It's midnight. After hours of doomscrolling, she finds herself wide awake, head racing, thoughts swirling, and her brain refusing to shut down. Perhaps a bedtime story can help calm you down. Too unappealing and perhaps even downright boring.
In the dark, dreamy corners of the podcasting world, there's a series of shows boring enough to put listeners to sleep. In fact, that's what the show's hosts are aiming for.place where the sound is heard It's no longer raining or windy, and boring podcasts and borecasts have taken over. This new subgenre of sleep podcasts is intentionally dull and positioned as an antidote to sleepless nights.
The Boar Cast host tells a boring story in a monotone tone, trying to lull the listener to sleep with the sound of his voice. From centuries-old classics like Moby Dick and Peter Pan to fascinating Wikipedia entries on everything from cardboard to the barristers of England and Wales, sleep-deprived listeners won't find it interesting enough to wake them up. Broadcast programs include a variety of content, including stories. You can choose your theme and topic.
For example, Sharon Handy, host of the weekly magazine Boring Books for Bedtime, reads nonfiction, fact-filled texts “long enough for my buzzing mind to calm down and shut down.”
She came up with the idea while trying to help her stepson fall back asleep after having a nightmare. Anna Sewell's classic Black Beauty (1877), about a beautiful horse she loved, was too glamorous to be of much use. So Handy switched to Thomas Paine's old political work Common Sense. The 47-page pamphlet was written between 1775 and 1776 advocating independence from Great Britain and influenced the American Revolutionary War. It's not fairy tale material at all. “He fell asleep right away and the idea for my podcast was born,” she says.
Since 2018, Handy has published works such as “The Voyage of The Bounty to the South Sea: For The Purpose Of Conveying The Bread-Fruit Tree To The West Indies, include An Account Of The Mutiny On Board The Ship” (1792). reading the title. William Bligh; G. V. Fry's The Practical Candy Maker (1884); Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with the Donkey of the Cévennes (1879). These centuries-old works are not particularly easy to read. But Handy's podcast was surprisingly popular. She has logged over 9 million downloads across her streaming platforms.
Although Handy has a deep interest in literature, science, and history, she doesn't necessarily find the content boring. She usually chooses randomly from her website Project Gutenberg, which offers free e-books of her domain works to the public.
Ben Boster, host of the podcast “I Can't Sleep,” reads Wikipedia entries on topics like long distance calling, HTML, Scrum, and stainless steel to help his listeners fall asleep. It contains 172 episodes, each approximately one hour long.
“I often find inspiration in everyday things that we take for granted, looking for topics that are ubiquitous but overlooked,” he says.
There are also different styles. For example, Sleep Whispers, hosted by Craig Harris Richard, includes Wikipedia articles on lucid topics such as dreams and Alexander Selkirk (a major inspiration for Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe). Entries are also posted. But they are read in soft, silky whispers as a form of his ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) storytelling.
And Dan Ackerman, host of Sleep With Me, which has been lulling listeners to sleep since 2013, says, I am using “tangent”. His original story is told in the rambling style of his character, the host of Dearest Scooter (voiced by Ackerman).
Let's sample this from an episode titled “I Know Dino Crossover.” “I'd get confused, go off topic, repeat the same thing, then go back and then say, what the hell was I saying?” Ackerman's YouTube channel has more than 1,000 episodes and about We have 36,000 subscribers who upload every episode.
Similarly, in the broadcast of Nothing Much Happens, narrated by yoga and meditation teacher Kathryn Nicolai, not much happens, just a meandering beginning and no dramatic ending. Snooze.
So why does boredom make us sleepy?
In a paper published in Science Communication in 2017, scientists at the University of Tsukuba in Japan discovered that the brain's pleasure centers also promote sleep. The nucleus accumbens is where dopamine is produced and plays an important role in positive reinforcement during motivation and behavior. It's why we seek food and sex, and it's also part of what drives us to abuse drugs like alcohol and cocaine. When left unstimulated (read: boredom), it induces sleep.
This is an interesting finding at a time when anxiety and chronic insomnia are on the rise. The market size for sleep disorders is estimated to exceed $20 billion by 2022 and is expected to grow at a rate of 12% annually over the next 10 years.
Borecasting as a subgenre of broadcasting is not entirely new. Brits have been relying on the BBC's delivery forecasts for boring sleep for decades. The notoriously monotonous weather forecast, which has tracked strong winds and currents around the British Isles for more than 100 years, will be broadcast four times a day on BBC Radio 4 until 2022. The only sounds heard in the static were marine jargon such as “Viking.” , North Utsile, South West, 5-7. Sometimes strong wind No. 8. Rain and showers are moderate to good, sometimes bad,” he said in a gloomy, stern voice.
Thanks to updated satellite information and online storm trackers, Shipping Forecasts are almost unnecessary for ships and vessels these days. However, the BBC still broadcasts twice a day during weekdays and three times a day at weekends, inadvertently acting as a device to give listeners a moment of calm during the day. I admit it.
In fact, jargon is a recurring theme on broadcast programs.
But what's interesting is that some of today's broadcasts quote some of yesterday's cutting-edge bestsellers. A prime example is Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which caused heated debate and condemnation upon its publication in 1859. This month, it was featured in “Boring Books for Bedtime.” Of course, even back then it may have been considered a useful precursor to Shipping Forecast.
“Many of the classics are controversial, but I've never actually read them, and I think they're interesting and worth listening to,'' Handy says. So she gives them thick, tight slices of it.
Are bore casters boring too? Sometimes, though, one learns a lot, Boster says.
Indeed, Handy added. “If you need someone to fix your steam-powered agricultural engine, I think I’m ready!”
