One of the joys of modern technology is with podcasts. This is kind of like radio, but in scripted form covering all manner of topics. Truly, there is a podcast for everyone.

This has been a routine of ours for the last few years or so now. It’s a fun way to drift off—you set the podcast countdown timer and listen to the mellifluous baritones of some random as you embrace unconsciousness.

Of course, you get to get the right voice. Someone with a shrill or bellowing voice (Brian Blessed, for example) won’t cut it.

But that’s what we’re here to have a bit of a ramble about (replete with examples of shows we listen to before drifting off to dream about space cheese invading the planet).

Falling Asleep to a Podcast: The Joys of Bedtime Distractions

Okay, if you don’t know—podcasts have an option to set a timer. We tend to bung it on for your 60 minutes for the full, hedonistic, sleepy glee of that. Then we can listen to the likes of You’re Wrong About whilst we drift off to snoozy land.

Another favourite is Bring Back V10s (F1 podcast) and Kermode and Mayo’s Take (film reviews and discussions).

The weird thing is, you can drift off to sleep with someone discussing things like alien invasions and the like. Other times we’ve been listening to You’re Wrong About’s episode on Medieval torture methods or why Heinz-Harald Frentzen struggled in the 1997 Williams.

Or the aliens out to slaughter us all. Great sleepy material, that, listening to this.

So, yeah, no topic seems to be off limits for us. As long as there are nice voices to listen to, and an interesting topic, this one really does the trick for us (sleeping wise).

This is a new thing for our routine. It came about circa 2019 when we used to listen to YouTuber Mauler’s ranting videos about why Season 8 of Game of Thrones is rubbish. Fact is, he has a great voice. A deep baritone!

Is Listening to Podcasts Before Sleep Healthy!?

Discussion point! Should you be doing this? Well, there’s a March 2023 feature in Refinery 29 by Sadhbh O’Sullivan: Is listening to podcasts as we fall asleep bad for our brains?

“It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it happened but at some point in the last five years, the way I fall asleep changed. Instead of reading before turning off the lights or just staring at the ceiling in the dark like a haunted Victorian widow, I started a nightly routine of untangling my headphones and listening to a podcast …

Falling asleep to podcasts, in and of itself, is not novel. There is limited research about podcast-listening habits but according to 2019 data from Edison Research, more than half of the nearly 6,000 people surveyed in the US say that listening to podcasts is a way they relax before falling asleep. Even more compelling is the number of sleep podcasts and audiobooks available: go into any podcatcher app, search ‘sleep’ and you’ll end up scrolling through a wealth of titles. This is to say nothing of the boom in apps like the mindfulness app Calm and audiobook provider Audible, which have thrived off sleep stories and soundscapes.”

Is it bad then, this lovely experience?

Happily not, no, in fact it can be good for people who struggle to drift off to the land of nod. O’Sullivan notes the chartered psychologist Dr. Lindsay Browning’s support of the practice.

“‘Podcasts can be helpful to distract someone from their busy mind in the short term, as they give you something to think about that is not the subject that is on your mind.’ However, she adds that it is not unequivocally a good habit. ‘When people start to get into a habit of not sleeping, and they start to become anxious about their sleeping problems, listening to something in bed can actually make things worse,’ Lindsay tells R29. ‘Your brain can start being kept awake by actively listening to the podcast instead of sleeping, plus the noise of the podcast can wake you up once you drift off.'”

There we go, then, if you’re a serial worrier perhaps it isn’t the best long-term tactic. But if you’re of relative peace of mind at the moment, seems like it’s about as good as it gets.

Dr. Zeeshan Afzal, MD, had this to add to the subject.

“During REM sleep the brain is more active and may be more likely to process the sounds from the podcast. However, individual differences in sleep patterns mean that this may not be true for everyone.”

The importance of the sleep timer is highlighted here. As continuing to listen to a podcast all night, even as you sleep, can lead to excessive mental stimulation. The result?

Make sure you set the podcast sleep timer!

Then the podcast will shut itself off at a suitable time, leaving you free to grapple with REM.

This got us thinking about what we used to do pre-podcast sleeping era.

Reading, usually, or watching a TV show/film right up until the last moment of sleep. The latter is a bad idea as the blue screens disrupt the flow of melatonin ahead of sleep. That makes it difficult to get to sleep (and stay asleep).

Usual advice is to get off your devices at least an hour before bed.

Podcasts? Fair game (just don’t stare at the screen whilst listening to it). But the gist seems to be to pick something suitable to send you off to sleep. If the hosts are particularly loud and “in-your-face” (shrieking, yelling, or whatever else) then that won’t cut it.

Whereas if you listen to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History episodes (as relentlessly bleak as many of the topics he covers are), that voice of his is a doozy.

Thus, as he rants about how some psychopathic tyrant from the past annihilated nations… you can drift off merrily to sleep in the most meta, post-modern, bizarre way our ancestors could imagine. Hurray! And sweet dreams.