I couldn’t sleep for decades until I started listening to audiobooks. It’s a bedtime story. Shut your mind off, let go of stress and just listen. It can still take a little while but now I fall asleep in minutes instead of 3 hours. It also helps me go back to sleep if I wake up from nightmares.
Same. Podcasts are also great, and some are even made specially for this purpose, like Nothing Much Happens.
For me, podcasts specifically about going to sleep to them trigger my contrariness too much to be actually relaxing. It’s gotta be on a normal topic that is just the right balance of interesting, but not exiting/engaging.
History typically scratches that itch for me. Dan Carlin’s hardcore history and the history of the English being the two goats that coke immediately to mind. Camp Monsters is also a great one; the rare fiction podcast that I can actually stand, much less relaxes me enough to sleep.
