History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianFrom Stonehenge to Shakespeare, from plagues to parliaments, this is the entire history of England told in one sweeping story. You’ll see kings rise and fall, empires built and lost, and ordinary people enduring it all with grit and grim humor. This isn’t the sanitized version from textbooks — it’s a journey through chaos, reinvention, and the stubborn persistence of an island that refused to vanish.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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 #England #DrowsyHistorian #CalmHistory #BoringHistory #SleepStory

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianAmsterdam in the Renaissance was celebrated as a city of tolerance, wealth, and trade. But for women pushed into its brothels, tolerance meant little. In this story, you step into the life of a poor young woman drawn into the city’s sex trade—your days consumed by smoke-choked taverns, sailors’ fists, lice-ridden sheets, and the steady decline of a body treated as nothing more than a commodity. From the stink of the canals to the empty promises of healers, from fading beauty to final erasure, your life unfolds in silence while Amsterdam thrives on trade and forgets your name.This is not the romantic image of the Dutch Golden Age, it is the harsher truth of those consumed by it.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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 #darkhistory #renaissance #amsterdam #prostitution #historystorytime #bedtimestory #forgottenvoices

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianTonight’s story takes you deep into the forgotten corners of the medieval world — not the merry vision of flagons raised in jolly taverns, but the far more common reality of lives drowned in cloudy ale. From the first bitter swallow forced on children as “safer than water,” to the trembling hands of dependency, to the final collapse in filth and silence, this is a descent without romance. The taverns are smoky, the rushes soaked with vomit, and the laughter thin. Drink does not lift you here — it drags you down, slowly and surely, until even memory lets you go.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking to upgrade your nighttime routine? These are a few things I personally use or recommend:• Sleep Earbuds for Enhanced Immersion → https://amzn.to/4nkFuZD• 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#MedievalHistory #DarkHistory #DrowsyHistorian #HistoryForSleep #HistoricalStorytelling #MedievalLife #HistoryChannel

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianThey told you the West was freedom. Wide horizons, clean air, a fresh start. What you found was dust thick enough to choke a horse, bunkhouses crawling with lice, wages too thin to buy a second pair of boots, and a cough that never let go. Consumption stalked cowboys as closely as the cattle they drove — turning young men hollow before their time, bleeding them dry in bunkhouses, on cattle trails, and beneath makeshift canvas shelters.This isn’t the ballad of fearless riders under open skies. This is the reality of fevered nights, bloody rags, indifferent comrades, and shallow prairie graves.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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 #cowboys #drowsyhistorian #americawest #forgottenhistory #tuberculosis #darkhistory

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianRome has always been remembered for its marble, its generals, its emperors — but not for the millions of ordinary people who actually lived there. Tonight’s story isn’t about triumphal arches or golden togas. It’s about what daily life was really like for a Roman plebeian: cramped insulae ready to collapse, endless hunger, noisy streets, sour wine, false promises of tribunes, and fires that erased entire families overnight.You’ll follow one forgotten Roman citizen from birth to death, seeing the empire not through the polished marble of history, but through the grit, smoke, and exhaustion that defined plebeian life. Rome endures in ruins. Its people did not.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#RomanHistory #AncientRome #HistoryForSleep #DrowsyHistorian #HistoricalHorror

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianFor over 5,000 years, the poppy has promised peace, sleep, and relief. But behind the poetry lies one of history’s darkest cycles—medicine turned indulgence, indulgence turned dependency, and dependency turned ruin. From Sumerian clay tablets to the laudanum bottles of Victorian Britain, from the opium wars in China to the prescription pill epidemic of today, every age has believed it could control the “sleep-bringer.” Every age has been wrong.In this episode, we trace the entire dark history of opium—its rise as a cure, its transformation into global commerce, its role in empire and war, and its survival into the modern opioid crisis. It is a story of comfort that never cured, wealth built on suffering, and a cycle of relief and destruction that repeats without end.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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 #Opium #SleepHistory #DarkHistory #DrowsyHistorian #Empire #Addiction #HistoricalSleepStory

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianStep into the smoke-filled basements and battered gyms of the Great Depression, where hunger drove young men into the ring not for glory, but for survival. Tonight’s story follows the brutal rise and collapse of a desperate fighter — from chipped kitchen tables and soup lines to sagging ropes and jeering crowds. Each punch is less about victory and more about scraping together enough coins to keep the lights on, until the body gives out and the crowd forgets. This is not the myth of boxing’s golden age, but the grim reality of broken ribs, crooked promoters, and the quiet erasure of men used up by spectacle.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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 #depression #boxinghistory #drowsyhistorian #asmrhistory #historicalhorror

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianFrom bonfires on Celtic hillsides to candy corn on suburban porches, Halloween has always been more than just costumes and sugar. It’s a patchwork of ancient rituals, medieval prayers, Victorian séances, and Hollywood monsters—stitched together into the strange night we know today. In this video, we’ll wander through the centuries of Halloween’s transformations, exploring how a night once meant to ward off restless spirits became a festival of plastic masks, slasher movies, and candy buckets.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#HalloweenHistory #StrangeHistory #DrowsyHistorian #SpookySeason #HistoryForSleep #HalloweenOrigins

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianThe life of a WWII tail gunner was not glory, but cold, noise, and isolation inside a glass bubble at the back of a Flying Fortress. Chosen for being small enough to fit, tail gunners endured -40°C temperatures, oxygen masks freezing to their faces, and the constant roar of engines and guns rattling their bones. They were the first target for enemy fighters, the last to be reached if wounded, and most never survived the 25 missions that promised a ticket home.This is not the story of fearless heroes, but of expendable men locked in coffins of glass and steel — forgotten as soon as replacements arrived.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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 #WWII #Tailgunner #DrowsyHistorian #WWIIHistory #B17 #FlyingFortress #WarStories

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianRome liked to call itself eternal. In reality, it was a thousand-year exercise in exhaustion, a city that stumbled from myth to monarchy, from Republic to Empire, from marble to rubble. This is the full story of Rome — not as a parade of glory, but as a slow-motion disaster dressed in togas and temples. From wolves and twins on the Tiber, to senators stabbing one another, to emperors sulking on islands, to gladiators bleeding in the sand, to barbarians collecting their ransom in gold, every chapter reveals less a destiny than a mess. Rome survived longer than anyone expected, but it did so on fear, spectacle, and stubbornness, until at last it collapsed with all the grandeur of a child dismissed from a throne.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#Rome #History #FallOfRome #RomanEmpire #AncientHistory #Documentary #DrowsyHistorian

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianLife in a medieval castle wasn’t the fairy tale of knights, banners, and warm feasts we imagine today. Behind the high walls and soaring towers lay a world of cold stone, smoky halls, rancid food, lice-ridden beds, and garderobes that emptied straight into the moat. This video explores the grim reality of castle life — the damp chambers, contaminated wells, endless noise, and the slow decay of fortresses that looked eternal but were constantly crumbling.If you’ve ever wondered what it was really like to live in a medieval castle, prepare to leave the myths behind and step into the drafts, filth, and regret that defined daily existence.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#MedievalHistory #CastleLife #DarkHistory #HistoryForSleep #MedievalCastles #HistoryPodcast

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianIn the 1970s, Quaaludes were sold as harmless relaxation, marketed by doctors as safe sleep and glamorized on the disco dance floor. But behind the glitter and neon was a much darker truth. This is the story of how a small white pill, passed casually between friends and strangers, promised freedom but delivered silence. From the first swallow under the mirrored ball to the isolation of the 1980s, Quaaludes erased not only nights but entire lives, vanishing from pharmacies, clubs, and history itself. Tonight’s story is not one of glamour or liberation, but of exhaustion, dependency, and erasure — the forgotten fate of a vanished drug and the people who disappeared with it.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#Quaaludes #1970sHistory #DrowsyHistorian #DarkHistory #AddictionHistory #DiscoEra #HistoryForSleep

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianThe Greek gods are remembered in marble and museums as noble, serene figures—but their myths tell a far darker truth. From Cronus devouring his children to Zeus’s endless betrayals, from Hera’s cruel vendettas to Apollo’s plague-bearing arrows, the Olympians were not moral guides but reflections of chaos, lust, jealousy, and violence. This weary walk through their stories reveals how worship in ancient Greece was born not of love, but of fear—sacrifices made not for justice, but for survival under capricious rulers.Join me for a slow, ironic retelling of the myths that shaped the ancient world, exposing the absurdity, brutality, and strange beauty of the gods who ruled not with justice, but with raw power.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#GreekMythology #OlympianGods #DrowsyHistorian #HistoryForSleep #DarkHistory #AncientGreece #BedtimeHistory

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianWoodstock 1969 is remembered as three days of peace, love, and music. The reality was three days of mud, sewage, and bad sandwiches. In this video, we step into the festival as it really was: the endless traffic, the collapsing toilets, the bread riots, and the bad trips—all narrated in the calm, dry sarcasm of the Drowsy Historian.Forget the myth of a harmonious countercultural utopia. What you’ll actually find is trench foot, diarrhea, and enlightenment mostly achieved through vomiting in the mud.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#Woodstock #HistoryForSleep #DarkHistory #DrowsyHistorian #1969 #Counterculture #HistoryPodcast

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianStep away from the golden masks and monumental pyramids, and into the mudbrick homes where most ancient Egyptians actually lived. This is not the Egypt of eternity carved in stone, but the Egypt of sand-filled bread, sour beer, smoky hearths, and endless labor.In this episode, we’ll explore the daily grind of the Nile Valley — from the grinding stones that wore teeth to stumps, to the cramped homes crawling with pests, to the weary rhythm of festivals that offered fleeting relief from monotony. We’ll meet farmers bent double in the fields, women chained to querns and ovens, children pressed into chores before they could play, and the forgotten millions who fed temples and kings but whose names dissolved in the sand.Ancient Egypt has always been presented as eternal, but its true eternity was not paradise. It was repetition — smoke, dust, grit, and sweat carried forward generation after generation. This is their story, told not in stone, but in silence.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#AncientEgypt #HistoryForSleep #DailyLife #EgyptianHistory #CalmHistory #DrowsyHistorian

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianStep into the dim, uneasy world of the medieval barber-surgeon — where the same razor that scraped a chin might, moments later, open a vein. In this slow, immersive descent, you’ll live through the life of an apprentice turned master of the trade, where grooming and crude medicine blurred into one grim routine. From sweeping up hair tangled with blood, to sawing through limbs on the battlefield, to returning home scarred and hollow, you’ll discover why the barber’s pole is striped with more than just barbering pride. This is not the neat history of universities and physicians — this is the weary, terrifying reality of the men who shaved, bled, and cut their way through the Middle Ages, only to be forgotten and replaced by the next trembling youth.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#medievalhistory #barbersurgeon #historyforsleep #asmrhistory #darkhistory #historicalstorytelling #sleepstory #medievalmedicine #drowsyhistorian

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianFrom ancient Greek kings cursed by the gods, to Celtic families condemned to wander as wolves, to the burning stakes of sixteenth-century France and Germany — the werewolf has stalked the European imagination for centuries. Far older than Hollywood transformations under a full moon, the werewolf was once a terrifying explanation for famine, madness, and unthinkable violence. This video traces the dark origins of the werewolf myth: from Norse warriors who wore wolf pelts into battle, to medieval sermons that cast wolves as the Devil’s servants, to the lurid trials where men confessed under torture to feasting on human flesh. Over time, the beast shifted from courtroom horror to gothic literature and penny dreadfuls, before finally being reborn on the silver screen.The wolf endures because he is more than an animal. He is a reflection of our own fears: hunger, violence, and the fragility of the boundary between man and beast.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#WerewolfHistory #DarkFolklore #DrowsyHistorian #HistoryForSleep #MythAndFolklore #HistoricalHorror

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianTonight we descend into the unforgiving hollers of Appalachia, where poverty, hunger, and suspicion push men into a trade that can only end in ruin. You are a moonshiner in the late 19th to early 20th century, dragging copper into the woods, hiding jars beneath sacks of corn, and listening for revenuers in the dark. The corn you grow feeds not your family but the fire in a shack that threatens to consume you with every run. Each jar that buys bread also buys betrayal, blindness, or blood. And when your body fails, the still will not wait—it will simply be rebuilt by another, your name already forgotten in the smoke that rises through the trees.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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 #Appalachia #Moonshine #DarkHistory #SleepStory #DrowsyHistorian #ForgottenLives #BleakHistory

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianWarriors of the Middle Ages are often remembered as fearless knights in shining armor — paragons of courage, duty, and faith. Chronicles tell us they rode boldly into battle, defended castles with honor, and fought without hesitation. But the reality, as always, was far darker. Behind the myths of chivalry lay sieges marked by starvation, raids that left villages burning, and battlefields where the noise of steel gave way to the silence of the broken.This video explores a question the chroniclers never asked: did medieval warriors suffer in ways we now recognize as trauma? From trembling hands in the aftermath of battle to visions reframed as divine punishment, the Middle Ages left scattered evidence of men haunted by what they endured. Their voices were largely erased, silenced beneath the myths of glory — yet the human cost of war has always been the same. Across a thousand years, only the vocabulary has changed.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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.#MedievalHistory #DrowsyHistorian #HistoryForSleep #MedievalWarfare #MentalHealthHistory #PTSD #DarkHistory

Get early episodes & ad-free audio on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DrowsyHistorianStep inside the fire-lit halls and frost-choked battlefields of the Viking Age, where the berserker legend was born. Far from the glorified verses sung by skalds, the life of a berserker was one of isolation, suspicion, and ruin. Feared by enemies, distrusted by comrades, and consumed by a frenzy that promised strength but delivered only exhaustion, their reality was harsher than the myths suggest. This is not a tale of triumph — but of a man slowly erased, his name forgotten while the beast he carried lived on in story.🛏️ Drowsy Historian’s Favorite Sleep ToolsLooking 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/3GJ9jTwThese 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 #Vikings #Berserker #SleepStory #DarkHistory #HistoricalStorytelling #DrowsyHistorian