40 Hours to Freedom: The Invention of the Weekend

Conflicted: A History Podcast

Zach Cornwell

Education, History, Society & Culture

4.8 • 610 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2023

⏱️ 94 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Where does the two-day weekend come from? In this standalone episode of Conflicted, we trace the historical trajectory of that oasis of leisure and free time we call “the weekend”. From its mystical beginnings in the religions of antiquity to its hard-fought development in Gilded Age America, we’ll untangle the surprising origins of everyone’s favorite part of the week. SOURCES: Hunnicutt, Benjamin. Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream. 2013. Onstad, Katrina. The Weekend Effect. 2017. Loomis, Erik. A History of America in Ten Strikes. 2018. Murolo, Priscilla. Chitty, A.B. From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend. 2001. Green, James. Death in Haymarket. 2006. Brecher, Jeremy. STRIKE! 1972. Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. 1980. Thomas, Gordan. Morgan-Witts, Max. The Day the Bubble Burst. 1979. BBC. (2019, September 5). Who invented the weekend? BBC Bitesize. Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia. “Presidential Speeches: Downloadable Data.” Accessed Feb 19, 2023. data.millercenter.org Captivating History. The Industrial Revolution. 2020. Grossman, Jonathan. “Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage.” Monthly Labor Review 101, no. 6 (1978): 22–30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41840777. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:56.0	Waitrose.
0:56.8	The home of food lovers.
0:58.5	Selected stores subject to availability.
1:00.3	Hello and welcome to conflicted.
1:02.5	The history podcast where we talk about the struggles that shaped us,
1:06.0	the tough questions that they pose,
1:07.8	and why we should care about any of it.
1:10.2	Conflicted is a member of the Evergreen Podcast Network.
1:13.4	And as always, I'm your host, Zach Cornwell.
1:16.2	As you know, on this show, we usually traffic in controversial historical topics.
1:21.3	Conflicts or events that are often misunderstood or rarely discussed or just flat out confusing.
1:29.0	Subjects that challenge our preconceptions or undermine our assumptions about the world. In fact, the word controversy is
1:34.6	even in the show's unofficial tagline, untangling history's greatest controversies. But the topic
	...

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