I spent a week listening to sleep podcasts to cure my insomnia. Here’s how it went.

With about 12 years of experience dealing with sleepless nights, I consider myself to be a litmus test for all different types of sleep-aids available to the everyday person. Seriously — name any type of pill or method, I’ve tried it, either to no avail or to a night of wonky side effects.

Weed (sativa and indica) makes me anxious. Melatonin gives me insanely vivid dreams. Valerian root once made me cry in my sleep. Nyquil makes me nauseous and drunk the morning after. As it stands, my brain and I have an understanding that if I stop eating by 8 p.m. and get into bed with the lights off by 9 p.m., that maybe I’ll receive the gift of sleep after about four hours of waiting patiently. If I’m lucky.

But, as I grow older and my body gets… more tired in general, I need all the waking hours I can muster to enjoy my surroundings instead of laying in bed, cursing the heavens and counting sheep. Seeing as I make a living off of producing podcasts, I thought I would turn to my fellow creators for a week, to see if any of their soothing voices could help me doze off any faster. Here’s what worked for me, and why some of these might work for you.

Something to consider before we continue: Because any slight change to my surroundings will cause my body to refuse to snooze, I did not use headphones or earbuds during these listens and instead let the tracks play at a low volume from my computer speakers. That may come up in a couple of these reviews, and it may change your experience when trying these out yourself.

Night 1: Sleepy

Starting off with what I understand is a classic, I settled in to have a listen to Otis Gray read an anthology of stories from greek mythology in his soft, baritone voice. I appreciated the simplicity of the podcast — no music or production aside from Otis reading the tale-du-jour — and the episodes have a good diversity of length between them. Alas, the story I chose for myself turned out to be too interesting to me. I ended up listening intently to what was happening as opposed to dozing off. A gallant effort from Sleepy, but no match for a terrible sleeper like myself.

Listen to this if: you want to be read a familiar bedtime story by a majesticly-voiced narrator; if you’re looking for a long listen with no music or other distractions

Night 2: Tracks to Relax: Guided Sleep Meditations

Of the meditation podcasts that are out there, I was drawn to this one because of the wide array of meditation types - visualizations, walkthroughs, long visual descriptions, and others. There’s also something to be said about how this podcast uses music in a way that never distracts from the host’s guided meditation. Seems like a home-run, right? But as a person who isn’t well-versed in meditation, listening to my chosen episode (a visualization of an oasis) had me stressing out about whether or not I was visualizing correctly. That’s not to say this series isn’t good at what it’s made to do; it’s maybe not the best for mindfulness beginners.

Listen to this if: You want a well-produced guided meditation; you want to try out a few different types of mindfulness exercises; meditating doesn’t make you anxious

Night 3: Nothing Much Happens

In reading the description of this podcast, I’ll admit I went in skeptical. For this series, host Kathryn Nicolai reads an original bedtime story, once at a regular pace and then again much slower. As we learned from Night 1, I’m prone to listening instead of sleeping, and for readthrough one, I was unfortunately very attentive. But that second readthrough? Holy cannoli. The repetition had me out like a light in less than 5 minutes. So, although I didn’t fall asleep extremely quickly, this podcast reigns as the only one to put me to sleep so far. The only downside is that you have to make it through the first readthrough to get the effects of the second.

Listen to this if: You’ve got the time to stay awake for at least 15 minutes; you can stand to listen to the same bedtime story twice

Night 4: One Third Of Life

I had high hopes for this series, which sits on the more niche end of the sleep podcast popularity scale. In it, deep-voiced host Zane C Weber reads word-for-word the Wikipedia articles of different religious sects and practices. Seems like a type of podcast I would enjoy — a retelling of a listicle of not super-interesting stuff — and like the Guided Sleep Meditation series, this podcast does a good job of incorporating music in a non-distracting way. Personally, though, I just couldn’t get into Zane’s extreme monotone delivery. It felt like I was being read to by the ghost of Jacob Marley. Swing and a miss.

Listen to this if: You need a host and topic reminiscent of history class to really knock you out; you don’t mind a little bit of audio production in your sleep podcast

Night 5: Sleep With Me Podcast

Full disclosure: I’ve listened to this podcast in the past, which is a blessing and a curse for my review of it. Host Scooter uses what he calls “creaky, dulcet tones” and stories that meander to nowhere to lull you to sleep. It takes a listen or two to get used to, and in my personal experience, the mystique of the storytelling wears off after a while. For example, my listen-through on Night 5 did not successfully put me to sleep. But the sheer length of each episode — we’re talking 60+ minutes here — will help the tossing-and-turning crowd really settle down if they need to.

Listen to this if: You want a bedtime story that goes nowhere; you’re willing to change to an alternate sleep podcast every once in a while

Night 6: Sleep Whispers

There’s no way I could have gone through the whole week without listening to an ASMR podcast. The best known of the lot for getting to sleep is the acclaimed Sleep Whispers series. The topics in each episode vary widely, and host Whispering Harris isn’t afraid to go off-book and ramble for a while. That all would have sounded nice, I’m sure, through a nice set of headphones as opposed to my computer speaker. The mouth sounds are all I ended up hearing, and they were just a bit too much for me.

Listen to this if: you don’t mind wearing earbuds while going to sleep; you like variety in the bedtime stories and ramblings you listen to at night

Night 7: Story Not Story

Ending off on a high(ish) note, we have a very cute take on both the chat-cast and the bedtime story-type podcasts. In this series, hosts Chyna and Craig (a married couple) tell each other bedtime stories that they make up on the spot, with suggestions from listeners sometimes folded into the recantation. This podcast is also a bit of a rambler, and the comedic parts of the episode had me feeling more alert than I would have liked, but eventually the intimate feeling of listening to the hosts tell each other a story helped me find my way to snooze-town. Success!

Listen to this if: You don’t mind letting out a chuckle or two as you get ready for bed; you like being a fly on the wall of a nice conversation between two people

Final recommendations:

So, did a week of listening to sleep podcasts cure my insomnia? Well, no. But I’ve come away with a couple of podcasts I’ll definitely try again, like Nothing Much Happens or Story Not Story. And of course, I only dipped my toes in the vast pool that is relaxation podcasting, but hopefully from this list, you’ll get a good idea of somewhere to start your next trip into Dreamland.

I spent a week listening to sleep podcasts to cure my insomnia. Here’s how it went.