Cozy Tales, a preview.

Why it works

The cozy stories are about competence at a small scale. A baker starts before dawn. A clockmaker spends an evening on one escapement. A sleeper train crosses the Alps with everyone aboard asleep. Nothing goes wrong in any of them, by policy. The warm hum on this page is the right room for them.

The voice in this preview is the site's one sample, the opening of Aristotle, which comes from Ancient Worlds. The cozy stories share its pace and its manners: the ending first, no surprises after, and a volume that falls as the story goes. They are listed below, with the first minute of each written out.

What you are hearing

• Warm fan hum. Brown noise low-passed at 240 Hz for the moving air, with two faint tones at 60 and 120 Hz underneath for the motor.
• The voice. The first four minutes of Aristotle, the Greatest Philosopher, a Lullable story, in a synthesised voice. It only plays if you bring it in.
• The ending. The preview lasts four minutes. Its last ten seconds are a straight fade to silence, so it never stops abruptly.

Cozy Tales stories in the app

• The Midnight Sleeper Train Across the Alps, 40 minutes. Board the midnight-blue sleeper in Vienna, hand over your passport, and let the train do the rest while borders pass over you like weather.
• The Clockmaker's Workshop, 42 minutes. The shop is locked, the lamp is out, and every pendulum keeps its small agreement in the dark. Nobody has to keep time while they sleep. It is being handled.
• The Lighthouse on the Windswept Island, 24 minutes. Somewhere on a cold coast tonight, a lighthouse keeper is turning a great patient light so that strangers can pass safely by. You are as watched-over as any ship out there.
• The Long Way Home: A Slow Evening Journey, 31 minutes. There is no adventure in tonight's walk, only lanes and hedges and a lamp left burning in a window for whoever is still out. That lamp is for you too.
• The Observatory on Ben Nevis, 40 minutes. Somebody is awake on a mountain, taking a reading on the hour, whether or not you are. The next one is not yours, and it will be taken anyway.
• The Bakery Before Dawn, 42 minutes. Someone else is already awake, working gently in the warm, at something that cannot be hurried. There is nothing here you need to do.

For a real recording that runs forty minutes, the Lullable iPhone app has rain, waves, a campfire and plain noise, with no voice and no music.