Kevin and Memory
The Real Kevin Bacon
Owen Lacey | Pudding | 21st October 2026
Data-driven investigation of the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", in which players name actors to form a chain of casting connections between films. Its name stems from "the conventional wisdom is that Kevin Bacon is the all-encompassing centre of Hollywood". In fact, that position belongs to Samuel L. Jackson: every actor is, on average, just 2.09 degrees of separation from him (5,000 words)
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Making Memories My Husband Might Lose
Josepha Natzke | Electric Lit | 22nd October 2026
Subtitled "Aphantasia: A Floor Plan", this short story (or personal essay, the veracity doesn't signify) uses a house renovation to explore a marriage where one person has little capacity for memory. "Your mind, I know, is racing along other tracks in a different city, so consumed with whatever is right in front of it that it cannot think back to what and who it has left. At least, I have to believe this to be true" (5,100 words)