#41 The Complete History of Dust

Episode forty-one of The World's Most Boring Podcast - Bore Me to Sleep is called The Complete History of Dust, and it is exactly as riveting as it sounds. Over the course of sixteen unhurried segments, we take you on a slow, meandering journey through the entire history of dust - from the Big Bang and cosmic nebulae to household dust mites, the Dust Bowl, Saharan dust crossing the Atlantic to fertilise the Amazon, volcanic ash and the accidental creation of Frankenstein, the word origins of dust in Old English, loess deposits three hundred metres deep in China, feather dusters and the collapse of the South African ostrich feather industry, and the quiet heroism of a Scottish physicist named John Aitken who spent decades counting tiny particles under a microscope. If you are looking for a sleep podcast, a podcast to fall asleep to, or simply something so thoroughly unimportant that your mind can finally let go and drift off, this is the episode for you. The Complete History of Dust is ideal for anyone dealing with insomnia, difficulty falling asleep, racing thoughts at bedtime, or anyone who simply enjoys monotone talking, slow storytelling, and the kind of content that is perfectly fine to miss if you doze off halfway through - because nothing important happens, and that is entirely the point. We cover topics including the Big Bang, cosmic dust, interstellar nebulae, the Oort Cloud, Jan Hendrik Oort, household dust composition, dust mites, the Dust Bowl and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Woody Guthrie, Dorothea Lange, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, the Kansas song Dust in the Wind, loess and the Yellow River of China, micrometeorites, the eruption of Mount Tambora, the Year Without a Summer, Mary Shelley and Frankenstein, and the Sahara-to-Amazon dust river. It is a lot of dust. More dust than you probably thought existed. Told in the most soothing, low-stakes, gently witty way we could manage. The final segment is an extra-long, dreamlike conclusion in which the history of dust slowly dissolves into something warm and surreal and deeply, deeply soporific. Think Douglas Adams writing a nature documentary for people who are already half asleep. If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe - it costs nothing and takes approximately four seconds, which is well within the energy budget of someone who is already lying down. If you have a topic suggestion, a question, or just something you would like to say, write to us at [email protected]. We read everything, and we find it all very calming. The World's Most Boring Podcast - Bore Me to Sleep. Proudly putting you to sleep, one grain of dust at a time.