Zen Parenting Radio

Cathy and Todd discuss Top Gun: Maverick to complete their summer blockbuster series, the 2022 legacy sequel that brought Tom Cruise back to the role that made him famous, three decades (and a pandemic delay) later. They talk about Val Kilmer’s real battle with throat cancer and how it shaped his return as Iceman, discuss the film’s themes of grief, legacy, and mentorship, de...

Cathy and Todd continue their summer blockbuster series and discuss Wedding Crashers, the 2005 comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson that grossed $288.5 million on a $40 million budget. They cover the cast including Rachel McAdams, Isla Fisher, Christopher Walken, Bradley Cooper, and Jane Seymour, plus behind-the-scenes trivia like the almost-cast Justin Long, the scra...

Cathy and Todd discuss the most recent summer blockbuster, The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s take on Homer’s epic and why a 2,700-year-old story about identity, home, and longing still hits just as hard today. From the Cyclops to the Sirens to Circe, they trace the myths and monsters and what those stories still reveal about who we are, and why the humanities matter to a thriv...

Cathy and Todd continue their summer blockbusters series with National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), John Landis’s frat-house classic that launched the college-comedy genre. They discuss the cast, behind-the-scenes trivia, the film’s most WTF scenes, and their own experiences in the Greek system. They also list the top 15 fraternity party songs of the early ’90s, pl...

Cathy and Todd discuss Back to the Future for their summer blockbuster series, Robert Zemeckis’s 1985 time-travel classic that took nearly 40 rejections to get made before Steven Spielberg got involved. They discuss how Eric Stoltz was originally cast as Marty McFly and shot for five weeks before being replaced by Michael J. Fox, who then secretly filmed the movie at night wh...