#26 The Alphabet's Order - A Deep Exploration of Why B Comes After A

The World's Most Boring Podcast - Bore Me to Sleep, Episode twenty-six: The Alphabet's Order - A Deep Exploration of Why B Comes After A. If you are looking for something to help you fall asleep, something slow and meandering and completely safe to miss if you drift off mid-sentence, you have found exactly the right place. In this episode, we spend a deeply unhurried amount of time exploring one of the most overlooked questions in human history: why does B come after A in the alphabet, and not after, say, Q? We trace the alphabet from the ancient Phoenician letters aleph and bet, through the Greek alpha and beta that gave us the word alphabet itself, through the Roman adaptations that gave us G thanks to a freed slave named Spurius Carvilius Ruga, and all the way to the twenty-six letters of the modern English alphabet. Along the way, we consider mnemonic theories, acrostic theories, the history of letters like J, U, and thorn, the alphabetical order effect and whether your surname initial affects your life outcomes, the difference between alphabets and character-based writing systems like Chinese and Japanese, and the deeply relatable experience of trying to alphabetise a spice rack on a Saturday afternoon. This episode is ideal for anyone searching for sleep meditation alternatives, boring podcasts for sleep, monotone talking to fall asleep, alphabet history, history of writing, Phoenician alphabet, Greek alphabet, Latin alphabet, or simply something calm and inconsequential to listen to in the dark. It is also perfectly suited to people who enjoy falling asleep to gentle, rambling talk radio, ASMR-adjacent content without the whispering, or the kind of documentary that covers a very small topic in a very large amount of time. You will not miss anything important if you fall asleep. That is a promise and also the entire point. Whether you have difficulty sleeping, struggle with a busy mind at night, or simply enjoy the cosy ritual of listening to something soothing before bed, The World's Most Boring Podcast is here for you, every episode more uneventful than the last. Have a topic suggestion, a question, or something you have been meaning to say to someone who will actually listen? Write to us at [email protected]. We read everything. We reply slowly. It is that kind of operation. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and become one of our growing number of dedicated, wonderfully drowsy listeners. The World's Most Boring Podcast - Bore Me to Sleep. Alphabetically, we come last. In terms of putting you to sleep, we come first.