Hi, everybody, welcome back to the Be There in Five podcast.

I'm Kate Kennedy, your host.

Today, we're exploring one of, I think, society's most misunderstood practices that arguably is my line of work, which is gossip.

Today I wanted to have on not only a host of an insanely popular podcast that you've definitely heard of or listened to, but also a juicy new book that I think you'll love.

And I'm only, like, I've always had authors

on when I love the book, but like sometimes I'll have on more than others because people, you know,

like I want to be good about an industry I'm in too and promote people's books. I'm trying

to be better at curating stuff like this is so Beth's coded. And today's author, today's book, today's podcast host of

the show Normal Gossip, Kelsey McKinney and her New York Times bestselling book, you didn't hear

this for me about the power of gossip. Like I know you will love it. Gossip is one of those things

I've struggled with my whole life in terms of not knowing how to feel about it. I'm such an

observer of people. I love exchanging information. I think women talking is so important. And this book kind of helped me frame it in a more productive, less shamy way that I think is really interesting. I mean, we've been taught gossip is a bad habit our whole lives. But Kelsey McKinney really changes your mind by arguing how gossip is shaped everything from politics to the Me Too movement. She looks at how celebrities' images are made and broken by gossip. What our obsessions with their personal life says about our culture. She gets into the science of why we can't resist a juicy piece of gossip.

And, you know, learning that it's kind of a hardwired way that we learn about our social world and reinforced norms and that even the origin of the word gossip was about the conversations had in like birthing rooms.

I mean, in patriarchal societies,

women's gossip networks have served as underground information channels. And when formal channels

of power were closed to women, gossip became an alternative system for sharing crucial information.

Like, which men are dangerous, which workplaces are hostile, which doctors can be trusted.

Labeling this information as sinful as nosy, whatever moral

coding you want to give it, like that's not a coincidence. It's deliberate. When you stigmatize

gossip, institutions from throughout time, from churches to now corporations to wherever, like effectively

silence women's collective knowledge, which isolates them from potentially life-saving information. And she doesn't shy away from gossip's darker side either, talking about

how it can be weaponized against women, how social media is supercharged gossip to an almost

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