History at Bedtime
- Episodes
- 99
- Released
- daily
- Latest episode
- Nov 13, 2026
About the podcast
Calm history stories and relaxing bedtime documentaries about ancient civilizations, forgotten cities, daily life in the past, empires, mysteries, and the quiet human stories behind history. Created for sleep, rest, and peaceful late-night listening.
Episodes 99
Zheng He | The Treasure Fleets and Why Ming China Ended the Voyages
Fall asleep while exploring the voyages of Zheng He and the great Ming treasure fleets that crossed Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean as far as East Africa. Follow their encounters with Malacca, Sri Lanka …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the voyages of Zheng He and the great Ming treasure fleets that crossed Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean as far as East Africa. Follow their encounters with Malacca, Sri Lanka, Calicut, Hormuz and other maritime powers, where diplomacy, trade, religious exchange and military force often existed side by side. Then discover why seven successful expeditions did not lead to permanent expansion at sea, as changing emperors, financial pressures and struggles over political authority gradually dismantled the state machinery that had made the voyages possible.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Dancing Plague of 1518 | Strasbourg, Saint Vitus and an Unsolved Mystery
Fall asleep while exploring the Dancing Plague of 1518, when distressed people in Strasbourg appeared unable to stop moving and city authorities struggled to understand what was happening. Follow the documented …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Dancing Plague of 1518, when distressed people in Strasbourg appeared unable to stop moving and city authorities struggled to understand what was happening. Follow the documented response through physicians, guilds, hospitals, restrictions on public dancing and journeys to the shrine of Saint Vitus. Discover how later writers transformed uncertain evidence into stories of hundreds dancing themselves to death, and examine competing explanations involving illness, ergot poisoning, religious belief, social stress and mass psychogenic illness — without pretending that the mystery has ever been conclusively solved.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
Chernobyl | Reactor Four, Pripyat and the Disaster That Changed Nuclear Safety
Fall asleep while exploring the Chernobyl disaster — from the failed safety test and destruction of Reactor Four to the evacuation of Pripyat and the enormous cleanup that followed. Discover how the RBMK …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Chernobyl disaster — from the failed safety test and destruction of Reactor Four to the evacuation of Pripyat and the enormous cleanup that followed. Discover how the RBMK reactor became dangerously unstable, why the AZ-5 emergency shutdown contributed to the final power surge, and how firefighters, plant workers and liquidators responded to an invisible radiological emergency. Follow the investigation into design flaws, operator decisions and Soviet secrecy, the documented health consequences, the construction of the sarcophagus and New Safe Confinement, and the continuing responsibility of managing the site decades later.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
Polynesian Voyagers | Stars, Wayfinding and the Settlement of the Pacific
Fall asleep while exploring how Polynesian voyagers crossed and settled the vast Pacific without modern charts or navigation instruments. Discover how stars, ocean swells, winds, birds and clouds helped skilled …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring how Polynesian voyagers crossed and settled the vast Pacific without modern charts or navigation instruments. Discover how stars, ocean swells, winds, birds and clouds helped skilled navigators find islands separated by immense stretches of open water. Follow the expansion from early Oceanic and Lapita communities to Hawaiʻi, Aotearoa and Rapa Nui, the exchange networks that continued between distant islands, and the knowledge preserved by figures such as Tupaia. Then trace the modern revival of traditional wayfinding through Hōkūleʻa, Mau Piailug and Nainoa Thompson.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Salem Witch Trials | Spectral Evidence, Executions and the Collapse of a Court
Fall asleep while exploring the Salem witch trials of 1692 — from the first accusations in Samuel Parris’s household to the examinations, imprisonments and executions that spread across Massachusetts. Follow …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Salem witch trials of 1692 — from the first accusations in Samuel Parris’s household to the examinations, imprisonments and executions that spread across Massachusetts. Follow the cases of Tituba, Rebecca Nurse, George Burroughs, John Proctor and Giles Corey as spectral evidence, coerced confessions and fear of a hidden conspiracy shaped the courts. Discover how growing doubts finally ended the prosecutions, and how survivors, jurors, judges and families spent years seeking apologies, compensation and the restoration of names damaged by one of colonial America’s most notorious miscarriages of justice.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Atlantic Slave Trade | The Middle Passage, Plantation Slavery and the Fight for Freedom
Fall asleep while exploring the history of the Atlantic slave trade — from African communities and coastal trading networks to the Middle Passage and the plantation economies of Brazil, the Caribbean and North …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the history of the Atlantic slave trade — from African communities and coastal trading networks to the Middle Passage and the plantation economies of Brazil, the Caribbean and North America. Follow the lives, labor and resistance of millions of enslaved people, the rise of maroon communities, the Haitian Revolution and the growing abolitionist movement. Discover the Zong, Amistad and Clotilda cases, the long struggle to end the trade, and why legal emancipation did not immediately erase the inequalities created by centuries of slavery.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The British Empire | India, Slavery, Sea Power and the End of Empire
Fall asleep while exploring the rise and decline of the British Empire — from Atlantic plantations and the East India Company to imperial rule in India, settler colonies, Africa and strategic ports across Asia …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the rise and decline of the British Empire — from Atlantic plantations and the East India Company to imperial rule in India, settler colonies, Africa and strategic ports across Asia. Follow the roles of slavery, naval power, finance, railways and global trade as Britain built the largest territorial empire of the modern age. Discover the resistance, dispossession and political contradictions behind imperial expansion, then trace how two world wars, independence movements, the partition of India, Suez and decolonization gradually dismantled a system that had once stretched across every inhabited continent.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Wars of the Roses | York, Lancaster and the Battle for the English Crown
Fall asleep while exploring the Wars of the Roses — the dynastic struggle that repeatedly placed England’s crown in the hands of rival branches of one royal family. Follow Henry VI, Richard of York, the brutal …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Wars of the Roses — the dynastic struggle that repeatedly placed England’s crown in the hands of rival branches of one royal family. Follow Henry VI, Richard of York, the brutal Battle of Towton, Edward IV, Warwick the Kingmaker and the shifting alliances that restored and removed kings. Then discover the mystery of the Princes in the Tower, the reign of Richard III, Henry Tudor’s victory at Bosworth and the difficult creation of a more stable Tudor succession after decades of rebellion, confiscation and civil war.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Opium Wars | Britain, Qing China and the Unequal Treaties
Fall asleep while exploring the Opium Wars — from Lin Zexu’s destruction of illegal opium at Humen and Britain’s military response to the Treaty of Nanjing, the cession of Hong Kong and the creation of new …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Opium Wars — from Lin Zexu’s destruction of illegal opium at Humen and Britain’s military response to the Treaty of Nanjing, the cession of Hong Kong and the creation of new treaty ports. Follow the expanding system of foreign commercial and legal privileges, the outbreak of the Second Opium War and the Anglo-French advance toward Beijing, including the looting and burning of the Old Summer Palace. Discover how opium, imperial trade, naval power and competing ideas of sovereignty reshaped China’s relationship with foreign powers for generations.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Mughal Empire | Akbar, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb and the World Behind the Taj Mahal
Fall asleep while exploring the Mughal Empire — from Babur’s conquest of northern India and Akbar’s expansion of imperial rule to the artistic worlds of Jahangir and Shah Jahan, the building of the Taj Mahal …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Mughal Empire — from Babur’s conquest of northern India and Akbar’s expansion of imperial rule to the artistic worlds of Jahangir and Shah Jahan, the building of the Taj Mahal and the long reign of Aurangzeb. Discover how agriculture, taxation, textiles, trade, religious diversity, military service and skilled craftsmanship sustained one of the wealthiest empires of the early modern world. Follow its succession struggles, regional fragmentation and eventual loss of political power while tracing the people and institutions behind its extraordinary monuments.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
Magellan and Elcano | The First Voyage Around the World
Fall asleep while exploring the first documented voyage around the world — from Ferdinand Magellan’s search for a western route to the Spice Islands to Juan Sebastián Elcano’s desperate return aboard the …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the first documented voyage around the world — from Ferdinand Magellan’s search for a western route to the Spice Islands to Juan Sebastián Elcano’s desperate return aboard the Victoria. Follow mutiny in Patagonia, the discovery of the Strait of Magellan, starvation and scurvy across the Pacific, encounters throughout Southeast Asia, Magellan’s death at Mactan and the dangerous journey around Africa. Discover how a commercial expedition seeking cloves became an unprecedented circumnavigation shaped by navigation, local knowledge, political rivalry and the survival of a remarkably small number of sailors.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Cold War | Nuclear Fear, Berlin, Cuba and a World Divided
Fall asleep while exploring the Cold War — from the atomic bomb and the division of Europe to the Berlin Wall, Korean War, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and the global struggle between the United States and …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Cold War — from the atomic bomb and the division of Europe to the Berlin Wall, Korean War, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and the global struggle between the United States and Soviet Union. Discover nuclear deterrence, civil-defense drills, espionage, the Space Race, proxy wars and the political movements that challenged both superpower blocs. Follow the ordinary people who lived beneath the threat of nuclear war, from divided families in Berlin and Korea to children practicing emergency drills and communities caught in conflicts across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
Medieval England | How Ordinary People Really Lived
Fall asleep while exploring everyday life in medieval England — far beyond castles, knights and kings. Follow ordinary families through harvest work, manor courts, markets, smoky homes, bread and ale, clothing …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring everyday life in medieval England — far beyond castles, knights and kings. Follow ordinary families through harvest work, manor courts, markets, smoky homes, bread and ale, clothing, childhood, religion, illness and the constant preparation for winter. Discover how villagers depended on neighbors, customary rights and local institutions, how towns connected them to wider trade, and how the Great Famine, Black Death and Peasants’ Revolt transformed wages, labor and opportunity. Medieval life was difficult and unequal, but also complex, mobile and far less static than popular stereotypes suggest.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Partition of India | 1947, Mass Migration and the Birth of India and Pakistan
Fall asleep while exploring the Partition of India in 1947 — from the collapse of British rule and the hurried Radcliffe boundary to the birth of India and Pakistan. Follow the division of Punjab and Bengal …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Partition of India in 1947 — from the collapse of British rule and the hurried Radcliffe boundary to the birth of India and Pakistan. Follow the division of Punjab and Bengal, communal violence, refugee columns, attacked trains and camps filled with families who had left homes they expected to see again. Discover the roles of Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru and Mountbatten, the struggle to divide property and institutions, and how millions rebuilt their lives after one political border transformed cities, families and memories across South Asia.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
Ancient Egypt | How People Survived Extreme Heat Without Air Conditioning
Fall asleep while exploring how people in Ancient Egypt survived extreme heat without fans, refrigeration or air conditioning. Discover how mud-brick houses delayed daytime heat, small windows and shaded …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring how people in Ancient Egypt survived extreme heat without fans, refrigeration or air conditioning. Discover how mud-brick houses delayed daytime heat, small windows and shaded courtyards reduced direct sunlight, linen clothing helped the body stay comfortable, and porous pottery could cool water through evaporation. Follow workers, farmers, desert expeditions and ordinary households as they organized food, water, labor and daily routines around the Sun and the Nile. Egyptian heat survival was not one lost invention, but generations of practical environmental knowledge built into everyday life.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
Ancient Rome After Dark | Nightlife, Watchmen and the City That Never Truly Slept
Fall asleep while exploring what really happened in Ancient Rome after dark. Follow freight wagons through crowded streets, the vigiles searching for fires, wealthy Romans at elaborate dinners and ordinary …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring what really happened in Ancient Rome after dark. Follow freight wagons through crowded streets, the vigiles searching for fires, wealthy Romans at elaborate dinners and ordinary families trying to sleep above the noise. Discover taverns, baths, oil lamps, household religion, night workers, slavery, crime and the hidden labor that kept an enormous imperial capital functioning until dawn. Rome did not simply go quiet when the Sun disappeared — darkness rearranged the city and revealed a world very different from its famous daytime monuments.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
Medieval Winter | How Families Survived Without Central Heating
Fall asleep while exploring how medieval families survived winter without central heating. Discover how open hearths, wool clothing, layered bedding, preserved food and carefully rationed fuel created a …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring how medieval families survived winter without central heating. Discover how open hearths, wool clothing, layered bedding, preserved food and carefully rationed fuel created a practical system for living through months of cold. Follow winter life from smoky peasant homes and stone castles to monasteries, medieval towns and Icelandic turf houses, while learning how families stored food, protected livestock, shared warmth and prepared months in advance. Survival depended not on one invention, but on many overlapping protections working together.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
536 AD | The Year the Sun Went Dim and the Ancient World Turned Cold
Fall asleep while exploring the extraordinary crisis that began in 536, when observers across Eurasia described a strangely dim Sun and unusually cold seasons. Discover how modern tree rings and ancient ice …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the extraordinary crisis that began in 536, when observers across Eurasia described a strangely dim Sun and unusually cold seasons. Discover how modern tree rings and ancient ice cores revealed evidence of massive volcanic eruptions, followed by failed harvests, renewed cooling around 540 and the arrival of the Justinianic Plague. Follow the effects across the Roman world, Scandinavia and beyond, while separating evidence from the popular claim that one catastrophic year simply ended antiquity. The volcano that began the crisis remains unidentified — and the investigation is still evolving.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Holy Roman Empire | Emperors, Electors and a Thousand Years of Central Europe
Fall asleep while exploring the Holy Roman Empire — the extraordinary political order that connected hundreds of kingdoms, principalities, bishoprics and free cities across Central Europe. Follow its story from …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Holy Roman Empire — the extraordinary political order that connected hundreds of kingdoms, principalities, bishoprics and free cities across Central Europe. Follow its story from Charlemagne and Otto I through imperial elections, the Investiture Controversy, Martin Luther and the Reformation, the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia. Discover how imperial courts and the Diet held together a deeply fragmented world, why Austria and Prussia eventually challenged that balance, and how Napoleon finally brought the centuries-old Empire to an end in 1806.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Great Irish Famine | Potato Blight, Black ’47 and the Irish Exodus
Fall asleep while exploring the Great Irish Famine — from the potato blight of 1845 and the catastrophe of Black ’47 to workhouses, soup kitchens, evictions, disease and mass emigration. Discover why the …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Great Irish Famine — from the potato blight of 1845 and the catastrophe of Black ’47 to workhouses, soup kitchens, evictions, disease and mass emigration. Discover why the disaster was caused by far more than a failed crop, as poverty, land ownership, British relief policy and the limits of the Poor Law shaped who survived. Follow Irish families aboard the infamous famine ships to Britain and North America, and see how death and migration permanently transformed Ireland’s population, language, politics and global diaspora.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Etruscans | Tombs, Lost Language and the Civilization That Shaped Early Rome
Fall asleep while exploring the Etruscans — the powerful civilization that flourished in central Italy before Rome dominated the peninsula. Discover their wealthy city-states, Mediterranean trade, painted …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Etruscans — the powerful civilization that flourished in central Italy before Rome dominated the peninsula. Discover their wealthy city-states, Mediterranean trade, painted tombs, distinctive religion, surviving inscriptions and mysterious non-Indo-European language. Follow the rivalry between Rome and Veii, the gradual Roman conquest of Etruria and the slow disappearance of Etruscan as a living language. Along the way, see how archaeology, ancient DNA and extraordinary finds such as the Pyrgi gold tablets and the Zagreb linen book are revealing a civilization that vanished politically without disappearing culturally.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Franklin Expedition | Erebus, Terror and the Mystery of the Lost Arctic Voyage
Fall asleep while exploring the Franklin Expedition — the 1845 voyage of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror that vanished while searching for the Northwest Passage. Follow the ships into the Arctic ice, the deaths of …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Franklin Expedition — the 1845 voyage of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror that vanished while searching for the Northwest Passage. Follow the ships into the Arctic ice, the deaths of Sir John Franklin and his crew, the desperate abandonment of the vessels and the evidence of starvation and cannibalism left behind. Discover how Inuit testimony, the Victory Point record, forensic research, the rediscovery of both wrecks and modern DNA identification have gradually revealed what happened — while leaving some of the expedition’s final movements unresolved.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Islamic Caliphates | Baghdad, Algebra and the Golden Age of Knowledge
Fall asleep while exploring the rise of the Islamic caliphates — from the early conquests and the Umayyad Empire to Abbasid Baghdad and the extraordinary intellectual networks of the medieval Islamic world …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the rise of the Islamic caliphates — from the early conquests and the Umayyad Empire to Abbasid Baghdad and the extraordinary intellectual networks of the medieval Islamic world. Follow the translation of Greek, Persian and Indian knowledge, the mathematics of al-Khwarizmi, advances in medicine and astronomy, and the growth of rival centers in Cairo and Cordoba. Discover how trade, paper, libraries and patronage helped ideas cross languages and religions, and why the Mongol destruction of Baghdad in 1258 did not bring this vast tradition of scholarship to an end.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Gilded Age | Railroads, Robber Barons and the Making of Modern America
Fall asleep while exploring America’s Gilded Age — from transcontinental railroads and standardized time to the enormous fortunes of Rockefeller, Carnegie and J. P. Morgan. Follow the rise of Standard Oil and …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring America’s Gilded Age — from transcontinental railroads and standardized time to the enormous fortunes of Rockefeller, Carnegie and J. P. Morgan. Follow the rise of Standard Oil and industrial steel, the Great Railroad Strike, Haymarket, Homestead and Pullman, along with immigration, tenement life, political machines and the growth of mass consumer culture. Discover how monopolies, inequality, racial exclusion and repeated financial crises inspired labor movements, Populists, investigative journalists and the first federal attempts to regulate the corporations that were transforming modern America.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Han Dynasty | Silk Roads, Paper and the Empire That Shaped China
Fall asleep while exploring the Han Dynasty — from Liu Bang’s rise after the collapse of the Qin to Emperor Wu’s wars against the Xiongnu and China’s deeper connection with Central Asia and the Silk Roads …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Han Dynasty — from Liu Bang’s rise after the collapse of the Qin to Emperor Wu’s wars against the Xiongnu and China’s deeper connection with Central Asia and the Silk Roads. Follow Zhang Qian’s journeys, the growing influence of Confucian learning, the development of paper, court politics, frontier expansion and the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Discover why the Han eventually collapsed into the age of the Three Kingdoms, yet left behind political institutions, historical traditions and even a name that continued to shape China for centuries.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
Pre-Colonial Africa — The Kingdoms the World Overlooked
Fall asleep while exploring the extraordinary history of Africa before European colonial conquest — from Mansa Musa, the Mali Empire and the manuscript libraries of Timbuktu to the pyramids of Kush, Christian …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the extraordinary history of Africa before European colonial conquest — from Mansa Musa, the Mali Empire and the manuscript libraries of Timbuktu to the pyramids of Kush, Christian Aksum, the Swahili trading cities and Great Zimbabwe. Follow the kingdoms of Kongo, Benin, Songhai and Asante, the trade networks that crossed the Sahara and Indian Ocean, and the political systems, scholarship, art and architecture that connected communities across the continent. Discover how archaeology, manuscripts, oral traditions and surviving objects are restoring histories that were often ignored, misunderstood or deliberately denied.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Minoans | Knossos, the Minotaur and the Lost Civilization of Crete
Fall asleep while exploring the Minoan civilization of Bronze Age Crete — from the palaces of Knossos, Phaistos and Malia to bull-leaping, elaborate frescoes, maritime trade and the still-undeciphered Linear A …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the Minoan civilization of Bronze Age Crete — from the palaces of Knossos, Phaistos and Malia to bull-leaping, elaborate frescoes, maritime trade and the still-undeciphered Linear A script. Discover what archaeology can really tell us about King Minos and the labyrinth, how the eruption of Thera affected the Aegean without instantly destroying Crete, and how Mycenaean influence gradually transformed the island. Along the way, uncover how Arthur Evans reconstructed Knossos and why myth, archaeology and modern interpretation remain so difficult to separate.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
World War I | Trenches, Empires and the War That Shattered the Old World
Fall asleep while exploring the First World War — from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the July Crisis to the trenches of the Western Front, Gallipoli, Verdun, the Somme and the global armies drawn …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the First World War — from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the July Crisis to the trenches of the Western Front, Gallipoli, Verdun, the Somme and the global armies drawn into the conflict. Follow the rise of chemical warfare, tanks, aircraft and mass industrial mobilization, the Russian Revolution, American entry and Germany’s final offensives before the Armistice of 1918. Discover how four empires collapsed, new borders emerged, Versailles reshaped Europe and the Middle East, and a war meant to settle old rivalries transformed the modern world.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Medici | Banking, Power and the Renaissance
Fall asleep while exploring the rise of the Medici — from Giovanni di Bicci’s banking network and Cosimo the Elder’s political influence to Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Pazzi conspiracy and Florence’s …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the rise of the Medici — from Giovanni di Bicci’s banking network and Cosimo the Elder’s political influence to Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Pazzi conspiracy and Florence’s extraordinary Renaissance culture. Follow the family through Michelangelo and Botticelli, two Medici popes, Catherine de’ Medici, the creation of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and Galileo’s discoveries, before the dynasty finally ended in the eighteenth century. Discover how banking, politics, religion, art and science turned one Florentine merchant family into a dynasty whose collections and buildings still shape Florence today.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
The Wild West | Cowboys, Outlaws and the Myth of the American Frontier
Fall asleep while exploring the real history of the Wild West — from cattle drives, Mexican vaqueros, Black cowboys, railroads and mining towns to Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Jesse James and the gunfight near …
Show notes
Fall asleep while exploring the real history of the Wild West — from cattle drives, Mexican vaqueros, Black cowboys, railroads and mining towns to Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Jesse James and the gunfight near the O.K. Corral. Follow the expansion of settlement across Native lands, the destruction of the bison herds, the Indian Wars, homesteading and the rise of frontier towns, while discovering how dime novels, Buffalo Bill and early cinema transformed a diverse and complicated West into one of America’s most enduring myths.
This calm bedtime history documentary is created for sleep, relaxation, and quiet late-night listening — and if you’d like to support History at Bedtime and help us create more episodes, you can become a monthly supporter.
These are the latest 40 of 99 episodes. You’ll find older episodes in the podcast’s feed.
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