Episode 26 – Pumping Iron (1977) with Dave Brouillette

“Blood is rushing into your muscles and that’s what we call The Pump. Your muscles get a really tight feeling, like your skin is going to explode any minute, and it’s really tight – it’s like somebody blowing air into it, into your muscle. It just blows up, and it feels really different. It feels fantastic.”

This month, we’re hitting the weights and getting a good pump with Dave Brouillette, as we bench press the 1977 bodybuilding docudrama that got Arnold noticed in Hollywood: Pumping Iron!

Cameras document – or is it dramatize? – the lives of the world’s leading bodybuilders as they prepare to compete for their sport’s top 1975 amateur and professional championships. One is junior high school teacher, Mike Katz, who aspires to the title of Mr. Universe. Another is shy underdog, Lou Ferrigno, who hopes to flex his way to the title of Mr. Olympia. But to do that, he must topple the reigning five-time returning champion, a certain popular and charismatic Austrian, just a couple years away from Hollywood superstardom.

Episode 3 – Hercules in New York (1969) with Sam Mulvey

hercules-in-new-york

“It’s tremendous! It’s stupendous!! It’s FUN!!!”*

We’re back with a dive into a mythic time — in more ways than one — with Ask an Atheist‘s Sam Mulvey to test our endurance against the herculean labor of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first starring role, in 1969’s Hercules in New York!

Bored of his idyllic life on Mount Olympus, Greek demigod Hercules provokes his father Zeus into sending him to modern day Earth. There, he beats up longshoremen and bullies college athletes. He eventually becomes a successful professional wrestler, and battles both the machinations of the gods and gangsters alike.

*none of these statements are true