Sleepy Philosophy Radio

Sleepy Philosophy Radio
  • 4.7 (7)
  • Philosophy
  • Weekly

Long-form philosophy content for late-night listening and deep focus. We cover the big thinkers - from the Stoics and Aristotle to Camus, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky - explained in a calm, steady voice that keeps things interesting without being overstimulating. If you want something substantial to think about during quiet hours, or just appreciate philosophy delivered at a relaxed pace, this is for you.

  1. 2d ago

    The Universe Is Mental | The Kybalion's Seven Hermetic Principles

    Fall asleep to The Kybalion's seven Hermetic principles, usually attributed to William Walker Atkinson.The Kybalion places a living mind beneath the visible universe and presents seven principles for understanding existence. This carefully researched narration follows Mentalism, Correspondence, Vibration, Polarity, Rhythm, Cause and Effect, and Gender, giving each its own argument and concrete examples. It distinguishes the book's American New Thought setting from its claims of ancient authority, and separates its speculative cosmology from established physics. The discussion also considers mental transmutation, deliberate attention, the relationship between a creator and a created individual, and the demand that knowledge enter action. Atkinson's Thought Vibration helps locate its publishing world, while the ancient Hermetica, including the Corpus Hermeticum, provides a contrast with the modern numbered system. The book's afterlife is considered through its portable maxims and the historical framing of The Kybalion: The Definitive Edition. The aim is to understand what the text actually proposes without turning mental practice into promises that wishes control physical events.Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.Chapters:0:00:00 The Kybalion and Its Real Origins0:13:50 Mentalism and the Mental Universe0:33:30 Correspondence and the Unseen0:48:58 Vibration and the Language of Science1:04:25 Polarity and Degrees of Feeling1:20:18 Rhythm and the Return of Moods1:35:48 Cause and Effect and Human Freedom1:51:48 Gender and the Creative Mind2:07:25 Mental Transmutation and Attention2:21:00 The All in Every Individual2:37:30 The Kybalion and Its Afterlife2:51:34 Knowledge Intended for UseIf this helped you rest, follow Sleepy Philosophy Radio on Spotify, and become a member to unlock member only episodes and help keep the show going.Music:"Mesmerize" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Evening Fall (Harp)" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Magic Forest" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Soaring" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Aftermath" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Clean Soul" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Sunset at Glengorm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Blue Feather" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Meditation Impromptu 02" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Trio for Piano, Cello, and Clarinet" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Cryptic Sorrow" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Promising Relationship" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Gymnopedie No. 1" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Overheat" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Meditation Impromptu 01" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Meditation Impromptu 03" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Smoother Move" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Cylinder Seven", "Cylinder Eight", "Cylinder Four", "Cylinder Five" by Chris ZabriskieFrom the album CylindersLicensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/chriszabriskie.com

    The Universe Is Mental | The Kybalion's Seven Hermetic Principles

  2. 5d ago

    Abandon All Hope | The History of Hell From Hades to Dante

    Fall asleep to the history of hell and Dante’s Inferno, a reading of Hades, Sheol, and Dante’s Inferno.The idea of hell did not enter history in one finished form. This reading follows Egyptian judgment, Hebrew Sheol, Greek Hades, the Zoroastrian bridge, Gehenna, and arguments in early Christianity about the reach and duration of judgment. Dante gives the tradition its most enduring imaginative architecture; Milton, Swedenborg, and modern philosophers change its terms again. The focus stays on ideas about justice and the human conscience, rather than scenes of torment. The chapters give each major claim enough space to become clear, then test where its evidence and limits lie. The narration follows the subject through the named texts and arguments, with its historical context where that changes the meaning. It keeps quotations and disputed interpretations in view, and leaves room for a listener to weigh the question rather than accepting a ready answer. Search terms include Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Inferno.Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.Chapters:0:00:00 The History of Hell and Its Names0:04:53 Dante's Inferno and the Gate0:15:27 Dante's Nine Circles of Hell0:26:14 Egyptian Weighing of the Heart0:35:40 Sheol and the House of Dust0:44:16 Hades and Plato's Judges0:56:28 Zoroaster's Bridge of Judgment1:04:10 Gehenna and the Divided Dead1:13:19 Hell in the Gospels and Revelation1:22:28 Origen and the Hope of Restoration1:39:41 Augustine and Eternal Punishment1:56:57 Medieval Judgment in Stone2:07:11 Milton's Hell Within the Mind2:12:26 Swedenborg and the Chosen Hell2:25:36 Darwin and the Moral Objection2:33:08 Sartre's No Exit and Other PeopleIf this helped you rest, follow Sleepy Philosophy Radio on Spotify, and become a member to unlock member only episodes and help keep the show going.Music:"Cryptic Sorrow" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Deep Noise" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Oppressive Gloom" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"The Dread" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Lightless Dawn" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Echoes of Time" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Sunset at Glengorm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Aftermath" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Unnatural Situation" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Heartbreaking" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Mourning Song" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Magic Forest" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Wounded" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Virtutes Instrumenti" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Agnus Dei X" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Soaring" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Quinn's Song: A New Man" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Immersed" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Crypto" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Night Break" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Mesmerize" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Cylinder Four", "Cylinder One", "Cylinder Seven" by Chris ZabriskieFrom the album CylindersLicensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/chriszabriskie.com

    Abandon All Hope | The History of Hell From Hades to Dante

  3. Oct 30

    Your Habits Are a Painkiller | Samuel Beckett's Complete Philosophy

    Fall asleep to the life and mind of Samuel Beckett, who made an art of failure, waiting, and going on. Born on a Good Friday in a comfortable Dublin suburb, a brilliant, restless young Irishman drifts to Paris, falls into the orbit of the greatest writer of the age, and spends a lost decade unable to find his own voice. Then a war, a betrayal, and years in hiding change him, and afterward, in a single astonishing burst, he writes the works that remake modern literature. This is the story of the man behind Waiting for Godot and Endgame, of two tramps by a bare tree and a woman buried in the earth, of a trilogy of novels that descend into a voice that cannot stop. We follow his idea of habit and time, his comedy of the abyss, his strange doctrine of failure, and the deep kindness of the private man, all the way to a plain grey stone and the words that outlived him. A life, and a way of seeing, for the quiet hours. Please listen only in safe, restful contexts. Chapters: 0:00:00 Chapter 1: The Life 0:11:49 Chapter 2: The Suffering of Being 0:20:48 Chapter 3: The Years in Hiding 0:27:35 Chapter 4: The Way of Subtraction 0:36:51 Chapter 5: Waiting for Godot 0:48:47 Chapter 6: The Comedy of the Abyss 0:56:39 Chapter 7: Endgame 1:08:11 Chapter 8: The Need of the Other 1:13:49 Chapter 9: The Voice Goes On 1:25:14 Chapter 10: Krapp's Last Tape 1:31:43 Chapter 11: Voices and Shadows 1:39:59 Chapter 12: Happy Days 1:46:08 Chapter 13: Fail Better 1:54:22 Chapter 14: The Body in the Dark 2:00:41 Chapter 15: Grey Upon Grey 2:09:02 Chapter 16: Still Going On If this helped you rest, follow Sleepy Philosophy Radio on Spotify, and become a member to unlock member only episodes and help keep the show going. Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Tracks used: Anguish, Blue Feather, Evening Fall (Harp), Gregorian Chant, Heartbreaking, Lightless Dawn, Lone Harvest, Magic Forest, Mesmerize, Mourning Song, Oppressive Gloom, Promising Relationship, Quinn's Song: A New Man, Relent, Smoother Move, Sunset at Glengorm, Trio for Piano Cello and Clarinet, Wounded

    Your Habits Are a Painkiller | Samuel Beckett's Complete Philosophy

  4. Oct 23

    The Wisdom of Insecurity | Alan Watts's Philosophy for Sleep

    Fall asleep to the life and ideas of Alan Watts, the philosopher who taught the West how to let go. Across sixteen unhurried chapters, we follow the strange and luminous life of Alan Watts, the self-taught Englishman who became the most listened-to interpreter of Eastern wisdom the West has ever known. From a boyhood spent gazing at Chinese landscape paintings, through a brief and surprising career as a priest, to the houseboats and mountain cabins of California, we trace how a restless amateur turned Zen, Taoism, and the old Indian teachings into clear and living English. Along the way we sit with his best-loved books, on insecurity, on Zen, and on the taboo against knowing who you really are, and with the great question at the center of them all. And we look, without flinching, at the gap between the serene teacher and the troubled man, and at why his gentle voice, decades after his death, still finds people in the dark. Please listen only in safe, restful contexts. Chapters: 0:00:00 Chapter 1: The Painted Mountains 0:11:56 Chapter 2: The borrowed light 0:17:57 Chapter 3: The habit and the collar 0:26:22 Chapter 4: The menu and the meal 0:32:27 Chapter 5: To hold your breath 0:43:01 Chapter 6: A finger pointing at the moon 0:55:28 Chapter 7: Beat, square, and neither 1:02:32 Chapter 8: The war with nature 1:11:34 Chapter 9: Two ways of healing 1:23:06 Chapter 10: The chemistry of consciousness 1:30:13 Chapter 11: The game of hide and seek 1:40:53 Chapter 12: The taboo against knowing 1:52:45 Chapter 13: You cannot live in tomorrow 1:59:27 Chapter 14: The watercourse way 2:08:41 Chapter 15: The genuine fake 2:19:58 Chapter 16: The voice that remained If this helped you rest, follow Sleepy Philosophy Radio on Spotify, and become a member to unlock member only episodes and help keep the show going. Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Tracks used: Anguish, Blue Feather, Evening Fall (Harp), Gregorian Chant, Heartbreaking, Lightless Dawn, Lone Harvest, Magic Forest, Mesmerize, Mourning Song, Oppressive Gloom, Promising Relationship, Quinn's Song: A New Man, Relent, Smoother Move, Sunset at Glengorm, Trio for Piano Cello and Clarinet, Wounded

    The Wisdom of Insecurity | Alan Watts's Philosophy for Sleep

  5. Oct 18

    There Are No Accidents | Sigmund Freud's Complete Psychology

    Fall asleep to Sigmund Freud, from a room full of buried gods to a chosen death in exile. He set out to be the coldest of scientists and ended by telling the strangest story modern people had ever heard about themselves. This is the life and the mind of Sigmund Freud. We begin in his consulting rooms in Vienna, among the ancient statues he could not work without, and follow him from a provincial childhood to the discovery that made his name, the claim that most of the mind is hidden, and hidden on purpose. We move through his masterwork on dreams, his scandalous account of childhood, the drama he found buried in every family, and the movement that made him famous and cost him his dearest friends. We watch his vision darken, after a war, into a theory of the wish for death and the permanent discontent of civilization. And we follow him to the end, through illness, exile, and a death met on his own terms, into the strange afterlife of ideas that science keeps rejecting and no one can quite escape. Please listen only in safe, restful contexts. Chapters: 0:00:00 Chapter 1: The Life 0:11:51 Chapter 2: A Cure by Talking 0:20:10 Chapter 3: Not Master in the House 0:26:21 Chapter 4: The Lamp Turned Inward 0:34:05 Chapter 5: The Royal Road 0:46:20 Chapter 6: What the Tongue Betrays 0:51:26 Chapter 7: The Child's Secret Life 0:58:38 Chapter 8: The Drama in the Nursery 1:09:36 Chapter 9: The Difficult Patients 1:15:48 Chapter 10: The Cause and Its Heretics 1:24:25 Chapter 11: The Crime at the Origin 1:30:27 Chapter 12: The Undertow 1:38:57 Chapter 13: The House Divided 1:44:52 Chapter 14: The Consoling Illusion 1:52:30 Chapter 15: The Price of Civilization 2:05:08 Chapter 16: The Fire and the Flight 2:13:33 Chapter 17: A Climate of Opinion If this helped you rest, follow Sleepy Philosophy Radio on Spotify, and become a member to unlock member only episodes and help keep the show going. Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Tracks used: Anguish, Blue Feather, Evening Fall (Harp), Gregorian Chant, Heartbreaking, Lightless Dawn, Lone Harvest, Magic Forest, Mesmerize, Mourning Song, Oppressive Gloom, Promising Relationship, Quinn's Song: A New Man, Relent, Smoother Move, Sunset at Glengorm, Trio for Piano Cello and Clarinet, Wounded

    There Are No Accidents | Sigmund Freud's Complete Psychology

  6. Oct 14

    All of Neoplatonism | Plotinus's Complete Philosophy

    Fall asleep to Plotinus, the mystic who taught that all things flow from a single source and long to return. In the third century, in the crowded city of Rome, a gentle teacher who was ashamed of his own body and would not sit for a portrait built the last great philosophy of the ancient world. This episode follows Plotinus, the founder of what we now call Neoplatonism, from his youth in Roman Egypt and his years with a secret master in Alexandria to the circle of devoted students who gathered around him. We trace his single luminous vision of reality, a great outpouring from one nameless source down through mind and soul to the very edge of matter, and the long road home by which a person may climb back. Along the way we sit with his thoughts on beauty and on time, on evil and the goodness of the world, on the self that never fell, and on the rare and wordless union he was said to have reached four times. It is a slow, patient walk up the oldest ladder in philosophy. Please listen only in safe, restful contexts. Chapters: 0:00:00 Chapter 1: The Face He Would Not Leave 0:11:56 Chapter 2: The Heir of Plato 0:17:59 Chapter 3: From One, All Things 0:26:27 Chapter 4: Beyond Being Itself 0:37:55 Chapter 5: Where Thought Is Being 0:48:00 Chapter 6: The Moving Image 0:54:04 Chapter 7: The Soul of the World 1:02:52 Chapter 8: The Shadow of Contemplation 1:09:13 Chapter 9: Where the Light Fails 1:18:36 Chapter 10: The Statue Within 1:30:45 Chapter 11: The Self That Never Fell 1:39:33 Chapter 12: Alone, to the Alone 1:51:34 Chapter 13: Happy on the Rack 1:59:51 Chapter 14: The Order of the Books 2:05:41 Chapter 15: The Long Afterglow If this helped you rest, follow Sleepy Philosophy Radio on Spotify, and become a member to unlock member only episodes and help keep the show going. Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Tracks used: Anguish, Blue Feather, Evening Fall (Harp), Gregorian Chant, Heartbreaking, Lightless Dawn, Lone Harvest, Magic Forest, Mesmerize, Mourning Song, Oppressive Gloom, Promising Relationship, Quinn's Song: A New Man, Relent, Smoother Move, Sunset at Glengorm, Trio for Piano Cello and Clarinet, Wounded

    All of Neoplatonism | Plotinus's Complete Philosophy

  7. Oct 12 ·  Bonus

    Thank You for Listening | Membership on Spotify

    Thank you for listening, whether this is your first episode or your fiftieth. Our regular episodes are free for everyone, and they always take hours of reading and writing. If you'd like to support the show directly, you can become a member on Spotify. Members get our book episodes: each one takes a single book and walks through it, in our own words. On Spotify, members also hear every episode without ad breaks. To join, press play on any of our episodes with a lock, or use this link: https://members.spotify.com/to/sleepyphilo Membership is separate from Spotify Premium. It is available in the US, Canada, the UK, most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. Music: "Trio for Piano, Cello, and Clarinet" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

    Thank You for Listening | Membership on Spotify

  8. Oct 8

    The Darkest Philosopher Who Ever Lived | Philipp Mainländer

    Fall asleep to the story of Mainländer, the philosopher who taught that God has died and death is our redemption. In a rented room by a German river, a mild and dutiful bank clerk finished the strangest book of his century, and then quietly ended his own life. This episode follows Philipp Mainländer, the poet and philosopher who took Schopenhauer's darkness further than anyone had dared. We trace his single great work, The Philosophy of Redemption, and the idea at its heart, that God, before the world began, chose not to exist, and shattered into the universe in order to die. We follow the strange drive he found beneath all life, the calm he took from a running-down cosmos, and the rescue he promised, which is simply rest, and nothing more. Along the way we meet his gentle serenity, his quarrel across time with Nietzsche, and the uncanny way modern science has come to echo his cooling universe. It is a patient walk to the far edge of pessimism, and gently back. Please listen only in safe, restful contexts. Chapters: 0:00:00 Chapter 1: The Man from the Main 0:13:26 Chapter 2: The Case for Wanting Less 0:22:19 Chapter 3: The Architecture of an Ending 0:28:02 Chapter 4: The Suicide of God 0:41:14 Chapter 5: The World Runs Down 0:47:17 Chapter 6: A World Without a Beyond 0:55:45 Chapter 7: The Will to Die 1:07:44 Chapter 8: Redemption Into Nothing 1:17:00 Chapter 9: A Foretaste of Peace 1:22:48 Chapter 10: The Road of Renunciation 1:30:59 Chapter 11: History's Long Sunset 1:42:48 Chapter 12: A Strange Serenity 1:48:42 Chapter 13: The One Who Said It First 1:56:33 Chapter 14: The Quiet Vindication If this helped you rest, follow Sleepy Philosophy Radio on Spotify, and become a member to unlock member only episodes and help keep the show going. Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Tracks used: Anguish, Blue Feather, Evening Fall (Harp), Gregorian Chant, Heartbreaking, Lightless Dawn, Lone Harvest, Magic Forest, Mesmerize, Mourning Song, Oppressive Gloom, Promising Relationship, Quinn's Song: A New Man, Relent, Smoother Move, Sunset at Glengorm, Trio for Piano Cello and Clarinet, Wounded

    The Darkest Philosopher Who Ever Lived | Philipp Mainländer
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Ratings & Reviews

4.7
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

Long-form philosophy content for late-night listening and deep focus. We cover the big thinkers - from the Stoics and Aristotle to Camus, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky - explained in a calm, steady voice that keeps things interesting without being overstimulating. If you want something substantial to think about during quiet hours, or just appreciate philosophy delivered at a relaxed pace, this is for you.

Information

  • Creator
    Sleepy Philosophy Radio
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    76
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Sleepy Philosophy Radio
  • Show Website
    Sleepy Philosophy Radio

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