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