History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianDrift back nearly four thousand years, to a world of wooden ships, ritual offerings, and the vast, indifferent silence of the Aegean. Tonight, you’re not a hero or a myth—you’re an ordinary Bronze Age sailor carried too far from home. A storm has pushed you into open water, hunger has carved its lessons into your bones, and the horizon refuses to move.This is the quiet horror of being lost at sea in the ancient world: the slow erosion of certainty, the fading of memory, and the realization that the gods remain silent no matter how many offerings you brought aboard. The sea shows no malice, only patience. And you learn, wave by wave, how small a single life truly is.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:• 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#bronzeage #calmhistory #sleepstory #ancienthistory #minoan #lostatsea #horrifyingfate #drowsyhistorian #relaxinghistory #sleepaid

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianStep back into the quiet world of late-medieval carpentry, where oak beams, wooden pegs, and patient hands shaped houses that have survived for centuries. Tonight, we’re exploring the forgotten craft of timber framing — the slow, tactile art of choosing trees, hewing beams by hand, and fitting joints that breathe with the seasons.These homes weren’t built with blueprints or precision machinery. They were shaped by instinct, repetition, and the quiet conversation between wood, gravity, and the craftspeople who understood both. Each joint was a puzzle solved by feel. Each peg was a promise meant to outlast the tools that drove it home.In this immersive journey, we’ll walk through the entire process of building a medieval timber house: selecting the right oak, shaping the beams, carving mortise-and-tenon joints, raising the frame with neighbors, weaving wattle and daub, and settling into a living structure that bends and breathes like an old friend.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:• 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#timberframing #medievalhistory #carpentry #drowsyhistorian #sleepstory #historyforrelaxation #asmrhistory #medievalarchitecture

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianStep into the sodden fields of medieval Europe during one of the most devastating but least-remembered catastrophes in history. Tonight, you’ll live through the Great Famine of 1315 — a year when the rain refused to stop, the fields dissolved into mud, and hunger became the only god still answering prayers.You’re not a knight or a scholar. You’re an ordinary medieval peasant trying to survive a season that forgot how to end. The crops rot in the ground. The village shrinks in silence. The church bells ring too often. And every day becomes an exercise in slow, procedural endurance.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:• 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#History #Medieval #GreatFamine #DrowsyHistorian #SleepStory #HistoricalSleepStory #MedievalHistory

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianStep quietly into one of the coldest, most forgotten corners of the 20th century. Tonight, we follow the life of a prisoner deep inside a Soviet Gulag — a world of frozen mornings, silent labor, and exhaustion treated as routine. Here, cruelty isn’t loud. It’s administrative. You wake before dawn, dig rock for a country that’s already forgotten you, and return each night to a barracks where sleep feels assigned rather than earned.This is not a story of rebellion or escape. It’s a portrait of the everyday machinery of suffering — paperwork, dust, hunger, and the slow erasure of the self. The horror isn’t chaos; it’s structure. A system that keeps moving whether you can or not.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:• 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#history #sleepstory #soviethistory #gulag #calmhistoricalstory #drowsyhistorian #sleepaid #historicalsleepstory #calmhistory #darkhistory #ww2history

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianTonight, you’re stepping into the double life of a Cold War spy — a world built on quiet routines, half-truths, and conversations that feel more like theater than communication. You move through a city that never stops watching, balancing two identities that never quite feel like they belong to you.There are no high-speed chases here. No glamorous gadgets. Just coded notes slipped under benches, safe houses that offer more dust than comfort, and meetings where certainty is performed rather than believed.As the years pass, you become fluent in a strange language: the silent gestures of surveillance, the soft choreography of blending into a crowd, the way petty rumors inflate into “intelligence,” and the endless bureaucratic confidence that history can be shaped by paperwork.This is the quiet, unglamorous reality behind the myth — the slow erosion of a person who lives two lives and belongs fully to neither.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:• 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#ColdWar #HistoryForSleep #CalmHistory #EspionageHistory #ASMRHistory #SpyHistory #DrowsyHistorian #ColdWarSpy #HistoricalStorytelling #RelaxingHistory