Speaker 1: Welcome to Sbot to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part three of our series about the
Speaker 1: seven day week. If you haven't listened to the two
Speaker 1: previous parts, you should probably go do that first. This
Speaker 1: one will maybe make more sense if if you do that.
Speaker 1: But hey, if you want to, you know, fly by
Speaker 1: the proverbial seat of your pants, let's go for it.
Speaker 1: Here we are in part three. Al right, well, you know,
Speaker 1: to kick things off, I thought, as a potential fun aside,
Speaker 1: I thought we might think about weeks on other planets. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, because if we're if we're going to have
Speaker 1: just a planet centric week based on solar days, so
Speaker 1: one complete rotation of said planet, then this is about
Speaker 1: how it all breaks down here on Earth, one week
Speaker 1: is a hundred and sixty eight hours twenty four hour days.
Speaker 1: Seven of those make sense, simple math. Um. On Mercury,
Speaker 1: one week is one thousand, four hundred and eight hours,
Speaker 1: or about fifty eight Earth days. So on Mercury that
Speaker 1: it is a hard core t g if mentality Like
Speaker 1: by the time you get to the weekend, you are
Speaker 1: ready to party exactly. And it's even worse on Venus.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know Venus is as a hell world.
Speaker 1: On Venus, one week is forty thousand, twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: or about one thousand, seven hundred and one earth days. Now,
Speaker 1: the really weird thing about Venus would be that I
Speaker 1: think it is the case that on Venus a day
Speaker 1: is actually longer than a year, meaning that it takes
Speaker 1: the planet Venus longer to rotate on its axis than
Speaker 1: it does to go entirely around the Sun. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that would mean that a week on Venus is
Speaker 1: actually more than seven years on Venus. Yeah, and again
Speaker 1: we're just taking the idea that you know we have
Speaker 1: a older day here on Earth. Well, complete rotation is
Speaker 1: a day on another planet, and therefore seven of those
Speaker 1: would make a week on any given planet. All right, now,
Speaker 1: you know we already touched on Earth. Head on out
Speaker 1: to Mars. The red planet has twenty five hour days,
Speaker 1: so it's not too far off. We're talking a hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five hour week. But then you go to
Speaker 1: Jupiter here you have ten hour days, so we're talking
Speaker 1: about a seventy hour week. Saturn eleven hour days, so
Speaker 1: that's pretty easy to calculate seventy seven hour weeks um.
Speaker 1: And then by the time we get to uh Uranus
Speaker 1: we're talking, we're looking at a seventeen hour days, so
Speaker 1: that's a hundred nineteen hour weeks, and on Neptune sixteen
Speaker 1: hour days, a hundred and twelve hour weeks. You know,
Speaker 1: this should all I think, drive home, how you know,
Speaker 1: nonsensical in many respects, the concept of a week or
Speaker 1: even a day is when you move off of Earth. Uh.
Speaker 1: For instance, just looking at Mars, the lack of a
Speaker 1: quote leisurely orbiting moon, as the planetary society puts it,
Speaker 1: means that you you don't really have Martian months for example.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so the year on Mars doesn't really divide
Speaker 1: into manageable time units like our months. Right, so when
Speaker 1: we come to like determining like what time it is
Speaker 1: on Mars, like that's that's ultimately a whole whole, whole
Speaker 1: different topic unto itself. Scientists that had to devise, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, different ways of thinking about time regarding another
Speaker 1: planet um. And of course you can imagine how how
Speaker 1: complicated this would become if you had ultimately had some
Speaker 1: sort of colonial system in place on another world. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know what, I just realized. I realized I was
Speaker 1: thinking about the speed of the orbits of the moons
Speaker 1: of Mars entirely in the wrong direction, right, because I
Speaker 1: was thinking, Oh, yeah, I've forgotten how long it takes
Speaker 1: some maybe maybe it takes some like months and months
Speaker 1: on on Earth to go around Mars one time. But
Speaker 1: no phobos orbits Mars like once every eight hours or something. Right,
Speaker 1: It's it's just whizzing around, yeah, not very leisurely. So
Speaker 1: it's do you know, I guess a reminder to just
Speaker 1: you know, so so many so much of our contemplations
Speaker 1: of time are based on again, as we discussed in
Speaker 1: the first episode, the the observable World, the observable cosmos,
Speaker 1: and you're not going to have the same a set
Speaker 1: of stuff in place on other worlds, or it's going
Speaker 1: to mean something different, such as how long it seems
Speaker 1: to take the sun to rise and then to set.
Speaker 1: So this, obviously, this leads to the next logical point
Speaker 1: is that if you were to watch the video from
Speaker 1: the Ring movies and therefore invoke the wrath of of
Speaker 1: of of a strange VHS tape based ghost you would
Speaker 1: of course have seven days left to live. Those seven
Speaker 1: days would be best spent on an off world colony,
Speaker 1: you know, preferably heading on over to uh to Venus.
Speaker 1: I think now, I think this came up when we're
Speaker 1: actually talking about this earlier, and Rob, you and I
Speaker 1: both forgot that. In the movie, they explain why it
Speaker 1: takes seven days, because that's like, you know, how long
Speaker 1: the creepy ghost girls in the well or whatever. But
Speaker 1: but but Sem had to remind us, Seth had to
Speaker 1: remind us. But we both forgot that. And you had
Speaker 1: the most amazing theory about the origin of the seven
Speaker 1: day curse period in the Ring, and it had to
Speaker 1: do with our childhood memories of Blockbuster video. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: well I I I was thinking, okay, seven seven days?
Speaker 1: Why seven days? Seven is is not an unlucky number
Speaker 1: in Japanese culture. It seems like four would be more
Speaker 1: fitting for that if we were going to go that route.
Speaker 1: So what is it about seven? I was thinking, Well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's the seven day rental period, right, and because
Speaker 1: we know that that she likes working through VHS tapes,
Speaker 1: so maybe it has to do with the VHS rental cycle.
Speaker 1: Of course, what this got me wondering about is how
Speaker 1: come in the Ring movies nobody ever talks back on
Speaker 1: the phone, you know, so you get the phone calls
Speaker 1: like your cursed seven days. How come nobody ever just
Speaker 1: like tries to negotiate. Well, you know, sometimes they have
Speaker 1: to participate in a survey after the call for quality
Speaker 1: assurance purposes. So there is that. In reality, I think
Speaker 1: the Ring videotape would probably give rise to a subculture
Speaker 1: of of what what would you call them? Like curse
Speaker 1: baiting scam fighters, you know, like the people who played
Speaker 1: pranks on the people who do the I R. S
Speaker 1: scam phone calls, except they're scamming Samara. Yeah. Yeah. Though
Speaker 1: it is interesting when you compare the two because when
Speaker 1: in the fictional situation, we have an evil entity calling
Speaker 1: you and wishing you harm and uh, it's it's very
Speaker 1: much the same thing when you have somebody trying to
Speaker 1: run some sort of a phone scam like it's it's
Speaker 1: almost its quite unsettling like to to to be speaking
Speaker 1: to somebody and realize this is someone who wishes to
Speaker 1: do me great harm. You've won a free cruise, but
Speaker 1: you first you need to send us some iTunes gift cards. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's sort of thing. But you know, this also makes
Speaker 1: me think that, Okay, if we have a technological ghost here,
Speaker 1: maybe two potentially well not not actually, but within within
Speaker 1: this argument look to an artificial cycle of time and
Speaker 1: using that as a way to to judge some other act.
Speaker 1: It does make me think about like the back in
Speaker 1: the old days of watching television, Um, there was a
Speaker 1: set TV cycle and I'm not saying it would was
Speaker 1: actually to the point where like a heavy, heavy TV
Speaker 1: consumption would make you know what day of the week
Speaker 1: it was based on what was on television. But it
Speaker 1: was easy to sort of have that that line of
Speaker 1: thinking in your head, you know, like you know what
Speaker 1: what is supposed to come on on Mondays? You know
Speaker 1: what what is the Monday night entertainment versus the Tuesday
Speaker 1: night Uh, you know the movie of the week sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Um, you could you could imagine yourself leaning
Speaker 1: into that view of the cosmos, and in a sense,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like ancient timekeeping. It's based on the
Speaker 1: observable universe. Only your observable universe is what's on the
Speaker 1: television screen. Is USA up all night? Yeah? You know
Speaker 1: what day it is. Then now, as delightful as all
Speaker 1: that that is, we do actually have more serious contemplations
Speaker 1: regarding the seven day week to get to here. Oh right,
Speaker 1: so I guess in this episode we're probably going to
Speaker 1: talk some more about the history of the seven day week,
Speaker 1: like where it comes from and how it has changed
Speaker 1: over time. There is one paper I came across that
Speaker 1: if you want a really really good, detailed, scholarly deep
Speaker 1: dive on this issue, uh, I would recommend this is
Speaker 1: actually not a paper, sorry, This is a book chapter
Speaker 1: in a historical book by the academic publisher Bill called
Speaker 1: Calendars in the Making The Origins of Calendars from the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire to the Later Middle Ages, published in and
Speaker 1: this chapter is called the seven day Week in the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire Origins, Standardization and Diffusion. And this is by
Speaker 1: Ilaria boltre Guini and Sasha Stern, and both of these
Speaker 1: authors are scholars of Hebrew and Jewish studies at University
Speaker 1: College London. This is a really good, really detailed chapter,
Speaker 1: but it is sort of written for scholars, so it's
Speaker 1: good if you want maximal detail on on the origins
Speaker 1: of the Western seven day week. Uh. Given basically our
Speaker 1: best picture of the evidence within the last year or so.
Speaker 1: But I just thought I would mention a few things
Speaker 1: from it that struck me as as interesting for the
Speaker 1: lay person. Now, of course, they acknowledge the same thing
Speaker 1: that we've mentioned several times now, which is that the
Speaker 1: the deep origins of the seven day week are poorly
Speaker 1: understood because we don't have a founding document really of
Speaker 1: the seven day week says here is where the week begins,
Speaker 1: and you know, and from here on out everybody will
Speaker 1: use it for this, that and the other. Instead, we
Speaker 1: have little tidbits of evidence from from literary sources here
Speaker 1: and there in antiquity, and occasionally from uh from archaeological
Speaker 1: of finds that give evidence of people using some kind
Speaker 1: of seven day weekly schedule in the ancient Near East.
Speaker 1: But they these pieces of evidence are fragmentary, and a
Speaker 1: lot of times we don't know exactly what broader cultural
Speaker 1: conclusions to draw from them. So, for example, we know
Speaker 1: that I the first few centuries c e. In the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire, people were at some level using seven day weeks,
Speaker 1: but we don't know exactly how far this practice goes back,
Speaker 1: and what all of the exact inputs on it were.
Speaker 1: Now in the previous episode we talked about, uh, this
Speaker 1: weird scenario that has been noted by historians where there
Speaker 1: were multiple different kinds of weeks in the first few
Speaker 1: centuries the e of the Roman Empire, uh, that had
Speaker 1: different numbers of days in them, which sounds terribly confusing.
Speaker 1: But so, for example, you had this eight day week
Speaker 1: that seemed related to commerce, so it's the eight day
Speaker 1: market cycle. But then you also had these seven day
Speaker 1: periods such as the seven day Roman astrological week, in
Speaker 1: which the days were named after gods or planets. And
Speaker 1: then also the seven day cycle of the Jewish Sabbath,
Speaker 1: which was acknowledged, uh, certainly by Jews within the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: but also by by other groups. Well, yeah, so you
Speaker 1: had these had divination and religion playing a role, but
Speaker 1: you also had like the hard realities of commerce and
Speaker 1: the economy. But even you know, but none of these
Speaker 1: are are fixed, uh, you know, figures in a given world,
Speaker 1: like these are things that will change over time and
Speaker 1: do right. And so there is one point in this
Speaker 1: book chapter where Boltugini and Stern actually disagree with something
Speaker 1: that I think we got from one of our other sources,
Speaker 1: which was the book The Seven Day Circle by Avatar Zerubavel,
Speaker 1: which claimed that the the Jewish practice of observing a
Speaker 1: seven day cycle with a with a day of rest
Speaker 1: traced back to Mesopotamian practices. But the authors of this
Speaker 1: paper actually say that despite what other authors have alleged,
Speaker 1: there's actually really no very good evidence tracing the seven
Speaker 1: day week back to ancient Egyptian or Mesopotamian practices. We
Speaker 1: we ultimately don't know exactly where it comes from. Now this,
Speaker 1: I wonder if this explained some of the hesitancy you
Speaker 1: see to really nable us down in some of the
Speaker 1: other sources, like for instance Fagin and aveni Um who
Speaker 1: I acided in the first episode. Oh yeah, they were
Speaker 1: more hesitant to to put a specific origin on it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it seems like it's still very much a topic
Speaker 1: of of of of studying consideration at least. But we do,
Speaker 1: of course have literary evidence from the ancient world of
Speaker 1: places where some kind of seven day weekly cycle or referenced.
Speaker 1: Of course, the big one is uh is the Hebrew
Speaker 1: Bible making reference to the Sabbath. So we see the
Speaker 1: idea of a seven day week, the days leading up
Speaker 1: to the Sabbath day in the Hebrew Bible. Though interestingly, uh,
Speaker 1: the authors of this of this book chapter claimed that
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible there are actually no events that
Speaker 1: are said to occur on specific days of the week
Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible itself. The dated events are dated
Speaker 1: by other methods, such as by by month or by
Speaker 1: year um. And this raises questions like they ask, Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's clear that at some point Jews were observing
Speaker 1: a Sabbath day, but they say, for example, we don't
Speaker 1: know in the early periods if Sabbath observance was synchronized
Speaker 1: across different Jewish communities or did like local Jewish communities
Speaker 1: all have their own Sabbath cycles. But once we get
Speaker 1: closer in time to the Roman period, we do see
Speaker 1: Jewish sources making specific reference to two things occurring on
Speaker 1: certain days of the week uh, specifically on the Sabbath day. UH. So,
Speaker 1: for example, they referenced the Book of First Maccabee's, which
Speaker 1: is a text from the late second century b C.
Speaker 1: And this makes reference to something occurring on the Sabbath day.
Speaker 1: They also make reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which
Speaker 1: are of course these fascinating documents from Jewish communities dating
Speaker 1: back to the second to first centuries b c UH.
Speaker 1: And they say that the Dead Sea scrolls in some
Speaker 1: cases make reference to a calendrical system. Um. This was
Speaker 1: kind of confusing, but I think the way I understand
Speaker 1: it is they had a year that had a different
Speaker 1: number of days than our year. I think it was
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty four days, which unlike our year
Speaker 1: of three hundred and sixty five point to five days
Speaker 1: or whatever. UH, that year would divide evenly into fifty
Speaker 1: two weeks, so you get a whole number of weeks
Speaker 1: within the year, and this would be for seven day
Speaker 1: weeks based around the observance of the Sabbath. But then
Speaker 1: they also point out that a a seven day Sabbath
Speaker 1: week is mentioned and observed within the Greek Septuagent, which
Speaker 1: is the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, in in
Speaker 1: the Psalms. But one question would be, Okay, why the
Speaker 1: sudden appearance of these references to things happening on uh
Speaker 1: days of the week in Jewish literature from around the
Speaker 1: second century b CE. What happened around there? So to
Speaker 1: read from the authors, they write quote the second century
Speaker 1: b c. Invention of the seven day week as a
Speaker 1: time reckoning system, even if only theoretical or literary, may
Speaker 1: well have been related to the revival and promotion of
Speaker 1: the observance of the Sabbath, which is credited to the
Speaker 1: Maccabeean rebels of the one sixties, but was surely also
Speaker 1: shared and promoted by other Judean groups at the time,
Speaker 1: such as the communities described in the Kumran literature, and
Speaker 1: this would be the ones associated with the Dead Sea
Speaker 1: scrolls uh and may have percolated further onto the diaspora
Speaker 1: in Egypt, as the papyri above mentioned possibly suggest promotion
Speaker 1: of Sabbath observance in this period may have elicited the
Speaker 1: conceptualization of the week as a recurring sequence of seven
Speaker 1: numbered days and as a fundamental structure of time reckoning
Speaker 1: and calendars. Uh So, again, this is one thing where
Speaker 1: we have to sort of speculate. We don't know for sure,
Speaker 1: but the authors here are saying it's possible that we
Speaker 1: see this sort of weak consciousness emerging in Jews of
Speaker 1: the second century BC as part of a religious revival,
Speaker 1: a sort of gathering of enthusiasm for observance of the
Speaker 1: Sabbath as a as a religious practice that of but then,
Speaker 1: of course this could end up having other functions within
Speaker 1: people's lives if you're observing uh, you know, a week
Speaker 1: leading up to the Sabbath that could serve other scheduling
Speaker 1: functions if practice for long enough. Though of course, they
Speaker 1: acknowledge that we don't know exactly what role these week
Speaker 1: days played in in people's day to day lives early on. Um.
Speaker 1: But another thing that's important to mention is that the
Speaker 1: early Jewish uses of days of the week identified a
Speaker 1: day not with a name, and certainly not with our names,
Speaker 1: because of of course, our names of the days of
Speaker 1: the week in English are derived largely from pagan and
Speaker 1: astrological sources, which would have had no relevance to the
Speaker 1: ancient Jews uh. And instead they identified days of the
Speaker 1: week with numbers, so this would be something like three
Speaker 1: in the Sabbath, so you would like sort of count
Speaker 1: from the Sabbath day, but then from here. In the
Speaker 1: subsequent centuries, this way reckoning days of the week appears
Speaker 1: to show up in other types of literature, such as
Speaker 1: Greek literature of the first century CE, but then again
Speaker 1: mostly in Jewish or Jewish influence texts, for example, the
Speaker 1: Books of the New Testament. These are books written in Greek,
Speaker 1: but they're influenced by by Jewish religious ideas of course,
Speaker 1: and also in the works of Josephus, these make references
Speaker 1: to days of the week, and it's a seven day week.
Speaker 1: So for example, the author of the Gospel of Mark
Speaker 1: uh that this is somebody who is writing in Greek
Speaker 1: sometime in the first century CE is writing a story
Speaker 1: of the life of Jesus. And the author of the
Speaker 1: Gospel of Mark writes that the crucifixion of Jesus took
Speaker 1: place on quote Preparation, which is the day before the Sabbath,
Speaker 1: and writes that the resurrection was on the quote first
Speaker 1: of the week. So I think I'm getting those right,
Speaker 1: But that would mean that the the author here is
Speaker 1: saying that Jesus was crucified on a Friday, because it's
Speaker 1: the day before the Sabbath, which is Saturday, and then
Speaker 1: the resurrection took place on a Sunday, which was the
Speaker 1: first day of the week after the Sabbath. So here
Speaker 1: we've got this evidence for the the Sabbath cycle as
Speaker 1: one of the main influences on the emergence of a
Speaker 1: seven day week that that we inherited and used throughout
Speaker 1: the world today. But another major influence seems to be
Speaker 1: the Roman planetary week. This is something we see evidence
Speaker 1: of in Rome and other parts of Italy, not just
Speaker 1: the city of Rome, but Rome and the Italian peninsula.
Speaker 1: Uh and this is well attested by the end of
Speaker 1: the first century CE. Now the Roman astrological week again,
Speaker 1: this is having seven days that are named after the
Speaker 1: planets or the gods associated with the planets in the
Speaker 1: in the Roman system of astrology or astronomy. Because the
Speaker 1: quote planets they could observe. Again, a couple of these
Speaker 1: things are not actually planets, but they were the Sun,
Speaker 1: the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. These are
Speaker 1: the moving objects in the sky that you can see
Speaker 1: without a telescope. And the way that the Roman astrol
Speaker 1: logical week was different was that it was not structured
Speaker 1: around a day of rest or a day of religious
Speaker 1: observance the way that the Jewish week was. Instead, it
Speaker 1: appears to have served a primarily astrological informative purpose, so
Speaker 1: sort of letting people know which planets reigned over had
Speaker 1: influence over which day of the cycle. Uh. And once again,
Speaker 1: this would not have any basis in real astronomical observations
Speaker 1: or patterns. It's not like there's anything physical you can
Speaker 1: say that associates the Sun with Sundays or the moon
Speaker 1: with Mondays. It's just that they just happened to pair
Speaker 1: them up that way. I don't know, unless we discover
Speaker 1: something really interesting that the Romans were on too, that
Speaker 1: nobody's figured out since then. Well, I mean, if if
Speaker 1: Monday really was aligned with with the moon, we would
Speaker 1: surely see werewolf transformations on Mondays. And I've never heard
Speaker 1: of that being a thing, so clearly it doesn't check out. No,
Speaker 1: I'd say the vast majority of a wu's occur on
Speaker 1: Fridays and Saturdays, unless one is a real uh work da,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe maybe you hollen when Monday comes along.
Speaker 1: That's a good point, of course, you've been working all
Speaker 1: weekend anyway, So I don't know. Sin news to the
Speaker 1: Emperor that the that the city has been sacked by
Speaker 1: verk beasts. But anyway, so their paper goes into great detail,
Speaker 1: but just in a very quick summary, it seems we
Speaker 1: see increasing numbers of references to use of a seven
Speaker 1: day week of some kind throughout the Roman Empire in
Speaker 1: the first couple of centuries CE, and again this would
Speaker 1: be based on the Christian seven day week that is
Speaker 1: derived from the Sabbath week, but then also using this
Speaker 1: Roman astrological seven day week as a basis uh, sort
Speaker 1: of the fading away of the significance of the eight
Speaker 1: day market week. And then in UH in the fourth
Speaker 1: century CE, you get some real moves such as by
Speaker 1: a decree by Constantine that makes Sunday sort of the
Speaker 1: official sacred day of the empire. Of course, Constantine was
Speaker 1: the first Christian emperor of Rome. Uh. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: you see a big push towards standardization of the use
Speaker 1: of a seven day week, and it's in this relationship
Speaker 1: to the Christian significance of Sunday as the Lord's Day
Speaker 1: or the day of worship uh and UH. And this
Speaker 1: being sort of standardized throughout the Roman Empire, especially in
Speaker 1: the third and fourth centuries. And this is the point
Speaker 1: where we can really start to say, Okay, here's the
Speaker 1: week that we inherited, and we can situate it well
Speaker 1: within history. So if your time machine has like Mondays,
Speaker 1: Wednesdays and Tuesdays on and so forth. Uh, this might
Speaker 1: be as far back as you can really go this
Speaker 1: period with perfect accuracy. Also, you should probably reconsider the
Speaker 1: interface for your time machine's depending on these these days.
Speaker 1: I just want to go five thousand mondays back. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. Now. I mentioned in the first part of
Speaker 1: this series that one of the sources I've been reading,
Speaker 1: uh for for history of the seven day week was
Speaker 1: a U. C. Berkeley historian named David Hankin, who has
Speaker 1: written a book called The Week, A History of the
Speaker 1: Unnatural Rhythms that made us who we are. And so
Speaker 1: there have been several articles out and interviews with Hanken
Speaker 1: about this book that I've drawn from here. One of
Speaker 1: the things I read was this Eon magazine article by
Speaker 1: Hankin where he tries to talk about some of the
Speaker 1: reasons that the week became especially salient in his view
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, that there was something that happened
Speaker 1: roughly in the eighteen hundreds in the West that made
Speaker 1: the week suddenly a much more useful and important calendar
Speaker 1: unit than it had been in centuries before. Because before that,
Speaker 1: of course, people observed the week, you know, so in
Speaker 1: medieval Europe, there was a week, but it might be
Speaker 1: more important for like tracking how long until the day
Speaker 1: you go to church or something. And one reason that
Speaker 1: the week became more salient in the eighteen hundreds was
Speaker 1: the increasing proportion of society that made a living by
Speaker 1: wage labor, so working you know, some number of hours
Speaker 1: per week for some you know, a factory owner or
Speaker 1: in some kind of shop, instead of just people working
Speaker 1: on farms and things. And of course at this time
Speaker 1: it would have been common for wage laborers to work
Speaker 1: on Saturdays, but with Saturday representing the most common end
Speaker 1: of the seven day weekly cycle and the regular pay day,
Speaker 1: so if you have a day of the seven day
Speaker 1: cycle where the majority of people who are getting a
Speaker 1: paycheck are receiving that check, that's going to kind of
Speaker 1: change patterns of buying and consumption throughout the economy. So
Speaker 1: whatever people wanted to spend their paycheck on Saturday night
Speaker 1: might be a likely time for it. But by the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century there had been an increased push among
Speaker 1: wage laborers to have to have two day weekends instead
Speaker 1: of just Sunday off, and so especially in the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties under under FDR, labor unions managed to make gains
Speaker 1: to sort of pressure it to to become the norm
Speaker 1: in the United States for full time workers to have
Speaker 1: a two day weekend, so you get Saturday and Sunday off.
Speaker 1: This was formalized I think when the US past the
Speaker 1: Fair Labor Standards Act in in nineteen thirty eight, which
Speaker 1: made a forty hour work week with a two day
Speaker 1: weekend the norm and the majority of American jobs. It's easy.
Speaker 1: This is another one of those examples that where it's
Speaker 1: easy to take it for granted and just think of
Speaker 1: like the weekend as a part of life itself. Uh,
Speaker 1: just imagining like, you know, people living in in centuries
Speaker 1: past and then doing them doing something on the weekend.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just without thinking too closely about it,
Speaker 1: you can easily fall into that trap of just thinking
Speaker 1: that that's this is just the pattern of life, this
Speaker 1: is just how it works. No, the weekend, the two
Speaker 1: day weekend is fairly new, and it's something that had
Speaker 1: to be fought for. Yeah. Henken actually identifies a number
Speaker 1: of different influence is that may have led to the
Speaker 1: increased salience of the week in the nineteenth century. One
Speaker 1: of them is the trend towards what he calls stock taking.
Speaker 1: I think a sort of accounting of one's affairs and
Speaker 1: and one's life. I guess this could be for business
Speaker 1: or personal reasons, with the use of the seven day
Speaker 1: week in the nineteenth century, and this would be aided
Speaker 1: by actually the proliferation of mass market diary books with
Speaker 1: pages already formatted to reflect the days of the week,
Speaker 1: so like sort of the diary would arrive in your
Speaker 1: hands not just with blank pages, but with sort of
Speaker 1: spaces for you to fill in what was going on
Speaker 1: each week or for the days of the week. And
Speaker 1: that earlier almanacs or diary books would have tended to
Speaker 1: to favor different kind of calindrical organizations. I never would
Speaker 1: have imagined that, but that was very interesting to me
Speaker 1: that like changes in just like printing of diary books
Speaker 1: could could play a role here. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting to think about again just how these um at
Speaker 1: times even physical structures of physical layouts based on the week,
Speaker 1: the form of the week, these uh, these end up
Speaker 1: influencing the way we think about our lives, how we
Speaker 1: organize our lives, etcetera. So, yeah, that's that's you can
Speaker 1: imagine how almanacs and diary books would have a huge
Speaker 1: impact because here it is, here is the week. Now
Speaker 1: fill in the week as you need to. He also
Speaker 1: points to schools as possibly playing a role in cementing
Speaker 1: weekly routines, uh to the printing another printed product, not
Speaker 1: just diary books, but domestic manuals that would just say,
Speaker 1: you know, here's a good way to run a household,
Speaker 1: and it would specify certain tasks that you would do
Speaker 1: on certain days of the week. So it might say,
Speaker 1: you know, Mondays are good for washing, and Tuesdays for ironing.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of ironing. Well, you don't have to
Speaker 1: fill the whole day with irony. But ultimately, Hankin identifies
Speaker 1: as as maybe the main contributor to the increasing importance
Speaker 1: of the week as an organizing principle for life what
Speaker 1: he calls commercial entertainment, voluntary association, and print culture, because
Speaker 1: he says that for increasingly urban populations people moving more
Speaker 1: towards city life and wage labor, it turned out that
Speaker 1: cycles of weeks were actually a useful way to schedule
Speaker 1: a busy, voluntary life. For example, if you're planning to
Speaker 1: see friends on a regular basis, you could just know
Speaker 1: that you know we get together every Thursday, which would
Speaker 1: allow for the meeting to happen on schedule without everybody
Speaker 1: checking to see if they had conflicting plans. And Hankin
Speaker 1: argues that there's an interesting explanation for this. He says,
Speaker 1: it was quote the impersonal character of urban life unquote
Speaker 1: that gave rise to the week as a primary scheduling device,
Speaker 1: because the week allowed people to quote coordinate recurring activities
Speaker 1: with others, including those they might not yet know. And
Speaker 1: I think this would be opposed to in in more
Speaker 1: rural life, the idea that socialization tends to be more
Speaker 1: kind of continuous and spontaneous rather than you know, scheduled
Speaker 1: recurring activities in an otherwise busy schedule. Yeah. Yeah, though
Speaker 1: it is kind of funny how it sounds like it
Speaker 1: would be easier just to say, okay, well we're going
Speaker 1: to always do this on Thursday. Thursday is the day
Speaker 1: for this um. But I I know that that many
Speaker 1: of you out there probably have experienced with with with
Speaker 1: this situation where you set that weekly expectation and then
Speaker 1: what happens when you get to Monday or Tuesday of
Speaker 1: that week. Someone's like, wait, actually, can we do it
Speaker 1: on Wednesday this week instead. I have a thing, what
Speaker 1: if we did it on Friday. No, Thursday is the
Speaker 1: day we decided that's why we have this week? And
Speaker 1: how many of those are caused by either people working
Speaker 1: outside of work hours or people us not wanting to
Speaker 1: go out and not wanting to admit it. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's in my opinion, and it's you know, it's fine
Speaker 1: if you don't want to go out, it's fine even
Speaker 1: if you want to work instead, but then don't don't
Speaker 1: bump around the the the the the the recurring uh schedule, uh,
Speaker 1: just because because you've decided to work a little extra
Speaker 1: that day. I don't know, I'm uh like, like I said,
Speaker 1: this is I think one of those things where I
Speaker 1: like the principle of it, but it seems to break
Speaker 1: down somewhat, uh in my experience. But we know, of
Speaker 1: course that eventually the week becomes salient for basically everybody
Speaker 1: in America, because it's not just like city dwellers whose
Speaker 1: whose weeks are filled with lots of different kinds of
Speaker 1: scheduled activities, uh that that you know about the week.
Speaker 1: Eventually it seems like the week is something that's on
Speaker 1: everybody's mind, and uh, he mentions this. I want to
Speaker 1: read from a paragraph here, Hankin writes, quote, for those
Speaker 1: who lived in small towns and on farms, fewer activities
Speaker 1: distinguished one week day from the next, but even they
Speaker 1: would anticipate the ir eival of the weekly mail, apportioned
Speaker 1: the reading of the newspaper they received every seven days,
Speaker 1: or follow the schedules of a train or stage coach
Speaker 1: that passed through regularly on specific week days. As a result,
Speaker 1: generations of Americans became disciplined to the rhythms of the
Speaker 1: week that it impinged only lightly on the lives of
Speaker 1: their ancestors. So I think this is an interesting argument
Speaker 1: that it's like, even if you're not living in a
Speaker 1: city and juggling a lot of uh, you know, scheduled
Speaker 1: activities on a recurring basis, you know, maybe you're just
Speaker 1: like we're working on a farm in the rural world. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the highly scheduled nature of city life sort of stretches
Speaker 1: out through through media and through transportation infrastructure and and
Speaker 1: communications through mail and stuff into the rest of the country. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing I was wondering about is, okay, though, what
Speaker 1: what is the direct evidence that people tended to become
Speaker 1: more conscious of weeks and week days what day of
Speaker 1: the week it was instead of say, what day of
Speaker 1: the month that was in the nineteenth century. So to
Speaker 1: mention a few examples of this, he says that there
Speaker 1: is a change in trends that we can see left
Speaker 1: in what are called blank book diaries of the period. So,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned a minute ago, some diaries would of
Speaker 1: course have a pre printed organizing principle for your entries,
Speaker 1: but some diaries would just be blank pages. And he
Speaker 1: says that in these diaries, if you examine them, you
Speaker 1: can see a natural shift in the first half of
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds towards a preference for identifying which day
Speaker 1: of the week it was at the top of each entry,
Speaker 1: and suddenly a greater tendency to make errors in identifying
Speaker 1: what date of the month it was instead of what
Speaker 1: day of the week it was, And checking against my
Speaker 1: own experience, I feel like I'm still in this this
Speaker 1: new weekday mindset, because you know, or I guess I
Speaker 1: would say that week day consciousness dominates date consciousness in
Speaker 1: my thinking. I pretty much always know what day of
Speaker 1: the week it is, but I always have to look
Speaker 1: up the new miracle date unless it's Halloween or something. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very very much dealing with the publication schedule, I
Speaker 1: think makes you think like this for sure, though I
Speaker 1: guess it would be different if you if you had
Speaker 1: a publication to say, only came out ont of every month,
Speaker 1: or you know, bi monthly publication or something. But but
Speaker 1: other pieces of evidence for the increasing weekday consciousness. He
Speaker 1: says also in this period in the eighteen hundreds, if
Speaker 1: you examine the records of witness testimony during trials, UH,
Speaker 1: you will see a trend toward people having a stronger
Speaker 1: memory for what day of the week something happened rather
Speaker 1: than the date UH, and frequently citing recurring weekly routines
Speaker 1: as sort of the anchor memory that made them sure
Speaker 1: of which day what they're what they're saying the witness
Speaker 1: happened on. So I don't know, maybe it was a
Speaker 1: Thursday because that is when the mail wagon arrives. And
Speaker 1: he also says across this period, letters begin to show
Speaker 1: a greater preference for organized using recent memories by weeks
Speaker 1: instead of other time scales. So if you just you know,
Speaker 1: read large amounts of correspondence people talking about what's going
Speaker 1: on in their lives. They're they're more inclined to start saying,
Speaker 1: here's what happened last week or the week before that. Also, interestingly,
Speaker 1: Hancin talks about a few different examples of various powers
Speaker 1: and institutions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Speaker 1: trying to replace the seven day week with something else,
Speaker 1: and noting that that these attempts failed in places where
Speaker 1: the week was already the norm. Some business interests in
Speaker 1: the West in the late nineteenth century wanted to get
Speaker 1: rid of the seven day week because it caused problems
Speaker 1: in bookkeeping. You might think, well, what would those problems be?
Speaker 1: But uh so, think about it this way. The year
Speaker 1: does not subdivide cleanly into a whole number of weeks.
Speaker 1: So you have inconsistent numbers of weeks lining up into
Speaker 1: time units that are you just for bookkeeping in businesses,
Speaker 1: like months or quarters or years, and this can cause confusion.
Speaker 1: For example, if you're trying to compare some performance metric
Speaker 1: between two months, but the metric you're looking at is
Speaker 1: calculated on Fridays, and then maybe you've got a month
Speaker 1: that has five Fridays, but the next month only has four,
Speaker 1: so you start having trouble comparing things evenly across these
Speaker 1: calendar units. Oh, that reminds me of at one point,
Speaker 1: we were owned by a company that did I guess
Speaker 1: we gotta like a pay We got our paycheck every
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and so occasionally you would have that
Speaker 1: one magic month where you've got three paychecks in a
Speaker 1: given month, and that one wouldn't have anything taken out
Speaker 1: of it for for benefits and so forth. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: the vague memory I have of it, anyway, chit ching, No,
Speaker 1: it's funny. You can actually google this. They're like people
Speaker 1: who do whole web pages that are just like, here
Speaker 1: are the months in two that have five fridays. We'll
Speaker 1: get five paychecks. I mean, if you get a paycheck
Speaker 1: every week. Now. He also notes that in the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: I think this was in nine nine, the USSR tried
Speaker 1: to change the calendar also to to change the number
Speaker 1: of days in a week and how weekends worked. I
Speaker 1: think the new system they put together was that there
Speaker 1: would be seventy two weeks of five days each in
Speaker 1: every year, and this would add up to like three
Speaker 1: and sixty days and then it would also have these
Speaker 1: weird interruptions supplementing it, so you would have holidays which
Speaker 1: didn't fall on a day of the week but instead
Speaker 1: interrupted the weekly cycle. So uh, not that they celebrated Halloween,
Speaker 1: but if you use Halloween as an example, imagine Halloween
Speaker 1: wasn't on any day of the week, but you could
Speaker 1: have a schedule that went like Friday, Saturday, Halloween, Sunday, Monday.
Speaker 1: The alleged benefit it of this was that it would
Speaker 1: eliminate the inefficiency of factories sitting dormant on the weekends,
Speaker 1: so you know, because of your workers would always be
Speaker 1: on duty to work the machines that day. But it
Speaker 1: apparently proved unpopular and inconvenient because people didn't always have
Speaker 1: the same day off as their friends or family, and
Speaker 1: it had some other downsides, like like, you know, there
Speaker 1: are reasons it can sometimes be useful for production to
Speaker 1: have offline periods, right, like say, there's certain maintenance procedures
Speaker 1: that need to take place. Uh, sometimes the machines need
Speaker 1: to stop, right. So the Soviet Union actually went through
Speaker 1: a couple of different attempts at different reckonings of weeks,
Speaker 1: but I think by like nineteen forty they just went
Speaker 1: back to the regular seven day week. But so it's
Speaker 1: interesting that at various points both capitalism and communism tried
Speaker 1: to kill the seven day week and they both failed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, once that that order is in place, once
Speaker 1: you've everything in your life has has become a tuned
Speaker 1: to this artificial structure, Uh, it becomes resistant to change
Speaker 1: because again, think of all the elements that have gone
Speaker 1: into it that we've discussed. You know, they're they're religious,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're supernatural, they're also related to uh to
Speaker 1: at times actual frequencies in the market. And then it
Speaker 1: just becomes the frequency of your life. Uh. So to imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to shift away from that, uh, you
Speaker 1: can imagine the resistance that would take place, um, either
Speaker 1: outward or certainly inward. Like what if we were to
Speaker 1: suddenly switch now like this was the decree that came down.
Speaker 1: Now we're gonna have sixty five one day weeks. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's how we're doing it. That's useful. That
Speaker 1: would it would be useful, Um, even if there were
Speaker 1: some strong argument to be made for it, like you'd
Speaker 1: have imagine like having to think about your life and
Speaker 1: time in that manner. Well, even if you try to
Speaker 1: put together a system that's not absurd in that way,
Speaker 1: but would try to be an improvement on our system.
Speaker 1: Such a is a one that's been proposed a number
Speaker 1: of times is um changing the calendar to have fixed
Speaker 1: weeks within the year, so that the same date in
Speaker 1: the year would always correlate with the same fixed day
Speaker 1: of the week. So for example, maybe January one would
Speaker 1: always be a Sunday, the second is always a Monday,
Speaker 1: and it just goes on like that. Of course, the
Speaker 1: problem is again that the number of days in a
Speaker 1: year does not cleanly divide into seven. So the proposed
Speaker 1: fixed to this is to have a couple of days
Speaker 1: at the end of the year that would be so
Speaker 1: called blank days. These are like neutral days that are
Speaker 1: no day of the week, and then it and then
Speaker 1: it starts over again at the beginning of the year
Speaker 1: with the with the fixed calendar. Can you imagine that, though?
Speaker 1: Can you imagine it living your life on a day
Speaker 1: that is that is not a day of the week.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it would feel like, how am I supposed
Speaker 1: to think about that? What is life like on a
Speaker 1: blank day? It's probably it's like the purge or something
Speaker 1: you would wake up to the sounds of the whole
Speaker 1: world screaming at once. Yeah. But anyway, I was reading
Speaker 1: about this proposal in an interview with David Hankin in
Speaker 1: an article call in The Atlantic um and he gives
Speaker 1: a reasoning why he thinks this has never taken hold.
Speaker 1: For one thing, it would break religious weekly cycles, which Christians,
Speaker 1: Muslims and Jews tend to see as a matter of tradition.
Speaker 1: These these weeks are in their view, an unbroken series
Speaker 1: going back into antiquity, and that it has some religious value. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so of course, like trying to change the calendar
Speaker 1: could be could be taken as a as an affront
Speaker 1: to the religious traditions of the main religions in the
Speaker 1: Western world. And speaking of that article in The Atlantic,
Speaker 1: there's one thing that the author asks David Hankin, did
Speaker 1: the increasing consciousness of the weekly calendar as opposed to
Speaker 1: the day of the month or whatever in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: did it make people feel different? Did it make time
Speaker 1: feel different to people when they started thinking about it
Speaker 1: more in terms of weeks? And Hankins says, well, it's
Speaker 1: really hard to prove this, but he has a he
Speaker 1: has a sense that s he thinks that increasing consciousness
Speaker 1: of the seven day time period did have an effect
Speaker 1: on people's perception of time, and that effect was that
Speaker 1: it made people feel like time was going by faster.
Speaker 1: So to read his quote, I do think that when
Speaker 1: we are more attuned to the cycle, because it's shorter
Speaker 1: than a month, it feels like time moves much more quickly.
Speaker 1: When our Mondays are different from our Tuesdays and our Wednesdays,
Speaker 1: it does kind of feel like, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it's Monday again. You can see in nineteenth century diary
Speaker 1: entries that more and more often people describe this feeling
Speaker 1: by referring to how another week has come and gone.
Speaker 1: Which is funny because as soon as I read that
Speaker 1: phrase another week has come and gone, it sounds like
Speaker 1: something extracted directly from like a Victorian letter or something.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, that's interesting. I wonder what you think
Speaker 1: about that. If you organize more of your life along
Speaker 1: the schedule of the seven day week, does it feel
Speaker 1: like your life is happening fast sster than if you don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, it's because you also hear
Speaker 1: people saying the same thing about months and years where
Speaker 1: they'll say things like, oh, man, March just flew by,
Speaker 1: didn't it. It just seemed like it was no time
Speaker 1: at all? Or is it really Christmas again? It's we
Speaker 1: just did Christmas, now it's Christmas again. Um. So I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not not sure if I I mean, I believe
Speaker 1: the author here, but um. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it completely matches up with with
Speaker 1: my experience and my experience of hearing other people talk
Speaker 1: about the passage of time. I guess we're so conscious
Speaker 1: of weeks we don't really have anything to compare it to.
Speaker 1: We like, we can't remember what the passage of time
Speaker 1: felt like in the part of our lives where we
Speaker 1: didn't experience weeks. Yeah, I would say when you think
Speaker 1: outside of cat like if you're going to actually think
Speaker 1: about things that are not cleanly divided by by by
Speaker 1: months and weeks and days, you know, I might think
Speaker 1: about the seasons, and sometimes that gets a little hard
Speaker 1: or to think about, like if you think about, well,
Speaker 1: when did when did winter actually begin for me and
Speaker 1: this part in this part of the world in which
Speaker 1: I live, and when does it seem like it is
Speaker 1: going to end or when did it end? And then
Speaker 1: when did it start again? And so forth. Good, we
Speaker 1: seem to have a certain fluctuation here in Atlanta. But
Speaker 1: I guess when I started thinking about that, and maybe
Speaker 1: it it becomes a little murkier, but you know, you
Speaker 1: begin to feel like it feels like it's always been winter. Well,
Speaker 1: of course we get the standard time perception paradox, right
Speaker 1: that has come up on the show many times before,
Speaker 1: which is that in general, things that feel like they're
Speaker 1: going on for a long time in the moment vanished
Speaker 1: to a point in memory, and things that feel like
Speaker 1: they're gone in a flash in the moment tend to
Speaker 1: expand in memory. A big example seasonally that I think
Speaker 1: about is um summers. When I was a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: summers off from school. It's like when you're in it,
Speaker 1: it feels like the summer is over in an instant,
Speaker 1: you just have to go right back to school. But
Speaker 1: in my memory, the summers seem infinite. It Yeah they
Speaker 1: yeah they really did. Yeah there's and granted school school
Speaker 1: summers have have gotten shorter, but the way they felt
Speaker 1: versus the way they seem now like it's it's more
Speaker 1: than canna be accounted for just by uh adding or
Speaker 1: subtracting even a whole month of the days. It reminds
Speaker 1: me of that that short story. Though the woman had
Speaker 1: been inspired. Kubrick's Ai movie had the title super Toys
Speaker 1: Last All Summer Long, which I always really liked that
Speaker 1: title because you know it it implies the summers of
Speaker 1: childhood and like you say, they're kind of infinite nature. Well,
Speaker 1: and to come back to weeks, I think one way
Speaker 1: in which the summer experience when I was a kid
Speaker 1: was different was that, of course, during the school year,
Speaker 1: I'm highly aware of what day of the week it was,
Speaker 1: and in the summer, weeks didn't matter anymore. That's another
Speaker 1: thing because that, yeah, I do remember more of a
Speaker 1: wide open summer situation when I was a kid, but
Speaker 1: as a parent, like we're more like, nope, this this
Speaker 1: this week, are doing this camp, and it definitely has
Speaker 1: a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday situation. Some of those
Speaker 1: days are pool days, some of those days are pizza
Speaker 1: party days. It's all, it's all in the schedule, you know.
Speaker 1: There was one more thing I was thinking about getting
Speaker 1: into that is a a proposed neurological basis for uh
Speaker 1: for the Seven Day a Week, But but maybe I'm
Speaker 1: gonna save that for our listener Mail episode on the
Speaker 1: following Monday, because we've got a good message from a
Speaker 1: listener about it. Excellent. Well, on that note, if you
Speaker 1: have thoughts on this topic that we've covered these last
Speaker 1: three episodes the Seven Day a Week, UH, keep them
Speaker 1: coming right in. We'd love to hear from you. Everybody
Speaker 1: has some sort of connection to this. How do these
Speaker 1: how do the days feel to you? How does the
Speaker 1: passage of the week feel to you? Um, anything we've
Speaker 1: discussed in these episodes is open game, so right in,
Speaker 1: we'd we'd love to hear from you. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you would like to check out other episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind, Well, this is how our
Speaker 1: week tends to go. On Monday we do listener Mail.
Speaker 1: On Tuesday a core episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: and Wednesday a short form artifact or monster fact episode.
Speaker 1: On Thursday, another episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: Friday we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
Speaker 1: strange film. And then on Saturday we have a rerun.
Speaker 1: We have a Vault episode followed by Sunday, which of
Speaker 1: course is the day we rest, the day we on
Speaker 1: our Soul Invictus. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Doctor. Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: The Press fourt