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PODCAST

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian

Drowsy Historian

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

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All Episodes

01:50:32

The HORRIFYING Fate of a Russian Famine Survivor

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/11/09

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianTonight, we descend into the famine-ravaged Russian countryside, where fertile black soil once promised life but delivered only silence and death. Through the eyes of a peasant family, you’ll walk the frozen lanes, hear the creak of death carts, smell the bitter smoke of bark and weeds boiling in empty pots, and feel hunger hollow you from the inside out. This is not the story of kings or generals, but of ordinary

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03:04:17

The Quiet Horror of Medieval Medicine

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/11/08

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianIn the candlelit world of the Middle Ages, medicine was as much ritual as science. You’ll step inside the healer’s chamber — a place of herbs, incense, and quiet faith — to see how doctors once balanced the humors, bled their patients, and prayed for balance between the body and the soul.Before modern medicine, belief was the only cure most people knew. From leeches to astrology, from whispered prayers to

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01:27:22

The HORRIFYING Experience of Childbirth in Ancient Rome

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/11/07

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianChildbirth in ancient Rome was never a promise of life. For Roman women, pregnancy was not a moment of celebration but a gamble with death—an ordeal endured as duty to family, lineage, and the gods. This immersive story brings you inside a modest Roman household where midwives prepare charms, shrines glow with offerings, and neighbors whisper with resigned expectation. Survival is uncertain, suffering is

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01:55:21

The STRANGE Things Victorians Did

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/11/06

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianThe Victorians liked to think of themselves as the pinnacle of progress: railways shrieked across the countryside, gas lamps flickered over polished streets, and the Great Exhibition gleamed with machines promising a brighter future. But behind the rhetoric of reason and refinement lay arsenic wallpaper, laudanum-soothed babies, corsets that crushed organs, and séances in gaslit parlors. They whitened their skin

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01:35:00

The TERRIFYING Effects of Thalidomide (Birth Defect...

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/11/05

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianTonight’s story is not set on a battlefield or in the ruins of an empire. Instead, it begins in the bright optimism of the 1950s and 60s — a world of gleaming hospitals, reassuring doctors, and glossy pillboxes that promised comfort and safety. You are a young mother, newly pregnant, who trusts modern science to ease the hardships of life. A new drug — thalidomide — is said to be perfectly safe. It is said to be

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01:04:40

The 5 Mass Extinctions That Nearly Erased Life (Up to...

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/11/04

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianLife on Earth has never been stable — it has always teetered on the edge of collapse. In fact, most of the species that ever lived are already gone. Across deep time, five catastrophic events nearly erased everything: seas froze and drowned, forests poisoned the oceans, volcanoes suffocated the skies, continents tore apart, and finally, an asteroid ended the reign of the dinosaurs.This is the quiet, unsettling

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01:30:54

The HORRIFYING Fate of a Hurricane Katrina Survivor

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/11/03

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianIn late August 2005, New Orleans was forever changed. Tonight, you will step into the life of a Hurricane Katrina survivor — not through headlines or statistics, but through the lived horror of waiting, drowning, and being forgotten.This is not the story of the storm itself. It is the story of what came after: the levees breaking, families stranded on rooftops, days in the Superdome without food or water, the

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01:47:22

Why You Wouldn’t Survive the Great Blizzard of 1888

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/11/02

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianOn March 11th, 1888, New York and much of the Northeast awoke to what seemed like an ordinary gray morning. By nightfall, the world had vanished into walls of snow, and the “modern” city of telegraphs, trains, and streetcars collapsed under silence. The Great Blizzard of 1888 killed thousands, sealed homes like tombs, and left survivors to crawl through trenches of ice.Tonight, you’ll step inside that storm. From

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01:27:59

What Halloween Was REALLY Like in the Middle Ages

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/11/01

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianStep into a medieval village on All Hallows’ Eve—what we now call Halloween. Far from pumpkins and candy, this night was one of prayers for the dead, flickering candles, children begging for soul-cakes, and villagers disguising themselves in soot and masks to confuse wandering spirits. The church bells tolled to ward off the restless dead, while neighbors whispered of witches, charms, and omens. In the torchlit

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01:27:27

What Life Was REALLY Like on the American Frontier

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/10/31

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianThe American frontier is remembered as a land of freedom, cowboys, and opportunity. The reality was something much harsher. Families who set out west traded comfort for smoke-filled cabins, endless labor, and the silence of miles between neighbors. Food spoiled, winters froze, summers burned, and disease lingered in every sip of water. The myth of independence overshadowed the truth: life on the frontier was

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01:37:34

Why You'd REGRET Shopping at a Medieval Market

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/10/30

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianStep through the gates of a medieval bazaar and discover that what was promised as a wonderland of silks, spices, and treasures was, in truth, chaos wrapped in filth. Behind the banners and incense lies a world of scams, shouting merchants, rigged scales, and food you’ll regret eating. Donkeys shove harder than people, thieves brush against every belt, and “healers” hawk potions more likely to kill you than cure

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01:19:04

The HORRIFYING Life of a WWII Combat Medic

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/10/29

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianStep into the harrowing reality of a World War II combat medic — a soldier trained to heal but forced to work in the mud, surrounded by death. With no weapon in your hands, only bandages, morphine, and trembling resolve, you crawl through fire to reach the wounded. This story is not one of glory or medals, but of exhaustion, improvisation, and the quiet erasure of those who saved lives without recognition.Told in a

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01:22:10

The STRANGE History of the Potsdam Giants

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/10/28

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianHistory remembers Prussia for its iron discipline and military brilliance. But hidden in that reputation is one of the strangest regiments ever assembled: the Potsdam Giants. These soldiers weren’t chosen for courage, loyalty, or tactical skill — they were chosen for being exceptionally tall.In this episode, we explore the bizarre world of the Lange Kerls, a regiment prized by King Frederick William I not for

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01:25:10

How Did Medieval People Think Witchcraft Worked?

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/10/27

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianWitchcraft in medieval Europe was not a fringe superstition but part of the way people understood the world itself. From spoiled milk and ruined bread to storms, illness, and sudden death, misfortune was never seen as chance — it was evidence of malice, of curses whispered by neighbors, or of alliances made with darker powers. This video explores how medieval people thought witchcraft worked: the charms and

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01:38:44

Why You’d REGRET Living in Kowloon Walled City

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/10/26

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianStep inside the Kowloon Walled City — once the most densely populated place on Earth. In this immersive journey, you’ll experience life within its suffocating alleys, where families lived shoulder to shoulder in concrete boxes, pipes dripped endlessly overhead, and sunlight rarely reached the ground. From noodle stalls and unlicensed dentists to triad-controlled gambling dens, the Walled City was both chaotic and

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01:29:31

Why the Black Death Was WORSE Than You Think

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/10/25

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianThe Black Death is often remembered as a single medieval catastrophe — a four-year nightmare between 1347 and 1351 that killed a third of Europe. But the reality was worse. Faster, stranger, and longer-lasting than the legend, the plague reshaped entire generations.In this video, we’ll trace its journey from the Silk Road to the shores of Europe, explore its grotesque symptoms, uncover the staggering death toll,

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01:44:54

The HORRIFYING Fate of a Prisoner in a Khmer Rouge...

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/10/24

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianIn the late 1970s, Cambodia was torn apart by the Khmer Rouge, a regime that promised “reeducation” but delivered only silence, starvation, and death. In this immersive story, you step into the life of a prisoner forced into a reeducation camp — herded from your village, stripped of identity, and reduced to a hollow shadow under endless labor, hunger, interrogation, and fear.More than 1.7 million Cambodians —

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01:31:09

Why You'd REGRET Being a Medieval Leech Collector

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/10/23

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianTonight’s story takes you to the edges of medieval Europe, where survival meant offering your own body to the swamp. As a leech collector, you strip down and wade into stagnant water, letting the worms feed on you so physicians and barbers can peddle their so-called cures. The buzzing of flies, the burning of bites, the weight of buckets writhing with your own blood — this is work no one wanted, yet someone had to

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01:29:27

The HORRIFYING Fate of a Sokushinbutsu Monk...

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/10/22

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianTonight’s story takes us deep into the mountains of Japan, where silence and devotion could lead a monk down a path few would dare follow. This is the horrifying fate of a Sokushinbutsu monk — a man who renounced comfort, endured years of hunger and poison, and sealed himself within stone to seek eternity.What begins in serene meditation soon descends into pain, claustrophobia, and silence, as the body withers in

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01:53:41

What It Was REALLY Like to Sail with Columbus in 1492

History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian ·

2025/10/21

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianTonight’s voyage takes you back to 1492, when you step aboard the Santa María with Columbus and his crew. At first, the cheers of the crowd and the promise of gold, glory, and discovery fill you with pride. But as the days drag on, optimism fades into monotony, hunger, sickness, and fear. The food rots, the air stinks, storms tear the sails, and delirium grips the crew until every shadow on the horizon looks like

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