The Captain’s Log entry: The last 12 weeks the year of our Lord 2024 into 2025 🎊
Gregorian Calendar New Year 2025 Musings, 6 Degrees of Cats has a Ko-Fi AND Season 3 heads up!
Happy 2025! And happy Monday! JUST KIDDING.
It’s been a spell - partly due to that aforementioned PRK surgery (for me, not the cats) and partly due to a bunch of unexpected shifts that came up in our domicile. You know how it goes.
AND…
I think for most of you listeners and followers, the last quarter of 2024 was harrowing and, in many ways upsetting.
While co-executive producers Binky and Snuggles, guest associate producer Peanut (still working on her attention span) and yours truly are now in production mode for Season 3 (hints of our STELLAR guests and topics below!) - well, 2024 gave us a LOT to think about.
SO. In this edition - which is late for humans, but we run on cat time here folks - we have updates, a recap of 2024, and a look ahead for Season 3 which is coming late Spring 2025!!!
This should take you like 10 minutes to read, but if you’d like to hear it recited to you, let us know.
Before we dive in -
🍭 BREAKING NEWS 🍭
To support us and gain benefits galore, 👇click this button! 👇
https://ko-fi.com/6degreesofcats
Folks, each episode you hear is the equivalent of about 20-30 human power hours to produce - that excludes “marketing” which is all the social media malarkey and such.
Our mission is to celebrate and demonstrate our values of compassion, curiosity and critical thinking - REAL critical thinking, not the “...just asking questions I’m a Reddit Google Wikipedia authority hrr hrr hrr” comment-and-dash crap we see on social media all the time, UGH - through a shared love of cats! It’s a joy, it’s a passion and it certainly is a big project.
Now, all due respect to our production team here, it is I - Captain Kitty - keeping things in ship shape. For now - none of us are “comfortable”, employed in lucrative fields OR annointed and appointed by Big Podcasting or The Media (YET - ahem, @
on all mainstream social media platforms over here)……and so, it really does take a village to keep this ship sailing.
You’ve been wonderful - sharing our pod, singing its praises and saying nice things about it in both our absence and presence. SOME of y’all have asked, “Do I really have to call you Captain Kitty?…Ah, right. Well, I was trying to ask how I can support you…like, do you have a Kickstarter or something?”
YES! Now we DO!
We thank you for considering buying the team the equivalent of a monthly snack, a soda or a whole coffee (yes, those are the prices here in Brooklyn these days, le sigh)! As you see above, there are THREE tiers of donor benefits - Kitten ($2 / month), Tomcat ($5 / month) and QUEEN ($10 / month). In closing…
If you are already pledged on Substack - THANK YOU!! We haven’t turned on the subscriptions yet on this platform, but the tiers are comparable and we will soon open up the Substack subscriber thingie. That said, if you prefer to redirect your membership support via Ko-Fi, please email us by January 31, 2025. Thank you!!
AT OUR LAST PORT OF DISEMBARKATION
In which the editorial director of this newsletter, Captain Kitty reports on our past destinations.
We’re just takin’ this moment to reflect - we’re just proud and grateful. And amazed - dang. Season 2, as with Season 1, boasted a CRACKING roster of experts, to whom we present in semi-organized order of appearance.
As you scan this list, please clap to yourself after you read each person’s name, they are so deserving and also, it’s a fun thing to do if you’re on the train and need extra space to yourself, just sayin’.
Culinary historian Sarah Lohman
Kings County Distillery co-founder and writer Colin Spoelman
Religion scholar and Keepin’ it 101 podcast host Megan Goodwin, Ph.D.
Islam and Middle East historian and Head on History host Ali Olomi, Ph.D.
Catholic culture historian, writer and returning Season 1 guest René Ostberg, M.A.
Norse folklore scholar Terry Gunnell, Ph.D.
Musician, tech worker and childhood Jólakötturinn survivor Júlía Hermannsdóttir
Skagafjörður Heritage Museum Head of Archaeology Brenda Prehal, Ph.D.
Culture journalist Maria Bustillos
Pizza czar and author Anthony Falco
Award-winning music journalist and professor Holly George-Warren
Cat behaviorist and YouTube star Jackson Galaxy
Rock star and lefty shredder Malina Moye
Multi-instrumentalist and filmmaker Joenne Dumitrascu, M.M.
Ethnomusicologist Keisuke Yamada, Ph.D.
Musician and Black Banjo Reclamation Project co-founder Hannah Mayree
Social media expert (ex-Cat Person) Tracy Michelle
Comedien, actor and writer Ivy Le
Artist and audio expert Keisha “T.K.” Dutes
Family Scientist Carol Johnston, Ph.D.
Korean Adoptee Adoptive Family Network executive director Katie Bozek, Ph.D., L.M.F.T.
Actor and Stoopkid Stories podcast host Melissa “Melly” Victor
Whew 😅 Collectively, that list represents over 30 hours of incredible conversations. Would you be keen to hear more of these abridged discussions? WELL those are behind the scenes and guess the heck what, you can!! Ko-Fi tier 2 gets you that.
AND!! Boy oh boy, did we go places!
Norway! Iceland! Denmark! Sweden! Not Finland because it’s not Scandinavian-slash-Norse! Japan! West Africa (keeping it general because at the time those land masses were not organized under the flags they now fly!)! Jamaica! Barbados! Nevis! Antigua! North America! The various nations now considered Southwest Asia and North Africa! North America! YOUR SOULS!
And we’ve addressed, so far [all episodes can be found here!]:
Season 1: the definition, and a light history of domestication, Greek and Roman gods, fertility, love languages, the history of Kosovo, post-war animal advocacy, Vikings and Norse mythology, saints, motherhood, physics, the scientific method, masculinity, fatherhood and more 😎
Season 2: the history of witch rumormongering*, whisky, religion in general including Islam and Buddhism, philosophy, Iceland, more Norse mythology, pop culture, the history of the internet, pizza, marketing, “cat people”, Vietnamese astrology, rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, banjos, the Atlantic slave trade (briefly), shamisens, family sciences, sociology and more 😈
“Gosh, Amand–er, Captain Kitty, aren’t you running out of things to talk about with cats?”
NOPE. Not close. I have a huge chart of ongoing investigations for future seasons.
Mu ha ha…speaking of which…
NEWS FROM THE CREW!
Here is where my team will share their updates.
Season 3 cometh sooneth! (Relatively. APRIL!)
🐈⬛ The team and I are STOKED at Season 3. We’re taking time to apply a lot of the lessons learned and the new skills and perspectives we’ve gained since taking a “Surprise Sabbatical” as yours truly recovered from PRK surgery and the entire ship adapted to the addition of our tiniest little crew member (Peanut - aww, just typing that out obliged me to go over and kiss her little furry noggin on the head, sorry. Where was I.)
Here is a hint of the topics we’ll be covering in season 3…
Worship
Domestics
Aesthetics
Art
Movement
Health
Economics
Covert ops
With experts in burlesque! Egyptology! Meso-american history! Clairvoyance! Photography! Movement! Film! Art! Animal advocacy! Beauty! International diplomacy!…and more. MUCH more. Intrigued? HOPE SO!!
Our episodes are evergreen and episodic, meaning - you can listen to them out of order or standalone, BUT we do think that if you’re an avid listener, this season will build upon knowledge and ideas we explored in Seasons 1 and 2 (and if you’d like to revisit those, you can check them out HERE.)
In some more news…
🛠 As noted, we cranked out another nine-episode season last year. Thank you to our growing number of listeners - we’re nearing 7k downloads and counting (whatever that even means - is that you, mom? Love you!) - thanks to whomever contributed to that spike during our extended season break!! - please say hi if you see us in the wild, we will stop and chat FOR YOU! Our goal is 10k downloads per episode and we’re getting there, little by little. It’ll take a bit, but still. Not bad for an independent podcast with a marketing budget of zero and only one human doing it all. (Sorry, Binky, Snuggles and Peanut - you’re the BEST voice actors and culture hires ever but those thumbs aren’t opposable.)
❤️🔥 Ear Worthy for named us “Best Pet Podcast” and a runner up as a Top 5 Indie Podcast (!!!) in the 2024 Indie Podcast Awards!
🤜🏽🤛🏾Our friends at the Tails & Tassels podcast featured yours truly on a super fun episode released December 26th. Host and burlesque ( er, purr-lesque) performer Gemma Smith, interviewed me on the creative process and I shared my own purr-sonal (trust me, the puns could be way more oppressive if I tried) experiences as a musician, podcast producer - and general creative person I’ve come to accept is the core foundation of all that I am, have been and will be.
Ahem. Anywho.
LISTEN HERE if you want to hear Amanda yap and be sure to subscribe to Gemma’s pod, she’s a delight! OH and if you happen to be in New York City and free on February 13th, I’ll be doing a brief bit during her excellent cat-themed cabaret (Cat-baret!) show for Palentine’s Day! Get tickets here and use promo code LOVE213 for a discount!
Whew, busy.
[NEW SECTION!] SHIP MANIFESTO
New section! Shout outs to our sponsors, supporters and advocates!
THANK YOU to Mister Frank Racioppi, founder of
and author of “Away from Home”, a riveting story about an incredible journey of two cats who survive a fire (very prescient in these times!), make friends along the way. All along, we witness their resiliency as they seek safety and shelter amidst a lot of adversity and a changing climate. We are loving this book and highly recommend it. If you’re looking for an action-packed read, it’s on Amazon in both e-book and paperback here! (It is a good companion to the excellent Latvian, non-dialog animated film, Flow, that the team is still swooning over. More animal protagonists, please.)You, too, can become a sponsor! Please reach out to 6DegreesOfCats [at] Gmail [dot] com for opportunities to showcase your cool stuff that everyone must know about…or else…
Ko-Fi shout outs!
…you? And on that note…
CALLS TO THE CLOWDER
Here is where we invite you, our cherished community, to help keep S.S. 6 Degrees of Cats afloat!
🙏 PLEASE COMPLETE OUR LISTENER SURVEY! 🙏
It takes up to 7 minutes, probably less.
Love 6 Degrees of Cats? Want to share more about us, but not sure how to describe our quirky podcast or how to snag a visual? Start with the README! Document! It’s here: https://tinyurl.com/streetkittens
🎶SAVE AND LISTEN TO OUR SPOTIFY PLAYLIST 🎶
It’s called Leave My Kitten Alone! A Playlist by 6 Degrees of Cats and has a ton of gems. See our last Captain’s Log entry for the song inclusion criteria and related episode if you can’t guess which one.
Ok folks. It’s nose back to the grindstone here. Keep apprised on the socials (this here Substack, Threads, Instagram and TikTok (for however long it lasts…what is this Lemon8?) and subscribe on your podcast player of choice - which can include YouTube. We’re not yet a vodcast, but we ARE mulling some on camera stuff…
Thank you for being both a friend of the pod and to all creatures, great and small, on this decreasingly green earth. Let’s keep being as kind and gentle as possible to ourselves and others, with a dash of mischief, a lot of humor and as much joy and curiosity as possible.
Love,
Captain Kitty, Binky, Snuggles and Peanut! (and Eddie)
To support the team, sign up for our Ko-FI! You can contribute $2, $5 or $10 monthly to keep the good S.S. 6 Degrees of Cats sailing across time, topics and territories in celebration and awe of those furry water bottles for the soul - KITTIES.