The problem with that podcast is that most of their selections are genuinely interesting - I even listened to them on long drives (e.g. "Origin of Species"). Even something I thought would boring like or "Farm Engines and how to Run" them turned out to be fascinating.
This one, on the other hand, seems to be genuinely boring. I couldn't get past the intro.
The Sleep With Me Podcast is very good. It helped my wife when she had a period of insomnia.
He has a number of tricks he uses from a monoto delivery, to meandering stories where the narrative constantly interrupts itself with. So you can’t really “follow along”.
Woke up too early this morning and tried it, after Mafra public radio did not work for me. This worked great, and now that I am listening to it again it is quite hilarious that I just cannot follow what he is talking about
Lifelong insomniac (racing thoughts, probably ADHD-related) and this podcast cured me.
To anyone who tries it, it's important to know upfront: there's nothing to "get." It's nonsense. It exhausts the brain without being interesting enough to keep it running.
A similar one I recently discovered is https://www.youtube.com/@SleepOnPhysics. I think it was meant to put you to sleep with the detailed narrative, but I found it to be very interesting and captivating, especially for long drives.
The content quality is pretty good, I am almost certain the audio is AI generated, but wonder how the content itself was authored.
Amazes me how people in a tech industry paying six figures refuse to pay a tiny percentage of their income to get rid of adverts on something that consumes so much time.
There's a very emotional "I'm not paying for YouTube" feeling that some people have. They try and justify it with logic after the fact, but the underlying principal seems too simply be "I'm not gonna pay for YouTube, I deserve to get everything for free!" Like, you get paid at your job where you work, which gets you money. Paying other people money for their work, however, suddenly that's just not ok. Somehow.
I avoid sponsorship read outs by choosing the channels I spend my time on, especially if it’s mid roll. Those people are bypassing the built in ad system and deliberately placing the read out in a place where it’s annoying for you to skip.
I can't speak for other cheapskates, but I personally think it's more that YouTube is still so utterly inessential that if ads ever start managing to get past my ad blockers, I'll simply not watch.
If you're in the UK you've already got the shipping forecast, no need for some custom podcast to fall asleep to. Here's twelve hours of it for your enjoyment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j6KlkVUseI
Northwoods Baseball Radio Network is my favorite. It’s a fictional baseball league based primarily in Wisconsin. Games are called by a droning announcer. Even the fake commercials between innings are monotonous.
I listen to it during the day too. I’m very tempted to score some of the games, but I’m a little worried I’d find holes like only 2 outs in an inning or missing innings in a game.
I love this, and I wanted to use it when I was suffering from a bit of sleeplessness in the past month or so. Unfortunately, my brain gets stuck in a loop trying to figure out when the audience noise loops. There's one guy who makes the same holler every N seconds.
Same effect for me. As a child, I was prone to fall asleep even during live events! The racing cars or motorbikes were interesting, but the drone of the motors brought an overwhelming drowsiness.
Not sure how accessible all this is outside of the UK (you'd need to check the BBC Sounds website & app), but the BBC has perfected a couple of great "gets you to sleep" radio outlets.
The oldest is Radio 4, the BBC's national spoken word radio station (there's also Radio 5 which focuses on sport and news, Radio 4 is more a mixture of comedy, arts, culture and news).
Late at night (UK time), there are programmes that were for many years my soundtrack to getting to sleep - news, a short programme (on Sunday it's a recording of some church bells from some church somewhere in the UK countryside - it changes each week), followed by the shipping forecast. The service "signs off" with the national anthem before switching over to the BBC World Service at around 1am through until 6am when it switches back to the iconic Today programme.
The shipping forecast though - that's the gold. If you've never listened to it before, try and find a recording. As an island nation with a decimated but still strong fishing trawler fleet, it's framed as essential safety information, but in truth its just an iconic, beautiful, ever-changing structured poem, read on national radio several times a day. It is perfect for helping calm the mind, it's a weighted blanket for the brain.
Somebody, somewhere realised that a continuity announcer slowly rattling through the shipping forecast was so good at putting over-active minds to sleep that they created a podcast - "The Sleeping Forecast" - which is a mix of slow/ambient music with old shipping forecasts read over them. I love it, but my partner finds it "weird" so I can't listen to it without wearing headphones late at night.
This, somehow, then led to the realisation that Radio 3 (the national classical music station in the UK), could provide more of the same. Cue other programs - Sleep Tracks, Night Tracks - where there is a composition of calming, quieting music, mostly rooted in classical tradition but overall just very ambient and calm.
And then the final inevitable chapter: in the world of DAB radio and digital platforms (including the BBC Sounds app that seemed absurd at its inception but now slowly becoming loved), the BBC realised they could cheaply put together a whole new station: BBC Radio 3 Unwind (or "3U" for short).
All of this being the BBC, there are no ads. No pledge drives. 3 Unwind has no news programming. It's my new go to when anxiety hits.
The BBC isn't perfect, the funding model needs to evolve, but while we have this - just in case one day we don't - do try and enjoy this stuff if you can.
It's a criminal act to not pay the license fee if you own a TV capable of receiving BBC channels (i.e. it's plugged into an aerial, satellite or cable box). Prison time is theoretically possible, but most prosecutions result in a fine.
As a result, and given that most political parties sense bias in the BBC (it's telling for me that the right-wing think it's too left-wing, and the left-wing think it's too right-wing, meaning it's probably just quite balanced and open and apolitical), the funding model is a hot political potato.
Recent announcements have suggested that the license fee should apply to anyone with a car radio (radio licenses were phased out years ago), and/or using streaming services regardless of whether they consume BBC content at all. This has not gone down well.
For me, I think regular consumption of at least some part of the BBC's very wide and diverse output is the only monocultural thing in the UK that helps people feel a common sense of belonging - we're a very multicultural society (and have been at least since WW2, and arguably since the Romans). People who hate the BBC are, in my experience, more likely to voice racist, homophobic, Islamophobic or Covid-hoax views.
So, in short, making almost every household in the country fork out £180/year to fund it is not something that goes without political consequence or debate, and it's likely that rolling it back in some form is on the cards in the next 10 years.
Marfa is an amazing little town. I was there 3 months ago; while it is out of the way, even as a visitor, everyone is nice and genuinely there to provide an amazing artistic experience. If you ever want to experience the actual weird, southwestern, cowboy country, go to Marfa. And have a drink outside this public radio station. It's quite a nice getaway.
My wife and I had our wedding in Marathon which is in the other side of Alpine. We both love the area and my oldest son is named Jett after James Dean’s character in the movie Giant which was filmed in and near those towns. Did you find the pay phone in Marfa that just plays Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off through the handset? Hah it’s a magical desert out that way.
We went there a few years ago, while we were in Fort Davis, to see the Marfa Lights. We did see the lights - it's a real thing! But at the same time, we also saw a Space X launch, including seeing the flash of the 1st stage separation. It was an amazingly cool experience.
While waiting for sunset, we also took a drive out of town to the southwest toward Mexico. It started as a nice paved road, but after an hour or so the pavement disappeared. A bit later, we started meandering down the side of a mountain, on loose shale, only one lane wide and nowhere to turn around. The views were amazing, but it seemed that was a clear sign that it was time to turn back.
There are no cars - or roads - where the lights can be seen.
I'm aware that there's widespread support for the idea that there's some odd atmospheric effect with refraction or something, that displaces the apparent location of real headlights. But even granting that, it doesn't change that it's a pretty weird thing.
Yes. It is pretty wacky. And while it looks like quiet the EV charging desert on paper (the nearest Tesla charger is in Alpine) but by springing for RV sites in Big Bend and Terlingua we made it work just fine.
EDIT: My only regret was going during spring break season. It makes for some very nice weather, but during those two weeks or so, the handful of restaurants in Marfa are overwhelmed.
What I do is to put a podcast in a language I'm learning, radio France is very good for this. I have a good level of French but my listening still needs work, at the beginning I can understand what they're saying but around the 20minutes or 30 mark my brain becomes too tired, I stop understanding and then I fall to sleep.
My favorite go-to-sleep move is to load up Ben Eater on YouTube. I actually love Ben Eater’s content, but his voice and his lack of dopamine-chasing production make for perfect go-to-sleep encouragement. And then I have a genuinely interesting video to pick up when I’m not tired.
One trick that makes me sleepy really fast: After I close my eyes, I imagine someone throwing black paint on them. The first coat is kinda gray and has lots of blob and not fully black. Then another coat. And another. Each one gets darker until it's just pure black and I'm usually asleep by then.
For some reason, my brain follows it, and I fall asleep much faster. It works way better for me than box breathing or most other sleep tricks I've seen. Sharing in case someone else finds this useful.
If noise keeps you awake (loud neighborhood) then a white noise blanket could work. I downloaded a 10 hour beachwaves sound and played it to cover the noise. Two small speakers left and right made it feel like I was there with the stereo. It took a little bit to get used to, but it did the trick.
I close my eyes and set out on a journey to explore an imaginary island. It almost always begins on a sun-drenched beach. Usually, I’ve already fallen asleep after just a few meters...
> Ever wondered what NPR's code of journalistic ethics involves for the newsroom?
I have been thinking a lot through the years about the choice between joirnalistic ethics and journalistic activism in the ranks of organizations like NPR. This is an extremely important topic because today's media are as impactful politically as the "regular" political process.
My point is, such discussion would not make me sleepy, the opposite would happen.
One of my greatest memories is performing at the Chinati Foundation. Marfa is such a gem with tons of cool people just being creative out in the desert.
I was starting to get chill
Until I heard this And then it hits you. That signal is at risk. It could be snatched right out of the sky. Congress has just passed the Rescissions Act of 2025, H.R.4, eliminating all federal funding for public media. At Marfa Public Radio, this means one third of our budget is disappearing. For now, everything's still humming, machinery whirring, tower broadcasting.
Now I got worried, is this actually true, wanted to look it up and now it was hard to fall asleep again.
They shouldn't put stuff like that in the podcast supposed to help you sleep
I started listening to an audiobook of Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust with the best of intentions. It's high quality literature, and it unquestionably has artistic and human-ness value!
However...it's become my "put this on with a 30 minute timer if I'm having trouble falling to sleep" tool. I'd probably have better luck with the physical book. The narrator, John Rowe, does an excellent job, but his voice is so damn _soothing_.
I love Proust, but you need mental space to read his books. It also helps to be a little bored. That's hard to achieve while connected to the Internet.
Anything works really. I think whatever music you enjoy works. I have fallen asleep to Morbid Angel and Vader, so I assume those who like this type of music would also fall asleep to Stellardrone.
My sleep strategy has been scary story montages on Youtube, whether r/nosleep style compilations from Mortis Media or 30min short stories.
The unique selling proposition is that the inherent intrigue makes them interesting enough to listen to in the first place.
The problem with most recommendations in this thread is that I’m still awake for 10+ minutes (or much worse) while I’m laying in bed so “Sleep to physics/calculus” just isn’t going to cut it.
I wonder how many people who can listen to audio where the gimmick is that it’s so boring actually needed sleep assistance in the first place.
I wake up multiple times at night. My go to solution is https://www.youtube.com/@agadmator - the monotone voice and low stakes chess matches knock me out most days.
Listen to The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. It's bureaucratic language, which could put you to sleep. But then it also contains some ideas that sound utterly unrealistic and utopian in our current times, even as mere aspirations. Thinking about what we've lost since 1967 makes me lose my sleep.
It's a progressive web app (you may install and use it both on android and ios)
Simply visit the page and click Install.
This may even be used without installation though...
Even no sign-up is required to try this.
I love visiting Marfa. If you haven't been, I recommend it (you should read up on it first, it's not really for everyone, it's a pretty weird little dessert town).
The topics here were quite interesting to me. Not boring at all. OTOH, i have never managed to sit through a headspace episode without falling into the best sleep ever.
i want a sleep app that reads me things that will put me to sleep, but i need it to track when i may have gone to sleep, or more importantly when I have not, so i can restart the next night past the point i've listened to. but it needs to be some crazy simple UI, i don't want the light on my phone to turn on, i don't want to fiddle, just skip forward, skip back, that's about it
there's all sorts of stuff that is dry but interesting that I'd like to plow through over time, a few paragraphs a day would suit me fine
I think it'd be an outstanding feature on the iPhone to turn off audiobooks/podcasts at ~5 min into sleep or whatever. Seems like they already have the data via the Watch...
Same here. Love the Mindscape podcast. It taught me everything I know about quantum physics (haha).
But for me, the bedtime listening is ALWAYS fascinating. It has to be. And I fall asleep nevertheless.
My routine is to play a podcast that I am interested in, put a sleep timer on 20 min (Overcast app FTW), and just enjoy the content.
No matter how interesting it is, it very rarely takes me setting the timer for another 20 min, almost always I fall asleep in the first run, often times within the first 10 min.
What makes it funny is I will be listening a single episode for weeks sometime, often listening the same parts over and over again simply because I can’t precisely start today where I fell asleep yesterday.
It became a part of a routine that I am genuinely looking forward to. This is how I worked through the entire Mike Duncan opus (Revolutions first, and then the History of Rome), I am currently working through the History of Byzantium by Robin Pierson, but occasionally I am listening to Sean Carrol, and sometimes I will go back to In our Time by BBC’s Melwyn Bragg.
Actually, come to think of it, most of my podcast listening time is bedtime. I would hate to waste it to listen something boring.
Am I the only one that can't fall asleep to music? I need human voice rhythms, so podcasts, or whatever. The downside is not learning anything from the podcast because I'm asleep and it works its way into dreams sporadically
I can't fall asleep to either. I can tolerate noise, like a thunderstorm, but even construction sounds are interesting enough to keep me up with questions like: "I wonder what tool makes that sound."
Me too. Got an air filter near the bed with a quiet enough motor that all I hear is the woosh. Its also handy for when nearby forest fires degrade the air quality.
It’s really annoying, but even if Cloudflare/AWS etc. offer a big “block all access from abroad/evil GDPR abroad/…”, I feel like the site owner is still the one to blame for pressing it.
Too many American websites these days put random geoblocking in place.
What’s even more frustrating is when it happens without any explanation in mobile apps via breaking a few specific APIs.
Just yesterday I was struggling with a bank/fintech that would send me through KYC every time I’d open the app from abroad as an existing user, which would then hang forever. Using a US VPN, everything would work normally. Good thing fraudsters don’t have access to US VPNs…
The geoblocking is mostly a desperate attempt at self defense against a flood of scrapers crushing the site for everyone. Don't take it personally unless you are one.
Why wouldn't I take it personally if some corporation decides that blocking their existing customers based on purported geographic location (VPNs exist, people travel etc.) is acceptable collateral damage in their presumably largely ineffective attempts to block scrapers?
been using long youtube lectures for this for years. the sweet spot is something just interesting enough that your brain can't fully let go, but not interesting enough to actually keep you awake. theoretical physics talks hit it perfectly for me.
the problem is occasionally you find one that's genuinely fascinating and you're suddenly wide awake at 3am having learned something.
I had a similar thought and drew a distinction between snark about lines in the submitted article and snark directed at a fellow HN commenter.
Both are discouraged, neither is great, the second following piling on and getting personal example is arguably worse.
The disappointing part (for myself at least) was a failure to be explicit in how they felt the lay / lie usage should go and in what English speaking domains the preferred usages are.
https://archive.ph/GkyK5
They've seemed to configure Cloudfront to block access from Singapore.
At least one can see the html there.
There is a similar podcast, "Boring Books for Bedtime": https://www.boringbookspod.com/episodes.
The problem with that podcast is that most of their selections are genuinely interesting - I even listened to them on long drives (e.g. "Origin of Species"). Even something I thought would boring like or "Farm Engines and how to Run" them turned out to be fascinating.
This one, on the other hand, seems to be genuinely boring. I couldn't get past the intro.
The Sleep With Me Podcast is very good. It helped my wife when she had a period of insomnia.
He has a number of tricks he uses from a monoto delivery, to meandering stories where the narrative constantly interrupts itself with. So you can’t really “follow along”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_with_Me_(podcast)
Woke up too early this morning and tried it, after Mafra public radio did not work for me. This worked great, and now that I am listening to it again it is quite hilarious that I just cannot follow what he is talking about
Haha. Thats very well put!
My favourite episode (The Bear with a Comet on his Belly): https://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/414/
There's a real craft to making something feel safe, low-stakes and impossible to get invested in
Lifelong insomniac (racing thoughts, probably ADHD-related) and this podcast cured me.
To anyone who tries it, it's important to know upfront: there's nothing to "get." It's nonsense. It exhausts the brain without being interesting enough to keep it running.
I don’t need it now but this was a godsend a few years ago.
A similar one I recently discovered is https://www.youtube.com/@SleepOnPhysics. I think it was meant to put you to sleep with the detailed narrative, but I found it to be very interesting and captivating, especially for long drives. The content quality is pretty good, I am almost certain the audio is AI generated, but wonder how the content itself was authored.
In the middle the YouTube Advertisements starts playing at a louder volume and you wake up :)
Amazes me how people in a tech industry paying six figures refuse to pay a tiny percentage of their income to get rid of adverts on something that consumes so much time.
There's a very emotional "I'm not paying for YouTube" feeling that some people have. They try and justify it with logic after the fact, but the underlying principal seems too simply be "I'm not gonna pay for YouTube, I deserve to get everything for free!" Like, you get paid at your job where you work, which gets you money. Paying other people money for their work, however, suddenly that's just not ok. Somehow.
Paying for YouTube does not get rid of ads. Only using sponsor block does.
The whole point of YouTube Premium is that there aren’t any ads.
There are ad reads as part of at least half of the videos I watch. Fortunately sponsorblock takes care of most of them.
I avoid sponsorship read outs by choosing the channels I spend my time on, especially if it’s mid roll. Those people are bypassing the built in ad system and deliberately placing the read out in a place where it’s annoying for you to skip.
Glad I'm able to amaze you.
I can't speak for other cheapskates, but I personally think it's more that YouTube is still so utterly inessential that if ads ever start managing to get past my ad blockers, I'll simply not watch.
I don't believe it to be ai generated voice. It's too good.
Or if it is - why e.g. automated voices reading nyt articles are so bad?
> why e.g. automated voices reading nyt articles are so bad?
Older (and cheaper, possibly self-hosted) text-to-speech software.
A two-hour-long recording released every 24 hours with the graphics being AI slop? It's AI.
If you're in the UK you've already got the shipping forecast, no need for some custom podcast to fall asleep to. Here's twelve hours of it for your enjoyment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j6KlkVUseI
I like the idea of B-B-B but unfortunately the reader has the voice of a heavy smoker, it's just not that relaxing for me.
> This one, on the other hand, seems to be genuinely boring. I couldn't get past the intro.
The professionals…
On a related note reading HN comments is a prime example of sleepy text. Gets me every time.
That's the funny trap with a lot of "boring" material: the moment it's old, technical or oddly specific, it becomes interesting again
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Northwoods Baseball Radio Network is my favorite. It’s a fictional baseball league based primarily in Wisconsin. Games are called by a droning announcer. Even the fake commercials between innings are monotonous.
I listen to it during the day too. I’m very tempted to score some of the games, but I’m a little worried I’d find holes like only 2 outs in an inning or missing innings in a game.
https://www.sleepbaseball.com/
They periodically have ‘specials’ such as idle chatter by the announcers during a rain delay. Ha!
Northwoods is actually a very real collegiate summer baseball league.
https://northwoodsleague.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwoods_League
I love this, and I wanted to use it when I was suffering from a bit of sleeplessness in the past month or so. Unfortunately, my brain gets stuck in a loop trying to figure out when the audience noise loops. There's one guy who makes the same holler every N seconds.
Hah! I often keep a few 1-3 week-old sports podcasts around as a sleep aid.
I find that outdated previews/predictions of events that have already happened is the perfect thing to get me to doze off.
I think the 2 weeks of heavy speculation about where Giannis Antetokounmpo will be traded to has me set for another month.
I almost think the possible scoring inconsistencies would make it better, not worse
For me it's Sunn O))) Live at the Mayan. I've never made it past the first note before falling asleep.
That’s great. Definitely going to check it out. I usually use NASCAR for this. I’m out in 10 minutes like a baby going for a car ride.
Same effect for me. As a child, I was prone to fall asleep even during live events! The racing cars or motorbikes were interesting, but the drone of the motors brought an overwhelming drowsiness.
I found the voice doing the play by play more aggravating than anything else. I don't know why. Very interesting.
I didn't think baseball could be any more sleep inducing but this is great.
Michigan. Though there are fictional Wisconsin teams in the fictional league.
This is actually fascinating. I have never heard of this before.
Not sure how accessible all this is outside of the UK (you'd need to check the BBC Sounds website & app), but the BBC has perfected a couple of great "gets you to sleep" radio outlets.
The oldest is Radio 4, the BBC's national spoken word radio station (there's also Radio 5 which focuses on sport and news, Radio 4 is more a mixture of comedy, arts, culture and news).
Late at night (UK time), there are programmes that were for many years my soundtrack to getting to sleep - news, a short programme (on Sunday it's a recording of some church bells from some church somewhere in the UK countryside - it changes each week), followed by the shipping forecast. The service "signs off" with the national anthem before switching over to the BBC World Service at around 1am through until 6am when it switches back to the iconic Today programme.
The shipping forecast though - that's the gold. If you've never listened to it before, try and find a recording. As an island nation with a decimated but still strong fishing trawler fleet, it's framed as essential safety information, but in truth its just an iconic, beautiful, ever-changing structured poem, read on national radio several times a day. It is perfect for helping calm the mind, it's a weighted blanket for the brain.
Somebody, somewhere realised that a continuity announcer slowly rattling through the shipping forecast was so good at putting over-active minds to sleep that they created a podcast - "The Sleeping Forecast" - which is a mix of slow/ambient music with old shipping forecasts read over them. I love it, but my partner finds it "weird" so I can't listen to it without wearing headphones late at night.
This, somehow, then led to the realisation that Radio 3 (the national classical music station in the UK), could provide more of the same. Cue other programs - Sleep Tracks, Night Tracks - where there is a composition of calming, quieting music, mostly rooted in classical tradition but overall just very ambient and calm.
And then the final inevitable chapter: in the world of DAB radio and digital platforms (including the BBC Sounds app that seemed absurd at its inception but now slowly becoming loved), the BBC realised they could cheaply put together a whole new station: BBC Radio 3 Unwind (or "3U" for short).
All of this being the BBC, there are no ads. No pledge drives. 3 Unwind has no news programming. It's my new go to when anxiety hits.
The BBC isn't perfect, the funding model needs to evolve, but while we have this - just in case one day we don't - do try and enjoy this stuff if you can.
In Our Time. Is always fascinating and always puts be to sleep - I have to consume it in 10 minute nightly chunks
The Shipping Forecast is such a strange cultural object from the outside
What do you mean in the last paragraph? I don't know much about the BBC, but I cherish our local equivalents.
It's a criminal act to not pay the license fee if you own a TV capable of receiving BBC channels (i.e. it's plugged into an aerial, satellite or cable box). Prison time is theoretically possible, but most prosecutions result in a fine.
There's more info on how the license fee works here: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-...
As a result, and given that most political parties sense bias in the BBC (it's telling for me that the right-wing think it's too left-wing, and the left-wing think it's too right-wing, meaning it's probably just quite balanced and open and apolitical), the funding model is a hot political potato.
Recent announcements have suggested that the license fee should apply to anyone with a car radio (radio licenses were phased out years ago), and/or using streaming services regardless of whether they consume BBC content at all. This has not gone down well.
For me, I think regular consumption of at least some part of the BBC's very wide and diverse output is the only monocultural thing in the UK that helps people feel a common sense of belonging - we're a very multicultural society (and have been at least since WW2, and arguably since the Romans). People who hate the BBC are, in my experience, more likely to voice racist, homophobic, Islamophobic or Covid-hoax views.
So, in short, making almost every household in the country fork out £180/year to fund it is not something that goes without political consequence or debate, and it's likely that rolling it back in some form is on the cards in the next 10 years.
The shipping forecast is great... or I should say, moderate, occasionally poor :)
Marfa is an amazing little town. I was there 3 months ago; while it is out of the way, even as a visitor, everyone is nice and genuinely there to provide an amazing artistic experience. If you ever want to experience the actual weird, southwestern, cowboy country, go to Marfa. And have a drink outside this public radio station. It's quite a nice getaway.
My wife and I had our wedding in Marathon which is in the other side of Alpine. We both love the area and my oldest son is named Jett after James Dean’s character in the movie Giant which was filmed in and near those towns. Did you find the pay phone in Marfa that just plays Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off through the handset? Hah it’s a magical desert out that way.
We went there a few years ago, while we were in Fort Davis, to see the Marfa Lights. We did see the lights - it's a real thing! But at the same time, we also saw a Space X launch, including seeing the flash of the 1st stage separation. It was an amazingly cool experience.
While waiting for sunset, we also took a drive out of town to the southwest toward Mexico. It started as a nice paved road, but after an hour or so the pavement disappeared. A bit later, we started meandering down the side of a mountain, on loose shale, only one lane wide and nowhere to turn around. The views were amazing, but it seemed that was a clear sign that it was time to turn back.
> to see the Marfa Lights. We did see the lights - it's a real thing!
They're car headlights, which are indeed a real thing.
There are no cars - or roads - where the lights can be seen.
I'm aware that there's widespread support for the idea that there's some odd atmospheric effect with refraction or something, that displaces the apparent location of real headlights. But even granting that, it doesn't change that it's a pretty weird thing.
Yes. It is pretty wacky. And while it looks like quiet the EV charging desert on paper (the nearest Tesla charger is in Alpine) but by springing for RV sites in Big Bend and Terlingua we made it work just fine. EDIT: My only regret was going during spring break season. It makes for some very nice weather, but during those two weeks or so, the handful of restaurants in Marfa are overwhelmed.
Don’t pass up Marfa Burrito, just off Highland Ave. Gigantic and extremely good. It’s a cool town on the edge of nowhere.
Agreed!
The ambience there fits Marfa perfectly.
I actually go there every year for a generative art festival. It’s a surreal and awesome spot for sure.
What I do is to put a podcast in a language I'm learning, radio France is very good for this. I have a good level of French but my listening still needs work, at the beginning I can understand what they're saying but around the 20minutes or 30 mark my brain becomes too tired, I stop understanding and then I fall to sleep.
Same here. It helps me sleep, but it doesn't help much with language learning.
> It's a sleep podcast wherein we read you the boring documents essential to our jobs, in the hopes we might lull you into slumber.
What a great idea, I feel li... zzz
My favorite go-to-sleep move is to load up Ben Eater on YouTube. I actually love Ben Eater’s content, but his voice and his lack of dopamine-chasing production make for perfect go-to-sleep encouragement. And then I have a genuinely interesting video to pick up when I’m not tired.
One trick that makes me sleepy really fast: After I close my eyes, I imagine someone throwing black paint on them. The first coat is kinda gray and has lots of blob and not fully black. Then another coat. And another. Each one gets darker until it's just pure black and I'm usually asleep by then.
For some reason, my brain follows it, and I fall asleep much faster. It works way better for me than box breathing or most other sleep tricks I've seen. Sharing in case someone else finds this useful.
If noise keeps you awake (loud neighborhood) then a white noise blanket could work. I downloaded a 10 hour beachwaves sound and played it to cover the noise. Two small speakers left and right made it feel like I was there with the stereo. It took a little bit to get used to, but it did the trick.
Similarly, I never try to imagine a bright sunshine. It can wake me up
I close my eyes and set out on a journey to explore an imaginary island. It almost always begins on a sun-drenched beach. Usually, I’ve already fallen asleep after just a few meters...
Love this. I'll try it.
Ive found great success with the Military Sleep Method where you progressively shutdown your body from head to toe.
> Ever wondered what NPR's code of journalistic ethics involves for the newsroom?
I have been thinking a lot through the years about the choice between joirnalistic ethics and journalistic activism in the ranks of organizations like NPR. This is an extremely important topic because today's media are as impactful politically as the "regular" political process.
My point is, such discussion would not make me sleepy, the opposite would happen.
I suppose it depends on how it is presented. You can definitely present boring things interestingly, and interesting things boringly.
For me, Edward Witten (1), Sheldon Axler (2), Patrick Winston (3) and many others do a far better job.
1. https://youtu.be/UW_M7hotSlk
2. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGAnmvB9m7zOBVCZBUUmSinFV...
3. https://youtu.be/TjZBTDzGeGg
Sean Carroll’s Mindscape for me
One of my greatest memories is performing at the Chinati Foundation. Marfa is such a gem with tons of cool people just being creative out in the desert.
agreed, it's a gem. wasn't familiar with Chianti, though!
I was starting to get chill Until I heard this And then it hits you. That signal is at risk. It could be snatched right out of the sky. Congress has just passed the Rescissions Act of 2025, H.R.4, eliminating all federal funding for public media. At Marfa Public Radio, this means one third of our budget is disappearing. For now, everything's still humming, machinery whirring, tower broadcasting.
Now I got worried, is this actually true, wanted to look it up and now it was hard to fall asleep again. They shouldn't put stuff like that in the podcast supposed to help you sleep
I started listening to an audiobook of Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust with the best of intentions. It's high quality literature, and it unquestionably has artistic and human-ness value!
However...it's become my "put this on with a 30 minute timer if I'm having trouble falling to sleep" tool. I'd probably have better luck with the physical book. The narrator, John Rowe, does an excellent job, but his voice is so damn _soothing_.
I love Proust, but you need mental space to read his books. It also helps to be a little bored. That's hard to achieve while connected to the Internet.
short of this radio, you can also play Stellardrone https://stellardrone.bandcamp.com/
Anything works really. I think whatever music you enjoy works. I have fallen asleep to Morbid Angel and Vader, so I assume those who like this type of music would also fall asleep to Stellardrone.
When I first read that, I saw "Mafia Public Radio."
"Youse gonna sleep wid' da fishies..."
My sleep strategy has been scary story montages on Youtube, whether r/nosleep style compilations from Mortis Media or 30min short stories.
The unique selling proposition is that the inherent intrigue makes them interesting enough to listen to in the first place.
The problem with most recommendations in this thread is that I’m still awake for 10+ minutes (or much worse) while I’m laying in bed so “Sleep to physics/calculus” just isn’t going to cut it.
I wonder how many people who can listen to audio where the gimmick is that it’s so boring actually needed sleep assistance in the first place.
I wake up multiple times at night. My go to solution is https://www.youtube.com/@agadmator - the monotone voice and low stakes chess matches knock me out most days.
Listen to The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. It's bureaucratic language, which could put you to sleep. But then it also contains some ideas that sound utterly unrealistic and utopian in our current times, even as mere aspirations. Thinking about what we've lost since 1967 makes me lose my sleep.
https://www.marfapublicradio.org/podcast/marfa-public-radio-...
I am using https://www.youtube.com/@EpicNate for the same purpose. Works like a charm.
I used to fall asleep to NPR as a kid, so this resonates. Curious if anyone else has a go-to station or podcast they use as a sleep aid?
No Agenda is a regular of mine... the sound levels on it are incredibly well done, also for all clips they play.
Just thinking about that little big neck of the world puts me to sleep. In the best of ways. I love West Texas.
fastsleep.app does kinda similar thing... but instead of long podcasts, you are given something to imagine at a time interval.
Like if you hear "calm river", imagine that. If you hear "heavy rain over a tree", imagine that.
In short → Close your eyes, listen & imagine.
I wasn't able to find this, is it iPhone only?
I may have missed the joke but no, https://fastsleep.app/ is not iPhone only!
It's a progressive web app (you may install and use it both on android and ios) Simply visit the page and click Install. This may even be used without installation though... Even no sign-up is required to try this.
I wonder why the telephone number read aloud, and that on the web page, are different.
I love visiting Marfa. If you haven't been, I recommend it (you should read up on it first, it's not really for everyone, it's a pretty weird little dessert town).
It's also a pretty weird little desert town.
Hah! Got me. I knew what I did as soon as I saw your comment in my inbox.
The topics here were quite interesting to me. Not boring at all. OTOH, i have never managed to sit through a headspace episode without falling into the best sleep ever.
Do you know why we need these kind of things for falling sleep? I know several friends that need it too.
i want a sleep app that reads me things that will put me to sleep, but i need it to track when i may have gone to sleep, or more importantly when I have not, so i can restart the next night past the point i've listened to. but it needs to be some crazy simple UI, i don't want the light on my phone to turn on, i don't want to fiddle, just skip forward, skip back, that's about it
there's all sorts of stuff that is dry but interesting that I'd like to plow through over time, a few paragraphs a day would suit me fine
If you have AirPods there’s a “Pause media when falling asleep” switch.
Any idea how that works? Something with the microphone maybe?
Probably the same accelerometers and gyroscope used for Spatial Audio.
Isn’t it annoying to have Airpods in your ears when sleeping?
I think it'd be an outstanding feature on the iPhone to turn off audiobooks/podcasts at ~5 min into sleep or whatever. Seems like they already have the data via the Watch...
audiobook software is almost there, I've used cozy like that myself
I guess there aren’t so many people here who can proudly say their mom used to program MUMPS while they were still a fetus, but well that’s me.
I love this. It's funny but also weirdly effective as a reminder that local radio is held together by a huge amount of invisible, unglamorous work
I’d like to filter the offerings to get the most monotonic voice
Bryon Gysin wrote series of corresponding letters with William Burroughs on radio.
One refers to toothpaste manufacturing, the cold anticipation marketers should have.
clicks fingers instead of clapping.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape is my favourite.
Though sometimes it is very interesting and might delay sleep a bit
Same here. Love the Mindscape podcast. It taught me everything I know about quantum physics (haha). But for me, the bedtime listening is ALWAYS fascinating. It has to be. And I fall asleep nevertheless. My routine is to play a podcast that I am interested in, put a sleep timer on 20 min (Overcast app FTW), and just enjoy the content.
No matter how interesting it is, it very rarely takes me setting the timer for another 20 min, almost always I fall asleep in the first run, often times within the first 10 min.
What makes it funny is I will be listening a single episode for weeks sometime, often listening the same parts over and over again simply because I can’t precisely start today where I fell asleep yesterday.
It became a part of a routine that I am genuinely looking forward to. This is how I worked through the entire Mike Duncan opus (Revolutions first, and then the History of Rome), I am currently working through the History of Byzantium by Robin Pierson, but occasionally I am listening to Sean Carrol, and sometimes I will go back to In our Time by BBC’s Melwyn Bragg.
Actually, come to think of it, most of my podcast listening time is bedtime. I would hate to waste it to listen something boring.
What a brilliant idea. I’m here fo…zzz.
Too bad they missed the opportunity to read it, very, slowly.
The Odd Lots podcast puts my wife to sleep
Wdym... this is riveting stuff!
Am I the only one that can't fall asleep to music? I need human voice rhythms, so podcasts, or whatever. The downside is not learning anything from the podcast because I'm asleep and it works its way into dreams sporadically
I can't fall asleep to either. I can tolerate noise, like a thunderstorm, but even construction sounds are interesting enough to keep me up with questions like: "I wonder what tool makes that sound."
The sound of a fan does it for me. Not the motor sound perse, but the blades of a powerful big fan cutting the wind. I’m addicted to it.
Me too. Got an air filter near the bed with a quiet enough motor that all I hear is the woosh. Its also handy for when nearby forest fires degrade the air quality.
See also the Myths and Legends podcast: https://www.mythpodcast.com/.
IWTWMBY
Listening now, after a day long coding binge, and I need to wind down.
It has a decent sleepy background vibe to it too. Reminds me of Joe Perra Talks You To Sleep (Adult Swim). I dig it!
> The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country.
Thank you very much.
So tired of the cloudflare shit.
Can't wait for Cloudflare to start demanding digital ID verification from me.
I think you’re mixing up clouds here…
It’s really annoying, but even if Cloudflare/AWS etc. offer a big “block all access from abroad/evil GDPR abroad/…”, I feel like the site owner is still the one to blame for pressing it.
another is "Sleep With Me" by Dearest Scooter which are nonsensical steam of consciousness monologues.
Meh, not math finance. Thats literally lorezapam.
Too many American websites these days put random geoblocking in place.
What’s even more frustrating is when it happens without any explanation in mobile apps via breaking a few specific APIs.
Just yesterday I was struggling with a bank/fintech that would send me through KYC every time I’d open the app from abroad as an existing user, which would then hang forever. Using a US VPN, everything would work normally. Good thing fraudsters don’t have access to US VPNs…
The geoblocking is mostly a desperate attempt at self defense against a flood of scrapers crushing the site for everyone. Don't take it personally unless you are one.
Why wouldn't I take it personally if some corporation decides that blocking their existing customers based on purported geographic location (VPNs exist, people travel etc.) is acceptable collateral damage in their presumably largely ineffective attempts to block scrapers?
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been using long youtube lectures for this for years. the sweet spot is something just interesting enough that your brain can't fully let go, but not interesting enough to actually keep you awake. theoretical physics talks hit it perfectly for me.
the problem is occasionally you find one that's genuinely fascinating and you're suddenly wide awake at 3am having learned something.
Marvin Minksky's AI lecture series FTW
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> knowing the difference between lay and lie.
I'm guessing you're not a linguist, and have no knowledge of academic linguistics.
Please consider imparting information rather than zero content snark.
~ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.htmlTo be fair the original commenter was incredibly snarky.
I had a similar thought and drew a distinction between snark about lines in the submitted article and snark directed at a fellow HN commenter.
Both are discouraged, neither is great, the second following piling on and getting personal example is arguably worse.
The disappointing part (for myself at least) was a failure to be explicit in how they felt the lay / lie usage should go and in what English speaking domains the preferred usages are.
Tell me you're not a Texan without telling me you're not a Texan.
I’d tell you what state I am from but do not want to embarrass you.