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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Psyche and Eros: The Complete Story of Mythology’s Greatest Love | Greek Mythology for Sleep

A slow, quiet retelling of the story of Psyche and Eros, told from the beginning and made for falling asleep to.

The oldest love story in Western literature, 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 with a girl so beautiful that people stopped visiting the temples and came to look at her instead, which was never going to end well for anybody. A goddess took offence. Her son was sent to punish the girl and did the opposite. What follows is a marriage in the dark to someone she was never allowed to see, a palace where every comfort arrived without anyone bringing it, and one night with a lamp that ruined everything. And then the long part: a girl walking the whole world looking for a husband she had lost by looking at him, taking on a series of tasks that were designed to be impossible, sorting seeds until dawn, going down into the underworld with a coin and a piece of bread. It was written down for the first time in a Roman novel almost two thousand years ago, and everything since — every sleeping girl, every beast who turns out to be a husband, every impossible task set by a jealous older woman — comes downstream from 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 in the dark palace 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.

A slow, quiet retelling of the life of Loki, told from the beginning and made for falling asleep to.

The whole story of the trickster who brought down Asgard, 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 never quite one of them. He lived among the gods, ate at their table, travelled with them, and was born to a different kind altogether — which nobody forgot, least of all him. For most of his story he's the one who causes the problem and then solves it, usually by making something worse first. He cut off a goddess's hair for no reason anyone could explain and ended up handing the gods their greatest treasures. He got them out of a bargain by turning himself into something else entirely and vanishing for a season. He talked his way into and out of more halls than anyone should survive. And then, somewhere along the way, it stopped being funny. There's a death he arranged that nothing could be undone from, a hall where he said out loud what everyone had spent centuries not saying, and a punishment that went far past anything he'd done. He is bound now, and everyone knows what happens when he isn't.

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.

A slow, quiet retelling of the Mothman legend, from the first sighting to everything that came after, made for falling asleep to.

The whole story of what people saw over that small West Virginia town, 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 starts on a November night in 1966, on an old abandoned stretch of land outside town, with two young couples driving home and something standing in their headlights that none of them could explain afterwards. Tall, grey, with wings folded behind it, and eyes that reflected red. They drove, and it kept pace with the car. What follows is the year that came next: more people seeing the same thing in the same few square miles, the strangers who arrived in town asking questions, the phone calls and the lights over the river, and a whole community that spent thirteen months not quite sure what it was living alongside. Then the bridge came down in December of 1967, and forty-six people died, and the sightings stopped almost immediately — which is the part that has kept the story alive ever since, whether or not there was ever any connection at all.

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 on that first night in 1966 and wake up much later, a year 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 and American 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.

Aphrodite: The Complete Story and Most Beautiful Myths of Divine Love | Greek Mythology for Sleep

A slow, quiet retelling of the story of Aphrodite, told from the beginning and made for falling asleep to.

The whole story of the goddess of love, at a pace that's deliberately too slow to follow properly. That's the point. You're not meant to reach the end.

She didn't have a childhood. She came out of the sea already grown, from something violent that had happened long before she existed, and stepped ashore on an island that belonged to her from that day on. It's a strange origin for the gentlest of them, and it explains a great deal about how the rest of it went. What follows is the marriage she was placed into and never wanted, the god she chose instead, the trap her husband built when he found out, and the fact that none of the others could stop laughing. Then the mortal men she loved, and how briefly that tended to last. The young man she couldn't save, whose blood was said to have come up out of the ground as a flower. The apple she was given by someone who should have known better, and the ten-year war that came out of it. And the story where love and the soul are put through everything imaginable before they're allowed to end up together, which is the closest any of these myths get to a happy ending.

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 at sea 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.

Trolls, Elves and Draugr: Complete Stories of Norse Mythic Creatures | Norse Folklore for Sleep

A slow, quiet journey through the creatures of the Norse world, made for falling asleep to.

Hours of trolls, elves and the walking dead, told at a pace that's deliberately too slow to follow properly. That's the point. You're not meant to reach the end.

The gods were never the whole population of that world. Most of it was filled with other things, and the people who told these stories lived a great deal closer to those than to any god. There were things in the rock and the mountains that were older than the gods and much less interested in people. There were beings of a different order altogether, beautiful and dangerous and best not bargained with, who could bring illness or luck depending on how they'd been treated. And there were the dead who didn't stay buried — heavy, swollen, still guarding what they'd owned in life, and far harder to deal with than any ghost, because they had a body. What follows is where all of it came from, what people believed about it, and what they did about it: the offerings left out, the ways a grave was built, and the precautions that had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with getting through the winter.

But the point of this recording isn't really the creatures. It's the hour or two spent drifting through them. 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 out in the mountains and wake up much later, deep in another story entirely, 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.