Bonus Episode: Try Hard with Erika Casupanan

Normal Gossip

Comedy

4.8 • 5.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today, we’re bringing you an episode of Try Hard,a new podcast hosted and produced by one of our very own dowager queens of gossip, Alex Sujong Laughlin.

This episode is the second episode of the season, and it features a familiar face, Erika Casupanan, the winner of the 41st season of Survivor, and a guest from the fifth season of Normal Gossip.

Erika spent her life being the person she thought she "should" be. It turns out that doing her own thing doesn't rock the world the way she thinks it will. It's actually pretty cool.

Check out Erika's podcast, Happy to See Me.

Episode transcript here.

Send me voice memos about the things YOU'RE trying at [email protected], or you can message me or tag me on Instagram @alexlaughs.

Try Hard is hosted and produced by Alex Sujong Laughlin. Editorial and production support from Audrey Mardavich, Tom Ley, and Jae Towle Vieira. Justin Ellis is Defector's projects editor. Mixing by Samantha Gattsek. Our show art is by Lille Allen and our theme song is "Photo Booth" by Avery Friedman.

Try Hard is a proud member of Radiotopia.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, my beautiful little gossip darlings. I want to tell you about another podcast brought to you by Radiotopia.
0:06.2	It's called The Selects Podcast, and it is a free twice-monthly show that is bringing you unearthed audio works that they found buried in web archives, radio streams, and early podcasts.
0:18.2	Recent episodes include a collection of early true crime.
0:22.4	They include episodes on the fight for gay marriage
0:26.5	and on how the National Endowment for Arts shed light
0:30.8	on works of great American literature.
0:33.2	The SLEGS podcast aims to preserve work
0:35.4	that is being lost to digital time.
0:37.4	These are award-winning documentaries made by some of the best in the medium, but they're
0:42.0	getting lost in web archives and defunct podcast feeds.
0:45.7	Listening to the Select Podcasts helps gives these works a new life, something that can help
0:50.1	make the audio industry more sustainable.
0:52.5	You can listen to the Selects podcast wherever you get your podcast.
1:02.4	Hello and welcome to normal gossip.
1:04.7	I'm your host, Rachel Hampton.
1:06.4	And in each episode of this podcast, we're going to bring you an anonymous morsel of gossip
1:10.6	from the real
1:11.4	world. And today's morsel of gossip actually isn't so anonymous. In fact, I know exactly
1:18.4	where it came from. Because it came from me. Well, me and the rest of the normal gossip team,
1:24.4	we have finally got a start date for the premiere of season nine.
1:29.8	But before I give you the gossip, I know I'm so sorry, that was so mean. But before I
1:35.0	give you the gossip, I wanted to tell you a little bit about the rest of this episode because
	...

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