The Banshee: The Complete Legend of the Spirit Whose Cry Warned of Death | Irish Folklore for Sleep

Ares: The Complete Story of the Feared and Misunderstood God of War | Greek Mythology for Sleep

A slow, quiet retelling of the story of Ares, told from the beginning and made for falling asleep to. The whole story of the god nobody wanted around, at a pace that's deliberately too slow to follow properly. That's the point. You're not meant to reach the end. He was the god of war in a culture that fought constantly and still didn't like him. His own father is on record saying he was the most hateful of all the gods. There's a version of war that the Greeks respected — strategy, defence, the sensible kind — and it belonged to somebody else entirely. What Ares got was the other part: the noise, the panic, the thing that happens to people on a battlefield once the plan has stopped working. What follows is where he came from, the fights he lost that he should have won, the long affair with the goddess he was never supposed to be with and the net they were both caught in, the trial he stood at a hill in Athens that gave the place its name, and the handful of moments where he turns out to be a father who came running when one of his children was in trouble. He is easier to dislike than any of the others, and harder to be fair to. But the point of this recording isn't really the story. It's the hour or two spent drifting through it. The voice stays low and even the whole way through. No music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Every sentence sits at roughly the same level as the one before it, so nothing ever pulls your attention back up to the surface. That's what makes it work on the nights when your head won't switch off. It's just interesting enough to give your thoughts something to hold, and slow enough that they let go of it on their own. You don't have to follow along. You don't have to remember any of it in the morning. If you drift off somewhere near the beginning and wake up much later, in the middle of something you've missed the start of, you've used this exactly the way it's meant to be used. Most people don't make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night. Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you. Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics and old folklore from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can't sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.

The Banshee: The Complete Legend of the Spirit Whose Cry Warned of Death | Irish Folklore for Sleep

A slow, quiet retelling of the banshee legend, told from its oldest roots onward, made for falling asleep to. The whole story of the spirit whose cry came before a death, at a pace that's deliberately too slow to follow properly. That's the point. You're not meant to reach the end. She was never a monster, which is the part most people get wrong. In the older belief she belonged to a family — attached to certain old Irish lines, following them for generations — and what she did was mourn. She arrived before the death rather than after it, and the sound she made was the same sound the women of the household would make later, when the news had actually come. What follows is where the belief came from, the much older figures behind it, the way she was described by the people who claimed to have heard her, and the century in which she slowly turned from a family's own mourner into something frightening in a story. There's also the tradition she grew out of: the keening women who were paid to cry at funerals, a practice that lasted into living memory and was eventually discouraged out of existence. Underneath all of it is a very ordinary idea — that grief starts before the loss does, and that people used to have a way of saying so. But the point of this recording isn't really the legend. It's the hour or two spent drifting through it. The voice stays low and even the whole way through. No music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Nothing in it is built to frighten you. Every sentence sits at roughly the same level as the one before it, so nothing ever pulls your attention back up to the surface. That's what makes it work on the nights when your head won't switch off. It's just interesting enough to give your thoughts something to hold, and slow enough that they let go of it on their own. You don't have to follow along. You don't have to remember any of it in the morning. If you drift off somewhere near the beginning and wake up much later, several centuries further along, you've used this exactly the way it's meant to be used. Most people don't make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night. Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you. Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics, Irish folklore and old stories from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can't sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.

Artemis: The Complete Story of the Goddess of the Hunt, the Moon and the Wild | Greek Mythology for Sleep

A slow, quiet retelling of the life of Artemis, told from the beginning and made for falling asleep to. The whole story of the goddess of the hunt, the moon and the wild, at a pace that's deliberately too slow to follow properly. That's the point. You're not meant to reach the end. She was born first and helped her mother through the birth of her brother, which tells you most of what you need to know about her. As a small child she was asked what she wanted and gave a list: a bow, a pack of hunting dogs, the mountains, and to be left alone by everyone forever. She got all of it. What follows is what that looked like in practice. The women who ran with her and what happened to the ones who broke the arrangement. The hunter who saw something he shouldn't have and did not live out the afternoon. The one man she may have loved, and the trick her own brother is said to have played to make sure that ended too. The city that killed a stag of hers and had to pay a price nobody wanted to pay. She is not the gentle version people expect from the moon. She is the wild itself, which is beautiful from a distance and does not care about you at all. But the point of this recording isn't really the story. It's the hour or two spent drifting through it. The voice stays low and even the whole way through. No music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Every sentence sits at roughly the same level as the one before it, so nothing ever pulls your attention back up to the surface. That's what makes it work on the nights when your head won't switch off. It's just interesting enough to give your thoughts something to hold, and slow enough that they let go of it on their own. You don't have to follow along. You don't have to remember any of it in the morning. If you drift off somewhere out in the forest and wake up much later, in the middle of something you've missed the start of, you've used this exactly the way it's meant to be used. Most people don't make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night. Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you. Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics, Mesoamerican stories and old folklore from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can't sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.

The Maya Hero Twins: The Complete Story of Their Journey into the Underworld | Mayan Mythology for Sleep

A slow, quiet retelling of the journey of the Hero Twins into the underworld, made for falling asleep to. The oldest surviving story from the Americas, told at a pace that's deliberately too slow to follow properly. That's the point. You're not meant to reach the end. It begins one generation earlier, with two brothers who were summoned down below, played a game they were never going to be allowed to win, and did not come back. What follows is what happened to the sons: two boys who grew up knowing where their father had gone, and who eventually went down the same road on purpose. Below them was a place with a river of blood, a road that spoke, lords with names taken from every way a person can die, and a series of houses meant to be survived one night at a time — a house full of cold, a house full of blades, a house full of bats. The twins get through most of it by being cleverer than the people testing them, and by knowing exactly when to lose on purpose. And what finally undoes the lords of the underworld isn't strength at all. It's a trick, performed in front of an audience that couldn't resist asking for it to be done to them. But the point of this recording isn't really the story. It's the hour or two spent drifting through it. The voice stays low and even the whole way through. No music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Every sentence sits at roughly the same level as the one before it, so nothing ever pulls your attention back up to the surface. That's what makes it work on the nights when your head won't switch off. It's just interesting enough to give your thoughts something to hold, and slow enough that they let go of it on their own. You don't have to follow along. You don't have to remember any of it in the morning. If you drift off somewhere near the top of the road down and wake up much later, far below, you've used this exactly the way it's meant to be used. Most people don't make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night. Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you. Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics, Mesoamerican stories and old folklore from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can't sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.

Odin The Complete Story of the Wanderer Who Sacrificed Everything for Wisdom | Norse Mythology for Sleep

Odin The Complete Story of the Wanderer Who Sacrificed Everything for Wisdom | Norse Mythology for Sleep A slow, quiet retelling of the life of Odin, told from the beginning and made for falling asleep to. The whole story of the wanderer who gave up everything he had for knowledge, at a pace that's deliberately too slow to follow properly. That's the point. You're not meant to reach the end. He is not a comfortable god. He was the highest of them and he spent most of his time out on the road in an old cloak and a wide hat, one-eyed, asking questions of anyone who would answer. What follows is what he paid for what he knew. An eye, given up at a well for a single drink. Nine nights hanging from a tree, wounded, with no food and no water and nobody to help him, in order to reach down and take up something that hadn't existed before. A long conversation with a dead woman who told him things he could not use and could not forget. He kept two birds who brought him the news of the world every evening, and he worried every day that one of them wouldn't come back. Everything he built, every hall and every hand-picked warrior, was arranged around a single piece of information he had gone to enormous trouble to obtain: how it was all going to end, and that he was not going to be able to stop it. But the point of this recording isn't really the story. It's the hour or two spent drifting through it. The voice stays low and even the whole way through. No music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Every sentence sits at roughly the same level as the one before it, so nothing ever pulls your attention back up to the surface. That's what makes it work on the nights when your head won't switch off. It's just interesting enough to give your thoughts something to hold, and slow enough that they let go of it on their own. You don't have to follow along. You don't have to remember any of it in the morning. If you drift off somewhere out on the road and wake up much later, in the middle of something you've missed the start of, you've used this exactly the way it's meant to be used. Most people don't make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night. Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you. Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics and old folklore from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can't sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.