Nothing. As close to silence as possible.
I can't do silence, my thoughts are too loud. Rain sounds work well for me.
...white noise drowns out the ringing in my ears and calms the voices in my head...
And dark as possible!
I use Futurama. It's my comfort show and I've watched it so much it makes me sleepy now haha
Hell yeah Futurama sleepers ftw. There used to be a sub for it.
Anything but jurassic bark 😭
Technology Connections doing a deep dive into something like how a VHS cassette tape works. I’m interested, but if it’s late, the topic also knocks me out in about 15 min.
This is mine too. Half the time my brain records bits and pieces when I'm asleep and I wake up knowing a few facts about how street lamps work or some shit.
Audiobooks.
Mostly the one I'm currently reading, but I have to listen to that part again the next day.
If that's too engaging I listen to Nothing much happens, Bedtime stories where as it says, not much is happening, read in a soothing voice.
Darkness and a home server fan
I've been listening to Fall of Civilizations, with some Kosmo before that.
I used to try to put on ocean things, but the animals were all too pretty, so I'd end up watching it instead of sleeping.
Math class
Alarm clock sound.
Works every time!
Classic movies, usually from TCM. I love classics but they’re often fantastic to fall asleep to with their slower stories and quieter dialog.
ASMR videos. I know some people associate them with fetish stuff but they're really varied and most are just about relaxing.
Over the last year or so I've conditioned myself to fall asleep to "Seasons" by Chris Cornell. It's the first song on my sleep playlist and I realized I was conditioned a few weeks ago when my wife was watching the movie Singles (which features the song repeatedly) and every time a bit of the song was played I would yawn.
Fucking quiet. Which is damn near impossible to get, which is what gives me insomnia
If you haven't tried already: use earplugs. I realized embarrassingly late that my sensitivity to sound wakes me up quite often and earplugs have been a life changer.
The I cant sleep podcast. Just a guy reading random wikipedia articles.
D&D lore, or any other fictional lore is really good for this. It's not nearly interesting enough to really keep my attention, but just interesting enough that I kinda half listen.
Put this on, and just try to stay awake at night, I dare you.
For background listening while I'm winding down in the evening I like something a little more interesting, and my best for that is probably SEA. One of the best astronomy channels around.
A book.
An irreverant/fantasy show with sypathetic well-intentioned protagonists, at minimum understandable volume, with characters and plotlines that invite analysis. Something about the pointlessness of studying a fantasy universe is a quite effective sleep aid. Various Star Trek series, Futurama, X-Files, Grimm, Family Guy...
For shows that are a great fit except for a few segments (boisterous theme songs, jarring fight scenes, etc) the PotPlayer Skip Playback function (hotkey ') is super useful. Also I have a basic script that gradually mutes the volume after 40 minutes.
A couple YouTube channels I regularly turn to:
The Exploring Series - He does read throughs of SCP files and Lovecraft stuff, as well as other things. His voice and inflection are excellent for being calming, but not hammy like a lot of sleep story channels.
Astrum - Astronomy and physics related material. Also an excellent voice for this purpose.
Otherwise I sometimes just pull up a dungeon synth album that has the right mood that I'm feeling for the night.
More Kitboga for the last few months.
Extremely longform videos where an incredibly talented voice actor/software engineer/performance artist/ADHD dad calls scammers and wastes their time, collecting things like bank accounts to report as compromised, BTC wallet addresses to investigate, and the like. Streams all of his calls live, uses a physical voice transformer, and plays like 12 different characters on the fly. Sometimes plays four characters AT A TIME.
The relaxing sound of scammers just screaming obscenities in other languages.
Used to watch Forrest Gump and Harry Potter to fall asleep quite a few years ago.
Almost all the suggestions here are videos. Who wants light from a screen keeping them awake when they are trying to sleep? Put on some very quiet music instead. Best for me is when it's something I know pretty well.
I have a giant monitor and just press two buttons and it turns the brightness and contrast all the way down to where it’s just visible enough to watch and barely illuminate the room, but dark enough to have hella darkness with my eyes closed.
Anything I’m watching by the time it hits 11:30 at night. Unless it’s a really great movie/show, I’m falling asleep on the couch.
I listen to a small fan generating white noise and sometimes my cat purring
Cosmos with Carl Sagan
There's this Dutch fella who has a huge library of videos on YouTube where he plays these incredibly difficult custom levels for Doom. Despite the difficulty of playing them pistol start on the hardest difficulty, he's (almost) always very calm, narrating his experiences live with a low, calming voice. Game volume is also set low, so even with tons of explosions and screaming revenants his voice takes center stage.
While he isn't uploading gameplay videos anymore, save for user submitted levels, he was uploading daily videos for the better part of five years. There's plenty of material. I like to put a video or two on while unwinding for bed, and once I start feeling sleepy enough I just lock my phone screen, drop the volume til I can juuuust clearly hear his voice, and fall asleep.
The Office (US). I've seen them all a million times but there's still enough to distract my mind. It's using the ubiquity of all the one liners and memes to advantage.
Reading paper books.
I have a playlist of meditation/yoga music I put on when I go to bed.
Casefile. It's not that content is boring or uninteresting. It just knocks me out.
Feldup, the French version of scare theater or other channels like that.
If it is really noisy or I need to sleep during the day (working shifts), waves sound from my Ozlo sleepbuds.
As I transition to being an old man I'm increasingly falling asleep on the couch while my wife and I watch through the Alone show again. It's quite relaxing.
Last night I fell asleep listening to PBS WashingtonWeek but that's the first time I've fallen asleep with an earbud in in a long time. Usually I just have a fan on.
There's a few short fiction podcasts I like for bedtime stories:
I like to listen to podcasts/youtube videos about religion. The two I use the most are Religion for Breakfast and Let's Talk Religion. I also sometimes listen to "Fall of Civilizations Podcast". I always get bored if I do nothing but listen to podcast, which helps me sleep.
I do wish I could listen to that last one though, since I like history and the production quality is good. A video can hold my attention for longer than a podcast for some reason.
Pink Floyd: Dark side of the moon
"Words for granted" podcast
BBW porn (and beating my meat) or porn with cute gay men (and beating my meat)
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