On February 10th, 1806, a brig sailed from Boston to Martinique carrying 80 tons of ice — and the newspapers laughed. Tonight: the Persian desert fridges that made ice in 50°C summers, the Roman snow trade, China's imperial ice ministry, Frederic Tudor the Ice King (debtors' prison to fortune), ice shipped 16,000 miles to Calcutta — and the machine that ended it all. Just long enough to fall asleep to. 🌙
Listen here
Take your time. The story starts when you’re ready.
Settle in. There’s nothing you need to remember.
A note before you listen
Welcome back, my sleepy friends. Get comfortable, let your breathing slow, and follow along for as long as you like. If you drift off somewhere along the way, the story will keep you company.
Keep wandering
On a summer night, the darkness over a meadow is not silent. It is full of questions and answers, written in light.Each kind of firefly speaks its own pattern of flashes, and each female replies after a delay so precise it works as a password. It is a beautiful system - and it has a flaw. In the grass sits a larger, patient hunter who has learned the…
Here is a soft thought to fall asleep to: the word algebra means restoration - the mending of something broken. The same word once described the person who set your broken bone.Tonight, a gentle journey in the company of patient people. Babylonian scribes solving puzzles in wet clay at dusk. An Indian astronomer explaining negative numbers as fortunes and…
Tonight, we lie down on top of a story. After water itself, concrete is the most used substance on Earth - and there is a fair chance it is holding up your room right now. We begin beside a volcano, where Roman builders mixed lime with the ash of Vesuvius and poured harbours that grow stronger in the sea, and a dome in Rome that has carried itself, without…
Whenever you're ready
Find a comfortable corner. Let the day get a little quieter.
We’ll take it from here.
Listen your way
