WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Seven Day Week, Part 3 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:07.800 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:11.119 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.680 Time for a vault episode. This is part three of 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:17.360 our series on the seven day Week. This originally published 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:24.720 March tenth. Here you go. Welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:34.159 your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:36.440 Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:39.760 and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part three 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:42.880 of our series about the seven day week. If you 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:45.240 haven't listened to the two previous parts, you should probably 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:47.680 go do that first. This one will maybe make more 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:49.559 sense if if you do that. But hey, if you 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:52.680 want to, you know, fly by the proverbial seat of 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:54.880 your pants, let's go for it. Here we are in 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:57.760 part three. All right, well, you know, to kick things off, 0:00:57.800 --> 0:01:00.280 I thought, as a potential fun aside, I thought we 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:04.160 might think about weeks on other planets. Um, you know, 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:06.440 because if we're if we're going to have just a 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:11.000 planet centric week based on solar days, so one complete 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:13.640 rotation of said planet, then this is about how it 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:15.880 all breaks down here on Earth. One week is a 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:19.840 hundred and sixty eight hours twenty four hour days. Seven 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:24.520 of those makes sense simple math um. On Mercury, one 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:28.000 week is one thousand, four hundred and eight hours or 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:31.840 about fifty eight earth days. So on Mercury that it 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:34.840 is a hard core t g if mentality, like by 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:36.880 the time you get to the weekend you are ready 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:40.440 to party exactly. And it's even worse on Venus. I mean, 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:43.319 we know Venus is as a hell world. On Venus, 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:49.080 one week is forty thousand, twenty four hours, or about 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:54.080 one thousand, seven hundred and one earth days. Now, the 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:56.920 really weird thing about Venus would be that I think 0:01:56.960 --> 0:01:59.480 it is the case that on Venus a day is 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:02.840 actually longer than a year, meaning that it takes the 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:07.000 planet Venus longer to rotate on its axis than it 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:11.160 does to go entirely around the Sun. Right, Yeah, so 0:02:11.400 --> 0:02:14.520 that would mean that a week on Venus is actually 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:19.040 more than seven years on Venus. Yeah, and again we're 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:20.440 just taking the idea that you know, we have a 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:24.120 solar day here on Earth. Well, complete rotation is a 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:26.720 day on another planet, and therefore seven of those would 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:29.480 make a week on any given planet. All right, now, 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:31.440 you know we already touched on Earth head on out 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:35.320 to Mars. The red planet has twenty five hour days, 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:37.440 so it's not too far off. We're talking a hundred 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:40.160 and seventy five hour week. But then you go to Jupiter. 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:42.720 Here you have ten hour days, so we're talking about 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:47.000 a seventy hour week. Saturn eleven hour days, so that's 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:50.960 pretty easy to calculate seventy seven hour weeks um. And 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:54.040 then by the time we get to uh Uranus, we're 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:57.000 talking we're looking at a seventeen hour days, so that's 0:02:57.000 --> 0:03:00.320 a hundred nineteen hour weeks, and on Neptune sixty hour 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.239 days a hundred and twelve hour weeks. You know, this 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:05.720 should all I think, drive home, how you know, nonsensical 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:09.079 In many respects, the concept of a week or even 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:11.560 a day is when you move off of Earth. Uh 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.280 for instance, just looking at Mars, the lack of a 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:18.359 quote leisurely orbiting moon, as the Planetary Society puts it, 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:22.080 means that you you don't really have Martian months for example. 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:25.680 Oh yeah, so the year on Mars doesn't really divide 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:30.359 into manageable time units like our months, right, So when 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:32.280 we come to like determining like what time it is, 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:35.040 on Mars. Like that's that's ultimately a whole whole old 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:38.720 different topic unto itself. Scientists defend to devise, uh, you know, 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:43.720 different ways of thinking about time regarding another planet. Um. 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:46.960 And of course you can imagine how how complicated this 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:49.520 would become if you had ultimately had some sort of 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:53.280 colonial system in place on another world. Actually, you know 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:56.040 what I just realized. I realized I was thinking about 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:58.560 the speed of the orbits of the moons of Mars 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:02.440 entirely in the wrong direct action, right, because I was thinking, oh, yeah, 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:04.560 I've forgotten how long it takes some maybe maybe it 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:07.400 takes some like months and months on on Earth to 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:11.320 go around Mars one time, But no phobos orbits Mars 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.640 like once every eight hours or something, Right, it's just 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:20.680 whizzing around, yeah, not very leisurely. So it's all do 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:23.120 you know, I guess a reminder to of just you know, 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:26.240 so so many so much of our contemplations of time 0:04:26.320 --> 0:04:29.719 are based on again, as we discussed in the first episode, 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:34.680 the the observable world, the observable cosmos, And you're not 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:37.520 going to have the same a set of stuff in 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:40.359 place on other worlds, or it's going to mean something different, 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:42.479 such as how long it seems to take the sun 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:46.400 to rise and then to set. So this, obviously this 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:50.440 leads to the next logical point is that if you 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:54.240 were to watch the video from the Ring movies and 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:58.520 therefore invoke the wrath of of of of a strange 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:03.480 VH tape based ghost, you would, of course have seven 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:07.400 days left to live. Those seven days would be best 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:12.320 spent on an off world colony, you know, preferably heading 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:14.760 on over to uh to Venus. I think now, I 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:17.760 think this came up when we're actually talking about this earlier, 0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:20.000 and Rob, you and I both forgot that. In the 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:24.480 movie they explain why it takes seven days, because that's like, 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:26.200 you know, how long the creepy ghost girls in the 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:29.480 well or whatever. But but but Ye had to remind us, 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:32.080 Seth had to remind us. But we both forgot that. 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:35.279 And you had the most amazing theory about the origin 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:37.800 of the seven day curse period in the Ring and 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:43.080 it had to do with our childhood memories of Blockbuster video. Yes, Uh, well, 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:46.279 I I I was thinking, okay, seven seven days? Why 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:50.279 seven days? Seven is is not an unlucky number in 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:53.719 Japanese culture. It seems like four would be more fitting 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:55.440 for that if we were going to go that route. 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:56.800 So what is it about seven? I was thinking, well, 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.440 maybe it's the seven day rental period, right, and because 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:02.080 we know that that she likes working through VHS tapes, 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:05.799 so maybe it has to do with the VHS rental cycle. 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:08.200 Of course, what this got me wondering about is how 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:10.600 come in the Ring movies nobody ever talks back on 0:06:10.640 --> 0:06:12.839 the phone, you know, so you get the phone calls 0:06:12.880 --> 0:06:15.720 like your cursed seven days. How come nobody ever just 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:19.839 like tries to negotiate. Well, you know, sometimes they have 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:23.159 to uh participate in a survey after the call for 0:06:23.240 --> 0:06:27.039 quality assurance purposes, right, So there is that. In reality, 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:29.479 I think the Ring videotape would probably give rise to 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:33.400 a subculture of of what what would you call them? 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:36.360 Like curse baiting scam fighters, you know, like the people 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:38.640 who played pranks on the people who do the I R. S. 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:43.280 Scam phone calls, except they're scamming Samara. Yeah. Yeah. Though 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:45.920 it is interesting when you compare the two because when 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:50.200 in the fictional situation, we have an evil entity calling 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:52.720 you and wishing you harm and uh, it's it's very 0:06:52.760 --> 0:06:54.280 much the same thing when you have somebody trying to 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:57.240 run some sort of a phone scam like it's it's 0:06:57.279 --> 0:06:59.840 almost it's quite unsettling, like to to to be speaking 0:06:59.839 --> 0:07:02.599 to somebody and realize this is someone who wishes to 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:05.880 do me great harm. You've won a free cruise, but 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:09.120 you first you need to send us some iTunes gift cards. Yeah, yeah, 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:11.720 that sort of thing. But you know, this also makes 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:15.400 me think that, Okay, if we have a technological ghost here, 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:19.200 maybe two potentially well not not actually, but within within 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:24.080 this argument looking to an artificial cycle of time and 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.040 using that as a way to to judge some other act. 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:29.760 It does make me think about like the back in 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:33.120 the old days of watching television, Um, there was a 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:36.200 set TV cycle and I'm not saying it would was 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:38.440 actually to the point where like a heavy, heavy TV 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:40.680 consumption would make you know what day of the week 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:42.960 it was based on what was on television. But it 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:45.840 was easy to sort of have that that line of 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:48.720 thinking in your head, you know, like you know what 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:51.000 what is supposed to come on on Mondays? You know 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:54.040 what what is the Monday night entertainment versus the Tuesday 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:56.600 night Uh, you know, the movie of the week sort 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:59.280 of thing. Um you could you could imagine yourself leaning 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:01.560 into that view the cosmos. And in a sense, it's 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:04.480 kind of like ancient timekeeping. It's based on the observable universe. 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:07.640 Only your observable universe is what's on the television screen. 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:10.600 Is USA up all night? Yeah? You know what day 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:13.080 it is? Then, Now, as delightful as all that that is, 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:17.040 we do actually have more serious contemplations regarding the seven 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:20.000 day week to get to here. Oh right, so I 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:22.040 guess in this episode we're probably going to talk some 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.200 more about the history of the seven day week, like 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:28.280 where it comes from and how it has changed over time. 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:31.040 There is one paper I came across that if you 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:35.520 want a really, really good, detailed, scholarly deep dive on 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:38.720 this issue, uh, I would recommend This is actually not 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:41.360 a paper, sorry, This is a book chapter in a 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:47.080 historical book by the academic publisher Bill called Calendars in 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:49.960 the Making The Origins of Calendars from the Roman Empire 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:55.320 to the Later Middle Ages published and this chapter is 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.640 called the seven day Week in the Roman Empire Origins 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:03.200 standardization into fusion. And this is by Ilaria Boultra Guini 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:07.640 and Sasha Stern and both of these authors are scholars 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:11.160 of Hebrew and Jewish studies at University College London. This 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:13.360 is a really good, really detailed chapter, but it is 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:16.160 sort of written for scholars, so it's good if you 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:20.240 want maximal detail on on the origins of the Western 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:24.480 seven day week. UH given basically our best picture of 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:27.280 the evidence within the last year or so. But I 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:29.360 just thought I would mention a few things from it 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:33.000 that struck me as as interesting for the lay person. Now, 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:35.840 of course, they acknowledge the same thing that we've mentioned 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:38.960 several times now, which is that the the deep origins 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:41.720 of the seven day week are poorly understood because we 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:45.079 don't have a founding document really of the seven day 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:47.760 week says here is where the week begins, and you know, 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:50.320 and from here on out everybody will use it for this, 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:53.760 that and the other. Instead, we have little tidbits of 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:57.600 evidence from from literary sources here and there in antiquity, 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:01.640 and occasionally from UH from arcol logical of finds that 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:05.240 give evidence of people using some kind of seven day 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:09.440 weekly schedule in the ancient Near East. But they these 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:12.680 pieces of evidence are fragmentary and a lot of times 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:16.480 we don't know exactly what broader cultural conclusions to draw 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:21.280 from them. So, for example, we know that by the 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:25.680 first few centuries c E. In the Roman Empire, people 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:29.800 were at some level using seven day weeks, but we 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:33.000 don't know exactly how far this practice goes back and 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:36.520 what all of the exact inputs on it were. Now, 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:39.319 in the previous episode, we talked about, uh, this weird 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:42.640 scenario that has been noted by historians where there were 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:47.720 multiple different kinds of weeks in the first few centuries 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:51.000 the e of the Roman Empire, UH that had different 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:54.360 numbers of days in them, which sounds terribly confusing. But so, 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:56.840 for example, you had this eight day week that seemed 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:00.600 related to commerce, so it's the eight day mark its cycle. 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:04.719 But then you also had these seven day periods such 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:08.400 as the seven day Roman astrological week, in which the 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:12.160 days were named after gods or planets. And then also 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:15.480 the seven day cycle of the Jewish Sabbath, which was 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:19.040 acknowledged uh, certainly by Jews within the Roman Empire, but 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:21.840 also by by other groups as well. Yeah, so you 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:26.120 had these had divination and religion playing a role, but 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:29.679 you also had like the hard realities of commerce and 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:32.400 the economy. But even you know, but none of these 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:36.480 are are fixed, uh, you know, figures in a given 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:39.600 world like these are things that will change over time 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:43.000 and do right. And so there is one point in 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:46.920 this book chapter where Boltu, Guini and Stern actually disagree 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:49.199 with something that I think we got from one of 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.520 our other sources, which was the book The Seven Day 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:57.720 Circle by Avatar Zerubavel, which claimed that the the Jewish 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:00.560 practice of observing a seven day cy goal with a 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:05.280 with a day of rest traced back to Mesopotamian practices. 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:08.440 But the authors of this paper actually say that despite 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:11.280 what other authors have alleged, there's actually really no very 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:14.920 good evidence tracing the seven day week back to ancient 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:19.360 Egyptian or Mesopotamian practices. We we ultimately don't know exactly 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:21.360 where it comes from. Now this, I wonder if this 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:23.800 explained some of the hesitancy you see to really nable 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:26.480 us down in some of the other sources, like for instance, 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:31.960 Fagin and aveni Um, who I acided in the first episode. 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:34.400 Oh yeah, they were more hesitant to to put a 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:37.439 specific origin on it. Yeah, So it seems like it's 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.560 still very much a topic of of of of studying 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:45.720 consideration at least. But we do, of course have literary 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:49.280 evidence from the ancient world of places where some kind 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:51.960 of seven day weekly cycle or referenced. Of course, the 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:55.600 big one is UH is the Hebrew Bible making reference 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:57.800 to the Sabbath. So we see the idea of a 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:01.040 seven day week the days leading up to the Sabbath 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:04.760 day in the Hebrew Bible. Though interestingly UH the authors 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:07.080 of this of this book chapter claim that in the 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:11.000 Hebrew Bible there are actually no events that are said 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:14.000 to occur on specific days of the week in the 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:18.079 Hebrew Bible itself. The dated events are dated by other methods, 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:21.560 such as by by month or by year um. And 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:24.280 this raises questions like they ask, okay, so it's clear 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.240 that at some point Jews were observing a Sabbath day, 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:30.320 But they say, for example, we don't know in the 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:35.080 early periods if Sabbath observance was synchronized across different Jewish 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:38.240 communities or did like local Jewish communities all have their 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:42.160 own Sabbath cycles. But once we get closer in time 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:45.079 to the Roman period, we do see Jewish sources making 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:48.800 specific reference to two things occurring on certain days of 0:13:48.840 --> 0:13:52.760 the week, specifically on the Sabbath day. UH. So, for example, 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:55.720 they referenced the Book of First Maccabee's, which is a 0:13:55.760 --> 0:13:59.040 text from the late second century b c. And this 0:13:59.120 --> 0:14:02.960 makes reference to something occurring on the Sabbath day. They 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:05.679 also make reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:09.080 of course these fascinating documents from Jewish communities dating back 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:13.560 to the second to first centuries b c. UH, And 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:16.400 they say that the Dead Sea Scrolls in some cases 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:22.120 make reference to a calendrical system. This was kind of confusing, 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:24.040 but I think the way I understand it is they 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:27.040 had a year that had a different number of days 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:29.160 than our year. I think it was three hundred and 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:32.600 sixty four days, which unlike our year of three hundred 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:36.320 and sixty five point to five days or whatever. UH. 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:41.080 That year would divide evenly into fifty two weeks, so 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:43.920 you get a whole number of weeks within the year, 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:47.360 and this would be for seven day weeks based around 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:49.920 the observance of the Sabbath. But then they also point 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:53.520 out that a a seven day Sabbath week is mentioned 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:57.240 and observed within the Greek Septuagint, which is the Greek 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:01.160 version of the Hebrew Bible in in the Salt. But 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:04.480 one question would be, okay, why the sudden appearance of 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:09.160 these references to things happening on uh days of the 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:13.320 week in Jewish literature from around the second century b CE. 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:16.880 What happened around there? So to read from the authors, 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:19.960 they write quote the second century b c. Invention of 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:22.640 the seven day week is a time reckoning system, even 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:26.200 if only theoretical or literary, may well have been related 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:29.720 to the revival and promotion of the observance of the Sabbath, 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:33.640 which is credited to the Maccabeean rebels of the one sixties, 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:37.000 but was surely also shared and promoted by other Judean 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:39.600 groups at the time, such as the communities described in 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:43.720 the Kumran literature, and this would be the ones associated 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:46.640 with the Dead Sea scrolls uh and may have percolated 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:50.200 further onto the diaspora in Egypt, as the papyri above 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:54.160 mentioned possibly suggest promotion of Sabbath observance in this period, 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:57.320 may have elicited the conceptualization of the week as a 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:00.840 recurring sequence of seven numbered days, and does a fundamental 0:16:00.880 --> 0:16:05.120 structure of time reckoning and calendars. Uh. So, Again, this 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:07.239 is one thing where we have to sort of speculate. 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:08.880 We don't know for sure, but the authors here are 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:12.280 saying it's possible that we see this sort of weak 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:17.040 consciousness emerging in Jews of the second century BC as 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:20.560 part of a religious revival, a sort of gathering of 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:24.200 enthusiasm for observance of the Sabbath as a as a 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:27.560 religious practice that of but then, of course this could 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:31.000 end up having other functions within people's lives. If you're 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:33.880 observing uh, you know, a week leading up to the 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:37.560 Sabbath that could serve other scheduling functions if practice for 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:40.120 long enough. Though of course, they acknowledge that we don't 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:43.320 know exactly what role these week days played in in 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:47.360 people's day to day lives early on. Um. But another 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:51.400 thing that's important to mention is that the early Jewish 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.600 uses of days of the week identified a day not 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:57.480 with a name, and certainly not with our names, because 0:16:57.520 --> 0:16:59.680 of of course, our names of the days of the 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:04.640 week in English are derived largely from pagan and astrological sources, 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:07.520 which would have had no relevance to the ancient Jews uh. 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:10.880 And instead they identified days of the week with numbers, 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:14.080 so this would be something like three in the Sabbath, 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:17.600 so you would like sort of count from the Sabbath day, 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:20.480 but then from here. In the subsequent centuries, this way 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:22.960 of reckoning days of the week appears to show up 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:26.720 in other types of literature, such as Greek literature of 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:30.920 the first century CE, but then again mostly in Jewish 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:34.240 or Jewish influence texts, for example, the Books of the 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:37.080 New Testament. These are books written in Greek, but they're 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:42.200 influenced by by Jewish religious ideas of course, and also 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:45.639 in the works of Josephas these make references to days 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:48.199 of the week, and it's a seven day week. So 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:51.360 for example, the author of the Gospel of Mark uh, 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:54.159 this is somebody who is writing in Greek sometime in 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:56.960 the first century cees writing a story of the life 0:17:56.960 --> 0:17:59.960 of Jesus, and the author of the Gospel of Mark 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:04.240 writes that the crucifixion of Jesus took place on quote preparation, 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:07.879 which is the day before the Sabbath, and writes that 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:11.000 the resurrection was on the quote first of the week. 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:14.440 So I think I'm getting those right, but that would 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:16.920 mean that the the author here is saying that Jesus 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:19.760 was crucified on a Friday, because it's the day before 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:22.800 the Sabbath, which is Saturday, and then the resurrection took 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:25.199 place on a Sunday, which was the first day of 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:27.960 the week after the Sabbath. So here we've got this 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:31.119 evidence for the the Sabbath cycle as one of the 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:34.400 main influences on the emergence of a seven day week 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:37.479 that that we inherited and used throughout the world today. 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:41.560 But another major influence seems to be the Roman planetary week. 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:44.639 This is something we see evidence of in Rome and 0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:46.600 other parts of Italy, not just the city of Rome, 0:18:46.600 --> 0:18:49.639 but Rome and the Italian peninsula. Uh and this is 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:53.160 well attested by the end of the first century CE. 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:57.040 Now the Roman astrological week again, this is having seven 0:18:57.119 --> 0:18:59.920 days that are named after the planets or the god 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.639 associated with the planets in the in the Roman system 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:07.520 of astrology or astronomy. Because the quote planets they could observe. Again, 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:09.560 a couple of these things are not actually planets, but 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:14.119 they were the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:16.960 and Saturn. These are the moving objects in the sky 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:19.560 that you can see without a telescope. And the way 0:19:19.600 --> 0:19:22.080 that the Roman astrological week was different was that it 0:19:22.119 --> 0:19:24.960 was not structured around a day of rest or a 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:29.040 day of religious observance the way that the Jewish week was. Instead, 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:33.800 it appears to have served a primarily astrological informative purpose, 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:36.960 So it was sort of letting people know which planets 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:41.120 reigned over had influence over which day of the cycle. Uh. 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:43.919 And once again, this would not have any basis in 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:47.639 real astronomical observations or patterns. It's not like there's anything 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:51.480 physical you can say that associates the Sun with Sundays 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:54.119 or the moon with Mondays. It's just that they just 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:56.159 happened to pair them up that way. I don't know, 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:59.439 unless we discover something really interesting that the Romans were 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:02.160 onto that nobody's figured out since then. Well, I mean, 0:20:02.160 --> 0:20:05.240 if if Monday really was aligned with with the moon, 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:09.400 we would surely see werewolf transformations on Mondays. And I've 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:11.600 never heard of that being a thing, so clearly it 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.919 doesn't check out. No, I'd say the vast majority of 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:19.000 a wu's occur on Fridays and Saturdays, unless one is 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:22.760 a real uh work based I don't know. Maybe maybe 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:25.600 you're hollen when Monday comes along. That's a good point, 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:27.879 of course, you've been working all weekend anyway, so I 0:20:27.920 --> 0:20:30.480 don't know send news to the emperor that the that 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:34.080 the city has been sacked by verk beasts. But anyway, 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:36.800 so their paper goes into great detail, but just in 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:40.440 a very quick summary, it seems we see increasing numbers 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:43.760 of references to use of a seven day week of 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:46.560 some kind throughout the Roman Empire in the first couple 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:49.560 of centuries c. And again this would be based on 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:52.199 the Christian seven day week that is derived from the 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:56.400 Sabbath week, but then also using this Roman astrological seven 0:20:56.480 --> 0:20:59.119 day week as a basis uh, sort of the fading 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:01.720 away of the signific against of the eight day market week. 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:05.760 And then in UH in the fourth century CE, you 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:09.240 get some real moves, such as by a decree by 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:13.600 Constantine that makes Sunday sort of the official sacred day 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:17.480 of the empire. Of course, Constantine was the first Christian 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:20.840 emperor of Rome. Uh. And so yeah, you see a 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:24.800 big push towards standardization of the use of a seven 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:28.640 day week. And it's in this relationship to the Christian 0:21:28.720 --> 0:21:31.720 significance of Sunday as the Lord's Day or the day 0:21:31.720 --> 0:21:34.840 of worship uh and UH and this being sort of 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:37.600 standardized throughout the Roman Empire, especially in the third and 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:40.520 fourth centuries CE. And this is the point where we 0:21:40.520 --> 0:21:42.840 can really start to say, Okay, here's the week that 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:46.600 we inherited, and we can situate it well within history. 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:50.000 So if your time machine has like Mondays, Wednesdays and 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:52.720 Tuesdays on and so forth, UH, this might be as 0:21:52.720 --> 0:21:55.119 far back as you can really go this period with 0:21:55.160 --> 0:22:00.240 perfect accuracy. Also, you should probably reconsider the intra face 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.119 for your time machine was depending on these these days. 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:14.720 I just want to go five thousand Mondays back. Now. 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:16.840 I mentioned in the first part of this series that 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:20.320 one of the sources I've been reading, uh for for 0:22:20.680 --> 0:22:23.560 history of the seven day week was a U. C. 0:22:23.720 --> 0:22:28.000 Berkeley historian named David Hankin, who has written a book 0:22:28.080 --> 0:22:31.480 called The Week, A History of the Unnatural Rhythms that 0:22:31.520 --> 0:22:34.359 made us who we are. And so there have been 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:38.800 several articles out and interviews with Hanken about this book 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:41.800 that I've drawn from here. One of the things I 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:44.960 read was this Eon magazine article by Hankin where he 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:48.960 tries to talk about some of the reasons that the 0:22:49.080 --> 0:22:54.000 week became especially salient in his view in the nineteenth century, 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:56.760 that there was something that happened roughly in the eighteen 0:22:56.920 --> 0:23:00.639 hundreds in the West that made the week suddenly a 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:05.560 much more useful and important calendar unit than it had 0:23:05.600 --> 0:23:09.399 been in centuries before. Because before that, of course, people 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:12.200 observed the week, you know, so in medieval Europe there 0:23:12.240 --> 0:23:14.439 was a week, but it might be more important for 0:23:14.520 --> 0:23:16.840 like tracking how long until the day you go to 0:23:16.960 --> 0:23:21.600 church or something. And one reason that that the week 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:25.480 became more salient in the eighteen hundreds was the increasing 0:23:25.520 --> 0:23:29.919 proportion of society that made a living by wage labor, 0:23:30.040 --> 0:23:33.119 so working you know, some number of hours per week 0:23:33.240 --> 0:23:36.040 for some you know, a factory owner or in some 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:39.040 kind of shop, instead of just people working on farms 0:23:39.040 --> 0:23:41.480 and things. And of course at this time it would 0:23:41.520 --> 0:23:45.320 have been common for wage laborers to work on Saturdays, 0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:48.639 but with Saturday representing the most common end of the 0:23:48.680 --> 0:23:53.000 seven day weekly cycle and the regular pay day, so 0:23:53.040 --> 0:23:55.560 if you have a day of the seven day cycle 0:23:55.720 --> 0:23:58.200 where the majority of people who are getting a paycheck 0:23:58.240 --> 0:24:01.280 are receiving that check, that's going to kind of change 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:05.760 patterns of buying and consumption throughout the economy. So whatever 0:24:05.800 --> 0:24:08.760 people wanted to spend their paycheck on Saturday night might 0:24:08.800 --> 0:24:11.600 be a likely time for it. But by the early 0:24:11.640 --> 0:24:15.760 twentieth century there had been an increased push among wage 0:24:15.880 --> 0:24:19.960 laborers to have to have two day weekends instead of 0:24:20.000 --> 0:24:23.800 just Sunday off, and so especially in the nineteen thirties 0:24:23.920 --> 0:24:27.520 under under FDR, labor unions managed to make gains to 0:24:27.560 --> 0:24:29.960 sort of pressure it to to become the norm in 0:24:30.000 --> 0:24:32.960 the United States for full time workers to have a 0:24:33.000 --> 0:24:35.720 two day weekend, so you get Saturday and Sunday off. 0:24:36.280 --> 0:24:39.000 This was formalized, I think when the US passed the 0:24:39.160 --> 0:24:42.880 Fair Labor Standards Act in in ninety eight, which made 0:24:42.920 --> 0:24:45.280 a forty hour work week with a two day weekend 0:24:45.320 --> 0:24:48.280 the norm and the majority of American jobs. It's easy. 0:24:48.440 --> 0:24:50.480 This is another one of those examples that where it's 0:24:50.480 --> 0:24:52.199 easy to take it for granted and just think of 0:24:52.400 --> 0:24:57.000 like the weekend as a part of life itself. Uh, 0:24:57.320 --> 0:25:00.400 just imagining like you know, people living in in injuries 0:25:00.440 --> 0:25:03.440 past and then doing then doing something on the weekend. 0:25:03.480 --> 0:25:06.359 You know, it's just without thinking too closely about it, 0:25:06.400 --> 0:25:08.720 you can easily fall into that trap of just thinking 0:25:08.800 --> 0:25:10.959 that that's this is just the pattern of life, this 0:25:11.040 --> 0:25:13.520 is just how it works. No, the weekend the two 0:25:13.600 --> 0:25:15.679 day weekend is fairly new, and it's something that had 0:25:15.720 --> 0:25:19.639 to be fought for. Yeah. Hankin actually identifies a number 0:25:19.640 --> 0:25:23.160 of different influences that may have led to the increased 0:25:23.720 --> 0:25:27.600 salience of the week in the nineteenth century. One of 0:25:27.640 --> 0:25:31.760 them is the trend towards what he calls stock taking, 0:25:31.920 --> 0:25:35.480 I think is sort of accounting of one's affairs and 0:25:35.480 --> 0:25:38.000 and one's life. I guess this could be for business 0:25:38.119 --> 0:25:41.640 or personal reasons with the use of the seven day 0:25:41.680 --> 0:25:44.119 week in the nineteenth century, and this would be aided 0:25:44.160 --> 0:25:49.280 by actually the proliferation of mass market diary books with 0:25:49.400 --> 0:25:53.680 pages already formatted to reflect the days of the week, 0:25:53.800 --> 0:25:58.639 so like sort of the diary would arrive in your hands, 0:25:58.720 --> 0:26:01.520 not just with blank page is, but with sort of 0:26:01.560 --> 0:26:03.760 spaces for you to fill in what was going on 0:26:04.000 --> 0:26:06.680 each week or for the days of the week. And 0:26:06.760 --> 0:26:09.880 that earlier almanacs or diary books would have tended to 0:26:09.880 --> 0:26:14.600 to favor different kind of clindrical organizations. I never would 0:26:14.600 --> 0:26:17.320 have imagined that, but that was very interesting to me 0:26:17.400 --> 0:26:21.159 that like changes in just like printing of diary books 0:26:21.160 --> 0:26:24.200 could could play a role here. Yeah, yeah, it's it's 0:26:24.240 --> 0:26:28.120 interesting to think about again, just how these um at 0:26:28.160 --> 0:26:34.760 times even physical structures of physical layouts based on the week, 0:26:35.040 --> 0:26:37.919 the form of the week, these uh, these end up 0:26:37.960 --> 0:26:39.639 influencing the way we think about our lives, how we 0:26:39.720 --> 0:26:42.439 organize our lives, etcetera. So yeah, that's that's you can 0:26:42.480 --> 0:26:45.760 imagine how almanacs and diary books would have a huge 0:26:45.760 --> 0:26:48.320 impact because here it is, here is the week. Now 0:26:48.400 --> 0:26:50.960 fill in the week as you need to. He also 0:26:51.040 --> 0:26:54.360 points to schools as possibly playing a role in cementing 0:26:54.359 --> 0:26:59.280 weekly routines uh to the printing another printed product, and 0:26:59.359 --> 0:27:02.919 not just die arey books, but domestic manuals that would 0:27:03.440 --> 0:27:05.120 just say, you know, here's a good way to run 0:27:05.119 --> 0:27:09.080 a household, and it would specify certain tasks that you 0:27:09.080 --> 0:27:11.480 would do on certain days of the week. So it 0:27:11.560 --> 0:27:14.360 might say, you know, Mondays are good for washing and 0:27:14.400 --> 0:27:19.879 Tuesdays for ironing. Now that's a lot of ironing. Well, 0:27:19.920 --> 0:27:21.720 you don't have to fill the whole day with ironing. 0:27:22.040 --> 0:27:27.240 But ultimately, Hankin identifies as as maybe the main contributor 0:27:27.320 --> 0:27:30.560 to the increasing importance of the week as an organizing 0:27:30.600 --> 0:27:36.600 principle for life what he calls commercial entertainment, voluntary association, 0:27:36.720 --> 0:27:41.480 and print culture because he says that for increasingly urban 0:27:41.560 --> 0:27:46.280 populations people moving more towards city life and wage labor, 0:27:46.920 --> 0:27:50.159 it turned out that cycles of weeks were actually a 0:27:50.280 --> 0:27:54.400 useful way to schedule a busy, voluntary life. For example, 0:27:54.760 --> 0:27:57.119 if you're planning to see friends on a regular basis, 0:27:57.200 --> 0:27:58.879 you could just know that, you know, we get together 0:27:58.960 --> 0:28:02.160 every Thursday, which would allow for the meeting to happen 0:28:02.200 --> 0:28:05.160 on schedule without everybody checking to see if they had 0:28:05.240 --> 0:28:09.239 conflicting plans. And I he can argues that there's an 0:28:09.280 --> 0:28:12.040 interesting explanation for this. He says it was quote the 0:28:12.080 --> 0:28:17.159 impersonal character of urban life unquote that gave rise to 0:28:17.200 --> 0:28:21.000 the week as a primary scheduling device, because the week 0:28:21.080 --> 0:28:25.240 allowed people to quote coordinate recurring activities with others, including 0:28:25.359 --> 0:28:28.439 those they might not yet know. And I think this 0:28:28.480 --> 0:28:31.359 would be opposed to in in more rural life, the 0:28:31.440 --> 0:28:36.480 idea that socialization tends to be more kind of continuous 0:28:36.520 --> 0:28:41.360 and spontaneous rather than you know, scheduled recurring activities in 0:28:41.400 --> 0:28:45.720 an otherwise busy schedule. Yeah. Yeah, though, it is kind 0:28:45.720 --> 0:28:50.000 of funny how it sounds like it would be easier 0:28:50.040 --> 0:28:51.680 just to say, okay, well we're going to always do 0:28:51.720 --> 0:28:54.760 this on Thursday. Thursday is the day for this um. 0:28:54.880 --> 0:28:56.840 But I I know that that many of you out 0:28:56.840 --> 0:29:00.480 there probably have experience with with with this suation where 0:29:00.520 --> 0:29:03.719 you set that weekly expectation and then what happens when 0:29:03.760 --> 0:29:06.680 you get to Monday or Tuesday of that week. Someone's like, wake, actually, 0:29:06.720 --> 0:29:09.200 can we do it on Wednesday this week instead? I 0:29:09.240 --> 0:29:11.600 have a thing, what if we did it on Friday? No, 0:29:12.120 --> 0:29:15.120 Thursday is the day we decided that's why we have 0:29:15.240 --> 0:29:17.400 this week? And how many of those are caused by 0:29:17.400 --> 0:29:20.680 either people working outside of work hours or people just 0:29:20.840 --> 0:29:24.480 not wanting to go out and not wanting to admit it. Well, 0:29:24.480 --> 0:29:26.600 I mean it's in my opinion opinion, it's you know, 0:29:26.600 --> 0:29:27.800 it's fine if you don't want to go out, it's 0:29:27.800 --> 0:29:29.400 fine even if you want to work instead, But then 0:29:29.440 --> 0:29:33.400 don't don't bump around the the the the the recurring 0:29:33.960 --> 0:29:37.840 schedule just because because you've decided to work a little 0:29:37.880 --> 0:29:41.360 extra that day. I don't know, I'm uh like, like 0:29:41.400 --> 0:29:42.640 I said, this is I think one of those things 0:29:42.640 --> 0:29:44.880 where I like the principle of it, but it seems 0:29:44.920 --> 0:29:49.480 to break down somewhat, uh in my experience. But we know, 0:29:49.560 --> 0:29:52.600 of course that eventually the week becomes salient for basically 0:29:52.640 --> 0:29:56.200 everybody in America because it's not just like city dwellers 0:29:56.240 --> 0:29:59.200 who's whose weeks are filled with lots of different kinds 0:29:59.200 --> 0:30:03.640 of scheduled at activities, uh that that know about the week. Eventually, 0:30:03.680 --> 0:30:06.240 it seems like the week is something that's on everybody's mind. 0:30:06.800 --> 0:30:09.720 And uh, he mentions this. I want to read from 0:30:09.720 --> 0:30:12.640 a paragraph here, Hinkin writes. Quote, for those who lived 0:30:12.640 --> 0:30:16.760 in small towns and on farms, fewer activities distinguished one 0:30:16.800 --> 0:30:20.160 week day from the next. But even they would anticipate 0:30:20.200 --> 0:30:23.520 the arrival of the weekly mail, apportion the reading of 0:30:23.560 --> 0:30:27.040 the newspaper they received every seven days, or follow the 0:30:27.040 --> 0:30:29.840 schedules of a train or stage coach that passed through 0:30:29.880 --> 0:30:33.560 regularly on specific week days. As a result, generations of 0:30:33.600 --> 0:30:36.480 Americans became disciplined to the rhythms of the week that 0:30:36.560 --> 0:30:40.000 it impinged only lightly on the lives of their ancestors. 0:30:40.760 --> 0:30:42.880 So I think this is an interesting argument that it's like, 0:30:42.920 --> 0:30:45.400 even if you're not living in a city and juggling 0:30:45.440 --> 0:30:48.200 a lot of uh, you know, scheduled activities on a 0:30:48.240 --> 0:30:51.600 recurring basis, you know, maybe you're just like working on 0:30:51.640 --> 0:30:55.800 a farm in the rural world. Eventually the highly scheduled 0:30:55.920 --> 0:30:59.520 nature of city life sort of stretches out through through 0:30:59.640 --> 0:31:05.080 media and through transportation infrastructure and and communications through mail 0:31:05.200 --> 0:31:08.240 and stuff into the rest of the country. Now, one 0:31:08.280 --> 0:31:10.560 thing I was wondering about is okay, though that what 0:31:10.560 --> 0:31:14.920 what is the direct evidence that people tended to become 0:31:15.000 --> 0:31:18.680 more conscious of weeks and week days, what day of 0:31:18.680 --> 0:31:20.360 the week it was instead of say, what day of 0:31:20.360 --> 0:31:24.600 the month it was in the nineteenth century. So to 0:31:24.720 --> 0:31:27.440 mention a few examples of this, he says that there 0:31:27.600 --> 0:31:30.440 is a change in trends that we can see left 0:31:30.480 --> 0:31:34.080 in what are called blank book diaries of the period. So, 0:31:34.800 --> 0:31:36.960 as we mentioned a minute ago, some diaries would of 0:31:36.960 --> 0:31:40.960 course have a pre printed organizing principle for your entries, 0:31:41.000 --> 0:31:44.120 but some diaries would just be blank pages. And he 0:31:44.160 --> 0:31:47.200 says that in these diaries, if you examine them, you 0:31:47.200 --> 0:31:49.960 can see a natural shift in the first half of 0:31:50.000 --> 0:31:54.280 the eighteen hundreds towards a preference for identifying which day 0:31:54.280 --> 0:31:56.840 of the week it was at the top of each entry, 0:31:57.200 --> 0:32:00.960 and suddenly a greater tendency to make error in identifying 0:32:01.080 --> 0:32:03.640 what date of the month it was instead of what 0:32:03.720 --> 0:32:06.520 day of the week it was and checking against my 0:32:06.560 --> 0:32:09.080 own experience. I feel like I'm still in this this 0:32:09.120 --> 0:32:12.800 new weekday mindset because you know, or I guess I 0:32:12.800 --> 0:32:17.040 would say that weekday consciousness dominates date consciousness in my thinking. 0:32:17.400 --> 0:32:19.480 I pretty much always know what day of the week 0:32:19.480 --> 0:32:21.360 it is, but I always have to look up the 0:32:21.440 --> 0:32:24.600 new miracle date unless it's Halloween or something. Yeah. Yeah, 0:32:24.600 --> 0:32:28.920 it's very very much dealing with a publication schedule, I 0:32:28.960 --> 0:32:30.880 think makes you think like this for sure, though I 0:32:30.920 --> 0:32:32.640 guess it would be different if you're if you had 0:32:32.640 --> 0:32:36.960 a publication to say, only came out on of every month, 0:32:37.280 --> 0:32:41.040 or you know, bi monthly publication or something. But but 0:32:41.160 --> 0:32:44.680 other pieces of evidence for the increasing weekday consciousness. He says, 0:32:44.720 --> 0:32:47.480 also in this period in the eighteen hundreds, if you 0:32:47.600 --> 0:32:52.080 examine the records of witness testimony during trials, UH, you 0:32:52.120 --> 0:32:55.640 will see a trend toward people having a stronger memory 0:32:55.720 --> 0:32:58.680 for what day of the week something happened rather than 0:32:58.720 --> 0:33:03.760 the date UH, and frequently citing recurring weekly routines as 0:33:03.800 --> 0:33:06.840 sort of the anchor memory that made them sure of 0:33:07.000 --> 0:33:10.240 which day what they're what they're saying the witnessed happened on. 0:33:10.960 --> 0:33:13.520 So I don't know maybe it was a Thursday, because 0:33:13.560 --> 0:33:16.200 that is when the mail wagon arrives. And he also 0:33:16.240 --> 0:33:19.280 says across this period, letters begin to show a greater 0:33:19.360 --> 0:33:23.040 preference for organizing recent memories by weeks instead of other 0:33:23.120 --> 0:33:26.040 time scales. So if you just you know, read large 0:33:26.040 --> 0:33:28.720 amounts of correspondence people talking about what's going on in 0:33:28.760 --> 0:33:33.240 their lives, they're they're more inclined to start saying, here's 0:33:33.280 --> 0:33:37.600 what happened last week or the week before that. Also, interestingly, 0:33:37.680 --> 0:33:41.800 Hancin talks about a few different examples of various powers 0:33:41.840 --> 0:33:45.480 and institutions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries 0:33:45.960 --> 0:33:49.640 trying to replace the seven day week with something else, 0:33:49.920 --> 0:33:54.280 and noting that that these attempts failed in places where 0:33:54.280 --> 0:33:57.760 the week was already the norm. Some business interests in 0:33:57.800 --> 0:34:01.240 the West in the late nineteenth century wanted to get 0:34:01.320 --> 0:34:03.960 rid of the seven day week because it caused problems 0:34:03.960 --> 0:34:07.120 in book keeping. You might think, well, what would those 0:34:07.120 --> 0:34:10.080 problems be? But uh so, think about it this way. 0:34:10.360 --> 0:34:14.200 The year does not subdivide cleanly into a whole number 0:34:14.239 --> 0:34:18.760 of weeks, So you have inconsistent numbers of weeks lining 0:34:18.800 --> 0:34:21.680 up into time units that are used for bookkeeping. In 0:34:21.719 --> 0:34:25.719 businesses like months or quarters or years, and this can 0:34:25.840 --> 0:34:29.759 cause confusion. For example, if you're trying to compare some 0:34:29.920 --> 0:34:33.719 performance metric between two months, but the metric you're looking 0:34:33.760 --> 0:34:37.279 at is calculated on Fridays, and then maybe you've got 0:34:37.360 --> 0:34:39.920 a month that has five Fridays, but the next month 0:34:39.960 --> 0:34:43.719 only has four, so you start having trouble comparing things 0:34:43.800 --> 0:34:47.920 evenly across these calendar units. Oh, that reminds me of 0:34:48.200 --> 0:34:50.120 at one point, we were owned by a company that 0:34:50.239 --> 0:34:53.239 did I guess we gotta like a pay We got 0:34:53.280 --> 0:34:56.480 our paycheck every couple of weeks, and so occasionally you 0:34:56.480 --> 0:34:58.520 would have that one magic month where you got three 0:34:58.520 --> 0:35:01.879 paychecks in a given month, and that one wouldn't have 0:35:02.120 --> 0:35:05.800 anything taken out of it for for benefits and so forth. 0:35:06.880 --> 0:35:10.680 That's the vague memory I have of it. Anyway, chit Ching, No, 0:35:10.800 --> 0:35:13.080 it's funny. You can actually google this. They're like people 0:35:13.120 --> 0:35:15.279 who do whole web pages that are just like, here 0:35:15.280 --> 0:35:18.960 are the months in two that have five Fridays. I'll 0:35:18.960 --> 0:35:21.240 get five paychecks. I mean, if you get a paycheck 0:35:21.280 --> 0:35:31.080 every week, thank thank now. He also notes that in 0:35:31.239 --> 0:35:35.440 the Soviet Union, I think this was in nine, the 0:35:35.600 --> 0:35:39.720 USSR tried to change the calendar, also to to change 0:35:39.760 --> 0:35:42.640 the number of days in a week and how weekends worked. 0:35:43.120 --> 0:35:45.160 I think the new system they put together was that 0:35:45.200 --> 0:35:49.440 there would be seventy two weeks of five days each 0:35:49.760 --> 0:35:51.719 in every year, and this would add up to like 0:35:51.719 --> 0:35:54.640 three and sixty days. And then it would also have 0:35:54.680 --> 0:35:59.120 these weird interruptions supplementing it, so you would have holidays 0:35:59.160 --> 0:36:01.600 which didn't fall on a day of the week, but 0:36:01.680 --> 0:36:06.080 instead interrupted the weekly cycle. So uh, not that they 0:36:06.200 --> 0:36:08.920 celebrated Halloween, but if you use Halloween as an example, 0:36:09.160 --> 0:36:12.200 imagine Halloween wasn't on any day of the week, but 0:36:12.280 --> 0:36:17.720 you could have a schedule that went like Friday, Saturday, Halloween, Sunday, Monday. 0:36:19.760 --> 0:36:22.480 The alleged benefit of this was that it would eliminate 0:36:22.520 --> 0:36:26.799 the inefficiency of factories sitting dormant on the weekends, so 0:36:27.120 --> 0:36:29.799 you know, because of your workers would always be on 0:36:29.880 --> 0:36:33.840 duty to work the machines that day. But it apparently 0:36:34.040 --> 0:36:37.480 proved unpopular and inconvenient because people didn't always have the 0:36:37.520 --> 0:36:40.160 same day off as their friends or family, and it 0:36:40.200 --> 0:36:43.640 had some other downsides, like, like you know, there are 0:36:43.640 --> 0:36:46.799 reasons it can sometimes be useful for production to have 0:36:46.920 --> 0:36:51.320 offline periods, right, like say, there's certain maintenance procedures that 0:36:51.400 --> 0:36:56.080 need to take place. Uh, sometimes the machines need to stop. Right. 0:36:56.080 --> 0:36:58.399 So the Soviet Union actually went through a couple of 0:36:58.480 --> 0:37:02.759 different attempts at different reckonings of weeks. But I think 0:37:02.800 --> 0:37:05.520 by like nineteen forty they just went back to the 0:37:05.520 --> 0:37:08.799 regular seven day week. But so it's interesting that at 0:37:08.880 --> 0:37:12.000 various points both capitalism and communism tried to kill the 0:37:12.040 --> 0:37:14.600 seven day week and they both failed. Yeah, I mean, 0:37:14.640 --> 0:37:18.400 once that that order is in place, once you've everything 0:37:18.400 --> 0:37:24.240 in your life has has become attuned to this artificial structure, Uh, 0:37:24.520 --> 0:37:27.600 it becomes resistant to change because again, think of all 0:37:27.640 --> 0:37:30.320 the elements that have gone into it that we've discussed. 0:37:30.360 --> 0:37:34.520 You know, they're they're religious, they're they're they're supernatural, they're 0:37:34.560 --> 0:37:39.680 also related to, uh to at times actual frequencies in 0:37:39.719 --> 0:37:42.480 the market. And then it just becomes the frequency of 0:37:42.480 --> 0:37:45.040 your life. Uh. So to imagine, you know, trying to 0:37:45.040 --> 0:37:48.280 shift away from that un you can imagine the resistance 0:37:48.280 --> 0:37:51.960 that would take place, um either outward or certainly inward. 0:37:52.440 --> 0:37:54.360 Like what if we were to suddenly switch now like 0:37:54.960 --> 0:37:57.560 this was the decree that came down. Now we're gonna 0:37:57.600 --> 0:38:01.719 have three sixty five one day weeks. Uh. That's that's 0:38:01.719 --> 0:38:04.839 that's how we're doing it. That's useful, That would would 0:38:04.920 --> 0:38:07.640 be useful even if there was some strong argument to 0:38:07.640 --> 0:38:10.239 be made for like you'd have imagine like having to 0:38:10.280 --> 0:38:14.319 think about your life and time in that manner. Well, 0:38:14.360 --> 0:38:16.359 even if you try to put together a system that's 0:38:16.400 --> 0:38:18.799 not absurd in that way, but would try to be 0:38:18.800 --> 0:38:21.640 an improvement on our system, such as one that's been 0:38:21.640 --> 0:38:24.960 proposed a number of times is um changing the calendar 0:38:25.000 --> 0:38:28.480 to have fixed weeks within the year, so that the 0:38:28.520 --> 0:38:31.360 same date in the year would always correlate with the 0:38:31.400 --> 0:38:34.160 same fixed day of the week. So for example, maybe 0:38:34.239 --> 0:38:36.680 January one would always be a Sunday, the second is 0:38:36.719 --> 0:38:39.759 always a Monday, and it just goes on like that. 0:38:39.840 --> 0:38:42.680 Of course, the problem is again that the number of 0:38:42.760 --> 0:38:45.560 days in a year does not cleanly divide into seven. 0:38:45.920 --> 0:38:48.000 So the proposed fixed to this is to have a 0:38:48.000 --> 0:38:49.440 couple of days at the end of the year that 0:38:49.480 --> 0:38:52.160 would be so called blank days. These are like neutral 0:38:52.239 --> 0:38:54.640 days that are no day of the week, and then 0:38:54.680 --> 0:38:56.680 it and then it starts over again at the beginning 0:38:56.719 --> 0:38:59.120 of the year with the with the fixed calendar Can 0:38:59.160 --> 0:39:02.520 you imagine that though? Can you imagine it living your 0:39:02.560 --> 0:39:04.520 life on a day that is that is not a 0:39:04.640 --> 0:39:07.360 day of the week. It's yeah, it would feel like, 0:39:07.400 --> 0:39:09.200 how am I supposed to think about that? What is 0:39:09.280 --> 0:39:11.000 life like on a blank day? It's probably it's like 0:39:11.040 --> 0:39:13.120 the purge or something. You would wake up to the 0:39:13.120 --> 0:39:16.800 sounds of the whole world screaming at once. Yeah. But anyway, 0:39:16.840 --> 0:39:19.200 I was reading about this proposal in an interview with 0:39:19.320 --> 0:39:22.799 David Hankin in an article in The Atlantic um and 0:39:23.280 --> 0:39:25.319 he gives a reasoning why he thinks this has never 0:39:25.400 --> 0:39:29.280 taken hold. For one thing, it would break religious weekly cycles, 0:39:29.320 --> 0:39:32.080 which Christians, Muslims and Jews tend to see as a 0:39:32.120 --> 0:39:35.759 matter of tradition. These these weeks are, in their view, 0:39:35.760 --> 0:39:39.040 an unbroken series going back into antiquity, and that it 0:39:39.120 --> 0:39:43.200 has some religious value. Uh. And so, of course, like 0:39:43.360 --> 0:39:46.400 trying to change the calendar could be could be taken 0:39:46.440 --> 0:39:49.680 as a as an affront to the religious traditions of 0:39:49.719 --> 0:39:53.560 the main religions in the Western world. And speaking of 0:39:53.560 --> 0:39:56.840 that article in the Atlantic, there's one thing that the 0:39:56.880 --> 0:40:01.719 author asks David Hankin, did the increasing consciousness of the 0:40:01.800 --> 0:40:04.319 weekly calendar as opposed to the day of the month 0:40:04.400 --> 0:40:08.080 or whatever in the nineteenth century, did it make people 0:40:08.160 --> 0:40:11.640 feel different? Did it make time feel different to people 0:40:11.640 --> 0:40:14.880 when they started thinking about it more in terms of weeks? 0:40:15.640 --> 0:40:17.960 And Hankins as well. It's really hard to prove this, 0:40:18.080 --> 0:40:20.720 but he has a he has a sense that yes, 0:40:21.360 --> 0:40:24.600 he thinks that increasing consciousness of the seven day time 0:40:24.640 --> 0:40:28.000 period did have an effect on people's perception of time, 0:40:28.160 --> 0:40:30.880 and that effect was that it made people feel like 0:40:31.040 --> 0:40:35.160 time was going by faster. So to read his quote, 0:40:35.800 --> 0:40:37.680 I do think that when we are more attuned to 0:40:37.719 --> 0:40:40.560 the cycle, because it's shorter than a month, it feels 0:40:40.640 --> 0:40:43.759 like time moves much more quickly. When our Mondays are 0:40:43.800 --> 0:40:46.799 different from our Tuesdays and our Wednesdays, it does kind 0:40:46.800 --> 0:40:49.320 of feel like, all of a sudden, it's Monday again. 0:40:49.920 --> 0:40:53.120 You can see in nineteenth century diary entries that more 0:40:53.160 --> 0:40:56.319 and more often people describe this feeling by referring to 0:40:56.400 --> 0:41:00.239 how another week has come and gone. Which is funny 0:41:00.280 --> 0:41:02.279 because as soon as I read that phrase, another week 0:41:02.320 --> 0:41:04.640 has come and go on, that sounds like something extracted 0:41:04.680 --> 0:41:10.319 directly from like a Victorian letter or something. But but yeah, 0:41:10.560 --> 0:41:12.279 that's interesting. I wonder what you think about that if 0:41:12.280 --> 0:41:16.520 you organize more of your life along the schedule of 0:41:16.600 --> 0:41:19.560 the seven day week, does it feel like your life 0:41:19.640 --> 0:41:23.000 is happening faster than if you don't. I don't know. 0:41:23.080 --> 0:41:26.160 You know, it's because you also hear people saying the 0:41:26.200 --> 0:41:29.839 same thing about months and years, where they'll say things like, oh, man, 0:41:30.080 --> 0:41:32.279 March just flew by, didn't it It just seemed like 0:41:32.280 --> 0:41:34.839 it was no time at all? Or is it really 0:41:34.920 --> 0:41:39.160 Christmas again? It's we just did Christmas, now it's Christmas again. Um. 0:41:39.840 --> 0:41:44.640 So I'm I'm not not sure if I mean, I 0:41:44.800 --> 0:41:47.919 believe the author here, but um. But on the other hand, 0:41:47.920 --> 0:41:50.000 I don't know if it completely matches up with with 0:41:50.040 --> 0:41:52.960 my experience and my experience of hearing other people talk 0:41:53.000 --> 0:41:55.600 about the passage of time. I guess we're so conscious 0:41:55.600 --> 0:41:57.920 of weeks we don't really have anything to compare it to. 0:41:58.160 --> 0:42:01.279 We like, we can't remember what the passage of time 0:42:01.360 --> 0:42:03.200 felt like in the part of our lives where we 0:42:03.239 --> 0:42:08.560 didn't experience weeks. Yeah, I would say when you think 0:42:08.600 --> 0:42:10.560 outside of cat like, if you're going to actually think 0:42:10.600 --> 0:42:16.080 about things that are not cleanly divided by by by 0:42:16.160 --> 0:42:18.319 months and weeks and days, you know, I might think 0:42:18.360 --> 0:42:20.760 about the seasons, and sometimes that gets a little harder 0:42:20.760 --> 0:42:22.600 to think about, Like if you think about, well, when 0:42:22.640 --> 0:42:26.160 did when did winter actually begin for me and this 0:42:26.320 --> 0:42:28.439 part in this part of the world in which I live, 0:42:28.840 --> 0:42:30.640 and when does it seem like it is going to end? 0:42:30.680 --> 0:42:32.080 Or when did it end? And then when did it 0:42:32.120 --> 0:42:35.200 start again? And so forth. Good, we seem to have 0:42:35.239 --> 0:42:40.440 a certain fluctuation here in Atlanta. But I guess when 0:42:40.480 --> 0:42:43.480 I start thinking about that, maybe it becomes a little murkier. 0:42:43.960 --> 0:42:46.400 But you know, you begin to feel like it feels 0:42:46.400 --> 0:42:49.000 like it's always been winter. Well, of course we get 0:42:49.040 --> 0:42:52.279 the standard time perception paradox, right that has come up 0:42:52.280 --> 0:42:54.760 on the show many times before, which is that in general, 0:42:55.520 --> 0:42:57.680 things that feel like they're going on for a long 0:42:57.719 --> 0:43:00.640 time in the moment vanished to a point in memory, 0:43:00.880 --> 0:43:03.320 and things that feel like they're gone in a flash 0:43:03.400 --> 0:43:06.439 in the moment tend to expand in memory. A big 0:43:06.480 --> 0:43:10.200 example seasonally that I think about is um summers. When 0:43:10.200 --> 0:43:12.440 I was a kid, You know, summers off from school. 0:43:12.480 --> 0:43:14.719 It's like, when you're in it, it feels like the 0:43:14.719 --> 0:43:16.960 summer is over in an instant, you just have to 0:43:16.960 --> 0:43:19.319 go right back to school. But in my memory, the 0:43:19.360 --> 0:43:23.279 summers seem infinite. Yeah they yeah, they really did. Yeah, 0:43:23.320 --> 0:43:27.800 there's and granted school school summers have have gotten shorter, 0:43:28.600 --> 0:43:31.919 but the way they felt versus the way they seem 0:43:31.960 --> 0:43:33.920 now like, it's it's more than can be accounted for 0:43:34.080 --> 0:43:37.239 just by h adding or subtracting even whole month of 0:43:37.239 --> 0:43:40.600 the days. It reminds me of that that short story, 0:43:40.640 --> 0:43:45.160 though the woman had been inspired. Kubrick's Ai movie had 0:43:45.160 --> 0:43:48.440 the title super Toys Last All Summer Long, which I 0:43:48.440 --> 0:43:51.000 always really like that title because you know it it 0:43:51.080 --> 0:43:54.839 implies the summers of childhood and like you said, they're 0:43:54.880 --> 0:43:58.000 kind of infinite nature. Well, and to come back to weeks, 0:43:58.280 --> 0:44:02.399 I think one way in which the summer experience when 0:44:02.400 --> 0:44:04.560 I was a kid was different was that, of course, 0:44:04.640 --> 0:44:06.920 during the school year, I'm highly aware of what day 0:44:06.920 --> 0:44:09.040 of the week it was, and then the summer weeks 0:44:09.160 --> 0:44:12.960 didn't matter anymore. That's another thing, because that, yeah, I 0:44:13.000 --> 0:44:16.239 do remember more of a wide open summer situation when 0:44:16.280 --> 0:44:18.239 I was a kid, but as a parent, like we're 0:44:18.239 --> 0:44:21.480 more like, nope, this this this week, we're doing this camp, 0:44:21.560 --> 0:44:25.400 and it definitely has a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, situations. 0:44:25.440 --> 0:44:27.120 Some of those days are pool days, some of those 0:44:27.160 --> 0:44:29.719 days are pizza party days. It's all, it's all in 0:44:29.760 --> 0:44:31.600 the schedule. You know. There was one more thing I 0:44:31.600 --> 0:44:34.839 was thinking about getting into that is a a proposed 0:44:35.040 --> 0:44:39.200 neurological basis for UH for the seven day a week. 0:44:39.280 --> 0:44:42.320 But but maybe I'm gonna save that for our listener 0:44:42.360 --> 0:44:44.960 Mail episode on the following Monday, because we got a 0:44:45.000 --> 0:44:48.560 good message from a listener about it. Excellent. Well, on 0:44:48.600 --> 0:44:51.719 that note, if you have thoughts on this topic that 0:44:51.760 --> 0:44:54.920 we've covered these last three episodes the seven day Week, UH, 0:44:55.320 --> 0:44:57.400 keep them coming right in. We'd love to hear from you. 0:44:57.440 --> 0:45:00.319 Everybody has some sort of connection to this. How do 0:45:00.400 --> 0:45:02.160 these How do the day's feel to you? How does 0:45:02.200 --> 0:45:05.720 the passage of the week feel to you? Um, anything 0:45:05.760 --> 0:45:08.560 we've discussed in these episodes is open game, So right in, 0:45:08.719 --> 0:45:11.200 we'd we'd love to hear from you. In the meantime, 0:45:11.239 --> 0:45:13.480 if you would like to check out other episodes of 0:45:13.520 --> 0:45:15.200 Stuff to Blow your Mind, well, this is how our 0:45:15.239 --> 0:45:18.080 week tends to go on Monday, we do listener Mail 0:45:18.080 --> 0:45:20.319 on Tuesday, a core episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:45:20.360 --> 0:45:23.720 On Wednesday, a short form artifact or monster fact episode. 0:45:23.719 --> 0:45:27.000 On Thursday, another episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Friday, 0:45:27.080 --> 0:45:29.040 we do Weird How Cinema. That's our time to set 0:45:29.080 --> 0:45:32.040 aside most serious concerns and just talk about a strange film. 0:45:32.080 --> 0:45:34.920 And then on Saturday we have a rerun. We have 0:45:34.920 --> 0:45:38.239 a Vault episode, followed by Sunday, which of course is 0:45:38.280 --> 0:45:40.600 the day we rest, the day we on our soul 0:45:40.680 --> 0:45:45.200 invict Us. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio 0:45:45.320 --> 0:45:48.680 producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get 0:45:48.760 --> 0:45:51.239 in touch with us with feedback on this episode or 0:45:51.239 --> 0:45:53.440 any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or 0:45:53.520 --> 0:45:56.320 just to say hello, you can email us at contact 0:45:56.360 --> 0:46:06.520 at Stuff to Blow Your Mind Doctor. Stuff to Blow 0:46:06.520 --> 0:46:09.080 Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more 0:46:09.120 --> 0:46:11.680 podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, 0:46:11.880 --> 0:46:27.200 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows.