Kelsey McKinney on Why We Love to Gossip
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From GQED in San Francisco, I'm Mina Kim. Coming up on Forum, gossip. We love to hear it, whether we're willing to admit it or not, or whether we identify as gossips or not. Kelsey McKinney, host and creator of the podcast Normal Gossip, thinks gossip has been unfairly maligned. And in her new book, You Didn't Hear This From Me, McKinney reflects on both the profound and petty ways we use gossip to

to entertain, admonish, bond, even to protect one another from harm. As McKinney likes to ask, what's your relationship to gossip? Join us after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim.

Gossiping is, at its most basic, talking about someone who isn't present, says Kelsey McKinney, creator of the hit podcast Normal Gossip. But it's also so much more than that. And after three years of collecting and retelling juicy stories from ordinary people for millions of listeners, McKinney has put what she's learned and theorized about why we're so hardwired to gossip, including to socially bond, to wield power, into

into a book called You Didn't Hear This From Me, Mostly True Stories on Gossip. So listeners, when and why do you gossip? How has gossip about you or someone else affected your life? Kelsey McKinney, welcome to Forum. Hi, Mina. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, thanks for coming on. I actually want to start by asking you the classic first question that you pose to your guests on Normal Gossip. What's your relationship to gossip?

Oh, my God. I mean, my relationship to gossip for the past three years has been that it has been my entire life. I've been working on it. I've been thinking about it. And then in researching this book, I just was constantly engaged in gossip. So I would say we're married and we're in love. So if gossiping at its most basic is talking about someone who isn't present, then would you say like a call in radio show like Forum can be gossip?

It could be, right? If you and I were talking about someone who wasn't here or when one of your callers comes in and tells a story about someone that you don't know, that's definitely gossip, definitionally. But because we also do journalism and reporting, how are they different from gossip? Because sometimes people do draw that comparison.

Sure. So I think as a reporter, I think that gossip and reporting are really closely intertwined, but they have one key difference, which is that reporting is deeply concerned with what the truth is. You're trying to verify everything. You're trying to make sure you have three sources. You're not bringing anything to air that you haven't confirmed independently. And gossip is not concerned at all with what the truth is. Gossip, if anything, exists in a spirit of

doubt, right? You come to your friend and you say, you didn't hear this from me. I don't know if it's entirely true. Like you set the stage by saying, who knows how much of this is real. So listeners then join the conversation at 866-733-6786 or by emailing forum at kqed.org or posting on our social channels at kqed forum. Tell us when you gossip, what about, with whom do you think of yourself as a gossip? Why or why not? Why do you think we gossip?

So I understand, Kelsey, that you actually have brought a little morsel of gossip to share with me. I have no idea, listeners, what this is. I did. It's very fun. Do you want to hear it? Absolutely. Okay, so I live in Philadelphia. Very recently, Philadelphia famously won the Super Bowl, which everyone was very excited about.

And in Philadelphia, when a big team wins a big game, everyone goes out to this street called Broad Street and just like parties it up, right? People are shooting off fireworks. It's complete chaos.

The day after this, I get into a rideshare to go to the train station. And I get into the back seat and the driver is talking really, really rapidly in Spanish. And, you know, I have spent the last five years of my adult life studying Spanish all the time to the point where I am like kind of mediocre at it. So I can understand what he's saying. And he's gabbing with his friend on the phone.

And he's talking really fast about how he went to Broad Street the night before and he was having a really good time with his buddies and he was so happy because the Eagles had won the Super Bowl. And then he looked up and he saw his best friend and he was like, oh, my God, there's my best friend. And then he looked up further and on his shoulders of his best friend was his ex-girlfriend.

Wow. And I, this whole time in the car, have been silent, right, because I'm pretending that I don't speak Spanish so that I can eavesdrop on this man's conversation. And when he makes this reveal, I gasped in the back seat, which blew my cover entirely. Wow.

And he was like, oh, no. He was like, do you speak Spanish? And I was like, yes. And he was like, okay, so you heard all of that. And I was like, yes. And he was like, do you want me to hang up? And I was like, well, actually, could you just put your friend on speakerphone? And so he put his friend on speakerphone. And then I got to listen to them gab about how like he had broken up with this girlfriend because he told her that he thought, well, she broke up with him. Sorry. She broke up with him because he told her that she thought he thought she was pretty enough to go on Love is Blind. Yeah.

And then she was like, oh, that's such a compliment. I am so pretty. And so she broke up with him and then she was found dating his best friend. Wait a second. Great gossip. She broke up with him because he paid her a compliment? Yeah, because it got to her head. She thought she was very pretty. But you can't blame her. So he was willing to put you on speaker.

Oh, yeah. Happily. To be able to hear this other side of this. Yeah. And then we showed up at the train station and I was so upset because I was like, this story is clearly continuing and there's no way to like appropriately be like, can you like add me into this call of your ride share? Like I had to leave, which was very tragic. It ended and you couldn't ask him any follow up questions, basically. I know. Awful. But I cherish that story in my heart.

You know what's so funny is just listening to you share that story, there are a couple of things that jumped out at me. One is like you had an automatic shift in tone where I felt myself leaning in, you know? So does that play a role in spreading gossip like in a good way or like doing it well? Yeah.

Totally. I mean, I always joke that you can look across the bar and tell that someone is gossiping, right, because their bodies are like pitched towards each other and they're using their hands really, really rapidly. And, you know, you're like, oh, they're talking about some stuff over there that I wish I knew about. But I think more than that, I think.

Something I think about a lot is that gossiping is in a lot of ways, it's the same as storytelling. It's the same as reporting often, like you're gathering information and then telling it back to someone. And so what distinguishes it from those two things is kind of that tone. It's the verb choices that you use and the way that you present it and the kind of cadence of excitement that exists within that conversation.

One of the other things that you reflect on in your book is the way that gossip can give us some subtle information about the teller. First, how so? Like, how can it give us that information?

Well, I think there are a lot of ways, right? You can tell a lot about what someone values and what they think based on what they're gossiping about. So if someone comes to you and they tell you a story about, a great example is cheating here because most people dislike it when people cheat in relationships. And if they tell you this story and they seem really in favor of the cheater, you've like learned a lot about them, right? You can tell from the way that someone presents a story whose side they're on, which gives you information about them as well.

Yes, that actually, that makes a lot of sense. So what environments tend to invite gossip, would you say? Oh, I mean, in my experience, sifting through thousands of gossip stories for Normal Gossip, the podcast, I would say bachelorette trips. You could not pay me to go on one after the things I have read. Workplaces. Yes.

And usually like small hobby groups, like if you're on like a kickball team or you go to a knitting class or something. And all of those things have the same thing in common, which is that it's a group of people who are stuck together by something other than like choosing each other. It's not your group of friends. It's just like a bunch of people that got shoved together. And so that kind of creates a tense dynamic like you would see on, I don't know, Survivor. So if you had to boil it down,

Why do you think we gossip? What function or functions does it serve?

I mean, anthropologists have proven, Robin Dunbar in particular, has studied gossip for a really long time and has proven that part of the reason that we developed language as a species was to gossip because being able to tell one another, like, this person is safe or that person is strong or this is where the strawberries grow in the summer is all a survival technique. And so I think at its very basic level,

We use gossip in that way. We're using it to navigate the world around us.

From a more like fun perspective, we're also using it to learn. We're really curious. I think as people naturally, our brains want to know stuff. There's a reason that when I see two girls pitch towards each other, moving their hands really fast in the bar, I want to know what they're saying. And gossip gives you license to do that. Yeah. And it's entertaining and distracting. And I think there's good reason that normal gossip really became such a hit and also kind of into being during initial lockdowns, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I was the I mean, the lockdown and the pandemic were terrible for a lot of really bad actual reasons. But a small, terrible thing that happened to me personally was that I had been really locked in on these stories of my friends of friends. Right. So people who were like on the verge of breaking up with their girlfriend are on the verge of putting their job. And then all of those plot lines just stopped. Right.

in the pandemic because no one was going anywhere or doing anything. And I was like, this is awful. I've been watching this fake television show of my friend's friend for years, and now there's just no conclusion to it. And I think that kind of absence made me realize how much those stories mean to me personally. The other function of gossip that you write about that I hadn't really thought about before was norm enforcement. Talk about what you mean by that.

Yeah. So we know sociologists have studied that we use gossip as a way to socially sanction each other. So what that means is like if you and I decide that we think wearing the color purple is immoral for whatever reason, obviously this is a metaphor. It could be any kind of moral action. Then if you and I see someone wearing the color purple, we're going to talk to each other about them and we're going to say, oh my God, can you believe that they would wear the color purple? And that

kind of talk then either tells that person that they have to either stop wearing the color purple or find new people to be around, which creates a sanctioning, right? You're saying either be like us or leave.

And that can be used for good or evil, right? It's what we see in high schools all the time with people saying like this person isn't cool for some mundane reason. But it can also be used to say like we as a society don't agree with calling people names, for example. And then we can use gossip to enforce that belief.

Yeah. So with all those functions that it serves, everything from social bonding to norm enforcement, right, or important information exchange for survival, why do you think it has been kind of signified as gossiping? It's been maligned, you know? Yeah. I think that gossip is, first off, it's often maligned as like, quote unquote, women's talk, which...

which I think is just a bias, right? Men often say, oh, I hate to gossip. And then I say, oh my God, did you hear that Tom Brady is going to un-retire? And suddenly they are very locked in and interested in gossip. So it's just a topic difference.

But I think when we talk about gossip being maligned, it's who's doing the maligning, right? Often the people who are saying gossip is bad are people who have more power in the society. So you see bosses doing it at work, right? Telling their employees, don't talk to each other, don't gossip, gossip is bad. And it's like, well, yeah, as a boss, gossip is really bad for you because what if your employees talk to each other and then form the union? That would be hard, right? And so I think it has been maligned and called bad

partly because there are ways that you can use gossip to really hurt people, but mostly because it is to the benefit of people in power that we not talk to each other. I want to dig into that more. But listeners, are you a fan of the podcast Normal Gossip? Kelsey McKinney is the creator and host of the podcast and has written a new book called You Didn't Hear This From Me, Mostly True Notes on Gossip. And tell us, has gossip about you or someone else affected your life?

Has gossip helped you with one of the social functions that Kelsey was talking about? Navigate a tricky social situation and so on. When do you tend to gossip? What about and with whom? 866-733-6786. Email address forum at kqed.org. And we're on Blue Sky Facebook and other social channels. More after the break. I'm Mina Kim.

Support for KQED podcasts come from Bioneers. Their annual event is coming up March 27th through the 29th in Berkeley. Three days of inspiring speakers, arts, music, movement building, and more.

Information at Bioneers.org slash KQED. Get the limited-time-only Comcast Business 5-Year Price Lock Guarantee. It's 5 years of gig-speed internet and advanced security at a great rate that won't change. Comcast Business.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. The podcast Normal Gossip came into being during lockdown when our social networks were a lot smaller and our thirst for gossip was high, says creator Kelsey McKinney, who has learned a lot about why we gossip, the functions it serves, and has put these things down in a new book called You Didn't Hear This From Me, Mostly True Notes on Gossip. And you, our listeners, are calling in, weighing in, writing in,

on your questions about gossip, telling us how and when you gossip, and also the impact of what you've noticed that gossip does. Martina on Discord writes, I read Kelsey's book last week. I must have been first on a library wait list. One of the things that struck me was the role of

Tattling and the examples from The Bachelor franchise and how tattling destroyed just as much trust in the one who spoke the truth about the gossip happening behind closed doors as it did for the person who was actually responsible for the bad behavior. That's fascinating in terms of whistleblowing blowback. Can you talk about that? What did you notice about the function of tattling and blowback for the messenger, Kelsey? Yeah.

Sure. So on The Bachelor franchise, this is a term that's used. It's called the tattle, which is where let's say that I, as a contestant on The Bachelor, hear someone else who's also a contestant talking about having a boyfriend back home or being here to get more Instagram followers or anything that I think of as, quote, not being here for the right reasons.

Historically, in the Bachelor franchise, that person would go to the lead and say, hey, this person isn't here for the right reasons and I don't think they should be here. And that is what we call the tattle. And what's really interesting about it is that we've seen over and over again as this happens that the lead of the show is appreciative. They say thank you. Thank you for bringing me this information. And often they send that person home.

But then the person who tattled, who brought them this information, is kind of tainted in their eyes. They can no longer see them as a potential dating partner or marriage partner. They see them as someone who brought them bad information. And so even though that's like a subconscious feeling, that person almost always goes home. Yeah. I guess one of the things it speaks to is it starts to cause questions about your ability to trust someone, trust being a really important function in gossiping.

Yeah. And I think when we're gossiping with people, you only gossip really with people you trust. Like, you don't call up your enemies and tell them that you got, like, an interesting story that you want to share with them. Right.

And on The Bachelor, trust is really fragile. These people barely know each other. They're drinking 800 glasses of wine a day and then going on a bungee rope course. Like, they don't have a lot of time together. And so if you are bringing something that is asking for a big trust response, like,

information about another person, you maybe don't have the rapport with that person to handle that amount of information. Like we gossip over time with people about the frivolous and the mundane and the stupid stuff that we experience so that when you have something serious, you can bring that into a place of trust. Let me go to caller Hunter in San Francisco. Hi, Hunter, you're on. Hi. Yeah. I just wanted to say I really love this conversation. I think gossip is like

with connecting. And I wanted to share that I honestly have no shame with like social media. And after moving away from a lot of my friends, I will definitely look at their social media posts and notice it. And I think your connection is slightly going in and out. But I really liked your choice of the word shame or no shame because it's reminding me Kelsey,

Even when you try to gossip with the AI chatbot, ChatGPT, that it tried to shame you kind of, right? Yeah. Early in the book, I write about trying to gossip with ChatGPT, which I did because I was trying to investigate this idea that gossip is something that only humans do. Like we know that no other species are capable of theory of mind, of doing this kind of this person said to me that this person said to them and holding all of that in their brain.

And so I was like, well, we have this new sexy artificial intelligence, like theoretically it should be able to gossip with me. And so I went on there and I said, hello, would you gossip with me? And the chat DBT was like, absolutely not. Here are five reasons why gossiping is actually evil and you're bad for wanting it.

And I was like, OK, that's very rude. And so I responded to chat GBT and I was like, that's actually not true. Here are like I refuted each of its five points. And then, of course, it immediately was like, oh, no, you're right. And I was like, OK, we're getting nowhere. And so then eventually I was like, well, can you tell me something as if it's a gossip? Can you tell me the story of Gilgamesh, which is a long episode?

epic story as if it's gossip. And what I found was really fascinating, which is that this computer program thinks that what gossip is, is only a tone and a word choice. So it told me the epic of Gilgamesh, but it used words that are prevalent in queer culture and amongst women and in this kind of frivolous tone. Otherwise, it was exactly the same. Which...

Then sort of raises the question of what we were talking about earlier about it, how it was stigmatized. And then we were talking about how it's associated with, you know, groups that have been traditionally marginalized as well. Right. You can kind of see all of those connections. Exactly. Yeah. You see it all together. You've also talked and written about growing up evangelical. And so talk about the messages they said to you about gossip.

Yeah. So I grew up in Texas in a very evangelical church and they are very clear in the evangelical church that gossip is a sin and that it is not a sin of moderation. So it's not like drinking or dancing where if you do too much of it, it becomes a sin. It's just a straight sin like adultery. And

And so I was told my whole childhood that that was my, like, cross to bear, essentially, that because I was such a good gossip and I loved it so much, this would be, like, the end of my faith or my inability to connect with God, which as an adult, I think is very – it's a lot of pressure to put on a child in general. Uh-huh.

I also think that from a like religious standpoint, that's actually not super biblical. Like if you are a Christian and you believe the things that the Bible says, one, there aren't very many verses about gossiping. And most of those are about lying. So slander or libel.

But two, a lot of the Bible I would consider gossip, which is to say that the second half of the New Testament is written by Paul. Paul was not there for any of the events of Christ's life. And so he had to have heard them from somewhere, which means it came secondhand. And so even if you believe it's true, you have evidence within the book that this kind of talk is necessary to your own religion.

You also talked about how it can be useful to cast gossip as sinful in a faith, especially if there are powerful people in that faith who are trying to hide things being said about them. If you want to talk a little bit about that, how leaders in a particular church were trying to avoid basically

you know, negative stories about them being shared and coming to light, but also how then that points to how gossip can be wielded by the powerful, but also a tool for the less powerful.

Yeah, so I know the most about the evangelical church, so that's the easiest reference for me to use here. But we see a kind of a playbook exist for evangelical churches when the head pastor has had an affair, because it is common enough that they run the same playbook over and over again. And the playbook says that you come before the congregation and you confess and you say, here's what's going on. We are going to engage this whole process to figure it out and make things right for you. And then you very explicitly

Right.

And I have always found that so interesting because what they are doing there is they're creating this space where they're saying, like, we know that you want to talk about this and that probably you even need to talk about it. But we also know that you talking to each other is very dangerous for us because we want to decide whatever it is we want to decide without your input. And so they do that pretty frequently. It's a kind of smart move for leadership. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, Zoe writes, if someone says I don't like gossip, what they really mean is I love to gossip 150% of that time. I personally really love to hear gossip when it's not about me. But in that case, it's infuriating. You've also talked about how gossip can be a really important form of constructive learning for teenagers and young people. And certainly, you know, the image of the young teenager or gossiping is something that's kind of

in our minds, but I hadn't thought about the value that it can have for teens. Could you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I think about this a lot because often when I'm talking to someone about my work or this research, they'll say, well, of course gossip can be bad. Like people are hurt by gossip all the time, which is true. Like in no way am I denying that. But if you push them often and you say, okay, in what scenario do

A lot of times the example they have is from high school or middle school. They'll say like, oh, well, when I was younger, this thing happened to me that was really hard and difficult. And that is real, right? I'm not diminishing those experiences at all. But what's interesting is that teens we know are doing everything to an nth degree because they're trying to understand the world around them. That's how they date. That's how they talk. It's how they consume media. And gossiping is a huge part of that.

Like they are learning to exist in the world. And the gossiping helps them do that. It helps them understand the rules of their group. It helps them understand when you've pushed something too far. It is very important for teenagers to gossip. Listeners, how has gossip about you or someone else affected your life?

When do you gossip? What about? With whom? And why do you think we're so hardwired to gossip? If you're a fan of the podcast Normal Gossip, why do you listen? Email forum at kqed.org. Find us on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and others on our social channels at kqedforum. Call us at 866-733-6786. Let me go to Susan in the South Bay. Hi, Susan, you're on.

Yes, hi. I've always been on the outside of gossip growing up, so busy with schoolwork and sports that I never really was the person that gossiped. But it's really affected me as an adult the last two years as a mother of an elite high school athlete who, yeah, the teen moms decided to have lunches, walks,

And it led to an exclusion of me and my son. And then maybe unintentionally or out of jealousy, the effect has been really negative on both him and me. And yeah, I'm not a fan of gossip.

I'm so sorry to hear that that happened to you and that it resulted in that as well. What you're describing, which makes me think, Kelsey, that what they said about Susan probably wasn't great. How do you think about the way we should ethically weigh ugly gossip or malicious gossip?

Yeah, I think I, as I just said, there are ways absolutely that you can use gossip to hurt others. And I'm so sorry that that's happening to you, like that you're being kind of excluded from this group of people who have decided for whatever reason that you don't belong with them. And that is a really painful and awful experience that I think most people have had at some point in time.

And I think when we're thinking about that, when I'm in particular trying to think about like where is the moral line of gossiping and not, the answer is like kind of a physical one, which is that it feels bad in your body when you are being malicious in gossip. There is a way of gossiping that feels really terrible. And I think that that kind of behavior always has repercussions for the people doing it and not.

I'm so sorry that you lost this friend group and that you are separated from them. And I also think that that kind of behavior says so much more about them than it does about you. And so, yeah. And if you're feeling that, it's a good gauge, right? As you're talking about something. And then the other thing is, God, we have...

So many tools that feel like they can amplify gossip in ways that, you know, we've never had before in the last couple of decades, right? Social media and other technology tools and so on. How do you think technology has affected the impact of gossip?

Yeah. When we were talking about gossip earlier about something that helped early humans, we're also talking about people who are gossiping in a much, much, much smaller group, right? Groups of less than 150 people talking about each other constantly. And we live in a world now that is so much more.

bigger than that. Like the example we were just given is within someone's community. That's very common. But we're also hearing a lot of gossip now that's happening at a state level or a national level or an international level because of the internet and because of social media. People will go online and they will post, you know, a video of someone talking at the table next to them at a bar and that will go viral and I'll see it on my phone 2,000 miles away. And that

is not what gossip was originally intended for. And it's not, I don't think, how you use it for good. Because when you are doing that, you're expanding the circle of people who know about something from a group of people that it can help or entertain at a mild level to a nationwide broadcast that only benefits you as the gossiper. Let me go to Gala Dawn and Panol. Hi, Dawn, you're on.

Well, thank you, dear, for your wonderful work. It's a start. It's hilarious. I've been in so many situations where I've been busted, gossiping, snitching. What about snitching? I had to teach my...

He's Spanish. He's Spanish born. He's a, I'm African American, but I'm from the States. And yeah, I had to teach him what the difference between snitch and dry snitch. And he had no idea, of course, you know, so it's snitching innuendo. What I think we need to do is,

is go back and detail every term that we're using, gossip. A few years ago, when I started in the middle of my graduate school, right in the middle of the pandemic, back in Middlebury, shout out to Middlebury, Brett Lowe's graduate school of English, I came upon the term and the project about envy.

So I was like, this is the root of our society. This is the root of the economic and political system and the basis of our society, economic system, Western economics, capitalism. So I embarked on and then I found out this whole theoretical framework for envy.

And so from there, so I was like, this is Western European political economic tradition about a discourse, a political economic discourse about envy. Philosophers are weighing in, and there are poems and tracts and articles, books, you name it, transgressions.

Well, Don, you are really bringing in some interesting points, like in the role that envy could be playing a very insidious role in our politics right now. And also just even terms, because we're also getting several questions around terms. But do you want to say a little bit about the relationship of envy to gossip?

Well, first I want to say something about snitching. I think that's a really interesting point here. Snitching and dry snitching. Yeah. Which is something I think about a lot is who can you gossip with ethically? And like at what level does your gossip become something more sinister? And kind of the rule I've created for myself is that you can gossip with people on your level. You cannot gossip about people beneath you and you cannot gossip up. So gossiping up would be snitching.

Because you are telling someone in a higher position of power something about someone on your level. That's snitching. I don't agree with that. I don't think it's gossip. And you can't gossip down. You can't tell your employees information about them because I think that's unethical, too. So I'm glad he brought that up. I think that's a really interesting point. The other thing he brought up was envy, which gossip is a huge tool for envy, right? We want to talk about what other people have and how we can get it.

And then to continue on this question of terms, one listener on Blue Sky writes, I noticed 10 years ago that people were calling gossip tea. Where did that come from? Do you know, Kelsey? People are still calling gossip tea. The term tea comes from actually a novel written in the trans community in the 1970s. Tea being a single letter acronym for truth.

And it was like, so spill the truth. Right. But the tea comes from like this space. And so it relates to a lot of the stuff we've been talking about already about how things come from marginalized communities and then they seep into mainstream culture and become this greater thing. Right.

So when you end up with spill the tea, it's because something that started as tea for truth in the trans community evolves over the course of 40 years. And then we start spelling it T-E-A. And then we say, well, you can spill tea. That's a fun little thing we can say. And now everyone says it.

This is no rights. I think everyone assumes that when they're gossiping, the recipient is trustworthy. But of course, no one is trustworthy. Laurie writes, my feeling about gossip depends on the intention. Sometimes it's more negative and intention when you're gossiping to put someone else down and feel better about yourself. Other times I get good information about someone which helps me navigate relationships with them, which I find to be positive in effect.

We are talking about gossip, the way that it shapes us, the role it plays in our lives and why we are so hardwired to gossip, whether we like to admit it or not. And then why we don't like to admit it, you know? That's what Kelsey McKinney has been examining in her new book, You Didn't Hear This From Me, hosting creator of the podcast Normal Gossip.

You can join the conversation by calling 866-733-6786, by emailing forum at kqed.org, finding us on our social channels at KQED Forum. More after the break. I'm Mina Kim. That's one secret I'll never tell. You know you love me. XOXO.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking about gossip this hour, the good, the bad, the juicy, why we love it, how we use it, who we share it with. So listeners, tell us when do you gossip and what about with whom? Why do you think we gossip? What have you noticed that gossip does? How has gossip about you or someone else affected you? Let me go to listener Laura in San Anselmo. Hi, Laura. You're on.

Hi, Chelsea, huge fan of normal gossip. And what gossip does for me is, A, makes me feel better about my own obnoxious behavior. Like I never intend to be cruel, but you know, we all have our moments. And I don't doubt people talk about it. That's just what you sign up for when you are a person in the world. And similarly, it really has helped me form closer bonds with people when we talk about

some of our mutual acquaintances, obnoxious behavior. And when it's, again, not done in the spirit of cruelty, it really can be a positive. And one quick example is in my book club, which as you spoke to earlier about these sort of groups that come together, you know, based on an affinity or a hobby, like there was this one woman, she's no longer in the club, and she was

She was a lot. She was a piece of work. But you don't want to be the first person to say to someone else, oh, can you believe Jane said that? Because then you're the jerk if they don't agree with you. But when I caught someone's eye reacting the same way and we could kick ourselves under the table, that was a hugely bonding moment.

Laura, thank you. I feel like I also just got some like a piece of gossip from you just from the way you described that. Thank you, Laura. That was great gossip. I loved hearing it. It's.

It's interesting when you're talking about it being like a bonding exercise between two people. There are actually studies that show that when two people are gossiping, it lowers their heart rate, which feels very counterintuitive to me because if I'm gossiping, it's like at a fever pitch that feels very energetic. But the act of gossiping feels so close and trusting that it makes you feel calm and

And to what you're saying about having this like enemy in your book club, they've also shown one of my favorite studies that's in the book is about having an office enemy. They have proven that if there is one person in an office that everyone dislikes, the happiness of that office is infinitely higher. And if you remove that person,

Excuse me. If you remove that person, the happiness drops. And so having this person that you can talk about that you mutually dislike bonds you very close together, which I find very beautiful. Yeah.

This is from Discord Rights. I was new to the idea of the banker archetype from Kelsey's book. Someone who is a gatherer of information. I tend to be very open about things and I'm not a banker of secrets. My dad was good at that. My mom is a total gossip and always has terrible news to pass along about people we know. But my dad was a storyteller, a great listener, a total...

you know, blankster. I think FCC rules make me so that I can't say this on a broadcast. When he wanted to see what would happen, asking my 24-year-old cousin how a fall winner's 17-year-old sister had just had a baby is a prime example I will never forget. And a master of holding other people's secrets, a trade requirement as a criminal defense attorney. Ooh, okay, yeah.

Wow. This listener writes about the boundaries they put on gossip. Given that as a Christian, we are not to be engaging, participating in gossip. When people try to gossip with me about others, I say kindly, you know what? You don't need to be saying this and I don't need to be hearing it. If people have a problem with another person, I'm willing to listen to their pain or how they have been impacted by the other person, but they don't get to malign the other person to me. I encourage them to gather the courage to say to the other person directly, not to me. So,

I want to ask you about another kind of side of gossip that you explore, and that is our sense of entitlement to gossip in certain sort of relationships. And one of them that I think is really interesting is the sense that we seem to feel entitled to celebrity gossip, like we're owed personal information about Beyonce or Taylor Swift or something if we're fans. What do you think about that? Like, where does that come from?

Oh, I'm obsessed with the bleed of parasociality into our relationships with celebrities, which is just to say that, like, it is so easy to forget that you don't know a celebrity at all. And I think a lot of that is because mechanically, the way that we engage with celebrities now is really similar to the way that you engage with your own friends, right? If you go to your Instagram and you're watching Instagram stories, it's like your sister's birthday, your friend's baby, Taylor Swift's concert in...

Hong Kong, right? And like, it is really hard for your brain to separate that like these first two people you do know and have an intimate relationship with. And the third person is the biggest pop star in the world. And so something really interesting happens there where when you are kind of committed in a one way relationship with the celebrity, this kind of parasocial relationship, you're

you become convinced that you know more about them than other people, even though everything you've been being given is coming diluted through sourcing to you. And so I find it really interesting because I see it in myself all the time where if a celebrity that I follow and really like gets divorced, for example,

I feel upset that they didn't tell me why. Because to me, I'm like, well, I'm paying attention. I know that you've gotten divorced. You should simply make a statement so that I can know why. And that's not actually my business. I don't know those people. But I feel in my body entitled to that information the same way I would feel if like my best friend got divorced and didn't tell me. It's the kind of like jarring feeling to have inside your body. Yeah. It's a very powerful thing.

gossip, this other listener writes, gossip can be stress inducing for people with social anxiety, we begin to think, oh, what are people saying about me when I'm not around? You're talking about how it's just a really powerful sense of entitlement that we feel with celebrities. And then at the same time, you know, just in terms of the kinds of emotions and reactions it brings up in us, it can also be a really powerful thing to leverage, which celebrities are also really good at, right, Kelsey? Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. A huge part of being a celebrity right now is controlling the narrative, which means understanding when you should release information and to which sources and how. And that is really fascinating to watch because you're seeing gossip used as ammo, essentially, by people to maintain their own status in society. Yeah. Let me go to Marie in San Francisco. Hi, Marie. You're on.

Hi, thanks so much. I can understand the fun and lightheartedness in certain gossip, but I was just impelled to call. I work for a very large, very well-respected city agency. I don't know what to say which one it is. And for a number of years, my particular workplace, the supervisor there, who wielded a lot of power, I want to go into the whole...

song and dance. But in any case, she just started spreading horrible, horrible rumors about me. We even deal with the public and the things just got very, very, very ugly. So much so that I actually physically became very, very sick. And it was just,

It was just horrendous. And everyone in that particular workplace was kind of mildly afraid of her. And so when you just made the comment, which on the one hand was funny, you know, that one study, if there's one person that's not liked in the workplace, it kind of makes her a more fun workplace. It triggered something in me, and I could just feel myself cringe in terror because of this woman's power. I kind of became that one person. It was...

absolutely horrific. And just as a final thing, this was a few years back, but recently I was in another workplace of this same city or

And one of the girls came up to me and said, you know, I have some good gossip on whoever the other person was. And I said, and I just froze for a minute. And I know she meant it lighthearted. And I said, you know, I was a victim for so long of such horrible gossip. And I know you just mean it in a lighthearted way, but actually I don't want to know. And then a funny thing at the very end, gossip.

Gossip in this particular system is so bad that a gentleman who I work with just for fun spread a rumor that he was engaged, which he wasn't. And a month later, the head of this particular organization came and asked him when he was going to be married. Anyway...

So, but I just whenever I even heard the word gossip, I literally just, it just can so easily turn horribly ugly. And I do understand the difference between fun and gossip. Anyway, I got horribly sick. But thank you very much. Bye. Thank you for sharing that.

Thank you so much for being honest about that. Yeah, exactly. And two, I think, really important points that you have made, you know, one about the powerful emotions that Gossam can create in us, but also just how it can be wielded as a tool of power and how, you know, we are quite aware of that. You know, this person actually writes, yeah,

I distinguish between gossip and neutral news. When I have some juicy gossip, it's a piece of social currency that buys me power. I bond with the person I'm talking to in an us-against-them way. Also, it's saying something behind someone's back I wouldn't say to their face. So that is that part of it. And with something that powerful, it is interesting just to hear all the different ways it can be

wielded, another person writes and says, why is it that we're still using this outdated word of gossiping only about women? Men talk about other guys as do women, but we're told it's gossiping when women do it. Do you think that as well, that when men do it, it's like considered news? Yeah.

Yeah, so it's interesting because the word gossip etymologically, like if you'll hang with me for one nerdy second, comes from an old English word that is godsib. And godsib was a word used for like your godmother, right? Someone who would be your mom's friend and very close, like an auntie almost, but not blood related. And then over time, that became used to talk about people who were literally in a birthing room when someone was born. Right.

And that became women talking to each other inside the closed birthing room. And now we have this word gossip. So it literally does come etymologically from women talking to each other. Like that part of it is correct.

But yeah, absolutely. You're right. When men talk about things, there is often this undertone of, oh, well, they're having important and serious conversations. And often, you know, they're talking about the NFL. Right. And that's fine. But I like the NFL, too. But you watch the NFL on television. It sits on your TV and then you go to work and you discuss it. That's exactly the same as watching The Real Housewives on your television and going to work and discussing it. And yet one of them is news and one of them is gossip.

So Pete on Discord says, there's a difference between sharing information and gossip. The latter, in an interpersonal sense, is like taking a pillow to a mountaintop and bursting it. Once the feathers are cast to the wind, there's no gathering them and the damage is done. Wow. So then I guess the question for me is, should we try to do away with the word gossip? I don't think that's what you would recommend. But people are sort of trying to draw this distinction because they feel like gossip is inherently, has all of these inherent negative connotations.

Yeah, I don't think that we should get rid of the word gossip. I think that it's about counteracting that narrative against it, right? Even in this example of, oh, there's a difference between information sharing and gossip. There's not. Like, we know based definitionally that there's not. Gossip is a form of information sharing. It's just how we use it as a society today says that it's not.

And so my instinct is that it's much easier to combat a negative connotation against one word than it is to invent a whole other word. Because at the end of the day, what would end up happening is if we invented a new word for important gossip and gossip that matters, who decides that? Someone still is going to be drawing this line and saying, well, this part is evil and this part is good. And that line is going to be different for everyone. So that's the same situation we already have.

The power of gossip and the role it plays. We're talking about it with Kelsey McKinney, and you are listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. And Christina writes, this is probably gossip, but my sister gossips and always gets it wrong. Then she goes on a road of badmouthing people involved and expecting me to join her in calling them losers.

Greg writes, what is included in gossip? I think juiciness is the key factor. Can you share your own juiciness ranking? So you have talked about what makes for good gossiping, right? Or relaying the hallmarks of relaying good gossip. Do you want to just share a few more of those?

Yeah, I think if you're looking for like how to make your gossip story juicier in general, I think there are a few things you can do. The first is that we I mean, this person saying that their sister always gets it wrong. I find very funny because that is like the telephone aspect of gossip, which is one person tells someone and something changes. That person tells another person and something changes.

And then over time, you have a much more dramatic story than you had at the beginning because like schoolchildren, you've embellished it into this state of heightened awareness. And I think you can do that when you're telling your gossip stories ethically. You can always anonymize the names. If you don't want to hurt someone, you can always just change the names of the people you're talking about or change their jobs. It doesn't change the quality of the story at all and maybe gives them a little bit of protection.

But you can also make choices as a storyteller to amplify the story, right? You can add in anecdotes that tell your listener other aspects of the characters in your story. You can make sure that there's a beginning, middle, and an end. It's the same as any good story. So you now have announced that you are leaving normal gossip, not defector media, but leaving normal gossip. Yeah.

to be able to pursue other things. Talk about, you know, sort of what sparked that decision. And in that process, as you've written this book about gossip, what your reflections are on what you feel like normal gossip has contributed to.

Yeah. I think as a creative person, you never want to do something for so long because of your own ego or hubris that you drive it into the ground. And so I always knew that at some point I would step down from it because I don't think you can do the same thing forever and not feel tired.

And I noticed in the last year that I was having a harder time getting excited about some of the stories. I was still pretty excited about almost all of them. But every once in a while, I would have this little feeling where I was like, oh, I wonder if I still have all the creative juice behind this.

And I had a great opportunity. We hired at Defector Media, Rachel Hampton, who I think is a genius and is a great storyteller. And so we brought her in to our meetings to kind of give us a fresh perspective. And she was so unbelievably good at it that it just made perfect sense to hand off the show to her and have her do it. And they're recording the new season right now. And it's so good. Like, I'm so excited about the work that she's doing. I think it's going to be incredible. And I'm very excited to listen to it.

Your question was also though, like, what did I take away from it? What did I learn? And I,

I think part of what I learned in my time working on the show is just that, like, people are people everywhere. The same crazy things are happening to way more people than you think they are. And that is kind of beautiful to me, that if you hear a story about someone and you think, oh, my God, that's crazy. That's never happened before. According to the Normal Gossip Inbox, it's happened five or six times that we know about, which is so funny and so fun because it just means that we're all kind of the same. Yeah. And...

In some ways, it really connects to the fact that the enjoyment of discovering secrets does relate to, I think, a strong desire for connection, a desire that's probably even amplified more than ever now. And then do you think people... I guess one of the things that I was thinking about is like...

This book that you have written almost feels like the analytical side of gossip that you probably weren't able to share in the actual podcast episodes.

Yeah. Part of why we started the podcast is that I love gossip and I think it's so interesting. And so because I am like a sicko, I would be at home in my room like Googling studies on gossip and reading them and being like, oh, my God, this is so interesting. And then I would come to the meetings and I would say, I think we can put this in the top of the podcast. And everyone would be like, Kelsey, no. And they were right because it was like not the right forum for this kind of information.

Inquisition, the podcast is about storytelling and telling great gossip. And so a huge part of this book came from stuff that I had and wanted to use and had nowhere to put. Yeah. Well, now you have and it's called You Didn't Hear This From Me, mostly true notes on gossip. I love the mostly and also, of course, the title itself and what it's implying. Kelsey McKinney, really appreciate having you on.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And thank you to the listeners. These were great stories. I appreciate them. Kelsey McKinney, also creator and host of the podcast Normal Gossip. My thanks to Francesca Fenzi for producing today's segment. My thanks to listeners for sharing their stories about gossip, the effect that it had on their lives, their questions and reflections on the role that gossip has played in their lives. You've been listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim.

Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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