Shift Happened

Zach and Mitchell sign up for a real contest that gets you cremated and stored inside a Pringles can for eternity, flavor debates included. From there they run through a list of horror movies built for people who hate being scared, and close out chasing a ghost that supposedly haunts a radio station buried somewhere under Rapid City.

Stitch and Zaccy Moon rank the internet’s list of boomer Halloween candy and immediately start arguing over whether Laffy Taffy and Starburst even belong on it. They dig into a batch of doctor-submitted stories about the dumbest things patients have ever done, including a guy who pulled a knife out of his own chest and then put it back in after a 911 operator told him not to. They wrap up debating whether they’d walk through a cemetery alone at night, and the national numbers on that are lower than either of them expects.

Houston marks Native American Day with the real story behind the state’s name, which traces back to a word that means friend or ally. He digs into Billy Mills, the Pine Ridge runner who shocked the world at the 1964 Olympics, and the Lakota code talkers whose language helped win World War Two while staying classified for decades. He also explains why the Lakota have let a billion dollar settlement for the Black Hills sit untouched since 1980.

Houston goes digging through Amazon’s new About You feature and finds strangers’ profiles calling out things like flat buttocks and zero friends, then can’t resist checking what the algorithm has decided about him. A sleep study on dogs and their owners settles the debate over who keeps who up at night, and the numbers don’t fall where most pet owners would guess. Houston also breaks down a TV ownership study and admits his father in law owns six, one for every room, so he never misses a football play.

Houston puts Stitch through a pop quiz on words nobody actually knows, from the chalaza in an egg to the glabella between your eyebrows, and Stitch hates every second of it. Houston points everybody toward tonight’s Draconid meteor shower, best viewed after the free Main Street Square anniversary party downtown. The two also swap confessions about the albums that soundtracked their first makeout sessions, which somehow leads into concert plans for Def Leppard and the Break the Cycle anniversary tour.

Stitch is nursing a head cold while Houston runs off with Rob to buy whiskey, which spirals into news that engineers in Scotland and Japan are about to launch a barrel of the stuff into space. Houston kicks off a crusade against daylight saving time, with fireworks and paychecks on the line. Somewhere in the mix, the two dig through decades of Halloween costume history and land on the year every toddler got dressed as a Spice Girl.

Houston and Stitch kick off the show with a sneezy standoff, trading blame over who gave who a cold, which somehow spirals into a deep dive on a mysterious plague death in Siberia and a years-long inside joke about Serbian versus Siberian tigers. From there they tackle National Taco Day with some wild stats on the 1.7 million Americans who have never eaten a taco, and Houston breaks down his mom's secret North Dakota taco recipe in full deep-fried detail. The afternoon wraps with Stitch's second annual birthday chili feed benefiting the Friday meals program, proving these two can turn a head cold, a taco, and a chili bowl into forty five minutes you didn't know you needed.

Mark heads into the old Lee-Deadwood Hospital morgue for a spooky Doc Talk shoot and the camera starts moving on its own like something down there wants in the shot. LimeWire pops back up online and the guys relive the golden age of pirated MP3s and viruses nobody saw coming. Stitch drops a jaw dropping mug holding world record ahead of tomorrow's Bierborse, and the debate over whether it's even real gets heated. Press play for this one.

Stitch wants a whole birthday month and Houston is having none of it, though he does cave enough to help plan Stitch Fest, a chili feed this Saturday raising money for the Friday band show meals that keep people fed all winter. A New Jersey man catches a shark cruising down his flooded street during a nor'easter, and Houston becomes very convinced sharks are coming for him specifically. Then Fat Bear Week crowns a new thousand pound champion named Backpack, and Stitch pitches his own version for the studio that nobody signs up for.