The best podcasts to fall asleep to, in my experience, should fill a certain criteria: They’re not so boring that you end up getting tied up in your own thoughts, but they’re not so interesting that you find yourself awake at 2am, heart hammering as you smash play on the next episode. Before bed podcasts should provide the same service as reading a couple of chapters of a book before your eyes can’t take it any longer.
This is because falling asleep is no easy feat for those with loud brains and bad habits. Many of us spend at least an hour before bed watching TikTok videos or scrolling social media, speeding up our heart rate and drying out our eyes in the process, before attempting to drop off having spent the day absorbing a constant stream of sometimes harrowing, often absurd, information. It’s like trying to sleep in a room full of everyone you’ve ever known. In other words: next to impossible.
To that end, here are some of the best podcasts to listen to before falling asleep. We haven’t included meditation or sleep hypnosis podcasts, because they feel like their own category. Instead, these are the podcasts that will distract your brain just enough for you to drift off.
Nocturne
Have you ever thought about what happens between the hours of midnight and 6am, when you’re presumably usually tucked up in bed? Like, what’s going on in the forest or the mountains? Or who’s doing the graveyard shift? Or why a person might be driving across the country under the cover of darkness? Nocturne – which releases an episode every month – is all about the night time. Topics range wildly – from surfers stranded at sea overnight to the death-defying journey of birds to what it feels like to gather around a campfire – with formats that range from abstract and essay-like to a more traditional, story-telling structure. Crucially, each episode is beautifully produced and incredibly easy on the ears, with host Vanessa Lowe speaking in the hush-hush tones of the night. You can listen to Nocturne here.
Swindled
Here’s one for the true crime heads. Each episode is about a scammer in some form, from practising surgeons who aren’t actually qualified surgeons, to CEOs committing billions in accounting fraud and police chiefs caught accepting bribery. Essentially, if you’ve ever heard of a scam, there’s probably a Swindled episode about it. We wouldn’t usually suggest the true crime genre as one of the ‘best podcasts for falling asleep to’, but the anonymous host of Swindled has such a lulling and hypnotic voice, and each episode is presented so simply and without fanfare, that they’re more like interesting audiobooks than anything else. You can listen to Swindled here.
