Recommendations for airplane sleepytime audio entertainment

June 25, 2022 11:33 AM

I'm looking for something narrative (audio book, tv show maybe) good for my ears while I'm on a long red-eye flight that will interest me enough to keep my eyes closed when I wake up during the night (so I'm not waking myself up with the blue light on my phone in the dark), and isn't too exciting or too loud? Ring any bells?

I have all of the streaming services, Audible, amazon, etc. and an iPhone. I tried downloading an episode of "Dickinson" from AppleTV which would work because it has an audio description track, but it was a lot louder and more musical than I was expecting.

I just don't like audio books when the story feels far away, the people feel far away, I feel far away.

I have kind of been on a star trek kick lately so if there's any good audiobooks in that genre, especially featuring Spock maybe? I am not familiar with any of the books.


Some past winners:
- The Diary of Samuel Pepys
- His Dark Materials trilogy
- The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime
- Lincoln in the Bardo (actually incredibly depressing to listen to in this context but it was a good audiobook)

Please let me know what this evokes for you!

posted by bleep to Media & Arts (15 answers total)

Response by poster: This is purposefully very broad, because there is no way for me to list out everything I like, just gimme whatever this makes you think of!
posted by bleep at 11:39 AM on June 25, 2022

I listen to Rivers of London or Becky Chambers.
posted by DarlingBri at 11:49 AM on June 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

The Calm app has "sleep stories," and I once enjoyed listening to Anne of Green Gables (one chapter, I think) on a flight.
posted by pinochiette at 12:02 PM on June 25, 2022 [4 favorites]

I get a lot of mileage out of Drachinifel, a British engineer and semi-professional naval historian who makes long-form infotainment videos/podcasts about age of sail through WWII naval history, including some merchant stuff but primarily focused on warships and naval battles. He has a series called "The Drydock" where he answers viewer questions, and the videos are very calm (just a guy talking about stuff, without any sound effects or incidental music) and interesting enough that I can dip in and out as I'm asleep. Based on comments on his videos/channel, I gather I'm not the only one. One caveat: I'm okay with it as a sleep aide, but I have profoundly mixed feelings about covering e.g. the ships and sailors of WWII-era Germany in a dispassionate, engineering way. The channel is not overtly political, but if hearing about the positive traits of German designs/engineers/sailors from that era is upsetting to you, I think you'd be fully justified in giving it a pass. It's real borderline for me sometimes for that reason.

Older National Geographic / Scientific American / Nova episodes fill the same niche for me, but newer Nova in particular is trying to be trendy/engaging and tends to amp up the drama in the narration and music more than is ideal for turn-off-brain-and-sleep use. Incidentally, some of the Nova episodes are apparently re-cut from other documentaries; if you find the original source they may be less overwrought.
posted by Alterscape at 12:02 PM on June 25, 2022

Hmm, we have some book interests in common, in this low-dopamine genre. So, here are some evocations:

- The Diary of Samuel Pepys --> James Nasmyth, Engineer, an Autobiography; works by Charles Darwin; In the Sargasso Sea by Thomas Janvier; Travels by Michael Crichton; Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman
- His Dark Materials trilogy --> The Cthulhu Casebooks - Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea-Devils by James Lovegrove; When the Tripods Came by John Christopher
- The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime --> The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan; The Garner Files by James Garner; Around the World on a Bicycle by Thomas Stevens
- Star Trek --> Star Trek: Doctor's Orders by Diane Duane (Spock's in there but it's an interesting story and well-written); Rendezvous with Rama; Manhattan Transfer by John Stith; 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

A bit of randomness in there maybe, but that's what comes to mind...enjoy your flight.
posted by circular at 12:13 PM on June 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

This might not be what you're looking for on a plane, but I find the back archives of the BBC's In Our Time (available as a podcast) great for falling asleep to. It's got a good rhythm and is interesting enough to listen to if I can't fall asleep, but if I am sleepy it doesn't stop me dropping straight off. And there are like 300 hours of the back archives available on the normal podcast apps, so you can really pick and choose between topics that you know are going to bore you to sleep and ones that you might listen to all the way through.
posted by BungaDunga at 12:37 PM on June 25, 2022 [7 favorites]

I could be missing the spirit of your question, but there's a whole "Sleep with Me" podcast that is exactly what it says on the tin, no entendre at all.

Can you listen to an old favorite? So that when you wake up in the middle of chapter 37, you don't start wondering about what happened while you were sleeping? I would put "The Princess Bride" or "Cryptonomicon" on repeat, and just ride that train all the way to sleepytown. If I woke up, I'd not be roused trying to figure out how they got away from Count Rugen, or what happened to that German spy on Qwghlm.

While I'm missing the point, I'll offer this completely other off-the-wall suggestion: for my youngest, for whom sleep is not quite easy, I have taken audiobook files into Audacity and recorded a new audio file that starts at normal speed and normal volume, but slows down over the course of (say) an hour, and has the volume drop over the course of that hour. So it starts out normal and gradually (hopefully imperceptibly) gets slower and quieter.... it seems to help turn "I can't sleep, can I listen to an audiobook" into "zzzzzz." But it takes some preparation, for each file, and how many times can you fall asleep to the first chapter of "Harry Potter and the Shitty In-Laws" or whatever the first one is? But anyway! It might be worth it for a trip.
posted by adekllny at 12:43 PM on June 25, 2022 [4 favorites]

I find the audiobooks of Andy Weir's The Martian and Project Hail Mary are both good for this. Enjoyable sci-fi stories, and on re-listen the detailed description of sciencey hacks are dry enough to be a reliable sleep aid.
posted by hovey at 2:11 PM on June 25, 2022

Mark Twain audio books work for me. It's right on the useful edge that separates too interesting and too boring. Maybe less if you haven't already read them and know where the plot is going. (Just to be provocative, I'd start with The Innocents Abroad.)

[Edit: also, I have often fallen asleep to the Greatest Generation trek podcast. It might be a bit lively, though, for what you want. But, listening to funny people talk about a show I memorized as a teenager is relaxing for me.]
posted by eotvos at 2:12 PM on June 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have been working my way through the many, many Agatha Christie books narrated by Hugh Fraser (who played Hastings in the David Suchet version of Poirot). I find his voice incredibly soothing to listen to, he doesn't butcher French unless the character he's voicing would, and he does a good job with different voices and accents for different characters so you always know who's speaking.
posted by Athanassiel at 3:36 PM on June 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The Levar Burton Reads podcast : The actor who played Jordie in Star Trek reads short stories in a rich, velvety and infinitely kind voice.
posted by dum spiro spero at 4:45 PM on June 25, 2022 [5 favorites]

I love, love, love Get Sleepy and The Sleepy Bookshelf. Both are podcasts. Get Sleepy offers two free episodes weekly (and a third episode for premium subscribers). There are a huge variety of stories to choose from in the archives. The Sleepy Bookshelf provides free audiobooks of classic literature with bonus shorter stories for premium subscribers.
posted by ReginaHart at 6:23 PM on June 25, 2022

On Being with Krista Tippett - a podcast with about a million shows, interesting topics, and just the most soothing voice(s).
posted by BekahVee at 6:45 AM on June 26, 2022

Listentoamovie.com is great for lulling yourself to sleep if you already know a film/show well enough to fill in the blanks.
posted by veery at 7:07 AM on June 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I'm giving Levar Burton the best answer because that's what I went with & it was great; however all of these answers were super helpful and I will be coming back to this thread for a long time!
posted by bleep at 8:27 AM on June 26, 2022 [1 favorite]