Heracles and the Twelve Labors: The Complete Story of Monsters, Trials and Redemption | Greek Mythology for Sleep

Heracles and the Twelve Labors: The Complete Story of Monsters, Trials and Redemption | Greek Mythology for SleepA slow, quiet retelling of the labours of Heracles, told from the beginning and made for falling asleep to.The whole story of the strongest man in Greek myth, at a pace that's deliberately too slow to follow properly. That's the point. You're not meant to reach the end.People remember the labours and forget why he was doing them. He was hated from birth by a goddess who had good reason and no mercy, and what she eventually did to him was worse than anything she'd sent to kill him — she reached into his mind for a few minutes and left him to find out afterwards what he had done. The twelve labours were what came next: a penance, set by a cousin who was afraid of him and enjoyed the arrangement. What follows is all of it in order. A lion that couldn't be cut. A thing that grew two heads for every one taken off. A hind he chased for a year without ever quite catching it. Stables, birds, a bull, a belt, cattle from the far end of the world. And the last two, which weren't really about strength at all: apples that had to be talked out of somebody, and a walk down into the underworld to bring something back up. He is the loudest of the heroes and the saddest, and the labours were never really the hard part.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 around the first labour and wake up much later, several monsters further along, 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.