It Was Never About the Figs with Caroline O'Donoghue

Caroline O'Donoghue joins us from across the pond for a story about art collectors with too much time and money on their hands. Follow Caroline on Instagram @czaronline https://www.instagram.com/czaronline/ Get tickets to Kelsey's book tour here! https://kelseymckinneybook.com/ Pre-order Kelsey's book, YOU DIDN'T HEAR THIS FROM ME, here! https://shop.lostcitybookstore.com/product/9781000275124 Subscribe to our newsletter for writing from Kelsey and Alex, blog recommendations, and bonus secrets! https://defector.com/normal-gossip-podcast You can support Normal Gossip directly by buying merch https://defectorstore.com/collections/normal-gossip or becoming a Friend or a Friend-of-Friend at supportnormalgossip.com https://defector.com/products/normalgossip. Our merch shop is run by Dan McQuade. You can also find all kinds of info about us and how to submit gossip on our Komi page: https://normalgossip.komi.io/ Episode transcript here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XcwFTvol0CESJ_HYVgRvGzEaUUWgp2Ho-PcDpuUzqYQ/edit?usp=sharing. Follow the show on Instagram @normalgossip https://www.instagram.com/normalgossip/, and if you have gossip, email us at [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 26-79-GOSSIP. Normal Gossip is hosted by Kelsey McKinney (@mckinneykelsey https://www.instagram.com/mckinneykelsey/) and produced by Alex Sujong Laughlin (@alexlaughs https://www.instagram.com/alexlaughs/), Ozzy Llinas Goodman (@ozzy_llinas https://www.instagram.com/ozzy_llinas), and Jae Towle Vieira (@jaetowlevieira https://instagram.com/jaetowlevieira?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==). Abigail Segel (@AbigailSegel https://twitter.com/AbigailSegel) is our intern. Justin Ellis is Defector's projects editor. Credits read by Carey T. Show art by Tara Jacoby. Normal Gossip is a proud member of Radiotopia https://www.radiotopia.fm/. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

• 0:06Speaker 00

  Hi and welcome to Normal Gossip. I'm Kelsey McKinney and in each episode of this podcast, we're going to bring you an anonymous morsel of gossip from the real world. Today I am so excited to have with me a long distance friend, Caroline O'Donoghue. Caroline is a novelist, a podcaster and a screenwriter. All Our Hidden Gifts, her fantasy series for young adults, is a New York Times bestseller and The Rachel Incident is being adapted for television by Universal Studios. Wow, that's cool. Caroline's podcast Sentimental Garbage charts internationally and has acquired over nine million downloads worldwide. Also, I love it. She was born in Cork, Ireland, and she currently lives in London. Caroline, welcome.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Hello. I'm so excited to be here. You've no idea. This is fantastic.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  Caroline, will you start me off with the classic first question and tell me what your relationship with gossip is?

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Wow, many and varied. Like, I feel, in case it's not clear to your listeners, I am an Irish person and like, there's this whole thing of like, I get to sit on all these amazing literature panels and have people ask me really thoughtful questions about like, what is it with the Irish in storytelling?

• 1:15Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  And to that, and the whole like, strong oral tradition thing. And like, it really hits me that the phrase "strong oral tradition" is just a sort of a euphemism for talking shit all day, every day.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  I think about this an awful lot. So Ireland never really had an industrial revolution. So, like, so we're going back to the turn of the 19th century.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  Perfect. Yeah, let's start at the beginning.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Let's, let me bring you back to the spinning Jenny.

• 1:48Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  You know, in England and America and Germany, all these different countries, there was like this moment where industrial action happened and where like, all kind of populations were just became into cities and all that kind of stuff. That never really happened in Ireland. Ireland was always just like, your workplace is your back garden. And there's no entertainment of any kind, except for...

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Or you can walk six miles in the dark to your friend's house to talk shit.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  No.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  And that's, that's like it. And I think that's where all the music stuff comes from. And that's where all this storytelling thing comes from. It really comes from a sort of a lack of anything else to do. Like the, the, the, the two penny strip show is not coming to Ireland. The like, the Nickelodeon is not coming to Ireland. What, what comes to Ireland is like going to your friend's house and telling them a story. You heard of somebody else who heard it off a cow, you know?

• 2:39Speaker 01

  You kind of see that as well with Irish people where it's like, they never let the truth get in the way of a good story either. So tall, that tales, tales be getting tall.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry to embarrass you, but I, your book, The Rachel Incident was one of my favorite books that I read last year. I loved it. I thought it was so great. And there's a lot of gossip in that book. And I wanted to ask you just like how you think about gossip in fiction, both like creating it and what role it plays in stories.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Oh, it's such a good question. So like the Rachel incident is definitely, it's a book about gossip in many ways. So like in the opening chapter, this character runs into somebody from her hometown, like years and years after she's left. And is kind of reminded of this piece of gossip that existed about her in her hometown that, that like, wasn't true, but she had to live her life as though it were.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  But like, I definitely think that, um, like it's a frequent thing of like, when someone tells you a piece of gossip. And then the first thing that you think about is like, how much of this can I change and then put into a novel? And, and I always do feel as well that like you, you're far more likely to put to, adopt a situation or a character that you know very little about kind of thing. So you can sort of fill in the gaps in your head. There has to be like a gap where intrigue can develop naturally, where you're just like, you know? Because if I, if I know my friend and all of her problems and everything about her, then, then my brain isn't doing that natural thing where it fills in the gap with sort of interesting lies. And so it's never gonna happen. Yeah.

• 4:15Speaker 00

  Did you bring a gossip for me?

• 4:18Speaker 01

  I did bring a bit of gossip for you. So, you know, I live in, I live in London, which is a place where people are so gossipy. And every single person in London has a story about either the royal family or Matty Healy.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  That's extremely funny to me because it's just like, ah, opulence, ah, trash.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  What's, what side of the class divide are they on in the kind of London social person? And, and so, you know, and obviously I can't repeat any of that gossip here because I'll be hung.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  And, um, but so this is a story that I heard at a wedding and, um, I loved it so much. So let me see if I can relate to you here.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Please.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Okay. So I, I, I meet this girl at a wedding and even as I met her, she seemed like a kind of a recently recovered shy person, you know?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Like she's.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  I know exactly what you're talking about.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? She's like learned the tricks and things and like, and she's learned how to, how to, how to do it. But you can tell that like, it's not something that comes like super easy to her. And like, you could tell with this, this woman that like, she was like, oh, she was like, so when I was, um, a teenager, I was super shy. And I was like, yeah, I can guess. Like, and, and like I met her and I was like, immediately I can see that she was to, this is again, filling in the gaps with interesting lies. I can, I can totally see that she was the kind of girl who probably had like two best friends in school. Who she's told everything to, but nobody else in her year group knew she existed, you know, kind of thing.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  And she's like super studious and, and just keeps herself to herself and whatever. And, um, in her, I guess what you'd call your senior year in her, in, in her last year of school, her family moves.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Oh, you can't move your beautiful shy child like in her final year of school? You're going to make her make new friends? That's not fair.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Well, precisely, Kelsey. They're not going to make her make new friends. What they're going to make her do instead is commute.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  Oh, no.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. Sad. Very sad for our shy girl. Let's just call her Andy.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  Poor Andy.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Poor Andy. She used to live right in the middle of the city with all of her friends, somewhere in the north of England. And, and now she lives in like the fucking countryside, right? And like, she has to get like a 45 minute long bus every day to go to school.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Woof.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  And yeah. So, you know, she's getting up at six, she's getting up in the dark to go to school. She's coming home in the dark. Her senior year like sucks. And then one day she is at the bus stop and a car drives up. And it is a boy from her year.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  Huh.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  And you know how like every, every single year group has like, you know, your, your, your sort of Russian nesting doll of popular kids. And some of them are popular because they're attractive. And some of them are popular because they're attractive and rich. And some, some of them are popular, and this is the, the, the smallest nesting doll in the, in the very middle. They're rich, they're attractive, and they're really fucking nice. You know those people?

• 7:30Speaker 00

  Aha, yes.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Let's call him, what's your favorite English name?

• 7:36Speaker 00

  Paul?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Paul?

• 7:39Speaker 00

  I don't know. I don't know what names are English Caroline.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  I thought you were gonna say like Edward or something, I don't know.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  What are the kings named? Henry, Harry.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  It's Henry. And not only is Henry like, um, beautiful, nice and rich. He's also like a lord.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  This is crazy.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  So teen lord pulls up in his like Porsche or whatever, and he's like beep beep, get in. I know you're you at my school, I might as well drive you in. Like we're, we're from the same place now.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  What?

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he's like, do you wanna lift into school?

• 8:18Speaker 00

  I guess this makes sense because lords famously have land.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  You can't have land in the middle of the city.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Turns out his like huge country pile is like five minutes from her place. From her like semi-detached like house in the middle of nowhere. And, um, and so they, even though she is the shyest girl in the world, and even though he is hot, rich and nice and a lord. They have this relationship their whole senior year where they're just going to school back and forth, an hour every day. They, they're slowly building up their conversation and their connection every day and every evening. And then she goes off and she hangs out with her two friends who she loves. And like, then he goes off with his like big gang and then at the end of the day, they go hang out again in the car. And that's their thing.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  And, and when they're towards the end of the school year, um, he, he, he starts opening up to her about some serious stuff. And among the serious things he opens up to her about is that he is adopted. Okay, he's an adoptive teen lord.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  And like, yeah, so it's like, yeah, he is, yeah, he's not like super public about it, but like his family, his parents couldn't have kids.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  He's very happy, but he tells her, he's like, you know, he's on the verge of turning 18. And he's like, I, I get to find out basically about my stuff, like about my mom and all that kind of stuff.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Oh, right, right.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he hasn't told anybody this. He's only told shy girl Andy, who he gets the car with every morning.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Oh, my god.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Then he, he goes to the adoption place and um,

• 9:56Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  He gets his birth mother's name.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  And, and the name is like the most unbelievable general name you could possibly have.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  It's like, it's Sarah Smith. It's, it's, you know.

• 10:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Whatever. Like, insert the most common name you've ever thought of here. And he sort of like takes a stab at trying to find her or whatever, but then he kind of gives up and he feels kind of awkward about it. And he just like,

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Doesn't. And then school ends.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  And then they don't see each other every day anymore.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  No.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  And I know, and, and, and shy girl Andy is like, I miss my friend. And like, they're texting quite a bit, but they don't have that routine anymore.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  And by the way, this is, this, they're millennials. So this is like 2009, I guess.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  The internet exists.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  It's becoming a thing. And so what Andy does is she gets this common ass fucking name and she essentially looks for every Sarah Smith in England on Facebook.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Oh, my god.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  And she just goes through and she's like, she's a diligent student who's on summer holidays, who's graduated high school. And she's just like going through, going through, being like, hello, this is a bit of a strange question, but in the late eighties, did you give birth to a son and give him up?

• 11:12Speaker 00

  Production.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Did you, uh, cause I know him. And anyway, eventually she strikes gold and she finds like the Sarah Smith.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  Oh, that is crazy.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  Like, I know.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  It's wild that she found her.

• 11:28Speaker 00

  It's wild that she found her.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  So many hours.

• 11:31Speaker 00

  I have no clue. Like, it's nuts to me that this happened.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  And so she

• 11:36Speaker 00

  Wild.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  At this point, shy girl Andy has a car of her own.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  And she, she, um, she drives over to his house and she gives him the information. And she like logs into her Facebook on his computer and like, there's your mom. Like, there she is. Like.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  I know, I know. And then, and, and so like you, him and his, him and his mom start connecting or whatever. And, um, they said, I said a date to meet or whatever. And then the date comes where they're supposed to meet and, um, she, he's supposed to go to her. I'm actually getting chills. I'm, I'm in a Sheraton in Frankfurt right now and I'm giving myself goosebumps.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  And, um, so they, they, they said, they said a date where he's gonna drive over to his mom's house. And, and, um, and meet her for the first time. And then he says to shy girl Andy, will you drive me?

• 12:29Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Cause he doesn't wanna, wanna drive alone and, and.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  He doesn't wanna go alone.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Doesn't wanna go alone and they're driving and they're not saying a word. It is totally silent in the car. And then they get, they get to the door and she's, she waits in the car and she's like, go on, you know, you know, you can go in. And then he walks up to the door and then he walks back and he gets back in the car and he says, I can't go in without you. And then they just, he just holds out his hand and they walk up to the mom's house, holding hands.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  I love this movie.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  I love, this is my favorite movie and Kelsey, Kelsey, they're married and they have a baby.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  She's the lord now.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  That's so beautiful. You know what? She deserves it.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  She deserves it. She did the bootwork, you know, she did it. She went to Facebook. She got a husband.

• 13:22Speaker 00

  Wow. It's like extremely funny to think about this from the perspective of like all the other rich girls who had a crush on him.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  Right? And it's like, why is he driving her? Why is he driving her? Just like fuming when they get engaged, right? Like.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  And like especially if like no one knew as well, being like, who even is she?

• 13:43Speaker 00

  That girl he drove to school?

• 13:46Speaker 01

  You're serious? She doesn't even talk.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  Wow. Caroline, thank you for bringing me this story. I love it. It's so beautiful.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  Okay, my story is less happy.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  More chaos. Do you still want to hear it?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Absa fucking lute, yes.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  Okay, great. Let's do it.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  We've been cooking up a fun, special holiday project for y'all over here at Normal Gossip. And usually when work gets crazy, I kind of just try to continue my life like nothing's happening. But recently, thanks to therapy, this time around, I was like, what if I did not try to pour from an empty cup? And that is what growing feels like. If you've been thinking about starting therapy, then I think you should check out today's sponsor, Growth Therapy. Growth Therapy is built for therapy that actually feels like care. You can find therapy based on what matters most to you, like insurance taken, mental health specialties, identity, or night and weekend availability if you're working a lot.

• 15:02Speaker 02

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• 15:29Speaker 02

  I'm gonna admit something embarrassing. I know, shocker. I have not had a bedside lamp for an undisclosed amount of months, long enough that I basically haven't read before bed for a really long time. And I only realized this because I'm hosting a friend and I was like, wow. They deserve to have a light by their bed at night. I don't. But this finally inspired me to find the perfect bedside lamp. And I had a vision in mind, Wayfair. They had exactly what I need, which is one of those library style lights with like the green lampshade and little pull cord. I have been having this image in my mind of having one. And now I have one because of course Wayfair had it.

• 16:12Speaker 02

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• 16:30Speaker 03

  Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 16:33Speaker 04

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• 17:12Speaker 00

  I'm going to call our friend of a friend today. We're going to call her Jane. And Jane has had like a nice, full life. She got married. She worked on the early internet with her husband. She was like a career woman in the eighties, right? Like big shoulder pads, even bigger hair. She and her husband, they had two kids. They grew up. The kids got married. They had kids themselves. Her husband died, which was terrible. And it was like very hard and she hasn't moved on, but she's kept on living. And this whole entire life that she's lived, she lived in one single house.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Do you have any experience like living in a place and watching it change around you?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Well, yes, because I've lived in London for 13 years and I was a writer that whole time. It is like you find, you find some place that's barely affordable to live where you can get okay coffee. And then you're priced out within usually about two and a half years. And that's, yeah, so I have a lot of experience with this. Yes.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  That is basically what has happened to Jane, but in slow motion, right? She moved into this house. It stayed the same. It's like a relic to her taste. Meanwhile, the whole neighborhood has turned over, right? Her friends moved out. All the cute little houses were torn down. More and more of the cars in her neighborhood are like fancy luxury ass cars. But she's also like looking around and she's like, this is crazy. Like my house is now the smallest and cheapest one in the neighborhood. Like everything else is concrete and expensive because it's been rebuilt.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  I see. Yes.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  And she realized this really concretely because she got a new neighbor.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  Her new neighbor is named Celeste. Celeste is like in her 40s. She's beloved by everyone in the neighborhood. And Jane knows this because Celeste used to live in a different house in the same neighborhood. She moved into a different house because she and her husband got divorced.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. So we've got, we've got Jane who's a widow and we've got Celeste who's a divorcee. Glamorous bunch.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  The reason that Celeste and Charles got divorced is that Celeste wanted that her house to be at 81 degrees Fahrenheit all the time, which is 27 degrees Celsius.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for that, by the way, because I would not have guessed what 81 degrees Fahrenheit was at all. I really appreciate the international edit here. 27 degrees Celsius.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  27 degrees Celsius.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  That's fucking crazy. That's mad.

• 19:41Speaker 00

  Hot.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  That's hot, hot, hot.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  She was like, I'm just cold all the time.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  What? Eat some soup, Celeste. That's nice.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  And her husband, Charles, wanted their house to be a normal fucking temperature.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  Like, not even cold. He was just like, I want it to be not 27 degrees Celsius in here. Do you believe that this is the real reason why they got divorced?

• 20:05Speaker 01

  No, I believe it is endemic to something else in Celeste's personality that is, like, unfixable, possibly.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  I feel like, you know, if she's one of these people who, like, in all aspects of their shared life together, Celeste's comfort is the most important thing, then maybe that's what destroyed their relationship.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  I love that theory. This is like, it's ridiculous to be like, we got divorced because she wants our house to be super, super hot, but it's like the only thing either of them ever says, right? Like, that is the party line. They're like, we got divorced because of this.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  We're so early in the story, and this is so nuts.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  I know. Okay. So imagine Jane's house, right? Jane's our widow. And then, right on the right of her house is Celeste.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  And on the left of Jane's house is a woman named Muffy.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Muffy? Right. Sure.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  And Muffy and Celeste are best friends.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, all right. I see.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  And Jane, our old lady, lives in the middle, just watching Muffy and Celeste, like, walk back and forth to each other's houses, carrying wine, carrying snacks, you know, gabbing, gabbing, gabbing.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. We've already talked about how, when you see strangers or people that you only know some details of, you kind of, like, fill in details that you have made up.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  What do you think that you might do with this friendship?

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Oh, they're in love, obviously.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  That's probably what I would do, too. I would be like, she left her husband for Muffy, right?

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, obviously, like, the temperature thing is, is like, a complete lie. And, and, you know, Celeste is gay, and I'm happy for her.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  I love that premise. In Jane's mind, she's like, Celeste and Muffy are the kind of friends who, like, they drink, they watch Below Deck, they talk about how they wish they could have a yacht. They don't know anything about each other. They don't like each other, actually.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  That's so crazy. Jane's a nutter.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  I love this.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  Jane believes this because she really likes Muffy and she does not like Celeste.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  Celeste is always wearing like one sweater and then she's wearing like another sweater tied around her shoulders. Because she's so cold. Celeste is like the kind of woman that's always wearing a lot of those like big bangles. And like has a really sleek bob.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. So it's giving kind of like a 90s art gallery type of woman?

• 22:42Speaker 00

  Totally. Yes.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 22:44Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. The real reason that Jane doesn't like Celeste though, is that Celeste will not stop talking about her damn fig.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Excuse me? As in like she's got a fig tree or something? Or is she proud of it? Is that what it is?

• 22:59Speaker 00

  Great thought. Wrong. It's not the fruit. It's not figs the tree. It is a sculpture. A bronze cast sculpture of a really big fig that is split in half.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  This is so great. This is everything. Every detail is more bizarre than the next Kelsey. What the fuck? This is my.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  I know. Try to, try to picture this fig, right? It's made of bronze. It's split in half. It's very, very large. Like think like sculpture garden large. Like each half of the fig is like the size of a person. And it's metal and shiny. And this fig slash artwork is titled, "The Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil."

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  It is a quote, "Statement on Gender."

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 23:52Speaker 00

  What is the statement? We don't really know. Do you have any idea what this statement could be?

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Hang on, isn't there something quite specific about the way figs are made that's like quite disgusting, right? Like there's this famous, like, it's like flies, wasps lay eggs and die in there or some shit. Like it's, it's like really gross. It's like you never want to eat anything with figs in it again after you've heard it. Not because it's cruel, but more because it's gross.

• 24:18Speaker 00

  You think that that is the statement on gender?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  I mean, that's the only thing I've ever heard about figs.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  They do look like balls because the fig is split in half and it's kind of around.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  They look like balls, they're big and gold, they're a statement on gender and they are the knowledge of good and evil.

• 24:37Speaker 00

  The real thing is that Celeste, like this fig sculpture is currently in Charles's backyard.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Charles?

• 24:44Speaker 00

  Her ex-husband.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  The man she's divorced, yes, because if he's not, doesn't like his house hot enough, yes.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  So Celeste like loved living by the fig, she loved looking at it, she loved when it was like reflecting the sun or something. And so she wanted to take it in the divorce. But because it was like so heavy, like it's made of, it's giant and made of metal. So you need like a whole group of guys and like construction equipment to move it.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  Like that might be why she didn't take it, or maybe she didn't take it because like Charles held on to it forever, like out of spite. But the fig is at Charles's house and she wants the fig to be with her.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Okay, as is her right.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  Jane knows all of these things because it's all Celeste ever talks about and Jane does not care about this.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Is this is all kind of feeding into as well, the kind of the yuppification of this neighborhood that these are like, like Jane is like, I've raised my family here and like, they're not my cares and concerns. They're your weird, modern art divorce problems.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. Jane's like, I had real problems when I was younger that weren't, where is my giant fig? Why isn't it at my fancy house?

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  So Jane dislikes her neighbor Celeste because of this fig problem and because she is filled with a whimsy that only rich people can have.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  But she likes Muffy.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  Because she's like, Muffy is kind, she has a really big laugh and she never, ever, ever talks about figs.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Such an important quality of neighbor.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  I now, okay, I now understand your earlier thing because like I definitely, I do have that thing where there's these two friends and you think one of them is just a stunner and you love hanging out with her and the other one, you're like, what? And so then you do invent in your head, you're like, oh, there must be some kind of fairy bargain in place or like perhaps-

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Charitable work going on.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  Right. You're like, the friend that I like must have been like trapped in a witch's spell in order to be friends with this other woman who I dislike. Jane also likes Muffy because Muffy started dating this like younger hot man and the younger hot man does all of their yard work with no shirt.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Lovely, lovely stuff.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  He's like sipping from the garden hose, throwing his hair back. He's always like hammering stuff, who knows what. He like has a push lawnmower. He's out there for hours. And Jane is like a little bit of a horn dog. So she's like, I appreciate this. Like, thank you for having this hot boyfriend for me. Very kind and thoughtful.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Very nice. Love Muffy.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. And Muffy reminds Jane of like a younger her because Muffy also like wants her house to be really nice, wants her garden to be really nice. And in particular, Muffy has a massive herb garden of like potted plants that she babies. She like brings them inside in the winter. She prunes them every day. She waters them constantly. She like never lets her young hot boyfriend touch them because they have to be like perfect.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  So one day Jane's out, she's on her little morning walk right around the neighborhood. She runs into Muffy. She's like, what's up, Muffy? Like, what's going on with you? And Muffy's like, oh my God, me and my hot boyfriend are going on vacation to Italy or whatever to be beautiful for two weeks. And Jane in her head is like, that's so sad that your hot boyfriend is leaving and I won't get to see him. But out loud, she's like, that's so nice. I'm so happy for you. Jane is also like, it's August, so it's really hot outside. And she's like concerned because she knows that Muffy loves her herb garden. So she's like, oh, do you want me to water it while you're gone?

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  And Muffy is like, oh my God, you're so sweet. But no, I already asked Celeste to do it. So you don't need to worry about it at all.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  Are you worried?

• 28:32Speaker 01

  I'm worried. Yeah. She's a feckless woman. I don't think she's, she's going to-

• 28:40Speaker 01

  I think she's self-involved and she's going to be negligent in her duties.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  Jane is like, okay, no problem. But then Muffy goes uptown and like, have you ever watched basil when it like, doesn't get watered?

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I buy it very frequently and I watch it wilt almost instantly. If you don't use that whole packet up in the day, it's gone. Yeah. It's, it goes black.

• 29:02Speaker 00

  Yes. And if it's like outside, it also like, just like starts to droop really badly, right? And the leaves like go yellow and then it's like very gross and sad. And it's summer and it's hot and Jane is watching out her window while Muffy is out of town that within a single 24 hour period, the basil is like wilted over.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Can I just say, this is far too much effort for an incredibly cheap supermarket plant. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not worth it. It's just not.

• 29:32Speaker 00

  If you're Jane, do you go water the basil?

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Oh, this is such a tough one. It's a real Sophie's choice because like, if she lets it die, then she can, um, then this friendship that she despises will be over, probably. And then Muffy can be her main friend. However, she loves Muffy and she doesn't want her thing to die. However, Celeste sucks and will definitely take the credit for the, the living basil.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  But Jane's too classy to say that was me watering it.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  So are you doing it or no? Where did, where did you end up?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Me, myself, I hate to garden. I would watch it die.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  And I'm also full of spite and I would just like, now Muffy's my friend.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  Jane is also full of spite because Jane is like, you know what? I offered to water it and Muffy explicitly told me, no, Celeste has got it. And so she watches out her window as the cilantro withers and the mint burns and the thyme becomes crunchy and the rosemary gets all fried and everything burns.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Christ. It's awful.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  You're not intervening at any point in this. You're just gonna watch the herb garden turn to dust.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Oh, you know what? I would say to Celeste, listen, the plants are dying. I believe this is your-

• 30:53Speaker 00

  You need to go water them.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  I believe this is your remit, Celeste.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think that's a really good idea, except that Jane can't talk to Celeste because if she tries to talk to her at all, she just talks about the fig again. So there's like no point.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Jane has really headed up to here with the fig, so the-

• 31:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. When I first heard this story, I was like, of course you go water the herb garden. But the more I think about it, the more I'm like, no, I'm so petty. And like, if I don't like the friend that's supposed to water it, like, it's just an herb garden.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, if it was a cat not being fed or a dog not being walked, that would be totally different.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  But ultimately, I don't give a fuck about herbs.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  Jane waits. She does not water the garden. It all dies. At the end of two weeks, Muffy comes home and Jane is like pettily like sitting by the window because she is like, Muffy's gonna freak. Right? She's like, there's gonna be some kind of blow up. They're gonna yell, like, they'll never be friends again. And then Muffy will be my friend.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Delicious.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  But instead, Muffy just like sees the herb garden and then goes inside.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  And then like a few days later, Jane sees the hunky boyfriend out there just like pulling out all the dead herbs.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Oh, hunky boyfriend.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  So she's like, she's like sad. Jane's like, this is very sad. The herbs are all dead. She's like, but also, Celeste has not gone over to Muffy's house at all since Muffy got back.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  So she's like, maybe, maybe my evil plan is working.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Yes. So perhaps some curt text messages were exchanged.

• 32:30Speaker 00

  What do you imagine was exchanged?

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Ah. Hey babe, comma, just checking. Just got back from the trip. Noticed that the herb garden didn't seem to get much of a look in this summer.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  I thought you were supposed to water it. Did something happen? No X's at the end.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  I love that. I imagine that this is what happened. Yes.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Jane has no idea. She doesn't know what's happening via text message. And she doesn't really see either of them out the next few days. So she's like, I don't know what's going on. My neighbors are maybe fighting. Hopefully they're never going to be friends again, but like, I don't know. She goes for her walk and she sees Celeste. You hate Celeste famously, but you want to know what's going on with Muffy. Do you like stop and try to talk to her?

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Fake as shit. Yeah. 100%.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Like, oh my God, hi. Yeah. Like, Muffy's back. Isn't it great? Ain't life grand? How was her trip? I haven't had a chance to catch up with her yet, but you see her all the time.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Smooth.

• 33:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, smooth as eggs, buddy.

• 33:47Speaker 00

  Jane is like, doesn't even have time to consider whether she wants to talk to Celeste or not, because the thing is you don't have free will with Celeste. Celeste is coming to talk to you. That's just like how she is because she has things to say.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Sure. Sure, sure, sure.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  All the things she has to say are about the fig.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Girl.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Celeste is like, I've got updates. My ex-husband has gotten engaged to a much younger woman. And this woman does not like the fig. Can you believe that?

• 34:17Speaker 00

  And Jane is like, yes.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Yes and yes.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  This does not stop Celeste. Celeste is like, yeah, you know, he also like demanded that I come get the fig from his house and pay him the original cost of it. And then I only have two weeks to do it or he's going to sell it.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Okay, that is, that is harsh.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  Jane is like, I don't care.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  Like in her heart, she's like, I hate Celeste. I hate this stupid fig. Like, this is not worth my time. She's like, have you talked to Muffy? And Celeste is like, no, but trying to talk more about her fig. And Jane is like, goodbye, Celeste.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Goodbye, Celeste.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  And she goes home.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  How are, now I'm like, how are Muffy and Celeste friends? I don't get it at all.

• 35:06Speaker 00

  Jane has forgotten all about this conversation. But at the end of two weeks, suddenly, there is a big truck in front of her house with a bunch of big, muscly men. And on the back of the truck is the fig on like a pallet.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. It's a comment on gender, okay.

• 35:24Speaker 00

  Yes. And Jane is like, oh, my God. I'm gonna have to look at this fig all the time.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  Forever.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Her attention was on the wrong thing. She shouldn't have been plodding out the herb garden. She should have been plodding with the husband while destroying the figs.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  Exactly. You gotta get it into some kind of like metal melter.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Smelt the figs. It's the only thing to be done.

• 35:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Jane is outside. She's watching this man, you know, greeting the construction workers. He's wearing a hard hat. He has a clipboard. He takes the hard hat off and she's like, oh, my God, hot boyfriend. And then hot boyfriend is pointing not at Celeste's yard, but at Muffy's.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Oh, my fucking God. That's incredible.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Jane is like, this is crazy. She's like, obviously, I'm outside. I'm paying attention. I'm eavesdropping. She watches like a forklift, you know, raise the metal fig and start to like drive it toward Muffy's house. And at this point, Celeste comes like running out of her house. And she's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you have the wrong house. My house is over there.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Uh huh, uh huh.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  And the construction workers are like, you know, they're like looking at their paper. They're like, well, no, like the address we have is that address. We don't have your address. And Celeste is like, no, no, no, no, it's my fig. I picked it out. She's like, you know, rattling off stats like it would be on like a fucking gallery thing where she's like, the artist is this. He was born here in this year. These are the dimensions of the fig. Like, this is the year it was created.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  He said the dimensions of the fig.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  The construction workers are like, listen, lady, we don't care about your fig facts. We were hired to drop them off over here.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  And then they begin to drive the fig into Muffy's backyard. Muffy bought the figs.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. You devious bitch, Muffy. I love it.

• 37:31Speaker 04

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• 38:12Speaker 00

  This creates chaos. Celeste is like on the phone. Jane assumes she's on the phone with Charles and Celeste is like yelling, right? She's like, you snake, you absolute snake. Like, you know, I only cared about the figs. Meanwhile, the construction workers are like, you know, checking up on a concrete platform. They poor god knows when for the fig to be on. Muffy comes out of the house and Celeste's tone like immediately changes and she begins to like plead. She's like, Muffy, you know, I love these. Like, Charles is the enemy. You cannot collude with him. She's like, pick me, choose me, give fig to me. Pick me, choose me, give fig to me.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Oh my God. Oh my, but this really does prove that like Jane was Muffy's true friend all along because, because like this is what Jane would do. Like they're, they're, they're both fueled by spite and nice gardening. Like that's, and hot men, that's what they share.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  Yes. Muffy is standing with her arms like crossed and she's like, Celeste, do you remember what I asked you to do when I went on vacation?

• 39:17Speaker 00

  And Celeste is like, water your herb garden? And Muffy's like, yes. And you didn't do that. And Celeste is like, yes, I did. I went every night, late at night, and I watered them.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  No, you didn't, you dumb bitch. No, you did not.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  And Muffy is like, they all died. And Celeste is like, well, I don't, and Muffy is just like, I can't like, I'm not having this conversation anymore. Like, we're done here. And Celeste is like, but what about my fig? Like, I love it so much. And Muffy's like, well, I love figs too. And I bought the fig. Right this way, gentlemen. And she shows the construction workers where to put them.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Oh my God, that's so fucking evil.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  At this point, Celeste freaks out. She's like in front of the forklift. She has to be restrained by the hot boyfriend. Jane is like, this is the most interesting thing to happen to this neighborhood in years.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Uh huh. Oh my God. To steal another woman's fig. To steal? And maybe this was, maybe this was the expression on gender all along, you know?

• 40:26Speaker 00

  Wow, that really makes you think.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Makes you think. Wow.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  After this whole event, the next day, the hot boyfriend like sets up a giant tent in the backyard. And Jane is like, this is terrible. Like now I can't see the hot boyfriend anymore. I have no idea what's going on over there, right? Like he's inside the tent.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Oh no.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  And then there's like a week where nothing happens. And this is where Jane realizes she had a, she has like a big problem because the big fight, this like huge blow up fight happened very conveniently in her front yard at full volume.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  But also she hears people in the neighborhood talking about like Instagram posts, next door posts. And Jane doesn't know how to get to those things.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Oh, because she's no lady.

• 41:11Speaker 00

  What do you think she should do here?

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Call her son.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  She really wants to know what's going on.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  It feels like Jane is ready to graduate to that part of her life where she is on various social media platforms all day, every day. So now is the time.

• 41:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  To invest, I think.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  Jane is like, this is petty drama. You know who loves petty drama? Teens. So she's like, I'll invite my teenage granddaughter over to spend the weekend. I'll get her takeout food and then I'll tell her this whole saga. And then she'll probably help me find out what's going on online.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Mmm. Oh, delicious. I love it. Lovely bonding.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  This works perfectly. The teen comes over, she eats her takeout. She's like, well, what's happening now? And Jane's like, I don't know, it's all online and I can't see it. The teen, within like minutes, has all of this stuff pulled up, right? Like she has like the Instagrams up, she has posts up. She begins to show Jane specific posts about this. The first post she shows is from the artist who made the fig. His widow has posted a photo of the fig with a caption that's like, this fig is by my like late husband and the location of the piece as the private collection of Celeste last name.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Motherfucking hell. Wow. Wow. I really thought that that like, the story was just gonna end on Muffy bought the figs, but there's a whole other thing going on now.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  There's more, baby.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  It's wheels within wheels.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  Celeste is posting like an endless amount of like photos of her fig, posts about how sad she is about her fig, posts about how Muffy like stole her fig.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Oh my God, she spent like a year and a half not having that fig. And she was also given a deadline to buy the fig.

• 43:00Speaker 00

  I know.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Like hawk one of your bangles and just, you know, just buy the fig back.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  The granddaughter is like, we don't need to look at this page because it's just like Muffy's boyfriend posting thirst traps. And Jane's like, what's a thirst trap? And then her granddaughter shows her one of the posts and she's like, oh, I know, I understand.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yes. I love this. Thank you.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Muffy's posts are mostly about her hot boyfriend. But there is also a picture that's like a flyer for what is titled her herb garden relaunch party.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  And it has like a date and a time and it has a picture of the fig on it.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  These people are fucked. People are fucked.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  These are people, like, it's just like, women in their 40s who are just, just trading fake a herb drama.

• 44:01Speaker 00

  This is what happens when you have too much money, right? Like, it's like, none of these problems are real.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Like, herbs are so easy to buy at the supermarket. Like, even, even I think Muffy's gone too far on this one.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  You do.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, before I was like, Team Muffy, Boo Celeste, and now I just think both these ladies are tapped in the head.

• 44:17Speaker 00

  Jane's granddaughter is like, "We have to go to the party. We're going to the Herb Garden relaunch party." And Jane's like, "Well, we weren't invited." And the teen granddaughter is like, "But it's posted on Instagram publicly. Like, we can go." Do you think that that's true? Do you think they can go?

• 44:37Speaker 01

  I'm a little confused slash concerned why Jane isn't being, why isn't Jane being kept abreast offline? Because it seemed like she was pretty tight with Muffy for a time there, like, enough so that she wanted to replace Celeste entirely.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  So like, it seems like she's fallen out of contact with both of these women and her wider neighborhood. So I'm like, what's, why isn't, yeah, hmm. Is Jane catching some flack that she doesn't even know she's catching?

• 45:07Speaker 00

  Jane is like, "I'm old fashioned. We're not showing up at this woman's house without being invited to the party."

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  She's like, "But I will call Muffy and ask her." And the granddaughter's like, "Great." So Jane calls Muffy and she's like, "Muffy, what's up with this giant tent in your backyard?" Because there is a huge tent there. And Muffy's like, "Oh, my God, I haven't seen you. That's crazy. Like, where have you been?" And Jane's like, "I've been at my house. Like, I'm, I'm always at my house." And Muffy's like, "Oh, okay, well, so sorry I haven't seen you, but I'm having this huge Herb Garden party. I'm relaunching my Herb Garden tomorrow. If you want to swing by, I would love to have you." And Jane's like, great.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Great. I'm going to the relaunch of an herb garden. There was a time when it used to be shocking to be invited to a dog's birthday party. And this is so like several rungs below that.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  They go over there. The party is like beautiful. The tent has been removed from the backyard and now Jane can see that like a huge transformation has taken place. Like the new herb garden has been planted. It's like twice as big. It has little like handmade signs. Muffy has made Herbie cocktails. There's like little appetizers. It's like very lovely little party. And also there is now art everywhere. Like not only are the figs there and like lit from below with little spotlights. There's also like a ton of other garden themed art. There's like a giant rosemary sprig and like a concrete trowel sculpture and like all this shit.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Yes. Okay. So she is, not only has she bought these figs out from under her former best friend, who did not tend her herb garden correctly or even at all.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  She has caught flak from the artist's widow. And now she is trying to establish an art collecting brand in order to sort of like legitimize the fact that she's stolen another woman's figs.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Bingo. All correct.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Oh my fucking god.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  Jane is like, let's go stand next to Muffy, like to her granddaughter. So they're like talking to Muffy and Muffy is like talking about all of this art with the air of someone who has like bought art for decades, right? Like she's like, oh, I know all about art. Like I love buying these things. It's like very much one of those things where she's like talking about like the finances of buying art more than the actual art. She's talking about like dealers and acquisitions and purchase prices and like all of this stuff.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  All right. Okay.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  And Jane is just like, what is going on? This is crazy. At this point, Celeste shows up.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 47:40Speaker 00

  She is dressed beautifully, overdressed, one might say.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 47:44Speaker 00

  And she goes up directly to Muffy and she's like, how much did you pay for the fig? I will buy it off of you.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Oh my god. What?

• 47:52Speaker 00

  And Muffy is like, this is a party? And no, I don't want to sell them.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:59Speaker 00

  And Celeste is like, what do you want for them? Do you want $50,000?

• 48:03Speaker 01

  $50,000?

• 48:06Speaker 00

  $50,000.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  $50,000?

• 48:14Speaker 01

  What? Isn't that like a nurse's income? Like, that's a nut!

• 48:18Speaker 00

  Yes! It's like more than a teacher makes.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  These fucking idiots, disgusting figs! They're like balls!

• 48:26Speaker 00

  Buffy is like, no. Like, I like the figs. I paid for them. I had this whole reinforced concrete platform built so that they could sit on it. Like, I'm not selling them.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Uh huh, uh huh.

• 48:39Speaker 00

  Guess who else is here at this party? It's Celeste's ex-husband.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  And his much younger wife, who likes an even temperature, yes.

• 48:45Speaker 00

  He comes over and he's like, Celeste, stop it. I gave you two weeks and you didn't buy them.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:54Speaker 00

  Like, you had the first option. I don't know what you're doing here. And Celeste freaks out. She's like, you stole my fig. You stole every fig.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Uh huh, uh huh.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  And Charles, like, kind of sighs and is like, I don't understand where this is coming from. Like, I'm the one who bought the figs. You never even liked the sculpture.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Excuse me? What? They were Charles's figs? Charles's precious figs?

• 49:19Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. We're almost at the end. What do you think? How are you feeling?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  I feel sick. I'm sick!

• 49:29Speaker 01

  The amount of money and waste in this story is sick! And it's like, like, does Celeste even know who she is? Like, she's just, it's like she, she, she had this husband and she wasn't ever the right temperature.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  And he loved the figs. And then she became fixated. She's like, what's like a year, over a year. She's been just like banging on about these figs and how much she loves them and how it is her one desire to get them back. And she didn't even like them that much.

• 50:04Speaker 00

  Yes. Muffy and Jane and Jane's granddaughter are all like, what? What? Like, this woman has been going on and on and on about these fucking figs for a year.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  Celeste's ex-husband is like, it was only like after we got divorced that she started to care about it.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Right. Oh, God.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  And Celeste is like, this isn't true. Like, they're going back and back and forth. They are now having this fight publicly, which means that this is the point where we find out that it was not about the house temperature.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Okay. What was it about, Kelsey?

• 50:37Speaker 00

  Thank you for asking. It is about the fact that Charles made a series of very, very bad investments. He put most of their money into an eco dance resort. And he also put a lot of money into some kind of omnidirectional treadmill for VR video games.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 50:55Speaker 00

  Both of these things sound stupid because they are. And so neither of them took off. And so the thing is, these people were no longer rich. They were house poor.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  So like, when she asked for a divorce, she used her settlement money to buy this new house in the neighborhood, expecting there would be more money down the road. And then there was like no more money. So it's not that she ever wanted the fig. The fig was like a pawn. It's like a pettiness prop. Like, she wants it because she wants to sell it, to have money, to hurt Charles.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Oh, shit. It was never about the figs. Holy crap. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So then how was Celeste trying to get, trying to give $50,000 to Muffy when she doesn't have that kind of money?

• 51:44Speaker 00

  Bingo. What she was trying to do is figure out how much Muffy paid for it so that she could then get half that money from Charles. So at this point, she turns to Muffy and she's like, just tell me how much you paid for it. Like, did you pay 50? Did you pay 75? Did you pay $100,000? Like, what did you pay for this fig?

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Holy fuck.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  Muffy's like, oh, no, I paid $10,000.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  Wow, a real, a real steal, these figs.

• 52:09Speaker 00

  Celeste loses her mind because she's like, he gave it to Muffy for cheap to get rid of it.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. What a tale. Fuck me. That's so good.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  We're at the very end.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  How do you feel? Whose side are you on?

• 52:28Speaker 01

  I just, I honestly just feel like, like an incredible magic trick has been like pulled on me and that like I was looking in the wrong place the whole time. And like, I thought this was a story of like just two rich bitches who like had nothing else to do, who are like being petty and funny. But like, there's so much more. It's Charles broke. He's flat broke. And so is Celeste and they're trying to maintain this weird fucking, it's very desperate housewives. It's very like turn of the century desperate housewives.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  It's also like Victorian, the loss of a family fortune.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Yes. And the idea of the one sapphire in the family kind of, it's, it's so crazy. And they got the artist's widow involved.

• 53:11Speaker 00

  I know.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  That poor woman is grieving.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  Leave her out of it.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Fuck. This is huge.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  Whose side are you on? Who do you like still?

• 53:22Speaker 01

  I love Jane still. All these other people.

• 53:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think, I think, yeah, Jane should sort of have some kind of a tired affair with the hot boyfriend because I don't, I don't like the idea of him being caught up in this. I think he's too pure.

• 53:35Speaker 00

  Do you want the final updates I have?

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  Very final.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  The very final updates I have for you are that after all of this like bickering, Jane realized that she was like kind of in no man's land between two sides of a war. Right? Between Celeste and Muffy. And she kind of realized when this happened, she was like, oh, maybe I didn't really ever like Muffy. Maybe I just liked her hot boyfriend. Right? Like, maybe I didn't even really want to be her friend either. Maybe they deserve each other. And so she's like, you know what? It's time for me to move. And so Jane sold her house for a huge profit and she moved and she never had to think about any of these people ever again.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  And now Jane is rich.

• 54:16Speaker 00

  And now Jane is kind of rich.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  And she can buy all the things she likes. What a story. So she's just like, I've had it with these hoes. Bye. Like, fuck.

• 54:26Speaker 00

  She's like, that's enough. Goodbye to the hot boyfriend.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  God, and those women are just still out there somewhere scheming. You know what I mean? Like, yes. I do think there are people in this world who like, they can't live unless there's a scheme going, you know? They're like, they're like running some kind of private con within their whole life. But it's, but like, but to them, it's not even a con. It's just some kind of weird form of contorted justice. They just think they just deserve this thing. It's so fucked up.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  The schemes, the schemes.

• 55:01Speaker 00

  Caroline, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was a delight to have you.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  I'm so honored. I really think this is up there, like in, if, if you, if there was like a normal gossip, like, like a MoMA for normal gossip, like a

• 55:13Speaker 00

  Power rankings?

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Noga or whatever. If there was a museum, there would be that chair with the vagina print on it, the bird lamp and this big. And I feel so proud to be part of it. Wow.

• 55:37Speaker 05

  Thank you for listening to Normal Gossip. If you have a gossip story to share with us, email us at [email protected] or you can leave us a voicemail at 2679 gossip. If you love this podcast and want to support us, become a friend or a friend of a friend at supportnormalgossip.com. You can follow the show on Instagram and TikTok at Normal Gossip. You can follow Kelsey on all social media, at McKinney Kelsey. This podcast was produced by Alex Sujan-Laughlin, Ozzy Linus Goodman and Jay To Viera. Justin Ellis is Defector's project editor. Jasper Wang and Sean Coon are Defector's business guys. Alex Sujan-Loughlin is Defector's supervising producer. Tom Ley is our editor in chief.

• 56:20Speaker 05

  Abigail Segel is our intern. Dan McQuade runs our merch store, which you can find at normalgossip.store. Tara Jacoby designed our show art. And thank you to Rachel Hampton, Brandon Jensen, Sabrina Imbler, Dave McKenna, Chris Thompson, Heather Chen, Ray Rado, David Roth, Catherine Xu, Jasper Wang, Israel Deramola, and Patrick Redford for your help on this season. Thank you to the rest of the Defector staff. Defector Media is a collectively owned subscriber-based media company. No More Gossip is a proud member of Radiotopia. No More Gossip is hosted by Kelsey McKinney. I'm Carrie, and remember, you did not hear this from me.

• 57:22Speaker 05

  Radiotopia.

• 57:26Speaker 05

  From PRX.