Alex Reads Old Stuff is the first sleep podcast to combine classic literature with the dulcet tones of host, Alex May.
Each episode starts on a random page, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. These random beginnings are designed to relax your brain and help you fall asleep.
For our season finale, we’re getting cozy and dozing to one of the all-time greats: Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Fun fact: he’s 18 in this photograph.
Interested in being a sponsor for AROS?
Email us at alexreadsoldstuff@gmail.com
2 Dec 2025
EP. 10 - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
Put on your tassels, bob that hair, and Charleston into bed because it’s back to the Roaring Twenties we go for this biting satire.
Interested in being a sponsor for AROS?
Email us at alexreadsoldstuff@gmail.com
25 Nov 2025
EP. 09 - A General History of the Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson
Aye, bring your arse to anchor for tonight we sail under the Black Flag to send your consciousness straight to Davy Jones’ locker in this titillating first account of pirates on the high seas. Sleep ho!
Interested in being a sponsor for AROS?
Email us at alexreadsoldstuff@gmail.com
18 Nov 2025
EP. 08 - The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar by Maurice Leblanc
Oh la la! For some reason, I uh did not read zis longest title zus far in ze AROS zeazon in a French accent. Maybe zis was a how-do-you-zay ‘missed opportunity’? Sound off in ze comments.
Interested in being a sponsor for AROS?
Email us at alexreadsoldstuff@gmail.com
11 Nov 2025
EP. 06 - Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
I do say, sir: pip, pip cheerio off to Dreamland as Ernest Shackleton’s classmate, Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse weaves a tale of the tallest, silliest order.
Interested in being a sponsor for AROS?
Email us at alexreadsoldstuff@gmail.com
4 Nov 2025
EP. 07 - The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
Holy Boring, Batman! Can you imagine sitting across from Kant at a dinner party listening to him drone on and on in 18th century German?! Anyway, gute nacht.
Interested in being a sponsor for AROS?
Email us at alexreadsoldstuff@gmail.com
28 Oct 2025
EP. 05 - Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole by Mary Seacole
Oh, Mary Seacole. This contemporary of Florence Nightingale; slash nurse slash entrepreneur slash traveler slash boarding-house-keeper-for-invalid-soldiers will make you feel like you haven’t accomplished anything in life as you drift off to sleep. Sweet, career-anxiety dreams.
Interested in being a sponsor for AROS?
Email us at alexreadsoldstuff@gmail.com
21 Oct 2025
EP. 04 - Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
Alex read this in college, but completely forgot what it’s about. Sorry, Dr. Farnan. Let him refresh his memory and lull you to sleep in this 1900 classic some have called the “greatest of all American urban novels.”
Interested in being a sponsor for AROS?
Email us at alexreadsoldstuff@gmail.com
14 Oct 2025
EP. 03 - A Daughter of the Samurai by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto
Close those peepers, pull up that duvet, and journey back to Meiji Restoration Japan. As you drift off to sleep, imagine a bunch of fierce samurai warriors in the 1870s only able to find menial work as desk clerks and doormen.
Actually — don’t do that.
Interested in being a sponsor for AROS?
Email us at alexreadsoldstuff@gmail.com
3 Oct 2025
EP. 02 - The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge by Calvin Coolidge
What better way to drift off to sleep than the weighty, boring tome of Calvin Coolidge penned by the 30th president himself? Alex tries not to doze off while recounting Silent Cal’s salad days working in a law office in small-town Massachusetts.
Interested in being a sponsor for AROS?
Email us at alexreadsoldstuff@gmail.com
3 Oct 2025
EP. 01 - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Can’t sleep? Throw on those monogrammed pajamas as Alex transports you back to 1925 with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel where everyone drank too much and people were not who they said they were.
Interested in being a sponsor for AROS?
Email us at alexreadsoldstuff@gmail.com
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Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
19 ratings
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