Secretly Incredibly Fascinating: Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon

Episode notes

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” is secretly incredibly fascinating.

Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week’s bonus episode.

LINKS FOR KATIE GOLDIN:

• Katie Goldin on Bluesky
• @ProBirdRights on Bluesky
• ‘Creature Feature’ podcast (iHeartRadio)
• When Is a Bird a ‘Birb’? An Extremely Important Guide (Audubon)

RESOURCES USED TO INFORM THE EPISODE’S LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

• native-land.ca
• U.S. Department Of Arts And Culture
• The True Native New Yorkers Can Never Truly Reclaim Their Homeland (Smithsonian)
• “Finding Lenapehoking” (YouTube / Hudson River Maritime Museum)
• Why Do They Call It Beacon? (The Highlands Current)
• Dutch & Native American Heritage In The Hudson River Valley (National Park Service)

RESEARCH SOURCES:

• IMDb listing for Kevin Bacon
• Six degrees of Kevin Bacon: scientists expose the seedy underbelly (The Guardian)
• Google search gets its very own ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ calculator (The Verge)
• Kevin Bacon and the Long Shadow of ‘Footloose’ (Mel Magazine)
• Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick’s 2 Kids: All About Travis and Sosie (People Magazine)
• IMDb listing for ‘Loverboy’ (2005) — this movie was directed by Kevin Bacon, starred Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, and co-starred both their children.
• IMDb listing for ‘American Dad’, S19E12, “The Legend of Mike Madonia, the Rototiller Man”
• National Lampoon’s Animal House Hazing Scene Was A Little Too Real For Kevin Bacon (SlashFilm)
• ‘Animal House’ Oral History: From Richard Pryor to a Real Melee (The New York Times)
• ‘Twilight Zone: The Movie’ and the Deadly Accident That Plagued It (The New York Times)
• The Six Degrees of Edmund Bacon: The people and places that made modern-day Philadelphia through the career of its longtime planning commissioner (and father of actor Kevin Bacon). (American Planning Association)
• Playbill listing and original program for ‘Slab Boys’ (1983)
• Digital Collections: “Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Val Kilmer in a scene from the off-Broadway production of the play “Slab Boys”.” (The New York Public Library)
• New York Times coverage of the 1982 Obie Awards
• Obie Awards website directory of 1982 winners
• The Science Behind Six Degrees (Harvard Business Review)
• Undiscovered: “Six Degrees” (NPR Science Friday / WNYC Studios)
• Dramatists Play Service listing for “Six Degrees of Separation” by John Guare
• IMDb listing for ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ (1993)
• “Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks” by Duncan J. Watts & Steven H. Strogatz (Nature)
• The History Of ‘Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon’ (NPR Morning Edition)
• Brian Turtle: ‘Endless’ Stories, Advice, Kevin Bacon and More! tBR Person of the Week (PeopleOfPlay.com)
• Kevin Bacon Was Offended by ‘6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon’: I Thought ‘They’re Making Fun of Me’ at First (People Magazine)
• How Kevin Bacon Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon (BuzzFeed)
• website of SixDegrees.org
• Frigyes Karinthy, 1887-1938 (New York Review of Books)
• upload of text of “Chain Links” (1929) by Frigyes Karinthy (Short-Stories.co)
• blog post about John L. Sullivan and concept of ‘Shake the Hand That Shook the Hand’ (TheWildGeese.irish)
• Examples of museums doing a “six degrees” game with Francis Bacon, Peggy Bacon, Ernst Bacon
• Dictionary.com listing for “sonder”
• Kevin Bacon and eggs: Actor stars in egg industry campaign (CBS News)
• YouTube upload of Simpsons joke where Homer orders Bart to butter his bacon