
Hosted by Todd and Cathy Adams · EN

Cathy and Todd continue their summer blockbusters series with Terminator 2: Judgment Day, James Cameron’s 1991 sci-fi action landmark that grossed $519 million on a then-record $102 million budget and won four Academy Awards. They cover the best behind-the-scenes stories, including how Billy Idol was originally cast as the T-1000 before a motorcycle accident took him out, how Edward Furlong was discovered at a Pasadena Boys and Girls Club with zero acting experience, and why Robert Patrick trained so relentlessly that he outran the insert car on the very first take of the mall chase scene. Subscribe to Cathy’s weekly Zen Moment and upgrade to hear a weekly Zen Moment podcast hosted by Cathy and Todd! Some Ways to Support Us Sign up for Cathy’s Substack Order Restoring our Girls Links shared in this episode: For the full show notes, visit zenpopparenting.com. This week’s sponsor(s): Avid Co DuPage County Area Decorating, Painting, Remodeling by Avid Co includes kitchens, basements, bathrooms, flooring, tiling, fire and flood restoration. MenLiving – A virtual and in-person community of guys connecting deeply and living fully. No requirements, no creeds, no gurus, no judgements Todd Adams Life & Leadership Coaching for Guys Other Ways to Support Us Follow us on social media Instagram YouTube Facebook Buy and leave a review for Cathy’s Book Zen Parenting: Caring for Ourselves and Our Children in an Unpredictable World

Cathy and Todd discuss Gladiator, released in 2000 and directed by Ridley Scott, it stars Russell Crowe as Maximus, a Roman general betrayed by the Emperor’s son Commodus, who murders his own father Marcus Aurelius to seize power, then orders the execution of Maximus and his entire family. Sold into slavery and forced into the arena, Maximus fights his way back to Rome for one purpose: vengeance. With a box office of $466 million, five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actor for Crowe, and a Hans Zimmer score that became one of the bestselling soundtracks of all time, the film didn’t just succeed, it reinvented an entire genre and inspired everything from HBO’s Rome to The Hunger Games. It’s filled with unforgettable lines like, “What we do in life echoes in eternity” and “Are you not entertained?”, and it happens to be one of Cathy’s all-time favorite movies. Subscribe to Cathy’s weekly Zen Moment and upgrade to hear a weekly Zen Moment podcast hosted by Cathy and Todd! Some Ways to Support Us Sign up for Cathy’s Substack Order Restoring our Girls Links shared in this episode: For the full show notes, visit zenpopparenting.com. This week’s sponsor(s): Avid Co DuPage County Area Decorating, Painting, Remodeling by Avid Co includes kitchens, basements, bathrooms, flooring, tiling, fire and flood restoration. MenLiving – A virtual and in-person community of guys connecting deeply and living fully. No requirements, no creeds, no gurus, no judgements Todd Adams Life & Leadership Coaching for Guys Other Ways to Support Us Follow us on social media Instagram YouTube Facebook Buy and leave a review for Cathy’s Book Zen Parenting: Caring for Ourselves and Our Children in an Unpredictable World

Cathy and Todd continue their summer blockbusters series with Raiders of the Lost Ark, the George Lucas and Steven Spielberg collaboration born from a beach conversation in Hawaii, diving into the film’s origins, iconic casting (Tom Selleck almost got the role), and the chaotic Tunisia shoot where nearly the entire cast and crew got food poisoning. They rank history’s oddest movie titles, wrestle with the film’s deeply uncomfortable Marion subplot, and close out with why Raiders still holds up as a masterclass in humble heroism and why Indy wins in the end by simply closing his eyes. Subscribe to Cathy’s weekly Zen Moment and upgrade to hear a weekly Zen Moment podcast hosted by Cathy and Todd! Some Ways to Support Us Sign up for Cathy’s Substack Order Restoring our Girls Links shared in this episode: For the full show notes, visit zenpopparenting.com. This week’s sponsor(s): Avid Co DuPage County Area Decorating, Painting, Remodeling by Avid Co includes kitchens, basements, bathrooms, flooring, tiling, fire and flood restoration. MenLiving – A virtual and in-person community of guys connecting deeply and living fully. No requirements, no creeds, no gurus, no judgements Todd Adams Life & Leadership Coaching for Guys Other Ways to Support Us Follow us on social media Instagram YouTube Facebook Buy and leave a review for Cathy’s Book Zen Parenting: Caring for Ourselves and Our Children in an Unpredictable World

Cathy and Todd kick off their summer blockbuster series with Top Gun (1986), directed by Tony Scott and produced by Simpson and Bruckheimer, which turned a $15 million budget into $357 million worldwide and made Tom Cruise a superstar. The episode covers the Scott brothers’ contrasting Hollywood legacies, the Navy’s behind-the-scenes script approval that reshaped the story, plus fun trivia like Cruise’s height-correcting boots and Meg Ryan secretly dating Anthony Edwards on set all while debating whether Iceman was the better pilot and whether Quentin Tarantino’s theory about the subtext is correct.   Some Ways to Support Us Sign up for Cathy’s Substack Order Restoring our Girls Links shared in this episode: For the full show notes, visit zenpopparenting.com. This week’s sponsor(s): Avid Co DuPage County Area Decorating, Painting, Remodeling by Avid Co includes kitchens, basements, bathrooms, flooring, tiling, fire and flood restoration. MenLiving – A virtual and in-person community of guys connecting deeply and living fully. No requirements, no creeds, no gurus, no judgements Todd Adams Life & Leadership Coaching for Guys Other Ways to Support Us Follow us on social media Instagram YouTube Facebook Buy and leave a review for Cathy’s Book Zen Parenting: Caring for Ourselves and Our Children in an Unpredictable World

Cathy and Todd discuss Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs for Zen Pop’s space month, a 1987 Star Wars parody following Lone Starr and his half-man half-dog sidekick Barf as they rescue Princess Vespa from Dark Helmet and the incompetent President Skroob (whose name is literally an anagram of Brooks). The cast includes Bill Pullman, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Daphne Zuniga, Joan Rivers, and Dom DeLuise as Pizza the Hutt. They discuss the WTF moments, the lines they quote at home, and the news that a sequel, Spaceballs: The New One, arrives April 23, 2027 with most of the original cast returning. Some Ways to Support Us Sign up for Cathy’s Substack Order Restoring our Girls Join Team Zen Links shared in this episode: For the full show notes, visit zenpopparenting.com. This week’s sponsor(s): Avid Co DuPage County Area Decorating, Painting, Remodeling by Avid Co includes kitchens, basements, bathrooms, flooring, tiling, fire and flood restoration. David Serrano- Certified Financial Planner- 815-370-3780 MenLiving – A virtual and in-person community of guys connecting deeply and living fully. No requirements, no creeds, no gurus, no judgements Todd Adams Life & Leadership Coaching for Guys Other Ways to Support Us Follow us on social media Instagram YouTube Facebook Buy and leave a review for Cathy’s Book Zen Parenting: Caring for Ourselves and Our Children in an Unpredictable World Find everything ZPR on our Resources Page Guys- Complete a MenLiving Connect profile

Cathy and Todd discuss Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar for Space Month – the dying Earth, the wormhole near Saturn, the black hole that swallows decades of a man’s life while his daughter grows old without him. They get into Matt Damon showing up two-thirds through as a villain nobody knew was in the movie, why Anne Hathaway’s love speech is the whole point of the film, the fact that Nolan grew 500 acres of real corn for the opening scenes, and the science behind the black hole Gargantua that was so accurate it accidentally produced two peer-reviewed papers. Plus the bigger question the movie keeps circling: what if love isn’t just a feeling, but something woven into the actual structure of the universe? Some Ways to Support Us Sign up for Cathy’s Substack Order Restoring our Girls Join Team Zen Links shared in this episode: For the full show notes, visit zenpopparenting.com. This week’s sponsor(s): Avid Co DuPage County Area Decorating, Painting, Remodeling by Avid Co includes kitchens, basements, bathrooms, flooring, tiling, fire and flood restoration. David Serrano- Certified Financial Planner- 815-370-3780 MenLiving – A virtual and in-person community of guys connecting deeply and living fully. No requirements, no creeds, no gurus, no judgements Todd Adams Life & Leadership Coaching for Guys Other Ways to Support Us Follow us on social media Instagram YouTube Facebook Buy and leave a review for Cathy’s Book Zen Parenting: Caring for Ourselves and Our Children in an Unpredictable World Find everything ZPR on our Resources Page Guys- Complete a MenLiving Connect profile

Cathy and Todd discuss Apollo 13 (1995) for Space Month, Ron Howard’s docudrama starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris, based on the true story of NASA’s near-disastrous 1970 lunar mission. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards and grossed over $355 million worldwide, cementing its place as one of the great survival stories ever put on screen. They discuss the complicated legacies of the astronauts, the emotional devastation of the wives left behind, and why the most famous line in the film isn’t what anyone actually said. Some Ways to Support Us Sign up for Cathy’s Substack Order Restoring our Girls Join Team Zen Links shared in this episode: For the full show notes, visit zenpopparenting.com. This week’s sponsor(s): Avid Co DuPage County Area Decorating, Painting, Remodeling by Avid Co includes kitchens, basements, bathrooms, flooring, tiling, fire and flood restoration. David Serrano- Certified Financial Planner- 815-370-3780 MenLiving – A virtual and in-person community of guys connecting deeply and living fully. No requirements, no creeds, no gurus, no judgements Todd Adams Life & Leadership Coaching for Guys Other Ways to Support Us Follow us on social media Instagram YouTube Facebook Buy and leave a review for Cathy’s Book Zen Parenting: Caring for Ourselves and Our Children in an Unpredictable World Find everything ZPR on our Resources Page Guys- Complete a MenLiving Connect profile

It’s Space Month on Zen Pop, and Cathy and Todd are talking about E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the Steven Spielberg film he called the first movie he ever made for himself. They discuss why it dominated 1982 and held the all-time worldwide box office record for eleven years, the Reese’s Pieces deal that made Mars look very foolish, the Atari game so bad they buried it in the desert, and why at its core this movie is really about divorce, grief, and two outsiders who find each other. Some Ways to Support Us Sign up for Cathy’s Substack Order Restoring our Girls Join Team Zen Links shared in this episode: For the full show notes, visit zenpopparenting.com. This week’s sponsor(s): Avid Co DuPage County Area Decorating, Painting, Remodeling by Avid Co includes kitchens, basements, bathrooms, flooring, tiling, fire and flood restoration. David Serrano- Certified Financial Planner- 815-370-3780 MenLiving – A virtual and in-person community of guys connecting deeply and living fully. No requirements, no creeds, no gurus, no judgements Todd Adams Life & Leadership Coaching for Guys Other Ways to Support Us Follow us on social media Instagram YouTube Facebook Buy and leave a review for Cathy’s Book Zen Parenting: Caring for Ourselves and Our Children in an Unpredictable World Find everything ZPR on our Resources Page Guys- Complete a MenLiving Connect profile

Cathy and Todd discuss Rocky IV, the 1985 film that Sylvester Stallone wrote, directed, and starred in, grossing $300 million on a $31 million budget and spending six weeks at number one over Christmas. They break down Apollo Creed’s shocking death at the hands of Ivan Drago and the real story of Brigitte Nielsen sliding a photo under Stallone’s hotel room door and landing a role he wrote specifically for her. They dig into what the film is really about, whether Drago is a villain or the Soviet state’s most tragic victim, how every great sports movie is secretly about an individual fighting an institution that doesn’t want them to win, and why a film that won five Razzie Awards is still so beloved to this day. This is our last entry for Rocky month! Some Ways to Support Us Sign up for Cathy’s Substack Order Restoring our Girls Join Team Zen Links shared in this episode: For the full show notes, visit zenpopparenting.com. This week’s sponsor(s): Avid Co DuPage County Area Decorating, Painting, Remodeling by Avid Co includes kitchens, basements, bathrooms, flooring, tiling, fire and flood restoration. David Serrano- Certified Financial Planner- 815-370-3780 MenLiving – A virtual and in-person community of guys connecting deeply and living fully. No requirements, no creeds, no gurus, no judgements Todd Adams Life & Leadership Coaching for Guys Other Ways to Support Us Follow us on social media Instagram YouTube Facebook Buy and leave a review for Cathy’s Book Zen Parenting: Caring for Ourselves and Our Children in an Unpredictable World Find everything ZPR on our Resources Page Guys- Complete a MenLiving Connect profile

Cathy and Todd discuss Rocky 3, the 1982 sequel where Stallone ditched everything that made the first two movies feel real and ended up with the biggest hit of the franchise anyway. They talk about where Mr. T came from, how Hulk Hogan got hired, and how Stallone dropped 40 pounds so fast it caused memory loss. They get into how “Eye of the Tiger” only exists because Queen said no, the statue that Philadelphia didn’t want, and an ending that freezes mid-fight. Also Paulie, because there’s always something to say about Paulie. Some Ways to Support Us Sign up for Cathy’s Substack Order Restoring our Girls Join Team Zen Links shared in this episode: For the full show notes, visit zenpopparenting.com. This week’s sponsor(s): Avid Co DuPage County Area Decorating, Painting, Remodeling by Avid Co includes kitchens, basements, bathrooms, flooring, tiling, fire and flood restoration. David Serrano- Certified Financial Planner- 815-370-3780 MenLiving – A virtual and in-person community of guys connecting deeply and living fully. No requirements, no creeds, no gurus, no judgements Todd Adams Life & Leadership Coaching for Guys Other Ways to Support Us Follow us on social media Instagram YouTube Facebook Buy and leave a review for Cathy’s Book Zen Parenting: Caring for Ourselves and Our Children in an Unpredictable World Find everything ZPR on our Resources Page Guys- Complete a MenLiving Connect profile