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

When we released our first two episodes of Hegel’s History of Philosophy, sleep scientists around the world noted a steep spike in the hours and quality of sleep people were getting.

They were baffled by its cause, but of course Textbook Sleep listeners will know by now that there is no writing more punishingly boring than that of Hegel. The conscious mind cannot help but fall asleep to escape it.

For Textbook Sleep, it is a rich vein of boredom to mine, yielding hours of golden slumber.

I, on the other hand, have no choice but to stay awake and read it. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. When I stop reading, you can rest assured that I stagger over to my couch, collapse upon it, and sleep for a ridiculously long time, awakening uncharacteristically ready to face the day with a smile on my face.

It is now time to ring the official Textbook Sleep bronze bell. The bell’s handle is festooned with dragons, as if to chase away cares.

Enjoy, if that’s the right word, this third sampling of the single most boring textbook in recorded history. (That’s not Economics.)

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

But you know who can’t fall asleep? Lighthouse keepers. Too many lives at stake.

Still, they were forced to read Instructions to Light-Keepers, published by Authority of the Light-House Board in July, 1881. It’s so exquisitely boring, it’s amazing that shipwrecks weren’t a more common occurrence, as lighthouse keepers, dutiful in the study of their responsibilities, were almost instantly rendered unconscious by reading it.

Bad news for them. Bad news for ships and sailors at sea. Good news for followers of Textbook Sleep.

I came across this passage, which reminded me of our own three strokes of the bell, in order to clear our minds of worldly cares and allow restful sleep to enter the space created.

“Keepers of light-stations and light-vessels provided with bells will salute, with three strokes of the bell, light-house tenders upon their approach to and departure from such stations and vessels.”

Let dark night be only illuminated by our dreams.

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

Unfortunately, we return to Hegel’s History of Philosophy. Last week’s episode was described by some as deeply, even bottomlessly boring. I would be remiss by not going there again.

A west coast listener writes:

“How do you not fall asleep while reading these things you read, are you sitting on a tack or is one in your shoe?”

Normally, I can stay awake by either sitting on a tack OR having one in my shoe. For Hegel, I have had to resort to both. If my normally soporific voice suddenly rises several octaves, you’ll know my strategy is working. I have had a recent tetanus shot, so please don’t lose any sleep over that.

It is now time to ring the official Textbook Sleep bronze bell. The tintinnabulation that so musically wells from it is said to drive away care and ready the mind for a deep, restful sleep. Let the dullness of Hegel wash over you.

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

We have a doozy for you tonight—it’s going to be an especial challenge to stay awake as I read it.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s History of Philosophy is impenetrable. And it includes his opinions on all the most boring philosophers who ever picked up a quill. Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hobbes, Hume. It’s a soporific smorgasbord of dull.

We begin by ringing the official Textbook Sleep bronze bell three times. It’s the signal that it is time to sleep—and soon, you will have no free will in the matter.

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The H-ion concentration method of standardization!

The selective action of anilin dyes!

The mechanism of entrance of pathogenic organisms into the body!

These and more, MUCH MORE, await you in this episode of Textbook Sleep, where we read aloud boring public-domain textbooks to help you fall asleep.

In this case, it’s The Fundamentals of Bacteriology by Charles Bradfield Morrey, published in 1921.

It’s an unparalleled opportunity to enter into an unconscious state, like when you cracked a biology textbook back in high school.

Remember having to re-read the same paragraph again and again, trying in vain to understand it? If you could just lay your head on the table, just for a moment, just for a second or two. But you knew from bitter experience what that would lead to: Sleep. Beautiful, restful sleep, untroubled by thoughts of the fermentation of carbohydrates or the splitting of fats.

But here, we encourage sleep. Here, even the most hardened insomniac will enter a state of drowsiness long before we get to cell structures like cytoplasm, vacuoles, and metachromatic granules, whatever they are.

We begin as always by ringing the official Textbook Sleep bronze bell three times. The sound will enter your ear canal and travel directly to the bacteria in your gut, causing an involuntary bodily reaction to pull up the covers, fluff your pillow, and get comfortable. Or so I’ve heard. I never took bio.

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

Or, should we say Handbook Sleep? For tonight, we will read:

The Handbook of Railroad Construction; for the Use of American Engineers, Containing the Necessary Rules, Tables, and Formulae, for the Location, Construction, Equipment and Management of Railroads, as Built in the United States, with 158 Illustrations.

The title page of the book alone can put you to sleep.

It was written by George L. Vose, Civil Engineer. And published by James Munroe and Company in 1857.

Back then, railroads were like AI—everybody wanted to invest in them. Now, only Warren Buffett does. And China and Japan. I suppose their handbooks are slightly updated.

The book’s credits include an epigraph:

“Rules themselves oblige us to reflect, that we may see whether we have not departed from them.”—Napoleon.

The rule we have—and will not depart from—is to begin our reading by ringing the official Textbook Sleep bronze bell three times. Its bright, radiating sound drives away care with the speed of a mighty passenger train hurtling through the night, while you, tucked into a sleeping berth, are gently rocked to sleep.

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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.

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

A listener recently informed us that she “used to read Ralph Waldo Emerson as a sleep aid, while in college.”

It happened that the Textbook Sleep library contained a collection of his essays. One glance made it clear that Emerson’s writing was indeed perfect for our purposes.

These stultifying essays have been putting people to sleep since they were first published in 1841. They are tried-and-true soporifics.

Thomas Carlyle’s wife Jane Welsh Carlyle complained,

“I find him getting affected, stilted… and in short 'a considerable of a bore.'”

A big, sleepy thank you to our listener for the recommendation. We welcome any and all suggestions, the more considerable of a bore the better.

Let us strike the official Textbook Sleep bronze bell, then, with the official Textbook Sleep teaspoon, to signal the end of everyday cares—and the start of a satisfying, long night’s sleep.

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Here’s a question posed by The Book of Wonders, published in 1915:

“How many have ever given a thought to the question of where rope comes from and how it is made, or realize what a variety of uses it is put to, and how dependent we are upon it in many of the everyday affairs of life?”

The answer is easy. No one. And that makes it the perfect story to fall asleep to. Not gently. But hard, instantly.

Hello and welcome to Textbook Sleep, the Maximum-Strength Sleep Aid podcast. We read aloud boring, public-domain textbooks to help you fall asleep.

Last week we learned how paint is made. Unexpectedly, some listeners found it interesting. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again. If rope isn’t boring, I don’t know what is.

In fact, before the advent of modern anesthesia, many patients were force-read stories about rope.

You’ll hear about cordage, hackling, spreaders, the four-stand compound laying-machine, and draw frames. Or you would, if you were still awake.

We begin by ringing the official Textbook Sleep bronze bell three times with the official Textbook Sleep teaspoon.

Its sound has been clinically proven to cause Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep, to leave his dark underworld cave and visit each and every one of you in rapid succession.

Soon, you’ll be sleeping like a cat in a sunbeam.

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Watching paint dry—a famously boring exercise. Tonight, we will surpass that level of tedium, by hearing how paint is made.

Welcome to Textbook Sleep, the Maximum-Strength Sleep Aid podcast. We read extremely boring public-domain textbooks to help you fall asleep.