The Art Of Gossip

Summary

All Of It - Episode Summary: "The Art Of Gossip"

Host: Alison Stewart
Guest: Kelsey McKinney
Release Date: February 25, 2025
Duration: 14:57 minutes

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Introduction

In this episode of All Of It, host Alison Stewart delves into the complex world of gossip with author and former podcast host Kelsey McKinney. Drawing from McKinney's book, You Didn't Hear This From Me: Notes on the Art of Gossip, the conversation explores the multifaceted nature of gossip, its role in human relationships, and its evolving presence in the digital age.

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Kelsey McKinney’s Relationship with Gossip

Timestamp: 02:26

Kelsey McKinney shares her personal journey with gossip, reflecting on how her perception has evolved over time. Initially viewing gossip with shame and as a negative behavior, McKinney's extensive research and experience led her to a more nuanced understanding.

Kelsey McKinney [02:26]: "My relationship with gossip is kind of like your relationship with a potluck freshman year roommate where I'm like, I know everything about you, and also, I want to be away from you for more than one minute."

She likens gossip to a double-edged sword—something inherently neutral that can be wielded for both good and ill, much like a tool without inherent morality.

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Anthropological Insights into Gossip

Timestamp: 04:13

McKinney discusses the anthropological perspective on gossip, highlighting its role in human bonding and societal structures. Citing anthropologists, she explains how gossip serves as a social glue, fostering connections among individuals.

Kelsey McKinney [04:23]: "You don't gossip with your enemies. You don't. You gossip with people that you do like."

Gossip, in this context, acts as a means of sharing secrets and building intimacy, contributing to stronger interpersonal relationships.

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Gossip and Artificial Intelligence: An Experiment with ChatGPT

Timestamp: 04:59

In an intriguing segment, McKinney recounts her attempt to engage ChatGPT in gossip. Initially met with resistance, the AI eventually demonstrated an understanding of gossip's conversational tone by reimagining the Epic of Gilgamesh with gossip-like dialogue.

Kelsey McKinney [06:46]: "It was saying like, spill the tea and listen up, honey. And like all of these, like really particular phrases that it hadn't been using before."

This experiment underscores the inherently human qualities of gossip and raises questions about whether artificial intelligence can truly replicate such nuanced social behaviors.

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Morality and Personal Experiences with Gossip

Timestamp: 09:37

McKinney delves into the moral implications of gossip, shaped by her upbringing in an evangelical household where gossip was unequivocally deemed sinful.

Kelsey McKinney [09:52]: "The evangelical church has a pretty black and white perception of gossip in that they view it as a sin full stop... I had to overcome that a lot."

She reflects on the complexity of gossip, recognizing that while it can be harmful, it also has the potential to be used constructively. This duality challenges the simplistic moral judgments often associated with gossip.

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The Evolution of Gossip in the Digital Age

Timestamp: 12:55

The discussion shifts to the transformation of gossip with the advent of digital media. McKinney compares traditional gossip columns, like those of Hedda Hopper, to today's instantaneous and unfiltered celebrity communications via social media platforms.

Kelsey McKinney [13:10]: "The power has shifted a little bit and we no longer have that discretionary mouthpiece to say, like, here are some caveats that I have for this information."

This shift has democratized gossip, giving celebrities direct control over their narratives but also complicating how the public discerns truth amidst rampant online chatter.

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Personal Anecdote: Hearing Impairment and Perception of Gossip

Timestamp: 11:18

McKinney shares a personal story about being deaf in one ear, illuminating how her altered hearing has affected her interpretation of gossip.

Kelsey McKinney [11:44]: "Even though I know that I'm often wrong and that my senses deceive me, my brain is so confident in what I've heard."

This experience highlights the unreliable nature of gossip, as our perceptions can be easily distorted, leading to misunderstandings and miscommunications.

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Conclusion

Throughout the episode, Alison Stewart and Kelsey McKinney navigate the intricate landscape of gossip, uncovering its roles in human connection, its ethical dimensions, and its transformation in the modern era. McKinney's insights challenge listeners to rethink their views on gossip, recognizing it as an inherent part of culture that, when understood and managed, can have both positive and negative impacts.

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Notable Quotes

• Kelsey McKinney [02:26]: "My relationship with gossip is kind of like your relationship with a potluck freshman year roommate where I'm like, I know everything about you, and also, I want to be away from you for more than one minute."

• Kelsey McKinney [04:23]: "You don't gossip with your enemies. You don't. You gossip with people that you do like."

• Kelsey McKinney [06:46]: "It was saying like, spill the tea and listen up, honey."

• Kelsey McKinney [09:52]: "The evangelical church has a pretty black and white perception of gossip in that they view it as a sin full stop... I had to overcome that a lot."

• Kelsey McKinney [13:10]: "The power has shifted a little bit and we no longer have that discretionary mouthpiece to say, like, here are some caveats that I have for this information."

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About the Podcast

All Of It is a WNYC show that explores culture in all its dimensions. Hosted by Alison Stewart, the show engages with thinkers, doers, makers, and creators to uncover the "what and why" behind their work, fostering a diverse and vibrant community of listeners and guests.

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Note: This summary omits all advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections to focus solely on the substantive discussions about gossip.

Transcript

[Alison Stewart]

All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates for multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

[Kelsey McKinney]

Listener Supported WNYC Studios.

[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We continue our conversation on how we communicate with one another. You didn't hear this from me. As a book devoted to hearsay, canards, tales and all the forms of gossip from the Bible to Britney spears, author Kelsey McKinney looks at the anthropological, social and moral values of talking. Ish. She writes, gossip is a morphing chameleon of a word whose meaning shifts in every conversation the way a kaleidoscope changes with every twist, later adding, we want to separate ourselves from gossip at the same time we want to drown in it. We want the truth, all of it. Not told slant until suddenly we don't. Kelsey knows a lot about gossip. She was raised by an evangelical family and was a subject of gossip herself. You can read about it in you didn't hear this from me. Notes on the Art of gossip. Kelsey McKinney's a reporter. Until recently, she was the of the acclaimed podcast Normal Gossip and she joins me now. Hi Kelsey.

[Kelsey McKinney]

Hi Alison. Thanks so much for having me.

[Alison Stewart]

We are so glad to have you. Hey listeners, what is the best piece of gossip that you have heard? We are all ears. 2124-339692-21243. WNYC or maybe you want to tell us whether you're pro or you're against gossip. When has gossip helped you out? When it is? When does it hurt you? What do you tell your kids and friends about gossip There different kinds of gossip. Gossip is the subject. 2124-339692-21243. WNYC. You can call in and join us on air or you can text to us at that number. Okay, this is the question. You're all of your podcast guests. It has now come to you. What is your relationship with gossip?

[Kelsey McKinney]

Thank you so much for asking. You know, my relationship with gossip has been through its ups and downs throughout my life. You know, I started off believing that it was a and feeling really ashamed of it. And I would say now that I've written a book and hosted a podcast about gossip and think about it 24 7, my relationship with gossip is kind of like your Relationship with a potluck freshman year roommate where I'm like, I know everything about you, and also, I want to be away from you for more than one minute.

[Alison Stewart]

It's interesting when you pose that question to people on the podcast, what was their reaction?

[Kelsey McKinney]

I think when we first started doing the podcast, which was several years ago now, people were really kind of stunned by the question because they would surprise themselves when they answered it. They would say, oh, I love gossip. And then they would kind of keep talking and wind themselves into a question about whether or not they actually did. And I always found that very fascinating because you can kind of tell a lot about how little we think about this thing that we do all the time by that problem.

[Alison Stewart]

Well, how has your relationship to gossip changed throughout the writing of the book?

[Kelsey McKinney]

I, you know, I went into this book with a really clear thesis. Like, I went into researching and reading all these studies and writing this book about gossip with this idea that gossip was unfairly maligned and that we thought of it as bad, when in reality it was something that could be used for good. And the problem with that thesis is that it was really simple. And gossip is a really, really complicated thing that does a lot of different things in our life and in our soc. In our history. And so as I researched and read, I ended up at a kind of more complicated stance on gossip, which is that I view it as a tool. It's like a hammer, something you can use for good or evil, but not. It doesn't contain a morality within itself.

[Alison Stewart]

You quote many anthropologists in your book, and one said gossip can actually bring humans closer together. How so?

[Kelsey McKinney]

Well, you don't gossip with your enemies, do you?

[Alison Stewart]

Not really like.

[Kelsey McKinney]

You don't. You don't gossip with people you dislike. You gossip with people that you do like. And often when you tell someone a really good piece of gossip, if you ask them, like, who are you most excited to tell this to? It's the people closest to them. We share secrets with people that we care about, and so it does bind you together, even if it binds you against someone else. And, you know, there are a lot of really interesting scientific studies that show that gossiping with one another can even lower our heart rates, that there's something calming about talking to someone that you feel really, intimately with.

[Alison Stewart]

You do a really interesting experiment. You try to get chatgpt to gossip, and you find out it really is. It's a very much a human thing. First of all, what happens when you try to get chatgpt to gossip with you?

[Kelsey McKinney]

Well, you know, I don't respect ChatGPT very much and that's my bias. But I went in and I asked the program, like, will you gossip with me? Will you tell me a gossip? And the program said, no, I won't do that. Gossip's immoral. Here's eight reasons why. And at this point, I had been thinking about this book and writing this book for several years. And so I responded to the program and I said, no, it's not like, here are my reasons why you're wrong. And the computer immediately backtracked and was like, you're right, gossip can be used for good. And I was like, okay, we're getting nowhere in this conversation. Like, you're just going to agree with me or you're not. And so I tried to get it to tell me gossip. I was like, well, could you just tell me one story? And it was like, no, I won't tell you any stories. And so then I was getting frustrated and I was like, well, it. Would you tell me something in what you think gossip sounds like? So I used the Epic of Gilgamesh, which I love. I think it's an incredible story. And So I asked ChatGPT to tell me the story of Gilgamesh as if it were gossiping. And what was really interesting about it was that embodied this kind of tone and vocabulary that we associate with gossip in telling the story, right? Terms that are really common amongst women and people of color and queer people. You know, it was saying like, spill the tea and listen up, honey. And like all of these, like really particular phrases that it hadn't been using before. This perception by the artificial intelligence that what gossip really is is a tone that's so interesting.

[Alison Stewart]

It makes me wonder if, you know, does the Internet really a male based entity that ChatGPT pulls from?

[Kelsey McKinney]

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think the majority of the biases against gossip are biases against women and people without power. This idea that, like, gossip is something frivolous and silly that we do and that it doesn't really matter. And so it's unsurprising to me that when you ask ChatGPT to tell you a story as if it's gossiping, it can't envision, for example, the voice of like a sportscaster, even though often sportscasters are gossiping.

[Alison Stewart]

We're talking to Kelsey McKinney. The name of her book is, you didn't hear this from me, Notes on the art of Gossip. By the way, she'll be in conversation with Josh Gondelman at the Fillmore in Philly on the 27th of February. Let's talk about morality in gossip. I wanna play a clip from the recent SNL50. It's a reoccurring sketch about famous people's friends. And in this, the couple are supposed to be Lorne, Michael's best friends from childhood. That's question. And everything's great. And he's great until they start gossiping. Let's listen.

[Kelsey McKinney]

What's Lauren really like?

[Alison Stewart]

Oh, he's the best. He's, like, relaxed and chill.

[Kelsey McKinney]

Yeah, he's super down to earth and approachable. Like, we just love gossip. He's our buddy. He's our long. Totally. Yeah. I will say, sometimes he can be a little rude.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah.

[Kelsey McKinney]

Yeah. Like a month ago, he asked us to help him move. And we're like, sure, of course. Help you move. Have like, a little dinner or whatever. So we get there, Lauren opens the door, and he's like, oh, you two.

[Alison Stewart]

And we're like, what?

[Kelsey McKinney]

You invited us. You asked us to be here.

[Alison Stewart]

So we look around. Nothing's packed.

[Kelsey McKinney]

Nothing's packed. What?

[Alison Stewart]

What?

[Kelsey McKinney]

You haven't even started yet. Okay, okay. Then he starts pointing at paintings and.

[Alison Stewart]

Saying, like, oh, this is from Steve. This is from Paul. This is from Mick.

[Kelsey McKinney]

Yeah.

[Alison Stewart]

And it's like, does he mean Mick Jagger?

[Kelsey McKinney]

Just say it.

[Alison Stewart]

Just say it. Where does that fall on the range of gossip for you?

[Kelsey McKinney]

I love this kind of gossip. I think it's so funny we're seeing this right now. Also in the new White Lotus season, there's a, like, triad of people who are constantly talking about each other behind each other's backs. It's so funny. But I think it's really fascinating because we know that people do this, right? We know that within friendship, for every beautiful, intimate conversation you have, there's also a moment where your close friends are texting each other, being like, can you believe that she's freaking out about this? Like, it's so ridiculous. And I think that that's kind of beautiful in a way. Like, it's funny. And it can be scary to think about people talking about us behind our backs. But I think that part of maintaining a really lifelong friendship is being able to say, like, this person is annoying me.

[Alison Stewart]

You write a bit about your life in this book. You didn't hear this from me. You grew up in an evangelical home. You know, how did the church shape you in terms of speaking about others and also speaking when you heard others speaking about you?

[Kelsey McKinney]

Sure, yeah. I mean, I grew up very evangelical. And the evangelical church has a pretty black and white perception of gossip in that they view it as a sin full stop, which means that it's on par with like adultery and murder and not like dancing something that could be like, questionably a sin or not. And so I was often in trouble as a child and a teen because it is like in my body to gossip, right? I want to do it so badly and I'm so good at it. And so it was very difficult for me to be constantly told, like, you shouldn't be doing this. This is like, hurtful. It's very bad. And, you know, as I've grown up, I've been able to see that in a much more like, broad perspective. You know, much of the Bible, much of the New Testament is written by Paul, who was not a first person observer of the gospel. And so in some ways, all of it is gossip, which I find really beautiful. And I had to, you know, overcome that a lot. I had to kind of think about what morality looked like outside of something that was so easily black and white. And I think part of what's so complicated with gossip and part of what people struggle with is that it's not that easy. It's not that easy to say like, oh, just never ever talk about anyone, because sometimes talking about other people helps them. Right. If someone tells you, you know, your neighbor doesn't have enough money to get groceries this month, that's gossip that you use for good. And so it's more complicated than we want it to be.

[Alison Stewart]

And during your life, you had surgery on your ear and you actually, you're deaf in one ear, is that correct?

[Kelsey McKinney]

Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. It's kind of ironic that I ended up in audio.

[Alison Stewart]

Well, what did that teach you about how people say things? Because for a while it must have been hard to tell. Am I hearing this right? Am I hearing this the right way?

[Kelsey McKinney]

Yeah. So I'm completely deaf in one ear, which means that it's really hard for me to filter out background noise. But what's interesting about that is that even though I know that I can't hear things correctly and I know that my ability to hear is half of what most people's is, my confidence is not really diminished. Like, if you and I were walking down the street and I overheard someone say something thing, I would be like, oh, my God, did you hear what that guy said? He's at this. And 50% of the time, the person I'm with will be like, that's not what that person said. Which is like, a really interesting problem because even though I know that I'm often wrong and that my senses deceive me, my brain is so confident in what I've heard. And I was really, like, enchanted with this because eavesdropping is so much a part of gossip. It's like listening to what other people are saying without their permission. And scientists have found with all of our senses that they betray us constantly, that we think we hear and see exactly what we hear and see, but our eyes and ears are not video recorders. Like, we can't remember everything perfectly. Everything gets filtered through, like, our biases and our opinions, which is fascinating.

[Alison Stewart]

You know, once upon a time in Hollywood, the gossip column was the way things were done. Hedda Hopper would have reached 35 million people with her column today. We have lawsuits between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni based partly on gossip. How. Yeah, is it different?

[Kelsey McKinney]

How is it the same Hollywood? Yeah, I think, you know, it is different in some ways in that when Hedda Hopper was working, the only way for celebrities to communicate with the public was through a mouthpiece. And this was true for a really long time. Right. If you wanted to talk to the American public, you needed to go on late night television or you needed to call People magazine or you needed to call Hedda Hochberg. Right. And that was like the kind of filtering device for information to the public that' true anymore. Right. You can go live on Instagram right now as a celebrity and tell your fans everything they want to know, and then that is going to end up being covered by those gossip magazines. So the power has shifted a little bit and we no longer have that discretionary mouthpiece to say, like, here are some caveats that I have for this information. Here are some things I think are maybe not true. And that also means that celebrities aren't really being pushed on the narratives that they're putting out there because they're coming straight from them, which I think is really interesting. It has pros and cons, right. It's good for the celebrities. In some ways, they have more power in the stories that they're telling. But it also gives you a problem where, for example, in the Baldoni and Lively situation, you have two people yelling constantly in public, and that makes it really hard for consumers to figure out what they think about something.

[Alison Stewart]

The name of the book is, you didn't hear this from me, Notes on the Art of Gossip. It is by Kelsey McKinney. Kelsey, thanks for your time today.

[Kelsey McKinney]

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. How do you make an Airbnb? A vrbo. Picture a vacation rental. Now imagine that every time you stay there, you earn rewards towards your next trip. Congrats. Now you're in a vrbo. Make it a vrbo. Onekeycash is not redeemable for cash and can only be used on Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo.

[Alison Stewart]

I'm Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, our team has been reporting high quality news about science, technology and medicine. News you won't get anywhere else. And now that political news is 24 7, our audience is turning to us to know about the really important stuff in their livescancer climate change, genetic engineering, childhood diseases. Our sponsors know the value of science and health news. For more sponsorship information, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.