This week, the Shat The Movies boys dust off their prep school blazers and follow Robin Williams into Welton Academy for 1989’s Dead Poets Society.
Commissioned by listener Rob F., this Oscar-winning coming-of-age drama gave the world “Carpe Diem,” a standing-on-desks finale, and enough inspiration to launch a thousand “cool teacher” clichés. But does it still move us 35 years later, or has it become too earnest for its own good?
Gene and Big D wrestle with their own school baggage while debating whether John Keating is a saintly mentor or a reckless enabler who lit fires in his students without offering any guardrails.
We revisit Ethan Hawke’s breakout role, the betrayal of Cameron (still unforgivable), and whether Neil’s tragedy hits harder as adults who now understand the crushing weight of parental expectation.
Along the way, Big D confesses he usually hates “inspirational teacher” movies, Gene compares Keating’s lessons to Krav Maga, and both hosts admit Robin Williams nails his most delicate performance without veering into schmaltz.
Is Dead Poets Society timeless poetry, or just a prep school fantasy that collapses under its own sentimentality? Seize the day and find out.
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The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.