Something not high energy, and interesting but not too interesting lol
Examples I’ve been enjoying include 99% Invisible, Ologies, and Common Descent
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.
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’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”.
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.
Hardcore History is my go to if you’re a fan of, well, history.
“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.
Fall of civilizations too. Only get an episode every 6months or so but it’s real good
I just posted something you might like actually
https://www.oldgodsofappalachia.com/episodes
(I like falling asleep to cosmic horror shit yes I am weird)
Also since it is sort of adjacent check out Trillbilly Worker’s Party
The History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan is over a decade (edit: typo) old 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.
If you’re into Star Trek, Gates McFadden, the actor who played Dr. Beverly Crusher on ST:TNG, has a great, chill podcast where she talks with people from all the different series.
Episode 1, every episode is the first episode of a podcast. It’s like 90% improv. Might be my favorite podcast.
Stuff You Should Know is a podcast by some well-meaning, curious, kind of dumb dudes from Atlanta. Libs but that doesn’t seem to be a disqualifier. Anyways they have very gentle and calm voices and basically have done a straight up book report-style podcast for like fifteen years and have done basically every topic.
They have the right voices to fall asleep to because they never get so excited they change their register and seem to like each other. Kind, friendly energy. It’s also easy to fall asleep to because you don’t have to hang on every word because they usually don’t really know too much about what they’re talking about so it never really matters if you hear the next part because you’d have to fact check it anyways
The lets read podcast and therapy gecko are my go to but they might be too interesting haha
I like Levar Burton Reads. His voice is so soothing. You can pick a story with a topic you are less interested in for nighttime listening since there are plenty to choose from.
I love Startalk Radio for this. It’s very interesting, funny and they make breaks every couple of minutes with a jingle that triggers me to wake up slightly with enough focus to take my headphones off and then fall asleep
I’ve always found RadioLab cozy, especially episodes from when it was still at its peak.
Also, not a podcast, but old-time radio is great for this. On a similar note, check out Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour.
Liam screaming incessantly
that’s real music baby
It’s all white noise at the end
