Welcome to Textbook Sleep, the Maximum-Strength Sleep Aid, where we read aloud boring public-domain textbooks to help you fall asleep.

We continue with another sleep-inducing essay by Emerson. By listening to it, you will join the hundreds of thousands of students who have struggled heroically to make their way through it, thinking there might be a quiz.

But there is no quiz here at Textbook Sleep. No need to stay awake. Instead, a double-whammy—a sleep hammer, if you will—of his pedantic writing and my tranquilizingly dull voice. A listener has called me “the anesthesiologist of the internet,” so powerful is the effect.

We begin as always by ringing the official Textbook Sleep bronze bell three times with the official Textbook Sleep stainless steel teaspoon, which sends a signal to our brains that what follows is separate and apart from the day’s worries and cares. We enter a realm of intense relaxation, having transcended the limits of the physical world, as Emerson would have wanted.

This recording will end quietly.

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