Wake up and go to sleep: it's time for Drowsy Sunday.

Sunday morning is no time to be jolted, challenged, or provoked. You want programming that soothes, that comforts, that hypnotizes. Presenting our new Sunday morning “show”, Drowsy Sunday! Hit play on our, uh, borrowed theme song and settle in. You’re getting sleepy… very sleepy…

Good morning. I’m Charles Yawngood. Welcome to another edition of Drowsy Sunday for May 24, 2015. In the headlines today: the foreign ministers of twelve EU nations are meeting in Brussels this week for a nice long nap. And scientists at the Stanford Institute of Coziness announced a revolutionary breakthrough that, they say, will change footy pajamas as we know them. In celebrity birthdays, Bob Dylan turns 74. Queen Victoria is 196. And Jason Toon turns 41.

On today’s program, we’ll be taking a slow, quiet look at what happened when two cutlery legends came together. But first, a word from our sponsor:

Welcome back. The year: 1649. Revolution rages in Great Britain. Everyone everywhere has fleas. And along a babbling brook in the forests of Finland, a Dutch expat merchant named Peter Thorwöste establishes a small blast furnace and forge. He makes nails. Wire. Reinforced metal wheels. But it was his knives and tool blades that made his fortune. Over the next few centuries, those blades would turn Peter Thorwöste’s humble enterprise into a worldwide household name, a name taken from the little town where it all started: Fiskars.

Next, Fiskars finds a friend in a company from very far away, right after this word from our sponsor:

Welcome back. The year: 1939. A Portland, Oregon adman named Joseph Gerber receives a most unusual request from Abercrombie & Fitch. They weren’t interested in engaging Gerber’s ad agency. No, they were interested in the handmade knives Gerber had been sending clients as gifts every Christmas. So interested, in fact, that they wanted to include these knives in their mail-order catalog. Joseph Gerber left advertising and never looked back, starting a new company: Gerber Legendary Blades.

Over the next 50 years, it became clear that “Legendary” was no idle boast. So when the '80s acquisition boom came along, and Gerber was fielding offers from potential corporate suitors, they said “yes” to the one name that could stand alongside theirs in terms of quality and tradition: Fiskars. And so the Gerber Multitool and Flashlight Kit we see before us today reflects the blade-making traditions of two continents, five centuries, and… are you guys getting tired? I’m getting tired. Let’s all fall asleep to some video of geese and ducks on a pond. Until next week… this has been… Drowsy… Sun… dZZZZZZZ