How a yoga teacher turned bedtime stories into a media empire

From The Business of Content with Simon Owens by Simon Owens

April 14, 2026 · 41 min

About this episode

Kathryn Nicolai discusses her journey in creating the largest sleep podcast and the evolution of the sleep podcast genre.

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/ The rise of "sleep podcasts" has quietly reshaped a corner of the audio industry, turning bedtime into a high-engagement listening moment. Few creators have benefited more from that shift than Kathryn Nicolai, whose Nothing Much Happens podcast has grown from a scrappy 2018 experiment into what she describes as the largest sleep podcast in the world. Drawing on decades of experience as a yoga and meditation teacher, Katyrhn built a format that flips traditional storytelling on its head—stories designed not to captivate listeners through to the end, but to gently lull them to sleep. Along the way, she's expanded the concept into books, subscriptions, and a growing ecosystem of products built around relaxation and habit formation. In a recent interview, Kathryn explained how she accidentally helped define an entirely new podcast genre, why word-of-mouth drove her early growth, and how she's built a monetization strategy around an audience that's literally falling asleep.

People in this episode

Host: Simon Owens

Guest: Kathryn Nicolai

Topics covered

sleep podcasts
media empire
storytelling
monetization strategy
relaxation products
podcast growth

Keywords

sleep podcasts
bedtime stories
media empire
podcast growth
relaxation
storytelling
monetization

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Nothing Much Happens