February 16, 2022 • 26 mins
Welcoming Kelsey McKinney and Alex Sujong Laughlin to the Pod Club! In this week’s episode, host Jo Piazza sits down with the host and the producer Normal Gossip to, you know, gossip. Ever since the pandemic left us bored at home, these two dreamed of filling our ears with the low stakes gossip of regular people. Now that the podcast is out, listen to hear how Kelsey and Alex learned to tell a perfect great gossip story and which podcasts inspired them in the process.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I feel like we should kick this episode of the
Pod Club off with everyone saying, what's the best piece
of gossip that you heard recently? Oh God, Okay, I
need to think, because like I need to think of
something that's not going to incriminated any right. I know
it's a podcast, podcast podcast. Members of the Pod Club
(00:28):
know that I, Joe Pianza love some gossip. I love it.
I love the concept of it. The industry, the art. Yeah,
there's an art. There's an art to good gossip. So
I was very excited when I found out about the
podcast Normal Gossip. Normal Gossip different than than Celebrity Gossip,
even different than like Dealist Celebrity Gossip. Normal Gossip is
(00:50):
a show from Defector Media, co created by host Kelsey
McKinney and producer Alex john Laughlin. The two of them
are a guest today and God, we just like Gossip
Nerd out. It's fantastic. I mean, I really think that
I found my Gossip Nerd soul mates here. I did,
I did. I thought it was Ben wi Coom and
Glennis McNichol, But no, it's Kelsey and Alex. To make
(01:14):
their podcast. Kelsey and Alex have been sourcing juicy pieces
of normal gossip that means like everyday person gossip from
all sorts of people, people all over the world. They
even have a hotline. I love calling a hotline. It's
like when you used to call a phone number and
ask what time it is, or talk to a psychic,
or do other things. Anyway, In each episode, Kelsey relays
(01:36):
one of these normal gossip stories to a guest. I'm
hoping one day I get to be one of these guests.
The storytelling part of it is what makes it so good.
Kelsey really keeps you on your toes wondering what's going
to happen next. I love that. I love some suspense,
so I'm very excited for you to listen to me
picking Kelsey and Alex Brains about what makes a perfect
gossip story. But before nerd ing out about other people's
(02:00):
gossip together, I started us with a little gossip cushion
of our own. Yeah, I have some good gossip, which
is merely that, like, somebody chatted me in a group
chat and said that an executive stood up for a
(02:22):
worker in a public forum, and that was very surprising.
That's nice. I'm trying to be very very vague, but
like that was great and it was totally unexpected, totally.
I recently heard that my one of my neighbors has
a crush on our mailman. I know, I know that's good. Right,
(02:47):
If anything happens, you gotta let us know, No, I will, Oh,
I'll keep everyone updated. I'll see what do you have.
I can only remember the most recent gossip I've received,
because we're now receiving like emails and phone calls full
of soup at all times. And the one I just
got a little while ago was about someone who people
who used to live in the house that she bought,
(03:09):
came and stole the pe and e bush out of
the front yard. Oh, which is so rude. That is
fantastic gossip. Yes, Like, do you see how excited we
just got, Like this is the reason that your new podcast,
Normal Gossip was so needed. Right now, I want to
(03:31):
know what my neighbors are doing behind closed doors. And
that's the kind of gossip that we've missed in the pandemic, right, guys,
So there are hundreds of us just looking up people's
solo listings trying to see what the insides at their
house look like. Very nosy totally, totally. This is why
we brought the two of you, Kelsey McKinney and Alex
(03:53):
s John Laughlin to talk to us about the show
Normal Gossip. Right now, Kelsey, you're the host, Alex, you're
the producer, but this is really a collaborative effort. You
too have created the show together, right, Yeah, that's absolutely right.
I think something we've been talking about a lot, Alex
and I is that producers and the role of the
producer in podcast is extremely downplayed, and so we're trying
(04:17):
to do more things together. That's why we're here together
to talk about the podcast that we are very much creating.
I don't know anything about podcasts. This is the first
one I've ever ever had, um and so Alex has
been my guiding light because she knows everything about them right,
and these podcasts couldn't get made with just a host.
(04:39):
And I want to give a shout out to all
of my producers Emily and Lulu, who are both on
the phone helping me make things right now. You guys
are goddesses and I would be nothing, nothing without you.
So tell me a little bit about how the idea
for Normal Gossip came to be. Kelsey. Last summer, you
(05:00):
wrote an op ed for The New York Times that said,
gossip is not a sin that was sent to me
by maybe a hundred people about how we need gossip,
how gossip matters, and how it's not a dirty word.
Tell us a little bit about that. So this podcast
started because of the peak of the pandemic. I was
(05:20):
like miserable because the only thing I like to do
is gossip about people that I've met one time. And
so I tweeted because I have no ability to control myself,
and was like, someone should simply give me a podcast
and I will call it normal gossip and we will
just tell everyone's gossip to the world as a joke. Um.
And then many people retweeted it, and so we were like, oh, wow, okay,
(05:43):
maybe people would actually like to listen to this. So
I mean I probably tweeted that in like the winter
of I feel like it's been brewing and like percolating
inside of me for a long time. This kind of
question of how you talk about gossip in a way
that is active and interesting and maintains the kind of
like giddiness that you get from it without demonizing this thing.
(06:08):
And so the off ed is kind of in the
same vein right, it's talking about how, um, you know,
gossip is something that people who are not in power
used to protect themselves, and how we have created a
world in which by telling people that talking to each
other is bad, people are able to get away with murder.
And so that's something both literally and figuredly and something
(06:33):
that we that's the goal is to keep it like
light and fun, but to always remember that, like there's
a place for gossip in any conversation, in any room.
And so, Alex, you came into this project as a producer,
and I'm sure that you were like, Okay, how do
we shape this? How do we do this show? You
can't just have someone say I've got this gossip and
(06:54):
the other person say, oh, because you've turned this into
really great narrative storytelling, which is my favorite kind of podcast.
How did you make those decisions to make the show
what it is right now? Early on we had a
meeting where we talked about like what's like the archetypal
like normal gossip story, Like what's the shape of a
(07:14):
normal gossip story. So we identified some things that were
really important to us, Like one of them is that
we're always punching up and not you know, making fun
of people when they're down, So that was really important,
and that like we kind of keep an awareness of
where power lies in any given situation. And then also
like it was really important to us that you know,
(07:37):
these stories were whimsical, fun funny, and unexpected, so they
should have some element of like surprise to them. Kelsey,
do you want to talk a little bit about like
how we put the stories together. Yeah, I think we
toyed a lot with the structure of the show early on.
Um the very first version, like the pilot we had
before we started like thinking seriously, was that someone would
(08:01):
come on and tell me a gossip story and then
I would tell them one back, and very rapidly the
lawyers who work for our company were like, this is
a terrible idea. You cannot have people coming on just
telling gossip willy nilly, like you will get sued into
the ground. So we changed it where I'm the one
that tells them the story, and at the top of
(08:21):
the show we talk about their relationship with gossip and
if they have something vague to tell us, we take it.
But part of that conversation started like how do we
make sure that we protect the people in these stories,
and how do we make sure that we aren't telling
someone's dirty laundry in public in a way that it's
going to get back to them and ruin their lives,
because that is not the goal. The goal is to
(08:42):
have fun, and the goal is to be fizzy and silly.
And so we kind of have a whole process where
we essentially tell the gossip story back and forth to
each other, like the game of telephone, enough that it
then distorts and becomes heightened in the same way it
might after going through six or seven of your friends
of a end. And then we do a run through
where I try to tell her the gossip story and
(09:05):
we find the kinks in it and we fix it.
And then once we have that, we kind of insert
sections where I can ask the guests to weigh in right,
kind of like a choose your own adventure situation where
you can say, okay, what what would you do here?
What would you not do? Knowing full well what the
character in the story is going to do? Anyway, walk
(09:26):
me through the first episode a little bit. Tell me
the story that you guys are telling, because I want
to play a little clip of it for our audience
so they can get a taste of what this sounds like.
This story is like straight from our inbox. We changed
some key details to protect the innocent. Yeah, we did
not have to do much with this one. To be
perfectly honest, It came a wholesale to us story about
(09:49):
group of graduate school people and one of them is
feeling like a little unincluded and doesn't really have good
friends in the group, and she gets invited to go
on a camping train with like the Queen Bee of
her cohort and all of the Queen Bee's friends, and
she very rapidly realizes that the Queen Bee is cheating
on her beloved, wholesome prince of a boyfriend, and she
(10:10):
has to kind of figure out how to continue her
life with this information. And everybody knows. Everybody knows except
for the boyfriend. So she takes Pancake for his like
little nighttime walk, and she gets into the tent and
she goes asleep about it. An hour later, Pancake wakes
her up. He's whining, he's upset, he's doing that like
(10:35):
whimper that really cute small dogs do. So she like
pokes her head out of the tent. Pancake barks. Lex
He's like looking around. She's using her iPhone light right,
you know, because she's not prepared and the only tent
that's lit up is James's. So she like sticks her
little ear out, right, and what do you do? You
(10:57):
have a guest on what she hears? Tell me, Well, virgie,
she hears, you know, she hears some boning, she hears
some sex noises. She's like, oh my god, Alicia is
hooking up in the cold. She has a boyfriend that
everyone likes. Her. Poor dog is in here freaking out.
(11:18):
She's like this is terrible. She can't sleep. Pancake is
pacing back and forth. She's like, this is awful. I
don't know what to do. Eventually she hears like the
little zipper undo and Alicia comes into the tent. The
next morning, they're like having breakfast, packing up the cars,
getting ready to drive home, and Lexi is just like,
I don't know what to do with this, right, Like,
(11:40):
I don't know if I should play it cool. No
one is asking me any questions. I'm not really like
close enough to anyone to tell them anything. And everyone
in this group is so Gossipy that like, what do
you do? As you guys were getting ready to make
this podcast, what else were you listening to? Because I
(12:02):
I'm also an author. I write books, and people ask
me advice about how to write all the time, and
I tell them read. If you want to write, read
And I think the same thing is true for podcasts.
If you want to make a good podcast, listen to
other good podcasts. So I want to know what's been
in your ears for the past year as you've been
developing normal gossip. I listen to How Weekly. It's like
(12:25):
my favorite podcast. It's not exactly what we do because
it's celebrity conversations and real people, but I liked the
kind of happiness that that show has and how they
try not to venture into like the dark, gritty, sad
side of celebrities, that it kind of stays in an
optimistic place, and how you feel, or I feel, at
(12:48):
least when I listened to it, like they're my friends,
which I understand is it's like paras social relationship, but
we wanted that, like we want people to feel like
they're just eavesdropping on my conversation with someone, and so
we're trying to kind of build that tension if this
(13:10):
is someone's first episode of the show, which it's not like, oh,
they talk about celebrity gossip, maybe they'll talk about Rihanna. No,
we can't do that. We have to do the ting
Tings meme that's taking over Instagram and TikTok. The biggest
celebrity news happened four minutes ago, and yet we're like
moving on to the ting Tings meme. It's the most
disruptive virus since COVID. This meme. Yeah, I appreciate who
(13:38):
Weekly because it really does bring joy and that's what
I want in a podcast these days. Who Weekly is
definitely part of that. My podcasts. Let's see. I was
(14:02):
about to say that I have trash taste in podcasts,
but that is insulting to people, and I actually think
like that the podcast that I love, I'm willing to
like go to bad and say that, like, you know,
prestige like highly narrative, highly crafted, high budget shows that
doesn't always mean like really great show or really great
listening experience. They often can be, but they aren't always.
(14:25):
So the shows that have like really just helped me
survive the last year have been like a game of Roses,
which is an absurd Bachelor podcast that has created an
entire universe where they believe that, like the Bachelor franchise
is a sport, you need to like go down the
(14:46):
rabbit hole or like go down the pit is what
they call it. It just it brings me so much joy.
And what I love about it, like production wise, is
that they have really definitely created like listener inside jokes
and they all so sprinkle in sound effects in a
way that I find really delightful, though some people I
think would say is heavy handed. I know nothing about
(15:09):
Game of Roses. Is there an episode that I should
listen to to just get a handle for it? Oh?
My god, Should I start from the beginning? No, it's
so chaotic um for many reasons. There have been more
seasons than usual this year. But they had like a
really brief off season where I think they were doing
(15:29):
like welcome to the Pit of Roses, Roses, just welcome
to Game of Roses. This is pace case. This is
(15:52):
Bachelor Clues, and as you know, there was no Bachelor
last night, so today we have something very special in
dead This is not a recap. This is a segment
where we talked to some people and we drag them
down into the bottom of the pit with us. This
is Welcome to the Pit. Do you guys have any
(16:24):
other podcast to recommend? When we were actually in the
beginning stages of launching Normal Gossip, I was listening to
a lot of back episodes of Another Round, which I
helped produce when I was at BuzzFeed back before we
were all laid off. But like you know, working on
that team was the last time I felt like there
(16:46):
was kind of lightning in a bottle, and I wanted
to remember what it felt like to be working on
something that you know, is not again the most highly
produced show in the world, but it is produced with
care and love and it is like pretty highly edited,
and so that was kind of the sensibility, like aesthetic wise,
that I was hoping to bring to Normal Gossip. For
(17:09):
our listeners that have never listened to Another Round, can
you just fill them in on what it is? Yeah.
Another Round was a podcast at BuzzFeed hosted by Heaven
negat To and Tracy Clayton from I Think it was,
and it was about culture and race and humor, and
(17:29):
they talked to every famous person you could imagine, including
Hillary Clinton and they did their interviews with such like
grace and humor, and I think that show is the
reason why I think a lot of people from underrepresented
backgrounds have gotten into audio. And yeah, it was definitely
(17:51):
like a pathway for me to do you have a
favorite episode? I know it's hard. It's a hard thing,
you know. I think probably the episode I've listened to
the most is actually the first episode with Durga Chu Boss,
because I love Derga as a writer, and I just remember, like,
I remember where I was when I listened to that episode.
I was like in a gym in Washington, d C.
(18:13):
And I was like twenty three and depressed, and it
was winter time, and I just remember being like, this
episode is magic. Jerga was talking about like being the
only brown person in the room and like having people
mispronounce your name all the time. And it has stuck
with me and I go back and listen to it
like probably once a year. Oh my gosh, I love it.
(18:34):
I think that's the exact reaction we want people to
have from podcast. This has made me remember that when
we first started talking about the podcast and talking about
like energy level, right, like how do you maintain a
kind of upbeatness and excitement that is engaging and not
so high that people are like, oh my god, how
(18:56):
many cups of coffee has she had? Alex for me
to listen to Lacey Mosley Scam Goddess, which was a
very influential podcast for us in the like very early
stages of thinking about tone, mainly because I was listening
to it at the gym and like we were both
kind of getting stuck doing squats because we were laughing
(19:16):
too hard, right, like this kind of disruption of your
ability to breathe because you were caught off guard by
like the twists that those stories take that we wanted
to really like steal and capture to create something that
was very similar to that kind of momentum. Yeah, Scam Goddess,
I think is such a great model for us also
(19:36):
because in the show, Lacy, we'll talk about real life
scams that have happened um and like scams, you know,
similar to gossip, can be funny, can be entertaining, can
also be incredibly dark and like people could be like
very materially and emotionally affected, but the show manages to
(19:57):
keep it light and to keep it like a level
of fun that I found really admirable. Oh my gosh,
so funny. Yes, scam got Us was recommended to us
on a previous episode. And also, by the way, can
we talk about how good their theme song is? And
(20:24):
this show. I think I can't recommend this enough because
I don't think it gets nearly enough attention. So I
want to play just a teeny tiny clip and sorry
if now you guys are already very into this show,
but if you're not here, here's another little bit of it,
the fake Aretha Franklin. Have you guys heard that episode?
(20:44):
I'm not sure. Oh, it's good, it's good, all right,
We're gonna play a little bit of that. News that
Aretha Franklin was performing for a fraction of our usual
feet spread amongst Florida club owners like wildfire, they're like
discount rere. We'll take it. On the night of one
sold out performance, a club owner began to suspect something
when he saw Vicky up close and noticed that she
(21:05):
didn't quite match up in pictures. Wow, her voice is gone.
Her voice was phenomenal, but face something that something that
right curious? You know. Vicky nervously shuffled toward the mic
and murmurs spread in the crowd. So this is probably
a crowd of black folks who were like, wait a minute, now,
(21:26):
the TV is maybe in black and white, but we
know where to read. The looks like, yeah, we got
some we got some fall on the antenna for show,
but we were still get a good picture, good enough
picture to notice that it's crackly, but I mean cool,
you hit the bus a couple of times. You Oh,
alright a minute, Well, all right, guys, to close out
(21:52):
the show, I'm I'm gonna make myself very vulnerable right now,
and maybe this will be kind a piece of gossip.
I want to be on your show. Oh my gosh,
I do. I mentioned this on the Pod Club before.
I did. Used to be a celebrity gossip columnist, which
was the most fun you can possibly have if you're
a twenty five year old woman in New York City.
(22:15):
But I have so much good, real people gossip that
I'm just I want to be a guest. I'm just
I'm putting myself out there. I'm I'm putting it into
the universe. So this is the first time that I've
asked a guest of the Pod Club if I could,
if I can come on their show. Wow, honored, we
are on. Well, we're working on booking for season two.
So alright, all right, good good. Definitely keep me in mind,
(22:38):
but I can go through all the formal channels. I
don't want to use any podcast show power that I
have here. Should I call it into your Gossip hotline?
Please call the Gossip Hotline at any hour of the day.
We listened to all of them. If you're listening to
this and you have gossip of any shape or sort,
we will take it at two six seven nine gossip.
(23:00):
Oh my god, how did you get that number? That's incredible.
We we did a lot of Google voice tries, I
guess to find it. I will warn you that the
voicemail box cuts off at three minutes. But if you
just keep calling back, who will listen to all of
them in order, so we'll get through it eventually. All right,
all right, get ready, guys, because I'm calling tonight. I'm
(23:22):
going to have two whiskey sours and then I'm going
to let loose on the Gossip Hotline. Oh my god,
that is my dream. We like talk about what are like.
Our dreams for the podcast are like obviously, we love feelings.
But one of our dreams is like you're out with
(23:43):
your friends at the bar and you're drunk or whatever,
and you're like, holy sh it, we have to call
normal gossip and tell them about this. And my dream
is that we're like getting voicemails from like a loud
bar of like five girls yelling over each other, like
finishing each other's sentences and being like, hey, you forgot
to say this thing, like don't forget he was her uncle.
(24:07):
That's our dreams, so like we want to make that happen.
All right, guys, I make dreams come true on this podcast.
I do. Thank you so much. All right, this is awesome, guys.
I really do love the show. I think you did
a wonderful, wonderful job. And thank you, thank you, thank
you so so much for coming on. We appreciate it
so much. Thank you for having us. That is it
(24:29):
for today's pod Club friends. That's it. Jury is still
out on whether I got myself a guest spot on
their show, but I'm trying because, like I say all
the time, the Pod Club makes dreams come true, and
why shouldn't those dreams be mine? In the meantime, please
go binge all of the episodes of Normal Gossips that
are out there. They're so good, they're so fun and
just freaking refreshing. Let's do a quick recap of the
(24:51):
shows that we talked about today. Who Weekly. We talk
about it all the time. I mean, if you haven't
listen to WHO Weekly, are you even listening to? The
Pod Club? Game of Roses, a new one, another Round,
an old one, but a really good one. Scam Goddess,
which we have mentioned before, but it is definitely worth
mentioning again because it's fantastic and they also have one
(25:11):
of the greatest theme songs of all time. Let's play
ourselves out with it, Goddess. Talk to you next week.
The pod Club is hosted by me Joe Pianza. Our
(25:32):
executive producers are Me Again and Emily Marinoff. Our producers
are Mary Do and Darby Masters. Our associate producer is
Lauren Philip. Our theme and additional music was composed by
Aaron Kaufman. Aaron Kaufman is also our consulting producer and
special thanks to Nikki Tour. He was just a wonderful
(25:53):
human being who I like the think at the end
of episodes,
I feel like we should kick this episode of the
Pod Club off with everyone saying, what's the best piece
of gossip that you heard recently? Oh God, Okay, I
need to think, because like I need to think of
something that's not going to incriminated any right. I know
it's a podcast, podcast podcast. Members of the Pod Club
(00:28):
know that I, Joe Pianza love some gossip. I love it.
I love the concept of it. The industry, the art. Yeah,
there's an art. There's an art to good gossip. So
I was very excited when I found out about the
podcast Normal Gossip. Normal Gossip different than than Celebrity Gossip,
even different than like Dealist Celebrity Gossip. Normal Gossip is
(00:50):
a show from Defector Media, co created by host Kelsey
McKinney and producer Alex john Laughlin. The two of them
are a guest today and God, we just like Gossip
Nerd out. It's fantastic. I mean, I really think that
I found my Gossip Nerd soul mates here. I did,
I did. I thought it was Ben wi Coom and
Glennis McNichol, But no, it's Kelsey and Alex. To make
(01:14):
their podcast. Kelsey and Alex have been sourcing juicy pieces
of normal gossip that means like everyday person gossip from
all sorts of people, people all over the world. They
even have a hotline. I love calling a hotline. It's
like when you used to call a phone number and
ask what time it is, or talk to a psychic,
or do other things. Anyway, In each episode, Kelsey relays
(01:36):
one of these normal gossip stories to a guest. I'm
hoping one day I get to be one of these guests.
The storytelling part of it is what makes it so good.
Kelsey really keeps you on your toes wondering what's going
to happen next. I love that. I love some suspense,
so I'm very excited for you to listen to me
picking Kelsey and Alex Brains about what makes a perfect
gossip story. But before nerd ing out about other people's
(02:00):
gossip together, I started us with a little gossip cushion
of our own. Yeah, I have some good gossip, which
is merely that, like, somebody chatted me in a group
chat and said that an executive stood up for a
(02:22):
worker in a public forum, and that was very surprising.
That's nice. I'm trying to be very very vague, but
like that was great and it was totally unexpected, totally.
I recently heard that my one of my neighbors has
a crush on our mailman. I know, I know that's good. Right,
(02:47):
If anything happens, you gotta let us know, No, I will, Oh,
I'll keep everyone updated. I'll see what do you have.
I can only remember the most recent gossip I've received,
because we're now receiving like emails and phone calls full
of soup at all times. And the one I just
got a little while ago was about someone who people
who used to live in the house that she bought,
(03:09):
came and stole the pe and e bush out of
the front yard. Oh, which is so rude. That is
fantastic gossip. Yes, Like, do you see how excited we
just got, Like this is the reason that your new podcast,
Normal Gossip was so needed. Right now, I want to
(03:31):
know what my neighbors are doing behind closed doors. And
that's the kind of gossip that we've missed in the pandemic, right, guys,
So there are hundreds of us just looking up people's
solo listings trying to see what the insides at their
house look like. Very nosy totally, totally. This is why
we brought the two of you, Kelsey McKinney and Alex
(03:53):
s John Laughlin to talk to us about the show
Normal Gossip. Right now, Kelsey, you're the host, Alex, you're
the producer, but this is really a collaborative effort. You
too have created the show together, right, Yeah, that's absolutely right.
I think something we've been talking about a lot, Alex
and I is that producers and the role of the
producer in podcast is extremely downplayed, and so we're trying
(04:17):
to do more things together. That's why we're here together
to talk about the podcast that we are very much creating.
I don't know anything about podcasts. This is the first
one I've ever ever had, um and so Alex has
been my guiding light because she knows everything about them right,
and these podcasts couldn't get made with just a host.
(04:39):
And I want to give a shout out to all
of my producers Emily and Lulu, who are both on
the phone helping me make things right now. You guys
are goddesses and I would be nothing, nothing without you.
So tell me a little bit about how the idea
for Normal Gossip came to be. Kelsey. Last summer, you
(05:00):
wrote an op ed for The New York Times that said,
gossip is not a sin that was sent to me
by maybe a hundred people about how we need gossip,
how gossip matters, and how it's not a dirty word.
Tell us a little bit about that. So this podcast
started because of the peak of the pandemic. I was
(05:20):
like miserable because the only thing I like to do
is gossip about people that I've met one time. And
so I tweeted because I have no ability to control myself,
and was like, someone should simply give me a podcast
and I will call it normal gossip and we will
just tell everyone's gossip to the world as a joke. Um.
And then many people retweeted it, and so we were like, oh, wow, okay,
(05:43):
maybe people would actually like to listen to this. So
I mean I probably tweeted that in like the winter
of I feel like it's been brewing and like percolating
inside of me for a long time. This kind of
question of how you talk about gossip in a way
that is active and interesting and maintains the kind of
like giddiness that you get from it without demonizing this thing.
(06:08):
And so the off ed is kind of in the
same vein right, it's talking about how, um, you know,
gossip is something that people who are not in power
used to protect themselves, and how we have created a
world in which by telling people that talking to each
other is bad, people are able to get away with murder.
And so that's something both literally and figuredly and something
(06:33):
that we that's the goal is to keep it like
light and fun, but to always remember that, like there's
a place for gossip in any conversation, in any room.
And so, Alex, you came into this project as a producer,
and I'm sure that you were like, Okay, how do
we shape this? How do we do this show? You
can't just have someone say I've got this gossip and
(06:54):
the other person say, oh, because you've turned this into
really great narrative storytelling, which is my favorite kind of podcast.
How did you make those decisions to make the show
what it is right now? Early on we had a
meeting where we talked about like what's like the archetypal
like normal gossip story, Like what's the shape of a
(07:14):
normal gossip story. So we identified some things that were
really important to us, Like one of them is that
we're always punching up and not you know, making fun
of people when they're down, So that was really important,
and that like we kind of keep an awareness of
where power lies in any given situation. And then also
like it was really important to us that you know,
(07:37):
these stories were whimsical, fun funny, and unexpected, so they
should have some element of like surprise to them. Kelsey,
do you want to talk a little bit about like
how we put the stories together. Yeah, I think we
toyed a lot with the structure of the show early on.
Um the very first version, like the pilot we had
before we started like thinking seriously, was that someone would
(08:01):
come on and tell me a gossip story and then
I would tell them one back, and very rapidly the
lawyers who work for our company were like, this is
a terrible idea. You cannot have people coming on just
telling gossip willy nilly, like you will get sued into
the ground. So we changed it where I'm the one
that tells them the story, and at the top of
(08:21):
the show we talk about their relationship with gossip and
if they have something vague to tell us, we take it.
But part of that conversation started like how do we
make sure that we protect the people in these stories,
and how do we make sure that we aren't telling
someone's dirty laundry in public in a way that it's
going to get back to them and ruin their lives,
because that is not the goal. The goal is to
(08:42):
have fun, and the goal is to be fizzy and silly.
And so we kind of have a whole process where
we essentially tell the gossip story back and forth to
each other, like the game of telephone, enough that it
then distorts and becomes heightened in the same way it
might after going through six or seven of your friends
of a end. And then we do a run through
where I try to tell her the gossip story and
(09:05):
we find the kinks in it and we fix it.
And then once we have that, we kind of insert
sections where I can ask the guests to weigh in right,
kind of like a choose your own adventure situation where
you can say, okay, what what would you do here?
What would you not do? Knowing full well what the
character in the story is going to do? Anyway, walk
(09:26):
me through the first episode a little bit. Tell me
the story that you guys are telling, because I want
to play a little clip of it for our audience
so they can get a taste of what this sounds like.
This story is like straight from our inbox. We changed
some key details to protect the innocent. Yeah, we did
not have to do much with this one. To be
perfectly honest, It came a wholesale to us story about
(09:49):
group of graduate school people and one of them is
feeling like a little unincluded and doesn't really have good
friends in the group, and she gets invited to go
on a camping train with like the Queen Bee of
her cohort and all of the Queen Bee's friends, and
she very rapidly realizes that the Queen Bee is cheating
on her beloved, wholesome prince of a boyfriend, and she
(10:10):
has to kind of figure out how to continue her
life with this information. And everybody knows. Everybody knows except
for the boyfriend. So she takes Pancake for his like
little nighttime walk, and she gets into the tent and
she goes asleep about it. An hour later, Pancake wakes
her up. He's whining, he's upset, he's doing that like
(10:35):
whimper that really cute small dogs do. So she like
pokes her head out of the tent. Pancake barks. Lex
He's like looking around. She's using her iPhone light right,
you know, because she's not prepared and the only tent
that's lit up is James's. So she like sticks her
little ear out, right, and what do you do? You
(10:57):
have a guest on what she hears? Tell me, Well, virgie,
she hears, you know, she hears some boning, she hears
some sex noises. She's like, oh my god, Alicia is
hooking up in the cold. She has a boyfriend that
everyone likes. Her. Poor dog is in here freaking out.
(11:18):
She's like this is terrible. She can't sleep. Pancake is
pacing back and forth. She's like, this is awful. I
don't know what to do. Eventually she hears like the
little zipper undo and Alicia comes into the tent. The
next morning, they're like having breakfast, packing up the cars,
getting ready to drive home, and Lexi is just like,
I don't know what to do with this, right, Like,
(11:40):
I don't know if I should play it cool. No
one is asking me any questions. I'm not really like
close enough to anyone to tell them anything. And everyone
in this group is so Gossipy that like, what do
you do? As you guys were getting ready to make
this podcast, what else were you listening to? Because I
(12:02):
I'm also an author. I write books, and people ask
me advice about how to write all the time, and
I tell them read. If you want to write, read
And I think the same thing is true for podcasts.
If you want to make a good podcast, listen to
other good podcasts. So I want to know what's been
in your ears for the past year as you've been
developing normal gossip. I listen to How Weekly. It's like
(12:25):
my favorite podcast. It's not exactly what we do because
it's celebrity conversations and real people, but I liked the
kind of happiness that that show has and how they
try not to venture into like the dark, gritty, sad
side of celebrities, that it kind of stays in an
optimistic place, and how you feel, or I feel, at
(12:48):
least when I listened to it, like they're my friends,
which I understand is it's like paras social relationship, but
we wanted that, like we want people to feel like
they're just eavesdropping on my conversation with someone, and so
we're trying to kind of build that tension if this
(13:10):
is someone's first episode of the show, which it's not like, oh,
they talk about celebrity gossip, maybe they'll talk about Rihanna. No,
we can't do that. We have to do the ting
Tings meme that's taking over Instagram and TikTok. The biggest
celebrity news happened four minutes ago, and yet we're like
moving on to the ting Tings meme. It's the most
disruptive virus since COVID. This meme. Yeah, I appreciate who
(13:38):
Weekly because it really does bring joy and that's what
I want in a podcast these days. Who Weekly is
definitely part of that. My podcasts. Let's see. I was
(14:02):
about to say that I have trash taste in podcasts,
but that is insulting to people, and I actually think
like that the podcast that I love, I'm willing to
like go to bad and say that, like, you know,
prestige like highly narrative, highly crafted, high budget shows that
doesn't always mean like really great show or really great
listening experience. They often can be, but they aren't always.
(14:25):
So the shows that have like really just helped me
survive the last year have been like a game of Roses,
which is an absurd Bachelor podcast that has created an
entire universe where they believe that, like the Bachelor franchise
is a sport, you need to like go down the
(14:46):
rabbit hole or like go down the pit is what
they call it. It just it brings me so much joy.
And what I love about it, like production wise, is
that they have really definitely created like listener inside jokes
and they all so sprinkle in sound effects in a
way that I find really delightful, though some people I
think would say is heavy handed. I know nothing about
(15:09):
Game of Roses. Is there an episode that I should
listen to to just get a handle for it? Oh?
My god, Should I start from the beginning? No, it's
so chaotic um for many reasons. There have been more
seasons than usual this year. But they had like a
really brief off season where I think they were doing
(15:29):
like welcome to the Pit of Roses, Roses, just welcome
to Game of Roses. This is pace case. This is
(15:52):
Bachelor Clues, and as you know, there was no Bachelor
last night, so today we have something very special in
dead This is not a recap. This is a segment
where we talked to some people and we drag them
down into the bottom of the pit with us. This
is Welcome to the Pit. Do you guys have any
(16:24):
other podcast to recommend? When we were actually in the
beginning stages of launching Normal Gossip, I was listening to
a lot of back episodes of Another Round, which I
helped produce when I was at BuzzFeed back before we
were all laid off. But like you know, working on
that team was the last time I felt like there
(16:46):
was kind of lightning in a bottle, and I wanted
to remember what it felt like to be working on
something that you know, is not again the most highly
produced show in the world, but it is produced with
care and love and it is like pretty highly edited,
and so that was kind of the sensibility, like aesthetic wise,
that I was hoping to bring to Normal Gossip. For
(17:09):
our listeners that have never listened to Another Round, can
you just fill them in on what it is? Yeah.
Another Round was a podcast at BuzzFeed hosted by Heaven
negat To and Tracy Clayton from I Think it was,
and it was about culture and race and humor, and
(17:29):
they talked to every famous person you could imagine, including
Hillary Clinton and they did their interviews with such like
grace and humor, and I think that show is the
reason why I think a lot of people from underrepresented
backgrounds have gotten into audio. And yeah, it was definitely
(17:51):
like a pathway for me to do you have a
favorite episode? I know it's hard. It's a hard thing,
you know. I think probably the episode I've listened to
the most is actually the first episode with Durga Chu Boss,
because I love Derga as a writer, and I just remember, like,
I remember where I was when I listened to that episode.
I was like in a gym in Washington, d C.
(18:13):
And I was like twenty three and depressed, and it
was winter time, and I just remember being like, this
episode is magic. Jerga was talking about like being the
only brown person in the room and like having people
mispronounce your name all the time. And it has stuck
with me and I go back and listen to it
like probably once a year. Oh my gosh, I love it.
(18:34):
I think that's the exact reaction we want people to
have from podcast. This has made me remember that when
we first started talking about the podcast and talking about
like energy level, right, like how do you maintain a
kind of upbeatness and excitement that is engaging and not
so high that people are like, oh my god, how
(18:56):
many cups of coffee has she had? Alex for me
to listen to Lacey Mosley Scam Goddess, which was a
very influential podcast for us in the like very early
stages of thinking about tone, mainly because I was listening
to it at the gym and like we were both
kind of getting stuck doing squats because we were laughing
(19:16):
too hard, right, like this kind of disruption of your
ability to breathe because you were caught off guard by
like the twists that those stories take that we wanted
to really like steal and capture to create something that
was very similar to that kind of momentum. Yeah, Scam Goddess,
I think is such a great model for us also
(19:36):
because in the show, Lacy, we'll talk about real life
scams that have happened um and like scams, you know,
similar to gossip, can be funny, can be entertaining, can
also be incredibly dark and like people could be like
very materially and emotionally affected, but the show manages to
(19:57):
keep it light and to keep it like a level
of fun that I found really admirable. Oh my gosh,
so funny. Yes, scam got Us was recommended to us
on a previous episode. And also, by the way, can
we talk about how good their theme song is? And
(20:24):
this show. I think I can't recommend this enough because
I don't think it gets nearly enough attention. So I
want to play just a teeny tiny clip and sorry
if now you guys are already very into this show,
but if you're not here, here's another little bit of it,
the fake Aretha Franklin. Have you guys heard that episode?
(20:44):
I'm not sure. Oh, it's good, it's good, all right,
We're gonna play a little bit of that. News that
Aretha Franklin was performing for a fraction of our usual
feet spread amongst Florida club owners like wildfire, they're like
discount rere. We'll take it. On the night of one
sold out performance, a club owner began to suspect something
when he saw Vicky up close and noticed that she
(21:05):
didn't quite match up in pictures. Wow, her voice is gone.
Her voice was phenomenal, but face something that something that
right curious? You know. Vicky nervously shuffled toward the mic
and murmurs spread in the crowd. So this is probably
a crowd of black folks who were like, wait a minute, now,
(21:26):
the TV is maybe in black and white, but we
know where to read. The looks like, yeah, we got
some we got some fall on the antenna for show,
but we were still get a good picture, good enough
picture to notice that it's crackly, but I mean cool,
you hit the bus a couple of times. You Oh,
alright a minute, Well, all right, guys, to close out
(21:52):
the show, I'm I'm gonna make myself very vulnerable right now,
and maybe this will be kind a piece of gossip.
I want to be on your show. Oh my gosh,
I do. I mentioned this on the Pod Club before.
I did. Used to be a celebrity gossip columnist, which
was the most fun you can possibly have if you're
a twenty five year old woman in New York City.
(22:15):
But I have so much good, real people gossip that
I'm just I want to be a guest. I'm just
I'm putting myself out there. I'm I'm putting it into
the universe. So this is the first time that I've
asked a guest of the Pod Club if I could,
if I can come on their show. Wow, honored, we
are on. Well, we're working on booking for season two.
So alright, all right, good good. Definitely keep me in mind,
(22:38):
but I can go through all the formal channels. I
don't want to use any podcast show power that I
have here. Should I call it into your Gossip hotline?
Please call the Gossip Hotline at any hour of the day.
We listened to all of them. If you're listening to
this and you have gossip of any shape or sort,
we will take it at two six seven nine gossip.
(23:00):
Oh my god, how did you get that number? That's incredible.
We we did a lot of Google voice tries, I
guess to find it. I will warn you that the
voicemail box cuts off at three minutes. But if you
just keep calling back, who will listen to all of
them in order, so we'll get through it eventually. All right,
all right, get ready, guys, because I'm calling tonight. I'm
(23:22):
going to have two whiskey sours and then I'm going
to let loose on the Gossip Hotline. Oh my god,
that is my dream. We like talk about what are like.
Our dreams for the podcast are like obviously, we love feelings.
But one of our dreams is like you're out with
(23:43):
your friends at the bar and you're drunk or whatever,
and you're like, holy sh it, we have to call
normal gossip and tell them about this. And my dream
is that we're like getting voicemails from like a loud
bar of like five girls yelling over each other, like
finishing each other's sentences and being like, hey, you forgot
to say this thing, like don't forget he was her uncle.
(24:07):
That's our dreams, so like we want to make that happen.
All right, guys, I make dreams come true on this podcast.
I do. Thank you so much. All right, this is awesome, guys.
I really do love the show. I think you did
a wonderful, wonderful job. And thank you, thank you, thank
you so so much for coming on. We appreciate it
so much. Thank you for having us. That is it
(24:29):
for today's pod Club friends. That's it. Jury is still
out on whether I got myself a guest spot on
their show, but I'm trying because, like I say all
the time, the Pod Club makes dreams come true, and
why shouldn't those dreams be mine? In the meantime, please
go binge all of the episodes of Normal Gossips that
are out there. They're so good, they're so fun and
just freaking refreshing. Let's do a quick recap of the
(24:51):
shows that we talked about today. Who Weekly. We talk
about it all the time. I mean, if you haven't
listen to WHO Weekly, are you even listening to? The
Pod Club? Game of Roses, a new one, another Round,
an old one, but a really good one. Scam Goddess,
which we have mentioned before, but it is definitely worth
mentioning again because it's fantastic and they also have one
(25:11):
of the greatest theme songs of all time. Let's play
ourselves out with it, Goddess. Talk to you next week.
The pod Club is hosted by me Joe Pianza. Our
(25:32):
executive producers are Me Again and Emily Marinoff. Our producers
are Mary Do and Darby Masters. Our associate producer is
Lauren Philip. Our theme and additional music was composed by
Aaron Kaufman. Aaron Kaufman is also our consulting producer and
special thanks to Nikki Tour. He was just a wonderful
(25:53):
human being who I like the think at the end
of episodes,
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