Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep · Wellness Loud

Mudlarking on the River, Part 2 (Encore)

March 19, 2026·33 min·3 clips

A coin with a mysterious hole tumbles into a river, launching an unexpected adventure of its own.

This encore episode of "Nothing Much Happens" continues a soothing bedtime story narrated by the show's writer and reader, Kathryn Nicolai. The episode follows a first-person narrative of a mudlarking excursion along a riverbank on a bright spring morning. The narrator describes the sensory details of the environment and the process of searching for objects washed ashore. A primary find is a bronze coin minted in the 1990s from another country, distinguished by a hole through its center. The narrator rinses the coin and reflects on different historical counting systems, like base-12 or base-60. They imagine the coin was brought home as a souvenir from a trip abroad and kept in someone's pocket for years. The imagined owner loses the coin when it falls from a bridge into the river during a chilly autumn afternoon. Further down the bank, the narrator discovers a whole, light-blue glass bottle with a square bottom and a long neck. They decide the bottle once held hair tonic and picture it in a barbershop from their grandfather's youth. The imagined scene includes a red and white pole, the scent of eucalyptus, and customers sharing stories. The narrator plans to thread the coin onto a necklace and use the bottle as a vase for forsythia stems. The story concludes by pondering which everyday objects from our time might intrigue future archaeologists. A memorable insight is the idea that a lost token of adventure is itself embarking on a new journey downstream. The narrative emphasizes how ordinary items can become magical when viewed with curiosity and imagination. The tone is consistently calm, descriptive, and intentionally repetitive, designed to lull the listener. The style is a gentle, first-person narrative focused on simple pleasures and quiet speculation. Listeners seeking a peaceful, sensory-rich story to quiet their mind before sleep would love this episode. Anyone looking for dramatic plot, conversation, or educational content might choose to skip it.

As heard by us

A riverbank walk where a coin and a bottle bottom drift into sleep.

The episode settles into a quiet river walk, using mudlarking, counting systems, a coin, and broken glass to keep wonder close at hand. It moves from base-12 and the familiar dozen to a bridge memory about a coin slipping into the water, then returns to the bank, where a bottle…

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Why you'd press play

For nights when your mind will settle for a river, a coin, and a bottle bottom.

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