Bonus Episode: Life as a New York Times Bestselling Author with Kelsey McKinney

Popping into your feeds with a little treat! In today’s bonus episode, Kelsey joins Rachelle to answer all of our burning questions about her new book, You Didn’t Hear This From Me: Mostly True Notes on Gossip, reality TV, victorian marriages, and, you guessed it, gossip! Order Kelsey's book, YOU DIDN'T HEAR THIS FROM ME, here! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/kelsey-mckinney/you-didnt-hear-this-from-me/9781538757406/?lens=grand-central-publishing Subscribe to our newsletter for writing from Rachelle, Se'era, Jae, Alex, and Kelsey, plus blog recommendations and 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/1azjZmu6yNGw-pPmq5lU6d-QG0b-BHajQEDPAwBKetDU/edit?tab=t.0. 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 Rachelle Hampton (@heyydnae https://www.instagram.com/heyydnae/?hl=en) and produced by Se'era Spragley Ricks (@seera_sharae https://www.instagram.com/seera_sharae/?hl=en) and Jae Towle Vieira (@jaetowlevieira https://instagram.com/jaetowlevieira?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==). Alex Sujong Laughlin (@alexlaughs https://www.instagram.com/alexlaughs/) is our Supervising Producer. Justin Ellis is Defector's projects editor. 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

  Hello, my gorgeous gossipy darlings. Welcome to another bonus episode of Normal Gossip. I'm your host, Rachel Hampton, and we've got a super special show planned for you today. But first, we have to do a little housekeeping. You know, who doesn't love a freshly vacuumed rug? The first bit of housekeeping, in case it's not totally clear from what I just said, or the title of this episode, this is a bonus episode. We are living in some dark times, and we here at the Normal Gossip team thought y'all deserved some little between-season treats to tide you over. But soon, Normal, Normal Gossip will return. We're in the middle of production. We're gonna start recording soon, and we've got some incredible stories that I cannot wait

• 0:48Speaker 00

  for y'all to hear. To that end, second bit of housekeeping, we have a season eight premiere day. The next season of Normal Gossip will premiere on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. Mark your calendars, babes, with a big, fat star. And last bit of housekeeping, I promise, this area rug, she's really big. Dowager Queen of Gossip, Kelsey McKinney, is currently on book tour. By the time this episode drops, you'll still be able to see her in Chicago or Toronto. If you're in the Midwest or in Canada, you're so lucky. And no matter where you live, you'll be able to buy Kelsey's incredible book, You Didn't Hear This From Me: Mostly True Notes on Gossip. And that perfectly segues

• 1:33Speaker 00

  into today's special guest here to talk all about her book, her tour, and you guessed it, gossip. We've got the one, the only, Kelsey McKinney in the house. Kelsey, hello.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Hello, Rachel. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be back.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  I'm so happy you're here. I miss you.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  I miss you too. We haven't been on Zoom together in like, at least a week, which is just insufferable and impossible. We cannot be expected to do that again.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  No, that is truly a crime, and there are many crimes being done, but That is certainly one of them.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  It's hurtful.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  It's really a hurtful. Yes. I miss you. Your loyal legion of gossip mongers miss you.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  I miss all of you so much.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  How is life on the other side been?

• 2:21Speaker 01

  It's been crazy. I've been doing so much promotion. I've been so busy. Um, I don't sleep anymore, so that's exciting, but I'm hopeful that very soon I will hibernate. And that's going to be really nice for me to be asleep for a very long time.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  Wow, that's going to be beautiful. Where are you going to come out of hibernation as?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Are you going to do a transformation?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Not physically, but I hope emotionally and mentally. I hope maybe by the end of it, I'll be able to meditate, something I've never been able to do.

• 2:52Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, emptying your mind?

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Imagine, imagine your mind being so, so, so blank and your brain so smooth. That's what I want.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  I need all the folds in my brain just steamed out like a beautiful piece of linen.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 3:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, today, as I said at the top, we've got a super special episode planned since Kelsey has so kindly blessed us with her presence. I'm going to ask her all my burning questions about you didn't hear this from me and her life as a famous author. Kelsey, are you ready?

• 3:27Speaker 01

  I guess so, yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. Okay, first, the book, beautiful. Let's just start there.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  I love her. Can I read you the first thing I underlined?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  I do not want to say yes to that, but I feel that I don't have a choice. So go for it.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  Don't worry, it's not a direct quote from you.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Oh, thank God.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  That's later.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  In the very first chapter, you quote from a book about five Victorian marriages that I immediately wrote down that I wish to read. That is written by Phyllis Rose and Rose writes, gossip may be the beginning of moral inquiry. The low end of the platonic ladder, which leads to self-understanding. We are desperate for information about how other people live because we want to know how to live ourselves. Yet we are taught to see this desire as an illegitimate form of prying.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  So this book rules. It absolutely slaps. It's so.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  So old, it's like decades old. And all it is, is Phyllis Rose took like literally five Victorian marriages that were all like, you know, when we think of the Victorians, we think of like prudes.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Like they hate sex, they're having no fun, they're losers, right?

• 4:35Speaker 00

  Cholera.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Cholera, exactly. And Phyllis Rose writes about five alternative Victorian marriages. So people who were like, living with someone when they were technically married to someone else, people who had three wives, right? All of this stuff. And it is such a like, gossipy, prying book. And I think it just like, it does a great job talking about like, why we care about other people's marriages. But it also is so interesting because it's like, oh, we've always been like this. Like, everyone has always been like this, which is really fun.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  It's really nice to know that my interest in other people's marriages is just simply a human trait.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  I will not be trying to eradicate anymore.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  No, you can't get out of it, it's evolutionary.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  Uh, it's designed to keep me safe.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  That's what this is for. But I wanted to talk about the idea of gossip as a tool for self-understanding. And I wanted to know if you feel like there's something about yourself that you have understood better through gossip.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Oh my God, yeah. When I was reporting this book and researching it, I was reading a lot of studies by sociologists. And one thing that they talk about a lot is that we use gossip as a tool, not only to understand our society, but to understand ourselves. So it's like, when I'm talking to you about something, I might surprise myself by like, an instinct that I have, or someone I think is a villain in your story, and realize, oh, this is a like, underlying bias that I have in my life, right? So I think a bias that I know I have that comes up all the time when I'm gossiping is like, I don't trust any managers. Like, none of them. And sometimes like, people will be telling me a story and I'm immediately like, well, clearly your boss is like, the one who did this. So they're like, no, my boss is like, really good.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  And I'm like, well, not according to me, right? Like, I'm like, I reject this information, it's not for me. And that's really interesting. Because it's like, we're just having a casual conversation and yet it's revealing things about myself and my own biases to me. That's an easy example. There are obviously harder ones to encounter.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  I've been watching Sex and the City for the first time.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Okay. Can't wait to get into this. Yeah.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  I know, but I found myself really turned off by some of the things that Miranda does. And I said this to my roommate and she said, that's really funny because I kind of consider you Miranda in some regards, a mixture of Miranda and Charlotte.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Uh huh. I can see that. Yeah.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  And I feel like some of the things that we find most distasteful in other people are often the things that are true about ourselves. And so I've wondered if you found that as you've been really doing this inquiry into gossip, where there are things, kind of first instinct reactions that you're like, oh, this actually says a lot about me and my personality.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Like, I think something I'm always like getting mad at people for is I'm like, why are you working all the time? Stop working all the time. Like, this is, I like, literally am constantly saying this. And all of my friends are like, you dumbass. Like, you work more than anyone we know. And I'm like, I know, but I don't like that about myself. And so I want to enforce it in other people. And also, I think it's like a lack of self-awareness, right? Where I'm like, I'm built different. It's different when I do it, right? And it absolutely is not. But I think a lot of that comes up when you're talking about other people because you're making judgments on them constantly. And you're saying like, well, I think that's stupid. I think she's dumb. And that's the danger of gossiping with someone who knows you really well, because they're like, mm, sweetie.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Look in the mirror.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Have you seen this? It's your front-facing camera on your iPhone.

• 8:20Speaker 00

  So would you say that that has made you more either like empathetic towards other people or sympathetic towards yourself? Like, do you feel like you offer yourself more grace now that you've?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Definitely not. No way. I don't offer myself like any ounce of grace that exists in the world. I would love to come on here and lie and be like, yes, I've become very good at giving myself rein. No. I have the infinite amounts of empathy for other people. For myself, nada, nothing.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  And that's beautiful. It's beautiful that you know that.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  It's not beautiful that it happens.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's fair. It's not even necessarily the actual act of gossiping and the judgment of that is what like reveals something about you. It's also the kinds of gossip you want to talk about, right? Like, I notice this especially in talk therapy where like I'll bring something up and my therapist will be like, why are we talking about this? And I'm like, well, I just thought it was really interesting. And she'll push on that, right? Of like, but why? Why do you think it's so interesting? What is it that's like catching on you, like snagging? And I think that that is like also true. The stories that you instantly want to turn around and tell someone are ones that often say something about you.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  That is so real. I hate when my therapist does that.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  I know.

• 9:34Speaker 00

  She's like, why do you think it's interesting? And it's like, hold on, everyone thinks it's interesting. Let's stop. Let's stop thinking about me. I'm here to host a lecture.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  See, this is a tight 45 that I'm doing.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  You're here to laugh.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  This is a TED Talk that you happen to be present for and that I'm paying to do.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Okay, back to you.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  One thing I really, really love about You Didn't Hear This From Me and also just the project of normal gossip in general is that I think you really lean into the ambiguity of gossip's nature. There's not a lot of ambiguity in society today. Everything's a take.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  And to borrow Rose's phrasing, you do a really good job of kind of undermining the society-wide illegitimacy of gossip. But I also appreciate that you don't lean too hard in the other direction and make it out to be this like inherently moral good. And you describe it, and you have said it already, as gossip is a tool. I'm curious as to whether you think the nature of the tool is controlled more by the wielder of the tool, so the giver of the gossip, or by whom the tool is wielded against, which is the subject of the gossip? Or is it some secret third thing, in this case, the audience for the gossip? Who do you think kind of controls? The nature of a gossip moor.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  So I want to say, if I'm thinking about gossip as a tool that we use, right? That can be used for good or evil or neutral. Then I think most often what I'm talking about is either the person who's telling the gossip, right? Who is like bringing something with an intention, right? Like, I feel like I say this all the time when people are like, how do you know if you're gossiping badly? Like, how do you know if you're being malicious? And I'm like, you know in your body, dude, right? Like, you can feel it when you're like intentionally going after someone who maybe doesn't deserve it. And in that case, I would say like, that is gossip being used as a tool for evil, right? Or for malicious intent. But I also think there's like, there is a secret third thing, which is like your society's morals. Right?

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Gossip is used to enforce whatever we decide as a society is valuable to us. And so if that's something innocuous, like we decide that we hate it when people wear the color purple, right? We will gossip about people who wear it to try and keep them from not doing it, to try and sanction them back into the correct behavior. And so I think there is, of course, individual agency in how you're using gossip. But there is also this greater umbrella that we exist in, which is like, what do we say our culture believes in? Which we don't all get an equal share of say in.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like a piece of gossip will land differently with someone depending on the kind of societal context that they come from. Like something that feels even noteworthy in, I don't know, the UK might not feel noteworthy here. I think about this as One Direction. I think I said this on one of our bonus episodes. I think one of the reasons Larry Stilson became such a big deal.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Is because there's a far bigger culture of touching in male friendships in the UK than there is here. And that cultural difference, I think, gave a lot of air for what is ultimately gossip.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, or even conspiracy at that point.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Ooh, what's the difference?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Uh, a conspiracy theory is like a gossip that flies too close to the sun, right? And so it's like, it's gotten too big and out of control. And it starts being like, I'll look for any evidence of this rumor that I've already decided is true. And maybe to a nefarious intent, right? Like outing someone would be one, but. I think it's also, it's not even necessarily UK-US culture, right? Like, using gossip to socially sanction someone, which is like, put them in a line based on what you believe in, is also a party disconnect, right? So like, you and I would view the use of social sanctioning to say like, you can't say these list of words that we think are harmful to people, right? Like, these are slurs that we don't use.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  We would view that as a moral good. Right? There are people in this country who occupy a lot of positions of power who would say that is a moral evil, to enforce that, but also that something like slut shaming is a moral good, right? So often, the tool of gossip tells you more about who's holding it than anything else.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  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.

• 14:54Speaker 00

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• 15:16Speaker 00

  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 kinda 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.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  Book your first session in minutes and you can start in as little as two days. Sessions average $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0, depending on your insurance plan. Prepare for holiday glimmers instead of holiday stress. Visit growtherapy.com/gossip to get started today. That is growtherapy.com/gossip. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  Y'all, for months, I've been in search of just a simple, black crew neck cardigan. And I finally found exactly what I was looking for. I should've just gone to Quince as soon as I started thinking of this, but for some reason I didn't. Well, Quince had exactly what I wanted. Their Mongolian cashmere cropped crew cardigan is in fact so cute and their reviews are so good that despite the fact that I went in saying, "I need a black cardigan to wear with everything", I took 15 minutes to decide what color I was getting. Do I need a red cardigan? Maybe. I can't promise I'm not gonna buy it later, but I did get the black one.

• 17:12Speaker 00

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• 17:38Speaker 00

  Your chapter, Knowledge is Power, is about one of our absolute favorite topics.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Reality television.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  Reality television. Now's the time for me to read something you wrote.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Oh, God. Uh-oh.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  You write, "Knowledge is power and reality television is a kind of warped mirror. It shows us who we were, what we want, and how we relate to others. One of the many things it reflects is that gossip is how we decide whom to trust and whom not to trust. It helps us decide who is safe and who is not, who will protect us and who won't." You also write in that chapter about traders in incredible TV show and Tom Sandoval of Scandival fame, who are currently engaging in one of the most iconic crossovers of the century.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 18:27Speaker 00

  Can we talk for a second about Tom Sandoval's performance on Traders? Do you think it is in any way a response to Scandival? Or is he just like that?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Okay, so something I've noticed, this is the third season of American Traders. And the first season was half celebrities, half regular people, half normies. Second season was all celebrities. This season is all celebrities. And something I've noticed is that because Traders is a game that anyone can play and that has rules that kind of don't require you to be a good strategist to be on it, it's a really great place for publicists to try and get their person on because it gives them FaceTime and they can make jokes. And so there are people in this season of Traders that I'm like, what the hell are you doing here? Right? Like Sam Ashgari, I think is actually the best example of this, where it's like, what?

• 19:22Speaker 00

  What are you doing here?

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Who let you in here? Right? Like, what are you doing? And it's like, well, it's because it's good PR for him. If he just sits there and doesn't open his mouth and looks pretty beautiful most of the time.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  Helps win the challenges, demonstrates how strong he is.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  We are like, oh, I feel positively about that.

• 19:41Speaker 00

  I do feel positively.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Right? Right? And so it's like, that's a really good move for a publicist. So I think for Tom Sandoval, it's like, if I'm Tom Sandoval's publicist, which like, you would have to pay me so, so, so, so, so much money to do that job because it's immoral and also insane. But this is a really good placement for him because it's like he's on TV. He can't really get himself into that much trouble. And so he's just like wandering around the castle. Now, the Survivor players are really strategic, right? Like, they are always really strategic. And that's kind of how the Survivor game is played, right? It's like four dimensional chess that everyone is playing at all times, which just like creates chaos.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  And so what's kind of funny to me about traitors is you have the survivors and someone like Wes, who's a challenge guy, right? You have people who have come from competition reality shows and they're trying to play eight dimensional chess at all times. And that works when everyone around you is also playing eight dimensional chess. The problem with the traitors is that you have Boston Rob and Carolyn playing this chess game and you have like Gabby Wendy in there, who's not playing chess at all, right? And she's just like sitting there. And so it's like, you can't, it makes it really hard to fight her though, because it's like, you really don't know what her next move is because she's not playing a strategic game.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  She's playing a like emotion based game.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  How did you know? The next question I was gonna ask, which is about friend of the pod.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Friend of the podcast Gabby Wendy.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  And also Chriselle Stoss, who I feel like I have been trying to nail down how to describe their game. They call themselves the Bambi's. And I have a twofold question, which is how would you describe their game? You mentioned an emotional game. And also, how do you think their gameplay utilizes gossip?

• 21:40Speaker 01

  So they call themselves the Bambi's because they all have big eyes, which I think is incredible and beautiful.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Same.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  And I think they're also kind of playing a game where it's like, everyone assumes we are dumb, right? And so that is like, we're just gonna embrace that and that's fine. What's funny, at least in the episodes that have aired when we're recording this right now, is Gabby's been right several times. And then she's been talked out of it by other people, right? So that's kind of funny because I'm like, you need to trust yourself more, girl, right? Like, you were on it and then someone was like, no, no, no, no, no, Gabby. No, no, no, you don't know anything. And it's like, well. They're wrong. That person was wrong, which we can see as viewers. So I think alliances in general are really smart for gossip. This is part of why the Survivor players do so well is that when you are in an alliance, you can gather gossip and bring it together and then you have more ears, right?

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Which helps you make conclusions faster. And it also gives you a voting block. Part of what all of these games require is knowledge of who's voting for what when you head into the roundtable. And you can see the Survivor players doing that, right? They're circulating really fast to try and ask people like, what are you thinking? What are you feeling? And they're counting is what they're doing. They're trying to be like, okay, so then how many votes do you need for a majority? And it's like, if you know that everyone's votes are split, then you need fewer votes to have a majority. And so I don't think the Bambi's are doing that, like quite obviously. But I do think the Bambi's are like vibes based. Like they're like, I'm getting a bad vibe from you.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  And the thing is, in Traders, that's equally as good information as anything else because you have no information.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  But it's mostly an exercise in group think, which is part of what I love about it. So it is intertwined with gossip, why we love a show like Traders, right? It's the same reason that you love a show like Survivor. Like the reason I titled that chapter, Knowledge is Power, is because there's an idol that exists in some seasons of Survivor where you can, if you have the Knowledge is Power idol, you can steal someone else's idol just by saying, I know that Rachel has an immunity idol. And then you get to just take it. And I think about that a lot, about how like these games teach us to behave and how we watch them with the hope that if you know enough, you can control the future, right? Like, we all watch the Traders and say, like, these idiots, right?

• 24:07Speaker 01

  If I were in there, I would do it totally differently. And the reality is like, no, you wouldn't because you wouldn't know who the traders are. If you were in there, you would be in the same darkness as everyone else. And like, that's a really fascinating aspect of the way that we talk about these games is we're trying to teach ourselves how to avoid these same fates.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Yeah, I think it really goes back to one of the points that you really kind of hammer home on in your book, which is that gossip is ultimately. A quest for knowing the right way to live in the world.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah, I think it is.

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• 26:18Speaker 00

  I personally love publicity publishing gossip. Part of why I miss you so much is because you've been trapped in the book press mind.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  I really have. Mm hmm.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  This isn't your first time releasing a book, everyone. Go buy God's Beer the Girls. But I wanted to ask, what's been different this time around?

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Tell me about the machinery. I feel like most people don't know what goes on behind the scenes.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, my first book was much smaller than this book, first off, right? I had a smaller advance. It was a debut novel. I didn't have nearly as big of a platform for it. And so I didn't really do any press for it. Like, we got a couple of reviews and people read it and I was so happy about that. But I didn't do any interviews about that book, basically. Maybe one or two here or there. And it was also the summer of 2021, and so we were still not going anywhere. And so I kind of naively going into this book was like, no problem, right?

• 27:17Speaker 00

  True.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  I've done it before. Like, I know how to play this game. Easy. And this is a totally different book, right? I've been doing tons of interviews because, as we know, the topic of gossip is one that almost everyone wants to talk about almost all the time, which is great. I'm really grateful to have done it, but it means that I have been in the mines and trapped away from you, doing interviews and preparing stuff and making a tour run of show and all of these little pieces that I think feel really separate from the writing of the book, which is really interesting because I think when you think about creative careers and when you don't have one, you think about output, right? We think about like, how many podcasts come out?

• 28:03Speaker 01

  You don't think about all the stuff that goes in before you get to do that. And so in a book, it's kind of the opposite, right? You spend all of this time making the product. And then, once the product is done, you have to completely pivot into just pitching it, which is a totally different skill.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  And it's far more about yourself as a person.

• 28:24Speaker 00

  There's this way that people tend to believe, even if they don't mean to, that fiction is about the author, even though the point is that it's fake and that you made it all up.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  It's funny you say that because I don't know that I knew that before I published my novel. Like, I don't know that I ever read a novel, except for maybe like the Ferrante novels, and thought, oh, this is autobiographical, right? Like, I don't know that I ever thought that. And so I was actually very surprised when my first book came out by how many people were like, well, which parts are true? Which parts happened to you? And I was like, well, none of these characters are real. I made them all up, right? Like, none of this is real. And I would tell people like, well, none of it is true. And also, like, all of it is true. I've had every emotion in that book, right? And so at an emotional level, it's real. In terms of the events, none of it's real, which is, I think, really complicated.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Like, it feels uncomfortable to be made to feel something based on nothing.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  And I think we both, well, let me not speak for you. I find nonfiction to be far more revealing of an author than fiction is. But I wanted to ask this time around, or even the way people are kind of talking to you about, you didn't hear this from me, are the questions you're getting asked more or less personal than they were for God's Spare the Girls?

• 29:49Speaker 01

  I think they're less personal, honestly. I think a lot of the questions I got asked about the novel were personal questions. It was about my upbringing, my experience, like, that kind of stuff. Whereas with the gossip questions, we have been talking more about gossip as a construct. It's unclear to me, though, if that's like, just because it's hard to interview someone about fiction, right? Like, there's, it's either questions about craft, which are basically only interesting if you are a writer or want to be a writer.

• 30:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Or it's spoilers, and people are really anti-spoiler culture. So if you're talking to a novelist, you don't really have a choice besides to talk about either process or them personally. Whereas with a nonfiction book, it's easier to talk about the stuff that's actually in the book.

• 30:36Speaker 00

  I mean, getting into questions, are there any that you're sick of answering?

• 30:40Speaker 01

  I don't know that I'm sick of it, but I feel like the question of like what my relationship with gossip is at this point. I've said so many times that like, someone asked it to me recently and I like zoned out halfway through and came back after I was done talking. And I was like, that's crazy. Like, I don't, who knows what I said, right?

• 30:58Speaker 00

  Like when you drive home and you're like, how did I get from point A to point B?

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Exactly. Entered like a fugue state to answer that question. It reminded me of being like a teenager, you know, when you're like in college and people keep being like, what are you gonna do with your degree? And you just like create an answer that is so like repetitive and that you're just saying the same thing over and over again, that you forget you're saying it. One of my publicists sent me this video of Lady Gaga doing press for A Star is Born.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Yes, you sent me this.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  It's so funny. It's like four minutes of just like spliced interviews that she did of her saying the same exact quote over and over again. Just saying like, there can be a hundred people in the room and 99 of them don't believe in you. But I had this one incredible talent with me. There can be a hundred people in the room and 99 don't believe in you and you just need one to believe in you and that was him. So you can have a hundred people in the room that are watching you and 99 don't believe in you and one does, and that was him. And I don't feel like I'm like at any level near that well media trained. But it is when you're answering the same question over and over again, you start to feel like a broken record a little bit.

• 32:13Speaker 00

  Do you feel like that changes your answer? Like, do you feel like your relationship to gossip has changed through being asked so much about what your relationship to gossip is?

• 32:23Speaker 01

  I think I've gotten better at answering it for sure. And I think I have realized, you know, I used to answer the question by being like, oh, well, I grew up in this way. And I, you know, stuff I've talked about on this podcast a hundred times. I grew up in this way and this is the way my relationship with gossip evolved. And I think I've started through this process of being, asking it a lot, thinking more about like, well, what is my relationship with gossip right now? Right? Like, what does it look like in this immediate moment? And I think the answer to that is like, it feels very intimate. Not in the like intimacy of a lifelong friend. It feels intimate in the way of like a summer camp bunkmate. I didn't go to summer camp, but I assume this is what it's like. Like having a freshman year roommate where it's like, I see you vomit.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  And also like, I'm so tired of you, right? And so it's like, it's that kind of like beautiful. I'm excited to move out and be like, I miss her.

• 33:21Speaker 00

  I'm having flashbacks.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, everyone has one of those roommates where it's like, you have this forced intimacy because you are constantly together. Which is like, interesting, because even if you might have chosen it, by the time you're forced to be together for so long, it's like, oof.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, you learn some things that you don't perhaps need to know.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:43Speaker 00

  Do you have any questions about the book that you wish you'd been asked?

• 33:47Speaker 01

  There's a chapter in the book that I think is like, maybe one of the last ones I wrote that is about Picasso and like what we do with gossip that we maybe don't like, that I feel like I haven't talked about at all, which is maybe because it's like, a little dicey.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  You want to talk a little bit about it right now?

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Sure. So I write about how I have always loved Picasso. I was trained as an artist in high school and I love to go to a museum and look around. And it has always been infuriating for me that I immediately in any gallery, I'm like, ooh, what's that? I love that. And then I walk over there and it's Picasso. And I'm like, this is so annoying because it is like very well known that Picasso is an asshole, right? Everyone knows this. It has like been known for decades. And I write in the book about one of my favorite books, which is Françoise Gilot's My Life with Picasso, which is a memoir. She was his third wife, basically, had kids with him.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  And she wrote this memoir about living with him that is really, really brutal. It's this kind of like drawn out affair where she's like, I had never been more in love in my life. And then also he like burnt me with a cigarette, right? Which is like this terrible, right? Awful form of violence.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  And I found it so interesting to read because she's a great, I mean, the book is really well-written and it provides you this insight into one of these quote-unquote "great men," but I think she also is willing to hold a lot more nuance for him than people now. Like, she's able to say, like, "He was an awful partner. He was an awful man. I had a terrible time being married to him. And also, he's one of the greatest painters to be alive," right? And that is like a really complicated place to sit. And like, I don't know that I can even do it fully with Picasso. I can't do it with really any of these, like, great abusive men. But it's like, that is a kind of interesting problem with gossip, where it's like, does gossip discredit everything? I think sometimes it can, but I don't know that it always does.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  I feel like that's kind of the crux of cancel culture.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 35:54Speaker 00

  You saw the face I was making before I actually got to what I was saying.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  But I think in the most generous light possible, at the beginning of what cancel culture now is, the question was, can gossip, can something negative about someone outweigh this other thing about them? How do we actually have a full view of someone that's not just their best and not just their worst? How do we integrate that into one person and our understanding of them, so we don't just discard them, but we also don't just exalt them?

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's really hard to talk about this at this point in time, because we've been through kind of the first wave of cancel culture. And what we saw in that is that no one really got canceled, right? Like, some people got called out for their behavior, but there were basically no consequences for most of those people.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  They were outright rewarded in some cases at this point.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so I think it's really hard to even talk about that in a nuanced way, because it's like, well, there is no actual consequence here, right? It would be a different conversation if we were talking about someone who actually faced consequences for their behaviors, and then we could look at the things they had produced separately. And I don't know that- We'll ever get there, but it is a complicated problem to like something by someone that you think is bad.

• 37:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, going through that right now with Neil Gaiman, who

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great example.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  Behind me has at least three to four books of his. Coraline is one of my favorite movies.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  I don't know the next time I'll be able to engage with his work.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  I mean, it sucks, right? It sucks that the people who make art are people and that some of those people are bad.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Like, it's really hard. I know it wasn't like this for me, but I know for a lot of people, Harry Potter was like this, right? Where it was this kind of devastating blow to lose something that you loved so much. And I get that, like, it's really hard to handle gossip about a person that directly created something. But then the thing they created is like technically separate from that, like messy.

• 38:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And also not, even if it is separate.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  It never is.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  Exactly. There's no way it's not part of the lens that you're looking at them through. And neither should it be possible to look at them without that affecting your view of them. Well, speaking of things that are hard.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Oh, great.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  One thing that I know is hard about publishing a nonfiction book specifically is that the book came out February 11th, but you put your finishing touches on this book several months ago.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably in August.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  I'm sure there are so many things, especially coming from someone who is a blogger at heart.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  That you wish. I'm so bad.

• 38:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I wanted to ask you, what are the things that you would have added into the book if you were to be writing it right now? Cause I'm sure there are so many things that you're just like, ah!

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Books are so annoying, like as a blogger by training and in a heart. Like, I've always worked on a really tight turnaround, right? Like, even when I was doing cultural criticism, it was like, The max I ever waited for something to be published was like a print deadline, which is probably six or eight weeks out, right?

• 39:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, max.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Max. And with a book, it's like, I say, I put my finishing touches on it in August, but like, that was fact checking and copy editing and like, final touches. It wasn't like, I'm gonna insert 12 pages of material here, right? So in reality, I haven't been able to add much to this since, I don't know, June of last year.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, a long time.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  It's a long time. Um, the first thing I'm thinking about is the Justin Baldoni Blake Lively case, right?

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  I'm like, they could have done me a real favor and done this drama two years ago. Like, that would have helped me personally so much. And I know that you have done a lot of like, reading on this also, but that is such an interesting case from a gossip perspective.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  It is.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Because it is not only just an absolute mess of he said, she said material, it is so revealing about the gossip industry in Hollywood on its own, right? Seeing like, who gets what and when these things are revealed is just, I would have loved to have had that when I was working.

• 40:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. Uh, I can already see that chapter.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it would have been a banger.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  It would have been a banger. It would have been a banger. I mean, re-release in 10 years with updated essays. Who can say?

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Who can say?

• 40:36Speaker 00

  It'll have gold foil on it.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Sprayed edges. Who am I, Rebecca Yaros?

• 40:42Speaker 00

  Oh, sprayed edges? Kelsey?

• 40:47Speaker 01

  I know, we're all so horny for sprayed edges.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  Don't tip me with the good times.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  They're so pretty.

• 40:53Speaker 00

  Don't tease me like that. Thank you for coming back, Kelsey.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me. How do you feel to have announced the first episode date?

• 41:03Speaker 00

  I am very excited. I feel like it's very similar to the normal gossip announcement in that this is something that I've known about for a hot minute. And so by the time it becomes public, I almost forget that it's happening. And then I'm almost like, how do you know that? And it'll be like, oh, you, I told you.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  I announced it.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  I announced it publicly. Yes.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  That'll happen to you.

• 41:26Speaker 00

  It, it, it's very strange. When people now know or talk to me or like, congratulations, I'm just like, for what?

• 41:35Speaker 01

  What? Yeah.

• 41:36Speaker 00

  What are you talking about? That's a secret.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Shh.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Well, I'm very excited. I can't wait to listen. I'm all amped up.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  I'm so excited for you to get to listen to this show as a fan.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Me too. To actually be surprised by a twist instead of having planned how a twist will hit for months. Oh, I can't wait.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  You'll have to let me know how the twist hit.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  I will, but I'm sure they're gonna be great.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  You heard it here. It's gonna be great.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Thank you, Kelsey. Everyone go bye. You can hear this from me. Thank you for having me.

• 42:11Speaker 00

  Anytime, my queen.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  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 friend of a friend at supportnormalgossip.com. You can follow the show on Instagram and TikTok at Normal Gossip. You can follow me on all social media at Heydene, that's H-E-Y-Y-D-N-A-E. This podcast was produced by Sierra Spragley-Ricks and Jay Tolviera. The co-creators and Dowager queens of Normal Gossip are Alex Su-John Loflin and Kelsey McKinney. Justin Ellis is Defector's projects editor.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  Jasper Wang and Sean Kuhn are Defector's business guys. Alex Su-John Loflin is Defector's supervising producer. Tom Lay is our editor in chief. Dan McQuade runs our merch store, which you can find at normalgossip.store. Tara Jacoby designed our show art. Thank you to the rest of the Defector staff. Defector Media is a collectively owned, subscriber-based media company. Normal Gossip is a proud member of Radiotopia. I'm your host, Rachel Hampton, and remember, you didn't hear this from me.

• 43:29Speaker 03

  Radiotopia.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  From PRX.