Three hours of calm music from the world of Chinese myth, made to help you fall asleep and stay asleep through the whole night. A bonus for the quiet nights, the same music playing tonight on our live sleep stream, three hours with no talking at all.

The music is original to the show, made with AI music tools and mixed for sleep: no melody that swells, no percussion, nothing sudden.

If it helps you sleep, follow the show so each new story and each new night of music arrives on its own, and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it.

Watch the live on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8rpznmJnkY
More stories and first looks at new seasons: gildenmyth.com

The voice you hear is the creator's own. He cloned it from recordings of his own voice, so every story is told in his voice. If you enjoy falling asleep to it, follow the show so each new story arrives on its own, and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it.

The voice you hear is the creator's own. He cloned it from recordings of his own voice, so every story is told in his voice. If you enjoy falling asleep to it, follow the show so each new story arrives on its own, and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it.

A bonus for the long nights: six Fairy Tale sleep stories from this feed in one long episode, told back to back with short pauses between them, then a long stretch of quiet music so it keeps playing through the night. It is the same compilation that airs live on our YouTube channel tonight.

In this episode:
0:00:00 Sleeping Beauty
1:35:02 Robin Hood
3:06:36 The Ballad of Mulan
4:41:28 The Wizard of Oz
7:19:07 The Snow Queen
9:08:35 The Moon Princess Kaguya
11:01:03 Ambience, the long night

Every story here is also in the feed as its own full episode.

Watch the live compilation on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4_eJWxBzyo
More stories and first looks at new seasons: gildenmyth.com

The voice you hear is the creator's own. He cloned it from recordings of his own voice, so every story is told in his voice. If you enjoy falling asleep to it, follow the show so each new story arrives on its own, and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it.

The voice you hear is the creator's own. He cloned it from recordings of his own voice, so every story is told in his voice. If you enjoy falling asleep to it, follow the show so each new story arrives on its own, and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it.

A bonus for the long nights: six Fairy Tale sleep stories from this feed in one long episode, told back to back with short pauses between them, then a long stretch of quiet music so it keeps playing through the night. It is the same compilation that aired live on our YouTube channel.

In this episode:
0:00:00 Scheherazade
1:41:53 Aladdin
3:17:39 The Little Mermaid
4:45:45 Cinderella
6:15:58 Peter Pan
8:31:39 Alice in Wonderland
11:17:16 Ambience, the long night

Every story here is also in the feed as its own full episode.

Watch the live compilation on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k03CuJ9lykk
More stories and first looks at new seasons: gildenmyth.com

The voice you hear is the creator's own. He cloned it from recordings of his own voice, so every story is told in his voice. If you enjoy falling asleep to it, follow the show so each new story arrives on its own, and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it.

The voice you hear is the creator's own. He cloned it from recordings of his own voice, so every story is told in his voice. If you enjoy falling asleep to it, follow the show so each new story arrives on its own, and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it.

Welcome to The Sleeping Almanac. Tonight is the last night of the Odyssey, and it is the quietest one. A king who has just won back his own hall walks out of it at first light and goes up into the hills, because there is one person left who does not know he is alive. His father lives on a high farm now, in a labourer's patched tunic and gardener's gloves, working an orchard alone and refusing the comfort of the house, because grief made him small and the work is the only thing that answers. You will hear a son stand at the edge of a vineyard row and watch an old man dig, and try a stranger's story on him first, and watch it land like a stone. And then you will hear him give up the disguise and prove himself with the gentlest evidence in all of Homer. Not a scar. Not a bow. A list of trees. Thirteen pear, ten apple, forty fig, and the rows of vines a father once walked with a small boy at his heel and counted out loud as a gift, and the boy remembered every one of them for forty years. You will hear a house wake up around that. A bath, clean clothes, an old woman's cooking, three generations of one family sitting at a table at the same time for the first time in a lifetime. And out on the road the fathers of the dead come looking for the king with spears, and the anger of a whole island stands up at once, and it is ended not with a battle but with a voice out of the sky and a bolt in the dust and oaths of peace sworn on the spot. Then the days after. A story promised and finally told, an oar carried inland until someone calls it a winnowing fan, and a sail at the edge of morning. A calm, hopeful telling for sleep, calm enough to drift to and rich enough to stay awake for if you choose.

Close your eyes. Let the orchard go quiet. There is nothing to do now but listen and rest.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Welcome and the Singer at the Fire
4:00 Chapter One: The Morning After Twenty Years
12:47 Chapter Two: The Walk Up Through the Autumn Island
19:34 Chapter Three: The Gardener King
27:47 Chapter Four: The Test He Could Not Finish
34:13 Chapter Five: The Proof of the Orchard
44:23 Chapter Six: The Bath and the Table
52:25 Chapter Seven: The Anger in the Town
1:01:36 Chapter Eight: The Voice That Ended It
1:11:38 Chapter Nine: The Oaths of Peace
1:15:58 Chapter Ten: The Days After
1:23:17 Chapter Eleven: The Story That Was Promised
1:29:22 Chapter Twelve: Goodnight. And the Sail at the Edge of Morning

Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HViw5KkaW-Y
New episodes every Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

🎙️ Sleep stories from history, Kingdoms at Dusk: https://kingdomsatdusk.com
📖 All our worlds: https://gildenmyth.com
🕊️ Goddess sleep meditations, The Tender Hour: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTenderHourChannel

🌙 Join the almanac, first looks and the occasional quiet letter: https://gildenmyth.com

This show uses AI tools (research, narration, visuals) under human editorial direction. Every episode is reviewed before release.

The voice you hear is the creator's own. He cloned it from recordings of his own voice, so every story is told in his voice. If you enjoy falling asleep to it, follow the show so each new story arrives on its own, and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it.

Welcome to The Sleeping Almanac. Tonight a great bow comes down off a wall where it has hung at rest through a whole long war, and the strongest young men in a kingdom warm it and grease it at the fire and cannot bend it, because strength was never the thing it was waiting for. A queen carries her husband's bow down the stairs in her own two arms and sets the terms of a contest she believes no one can win. A boy plants twelve iron axe heads in a straight trench down the hall floor, a game he has never once seen played, and his hands know it anyway. And a beggar in rags asks to try that bow, and turns it in his hands the way a singer turns a new lyre, and strings it without rising from his stool, and plucks it once, and one clear note answers like a swallow. You will see a single arrow fly clean through the sockets of all twelve axes without touching iron. You will see a house give a wandering king back his name, and then his hall, and then his wife, who makes him prove himself with a bed whose secret is a living olive tree for a leg, rooted in the island itself, that no man alive could move. The night is stern for a little while in its middle, told plainly and in a low voice and staged not at all, and it is brief, and it passes. On the far side of it there is a house swept clean, and two people knowing each other again after twenty years, and a night the grey eyed goddess made longer so they would have time enough. A calm, hopeful telling for sleep, calm enough to drift to and rich enough to stay awake for if you choose.

Close your eyes. Let the hall go quiet. There is nothing to do now but listen and rest.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Welcome and the Singer at the Fire
4:40 Chapter One: The Morning of the Axes
12:17 Chapter Two: The Bow Comes Down
21:32 Chapter Three: The Contest of the Young Men
30:14 Chapter Four: The Two Herdsmen in the Yard
37:46 Chapter Five: The Beggar Asks for the Bow
44:27 Chapter Six: The Singer Strings the Bow
50:43 Chapter Seven: The Arrow Through the Twelve
56:52 Chapter Eight: The Reckoning
1:02:31 Chapter Nine: The House Made Clean
1:08:21 Chapter Ten: Come and See
1:14:33 Chapter Eleven: The Bed That Could Not Be Moved
1:25:00 Chapter Twelve: Goodnight. And the Night the Goddess Made Longer

Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1HRpIBQzS6E
New episodes every Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

🎙️ Sleep stories from history, Kingdoms at Dusk: https://kingdomsatdusk.com
📖 All our worlds: https://gildenmyth.com
🕊️ Goddess sleep meditations, The Tender Hour: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTenderHourChannel

🌙 Join the almanac, first looks and the occasional quiet letter: https://gildenmyth.com

This show uses AI tools (research, narration, visuals) under human editorial direction. Every episode is reviewed before release.

The voice you hear is the creator's own. He cloned it from recordings of his own voice, so every story is told in his voice. If you enjoy falling asleep to it, follow the show so each new story arrives on its own, and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it.

Welcome to The Sleeping Almanac. Tonight a king walks into his own house as a beggar, and only a dog knows him. He comes down the goat track from the high farm in rags, past the spring where the road bends, and lets a rude man kick him without answering. At his own gate an old hound lifts his head, thumps his tail once in the dust, and lets go of a life he had only been holding on to for this. Inside, the great hall is loud with men eating another man's cattle, and the ragged stranger goes along the tables with his hands out and takes what they give him, insults and bread alike, while his own son watches and says nothing. Upstairs the queen sits at a loom she has been quietly unweaving by lamplight for three years. And in a quiet corner an old nurse kneels to wash a beggar's feet, finds a scar above his knee that she has known since he was a boy, and is hushed before she can cry out. A calm, hopeful telling of the return to the hall for sleep, calm enough to drift to and rich enough to stay awake for if you choose.

Close your eyes. Let the lamps in the hall burn down. There is nothing to do now but listen and rest.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Welcome and the Singer at the Fire
4:34 Chapter One: The Road Down to the Town
10:30 Chapter Two: An Unkindness on the Road
16:02 Chapter Three: The Old Dog on the Warm Heap
26:20 Chapter Four: The Beggar at His Own Door
31:54 Chapter Five: The Thrown Stool
40:18 Chapter Six: The Queen Among the Wasters
48:05 Chapter Seven: The Web Told by the Weaver
56:01 Chapter Eight: The Cloak and the Brooch
1:04:52 Chapter Nine: The Basin and the Scar
1:14:24 Chapter Ten: The Dream of the Geese
1:21:30 Chapter Eleven: The House Going Quiet
1:25:59 Chapter Twelve: Goodnight. And the House Asleep Around Its Secret

Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/wlBVOc8e4WI
New episodes every Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

🎙️ Sleep stories from history, Kingdoms at Dusk: https://kingdomsatdusk.com
📖 All our worlds: https://gildenmyth.com
🕊️ Goddess sleep meditations, The Tender Hour: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTenderHourChannel

🌙 Join the almanac, first looks and the occasional quiet letter: https://gildenmyth.com

This show uses AI tools (research, narration, visuals) under human editorial direction. Every episode is reviewed before release.

The voice you hear is the creator's own. He cloned it from recordings of his own voice, so every story is told in his voice. If you enjoy falling asleep to it, follow the show so each new story arrives on its own, and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it.

Welcome to The Sleeping Almanac. Tonight the long way home ends on a beach at last, and nobody knows it yet. A man wakes in a mist so thick he does not recognise his own island, and believes for one aching moment that he has been cheated again. A young shepherd with grey eyes tells him where he is, and then tells him who she is, and laughs at him fondly for lying to her, because they are both of one craft. Then the king of Ithaca is made old and ragged and unrecognisable, and walks up to a pig farm on the high ground to sit at the fire of a servant who has never stopped believing he would come back. There is a supper of roast pork and dark wine. There is a tale told about a cold night at Troy and a borrowed cloak, invented on the spot to beg a blanket. There is rain drumming on a rough roof, and a son sailing home under the same rain, and one quiet room where a father finally says who he is. A calm, hopeful telling of the homecoming and the swineherd's hut for sleep, calm enough to drift to and rich enough to stay awake for if you choose.

Close your eyes. Let the fire in the hut burn low. There is nothing to do now but listen and rest.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Welcome and the Singer at the Fire
4:34 Chapter One: The Waking Stranger
10:15 Chapter Two: The Shepherd with Grey Eyes
17:48 Chapter Three: We Are Both of One Craft
23:57 Chapter Four: The Cave and the Plan
32:36 Chapter Five: The Farm on the High Ground
40:20 Chapter Six: The Supper of the Swineherd
49:10 Chapter Seven: The Tale of the Cloak
56:02 Chapter Eight: The Story of the Swineherd
1:03:17 Chapter Nine: The Son on the Sea
1:09:26 Chapter Ten: I Am Your Father
1:18:26 Chapter Eleven: The Plan Laid in Low Voices
1:26:42 Chapter Twelve: Goodnight. And the Rain on the Swineherd's Roof

Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/t3zpNlv2NjI
New episodes every Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

🎙️ Sleep stories from history, Kingdoms at Dusk: https://kingdomsatdusk.com
📖 All our worlds: https://gildenmyth.com
🕊️ Goddess sleep meditations, The Tender Hour: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTenderHourChannel

🌙 Join the almanac, first looks and the occasional quiet letter: https://gildenmyth.com

This show uses AI tools (research, narration, visuals) under human editorial direction. Every episode is reviewed before release.