Marfa Public Radio Puts You to Sleep
marfapublicradio.org
marfapublicradio.org
They've seemed to configure Cloudfront to block access from Singapore.
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.
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”.
My favourite episode (The Bear with a Comet on his Belly): https://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/414/
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 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.
Or if it is - why e.g. automated voices reading nyt articles are so bad?
Older (and cheaper, possibly self-hosted) text-to-speech software.
The professionals…
On a related note reading HN comments is a prime example of sleepy text. Gets me every time.
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I find that outdated previews/predictions of events that have already happened is the perfect thing to get me to doze off.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've determined it must be fictional (maybe wrong?) given the just-entertaining-enough player names, which set me up into a smile during the lineup introduction.
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.
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.
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.
They're car headlights, which are indeed a real thing.
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.
The ambience there fits Marfa perfectly.
What a great idea, I feel li... zzz
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.
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.
Ive found great success with the Military Sleep Method where you progressively shutdown your body from head to toe.
1. https://youtu.be/UW_M7hotSlk
2. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGAnmvB9m7zOBVCZBUUmSinFV...
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
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_.
"Youse gonna sleep wid' da fishies..."
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.
https://www.marfapublicradio.org/podcast/marfa-public-radio-...
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.
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
One refers to toothpaste manufacturing, the cold anticipation marketers should have.
Though sometimes it is very interesting and might delay sleep a bit
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.
It has a decent sleepy background vibe to it too. Reminds me of Joe Perra Talks You To Sleep (Adult Swim). I dig it!
Thank you very much.
So tired of the cloudflare shit.
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.
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 problem is occasionally you find one that's genuinely fascinating and you're suddenly wide awake at 3am having learned something.