The Slumber Studios blog

Get Sleepy: where to start with 1,100+ episodes

Slumber Studios — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Get Sleepy has been putting people to sleep (in the good way) since November 2019. That adds up: 1,100+ episodes and counting, with new stories most days. Wonderful if you’re a regular; slightly dizzying if you’re staring at the back catalog wondering where to begin. This is the guide we’d hand a friend.

First, how the show works

Every episode follows the same gentle arc: a warm welcome from your host, a few slow breaths to settle in, then a story told softly enough to follow with your eyes closed. Almost every story stands alone: there’s no series to keep up with, no “previously on,” beyond the occasional two-parter. You can start anywhere, which is exactly why a little curation helps.

Pick by mood

The easiest way in is one of our curated collections, gathered from listener favorites:

Train Stories: the fan-favorite genre. Sleeper cars, mountain lines, dining carriages; the rhythm of a train is basically a lullaby with scenery.
Rainy Stories: cozy interiors while weather happens to other people. Bakeries, bookshops, cabin windows.
Ocean Waves: coastal villages, lighthouse keepers, slow voyages.
Myths and Legends: old tales told at half speed, halfway between history and dream.
Bedtime Stories: a broad best-of sampler, and the simplest possible starting point.

If you’d rather browse everything, the full feed is on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else, and history lovers should detour to our sister show, Sleepy History.

The voice you’re hearing

Your host is Tom Jones — the calm British voice that listeners around the world now file somewhere between “narrator” and “sleep aid.” He’s joined by a rotating cast of gentle guest narrators, so the show stays varied without ever changing temperature. Every story is written and read by people (how we make our shows).

Free vs. Premium

Get Sleepy is free. Get Sleepy Premium removes the ads and unlocks hundreds of exclusive episodes and extra-long soundscapes, most easily via Supercast, where you can subscribe to the show alone or the whole Slumber Studios network. (Already subscribed and hearing ads? You’re probably still on the public feed; the podcast FAQ sorts it out in two minutes.)

Tonight’s assignment

Pick a collection above, queue an episode, set your app’s sleep timer, and let Tom take it from there. If you make it to the end of the story, congratulations. You now know a Get Sleepy secret: almost nobody does.

The best podcasts to fall asleep to

Slumber Studios — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

First, full disclosure: we make sleep podcasts. Six of them, in fact. So instead of pretending to be a neutral judge, this guide does something more useful: it explains what makes a podcast work for sleep, matches each of our shows to the kind of listener it suits, and points you to a couple of shows we don’t make but happily recommend.

What makes a podcast good for sleep?

Most podcasts are designed to keep you awake: hosts spar, music stings, ads arrive at double volume. A podcast you can fall asleep to needs the opposite:

A slow, steady voice. Calm on its own isn’t enough. The voice has to be unhurried, with no sudden changes in energy.
Interesting, but not urgent. The story needs to hold your attention gently enough to crowd out your own racing thoughts, without ever making you need to hear what happens next. Cliffhangers are the enemy.
Consistent volume. No jolts, no laughing fits, no ad reads that arrive louder than the story.
No stakes for you. The best sleep content is about somewhere else, someone else, some other time.

Everything below is built around those rules, and read by people (how we make our shows).

If you want to be told a story: Get Sleepy

Get Sleepy is our flagship: cozy bedtime stories for grown-ups, told slow and soft by host Tom Jones and a rotating cast of gentle narrators. With 1,100+ episodes and new stories most days, there’s always somewhere new to drift off to: a slow train through the mountains, a quiet seaside village, a walk through autumn woods.

If you’re curious by nature: Sleepy History

Sleepy History tells true tales from the past (the history of chocolate, lost cities, quiet mysteries) in a supremely calm voice. History turns out to be the perfect sleep genre: fascinating enough to hold you, finished long enough ago that none of it can worry you. We wrote more about why history helps you sleep.

If you love books: The Sleepy Bookshelf

The Sleepy Bookshelf is Elizabeth Grace reading beloved classics (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice, Anne of Green Gables) gently adapted so you can drift off and never lose your place; every episode opens with a recap, so sleeping through a chapter costs you nothing. If you’re more audiobook than podcast, we also keep a guide to the best audiobooks to fall asleep to.

If you’re putting kids to bed: Snuggle

Snuggle is calm bedtime stories for kids, toddlers, and the whole family: cozy recurring worlds and gentle adventures, with a new story every Sunday. It’s the one show on this list designed to put two generations to sleep at once.

If voices keep you awake: Deep Sleep Sounds

Some nights even the gentlest story is too much. Deep Sleep Sounds is pure, carefully mixed sound with not a single spoken word: rain, ocean waves, white and brown noise. The feed is free; Premium drops the ads and unlocks eight-hour episodes that run until morning.

Shows we don’t make but like anyway

Two long-running favorites from elsewhere: Sleep With Me, whose rambling, deliberately pointless bedtime stories have lulled insomniacs for over a decade, and Nothing Much Happens, which does exactly what the title promises, beautifully. Different flavors from ours, and some nights a different flavor is what works.

A few tips, whatever you choose

Use your podcast app’s sleep timer (usually a crescent-moon icon on the Now Playing screen) so playback stops once you’re under. Keep the volume just above a whisper. And if ads keep jolting you awake, that’s what Premium fixes: every one of our shows, ad-free.

Why history is the perfect thing to fall asleep to

Slumber Studios — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ask people what they fall asleep to and a surprising number say the same thing: history. Not lectures, not documentaries — slow, quiet stories about the past. It’s become a whole genre of sleep audio, and it works for reasons that make a lot of sense once you see them.

The past can’t worry you

The mind that keeps you awake at night is a problem-solving machine stuck in the on position: replaying today, rehearsing tomorrow. To quiet it, you can’t just tell it to stop; you have to give it something else to hold. That something needs to be interesting enough to occupy your attention, but free of anything your brain might mistake for your problem.

History is exactly that. The fall of a lost city is fascinating, and it finished happening centuries before you were born. There is nothing to solve, nothing to fear, nothing to add to your list. Your curiosity engages; your vigilance doesn’t.

No cliffhangers by design

Fiction has to tempt you onward. That’s its job. History, told calmly, doesn’t. You already know how it ends: the empire falls, the explorer returns (or doesn’t), chocolate makes it to Europe. That knowledge changes how you listen. You’re not bracing for a twist; you’re just keeping company with the story, which is precisely the state a falling-asleep brain wants.

Told slowly, it’s hypnotic

The same events that fill a breathless documentary become something else entirely at a third of the speed. Listeners of Sleepy History describe it as feeling gently hypnotized. Simon Mattacks and our rotating cast of narrators tell true tales from the past in a voice that never hurries and never spikes. Every episode is researched, written, and read by people (how we make our shows).

The show’s trick: each episode is interesting enough to hold you and calm enough to let you go. Most listeners never hear an ending, and since every episode is two or three bedtimes long, that’s a feature.

Where to start

Sleepy History — a new true tale every week: the history of chocolate, lost cities, curious people, quiet mysteries. Free wherever you get podcasts.
Get Sleepy also wanders into the past regularly, with gentle story-episodes set in other eras, and its Myths and Legends collection sits right on the border of history and bedtime story.
Prefer a book? Classic literature is history’s cousin at bedtime. Our guide to the best audiobooks to fall asleep to has eight gentle places to begin.

Tonight, let the past do what it does best: stay finished, stay fascinating, and carry you off.

The best audiobooks to fall asleep to

Slumber Studios — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Falling asleep to an audiobook is one of the oldest sleep tricks there is: it’s being read to, the way most of us first fell asleep as children. But not every book works. Pick a thriller and you’ll be awake at 2 a.m., clutching the plot. The trick is choosing the right book, read the right way.

What makes an audiobook sleepable

Low stakes, gentle pace. Countryside walks, small villages, domestic comedy. Nothing you’ll need to stay awake for.
A story you half-know already. Familiarity is a feature: when you already know Anne gets to stay at Green Gables, your mind can relax its grip.
Episodic chapters. Books built from small, self-contained scenes forgive you for sleeping through the ending, which is the whole idea.
A slow, warm narrator. Most commercial audiobooks are performed to keep you engaged. A sleep reading is a different craft: softer, slower, with room to drift.

That last one is why we produce our own. On The Sleepy Bookshelf, Elizabeth Grace reads classics gently adapted for sleep. Every episode opens with a recap, so a chapter you slept through costs you nothing. A person, reading slowly, on purpose (how we make our shows).

Eight to start with

The Wind in the Willows. The gold standard of gentle. Riverbanks, picnics, and Mr. Toad’s mild misadventures.
Anne of Green Gables. Warm, funny, and episodic. When you finish, the sequels go on for many more bedtimes.
Jane Eyre. Proof that a book can be absorbing and still sleepable when it’s read softly enough.
The Secret Garden. A story that literally slows down to watch things grow.
Winnie-the-Pooh. Small adventures, zero peril, prose like a lullaby.
Pride and Prejudice. You already know Darcy comes around, which is exactly why it works at midnight.
The Enchanted April. Four near-strangers share a medieval castle on the Italian Riviera; the most stressful event is a wisteria in bloom.
Heidi. Mountain air, goat bells, and bread with cheese. Sleep in book form.

Prefer mysteries? The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is surprisingly good bedtime listening. Each case wraps up neatly, and Watson’s narration is steady as a metronome.

Where to listen — free

Every book above (and 140+ more) is on our audiobooks page, with free podcast episodes on Spotify and Apple Podcasts plus store links if you’d rather own a copy. Ad-free versions and exclusive books are part of Premium.

Set yourself up to drift off

Start the sleep timer before you press play, keep the volume low, and don’t worry about losing your place — every Sleepy Bookshelf episode opens with a short recap for exactly that reason. Falling asleep mid-chapter isn’t failing the book. It’s the book succeeding.