I’ve exhausted things I can sleep to on Netflix, and it’s literally impossible to sleep to things on Prime (so I barely watch anything there; it’s not worth falling asleep to something I like, since I might be punished for it), so I’ve started putting on YouTube in the evenings since it won’t wake me with silence at 4am.
I’ve a few voices I love listening to, but I’d like even more.
Which YouTubers do you recommend who:
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Have smooth, hypnotic voices,
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have content that won’t give me uncomfortable dreams (I’m a very visual, realistic, and impressionable dreamer), and
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have channels I’ll want to listen to when awake? (eta I like sciences and news mostly, a bit of fiction (scifi, horror, nf), gaming, other nerdy things, but never romance, pop culture , or reality tv).
I kinda need all 3.
Wolfpack345 plays naval war games and has a voice like that. He usually does slow and strategic submarine stuff. Puts me right to sleep.
I should mention audiobooks. I love listening to audiobooks, and sleeping to them is also great. There’s some excellent works out there, especially voice work by Steven Fry, that’s just magic to listen to.
https://www.proofreadingservices.com/pages/audiobooks-read-by-stephen-fry
Oh yeah. And Stephen Fry is a national treasure.
I don’t know why, but I can’t sleep to them, though. I have to listen for some reason, and my brain gets too engaged.
It might be because it’s a new story. Try listening to a story you’ve already heard before.
I find when I go to sleep with audiobooks, it feels like I’m awake for hours. But the next day when I try to pick up where I left off on the audiobook, I’m usually 5 to 10 minutes in. But it felt like hours.
Try Drachinifel. It’s about ships and naval stuff from previous centuries. Best sleep. https://youtube.com/@Drachinifel?si=hiHGva5RXNeSVopY
https://m.youtube.com/@sea_space
This one is my favorite. It’s mostly 30 minute videos about astronomy. I recommend starting with the newer ones.
Ooh my time to shine with my long list
- T90 Official plays age of empires games very soothing voice
- Agadmator plays chess videos very rhythmic voice
- 3blue1brown maths videos, even if you hate math he has a voice that is so calm
- Real Civil Engineer plays indie or building games is a bit weird, 90% he is nice but sometimes he gets excited and I’ve been woken from my sleep, but still good as I fall back right after
- Kurtzgezat science videos with great narration (may hurt your dreams tho)
- Nicole Coenen woodcutting videos great voice great pace only downside very few videos in total so you burn through her videos quite fast.
- Technology Connections, great videos about obscure day to day tech mazing voice
- Primitive technology, no words a lot of nature sounds of him building stuff without technology
I’ll add more if I remember.
3blue1brown is a great call.
I would add Applied Science and NileRed (who does chemistry experiments) as possibilities if OP likes their voices. Their content is very methodical and uniform. My cat likes their videos, which seems like a pretty good metric for this use case.
I also love vihart, who does math videos, but her stuff is a little more varied, including some music, so OP might want to evaluate her during the day before trusting her channel for sleep.
Jeremy Fielding has a great voice if you want videos about engineering and how to salvage motors out of washing machines and treadmills.
I’ll consult my subscription list and add more if I find any.
Edited to add:
Carl Bugeja (electronics)
CGP Grey (mostly history)
DIY Perks (various projects)
Henry Segerman (math art)
OskarPuzzle (designs for 3d printed puzzles)
Razbuten (video games)
Sabine Hossenfelder (physics)
Stand-up Maths (math)
Steve Mould (explanations of unusual everyday things, I guess? kinda hard to summarize)
Technology Connections (as others have mentioned)
Tim Hunkin (makes weird mechanical art and explains machines)
Tom Scott (videos about unusual places and bits of history)
Two Minute Papers (advances in AI and computer graphics)Edited again to add: Breaking Taps. This one is mostly microscopic fabrication stuff, so, various kinds of microscopes, vapor deposition, etching, etc.
Yes almost all great options.
Whisky.com! Smooth, German! Very serious about quality whisky.
Here are some I enjoy. All have a good voice, not overly expressively and no sudden change in background tracks. No sudden screaming/explosions/anything that will wake you.
John Michael Godier Science/Speculative Scifi, Low Soothing voice, even has a sleep playlist.
Issac Arthur Sci-Fi, Calm voice, Good background track, Long Videos
Darth Gandalf Fantasy, Soothing Voice
Forgotten Weapons Firearms, Historical and Mechanical overviews and indepth discussions. I recommend you skip the shooting range stuff if you’re trying to sleep.
Cool Worlds Science & Astronomy. Great Narrative Voice, Calm background tracks.
North02 Science, Anthropology & Natural history. Soothing Voice, nice selection of long videos.
Natural World Facts Deep Sea biology, excellent soothing narrations, very good soothing background tracks.
My wife puts on RyconRoleplays or ChristopherOdd in the background sometimes when she’s having trouble sleeping. Rycon might have the voice you’re looking for; Odd’s narration depends on the game he’s playing, he likes to set the mood in more atmospheric games, and he reads out every bit of lore.
Clarkesworld is a sci-fi magazine with free audio versions on their site, plus on Spotify as a podcast. I’d recommend “The very Pulse of the Machine” personally as an intro. It was adapted into a great episode of “Love, Death + Robots”.
I listen to my favorite British game show (QI and “8 out of 10 cat’s does countdown”) or the 10 hour loop of Joe Pera talks you to sleep https://youtu.be/91wX0NRjJqg?si=aMDe0U0oyoNmAbVR
Purge (https://youtube.com/@PurgeGamers) is pretty good. He typically posts full, un-cut dota games, and is lower energy throughout. There’s not big volume or tone changes, and they’re long enough that you should always be able to fall asleep during them.
Lemmino hits 1 and 3, and sometimes 2 (some of his videos are about dark topics, some are more fun or wonderous). His voice is very nice to listen to. Smooth, low, and a relatively thick, but perfectly understandable Danish accent.
To boot, he’s one of the best goddamned researchers I’ve ever seen. For example, he did a documentary on Jack the Ripper. Instead of just going over the same beats everyone else does, this madlad poured over dozens of police reports, newspaper clippings, and eyewitness accounts from the time of the events, (more than 150 years old), and then compared those to more contemporary research to make a more complete study. He somehow put all of this together into the most cohesive description of the events I’ve ever seen, all with detailed and accurate CGI visuals (nothing graphic, just to show locations and timelines and such).
Really, really dedicated guy with a huge amount of integrity in his work, lots of creative flair, and no annoying biases or wild assumptions.
Northernlion – He plays video games, but his banter is very easy-going. I especially like his older videos where it’s just him (not reacting to chat while streaming) rolling with his stream of consciousness while he plays the game and talks about it and life in general.
Didn’t see Baumgartner Restoration here yet. Incredibly soothing art restoration
If you’ve ever been in the military, and had to endure hour-long PowerPoint presentations, and felt very sleepy… This guy is for you.
Perun does deep dives into defense economics, for modern-day conflicts. Extremely interesting stuff. Easy to fall asleep to. Highly recommend.
Death by PowerPoint!
Oh wow, it just keeps going.
This looks perfect, thank you.
Thevolgun… Just don’t listen to the really scary scps …
I’ll add The Exploring Series as well, they have more long form videos and cover other subjects as well as SCP content. Both have great voices and I’ve fallen asleep to both before.
Just make sure you turn off YouTube autoplay, you never know what you’re going to wake up to…
