This is why you really shouldn't travel or do big, exciting things with people you don't know.

Hi and welcome to Normal Gossip. I'm Kelsey McKinney. In each episode of this podcast,

we're going to bring you an anonymous morsel of gossip from the real world. Today, I have with me

as a little treat Jessica Goodman. Jessica Goodman is the New York Times best-selling author of

They'll never catch us. They wish they were us. And the counselors jazz welcome to the show.

Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having me. I cannot even begin to explain how excited I am

to be here and also to hear the gossip. I'm thrilled that you're here. Do you want to

start with like the most basic question of all and just tell me what your relationship to gossip is?

Yes, I mean, thank you for asking. You're welcome.

I would say that my relationship to gossip is longstanding, fruitful, and very important to me

and my identity. How? I definitely like identify as a low-stakes gossip, I would say.

Okay, it's been this way. I've always been interested in what's happening, what the goings-on are,

and you know, who's doing what and where. And my mom has like all of my childhood, like,

assignments stuffed away. And you know, she loves me very much. And recently, she, or maybe a

couple years ago, she found this piece of paper that I drew in second grade that was like, what do

you want to be when you grow up. And on one side of the piece paper, I wrote that I wanted to be a

journalist and on the other side I wrote that I wanted to be an author and write books.

Wow, congratulations on achieving both of your childhood dreams. How does it feel? Thank you.

It feels good. This is just a humble, not even a humble, it's just a brag. You're just bragging.

Great job. I'm just bragging. But on the journalism side, it says that it says something like,

I want to be a journalist because I want to know all the gossip before it happens.

Yeah. And yeah, and I think that's how a lot of journalists start out, because we just want to

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