Beantown Podcast - Janyary Pranks

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

Quinn comes to you LIVE to talk about failed spellcheck, the mighty bat, and Pittsburgh Men's Basketball

Hey, what's going on? It's Quinn David Furness. Welcome to my show. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast for Friday, January 16th, 2026. What's going on? What's happening? How are you? We are now in year nine of Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast. I am your host, creator. And I got to make a noun out of this. I'm looking at this bag of treats titled Drizellicious that Rachel picked up. from somewhere, Costco, CVS, the tobacco store, I don't know. There are mini rice cakes reimagined, smores bites, drizzled deliciousness. Oh, whole foods. Okay.

So this whole bag, this four-ounce bag, was $8.99, if you can believe it. And it's fast-siddy because they're rice cake bites, I swear to God, you lift up this bag and it weighs a tenth of an ounce. of a pound or something like that. It's crazy. How do they even make cakes out of the rice? You got to puff them with air. How do you get the air into the rice? Not sure.

We get our research team right on that. We'll come to you live on a Friday evening here. And just chilling. Got our research team Meple over here. She was alone for an hour earlier this week. It was really traumatizing. and now she's looking frumpy well she is looking frumpy

she needs a shower a shampoo she needs some of her she got some shampoo spray from Whole Foods that was 2399 and she's looking frumpy she needs a nail trim a defrumptizer

that's right I'm the chief frumpeteer on this program I want to give a shout out to our good friends in pakistan thank you for making can't see 120th ranked comedy podcasts in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Lahore, Karachi, Calcutta, and all over the place, really. You know, shout it from the mountaintops down to the valley forest, to the canyons.

So they have canyons in Pakistan. You just kind of assume these things, but I'm not sure. And I also want to mention that listener discretion is advised when you're listening to this program. Number one will occasioning some language. Number two, this podcast is objectively terrible. So if you're newer to the show and you've heard me maybe reference Pakistan once or twice in the 112-ranked comedy podcast, that's say, you know, for all the joking around and joshin, that's right, we do a lot of joshin on this show. That wasn't something I just pulled out of my behind.

It was an email, you know, one of those classic probably spam emails with, you know, not founded on anything that is truthful or realistic. But, you know, there's always a 5% chance. It's just like it was a 5% chance that the guy emailing me back in season one with the scam was actually Chris Rock. Like, we don't think it was, but I don't know what he gets up to in his hobbies in his free time. When he's not getting slapped at award shows, you know, it's not like Chris Rock is out there working every day. He's probably does some stand-up works, you know, does projects when he wants to. And other times he might just be emailing me about opening up a diamond mine. and it's unlikely, right, but you can't rule it out completely.

Well, the reason I bring this up is we got a great email. I've been getting a decent amount of, like, they're not, you wouldn't characterize them as spam emails, but into the Beantown inbox, Beantown Podcast at Yahoo.com. Again, it's Beantown Podcast at Yahoo.com. I've been getting a lot of emails lately, you know, and they're just people advertising their business. It's SEO marketing, SEO consulting, search engine optimization.

We would call it here in the, the biz. And, you know, it's always, you know, something stupid is like AI wrote it, but it's just like, hey, Quinn David. That's right. It's always Quinn David, because my name on these shows is Quinn David's Furnace. And it's always like, your listeners aren't finding you for one simple reason. They can't find you. Check out, you know, SEO.AI today for free consultation to learn how to revamp and turn your thousands of leads into thousands of listens. That's essentially the of it. So I get these emails all the time. But I got one that was particularly, excuse me, not specific necessarily, but just kind of wild. And I wanted, I saved it. It just came in today.

I wanted to read it live on the air because I think there's some really interesting insights. And we can all learn a little bit, something maybe about what makes Bean Town, Beantown, Beantown. And that's a good opportunity, good call to action for you all, the Beanheads out there, to give us an email. Send us an email. Bean Town Podcast at Yahoo.com with your, you know, your thoughts, your insights. What makes Bean Town, Bean Town, what should our core values be? You know, what, what's, we need a Beantown podcast mission statement, probably. That would be something we can work on together.

The problem is, I have to go rummage around in my closet. That's right. First we were joshing and next we're going to be rummaging. I've got a mic stand somewhere. Actually, I think it's over by the piano. somewhere that I'm going to have to dig out because it's really hard to type up a mission statement with one hand. I'm always doing work here in the Beantown podcast with one hand. And that's research and stuff. And it's always always a challenge. So what I need to, I need to go hands free.

Or maybe we just do an episode live with the AirPods, give Samson a week off. We'll see. I don't know. But that could be a goal for next week. My mission for next week is to make a mission statement. Don't let me forget. I should start a note in my phone before. I forget. Actually, you know, I'm opening this up at my Beantown podcast inbox. And wouldn't you believe it? I haven't opened it up yet. I'm in my notes at writing down mission statement. But to come back to the present here, what I was just talking about with, you know, getting these marketing emails, essentially these big email blasts about SEO, I open it up 5 p.m. here on Friday night. This is from email, hello at absorblms.com, which is interesting learning management

system. I don't know. This is what it says. I'm reading this live on air. This isn't the email that I wanted to read. We'll get to that in a second. This is new. This is, I assume, to Beantown Podcasts. Oh, no, this is, this is not even the Beantown Podcast. This is, this is something about LMS learning management system and metrics and education. So we're going to scrap that because I thought it was going to have some good concrete advice for my business, but it's more about education, which is less exciting. I do want to give a quick cone of shame to Yelp for sending a message today, January 16th, 2026. I don't even know why I'm on the Yelp mailing list. I've been trying to be better about like when I actually see something in my inbox from like,

yeah, I definitely do. There's no chance in the future. where I would need to receive a Yelp marketing email or landsend or something. So I'm like, you know what, we're just going to go take care of this. But I'll let you know the cone of shame that I'm handing them, which is a new thing I just invented. Their email subject line is Goodbye, Mess, Hello, 2026. And it's just like, I know that's not quite the same thing as like a happy New Year email. But you can't say hello 2026 on January 16th. That's my, I'm taking a stand.

And I know that's like a curb your enthusiasm type thing. Like there's a whole bit on, you know, how late you can say happy new year. But I don't think Larry David gets to own the calendar. I think I can comment on this as well. Let's plow ahead here because we got to talk. We got, we got pranks. I got some betting advice I want to give you with the all new Beantown Sportsbook. We got a fun trivia question.

And I think generally speaking, we're going to keep it high and tight this episode. There's some episodes or there's just like a million bullet points on my phone and it's my notes and it's juicy and I want to get through all of it. And then there's some episodes where it's just like, you know what, it's January, it's dark, it's dry, just trying to survive the same as you all. And there's a lot of good quality content out there. Good shows to watch, traders, pit. I don't know. Other shows, football. So you don't need to spend an hour with Beantown.

just doing filler like we're inside of a real housewise lips or something right we're just going to give you what i got and we're going to go on with our day i think i'm going to play a video game tonight maybe some madden 2016 or something whatever i got over there on the PlayStation 3 courtesy of my father-in-law this is an email uh today from Andrea demarsie what is the actual email demars at podseo.com so it's actually you know sometimes you get these and it's from like this crazy space spam email. But this is actually like, you know, she's out there trying to grow her business, cultivating mass. So she says, hi there.

I'm Andrea from Pod SEO. We track podcast search rankings across Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and YouTube music. Beantown Podcasts appeared with interesting patterns in our Apple Podcasts data. I didn't really pay attention to that before that sentence, and I'm not going to linger on it. But I always felt it was so lazy to say, oh, we noticed something interesting. Like actually, you know what? Obviously, it's interesting. I know who I am.

I know my podcast is interesting. You don't have to tell me. So point out something specific. Andrea continues, what caught my intention? Your podcast visibility metrics. Listener ratings, Spotify, five out of five. That's what I'm talking about. No bad reviews here on the Beantown podcast.

And then this is what caught my attention. The keyword rankings. Apple podcast rankings. Actually, let's start with Spotify, because that's more straightforward and to the point. The Spotify rankings top three keywords, nothing too surprising here. Number one, Quinn David Furness. And then I don't really know what these ranks mean because she gives me three data points. The first one is it says Quinn David Furness rank number one.

The second one, the keyword is absurdist comedy, which 100%. The rank is number 51. So does that mean like when you search absurdist comedy, the Beantown Podcast is the 51st ranked show? I think that's what that means. I actually don't know. So maybe that's some feedback I have for Andrea Domarcy at podseo.com. And then irreverent takes, great word, irreverent, I-R-E-V-E-R-E-N-T.

That one was easy for me to spell because I was looking right at it. Rank number 57. So that's right. If you go to Spotify and you search, Irreverent Takes, takes rather, not tanks. You only have to go through like four screens to actually get to Beantown podcast. Now, if you do irreverent tanks, there was no, no mention of that. I imagine that's more like a,

I don't know, I'm just thinking about there's this, you know, 30 Rock's got a million fake shows. And one of them, because we were just watching like a compilation the other night of the 30 Rock fake shows. This wasn't even like a show that they have like a clip from. It's just like a little bumper on the bottom of, you know, 30 Rock. But it's just old guys in tank tops. And that's the show. I don't remember, I think it's when Alec Baldwin is trying to tank the network or something. That's what Irreverent Tanks makes me think of. But I didn't read this email to tell you about irreverent takes being listed number 57. We go, so that was the Spotify rankings, top three keywords. And they also, Andrea also includes the Apple podcast rankings, top three keywords

for the Beantown podcast. And this is what caught my attention. So I, again, like Spotify, I, I'm number one for Quinn David Furness, which is good to hear. It would be really embarrassing if I was not number one for my name as far as podcasts go. Although I'll say this. I, you know, with my new job, I have a lot of, like, it's linked to, like, Google accounts and stuff. And I have, like, a new Gmail. So when I go to YouTube, it's like a whole new account because YouTube's on my Google. I was Googling myself or YouTube searching myself the other day just to get myself a subscribe to bump up those numbers from like 40 to 41.

And when I search my name, Quinn Furness, not the first person that comes up. And the embarrassing thing is it's not even like, oh, there's another Quinn Furness out there. It was someone named like Bill Furness or something. It was like, you know what? I know I'm not the most popular guy in YouTube, but how can I not even be the number one search result when I'm the only one with my name? I've never met another Quint Furness. So how can I not be the top search? It's just a little humiliating, if I can be honest.

But Quinn David Furness for Apple Podcasts number one, and then here's where things get crazy. And I'm not lying. Like, I don't, I have no explanation for this. Let's just explore the space together. Coming in, rank number four, so if you search this term, I'm the fourth podcast that comes up, I think. Is that what that means?

Prison survival tips. Prison survival tips, number four. And I really, when I read that for the first time earlier today, I really had to rack my brain and think, like, have we, because we've covered a lot of ground, okay, on the Beantown podcast where it's like episode 419, 420, something like that, blaze it. And I had to really think, like, across nine seasons, have we ever, we've done a lot of tips and power rankings and big ideas and parodies and all sorts of stuff. Have we ever done a prison survival tip? I don't know a lot about prison.

The only thing I can say is one of our Christmas specials, it was like season two or season three, our Christmas special was interviewing my mom when she got out of prison. Now, she hadn't committed a crime or anything. She was teaching like a literacy class there on weekends or something. But, you know, she had just gone out. So I wanted to, you know, interview her. That's the closest thing I can think of that comes to prison survival tips. Even that, it wasn't like, hey, how did you just survive in there? It was really what I got most out of that was a great idea I have for, you know, a nonprofit that I'm still, This is a verbal trademark, and we've mentioned it before in the show. I don't want anyone stealing this idea when I get enough money to launch this nonprofit.

It's called pros and cons, and it's where you go into prisons, you teach the inmates' literature, writing skills, how to identify themes, metaphors, similes, you know, all this fun stuff. So that's right, pros and cons, P-R-O-S-E and cons, verbal trademark and copyright. So prison survival tips is number four. And then I was maybe able to draw a bridge somewhere in my memory, like Home Alone, to that. But this one was really a bridge too far, I would say. Number six, I am the sixth ranked podcast for this keyword search. Pit Basketball Highlights, as in the University of Pittsburgh, I assume, or the pit. You know, season two is coming out right now.

and I haven't seen any episodes where they kind of take a half-hour break from their ER shift to go play a game of horse. So I assume this is University of Pittsburgh. What do we think the University of Pittsburgh's team name is? They're the Pittsburgh Panthers, is that right? Pittsburgh basketball. I feel like when's the last time Pittsburgh was in the NCAA tournament? I do not think of them when I, when I think of powerhouse teams,

in that area, I'm thinking like Syracuse, I'm thinking, you know, Ohio State, occasionally Cleveland State. I think they've been in the tournament once or twice in my lifetime. Yeah, the Pittsburgh Panthers men's basketball, I know it's early, but they're 14th in the ACC right now. Let's learn a little bit about their basketball team. Before I do that, just to cap the thought again, I'm the number six ranked podcast when you serve.

pitch basketball highlights. And if you're wondering, like, what actually goes into that? I just, I got nothing. I got nothing.

I also got to tell you, and I'm not a very, like, spiteful or vindictive person, and this is still, like, surface love, I don't have many thoughts on that, but my, my alma mater,

I guess we can name and shame now, DePaul University, where I have my degree from, where I spent the last six, what, six years, seven years? seven of years, I think, of my life working full-time, where I was laid off last month. It's their big fundraising day this Thursday, Tuesday?

I can't remember what day it is. So I'm just getting bombarded with the calls from these students making $12.50 an hour or whatever minimum wage is. And the emails just got an email right now. There are way too many emails, if I can take a time out, and say this. There's way too many emails being sent to my inbox. after 5 p.m. on a Friday. Like, can we schedule it to go out at a normal time?

Obviously, these things are crafted and scheduled from Pod SEO and DePaul University Advancement and all that stuff. But, yeah, I hate to break it to DePaul. I feel bad about this, but this family is not going to be donating money to that cause this year, unfortunately. Best of love.

regardless, irregardless, one of our top number one horse names. Oh, I'm on the Wikipedia page for the Pittsburgh Panthers Men's Basketball. At the top, there was a little notification. I am invited, probably because of my status, I am invited to celebrate Wikipedia Day in Chicago on Saturday, January 17th. That's tomorrow. What the heck do we think Wikipedia Day is? I'm not usually wanting to click on pop-ups like this,

but I got to know what Wikipedia Day is. And just how sad would it be to celebrate Wikipedia Day on a cold Saturday? 2810 North Milwaukee Ave, so we're talking Milwaukee and Diversi. What is that? Like Logan Square-ish? At 1 o'clock, or they call it 13 o'clock, but this is America. So 1 o'clock. 221 participants.

Visitors of all experienced levels are, welcome to join the Wikimedians of Chicago user group. Sounds really lame. It's the 25th anniversary of Wikipedia. They're celebrating its style. Information. At the Harpin Arts Center, 2810 North Milwaukee Ave, second floor. Saturday, January 17th, times are approximate.

Refreshments including food, drink, and cake. Plus a brief intro to Wikipedia in its history. 1.30, a beginner's guide to editing Wikipedia. 2 o'clock Jeopardy with prizes. Now I'm getting a little excited. Then some other stuff. Bring a laptop. Recommended but not required.

Bringing food to share is optional. Transit info. Discussion. What's the cost? Are you telling me that I could take time out of my day, hop in the car. If it's free and I can go get free cake for Wikipedia Day and play Jeopardy and be home in time for supper? I'm getting a little excited.

But when I click register for event, nothing happens. You think they're like checking a spreadsheet at the door saying, hey, you didn't register in advance. You're not getting a slice of cake. No jeopardy, bro. Or do you think this is like everyone's a welcome? This is actually, I'm legitimately doing this and they have a register for event button and you click on it and just nothing.

You click on more details and you can get more details, but you can't register. Just I'll never get cake. Oh, here we go. Now it's working. Oh, I have to have a username and password. Wow. That's the end of that.

Okay. Mid-show trivia, take a guess. How many times in the 21st century, and I'll guess too, because I don't know. And hopefully we can find this quickly on their Wikipedia page, I would imagine so. How many times in the 21st century have the Pittsburgh Panthers out of the,

the ACC or just in general if they weren't in that conference before, I don't know. How many times have they made the NCAA tournament? I feel like I've seen it a couple times, although I can't remember anything distinctively or distinctly. I'm going to estimate that Pittsburgh has made the tournament three times. And that could be low. I don't think it's high. It could be low.

Let's see. Can we get a quick little season, post-referral. season recap they've appeared in the tournament 27 times okay here we go here's a nice long list oh i was i was way too low they've been a lot better than i thought they went in uh 2002 oh and they've had some high seeds as well like twos and threes 2002 oh three oh four oh five oh six oh seven oh eight oh nine ten eleven thirteen fourteen sixteen twenty twenty three so i just had some major recency bias that's on me Let's see.

What do we think the furthest is they've gotten? I'm seeing a lot of round of 32s. Here, they went to the Elite 8 in 2009, lost to Villanova. There's a Sweet 16, another Sweet 16, a bunch of Sweet 16s in the early 2000s, but never could quite break through. And, yeah, it looks like Elite 8 is the furthest Pittsburgh's ever gotten. So apologies to any Pittsburgh grads out there. I didn't mean to offend you.

I'm not plugged in, okay, if you couldn't tell already. Hopefully no one at Pittsburgh was doing any point shaving. You guys hear about this? It sounds like an infringement on cuts by Q, frankly, point shaving. Sounds like something they need to offer as part of our MVP package. That's right. If great clips can be sports themed, so can cuts by Q. But yeah, you got to watch out for point shaving because now finally as a DePaul alum, I can give excuses for why our team is just so ass.

It's because our players are intentionally trying to lose, which is a heavy coping mechanism. But, you know, it's all I got because you want to guess how many times DePaul has been into the tournament in the 21st century? I think it's one. I don't know. I think they went in like 2002 or something like that. Not good. not great blame the point shaving they said it only was you know going on for three years let's try 25 or 40 last time we were in the final four i'm more comfortable with that and i'd prefer that

it continue to be a thing a good excuse until we actually are good again so continue to shave away that's a good time to get into the rest of our ads here i guess we start with cuts by q our good friends Bob and Weave, we all know the hairstyle. We all love it. But how many Chicago-based independent barbers can actually give it to you the way you deserve? Enter cuts by Q is low-like and or Sandman, only different. Cutsby Q has been independently owned and operated since 1995, and it's probably one of the better barbershop.

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call the experts at cuts by Q. We're going to get to our newest sponsor in a moment here. I'm not going to do full ad reads across the board because that takes some time, but I do have to say thank you to the Samson Q2U series for your crisp, clear audio quality as always. And, of course, the meantime podcast is presented ease. Why did I say it like that?

is presented in part by our good friends at Home Pride, Oregon. Home Pride, Oregon inspection, perfection. All right, guys, we already talked point shaving a little bit. Well, that's just one of the key, fun, new features of the Bean Town Sportsbook. You can bet on which games are being bet on, which games are, you know, oh, this was interesting. You could have bet big on one, lost big on this one, I suppose, or one depending on who you bet on.

You guys see this is actually a real thing, like the Bean Town Sportsbook. It was Texas versus, was it Notre Dame or South Carolina, I think, women's basketball, NCAA. And I swear to God, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this until I saw what the over-under was, or not the over-under under the money line. So I think it's like South Carolina versus Texas. There's a big game. It's like two, two versus four or something like that. And Texas is a three and a half point underdog, which means that if they win the game

or if they lose to South Carolina but keep it within three points, so they lose by one, two, or three, then if you bet on that, you still win your money. Okay? So they're down three. There's six seconds. Texas women is down three. There's six seconds left to play. South Carolina has the ball out of bounds, they inbound it.

And so if you know anything about basketball, they're down three. So you foul, right? For South Carolina, you stop the clock. South Carolina shoots free throws if they miss them both, you have a chance to tie the game. And even with six minutes or six seconds remaining, which might not sound like a lot and it's not, I don't know if Texas had timeouts, but if you have a timeout, six seconds, you can stretch that quite a bit when I'm getting in as like, like let's say South Carolina goes and hits both their free throw as well,

you call a time out, you inbound it, you hit a quick three, and you can probably do the same thing only down by two with like two seconds remaining. And then it's like, yeah, you're still talking half court, full court heave, which is I did a half court heave on the red line after I drank too much a couple summers ago, a couple summers ago was a decade ago, more than that actually. But what happened, South Carolina inbounds the ball. And Texas is, you know, doing like the full court press. And it's like, okay, understandable if you want to try to get the steal once for a half second

and then you got a foul. But, you know, even six seconds, not enough time to play the, you know, try to steal and trap game. You just got a foul. Texas does a light pressure. South Carolina escapes it. And the Texas women just walk away. There's four seconds left in the clock. is running. South Carolina, instead of the Texas players hacking them, hack a shack,

the Texas players just walk away and South Carolina just holds onto the ball for the last four seconds and the game's over. In a three-point game and I'm watching this clip on Twitter and I'm thinking like there's zero explanation for this. What the hell is this? And then you see that Texas was, you know, they're down three in this game. They're three and a half point underdogs, meaning if they foul, South Carolina hits one of their two free throws or both of their free throws, and assuming Texas isn't going to, you know, half-court heave it at the buzzer, you know, to bring it within one or two,

it's just we got some serious gambling problems, some serious sports betting problems, and it's not a new thing, right? Black Sox 1906 or whenever that was. But I got, in fact, I want to follow up on this. want to like Google search it because there's no it goes against the very laws of thermodynamics of basketball you're down three you foul right and this isn't some like preseason jv game you know how you'll have in like the NFL preseason where they'll like take a knee when it's like they could drive 90 yards for a touchdown to tie the game with like 30 seconds left like they're not

doing that in the preseason they're taking a knee this is a regular season this is a regular season this is a quad one victory. I assume. I assume they have quads in women's basketball. I don't actually know. So that's a disgrace. But what's not a disgrace, the all-new Bean Town Sportsbook, Hey Sports Has, has it been too long since you made a terrible decision? The all-new Beantown Sportsbook is now live leveraging the latest AI, advanced analytics, and obnoxious in-app advertising, or sometimes you can invite it to Wikipedia Day, so make sure you read it to turn you into a slam dunk with a major, I had it here on the copy, it says the major sporting events.

Let's call it the NFL divisional round right around the corner and the national championship between Indiana and Miami. There's never been a better time to send your bets up, up, up, up, up, up, and away into orbit. The Bean Town podcast, Sportsbook is Sirchalk full of the best money lines over under, same game parley's, bet-back guarantees, prop bets, fractional bets, ETFs, mutual funds, bonds, municipal bonds, and for limited time only a $500, no-risk,

bet-back winners only just for VIP's tax-free, guaranteed for a limited time only. Download the app today and use code sucker for your first token bet-back unlimited prop-free bonus guarantee up to $500 bet-back guarantee. Bean Town Sportsbook bet like a better better. there you go speaking of better better we uh we you know we bought a lot of butter around christmas time for baking and stuff and i think we we had a lot because my wife uh you know or the research department was uh rachie baby 95 was planning to make an additional round of

cookies i think at or around christmas and it never came to fruition and then my parents had a bunch of butter as well and they were flying so you know tsa they they get you know how they get with butter in your carry-on so we ended up with a lot of butter and now we got like seven or eight sticks in the fridge come sail away come sail away come sail away the pitch was all over the place on that one I'm okay with it it is what it is I never pretended that I could cover sticks but we got a lot of sticks in the in the fridge here and I don't know. I guess you've got to have more toast. But I like my spreadable olive oil infused butter from Trader Joe's. So I'm going to have a butter reckoning. Let's just put it that way.

Our animal of the week is the mighty bat, BAT. And I'm reading Coojo a couple weeks ago. He gets, he's chasing a rabbit, sticks his nose in a foxhole or something, and he gets bitten by a bat. And I just wanted to give a shout out to these guys. I'm not going to go as in-depth on the genomes and probiotics with the Arctic fox that we did last week. But, you know, these bats get between the rabies thing and the vampire bat, the blood-sucking thing, and the fact that they look, they don't always have the cutest smiles, if we can just be real for a second. But these guys get such a bad rap. They're so cool.

They're mammals. They have wings. they hang upside down It's not a lot of other animals that hang upside down Maple, you never hang upside down You're always right side up Sometimes you go on your belly

But that's not really Or on your back To expose your belly But that's not really upside down Kind of sideways Yeah I mean these bats They stick together in a pack You can go down to Austin, Texas

And they fly out from under that bridge I think They have cool like It's the sonar thing going on on i don't even know how it works they're flying around they're looking for mosquitoes and they're this whole time they're sending out echoes like mr echo from lost and you know they're they got their sonars and their radar and their sign and cosine waves bouncing off of other mosquitoes and bats and buildings and all sorts of stuff man-made fortresses and they're you they can't even really see they're

Just listening. We could all learn something from the mighty bat. You know, rely less on your eyes and stop tasting so much. You don't have to touch it. Just close your eyes and listen. I don't know where smell falls on the spectrum, but you never hear about bats smelling. They're probably smelly, but I don't think they really smell. What do you think, Meple, you want to do interview with a dog?

We could do guest interview with a bat if we had one. I know how far. I'm sitting here in my apartment in Chicago, urban, densely populated. How far do I actually have to go to find a bat just hanging around? Are they so ubiquitous that it's like, oh yeah, if you actually like looked in the corner of that building over in the alley, like you actually see a bat hanging out there? Do bats hibernate? I guess we could learn one valuable thing on the show today rather than just pontificating about bats. do bats hibernate?

My guess is no. They'd have to find, certainly a nook or a cranny. Oh, AI, Google Gemini, so you know what's right, says, Yes, many bat species hibernate to survive winter when insects disappear, entering a deep sleep called torpor, T-O-R-P-O-R, where they lower their heart rate, breathing, and body time to conserve fat reserves. Other species migrate to warmer areas and hide under or hide under a leaf litter.

Very interesting. Oh, you got to love this. So how bad hibernation works. Point one is Torpor, which we just talked about. Point two is called, I'm not kidding, hibernacula. That should be the name of like a Bix-Beederbeck jazz album or something called Hibernacula or Herbie Hancock.

Dude, that would be badass. They find safe, stable spots like caves, mines, or rock crevices to hibernate. So that's what hibernacula is. Let's tap on it. Hibernacula is a bath's winter shelter, typically a cave, mine, cellar, or tree cavity chosen for its stable, cool temperature, and high humidity. That's a hell of a word. You know exactly where this is going. And it's going to resurface in May. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, well, you'll just be pleasantly surprised. but this thing is going to pot. Hypernaucula is going to rear its head again in a couple months here.

Let me write this down. Okay. Dead air. Hard to type. This is something that I have a hard time with. Typing one thing and saying the other. Okay. Animal of the week was the bat January 16th.

for my notes, spelled it wrong, that's okay. I'll know what I meant. You know, you type J-A-N-Y-A-R-Y. I'm one letter off, and you know, it gives you the red line. It says, hey, you misspelled this, you idiot. And then you click on it, hoping it will give you a suggestion for January because you only messed up one letter, and it says, oh, sorry, no replacement's found. It's like, what the hell are we doing here?

that's our animal of the week the bat i've got a couple things here first in this and then we're going to get to our pranks and you know we'll rifle through those relatively quickly because i'm running out of steam but i'll say this one of my like unofficial new year's resolutions that i'm just like holding to myself is like doing less random browsing on social media and you know red in in twitter it's like okay some of that stuff is pretty much mindless but I think there's still some good information there when I'm trying to do less of as like Instagram and Snapchat not that I was on there a ton before but it's just like I'm getting no value out of it like I could delete my Snapchat tomorrow and I would lose out on like one or two

ongoing conversations with friends and we would just have to shift to text and that would be it otherwise I have no you know I don't know the last time I like you know Snapchat used to be like oh you like take a selfie and put a caption and send it to someone else it's been five six years since I've done anything like that. Not actually. I've probably done like one or two a year sporadically. But anyways, my point is I was on the, you know, Discover page all the way on the right, I think, on Snapchat. And someone popped up that I've never seen on Snapchat before.

It was Joe Joe Siwa. And I was just kind of like out of morbid curiosity, tapped through the first stories or post, or pictures on her story, whatever it's called. just to kind of see like, you know, because I feel like, you know, JoJo kind of had a moment like two years ago and I haven't really seen anything from her since. I don't really know what she does.

And one of the first things on her story is, you know, it shows like the time, the clock in the middle, excuse me, that's 7.10 a.m. And her caption is like, why is my body naturally awake at 7.10 a.m.? L.O.L. And I'm just sitting there thinking like, man, When it's, well, I guess I was going to say when it's summer out.

I'm up at like six. Understandably it's not summer out. I get it. Point Jojo. But how, we're saying 7.10 a.m. naturally, that's a big L.O. It's just, it's the, the Gen Z's, man. They love to sleep. Every Gen Z person I know is just,

sleeps till nine, wakes up a minute, before work. No one wants to work anymore. Don't get me started on that. I don't know how all these people are staying up till midnight, especially in winter when it's 4.30 in the sun setting. How are you keeping your body clock going for eight minutes or eight hours after that? I don't know. Let's run through some January pranks here. These range from the mundane to the straight up devious. And originally, I had an idea for a January prank in the kitchen. And I thought this was like three days ago. And I was like, oh, we can make a whole episode out of this.

And then it just sometimes you have ideas and you got like one really good thing. And then just you can't get anything going after that. And then that's what this was. Sometimes you get ideas and it just flows like lava. And you're like, oh, boom, we'll do this. We'll do that. Easy. And this was not one of those times.

So I am going to apologize. What that means is I've still got some good pranks for you. that you could try out, but many of these where I would typically claim originality over merely all of my output. A lot of this is sampled. But I will give credit where credits do where I can recall. This first one is, this is all me. Not to say it hasn't been done before, but it's just, you want to really play a silly little prank on someone. And it's kind of, it's kind of edgy because you don't know, you know, is this going to be like a big deal or not a problem at all? in the toaster. I was toasting some bread trying to get through this butter. I don't know if you

guys heard. We have a lot of butter. And I thought, you know, this looks like the perfect size for an iPhone or something. Not one of those chunky Nokia's, but certainly one of the slimmer iPhones. And it just got me thinking like, hey man, you put, you know, I don't know if you want to do the bagel setting or not, but you need the toaster to be at least a five out of six or a five or a six out of ten to at least, you know, raise the stakes, raise the temperature a little bit literally. phone in the toaster, what do you think happens? Because I know what's really hot out or really cold out, my phone will like, you know, it says, you know, like overheat or like too cold,

like will return to normal activity when it's, you know, back at a normal temperature or whatever. So how, what's, what level do you have to put that toaster at? And then more importantly, is it going to start to mess with the hardware? I don't really want to test this on my own phone, but if someone wants to ship me one, I'll make a YouTube video out of it. phone in the toaster, good prank. Replacing mom's edibles with multivitamins.

Originally, and I say mom, my wife, originally the prank was, we haven't tested this out, but I know she's not going to listen all the way. She'll give it five minutes to boost our airplay and then she's out to, you know, the Nick Crowell podcast or, I don't know, whatever she listens to. And originally the prank was going to be edibles, in the multivitamin jar or the whatever canister. Then I was like, you know what? It could cause some serious health problems.

So what's more fun is she thinks, oh, I'm going to get, I'm going to, you know, 420 blaze it. You know, she's throwing up in the air and catching them like candy. And I'm thinking, hey, we just make that a multivitamin. We let her make a healthy choice. And, you know, she won't get dried out. and she won't, you know, feel like a space cadet. She'll just have her daily serving of magnesium, iron, and nitrous filbrate, or xanthum gum or something.

So maybe a little more of a wholesome choice, much like listening to the Beantown podcast. I will mention, I saw a week or two ago that Amy Poller's podcast, won the Golden Globes for a best podcast. So I don't know. Try again next year. Next up, Maple's been running around a little bit here when she gets really excited, especially red peppers.

That's her favorite thing. And sometimes she struggles with traction on the hardwood floors, and I joke that, oh, you know, dad, yeah, dad wax the floors. That's why it's so slippery. Well, what if we actually in the dead of night while she's sleeping? Not that you could get anything by her She, unlike bats, she doesn't go into a hyper-inaculic state But what if we actually wax the floor

And she'd just be like a cartoon character Or something with the feet just do, d'l-d-l-d-l-l-d-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-you know, like Fred Flintstone I don't know, Maple, what do you think? That could be a good prank I don't know, she's looking at me like, I don't know, Jim like Tony Romo on CBS Yes. We'll see. This one is a shout-out to Scrubs, which the reboot is coming out in like three weeks here or something. This is a shout-out to the great.

Phil Lewis, you might know from The Sweet Life of Zach and Cody. But there's a great prank that Turk and J.D. play on this Dr. Houch, where he's taking a shower at the hospital locker room, and they put bouillon cubes, chicken bouillon cubes in the showerhead. And ever since then, I wanted to try that. I think, I think I'd be like less, I wouldn't be upset if someone bullionized my shower. I think I would just be like, well, I don't know. I was going to say like it wouldn't be so bad, but how, you know, are those bullion cubes last in a long time?

I feel like if you got scalding hot water, they're not going to, you know, they're going to dissolve. But I've never actually worked with bouillon cubes. So I don't know. their buionic properties. All right, no more saying buyon. Boo ya. Oh, this is a fun one. I had a really, I had a tough customer service experience this morning,

and this doesn't have a lot to do with the actual prank, because it's going in a different direction with this. But I had this, you know, you're calling your retirement plan, and, you know, they do a lot of verification and all that stuff. And it's like, great, I get it. Like, I'm glad you're keeping my account secure. I had this lady this morning who for all of my verification questions was like, and you have two attempts to answer each one.

It was like, okay, no problem. Like, I'm not stealing my identity. And I got through the first couple, you know, name, date of birth, social, no problem. The next one, she asked me to verify my address. I'm like, cool, no problem. I'm going to yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yeah. Apartment 3. City, state, zip code.

and she doesn't even say like oh i'm sorry sir that looks different from what we have on file you can you try again all she says in response is you have one guest remaining this is a real person mind you and i literally i don't remember the last time i was taken so aback i was like i just gave you my address like what do you mean i have one attempt remaining and then she paused like she had no idea what i was saying and she was like you have one remaining and I was like okay so do you want me to give you want me to give you the same address again she's like you have one remaining and I was like you know when you say it out loud it sounds like it was AI but it wasn't it was this a lady who sounded South Asian and I think

she was just going off the script so I gave give the same address again because I'm not sitting here like oh let me do the wrong address the first time and then we'll do the right one the second time I did the right one both times and I got through on the second time. It's like, what the hell is this? And then the same thing happened with the zip code. Like, I know what my zip code is. It's five digits. It's not, you know, we're not solving the riddle of the sphinx here. So I give her my zip code, she says, you have one try remaining. I'm like, okay, well, I'll give you my zip code again. If you want to lock me out, that's fine. And the best part is I finally passed all of her twisted riddles, like the bridge in Monty Python

and the Holy Grail. still couldn't she still couldn't help me not because i got unverified out or locked out or something but just they don't have me on file okay tough tough tough when someone tells you you're not on file heartbreaking here it's the actual prank you know there's so many ai customer service reps these days this is a you know this is a little bit of a callback to an old one i saw on youtube where two they connect these two pizza places together over the phone and it's this whole big deal this is me just you know two customer service AI reps just talking to each other just asking each other what can I help you with no what can I help you with I'm sorry I didn't understand

you can you repeat that you only have one guest remaining a couple more here this is inspired by breaking bad this is a fun potentially harmless one maybe not rice in the cigarette of course You got to get beans and you got to, are they not rice and beans, right? Or is that, oh yeah, the ricin comes from the beans and the show he doesn't use the ricin.

He uses the Lily of the Valley, et cetera. Why did I say, et cetera? It doesn't make sense. Having a stroke over here. Anyways, you get the picture. You know, you find your friend who's a big smoker, you throw ricin in the cigarette. Everyone, you might go to the ER urgent care.

Everyone's going to be okay, okay? It's not like a bat gave you rabies. It's just your friend pranked you with some ricin. This is a fun one. I got two more. This is a fun one that I didn't even have to come up with because the big man over in Washington pulled it off. And it sounds like a prank.

I don't think it is, but it would be a really funny prank. Not really funny. You'll just see where I'm going with this. Reintroducing entrance fees to all national parks on Martin Luther King Day. Just the way he would have wanted. Charge your big, big, big bucks to go to Shenandoah or Key West. What's that one out in the ocean? Islands of the Florida, something like that.

That's not what it's called at all. There's also Congaree in South Carolina. Biscayne National Park, it's something like that. But yeah, Agent Orange, even though MLK Day still a national holiday for now. We'll see if he's able to get rid of it next year. But he said, you know what? You're paying to go into the national parks on money. It used to be free. And that's not happening anymore. So pay up. Absolutely brutal. And then finally, this is an homage to the greatest prank that I played in college. I get off the train one morning. I'm walking to my shift at work. And my friend,

who we don't need to, you know, name, but they've been a part of the show. the past and this was a great prank and I'm sure they didn't appreciate it when it happened but I think looking back they can appreciate it so I'm walking down you know the street and I you know past the alley and I see there's a mattress in there and I know I'm like a block from my friend's apartment so I'm thinking you know what let's we got a little bit of free time here you know 20 minutes before work let's see if we can get something excuse me get something going with this and I got lucky because it was a perfect match, a perfect fit. I'm dragging this mattress down the street, which sounds

crazy when you say it out loud now, but for a 19-year-old, it's everything. What more can you say? Drag this mattress down the street. My friend lives in a garden unit, so you've got like three steps down from the sidewalk to get in there. And wouldn't you know this mattress is like a twin mattress, it wedges perfectly into like their doorway.

entryway. It was just like it was the perfect fit. It was like finding the last puzzle piece. Not so much that it's like you can't get out. Like you can just open the door and kick out the mattress. Like it's not hard. So I told my friend that they got mattressed and they sure did. Mattress the heck out of that apartment.

But my friend got touchy about it. I think her boyfriend was coming over or something. She's like I can't, people can't come over if I've been matching. which I'm like, you could just kick it out or someone pulls it away. It's really easy. I ended up having to go back and remove the mattress myself. I don't know what I did with it. Threw it in the street or something.

But regardless of the outcome, I think that's why my friend was upset because, you know, getting mattress is so devilish, so devious, so perfect. Watch out. You do not want to get mattressed. And if you do, you just move the mattress out of the way and kind of go about your day. So it's really not so bad. Our trivia question, kind of random, kind of off the top rope, and I'll tell you this, a little challenging. Like I think five of these, give or take, half of these, give or take, is a top 10 list, by the way, are like reasonable and easy to get it.

And I think, you know, the other half, it's like good luck. this is from the year 2010 to 2020 named the top 10 U.S. states by population growth so we're not talking people who left this is the opposite of brain drain you know people who left the state which I think it's like I don't know is Illinois losing people I think so

probably like who else would be losing people I don't know like Wisconsin or something I don't really know how that works why people would be leaving a place with all this population growth we have across the board. I actually don't know what the U.S. population growth is. I know they're having trouble with that and China in particular.

But yeah, these are the top 10 U.S. states by population growth. So if you just start guessing, you got a 20% chance of getting something in the mix here. Again, when I'm looking at this list, I'm like, okay, one makes a lot of sense, Three makes a lot of sense. Five, six, eight, and nine, and I guess seven.

So I guess like, I don't know. There's probably three on here, maybe four, where I'm like, I don't know how the heck that happened. Like, I don't have a good explanation for this. Again, this is across 10 years from 2010 to 2020. If you want a little more time to cultivate, I know this is, you know, 10. We should have asked the question earlier at halftime or something and then giving you a chance to jot down your thoughts.

But yeah, if you, you know, submit your results, you know, the form online, beantimepodcast.com slash trivia, and we'll see, you know, we'll tally it up whoever got closest. We'll send them a free hat or something. A pork, pork pie hat? That was on New York Times connections this morning. I don't know what it is, but sounds delicious. The barbecue place by us is closing this week.

weekend. Very, very sad. They had a great rooftop in the summer. I'm going to sneeze again. Excuse me. It would be great if we could pause this podcast. You know, a lot of, and someone kind of sets this podcast apart. A lot of other shows that they got to sneeze, they pause, sneeze and go back, or they just cut it out. See, we don't have the ability to pause and we don't have editing capability. So that's kind of, we're sort of a triple threat in that sense. Here are the top 10 states by population growth. 2010 to 2020 will go top down or 10 to 1. Number 10, South Carolina, wasn't really on my radar. Number 9, this is what I thought was going to be number one, but number nine is Arizona. Number 8, Florida. No one likes the cold anymore.

There's becoming more and more old people, so everyone's moving to Florida. Number seven, this one was definitely on my radar because everyone seems to love it. Washington State. Six and five were also things that I guessed, Colorado at six and Nevada at five, which I knew about Nevada, like Arizona. I thought those would be higher, but alas. Number four, number two, I would never have been on my radar. Number four, North Dakota, which I guess for them, you know, if they have like a 14% population growth, that's like an extra six people. So not too hard.

Number three, Texas. Number two, I thought was tough. Idaho. I don't know where all these people in Idaho are going. I guess they have a lot of space, but they all got to be ranchers or something. And number one, you could see it coming with the success of their real housewise franchise.

The number one fastest growing state is Utah. So there you go. That's what I got for you guys. Thank you for tuning into my program. Quinn David Furnace presents the Beantown podcast. Let's go ahead and get our outro music here. We'll work on a mission statement next week. And I think that's all I got.

for all of us here at the Beantown podcast, I hope that you are staying safe, staying sane, happy MLK day, fork over the big bucks to go to Big Bend. I'll check in on you next time. Bye-bye.