Beantown Podcast - Strewn About, Black Cherries, & the Mt Baldhead Challenge

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Quinn comes to you LIVE to discuss game birds, racing up to the orb, and just how rocky are those mountains??

Hey, what's going on? It's Quinn David Furness. Welcome to my show. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast for Friday 9-11, 2026. What's happening? What's going on? How are you? My name is Quinn David Furness. I am the chief creator, host, and historian on this show. 25 years, huh? We're not going to do a like remembrance, moment of silence, deep dive or anything like that. But, like, you know, 25 years is a big one. We had 250 years for America this summer, which was really a shame. Like, I feel like regardless of your feelings on America, it's like 250 could have been really cool, really badass. But instead it was just like a UFC fight and like a national state fair kind of thing that no one went to. It's just, yeah, not, I don't know. It could have been way cooler, I feel like. And then, you know, 9-11, what can you say?

Let's roll, I guess is what I would say. Roll into the Beantown podcast season 9 here as we get you ready for fall. Labor Day has come and past. How does that Green Day song go? Summer has come and past. The innocent will never last. Wake me up. When September ends.

Listen, discretion advised, by the way, when you're listening to this program, number one, will occasion you some language. Number two, the podcast is objectively terrible. Shout out to our good friends in Pakistan, who had nothing to do with 9-11, communist misconception. Thank you for making this 70th ranked comedy podcast in the Islamic Republic of podcast. And, of course, our good friends in Nigeria. Benin City, East, Togo, West.

Kenya, wherever you're listening from. Thanks for making us. We're cracking the top 178 in West Africa, which is exciting. Afro beat, maybe I could make an Afro beat album. That was more talented. I could apply my musical skills and abilities in different ways. That muscle doesn't get a lot of flexing these days. It's kind of just like some sight reading here and there of classical pieces,

the occasional just like death cab cover from memory on the piano just being playing inside my own head and that's about it i felt like i was a lot more musically creative and just like inclined to experiment and do different things just for fun you know like three to six seven years ago and i don't know i just kind of it hasn't gone away it's just I think my own, like, personal need to feel like I'm entertaining myself has gone down. I'm more, I think, busier with, like, jobs and work and side gigs and family commitments. And just, I don't know, it's just not that my whole life is just busy, busy, busy all the time, but it feels like when I actually get the chance to just kind of let my hair down, as they say,

it's nice to just kick your feet up, turn something on TV, play some tune, last and just fade in, fade out. Isn't that what Oasis says? We are drinking. In fact, we got to get it open here. Thanks to our Karen Hugar, Real Housewives of Potomac saucer. What is it called? A cup holder? It's not a cup holder. What the heck? A coaster? Yeah, Rachel got, my wife got Real Housewives of Potomac Coasters as some sort of birthday Christmas Veterans Day gift. I don't know what it was, but we got four. We got Karen, Ashley, Robin, and I assume Giselle. I can't remember who the fourth one is, but they're kind of scattered.

They're strewn about the apartment. S-T-R-E-W-N. that's like a verb tense of a word right strewn about that's a verb so what is the like conjugation of the word strewn what are we dealing with here strewn is an adjective oh it's a you know i never claimed to be an english major over here strewn this makes more sense because in my head i'm trying to like conjugate strewn and uh you know it's not going so well strewn is an adjective or past part of it well it says it could be a past participle that means scattered spread or covered with things lying about strew is is the name of uh or is a verb have you guys ever our

our first listener poll question of the week you ever use the verb to strew not in the past participle sense it is like exclusively a past participle that would be a good horse name past participle write that down. I actually heard another good horse name earlier this week that I had to write down, which is a good reminder while we're here, Beentown Podcasts at Yahoo.com. Again, it's Beentown Podcasts, Beintown, Bintown, B, podcast at Yahoo.com. We do our horse name special. If you're listening to the show at this point in season nine deep in the weeds of September, it's unlikely that I need to explain to you what the horse name special is. But basically, just in five words or less,

every year I come up and with listener help as well. With some names, these are not like, oh, there was a horse name to this in 1970, and I love it. Let's put it on the list. This is just pure creation from my mind of, oh, that seems like it could be a good horse name. It really taps into this wild, bizarre culture

of giving horses just the strangest names. And past participle, I think, falls into that category. But the reason I mentioned it is even though we do our horse name special every year Kentucky Derby weekend, we're constantly fielding recommendations and suggestions. And no matter whether your name that you send in or names make the top 10 list when it's showtime in May, I do commit to reading all the names on the air because it's a very democratic process. and it doesn't take very long to go through anywhere from one to three annual listener name suggestions. So that's why I do it that way.

But I am drinking Trader Joe's sparkling water. It's been in the back of the fridge for probably nine months now. Black cherry vanilla. I want to come back to that. Actually, you know what? Let's do this. I'm not drinking today. I've got a half marathon tomorrow, which we'll get to in a second here because I think that's fun to talk about.

But I wanted to belabor this point for a moment. I just spilled. Took my first sip. It spilled all over my nice white cotton tea. That definitely hasn't been in my plain white teas rotation for like eight years. I think I buy a new pack. It's like six pack. Haynes Fruit of the Loom, whatever it is.

Plain white t-shirts once every like three years is probably my average at this point. I wore I wore plain white t-shirts a lot more when I had to dress business or business casual every day. Now it's just like I'm only wearing button-down dress shirts. There's a difference between like casual button-down shirt and like button-down dress shirts that you can wear a tie with. I'm only doing the latter like at weddings these days and that's about it. I guess the occasional event for work that I have to go to. once every couple weeks or so. But what's the deal?

Okay, so this flavor, which I don't mind, by the way, this is nothing against the flavor itself. Black cherry vanilla. I get vanilla. I think I have a pretty firm grasp on what vanilla is as a concept and as a flavor. Can we talk for a second about black cherry? Now, this isn't any sort of like revolutionary new flavor.

And I don't even want to go so far as to label it or categorize it in the same way as like a blue raspberry because that just doesn't exist. That's just like let's invent something and have fun with it and just the kids will like it. When you have a regular cherry, it can be bright red or you get some of those dark cherries and frankly they get closer to being black, but I don't think anyone would ever say like, oh, look at that cherry. It's black. Chiries are red. That's just how it is.

So my question, what's the deal with this black cherry? Is this, did we make it up? Do we wait? We let the cherries like overripen until they get so dark red that ergo de facto, they're black? I opened up my web browser and my phone and I don't even know if we finished our strew past participle thought because I think we got into horse names. To strew, to spread by scattering, to cover box. or as if by scattering something, to become dispersed over as if scattered or to disseminate.

She strewed the bird seed on the ground. No one's ever said that. I'd be more likely to say she disseminated the birdseed on the ground that she strewed the bird seed on the ground. If you're going to go with strewd, you've got to say the bird seed was strewn about on the ground. I think that's the other thing, too. It's important to include that about whatever.

that is an adverb, uh, conjunction, I don't know, it's got to be strewn about. You can't just be strewn, strewing things randomly. You can't construe that. Construne. Sounds like an old, like, you ever watch that, uh, that movie Brave with the redhead? What is that, Scotland where that's set in like the Middle Ages or something? If you put together the word construed and strewn, you'd have the name Constrewn. It feels like it'd be the name of like the grandma or something. Or Lilith. Lilith is good.

I feel like Lily, you know, has kind of hung around in the naming conventions, but Lilith, not so much. Okay, what were we actually going to look up? Black Cherry. Reminds me of that song, Big Black Horse and the Cherry Tree. What was going on with that? What's the horse and the cherry tree doing? do horses like cherries it's not big horse in the black cherry tree it's big black horse in the cherry tree

what is that k t tunstall big black horse in the cherry tree oh do oh doom do do do whoa boom boom boom boom and i said no no no no no no no no no you're at the ball to me that might qualify as a nonsense song. I don't know what the heck she's talking about or what big black horses and cherry trees have to do with each other. Okay. I'll eat crow on this because it looks like it's a legit thing. Prunis seratina,

commonly called black cherry, wild black cherry, rum cherry or mountain black cherry is a new world deciduous tree or shrub in the rose family. Despite his common names, it is not very closely related to commonly cultivated cherries. So my question is here, are we actually eating this? Or did we just take the concept of a cherry and say, you know, it would be really fun? Black cherry.

That's going to give it an extra little bite. I do think black cherry has a flavor profile is slightly different than a traditional cherry. Right? When I think of traditional cherry, I think a little bit sweeter. And then black cherry has got a little bit more of that bite to it. So maybe you can eat black cherries. I don't know. Edible raw, the fruit is also made into jelly and the juice can be used as a drink mixer, hence the common name rum cherry.

All right. So it's a new world tree and, excuse me, similar cherry but different. A.I. Is black cherry a real cherry? Yes, a black cherry is a real cherry in botanical terms. It says these are standard sweet cherries that have dark red or nearly black skin. Color comes from the extra time ripening on the branch and natural plant pigments. It's still not 100% clear to me if a black cherry and a regular cherry are like different plants.

Because I thought so from the Wikipedia article and the AI seemed to hint at they might just be ripened longer. are cherries and black cherries different. It's good a definitive answer. Depends on whether you mean the grocery store fruit or the wild North American tree. All right, we're not getting anywhere. Thefruitguys.com says they're basically the same thing. Okay. What is that one song, play that funky music, White Boy?

Is that by the song Wild Cherry? or I buy the band Wild Cherry or am I misremembering something? Wild Cherry rock band. American funk rock band formed in Mingo Junction, Ohio in 1970. If you ever been to Mingo Junction, email us being on podcast, at Yahoo.com, or tweet at us. They released four albums and I think they're the ones who did, yeah, play that funky music. You gotta love it.

It's like this, you know, band of white guys, they kind of sound like, you know, the singer kind of sounds like he could be black just based off of the voice alone. Reminds me of another great funk band, right? Casey and the Sunshine Band. Make a little, do a little dance, make a little love. Get down to night. Get down to nine. It always, when I found out that Casey of Casey and the Sunshine Band, their lead singer, Harry Wayne Casey, was just like this big old. white guy. I was like, wow,

did not expect that. Our Animal of the Week, we were watching an episode of Chopped last night in between the dropout, the Hulu series and Elizabeth Holmes with Amanda Seifred from like three or four years ago. We've been going through that after, basically, I saw the Nathan Fielder trailer

with Elizabeth Holmes five days ago, whatever, and I was like, oh my gosh, I have got to like get myself prepared for this so i'd never seen the drop out so we're watching that one episode at a time and then uh we had a little bit of a gap between that and the start of the australia game NFL and so i said you know what let's just go with a little bit of chop the reason i mentioned that one of their basket ingredients i think in the entree round was pheasant sausage and they were talking a little fessons and i realized like we got this whole little game bird corner of

the world here that I don't know much about. Maybe I would be more informed if I was ever a hunter. Because, you know, you got your pheasants and your turkeys and your cornish game hens. It's literally right in the name. But they were saying pheasant actually kind of tastes like chicken sausage, which I'm intrigued by. I think pheasant is one of those things. It's definitely one of those things for me at least where just from name alone, like I'm never going to be at the restaurant and be like, hey, you know what?

I'm in the mood for a pheasant. Like there's no real situation in life where I'm ever going to go out of my way to try it. But if I was like over at someone's house or if there was a fancy wedding or something and it was like, you know, a pheasant appetizer or something, I would totally try it. And from the way they were describing it on the chopped episode, I was like, you know, maybe this would be actually pretty good. I remember one time when I was in high school, I went over to my girlfriend's house. She lived with her mom. And she made, or had made it wasn't like, oh, Quinn's coming over. So let's cook dinner.

It was just like dinner happened and I happened to like come in when it was ready. Cornish gay men, as we just mentioned. And I think I lost some brownie points when I was like, oh, I'm not actually that hungry because I was just scared to try something new and different. And it had like the bone sticking out of it. and I was just like, I don't know if I really want to like get in here with a knife and fork, but I think I think like, you know, whatever it is, 16, 20, 15 years later, if I can do math, like 15 years later, I feel like if I went over to like my mother-in-law's house and she was like making something funky like pheasant or cornish game hen, I think in obviously situations

are different, but just my own, like, style and approach. You'd be like, you know what? Yeah, let's give it a shot. Back in the day, I was just like, you know what? I've got a 12-pack of zebra cakes and a 2-liter of diet store-brand orange soda in the backseat, so I think I'm good. Could use some protein, for God's sake. Cornish game hen.

Let's see if there's anything else interesting about pheasants. They are really beautiful. I mean, like, you know, I mean, not in the conventional sense of like Aphrodite or something, but I just think the colors, when you see them like walking around in the little like fall, you know, native plants in the Midwest or like cornfields, I don't know. I think that they're kind of pretty. They got like a cool little yellow and blue and red going on color scheme.

Very fall. It's interesting that the turkeys have completely cornered the things. giving market when I mean probably probably good for pheasants that they've avoided that but quail is another one I feel like every once in a while people cook up a quail or quail eggs I don't think I've ever had quail dan quail email us if you have any good dan quail facts or regular quails I'm amenable to both pheasants can be found all over the world in introduced populations there's native range is restricted to Eurasia, which is always a fun region, comprising all of Europe and Asia. I got to tell you, when I hear Eurasia instantly I'm thinking like the border between Europe and Asia,

so if you tell me Eurasia, I'm thinking like Azerbaijan and Western Russia and Tajikistan, that kind of area of the world. but I guess Eurasia technically could go all the way from Lisbon to Pyong Chang How does that go? Pyong Chang is where the Olympics were in South Korea four years ago or whatever. Pyongyang is the capital of North Korea. Way too close to each other.

Anything else on pheasants we got before we talk sponsors and Mount Baldhead challenges, aka half marathons? They mostly eat seeds, green, It means roots and berries, okay. They also enjoy fresh green shoots, earthworms, snails. In the UK, there are a potential threat to endangered native adders. That's a snake, right? Yeah, venomous snake.

I don't feel that badly about the pheasants wiping out the adder population. Maybe that's a short-sighted view of mine. But I'd rather have pheasants running around than venomous snakes. I don't know. when we were in uh and i speaking of you know issues to the you know local floor and fauna population and stuff in actual issue in hawaii we probably talked about this when we went there but huge swaths of chickens strewn about on the island at least on oahu i don't know if they have that issue on other islands too but there were a lot of

chickens just, you know, it wasn't like every day we're seeing a million, but I remember one hike was like the Alua, the Alua Valley Loop or something, or IEA Valley Loop, I can't remember what it was called. But it was a nice little like forest walk down, not a crazy ton of elevation until the end, there was a lot of like stairs and then back down. But overall, like a pretty gentle hike. Maybe I'm conflating too in my mind. I don't know. I have to ask my wife later, but we're just like walking down the trail and there's just like chickens kind of following you and you're not like scared in the traditional sense but they're also like chickens i feel like are kind of unpredictable what did john hitter say napole dynes do they have large talons and the farmer's like i don't understand a word you just said that's kind of how i feel about a chicken half halfway like following me down the meandering path i'm kind of like i'm not that scared but also i would be kind of kind of upset if it charged me and like flapped its wings like crazy and started pecking at me

and I had to like make a gut call like do I run or kick it like I don't really want to be in that situation and so you're you're kind of like two degrees away from that when they're just kind of like following you you know 15 20 feet away it's like not super ideal I did get followed when I was going down the Grand Canyon last time I was there like five years ago for a brief spell of time that's right, a spell of time. I was going down, I think the worst part about it was it was still dark. I was going down the angel, bright, bright angel trail, whatever it's called, going down to Plateau Point to see the Colorado.

And a ram, I think that's the only time of, I'm sure I've seen rams before, like, you know, with binoculars, but a ram followed me for a good minute, two minutes, not like charging at me, but just kind of trotting down a little bit of bug. me coming down the same path I was and eventually, you know, one of the times I looked back, he was just gone. But that's another one of the situations where you're like, all by yourself, it's dark. You can't see your footing super well. And here comes a big old, you know, sheep with big ass horns and you're just kind of like, I'm going to play it cool for now, but if this guy decides he wants to try me, if he wants a piece of me, I think the chicken I could handle a

but more of the ram if he comes charging down the trail. I don't really feel super great about that, like what I would do, because you'd have to make a decision really quickly. I think I would, like, try to sidestep it. But if he decides he wants to have a go at you, I mean, it's him or me. Someone's going to have to get pushed off the side of this trail. We'll have to find us at the Indian Garden campsite, lush, green forestry, if you have ever been to the Grand Canyon.

That's enough of that. would be a great time to say thank you to our sponsors home pride organ and thank you to the pheasant by the way our animal of the week are you tired of selling your house for less than a quarter of what it's worth all because you couldn't find a reliable home inspector in time well organ listeners i got good news for you home pride organ home pride inspection services rather in bend oregon is central organ's hottest new home inspection provider with inspection services including things like heating and cooling roofing plumbing and so much more home pride organ is both contractor certified certified and home inspection certified so you know you're getting the good stuff.

If you're tired of big real estate, Rangelhold on the home inspection market and you want a safe certified home inspector you can trust, call Steve at 541-4100316 or email homeprideorgan at gmail.com. Again, that's home pride organ at gmail.com. Home pride organ inspection perfection. I also want to give a shout to the Samson Q2U series. You won't find in the average person's

household any Samson's strewn about that's because they need to be kept in a nice dark cool environment a display case maybe you don't want people tripping over cords or Samson's or anything like that you think the word strewn shows up in the Bible anywhere probably depends on your translation it's like if you get one of those NIVs no but King James it's like twice every freaking book of the Bible there is a question uh... the other day about the Pentateuch. And my first guess was wrong and my second guess was wrong.

And it turns out the answer was numbers. You guys ever see that, what was it, a CBS show, Numbers? What's the plot of that one? There's so many like crime, drama, periodical shows like that that I will never watch in my life. Not to like lump in something like

numbers with, you know, goats, like Law and Order SVU but there's just so many of those shows with so many episodes because they all have

like 22 episode seasons fringe what the heck is fringe numbers I don't know that I will just never watch one of those shows had that guy

from Lost on it right the guy who plays Ben Linus from the others he's like the main badie in like season two and three

basically and then he kind of becomes like less of a bad guy he's just more of a bad guy when he's another kind of like an immigrant but i think i don't know if he was on numbers or which show he was on but if anyone knows anything about numbers book of the bible or the cbs show let us know home pride or we did that one samson god speaks he uses us samson of course our good friends i got

to take care of this uh right after the show here hop in the shower do a little back of the neck shave before it gets too gnarly i want to look good for football season and for my big race Not the amazing race. It's less exciting than that, but hopefully still good. 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.

It's a little like Enter Sandman, only different. Cuts by Q has been independently owned and operated since 1995, and is probably one of the better barbershop operations serving Chicago, Cook County, Northwest Indiana, and the Greater Chicago land area. From beehives to bangs, foahawks, to flat tops, and everything in between, call Cuts by Q at 815-298-7200 or email Cutsby-Q at Yahoo.com. And that's Cuts. Q-U-T-Z by Q at Yahoo.com.

Oh, and you need a fresh stew, something snappy or new. Just call the experts at Cuts by Q. And finally, oh, man, the NFL season is here. We've had two games so far, Patriots, Stormback, or other way around. Seahawks stormback to knock off the Patriots in an ugly game. And then, I mean, at least that one was within three points and it came down to the end. Last night, Rams and 49ers. My God, what a...

I saw it to some extent. I mean, it was close until, like, late third quarter. But boy, that Matthew Stafford performance was just yucky. There were so many throws, and I'm biching about it because I had Devante Adams and fantasy. there were at least like two or three Devante Adams routes where he's just wide open and Stafford it wasn't it was like a it was a different or like a balance or somewhere in between like a clean pocket and just like getting the crap beat out of you so like pressure's collapsing but but Stafford having done this for 20 years you kind of think like he can like

figure out how to make those throws even if it's not a perfect pocket and he just could not last night. It was bad, man. Yeah, that one ended up being a blowout, which is just not what I expected at all. Anyways, Hayes Sports Heads, has it been too long since you made a terrible decision? While the all-new Beantown Sportsbook is now live leveraging the latest AI, advanced analytics, and obnoxious in-app advertising to turn you into a slam dunk. With the NFL season, kickoff right around the corner. It's here. There's never been a better time to send your bets up, up and away. into orbit. The Bean Town Sportsbook is Sarah Chalk full of the best money lines over under, same game parlays, bet back guarantees, prop bets, fractional bets, ETFs, and for

a limited time only, and what were those things? NFTs, you don't hear about those much anymore. $500, no-risk betback winners only just for VIP's tax-free guarantee for limited time only. Download the app today and use code Melbourne. Do you guys hear that last night on the Netflix broadcast with Ian Eagles kid. Can we, so there's a line between like saying a town name like how we say it in America because of America and then saying it like all the other way to like try to blend in with the accent. But I mean when the, you know, NBC is going down to Mexico for the Vikings Niners game in like

November and they're not, you're not going to have Chris Collinsworth saying like, well, to or like, bienvenitos of Mexico, see you da de Mexico. Right. Like we're not, that's too far. And so every single time on this broadcast lesson, Eagle Jr., is like, welcome to Melbourne. No, like, can we just say Melbourne? Like, it's not that hard. You don't have to say Melbourne because that's like how it would come out with an Australian

accent. Man, it was pissing me off. Unless I'm missing something about like how we're actually supposed to pronounce Melbourne in English that no one has taught me but I mean the amount of times Eagle Jr. said melbourne last night I was like I'm getting hungry like take me to the bakery over here I'll buy a melbourne for myself just kind of pissed me off where were we download the app today and use code melbourne for your first token bet back unlimited prop free bet bonus guarantee back up to $500 no limit Texas hold them

Bean Town Sportsbook bet like a better better That's how you say it in Beantown slang It's not better better, it's better, better While we're on the topic of NFL Before we get to Mount Baldhead Challenge And then I got one of their like random thought That I don't have a bit on But it just popped in my head today

And I think it's worth asking And then we'll finish up with a trend trivia question. My, the official Beantown podcast, NFL division and playoff picks for the season. I don't have anything super funny. It's just this is where I'm thinking. If you guys are NFL buffs like me, I figure I'll give you two minutes on it. It's just this is where my gut is on September 11th, two days before the season really gets

going. Starting the AFC West, I'm taking. the Broncos. I just, last year I was kind of like, oh, they kept winning. I was like,

oh, they're not for real. And then you look at the infrastructure and pieces they have in place and they're a pretty like veteran team. Like with Sean Payton, like, oh, yeah,

I actually think they're good. Like, chiefs and chargers are going to be solid too, but I like the Broncos. AFC North, I don't know. Everyone's on the Ravens. They're like, oh, my God,

the ratings are going to be so good. And then sneaky, everyone's like, oh, yeah, the Bengals actually could, like, two. It just depends on if borough's healthy. I think the Bengals, though, I'll take the Bengals. I don't want to overlook the Steelers, but I don't know, they got wild card in all over them.

The South, I think the Jags got a little bit lucky last year with some turnovers. So I'm going to take the Texans. I think CJ Straud rebounds a little bit. And I don't think the Colts are going to be able to replicate last year. And then in the East, just saw the Patriots who didn't look terrible, but not great and made. It didn't look very good. So just give me the bills. Kind of chalky there. So I got bills, Bengals, Broncos, and Texans.

Wild cards, I don't know. No one cares about wild cards. Doesn't matter. Not going to win the Super Bowl. My AFC representative in the Super Bowl, I think I'll take the Broncos. I think they were so close last year. I think they can do it this year.

NFC West, well, we just saw it happen to the Rams. They're going to storm back. Seahawks, who knows how long Darnold's out for, 49ers look good, but they're going to get hurt. So it really is up, to me, it's like a total one-third toss-up amongst those three teams. I just think for like the not memingness of it, but everyone's going to be like, oh, what happened to the Rams?

Like, false flag. I'll take the red hang. I'll take the Rams to win that division. the NFC South God. I think the only thing we know for certain is that it's not going to be the Falcons who are starting Cooper Rush tomorrow. After a whole offseason of like, oh, is it going to be Pennix? Is it going to be Tua?

Turns out it's neither, which is really exciting. I can't imagine being a Falcons fan. Good friend of the show, Ryan Austin English is a Falcons fan. And I got to send him a text tonight or tomorrow and just check in on his mental well-being. NFC South, I'll take the Buccaneers. NFC East seems like it's kind of trendy to pick the cowboys right now. Giants for a second were popping up, but I'm iffy on them. Commanders, I think, are just going to be trash.

Eagles, I don't know. I'll take the Eagles, though. I just don't know how I can pick the Cowboys. NFC North, I'm picking the Lions solely for the easy schedule. I think it'll be Lions, Vikings, Bears, Packers in that order. one, two, three, four. Packers are just giving me the hick right now. NFC representative, who did we say in the AFC?

We said the Broncos. NFC, I think I'll take the Lions. I think they finally get over the hump this year. And then Super Bowl Broncos versus Lions. I'll take the Broncos to win the Super Bowl. That's what I think is going to happen. That's your official Beantown podcast, Beantown Sportsbook pick of the year.

Denver Broncos plus four six. to win the Super Bowl. I don't actually know if they're 470. I don't really know how to interpret an odd like that, but everyone else says it. It's kind of the theme of the Beantown podcast, right? 450 episodes in. Everyone else is saying something,

so let me just get in on the action. Here, let me just do my random thought. Then we'll briefly pontificate on my race tomorrow, then finish with trivia. I just had this thought. Nothing like crazy funny about it more, just like a, I don't know, Is this true?

The Rocky Mountains are a pretty well-known mountain range, and their name is rocky, as in lots of rocks there. My question, are the Rocky Mountains particularly more rocky than other mountain ranges you might compare there to? I think the first thing that came into my mind was, well, if you're in the U.S. and you're doing some exploration from east to west back in the day, if you're used to looking at the Appalachians and the Alleghenies and the Cat Skills and Adirondacks,

although Adirondacks got rocks in the name, Green Mountains, White Mountains, etc. Although I've been in the White Mountains and Green Mountains, they were pretty rocky. So it's not all just lush forest. If we go up to Mount Washington, it's just like pure rocks in New Hampshire. So maybe I'm, you know, disproving my own theory. But my thought was like if you're used to those verdant hills,

in the Shenandoah Valley and Shiloh and stuff. Maybe by the time you get to Wyoming and Colorado, maybe the Rocky Mountains actually were pretty rocky by comparison. But then it's like, well, you look at, I assume, places like the Andes and the Caracorum, and I don't know, the people. Pyrenees, those feel pretty rocky too. So I actually don't know about the Pyrenees. Never really looked at the Pyrenees.

So my question is simply that, and if anyone's got an expert insight into this, they can email us or tweet at us. But are the Rocky Mountains particularly more rocky or significantly more rocky than comparable mountain ranges? Don't know the answer. Just had a thought. I am running tomorrow, starting in about 12 hours here, the Mount Baldhead Challenge in Sagittuck slash Douglas, Michigan, which if you don't know, is a little like summer resort

town on the eastern shores of Lake Michigan, about an hour up into Michigan, you know, two and a half to three hour drive from Chicago, depending on traffic, beautiful little town. and my wife and I had a tradition early when we were dating and it's kind of fallen off here just for various reasons but of going to Sagatuck not in the summer when it's touristy but in the winter and usually the first weekend or so of December they do Christmas parade a Christmas parade and a bar crawl and they got some good breweries there shout out Sagatuck brewing

and Mitton Brewing which is not based in Sagatuck but has a satellite location there and you've heard me talk about this many times. We've done a show live from there. There is a sand dune in between town and the shores of Lake Michigan with

302, give or take steps going up to the top of it called Mount Baldhead, which has a World War II era radar tower with this big old ball at the top that they put a star on for Christmas time called Mount Baldhead

and I call it the orb excuse me you've heard us talk about this ad nauseum on this show anyways every year second weekend of September in Saga Tuck they host

their big race the Mount Bald Head Challenge and I've known about it ever since we started going to Saga Tuck and I've always thought oh man this would be a cool thing to do kind of like when you hear me talk about

in Bell Buckle the Moon Pie R.C. Cola Festival like late June is just one of those like small local Americana slice of life kind of things that I've encountered in my years and I've always been like, you know, that would be fun to do. I don't know if the situations or conditions in my life are ever going to be ripe enough for me to just casually want to like go to bell buckle for a day because it would legitimately be a nine-hour drive from Chicago and I just don't know if that's ever

going to work out. I would love to, but that's a big commitment. Maybe take the kids down there some time. But considering this is just a Saturday morning, it's a two hour, it's a half marathon, you can do either, I think it's like an eight mile race or a half marathon, which is 13.1 miles. Considering it's two and a half hours to get out there, it's a Saturday, no other plans, I was like, you know what, this is the year, I'm going to do it. All the proceeds go to the after-school programming for the kids in Sagatuck. So I'm like, you know, a good call. we are locking in, we're doing it. So I signed up for it like two months ago.

And yeah, it's a half marathon. It's my second ever organized half marathon. First ever trail half marathon. As part of the race, you get to run all the way up the steps to the top of the orb and then back down in the sand dune. And then you run along the beach and into town and all that good stuff. So I'm excited. The one kind of hiccup is driving out there.

you lose an hour, and it'll take me about, I got to stop for gas, maybe take a crap somewhere, so I'm race ready. So you got to give yourself about three hours, give or take to get out there, plus the time change. You lose, and I have to show up early to pick up my packet because I wasn't about to drive out there the day before, and pay $200 bucks for a hotel room. So we're leaving legitimately where I got to set my alarm about 2.30 a.m. and out of the house by 3.30-ish at the latest to drive out there. So wish us luck.

Hopefully we avoid any pulled hamstrings, but I'm looking forward to it. One of my favorite places. I'm going to have good weather. And, yeah, running up the orb. I podcasted from the orb, but I've never run up the orb before. Fortunately, you can't get all the way to the top. You just get to the base of it, but still pretty good.

So that's the Mount Bald Head Challenge, your reminder to, you know, upcoming weeks coming up here when you get an extra $25, 50 bucks lying around. It's always good to find those local programs and organizations who are doing important work that you believe in and throw them a little bit. Your charity doesn't have to be a big $500 check. That's the last thing I'll say. Then we get to our trivia question. Did you guys, so there, you know, Love Island USA had another roaring, riveting season and one of the people who just like was on from start to finish didn't win or anything like that but her name was anaya who i personally do not care for much um but was kind of i think

she didn't she wasn't like a fan favorite and she wasn't like people hated her she was kind of somewhere in the middle of this season anyways you know all these love islanders the season finishes they come back from fiji and they have a very limited period of time where they can like chase the cloud and so one of the things she did did was go back to her the middle school she had graduated from to like make an appearance and the kids are excited she's got a camera crew and everything and at the end in the video she pulls out the giant check and i this is so michael scottish from fun run it's way too close mind you this is a girl who's like you know cashing in on brand deals all over the place in

the internet like clearly got some money coming in okay not to mention if you can afford to just like not work and go on a game show for six weeks you're probably i'm not saying you're like super rich but you're probably doing fine financially is my take i don't know how true that is but that's my gut she goes brings out the big check for this school to donate to their you know kids activities whatever five hundred dollars and there's a very small part of me who's like you know what she showed up she made an appearance to those kids and she donated some of her money so like i'm going to give her credit for that just no other questions asked but also 500 bucks girl it doesn't have to be a michael bloomberg style donation here but i think if you're going the the thing that

is it trips me up the most if you're going through the effort of making the two-minute video so you can put it on social media and chase the cloud you got a camera crew you get your hair and makeup done. She pulls up in like a, I don't know if it was like a Rolls Royce or what it was, but like a fancy car. Brings out, you're doing the giant check, right? That's the thing from the office is the giant check. It's like, oh, they're raising money for Meredith's hospital bills. And they could do the giant check, but it's going to be an extra $200. And Michael Scott's like, yeah, we got to, I always envisioned it on the giant check. And so she gets like a hundred bucks at the end of the day because two thirds of it went to the giant check. It's not quite that extreme.

but $500 on a giant check is, I think that's like, I mean, I was going to say, like, man, if you get like third prize in the spelling bee or something, the script spelling bee, maybe they'll give you a giant check with $500. But even these days with inflation, I think those kids starting in third place are getting at least like $10,000 or something. So, yeah, $500 to be divvied out for an entire middle school. school is, I mean, you're going to buy like some soccer balls. I don't know. I think if it's like a $500 donation to like a developing country in sub-Saharan Africa, that's something where you can make it go pretty far. But in like Atlanta or wherever she's from, it's like maybe $500 doesn't actually go that far.

But so my point is find something you are passionate about and donate some money. It doesn't have to be $500. It also doesn't need to come on a giant check, however. Our trivia question of the week to wrap here. So I saw this like five days ago on Reddit, the geography subreddit. And I didn't really linger on it a ton. I just saw the graphic in the post. I was like, oh, this is amazing.

This is right up Bean Towns Alley for a trivia question. So I haven't personally vetted it. I don't know what the source is. I think just, you know, general population stuff. So I'm going to just do my best. I didn't really like prepare it. I didn't like script out how I want to ask this question. The post is, and it's a map of the Mississippi River and all the states that it borders.

Okay. The post was number of people living within 10 miles of the Mississippi River by state. So basically you've got these one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten U.S. states that border the Mississippi River. and then for each of those states take the 10-mile radius from river to inland, if you will. And it's the number of people in each of those states, the population, within a 10-mile radius for each of these states. I guess we'll just rank them 10 to 1. Let me make sure that's what it was. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

And I'll give you the states to help contextualize things for you. But again, we're not ranking the state populations like Illinois would be number one in that instance. We're ranking it by 10 miles of river of Mississippi within each state. How many people live within that 10 mile zone? Okay. A little bit convoluted, I apologize, but that's what it is. The states are from top to bottom going both sides here. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, the state, and Louisiana.

Those are your 10 states. So which state has the fewest people in the 10-mile zone of the river? I'm just going to have to like eyeball this and sort of this. I should have like written it out as a list. Number 10 is Kentucky, approximately 12,000 people. Okay. Number nine, next up we have, and that makes sense, by the way, because it's a very small land area physically that actually borders the Mississippi. This next one has a healthy border and not a lot of people. 97,000 in Arkansas.

So Kentucky, about 12,000, Arkansas, 98,000. Okay, number eight on the list is, this one's actually kind of close between two. on opposite ends of the spectrum north-south here. Number eight is Mississippi with 167,000 people, and number seven is Wisconsin with 179,000 people. Then we're going to have a little bit of a jump as we get into number six here. So next up on the list we have Iowa coming in at 407,000 people. So that's the bottom five.

It goes Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Iowa. Now, coming in at number five, a little bit ahead of Iowa, we have Tennessee at 490,000 people. So that's number five. Number four, make sure I didn't mess this up here. Number four, we have Illinois coming in at 613,000 people, which is a pretty decent amount still for Illinois.

Illinois. Then at number three, we're down to the big three. So now we're all million plus. Number three and two are close. Number one is a winner in its own category. Number three is Missouri at 1.6 million people. Actually, we'll narrow it down more because they're close. One million five hundred seventy two. And then Louisiana number two, one million six hundred forty eight thousand people. And that leaves the clear cut. winner, as in most things, Minnesota, 2,976,000 people. So from 10 to 1, from fewest people to most people in terms of the 10-mile radius in that state, convoluted question, but I think it was fun. Number 10, Kentucky, number 9, Arkansas, number 8, Mississippi, number 7, Wisconsin, number 6, Iowa, number 5, Tennessee. number four, Illinois, three, Missouri, two, Louisiana, and number one, Minnesota. That's what I had for you guys. I appreciate you tuning into my program week after week, whether you are in Pakistan or Nigeria

or the Midwest hunting pheasants. You're in your pheasant era and you're listening to the Beantown podcast. You're drinking some black cherry, sparkling water. You're turning on KT. stall next and soon after you slap a few pheasins they'll all be strewn about the prairie or maybe you're doing that from Eurasia wherever that is stay safe stay sane i'll check in on you next week bye