I have had insomnia most of my life and found out that falling asleep listening to something as opposed to white noise really helps the anxiety I feel leading up to and falling asleep. I ended up buying a sleep mask with headphones after my wife was being woken up/kept awake by my phone on my nightstand. I can no longer sleep without this thing, kinda like a kid with their stuffed animal lol.
I am slowly running out of my normal stuff after repeated listening over the last 3 years. Just looking for some suggestions of stuff to fall asleep too.
Normally, I am listening to some competitive Pokémon analyses/videos (JimothyCool, FSG, BKC, anything covering Smogon metas), lore videos covering long running game series (mainly just WoW), comic book analysis (ComicTropes, Owen likes comics, strange brain parts, merry marvelite) and now some “sleep story” based channels (harder to find non-ai junk, but ive been enjoying Good Knight Sleep for their batman stories/call in radio and some mystery stories).
Sorry if that was too much for an example of what ive been listening to, but I would love to find some new things to throw into the rotation.
I’ve been rewatching DS9 at night and falling asleep to that.
There’s a dude on YouTube that repairs old cameras, hour long videos that I try to pay attention to but always puts me in that state where I can feel myself falling asleep, and my eyes won’t stay open.
“thank you?”
-that guy, probably
Casefile. Would recommend an earphone if you have a partner hahaha
Sleep With Me and Sleep Magic podcasts are great. Both have interesting enough content to listen to, but designed to make you sleepy. Also they talk like normal people. I can’t stand the ones where people are using their “sleepy ASMR voice.”
All the This Week in Tech (TWIT) podcasts are also really good, and long so good to fall asleep to. Also good if you can’t fall asleep since they’re pretty interesting.
Darknet Diaries is a good one - great stories.
Paper books with nightlights, or ebooks on low light level.
Reduced sensory input works like a charm.
I took a nap while falling asleep to a short video and in my dream I kept trying to turn off the video wondering why I the audio kept looping. Took me a while to realize I’m in dream land
I do, it also greatly helps with my work based anxieties related to next day woes. I find it also helps me relax and sleep when dealing with my chronic migraines to be able to listen, and in a way see, with my ears only since I get severe occular issues with them.
I pretty exclusively listen to video game lps, especially on migraine days, as I find comfort in knowing the game that is being played so well I dont feel the urge to look.
If that sounds up your alley there are a few creators I can recommend, all of which do not raise their voices, shout in surprise, or have sharp jumps in audio levels. They all balance their audio very very well.
Rhadamant: Narrative driven stories in a variety of games with a large focus on Rimworld. He does a very good job of explaining everything so you really can “watch” without seeing and fall asleep comfortably listening to a story. My favorite was the OG wendigo series personally but if you don’t know Rimworld that may be heavy. Life on the Rim is tough.
Halfman: Very different here but his rags to riches series on Tarkov feels like listening to a survival novel set in a warzone.
Aavak: Calm and collected every time with a very soothing tone. Unlike the others has a wider back catalogue of games so may be more options to grab your interest.
The Black Pants Legion - TexTalksBattletech: Lore videos on Battletech (big tabletop mech war set in an alternate timeline) super cool stuff. Lots to dig into.
TheAshHeritor: I started with the narrative lets plays of Age of Wonders because I was playing it in a similar way. The creator is an author for Warhammer and it really shows in the way they commentate. There is a current series running on Rogue Trader as well that is quite good.
Here’s hoping you find some joy and, most importantly, some sleep.
Black Pants Legion sounds interesting. I have never played TT games but mechs and lore is always cool.
Halfman sounds interesting, I played Tarkov for a month or two in 2022. It was a lot of fun but I didnt have the time to play a lot, and felt like I was so under geared two months into a reset. If the single player mod still is being developed, I was thinking of giving that another shot.
I started doing this when I went away to college. I think it was some mix of not having parents to tell me to go to sleep, feeling like I needed to reclaim some time for myself when the rest of my day was so busy, and maybe being a bit lonely far away from home.
I almost exclusively watch HS BG. It’s the right level of enough stuff happening that it occupies my mind while I’m conscious but it’s not something I care about missing any of it and they’re generally chill enough to not overexcite me or shock me awake. Plus they usually have on some generic chill music in the background.
I set a timer to shut off my tablet after an hour and with only a few exceptions I don’t ever stay awake long enough to see it shut off.
Sleeping with celebrities is celebs trying to calmly talk you to sleep. Empire and Revolutions are great podcasts. You can learn and then re-listen the next day if you want to learn more.
Would I lie to you is amazing, and the stories start to become a safety blanket. The unbelievable truth is great too.
I typically need something familiar to listen to in order to fall asleep. I doubt it would work for you, but for me personally, Alpharad among us vods work great. I envy you, as a single person it’s very difficult early in a relationship to navigate these things
I have been catching up on some Nothernlion bits and banter videos, those could probably work
Listening to podcasts also helps me immensely to fall asleep. But it’s difficult to find content that is not too boring and not too interesting.
My favorites are (and I doubt it would work for you looking at your preferred content)
- behind the bastard
- imaginary worlds
- darknet diaries
- build for tomorrow
Can only judge for the first 10 minutes of each episode because success.
I’m more low-tech, i set my mobile to minimum volume and use some equalizer app to reduce volume even more. Then i put the speaker right next to my ear… need to upgrade on this :-)
I have a huge backlog of BTB to catch up on. Might be good at night, but I usually like to listen to them in one go.
I tend to go for story-telling podcasts, and within those I gravitate towards Twilight Zone/Outer Limits/Black Mirror style weird anthologies.
Right now I’m finding a lot of great stuff in:
- The Other Stories (all kinds of stuff, they have a different theme every month or so)
- The Wrong Station (similar, but less likely to stick to a theme for a while)
- Gray Matter (lots of modern adaptations of older horror/sci-fi, like Lovecraft)
- The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings (higher ratio of dumb stuff, but still some gems)
- The Program (Black Mirror-esque)
- The Truth (various radio plays. Many aren’t sci-fi, but still weird in some way. Kind of reminds me of the bits of Inside No. 9 I’ve seen.)
I’ll take a look at all of these! I started get into old SciFi radio dramas and never knew where to start with modern ones. Thanks!
You might also like Auditory Anthology then. Their original stories are sometimes a little hit or miss for me, but one neat thing they do is they rebroadcast old episodes of a 50s radio show called X Minus One between their own stories. Often ones that they used as inspiration for a modern rewrite in an earlier episode.
Regrettably my tinnitus requires me to have some kind of sound going. I also like having flickering light, so I tend to just put on TV shows I have seen many times. Like Supernatural or Star Trek.
I just started watching TNG for the first time. Maybe once I’m done I’ll throw that in rotation!
The French Whisperer. “Whisperer” is a bit of a misnomer since he speaks softly instead of actually whispering but he is very French. He covers a pretty wide range of history, mythology, science, and literature/arts. There’s a YouTube channel for videos but he uploads audio-only versions on podcast platforms.
I don’t, but I do have a mask and that helps a lot!
I know some people use gameplay videos as background noise to fall asleep, someone I follow made a Sniper Elite video where he quietly narrates invasion mode for an hour and a half
