Secretly Incredibly Fascinating: The Days Of The Week

Episode notes

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why the days of the week are secretly incredibly fascinating.

Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week’s bonus episode.

LINKS FOR KATIE GOLDIN:

• Katie Goldin on Bluesky
• @ProBirdRights on Bluesky
• ‘Creature Feature’ podcast (iHeartRadio)
• When Is a Bird a ‘Birb’? An Extremely Important Guide (Audubon)

RESOURCES USED TO INFORM THE EPISODE’S LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

• native-land.ca
• U.S. Department Of Arts And Culture
• The True Native New Yorkers Can Never Truly Reclaim Their Homeland (Smithsonian)
• “Finding Lenapehoking” (YouTube / Hudson River Maritime Museum)
• Why Do They Call It Beacon? (The Highlands Current)
• Dutch & Native American Heritage In The Hudson River Valley (National Park Service)

RESEARCH SOURCES:

• The names of the days of the week – origin and meaning (Viking Ship Museum Roskilde)
• How we divide time: Why do we have 12 months in a year, seven days in a week and 24 hours in a day? (Royal Museums Greenwich)
• How Wednesday Addams Got Her Name (Boing Boing)
• Why 4 Days of the Week Are Named After Norse Gods (History.com)
• The Five Boroughs Of Danelaw (Historic UK)
• Mercury/Hermes (The Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge)
• Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Saturn, Roman god
• Friends Historical Library: The Quaker Calendar (Swarthmore College)
• Secrets of American History: The “Quaker Comet” Was the Greatest Abolitionist You’ve Never Heard Of (Smithsonian Magazine)
• Humanities: Did a Calendar Change Cause Riots in England? (Encyclopedia Britannica)
• Living Maya Time: The Calendar System (Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian)
• Scientia Blog: Myths of the Mayan Long Count calendar (American Association For The Advancement Of Science)
• Telling Time in Ancient Egypt (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• NASA website upload: “Calendars” by L. E. Doggett, from The Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac, P. Kenneth Seidelmann, editor
• The History of Astronomy by Heather Couper & Nigel Henbest
• Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Babylonian Captivity, Jewish history
• User’s Guide To The Night Sky: Lunar Sidereal and Synodic Periods (Durham University Department Of Physics)
• Online Etymology Dictionary entry for week, noun
• 1982 Jim Davis Interview — written by Walter Shapiro for People Magazine, text and cover image preserved by Sean Kleefeld
• Nerding Day: The Dilbert Future (1900HOTDOG.com) — this is Alex’s review and write-up of the Scott Adams book The Dilbert Future, which makes clear that the Dogbert character was simply Scott Adams’s unvarnished horrible opinions and ideas.
• Secretly Incredibly Fascinating: Leap Day
• Secretly Incredibly Fascinating: The Number 13
• Secretly Incredibly Fascinating: Mercury (planet)
• Secretly Incredibly Fascinating: Mercury (element)
• Secretly Incredibly Fascinating: Saturn
• Secretly Incredibly Fascinating: Wool
• Secretly Incredibly Fascinating: The Name Katie