Settle in and close your eyes. Slow History for Sleep tells true stories from the past in a calm, steady voice, slowly enough to follow and gently enough to drift off to. A ship's gears found at the bottom of the sea. A windy beach where two brothers first flew. A painting that vanished from the Louvre. A long walk through the Niagara woods.Each episode is a single story of around half an hour, told in the third person with soft rain in the background and nothing sudden to wake you. Real history, without the drama.This podcast is...
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Nov 14, 2026 · 47:12
A busy river between two growing cities, and the bridge that finally crossed it. This episode follows the Roebling family and the people who built the Brooklyn Bridge, from the…
Nov 13, 2026 · 49:33
A chair, a peg rail and the rooms of a Shaker household. The story follows communal work, Mount Lebanon chair-making and the objects preserved by museums. Created with the…
Nov 12, 2026 · 50:41
Follow the wood, frames and planks of Lunenburg's Dory Shop, the small boats carried by fishing schooners, and the records and craft that survived the changing fishery. Created…
Nov 12, 2026 · 47:55
A calm account of the road between Edo and Kyoto, following its post towns, inns, river crossings and Hiroshige's printed views. The story keeps the working route and the…
Nov 12, 2026 · 49:22
Follow the discovery of the Terracotta Army, the evidence of clay preparation and workshop organisation, and the conservation of fragile colour beside Qin Shi Huang's burial…
Nov 12, 2026 · 47:46
A calm account of the Tunguska airburst of 1908, following witnesses, Leonid Kulik's expeditions and the evidence preserved in photographs, tree rings and lake sediments. Created…
Nov 12, 2026 · 47:45
A circular reading room above the Ottawa River holds a history of books, carving and conservation. The account follows the Library's collection, building and repairs. Created…
Nov 12, 2026 · 49:53
A calm account of the workers’ town beside Giza, its bakeries, food remains, tools and living spaces. The story follows archaeological evidence and the Wadi al-Jarf papyri,…
Nov 10, 2026 · 57:48
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. A harbour in Newfoundland, an island in Kerry and an ocean between them. The story covers the telegraph and its code,…
Nov 6, 2026 · 55:36
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. A printing house on the Vrijdagmarkt in Antwerp, home and workshop of the Plantin and Moretus families. The story…
Nov 5, 2026 · 54:34
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. A railway line is carried through the mountains of British Columbia, from the Fraser Canyon to a quiet spot in Eagle…
Nov 4, 2026 · 56:05
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. A Toronto market that has met on Saturdays since 1803. It follows the town of York, the proclamation, the brick…
Nov 3, 2026 · 54:19
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. A bay, a bog and a grassy terrace at the northern tip of Newfoundland, where the remains of a Norse camp lie. The…
Nov 2, 2026 · 52:20
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. An evening on the gas-lit streets of Westminster and Covent Garden. The story follows London's first gas street lamps…
Nov 1, 2026 · 54:07
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. A wooden brigantine built on the Bay of Fundy and found adrift in the Atlantic in 1872. It covers her building, her…
Oct 31, 2026 · 57:26
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. A chain of lakes, rivers and hand-worked locks between Ottawa and Kingston. The story covers the building of the…
Oct 30, 2026 · 1:02:12
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. A spacecraft far from home, and a team on the ground working through the night. The story follows Apollo 13 from the…
Oct 29, 2026 · 44:03
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. The Franklin expedition: two ships in the Arctic ice, a note left in a cairn, and the search that ended with Inuit…
Oct 28, 2026 · 32:15
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. The Rosetta Stone: a delta port, a fort, a dark slab with three kinds of writing, a doctor who found one name, and a…
Oct 27, 2026 · 31:44
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. The finding of Tutankhamun's tomb: a dry valley in pale cliffs, an artist turned archaeologist, one last season, a…
Oct 26, 2026 · 30:39
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. Heinrich Schliemann and the hill of Hisarlik: a pastor's son from northern Germany, a clerk, a merchant, a trench…
Oct 25, 2026 · 31:32
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. The Klondike gold rush: a river valley in the Yukon, a small party that found gold in a creek, the long road over the…
Oct 24, 2026 · 32:27
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. The portages of the fur trade: the ancient rock and countless lakes of the Canadian Shield, the worn paths between the…
Oct 23, 2026 · 34:37
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. A winter at a Hudson’s Bay Company post on the shore of Hudson Bay: the palisaded buildings, the Cree traders and the…
Oct 22, 2026 · 36:13
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. The voyageurs’ yearly paddle from Montréal to Grand Portage on Lake Superior: the birchbark canoes, the Ottawa River…
Oct 21, 2026 · 33:34
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. On a mild winter afternoon in 1919, a great tank of molasses gives way in Boston’s North End. The neighbourhood comes…
Oct 20, 2026 · 33:22
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. A young doctor from the Ontario farm country spends a long summer and a snowy winter in a small laboratory in Toronto.…
Oct 19, 2026 · 34:29
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. In the summer of 1518, a woman in Strasbourg begins to dance in the street, and soon others join her. The city looks…
Oct 18, 2026 · 35:13
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. In the hot summer of 1858 the River Thames runs low and foul through London. An engineer named Joseph Bazalgette sets…
Oct 17, 2026 · 34:16
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. In 1915 the ship Endurance is held fast in the Antarctic ice, and her crew wait out a long, dark winter on the frozen…
Oct 16, 2026 · 33:46
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. In the early summer of 1813, a woman named Laura Secord sets out on foot through the Niagara country of Upper Canada,…
Oct 15, 2026 · 33:27
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. In the late summer of 1911, the most famous painting in Paris disappears from its wall in the Louvre, and a long,…
Oct 14, 2026 · 33:09
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. Two brothers from a bicycle shop in Ohio travel to a long, windy stretch of sand dunes on the North Carolina coast,…
Oct 14, 2026 · 33:54
A calm, slow telling of a true story to help you drift off. In 1900, a crew of sponge divers sheltered from a storm beside a small Greek island and found an ancient shipwreck…
Oct 11, 2026 · 35:52
Settle in and close your eyes. Tonight we drift back to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the winter of 1917: a busy wartime harbour, ships coming and going through the Narrows, and a…
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