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

    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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. Oct 2

    Let Go of God to Find God | Meister Eckhart's Complete Philosophy

    Fall asleep to the medieval mystic who taught ordinary people to pray to be rid of God. At the summit of the medieval Church, a Dominican master who governed dozens of religious houses did something no one of his rank had dared. He carried the deepest theology out of the Latin schools and preached it, in plain German, to nuns and weavers and widows. We follow him from an uncertain village in Germany to the heights of the University of Paris, and into the heart of what he taught, a God beyond all names, an uncreated spark at the bottom of the soul, a birth of the divine within us, and a path that runs not by adding but by letting everything go. We trace his tender words to the grieving, his surprising defense of the working life, and the trial that broke over him at the very end. Then we follow the long silence after his death, and the strange, luminous return that made him a voice for our own restless age. Please listen only in safe, restful contexts. Chapters: 0:00:00 Chapter 1: A German Life 0:11:39 Chapter 2: The Common Tongue 0:20:05 Chapter 3: Being Before Doing 0:25:45 Chapter 4: Being Is God 0:34:21 Chapter 5: A Pure Nothing 0:39:58 Chapter 6: The God Beyond God 0:51:08 Chapter 7: The Spark in the Soul 0:59:36 Chapter 8: The Eternal Birth 1:10:41 Chapter 9: The Art of Letting Go 1:20:07 Chapter 10: Without a Why 1:25:57 Chapter 11: The Breakthrough 1:37:23 Chapter 12: The Swiftest Horse 1:44:54 Chapter 13: Martha in the Kitchen 1:50:42 Chapter 14: In the Field of the Lord 2:01:53 Chapter 15: The Long Silence 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

    Let Go of God to Find God | Meister Eckhart's Complete Philosophy

  8. Sep 27

    Montaigne | He Locked Himself in a Tower and Described Us All

    Fall asleep to Montaigne, who locked himself in a tower to study one man and quietly described us all. In fifteen seventy-one a French nobleman withdrew from public life to a round library at the top of a stone tower, and there, to tame his own restless mind, he began the strangest and most intimate book of its age. This is the story of Michel de Montaigne and the work he modestly called his attempts, the essays that invented a whole way of writing. We begin with his unusual life, the strange education, the one friendship that shaped everything, and the loss that turned him inward. From there we follow the great themes of the book, his bottomless doubt and its gentle motto, his study of the ever-changing self, his hatred of cruelty in a country torn apart by religious war, his acceptance of the body and its pains, and the serene wisdom of his final years. Along the way we meet a mind that set out to know one person and ended by knowing everyone. Please listen only in safe, restful contexts. Chapters: 0:00:00 Chapter 1: The Man in the Tower 0:11:33 Chapter 2: Because It Was He 0:19:29 Chapter 3: The Matter of My Book 0:31:06 Chapter 4: Nothing Holds Still 0:36:42 Chapter 5: Planting the Cabbages 0:45:20 Chapter 6: What Do I Know 0:57:58 Chapter 7: A Head Well Made 1:03:53 Chapter 8: The Cannibals at Rouen 1:12:01 Chapter 9: Between Two Fires 1:23:03 Chapter 10: The Mayor and Myself 1:30:17 Chapter 11: The Road to Rome 1:35:53 Chapter 12: Kings and Philosophers 1:43:33 Chapter 13: On Our Own Legs 1:55:05 Chapter 14: The Last Additions 2:00:28 Chapter 15: The Book That Became a Friend 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

    Montaigne | He Locked Himself in a Tower and Described Us All
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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
    74
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Sleepy Philosophy Radio
  • Show Website
    Sleepy Philosophy Radio

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