History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian

Drowsy Historian

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian 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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

  1. 7H AGO

    Why You’d REGRET Surviving a Witch Trial in the Middle Ages

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian What happened to women who survived witch trials? In this immersive, second-person historical narrative, you live as a medieval woman accused of witchcraft — not executed, not absolved, and never fully forgiven. You return to your village alive, only to discover that mercy has its own consequences. Neighbors watch without speaking. Conversations fall silent. Kindness appears briefly, then retreats. Life continues, but it is permanently altered. This story is not about the spectacle of trials or executions. It is about the quiet aftermath — the long years of being observed, avoided, and remembered without resolution. Survival becomes a lifelong discipline. Routine replaces belonging. Silence becomes the punishment. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Under Pillow Speaker for Ultimate Immersion → https://amzn.to/49fnEm1 • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/47ccNqV • 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. #boringhistory #medievalhistory #witchtrials #historyforsleep #drowsyhistorian #quiethistory #historicalimmersion #forgottenhistory #sleepstories

    2h 3m

  2. 1D AGO

    What It Was Like to Practice Medicine in the Middle Ages

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian Tonight, you step into the quiet world of a medieval healer, practicing medicine centuries before proof, experiments, or modern anatomy.In a small room before dawn, illness is understood not as an enemy, but as imbalance — a subtle shifting of blood, phlegm, bile, belief, and time itself. This episode explores what it was really like to practice medicine in the Middle Ages, where healing was guided by tradition rather than certainty. Bloodletting is ritual, diet is medicine, astrology shapes timing, and belief itself becomes part of treatment. Care is patient, routine-bound, and deeply human — offered with humility, explanation, and quiet apologies when balance refuses to return. There are no dramatic cures here, only steady attention. Healing unfolds slowly, shaped by habit, expectation, prayer, and rest. From the first moments before sunrise to the edge of sleep, this story follows a full day of medieval medicine as it was sincerely understood by those who lived it. Settle in, get comfortable, and let this calm descent into forgotten medical history guide you toward rest. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Under Pillow Speaker for Ultimate Immersion → https://amzn.to/49fnEm1 • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/47ccNqV • 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.

    2h 20m

  3. 2D AGO

    Fall Asleep As a Celtic Farmer During Roman Conquest

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian Tonight, you step into the quiet life of a Celtic farmer as empire arrives without ceremony. You are not a warrior or a leader. You rise with the light, tend the soil, and follow the seasons as you always have. But beyond your fields, foreign armies advance — not with fire or shouting, but with roads that cut straight through memory, laws spoken calmly, and systems that do not ask permission. This story follows conquest as it was most often experienced: not through battles, but through normalization. Barter gives way to coin. Custom gives way to rule. Old gods grow quiet. Children speak new words. And life continues — thinner, quieter, but unbroken. This is a slow, immersive historical narrative about inevitability, endurance, and the kind of loss that happens while everything appears to go on as normal. Perfect for sleep, relaxation, or quiet reflection. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Under Pillow Speaker for Ultimate Immersion → https://amzn.to/49fnEm1 • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/47ccNqV • 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 #boringhistory #romanconquest #ancienthistory #celtichistory #sleepstory #ambienthistory #quietconquest #romanbritain #historicalimmersion

    2h 11m

  4. 3D AGO

    Fall Asleep As a Factory Worker Escaping the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian In this episode, you step inside an early-20th-century New York garment factory on an ordinary workday that slowly turns lethal. Smoke creeps through stairwells, exits fail, and the systems meant to protect workers reveal their limits. Trapped high above the street, escape becomes a careful negotiation rather than a guarantee. This is a quiet, immersive account of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, told from the perspective of an ordinary factory worker. The story focuses not on spectacle or panic, but on routine, restraint, and the gradual realization that safety was treated as an assumption rather than a responsibility. As the building fills with smoke and authority dissolves into silence, the narrative traces how institutional neglect, locked doors, narrow corridors, and symbolic safeguards shaped the experience of those inside — and how disaster emerged not from chaos, but from design. This is a story about labor, survival, and what happens when productivity is protected more carefully than people. Listen, rest, and let the history unfold slowly. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Under Pillow Speaker for Ultimate Immersion → https://amzn.to/49fnEm1 • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/47ccNqV • 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. #TriangleShirtwaistFire #LaborHistory #IndustrialHistory #FactoryFire #WorkplaceSafety #ProgressiveEra #NewYorkHistory #ForgottenHistory #HistoryForSleep #DrowsyHistorian

    2h 33m

  5. 4D AGO

    What It Was Like to Be a Christian Boy Taken for the Ottoman Janissaries

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian This episode follows the life of a Christian boy taken from his village under the Ottoman devshirme system — not through violence or spectacle, but through routine, discipline, and quiet adaptation. You are selected without chaos, removed without cruelty, and reshaped through repetition rather than force. A new language, a new name, and a new purpose slowly replace the life you once knew. Advancement is possible, even likely, but only if obedience becomes instinct and memory grows less insistent. This is not a story about rebellion or escape. It is about survival within a system that does not need brutality to endure — only time, structure, and compliance. Identity erodes not because it is ripped away, but because forgetting becomes easier than holding on. Told in a calm, restrained voice, this episode explores how institutions reshape people quietly, and how a life can continue long after its beginnings have faded from view. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Under Pillow Speaker for Ultimate Immersion → https://amzn.to/49fnEm1 • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/47ccNqV • 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. #ottomanempire #devshirme #boringhistoryforsleep #drowsyhistorian #sleepstory #forgottenhistory #historicalimmersion #quiettragedy #historyforsleep #calmhistory

    2h 8m

  6. 5D AGO

    Fall Asleep While Working the Docks in a 1903 British Port

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian Before dawn, you arrive at the edge of a polluted river where ships wait, bells decide who eats, and labor begins long before the city fully wakes. You are not remembered, not protected, and not spared. You are a dock worker in Industrial Britain in 1903, lifting cargo by hand while steam cranes loom overhead and progress accelerates without slowing for the bodies beneath it. This episode follows a single day along the docks — the hiring bell, the endless noise of chains and machinery, the damp cold that never leaves your clothes, and the quiet way injuries are absorbed and forgotten. As the hours pass, the work becomes mechanical, the fatigue settles deep, and even rest offers no true relief. Progress moves by the ton, but it never pauses long enough to notice who carried it there. Told in calm, second-person narration, this is a slow, immersive descent into repetitive labor, physical exhaustion, and the quiet indifference of an industrial system built on bodies that are easily replaced. Lie back, get comfortable, and let the rhythm of the docks carry you through another forgotten day in history. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Under Pillow Speaker for Ultimate Immersion → https://amzn.to/49fnEm1 • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/47ccNqV • 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. #drowsyhistorian #boringhistoryforsleep #industrialrevolution #dockworkers #workingclasshistory #edwardianbritain #laborhistory #sleepstory #calmhistory #forgottenhistory

    2h 3m

  7. 6D AGO

    Fall Asleep As a Peasant in Roman Britain

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian Tonight, you live quietly in Roman Britain, farming land that still feels like yours even as it is claimed, measured, and taxed by an empire that rarely needs to show its face. Soldiers pass along stone roads that cut through your fields. Coins enter your hands only long enough to leave again. Your name survives elsewhere as a number written into distant records. This is not a story of rebellion or heroism. It is a story about systems, monotony, and quiet submission. Rome does not rule through constant violence, but through order, expectation, and routine. Over time, resistance learns to become careful. Silence becomes practical. Survival becomes a skill. As seasons pass, children grow up fluent in the new order, old beliefs retreat into private spaces, and endurance replaces hope as the measure of success. The empire feels permanent. Suffering is structural. And yet life continues — quietly, patiently, and largely unseen. This episode is designed to be calm, grounded, and immersive — a slow descent into ordinary life under occupation, where history is being made somewhere else. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Under Pillow Speaker for Ultimate Immersion → https://amzn.to/49fnEm1 • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/47ccNqV • 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. #BoringHistoryForSleep #RomanBritain #AncientRome #SleepHistory #DrowsyHistorian #HistoricalImmersion #FallAsleep #AncientHistory #CalmNarration #HistoryPodcast

    1h 58m

  8. FEB 15

    Fall Asleep as a City Guard in Ancient Sumer

    Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian In one of the world’s first cities, you stand watch as a city guard—holding position at gates, temples, and storehouses built from mudbrick and patience. You are not a king, priest, or hero of legend. Your days pass slowly in heat, routine, and repetition, as early civilization learns how to endure through habit rather than spectacle. This episode follows a full cycle of time, from the quiet before dawn through the long stillness of midday, into evening light and deep night, before morning returns again. There are no battles to fight and no grand decisions to make. Instead, life unfolds through standing, waiting, observing, and maintaining order so quietly that it almost disappears. Through dust, shadow, heat, and silence, this is a story about how civilization didn’t begin with excitement or triumph—but with boredom, patience, and people willing to remain where others could move freely. This is a calm, immersive history episode designed for sleep, relaxation, or quiet listening. 🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend: • Under Pillow Speaker for Ultimate Immersion → https://amzn.to/49fnEm1 • Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/47ccNqV • 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. #boringhistory #historyforsleep #ancienthistory #sumer #earlycivilization #sleepstory #calmhistories #drowsyhistorian #ancientcities #historicalimmersion

    1h 59m
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4.1
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About

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian 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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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