What is your relationship to gossip? Perhaps this is the first question you should address before you dive into the hit podcast from Defector media, Normal Gossip (NG). And if, like many of the guests that appear thereon, your answer falls anywhere on the spectrum from “it’s got its purpose” to “I live and die for it” then get your airbuds in, listener, because you’re in for a tea-spilling treat.
Philadelphia journalist and self-declared gossip queen Kelsey McKinney and producer Alex Sujon Laughlin have thus far bestowed upon us three seasons of a podcast devoted to the juicy tidbits gleaned from a friend of a friend of a friend — no celebrity scandals here, just normal gossip about normal people, if your concept of normal includes things like faking your own death, stealing from your boyfriend’s grandmother, or hunting squirrels with a crossbow.
Each story is based on a true tale filtered through whatever source disclosed it to the NG team, anonymised with some name changes, some moments or details amplified, and the removal of identifying factors including specific location, and then retold in titillating beats by McKinney to the listener, and each time to a guest.
The guests — from comedian Samantha Irby to podcaster Tuck Woodstock to actor Laci Mosley — serve as story foil, commenter, consiglieri to the anonymous protagonists, and willing ear, absorbing the drama in all its detail. McKinney is a master storyteller — she crafts with expertise and interrupts each tale at key moments to ask her guest what they might do in this scenario. Whose side are we on as we listen to the gossip? Who’s the villain? Why are the characters so incompetent and idiotic? And where the hell is Nosering Nick? (Season 3′s episode 7 can answer that last one for you).
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She also dips into the science of gossip and talks to guests about the reasons for its appeal and the functions it serves. Why do we love to gossip? Does it deserve its bad rap? Why do we care what is happening to people we don’t even know? And how is human behaviour so constantly surprising and so deliciously compelling? (Also, if everything is so carefully anonymised and then made podcastably public, does the content of Normal Gossip even qualify as gossip any more? Do we care?)
Forgive the spoilers, but there are so many glorious and twisted stories in here that the temptation for a consummate gossip — find me the journalist who isn’t — to pass them on is overpowering: There’s the one about the dead grandfather’s pocket watch and the romance that blossoms in the search for a repairman. There’s the one about the woman who brought her sister’s photograph on an ice-pop stick to a One Direction concert and chaos ensued involving glitter and a hotel fridge. There’s the one about the dad whose orchid-growing hobby brings him into the orbit of a master exotic plant scammer.
Each story shakes out a little shaggy dog, a little meandering towards an ending that’s more real life than climactically satisfying, and more successful because of it. They come largely through listeners, and McKinney and Sujon Laughlin do ask further questions and seek documentation at times, but these are friend-of-a-friend tales, not the kind of journalistic endeavours requiring fact checks and multiple sourcing. It’s gossip, not gospel after all.
Ultimately, Normal Gossip is an expertly crafted tribute to the oddness of humankind. People do the darnedest things: what else is there to do than tell each other all about it?
