Shows / Witty Historian
Witty Historian
Witty Historian is a sleep-focused history podcast featuring calm, immersive storytelling designed to help you fall asleep. Each episode explores unusual and often unsettling historical topics — including drug history, human behavior, and forgotten events — told in a slow, steady voice for relaxation and sleep. Perfect for listeners looking for sleep stories, relaxing podcasts, or quiet background narration to unwind at night.
Episodes
- Witty Historian
What Getting High Was Like in Medieval Times
Fall asleep to the strange history of getting drunk and high in medieval Europe. From ale and wine to opium, henbane, and mandrake, discover what people took…
- Witty Historian
How Hash Became the Soul of 1970s Counterculture
Fall asleep to the history of hash and its place in 1970s counterculture. From Afghan Black and Lebanese hash to California's Brotherhood of Eternal Love…
- Witty Historian
Why Opium Dens Became Notorious in Victorian London
Step into the dark side of Victorian London, where hidden opium dens became places of escape, addiction, and mystery.In this relaxing 2-hour history…
- Witty Historian
How Valium Sedated 70s American Housewives
In 1970s America, Valium became one of the most prescribed drugs in the country, finding its way into suburban homes and the daily lives of millions of…
- Witty Historian
The Spice That Got People HIGH for Centuries (2-Hour History for Sleep)
For centuries, nutmeg was more than just a kitchen spice. It appeared in old medicines, medical reports, prisons and strange experiments as people discovered…
- Witty Historian
Can’t Sleep? Here’s the Entire History of Sleeping Pills
For generations, doctors have tried to find better ways to help people sleep. Early sedatives gave way to barbiturates, benzodiazepines and newer sleep…
- Witty Historian
The Evolution of Designer Drugs Explained (2-Hour History for Sleep)
Designer drugs travelled from obscure laboratory research into clubs, smartshops and street markets. From Ecstasy and research chemicals to Spice/K2 and bath…
- Witty Historian
How Anti-Drug Campaigns Took Over 1980s America
In 1980s America, anti-drug campaigns became impossible to ignore. From “Just Say No” and D.A.R.E. to the famous “Your Brain on Drugs” ads, television…
- Witty Historian
What Getting Drunk & High Really Meant to the Vikings
Tonight we’re heading into the Viking Age to explore what getting high really meant to the Vikings, from drinking and feast halls to trance, ritual, strange…
- Witty Historian
How 90s Ravers Reinvented the Psychedelic Experience
Ever heard of candy flipping? The term became closely associated with 1990s rave culture, where LSD and MDMA were combined into a very different kind of…
- Witty Historian
The Strange History of American Weed: From Reefer Madness to 420
The history of weed in America is much stranger than its modern image suggests. Cannabis has been sold as medicine, portrayed as a dangerous social threat…
- Witty Historian
How Ecstasy Changed From the 1990s to Today
Ecstasy in the 1990s is often remembered very differently from what people encounter today. In this video, we trace how the pills, the chemistry, the market…
- Witty Historian
Why Was Getting High So Normal in Victorian England?
What did getting high actually look like in Victorian England? From opium and laudanum to chloroform, cannabis and other strange Victorian remedies, this is…
- Witty Historian
How a Village Healer Became the Face of Magic Mushrooms
Maria Sabina lived quietly in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, where sacred mushroom ceremonies had been practiced for generations. Then outsiders arrived and…
- Witty Historian
The Legendary Weed of the 1970s Explained
Thai Stick, Panama Red, Acapulco Gold, Colombian Gold, Maui Wowie… these were the weed names people remembered from the 1970s. But what were they actually…
- Witty Historian
How Amsterdam Became the Weed Capital of the World
Amsterdam became famous for cannabis without ever fully legalizing it. Its coffeeshops grew from youth centres and informal house dealers into a global symbol…
- Witty Historian
The Psychedelics Iceberg Explained
LSD became the face of psychedelics, but it was never the only one. Behind it sits a huge world of psychedelic drugs, from magic mushrooms, mescaline and DMT…
- Witty Historian
Old Weed vs New Weed: What Actually Changed?
Weed has changed a lot over the last 50 years, but is modern cannabis actually better than the weed people were smoking in the 1970s?We’ll explore how cannabis…
- Witty Historian
Was Hitler’s Drug Use Actually Insane by 1930s Standards?
Adolf Hitler’s drug use is usually told as a simple story: methamphetamine, cocaine, opioids, injections, and a personal doctor who kept adding more.But once…
- Witty Historian
The OPIOID That Treats OPIOID Addiction | History For Sleep
Methadone is an opioid used to treat opioid addiction.. a contradiction with a surprisingly complicated history. From its origins in 1930s Germany to its rise…
- Witty Historian
Welcome To Witty Historian
Thank you so much for being here and for listening to these stories, whether you make it to the end or fall asleep somewhere along the way :) I genuinely…
- Witty Historian
Inside the Most Extreme Drug Experiences
What do hard drugs actually feel like when the experience goes to its absolute extreme? From losing your sense of time and body to entering completely altered…
- Witty Historian
Why a Drug Called Dragonfly Cost People Their Arms and Legs
Bromo-DragonFLY is one of the most potent and long-lasting psychedelics ever created. Born from legitimate psychedelic research, it eventually escaped the…
- Witty Historian
What Was Really on That Blotter Paper? (It Wasn’t LSD)
NBOMe, also known as N-Bomb, is a family of extremely potent psychedelics that became notorious for being sold on blotter paper as LSD. 25I-NBOMe in particular…
- Witty Historian
The Most Terrifying Psychedelic That Came After Salvia
Symmetry is the name given to a mysterious synthetic psychedelic related to salvinorin A, the extraordinarily potent hallucinogenic compound found in Salvia…
- Witty Historian
The Secret Chemistry Of Truth Serums: From Ancient Datura To Cold War Barbiturates
How does a truth serum actually work? As it turns out, the answer is far stranger than the myth that inspired centuries of experiments, interrogations, and…
- Witty Historian
How One Drug Turned Parkinson’s Patients Into Compulsive Gamblers
Mirapex (pramipexole) is a Parkinson's disease medication that has been linked to unexpected side effects, including compulsive gambling and other impulse…
- Witty Historian
The Forgotten Psychedelic That Terrified the 1960s
STP arrived in San Francisco with a reputation for being something extraordinary. The problem was that almost nobody taking it knew quite what they were…
- Witty Historian
Serotonin Storms: The Untold Dark Side of the SSRI Prescription Boom
Antidepressants have transformed millions of lives, but they also come with risks that are often misunderstood or rarely discussed. This documentary explores…
- Witty Historian
Every Way Humans Have Tried to Get High
Humans have been searching for altered states for thousands of years. From ancient rituals and fermented drinks to poisonous plants, this documentary explores…
- Witty Historian
How a Soviet Anxiety Drug Became an Internet Addiction
Phenibut was developed in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and later used as an anti-anxiety medication. Decades later, it found a new audience online, where it…
- Witty Historian
Vioxx: The Rise and Fall of Medicine’s Miracle Painkiller
Vioxx was once one of the world's best-selling painkillers before becoming one of the biggest pharmaceutical scandals in history. Why was Vioxx recalled? It…
- Witty Historian
The 7 Levels of Drug Addiction: A Journey Through History
Drug addiction didn't emerge all at once, it evolved over thousands of years as humanity discovered new ways to relieve pain, chase pleasure, and escape…
- Witty Historian
The 4,000 Year History of Opioids
Opioids have relieved pain for thousands of years but they've also reshaped medicine, warfare, addiction, and society in ways few people realize. A deep dive…
- Witty Historian
Every Drug Ranked by How Quickly It Destroys You
Some things destroy lives in decades. Others can do it in months, weeks, or even a single mistake. In this video, we rank drugs by how quickly they can take…
- Witty Historian
How One Man Turned Amphetamines Into a Superpower
Paul Erdős was one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, fifteen hundred published papers, five hundred collaborators, sixty years of arriving…
- Witty Historian
The Forgotten History of Quaaludes (America's Favorite Sedative)
Quaaludes were once America's favorite sedative. What began as a prescription sleep aid became a cultural phenomenon, a disco-era icon, and eventually one of…
- Witty Historian
We Need to Talk About Cocaine (Again)
This video covers the history of cocaine as a legal medicine in the United States, including cocaine toothache drops sold to children in the 1880s and the…
- Witty Historian
The Craziest Drugs You’ve NEVER Heard Of
Most people have heard of cocaine, heroin, or LSD. But hidden in medical journals, laboratory accidents, military experiments, forgotten research papers, and…
- Witty Historian
Why Millions Took a Cough Medicine to Leave Their Own Mind
DXM (dextromethorphan) was supposed to suppress coughs. Instead, it became one of the strangest drug trends of the internet era. From suburban teenagers and…
- Witty Historian
Fentanyl Was Just the Beginning
Most people had never even heard the word “nitazenes” a few years ago. Now they’re showing up in fake pills, fentanyl mixtures, heroin, and overdose cases…
- Witty Historian
How Gas Station Heroin Became an Addiction Nightmare
Discover the disturbing rise of “Gas Station Heroin”, the nickname given to ZaZa Red and tianeptine, a powerful and addictive substance sold in convenience…
- Witty Historian
A Miracle Drug That Wasn't a Miracle at All
The strange thing about thalidomide is that almost nobody thought they were taking a dangerous drug. There were no dramatic overdoses. No gangsters. No…
- Witty Historian
The Most Unpleasant Deliriants in History
What makes a drug unpleasant isn't the danger. It's waking up two days later to find out you'd been talking to someone who died six years ago. It's shadows at…
- Witty Historian
Why Nobody Trusted Their Drink in 1900s Chicago
In early 1900s Chicago, one bartender became so infamous that his name eventually turned into slang for a poisoned drink. His name was Mickey Finn, and the…
- Witty Historian
Mephedrone: The Drug That Took Over an Entire Generation
Mephedrone, also known as meow meow, MCAT, and M-Cat, became one of the fastest-spreading drugs in modern British history. Sold online as “plant food” before…
- Witty Historian
How Victorians Turned Anesthesia Into Entertainment
In the nineteenth century, Victorian England discovered something unusual: a powerful anesthetic that could produce laughter, euphoria, and a remarkably…
- Witty Historian
What Happened When America Banned Alcohol
In 1920, America banned alcohol and accidentally turned drinking into one of the most dangerous businesses in the country. Tonight’s story explores the rise…
- Witty Historian
The Empire That Turned Drugs Into Global Business
The British Empire ran the world’s first industrial drug trade. It went to war to protect it. Three hundred years later, the same system is still running…
- Witty Historian
What Doctors Believed About Cigarettes in the 1950s
There was a time when smoking was recommended, prescribed, and trusted. This is how Nicotine moved from medicine to habit and how early research, advertising…
- Witty Historian
Why Hollywood's Biggest Stars Kept Dying the Same Way
An educational exploration of barbiturates and their widespread use in mid-20th century medicine and Hollywood. This video breaks down barbiturate pharmacology…
- Witty Historian
Why Ecstasy Made Strangers Feel Like Soulmates
An educational deep dive into how MDMA (ecstasy) affects the brain, emotions, and human connection exploring its history, psychological impact, and why it made…
- Witty Historian
What the First LSD Experiments Actually Felt Like
A slow, immersive history designed for relaxed, late-night listening and sleep.In the 1950s, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) wasn’t a cultural symbol yet — it…
- Witty Historian
Every Drug Explained From the Beginning
A slow, immersive history designed for relaxed, late-night listening and sleep.In this video, we’re diving into every major drug category from the beginning…
- Witty Historian
Why One Drug Made Success Feel Effortless (Until It Didn't)
A slow, immersive history designed for relaxed, late-night listening and sleep.Cocaine has been used across different eras and environments, often associated…
- Witty Historian
Why Speed Became the Drug Every Generation Rediscovered
A slow, immersive history designed for relaxed, late-night listening and sleep.Amphetamine (speed) was once a trusted prescription drug used for focus…
- Witty Historian
Why One Pill Made Heroin Users Impossible to Stop
A slow, immersive history designed for relaxed, late-night listening and sleep.Pregabalin was a legal prescription drug — and it became linked to a rise in…
- Witty Historian
Why One Pill Turned Soldiers Into Human Weapons
A slow, immersive history designed for relaxed, late-night listening and sleep.This documentary explores Captagon — often searched as captagon drug, what is…
- Witty Historian
How a Drug Made People Impossible to Restrain
“Monkey Dust” isn’t a single substance. It became a name attached to a range of synthetic stimulants, often linked to compounds like MDPV, and widely reported…
- Witty Historian
Why One Drug Forced People to Relive Every Mistake
A slow, immersive history designed for relaxed, late-night listening and sleep.This documentary explores ibogaine, a psychoactive compound increasingly…