History For Sleep with the Drowsy Historian

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You are not a king. Not a noble. Not even a name in the annals of history. You are a conscript in the massive armies of Xerxes I — fed into the meat grinder of the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BCE. This is not the story of glory at Thermopylae or triumph at Salamis. This is the story of what it was like to march, bleed, and rot in the dirt be...

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Tonight on Drowsy Historian, you're not a general, a hero, or even a soldier anyone remembers. You're a WWII truck driver — a man with no armor, no weapon, and a barely running vehicle, hauling supplies across every front and through every hell the war could conjure. From the frozen wastes of Russia to the suffocating heat of North Africa, you dri...

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In this episode of Drowsy Historian, you are not a tycoon, a pioneer, or a name carved into the history books. You're one of the thousands of forgotten Chinese laborers brought to the American West in the 1800s — tasked with blasting through mountains, laying rail across barren wilderness, and enduring the contempt of a country that needed...

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What was it really like to be a woman in Edo-period Japan?

Not a warrior. Not a noble. Just… a woman. A daughter trained to be silent. A wife traded like rice. A mother whose worth depended on bearing sons. This slow, immersive historical journey puts you in her sandals — from childhood obedience drills to the quiet vanishing of old age. There ...

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Step into the gilded nightmare of a Tudor banquet — where social survival depends on knowing which trenchers to eat from, when not to sneeze, and how to pretend rancid meat is a delicacy. This isn't your average historical reenactment. It’s a slow descent into grease-slicked etiquette, twitching meat, unblinking jesters, and public humilia...

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You’re not a knight. You’re not even French. You’re a half-starved Highlander shoved onto a French boat and handed a pike with a splintered shaft. Welcome to the glamorous life of a Scottish mercenary in the Hundred Years’ War — where the food is rotten, the boots don’t fit, and the only thing worse than the English are your own commanders.

This sl...

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You’re homeless in ancient Athens — not a philosopher, not a warrior, just another hungry body fading into the marble backdrop. No scrolls will record your name. No statues will remember your face. As the temples rise and the plays unfold, you rot quietly in the sun, swatting flies and swallowing shame. This isn’t the Greece of legends. It’s the G...

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In this immersive historical bedtime story, step inside the quiet, harrowing descent of a forgotten Soviet cosmonaut in the 1960s space race. From silent railway platforms and photo ops under propaganda floodlights to the final, flickering hours alone in orbit, this is the fate they never televised.

It’s not a heroic journey. It’s not a conspiracy ...

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You didn’t die in battle. You weren’t the subject of a grand trial, a royal scandal, or a religious persecution. You just lived in a London slum in 1854, drank from the wrong pump, and died fast — alone, forgotten, and covered in your own filth. In this immersive, second-person historical sleep story, you’ll experience every stage of what it meant...

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In this sleep-friendly deep dive into the horrifying reality of child labor during Britain’s Industrial Revolution, you’ll step into the threadbare boots of a boy fed into the machines and forgotten just as quickly. Through cotton mills, tenements, beatings, malnutrition, disease, and silence, this is not a story of resilience — it’s a story of rout...

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Charles II of Spain was born into power, but his body—twisted by centuries of inbreeding—betrayed him from the start. In this immersive, second-person narrative, you are the last Habsburg king: a monarch who drools in council meetings, mumbles at ghosts, and unwittingly signs Europe into one of its deadliest wars. Your jaw doesn’t close, your heir...

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In feudal Japan, the path of a woman warrior was not marked by glory, but by silence. This is not a tale of cinematic heroism. It’s a slow unraveling — of expectation, obedience, resistance, and disappearance. You are born into duty, trained in shadows, and remembered by no one. Through smoke and blood, you hold a blade the world insists you never t...

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In this quietly devastating, sleep-friendly video, you experience the horror of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest from the inside — not as a general, not as a historian, but as a legionnaire with mud in your sandals, hunger in your gut, and fog choking your lungs. Day by day, the forest closes in. Food runs out. Orders stop making sense. The line d...

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In tonight’s story, you walk through the life of a young Korean girl taken during World War II and forced into the horrors of a military brothel. What follows is not loud, but it is devastating: the silence of survival, the emptiness of return, and the long shadow cast by a world that never wanted to remember.

#ComfortWomen #WWIIHistory #ForgottenVoi...

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Tonight, you’re not a hero, a villain, or even a particularly interesting footnote. You’re just a traveler — tired, hungry, and walking the wrong trail at the wrong time. The inn ahead looks like salvation: a warm fire, a hot meal, a kind smile. But this is Kansas in the 1870s. And the Bloody Benders are home.

This slow, immersive descent follows you...

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Step into the cold corridors of Bedlam Royal Hospital, where silence is not peace—and compliance is not safety. In this immersive, second-person journey through the 18th-century asylum, you are not mad. But that doesn’t matter here. From the moment the gate slams shut behind you, your voice, your name, and your identity begin to fade. What follows i...

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You were the king’s physician — and nothing more than a shadow with steady hands. In the dark corridors of Henry VIII’s court, survival had nothing to do with medicine, and everything to do with keeping your head down while the leg rotted. The wound festered. The politics shifted. The crown watched.

This is the story of what it meant to tend to a dyi...

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Step into the dim halls and bloodstained courtyards of 15th-century Wallachia, where being a noble wasn’t a privilege — it was a warning sign. In this slow, immersive descent through paranoia, performance, and political cruelty, you experience firsthand what it meant to dine in Vlad the Impaler’s court… and how quickly a feast turned into a funeral.

...

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In the dying days of the Roman Empire, glory was just a rumor—and survival was the only triumph. This is not the story of emperors or generals, but of a forgotten peasant watching his world crumble, piece by piece. War, famine, fire, silence. He doesn’t witness the fall of Rome with grandeur. He endures it with dirt under his nails and smoke in his ...