Beantown Podcast - Margaret Hamilton Talk Show (06072026 Beantown Podcast)

Episode Date: June 7, 2026

Quinn comes to you LIVE to discuss bloated sermons, pork chops, and the short-lived Margaret Hamilton Talk Show

Hey, what's going on? It's Quinn David Furness. Welcome to my show. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast for Sunday, June 7th, 2026. What's happening? What's going on? How are you? My name is Quinn. We're coming to you live on a beautiful Sunday morning here. You could go to regular church or you could go to the church at Beantown. That's right. You got better music, better, you know, shorter. We used to go to these church services growing up that'd be like 90 minutes long. It's just too much, you know. Just come in and get your little communion wafers, your wine, and, you know, what really kills me, what I think the Catholics do well. Because in Catholic church, you don't have like a sermon, right? You call it, what is it, the homily? I don't know. My Catholic wife over here would know.

but when you're in the Catholic Church it's not like a sermon it's the homily is that what it's called but it's pretty short right it's like five minutes usually depends on the priest Father Marouche will really yeah well we we would have these non-denominational

sermons you know the church service order would be pretty traditional you got your music first your worship and then church announcements And then you get into the sermon, and boy, those sermons could really balloon up to like 30, 40 minutes. And just, it's too much, okay? There's, you know, you got to have your bullet points.

And each point supported, point is supported by like five Bible verses. It's just, it's, it's too much. what's it pontificating that's not the word there's a grandstanding i don't know and then you know the sermon finishes and then you got to close it up with a little bit more worship music and it's just too long let's keep these church services to a tight 55 i think that's where everyone wants to be right no one needs more than that we got stuff to do it's a beautiful day we can go to the park or the worst is during football season we we didn't growing up normally go to the later service.

Our church would have two services, like an 8 a.m. and a 1045 or something. But those 1045 service is way too risky because you got the Bears game, Vikings game, Packers game, all starting at noon. This was in the era of regular NFL start times before everyone's got to play on a Wednesday night and then two international games and yada, yada, yada. But, yeah, just too much. That's why Beantown Podcasts, we keep it, you know, most weeks pretty short, and then inevitably it goes a little bit longer, but that's okay. It'll be pretty quick this week.

That's the oldest trick in the book. You've heard me say that a million times, but we're going to keep things high and tight today. I am the creator, the host, the chief Moka Master of this program. Shout out to good friends, Ryan and Kristen Austin English. for their lovely Moka Master wedding gift getting some good use right now, and they're coming down. They've been on the show a handful of times. They're coming down to town today for some brunch.

Old friends, I would plug their car ride combos podcast for you, but I don't think they've released a new episode in about seven or eight years here. Meanwhile, season on to the Bean Town podcast, no off days. We're going strong every day. to our good friends in Pakistan and Nigeria. Pakistan, thank you for making us the 78th ranked comedy podcast in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. And, of course, to our newer friends in West Africa, thank you for making us the 178th ranked comedy podcast in the Republic of Nigeria,

People's Republic. I don't know. We should do a quick Wikipedia search, figure out exactly what they prefer, what they go by. I think a lot of those West African countries, as I understand it, their present-day political boundaries are, it's less of like, we all came together and decided as a country this is where the border should be and more of just Europe kind of swooped in. They swooped in, they scooped in, they did both,

and divvied things up. And I don't know if it always fits in with the, the regional mapping of local ethnic groups and cultures and languages. I don't know. Do you think they made a Nigerian border right through a particular tribe or group and divide things? Unclear. Don't know.

You don't come to the Beantown podcast for West African colonial geopolitical history, but we'll teach you a few things if you're not careful. Thank you, Nigeria, Lagos, Abuja. a third city. I need to brush up. If you're one of the many Nigerian listeners out there, email us Beantown Podcast at yahoo.com. Again, that's Beantown Indian Podcast at Yahoo.com.

Let us know, what are your big cities so that we can be educated and informed? Listener discretion advised when you're listening to this program, number one will occasionally some language number to this podcast is objectively terrible. Our animal of the week, up until a... about quite literally 15 minutes ago was going to be the boa constrictor just because I think big snakes are cool. And then for a hot second it was going to be the hippopotamus because I was

watching this cool video on Reddit this morning at like 6 a.m. about this big pool in Africa somewhere of hippopotamai and during the dry season they all huddle around and turn this tiny little shallow lake or river or something into a toxic waste dump because they just keep pooping. Well, it wasn't clear from the video. The video was, it was like three minutes long, and it starts by talking about how much hippopotamai poop and it turns their, you know, in the dry season when the water levels are really low, it turns their whole kind of environment into a toxic dump, Chernobyl style.

What I didn't understand is what are these hippopotamite eating the whole time to, like, continue producing all the poop because then there was this was like a nature documentary kind of thing there was this one hippopotamus that in the middle of the night ventured out to try to find some fresh grass to eat and when he came back in the tribe wouldn't let him back in which was really sad and he had to fight black panther style and he lost and so he wasn't allowed back in the community but it's like, hey, this guy was just trying to get some fresh grass. So what are these hippopotamite eating when they're just hanging out in their pod? And it was a happy ending.

Eventually, the rains come back and everyone's satisfied again. But it kind of reminds me those penguins, you know, what is it? All the males they huddle around and cover the eggs while the females go out and get food, I can't remember what I learned from Happy Feet or Scamper or March of the Penguins. I should have made some notes. How long do you think they go without eating? I feel like they're huddled around those eggs, protecting those eggs for a while. They don't eat the eggs.

That's what the seagulls try to do. I remember that scene from Scamper. Seagull attack? Oh, man. These guys are trouble. But then I was doing some research on where we want to go to lunch with friends later and there's a big park the the park to be at in the lincoln square neighborhood here in chicago wells park and it's named after gideon wells and in fact the restaurant we're looking at is called

gideon wells and it got me thinking i should google search and figure out excuse me who this giddian wells was anyways he was a big supporter of lincoln's 1860 bid for the presidency and was rewarded if knowledge serves me correctly by becoming U.S. Secretary of the Navy during the Civil War, I think, from like 1861 to 1869. So that's his big claim to fame. But what I stumbled upon what led us to our actual Animal of the Week here on his Wikipedia page, he was responsible for the Union Army's Anaconda Plan, which I had never heard of. So our Animal of the Week is the Anaconda, which is very versatile. It's the Jennifer Lopez movie, the Nicki Minaj booty song.

The, I don't know, what do we call them this? Not a remake, but they did the, what was it? Was it Jack Black and Paul Rudd did anaconda movie a couple months ago, which was like about making the original Jennifer Lopez movie? I don't know. Apparently it was terrible. I'm confused by how it all worked out. But I think what's most important to focus on is the Anaconda plan. So basically, the Union Army said, we're going to cut off all the southern ports, all the way from Washington, D.C. to, I don't know, Corpus Christi or something. I don't know.

What are the big southern ports during the war? New Orleans. There's a big battle of New Orleans. Isn't that more of a, that's more of a War of 1812 thing? but Mobile probably feels like a good port opportunity for the south. Vicksburg. Where is that? Virginia or Mississippi? I don't remember.

Biloxi. Tune into today's Beantown podcast where Quinn names every Gulf of Mexico city he can think of. Jacksonville, that had to have been a big port, you would think. Miami? Was Miami even around in the Civil War? When was Miami founded? Doesn't it feel like one of those like Las Vegas came to be in like 1920 or something like that? I feel like Miami, you don't hear about the Battle of Miami. Let's see, when do you guys take your bets?

I will, before I Google it, I will guess too. When do we think Miami was incorporated? Before we reveal that answer and I'll just guess off the top of my head. I'm going to guess Miami came into existence in 1904. That's my guess. But the Anaconda, so it's all about squeezing out the competition, in this case the Confederacy. And so the union's plan was to blockade every port,

much like, you know, if you're a fan of George Lucas's 1999 epic space fantasy, the Phantom Menace, you probably remember Newt Gunray and the Trade Federation they're big little that doesn't make sense those big like donut kind of looking ships with a big ball in the middle that Jake Lloyd destroys at the end of the episode

they got the trade blockade going that's essentially what we're talking about here with the Anaconda plan Newt Gunnray was I was going to say ahead of his time and then I realized Star Wars came out after the Civil War but then I remembered again that Star Wars was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I don't think we talk enough about how Star Wars happened in the past. We think of it as this futuristic thing but this was probably millions of light years ago.

Pretty cool. So yeah, that was the Anaconda Plan. and I think they tried to like take over the Mississippi too to split the Confederacy in two which is kind of a throwaway line I read when I was reading about Gideon Wells and the Anaconda plan but then I was thinking like you know when I think of the Confederacy I'm thinking

everything in my mind is east of the Mississippi you know I'm thinking Virginia and Georgia and you know Mississippi Alabama so when you're splitting the Confederacy and two, maybe it was successful, and that's why you never hear about anything west of the Confederacy, because they got cut off, they got squeezed out by the Anaconda plan. But it's like, what, from a confederacy perspective, what did they even have going on west of the Mississippi?

I mean, you never hear anything about Arkansas, maybe a little bit of Missouri, but frankly, not really. And then you got the whole Texas thing. I guess Louisiana, I guess a little bit. But I think of it as more of, you know, Cajun style. They were sort of, I think when the Civil War was going on, they were mostly focused on boiling shrimp. And then Texas, I don't hear anything about Texas in the Civil War. I mean, when was the Alamo?

That was like 1850, something like that. So they kind of had their own stuff going on with, you know, first it was Spain and then it was France. and then it was Mexico and then it was its own thing. I guess I do know, this is a classic trivia question, the six flags over Texas, because Texas has had six different, has belonged to six different sovereign nations in its history.

And I think it's like Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas. It was its own thing for like two years or something. the U.S. obviously, but then the last one is the CSA, the Confederate States of America. So obviously it was in the fold. It was in the mix, but I just don't really hear anything about it. I don't know.

That's the Anaconda Plan. So when do we think Miami was incorporated? Here we go to the Wikipedia page. Let's see. Got to go down to history. Settled. That wasn't too far off. So it was settled.

Settled. It just says after 1858, which could be yesterday. But we know it was after 1858. Incorporated July 28, 1896. What did I say like 1904 or something like that? So I think I was like 10 years off. That's not too bad. Founded by Julia Tuttle,

an American businesswoman who owned the property upon which Miami, Florida, was built. For her boosterism, she's called the mother of Miami. She's the only woman to have founded what would become a major American city. That's kind of cool. We stumbled upon a cool fact. Her estate's got to be... I was just about... Literally just about to say her estate's got to be loaded,

but then I go down to the legacy section of her Wikipedia. Again, this is Julia Tuttle, the mother of Miami. Legacy starts with. Tuttle died leaving a large amount of debt. Partly the result of her land grant incentives to Flagler. there's some history we didn't get the name of or the story on her name was mostly forgotten until it was placed on a causeway for interstate 195 over biscane bay in 1959 that's too bad hmm anyways that's julia tuttle she had two kids i don't know if they're billionaires or what

it's probably one of those situations where she like bought the land it was all swamp and then some rich white land developer came in and she sold it for two cents an acre or something and got out and she would have held could have been huge anyways died at the age of 49 hmm julia tuttle famous names in american history that's pretty cool the only uh the prep was lacking this week for the show if you couldn't tell it and we'll get out of here before much longer the only thing i had in my notes other than our animal of the week and our trivia question for today's show it's not even something i can really expand upon it's just random thoughts addition i had a dream i think it was like tuesday night wednesday night that i was

watching a episode of 30 rock but it was you know brand new material and Jane Krakowski's character, Jenna, makes, as she's known to do in the show, makes a random throwaway mention of something that is so fast that it's like you hardly even process it because the plot keeps going. And her throwaway reference, which I googled when I woke up and confirmed it's not a real thing,

but she mentions in my dream, as I'm watching this episode of 30 Rock, she mentions an ill-fated Margaret Hamilton talk show which all the Oz heads out here are celebrating kind of the unsung hero of the original Wizard of Oz film

Margaret Hamilton, actress The Wicked Witch of the West. And she was like a very kindly person in real life and did a lot for like women's rights and activism. And there's nothing even that inherently funny about a Margaret Hamilton talk show other than just in the context of it being a 30 Rock throwaway line that I wish existed in real life, but it didn't. So, and that's, I told you I had nothing else on it. There's no, I didn't write a pilot for it or anything like that. It's just I had to

write down in my notes when I woke up Margaret Hamilton talk show. And I mean, she's been dead for however many years. So it's probably not going to, doesn't, you know, it's not going to make the NBC fall lineup. I don't think, but oh well. Rip Margaret Hamilton, Maggie, as I know her. I do want to just briefly, I don't have the copies in front of me, but say thank you to our sponsors.

The Samson Q2U series, Home Pride, Oregon, Beantown, Sportsbook, and, of course, cuts by Q. When you need a fresh do-some that snap you're new, call the experts at Cuts by Q. Thanks for supporting the show as we get into the ninth summer of Beantown. I was talking to my wife before we started recording. You know, what if we did a Beantown podcast, Jimmy Kimmel style,

where he does guest hosts throughout the summer. You know, he takes two months off. And every week is just a different host. So now fielding. applications if you're interested email us bean town podcast at yahoo.com or tweet at us at beantown cast uh you know you'll probably want to include like a hour long submission or something you know kind of showing off your chops if you wanted to cook up some pork chops that'd be good too i've never made pork chops before i don't know it's just we had pork chops every like a couple of months

grown up as a kid and it was never bad. It was just, to me, it's, a pork chop is the perfect

embodiment of mid. Like when it was pork chop night, thank you to my lovely mother for doing the lion's share of the cooking. When it was pork chop night,

I was, it was never like, yes, this, oh man, this pork chop is going to slap and it was never like, oh my God, for real,

it's pork chop night. It was just, you usually have it with mashed potatoes, which I'm a big fan of. I almost never have potatoes, but I should try to incorporate them more. Make my own mashed potatoes.

I've never made mashed potatoes like for myself. I think probably around the holidays I have, but I should get into that. Other email us Beantown Podcasts at Yahoo.com. What's your like most mid meal? It's different when you're, you know, growing up in a large family. and your poor mother's got to cook like every night just to keep things moving.

And it's kind of like not every night's going to be a winner just inherently. Whereas now when we cook, you know, just the two of us, it's, you don't go into every meal thinking like this is going to be the best thing you've ever eaten, but you want to approach it thinking like, you know, this is going to be solid. This is going to be something that we really like. And it doesn't always work out that way. but yeah what were those meals for you growing up where it was just kind of like or it doesn't have to be grown up it could be now but you're just like you know what this is going to be fine not the greatest thing not the worst thing i almost had that experience last night i was i was at a friend

friend's going away party and he lives very close to the wrigleyville taco bell which i used to frequent quite often when I lived over there. And I hadn't been inside a Taco Bell and it's been years at this point since I was last inside of Taco Bell or had eaten Taco Bell. And I was curious what what prices look like. So I downloaded the app with like a 20% thought in mind of if I see something that really speaks to me flavor wise or price wise, maybe I'll, you know, walk over there and grab something for the walk home. Excuse me. And I looked at the app and I looked at the prices and they weren't egregious.

But I think Taco Bell is another one of those where meals where it's like, I've never gone into a big bite of a Taco Bell menu item thinking this is going to be the most delicious thing of all time. And I've certainly had Taco Bell experiences that are bad. But I've never thought going in like, oh, this is going to be absolute trash. But I guess I'll eat it. I don't know. Is there any fast food out there or you're like, you know,

going to be garbage going in. I feel like people would have that impression of like a white castle or a little Caesars, but I don't think I've ever had a... I've definitely had a White Castle slider or two where it's like really soggy and it's just like, oof, this is... This was not the move, but usually it's just fine. I went to White Castle on my 21st birthday. Most people on their 21st birthday, they like go out to a bar and get a hand.

hammered and on my 21st birthday we did a food tour of, I don't even know what neighborhood that is, Avondale-ish. It's close to where we live now, but we went to Little Caesars and then White Castle and Olive Garden. All three back to back to back. And then came home and watched a Christopher guest movie and I probably had some wine or something, and like all fell asleep on the couch. Kind of a food coma.

It was me and a couple friends. Kind of an unorthodox. U-N-O-R-T-H-O-D-O-X, 21st birthday party. But I think the White Castle and the Little Caesars I had never been, and that's why I was like, oh, this is going to be like a treat yourself kind of thing. Oh, and we got donuts before that, yikes.

I wonder why I was so overweight. I'm ballooning back up a little bit. I need to, it always gets tough in the summer. It's just there's so much good ice cream to eat and wine to drink. It's like I'm living in the south of France over here. Got some good Aldi gelato. So it's just so many options. Let's wrap up with our trivia question here.

Well, unlike the sermons that we attended growing up, we'll get you out of here in half an hour. My oldest brother, friend of the show, Walter, is going to Alaska to visit some national parks with his family very soon here. And so I thought it would be fun for this trivia question, namely five largest, so by area five largest non-alaskan U.S. national parks. And I don't have the exact list in front of me to know like, because X number of the top 10 by size are in Alaska.

It's like six or seven of them, something like that. So I said, and a lot of them are lesser, you know, it's fun, but a lot of them are lesser known by name. You know, they're not your traditional Shenandoas or Big Ben's or Rocky Mountains. It's, you know, a lot of Alaskan ones, which are fun if you're a diehard parks head. But for, you know, your average Nigerian listening to this, they've never heard of, you know, glaciers of the gods or something like that. So this is the top five largest non-Alaskan U.S. national parks.

And I should have written down where these all rank when you factor in Alaska, but that's okay. So this is not by number of visitors. This is not the most populated ones, but these are definitely all five ones that are big names, I guess you would say. So going from 5 to 1, so smaller to larger, number 5, Glacier National Park in Montana on the border with, what do you think, Alberta, probably? Maybe it's like an Alberta, British Columbia kind of crossover. Maybe it extends into all three. I think on the other side of the Canadian border, it's like also a, you know, it's like Canadian Glacier National Park or something like that. because there's two countries, you have to have two separate park systems.

Number four, Grand Canyon National Park. It's a classic. Your bonus trivia question, which river runs through Grand Canyon National Park? It's the Colorado. My wife is a geography expert. Number three, it's the only one on this side of the pond, as they would say, Everglades National Park. Speaking of Julia Tuttle,

she should have bought the Everglades and sold it to the park service for billions. Number two, Yellowstone. All the Taylor Sheridan heads got that right away. And then number one, Death Valley, which is pretty much what it sounds like. It's a big valley, but it covers, I believe, both Nevada and California. Maybe it's not Nevada. Maybe it's just California. I don't know, but it's just kind of in between two big mountain, like, ridges, if you will,

and it's just, for the most part, a big old flat valley. There's a good shot, speaking of Star Wars, episode 4, New Hope, 1977, where their old Ben Kenobi and Luke and C-3PO and R2 are going from Luke's little village to most icely. and they're looking out over yonder and Alcatus's line is something like most icely spaceport you'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy i think is how the quote goes something like that and they're looking out over death valley if i'm picturing it correctly so there you go your your top five and if you're curious the largest u.s national park alaska inclusive i believe is wrangle st. Elias top top 10 saint but not inclusive of Alaska, Death Valley, Yellowstone, Everglades, Grand Canyon, and Glacier are the top five. I guess we could just say lower 48 U.S. National Parks by Area. So there you go. For Margaret Hamilton, for the Anaconda Plan for Gideon Wells, thank you for listening to my program.

Quinn Davis-Fernice presents the Beantown podcast. Let's cue up our outro music here. I hope everyone stay safe, stay sane, stay cool. I'll check in on you next time. Bye-bye.