Daedalus and Icarus: The Complete Story of the Inventor, the Labyrinth and the Flight Toward the Sun | Greek Mythology for Sleep

Daedalus and Icarus: The Complete Story of the Inventor, the Labyrinth and the Flight Toward the Sun | Greek Mythology for SleepA slow, quiet retelling of the story of Daedalus and Icarus, told from the beginning and made for falling asleep to.The whole story of the inventor, the labyrinth and the flight, at a pace that's deliberately too slow to follow properly. That's the point. You're not meant to reach the end.Everyone knows how it ends, and almost nobody knows how it starts. Before any of the famous part, he was a craftsman in Athens who was so good at what he did that he could not bear someone else being better — including a nephew he was teaching, who invented something clever and did not survive the afternoon. That's why he was on the island in the first place. What follows is the work he did there: a hollow cow built for a queen who asked for something no one should have asked for, the creature that came of it, and the enormous winding structure he was ordered to build afterwards to hide the king's shame from the world. Then the thread he quietly handed to a young man who wanted to get out of it, and what that cost him. By the time he starts gathering feathers he is a prisoner of a king who cannot afford to let him leave, and the wings are not a marvel so much as the only door left. And then there is a boy, and a morning, and a warning given twice.But the point of this recording isn't really the ending. It's the hour or two before 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 workshop and wake up much later, out over open water, 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, Chinese classics 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.