Listener Mail: Tuesday's Great and Wednesday Too!

couple of things. First of all, he wanted us to uh, to to remind everything, to to tell everybody, not remind to to tell everyone that he has been enjoying the hot dog plus kim Chi combo, which was recommended in the previous listener mail by Jim from New Jersey. How could you go wrong? I mean it's like, I know, it's perfect without even tasting it. Yeah, it's a matchmate

in heaven. Uh. And then second, secondly, as I think we've we've mentioned this before, but Seth Nicholas Johnson has his own podcast, Usty Needles Record Club, which you can find wherever you get your podcast, and he had an episode come out on Friday with a very special guest. Who's that special guest? Joe? Oh, it's me. I was on sets podcast last Friday. We talked about So if

you haven't heard it, Uh, Seth's podcast is again. It's called Rusty Needles Record Club and it's sort of like a book club, but four albums, you know, but for music and so it's very low key. It's a lot of fun. And the album I picked for Seth show was the Batman Forever soundtrack from the ninety nineties. I mean, what else with Seals kiss from Arose on it? Oh? You know it is. It's got Seal, it's got a method man, it's got Nick Cave, it's got the Flaming Lips.

It's all over the place. You two had a song in there, didn't they. You two? Yeah, it has a You two has a song so big it contains universes within it. Wow. All right. So if hearing Seth and me gab about the Batman Forever soundtrack sounds like you're kind of thing, look up Rusty Needles Record Club. It should be the most recent episode on the day this comes out. Yeah, And the podcast has a cartoon dog on the logo, so you know you're in the right spot.

All right. Well, Rob, if you don't have anything else, I think I'm going to jump right in with this message from Virginia. Let's do it, okay. This is in response to our episodes on The Seven Day Week. Virginia rights Greetings. I'm Virginia and I'm Brazilian. This is my first time writing to you, and I apologize in advance for any grammatical errors in this email. First, I need to say I love this podcast and I always recommend it to everyone. It's perfect to practice my English listening.

It's so very well produced and always very fun to listen. Well, thank you, Virginia. Virginia says, by the end of part one of The Seven Day Week, you talked about the theory about markets and fresh food. I always have this on my mind because of my language. In Portuguese, the days of the week are separated by work days and rest days. Monday to Friday is and I think this is in order. Segunda fara ter safarra quarta farra keen

to farrah and sex to farrah. Fa in Portuguese is often used to describe a fair or an open market, so we have second fair to sixth fair, and then we have the rest days Sabodah and Domingo or DS Dominica, and that's of course Saturday and Sunday. I think those are the same names for the weekend days as they are in Spanish, or very close. Anyway, Virginia says, maybe this will add something. I don't know, but I've been thinking about writing you for a long time. Hope this

information will be useful. Lastly, I really love episodes that involves such trivial things that people would never tend to think about them. Can't wait for part two. Ps. I really don't know why we don't have a first fair here. Well, thank you, Virginia. Yeah, that's very interesting. So to restate what she says in the email, Monday in Portuguese translates to second market and then Tuesday's third market, and it goes all the way through until Friday, which is six

the market. So that would imply to me that Sunday is in fact first market or first fair. Though this would be kind of weird because of course, you know, Sunday is the Christian holy day going back many centuries, probably including the whole time in the development of Portuguese, so I don't know. I wonder what is behind that. And I also wonder about words for days of the week and other languages, and if they shed any light on on weird quirks of local cultural history that they

emerged from. Yeah, this is this is very fascinating. I always enjoy it when when listeners from the around from around the world share their own, uh you know, local and or linguistic take on the topic. Alright, this next one comes to us from Will. Will says, Hi, Robert and Joe, thanks for the fascinating content. I enjoyed listening to the first episode of Seven Days of the Week. You have underlined that different people are likely to have

different mental representations for days of the week. This made me think of my father, who was a recently retired Lutheran minister. For my dad, the weekend was a time of work, as this was when he was prepared to lead and leading the Sunday services, including finalizing and delivering his sermon. Thus, Sunday, the traditional day of rest, was for my father, a peak day of work, at least until about one pm, when he usually made it back

to sit with the family for lunch. Because of this my father often called Sunday afternoon the quote start of his weekend. Thanks again for the stimulating material each week, look forward to part two from Zurich. Will oh, glad to hear from Zurich. So we've heard from both Brazil and Switzerland already. Yeah, you know, this is interesting because maybe this explains why the clubs and music halls are not full of of priests and preachers partying on Saturday night.

They're buckling down to work for the for the Sunday morning sermon. Yeah, are they better not be partying? They have they have a big day. Aad though, it is a reminder that, you know what, you're gonna have a particular religious calendar in place. I imagine it's going to vary not only from faith to faith, but from denomination

to denomination. You know, is this a is this a church where Sunday is the big day or is it a church where, oh, also Wednesday is really big or or either or there's just something going on pretty much every day of the week. So it's always it's always interesting to consider a different different models for the week that are tailored to a specific um line of work. Uh,

you know, sometimes Monday is the weekend. I would be interested to see a study that ranks all of the Christian denominations by how much prep work on average the leader of the congregation has to do to get ready, Like, you know, which are the most intensive in terms of sermon writing and which are the most seat of the pants. Yeah. I have fond memories of the episcopal priest at my my church when I was when I was a kid, uh, putting together I feel like, really well written sermons, Like

you know, he puts some work into him. They had themes and stuff that wouldn't come back and all that. I remember. There was one about James Bond, and I don't really the moral was, Yeah, somehow I think he tied back into the Gospel of Matthew. Well, you know, you gotta connect you It's it's always a struggle, right, you gotta find a way to connect with everybody, to

to make the message relevant to today's listeners. And you know, and and so sometimes that means reference thing what everybody's excited about, being a you know, James Bond film or uh, you know, The Grinch or whatever it happens to be. It could be it was some kind of Bible lesson that tied into it. Possibly it was a movie tie in for the upcoming release of Golden I in the Night release with Pierce Brosnan, but I'm not sure. Okay.

Next message is from frequent correspondent Jim and New Jersey See. Jim says Robert and Joe, I keep having a recurring thought about biological reasons for there to be seven days in the week. You've danced around the idea several times in referring to people using the week to mentally organized tasks. Is there any connection between seven days in the week and roughly seven short term memory chunks and human brains.

People in cultures with low literacy would depend more upon memory in organizing and tracking short to medium term tasks. Most people would be able to manage a week's worth of activity in their heads at a time. Add a few more days to the week and you start to lose track. I have no evidence for this, but a quick Google search didn't reveal any resources confirming or contradicting

this idea. Jim in New Jersey. Uh yeah, Jim, I would say, like the other biological hypotheses that we've mentioned, I mean, I feel like it would be hard to prove this is the origin of the week, but it's it's it's certainly an interesting idea. If you want to look up more about the idea of their being sort of seven chunks of short term memory, you can check out a classic paper in cognitive psychology. It's called the Magical number seven plus or minus two Some limits on

our capacity for processing information. This was published in nineteen fifty six in Psychological Review by the famous Harvard psychologist George A. Miller, And if you want to have a full, well rounded understanding, you should look up the paper and then all the subsequent research adding to and critiquing it. But the massively abridged and simplified version is that Miller used a number of different tests to argue that the average person can typically hold in working memory about seven

chunks of meaningful information at one time. And this general rule shows up in people's attempts to do things like repeat lists of items or manipulate simple pieces of information. But of course all the usual caveats. It's more complicated than that. In reality, it depends on a number of

intrinsic and extrin sick factors and so forth. But I do think that you could be onto something, Jim, Because if seven is a good rough approximation of the average number of chunks of information that we can manage in working memory at one time, would that means seven is just a pretty good number of days to have in a week, because that's about as many days in advance as the average person would be able to think about

without consulting written records. Yeah, that that makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah, plus seven is the Holy number, James Bond is double O. Seven all comes together. Um. By the way, another shout

out to Seth, our producer. Uh. In one of these episodes, we were asking the question, well, what are some horror franchises, uh, that have seven installments that you could, you know, spread out evenly throughout the week, and Uh, Seth researched this as he was editing the episode and pointed out that, uh, there are three that we can look to the as of this recording. There may be some subsequent films that come out of the change this, but he said, Paranormal Activity,

the Amityville Horror and Wrong Turn. Wow, all of those hilarious wrong They just keep going in those woods. You'd think after the previous six massacres in the West Virginia woods. People would stop taking that wrong turn. They'd be like a sign up by that that put us put a sign up for God's sake. Yeah, I've never seen a single I don't think I've seen any of these movies. I haven't seen anything from all three of these franchises. I saw a number of the paranormal activity movies. They're all,

you know, they're all demon hauntings. There's a demon possession and then you you know, like a camera gets set up in a room and and you see weird stuff happening behind a person's back and they're not aware of it. Yeah, and you know, here's another thing that once they put that sign up, they have to make more of these, and they could just call it right turn. It's just about a family going on a normal vacation in West Virginia and uh and just skipping them. I'm assuming cannibalistic

h rural dwellers altogether. That would be an interesting movie. It's about a group of backwoods cannibals who are trying to get people to come down the wrong term, but nobody ever comes, and we just follow them about their day to day lives. While they're sitting around waiting. All right, we have another one here. This one comes to us from Aiden. Aiden writes, Hi, Robert and Joe, I just listened to part two of the Seven Day Week series.

In the episode, you mentioned the study using BART tests to look at risk aversion and it's correlation with mood throughout the week. Uh. Yeah, Now a quick refresher on that in case it's been a while since you listened, or you didn't listen yet. The BART test that Aiden is talking about, that's an acronym. It stands for Balloon Analog Risk Task and basically it is a simple computer game that is used to measure a person and his willingness to take risks. And also, uh, quickly on the

results of that one study we looked at. They the authors found a pattern where people start fairly risk tolerant on Mondays, and then their risk tolerance goes down each day after that, reaching its lowest point on Thursdays, Thursdays the most cautious day, and then rebounding again on Fridays, with Friday looks a little bit more like Monday anyway, Aid continues. You point out that the correlation is consistent through the week, More sad equals less risk averse, except

for Fridays. On Fridays, we would expect people to be happy and for risk aversion to go down, but instead it goes up. You considered a few different explanations for this, which I must admit we're not very compelling. The explanation that immediately came to mind for me is the fact that some poor soul had to spend their Friday night in a lab clicking a spacebar for pennies instead of doing something fun and or relaxing after a long week. I would be sad too if I had to bar

tie instead of party on my Friday night. To the based emoticon that that is an illegal pun. As a side note, your description of the bart test exactly matched a personality test I had to do once as part of a job application process. There were a series of similarly simple games and scenarios that seemed to assess various personality metrics. I never heard back from the company, so I will never know if I lacked the right experience for the job or if it's simply my personality that

got in the way. When I was job hunting at the time, it was always demoralizing to be rejected by a machine. Another online test I had to do automatically emailed me within seconds telling me I didn't meet their benchmarks. I'm not sure which of these outcomes is worse. Anyways, Thanks for another great episode, Hayden oh Aiden. I feel

for you there. I mean, on from the employer's perspective, I can understand why they might use personality tests to to help them find the right kind of candidates, But I don't know from the applicants perspective, that's just brutal having something feels really awful about having to like play the balloon inflation test in order to get a job. Now, you know, we don't know exactly what job they were applying for here, so maybe this wasn't abstract at all.

Maybe the job was inflating balloons with moneys and uh and doing so in a way where the balloon of money does not explode, but also is filled enough that you're not losing losing money on you know, all those giant, you know, balloon rubbers. Were you applying for a job as a professional gambler? But I agree, and I can see where that would be demoralizing too, to be rejected

by a machine. All right. This next message comes from Selena, and it is also about the same study, with people being becoming more risk averse from Monday through Thursday, and then risk tolerance rebounding on Friday. Um Selena says that this pattern of behavior sounds like a pattern called scalloped responding In applied behavior analysis, this patterned behavior is typically

produced by a fixed interval schedule of reinforcement. Behavior that happens closer in time to access to the reinforcer e g. Finish the work week slash access the weekend is more likely to be strengthened than behaviors that happened farther in time from the reinforcer. Once someone gains access to the reinforcer,

it produces a post reinforcement pause in responding. Then, as the person anticipates access to the reinforcer, as it gets closer to the end of the fixed time interval i e. The work week, the previously reinforced behaviors start to ramp up again. Another example of fixed interval schedule of reinforcement is studying behavior for weekly tests or monthly exams. Well that's interesting, Selena, and I guess if I'm understanding you right.

I think this would mean that there's a different kind of pattern going on than the than the explanation hypothesized

by the researchers there. So, under this interpretation, if the pattern of risk tolerance observed in the study is generally sound, it might be explained by proximity to the weekend, you know, with the weekend offering some kind of behavioral reinforcing mechanism that causes us to take risks, rather than you know, improving mood from Monday to Thursday causing increased aversion to risks. So maybe it has nothing to do with mood. All right,

here's another one. This one comes to us from Samantha. Hello, Rob, Joe, and Seth. I wanted to write in about my experience with confusing days of the week with each other. I'm a college student and my schedule has a typical division into Monday, Wednesday, Friday days, and Tuesday Thursday days. I tend to have the same set classes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then a different set of classes on Tuesday Thursday. Even within that, I have different labs that happen on

different days. None of my week days are identical. Uh. This this just makes me anxious even reading this, because I feel like I still have dreams about this sort of thing. Oh yeah, So my college classes were organized along the same scheme. I mean, with some exceptions. I had some of that were just like one long weekly Wednesday night class or something. Um, you didn't you have that mid morning Tuesday Thursday class that you didn't cancel that?

Did you? You? You just stopped going oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Did you have rob? Did you ever do the thing where I think I tried this at least one semester, where you tried to get all of your week's classes into the Tuesday Thursday days and you basically have five days off but Tuesdays and Thursdays are just nuts. Yeah, yeah, I think I did something along those lines. Or God, it's it's been so long, but I remember sort of scheming.

I don't know if it worked out, um, but I can't imagine that would have been a good idea to just try and just slam everything under those two days and thursdays. I think I basically did that one semester, but it didn't actually work out great because of a because at the time I sort of had a tendency to procrastinate, and like, you can't procrastinate if you're if you're cramming all of your stuff into being due on basically the same day. Yeah, yeah, I was. I was

very much the same way anyway, Samantha continues. Despite it being very important that I know what day of the week it is, it is not unusual for me to be getting ready in the morning and have no idea what class I will be heading to later. Keep my whole schedule in my phone, however, so I can often check that and know which classes I have that day. I wonder if this has to do with the fact

that I have my calendar in my phone. Why I bother to remember what day of the week it is When I can check my phone at any given moment and see that I have chemistry at ten am. My classes start at the same time every day, so I suppose that helps blend the days together as well. Thanks for reading. I love your show. You guys keep me company while I crochet and net Samantha, Well, thanks, Samantha. Yeah, it's a good question. Is our perception of time and

calendar consciousness affected by ease of access to uh? I don't know. Uh date confirming devices. Yeah. I mean, we've certainly looked at similar data about our ability to sort of offload things to other minds and of course machines, so it seems entirely plausible. All right, Rob, should we wrap up with one message about Weird House cinema? This? This one is about snooker, So I feel like I

must defer to you and let you read it. Okay, Yeah, we we We heard from at least a couple of listeners regarding uh ability to kid in the Green Days Vampire, So here we go. This comes to us from Kinney, Hi, Rob and Joe. Growing up in the UK when there were only four channels, you unfortunately had to endure a lot of snooker on TV. Scintillating entertainment for a nine year old, it was not I did, however, absorb the rules pretty well, despite only getting to play once or

two ice in the intervening years. Every time you pocket a red you can pocket a colored ball. Since the balls all have different values, the best one to go for, if you can get it, would be the black. While there are still red balls on the table, the other colors are replaced on their starting spots each time they are sunk. Once all the reds are gone, the remaining colors can be sunk, but this must be done in

ascending order of value, finishing with the black. This is why the Green Bay's vampire is repeatedly going for the black, and why it's seemingly always being replaced. Also about the luminous waistcoats, I think you call them vests. In the USA, the formal attire for a professional match would be spiced up with a bit of color, and I seem to remember that the younger, cooler players could be pretty flamboyant. Finally, I was confused by the green stamps or tickets reference.

I am not sure it refers to money, as our bank notes aren't green. Only the single was green, and these guys wouldn't think of a one pound note as being worth singing about. It was also completely withdrawn from use, at least in England. In anyway, I hope that this shed some light on the topic. Kenny Well, Thanks Kenny Well. Okay, so a couple of notes on the things you bring up here. The luminous waistcoats line, if nobody remembers what

that was. That was when the Green Bays vampire is complaining about how about how the young people in in Snooker are no longer you know, fancy, posh, rich people like him. They're coming in wearing wearing gaudy clothes and stuff. And and one of the things he says is luminous waistcoats. I think that comes right before he says one of them has green hair. Yes, And then the green stamps thing is the very first song in the movie is called green Stamps. And we were trying to figure out

what it was about, and we honestly couldn't. It seems to be about money. But yeah, Kenny's note is good here because I don't I don't think the cash at the time was green. Yeah, based on this after reading Kenney's email, I did a little more research and um, it looked a little deeper and I think this is

my guest. I think they must be referencing green shield stamps. Um. According to Wikipedia quote, green shield stamps was a British sales promotion scheme that rewarded shoppers with stamps that could be used to buy gifts from a catalog or from any affiliated retailer. Uh. They apparently were referenced in songs by Genesis and Jethrow Toll, So you know this would not this this show and this song would not be

isolated in referencing green Stamps. Though, um, I'm guessing you know, I would have to go back and listen to the song a bit more to maybe try and get it. But maybe they're they're trying to talk about green stamps and you know, sort of using that to, uh to to further flesh out this idea of sort of the via the nineteen eighties rat race of trying to get ahead in this London, you know, sub world. Yeah, maybe

I don't know. I mean, the song really does seem to be about money, like that's what you get from all the visuals and all that. But but yeah, I I really don't know what to make of this. Uh. The alternate explanation I was thinking of was, Okay, if you go with the post apocalyptic interpretation where they're living in an underground system of of of bunkers and tunnels, maybe it's like, you know, the green stamps or the in world currency that you have to use to buy

oxygen from Cohagen or whatever. There seems to be a song by someone named Alan Sherman called green stamps as well. Uh so I don't know this is I mean, this is I guess was just a common cultural reference at the time. I guess, And my only guess is that there's somehow supposed to be a critique of sort of uh Thatcher era capitalism in England. But if anyone out there has more information, maybe you're a big you know, Genesis fan or Jethrow toll head, you can ride in

and uh and let us know more about green stamps. No, we do not want to hear from the tull heads. I'm just kidding. All all fans welcome. All right, We're gonna go and wrap it up here, but we will be back next Monday with more listener mail, So keep them coming right in about current episodes, past episodes, potential future episodes. If you have anything to add to listener mail discussions that are ongoing here, then you know, let

us have it. Um Our core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then on Wednesday we do a short form artifact or monster fact episode. On Friday's we do Weird Out Cinema. That's our time to discuss a strange film. And on the weekends we have a rerun a Vault episode. Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.