Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
The year is 1933. The Great Depression has hollowed out the cities, emptied the factories, and sent millions onto the rails in search of work, food, or mercy. Tonight, you are one of them. You ride the freight lines west through a landscape of dust and hunger — learning the language of the rails, the cruelty of the bulls, and the strange brotherhood of the forgotten.
This is not a story of freedom. It’s a story of movement — the kind that never really ends.
Lie back. Get comfortable. And listen to What It Was Like to Be a Train-Hopping Hobo in 1930s America.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#DrowsyHistorian #HistoryForSleep #GreatDepression #AmericanHistory #SleepStory #CalmHistory #DepressionEra #HistoryNarration #TrainHopping #RailroadHistory
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
Under the crushing heat of British Malaya, a Tamil laborer searches for relief in a single green leaf. At first, it makes the days bearable — the endless rows of rubber trees, the shouts of overseers, the weight of survival. But what begins as mercy becomes dependency, and what begins as a choice becomes control. This is the horrifying life of a kratom addict in British Malaya — a story of empire, exhaustion, and the quiet erasure of those who built history’s wealth with their bodies.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#Kratom #History #BritishEmpire #ColonialHistory #Addiction #DrowsyHistorian #SleepHistory #HistoricalStorytelling #RubberPlantation #Malaya #Imperialism #ForgottenHistories
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
In 1845, two British ships—HMS Erebus and HMS Terror—set sail from England in search of the fabled Northwest Passage. They were the pride of the Empire: state-of-the-art, steam-powered, and crewed by 129 men confident they would chart the last blank space on the map. Instead, they vanished. This is the story of their doomed voyage—of optimism frozen into silence, of endurance turned to despair, and of the long, patient ice that remembered what the world chose to forget. From the cheers of London’s docks to the final stillness beneath the Arctic, this is The HORRIFYING Fate of the Franklin Expedition.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#FranklinExpedition #History #SleepStory #Arctic #NorthwestPassage #HMS_Terror #HMS_Erebus #DrowsyHistorian #Exploration #HistoricalNarration #BritishHistory #Documentary #SleepHistory
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
From ancient temples in India to the dispensaries of modern California, marijuana’s story is one of rediscovery, repression, and reinvention. Once a sacred plant offered to the gods, it became a scapegoat, a symbol of rebellion, and finally, a regulated commodity.
In this episode, we trace 5,000 years of humanity’s relationship with cannabis — from prayer to prohibition, from medicine to paperwork. Along the way, we’ll meet the emperors, mystics, merchants, and lawmakers who each claimed to define the plant… and the people who quietly kept using it anyway.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#DrowsyHistorian #HistoryOfMarijuana #CannabisHistory #SleepHistory #HistoricalPodcast #CalmHistory #RelaxingDocumentary #HistoryForSleep #EducationalDocumentary #MarijuanaLegalization #THCHistory #CBDHistory
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
Tonight, we step quietly into the gray rooms of Soviet life — through factories thick with smoke, queues that never end, and kitchens where love and exhaustion share the same table. The HORRIFYING Life of an Alcoholic in Soviet Russiafollows one man’s slow, ordinary collapse inside a system that drank as faithfully as it worked. It’s not a story of villains or heroes, just survival: a nation numbed by routine, a bottle that always tells the truth, and a silence that never really lifts.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#SovietUnion #HistoryForSleep #DarkHistory #SovietLife #Alcoholism #HistoricalStories #CalmHistory #ASMRHistory #DrowsyHistorian #SovietEra #RussianHistory #SleepStory #MelancholyHistory
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
From Roman emperors feeding gold to their horses to popes blessing elephants, from monks with talking ravens to influencers with tigers — humanity’s history with pets has always teetered between affection and absurdity. This episode drifts through the centuries to explore how animals became symbols of love, vanity, power, and hope — and how every age found new ways to mistake ownership for affection.
Join me for a quiet, slow journey through gilded palaces, monastic cloisters, and digital screens — tracing the strange bond between humans and the creatures they claimed to love.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#HistorysStrangestPets #DrowsyHistorian #HistoryForSleep #CalmHistory #HistoricalPodcast #SleepStory #AnimalHistory #WeirdHistory #StrangeFacts #EducationalASMR #HistoricalDocumentary #QuietStories
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
Step into the world of Medieval Spain — a land of light and shadow, where faith, knowledge, and survival intertwined for centuries. From the bustling markets of Toledo to the silent monasteries of Castile, from scholars translating the wisdom of three worlds to peasants tilling the same ancient soil — this was a civilization both divided and united by its humanity.
This is not a story of kings and battles, but of ordinary people who built eternity one quiet day at a time. Experience the textures, sounds, and contradictions of a world where mosques, churches, and synagogues stood within earshot — and every prayer, in its own way, reached the same sky.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#MedievalSpain #HistoryForSleep #DrowsyHistorian #MedievalHistory #Andalusia #Toledo #HistoricalStorytelling #SleepHistory #EducationalASMR #CalmHistory #HistoryDocumentary
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
In seventeenth-century Holland, beauty became a currency. This is the quiet, devastating story of Tulip Mania — how an age of reason and refinement lost itself to a flower. From the scholars who first cultivated it, to the merchants who measured it in guilders, to the taverns where fortunes bloomed and vanished overnight, this is the tale of the world’s first financial bubble. Told in calm detail and soft candlelight, it’s a reflection on greed, faith, and the fragile human need to turn wonder into wealth.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#TulipMania #DrowsyHistorian #HistoryForSleep #DutchGoldenAge #FinancialHistory #CalmHistory #RelaxingNarration #SleepStory #HistoricalPodcast #BizarreHistory
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
Tonight, we walk slowly into the heart of ancient Rome — into marble halls, incense smoke, and whispered vows — to witness the fate of a girl chosen as a Vestal Virgin. For a moment, she stands above the city, revered, honored, untouchable. But Rome’s respect has sharp edges, and reverence easily curdles into suspicion. One whisper, one accusation, and the same city that bowed in awe will bury her alive in silence.
This is not the triumphal history of emperors and legions. This is the story of a child handed to ritual, of respect that becomes surveillance, and of piety maintained through erasure.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#HistoryForSleep #VestalVirgins #AncientRome #CalmHistory #DarkHistory #BoringHistoryForSleep #ForgottenHistory
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
From the medieval almshouses where faith and fear mingled, to the towering Victorian institutions that promised compassion through confinement, and finally to the quiet ruins reclaimed by time—this is the dark history of the asylum. For centuries, every generation believed it had found the cure for madness, yet each built new walls to hide what it couldn’t understand. This story traces the evolution of mercy into machinery, of care into control, and of silence into architecture. Step inside the echoing halls of history’s most forgotten institutions—where every locked door was meant to heal, and every reform only deepened the quiet.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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 #DrowsyHistorian #Asylum #MentalHealthHistory #VictorianEra #Bedlam #HistoricalDocumentary #DarkHistory #SleepStory #InstitutionalHistory #ForgottenPlaces #PsychiatryHistory #MentalInstitutions #HistoricalAsylums
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
Under the sweltering Miami sun of the late 1970s, you arrive chasing freedom, fortune, and a taste of the city’s electric promise. What begins as brightness and possibility soon twists into a fever dream of sleepless nights, glittering lights, and a white powder that feels like control—until it isn’t. This is the quiet descent of an ordinary man swallowed by the illusion of success, set against the shimmering mirage of a city built on temptation. Told in the calm, immersive tone of The Drowsy Historian, this story follows the rise, collapse, and erasure of a life lost beneath Miami’s heat and neon glow.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#Miami1970s #CocaineHistory #AddictionDocumentary #HistoricalSleepStory #DrowsyHistorian #MiamiViceEra #HistoricalNarration #SlowHistory #MiamiNightlife #DarkHistory
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
Tonight’s story drifts into one of the darkest corners of modern history — the rise of krokodil, the so-called “cheap heroin” that left devastation in its wake. You’ll step inside the suffocating life of addiction: the poverty, the false promise of relief, the grotesque transformation of the body, and the quiet, forgotten erasure that follows.
This isn’t a tale of spectacle, but of silence — a reminder of how suffering is often pushed aside, reduced to statistics and warnings, while the people behind those warnings disappear without memory.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#HistoryForSleep #DarkHistory #AddictionHistory #SleepStory #ForgottenHistory
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
Tonight, 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 people erased by famine—lives reduced to numbers in a ledger, voices lost to silence, and graves left unmarked.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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 #Famine #SleepStory #RussianHistory #ForgottenHistory #DarkHistory #HistoricalSleep
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
In 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 apothecary jars, this is what healing truly meant in a world where every remedy walked the line between hope and harm.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#DrowsyHistorian #MedievalHistory #CalmHistory #SleepHistory #HistoricalStorytelling #MedievalMedicine #HistoryToFallAsleepTo #ASMRHistory #BedtimeHistory #DarkHistory
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
Childbirth 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 inevitable, and the gods remain distant. Through incense smoke, whispered prayers, and the relentless rhythm of labor, we see how millions of nameless women lived and died in service to continuation. Their voices are gone, but the silence they left behind tells us everything.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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 #AncientRome #Childbirth #DarkHistory #HistoricalStorytelling #SleepStory #DrowsyHistorian
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
The 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 with mercury, sweetened their candies with lead, and dined on chalky bread while congratulating themselves on civilization.
In this episode, we descend into the strange rituals and everyday absurdities of Victorian life — from mourning jewelry made of human hair to taxidermy pets posed for tea parties. It’s a story of poison, superstition, and discomfort, all disguised as refinement. Progress, it turns out, was not always what it seemed.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#VictorianHistory #StrangeHistory #DarkHistory #WeirdVictorians #HistoryForSleep
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
Tonight’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 progress.
But as months pass, silence gathers in waiting rooms, whispers circulate behind closed doors, and joy gives way to devastation. Your baby is born alive — but marked forever by the drug you were told to trust. Doctors avert their eyes. Society stares. Governments delay. The optimism of a modern miracle collapses into isolation, struggle, and betrayal.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#DrowsyHistorian #HistoryForSleep #Thalidomide #MedicalHistory #DarkHistory
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
Life 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 story of the Big Five Mass Extinctions — the Ordovician, the Devonian, the Permian (The Great Dying), the Triassic, and the Cretaceous. Each one reset the planet, shaping life not through strength or grandeur, but through luck, adaptability, and survival in the margins.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#MassExtinction #EarthHistory #DrowsyHistorian #BigFive #ExtinctionEvents #Dinosaurs
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
In 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 silence of a government that looked away, and the exile that followed. The horrifying truth is that survival was not an ending, but its own kind of erasure.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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.
#HurricaneKatrina #HistoryForSleep #DrowsyHistorian
Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorian
On 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 the first harmless flurries to the crushing weight of snowdrifts, you’ll follow one man’s doomed attempt to endure. This is not a tale of triumph, but of erasure — when progress itself was smothered, and the city that never slept lay buried, forgotten beneath white.
🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep Tools
Looking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:
• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4pVFoJy
• 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/3GJ9jTw
These 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 #blizzard #newyorkhistory #drowsyhistorian #greatblizzard1888 #disasterhistory