1: said definitely no more ever, any one for each day,
Speaker 1: and that's it. I don't know. Are we at transfer
Speaker 1: seven yet? I've just looked it up. Now we're at
Speaker 1: transfer six, So one more and then we're good, okay,
Speaker 1: than than than well. So another question comes up though
Speaker 1: from this, which is, um, okay, so seven days is
Speaker 1: not strictly speaking a a time period that we derive
Speaker 1: from astronomy or from anything physical that happens in the
Speaker 1: world around us. It seems to be a cultural invention. Um.
Speaker 1: But but could it possibly be based in some other
Speaker 1: natural fact about the world other than say, you know,
Speaker 1: the moon or the sun or the Earth. Could could
Speaker 1: a period of seven days somehow lie within biology? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I was wondering about this as well. You know, is
Speaker 1: is there anything that might connect the idea of the
Speaker 1: seven day week to the biological world, particularly to human biology?
Speaker 1: And I found uh an interesting and at times perplexing
Speaker 1: at least to me paper flexing to me anyway. Uh,
Speaker 1: paper that was published in twenty six in the journal
Speaker 1: Chronobiology International by Rheinberg at All titled seven day Human
Speaker 1: Biological Rhythms An Expedition in search of their origin, synchronization,
Speaker 1: functional advantage, adaptive value and clinical relevance. This paper aims
Speaker 1: to look at the quote seven day domain of the
Speaker 1: biological time structure with special reference to human beings. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it seems like they're investigating exactly the question we
Speaker 1: just raised, like, could there be any kind of rhythm
Speaker 1: within the body of things that tend to happen in
Speaker 1: cycles of seven days or so? Right? And uh? And
Speaker 1: you know, first of all they do say this is
Speaker 1: from the conclusions they stay quote, neither cosmic nor earthborn
Speaker 1: signals seemed to be of sufficient strength to give rise
Speaker 1: to the seven day rhythms of life forms of various
Speaker 1: degrees of complexity. All right, fair enough that that matches
Speaker 1: up with what we've said so far, particularly as far
Speaker 1: as the heavens go. However, they also conclude that the
Speaker 1: evidence quote motivates us to hypothesize weekly rhythms are endogenous
Speaker 1: in origin. So, in other words, these researchers still think
Speaker 1: that there is something about the power of seven that
Speaker 1: emerges from within us. So they admit that the seven
Speaker 1: day biological cycle is a little studied. But but they
Speaker 1: make a point of saying what it does seem to
Speaker 1: factor into various organisms, And they cite a list of examples,
Speaker 1: including things like laboratory rats, domestic horses, and seemingly to
Speaker 1: some degree, human beings. Though I should say that these examples,
Speaker 1: like for example, with the horse, the example is a
Speaker 1: study on seven day cycles in semen volume, sperm motility
Speaker 1: and supermatozoa concentration. Uh. And not not to say that
Speaker 1: all all them are sperm related, but you know it's
Speaker 1: it's things related to various processes inside of biological system. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess if it's domestic horses and animals living within
Speaker 1: human environments, I would be a little curious whether any
Speaker 1: appearance seven day cycles could somehow be based on something
Speaker 1: that's changing within their environment on the basis of human
Speaker 1: and behavior, because humans live by seven day cycles or
Speaker 1: not all humans do. But I'd imagine that the animals
Speaker 1: used in the study probably belong to humans that do right,
Speaker 1: and all scientists are humans. So um, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: definitely an area where I would I would love to
Speaker 1: read more on this topic and read some you know,
Speaker 1: some some work from other researchers as well. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't really know quite what to make of this paper
Speaker 1: because on one hand, I am not it's intended audience,
Speaker 1: and I may be missing something important in their their
Speaker 1: arguments here, So that's always certainly a possibility. But I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how much stock I put in the concept
Speaker 1: that there is something about seven day time period that
Speaker 1: emerges within us, because for starters, I'm not sure it
Speaker 1: really lines up with the history that we're going to
Speaker 1: be discussing in this episode. In the next uh, you know,
Speaker 1: seven becomes the standard and it wins out over other models.
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure it's because it match something inside us.
Speaker 1: I think they're there are other stronger arguments to be
Speaker 1: made for other factors. Well, I don't know. Maybe we
Speaker 1: can revisit this paper later if we if we get
Speaker 1: some additional clarity on it. But but also maybe we
Speaker 1: can trudge out of the swamp of confusion, but by
Speaker 1: focusing on something a little more understandable in the moment,
Speaker 1: which is the question of Okay, just in in basic
Speaker 1: functional terms, what does the week actually do? What do
Speaker 1: we use the seven day week for? Hinkin actually outlines
Speaker 1: four different things that he thinks the seven day week does,
Speaker 1: and so I want to go through these with you, rob. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the first one would be categorizing days into different types.
Speaker 1: So the week organizes time into blocks of two fundamental
Speaker 1: kind of days, week days and weekends, with the main
Speaker 1: distinctions between the two being, um being the distinction between
Speaker 1: work and leisure and the distinction between mundane and sacred. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know you see this reflect like even if
Speaker 1: if you were, say, someone who does not work, maybe
Speaker 1: you're retired or you have a particular work schedule that
Speaker 1: sets you apart from from many other people. Um, you
Speaker 1: still see it reflected, say in what sort of businesses
Speaker 1: are closed on the weekends, what sort of businesses are
Speaker 1: are going to be swamped on the weekend, and therefore
Speaker 1: it's better to go on a weekday. So even if
Speaker 1: the cycles don't don't at first seem to impact you personally,
Speaker 1: that they still probably do to some degree anyway, exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's one thing we do. We we sort days
Speaker 1: into different kinds of days, and there's usually mainly just
Speaker 1: two kinds, but you could imagine other schemes of of
Speaker 1: sorting days into different sort of buckets like that. Beyond that,
Speaker 1: I would say you could get more granular and and
Speaker 1: go to the second category, which is day individual ation,
Speaker 1: because of course we have week days and weekends, but
Speaker 1: also each day of the week is its own fundamental thing.
Speaker 1: Uh So we all we know that Tuesdays are not
Speaker 1: exactly the same as Mondays, and Saturdays are not exactly
Speaker 1: the same as Sundays. So each day becomes a distinct
Speaker 1: concept with its own connotations. And of course this can
Speaker 1: be highly individualized. You know, Friday for some people maybe
Speaker 1: more of a celebration day the beginning of the weekend.
Speaker 1: Others may see it as kind of a termination point
Speaker 1: for fulfilling work, you know, maybe even an unwanted termination point,
Speaker 1: like oh, I have to I have to not work
Speaker 1: for two days um. Or others may see it as
Speaker 1: a crunch day, like this is the day where everything
Speaker 1: that was stressful in the week is even more stressful
Speaker 1: and there's just not enough time in the day to
Speaker 1: get it done. You know, there are a million different
Speaker 1: variations on everything I just said again, uh, the exact
Speaker 1: flavor of the day is going to vary from person
Speaker 1: to person, but they do end up having these separate flavors,
Speaker 1: these separate fields, even though the only thing different, you know,
Speaker 1: the only difference from the Monday and Tuesday is just
Speaker 1: how they relate to each other and to the rest
Speaker 1: of the calendar system. Right. I was actually looking for
Speaker 1: scientific studies about how people feel about different days of
Speaker 1: the week, and I found one. Uh So, I found
Speaker 1: a study published in pl Os one in by David A. Ellis,
Speaker 1: Richard Wiseman, and Rob Jenkins called mental Representations of week Days.
Speaker 1: I was I was sure you were going to say
Speaker 1: this was a study by Garfield at all. I thought
Speaker 1: it was a joke. I thought you were setting me up.
Speaker 1: It's a real study, Okay, go for it. Well, this
Speaker 1: study would suggest to Garfield that he is not alone.
Speaker 1: His his his feelings are born out in the broader population.
Speaker 1: So it was conducted by three psychologists in the UK
Speaker 1: and they were trying to draw out trends in how
Speaker 1: people conceptualize each of the days of the week as
Speaker 1: its own idea and how people react to those those ideas.
Speaker 1: This used sampling tools over the internet, because of course,
Speaker 1: the weekly accounting schedule is going to be somewhat culturally contingent.
Speaker 1: I was looking, okay, well, where are the people who
Speaker 1: were answering these studies. It seems the majority of respondents
Speaker 1: appear to be based in UH in North America and Europe.
Speaker 1: And so in the first study, they were looking at
Speaker 1: which days do people get confused about? You know, when
Speaker 1: somebody's like, oh I thought it was one day, but
Speaker 1: it's actually another. This might not be surprising, but they
Speaker 1: found that people were actually much more likely to confuse
Speaker 1: midweek days meaning Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for different days
Speaker 1: than they were to confuse other days for the wrong day.
Speaker 1: So you're way more likely to to think it's the
Speaker 1: wrong day when it's a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday than Wednesday,
Speaker 1: it's a Friday or a Monday. Second study looked at
Speaker 1: reaction times to see how quickly people could answer what
Speaker 1: day of the week it is? That's a good question, right, uh,
Speaker 1: And they found that people's reaction times were fastest on
Speaker 1: Monday and Friday. So that would tend to suggest that
Speaker 1: Mondays and Fridays are the days when what day of
Speaker 1: the week it is is most highly represented in your brain,
Speaker 1: you're the most conscious of it and can answer immediately. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean basically comes down our things beginning, are things ending?
Speaker 1: Are are we somewhere in the middle? Which it's interesting
Speaker 1: to think about that because we have such a linear
Speaker 1: understanding of time, you know, we we have such a
Speaker 1: narrative approach to understanding our own lives, it makes sense
Speaker 1: that that would relate to the to the work week
Speaker 1: as well, or just the week in general, like each
Speaker 1: week is a little story with a beginning and an ending,
Speaker 1: and also this middle bit which might be a bit muddled,
Speaker 1: right right, And speaking of muddling in in the third study,
Speaker 1: they also found that participants had the least semantic associations,
Speaker 1: meaning they were able to come up with the fewest
Speaker 1: number of connotations and thoughts about the midweek days once again, Tuesday,
Speaker 1: Whence and Thursday. Other days of the week like Monday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
Speaker 1: people could come up with more thoughts about. Another thing
Speaker 1: they looked at was affective norms, how people feel when
Speaker 1: asked to think about individual days of the week. Again,
Speaker 1: this might not be surprising at all, but it does
Speaker 1: validate the Garfield experience because it turns out everyone hates Mondays,
Speaker 1: people feel strongly negative about Monday's, people feel strongly positive
Speaker 1: about Fridays, and then basically the other days in between
Speaker 1: appear to be graded on slopes towards those two extremes.
Speaker 1: So people are highest on a Friday, and then it
Speaker 1: goes down a little bit on Saturday, then more on Sunday.
Speaker 1: Monday is the lowest, and then starting on Tuesday it
Speaker 1: starts to climb up again to get until it gets
Speaker 1: to Friday. Well, yeah, I don't know if I have
Speaker 1: much personal to relate on that. I feel like you
Speaker 1: can sort of find something nice to say about any
Speaker 1: given day. I feel lucky, you know, or if you
Speaker 1: look hard enough. But that's just my take. Well, I
Speaker 1: feel like that's one of those studies where that didn't
Speaker 1: really have any surprises in store, right, Like that, it's
Speaker 1: sort of what you would think, but it does at
Speaker 1: least put some data behind those intuitions that. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: for us, like Fridays and Mondays are definitely more of
Speaker 1: a phenomenon than than Tuesdays or Wednesdays are, and we
Speaker 1: also have the correspondingly the strongest feelings about those days.
Speaker 1: And I would you know, I think they're probably pretty
Speaker 1: obvious reasons for that. I would be very surprised if
Speaker 1: the answer were not that it has something to do
Speaker 1: with the work week. People like being done with work
Speaker 1: for the week, and people do not like having to
Speaker 1: go back to work for the week. Now, it's interesting
Speaker 1: to think back on the song Friday, I'm in Love
Speaker 1: by the Cure, because if I remember correctly, I don't
Speaker 1: think he has anything nice to say about any of
Speaker 1: the days of the week except for Friday, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: day that he is in love. Oh you know, I
Speaker 1: just looked up the lyrics, and the way you explain
Speaker 1: it makes a lot more sense than how these were
Speaker 1: represented in my head because I always thought it was
Speaker 1: that Tuesday's great and Wednesday it too, And that was
Speaker 1: a strange thing to say, like like he's just trying
Speaker 1: to be nice, you know, He's like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to say bad things about Tuesday. Tuesday's Wednesday's fine. That
Speaker 1: would yeah, that would that would be I guess it
Speaker 1: did a different song. Yeah, Thursday, I don't care about you. Oh,
Speaker 1: that would be a different cycle entirely because it's like
Speaker 1: Monday he's blue, but then yeah, Tuesday, he's over it. Wednesday,
Speaker 1: everything's going fine. Thursday he's so detached from the situation.
Speaker 1: But then he falls back in love again on Friday
Speaker 1: and begins the cycle once more. I still don't entirely
Speaker 1: understand the song, but it's a great song. Wait wait,
Speaker 1: but but I want to come back to Hankin's ideas
Speaker 1: about what the week does for us. So we already
Speaker 1: talked about the categorization of types of days. You've got
Speaker 1: weekdays and weekends, and then you've got the individuation of
Speaker 1: each day. But then the next thing, I think this
Speaker 1: is a really important one. I would call it like
Speaker 1: time conceptualization. Uh, this is for mental time travel and
Speaker 1: for what Hankin calls stock taking. So one thing weeks
Speaker 1: do is that they give us blocks of time, blocks
Speaker 1: of seven days along which to organize our memories and
Speaker 1: our anticipation of the near future. And this absolutely makes
Speaker 1: sense to me because I know I do this. I
Speaker 1: would say that for me, You know that the general
Speaker 1: present time, I think I represent mentally as about two
Speaker 1: weeks past and two weeks ahead, and I think of
Speaker 1: them as weeks. Yeah, I can relate to this as well.
Speaker 1: Like if if someone says, what are you doing ten
Speaker 1: days from now? I might not initially have an answer,
Speaker 1: but if if it's if the question is what are
Speaker 1: you doing Friday after next, well then I have a
Speaker 1: little more to go on. Like that's a little more
Speaker 1: concrete and formed in my mind. In fact, it's almost
Speaker 1: kind of a mnemonic device, because if somebody says, hey,
Speaker 1: what have you been up to recently? I might often
Speaker 1: be kind of like, I don't know, you know, I
Speaker 1: can't think of what to say. But if someone says,
Speaker 1: what have you done this week? Somehow that kind of
Speaker 1: spurs and answer more easily. Yeah, It's like, well, I
Speaker 1: was just generally generally kind of depressed, and then um,
Speaker 1: and then I totally forgot about the person I was
Speaker 1: in love with, and then I fell in love with
Speaker 1: him again. Oh yeah, okay, But so by by Hankin's scheme,
Speaker 1: that's three things the week does, and then finally it
Speaker 1: functions as a scheduling device. This might be the most
Speaker 1: practical of all three, which is that recurring events that
Speaker 1: need to happen roughly on the order of once every
Speaker 1: seven days become of course, weekly events. So think about
Speaker 1: all the different kinds of things. You know, there are
Speaker 1: tons of things like this in life that feel right
Speaker 1: to do roughly once every week, and so you might
Speaker 1: schedule them with a day in the week. You know
Speaker 1: that tuesdays the day every week when you do X. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like with us, it's the grocery shopping, it's the it's
Speaker 1: the cleaning of the house. These are things that are
Speaker 1: done on a weekly basis, and it would feel weird
Speaker 1: if we didn't do them now in some in this episode,
Speaker 1: but then I think also probably in in at least
Speaker 1: the next episode, we're going to be talking about the
Speaker 1: origins of the week as we know it and saying
Speaker 1: where the week came from is a little bit complicated
Speaker 1: because it depends on UH. For one thing, what counts
Speaker 1: as a week? Are you saying, like our current continuous,
Speaker 1: unbroken cycle of seven day weeks, where did that come from?
Speaker 1: Or like, where does the concept of UH grouping blocks
Speaker 1: of days into you know, roughly seven but you know
Speaker 1: what would would an eight day block also count as
Speaker 1: a week? And and so forth? Um? And there are
Speaker 1: plenty of examples of things like that going way back
Speaker 1: in time. But Hankin argues that the history of our
Speaker 1: current system of seven day weeks goes back roughly two
Speaker 1: thousand years. There are obviously earlier traditions that feed into it,
Speaker 1: but he writes that there were seven day cycles used
Speaker 1: for various religious and clatural purposes beforehand. But in the
Speaker 1: first century CE in Rome, this is the earliest evidence
Speaker 1: we have of quote any society using such cycles to
Speaker 1: track time in the form of a common calendar. So
Speaker 1: in the first century Roman Empire, the seven day week
Speaker 1: that we currently use grew out of a combination of
Speaker 1: the Roman astrological organization of days. So you have seven
Speaker 1: days for seven planets or gods. And if you think
Speaker 1: about that, there were seven things that could be called planets.
Speaker 1: They're not all actually planets, but uh, but seven you know,
Speaker 1: moving bodies in the sky that are not just stars
Speaker 1: that were known by Romans because you could see them
Speaker 1: with the naked eye. So that was if you count
Speaker 1: them up, the Moon, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
Speaker 1: and Saturn, and that makes seven. Yeah, that's that's the
Speaker 1: best case I think one can make for an observation
Speaker 1: based astronomical reason for a seven day system. But the system, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in that case, it wouldn't actually be seven days, it's
Speaker 1: just the number seven being something from astronomy. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: then also so you got that, but then it would
Speaker 1: be combining with Jewish observance of the Sabbath, the traditional
Speaker 1: practice of having a day of rest every seven days,
Speaker 1: in accordance with the creation narrative in Genesis h during
Speaker 1: which during which it said in Genesis that God created
Speaker 1: the heavens and the earth over the course of six days,
Speaker 1: and then he rested on the seventh. Though, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was thinking about this, it actually raised an
Speaker 1: interesting history of religions question, which is, I don't know
Speaker 1: if there's any any evidence which which actually came first
Speaker 1: the sixth day creation narrative or the practice of having
Speaker 1: a day of rest. That's a great question. I was
Speaker 1: reading about it in the background of some distinctive values
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible by Cyrus H. Gordon Uh. He
Speaker 1: wrote that there were there were two different explanations of
Speaker 1: the Sabbath. In Exodus, it was the seventh day of
Speaker 1: rest after the six days of creation, as we've already mentioned.
Speaker 1: But in the Book of Deuteronomy quote the Sabbath is
Speaker 1: said to commemorate the exodus from Egypt. Israel must never
Speaker 1: forget that God saved them from slavery, and therefore these
Speaker 1: reel lites must always provide a day of rest for
Speaker 1: the entire community, slaves included. Oh, that's interesting. So those
Speaker 1: are but those are both passages about the institution of
Speaker 1: the Sabbath day because those are in the Laws of Moses, right,
Speaker 1: So like the one in Exodus would be during the Decalogue,
Speaker 1: during the Ten Commandments that says you should honor the
Speaker 1: Sabbath day and keep it holy um. And And that's
Speaker 1: an interesting reminder that the narrative in Genesis about the
Speaker 1: creation of the world actually doesn't lay out a a practice,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just the story on which it is
Speaker 1: later invoked to say that you should keep the Sabbath
Speaker 1: day right. He also mentions that the background of the
Speaker 1: Biblical Sabbath is the samaro Acadian system of lucky and
Speaker 1: unlucky days. So there are days when it is advised
Speaker 1: to work and others where it is not. And this
Speaker 1: is something we'll see in the future when we look
Speaker 1: at other calendar systems as well, the idea that there's
Speaker 1: a certain amount of divination in a calendar system. It's
Speaker 1: about it. Sometimes, it's in fact, it's sometimes specifically about
Speaker 1: knowing what days are appropriate for beginning various ventures and
Speaker 1: so forth. Okay, but so whether you are going with
Speaker 1: h with the the Jewish example or with the the
Speaker 1: possibly related ancient Mesopotamian example, uh, this would have something
Speaker 1: like a week that has that has days within it
Speaker 1: that are set aside for some kind of religious reason. Yeah. Gordon, however,
Speaker 1: drives home the quote rituals are primary and the historical
Speaker 1: or mythological explanations come later. Furthermore, he says that the
Speaker 1: significance of the Sabbath tradition doesn't depend on what informed it,
Speaker 1: but rather on how it is reflected upon, and then
Speaker 1: mythological than than you know, crafted into mythology um, which
Speaker 1: I think is an important thing to keep in mind
Speaker 1: that like, not everything is just this perfect linear system.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, we established this, and this is the
Speaker 1: connection it has to our religion or our mythology. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, and very often we're taking things that are
Speaker 1: that have been absorbed in and are practiced and then
Speaker 1: we're creating the reasons for it. And yeah, totally, and
Speaker 1: a lot of this is a common opinion. I've encountered
Speaker 1: a loon among a lot of scholars of religion and
Speaker 1: cultural anthropologists. The idea that when there is a myth
Speaker 1: or story that corresponds to a ritual and says this
Speaker 1: is why we do the ritual, it's often believed that actually,
Speaker 1: probably the ritual was done before the myth was there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, we you know, we can't know that in
Speaker 1: every case because a lot of times there's just no
Speaker 1: way to decide for sure one way or another. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it does seem like that happens a lot. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, I mean, if you're imagining what kinds
Speaker 1: of origin something like a week could have, and again
Speaker 1: here we would be talking about a week in the
Speaker 1: broader sense, not necessarily like ours stem of of seven days, um,
Speaker 1: but like a blocks of days of you know, some
Speaker 1: manageable length that subdivide the month. Um. You could imagine
Speaker 1: totally different even totally practical or economic considerations that could
Speaker 1: lead to the creation of things like that. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: in and in this we come to the idea of
Speaker 1: the market week, um, which which I realized is also
Speaker 1: I think the name of various um like media shows
Speaker 1: about like the economies and so forth, which is which
Speaker 1: is kind of funny when you when you when you
Speaker 1: look at this basic idea of the market week. So um.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cite several different authors here, but one of
Speaker 1: the first places I turned to is I I turned
Speaker 1: to Brian and Fagan, who has written a lot about
Speaker 1: about ancient history and about ancient technologies. And I was
Speaker 1: reading a chapter that he wrote in the seventy grade
Speaker 1: Inventions of the Ancient World, a book there for back
Speaker 1: to a lot, and this is a chapter that he
Speaker 1: wrote with the author Anthony f Any, author of Empires
Speaker 1: of Time, Clocks, Calendars and Culture. And in that they
Speaker 1: state that the period of the week be at a
Speaker 1: seven day week or an eight day week or even
Speaker 1: a ten day week is quote a good measure of
Speaker 1: the time it takes to harvest a manageable load of
Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables, take them to market, dispense them before
Speaker 1: they overripen, and then return to the field for another round.
Speaker 1: This is so interesting because I was wondering about I
Speaker 1: was like, could it possibly be that that any origins
Speaker 1: of a week or week like institution could be related
Speaker 1: to the freshness of food? I mean, and that that
Speaker 1: would still be reflected in like how often people typically
Speaker 1: go grocery shopping. Yeah, and and there seems to be
Speaker 1: a very strong case to be made for this. I've
Speaker 1: I've come across the several sources that explore this at length. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: Fagan and A any right that this market week was
Speaker 1: likely shifted down to seven days, probably from like eight
Speaker 1: days uh or more during the first millennium BC E
Speaker 1: in the Sumerian world, in order to quote accommodate heavily connections. Um.
Speaker 1: So we can imagine what that would be again just
Speaker 1: very loosely speaking, uh, you know, thinking of astronomical significance
Speaker 1: of the number seven, and if you already have a
Speaker 1: market week that is eight days then you know, maybe
Speaker 1: you just ratcheted down to seven. And also they write
Speaker 1: that seven uh, seven does have have a few different connections. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, there's the number of visible planets, plus the
Speaker 1: sun and moon as we discussed, also roughly the interval
Speaker 1: between quarter phases of the moon. But Venie writes in
Speaker 1: Empires of Time that the eight day work week was
Speaker 1: ultimately uh quote of unknown origin. Uh, though still sites
Speaker 1: the market week idea though I've I've also seen the
Speaker 1: eight day work week cited as an etruscan um invention
Speaker 1: of perhaps the seventh and eighth centuries b c. According
Speaker 1: to Aviatar Zaruberville in the seven Day Circle, Uh, the
Speaker 1: evolution of the week generally coincides with the rise of
Speaker 1: market economies, so weekly market cycles ended up emerging in
Speaker 1: human activity. Um. Again, this is you know, the time
Speaker 1: it takes to to have fruits and vegetables come in
Speaker 1: from the field, make it to market, and then you
Speaker 1: get back to the fields again. But they didn't have
Speaker 1: to be seven days long, obviously, um. Zaruberville points to
Speaker 1: three day market weeks in ancient Meso America in Indo China,
Speaker 1: a ten day market week in ancient Peru, and of
Speaker 1: course there's also this twelve day market week in ancient
Speaker 1: southern China. And he says that this, UM, this Chinese
Speaker 1: twelve day week is a quote classic example of a
Speaker 1: weekly cycle that served to regulate economic transactions. And uh,
Speaker 1: I was reading about this in the seven day circle,
Speaker 1: and if I'm gonna understand doing it correctly, this encompassed
Speaker 1: multiple three day market cycles and six day market cycles
Speaker 1: as well. UM. And that's something you see with several
Speaker 1: of these examples of different week systems before, certainly before
Speaker 1: the seven day week that we think of now was
Speaker 1: fully adopted, you would often have different week cycles or
Speaker 1: what you might categorize as a week uh, coexisting with
Speaker 1: each other. Um And and you still see that to
Speaker 1: a certain extent in parts of the world, as we'll
Speaker 1: discuss now. Zeruberville writes that during the eighth or seventh
Speaker 1: centuries b c e. The eight day market evolved in
Speaker 1: what is now Italy and and a Truscan quote time
Speaker 1: reckoning system based on the number eight, and it revolved
Speaker 1: around a periodic market day that was held regularly every
Speaker 1: eight days. And of course this Etruscan system is going
Speaker 1: to be key because it coincides with and feeds into
Speaker 1: the Roman system, which we've already alluded to. So in
Speaker 1: our next episode of the podcast, we'll jump back in
Speaker 1: with the Etruscan system and the Roman use of the
Speaker 1: of the Etruscan system, and and continue to build up
Speaker 1: from there. There's a lot of interesting stuff to talk about.
Speaker 1: I mean, even just the uh, like the market week
Speaker 1: stuff I found particularly um uh fascinating. Yeah, and I've
Speaker 1: got a great paper that we can get into about
Speaker 1: the Roman origins of the of the seven day week
Speaker 1: that we used today. But we can also talk about
Speaker 1: some really cool cultural variations of different kinds of weeks
Speaker 1: and about some of the psychological effects of weeks. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Uh So this is your brain on Friday's. So this
Speaker 1: episode is a Thursday episode, and we're going to be
Speaker 1: back with a Tuesday episode. Um yeah, I remember there
Speaker 1: was a time, speaking of days, where we used to
Speaker 1: think it was it was just completely inappropriate to have
Speaker 1: a part one on a Thursday and a part two
Speaker 1: on the following Tuesday. And I don't know, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: some listeners think it's inappropriate still, uh, but generally listeners
Speaker 1: have informed us that they don't care. So but going
Speaker 1: back to that sort of linear system and linear thinking
Speaker 1: regarding the week. It was kind of like, no, things
Speaker 1: must begin and end within the same week. Otherwise, like
Speaker 1: what it's like, you're just cutting it in half. We
Speaker 1: have like one uh, disembodied slab of episode on one
Speaker 1: side of the week, and it is just like the
Speaker 1: and the Magician's Blade falls on Sunday evening. But obviously
Speaker 1: that's not the case. So so yeah, well we'll be
Speaker 1: back in the next episode. But we would love to
Speaker 1: hear from everyone out there, because I know everyone. Everyone
Speaker 1: has thoughts on the days of the week. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: days that are good, days that are bad, and days
Speaker 1: that that have their own particular energy about them, the
Speaker 1: things that define these days for us, and uh and yeah,
Speaker 1: also the occasional experience of maybe forgetting what day it is,
Speaker 1: or feeling like the day you were in is surely
Speaker 1: not a Friday. Surely this is a Thursday because it
Speaker 1: feels like a Thursday. So join us next time. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, well, here's how how we divide up the week.
Speaker 1: Usually on Monday's we do listener mail. On Tuesday's core
Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind Wednesday art of Factor,
Speaker 1: Monster Fact Thursday, another core episode of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. Friday Weird House Cinema. That's that's the day
Speaker 1: that we're in love with a strange film. And then Saturday,
Speaker 1: well that is a day where we bust out a
Speaker 1: Vault episode which is a rerun. And then on Sunday, well,
Speaker 1: then that is the day we rest huge. Thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listening to your favorite shows. They starts four starts fourt