How Gossip Works

You know what I heard? That Josh and Chuck hate each other and they're just faking being friends for the show. That's called gossip, folks and it can do serious damage. Learn all about it in today's episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to stuff you should know from house stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant and uh, it's
just two of us again. Man, not getting any easier.
This is just it's getting old this man. We need

(00:23):
Jerry back. Where are you, Jerry? Where did you go? Selfish?
Jerry wants to be at home with her baby. Yeah,
we all went to shopping at kmart and she wandered
off and we haven't seen her since. We all want
to be at home with Jerry's baby. Sure, it's a
cute baby, but we can't be you know, the old
joke that Jerry could be replaced with a those dipping

(00:45):
birds just to hit record. We were just kidding. It's
that's happening. It is true. Maybe not the post production stuff,
but definitely the recording thing. Clearly takes a finger to say, Okay,
you guys are rolling. Yeah, we cannot stop griping about
this time. I know it's just weird. You know, when
the threesome becomes to do, some things get awkward. I try,

(01:07):
it becomes a diade, or when it toosome, becomes a
threesome that gets super awkward or I mean really, anytime
you're moving people in and out of some sort of dynamics,
it can be weird. The transition be rough. I think
it's the that's what you put on the T shirt ultimately, alright,
the transition is rough anytime you're moving people in and

(01:28):
out of a dynamic. Ready, yes, didn't know me say
that already. Yeah, we're recording, Chuck, I have something for you, right.
I am not much of a gossip at all. I
just don't do it. But do you know who does?
Jerry a lot, and she's really vicious. I know it's

(01:48):
just not here right now, but just between the two
of us, I don't gossip. Jerry does, and you should
really watch out for. I heard that she gossips. I'm
not saying that, but I just heard that. I got you. Well,
I've seen her do it. She's gossip to me because
she finds me very important and like to confide to me.
But it's just so vicious. So we just gossiped. We did.

(02:11):
That was play acting, though. The ironic thing was that
I was gossiping about how I don't gossip. That that
came through. Huh, everybody gossips. Yeah, I guess so. I mean,
apparently people gossip way more than they realize. But I
think you're I think gossip is a normal thing. It
has such a bad connotation though that people say like,

(02:32):
I don't gossip, I'm not a gossip but liars. Technically
not necessarily even liars. I think it also as far
as like linguists and psychologists are concerned, it comes from
a misunderstanding of what gossip, what constitutes gossip. Like at
its basic, barest, bare bottomed element, gossip is simply too
or it can be more but a couple of people

(02:55):
speaking about a third person's business while the third person
isn't there. There's another person who's being talked about, boy
isn't there. It doesn't necessarily mean you're talking about how
they're just just what allows you parents. They are sure
spending baby shoe money on gambling rather than gambling in
order to get more shoes. That's bad parenting right there.

(03:17):
There's all sorts of stuff you can say, but you
could also say, actually, that guy is a great dude.
He spends all of his money on nothing but baby shoes.
That's gossip. It is gossip and it's not necessarily harmful.
It's in this case you're you're helping someone else's social
status in other people's eyes. That's still gossip. Yeah, I think, Um,

(03:39):
what's this tracy of stuff you missed in history class?
Wrote this one? That is true? She's always thorough and
uh she included in here something I thought was pretty pertinent,
gossip the rumor. Yeah. Uh, and there are differences, And um, well,
I say there's differences. But if you ask professional als

(04:00):
who study this, and there are weirdos who do that, um,
they will say sometimes now it's the same thing. Or
a rumor is just a type of gossip. Uh, here's
some other distinguishing factors. Gossip is based in fact rumors
are based in hypotheses. Um. I don't know about that one.
That makes sense to me because it kind of ties
in with the last one. Yeah, gossip is a tool

(04:23):
for maintaining social order, which we're gonna talk about at length.
Rumor is a tool for explaining things that people do
not understand. I'm not sure I get that one. Like
there's garbage raining from the sky, it's the government, that's okay.
Whereas if you're like Charles is up on the roof again,
dumping his garbage out on the street. That's gossip technically,

(04:44):
so yeah, or that's just laying it out there. Yeah
yeah true. Uh. And then finally, gossip or late something
people believe has happened, but rumor expresses something people hope
or fear will happen. So I have my own hypothesis
of the distinction between rumor and gossip. It's here, Uh,
rumor is uncurated, gossip rumors any dude walking down the street.

(05:06):
You can be like, there's garbage following from the guy,
and it's the government. There's no bond that's formed there,
there's no requirement of a bond, whereas gossip requires some
sort of connection or you're forming a connection from the gossip,
you know what I'm saying, Or is just for anybody.
Gossip is between confidence to an extent. Yeah, And Tracy
points that out too, And that is why supposedly celebrity

(05:29):
gossip isn't qualified, doesn't qualify as gossip because it's a
third party that doesn't know the others in general, unless
it's you know, Jenniferranison is talking smack about she would
never do that. Oh really, no, she loves Courtney Cock,
there's still friends. Huh. Sure, why doesn't she ever have
around Cougar Town? Then I think she was on cougar Town. Well,

(05:51):
I stayed corrected, although I have no idea because I've
never seen cougar that. Did you hear about what happened
after he's on Cougar Town? I heard she washed her
hair and Evy and her best Shannon Dherty? Yeah, that's right.
Is that a rumor? Gossip? I don't know. We don't
know Shannon Dherty. Uh. And then there are some other
stipulations that researchers point out for a gossip that I

(06:13):
also take issue with. Some of these, Um, the conversation
takes place in private, usually the case. Yeah, if not
like actual private depends on what private mean. You you
everybody's got the shoulders turn. There's like a creation of
a private situation. Yeah, I got you. Uh. People are
saying it as if it were fact, even though it's
not confirmed. That's definitely true. Yeah, but that's not necessarily

(06:35):
the case. That's I take issue with that one. It's
kind of like you were saying, like I heard, but
I haven't checked it out to take it with a
grain of salt. But get this. Yeah, man, uh people, Yeah,
we already talked about that knowing each other. And then
the body language and tone, uh suggests a moral judgment.
That's a big one, you know, like when people use

(06:57):
this tone. But again, that's malicious gossip. Typically there's such
a thing. So this is it should be said, And
Tracy doesn't really say it in this Um I think
she was drinking while she was writing this one. That's
what I heard. Um, she didn't lay out that. There's
really two types of gossip. One is malicious gossip. That's
the type of gossip people think about when they hear

(07:18):
the word gossip. But the other type, the far more
apparently far more prevalent type, is um regular gossip. Yeah,
there's some weird, unsubstantiated stat here that only that five
was malicious. Yeah, among most gossip. Yeah, how in the
world did they pull that out of their key stirt

(07:40):
Here's that's a great question. So they are linguists, historians, uh, anthropologists, psychologists,
people who started studying gossip for a very long time.
Everyone is aware of gossip, but they're like, it's just noise.
It's not to be studied, it's to be ignored and
As a matter of fact, there's this really great article
in The Lantic that talked about gossip and how it

(08:02):
was viewed um and specifically there's this thing in sixteenth
and seventeenth century England didn't like it called scolds bridle,
And if you want to see what a scolds bridle is,
you should check that out online because there are actual
such things. But they're basically iron masks with like points
sticking into the The woman who was accused of gossip's

(08:24):
mouth usually a woman, and she would just have to
wear that and be publicly humiliated. A lot of them
had like a leash leading from them. So I guess
the gossip or the scold is what they used to call,
could be paraded around town, right, Yeah, and also get
the feeling that a lot of women were probably made
to wear those who just talked too much. Yeah, I
would I have the same the same impression because of

(08:46):
the time period of so that's how people typically viewed gossip.
It was something to be stamped out. It was something
that was um very undesirable, and academia treated it the
same way. In World War two came around, and I
think the government saw that there was some real harm
that could be done with gossip, with rumors, and they

(09:09):
wanted to start to understand that. So that kind of
led to the basis of academia investigating what gossip was,
what rumors are, and then um over time organizations got
in on the act because there came this idea that
if the rumor mill or the gossip mill in your
office was really going over time, you needed to stamp

(09:29):
that out. True. They've found the opposite is actually true. Yeah,
they found it can do a lot in a workplace
to keep people in line, uh, either by scaring them
in line or what it What it seems like a
lot of gossip does in that kind of environment is
it establishes like the norms and the culture is expected
out of the bosses. That's like one low level that's

(09:51):
like low level background gossip. If it's peaking and really
working over time, you from what I understand, you're not
supposed to attack the gossips. What you're supposed to do
is be more transparent at the top and then people
don't have reason to gossip. So it's not it doesn't
mean that you have a lot of gossips at your place.
That's a normal human situation. As we'll see, it means

(10:11):
that your managers and the people who are running the
show aren't being open enough for the the hoi polois tastes, right,
see what I mean. Good point, and that was a
big thing that came out of studying it. But to
answer your question I'm about to finish, they study it
by eavesdropping on like people who are talking in cafeterias.
That's about the only way you can yeah, because it's

(10:32):
so spontaneous and it's largely unconscious. Yeah, unless it's you know,
just some dumb pole where you're asking people about gossip
and self reporting poles like that, I don't put a
lot of stuck in you know. Well, actually they're funny
to look at. There's one that found that about we
spend about three quarters of our time gossiping apparently. Yeah,

(10:52):
and that's in the broadest sense of the definition, right,
not necessarily malicious, because about five percent of that supposedly lishes.
But people self report gossiping about they say they spend
about thirty percent of their time. So rather than people
are like, oh, only gossip yea. And all that comes
from eavesdropping on people and then asking them afterwards whether

(11:14):
they gossip. Tracy points out rightfully so that most world
religions have always said gossip is a bad thing, including
the Christian Bible. Uh in Leviticus, thou shalt not go
up and down as a talebearer among the people. Oh,
that was good. By the way, I wanna echo the
kudos that have wrung throughout social media applauding your scary

(11:39):
spider growing redneck man in the Halloween episode. It was
clear as a slack jowled yokel sort of. And my
friend Big John, well, it was good. It was a matchup.
I appreciate that it was Big John in New York. No,
he's in he's in Atlanta. Okay. Um. I actually thought
your your vomit take was the funniest part of the
whole thing, the gag, thank you, thank you. Uh. Jewish

(12:04):
tour always also says so in Buddhism. We've talked about
Buddhism before the eight full Path to Enlightenment. No place
where gossip there, my friend, no way, not if you
want to become one with the universe, no gossiping. And
like like I said earlier too, it's not just the
religious types that are against it. People and remember the

(12:25):
business world kind of started looking in on this, and
they're like, don't gossip if you want to be a
good person, don't gossip and spreading U unless you're spreading
a gossip rumor that we want you to spread. Right,
that's the official company line. Uh. And then there's this dude,
Robin Dunbar, who wrote a book called Grooming, Gossip and

(12:45):
the Evolution of Language, And I looked into this guy.
He he really goes for it. He says that gossip
is the whole reason that we have language, and it
evolved from primates grooming each other and that took so
much time to groom one another and it wasn't efficient.
That language was created in order to not have to

(13:08):
groom one another, and so you would vocal groom, that's
what he called it. So this is kind of a
big deal. Let's let's take a break for a second
because we're pretty deep into this, and we'll talk about
Dunbar and his mad ideas after this, all right, Dunbar,

(13:40):
Dunbar can't put them off any longer. Robin Dunbar, Yeah,
that's a pretty out there theory. I think like Dunbar
is saying we developed language so we could gossip in
in essence, Yeah, the tide of grooming is where he
loses me a bit and vocal grooming. I'm just he
says basically, it was a more efficient way to uh

(14:01):
service your allies rather than grooming one another. Right, So,
I think what he's saying is that when you win
a primate grooms another primate, it's an act of um kindness.
It's saying, like, I'm doing something nice for you. It
gives the other primate who's being groomed an opportunity to
reciprocate and form an even stronger bond. Right, scratch my back.

(14:23):
But it takes a little while to do all this
stuff because you're actually going through the act of grooming,
whereas if you just gossip about somebody, um, you can
do a lot of that same stuff, but just by talking. Yeah,
but I don't get what it has to do with
picking knits out of fur. It's it's I think what
he's saying is it's it developed out of that. It

(14:45):
serves a lot of the same purposes. Plus also, it's
entirely possible that gossip began around the time or I
guess during grooming sessions think about it if you're just
sitting there picking knits out of somebody, or you're just
gonna sit there silently not at start chatting. How how
easy is it going to be to lead to talk talk?
And what he did after he ate that for minute? Apple, Sure,

(15:08):
it's like the barbershop or the beauty shop, right kind of. Um.
There are some different roles though that it does play
in social interactions where I guess the grooming thing comes
into play. UM. Entertaining one another, like you said, uh,
influence on one another, that's a big one. UM, Exchanging
information that's important, uh, And one of the biggest ones

(15:30):
is learning from mistakes that UH linguists point out is
a really big part of gossip or a part of
positive gossip, and that there's oftentimes a moral lesson attached
to it. Yeah, like you don't want this to happen
to you, right, No, exactly, and it kind of um
in that respect, it gets across somebody who's perhaps a

(15:52):
little more established in a group, maybe an older person
like ingratiate yourself, right, But but it's also saying like
I'm a part of this group. You're a little newer
than I am. Let me tell you the story about
what this guy did when he transgressed against the group
and bad things befell him. Like you said, don't let
this happen to you. Don't transgress the group's boundaries, right,

(16:14):
And that's important if you get if you're like a
new hire, they say, a lot of gossip flies. Uh,
Like I remember the movie Big Remember when Tom Hanks
gets hired, Like the very first thing that happens is
John Lovitts comes over and starts talking about all the
gossip of everyone in the office. I don't remember that part.
Oh yeah, he talks about like this lady is easy

(16:34):
and this guy's a jerk, and it's just pretty common.
I think when you get a new job, there's always
someone in there that's like And what they're doing, though,
is they're not just it's not purely they're trying to
help themselves. It's socialization. It's in dr nature. Oh that's
not what I thought you were gonna say. No, Like,
I think they're trying to be like, well, here's a
new ally I can get, right, Yeah, so let me

(16:56):
let me you know. I mean, it's it's there. It's reciprocal,
I guess to a certain degree. Yeah, both people are
getting something out of it. But I mean you make
a good point. The person who is doing the gossiping,
especially in that situation, is setting themselves up as a
like a wise older savior advisor. If you want some information,

(17:19):
Well you'll find though over the years is that usually
the first person who comes up and starts gossiping to
you about how the office works is usually also the
most disliked. You know. That's why they cast John Lovett.
He's great for that. That or the dude with the
forehead the size of a dinner plate who was in
all the eighties movies as that character? Was he the

(17:41):
jerkin big I don't know. Is the dad from Home Alone? No? No, no,
this is um the coked up sidekick from the eighties
with the huge forehead. He was in What About You?
He was the sidekicking mad about you. Oh that guy?
Yeah yeah yeah yeah, same same function. Yeah he's uh
he's in that show now ah with Joey Tribbiani. It's

(18:06):
called Joey, Melissa and Joey. No, he's on the Yeah, yeah,
he's on episodes took great. Does he play himself? Uh? Now?
He plays a jerk? Um uh TV executive perfect. He's exactly.
I love that guy that he's such a good actor. No,
that's what I'm saying. But he always plays that part.
He's definitely he's got that part down. You're right, he's

(18:28):
not a romantic lead. Um. A lot of times. The
feeling of superiority is another big part of gossip, like
I would never do this, um. And Tracy also points
out the old schaden freude, which is one of my
favorite words. It's a good word and one of my
least favorite things. That's you must be very ambivalent about

(18:48):
that word. What do you mean? Well, if you love
it but you also hate what it means, well, let's
got to tear you up inside. Well, I just don't
like someone delighting in someone else's misfortune unless it's a
bad person. Yeah. Could the Jimmy john S guy like
shot his toe off on a big game hunt, Well,
oh yeah, he's a big game hunter. I would probably
think that was kind of you know, I think that's

(19:10):
acceptable shot in Florida, especially if it was just a
relatively minor injury. You know. Yeah, you say shaden shod
and frauda, That's how I say it. So, Chuck, kind
of what a couple of like we've were kind of
dancing back and forth across this line, like going to
the office setting up the first day and having somebody

(19:32):
come over and tell you how the things work. Yes,
there might be a little bit of malicious gossip in there,
but for the most part, that's not bad gossip. That's
neutral gossip, right, But putting someone else down or talking
about how how much superior you are by not you
would never do what they did, that's definitely the malicious variety.
And there's an idea that if gossip evolved, like um,

(19:57):
Robin Leech. Yeah, like, like Robin Leach says in his
post Rich and Famous Career he became an anthropologist, you know,
Um Robin Leach says that if if language evolved as
a means of gossiping, the guy takes it further by saying, Um,

(20:20):
the reason gossip of all, the reason we needed that
in the first place was because we grew out of
these little hunter gatherer bands of like fifteen people, and
as our societies grew larger and larger, and we weren't
as able to be able to keep tabs personally on
others in this group that's getting bigger and bigger, so
you don't know who to trust. You know, if I'm
gonna leave my crops to somebody while I go on

(20:41):
a walk about or something, I need to make sure
that all my crops are gonna be there when I
get back, you know, But I don't really know this guy.
Gossiping serves that function. It's it's like a stand in
for being able to keep tabs on everybody else in
the society, because when you gossip with somebody, you're sharing
a trust, a bond that they're not going to use
that information against you that you shared with them, and um,

(21:04):
so there's a there's a definite element of trust to it.
And when when people gossip in a larger society, they're
they're trusting that the person is either vouching for the
person or they're being warned against trusting that third party. Right,
So it works in that same way that it's like
a it's a means of um keeping tabs on everybody

(21:24):
at the same time. On the other hand, or at
the same time, it's also um a means of social
control because if you know people are gossiping about everybody else,
then surely they're gonna gossip about you too, which means
you better just be an upstanding, upright person. Yeah, there
was this uh this what's his first name, Fineberg, let's

(21:47):
just say Dr Fineberg. Dr Fineberg at Toronto in Toronto,
University of Toronto. He's done some studies and he did
find in fact that basically they did these studies where
they were um, were you were allowed to exclude non
cooperators in like a group work setting. And they found
that you you set them out for one game, like

(22:09):
you've not been playing nicely, so you go sit over
there in the corner, and when they came back, they
were more likely to behave in other rounds. And uh,
if they knew that their behavior was gossiped about people,
sort of like what you're talking about with the staring,
Like if you knew someone was watching you, you would
return the grocery cart. If you know, if you know
someone's gossiping about you, you're gonna tow that line and

(22:32):
get your act together exactly. It's again it's a means
of social control. You know. Who were really really really
good at gossiping. Uh, the Puritans in colonial America, they
were huge, like their whole society operated on gossip and
the encouragement of gossip. As a matter of fact, I
think women were called gossips um and not necessarily negatively.

(22:53):
It's just like there was a really good means of
social control. Not only was God watching you, your neighbors
were too, and they would go tell the preacher, who
would put a scolds bridle on you, and maybe them
too for telling and toss you in the lake. Yeah.
And if you if you drowned, you weren't a witch. Right,
all right, Well, let's take another break and we'll talk

(23:13):
a little bit more about some studies and some other
theories about the origin of gossip. Uh So, fine Berg,

(23:39):
we talked about Dr Tinberg. Okay, I hope he or
she is a doctor, um, but if not, we just
gave him an honorary honorary doctor from stuff. You should
know you people are going to request those now, which
is great, but we can sell them. Uh So. One
thing that he found is that gossip can also relieve you,

(24:01):
um physiologically, Like if you know that you're allowed to gossip,
you won't get as upset about unfair things then if
you had to hold it all in or it's like
a way of setting injustice, right, Yeah, like it's street
justice without like a sawtout shotgun, as Charles Bronson would
dispense it. Right, Uh yeah, good point. Man. Have you

(24:24):
gone back and seen Death Wish recently? It is a
rough movie? Yeah, of course, the same with Death Wish too.
What did you think it was? I mean I remember
seeing movies when I was a kid and just being like,
you know, as a growing up, you're like, this was nothing.
That was something. Those movies were very violent and very disturbing.

(24:45):
You see, Jos Bunsen did not ask questions. No, he
just shot everybody. He did. Man, that was crazy. Why
why did you go back and rewatch Death Wish? You
gotta watch something? Good point? It was on. That's why
got I was like, I haven't seen Death Wishing forever.
When's the last time you saw it? It's been a while.
It's disturbing, especially as an adult. You know what movie

(25:07):
I love? What Charles Bronson movie I love? Is a Mechanic? Well,
that one's good too. Um. What's it called Tin Past Midnight?
Is that right? I think that's on Netflix too. Maybe
there was there was some creepy serial killer, like psycho
sexual killer that he was. He was He's always hunting

(25:28):
some money. He was the Liam Neeson of his day.
That was like supposedly a very very underrated horror thriller,
horror slasher thriller. I'm with you all the way. I
haven't seen it's good though, it's good. I'll check it out.
Very creepy and and I learned, well it's not for
kids because I learned some things in that movie. Oh yeah, yeah.
It's one of those that I can specifically remember. It's like, oh, well,

(25:51):
that's how I know what this is. Charles Bronson will
teach you all about life, whether you want to learn
it or not. I think it was ten past midnight. Um,
all right, sorry about that sidetrack. Where were we? Uh?
We were talking about the origins of gossip. Oh yeah,
there's some Did you read the other article I sent um?
I think it was from the Guardian. I can't remember where.
One of the the theories is that was that was

(26:14):
a BBC that hunting and gathering and foraging was a
big reason gossiping came about, because you had to know,
you had to talk about each other, like you know,
tuk tuk. You know, it's not very good at the hunting.
But he's quite the gatherer, so it helps them organize
in the most efficient way to get things done, because

(26:35):
how is she gonna know unless you tell somebody what's
going on. So that makes sense, No, it is. And again,
if this person, if the if the band is large
enough for the civilization is large enough that the person
can't keep an eye on tuk tuk all the time,
that's how that person will gain understanding of tuk tuk's abilities.
We're tuk talking keeping tabs on poor tuktok uh. And

(26:56):
then the other cool thing I thought was the uh
when we finally learned to harness fire. Uh. This hypothesis
is during the day we were out, you know, trying
to stay alive and doing our thing, finding building shelters,
hunting for food, finding water, and at night when we
finally got fire, well before fire, you would just go
to sleep and rest because it was dark and it's

(27:16):
weird to sit around the dark. But once they had fire,
people literally from the very beginning started sitting around and
talking about their day and kind of gossiping about what happened.
And it's amazing. It's hard to blame anybody if you
think about it, Like, when's the last time you had
a legitimately interesting conversation about fantastical stuff. They're there are

(27:39):
few and far between. For the most part. People are
talking about their day. They're talking about people they work with,
talking about some dude that cut them off in traffic.
They're talking about their immediate experience. So of course you're
gonna gossip. It's this if if the definition of gossip
is talking about people who aren't there every year, right,
everyone gossips, you're going to It's a completely natural thing.

(27:59):
And I'm totally unsurprised by the idea that it started
out at the first campfire and it still happens today.
Apparently there are researchers who studied um bushmen in the
Kalahari Desert in Botswana, and they say that the language
and the stories and the things they say during the
day are completely different than the things they say at

(28:19):
night and around the campfire. And they say, there's really
no reason to think this hasn't always been the case.
That's neat. Um. So you said it still goes on
to day, And we were talking about modern studies of gossiping, right, Um.
One of the there was like a series of studies.
I don't know if they were all from the U
of Toronto or not, but they seem to be somewhat

(28:40):
related where it was. Um outside observers could watch people
playing games and they noticed cheaters. So they had this
information about cheaters that the people playing the games didn't
have about the cheaters. And when they were given the
the chance to let the players know about a cheater,
to send him I think like a gossip note is

(29:02):
what they called it. Um. They they would most people
would take them up on the offer and would send
a note of warning to the person that they were
playing somebody who was cheating. Yeah. Um, and they, like
you said, they went from being really upset and up
in arms to that release valve being undone and everything
was fine with the world again because that person had

(29:23):
been alerted to cheating through gossiping. So there is such
thing as altruistic gossiping as well. Yeah, with altruism. Tracy
had another example of let's say there's like a coral
group and the self appointed leader is really kind of
lazy and if someone UM, then other people are kind
of making up the slack doing the duties that UM

(29:45):
he or she should be doing. So when new comes
in the group, and they say, hey, listen this this
girl Jane is the head of the coral group. But
you should know don't count on Jane to bring the
sheet music for you because she never does it. So
that's sort of altruis stick in the air, helping someone
learn the rules of your new group. But you're also
kind of talking smack and making yourself superior to Jane. Right,

(30:08):
And then so Chasey added this one other thing that
some people would say that the person who's doing that
is really, like you said, just talking smack and isn't
really working towards a solution to the actual problem, which
is Jane being slack at her job. Right, And I wonder,
like that's a really good descriptive of what gossip is.
Like gossip would be talk that's not directed toward any

(30:32):
kind of solution. It's just talking. You know, Like if
you take that same conversation to somebody who can fire
Jane or make her do her job, you would no
one would consider that gossip because it's directed toward a goal,
towards the solution. So I guess, and that's probably one
thing that people don't like about gossip. It's it's really
in a lot of ways it's just blowing off steam.

(30:52):
It's not really serving any direct purpose. They all seem
to be indirect like socializing people. I did now I
need an honorary doctorate from somewhere. You've got one. Um.
And then lastly, chuck um. One of the other things,
especially from malicious bond Um malicious gossip, is that UM,

(31:15):
when somebody it's a very dangerous game. Right, when you're
gossiping with somebody, especially with somebody that you're not super
tight with, UM, you you run the risk of scaring
that person. Because if there's one thing that people do
when they hear gossip, it's they take themselves and put
themselves in that situation. And one of the things that

(31:39):
you will immediately think when you're being gossip too, is well,
this person gossips, so they could very easily be gossiping
about me. How much should I trust this person? And
that's especially pertinent when it's not already like a tight pair,
and when the gossip is malicious you know, good point. Yeah,
well it's not mine. I'm just relating facts. You ever see, Uh,

(32:00):
you've watched that gossip Girl show. No, but there's a
Twitter handle gossip Girl I've noticed what in my research,
and it's like real No, it's like real gossip. Yeah,
I've never seen it either, But it's not real gossip
because it's all celebrity gossip, right. I think that's a
kid's not a kid show show for younger people than me.

(32:20):
It's not for middle aged men. Although I do like
the Blake Lively so well, that was one other thing
too like and I don't. We haven't come out and
said this. Um, there's a definite perception that gossip is
much more prevalent among women. Sure that's not true. No, No,
research shows that men and women basically across the board
equally gossip. It's old white men. Yeah, it's old white

(32:45):
old white men under attack in America. Eleven. You got
anything else? H No, sir, being trolley you know that? Yeah.
If you want to know more about gossip, you can
type that word in the search bar at how stuff
works dot com and it will bring up this article,
complete with totally superfluous illustrations that will baffle the mind. Um,

(33:12):
did you see him? Yeah, it's just weird. I kept
looking like, did I miss a story or something that
relates to that. It became a game I find the
meaning the uh and I think I said search bar,
and I think I said how stuff works. But either way,
it's time for listening. Now. I'm gonna call this Disney

(33:32):
Disney band. Hello, Chuck, Josh and Jerry and Neil. He
really wouldn't Neil the chair, No, Frank was a chair.
I think he means nol probably, so it's just hilarious.
I've been listening for a few months now, binging episodes
like well, I can't see what she says, Um, I

(33:53):
just listened to your part one of fairy Tales and
the last time on my way to work. The reason
I'm writing is about the original Little Mermaid story. When
I was going up, my parents were hardcore Southern Baptist.
During my childhood, the Southern Baptist Convention did not like
that Disney was friendly towards homosexuals and supported evolution, so
they called on all the churches to boycott Disney. So

(34:14):
my parents, a good Southern Baptist that they were, took
everything Disney out of our house and we weren't allowed
to have any Disney clothes or watch the Disney Channel,
and of course no Disney movies. So when the Disney
version of The Little Mermaid came out in nineteen one.
I was in first grade. All my friends watched it,
loved it. My mom was at a loss. Luckily, Golden
Films released their own version of The Little Mermaid, and

(34:35):
my mom bought it. I watched this many times as
a child, honestly thinking this is the only version. Didn't
learn until a few years later when I saw the
original at her friend's house. Um, WoT, I bet she
felt like, I'm watching The Little Mermaid. It's in color. Uh.
This version I saw followed the original story by Hans
Christian Anderson, complete with a terrifying sea witch and the

(34:57):
suicide at the end, which a great movie for a
first grader to see, which started my nightmares. That's about
the time that I started smoking cigarette. So thanks for
all the great side tracking as well as the amazing
content you provide. And that is from Lindsay. Well, thanks
a lot, Lindsay appreciate that. Glad you finally got to

(35:18):
see The Little Mermaid. I like that she thank us
for side tracking. Some people do. Sure, it's pretty infrequent.
People are like just too on point, and then when
they do, I'm like, buddy, you have a long archive
to go through. Yeah, if that bothers you, We've got
a lot of good sidetracks today. And it was ten
past midnight by the way. Nice um. If you want

(35:40):
to get in touch with this, you can tweet to
us at s Y s K Podcast. You can join
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You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at house,
stuff works dot com, and Chuck as always join us
at at home on the web, Stuff Chuck Yet, Stuff
you Should Know Chuck dot com. For more on this

(36:06):
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
H