There’s a lot that may be keeping you up at night. Sleep problems have been on the rise for years and have spiked since the pandemic alongside other mental health concerns. And if you’re one of the many Americans who lost sleep in the run up to the election, you may not be sleeping much better now that it’s over.
Bedtime stories are best known as a way to help children wind down, but they can be just as beneficial for the racing thoughts of an adult mind. These six podcasts offer respites for your brain, delivering tales that are diverting enough to keep you focused, but uneventful enough that you can doze off.
‘Get Sleepy’
If you’re someone who finds British voices mysteriously soothing, this may be a particularly effective bedtime option. The meditative sleep stories that transport the listener to far-flung destinations en route to the Land of Nod are accompanied by ambient music and narrated by host Tom Jones, who first began “Get Sleepy” as a local radio show in southern England. Five years on, there’s a deep back catalog with a variety of settings to choose from: You can take a sleepy mental stroll around a Bavarian castle; attend a leisurely tea party in 1920s London, or inhabit the point of view of a fox on the streets of Rome. The notes for each episode include guides on what sounds and vibes to expect (bird sounds, mountain ambience, bodies of water and so on), so you can filter for what you find most relaxing.
Starter episode: “A Sleepy Springtime Journey to Welsh South America”
‘Sleep With Me’
There’s a phase between wakefulness and sleep known as hypnagogia, during which we may experience hallucinations and our thoughts become illogical and meandering. “Sleep With Me,” hosted by Drew Ackerman, helps to gently nudge listeners toward this state using stories that are deliberately slow-paced and a little surreal, full of tangents that keep your brain just busy enough to relax. Dating back more than a decade, this is the O.G. sleep aid podcast, and was inspired by Ackerman’s childhood habit of listening to radio shows to interrupt his racing thoughts during bouts of insomnia. The subjects of the biweekly episodes run the gamut from rambling recaps of television episodes to stream-of-consciousness fantasy stories, all delivered with the hope (and expectation) that you never make it to the end.
Starter episode: “Stuffed Animal Planning”
‘Phoebe Reads a Mystery’
Podcast aficionados may be familiar with the dulcet tones of Phoebe Judge from the long-running “Criminal,” a true crime series which takes a subtle, cerebral approach to a now oversaturated genre. Here, the focus is on fictional crimes, more specifically the cozy mysteries which Judge reads out, chapter by chapter. The series has worked its way through horror staples like Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw,” an array of Sherlock Holmes stories including the iconic “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” and the occasional non-mysterious classic like “Little Women.”
Starter episode: “Lady Molly of Scotland Yard — Chapter 1 — The Ninescore Mystery”
‘Nothing Much Happens’
The creator and host of “Nothing Much Happens,” Kathryn Nicolai, is a yoga and meditation teacher, but perhaps more important, she’s a self-described “architect of cozy.” That remit is at the core of this calming podcast, in which Nicolai reads a wholesome and uneventful bedtime story that’s just detailed enough to keep your mind tethered in one place. Each episode begins with a brief meditative breathing exercise to kick off the wind-down process, followed by Nicolai reading the same story twice, going a little slower the second time for maximum hypnotic effect. The storytelling and scene building is heavily influenced by the seasons — summer episodes might take you paddling at a lake, while currently it’s all about pie-making and frosty mornings.
Starter episode: “Pies and Pinecones”
‘Goodnight, World!’
This delightful collaboration between the staple meditation app Headspace and Sesame Street is designed to help restless children drift off — although its whimsical and comforting adventures might just help their parents to unwind at bedtime, too. Each 20-minute episode focuses on favorites like Grover, Big Bird and Bert and Ernie as they explore jungles, look around museums and even journey to the moon. Although there’s no actual meditation in these episodes, there are tie-in activities available in the Headspace app that can help introduce children to mindfulness, including a bedtime body scan narrated by Elmo.
Starter episode: “Bert and Ernie’s Fall Day on the Farm”
‘Boring Books For Bedtime’
Reading just before going to bed has been shown to improve sleep quality, but it can be tricky to find the right book that’ll hold your attention without being so page-turning that you’re up all night. As its title suggests, “Boring Books For Bedtime” does the work of selection for you, delivering chapters from snooze-worthy texts in the public domain. One week, the host, Sharon Handy, might be reading from H.G. Wells’s “A Short History of the World”; the next, a guide to Old English country inns, a car instruction manual, or a schedule of trans-Atlantic steamer sailings from the 1920s.
Starter episode: “The Railway Traveller’s Handy Book, Part 1”
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