Beantown Podcast - Missionary Persecution, Girafarigs, & Lonely Hearts Clubs (08072026 Beantown Podcast)

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Quinn comes to you LIVE to discuss the Richard Harris Estate, Congo bridge crossings, & different names for juice

Hey, what's going on? It's Quinn David Furness. Welcome to my show. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast for Friday, August 7th, 2026. What's going on? What's happening? How are you? It's hot.

It's sticky. It's like 87 degrees out, 85% humidity, double-a-a-a-hats. Crazy-Ats? Isn't that crazy-aids game? kind of like, basically like, Uno. Because I think the whole purpose of the game is like, you know, you can only play. I think you can like play a card that's the same number,

maybe the same suit. But if you have an eight, it's crazy. And you can play it wherever you like, whenever you like. Here, there, over, under, beneath, through, throughout. You can definitely play your crazy eights throughout. game. I don't know the last time I played Crazy Ate's. Used

to play not Crazy Aths so much, but there was one year I think we've probably talked about this on the show before. I won't go into depth, but there was one year of my homeschool co-op community. I think I was probably around like fifth grade

or something. Still elementary school, starting to come into my own but not all the way there yet. But one year where me and three buddies, we all a free period. And we played hearts. Like the most old lady ass card game.

We should have brought out our canasta as well. Our mahjong. We played hearts, which is still, I love hearts. I think I've played in person once or twice outside of this year-long hearts club my entire life. You need three other dedicated players. And hearts, too, is one. You gotta have four people who know what they're doing who understand the game.

It's cutthroat. It was myself. B.J. Brinkman, which was Bryce Jr. His dad was Bryce, I think. No, Bruce, his younger brother was Bryce. Isn't that confusing? These three guys, they moved away when I was like 16 or something. Used to be tasseled together, the Brinkmans lived by our piano teacher.

And, by the way, listen to discretion. advice when you're listening to this program. Number one will occasioning some language number to this podcast, objectively terrible. But yeah, the dad was Bruce, Bruce Brinkman, so he's already got the alliteration going, probably retired somewhere in Kansas now. I think that's where they moved, you know, 15 or so years ago. And then firstborn son, there are two kids, two sons. Firstborn son is like two years older than me. Bruce Jr., aka BJ. Only, it wasn't like, oh yeah, his name is Bruce.

It was like only known him as BJ and figured out later that if someone's got a J, there's a 90% chance. That means they're a junior. Like AJ from the Sopranos. By the way, drinking a falling tide, light citrus wheat. Aldi. How about that? The first time, you used to buy Winking Owl Aldi wine.

Here and there, there was a short period of time when I was in college. And I was 21, my senior year I turned 21. And I was an RA at a residence hall that was about a mile or so from the Aldi. So when I first ever started buying alcohol with any sort of regularity, because I never had a fake or anything, it was going to the Aldi on my weekly grocery trip to get Winking Owl Wine. This is my first time buying any sort of beer ever in my life from Aldi. It's basically like a bad blue moon, but it's okay.

for $8 for a six-pack he can't complain too much these days, right? There was Bruce Jr. And then young, so Bruce was the dad. Bruce Jr. was the son. And then the second son was Bryce. I've never really thought about that that much. I mean, we were decent friends,

not like super close or anything like that, but detasseled together. But, I mean, Bruce, Bruce Jr. and Bryce, that's kind of diabolical. The two other guys, they didn't really know quite as well. There was Nathan and an Andrew. And the four of us, we played hearts together.

One hour every Tuesday. Just enough, I feel like if you're really trucking, you can get through a game of hearts in like half an hour. It's a lot faster on the computer. When you're playing in person, you had manual score and everything. That's a little bit tough. So it usually take us like the full 45, 50 minute period. And, yeah, loved hearts.

Shout out to her good friends. I don't know if they have all the, or hearts or, you know, canasta or old maid or crazy or whatever in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan or good friends in Nigeria, but thank you for supporting our show. Nevertheless. I mentioned it's sticky, even our pets are affected, took Maple to the dog park today, had a terrible time. She did. I thought it was lovely other than sweating my buns off. And we even stopped for water halfway through. We got. rehydrated and

Maple probably stopped to pee while she pooped on two separate occasions peed on eight or nine separate occasions and then was hot not feeling great and chose to display that affection

the second we get back I promised her a pup cup we got one more frozen one also from Aldi so I laid out on the floor 30 seconds later just vomit everywhere So nice of her to wait until after the 45-minute walk to really let loose. But dogs gonna be dogs.

I bet Randy Jackson said that once in his illustrious career as American Idol judge. I was watching, well, this very, no one needs to really hear me elaborate on any of this, but the train of thought that got me to this video clip that I thought was hilarious. We, or it was just a fun nostalgic memory. So we're watching Hacks, the HBO show that ended earlier this year, and we're on the penultimate season. So we're almost caught up in real time. We're just like a year and a half behind right now.

And there's a great Jimmy Kimmel cameo. Jimmy Kimmel, I think, is pretty well regarded in the industry as like, you know, good guy, family man. I mean, he's on his third marriage or whatever, but it seems like he's figured stuff out for the time being. And his cameo in hacks is just the exact opposite of that. It's just like a total asshole. So that reminded me of, speaking of, you know, kind of opposites, reminded me of the clip from about, I don't know, 15-ish years ago.

He does a nice off with Ellen DeGeneres. This was Finding Nemo, Finding Dory Era, Ellen, before she got uncovered. And so she was still, you know, her reputation was at an all-time high in the industry. And so there's a great clip of them. You know, it's like a rap battle kind of thing, but they're exchanging niceties. And in the bit, Kimmel makes some joke about how great her stunt, her stint, not her stunt, her stint on American Idol was, talk about an all-time fevered

I mean, if something like that happens these days where it's like some random comedian as a judge on the voice for a season, it's not that big of a deal. But I can't express, especially if you're a younger audience member here listening today, or maybe you're from Pakistan or Nigeria, I can't express how big of a cultural sensation American Idol was for its time. And there's probably a million different reasons for that. But, you know, think back, you know, 2003, 2004, 5, whatever. You know, there's no social media in the way we have it now.

There's probably MySpace, but you certainly didn't have a smartphone. So you were just watching the main thing that was on TV. It was American Idol. It was spawning stars left and right, like Justin Guarini, who you know from the Diet Dr. Pepper commercials and Bo Bice, who you don't know. And then, of course, after X amount of years, they decided, let's get funky with it. Let's add a fourth judge.

and Ellen comes in. I don't remember. Was she the first? Obviously, there's the core. We don't need to belabor this point, but Simon, Cowell, and Paul Abdul and Randy Jackson. I think the first time they added a fourth was Kara, what's her name? I don't know if she was like a producer, a choreographer, whatever she was. But at some point Ellen came in as well. I don't know if she was a Paula replacement or if she was just like the additional fourth judge.

But I never understood, you know, they didn't really dive into the detail. of this but you know it's nice and easy when you got three judges to decide if someone's going to hollywood or not off their addition simple majority vote rules when you got four people i mean i feel like for the most part someone's either good enough to go and they're getting three or four votes or they're not that the chances of they're reading a split decision two versus two is probably unlikely and i'm sure it was just some you know producer behind the camera off camera, making a decision whether or not you're going, because these things are all extremely calculated.

But I always thought it was curious when they're like, oh, yeah, we're going to have four judges now with the whole point of it being, or the whole purported point being, you got to get two out of three votes to go to Hollywood. Speaking of 2000s era TV, we've been watching a lot of fear factor lately before bed because we turn on the Roku

and you get the, you know, live channels. I think I even mentioned this one or two episodes ago, but my wife is getting a little bit more, you know, when I first introduced it, not that I was like hunting for it, but it just kind of showed up on the recommendations. I was like, all right, let's throw this on, a little bit of a, you know, trip down memory lane, Rogan style. And she wasn't a fan, and it's not my favorite thing either,

but especially the second of three challenges is always the disgusting bug-eating challenge. And now it's still not her favorite thing, which is fair enough, but more tolerable. I think the best part, forget the bugs and the, you know, stunts and stuff. The best part of those shows is just like the 2000s era-coded interpersonal relationships, just like the conversations they have. It's all so fake and macho and so antagonistic. Everyone's got spiky, frosted tips hair. It's good stuff, man.

It's, which is in a very different place as a society now. We got to go back. We got to get rid of social media. Do you think this is our Beantown podcast poll question of the day, although per my notes here, we're going to have something else that we're asking for audience engagement on in a second here. But emails Beantown Podcast at yahoo.com, fill out our poll, beantownpodcast.com slash poll.

That's P-O-L-L-L. For my suburban friends going to St. Albert the Great, that's P-O-L-E. Do we think social media, as we know, it is still going to be kicking in, like, I don't know, a decade? I mean, it's already evolved, obviously, since, you know, the advent of MySpace and Facebook. I don't know. I wonder if as a society, I think Reddit, like a place like Reddit is pretty ironclad. but when you talk about the big dogs like your Reddit or your Instas your snaps Facebook's already seen such rapid change for the worse

I mean to think about I don't want to speak for everyone else but you know speaking of like 20 years ago well Facebook wasn't around 20 years ago but it's closed what it sounded like 2007 something like that let's say 15ish years ago um or was Facebook like 2004 I can't remember whatever it was 20ish years ago i remember you know you're on facebook you can like see the list of your friends who are online you know because no one's on in on their phone everyone's logged in on their desktop their you know Microsoft vista or at windows vista and it was like the place to be it's like anyone who's everyone is there excuse me and i don't we don't really have that as a society anymore i had a bigger point a better point i wanted to make and i completely lost it

I lost it, so I apologize. But with that in mind, we're going to keep things moving here. To get into our jumbled topics, I also have to admit something happened. I'm not going to belabor this point, but I don't think anything quite like this, quite as embarrassing or egregious as this has happened in a long time on the Beantown podcast as we're firmly here in season nine. I recorded about three minutes of a show right before I started recording this one. that's actually recording before I realized on the previous attempt that it wasn't recording.

In fact, it was playing a previous Beantown podcast episode. I must have hit a play button instead of a record button. And if you're curious, in the first three minutes of that show, instead of talking about hearts and fear factor, no lie, we talked about the dog puking because it was sticky outside. We recapped that situation. And that quickly transitioned into a discussion on that you'll never hear.

It was never recorded and we're not going to revisit it. It was a discussion on the difference between sticky buns, sticky rolls, cinnamon rolls, and cinnamon buns. With a brief mention at the end right before I realized it wasn't recording of caramel rolls. So maybe that'll make it to our, you know, you got to subscribe to the Patreon to hear our in-depth discussion on cinnamon rolls and sticky buns and etc so i'm really sorry you guys had to miss it it was pretty much comedy gold um i mentioned something that i wanted audience feedback on so we might as well just

get to that right now it's top of my notes here of course coming up in a second here we have our animal of the week which will inform or was informed by our trivia question but we'll reverse engineer it. I was sitting here working this morning and my wife's on a work call and I wasn't paying too much attention at first, but I, you know, I wasn't on a call or anything. I was just doing emails, whatever. And I think about the eighth to tenth time I heard this man's name mentioned, it picked up on it that it had been said a wild number of times in this 30 minute period. The late great Richard Harris, the stage and screen actor, passed away, and I think 2002 is what I saw. So like 25 almost years ago.

You know him as the first Dumbledore from the first two Harry Potter films. What was it? Philosopher's Stone, Sorcerer Stone, rather, and Chamber of Secrets. Replaced by Michael Gambon, who was Dumbledore in movies three through. who also has recently passed away. But they got, they were talking because my wife, I think it's a holiday ad for this company she works on,

has got a clip of Dumbledore saying, let the feast begin. And presumably, I wasn't really plugged into the work calls in a different room, but presumably that that's the clip they're talking about. Anyways, the big conversation was like how much or when do we pay, the estate of Sir Richard Harris.

I don't know if he was Sir Richard Harris, but I just assume if you were a British legendary actor who got casted as Dumbled Door, you probably were a sir. So email us, Beantown Podcast at yahoo.com, or tweet at us at Beentowncast, if that's incorrect. Let us know. But that got me thinking as we sip our light citrus wheat ale here. with just a hint of tangerine.

Great Led Zeppelin song. Tangerine. It's one of those, it's one of the, harder to just like casually sing Led Zeppelin songs. It's not like stairway to heaven. You know, there's a lady who knows

all that clitters is gold, and she's buying a stairway to heaven. Excuse me for not having a great Robert Plant. Or, you know, you got immigrant song. I'll pull the mic... I was going to say microwave away for this one. Microphone away for this one. Ah, come from the land of the ice and snow for the midnight sun with a hot springs glow.

I can't wait to go to, like, Iceland. Scandinavia is going to happen before too long. And the only question is, like, do we do a little kind of intro dip our toes into the springs as they would say up there to Iceland because it's like it's going to be like half the price of doing it you know in Breaking Bad what did Jonathan Banks say you got a half measure and a full measure Iceland is the half measure although I know I would love it and then like a Norway Denmark Sweden is kind of the full measure but I got it I got to do one and or both of those before I get too old and miserly.

Richard Harris, the reason I mentioned it got me thinking because they're talking about how much are we going to be paying the estate and when do we pay the estate of Richard Harris and that got me thinking, well, we haven't talked at all about the estate, not of me, Quindy and Furness, but of the Beantown podcast. Because, I mean, when you want to talk about

intellectual property value, holy, Holy cow. The influence, the history, the community, the website, the blog. Oh, the blog could be spun off as its own thing. So I don't know if we got any estate lawyers or probate guys. Or if you're a state lawyer has a probate guy that's really good that he uses or a notary. I've toyed with the idea That's right

Toyed T-O-Y-E-D With the idea of becoming a public notary in the past But it seems like One of those things

Where it's like Okay you study You pay the fee Whatever it is You take the test Whatever you got to do I don't know It's kind of like

Be becoming Ministerized Where you can Conduct Weddings There's multiple better ways to say that but that's just what i said we're going to keep going but then it's like like i am i am i am baptized in the methodist faith i believe i don't know i think my shower a couple years counted but it's like you get

notarized you become a notary and then what you got to have a whole marketing plan to get your name out there and i know getting stuff notarized is still a thing in this digital age but i feel like it's what would I even like if you put a gun to my head right now and we're like hey you have to get this notarized I'd be like what well what could I bring out here I don't have anything that that requires notarization so that was a little bit of a tangent at one time in my life did I come into uh contact with a notarization process. And I don't even remember, it was something to do when I worked for the law school. And one of my, I don't even want to go down the stroke because I can't even explain what it was. I don't remember, but it had something to do with one of my former clerks who I managed

applying to the state bar. They had passed their bar exam or were preparing to take it and they had to apply for it. And some sort of like feedback, I think is like, You have to get, you know, it's a very thorough process applying to the state bar and they have to know all of your past employment. And I think I had to fill out some form that required notarization. And there was a staff member at the law school who was a public notary. And they literally like came down to the office, brought their stamp and didn't even read it or anything. Just like grabbed the piece of paper. I printed out, stamped it.

and I think I put in an envelope, put in the mail. I think that's what the process was. And I don't think I paid this guy. I think the clerk that I had managed paid him, but that's my only experience with notarization. So I don't know, if anyone wants to manage the Beantown podcast, a state after I'm long and gone, presumably you're on the younger side,

like teenager. I don't know how many teenagers we have listening to this show. Probably not a lot. But I would hate, you know, know what would really bug me, what would really make my life hard, is if we find a lovely notarizer who is like 85 years old and I'm over here 31 and all of a sudden, two years later, I got to go through this whole song and dance again. Now, I can't officially say because of the Age Discrimination Act of 1920 or whenever, you should know this, I'm practically an HR professional.

I can't discriminate based off of age. No, I think that's pretty classic like Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII type stuff, I think. But there's also, there's a executive order. I don't know if it was Johnson or who it was, but the Age Discrimination and Employment Act, ADA. I think that's ADEA, rather.

I think that's what it is, actually. That means that says you can't discriminate based off of age and the hiring process. Thankfully, I'm not a federal contractor because I can't get the government to sponsor my podcast. So a lot of these anti-discrimination laws might not apply to me. But just to be safe and just to be a good human, I'm not going to come out and officially say, you know, you got to be under 15 to apply. but I just want to say when I'm talking about who will take over the estate and subsequent payments towards the Beantown podcast after I'm gone, I'm taking, I'm looking at all angles when I make a

decision. Okay. So just bear that in mind. Our Animal of the Week is sponsored by our good friends at Home Pride, Oregon. Guys, when you are buying that next million dollar Mick Mansion, next next to to Rain Wilson or Drew Bloodsoe or Richie Sexton or whomever in Central Oregon. Don't rush through it. Don't botch it.

Go with an expert, someone certified, safe who you can trust. Could be, should be, might be, might add Steve. Call them 54140100316 or email Homeprideorgan at gmail.com. Homeprite organ inspection perfection. Of course, a good friend's at Cutsby Q. and if you're going to give an animal a haircut, might as well be our animal of the week, or you can go with my dog Maple.

When she's not puking, she enjoys getting fresh haircuts as she did yesterday, not necessarily from Cuts by Q, but one of our partner collaborators, lovely pets here over on Irving Park Road. Cuts by Q, bullhives, bullhives, there's no such thing as a bullhive, but with my track record, I might just give you one.

Beehives, bangs, foahawks, flat, top so we do it all over here at the Beantown podcast cuts by Q when you need a fresh juice something snappy or new call the experts that cuts by Q not going to say thank you to TV guide still missing mini copies from 27 2007 speaking of many copies hold on to that thought because it's going to make sense when you get to our animal of the week I also want to quickly say thank Q2 are good friends at the Samson Q2U series are crisp clear. Angelithic. I was looking for some sort of Christianity-inspired adjective.

And I started saying angel and realized that there's nothing there. Maybe pious. If you're looking for a pious audio quality, P-I-O-U-S pious in the sky. Pontius Pius Pantius. Pontius pilot. We're all over the place right now. Holy cow. You think I was drunk.

drunk, I'm not. I had a summer shandy and one and a half, or a one summer shandy and a half light citrus wheat. Combined, they get up to about 2.7% ABV. It's the Samson Q2U series. When God speaks to you uses the Samsung and, of course, they're good friends at Beantown Sportsbook, whether you hit all your bets in the NFL Hall of Fame game last night

or you're down bad. There's never been a better time to make a bad decision with our bet-free token back. Get your money back, no risk, low three-item parlay, Sarah Chalk full of savings. Being Town Sportsbook, bet like a better, better. So I mentioned something about small copies. It came out of nowhere from a verbiage perspective. And it works out well because I was doing some research on the Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

and we'll get to that more in our trivia question of the week, which I think is going to be fun. But I also just randomly say, like, you know what, we got to figure out an animal of the week here. Let's Google search. What is the national animal of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or as I know it, Dr. Congo? And that led me right to the Okapi. O-K-A-P-I-the-O-C-O-C-Copy. is our animal of the week. And I did a little bit of Wikipedia searching

when I stumbled upon the Ocopi. I will mention I've seen one in a zoo before many, many years ago, 20, 25 years ago in St. Louis, I think. It's kind of like a miniature giraffe, doesn't really have the long neck, but otherwise the same kind of features. The Ocopi and the giraffe are in the same,

family, I think, when you're talking genus and species and kingdoms and orders. They're the only two in the kind of line. The cool thing about the Okapi is they got striped legs like a zebra. So they kind of look like a deer with a giraffe head, not Jurassic, giraffe kind of looking head. And then they got striped hindquarters. all the way down to the hooves, which I think is very cool. And they seem pretty nice.

They got a cool name, Ocopi, it's fun to say. And it reminds me there's this Pokemon from Gen 2, I think, that I always thought kind of looked like one of these. The giraffe-a-rig, which is a palindrome, would have been great for a palindrome of the week's segment last year, the year before, remember that was. Giraffirig, G-I-R-A-F-A-R-I-G is a 4-11-92 pounds.

I thought this thing would be bigger than that. It's a dual-type normal and psychic-type Pokemon known as the long-neck Pokemon introduced in Gen 2, famous for its palindromic name and the small, sentient head located on its tail. So the whole thing with the giraffe rig, it's kind of got like a, you guys remember that, Nickelodeon show, I think it was, cat dog or dog cat, I don't remember, where it's like one end is a dog,

the other end's a cat. It's kind of that deal going on here, but I always just thought, because it's kind of like a giraffe ik, uh, Pokemon, obviously from the look and the name. And because the back legs are like a different color than the rest of the body, I was like, that kind of looks like an Ocopi. I don't know if it's inspired in any way. Let's go. Google giraffe rig Okapi. See if there's any discussion on that. AI does say the Pokemon giraffe rig shares a clear design and name inspiration with the real life Okapi.

I don't really know the name inspiration piece of this, but I appreciate. Oh, someone on Reddit says there should be a new giraffe rigourg evolution called the Okopsy, which kind of plays well into the whole. Sometimes Pokemon has names. that are fun and cooling out there, and then other times it's just like, yeah, we just called it an actual animal.

My wife's got pickles. She finished the pickles that she got two days ago. Loves pickles. Who doesn't? They're crunchy. They're salty. Dilly. They're delicious.

I think there's a Pokemon called Dellybird. I don't know if he's serving cold cuts or what. We got more pickles. That's good. You never want to run out of pickles. That was our animal of the week. Two other things, and we get to our trivia question, then we wrap up here.

I apologize. Not our strongest show of this season, but you know what? It's been 445 episodes or whatever of the Beantown podcast. And if you're coming and expecting a home run every swing or if you're coming at all, it's, you know, you got bigger things to worry about or enjoy. We stopped at a sonic drive-thru, drive-in last week to get the viral loaded water. I didn't really know what went into loaded water.

But you're just picking a bunch of, like, fruit selections. So it's just fruit and water. Other people might know it as juice. well and earlier this week on reddit i'm on the duncan subreddit back in the day like i don't know three four or five years ago i felt like duncan was killing it with their rewards program and like introducing hot new deals and free stuff for loyal members and they've completely disregarded that and their reward system sucks now i mean it's all part of their economic is all part of their strategy, and I assume they're smarter than I am to know, like,

we make more money by not giving out cool deals. But from time to time, you'll still see someone will just, like, randomly uncover a mass code for free stuff. And so I always take the code that people are chattering about around their water cooler on Reddit and see if I can still get in on the action, because sometimes you're too late. but I did I got my free

code for a free refresher at Duncan and it's expiring today or tomorrow or something like that so I stopped in at my local Duncan after my run yesterday and the point I'm trying to make here is it's fascinating to me

how all these different maybe not even fascinating it's just funny how you got all these different fast food restaurants whatever duncan sonic i'm sure there's others out there and it's just kind of like these are all just juice we've reinvented juice not reinvented more so just hey let's sell some juice but if we just call it juice people aren't going to buy it so let's call it loaded water or a refresher or

or I don't know. There's got to be other fast food places out there that have branded juice. Probably would have strengthened my argument to come up with at least one more to add to the table. But you know what? We're all about here at the Bean Town podcast, we don't always finish the conversation.

But we start it. And now you're all sitting there late at night as a family. Imagine, you know, it's like you're listening into one of FDR's fireside chats, old-timey radio, but instead it's the Beantown podcast, which is just a really depressing, sobering thought 80 years later as a nation, how we've gone from FDR's, you know, wartime fireside chats and fighting the Nazis to listening to 31-year-old Quinn David Furness talk about loaded water and refreshers.

And even considering those in the same breath is, is. sad and pathetic and not actually reflective of what anyone does. It's more so like how I imagine most people engage with the Beantown podcast is they're subscribed out of apathy and they turn it on. They get to the first three to five minutes to see if there's actually anything interesting happening on the show. They decide not and they turn it off to go listen to literally anything else. And then there's about 2% of listeners out there who actually listen to the entire program.

Shout out to you, the 2%. And you just kind of stick with it because maybe something cool will happen, or you're just, you like trivia. And you try not to pay attention to when you look down at the progress bar and you see there's still 15 minutes left on this Godforsaken episode. But you're like, all right, let's just bump this up from two times speed to three times speed and we'll get through it. you know, throw Quintabone, help them out with the numbers.

So thank you because it means a lot. And you're one of the few people out there in the world who have even thought about an Okapi in the last hour, unless you live in the Democratic Republic of Congo. So consider yourself blessed, because most people out there, they're, you know, man, they're bogged down by bills, the system. NFL preseason.

You know, they got their mind on bigger things, but you're out here just chilling saying, you know what? There's like five of us in the world outside of the Democratic Republic of Congo who are thinking about old copies and giraffe rigs and cheap Aldi wheat beer. And it's a fun club to be in. It's not pretentious. It's not special. It's just there's a lot of different things you can do with your life.

Thanks for being part of. the Beantown community for this 45-minute hour-long session once a week. Let's keep this moving. I got one more thing, small thing, that popped up right before we were out to go live. I was scrolling Facebook, which I do just casually, like, I don't know, honestly, no cap, probably like twice a day, maybe a third time for anywhere from like 10 seconds to 2 minutes. and rarely do I see anything interesting. But I saw this, and it wasn't particularly interesting,

but it just caught my attention, and I was like, what could this mean? So I follow a church, you know, old connections from back home, whatever, never really engaged with this church much, but follow them. They posted a video, one of their members, who I don't know, and post like a 30-second video saying, hey this week we're not going to be live streaming our church service on YouTube as we normally do

that's because we've got some missionaries coming in to talk about their work so to protect their identities we're not going to live stream granted this is you know as you would expect like a Sunday morning church service at 9 a.m. that every time I log in it's I'm like the second person viewing the stream so not a lot of action but that's not really the point my point is like well there's a lot of different things I could say first and foremost what are these missionaries talking about where we need to protect their identities

the what goes to my mind is like the the implication i m p l i c a t ione seems to be like these missionaries are doing such dangerous work in such hostile areas it's going to be like when Hillary landed in Afghanistan or it wasn't Afghanistan, right? It was Eastern Europe. Somewhere it was like Serbia.

Sarajevo. Something like that. And, you know, the bullets were flying overhead and turns out it was completely false. Or the whole, what's his name? Allison Williams' dad. Brian Williams. You know, the whole misreporting, false reporting scandal from like 10, 12 years ago. He was talking about bullets flying past this.

That's right. They're whizzing. Passis says, I don't think he necessarily said that. I just, the verb fit too well there. W-H-I-Z-Z-I-N-G whizzing. And he got,

you know, he lost his primetime spot. I think Wester Holtz got it now. NBC Nightly News. But like, what are these missionaries doing? And where are they? That is so hostile.

Because I feel like, you know, growing up in a very evangelistic, almost cultish Christian society. You hear a lot about like, oh man, Christians everywhere, they're being persecuted. And maybe that's true.

Maybe it's not. But I just, I don't know how many countries out there are actively being like, oh man, you're preaching the gospel. We're going to fuck you up. I don't think this has anything to do. There's no correlation between these two things, but just in my mind I'm thinking the scene in Last King of Scotland

when they hang McAvoy from the Meat Hook. Oh, man. that doesn't pinch your sphincter i don't know what will but i think he makes it out right he doesn't he doesn't die james macko's character i've never actually seen it i just am aware of the scene forest whittaker oscar winning performance oh man ediamine but it's like i don't know maybe this is even like a mini power ranking what are the top five countries top five worst countries for evangelical missionaries these days Because like 20 years ago I would have said, well, here's a list of like 160 places that hate Christians and hate us.

And now I'm like, they're probably like, unless you're being irritating, they're probably fine. My other thing before maybe we speculate in power rank a second, it's like maybe we focus less on like, I don't know, preaching on the street and trying to do conversion stuff. And just let's focus more on like the social services side, I think. things. And if you want to, you know, project a Bible verse on the screen off to the side while you're building a school or something, or, you know, digging a ditch, cultivating a well, you know, that's okay. But maybe focus more on the infrastructure and all these mission trips going up. It's like, yeah, we're going to go down to Haiti to build a church. It's like, well, just maybe just build a like a school or get them an Xbox or something.

I would be much more receptive if you came into my community, if you're, you know, a Hindu or something, I'm probably not going to convert if you're like, here I'm going to build a Hindu temple in your backyard. But if you were like, here's an ice cream Sunday, I'd be like, okay, this Hinduism thing, now we're talking. Okay, so maybe there's a little bit of insider strategy for you. maybe if these missionaries did some,

what if they did some more focus groups before they went into the market, right? Let's take this for more of a economics angle. You got to know your market. Ask the people what they want before you start building churches and pulpits and, you know, singing hill song songs. Focus on what the people want, okay?

top five worst countries in 2026 to be a missionary I feel like North Korea kind of makes the list just de facto I don't even I think communism in general is kind of not into organized religion generally speaking

in North Korea just you know maybe these missionaries are actually from North Korea but it's like that also makes me think if they got to protect their identity or are they like is it like the americans Carrie Russell

they like pretending to be regular people in that particular country and they're just like trying to infiltrate from the inside what are these missionaries doing why do their identities need to be protected

I thought the whole thing with Christianity it was like we're going to wear Jesus on our sleeves our WWJD bracelets so now it's it seems like they're backing off a little bit I don't know.

We'll put them in there. I wouldn't want to be a missionary or anyone else in North Korea. So we'll give you that one. Russia, if we're following the communist route, I feel like October Revolution, 1917, they probably killed a lot of the Christians to set up their communist state. but the thing with Russia too is I feel like there's still like the big

Eastern Orthodox population which is not excuse me the same thing as you know singing Hill song on a Sunday morning but I don't know I feel like he could go if Russia is so big too it's like they're not even going to find you it's like one person per per 240 million

square miles. I think if the math is right. So I don't even know if we should have Russia on the list. The fact I'm having such a hard time crafting this list tells me all I need to know. It's that you don't have to hide your identity. But if we wanted to throw three other countries on there, North Korea, Russia, I don't know, just because of the cony coolness factor. And since it's on topic, we'll throw Democratic Republic of the Congo on there.

there's three maybe like a hardcore Muslim state or Islamic state maybe I don't know who do you think the most hardcore one is Iran

they seem pretty hardcore throw Iran on there that's three I feel like Pakistan don't they have a crescent moon on the flag as does Turkey A we'll put Pakistan

on there and then I don't know to close it out what do you think some country who doesn't even matter their religion they're just feisty and seem aggressive albania sneaky sneaky sneaky uh muslim population in albania so there you go there's our mini power ranking of the week top five worst places to be a christian missionary in 2026 in whatever order you fancy north Korea, Russia, Albania, Iran, and that fifth one we mentioned. Shoot, what was it? Democratic Republic of the Congo. Which brings us to our final segment here, of course, our trivia question of the week.

I will let you know in advance. This is not your traditional, you're going to get it right or you'll probably get it wrong type question because it's a time question. How long is this going to take, et cetera? So you're just going to give it your best guess just for fun. See who gets closest. Email us your responses. Beantown Podcasts at Yahoo.com.

So I think, I don't know what the Reddit thread was I was on yesterday, but something about like two places that are close to each other that, like, like you can't easily get to one or the other. I don't know what the exact thread was. But it got me and this is how I started thinking about congos in general for today's program. and I took a look at, as you might know, the two capitals of the two Congoes are Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and they sit on opposite banks of the Congo River,

which is a mighty, a large river in Africa. It's pretty long, but even more so, it's very wide, miles at a time in some places. And so there is a ferry that presumably if you wanted to, cross borders and go from Brazzaville to Kinshasa or vice versa. You would just take this ferry and it'd be nice and easy and it's like 45 minutes or something across the river. Watch out for hippos. But in the event, let's say you don't like fairies and you just want to cross a good old-fashioned bridge. Here's my question to you.

If you ignore the ferry and want to drive from downtown Kinshasa to downtown Brazaville, how long is that going to take you? So you got to find the nearest bridge crossing. I'll give you a small hint. It's not that close to either of these cities. You had to go down, over, and back up. Down River the Congo. You know, they had that movie, what, Merrill Street, Kevin Bacon, John C. Riley, the River Wild.

I think they're going down. I don't know, what's the river in that one? It's like the Columbia or something. I don't remember which river they're going down. there's a dog, there's a kid, a failing marriage. And I don't really remember, like, what, because Kevin Bacon and John C. Riley are the bad guys in that one, and they, like, take Meryl Streep hostage,

and her husband is, like, on the boat for some of it, and then nod on, and it comes back at the end of the day and rescues things, rescues everyone. But, like, what were Kevin Bacon... Oh, it's David Strather, and there you go. What were Kevin Bacon and John C. Riley trying to do in that movie? I feel like there's not a lot of money to be made and like taking over someone else's canoe, generally speaking. Like that's not a big scheme.

They're taken hostage by a pair of armed fugitives. What's the river though? The salmon river in Idaho. There you go. Their dog Maggie. It's a total five bagger. You can go wild. watch it. Let's see what the, uh, 63% on rotten tomatoes. Not bad. It's one of those movies I saw

once on WGN when I was a kid. Good stuff. But yeah, that's our trivia question. How long does it take if you ignore the ferry to drive from Kinshasa to Brazzaville via the nearest Congo River bridge crossing? I think there's only like two bridge crossings in the entire river, which is insane to think about. But it is what it is. Take your best guess, write it down. Let us know how you did. I will reveal the answer.

This was, by the way, like 4 p.m. central time on a Thursday. So that's probably what, like, midnight or something in the Congo. So it might even be slower at other times a day with increased traffic. Who knows? The answer that I found via Google Maps was 16. hours, 38 minutes. Excuse me. So again, these two capital cities are just across the river from each other,

much in the same way Detroit and Windsor are. Imagine if it took, you wanted to go from Detroit to Windsor, and it took 16 hours, 38 minutes, that'd be rough. There you go. If you got any other cool Congo River facts, let us know. But otherwise, I will wrap it up there. I appreciate everyone for their continued support of the Bean Town podcast. Thank you for tuning into my show.

You know we'll be back next week. We're always back. Stay safe, stay sane. Check in on you next time. Bye bye. You know, that's not the outro music, the Bean Down podcast. That's a really embarrassing. Tough day.

Tough day for the show. Here's the actual outro music.