The Cosmic Library explores massive books in order to explore everything else. Here books that can seem overwhelming books of dreams infinity mysteries turn out to be intensely accessible offering so many different ways to read them and think with them. Stories can frighten us disturb and shock us, prompt us to change our thinking, but compared to most experiences reading a story is tranquil. Podcasts similarly conveying mediated encounters with other lives, are also used as sleep aids there’s a “sleep” category in Apple Podcasts. Story podcasts, then, can demonstrate powerfully the connections between fiction and sleep. When people say they use my podcast to fall asleep, it feels slightly insulting. But there is something about being read to, and we all really love it. And it takes us back to childhood, and it is soothing The calming effect and the strange openness of stories can have, it turns out, everything to do with each other Stories vanquish boredom, taking audiences on adventures into something beyond their immediate experience. And often, stories don’t even reassure us
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Wednesday, March 11, 2026