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Speaker 1: Welcome to Sbot to Blow Your Mind, the production of

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Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: we're back with part three of our series about the

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Speaker 1: seven day week. If you haven't listened to the two

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Speaker 1: previous parts, you should probably go do that first. This

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Speaker 1: one will maybe make more sense if if you do that.

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Speaker 1: But hey, if you want to, you know, fly by

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Speaker 1: the proverbial seat of your pants, let's go for it.

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Speaker 1: Here we are in part three. Al right, well, you know,

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Speaker 1: to kick things off, I thought, as a potential fun aside,

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Speaker 1: I thought we might think about weeks on other planets. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, because if we're if we're going to have

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Speaker 1: just a planet centric week based on solar days, so

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Speaker 1: one complete rotation of said planet, then this is about

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Speaker 1: how it all breaks down here on Earth, one week

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Speaker 1: is a hundred and sixty eight hours twenty four hour days.

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Speaker 1: Seven of those make sense, simple math. Um. On Mercury,

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Speaker 1: one week is one thousand, four hundred and eight hours,

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Speaker 1: or about fifty eight Earth days. So on Mercury that

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Speaker 1: it is a hard core t g if mentality Like

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Speaker 1: by the time you get to the weekend, you are

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Speaker 1: ready to party exactly. And it's even worse on Venus.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we know Venus is as a hell world.

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Speaker 1: On Venus, one week is forty thousand, twenty four hours,

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Speaker 1: or about one thousand, seven hundred and one earth days. Now,

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Speaker 1: the really weird thing about Venus would be that I

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Speaker 1: think it is the case that on Venus a day

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Speaker 1: is actually longer than a year, meaning that it takes

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Speaker 1: the planet Venus longer to rotate on its axis than

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Speaker 1: it does to go entirely around the Sun. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that would mean that a week on Venus is

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Speaker 1: actually more than seven years on Venus. Yeah, and again

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Speaker 1: we're just taking the idea that you know we have

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Speaker 1: a older day here on Earth. Well, complete rotation is

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Speaker 1: a day on another planet, and therefore seven of those

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Speaker 1: would make a week on any given planet. All right, now,

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Speaker 1: you know we already touched on Earth. Head on out

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Speaker 1: to Mars. The red planet has twenty five hour days,

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Speaker 1: so it's not too far off. We're talking a hundred

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Speaker 1: and seventy five hour week. But then you go to

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Speaker 1: Jupiter here you have ten hour days, so we're talking

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Speaker 1: about a seventy hour week. Saturn eleven hour days, so

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Speaker 1: that's pretty easy to calculate seventy seven hour weeks um.

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Speaker 1: And then by the time we get to uh Uranus

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Speaker 1: we're talking, we're looking at a seventeen hour days, so

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Speaker 1: that's a hundred nineteen hour weeks, and on Neptune sixteen

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Speaker 1: hour days, a hundred and twelve hour weeks. You know,

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Speaker 1: this should all I think, drive home, how you know,

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Speaker 1: nonsensical in many respects, the concept of a week or

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Speaker 1: even a day is when you move off of Earth. Uh.

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Speaker 1: For instance, just looking at Mars, the lack of a

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Speaker 1: quote leisurely orbiting moon, as the planetary society puts it,

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Speaker 1: means that you you don't really have Martian months for example.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so the year on Mars doesn't really divide

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Speaker 1: into manageable time units like our months. Right, so when

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Speaker 1: we come to like determining like what time it is

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Speaker 1: on Mars, like that's that's ultimately a whole whole, whole

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Speaker 1: different topic unto itself. Scientists that had to devise, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, different ways of thinking about time regarding another

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Speaker 1: planet um. And of course you can imagine how how

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Speaker 1: complicated this would become if you had ultimately had some

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Speaker 1: sort of colonial system in place on another world. Actually,

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Speaker 1: you know what, I just realized. I realized I was

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Speaker 1: thinking about the speed of the orbits of the moons

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Speaker 1: of Mars entirely in the wrong direction, right, because I

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Speaker 1: was thinking, Oh, yeah, I've forgotten how long it takes

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Speaker 1: some maybe maybe it takes some like months and months

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Speaker 1: on on Earth to go around Mars one time. But

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Speaker 1: no phobos orbits Mars like once every eight hours or something. Right,

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Speaker 1: It's it's just whizzing around, yeah, not very leisurely. So

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Speaker 1: it's do you know, I guess a reminder to just

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Speaker 1: you know, so so many so much of our contemplations

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Speaker 1: of time are based on again, as we discussed in

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Speaker 1: the first episode, the the observable World, the observable cosmos,

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Speaker 1: and you're not going to have the same a set

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Speaker 1: of stuff in place on other worlds, or it's going

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Speaker 1: to mean something different, such as how long it seems

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Speaker 1: to take the sun to rise and then to set.

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Speaker 1: So this, obviously, this leads to the next logical point

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Speaker 1: is that if you were to watch the video from

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Speaker 1: the Ring movies and therefore invoke the wrath of of

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Speaker 1: of of a strange VHS tape based ghost you would

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Speaker 1: of course have seven days left to live. Those seven

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Speaker 1: days would be best spent on an off world colony,

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Speaker 1: you know, preferably heading on over to uh to Venus.

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Speaker 1: I think now, I think this came up when we're

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Speaker 1: actually talking about this earlier, and Rob, you and I

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Speaker 1: both forgot that. In the movie, they explain why it

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Speaker 1: takes seven days, because that's like, you know, how long

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Speaker 1: the creepy ghost girls in the well or whatever. But

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Speaker 1: but but Sem had to remind us, Seth had to

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Speaker 1: remind us. But we both forgot that. And you had

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Speaker 1: the most amazing theory about the origin of the seven

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Speaker 1: day curse period in the Ring, and it had to

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Speaker 1: do with our childhood memories of Blockbuster video. Yes, uh,

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Speaker 1: well I I I was thinking, okay, seven seven days?

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Speaker 1: Why seven days? Seven is is not an unlucky number

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Speaker 1: in Japanese culture. It seems like four would be more

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Speaker 1: fitting for that if we were going to go that route.

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Speaker 1: So what is it about seven? I was thinking, Well,

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Speaker 1: maybe it's the seven day rental period, right, and because

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Speaker 1: we know that that she likes working through VHS tapes,

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Speaker 1: so maybe it has to do with the VHS rental cycle.

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Speaker 1: Of course, what this got me wondering about is how

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Speaker 1: come in the Ring movies nobody ever talks back on

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Speaker 1: the phone, you know, so you get the phone calls

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Speaker 1: like your cursed seven days. How come nobody ever just

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Speaker 1: like tries to negotiate. Well, you know, sometimes they have

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Speaker 1: to participate in a survey after the call for quality

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Speaker 1: assurance purposes. So there is that. In reality, I think

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Speaker 1: the Ring videotape would probably give rise to a subculture

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Speaker 1: of of what what would you call them? Like curse

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Speaker 1: baiting scam fighters, you know, like the people who played

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Speaker 1: pranks on the people who do the I R. S

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Speaker 1: scam phone calls, except they're scamming Samara. Yeah. Yeah. Though

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Speaker 1: it is interesting when you compare the two because when

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Speaker 1: in the fictional situation, we have an evil entity calling

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Speaker 1: you and wishing you harm and uh, it's it's very

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Speaker 1: much the same thing when you have somebody trying to

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Speaker 1: run some sort of a phone scam like it's it's

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Speaker 1: almost its quite unsettling like to to to be speaking

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Speaker 1: to somebody and realize this is someone who wishes to

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Speaker 1: do me great harm. You've won a free cruise, but

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Speaker 1: you first you need to send us some iTunes gift cards. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's sort of thing. But you know, this also makes

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Speaker 1: me think that, Okay, if we have a technological ghost here,

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Speaker 1: maybe two potentially well not not actually, but within within

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Speaker 1: this argument look to an artificial cycle of time and

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Speaker 1: using that as a way to to judge some other act.

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Speaker 1: It does make me think about like the back in

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Speaker 1: the old days of watching television, Um, there was a

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Speaker 1: set TV cycle and I'm not saying it would was

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Speaker 1: actually to the point where like a heavy, heavy TV

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Speaker 1: consumption would make you know what day of the week

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Speaker 1: it was based on what was on television. But it

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Speaker 1: was easy to sort of have that that line of

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Speaker 1: thinking in your head, you know, like you know what

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Speaker 1: what is supposed to come on on Mondays? You know

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Speaker 1: what what is the Monday night entertainment versus the Tuesday

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Speaker 1: night Uh, you know the movie of the week sort

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Speaker 1: of thing. Um, you could you could imagine yourself leaning

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Speaker 1: into that view of the cosmos, and in a sense,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like ancient timekeeping. It's based on the

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Speaker 1: observable universe. Only your observable universe is what's on the

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Speaker 1: television screen. Is USA up all night? Yeah? You know

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Speaker 1: what day it is. Then now, as delightful as all

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Speaker 1: that that is, we do actually have more serious contemplations

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Speaker 1: regarding the seven day week to get to here. Oh right,

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Speaker 1: so I guess in this episode we're probably going to

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Speaker 1: talk some more about the history of the seven day week,

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Speaker 1: like where it comes from and how it has changed

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Speaker 1: over time. There is one paper I came across that

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Speaker 1: if you want a really really good, detailed, scholarly deep

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Speaker 1: dive on this issue, uh, I would recommend this is

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Speaker 1: actually not a paper, sorry, This is a book chapter

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Speaker 1: in a historical book by the academic publisher Bill called

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Speaker 1: Calendars in the Making The Origins of Calendars from the

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Speaker 1: Roman Empire to the Later Middle Ages, published in and

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Speaker 1: this chapter is called the seven day Week in the

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Speaker 1: Roman Empire Origins, Standardization and Diffusion. And this is by

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Speaker 1: Ilaria boltre Guini and Sasha Stern, and both of these

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Speaker 1: authors are scholars of Hebrew and Jewish studies at University

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Speaker 1: College London. This is a really good, really detailed chapter,

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Speaker 1: but it is sort of written for scholars, so it's

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Speaker 1: good if you want maximal detail on on the origins

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Speaker 1: of the Western seven day week. Uh. Given basically our

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Speaker 1: best picture of the evidence within the last year or so.

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Speaker 1: But I just thought I would mention a few things

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Speaker 1: from it that struck me as as interesting for the

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Speaker 1: lay person. Now, of course, they acknowledge the same thing

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Speaker 1: that we've mentioned several times now, which is that the

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Speaker 1: the deep origins of the seven day week are poorly

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Speaker 1: understood because we don't have a founding document really of

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Speaker 1: the seven day week says here is where the week begins,

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Speaker 1: and you know, and from here on out everybody will

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Speaker 1: use it for this, that and the other. Instead, we

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Speaker 1: have little tidbits of evidence from from literary sources here

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Speaker 1: and there in antiquity, and occasionally from uh from archaeological

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Speaker 1: of finds that give evidence of people using some kind

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Speaker 1: of seven day weekly schedule in the ancient Near East.

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Speaker 1: But they these pieces of evidence are fragmentary, and a

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Speaker 1: lot of times we don't know exactly what broader cultural

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Speaker 1: conclusions to draw from them. So, for example, we know

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Speaker 1: that I the first few centuries c e. In the

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Speaker 1: Roman Empire, people were at some level using seven day weeks,

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Speaker 1: but we don't know exactly how far this practice goes back,

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Speaker 1: and what all of the exact inputs on it were.

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Speaker 1: Now in the previous episode we talked about, uh, this

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Speaker 1: weird scenario that has been noted by historians where there

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Speaker 1: were multiple different kinds of weeks in the first few

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Speaker 1: centuries the e of the Roman Empire, uh, that had

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Speaker 1: different numbers of days in them, which sounds terribly confusing.

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Speaker 1: But so, for example, you had this eight day week

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Speaker 1: that seemed related to commerce, so it's the eight day

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Speaker 1: market cycle. But then you also had these seven day

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Speaker 1: periods such as the seven day Roman astrological week, in

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Speaker 1: which the days were named after gods or planets. And

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Speaker 1: then also the seven day cycle of the Jewish Sabbath,

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Speaker 1: which was acknowledged, uh, certainly by Jews within the Roman Empire,

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Speaker 1: but also by by other groups. Well, yeah, so you

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Speaker 1: had these had divination and religion playing a role, but

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Speaker 1: you also had like the hard realities of commerce and

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Speaker 1: the economy. But even you know, but none of these

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Speaker 1: are are fixed, uh, you know, figures in a given world,

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Speaker 1: like these are things that will change over time and

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Speaker 1: do right. And so there is one point in this

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Speaker 1: book chapter where Boltugini and Stern actually disagree with something

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Speaker 1: that I think we got from one of our other sources,

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Speaker 1: which was the book The Seven Day Circle by Avatar Zerubavel,

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Speaker 1: which claimed that the the Jewish practice of observing a

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Speaker 1: seven day cycle with a with a day of rest

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Speaker 1: traced back to Mesopotamian practices. But the authors of this

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Speaker 1: paper actually say that despite what other authors have alleged,

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Speaker 1: there's actually really no very good evidence tracing the seven

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Speaker 1: day week back to ancient Egyptian or Mesopotamian practices. We

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Speaker 1: we ultimately don't know exactly where it comes from. Now this,

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Speaker 1: I wonder if this explained some of the hesitancy you

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Speaker 1: see to really nable us down in some of the

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Speaker 1: other sources, like for instance Fagin and aveni Um who

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Speaker 1: I acided in the first episode. Oh yeah, they were

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Speaker 1: more hesitant to to put a specific origin on it. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So it seems like it's still very much a topic

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Speaker 1: of of of of studying consideration at least. But we do,

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Speaker 1: of course have literary evidence from the ancient world of

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Speaker 1: places where some kind of seven day weekly cycle or referenced.

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Speaker 1: Of course, the big one is uh is the Hebrew

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Speaker 1: Bible making reference to the Sabbath. So we see the

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Speaker 1: idea of a seven day week, the days leading up

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Speaker 1: to the Sabbath day in the Hebrew Bible. Though interestingly, uh,

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Speaker 1: the authors of this of this book chapter claimed that

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Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible there are actually no events that

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Speaker 1: are said to occur on specific days of the week

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Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible itself. The dated events are dated

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Speaker 1: by other methods, such as by by month or by

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Speaker 1: year um. And this raises questions like they ask, Okay,

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Speaker 1: so it's clear that at some point Jews were observing

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Speaker 1: a Sabbath day, but they say, for example, we don't

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Speaker 1: know in the early periods if Sabbath observance was synchronized

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Speaker 1: across different Jewish communities or did like local Jewish communities

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Speaker 1: all have their own Sabbath cycles. But once we get

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Speaker 1: closer in time to the Roman period, we do see

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Speaker 1: Jewish sources making specific reference to two things occurring on

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Speaker 1: certain days of the week uh, specifically on the Sabbath day. UH. So,

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Speaker 1: for example, they referenced the Book of First Maccabee's, which

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Speaker 1: is a text from the late second century b C.

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Speaker 1: And this makes reference to something occurring on the Sabbath day.

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Speaker 1: They also make reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which

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Speaker 1: are of course these fascinating documents from Jewish communities dating

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Speaker 1: back to the second to first centuries b c UH.

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Speaker 1: And they say that the Dead Sea scrolls in some

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Speaker 1: cases make reference to a calendrical system. Um. This was

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Speaker 1: kind of confusing, but I think the way I understand

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Speaker 1: it is they had a year that had a different

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Speaker 1: number of days than our year. I think it was

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Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty four days, which unlike our year

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Speaker 1: of three hundred and sixty five point to five days

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Speaker 1: or whatever. UH, that year would divide evenly into fifty

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Speaker 1: two weeks, so you get a whole number of weeks

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Speaker 1: within the year, and this would be for seven day

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Speaker 1: weeks based around the observance of the Sabbath. But then

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Speaker 1: they also point out that a a seven day Sabbath

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Speaker 1: week is mentioned and observed within the Greek Septuagent, which

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Speaker 1: is the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, in in

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Speaker 1: the Psalms. But one question would be, Okay, why the

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Speaker 1: sudden appearance of these references to things happening on uh

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Speaker 1: days of the week in Jewish literature from around the

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Speaker 1: second century b CE. What happened around there? So to

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Speaker 1: read from the authors, they write quote the second century

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Speaker 1: b c. Invention of the seven day week as a

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Speaker 1: time reckoning system, even if only theoretical or literary, may

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Speaker 1: well have been related to the revival and promotion of

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Speaker 1: the observance of the Sabbath, which is credited to the

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Speaker 1: Maccabeean rebels of the one sixties, but was surely also

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Speaker 1: shared and promoted by other Judean groups at the time,

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Speaker 1: such as the communities described in the Kumran literature, and

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Speaker 1: this would be the ones associated with the Dead Sea

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Speaker 1: scrolls uh and may have percolated further onto the diaspora

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Speaker 1: in Egypt, as the papyri above mentioned possibly suggest promotion

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Speaker 1: of Sabbath observance in this period may have elicited the

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Speaker 1: conceptualization of the week as a recurring sequence of seven

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Speaker 1: numbered days and as a fundamental structure of time reckoning

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Speaker 1: and calendars. Uh So, again, this is one thing where

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Speaker 1: we have to sort of speculate. We don't know for sure,

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Speaker 1: but the authors here are saying it's possible that we

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Speaker 1: see this sort of weak consciousness emerging in Jews of

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Speaker 1: the second century BC as part of a religious revival,

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Speaker 1: a sort of gathering of enthusiasm for observance of the

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Speaker 1: Sabbath as a as a religious practice that of but then,

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Speaker 1: of course this could end up having other functions within

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Speaker 1: people's lives if you're observing uh, you know, a week

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Speaker 1: leading up to the Sabbath that could serve other scheduling

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Speaker 1: functions if practice for long enough. Though of course, they

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Speaker 1: acknowledge that we don't know exactly what role these week

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Speaker 1: days played in in people's day to day lives early on. Um.

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Speaker 1: But another thing that's important to mention is that the

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Speaker 1: early Jewish uses of days of the week identified a

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Speaker 1: day not with a name, and certainly not with our names,

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Speaker 1: because of of course, our names of the days of

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Speaker 1: the week in English are derived largely from pagan and

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Speaker 1: astrological sources, which would have had no relevance to the

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Speaker 1: ancient Jews uh. And instead they identified days of the

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Speaker 1: week with numbers, so this would be something like three

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Speaker 1: in the Sabbath, so you would like sort of count

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Speaker 1: from the Sabbath day, but then from here. In the

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Speaker 1: subsequent centuries, this way reckoning days of the week appears

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Speaker 1: to show up in other types of literature, such as

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Speaker 1: Greek literature of the first century CE, but then again

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Speaker 1: mostly in Jewish or Jewish influence texts, for example, the

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Speaker 1: Books of the New Testament. These are books written in Greek,

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Speaker 1: but they're influenced by by Jewish religious ideas of course,

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Speaker 1: and also in the works of Josephus, these make references

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Speaker 1: to days of the week, and it's a seven day week.

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Speaker 1: So for example, the author of the Gospel of Mark

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Speaker 1: uh that this is somebody who is writing in Greek

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Speaker 1: sometime in the first century CE is writing a story

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Speaker 1: of the life of Jesus. And the author of the

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Speaker 1: Gospel of Mark writes that the crucifixion of Jesus took

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Speaker 1: place on quote Preparation, which is the day before the Sabbath,

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Speaker 1: and writes that the resurrection was on the quote first

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Speaker 1: of the week. So I think I'm getting those right,

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Speaker 1: But that would mean that the the author here is

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Speaker 1: saying that Jesus was crucified on a Friday, because it's

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Speaker 1: the day before the Sabbath, which is Saturday, and then

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Speaker 1: the resurrection took place on a Sunday, which was the

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Speaker 1: first day of the week after the Sabbath. So here

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Speaker 1: we've got this evidence for the the Sabbath cycle as

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Speaker 1: one of the main influences on the emergence of a

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Speaker 1: seven day week that that we inherited and used throughout

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Speaker 1: the world today. But another major influence seems to be

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Speaker 1: the Roman planetary week. This is something we see evidence

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Speaker 1: of in Rome and other parts of Italy, not just

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Speaker 1: the city of Rome, but Rome and the Italian peninsula.

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Speaker 1: Uh and this is well attested by the end of

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Speaker 1: the first century CE. Now the Roman astrological week again,

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Speaker 1: this is having seven days that are named after the

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Speaker 1: planets or the gods associated with the planets in the

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Speaker 1: in the Roman system of astrology or astronomy. Because the

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Speaker 1: quote planets they could observe. Again, a couple of these

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Speaker 1: things are not actually planets, but they were the Sun,

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Speaker 1: the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. These are

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Speaker 1: the moving objects in the sky that you can see

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Speaker 1: without a telescope. And the way that the Roman astrol

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Speaker 1: logical week was different was that it was not structured

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Speaker 1: around a day of rest or a day of religious

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Speaker 1: observance the way that the Jewish week was. Instead, it

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Speaker 1: appears to have served a primarily astrological informative purpose, so

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Speaker 1: sort of letting people know which planets reigned over had

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Speaker 1: influence over which day of the cycle. Uh. And once again,

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Speaker 1: this would not have any basis in real astronomical observations

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Speaker 1: or patterns. It's not like there's anything physical you can

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Speaker 1: say that associates the Sun with Sundays or the moon

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Speaker 1: with Mondays. It's just that they just happened to pair

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Speaker 1: them up that way. I don't know, unless we discover

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Speaker 1: something really interesting that the Romans were on too, that

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Speaker 1: nobody's figured out since then. Well, I mean, if if

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Speaker 1: Monday really was aligned with with the moon, we would

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Speaker 1: surely see werewolf transformations on Mondays. And I've never heard

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Speaker 1: of that being a thing, so clearly it doesn't check out. No,

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Speaker 1: I'd say the vast majority of a wu's occur on

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Speaker 1: Fridays and Saturdays, unless one is a real uh work da,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe maybe you hollen when Monday comes along.

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Speaker 1: That's a good point, of course, you've been working all

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Speaker 1: weekend anyway, So I don't know. Sin news to the

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Speaker 1: Emperor that the that the city has been sacked by

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Speaker 1: verk beasts. But anyway, so their paper goes into great detail,

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Speaker 1: but just in a very quick summary, it seems we

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Speaker 1: see increasing numbers of references to use of a seven

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Speaker 1: day week of some kind throughout the Roman Empire in

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Speaker 1: the first couple of centuries CE, and again this would

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Speaker 1: be based on the Christian seven day week that is

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Speaker 1: derived from the Sabbath week, but then also using this

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Speaker 1: Roman astrological seven day week as a basis uh, sort

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Speaker 1: of the fading away of the significance of the eight

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Speaker 1: day market week. And then in UH in the fourth

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Speaker 1: century CE, you get some real moves such as by

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Speaker 1: a decree by Constantine that makes Sunday sort of the

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Speaker 1: official sacred day of the empire. Of course, Constantine was

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Speaker 1: the first Christian emperor of Rome. Uh. And so yeah,

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Speaker 1: you see a big push towards standardization of the use

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Speaker 1: of a seven day week, and it's in this relationship

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Speaker 1: to the Christian significance of Sunday as the Lord's Day

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Speaker 1: or the day of worship uh and UH. And this

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Speaker 1: being sort of standardized throughout the Roman Empire, especially in

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Speaker 1: the third and fourth centuries. And this is the point

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Speaker 1: where we can really start to say, Okay, here's the

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Speaker 1: week that we inherited, and we can situate it well

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Speaker 1: within history. So if your time machine has like Mondays,

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Speaker 1: Wednesdays and Tuesdays on and so forth. Uh, this might

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Speaker 1: be as far back as you can really go this

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Speaker 1: period with perfect accuracy. Also, you should probably reconsider the

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Speaker 1: interface for your time machine's depending on these these days.

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Speaker 1: I just want to go five thousand mondays back. Thank you,

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Speaker 1: thank you. Now. I mentioned in the first part of

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Speaker 1: this series that one of the sources I've been reading,

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Speaker 1: uh for for history of the seven day week was

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Speaker 1: a U. C. Berkeley historian named David Hankin, who has

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Speaker 1: written a book called The Week, A History of the

399
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Speaker 1: Unnatural Rhythms that made us who we are. And so

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Speaker 1: there have been several articles out and interviews with Hanken

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Speaker 1: about this book that I've drawn from here. One of

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Speaker 1: the things I read was this Eon magazine article by

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Speaker 1: Hankin where he tries to talk about some of the

404
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Speaker 1: reasons that the week became especially salient in his view

405
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Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, that there was something that happened

406
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Speaker 1: roughly in the eighteen hundreds in the West that made

407
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Speaker 1: the week suddenly a much more useful and important calendar

408
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Speaker 1: unit than it had been in centuries before. Because before that,

409
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Speaker 1: of course, people observed the week, you know, so in

410
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Speaker 1: medieval Europe, there was a week, but it might be

411
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Speaker 1: more important for like tracking how long until the day

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Speaker 1: you go to church or something. And one reason that

413
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Speaker 1: the week became more salient in the eighteen hundreds was

414
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Speaker 1: the increasing proportion of society that made a living by

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Speaker 1: wage labor, so working you know, some number of hours

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Speaker 1: per week for some you know, a factory owner or

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Speaker 1: in some kind of shop, instead of just people working

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Speaker 1: on farms and things. And of course at this time

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Speaker 1: it would have been common for wage laborers to work

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Speaker 1: on Saturdays, but with Saturday representing the most common end

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Speaker 1: of the seven day weekly cycle and the regular pay day,

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Speaker 1: so if you have a day of the seven day

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Speaker 1: cycle where the majority of people who are getting a

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Speaker 1: paycheck are receiving that check, that's going to kind of

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Speaker 1: change patterns of buying and consumption throughout the economy. So

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Speaker 1: whatever people wanted to spend their paycheck on Saturday night

427
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Speaker 1: might be a likely time for it. But by the

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Speaker 1: early twentieth century there had been an increased push among

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Speaker 1: wage laborers to have to have two day weekends instead

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Speaker 1: of just Sunday off, and so especially in the nineteen

431
00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:06,840
Speaker 1: thirties under under FDR, labor unions managed to make gains

432
00:24:06,880 --> 00:24:09,240
Speaker 1: to sort of pressure it to to become the norm

433
00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:12,199
Speaker 1: in the United States for full time workers to have

434
00:24:12,280 --> 00:24:15,120
Speaker 1: a two day weekend, so you get Saturday and Sunday off.

435
00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:18,399
Speaker 1: This was formalized I think when the US past the

436
00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:21,680
Speaker 1: Fair Labor Standards Act in in nineteen thirty eight, which

437
00:24:22,080 --> 00:24:24,320
Speaker 1: made a forty hour work week with a two day

438
00:24:24,359 --> 00:24:27,680
Speaker 1: weekend the norm and the majority of American jobs. It's easy.

439
00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:29,920
Speaker 1: This is another one of those examples that where it's

440
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:31,639
Speaker 1: easy to take it for granted and just think of

441
00:24:31,800 --> 00:24:36,480
Speaker 1: like the weekend as a part of life itself. Uh,

442
00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:39,800
Speaker 1: just imagining like, you know, people living in in centuries

443
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:42,840
Speaker 1: past and then doing them doing something on the weekend.

444
00:24:42,920 --> 00:24:45,800
Speaker 1: You know, it's just without thinking too closely about it,

445
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:48,200
Speaker 1: you can easily fall into that trap of just thinking

446
00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:50,399
Speaker 1: that that's this is just the pattern of life, this

447
00:24:50,440 --> 00:24:52,960
Speaker 1: is just how it works. No, the weekend, the two

448
00:24:53,040 --> 00:24:55,119
Speaker 1: day weekend is fairly new, and it's something that had

449
00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: to be fought for. Yeah. Henken actually identifies a number

450
00:24:59,080 --> 00:25:01,720
Speaker 1: of different influence is that may have led to the

451
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:06,920
Speaker 1: increased salience of the week in the nineteenth century. One

452
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:11,200
Speaker 1: of them is the trend towards what he calls stock taking.

453
00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:14,919
Speaker 1: I think a sort of accounting of one's affairs and

454
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:17,480
Speaker 1: and one's life. I guess this could be for business

455
00:25:17,560 --> 00:25:21,080
Speaker 1: or personal reasons, with the use of the seven day

456
00:25:21,080 --> 00:25:23,560
Speaker 1: week in the nineteenth century, and this would be aided

457
00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:28,719
Speaker 1: by actually the proliferation of mass market diary books with

458
00:25:28,840 --> 00:25:33,080
Speaker 1: pages already formatted to reflect the days of the week,

459
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:37,680
Speaker 1: so like sort of the diary would arrive in your

460
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:40,959
Speaker 1: hands not just with blank pages, but with sort of

461
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:43,159
Speaker 1: spaces for you to fill in what was going on

462
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:46,120
Speaker 1: each week or for the days of the week. And

463
00:25:46,200 --> 00:25:49,320
Speaker 1: that earlier almanacs or diary books would have tended to

464
00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:54,000
Speaker 1: to favor different kind of calindrical organizations. I never would

465
00:25:54,040 --> 00:25:56,760
Speaker 1: have imagined that, but that was very interesting to me

466
00:25:56,840 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 1: that like changes in just like printing of diary books

467
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,680
Speaker 1: could could play a role here. Yeah, yeah, it's it's

468
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 1: interesting to think about again just how these um at

469
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:14,160
Speaker 1: times even physical structures of physical layouts based on the week,

470
00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:17,359
Speaker 1: the form of the week, these uh, these end up

471
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:19,080
Speaker 1: influencing the way we think about our lives, how we

472
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:21,880
Speaker 1: organize our lives, etcetera. So, yeah, that's that's you can

473
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:25,160
Speaker 1: imagine how almanacs and diary books would have a huge

474
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 1: impact because here it is, here is the week. Now

475
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:30,400
Speaker 1: fill in the week as you need to. He also

476
00:26:30,480 --> 00:26:33,760
Speaker 1: points to schools as possibly playing a role in cementing

477
00:26:33,800 --> 00:26:38,919
Speaker 1: weekly routines, uh to the printing another printed product, not

478
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:43,160
Speaker 1: just diary books, but domestic manuals that would just say,

479
00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:45,240
Speaker 1: you know, here's a good way to run a household,

480
00:26:45,280 --> 00:26:48,960
Speaker 1: and it would specify certain tasks that you would do

481
00:26:49,160 --> 00:26:51,400
Speaker 1: on certain days of the week. So it might say,

482
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 1: you know, Mondays are good for washing, and Tuesdays for ironing.

483
00:26:56,160 --> 00:26:59,680
Speaker 1: That's a lot of ironing. Well, you don't have to

484
00:26:59,720 --> 00:27:04,560
Speaker 1: fill the whole day with irony. But ultimately, Hankin identifies

485
00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:08,200
Speaker 1: as as maybe the main contributor to the increasing importance

486
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:11,960
Speaker 1: of the week as an organizing principle for life what

487
00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:18,879
Speaker 1: he calls commercial entertainment, voluntary association, and print culture, because

488
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:23,280
Speaker 1: he says that for increasingly urban populations people moving more

489
00:27:23,359 --> 00:27:27,240
Speaker 1: towards city life and wage labor, it turned out that

490
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:31,080
Speaker 1: cycles of weeks were actually a useful way to schedule

491
00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:34,919
Speaker 1: a busy, voluntary life. For example, if you're planning to

492
00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:37,199
Speaker 1: see friends on a regular basis, you could just know

493
00:27:37,280 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 1: that you know we get together every Thursday, which would

494
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:43,119
Speaker 1: allow for the meeting to happen on schedule without everybody

495
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:47,520
Speaker 1: checking to see if they had conflicting plans. And Hankin

496
00:27:47,640 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 1: argues that there's an interesting explanation for this. He says,

497
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:55,639
Speaker 1: it was quote the impersonal character of urban life unquote

498
00:27:55,640 --> 00:27:58,920
Speaker 1: that gave rise to the week as a primary scheduling device,

499
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:03,439
Speaker 1: because the week allowed people to quote coordinate recurring activities

500
00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:07,439
Speaker 1: with others, including those they might not yet know. And

501
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:09,920
Speaker 1: I think this would be opposed to in in more

502
00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:14,080
Speaker 1: rural life, the idea that socialization tends to be more

503
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 1: kind of continuous and spontaneous rather than you know, scheduled

504
00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:24,680
Speaker 1: recurring activities in an otherwise busy schedule. Yeah. Yeah, though

505
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:28,720
Speaker 1: it is kind of funny how it sounds like it

506
00:28:28,760 --> 00:28:30,560
Speaker 1: would be easier just to say, okay, well we're going

507
00:28:30,600 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 1: to always do this on Thursday. Thursday is the day

508
00:28:32,720 --> 00:28:35,880
Speaker 1: for this um. But I I know that that many

509
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:39,000
Speaker 1: of you out there probably have experienced with with with

510
00:28:39,080 --> 00:28:42,120
Speaker 1: this situation where you set that weekly expectation and then

511
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:44,480
Speaker 1: what happens when you get to Monday or Tuesday of

512
00:28:44,520 --> 00:28:46,560
Speaker 1: that week. Someone's like, wait, actually, can we do it

513
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:49,560
Speaker 1: on Wednesday this week instead. I have a thing, what

514
00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:52,280
Speaker 1: if we did it on Friday. No, Thursday is the

515
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:55,560
Speaker 1: day we decided that's why we have this week? And

516
00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:57,880
Speaker 1: how many of those are caused by either people working

517
00:28:57,880 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 1: outside of work hours or people us not wanting to

518
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:04,160
Speaker 1: go out and not wanting to admit it. Well, I mean,

519
00:29:04,160 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 1: it's in my opinion, and it's you know, it's fine

520
00:29:06,360 --> 00:29:07,560
Speaker 1: if you don't want to go out, it's fine even

521
00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 1: if you want to work instead, but then don't don't

522
00:29:09,680 --> 00:29:14,440
Speaker 1: bump around the the the the the the recurring uh schedule, uh,

523
00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:17,520
Speaker 1: just because because you've decided to work a little extra

524
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:21,120
Speaker 1: that day. I don't know, I'm uh like, like I said,

525
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:22,479
Speaker 1: this is I think one of those things where I

526
00:29:22,520 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 1: like the principle of it, but it seems to break

527
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:29,120
Speaker 1: down somewhat, uh in my experience. But we know, of

528
00:29:29,120 --> 00:29:32,520
Speaker 1: course that eventually the week becomes salient for basically everybody

529
00:29:32,520 --> 00:29:36,000
Speaker 1: in America, because it's not just like city dwellers whose

530
00:29:36,080 --> 00:29:38,720
Speaker 1: whose weeks are filled with lots of different kinds of

531
00:29:38,760 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 1: scheduled activities, uh that that you know about the week.

532
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:44,720
Speaker 1: Eventually it seems like the week is something that's on

533
00:29:44,760 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: everybody's mind, and uh, he mentions this. I want to

534
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:51,640
Speaker 1: read from a paragraph here, Hankin writes, quote, for those

535
00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:55,120
Speaker 1: who lived in small towns and on farms, fewer activities

536
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:58,760
Speaker 1: distinguished one week day from the next, but even they

537
00:29:58,760 --> 00:30:02,360
Speaker 1: would anticipate the ir eival of the weekly mail, apportioned

538
00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:05,440
Speaker 1: the reading of the newspaper they received every seven days,

539
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:08,520
Speaker 1: or follow the schedules of a train or stage coach

540
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:12,160
Speaker 1: that passed through regularly on specific week days. As a result,

541
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 1: generations of Americans became disciplined to the rhythms of the

542
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:18,440
Speaker 1: week that it impinged only lightly on the lives of

543
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:21,880
Speaker 1: their ancestors. So I think this is an interesting argument

544
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:23,680
Speaker 1: that it's like, even if you're not living in a

545
00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:26,720
Speaker 1: city and juggling a lot of uh, you know, scheduled

546
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:30,040
Speaker 1: activities on a recurring basis, you know, maybe you're just

547
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:33,160
Speaker 1: like we're working on a farm in the rural world. Eventually,

548
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:37,560
Speaker 1: the highly scheduled nature of city life sort of stretches

549
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:42,680
Speaker 1: out through through media and through transportation infrastructure and and

550
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:47,480
Speaker 1: communications through mail and stuff into the rest of the country. Now,

551
00:30:47,520 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 1: one thing I was wondering about is, okay, though, what

552
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:54,360
Speaker 1: what is the direct evidence that people tended to become

553
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:58,120
Speaker 1: more conscious of weeks and week days what day of

554
00:30:58,120 --> 00:30:59,760
Speaker 1: the week it was instead of say, what day of

555
00:30:59,760 --> 00:31:04,040
Speaker 1: the month that was in the nineteenth century. So to

556
00:31:04,120 --> 00:31:06,880
Speaker 1: mention a few examples of this, he says that there

557
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:09,840
Speaker 1: is a change in trends that we can see left

558
00:31:09,880 --> 00:31:13,480
Speaker 1: in what are called blank book diaries of the period. So,

559
00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:16,360
Speaker 1: as we mentioned a minute ago, some diaries would of

560
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 1: course have a pre printed organizing principle for your entries,

561
00:31:20,440 --> 00:31:23,560
Speaker 1: but some diaries would just be blank pages. And he

562
00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:26,600
Speaker 1: says that in these diaries, if you examine them, you

563
00:31:26,600 --> 00:31:29,400
Speaker 1: can see a natural shift in the first half of

564
00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:33,680
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds towards a preference for identifying which day

565
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:36,280
Speaker 1: of the week it was at the top of each entry,

566
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:40,360
Speaker 1: and suddenly a greater tendency to make errors in identifying

567
00:31:40,480 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 1: what date of the month it was instead of what

568
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:45,960
Speaker 1: day of the week it was, And checking against my

569
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:48,480
Speaker 1: own experience, I feel like I'm still in this this

570
00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:52,240
Speaker 1: new weekday mindset, because you know, or I guess I

571
00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:55,880
Speaker 1: would say that week day consciousness dominates date consciousness in

572
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:58,560
Speaker 1: my thinking. I pretty much always know what day of

573
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:00,520
Speaker 1: the week it is, but I always have to look

574
00:32:00,600 --> 00:32:04,040
Speaker 1: up the new miracle date unless it's Halloween or something. Yeah. Yeah,

575
00:32:04,040 --> 00:32:08,360
Speaker 1: it's very very much dealing with the publication schedule, I

576
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:10,280
Speaker 1: think makes you think like this for sure, though I

577
00:32:10,320 --> 00:32:12,080
Speaker 1: guess it would be different if you if you had

578
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:16,360
Speaker 1: a publication to say, only came out ont of every month,

579
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:20,480
Speaker 1: or you know, bi monthly publication or something. But but

580
00:32:20,600 --> 00:32:23,840
Speaker 1: other pieces of evidence for the increasing weekday consciousness. He

581
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:26,760
Speaker 1: says also in this period in the eighteen hundreds, if

582
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 1: you examine the records of witness testimony during trials, UH,

583
00:32:31,440 --> 00:32:34,640
Speaker 1: you will see a trend toward people having a stronger

584
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 1: memory for what day of the week something happened rather

585
00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:42,880
Speaker 1: than the date UH, and frequently citing recurring weekly routines

586
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:46,000
Speaker 1: as sort of the anchor memory that made them sure

587
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:49,080
Speaker 1: of which day what they're what they're saying the witness

588
00:32:49,160 --> 00:32:52,000
Speaker 1: happened on. So I don't know, maybe it was a

589
00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:55,160
Speaker 1: Thursday because that is when the mail wagon arrives. And

590
00:32:55,240 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: he also says across this period, letters begin to show

591
00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:01,720
Speaker 1: a greater preference for organized using recent memories by weeks

592
00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:04,680
Speaker 1: instead of other time scales. So if you just you know,

593
00:33:04,840 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 1: read large amounts of correspondence people talking about what's going

594
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:12,440
Speaker 1: on in their lives. They're they're more inclined to start saying,

595
00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 1: here's what happened last week or the week before that. Also, interestingly,

596
00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:21,240
Speaker 1: Hancin talks about a few different examples of various powers

597
00:33:21,240 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 1: and institutions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

598
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: trying to replace the seven day week with something else,

599
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:33,720
Speaker 1: and noting that that these attempts failed in places where

600
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:37,160
Speaker 1: the week was already the norm. Some business interests in

601
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:40,640
Speaker 1: the West in the late nineteenth century wanted to get

602
00:33:40,760 --> 00:33:43,400
Speaker 1: rid of the seven day week because it caused problems

603
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:47,200
Speaker 1: in bookkeeping. You might think, well, what would those problems be?

604
00:33:47,360 --> 00:33:50,320
Speaker 1: But uh so, think about it this way. The year

605
00:33:50,600 --> 00:33:54,280
Speaker 1: does not subdivide cleanly into a whole number of weeks.

606
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: So you have inconsistent numbers of weeks lining up into

607
00:33:58,640 --> 00:34:01,760
Speaker 1: time units that are you just for bookkeeping in businesses,

608
00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:06,120
Speaker 1: like months or quarters or years, and this can cause confusion.

609
00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:10,400
Speaker 1: For example, if you're trying to compare some performance metric

610
00:34:10,520 --> 00:34:13,520
Speaker 1: between two months, but the metric you're looking at is

611
00:34:13,560 --> 00:34:17,160
Speaker 1: calculated on Fridays, and then maybe you've got a month

612
00:34:17,239 --> 00:34:20,160
Speaker 1: that has five Fridays, but the next month only has four,

613
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:24,319
Speaker 1: so you start having trouble comparing things evenly across these

614
00:34:24,360 --> 00:34:28,120
Speaker 1: calendar units. Oh, that reminds me of at one point,

615
00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:31,319
Speaker 1: we were owned by a company that did I guess

616
00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:33,600
Speaker 1: we gotta like a pay We got our paycheck every

617
00:34:33,719 --> 00:34:36,400
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and so occasionally you would have that

618
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:38,600
Speaker 1: one magic month where you've got three paychecks in a

619
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:42,399
Speaker 1: given month, and that one wouldn't have anything taken out

620
00:34:42,400 --> 00:34:46,480
Speaker 1: of it for for benefits and so forth. Uh, that's

621
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 1: the vague memory I have of it, anyway, chit ching, No,

622
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 1: it's funny. You can actually google this. They're like people

623
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:54,680
Speaker 1: who do whole web pages that are just like, here

624
00:34:54,680 --> 00:34:58,359
Speaker 1: are the months in two that have five fridays. We'll

625
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:00,680
Speaker 1: get five paychecks. I mean, if you get a paycheck

626
00:35:00,719 --> 00:35:11,680
Speaker 1: every week. Now. He also notes that in the Soviet Union,

627
00:35:11,719 --> 00:35:16,000
Speaker 1: I think this was in nine nine, the USSR tried

628
00:35:16,080 --> 00:35:19,560
Speaker 1: to change the calendar also to to change the number

629
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:22,640
Speaker 1: of days in a week and how weekends worked. I

630
00:35:22,640 --> 00:35:24,759
Speaker 1: think the new system they put together was that there

631
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:29,279
Speaker 1: would be seventy two weeks of five days each in

632
00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:31,319
Speaker 1: every year, and this would add up to like three

633
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:34,279
Speaker 1: and sixty days and then it would also have these

634
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:38,839
Speaker 1: weird interruptions supplementing it, so you would have holidays which

635
00:35:38,880 --> 00:35:41,560
Speaker 1: didn't fall on a day of the week but instead

636
00:35:41,719 --> 00:35:46,640
Speaker 1: interrupted the weekly cycle. So uh, not that they celebrated Halloween,

637
00:35:46,680 --> 00:35:49,520
Speaker 1: but if you use Halloween as an example, imagine Halloween

638
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 1: wasn't on any day of the week, but you could

639
00:35:52,040 --> 00:35:57,120
Speaker 1: have a schedule that went like Friday, Saturday, Halloween, Sunday, Monday.

640
00:35:59,160 --> 00:36:01,239
Speaker 1: The alleged benefit it of this was that it would

641
00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:05,919
Speaker 1: eliminate the inefficiency of factories sitting dormant on the weekends,

642
00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:09,040
Speaker 1: so you know, because of your workers would always be

643
00:36:09,120 --> 00:36:12,640
Speaker 1: on duty to work the machines that day. But it

644
00:36:12,719 --> 00:36:16,800
Speaker 1: apparently proved unpopular and inconvenient because people didn't always have

645
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:19,440
Speaker 1: the same day off as their friends or family, and

646
00:36:19,520 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 1: it had some other downsides, like like, you know, there

647
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:26,120
Speaker 1: are reasons it can sometimes be useful for production to

648
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:30,719
Speaker 1: have offline periods, right, like say, there's certain maintenance procedures

649
00:36:30,719 --> 00:36:34,440
Speaker 1: that need to take place. Uh, sometimes the machines need

650
00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:37,080
Speaker 1: to stop, right. So the Soviet Union actually went through

651
00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:41,720
Speaker 1: a couple of different attempts at different reckonings of weeks,

652
00:36:41,760 --> 00:36:44,560
Speaker 1: but I think by like nineteen forty they just went

653
00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:47,359
Speaker 1: back to the regular seven day week. But so it's

654
00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 1: interesting that at various points both capitalism and communism tried

655
00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:53,759
Speaker 1: to kill the seven day week and they both failed. Yeah.

656
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:56,240
Speaker 1: I mean, once that that order is in place, once

657
00:36:56,280 --> 00:37:00,320
Speaker 1: you've everything in your life has has become a tuned

658
00:37:00,560 --> 00:37:05,440
Speaker 1: to this artificial structure, Uh, it becomes resistant to change

659
00:37:06,040 --> 00:37:08,560
Speaker 1: because again, think of all the elements that have gone

660
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:11,200
Speaker 1: into it that we've discussed. You know, they're they're religious,

661
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:16,520
Speaker 1: they're they're they're supernatural, they're also related to uh to

662
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:20,719
Speaker 1: at times actual frequencies in the market. And then it

663
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:23,880
Speaker 1: just becomes the frequency of your life. Uh. So to imagine,

664
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:26,520
Speaker 1: you know, trying to shift away from that, uh, you

665
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:30,040
Speaker 1: can imagine the resistance that would take place, um, either

666
00:37:30,080 --> 00:37:32,560
Speaker 1: outward or certainly inward. Like what if we were to

667
00:37:32,600 --> 00:37:35,719
Speaker 1: suddenly switch now like this was the decree that came down.

668
00:37:36,280 --> 00:37:40,560
Speaker 1: Now we're gonna have sixty five one day weeks. Uh,

669
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:43,400
Speaker 1: that's that's that's how we're doing it. That's useful. That

670
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:46,120
Speaker 1: would it would be useful, Um, even if there were

671
00:37:46,200 --> 00:37:48,200
Speaker 1: some strong argument to be made for it, like you'd

672
00:37:48,239 --> 00:37:51,480
Speaker 1: have imagine like having to think about your life and

673
00:37:51,640 --> 00:37:54,480
Speaker 1: time in that manner. Well, even if you try to

674
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:56,959
Speaker 1: put together a system that's not absurd in that way,

675
00:37:56,960 --> 00:37:59,520
Speaker 1: but would try to be an improvement on our system.

676
00:37:59,640 --> 00:38:01,879
Speaker 1: Such a is a one that's been proposed a number

677
00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:05,760
Speaker 1: of times is um changing the calendar to have fixed

678
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:08,799
Speaker 1: weeks within the year, so that the same date in

679
00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 1: the year would always correlate with the same fixed day

680
00:38:11,680 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 1: of the week. So for example, maybe January one would

681
00:38:14,520 --> 00:38:17,279
Speaker 1: always be a Sunday, the second is always a Monday,

682
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:19,719
Speaker 1: and it just goes on like that. Of course, the

683
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:22,520
Speaker 1: problem is again that the number of days in a

684
00:38:22,600 --> 00:38:26,200
Speaker 1: year does not cleanly divide into seven. So the proposed

685
00:38:26,239 --> 00:38:28,040
Speaker 1: fixed to this is to have a couple of days

686
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:29,359
Speaker 1: at the end of the year that would be so

687
00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:32,279
Speaker 1: called blank days. These are like neutral days that are

688
00:38:32,360 --> 00:38:34,640
Speaker 1: no day of the week, and then it and then

689
00:38:34,680 --> 00:38:36,560
Speaker 1: it starts over again at the beginning of the year

690
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: with the with the fixed calendar. Can you imagine that, though?

691
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:42,919
Speaker 1: Can you imagine it living your life on a day

692
00:38:42,920 --> 00:38:44,720
Speaker 1: that is that is not a day of the week.

693
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it would feel like, how am I supposed

694
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:49,319
Speaker 1: to think about that? What is life like on a

695
00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:51,400
Speaker 1: blank day? It's probably it's like the purge or something

696
00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:53,399
Speaker 1: you would wake up to the sounds of the whole

697
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:56,800
Speaker 1: world screaming at once. Yeah. But anyway, I was reading

698
00:38:56,840 --> 00:38:59,600
Speaker 1: about this proposal in an interview with David Hankin in

699
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:03,120
Speaker 1: an article call in The Atlantic um and he gives

700
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:05,440
Speaker 1: a reasoning why he thinks this has never taken hold.

701
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: For one thing, it would break religious weekly cycles, which Christians,

702
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 1: Muslims and Jews tend to see as a matter of tradition.

703
00:39:12,600 --> 00:39:16,480
Speaker 1: These these weeks are in their view, an unbroken series

704
00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:21,280
Speaker 1: going back into antiquity, and that it has some religious value. Uh.

705
00:39:21,360 --> 00:39:24,360
Speaker 1: And so of course, like trying to change the calendar

706
00:39:24,640 --> 00:39:27,320
Speaker 1: could be could be taken as a as an affront

707
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:30,920
Speaker 1: to the religious traditions of the main religions in the

708
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:34,840
Speaker 1: Western world. And speaking of that article in The Atlantic,

709
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:38,959
Speaker 1: there's one thing that the author asks David Hankin, did

710
00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:43,000
Speaker 1: the increasing consciousness of the weekly calendar as opposed to

711
00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:45,480
Speaker 1: the day of the month or whatever in the nineteenth century,

712
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:49,800
Speaker 1: did it make people feel different? Did it make time

713
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:52,719
Speaker 1: feel different to people when they started thinking about it

714
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:56,279
Speaker 1: more in terms of weeks? And Hankins says, well, it's

715
00:39:56,320 --> 00:39:58,360
Speaker 1: really hard to prove this, but he has a he

716
00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:02,879
Speaker 1: has a sense that s he thinks that increasing consciousness

717
00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:06,000
Speaker 1: of the seven day time period did have an effect

718
00:40:06,040 --> 00:40:08,839
Speaker 1: on people's perception of time, and that effect was that

719
00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:12,200
Speaker 1: it made people feel like time was going by faster.

720
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 1: So to read his quote, I do think that when

721
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:18,640
Speaker 1: we are more attuned to the cycle, because it's shorter

722
00:40:18,719 --> 00:40:21,920
Speaker 1: than a month, it feels like time moves much more quickly.

723
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:25,360
Speaker 1: When our Mondays are different from our Tuesdays and our Wednesdays,

724
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:27,640
Speaker 1: it does kind of feel like, all of a sudden,

725
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:31,520
Speaker 1: it's Monday again. You can see in nineteenth century diary

726
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:34,680
Speaker 1: entries that more and more often people describe this feeling

727
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:38,000
Speaker 1: by referring to how another week has come and gone.

728
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:40,719
Speaker 1: Which is funny because as soon as I read that

729
00:40:40,760 --> 00:40:43,080
Speaker 1: phrase another week has come and gone, it sounds like

730
00:40:43,160 --> 00:40:47,680
Speaker 1: something extracted directly from like a Victorian letter or something.

731
00:40:48,800 --> 00:40:51,239
Speaker 1: But but yeah, that's interesting. I wonder what you think

732
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:53,800
Speaker 1: about that. If you organize more of your life along

733
00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:58,320
Speaker 1: the schedule of the seven day week, does it feel

734
00:40:58,360 --> 00:41:01,360
Speaker 1: like your life is happening fast sster than if you don't.

735
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:04,879
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, it's because you also hear

736
00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:07,960
Speaker 1: people saying the same thing about months and years where

737
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:10,520
Speaker 1: they'll say things like, oh, man, March just flew by,

738
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:12,279
Speaker 1: didn't it. It just seemed like it was no time

739
00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 1: at all? Or is it really Christmas again? It's we

740
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:19,919
Speaker 1: just did Christmas, now it's Christmas again. Um. So I'm

741
00:41:20,120 --> 00:41:24,560
Speaker 1: I'm not not sure if I I mean, I believe

742
00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:27,319
Speaker 1: the author here, but um. But on the other hand,

743
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:29,399
Speaker 1: I don't know if it completely matches up with with

744
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:32,399
Speaker 1: my experience and my experience of hearing other people talk

745
00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:35,000
Speaker 1: about the passage of time. I guess we're so conscious

746
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:37,360
Speaker 1: of weeks we don't really have anything to compare it to.

747
00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:40,719
Speaker 1: We like, we can't remember what the passage of time

748
00:41:40,800 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 1: felt like in the part of our lives where we

749
00:41:42,680 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 1: didn't experience weeks. Yeah, I would say when you think

750
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:49,960
Speaker 1: outside of cat like if you're going to actually think

751
00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:55,520
Speaker 1: about things that are not cleanly divided by by by

752
00:41:55,600 --> 00:41:57,759
Speaker 1: months and weeks and days, you know, I might think

753
00:41:57,800 --> 00:41:59,960
Speaker 1: about the seasons, and sometimes that gets a little hard

754
00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:01,799
Speaker 1: or to think about, like if you think about, well,

755
00:42:01,840 --> 00:42:05,440
Speaker 1: when did when did winter actually begin for me and

756
00:42:05,560 --> 00:42:07,480
Speaker 1: this part in this part of the world in which

757
00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:09,560
Speaker 1: I live, and when does it seem like it is

758
00:42:09,600 --> 00:42:11,080
Speaker 1: going to end or when did it end? And then

759
00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:13,680
Speaker 1: when did it start again? And so forth. Good, we

760
00:42:13,960 --> 00:42:18,000
Speaker 1: seem to have a certain fluctuation here in Atlanta. But

761
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:21,080
Speaker 1: I guess when I started thinking about that, and maybe

762
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 1: it it becomes a little murkier, but you know, you

763
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:27,200
Speaker 1: begin to feel like it feels like it's always been winter. Well,

764
00:42:27,239 --> 00:42:30,600
Speaker 1: of course we get the standard time perception paradox, right

765
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:32,960
Speaker 1: that has come up on the show many times before,

766
00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:36,160
Speaker 1: which is that in general, things that feel like they're

767
00:42:36,160 --> 00:42:38,800
Speaker 1: going on for a long time in the moment vanished

768
00:42:38,840 --> 00:42:41,640
Speaker 1: to a point in memory, and things that feel like

769
00:42:41,680 --> 00:42:43,960
Speaker 1: they're gone in a flash in the moment tend to

770
00:42:44,000 --> 00:42:47,520
Speaker 1: expand in memory. A big example seasonally that I think

771
00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 1: about is um summers. When I was a kid, you know,

772
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 1: summers off from school. It's like when you're in it,

773
00:42:53,560 --> 00:42:55,600
Speaker 1: it feels like the summer is over in an instant,

774
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:57,680
Speaker 1: you just have to go right back to school. But

775
00:42:57,760 --> 00:43:01,319
Speaker 1: in my memory, the summers seem infinite. It Yeah they

776
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 1: yeah they really did. Yeah there's and granted school school

777
00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:09,800
Speaker 1: summers have have gotten shorter, but the way they felt

778
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:12,319
Speaker 1: versus the way they seem now like it's it's more

779
00:43:12,360 --> 00:43:15,279
Speaker 1: than canna be accounted for just by uh adding or

780
00:43:15,320 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 1: subtracting even a whole month of the days. It reminds

781
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:20,839
Speaker 1: me of that that short story. Though the woman had

782
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:25,680
Speaker 1: been inspired. Kubrick's Ai movie had the title super Toys

783
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:28,680
Speaker 1: Last All Summer Long, which I always really liked that

784
00:43:28,719 --> 00:43:32,040
Speaker 1: title because you know it it implies the summers of

785
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:36,200
Speaker 1: childhood and like you say, they're kind of infinite nature. Well,

786
00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:39,320
Speaker 1: and to come back to weeks, I think one way

787
00:43:39,360 --> 00:43:42,399
Speaker 1: in which the summer experience when I was a kid

788
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 1: was different was that, of course, during the school year,

789
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:47,040
Speaker 1: I'm highly aware of what day of the week it was,

790
00:43:47,120 --> 00:43:51,640
Speaker 1: and in the summer, weeks didn't matter anymore. That's another

791
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:53,719
Speaker 1: thing because that, yeah, I do remember more of a

792
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:56,360
Speaker 1: wide open summer situation when I was a kid, but

793
00:43:56,719 --> 00:43:59,480
Speaker 1: as a parent, like we're more like, nope, this this

794
00:43:59,480 --> 00:44:02,200
Speaker 1: this week, are doing this camp, and it definitely has

795
00:44:02,200 --> 00:44:05,239
Speaker 1: a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday situation. Some of those

796
00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:07,480
Speaker 1: days are pool days, some of those days are pizza

797
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:10,160
Speaker 1: party days. It's all, it's all in the schedule, you know.

798
00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:11,800
Speaker 1: There was one more thing I was thinking about getting

799
00:44:11,800 --> 00:44:16,799
Speaker 1: into that is a a proposed neurological basis for uh

800
00:44:17,400 --> 00:44:20,359
Speaker 1: for the Seven Day a Week, But but maybe I'm

801
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 1: gonna save that for our listener Mail episode on the

802
00:44:23,040 --> 00:44:25,239
Speaker 1: following Monday, because we've got a good message from a

803
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:28,880
Speaker 1: listener about it. Excellent. Well, on that note, if you

804
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:32,040
Speaker 1: have thoughts on this topic that we've covered these last

805
00:44:32,080 --> 00:44:35,120
Speaker 1: three episodes the Seven Day a Week, UH, keep them

806
00:44:35,120 --> 00:44:37,320
Speaker 1: coming right in. We'd love to hear from you. Everybody

807
00:44:37,320 --> 00:44:40,000
Speaker 1: has some sort of connection to this. How do these

808
00:44:40,080 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 1: how do the days feel to you? How does the

809
00:44:41,719 --> 00:44:45,359
Speaker 1: passage of the week feel to you? Um, anything we've

810
00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:47,960
Speaker 1: discussed in these episodes is open game, so right in,

811
00:44:48,160 --> 00:44:50,640
Speaker 1: we'd we'd love to hear from you. In the meantime,

812
00:44:50,640 --> 00:44:52,920
Speaker 1: if you would like to check out other episodes of

813
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:54,600
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind, Well, this is how our

814
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:57,480
Speaker 1: week tends to go. On Monday we do listener Mail.

815
00:44:57,520 --> 00:44:59,719
Speaker 1: On Tuesday a core episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

816
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:03,160
Speaker 1: and Wednesday a short form artifact or monster fact episode.

817
00:45:03,160 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 1: On Thursday, another episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind.

818
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:08,239
Speaker 1: Friday we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to

819
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:10,520
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a

820
00:45:10,520 --> 00:45:14,120
Speaker 1: strange film. And then on Saturday we have a rerun.

821
00:45:14,160 --> 00:45:17,200
Speaker 1: We have a Vault episode followed by Sunday, which of

822
00:45:17,239 --> 00:45:19,480
Speaker 1: course is the day we rest, the day we on

823
00:45:19,560 --> 00:45:24,080
Speaker 1: our Soul Invictus. Huge thanks as always to our excellent

824
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:27,960
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to

825
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:30,560
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode

826
00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:32,720
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

827
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:34,879
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at

828
00:45:35,160 --> 00:45:45,719
Speaker 1: contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Doctor. Stuff to

829
00:45:45,719 --> 00:45:48,279
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For

830
00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 1: more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,

831
00:45:51,280 --> 00:46:02,040
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.

832
00:46:00,719 --> 00:46:06,160
Speaker 1: The Press fourt