The Nighttime Stress Issue: Dreams of Car Keys and Sciatica

Welcome to a very special episode of All the Feelings, brought to you by REM sleep, tennis elbow, and the visceral horror of trying to put on socks like you’re still in your 30s.

This week, Pete and Tommy are pulling a two-for-one special: first, they dive into the dreamscape of adult anxiety—why our nighttime brains love to drop us in college final exams we never studied for and why Tommy keeps losing his car in a parking garage that exists only in the astral plane. Then, they shift to the nighttime betrayals of the body: the mysterious transformation from human being to fragile pile of orthopedic complaints, where simply “sleeping” can result in injuries typically reserved for Olympic gymnastics.

Along the way, we get hot tips from Tommy’s therapist (shout-out to Bonnie!), dream science from the BBC, and Pete’s personal musculoskeletal origin story—which involves surprise vertebra fusion, leg-length inequality, and an orthotic insert named Steve. There’s also a powerful case made for the humble foam roller, a pony running off with Tommy’s Mazda, and a rare Greek myth about moon-gazing lovers that ends, predictably, in a curse.

If you’ve ever woken up more injured than you were when you went to bed, if you’ve ever texted your group chat just to be out-sympathied by someone who dislocated their shoulder sneezing, or if you’ve ever been haunted by the ghost of your own plantar fascia, this one’s for you.

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