Falling Asleep to BBC

I’m just going to put in a word here for listening to the BBC World Service just before bed, something I do every night. Even if you don’t have an HD radio and a nearby station that plays the World Service on one of its channels, you can get the World Service on your laptop, which you can place conveniently by your bed, or in your bed, as I often do. Yes, it may be conventionally viewed as pathetic to have your Macbook in bed with you when you fall asleep, and Nicholson Baker’s character even says so in “The Anthologist,” but these are the kind of brave and honest admissions you come here to read. 

But back to the BBC. The nice things about listening to the World Service just before nodding off are: 1) It gets you caught up on world news; 2) they never spend very long on any one story; in fact they sort of bounce around among 5 or 6 stories, repeatedly telling you what they’ve just told you about them, and breaking every now and then to discuss an obscure medical issue or business practice. Sometimes they discuss sports, but never for every long. Finally: 3) The announcers have the most beautiful, dulcet voices.

But the best reason to listen to BBC World Service just before bedtime is because, thanks to the synergistic effect of 1, 2, and 3, and the fact that the whole of them is greater than the sum of their parts, you will be out like a light in no time. To be honest, I fall asleep so quickly every night, I can never remember the next morning anything of what I heard the night before.