Orpheus and Eurydice: The Complete Story of Love, Loss and the Underworld | Greek Mythology for Sleep

A slow, quiet retelling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, made for falling asleep to.This is the one about the man who nearly got away with it. He was the best musician who ever lived, good enough that rivers changed course to listen and stones moved themselves out of his way — and when his wife died on their wedding day he simply walked down to the underworld and asked for her back.The remarkable part is that it worked. He played, and everything down there stopped: the wheel, the stone, the water, the man reaching for the fruit. The dead stood still. Even the king and queen of that place gave in, which nobody else in any of these stories ever managed. One condition, and it was a small one, and everyone listening already knows he couldn't keep it.What follows is the rest of a life spent afterwards, which the myth doesn't hurry through. He wandered, and refused everyone, and eventually died badly at the hands of people who couldn't stand being refused. His head is said to have floated down a river still singing. It's a story about grief and about the particular cruelty of nearly, and it has been retold more often than almost any other Greek myth for exactly that reason.The recording itself is the usual thing. A low, even voice, no music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Slow enough that following along stops feeling necessary somewhere in the first twenty minutes. If you drift off before he reaches the river and surface again long after, that's the intended use. 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.