Dream Researcher Dr. Dylan Selterman
They only happen when we’re sleeping but our dreams can have a profound effect on what we do when we’re awake. Dream Researcher Dr. Dylan Selterman studies how dreams impact our daily lives, our relationship and the choices we make. We talk why we dream, why some people are dreaming less and controlling our dreams. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Common Sense Things We Didn’t Know.
Dr. Dylan Selterman: 00:49
Pointless: 33:26
Top 5: 49:45
Interview with Dream Researcher Dr. Dylan Selterman
Nick VinZant 0:00
Nick, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant, coming up in this episode, dreams and uncommon common sense.
Dr. Dylan Selterman 0:12
I think this is where I would say dreams are still one of the big unsolved mysteries of science. When you're asleep, it's it's kind of like a safe place for your mind to start experimenting a little bit with some stuff. I've noticed that overall, they're less likely to report having dreams than in some of the past samples that I've collected.
Nick VinZant 0:33
I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance subscribe, leave us a quick review. We really appreciate it really helps out the show. I want to get right to our first guest. This is Dream researcher, Dr Dylan selterman. Why do we dream?
Dr. Dylan Selterman 0:50
I think this is where I would say dreams are still one of the big unsolved mysteries of science. There's no one clear evidence based reason why we dream. There are some good theories, though. And one theory is that we dream to help us prepare for things we might experience after we wake up. Another theory is just that we dream about whatever we have experienced. So this kind of continuity between what we experience in our lives, and then that just appears in our dreams. Another theory is that dreams promote social bonding, and this is relevant to my own research. The idea is that we dream in order to make sense of our interpersonal relationships with other people, in particular, close friends, family members, romantic partners, that kind of thing.
Nick VinZant 1:47
Can you elaborate a little bit on that? That's one of those things, like, I know what that means, but I don't know what that means. If that makes any sense.
Dr. Dylan Selterman 1:54
Well, one of the things that my research has revealed is that there's associations between people's interpersonal relationship variables like attachment style and the content of dreams. So when people feel more insecure in their romantic relationships, they tend to have more negative dreams about those partners, including things like jealousy and betrayal and conflict. And for people who feel more secure, they tend to have dreams again, of those partners with themes of support and nurturance. Which
Nick VinZant 2:35
one's the chicken, which one's the egg? And as I said that I don't really know actually which one came first, but what comes first? We dream about the negative interaction and then we have the negative interaction, or we have negative interaction and then we have the bad dream. It's probably
Dr. Dylan Selterman 2:52
both. And part of my research has looked at the day to day experiences that people have in relationships and the dreams that they have, and we did find evidence that when people have a dream where there's some kind of negativity, some kind of conflict or infidelity, that does correlate with behaviors the next day. We can't say causes necessarily, because we didn't create those dreams. We didn't, you know, manipulate people's minds to have one type of dream, but we can say that it predicts when people feel like less intimacy with their partners the next day after having a conflict dream, or more conflict after having a dream with jealousy in it. That kind of thing. But the other way is also something that we find some evidence for. So typically, what we would say is that when people develop an attachment bond to someone, that is something that happens pretty early on in the long term nature of the relationship. So if people are together for years, the attachment bond is something that develops early on, and that would predict when people have positive or negative dreams down the line. It's unlikely that the dream happened first in that case. So my answer to that question would be, it's probably both
Nick VinZant 4:19
that kind of in my own personal life, right? Like, I remember one time my wife and I loved this thing from Pizza Hut called the dinner box. It was a thing between us. And I had a dream that she got a dinner box, a dinner box without me, and I was mad at her for like, two weeks. Like, why would you even do that? Is that the kind of thing that we're talking about? Like, I dreamed that you did something and now I'm mad at you about that.
Dr. Dylan Selterman 4:43
Yeah, that's definitely a thing. And this is maybe the part of my research that resonates most with people, because they they express something similar to what you just described, where you know somebody does something to make you upset in the dream, and then you wake up and feel upset. Said about it. And you know, some sometimes it can be mild. Sometimes it can be like the pizza box thing, but other times it can be more intense. Sometimes it can be dreams about betrayal or abandonment, and those can cause real, real conflict and real problems with with people in relationships. Is
Nick VinZant 5:20
the dream trying to tell us something like, is there something there?
Dr. Dylan Selterman 5:26
Yeah. So that's, that's something that we don't know necessarily from the from this line of research yet, is, you know, what, if anything, like, what is objectively happening, that the dreams could be trying to clue us in on sometimes. That's probably true if, let's say somebody has been in a relationship with someone who has been unfaithful and then has dreams about it, then this dream could reflect the reality that they're experiencing. It could also reflect personal insecurities and anxieties that do not reflect the reality. So my guess is, again, it's probably both.
Nick VinZant 6:04
Yeah, that's tough, right? It's the answer is, like, sometimes you're imagining it and sometimes it's real. Yeah, and how do you know the difference between one or the other? So
Dr. Dylan Selterman 6:15
one way to answer that question would be to try to understand whether the dreamer has a personal history of feeling anxieties and insecurities in general in their life, because then it may not be specific to that person in that relationship. It could be that this is part of their more or less insecure personality type, and in that case, we would say maybe there's not something to be objectively concerned about. Would
Nick VinZant 6:44
you say, kind of in general, that our dreams are trying to tell us something
Dr. Dylan Selterman 6:50
yes and no? I think there's a there's a way to answer that question where the answer is yes, and I think that the the yes answer involves people understanding their personal insecurities or, you know, maybe not, maybe something positive about themselves that they hadn't been thinking about in their minds, or trying to remind them about these features of their life that they should be paying attention to. That being said, there's a way to interpret that where the answer is no, and that's something like is the dream trying to warn us about something that will happen in the future, like a kind of prophetic dream, and that that we don't have any evidence for.
Nick VinZant 7:36
If you're always thinking your spouse is cheating on you, then the dream about your spouse cheating on you probably does. Says a lot more about you than the spouse. If you suddenly have this dream, then maybe your subconscious is putting the pieces together. Is that a dramatic interpretation of Yeah, and
Dr. Dylan Selterman 7:53
and to your point, there are. There are other studies that don't have to do with dreams about people's intuitions about their partners, perhaps being unfaithful, and sometimes not always, but sometimes those intuitions are correct in the case where someone's partner starts behaving very differently.
Nick VinZant 8:15
How like if you look kind of outside of like relationships, how else do dreams seem to affect us in our daily lives, like when we wake up? How do the dreams that we have seem to affect us?
Dr. Dylan Selterman 8:28
Yeah, that's a good question. So my research, being a social psychologist, my research does focus more on interpersonal relationships and social relationships. That being said, there are other studies from other laboratories, showing that people can sometimes derive creative inspiration from their dreams. We do see that people who you know, they deal with things like computer science or physics or chemistry, sometimes have dreams in those languages and wake up and they think, Oh, this is, this is cool. I'm going to try this as a potential solution of the problem that I've been working on. Some there's famous anecdotal examples, like the the scientist who invented the periodic table, apparently, that came to him in a dream. Paul McCartney apparently dreamed the song yesterday and then woke up and wrote it down, and it, you know, became this classic song. So sometimes there's that, sometimes there's some creative inspiration or problem solving or rehearsal and so, so sometimes that can affect people after they wake up. When we look at
Nick VinZant 9:37
dreams, is the goal to dream, or is the dream a byproduct of something else that the brain is doing?
Dr. Dylan Selterman 9:46
So that's one theory. Is that the dreams are a byproduct of our brain kind of doing some kind of, you know, in information consolidation. So this, this is some, you know, based on some work by. Neuroscientists and sleep researchers who argue that, you know, when we sleep, our minds are kind of distilling important information, keeping the stuff that needs to be kept, and throwing away a lot of junk. And so the dream is our mind's way of trying to make sense of that process, which sometimes makes dreams feel bizarre, and then, you know, a lot of it just gets thrown out because we generally don't remember most of our dreams, especially when you look at the research on night awakenings in the lab, that shows that when you actually get people to wake up in the middle of the night, most of the time they report being in the middle of a dream, but when people are sleeping at home, they might wake up from a dream briefly and then go right back to sleep and forget about it completely by the time they wake up. So a lot of the stuff that we dream about is not something that we're necessarily going to keep in our long term memory, and that might reflect our mind's way of just kind of like consolidating and distilling information and throwing away a lot of the stuff that doesn't need to be kept.
Nick VinZant 11:06
I don't know if this relates directly to this, but something that we were talking about earlier, like, I do remember being in school and learning Spanish, and when I started to really get into it, I started to dream in Spanish, yeah, and then I felt like I could speak Spanish much better, because I had dreamed it is that kind of a common thing or, like, I don't know what you're talking about. Man,
Dr. Dylan Selterman 11:27
yeah, I I've seen, I've seen some good research coming out of my colleague Bob Stickles lab. He does studies where they give people some kind of task to work on. In the lab, it could be like a puzzle or a maze or something, and then they'll have some people sleep, and if they report dreaming in the lab, then performance apparently goes up after having dreams that are relevant to what they're working on. So it could be like you're describing, you know, people having dreams about something that's kind of like a process, like learning a language or a musical instrument, and it's part of the mind's way of like rehearsing and playing out the thing that you're learning. And yeah, then, then it could make it easier for you to continue doing well in that process.
Nick VinZant 12:15
Why are dreams like real, but not real in the sense that I'll be playing basketball at the place that I go and play basketball with, but in the audience is a shark and the basketball is a cake, like, why is it real? But not? Yeah, so
Dr. Dylan Selterman 12:34
there's a few ways to answer that. One is that most dreams are actually pretty normal and mundane. And the reason why we have the stereotype of dreams as having all this bizarre stuff is because the bizarre stuff we're more likely to remember because it stands out relative to the kind of mundane stuff. So what I tell people is, if you start keeping a regular nightly dream journal, and you write down everything that's in your head immediately when you wake up and you can't let you know social media distract you, like you have to wake up and immediately write stuff down, otherwise you'll forget it. But if you get into the habit of doing that, and then you look back on your dreams over a few weeks, you'll see, oh, most of it is just like, I'm going to the grocery store and work and hanging out with friends, and it's normal, and there's no sharks in the audience. Necessarily, that stuff does come up from time to time, but it's uncommon, and we don't necessarily realize that until we look at the whole picture. Now, when those bizarre elements do appear, sometimes those are explained by other things that we have experienced or encountered while we're awake. So if you have a dream that has dragons in it, you know, maybe you were like, you know, reading Harry Potter before going to bed or something like that. And, you know, there's some there's some aspect of what you've experienced in waking life that would explain why that dream element is there. It might seem a little bit out of place, but it's coming from somewhere that we can point to. And the third explanation is, you know, that your mind is putting stuff together in a creative way, and it does seem bizarre and it does seem random, but when you're asleep, it's, it's kind of like a safe place for your mind to start experimenting a little bit with some stuff. So it's like, oh, okay, basketball, but let's throw in a shark and just see what happens. And you know, you're safe in the dream, like the shark's not going to get you so that's kind of like, you know, just a space for that kind of creative stuff to happen. So
Nick VinZant 14:46
it can be as simple kind of as, like, the shark is in the dream because I've been reading this book about the ocean recently, and the cake is in the dream because my son's birthday is coming up. There you go. Not because the cake is a symbol of the loss. Of my son's childhood as he turns six, right? It's like, no, it's just it's not that complicated. That's a
Dr. Dylan Selterman 15:08
great point. And I want to double click on that, because you might go to the bookstore and see a kind of dream encyclopedia, book that tells you that there's a specific meaning, like, if you dream of a cake, it means this, and if you dream of a shark. It means that total bunk. There's, there's no there's no one to one dream interpretation of those kinds of symbols.
Nick VinZant 15:27
Why? Why does that stuff exist? Then, like, why did we have such a like, there has to be this deeper meaning to this. Uh,
Dr. Dylan Selterman 15:35
well, I mean, I think in general, people have a tendency to look for meaning in things, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It can steer us in some pretty wacky directions. But that's that seems to me to be a feature of who we are as a as a species. I guess we look for meaning in things, and it's fun too to think about like, you know what this could mean. And if you have a dream about something like what it reveals about you. It's, it's a it's a fun practice, and most of the time it's pretty harmless. I do advise people not to take that stuff too seriously, because we don't want people making any major life decisions based on something that's, you know, not really evidence based. Do
Nick VinZant 16:17
people dream differently, or do we all kind of dream the same?
Dr. Dylan Selterman 16:26
Well, there are some pretty normative, common features of dreams, so going back to what we were talking about earlier, that is relevant to my research, dreams are very social, and this is, I think, an underappreciated aspect of dreams. Most of the time, when people dream they're dreaming about other people, especially familiar people, people that they're close to and interact with regularly in settings that are familiar and that they interact in regularly. So that that tells us something about, I guess, you know, quote, unquote, normal dreams that most people have, that that send that tend to be centered around those things.
Nick VinZant 17:09
Um, are you ready for some harder slash, listener submitted questions, let's do it. Most common dream, well, in
Dr. Dylan Selterman 17:18
general, there's things that I hear from people a lot. The common dream is the teeth falling out dream. And so a lot, lot of people report having that type of dream. Lot of people have dreams where they're, you know, running, sometimes falling. And other than that, I would say, like, just the mundane stuff that we talked about so going to work and hanging out with friends and doing chores, those the kinds of things that we those the most common types of dreams. For
Nick VinZant 17:50
some reason that makes me sad that most of my dreams are just like boring, like I could be doing all these adventures and I'm still just going to the grocery store.
Dr. Dylan Selterman 17:59
Yeah. Well, that's, that's where lucid dreaming comes in. So when, when people have lucid dreams, then they are aware of the fact that they're in a dream while they're in it, and then they have more control. So then they can, you know, for for lucid dreaming, that opens up a whole world of possibilities.
Nick VinZant 18:22
I don't know if that's ever happened to me. Is that a common thing or not?
Dr. Dylan Selterman 18:28
It is relatively common. So if you, if you ask people, have you ever had this type of dream? A lot of people will say, Sure, I've had, I've had that happen before. I wouldn't say it's common for people to have regularly. So I've had them in my life. I've had them more like years ago. I don't have that many now, and that may be to due to normative changes in my sleep cycles. For instance, every, every, my whole sleep routine changed dramatically when my daughter was born. So yeah, and I don't think I'm ever going back to how it was before that. As
Nick VinZant 19:05
a father of two, you're not
Dr. Dylan Selterman 19:07
so, so but, but loose, but lucid dreaming is definitely achievable. It's, it's one of the things where you know you kind of have to train yourself a bit to recognize when you're dreaming. And one of the routines that people will who research this will suggest using is something called mnemonic Induced Lucid dreaming, where you're trying to trigger your mind to recognize when you're dreaming with a mnemonic device. So you might, for example, train yourself to think about something like a cat or a lamp or something throughout the day, and then if you see that in your dream, or if you think about it, then you'll realize that you're dreaming. Another technique is called wake back to bed. And I remember using this when I was younger. You awake. Up in the middle of the night from from sleep, and sometimes, if you're able to recall a dream, then you're, you kind of intend to go back into the dream when you go back to sleep. And if you can get back into that dream space, then you can, you're more likely to become lucid. Apparently, mindfulness meditation is another way to develop lucidity. You're kind of training your conscious focus on the momentary experience. And if you look at Buddhist practitioners and meditators all over the world who do this like regularly, all day, every day, they will describe dream the dream state is a kind of sleep yoga where they're they're practicing mindfulness, essentially, while they're sleeping. So that's, that's kind of what it means to be in a lucid dream state. You're aware of what your conscious mind is really doing in that moment.
Nick VinZant 20:59
I guess. What's the point. Like, do we unlock a new super like, all I can think of is, I'm an anime person. Like, do we level up, all right? Or just, like, No, you just, you kind of just know you're dreaming. And that's kind of it, like, is there a broad like, I guess, what's, what's, what's the
Dr. Dylan Selterman 21:14
point? I mean, I think that depends on the person. And for some people, it's just, you know, I'm gonna do some fun stuff while I'm sleeping, and it's better than going to the grocery store. Like, I'll, you know, play basketball with Lebron James in my dream. And like, you know, just have fun. And for some people, it could be trying to unlock something, especially if they have, you know, had some trauma or something really negative in their life that they want to try to work through lucid dreaming could be a path to doing that. There's, you know, I think there's a world in which dreams of that nature can be therapeutic. That being said, you know, it really is idiosyncratic, based on individual desires and needs. Yeah,
Nick VinZant 22:02
that'd be pretty awesome if I could train myself to just fly around the world, right? That's what I would want to be doing. But I could see that being really addictive.
Dr. Dylan Selterman 22:14
Well, there's no, there's no way to be addicted to sleep. You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to wake up and go about your day at some point. So
Nick VinZant 22:23
yeah, that's this kind of hints at a little bit of a question that we have. It's like, is it real in the sense that, if your mind, like we're all kind of experiencing these the world around us in our minds. So if we're experiencing the dream in our mind, does it make the dream real in a way.
Dr. Dylan Selterman 22:42
Well, if, if it's in your mind, then I would say it is real. Yeah,
Nick VinZant 22:50
right, it's real, but not reality, if that makes, yeah, a little bit of sense. Um, are dreams fundamentally different than nightmares? Or a nightmare? Yeah,
Dr. Dylan Selterman 23:02
good question. Personally. I mean, there's no objective definition of what a nightmare is. I mean, we know what a nightmare is because somebody tells us that they had a nightmare. Otherwise, the same person could potentially have the same dream as another person and not call it a nightmare. They would just call it a regular dream. So you could think about a nightmare as something that people just subjectively identify. And there are, you know, features of nightmares that are a little bit different in the clinical population. So for somebody who has had a traumatic event, they are more likely to have recurring dreams of that event that being said, we generally tend to have a little bit more negative emotion than positive emotion in our dreams anyway, and I wouldn't say that makes the majority of people's dreams nightmares. I would just say that those emotions are more salient in dreams that we normally have. So to answer your question, I would say, in most cases, dreams and nightmares, there's kind of, you know, very fine line between those things, and we could maybe just group them together. That being said at the extreme end, where people are really suffering from distress, I would say that's a very different thing and that, you know, we would definitely call those those nightmares.
Nick VinZant 24:25
Why do we have more negative emotions and positive emotions and dreams? That's just who we are. Well, it
Dr. Dylan Selterman 24:31
could be more of the we're trying to plan ahead, think about things that might happen and deal with them preemptively. I mean, that's that's one of the other things, again, putting dreams aside for a second. That's one of the things that makes us such a successful species, is that we're able to think 12 moves ahead in life and plan for things like, you know, we're gonna get snow in a little bit. So how do we deal with that? Before? Happens. And maybe there's a meteor that'll hit Earth in, you know, the year 2032, or something. And how are we going to deal with that? So those things are, you know, they can be unpleasant to an extent it requires thinking ahead to potential things that could hurt us and dealing with them. So if that theory of dreams is correct, then it would make sense for us to have a little bit more negativity than positivity in terms of emotions in our dreams. That's not to say there's no positivity. There certainly is, but it would make sense to think ahead about what could what could go wrong tomorrow, so I can deal with it now. And in fact, I think anecdotally, a lot of people will report experiencing that in their day to day lives. Like, Oh, I had this dream and I realized I had to deal with it, and I woke up and I dealt with it, and
Nick VinZant 25:50
I saw that thing about the meteor hitting, or asteroid or whatever I call it, like, it's like, though, that those, those odds are going up, are going down, but like, it's one in 40 it's one and 32 like, oh, well, that's good. Have you ever ran across somebody that just didn't they just didn't dream?
Dr. Dylan Selterman 26:08
It is possible, I don't know anyone personally, but it is possible for someone to not dream. It you. We psychologists used to believe that if you did not have the ability to dream, that you you couldn't be alive, but that that has been debunked as well. There are, there are people, and it's very, very rare, but there are a non zero number of people in the world who will, just will not dream, and they're fine.
Nick VinZant 26:33
When you look like, I don't know if you've done this or not, but if you look at somebody's brain while they're dreaming, like, what's happening up there? Is it just all over the place? Or no, this is confined in a certain area of the brain.
Dr. Dylan Selterman 26:47
Um, well, I'm not a neuroscientist, so my answer is going to be a bit limited there, but I think in many ways, brain activity is similar to the kinds of things that people would experience while they're awake. And there is more, for example, there is more oxytocin and vasopressin, which are involved in social bonding, which kind of, in a way, supports my earlier theory of dreams, being these methods for us to have. You know, more more connection to other people, the facilitating of attachment bonds. So it could be that that's the reason why we have dreams that are kind of social in nature, is because of the the increased levels of oxytocin and vasopressin in the brain.
Nick VinZant 27:36
What is to you? What is the single most interesting thing about dreams? Hmm,
Dr. Dylan Selterman 27:42
the most interesting thing about dreams, well, I think it's the mysterious quality of dreams that there, there's potential for anything that we could experience, we can have in our dreams, and it's almost limitless. We can have dreams that are other worldly. We could have dreams about, you know, the afterlife, or those you know, who are deceased. We could have dreams about people that we've never met. We could have dreams where we're, you know, we're fulfilling our dreams in a kind of, in an abstract sense, like we're fulfilling our dreams in our dreams. So, yeah, they're just, they're just very magical. Yeah,
Nick VinZant 28:37
they're pretty cool. Like, it's kind of cool to play basketball with a shark. Not gonna lie to you, it was pretty fun. Do they do? They seem to motivate us or to distract us?
Dr. Dylan Selterman 28:51
Well, maybe neither. I mean, I think so. This is one other area where I would say, as a society, I don't think Americans place that much value in their dreams overall, relative to maybe other societies. I think we tend to not put that much stock into our dreams. We don't feel very motivated or distracted by them, I think, and that's probably especially true with with people now in the age of kind of ubiquitous technology, because, like I was saying before, if you wake up and you're just immediately plugged into whatever is going on in your in your devices, then you're not really thinking about your Dreams and taking them seriously. I've actually so I'm collecting some data now on the people who are participating in the study that I'm running are college age students, and I've noticed that overall, they are less likely to report having drugs. Dreams than in some of the past samples that I've collected, and I think that's because they're not really taking the time to think about their dreams after waking up. So I have to kind of go an extra step to make sure that they disconnect from their devices and give them like a pad of paper and a pen to write down their dreams that that I that we know, that we can get them so, yeah, I think overall, probably neither, you know, neither motivated or distracted
Nick VinZant 30:32
man that is an existential crisis in the sense that, like modern society, has killed our dreams, like, oh, but we're
Dr. Dylan Selterman 30:41
not. We're not, you know, we're not doomed. We can, we can focus on our dreams anytime we want to, and we just need to make that choice. And, you know, we still, we still have paper and pencil journals like I still have them. I still use them and or, or, you know, just put your phone on airplane mode and make sure nothing comes in until you write it down and then, and then you have it.
Nick VinZant 31:08
What are we still what's the big thing that we're still trying to learn about dreams?
Dr. Dylan Selterman 31:13
For me, the the next link in the dream research would be to try to figure out like you, like you said before, the chicken or the egg. So is it the dream that is playing a key role in the formation of social bonds, or is it the bond that forms first and then the dreams come after? And how do those things interconnect with each other, like I would love to know, for instance, whether, when people meet, let's say friends or romantic partners, how those dreams change over the course of that bond being actually formed. And then, how does that implicate the long term stability and success of those relationships. So do dreams tell us something about who is more likely to stay together versus who's more likely to break up in a romantic relationship? We still don't know. I mean, I don't know that that's the burning question on every scientist's mind. Who's interested in dreams, but those are, I guess, you know, some of my burning questions. Um,
Nick VinZant 32:24
that's pretty much all the questions we got. What's kind of coming up next for you? What are you working on? All that kind of stuff?
Dr. Dylan Selterman 32:30
Yeah, well, like, I, like I mentioned, we're trying to collect some data now, and hopefully we'll have a good sample of people who are actually reporting dreams consistently, and will be able to look at some of those data. I'm trying to see what other types of personality traits are connected to people's dreams. So that work is in is in process. It's ongoing, and I hope to have something to show for you know, within within the year. I want
Nick VinZant 33:00
to thank Dr selterman so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media accounts. We're Profoundly Pointless on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, and we've also included his information in the episode description. And if you want to see more of this interview, the YouTube version will be live on February 13 at 12:30pm Pacific. Okay, now let's bring in John Shaw and get to the pointless part of the show. Do you have a recurring dream?
John Shull 33:34
I have this. It's the same person in the dream, though it may be a different dream, but it's centered around this one person, and it is spooky. So I should put it, I should say that,
Nick VinZant 33:46
well, okay, who's the person and what's going on in the dream?
John Shull 33:50
So it started when I was a young person, probably a teenager, and it was right after I watched The Blair Witch Project. And if you ever seen that movie, horror, horror movie, obviously there's an end scene where the main character goes down into like a vacant house in the middle of the woods, and another one of the main characters just standing against the wall, obviously possessed, just staring off in Oblivion, dead, right? So I remember this. This is actually kind of giving me chills right now. So I don't remember was that night, whatever, but I had a dream that I was running through the woods. Went to a house, and there was a, you know, like a, like a woman cloaked, and I couldn't see her face. But every time I would, like, shut my eyes, open my eyes, she would get closer, but I couldn't see your face. Yeah. Long story short, I've, I've had that dream and this person in my dream for 25 years now, like I some sometimes, and I don't dream, by the way that I remember, I'm sure I dream, but I don't remember it, but I'll have a dream like, say, I'm at a at a basketball game. You. And she'll be across the arena just sitting there, but I can't tell her what her face is. It's the weirdest thing, man, it's, it's
Nick VinZant 35:08
like, do you try in the dream? Do you try to get a look at her? Like, do you try to make out? Because I'll, sometimes, when I have a dream, I'll and like, details are vague, I'll try to get more details, but I never can in a dream. Like, if I try to read what's on a note or try to think about something like, I my brain won't fill in the details in the dream. My thing
John Shull 35:29
is I always like, like. Now, for some reason, it must be a self conscious thing, but I always try to like, go up to her, and it's like, right when I get to be about where I can tell who she is. I wake up or something happens. It's incredibly stressful saying it out loud, yeah, that's weird, yeah. So yes, I do have a reoccurring theme. I wish I had a better one for you. Now
Nick VinZant 35:54
that I think about it, I do have a recurring dream that I finally get exposed that I didn't actually graduate college, because it just never really made sense in my mind that I had enough credits to graduate college the way that I did. I graduated with two degrees. This is all going to sound douchey, but I graduated with two degrees, and I never understood how I was able to do that. And I'm just worried that, like the dream is always that they're going to find out one day, like, Oh, you didn't actually graduate, you gotta come back.
John Shull 36:22
That's your reoccurring dream.
Nick VinZant 36:25
Yeah, that I would have to go back to college. But My phone is ringing,
John Shull 36:31
this call coming you, you ever been in a situation and somebody has that on, and it's like this call coming from your sex dungeon.
Nick VinZant 36:41
Oh, no, I haven't. Have you been in an awkward situation where somebody got like, I've had somebody like, try to show me something on a phone, and I definitely saw something that I shouldn't have, not crazy, but like, maybe you shouldn't be taking all these screenshots of like, women on the internet. Like, at least put that in a secret place in your phone where it's not like the first 30 pictures.
John Shull 37:07
Nick and I have the unfortunate misfortune of working with a gentleman who is spending plenty of time in prison for collecting child porn. So yeah, I get, I actually, I don't get nervous, but like, I don't want to see, like, if someone's like, Hey, check this out. I'm always like, okay, just okay. Like, I always get nervous that I'm gonna see something and then I'm gonna have to, like, report it, or, like, go to the next like, you know, to the next level. Because I honestly feel that most people are shady weirdos,
Nick VinZant 37:42
yeah? I mean, a lot of, well, everybody's got something a little bit weird, yeah. What percentage would you say the average person is weird?
John Shull 37:53
At least 50% everybody has at least two to three things that are, I guess we would consider weird, but to that person, it's completely normal.
Nick VinZant 38:04
I think, I think that's too high. I think that's too high because I don't think that in the grand scheme of things, there's that many weird things. I think 25% I think 25% is how much most people are weird, just because when you really get into something, it's not that weird. There's still a lot of people who do even what you would consider to be weird things.
John Shull 38:34
Maybe I'm not that weird. I appreciate you saying that. All right, let's give some shout outs here. Xavier Godwin, Jeff board, Zach domerville, Jude Grayson, Jacob Huff Huffman, uh, Muhammad McCabe, Casey Sanderson, Brendan musty. Don't think I'm saying that last name correct.
Nick VinZant 39:01
What is M u s t, y, it's
Unknown Speaker 39:05
M U S k, e, g,
Nick VinZant 39:09
muskeg, M, U S k, e, muskeg, muskeg. All right.
John Shull 39:14
Muskeg, muskeg, okay. I must kick the ball anyways. Uh. Brendan o'doil, I thought that was funny. Nate Kieran, I mean, it's my life for God's sakes, that's true. Dave accent, appreciate all of you this week. Okay, cool. Should we talk should we talk about it? Should we talk about the event that 200 million people watched live around the world. That's
Nick VinZant 39:43
down, though, right? The ratings were down.
John Shull 39:47
Ratings were down, but see, Fox is spinning it. So TV ratings were down, but streaming was up by like 8,000% so that's, oh, yeah, so
Nick VinZant 39:57
they're just making it up, right? Like. This thing we've never counted before is up because we've never decided to count it before. I didn't watch a single second of it, not a single second of it, not the lead up the game, after the game, the commercials. Didn't watch a single second of it. Had no interest of it, which is why I would like to take credit for the Chiefs losing,
John Shull 40:24
in all actuality, my I would, I would have watched it regardless, but my daughters wanted to see Taylor Swift, and then when they only showed her once and she got booed, my oldest daughter was like, why are they booing Taylor Swift? Is she a bad person? And I'm that created a whole conversation I wasn't ready to have. I
Nick VinZant 40:43
did hear that they booed her. I also find it fascinating that she was always down on the field and the guy that she's with, they were always seen together after the win, but then when they lost, like, oh, suddenly they're not seen together, right? Oh, she's not very supportive. That's a real relationship. She's suddenly not very supportive of this guy losing the biggest moment of his year.
John Shull 41:04
You know what? I need to rant for a quick second about him and Travis Kelsey, and it kind of bothers me. He's getting hated on today because he was crying walking back to the dressing room. And it bothered me for multiple reasons, but the main reason is, let the guy cry. He just lost the Super Bowl. I don't care if he's won two already. Like, he just lost something he's been working towards for an entire year. All of us would cry. Like, let it be. It doesn't make him any less of a man.
Nick VinZant 41:35
Yeah. I mean, I get that. My rant on the other side of it is, like, I don't want to ever hear about how athletes work hard. Like, they may work hard, but it's not hard work.
John Shull 41:49
I don't think you know, you know, let the man cry. Who cares? You know, I think it's
Nick VinZant 41:53
fine to cry, but I just don't like it when they're up there talking about, like, Man, I'm working so hard. Like, no, you're really not. Like, that's not hard work. You may be working hard at what you do, but hard work is digging ditches. Like it's not hard work to sit there and catch a football, like it's not, it's not the same thing, and get paid millions of dollars for that. So let's not
John Shull 42:16
but are you telling me that if somebody digging a ditch could catch a football like Travis Kelsey, it wouldn't be reversed.
Nick VinZant 42:26
Yeah, no, I don't, I don't know what point you're trying to make with that one.
John Shull 42:30
It's all hard work Travis Kelsey still had just because he has to lift weights and run and eat and be on a strict diet. Is no different than somebody digging ditches. It's still, it's still hard work, just in a different way.
Nick VinZant 42:43
Well, it's still the same amount of effort that you're putting into it, but it's not hard work when one person's getting paid $20 and somebody else is getting paid $200,000 a minute, that's what the difference is. That's where, like, it becomes pretty easy once you get that amount of money for it. Like putting in that amount of effort for that amount of reward is what makes it different. In my mind.
John Shull 43:05
Listen, how far are you away from Bend Oregon?
Nick VinZant 43:09
I don't actually know, six hours. I live in Seattle, so I'm much closer than you are. Yes,
John Shull 43:14
I think you need to go to the last standing blockbuster at some point and do a report on it and just stand out there. Yeah, I'm sure you are not the only person that would do that. But I was thinking about this sort of the weekend, like, I kind of miss, like, a blockbuster, like a family video,
Nick VinZant 43:33
oh, to, like, go in. I don't miss that at all. I value convenience much more. Like,
John Shull 43:38
maybe I'm different now as a dad like, I would like just my kids to be able to go in and pick something out and make it a full on Movie Night and just turning on the TV and, oh, what's new on streaming. But I also realize I might sound like a carmagen old man right now,
Nick VinZant 43:54
you do sound like a car like, I don't know what is happening with your transition into a 70 year old man, like you went from 32 to 75
Speaker 1 44:03
why can't they bring back the horse and buggy? I'm tired of all these cars. We should just be able to hop on a horse and ride over to our neighbor's house with an unlocked door and say Hello Neighbor.
Unknown Speaker 44:17
See why? Why? Why?
Nick VinZant 44:20
Because you just want to be an old man out
Unknown Speaker 44:24
there. Do you have a blanket right next to you? Do
Nick VinZant 44:26
you have a blanket right next to you right now? Hearing this
John Shull 44:29
for the first time, I wasn't even alive during the horse and buggy era, so,
Nick VinZant 44:35
but yet you want to go back, like, just admit that you want to go back in time. I don't why can't you just admit that you want to go back in time, and you're a grumpy old man,
John Shull 44:45
I wouldn't survive in the 1900s like 1900 and, you know, 1910s like, I wouldn't survive. I don't think,
Nick VinZant 44:52
Okay, what's the last year going back that you think that you could survive if. You went back in time. How far back in time do you think that you could survive? Because for me it might be like 1980
John Shull 45:10
I was gonna say, like, I'd have to miss all the wars. So like World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, like, I'm not getting drafted, yeah, because I'm dying. Okay, um, take,
Nick VinZant 45:20
take, put
the wars and all that kind of stuff out of it, right? Like you're just surviving in that time. How far back do you think you could go and survive?
John Shull 45:33
I mean, probably the one these, maybe. I mean, I think I could live a pretty simple life, if that's what I knew.
Nick VinZant 45:42
Yeah, that's true.
John Shull 45:44
Only problem is, like, if you take me now and throw me back there, life's gonna really suck. It's gonna
Nick VinZant 45:50
be really hard.
I don't know if I could go back to like, the 1950s and live. I don't know if I could survive in the 1950s even.
John Shull 46:03
I just want to see if, if me and my family can put down our devices for an entire day and see if we can do that. I don't think that's possible.
Nick VinZant 46:12
I've done it. You got to get out in the wilderness, man. You got to go, like, be outside a little bit more.
John Shull 46:19
I'm working on it. I tried and I busted my ass.
Nick VinZant 46:24
What do you Okay, so can I tell this story to make it because if you tell it, it's going to be five minutes, but if I tell it's going to be 20 seconds, can I tell it sure John went sledding and fell over and rolled down a hill, and there's a really good picture of it that hopefully he'll share somewhere on social media. My question to you about falling over is, how are you going to reestablish dominance in the house? Because you are not looking like a man amongst men, right? Like if I'm your wife, if I'm your daughters, I'm looking at you like he hurt his back picking up dog poop. He tore his calf muscle trying to play softball, then he tries to go sledding, and he fell off the sled and rolled down the hill like you're not looking like a man who can provide for his family right now.
John Shull 47:12
Oh, but don't you worry, I gained respect right back. Oh, how did you do it? How did you do it? I ran directly up the hill from where I was as kids were sledding around me, I didn't give a shit. You're gonna make room for me. And then some of the people that were asking me if I was okay said, Let's fucking do this again. And then I proceeded to do it. I proceeded to do it 11 more times, okay? And I only fell off probably half of those.
Nick VinZant 47:42
I mean, like, I don't know as an adult, if, like, unless I'm doing a jump or something. Like, I don't know how you fall off a sled. Like, you just sit on it and hold this
John Shull 47:53
hill. And then, yeah, I guess I will have to, for those of you out there, unless I will have to post it. This hill is quite steep for a sledding hill, and there was a layer of ice underneath most of it. Okay, so, I mean, you were basically sliding on ice,
Nick VinZant 48:08
but you're still just sitting down, like, I don't understand, oh, how this is going to be different, right? Like, you just sit on it and it goes down. Like, you literally just have to sit, yeah,
John Shull 48:21
but when you get going fast enough and you move or you hit a divot, assholes were putting ramps on there. I hit one of those airborne That wasn't fun. I don't have to worry. Do you know why I posted that pictures? Because I don't have to worry about establishing dominance. I am fine, right where I am. Hmm,
Nick VinZant 48:43
they're not old enough yet, but they're questioning you. Your family is questioning you right now, behind your back, like, Yeah, Mom, what if somebody breaks into this house? Like, Dad can't even ride a sled. That's their question. The seeds planted. Is there anything else? I
John Shull 49:03
don't have much more. I was going to bring up the fact that you're not going to be able to build a house anymore, but that's just my trump talk. In politics,
Nick VinZant 49:10
you can't build a house. Why can't you build a house? Well,
John Shull 49:13
I think as of you know earlier this week, there's going to be a 25% tax and tariff on Canadian and Mexican steel and aluminum coming into this country. So, you know, there's, oh, yeah, it's just, it's just, it's out of control. I don't know what else to say about
Nick VinZant 49:32
it. Yeah, it's a little all over the place, right? Like, wait five minutes and it'll change. Wait five minutes and it'll change pretty much. Yeah,
Speaker 2 49:39
it's whatever, uh, you ready for a top five?
Nick VinZant 49:43
Oh, you're already done. Okay, alright, alright, let's, let's do it. Alright. So our top five is, I don't know exactly how to just describe our top five, but basically the top five common knowledge, things that you didn't know, like everybody else seemed to. Know this thing and you were the one who didn't know it. What's your number five?
John Shull 50:05
Uh, so that this is, these are gonna sound terrible, but I learned, oh yeah, they're all gonna be terrible. Yeah. I learned all these lessons at some point in my life, so I don't do them anymore. Just throw them. Okay, okay, my number five is learning that a solid white line does not mean pass.
Nick VinZant 50:27
You should know that, like that's one
of the rules of the road. You should really know I have I thought about putting the fact that I don't know how a four way stop works on there, but that's not as dangerous to people as thinking a solid white line means pass. Well,
John Shull 50:42
I knew, like, I knew it didn't mean like, pass, but I didn't think it meant you like, you're not supposed to pass. I thought it just was a barrier in the middle of the road. I had one close call, and then the person I was with was like, you idiot. That's why it's there, is because there's, you know, whatever. So, yeah, but yeah, solid white line means do not pass. I learned that.
Nick VinZant 51:03
Wow. Yeah, that's the lesson that's going to come the hard way, right? Yeah, I guess I grew up growing up in Kansas, which has a lot of two lane roads, like, you learn that pretty quick, like, oh, I shouldn't pass on this curve.
Speaker 2 51:17
Yeah. Pretty much, pretty much. Okay, my
Nick VinZant 51:21
number five is, don't put hot water on a cold windshield. I didn't make that mistake. I didn't make that mistake, but I saw somebody else make that mistake. It's like, Oh
John Shull 51:34
yeah, right there. Man, that is, oh, that is, why would you even I mean, I why I don't. Why would that person even do that makes no sense. Somebody
Nick VinZant 51:45
just doesn't know. I live in Seattle, and I saw a grown adult, like 4050, year old doing it, and I tried to catch him. And you like, I didn't catch it's like, don't, yeah, if you don't know, you don't know, you think it's a brilliant idea. Oh boy, there's a hot water on this cold thing that doesn't gotta be bad, idiot. All right, what's your number four? This is starting off better than I thought it was gonna be. Okay. Yeah,
John Shull 52:11
Johnny, my number four is another something else to do with heat, and that is, do not take a hot pan off the stove and put it in your kitchen sink, because it will Bumble the metal.
Nick VinZant 52:23
Oh, how hot is Japan. I love doing that. And, like, turn on the water right away. And he goes,
John Shull 52:27
Yeah, just taking it right from the water to the sink, putting it down. And you sometimes you hear just up, you know, or other times, I mean, I, I've had it, I've had it pretty bad. So, you know, you know, you might, you might want to hold it and put the water and then put it on maybe. But, yeah, it can be pretty bad, just for the audience.
Nick VinZant 52:47
And quick update, how many pairs of tongs do you have at the moment?
John Shull 52:53
You know, I'm actually down two pairs. I've broken, or I haven't. My family member, including my oldest daughter, has broken a pair. So, you know, say I was at 13, I'm down to 11 now. Oh,
Nick VinZant 53:03
you gonna stock mike up? You gonna get some more tongs,
John Shull 53:07
probably. But I actually, I'm gonna get a whole new pan set. So, oh, my God,
Nick VinZant 53:13
it's kind of exciting, but also it's incredibly lame. Uh, my number four is that the shower curtain goes on the inside of the tub. I always put it on the outside of the tub. I didn't know that at all. Oh, one day my wife is like, why is there all this water out here? It's like, I don't know. I got the shower curtain. It's on the inside, you idiot. Yeah, I didn't know that at all. Yeah,
John Shull 53:38
that's a pretty bad one right there. That's not a good thing. My number three is, never feed, you know, animals like at a public place.
Nick VinZant 53:49
Oh, well, what kind of I guess? I mean, I'll feed like a squirrel,
John Shull 53:52
like, for instance, I lived in in Orlando, and I lived on Lake Eola in swans, like, I learned not to feed them, because, for one, they don't go away, and then they'll follow you, and then they'll get angry when you don't give them any more food. And then, for some reason, they remember you, and then want to just bite the shit out of you the next time they
Nick VinZant 54:11
see you. Did you get attacked by geese at Lake Loyola, the angry
John Shull 54:15
swan? I don't know you. I don't know if you were there when there was a mother that was protecting, you know, her, her babies. But back in the day, when I was a runner, ran too close and she, God damn, like was chasing me,
Nick VinZant 54:28
kind of, don't mess with the animals and their babies. Man, don't mess with Well, I didn't mean to,
Unknown Speaker 54:33
but whatever. Uh, my
Nick VinZant 54:35
number three is that England, the United Kingdom and Great Britain, are not all the same thing. I thought that England, United Kingdom and Great Britain were all the same. Like, you could explain the difference to me every day for a year, and I still won't know the difference. I
John Shull 54:53
mean, I feel like I know the difference, but now that you say that, I don't know if I could tell you the difference, right,
Nick VinZant 54:57
right? When you start to like, you think, like, oh. I know the difference. And then you think about it for a second and realize you don't know the difference. I know England is just England, but I'm not sure what the difference between the United Kingdom and Great Britain is. Maybe the United Kingdom is all that one island, like with Ireland and Scotland and
John Shull 55:19
Wales. Well, I think that is all three. And Great Britain is England. You know, I think
Nick VinZant 55:27
let's not look this up at all and just give okay, what's my this is my bet for Great Britain is it's like where London is, plus like Scotland and Ireland and Wales, and then the United Kingdom is that, and some other territories that I don't really know about, like Papa, New Guinea or French Guiana, which is Jesus. But should,
Speaker 2 55:48
should we just, should we just move on? We should probably just move on. Yeah, you're right. Okay, what's your number two? Uh, my number two
John Shull 55:55
is that on your, like, gas Gage, the arrow tells you which side of the car the gas tank is on. Is that really your number two? Is that your number two?
Nick VinZant 56:08
Yeah, that's my number two too. I had no idea that the arrow showed you what side the gas tank was on. I'm always like, what sides the gas tank on?
John Shull 56:16
I learned that at a very like, probably 2021 I didn't even know it was there until my wife showed me,
Nick VinZant 56:23
oh, I was probably in my 30s when I realized that, yeah, I
John Shull 56:29
I had no I would say, though, that out of everything, that's probably the one where I was like, Wow, I feel like, like, the an idiot, more so than anything.
Nick VinZant 56:39
That's like, the biggest thing, because it's practical, like, Oh, I wish I would have known that. That would have been helpful all this time. Yeah, for sure. What's your number one?
John Shull 56:48
Probably the most frustrating one to me, and that is, I will until you learn this, and that is that shirt tags are always on the left. They are, yeah,
Nick VinZant 57:01
I didn't know that.
John Shull 57:02
Yeah, there's usually most shirts, at least cheap shirts, there's always a little tag on the left and because that way when you put it on, you know that side the tags on is, you know how you want to put it on, I
Nick VinZant 57:15
feel like this is another piece of evidence for the discrimination of left hand against left handed people like myself.
John Shull 57:21
I said all shirts, but a lot of shirts. And I when I learned that, I was like, Oh, it makes perfect sense. I'm not gonna be putting my shirts on backwards
Nick VinZant 57:31
anymore. Oh, I mean, I didn't you. You had that was a big problem until you learned this can like, and we didn't just be like, Oh, yeah. Can we agree
John Shull 57:41
that one of the most frustrating things is getting out of the shower and putting on a shirt and it's backwards, and then you have to take it off and your skin's still kind of wet. It's a frustrating thing. It's one of the most frustrating things that you can go through.
Nick VinZant 57:53
I really don't run into that problem very much. I don't know if I've accidentally put a shirt on backwards in 15 years. Like, I really don't like, why are you? How often does this happen to you that you're constantly putting shirts on backwards?
John Shull 58:10
I mean, probably, it still probably happens once or twice a week to me. I don't know i It's always the undershirt, it's not the Polo. It's not the button down,
Nick VinZant 58:22
the button down, then you got, like, you need to go, Well, you got bigger problems if, like, Oh, crap. So
John Shull 58:30
yeah, probably wants your choice a week still,
Nick VinZant 58:34
I really don't understand how that's even possible. To be honest with you, like, I don't know what you're doing over there.
Speaker 2 58:41
Nobody does Nick No one gets it. My
Nick VinZant 58:44
number one is that eggs aren't just baby chickens. I really thought that those were just like, if you just left the egg, you turn into like a baby chicken. Like, that's not how that works.
John Shull 58:58
You know, that reminds me. I somebody once told me, like, if you eat like a seed, it'll sprout in your stomach. So for the longest times, like, if I if I ever swallowed a seed, I would be worried I was gonna have like, something sprouting in my stomach.
Nick VinZant 59:11
I remember some relative of mine told me that about watermelons, and this was before the invention of seedless watermelons. It's been in their hours. I love watermelons. It's in their hours, like picking out all the seeds. Uncle, watermelon, your stomach. You
John Shull 59:25
know your mom and dad were like, Thank you, uncle. Larry. Nick's been busy for hours. I have an uncle. Larry, of course you do, because
Nick VinZant 59:33
you're Do you have an uncle? Do you have an uncle? Larry,
John Shull 59:35
I do not have an uncle. Larry. John Wayne, for God's sakes,
Nick VinZant 59:41
you have an uncle. His name is John Wayne. Yeah. John Wayne Shaw,
Unknown Speaker 59:47
no. Baker, my mother is John Wayne Baker,
Nick VinZant 59:49
J, W,
Speaker 2 59:51
B, we call him if we ever talk to him anymore.
Nick VinZant 59:54
Does he seem like the kind of guy who should be named John Wayne Baker, the.
John Shull 1:00:00
You say relations with with John Wayne aren't, haven't been the best in a long time, so I don't know could be done? Okay, I know. Well,
Nick VinZant 1:00:06
that sounds like a guy who probably shouldn't be named John Wayne. Then that's funny. Do you have anything in your honorable mention?
John Shull 1:00:14
Nothing good. Yeah, nothing better than what I had on my list. I don't think
Nick VinZant 1:00:21
hmm, I didn't realize the only the other thing that I had was, I didn't realize you were supposed to leave, like, shampoo in for a while. I thought you just Okay, put it like, sure, and that was it like. I thought you just put it on your hands, like soaping up your arm. Like you don't just leave the soap on your arm. I didn't realize that's what you were supposed to do with shampoo. I just, like, there it is. Done. I
John Shull 1:00:41
wasn't gonna put this on the list, but I felt that this would be too embarrassing. But I didn't realize that hand sanitizer just isn't, like a universal for everything, like you take a shit, it can be soap, you know what? I mean? Oh, you drop something on the counter, you use it as, like, you know, Lysol or something. You
Nick VinZant 1:01:02
didn't realize that that it's not for just, like, it's just not an all purpose cleanser
John Shull 1:01:07
for the for you kids out there that don't remember the pandemic, I remember buying, like, 30 bottles of hand sanitizer. I remember that. And I would use, like, I would use it everywhere. I mean, on everything, anytime I touch something or, I mean, my hands were so chapped.
Nick VinZant 1:01:23
Oh, okay, that's gonna go ahead and do it for this episode of Profoundly Pointless. I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, leave us a quick review. Subscribe to the show. We really appreciate it really helps us out and let us know what you think are some of the things that for whatever reason, everybody else seemed to know it, except for you? You.