KBHU-FM and KJKT-FM (Spearfish, SD)

This article will contain spoilersfor season one of “Heated Rivalry.” On Nov. 28, 2025, “Heated Rivalry” began airing on HBO Max. No one involved with production expected this show to become as popular as it did. It wasn’t a product of Hollywood in any way.

Skip to Main Content

During the long winter months, many struggle to stay warm. They tamper with finicky heaters, scramble to buy new coats, cook comfort meals and hide away from the icy elements under their covers when they go to bed at night. In the summer, people suffer through long conversations with repairmen over broken air conditioning units, constant wardrobe changes and the puzzle of finding enough room in the fridge to keep their favorite beverages cold.

An opinion that I hold, which is not widely regarded, is the use of the word “bitch”-or rather, opposition to its use. As someone who attended a public elementary school, I learned at a young age that, in its truest sense, a bitch is a female dog. It’s a dog breeding term. It’s also a term that has been used for centuries to demean women. And while in modern parlance it has taken on a less biting connotation, it cannot be entirely divorced from its original context.

The mountains of western Montana are sweeping monoliths of beauty and danger, testaments of nature’s grace and ire. Buried within this granite boneyard is the quiet town of Manhattan, home of the Thronson Forge. This is a place of creation. Inside, sparks dance through the air and fade into the concrete floor. Billets of layered steel are heated until they glow orange, then rhythmically hammered into shape.

Twenty-three years ago, 7,400 meters above sea level, Narayan GC climbed the jagged face of Mount Cho Oyu, the sixth-highest mountain in the world, on the border of Nepal and China. A blizzard had battered the final camp – only 800 meters from the summit – for three days. Winds hit 80 mph. Temperatures dropped to minus 50 degrees. Two police officers from Melbourne were trapped there. One of them – Inspector Carr – was deteriorating quickly. His partner left to find their guide.

In 1929, Gladys and Harold Nikalson moved from Spencer, Iowa, to Brookings, South Dakota, where they began to make what would, arguably, become the most famous burgers in South Dakota. At a starting price of five cents per burger and with the “Dirty Thirties” ahead of them, the Nikalsons needed to create an icon to survive. The Nikalsons opened Nick’s Hamburger Shop Nov. 2, 1929, located on 5th Street in downtown Brookings.

Diannia Zimmerman sits crookedly in an armchair she never bought – in an apartment she can barely afford. Confined to her walker, she makes the effort to leave the apartment building each day to smoke her cigarettes – the only vice she affords herself anymore. This is where the decades spent serving the public left her, struggling to pay rent on her Section 8 “affordable” housing.

Rokuzaemon Matsumura and Takeko, his wife, immigrated from Japan to the United States in the early 1900s after he, like thousands of other Japanese men, was recruited to continue railroad expansion across the Western United States. Matsumura worked as a railroader in Wyoming for around 30 years before finally retiring, ready to begin a new chapter for his family. He invested the couple’s retirement savings into a small storefront in East Hollywood, California, and named it The Wyoming Market.

Generally speaking, the day-to-day routine of a collegiate athlete is anything but lackadaisical. Hours of practice wear down the body, weekdays full of classes weigh on the mind, and weekends spent on the road competing leave little room for rest – let alone much else. These elite few who pass into the realm of college athletics live in a constant state of sacrifice – offering their time and their bodies in exchange for the chance to pursue perfection in their craft.