The Very Excellent Reasons We Have a 7-Day Week & How Cats Became Pets

As you know, you can’t tickle yourself. But if you are ticklish, anyone else can tickle you. So why is that? Even if you know someone is about to tickle you, it still tickles. Listen as this episode begins with an explanation of how tickling works. http://www.livescience.com/3882-tickle.html Our culture – in fact the whole world lives on schedule of a 7-day week. Yet, the week is a totally artificial, man-made invention. Other ways of measuring time such as days, hours, months and years are related to the sun, the moon, the rotation of the earth and other things – but the week is all just made up. Yet it works so exquisitely well! Imagine life with the week. Your schedule would be a disaster. Here to discuss how the week came into being and why it is so important is David Henkin, a professor of history at the University of California at Berkley and author of book The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are (https://amzn.to/3InCDwl) Are you a cat lover? There are millions of them. And even if you are not, you have probably lived in or spent time in a home with cats. Where did cats come from? How did they get to be household pets? And what’s really interesting is that having an indoor cat didn’t actually become a thing until the 1930’s. That’s an interesting story. And here to discuss all this is Jonathan B. Losos an evolutionary biologist at Washington University and author of the book The Cat’s Meow: How Cats Evolved from The Savanna to Your Sofa (https://amzn.to/41PpAe1). If you have valuables in your home, where is the best place to hide them? The freezer? A dresser drawer? No. There’s another place that burglars almost never look. Listen and I will tell you where that is. https://www.rd.com/list/where-do-burglars-look/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Zocdoc is the only FREE app that lets you find AND book doctors who are patient-reviewed, take your insurance, are available when you need them and treat almost every condition under the sun! Go to https://Zocdoc.com/SYSK and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. The Dell Technologies’ Summer Sale Event is on, with limited-quantity deals on top tech! It’s the perfect season to power your passions during Dell’s Summer Sale Event. Save today by calling 877-ASK-DELL. Discover Credit Cards do something pretty awesome. At the end of your first year, they automatically double all the cash back you’ve earned! See terms and check it out for yourself at https://Discover.com/match If you own a small business, you know the value of time. Innovation Refunds does too! They've made it easy to apply for the employee retention credit or ERC by going to https://getrefunds.com to see if your business qualifies in less than 8 minutes! Innovation Refunds has helped small businesses collect over $3 billion in payroll tax refunds! Let’s find “us” again by putting our phones down for five. Five days, five hours, even five minutes. Join U.S. Cellular in the Phones Down For Five challenge! Find out more at https://USCellular.com/findus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices