Bonus Episode: A Beautiful Gossip Ouroboros

Surprise! In today's bonus episode, Alex Sujong Laughlin and Patrick Redford join Rachelle for some delectable morsels of gossip and not one but TWO big announcements! Try Hard premieres July 28th! Subscribe here https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/try-hard/id1824016771 or wherever you get your podcasts. Look out for Only If You Get Caught this fall! Get your tickets for the Normal Gossip Live tour here https://www.normalgossiplive.com/! 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 buyingmerch https://defectorstore.com/collections/normal-gossip or becoming a Friend or a Friend-of-Friend atsupportnormalgossip.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/1n70MegXRjEgvd_y4fre8lCJ-tPZwZ0GXWaWnF1q_VAY/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 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 ofRadiotopia https://www.radiotopia.fm/. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

• 0:06Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome back to Normal Gossip. I'm your host, Rachel Hampton, and in each episode of this show, we are gonna bring you an anonymous morsel of gossip from the real world. And this episode, we have got extra delectable little treats. In case you are new around here, let me very quickly explain. We are still on our break between season eight, which just wrapped in June, and season nine, which will premiere in the fall. But we are benevolent bitches over here at Normal Gossip. And to keep y'all tied over between seasons, we have got a couple of bonus episodes planned over the next few months. Just to reiterate, this is a bonus episode, not a regular season episode, so the format is a little bit different. Still, it'll be familiar to y'all who are

• 0:51Speaker 00

  subscribed as friends or friends of friends. Every month, even between seasons, we release a subscriber exclusive episode. Sometimes it is a chat about the secret lives of Mormon wives, or the spirit of Christmas. And sometimes we just open our inbox and share a handful of gossipy morsels that I haven't even heard, and that is what we will be doing today. However, I have heard through the grapevine that today's selection of gossipy morsels includes some super exclusive news that we here on Normal Gossip are the first to break. You've got to stick around to find out what it is. Now, like any good gossip knows, gossip is best when shared. So today, I've invited not one, but two of my comrades

• 1:32Speaker 00

  from defector.com to experience this gossip with me. Dowager Queen of Normal Gossip and Defector's supervising producer, Alex DuJong-Lowfflin, is here with me today. Welcome back to the show, Alex.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Woo, it is.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  And it is.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  It is so good to be back, and I totally know how to talk on mic.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  I know you do.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  And we're also blessed with the presence of Patrick Redford. You may remember him from our Family Mealworms episode in season four, or from our Subscribea episode we did back in February, when he answered all of your questions about love. Welcome back, Patrick.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Hello. Thank you for having me. Excited to be back. I also know how to talk into a mic because I was taught by Alex and several people in this room, so we're all good to go.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  I'm clapping like Alandria from Love Island, season seven.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  Are y'all ready? Is there any kind of gossip you're hoping to hear today?

• 2:31Speaker 02

  I mean, I know who Alandria is, so I'm feeling extremely ready.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  So exciting.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm locked in.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  I love that. I love that. Maybe we'll have a Love Island roundtable at some point. But before we do that, let's hear some gossip. Let's hear this first morsel. We have been informed by our producer, Jay Tolviera, that this selection today is going in some interesting directions. So I'm a little bit scared and I'm very excited.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  Let's hop in.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  So I went to a small women's college and I was in the honors dorm and I did not choose my roommate. So my roommate and I were kind of like randomly put together. And relevantly, we were both Catholics. So we were both Catholic people.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  And so, like, we get through like the first, like, week or so of college. We're getting to know each other. And there's one day that, like, I get home to like my room and my roommate is like having a little breakdown and she's crying in the room. And I go up to her and I'm like, what's wrong? What's happening? And she's like, oh, I just really miss my boyfriend. And he goes to school two hours away. A few months later, it's like October. We have some kind of like big fall event, like a formal. And I finally get to meet her boyfriend.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  Now at this point, I know that I don't have to worry about my roommate hooking up while he's there. So, he's gonna stay the night after this formal and he's just gonna sleep in her bed with her. I'm gonna stay in the room with them and it's not a big deal. Cool, awesome. Except that I learned that he snores worse than any human who has ever breathed air. The next day, I'm like, "Look, come over whenever you want, you're a good time, but if you come and stay the night, I'm gonna just have to sleep somewhere else. Like, this is not tenable." A few months later, he comes over again, it's like, maybe January,

• 4:49Speaker 03

  and he stays for the weekend. And at this point, I make plans to just spend the night with a mutual friend of ours. Well, that's when things start to go wrong because dad comes to see her and they go out for lunch. Whatever, we're all cramming, we're in like the common area. And then comes back in tears. He took her to a Chipotle

• 5:18Speaker 03

  and told her that if this ever happened again, where her boyfriend stayed over and there was no one there, like in the room with them at night, they would stop financially supporting her at college. So, we like calmed her down and like, we're mad about it with her for a while. And we were like, "Okay, we're never telling your parents anything again." I'm like, "I will be your alibi going forward." I'm still not sleeping in the same room as him, but I will be your alibi.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  So, fast forward a long time. They start hooking up and it's fine and the world does not burn down. And they stay together all through college. They stay together when he applies to grad school. They stay together when COVID starts and he proposes. We're at their wedding. We are all lined up to like get ready to walk down the aisle. And my roommate is in the back room, having a moment to prepare. In her wedding dress, like beautiful. And then her mom walks in and then her mom goes, "Here are some things I wish that I had had on my wedding night, so I'm gonna give them to you."

• 6:27Speaker 03

  And then hands her a bunch of breath mints and several individual packets of lube.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  And then leaves to go get in position to walk down the aisle.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  And my roommate is standing in the big Catholic church in a beautiful ball gown with handfuls of breath mints and lube.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Just imagining the crinkling sound as like the organ is playing in the background. It's just like the as she like puts the lube in a bag or something.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  My jaw is agape at this moment. I, that was a wild ride from beginning to end. A, my favorite thing about doing these segments is hearing the backgrounds of what our listeners are doing while they send us voice memos. I'm like, wow, turn your turn signal on. Let me hear it.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Standing on the highway.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Exactly. Exactly. Respectfully. So respectfully. I actually do love it. Um. Whoa, what a wild ride from beginning to end. Um. The being sure that they're not going to hook up while you're there is such not an experience that I had in college. So I'm glad that you knew that you, her roommate and her boyfriend were like keeping enough space for God in between them. I have a lot of questions about the individual packets of lube. Like where did you obtain those? Have they been obtained over a long period of time?

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Just collected from like gas station bathrooms, one at a time.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  What decade did they expire during?

• 8:05Speaker 00

  Exactly. Are they actually still able to be used? Um, also I love handing it over without any explanation. It's like, here's what I wish I knew on my wedding night. Anyway, here's some breath mints and lube. And it's like, that doesn't explain anything more about what's going to happen tonight.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Together? Like, are you supposed to make sure the breath mints are like nice and slight slid up?

• 8:27Speaker 00

  That mint's going to end up somewhere. It shouldn't if you don't explain it properly.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  My favorite detail of this is obviously the Chipotle bit. And I like imagining that the dad is like, now, I can accept hooking up, but I draw the line at snoring. Because that was followed directly by that detail. So I like, I like just imagining that it's like, you know, we raised you as a good Catholic. Like, you gotta have someone with like clear nasal passageways. As, as like you're doing this over a burrito bowl or something.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  As someone of deviated septum experience, I have so much pity for this man. Who is a loud snorer and, you know, I do think that that wasn't necessarily a pertinent detail to the story.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  I just think we should interrogate what we're laughing at and why, you know?

• 9:20Speaker 00

  I mean, I feel like it connects beautifully to our Love Island discussion because the thing I think about the most is the fact that at any given time, you are sharing one single room with between nine to 20 other people. I hope this man has discovered mouth tape or has, um, what's the little machine called when you have sleep apnea where you might? I hope it's a CPAP. Yeah, like the, sometimes when you snore like that, it means you're like on the verge of dying. So I hope that he's okay. Uh, I mean, I do love how long this friendship lasted. I don't know if y'all are friends with your freshman roommates. I'm not.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  I don't think I even saw her again after we moved out. Like, we didn't even hug. She was a random roommate and she had this long-term, long-distance boyfriend. And midway through the year, she started cheating on her boyfriend and we had bunk beds.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Which one were you on?

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Top.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Okay, that's better.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Is it? Cause I'm trapped.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  And I could hear it. So I had to hear her cheating on her boyfriend and then I had to hear her crying on the phone to him, saying that she wasn't cheating on him. It was a nightmare.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Oh, that's tough.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  And you have to be like, can you move this clothes off the bottom step of the bunk? I don't want to slip. That's rough.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  I lived in a triple my freshman year. One roommate, the one closest to the door, um, I never saw like his knees, I would say. He appeared to do and all of his activities, including sleeping in jeans.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Just like hard pants, denim under the comforter. That was rough. The other one.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  Wait, hold on. Stop, pause, hold up.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  Denim? Under the comforter?

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, like bottom sheet denim, top sheet.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  Oh my god. That's a crime against the Lord.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  I, I, you know, we don't do, we don't do stereotypes on this show, but I will just mention, this is maybe not correlated. He was like one of the best, like, uh, computer science, electrical engineering students.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  And you know what? We do do stereotyping on this show and that is exactly what I expect from a computer science student to be wearing jeans at any given. The least breathable fabric possible. Like what is going, what the smell under there must have been horrendous.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Oh, you know, he wasn't changing his sheets.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  Did you go to school in?

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Uh, I went, I went to school in California. It was definitely an environment that smelled crazy. Which the other roommate, he was, um, one of the tallest people I've ever been in contact with. He was really, he's a rower, big guy. Um, he loved to, he appeared to not be aware that they had invented the technology, um, called headphones where you can listen to sound personally. So he would watch, uh, anime, usually the Yu-Gi-Oh series on full volume, but that was, that wasn't his greatest sin. He wouldn't laugh. He would just say, that's so funny. Like hundreds and hundreds of times as I'm trying to do my homework.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  That's so funny.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Y'all are making me feel like my freshman roommate was not actually that bad.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Are you still friends with him?

• 12:26Speaker 00

  No. But she did apologize in our junior, senior year for being a bad roommate. So I feel like I cannot really talk shit about her because she, uh, reformed. But I will say one time she did throw up in her bed and then like sleep, yeah, go to fall asleep with it. And I have a fear of vomit because I vomited twice in my life, once quite recently. It was not great. I was scarred.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Wait, twice in your life? The normal person encounters a vomiting style scenario, I would say conservatively every two years or so. And you're older than four, so what's going on there? Are you just, are you just built different?

• 13:06Speaker 00

  I am built different.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Unprecedentedly?

• 13:08Speaker 00

  I am built different. Well, I would say that my stomach tends to, uh, the other end is more well-used.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Well-used.

• 13:18Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, I don't vomit that often. I get food poisoning maybe once every five years so far. And then, yeah, I vomited for the first time as an adult at like 22 and I didn't know what was happening to me. I was like, why am I so sweaty? Why do I feel insane right now? Um, and then I threw up and I was like, well, it had to happen at some point. Yeah.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  The worst.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  This is going really far from where we started the story. Yeah. I feel like it might be time to move on to the next bit of gossip.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Good hosting.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  Next.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Okay, I heard that Alex is actually on the show right now to announce a new podcast that she is hosting and producing. The show is called Try Hard and on it she works with people to try doing the things that they always wanted to do. Whether that's like a cartwheel or learning how to play a song on the piano. So I think it's gonna be really fun.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  Wait, I don't know about that one. That voice sounded really familiar to me. Am I going crazy? Have you been keeping a secret from us, Alex?

• 14:27Speaker 01

  I have been keeping a wee little secret for the last several months, yes. Tee hee hee. I've been working on this show. Um, when we handed off, uh, Normal Gossip to you and Sierra, people were asking all the time, like, what's next? What, what are your plans? And we kept being like, I don't know, smiley face. I did know. And it was this. It was Try Hard. I was working on Try Hard. I- I'm really obsessed with the TV show MTV Made. MTV Made was a show where there was a kid, usually like a nerdy kid in a high school. And they would be like, I want to be a rapper.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  I want to be a break dancer. I want to learn how to skateboard. And then they get paired with a coach and they learn how to do it. And then it culminates in them like performing this new skill in front of their whole school and likely their crush and like killing it every time. And like, I always cried watching this show. I loved it so much. And I also famously love taking on hobbies. I'm like always knitting or like learning a new craft. In the last year, I took voice lessons and I also was in a play. People are always like, oh, I could never do that. Or, or when I tell them about a thing I'm doing, they'll say, oh, you know, I've always

• 15:56Speaker 01

  wanted to do X. I've always wanted to try this thing. Um, and I, I was thinking about it and I thought like, most people have a thing that is like, if they had more time or, you know, if they just admitted it to themselves that they wanted to do this, that they would like try a thing.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Alex, I'm curious to know, because your show premieres on July 28th. You've already been in development for it for a few months. You've recorded a ton of episodes. What do you feel like you've learned about trying hard that you were surprised to learn?

• 16:31Speaker 01

  One of the guests I had a conversation with, um, talked about a time in her life when she made a really big change and it kind of catalyzed a lot of other changes for her. And the change was she cut her hair. She had really long hair and she cut it short and she put purple streaks in her hair. Before she did it, she was like, oh my God, this is going to rock the world. Everyone's going to turn and look at me and be like, who's that? Like, what did she do? She's not allowed to do that. And then she did it and she walked into work and everyone was like, cool.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  And I think like that is an encapsulation of what a lot of these experiences have have been like where they sound like they are going to be like cataclysmic, rock your world, change everything to the person doing it. And in some ways, it can be like pushing yourself to do a scary thing is scary, whether it's like a big scary thing or a small scary thing. But from the outside, it's like, oh, that's cool. That person's trying a new thing. And that's all it is. And so I think like the fear that people have that they're going to be judged, or you know, that people will have something to say about, you know, them

• 17:49Speaker 01

  looking stupid is just, it's, it's very unfounded, because people are truly not paying attention.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  That is one of the most freeing things to realize is no one gives a single fuck about what you're doing in your life. It's absolutely incredible. It's like most people's reactions to you are entirely their own personal shit happening and you are free to vibe. And it's beautiful. Part of trying hard is failing. So are you looking for any stories of, you know, failure that has been instructive?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah. I, I have told every guest as we embark on our journey together, I've been like, it can be so tempting for this to feel like a triumphant narrative where you are gonna try to do this thing, and you face obstacles, and you jump over them, and you come out on top. And I, I told every single one of them, like, if you fail, or if you, if it turns out you hate doing this thing, I want to hear about that, too. Because like, the success isn't the point of what we're doing. The success is like a bonus. The point of the show is to get to that moment of like, you're standing outside

• 19:05Speaker 01

  a door, and your stomach is in your butt, and you're like, oh, my God, I can't believe I'm about to do this. Oh, my God, I should just go home. And then you push through it. Like, that's what the show's about.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  It's about the moment before you do the skateboard recital in front of your crush in the whole school.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  It's the knees weak arm spaghetti moment.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Truly, yeah. Mom's spaghetti. Vomit on your sweater already.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  There's that word again.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm sorry for other people who have vomit phobia.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  Well, that was a beautiful piece of gossip. Please look in your feeds wherever you get your podcasts on July 28th for the premiere of Try Hard.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  And the trailer is live today, so you can go ahead and subscribe right now.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  Go do that right now. We're actually about to take an ad break, so go do that while you listen to the ads. Thank you.

• 20:11Speaker 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 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.

• 20:56Speaker 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.

• 21:22Speaker 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.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  For all things hosting, Wayfair delivers high-quality, customer-trusted products for your home so you can host and celebrate without distress. When refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com.

• 22:27Speaker 04

  This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at O D O O dot com. That's O D O O dot com.

• 23:04Speaker 00

  Okay, next morsel.

• 23:07Speaker 05

  Last year, I got my knee replaced. And because I live alone, my mother came out to take care of me for the first couple of weeks while I actually learned how to walk again. When she left, she left me with about a month's worth of frozen meals and all my laundry cleaned because my laundry is in the basement. And I don't have a railing on my stairs to the basement. And trying to go down those stairs with a fresh knee is unlikely to be a good idea, period.

• 23:42Speaker 05

  A few days after my mother left, I started to feel uncomfortable down below. There was some itching, there was a little bit of burning. It just wasn't great. So I thought, ah, crap, I got a yeast infection. So I treated myself and I thought it got better. And two days afterwards, it started coming back again. I'm like, crap, what the heck is going on here, right? So I tried a yeast infection again.

• 24:20Speaker 05

  Two days later, it's back. I go to the freaking emergent care. They test for urinary tract infection, which I do not have. And she gives me yet a third treatment for a yeast infection. And you can tell damn well that the doctor's opinion of me is that I'm a complete idiot, right?

• 24:42Speaker 05

  Doesn't work. Burning, itching, very, very uncomfortable. One night, I'm desperate and I'm on Google and I'm trying to figure out reasons for this to happen. And I read, this could be caused by an allergy to laundry detergent. And I think, oh, my mother did my laundry. I always double rinse my laundry. My mother, who is very concerned about water conservation, did not.

• 25:21Speaker 05

  So I took all my underwear, threw it in a bucket full of water, and I rinsed them four times over before I wore another pair. And everything cleared right up.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Poisoned by your mother? This is a very, very Freudian story we have here.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  They fuck you up, your mom and dad, you know?

• 25:45Speaker 02

  In extremely creative ways, apparently.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Oh my god. I mean, the thing is, I'm gonna be slightly on the side of this collarin's mother because she was trying to conserve water, and that is a noble, noble cause. I will say, I think everyone should stop using extremely scented deodorant. I go to a laundromat and sometimes I see the amount of laundry detergent people put in their clothes. And I'm like, you know the soap's not coming out, right? Like, you know you just have like soap all over your body right now, right? Like, what are we doing right now? It does not need to smell like a bouquet of flowers when you take it out the dryer. It should smell like clothes, clean clothes.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  But not freesia. Like, what's going on here?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  I've never heard of double rinsing your laundry.

• 26:30Speaker 00

  I didn't even know you could do that. Is that like a function on the machine?

• 26:33Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  An apparently important one, the knee replacement element of it too. It's just like, you have to just kind of sit there while all this is happening. That's not great.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  I don't know what it's like to have a knee replacement. I do have bad knees, but I'm just imagining washing your clothes in a bucket full of water while you have a fresh knee replacement, and that feels not fun. That feels, that feels arduous.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  The phrase "fresh knee" that came up in this, that like, made me kind of shiver.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Well, you, you don't want a fresh knee?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  I, I kind of want a fresh knee. I don't know.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  I don't want fresh knees.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  It'd be unstoppable.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  This person would be a good try-hard guest, because I feel like you probably have to learn how to like, I mean, like she said, you have to learn how to walk again and stuff. Like, my dad had his knee rebuilt, and that sounds not great. So, and he wasn't even poisoned by his mother while this was happening, like, presumably, I don't know.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  God, poisoned is such a nice euphemism for what's happening here.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  That's an appropriate word in this context, right?

• 27:36Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah, yeah. The stakes are just so high for not doing a thing that I didn't even know you could do.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is, I mean, a potent metaphor too for how I imagine parenting works, where it's just like, this seemingly innocent, tossed-off thing can have like ramifications decades. I guess this isn't decades, but you know what I mean.

• 27:56Speaker 00

  Months later, do you think that leaving our collarin' with a month of frozen meals outweighs accidentally?

• 28:06Speaker 00

  Poisoning her, cuz I kind of do.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  That's a worthwhile trade.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially if it's your mommy's food.

• 28:13Speaker 00

  Exactly. If I had a month, like a freezer full of meals from my mother right now, my life would be different.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  What's the worst disease you would voluntarily take on?

• 28:29Speaker 00

  You know what? Food poisoning. I'd throw up for that.

• 28:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, 100%.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  A 1 for 30 trade. You're coming out ahead.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  Exactly. The thing I did learn about throwing up is that once it's over, it's over. Like, you kind of feel immediately better.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the, that's the great thing about throwing up.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  It's crazy. This is the theme of the show.

• 28:49Speaker 00

  I know. I'm so sorry.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  Wow. I also love self gossip. I love the freeness of being like, I thought I had a yeast infection for three weeks and turns out my mother just gently poisoned me.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  That's such a long time to be in that kind of misery.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  Okay, also that, like, let's talk about that for a second. The, the yeast infection UTI symptoms. Our caller did a good job of just being like, it was uncomfortable. It's one of those things that drives you slowly insane. You're just like, this is the worst thing that could happen to me and that happens regularly and could happen regularly. I think of people in the past who probably were just constantly walking around with recurrent yeast infections and UTIs. And I'm like, no wonder all of you died at 40. I would also want to be done with life.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was brave. She was so brave.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  So brave.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. The concept of conserving water probably didn't exist in the old days because the concept of like fresh drinking water hadn't really been invented yet.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  Oh, they were drinking beer to stay safe.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  Wow. Thank you so much for this gossip. Um, I will be double rinsing my clothes from now on.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  Okay, next.

• 30:07Speaker 06

  In the fall of 2014, I found this apartment, which now would be totally unaffordable to a grad student. Nice, clean, one-bedroom apartment, nothing fancy, uh, two-story apartment building, maybe, you know, fourteen units or so. And one of the downsides of it was that it was clear that the walls were quite thin. My neighbor's door was right next to mine, so if you go up the stairs, you turn right, you're facing my door, but if you had faced straight, you would be right at their door.

• 30:47Speaker 06

  And because, again, everything is thin, uh, if they, somebody is trying to open their door, like, open their screen door, it sounds very much like they're opening my screen door. So I was kind of, uh, put on edge by that quite a few times when I first moved in. But eventually got used to it, not a big deal. I talked my landlord into letting me have a cat. Around mid-October, I get quite sick, and I'm sick for multiple days. And I'm throwing up, I'm not eating, I have a fever, all the works.

• 31:27Speaker 06

  And so then, when I'm starting to finally feel better, and I finally have an appetite, I'm like, oh my god, I need a pizza. So I order a pizza, the pizza delivery person calls me, I open my door to kind of wave them up. And as I'm opening my door, my neighbor's door also opened. And I said, oh, sorry, you know, it's just me. And she looks right at me and she says,

• 31:59Speaker 06

  I know you have been stealing my trash. And I have photo graphic evidence. And shuts the door.

• 32:11Speaker 06

  And you know, I get my pizza and I get back into my apartment and I just burst into tears. And I'm calling my friends, I'm like, I don't know what's happening. I mean, obviously, I haven't done anything to this wolf's trash. But like, what could possibly be going on? Um, and here is the story that I kind of come up with for myself. Because I have this cat, I am going out to the trash every day with little baggies of poop from the litter. And so maybe what's happening is that she sees me

• 32:52Speaker 06

  kind of around the trash bins, but without a big trash bag of my own. Also, I'm thinking like, what would the photographic evidence be? Like pictures of me with a trash bag? What could like, so, but I'm still creeped out. And so when the end of the month rolls around, so it's October thirty first, it's Halloween. I go down to my landlord's apartment to give him the November rent check. And we chat a little bit and I say, I had this really weird interaction with the woman in apartment twelve.

• 33:36Speaker 06

  And I'm just wondering, has anyone else had weird interactions with her? And I was like, oh, that apartment doesn't have a female resident. It's just like those two tall guys who live there.

• 34:00Speaker 06

  And I moved out of that place two months later.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  That's it?

• 34:06Speaker 00

  What the fuck? Wait, what the fuck? Okay, we have from beginning to end. A, how do we continue the vomit trend without? What the hell? What the hell? That's A. B, why would you get a pizza after being sick?

• 34:21Speaker 01

  That, that is a wild move.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  That's a crazy decision.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  But you're in grad school, so you know what? You have the constitution of, I'm assuming, a twenty something. So go with God on that one. Um, third, why would you steal someone's trash? Also, why would you care if someone stole your trash?

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Why would you steal a ghost's trash?

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Why would a ghost care if you stole their trash?

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Why does a ghost have trash?

• 34:47Speaker 00

  If someone stole my trash, I'd simply say, you know what? My trash is your treasure. There you go. Four, ghost? Ghost? Is it a ghost? Or is it someone there hooking up us who decided to terrorize the next door neighbor?

• 35:05Speaker 00

  What's going on here?

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Well, okay, we also have to consider the Halloween of it all.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  I believe tends to be a, a sort of period of time when the, the spectral veil between worlds is a little thinner.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  That is so true.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  An alternate explanation that I was thinking of is like, maybe the landlord was fucking with her?

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Okay, the third thing is, the thin walls were mentioned and never came back up again. And I was thinking like, this is gonna be a part of the story. So presumably like, you would know who your neighbors are, right?

• 35:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, especially your next door neighbors.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, your doors are so close.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  I thought the neighbor was gonna be like, I've heard you vomiting. Why did you get a pizza?

• 35:49Speaker 01

  That's a reasonable question.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Advice, yeah.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  Just be like, baby girl, get some bananas, some rice, some applesauce, some toast.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  This is a rich text. The, I mean, I feel like the concept of stealing trash is a really, that one is, I feel like mostly used in sort of like spy novels and stuff where like you're, you're stealing out someone's apartment and you want to like, get the financial records or whatever and you like grab their trash. Presumably this person is not like studying spycraft at this grad school style university.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  I mean, who knows what was happening in 2014?

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Also, this is 2014 pre-ring camera. So the photographic evidence must be someone standing with camera.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:33Speaker 00

  Taking photos of you. I also would like to know, as someone who has a cat, I do scoop the litter box every day. I don't take it outside every day. Why don't you just throw the little baggies in your trash bag?

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Does it not smell crazy?

• 36:48Speaker 00

  Well, if you have a plastic bag, you shouldn't be able to smell anything.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Fair enough.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Twist it up, tie it up.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  Exactly. Get it nice and tight. I have a lot of questions. And I don't actually know if our caller in can answer them.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  I choose to believe ghosts. We are always asking for gossip stories with ghosts in them and we have one.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  I do actually. I think I agree with you, Alex. I think that's the only logical conclusion here. Like, I think it's a malevolent spirit.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  A trickster.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  They died in a trash stealing style incident and are sort of like perennially seeking revenge on those who, those who go through their garbage.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  The photographic evidence is like the cameras that you have to throw the thing over and

• 37:41Speaker 01

  stay still for like an hour.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like a daguerreotype on a silver plate.

• 37:45Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 37:50Speaker 00

  That is crazy, crazy. I do want to say that I really empathize with the listener crying immediately after this interaction because that is also exactly how I would respond to someone.

• 38:06Speaker 00

  Being like, I see you stealing my trash.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  Wow. You know what? Jay was right. We are a real range of gossip.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  We're going on such a funny-

• 38:30Speaker 02

  And yes, it's a strong central theme.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:33Speaker 00

  A strong central theme of vomit.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Well curated.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  And we didn't even know. I just brought that up casually. Um, let's see if the next one has anything to do with vomit.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Okay, so there's a, there's a rumor going around, which I know is the purview of this show, about another podcast, which is definitely the purview of this show, according to my sources. And I have this, I had this from some pretty reliable people. Um, there's going to be a new show on Radiotopia called Only If You Get Caught, which is going to be about cheating scandals, breaking the rules, all of which is like sort of normal gossip adjacent, which is going to be hosted by Patrick Redford. Um, and according to my sources, Alex SuJong Loflin is going to be producing the show. Um, so I think that's going to be pretty fun. I, I hope people are into that.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  Wait, am I hallucinating again? That sounds so familiar. Patrick, are you Defector's new podcast, A Girl?

• 39:35Speaker 02

  It's true. It's true. I got the Shure M7 mic. I'm writing scripts. Uh, we talked to someone who taught me how to speak good on the mic, as hopefully you can hear here. Um, yeah, it's true. Another podcast is coming, um, at some point in the fall. It's very exciting. We've been working on it for literal years until Alex helped get it into shape somewhat recently. Yeah, and we're very, very excited. As I said, it's about, um, sort of cheating scandals and breaking the rules, which as I guess listeners to this show and readers of our site would know is like something that I've like chronicled fairly closely and taken like a pretty deep interest in forever. The thesis of the show is basically that you can learn the most about

• 40:17Speaker 02

  any sort of like competitive framework or system or setup through its cheating scandals. Like those provide the cleanest, the vertical slice of like what actually matters, who has power, what the dynamics are. Um, and so these, these episodes aren't just like annotated Wikipedia entries. We have like good guests. We have, uh, I think interesting insights. Um, and I'm super excited for you guys all to hear it.

• 40:40Speaker 00

  I'm so excited. Can you give us an example of what kind of cheating scandals you are covering? Like, am I gonna hear about the gerbil and chess?

• 40:49Speaker 02

  You are gonna hear about the chess thing.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, like, that's the listeners of this show tying, because I've obviously covered the Magnus and Hans alleged butt cheating, which, which we get into in the episode.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  And if those words mean nothing to you, welcome. Get ready.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Former season one guests of Normal Gossip, Emma and Claire, come on to talk about The Bachelor, and we sort of get into the legal fiction of The Right Reasons.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Which, obviously, you know, Love Island's on the brain, very relevant right now. We have some sports stuff, some non-sports stuff. Yeah, I'm really excited to bring it to you guys.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  I'm so excited to listen. I have to know, after thinking about this for so long, are you pro-cheating or anti-cheating?

• 41:38Speaker 02

  See, that's an interesting question, because I, one worry I had when writing all the scripts is like, these are all kind of coming off as like, pro-cheating, which is not exactly pro-cheating, but I think, I think the kind of popular understanding of like, people who break the rules and like cheat in sports or whatever, doesn't really like, take into account their side of the story. Like, they, there's not that much inquiry into like, why people would break the rules, which I find to be the most interesting sort of question to answer. And so, we do come down as like broadly pro-cheating in some of the episodes, but then other ones are like, okay, this is actually bad. And I think you have to like, make sure you frame like what the consequences are, what the stakes are, who's like, the arbiter of the rules.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  Like, we have one about the WNBA and like salary cap circumvention, where the owners were actually cheating against each other to pay the players more. And like, that's a weird sort of cheating scandal. Like, the people coming out ahead are like, not the ones actually breaking the rules. And like, we talked to my three and aunt the ramen about that, and there's some like, really interesting dynamics to get into, so.

• 42:43Speaker 00

  What I'm hearing, and I will be saying to promote this podcast, is that it is a podcast about how cheating is actually good.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you want to get ahead, if you want to actually succeed in this, this is like for the young money hustlers out there, for you know, the Dubai grindset types, like we're trying to give you tips to maximize your stack to like, really make 2025 and 2026, and presumably all the other ones after that, your year. If you want to learn how to do crypto scams, or how to do bank fraud against the elderly, just kidding, this is not, my editor is saying this is not financial advice, this is a parody, but you know, if you do want to unlock your grindset, I would recommend listening to this, actually to all three of our shows, really.

• 43:25Speaker 00

  Incredible. And when does it premiere? Where can people listen?

• 43:28Speaker 02

  It should be out in mid-October. We are in negotiations on a final date right now, but we are pretty deep in production, so.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  Wow, a beautiful fall vibe. Thank you so much. I'm so excited for these new shows. This is the best gossip I could possibly be a conduit for.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  Hell yeah. Tryhard out July 28th. You know what it is.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  And only if you get caught in October, and we will not shut up about either of them, so you will not be able to forget.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  And you won't be able to forget when you listen to normal gossip, because you will certainly be hearing more about them over the course of the next few bonus episodes. But before those come up, we do have one last piece of gossip to hear. Are y'all ready?

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:18Speaker 05

  So, this story starts in my second year of university, and I am an avid member of the musical theatre society, and a new boy starts, I'm gonna call him Pete, he is a very On the musical theatre society, which is a really handsome, uh, really tall, straight boy. Competition among the thousands of girls is obviously brief, but somehow, um. It's, it's, it's me and, me and Pete, we, um, we, we hit it up and it's, um.

• 45:02Speaker 05

  Honestly delightful, okay, um. He studies ancient history, which is interesting. He's from a ridiculously rich family. So in the, in our third year, we are trying to go to our first meeting, which is in a university building. And his past work, um, he says it's something to do with his parents' pain disease. Um, we continue to do like lots of lovely couple of things, like we go down to London to watch a musical. And we spend one night with his sister and his sister says, what are you gonna do while Pete is at the interview? And I say, oh, I don't, what, what, what's going on? And, um, turns out he's told his sister that he's down to

• 45:47Speaker 05

  have an interview for an internship at a huge banking firm over the summer. And does a full practice interview, like with seamlessly answering all the questions for an internship in finance, um, and I then have to lie and say, oh yeah, I'll just sit in a cafe and read while he's doing it, knowing in my head fully well that I will be watching a matinee of Matilda with this boy. Um, and I say, that's, that was really weird, what, what happened there? And also, why didn't you tell me? That I was gonna have to lie, like, I'd lie for you. He's very apologetic. It's fine. We watched the show. We had a lovely time.

• 46:28Speaker 05

  Um, all good, all good. Um, we graduate the next year and, you know, the cracks sort of start to show in our relationship. Um, we break up. And it's around this time that I start to go a little bit, um, Charlie from It's Always Sunny. Uh, but start to put together some of the pieces, you know, so I Google, um, I'm like, I never, I never saw him graduate. Um, he told me he'd got a first and this was, this was a boy who'd loved to post on Facebook about things. And he hadn't mentioned anywhere that he'd got a first or anything about his degree. Um, I moved to London and then he moved to London a couple of years after me.

• 47:13Speaker 05

  And then he happens to walk into a bar when I'm where I'm working. And we, you know, we have a nice chat, we catch up, it's all very, very cheery, very pleasant. And, um, at the end of that, I think, well, this has gone quite well. I'll just say it, I'll just, I'll, I'll just ask him. Um, and I say, you know, did you go to uni? Were you ever there? And he looks so hurt and says, I, I can't believe you, you'd think that of me. Um, and then I, you know, I, and I do, and then I do feel quite bad for, for thinking of him. And, um, we had a little, a little romantic fun for old time's sake.

• 47:53Speaker 05

  And, um, you know, then he, then he goes on his way and that's the last time that I, that I ever saw him, spoke to him. Um, but a couple of, a couple of weeks ago now, one of my other friends. Um, calls me, she says, she's got some news. And she tells me that he's now, um, he's written a little blog. In that blog, he says, university's not right for everyone, which is why I dropped out. And he'd proceeded to lie about it for the next 10 years, including one year where I was dating him. I saw him every single day, pretty much.

• 48:34Speaker 05

  I was with his friends, we were in shows together at uni, we were in the junior bar. He was pretending to go to exams, he was pretending to go to lectures. He was, he told me what he was writing his dissertation on. He told me about the Roman battle styles that he was writing a full dissertation on. And he just wasn't going to uni.

• 48:53Speaker 00

  Is that the end?

• 48:56Speaker 00

  Whoa. Um, um.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  That's a rich text.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  And it is. It is. That is, that is a rich text. I mean, on one hand, I'm always impressed with people who can keep up a lie like that. And not in a casual way, but in a way where you have figured out your dissertation topic and are talking about Roman battle styles. Low key, at that point, I'm like, why didn't you just finish? It sounds like you easily could have.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. How rich is this guy? Like, is, is, is.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  I forgot that part. He's rich.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Parents just like, were his parents in on the scheme? Or was he just like, living this totally subsidized lifestyle? And maybe there's, there's like a sad element to this. Like, he, he's going to inherit some like Titan of Industry style position, but he's like, what I really want is to live among the common people. And so he's like, Daddy, I want to cosplay like a Roman history student. And father is like, as long as you come work with me at HBO's industry after this.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, honestly, as soon as I heard he's very rich, I was like, this man's a pathological liar. I don't think he's actually rich. I think that's the, the twist here.

• 50:09Speaker 00

  You think he's lying about his money as well?

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Which makes the story very sad, because then I think he's dropping out for other reasons.

• 50:23Speaker 00

  But also, they seem to be in the UK or Australia, maybe. I don't know. I don't understand. I'm, I'm, I'm not going to say I'm great at accents. Isn't university free there?

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's usually, I mean, we, we have, our college system is the only one that forces you to go into crazy ass debt.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  To complete it. So I assume, I mean, this, this sounds like a, this sounds like a London accent to me.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  That is, there's so many good details in here. Matilda.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  Yes, matinee specifically.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Matinee of Matilda.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  Um, we also heard exactly what this person's walk up sounds like, um, into their house.

• 51:02Speaker 00

  I love, again, I love whenever I can hear people doing their little tasks, because I'm like, A, did you, when did you decide to record this voice note? Cause you have to have known you were going to be entering your home in the three minutes that you were going to be recording this voice note. And you have a little door open and I'm like, yes, girl, walk into your house.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Another detail is that this Pete character was pretending to do exams.

• 51:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  And I wonder if like that involved actually going into the classrooms, being given like a sheet of paper and like actually taking the test and like, I don't know, maybe not turning it in or whatever.

• 51:37Speaker 00

  Fully in the student play without being the student there.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  How is this possible?

• 51:43Speaker 02

  This has to have been for the love of the game.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  I, I agree. Cause again, it sounds like he is smart. She said he did this whole fake interview for a financial internship that sounded entirely real. So it's not like he's just saying things that don't make sense.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  And then he started a blog 10 years later. Can we see the blog?

• 52:02Speaker 01

  I want to see the blog.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  Can we have a link to the blog? I want to see the blog.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  Can we have him on Only If You Get Caught?

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say, that's who I need to talk to.

• 52:10Speaker 00

  Can we? But also he, he outed himself. He didn't even really get caught.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  This is a good segue because one of the episodes we have is about the varsity blues college cheating scandal.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  My favorite cheating scandal.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Which is like among, among the sort of interesting structural reads on like the general scam of higher education, the funniest shit of all time is when parents got like this like very, you know, janky version of Photoshop and would like Photoshop their like unathletic kid on like a water polo player's body or like they would buy water polo gear online and then like conduct a photo shoot and to have the cheating college scandal guy be like, uh, you aren't supposed to stand on the bottom of the pool when you play water polo.

• 52:52Speaker 00

  I love the Photoshop photos of kids doing sports. They very clearly didn't play because so much of I feel justification for varsity blues was people being like, well, they didn't know what their parents were doing. And I'm like, I was dumb at the age of 17, but I certainly was not dumb enough to not put together why my parents were forcing me to put on a uniform for a sport I didn't play and then later receiving a scholarship for that sport I didn't play.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  That's, that's one of the other funniest elements too is like the kids like go to USC or whatever and then like tell all their friends are like, I'm not on the tennis team. I don't know what you're talking about. And then the, uh, the school gets wind of that and they contact the parents and they're like, your kid doesn't seem to understand that they're here on like a scholarship. Like what's going on with that? Just bless their, bless their little hearts. See, you wouldn't have to do this. You wouldn't have to do this in a country like the UK.

• 53:46Speaker 00

  That is so true. Exactly.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Which is an endorsement of our education system because you can get the funniest outcomes possible. So.

• 53:53Speaker 00

  I mean, I don't know. Being in a student play for shits and gigs is like a pretty funny outcome.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:00Speaker 00

  Just to get girls.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  I mean, it sounds like the, the, the hundreds were flocking to see this, this damn Pete. Like.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  I mean.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Shout out to him.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  Have you seen theater girls around the one straight guy in theater? It's a bloodbath. It's The Hunger Games. There are cannons being shot like every few hours.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Alex, you, you said in this app that you were recently in a play.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  I was.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  Um, presumably not with college age students, but was there any interesting goss around the play?

• 54:31Speaker 01

  There, well, you know, there were three sets of parents and children in this play. Like one was like a 13 year old and their mom. And then there was like a almost 30 year old and her dad. And then the director's parents were also in the play. And so that was fascinating to see like, I, you know, a lot of them hadn't acted together before. And, um, so like they were seeing their parents in these new lights and these new contexts. Um, but it was also funny to see like, you know, them snap at each other in a like parent and child kind of way that they would never do to another member of the cast. And that,

• 55:16Speaker 01

  that was great.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  That sounds, yeah, that sounds, that sounds fun, honestly, sort of like wholesome, interesting, fun. And also you get to see which parents would be the ones to accidentally poison their children with laundry detergent.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  Style maneuvers.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  And there, there were two straight men in the cast.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Respect.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Shout out to those guys.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:40Speaker 02

  They're trying hard.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  They sure are.

• 55:42Speaker 00

  And they are, they are. For some reason, this voice memo reminded me of Saltburn. Like, it feels like a version of Saltburn.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Yes, like some talented Mr. Ripley shit.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. Except he didn't use it to get that far ahead, seemingly.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  No, he could have gone so much further.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  Ten years later.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  See, that's, that's like, that is the sort of scammer that I'm down with. Like, someone who just does it for the love of the game. Like, he's not out here putting up numbers to, like, steal anyone's money or anything. He just wants to hang. And like, maybe he really was into ancient history. Like, that's cool, man.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  And actually into theater. You can't fake being into musical theater.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  That is so true. Seemingly, he was talented enough to be in this play. I'm like, you don't have to lie to hang out. You can just hang out.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  This is almost like a Ratatouille situation. He, he gets to live this life. He's like, he's like sort of structurally incapable of living. Except, I guess, instead of being a mouse, it's like he has presumably millions of pounds in his bank account.

• 56:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  So, I'm less sympathetic, but still very funny.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  I did enjoy that our caller in was like, we met up a few years later and had a night of romantic fun. Pop off, queen.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 56:55Speaker 00

  Pop off, queen. I will say, if you ever ask someone a question and they answer with, "I can't believe you asked me that," then they want, like, whatever the worst possible answer to your question is, that is the right one. Like...

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, if someone says that, you sit up in your chair.

• 57:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you say, "Why can't you believe I asked you that?"

• 57:17Speaker 02

  What did you mean by that?

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Sounds like you're lying.

• 57:21Speaker 00

  This is the key to scamming. You'll learn how to cheat from this show, from Patrick's new show, and maybe how to recover from your cheating scandal by learning to be a better person by listening to Try Hard.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then you can tell Rachel all about it. What we've set up here is like a, like a perfect, not quite like a pyramid scheme, but more like a

• 57:42Speaker 00

  An Ouroboros.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  A beautiful gossip Ouroboros. We're just trying to create more stories for all of you.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  Uh, I love that.

• 57:51Speaker 02

  Forever.

• 57:52Speaker 00

  Thank you all so much for joining me.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Thank you for having us.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you for having us. This is so fun.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  Thank you for listening to Normal Gossip. If you have a gossip story to share with us, email us at [email protected]. We are starting to work on season nine, so if you want to hear your gossip for season nine, you only got a few weeks left, send it to us. You can also 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 HeyDnA, 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 SuJong Loflin

• 58:45Speaker 00

  and Kelsey McKinney. Justin Ellis is Defector's projects editor. Jasper Wang and Sean Coon are Defector's business guys. Alex SuJong 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 did not hear this from me.