Something not high energy, and interesting but not too interesting lol
Examples I’ve been enjoying include 99% Invisible, Ologies, and Common Descent
Sleep With Me
How about you invite OP to a dinner first?
Love scooter! Feels like a super low key barely funny comedy sketch. Helped my sleepless night and mid night waking a lot.
Love Sleep with Me!
It’s basically soothing white noise
I’ve been listening to Scoot for probably 5 or more years now. Makes me go lights out 20 min top
If I remember the name correctly, “Sleep With Me” is designed specifically for this purpose.
Yup and they gave a large archive too! Other recommendations: Nothing much happens, and Boring books for bedtime.
I’d recommend the Welcome to Night Vale podcast. It’s an audio play that presents itself as a local radio news station for a town called Night Vale, where all sorts of weird and spooky things happen but are all totally normal and mundane to the people there. It’s very entertaining, and because all the “bits” are told like very short little news segments. Each story is pretty much self-contained and not intrinsically related to anything else, so it’s easy enough to tune in and out while you fall asleep, and you won’t really be missing anything “important”.
The weather always does a good job of waking me up. It’s why I stopped “listening” to Night Vale .
Hardcore History is my go to if you’re a fan of, well, history.
Fall of civilizations too. Only get an episode every 6months or so but it’s real good
“The British History Podcast” is also really solid for this.
There are also good ones on Japan, The Crusades, Rome, and the Byzantine Empire although I don’t remember their names exactly. They’re all variations on “The History of [x]” or “[x] History Podcast”.
The history of the crusades one is done by an Australian professor and she’s really good. I believe she did one on the Normans as well which was excellent, too.
Really, if you’re going with History, I would do a bit of research on how they’re perceived and make sure you like the narrator’s voice. It’s almost always one narrator which is perfect for sleep.
Additionally, I will go out and find lectures from “The Great Courses” series which are pretty well vetted for oratory because the speakers are genuine college professors. Just finished one of those on Balkan history which was really solid.
As far as vetting of podcasts goes, most of them are done by well meaning amateurs, but it should become clear whether they actually know what they’re talking about. I’d recommend Hardcore History or Great Courses lectures as a jumping off point and then see about podcasts that are similar in respect for the subject matter.
Came here to recommend the same thing. Incredibly relaxing, funny, and wholesome.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/playlist?list=PLOg1r3RmAaWkKAJVrVpQYCS2BBmzfX2B5
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
The History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan is over a decade of but it’s ideal for that. He has an incredibly relaxing voice, and even though I’m legitimately interested in Roman history I would find myself drifting off sometimes. The audio quality in the early episodes aren’t great but he gets a better mic later.
Sleepy - American male host reads classic literature
CaseFile - Australian male host tells true crime
The PurrrCast - People talk about their cats
I sleep to Lore
I really enjoyed Lore for a while until he got involved in his TV series. I feel the quality dipped a bit after that (but not a big issue if you’re just falling asleep to them).
other similar ones for falling asleep to:
Criminal and This is Love - Pheobe Judge has a great voice to fall asleep to. The content is interesting enough to have your mind not wander too much but her voice relaxing enough to lull you to sleep. I often end up listening to an episode over several bedtimes to hear it all.
Hidden Brain is another great one to fall asleep to.
The Memory Palace, similar to Roman Mars’ narrating.
Fall of Civilization. His voice is absolutely soothing and the topics of how certain people found these lost Civilizations and then how they fell into ruin is super interesting.
Huge +1 to this. Also North 02 on YouTube.
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Along the same lines, but not a podcast, McFadden narrates a docuseries on all things Trek, “The Center seat”, on Amazon currently.
Episode 1, every episode is the first episode of a podcast. It’s like 90% improv. Might be my favorite podcast.
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I listen to DnD podcasts every single night.
The adventure zone. Dungeons and daddies. Naddpod.
These three have kept my brain occupied and entertained for YEARS.
It’s just frustrating to set a 15 minute timer and have no idea where you fell asleep and what you missed the next day when you press play.
I recognize the irony of this, but sometimes I like to fall asleep to the No Sleep podcast.
I subbed just last week, haven’t listened to many episodes, but it’s been good.
I like Roman Mars’ voice so 99% invisible is my go to. But I’m still searching for a way to automate listening to British shipping traffic in a podcast like fashion.
