Where can I find BBC Shipping Forecast compilations?

April 10, 2016 1:08 PM

Does anyone publicly maintain an archive with edited, perhaps back-to-back versions of *just* the broadcasters reading the forecast?

I should disclose that I use the BBC Shipping Forecast for soothing anxiety and falling asleep. However, some of the readers' voices are more soothing than others, and the clips available on the BBC website are often bookended with news, music, etc. that are quite jarring and often wake me up. It would be great if someone had already Soundclouded an elegant edit (just found this parody, which is fun, but likely to make me giggle.)

posted by ziggly to Grab Bag (3 answers total)

If it doesn't need to be the shipping forecast exactly, try searching ASMR on youtube. There you will find people making channels full of stuff for precisely the reason you are asking about. They will talk/whisper about topics like learning chess, or they role-play, for example, a salon visit (i.e. simple topics you can zone-out to).
posted by zyxwvut at 2:12 PM on April 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've sometimes fallen asleep while listening to an audio book.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:07 PM on April 10, 2016

You should look at some of the BBC podcasts that are available that might do the same thing -- I have a whole collection of podcasts that fall into that exact niche. Soothing voices without a lot of noise or distractions.

For example, a few of the best are the Food Programme from BBC Radio 4 and Discovery from BBC World Service. Occasionally there may be an episode that doesn't work, but those two are consistently pretty good. It's not that they are boring, it is just the mix of the voices, the ambient background noise, and the content that really work well.

There was an episode on Discovery a while back about some scientists observing some butterflies that I must have listened to for a week straight since it would zonk me out before I ever finished even 10 minutes of it. And assuming the topics don't make you hungry (I once really got into an episdoe about Scotch Eggs), the host of the Food Programme -- Sheila Dillon -- has a great voice for this type of podcast.

I have looked for the shipping forecast as well, but ended up going with these types of shows since they were easily available in podcast clients. There are a lot more of them too (lots of good science and history ones from the BBC that fit the bill).
posted by This_Will_Be_Good at 10:23 PM on April 10, 2016