Six Degrees of Actual Bacon

Last night I caught the tail end of NPR Presents in which apparently KUOW airs some random other good NPR show. Since I missed the beginning and the end, I don't know what show it actually was, but I do know that I enjoyed it. Ken Jennings, the guy who won the most consecutive times on Jeopardy, was on, talking about his new book and his regular column in a brainy magazine of some kind.

Now I am by no means a Jeopardy-watching regular, but I did see multiple news reports and clips of Ken, and he always struck me as kind of scary and robotic - in fact Mitt Romney kind of reminded me of him (and I think they share the same belief in Joseph Smith's golden plates). However, on the radio he came across as smart, and most surprisingly, kind of funny. In the bit I heard, he talked about random trivia from Washington (like the etymology of Skid Road) and then at the end, he shared the "homework" the show producer had given him. In his column, he often takes two ideas and does a six-degrees-of-separation thing between them, and the producer asked him to do the same with two terms you don't normally find together: NPR and Bacon. And here's how he did it:

Start with NPR

1. NPR has pledge breaks
2. Takes you to the Pledge of Allegiance
3. Which was written by flag companies as a way to sell more flags
4. The Canadian flag (which he mentioned has an 11-point Maple leaf) is a flag
5. And Canada brings you to Canadian Bacon

End with Bacon.

Now you know too.