Sleep With Me
4.9/5
Critic Rating
Insomnia? Mind racing at night? Worries keeping you up? Tune in for a bedtime story that lets you forget your problems and progressively gets more boring until you fall to sleep. So get in bed, press play, close your eyes, and drift off into dreamland.
Critic Reviews
Score: 4
Elizabeth Gulino • Refinery29 • May 28, 2021
"I skipped past some advertisements and began to listen and was... honestly, kind of confused. I'm not usually someone who hyper-fixates on anything but my own anxieties, but instead of letting myself lose the thread of what Ackerman was saying, I kept catching myself concentrating harder and harder as I tried to make sense of what I was hearing — which, maybe, is the opposite of what he intended. So how was it, really? Just... fine. It wasn't the miracle insomnia cure I'd hoped for, but it does feel like I've added another tool to my box of things I can try when I'm having a hard time drifting off. And if anyone asked, I'd absolutely suggest turning on Sleep With Me, just to give it a try."
Score: 4.8
Nikki Tate • The Narrative • Apr 12, 2021
"I’ve never actually made it to the end of an episode without — wait for it — falling asleep. That’s actually a pretty strong recommendation if you think about it. The weird thing is, this podcast shouldn’t put anybody to sleep. It’s vaguely annoying, definitely strange, an acquired taste, not at all what I was expecting, and flipping effective."
Score: 5
Casper Editorial Team • Casper.com • Jul 30, 2020
"Known as the Sandman of sleep podcasts, this highly praised show is perfect for any insomniac. In each episode, the narrator takes a random topic and fills it with extra tangents, rambling sentences, and a soothing monotone voice, making the show as incomprehensible and sleep-inducing as possible. …"
Score: 5
Kari Moye • Liberty University SA • Jul 30, 2020
"Sleep With Me podcast by Drew Ackerman has become as comforting to me as a light back scratch after being tucked in to bed. Although Ackerman’s storytelling is comparable to that one friend of yours who has the ability to tell the most boring, never-ending stories, it is perfectly effective in putting you right to sleep."
Score: 5
Chloe Foussianes • Town & Country • May 29, 2020
"Ackerman leads the listener through dull, overlong stories, complete with plenty of asides and tangents, all while maintaining a flat monotone—a recipe for sweet dreams if there ever was one."
Score: 4.5
Jess Joho • Mashable • Feb 23, 2020
"Often, they're grounded in current events, topics, and even TV shows (like Game of Thrones), he has a unique talent for making just about anything unfollowable."
Score: 5
Elena Fernández Collins • Discover Pods • Feb 13, 2019
"Ackerman’s voice is kindness personified, best for people who prefer creaky and higher-toned voices, and good at rambling, tumbling words one over the other. If you’re looking for another story where you don’t have to worry about anything happening, Sleep with Me will help."
Score: 5
Aoife Hanna • Bustle • Jun 8, 2018
"making it just about as boring as you can imagine.His voice, it is also worth mentioning, is super soothing and gravelly, which really helps with sleepy-time vibes."
Score: 5
Rebecca Kurson • Observer • Nov 17, 2017
"With three new episodes every week, each session is composed of about 50 minutes of ambling, sort-of imaginative tales that are endearingly odd. But they’re not so strange or compelling as to have you riveted. Quite the opposite. They provide just enough to keep you distracted from your aim of falling asleep, without keeping you so animated as to make that task difficult. The show is a rarity among podcasts because the host genuinely doesn’t want you to listen to the full show; in fact, Ackerman would consider it a failure if you’re still awake by the end of it."
Score: 5
Gray Chapman • Nylon • May 23, 2017
"The next thing you know, you’re waking up in a puddle of pillow drool and nine hours have passed. I felt bemusement and a little confusion, followed by a surprisingly swift (abrupt, even) transition into blissful, deep sleep. Ackerman’s signature brand of gently whimsical storytelling somehow manages to hit the “mute” button on the ever-churning froth of anxious thought patterns that keep us up at night."
Score: 5
Benedict Cosgrove • Daily Beast • Apr 13, 2017
"And as Scooter wanders down that winding, undulating, occasionally switchback road of his own devising, the listener quickly begins to feel that it’s OK to hang back, to wander off, to hear Scooter’s voice growing distant, and not to worry about it. Five or 10 minutes later comes blessed sleep—according to a rigorously unscientific poll conducted with friends and family members who swear by “Sleep With Me.” (Disclosure: This writer does not suffer from insomnia. He does sometimes listen to Scooter, though.) …"
Score: 5
Stephanie Lee • Life Hacker • Nov 8, 2016
"I’ve been listening to Sleep With Me on and off for the last couple of years. The podcast is narrated by Scooter, who injects the appropriate amount of monotone into his hilarious bedtime stories. At least for me I eventually zone out and drift off to sleep. I’m fast asleep within 20 minutes about 90% of the time."
Score: 5
WBUR Staff • WBUR • Oct 17, 2016
"Drew Ackerman is a storyteller whose tales are so dull, convoluted and meandering that they're likely to put you to sleep. And that's exactly the point."
Score: 4.9
Emma Dibdin • Esquire • Oct 14, 2016
"But this innovative nightly show really is like Ambien in sound wave form, offering up "a lulling, droning, boring bedtime story to distract your racing mind." That description actually undersells what's so brilliant about Drew Ackerman's stories—they are deliberately surreal and semi-nonsensical, his sentences labyrinthine and full of tangents, mirroring the way your brain works in a hypnagogic state."
Score: 4.9
Megan Cahn • A Cup Of Jo • Jun 23, 2016
"With my head on my pillow and Ackerman’s deep voice in my headphones, I found myself laughing a few times as it got going, but soon all thoughts were cleared from my mind. I wasn’t worrying about work, or family, or that random thing I said at a party; there was just the drone of his voice — and then it was morning."
Score: 5
Jeena Cho • Forbes • May 22, 2016
"It's bedtime stories for grownups."
Score: 5
Nora Caplan-Bricker • New Yorker • May 11, 2016
"Drew Ackerman, a.k.a. Dearest Scooter, the forty-two-year-old creator and host of the popular podcast “Sleep with Me,” has an ingenious intuition for this narrative balancing act. But the brilliance of Ackerman’s technique is the way in which he calibrates his monologues to grab you ever so slightly: he seems always on the verge of being funny or interesting or profound, but, like narrative tantra, he never quite lets himself go all the way. I find it soothing that his openers are almost always more or less the same: Ackerman repeats some version of his pledge to “create a safe place where you can set aside whatever’s been running through your brain.” Listening to “Sleep with Me,” I often feel as if Ackerman’s ramblings work by tricking my brain into believing it is drifting off, emulating the peripatetic workings of the dreaming mind."
Score: 5
Stacey Lastoe • The Muse • Jan 1, 2016
"But if you haven’t yet discovered the Sleep With Me podcast, then you do need me to tell you this: It’s a game-changer. To anyone who’s ever struggled with getting good sleep (or can’t sleep at all), that’s enormous praise. The beauty of the stories, all of which have an ending and don’t just trail off, is that they don’t make you care about the end or feel like you missed something the way a TV show or movie does. You’re engaged enough to stop the obsessive thoughts, but not so much so that you fight off sleep."
Score: 5
Whitney Matheson • Mental Floss • Oct 23, 2015
"If Ben Stein’s famous Ferris Bueller's Day Off teacher droned on for an hour, it'd make a great episode of Sleep With Me, an odd little podcast that never fails to make me drowsy."
