Hermes: The Complete Story of the Cleverest Trickster on Mount Olympus | Greek Mythology for Sleep
A slow, quiet retelling of the life of Hermes, told from the beginning and made for falling asleep to.
The whole story of the cleverest of the gods, at a pace that's deliberately too slow to follow properly. That's the point. You're not meant to reach the end.
He got more done on his first day than most of them managed in a century. Born in a cave in the morning, out of the cradle by the afternoon, and by nightfall he had invented an instrument out of a tortoise shell and stolen a herd of cattle belonging to one of his own brothers — walking them backwards so the tracks pointed the wrong way. What follows is the argument that came out of that, the trial in front of their father where he talked his way out of it by giving away the very thing he'd just invented, and the job he was handed afterwards. Because he ended up being the one who carried messages between worlds, the only one who could go down and come back up again as he pleased, and the one who walked the dead the last part of the way. He looked after travellers and merchants and thieves without seeing much difference between them. Of all of them, he's the one who seems most like he'd be good company.
But the point of this recording isn't really the story. It's the hour or two spent drifting through it. The voice stays low and even the whole way through. No music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Every sentence sits at roughly the same level as the one before it, so nothing ever pulls your attention back up to the surface.
That's what makes it work on the nights when your head won't switch off. It's just interesting enough to give your thoughts something to hold, and slow enough that they let go of it on their own. You don't have to follow along. You don't have to remember any of it in the morning. If you drift off somewhere in the cave where he was born and wake up much later, on a road between two worlds, you've used this exactly the way it's meant to be used. Most people don't make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night.
Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you.
Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics and old folklore from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can't sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.
