History to Sleep Through

History to Sleep Through
  • 5.0 (1)
  • History
  • Updated Semiweekly

Long, quiet history, read slowly enough to fall asleep to. Real events, told at an easy pace, with the small details left in: the weather, the dates, the names of the people who were there. Put it on and close your eyes. Narrated by an AI voice. You'll hear the ending eventually. Probably not tonight.

Episodes

  1. 1d ago

    The History of Halloween

    Before the pumpkin, there was the turnip. In Ireland and Scotland, faces were carved into turnips and set beside the house, and the jack-o'-lantern took its name from Stingy Jack, a man who tricked the Devil. This episode follows the night from a Gaelic festival at the end of summer, through the feast days the church laid on top of it, across the Atlantic with Irish and Scottish emigrants, and on to paper party guides, candy corn and the first cries of trick or treat. Along the way, some two hundred boys leave a stuffed dummy on a railway track in Kentucky. Cover picture: "A Merry Halloween" postcard, about 1910. Public domain. Narrated by an AI voice.

    The History of Halloween

  2. Oct 12

    The Crippen Case

    On the last evening of January 1910, four people played cards in a rented house in north London. One of them, the music hall singer Cora Crippen, was never seen again. The American doctor Hawley Crippen, his typist Ethel Le Neve travelling as his son, the Scotland Yard inspector who crossed the Atlantic on a faster ship to meet them, and the ship's wireless that let the newspapers follow the chase day by day. Cover photo: Dr Crippen and Ethel Le Neve in the dock, London, 1910. Library of Congress (Bain Collection), public domain. Narrated by an AI voice.

    The Crippen Case

  3. Sep 28

    Shackleton's Endurance, Part 3: The Return

    Twenty-two men waited on Elephant Island for four and a half months, living under two upturned boats, while Shackleton tried four times to reach them. Life on the island, the ships he borrowed and begged for, and how the expedition ended, including the second party on the far side of Antarctica. Cover photo: the Yelcho arriving at Elephant Island for the rescue, August 1916. Frank Hurley, public domain. Narrated by an AI voice.

    Shackleton's Endurance, Part 3: The Return

  4. Sep 28

    Shackleton's Endurance, Part 2: The Whistle

    After the ship went down, 28 men camped on the drifting sea ice for five months, then took to three lifeboats and reached Elephant Island. From there, six of them sailed a 22-foot boat 800 miles to South Georgia, and three of those six walked across the island's mountains, which no one had ever crossed, to the whaling station at Stromness. Cover photo: the James Caird being launched from Elephant Island, April 1916. Frank Hurley, public domain. Narrated by an AI voice.

    Shackleton's Endurance, Part 2: The Whistle

  5. Sep 28

    Shackleton's Endurance, Part 1: The Drift

    In January 1915 the Endurance was frozen into the ice of the Weddell Sea, and she never sailed again. How the expedition was paid for, how the ship was built and the crew chosen, the long winter aboard, and the slow drift that left 28 men stranded on the ice. Cover photo: the Endurance held fast in the ice of the Weddell Sea, 1915. Frank Hurley, public domain. Narrated by an AI voice.

    Shackleton's Endurance, Part 1: The Drift
  • 5 Episodes

About

Long, quiet history, read slowly enough to fall asleep to. Real events, told at an easy pace, with the small details left in: the weather, the dates, the names of the people who were there. Put it on and close your eyes. Narrated by an AI voice. You'll hear the ending eventually. Probably not tonight.

Information

  • Creator
    History to Sleep Through
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    5
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 History to Sleep Through
  • Show Website
    History to Sleep Through

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