History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian

Drowsy Historian

History For Sleep delivers slow, calm, and slightly unsettling historical storytelling that makes dozing off educationally depressing. Brought to you by the Drowsy Historian, each episode is 1–2 hours of immersive bedtime history with just enough absurd detail to keep you listening — until you aren’t. Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying p

  1. 17 HR AGO

    The HORRIFYING Life of a 1970s Quaalude Addict

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian In the 1970s, Quaaludes were sold as harmless relaxation, marketed by doctors as safe sleep and glamorized on the disco dance floor. But behind the glitter and neon was a much darker truth. This is the story of how a small white pill, passed casually between friends and strangers, promised freedom but delivered silence. From the first swallow under the mirrored ball to the isolation of the 1980s, Quaaludes erased not only nights but entire lives, vanishing from pharmacies, clubs, and history itself. Tonight’s story is not one of glamour or liberation, but of exhaustion, dependency, and erasure — the forgotten fate of a vanished drug and the people who disappeared with it. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4nkFuZD • Blanket Soft Enough to Make the Plague Feel Tolerable → https://amzn.to/3GSOq8f • Weighted Blanket for Pretending You’re a Mummified Pharaoh → https://amzn.to/4kVJCgE • Sleep Mask Headphones For Total Historical Escape → https://amzn.to/4nWsNVn • Book Light for Reading About Plagues at 2AM → https://amzn.to/4eSg0iu • White Noise Machine for Blocking Out the 21st Century → https://amzn.to/3GJ9jTw These are affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you purchase through them—at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting the show while staying cozy. #Quaaludes #1970sHistory #DrowsyHistorian #DarkHistory #AddictionHistory #DiscoEra #HistoryForSleep

    1h 32m

  2. 1 DAY AGO

    The Strange, Brutal Myths of the Greek Gods

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian The Greek gods are remembered in marble and museums as noble, serene figures—but their myths tell a far darker truth. From Cronus devouring his children to Zeus’s endless betrayals, from Hera’s cruel vendettas to Apollo’s plague-bearing arrows, the Olympians were not moral guides but reflections of chaos, lust, jealousy, and violence. This weary walk through their stories reveals how worship in ancient Greece was born not of love, but of fear—sacrifices made not for justice, but for survival under capricious rulers. Join me for a slow, ironic retelling of the myths that shaped the ancient world, exposing the absurdity, brutality, and strange beauty of the gods who ruled not with justice, but with raw power. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4nkFuZD • Blanket Soft Enough to Make the Plague Feel Tolerable → https://amzn.to/3GSOq8f • Weighted Blanket for Pretending You’re a Mummified Pharaoh → https://amzn.to/4kVJCgE • Sleep Mask Headphones For Total Historical Escape → https://amzn.to/4nWsNVn • Book Light for Reading About Plagues at 2AM → https://amzn.to/4eSg0iu • White Noise Machine for Blocking Out the 21st Century → https://amzn.to/3GJ9jTw These are affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you purchase through them—at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting the show while staying cozy. #GreekMythology #OlympianGods #DrowsyHistorian #HistoryForSleep #DarkHistory #AncientGreece #BedtimeHistory

    2h 5m

  3. 2 DAYS AGO

    Why You’d REGRET Going to Woodstock 1969

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian Woodstock 1969 is remembered as three days of peace, love, and music. The reality was three days of mud, sewage, and bad sandwiches. In this video, we step into the festival as it really was: the endless traffic, the collapsing toilets, the bread riots, and the bad trips—all narrated in the calm, dry sarcasm of the Drowsy Historian. Forget the myth of a harmonious countercultural utopia. What you’ll actually find is trench foot, diarrhea, and enlightenment mostly achieved through vomiting in the mud. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4nkFuZD • Blanket Soft Enough to Make the Plague Feel Tolerable → https://amzn.to/3GSOq8f • Weighted Blanket for Pretending You’re a Mummified Pharaoh → https://amzn.to/4kVJCgE • Sleep Mask Headphones For Total Historical Escape → https://amzn.to/4nWsNVn • Book Light for Reading About Plagues at 2AM → https://amzn.to/4eSg0iu • White Noise Machine for Blocking Out the 21st Century → https://amzn.to/3GJ9jTw These are affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you purchase through them—at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting the show while staying cozy. #Woodstock #HistoryForSleep #DarkHistory #DrowsyHistorian #1969 #Counterculture #HistoryPodcast

    1h 45m

  4. 3 DAYS AGO

    What Daily Life Was REALLY Like in Ancient Egypt

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian Step away from the golden masks and monumental pyramids, and into the mudbrick homes where most ancient Egyptians actually lived. This is not the Egypt of eternity carved in stone, but the Egypt of sand-filled bread, sour beer, smoky hearths, and endless labor. In this episode, we’ll explore the daily grind of the Nile Valley — from the grinding stones that wore teeth to stumps, to the cramped homes crawling with pests, to the weary rhythm of festivals that offered fleeting relief from monotony. We’ll meet farmers bent double in the fields, women chained to querns and ovens, children pressed into chores before they could play, and the forgotten millions who fed temples and kings but whose names dissolved in the sand. Ancient Egypt has always been presented as eternal, but its true eternity was not paradise. It was repetition — smoke, dust, grit, and sweat carried forward generation after generation. This is their story, told not in stone, but in silence. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4nkFuZD • Blanket Soft Enough to Make the Plague Feel Tolerable → https://amzn.to/3GSOq8f • Weighted Blanket for Pretending You’re a Mummified Pharaoh → https://amzn.to/4kVJCgE • Sleep Mask Headphones For Total Historical Escape → https://amzn.to/4nWsNVn • Book Light for Reading About Plagues at 2AM → https://amzn.to/4eSg0iu • White Noise Machine for Blocking Out the 21st Century → https://amzn.to/3GJ9jTw These are affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you purchase through them—at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting the show while staying cozy. #AncientEgypt #HistoryForSleep #DailyLife #EgyptianHistory #CalmHistory #DrowsyHistorian

    1h 59m

  5. 4 DAYS AGO

    The Horrifying Life of a Medieval Barber-Surgeon

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian Step into the dim, uneasy world of the medieval barber-surgeon — where the same razor that scraped a chin might, moments later, open a vein. In this slow, immersive descent, you’ll live through the life of an apprentice turned master of the trade, where grooming and crude medicine blurred into one grim routine. From sweeping up hair tangled with blood, to sawing through limbs on the battlefield, to returning home scarred and hollow, you’ll discover why the barber’s pole is striped with more than just barbering pride. This is not the neat history of universities and physicians — this is the weary, terrifying reality of the men who shaved, bled, and cut their way through the Middle Ages, only to be forgotten and replaced by the next trembling youth. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4nkFuZD • Blanket Soft Enough to Make the Plague Feel Tolerable → https://amzn.to/3GSOq8f • Weighted Blanket for Pretending You’re a Mummified Pharaoh → https://amzn.to/4kVJCgE • Sleep Mask Headphones For Total Historical Escape → https://amzn.to/4nWsNVn • Book Light for Reading About Plagues at 2AM → https://amzn.to/4eSg0iu • White Noise Machine for Blocking Out the 21st Century → https://amzn.to/3GJ9jTw These are affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you purchase through them—at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting the show while staying cozy. #medievalhistory #barbersurgeon #historyforsleep #asmrhistory #darkhistory #historicalstorytelling #sleepstory #medievalmedicine #drowsyhistorian

    1h 45m

  6. 5 DAYS AGO

    The Dark Origins of the Werewolf Myth

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian From ancient Greek kings cursed by the gods, to Celtic families condemned to wander as wolves, to the burning stakes of sixteenth-century France and Germany — the werewolf has stalked the European imagination for centuries. Far older than Hollywood transformations under a full moon, the werewolf was once a terrifying explanation for famine, madness, and unthinkable violence. This video traces the dark origins of the werewolf myth: from Norse warriors who wore wolf pelts into battle, to medieval sermons that cast wolves as the Devil’s servants, to the lurid trials where men confessed under torture to feasting on human flesh. Over time, the beast shifted from courtroom horror to gothic literature and penny dreadfuls, before finally being reborn on the silver screen. The wolf endures because he is more than an animal. He is a reflection of our own fears: hunger, violence, and the fragility of the boundary between man and beast. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4nkFuZD • Blanket Soft Enough to Make the Plague Feel Tolerable → https://amzn.to/3GSOq8f • Weighted Blanket for Pretending You’re a Mummified Pharaoh → https://amzn.to/4kVJCgE • Sleep Mask Headphones For Total Historical Escape → https://amzn.to/4nWsNVn • Book Light for Reading About Plagues at 2AM → https://amzn.to/4eSg0iu • White Noise Machine for Blocking Out the 21st Century → https://amzn.to/3GJ9jTw These are affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you purchase through them—at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting the show while staying cozy. #WerewolfHistory #DarkFolklore #DrowsyHistorian #HistoryForSleep #MythAndFolklore #HistoricalHorror

    1h 50m

  7. 6 DAYS AGO

    The HORRIFYING Life of an Appalachian Moonshiner

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian Tonight we descend into the unforgiving hollers of Appalachia, where poverty, hunger, and suspicion push men into a trade that can only end in ruin. You are a moonshiner in the late 19th to early 20th century, dragging copper into the woods, hiding jars beneath sacks of corn, and listening for revenuers in the dark. The corn you grow feeds not your family but the fire in a shack that threatens to consume you with every run. Each jar that buys bread also buys betrayal, blindness, or blood. And when your body fails, the still will not wait—it will simply be rebuilt by another, your name already forgotten in the smoke that rises through the trees. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4nkFuZD • Blanket Soft Enough to Make the Plague Feel Tolerable → https://amzn.to/3GSOq8f • Weighted Blanket for Pretending You’re a Mummified Pharaoh → https://amzn.to/4kVJCgE • Sleep Mask Headphones For Total Historical Escape → https://amzn.to/4nWsNVn • Book Light for Reading About Plagues at 2AM → https://amzn.to/4eSg0iu • White Noise Machine for Blocking Out the 21st Century → https://amzn.to/3GJ9jTw These are affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you purchase through them—at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting the show while staying cozy. #HistoryForSleep #Appalachia #Moonshine #DarkHistory #SleepStory #DrowsyHistorian #ForgottenLives #BleakHistory

    1h 49m

  8. 25 SEPT

    Did Medieval Warriors Get PTSD?

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian Warriors of the Middle Ages are often remembered as fearless knights in shining armor — paragons of courage, duty, and faith. Chronicles tell us they rode boldly into battle, defended castles with honor, and fought without hesitation. But the reality, as always, was far darker. Behind the myths of chivalry lay sieges marked by starvation, raids that left villages burning, and battlefields where the noise of steel gave way to the silence of the broken. This video explores a question the chroniclers never asked: did medieval warriors suffer in ways we now recognize as trauma? From trembling hands in the aftermath of battle to visions reframed as divine punishment, the Middle Ages left scattered evidence of men haunted by what they endured. Their voices were largely erased, silenced beneath the myths of glory — yet the human cost of war has always been the same. Across a thousand years, only the vocabulary has changed. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4nkFuZD • Blanket Soft Enough to Make the Plague Feel Tolerable → https://amzn.to/3GSOq8f • Weighted Blanket for Pretending You’re a Mummified Pharaoh → https://amzn.to/4kVJCgE • Sleep Mask Headphones For Total Historical Escape → https://amzn.to/4nWsNVn • Book Light for Reading About Plagues at 2AM → https://amzn.to/4eSg0iu • White Noise Machine for Blocking Out the 21st Century → https://amzn.to/3GJ9jTw These are affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you purchase through them—at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting the show while staying cozy. #MedievalHistory #DrowsyHistorian #HistoryForSleep #MedievalWarfare #MentalHealthHistory #PTSD #DarkHistory

    1h 49m
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About

History For Sleep delivers slow, calm, and slightly unsettling historical storytelling that makes dozing off educationally depressing. Brought to you by the Drowsy Historian, each episode is 1–2 hours of immersive bedtime history with just enough absurd detail to keep you listening — until you aren’t. Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying p

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