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 always needed some sort of noise to help sleep. I can do it in complete silence, but it takes a lot longer and I can never get comfortable so if I have to be up early the next day, silence is a recipe for disaster.
I tend to sleep to one of Vinny Vinesauce’s vods he uploads to the Fullsauce channel. Dude has just a nice relaxing voice and personality so I can kind of half pay attention and imagine what’s going on as I lie down with my eyes closed.
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 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 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.
If you want completely different genre, these I find helpful if I can’t sleep.
Darknet Diaries - stories of ex hackers and penetration testers telling their experiences on a job. Sneaking into various facilities etc.
Stuff You Should Know - two hosts laying out various topics with a bit of silliness and banter mixed in.
Lost SciFi Podcast -dude reads various short stories from ages ago. He’s a good reader but just enough monotony to fall asleep to if you aren’t into the story
I use Joov VODs. Just some random Skyrim sounds, the Fallout ones don’t work as well, what with the gunshots and all.
I’ve started listening to SecretBase from pateron
I used to fall asleep a couple of audio books. The Winds of War, The Stand or The Wheel of time. I found the narrators of those books voices very soothing.
I made my self stop though, I wanted to reduce the amount of stuff I needed to fall asleep.
I love listening to college lectures for topics I’m interested in but don’t fully grok. I fell asleep in them back when I was paying for it and getting tested on the material. Now I can listen to the same lecture 50 times if I want. And no test.
An all time favorite: Lenny Susskind’s Stanford open lecture series on Quantum Mechanics
Down side: sometimes I dream that I am trying to ask a question and the lecturer never notices. I have literally in the dream started running around terrorizing the room going insane screaming why does this professor not acknowledge my existence?!
Doubly hurtful when it’s Lenny; he’s such a comforting father-figure
Mostly I fall asleep to Alan Watts, Charles Bukowski (read by someone with a better voice haha), sometimes a reading of Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet. When I get bored with those, I try radio stations, just whatever one interests me at the moment. Sometimes I’ll listen to the “learn [language] while you sleep” videos, just as a goof.
I’ve been rewatching DS9 at night and falling asleep to that.
History of the universe, or fall of civilizations podcast.
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
I listen to short science videos. I usually put them into a playlist of about five videos and fall asleep by the second. New videos or topics I know less about go first.
My favourites are Dr Becky, PBS Space Time, PBS Eons, Omega Centauri and Urknall, Weltall & das Leben. Angela Collier would be up there as well, but her videos are too interesting to fall asleep to. And I also like Looking Glass Universe, but she tends to show too much stuff you have to see.
No, I prefer to read to sleep. But I also just… go to sleep, sometimes.
