LIFESTYLES
WEEKEND, MAY 26-27, 2018
DEGREES OF
SEPARATION
NIKKI
KATZ
ROSEANNE
BROWN
Pendleton, Portland, and a podcast
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
S
tart: A replica of the
Trojan Horse at the
Canakkale Waterfront
in Dardanelles, Turkey.
The horse is featured
prominently in Homer’s
epic poem, “Odyssey.”
1
A second century Roman
mosaic depicting a maritime
scene from “Odyssey.”
Scholars believe the epic poem
was composed somewhere in the
Greek coastal region of Anatolia.
2
Anatolia, the
westernmost
protrusion
of Asia, makes
up the majority
of modern-day
Turkey. Anatolia
was ruled by
the Ottoman
Empire between
the early 14th
and early 20th
centuries.
I
t’s a common phenomenon
for someone with internet
access and some time to kill.
Trawling through Wiki-
pedia’s seemingly exponen-
tial number of articles and
entries, a user clicks several links and
before they know it, they’ve ended up
on a topic that’s a far cry from where
they started.
It’s commonly referred to as a
Wikipedia “spiral,” and two sisters
have decided it offers enough material
for a downloadable talk show.
Rosanna Brown and Nikki Katz
host the “6 Degrees of Wiki” pod-
cast, an online talk show that uses
Wikipedia, the popular encyclope-
dic website with more than 6.5 mil-
lion English-language entries, to con-
nect seemingly unrelated topics in six
steps.
In a recent episode, the sisters were
tasked with linking the Trojan Horse,
the mythical wooden horse the Greeks
used to invade Troy, to Transylvania, a
Romanian region most popular as the
setting of “Dracula.”
Katz, 36, played the role of quiz-
master, cluing in Brown, 39, at the
start of each round by giving her a run-
down of each Wikipedia page before
3
The seal of
the Ottoman
Empire, which
controlled much
of southeastern
Europe, western
Asia and northern
Africa between
the 14th and early
20th centuries.
Suleiman the
Magnificent was
the longest ruling
sultan of the
empire.
Brown gives her best guess (the sisters
switch roles each month).
Brown’s initial stab at guessing the
ultimate link is a little thin.
“Episode 28 is brought to you by
the letter T, because that’s all they
have in common,” she said, leading to
some laughs between the siblings.
Katz’s journey through the spi-
ral, which includes stops at the pages
of Homer’s “Odyssey,” Suleiman the
Magnificent, and the Siege of Vienna,
includes plenty of asides where the
sisters can further discuss interesting
facts.
The crosstalk stays pretty light-
hearted between the hosts: the dark-
est it gets is when Katz mentions that
a priest who tried to warn the Tro-
jans about the impending invasion is
murdered by sea serpents sent by the
Greek god Poseidon, spurring Brown
into a fit of giggles.
Although the sisters have an easy
rapport, they don’t have the benefit of
being in the same room.
More than 200 miles separate Katz,
who lives in Portland, and the Pendle-
ton-based Brown.
Brown said the distance actually
aids their quiz format by preventing
them from reading each other’s body
language.
See SISTERS/4C
4
Suleiman
in a portrait
attributed
to Titian,
circa 1530.
Suleiman
led the
Siege of
Vienna in
1529.
6
The Sighisoara
Clock Tower in the
Transylvania region
of Romania. Transylvania
became the start of the
next “spiral” on the podcast.
5
St. Stephen’s Cathedral,
Vienna, was used as the
headquarters of the Austrian
resistance. Transylvanian noble
John Zapolya aided Suleiman
during the siege of Vienna.