Selects: 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 this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey everybody, it's Saturday, and I've got to tell
you I heard something about Jerry the other day that
I don't know if I should say, but if you
promise not to tell anyone, I will tell you right now.
She is pretty great. That's called bad gossip. No one
wants to hear gossip like that. The only good gossip

(00:20):
is maybe to say that Jerry is not great for
a list of reasons. But I'm not going to do
that because Jerry is great. But you could listen to
this episode from December, a Christmas episode. It's all about
gossip and it's called How Gossip Works. Welcome to Stuff

(00:40):
you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. 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
let's getting old, it is, man. We need Jerry back.

(01:02):
Where are you, Jerry? Where did you go? I 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, that's a
cute baby, but we can't be you know the old
joke that Jerry could be replaced with a those dipping

(01:23):
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
a threesome becomes to twosome, things get awkward. Yeah, I try,

(01:46):
it becomes a diade, or when it twosome 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. Transition could be rough, I think
is the that's what you put on the T shirt. Ultimately,
al right, the transition is rough anytime you're moving people
in and out of a dynamic. Ready, yes, didn't know

(02:08):
you 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 she's not here right now, but just between
the two of us, I don't gossip. Jerry does, and

(02:32):
you should really watch out for her. 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
likes to confide to me. But it's just so vicious.
So we just gossiped. We did. That was play acting.
The ironic thing was that I was gossiping about how

(02:53):
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, I don't gossip, I'm not
a gossip but liars. Technically, not necessarily even liars. I

(03:15):
think it also as far as like linguists and psychologists
are concerned, it comes from a misunderstanding of what gossip,
what constitutes gossip. That's right, Like, at its basic, barest,
bare bottomed element, gossip is simply too, or it can
be more but a couple of people speaking about a
third person's business while the third person isn't there. There's

(03:38):
another person who's being talked about who 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. There's all sorts
of stuff you can say, but you could also say, actually,

(04:00):
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 the
other people's eyes. That's still gossip. Yeah, I think, um,
what's this tracy of stuff you missed in history class?

(04:21):
Wrote this one? That is true? She's always thorough and
uh she included in here something I thought was pretty
pertinent gossip v rumor Yeah. Uh, And there are differences
in Um, well, I say there's differences, but if you
ask professionals who study this, and there are weirdos who
do that Um, they will say sometimes now it's the

(04:43):
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 for maintaining social order, which we're gonna talk
about at length. Rumor is a tool for explaining things

(05:06):
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 a rumor, okay. Whereas if you're like
Charles is up on the roof again dumping his garbage
out on the street's technically so yeah, or that's just
laying it out there, you know. Yeah true. Uh. And

(05:26):
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, you can be like,
there's garbage falling from this guy and it's the government.

(05:47):
There's no bond that's formed. 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.
Rumbor is just for anybody. Gossip is between confidence to
an extent. Yeah, and Tracy points that out too, And
that is why supposedly celebrity gossip isn't qualified, doesn't qualify

(06:09):
as gossip because it's a third party that doesn't know
the others in general, unless it's you know, Jennifer Ranison,
it's talking smack about Angelina. No, she would never do that.
Oh really, No, she loves courting cocks. They're still friends.
Huh sure. Why doesn't she ever have around cougar Town?
Then I think she was on cougar Town? Well I

(06:29):
stayed corrected, although I have no idea because I've never
seen cougar down. Did you hear about what happened when
she was on cougar Town? I heard she washed her
hair and heavy and water. That's Shannon Doherty? Yeah, that's right.
Is that a rumor? Gossip? I don't know, because we
don't know Shannon dherty. Uh. And then there are some
other stipulations that researchers point out for gossip that I

(06:51):
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 means. 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

(07:13):
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

(07:36):
this tone. But again, that's malicious gossip. Typically there's such
a thing, So this is it should be said. 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 the

(07:56):
word gossip. But the other type, the far more are
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 start?

(08:18):
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 Atlantic that talked about gossip and how it

(08:40):
was viewed um and specifically, there was this thing in
sixteenth and seventeenth century England they didn't like it, called
the 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

(09:01):
was accused of gossip's 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,

(09:22):
I would I have the same the same impression because
of 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. Then World War two came around
and I think the government saw that there was some

(09:42):
real harm that could be done with gossip, with rumors,
and they 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 you that if the rumor mill or the gossip

(10:03):
mill in your office was really going over time, you
needed to stamp 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

(10:24):
the culture is expected out of the bosses. That's like
one low level that's 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

(10:46):
gossips at your place. That's a normal human situation. As
we'll see, it means 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? Yeah,
good point, And that was a big thing that came
out of study it. But to answer your question, I'm
about to finish, they study it by eavesdropping on like
people who are talking in cafeterious. That's how about the

(11:09):
only way you can Yeah, because it's 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
stock 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, and that's in

(11:31):
the broadest sense of the definition, right, not necessarily malicious. Yeah,
because about five percent of that supposed lyst malicious. But
people self report gossiping about they 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 they gossip. Tracy

(11:53):
points out rightfully so that most world religions have always
said gossip is a bad thing. Uh, include in the
Christian Bible. Uh in Leviticus, Thou'll shalt not go up
and down as a talebearer among thy people. Oh that
was good. By the way, I wanna echo the kudos
that have wrong throughout social media, applauding your scary spider

(12:18):
growing redneck man. In the Halloween episode, it was cleardis
a slack jold yokel sort of and my friend Big John, well,
it was good. It was a mashup. 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 tour always

(12:42):
also says so in Buddhism. We've talked about Buddhism before
the eight full Path to Enlightenment. No place for 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 hypes that
are against it. People. And remember the business world kind

(13:04):
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 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 the Evolution of Language. And

(13:25):
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 groom one another, and so you

(13:47):
would vocal groom, that's what he called it. So this
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.

(14:17):
All right, Dunbar, 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

(14:37):
way to uh 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

(14:58):
to reciprocate, INSUREM and even stronger bond. Right, scratch my back.
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

(15:19):
he's saying is it's it developed out of that. It
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, are you just
gonna sit there silently not chat start chatting? How how

(15:41):
easy is it going to be to lead to tuck
tuck and what he did after he ate that for minute? Apple, Sure,
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, influence

(16:01):
on one another. That's a big one. Um. Exchanging information,
that's important, uh. And one of the biggest ones 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,

(16:23):
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 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

(16:46):
you said, don't let this happen to you. Don't transgress
the group's boundaries, right, 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 Be Big,
Remember when Tom Hanks gets hired. Like the very first
thing that happens is John Lovitts comes over and starts

(17:07):
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 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

(17:29):
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 let me you know. I mean, it's
it's they're also 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 sage or advisor, like

(17:53):
I know this place. You come to me if you
want some information. Well you'll find though over the years,
is that you should. The first person who comes up
and starts gossiping to you about how the office works
is usually also the most disliked. Yeah, you know, that's
why they cast John Lovett. He's great for that. That
or the dude with forehead the size of a dinner

(18:14):
plate who was in all the eighties movies as that character?
Was he the 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 About You. He was the sidekicking mad
about you. Oh that guy? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, same

(18:37):
same function. Yeah, he's uh. He's in that show now,
ah with Joey Tribbiani. It's called Joey, Melissa and Joey. No,
he's on the episodes. Yeah, yeah, he's on episodes too, Okay, great.
Does he play himself now? He plays a jerk? Um
uh TV executive perfect, exactly. I love that guy that.

(19:01):
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 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 freuda, which
is one of my favorite words. It's a good word

(19:22):
and one of my least favorite things. That's you must
be very ambivalent about 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, Like if the Jimmy John's guy
like shot his toe off on a big game hunt.

(19:43):
Oh yeah, he's a big game hunter. I would probably
think that was kind of you know, just as I
think that's acceptable shot in freuda, Okay, especially if it
was just a relatively minor injury. You know, you go
shod in. 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

(20:05):
forth across this line, like going to the office, setting
up the first day and having somebody 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

(20:26):
what they did. That's definitely the malicious variety. And there's
an idea that if gossip evolved like um, Robin yeah, like,
like Robin Leach says in his post Rich and Famous
Career he became an anthropologist, you know, Um, Robin Leach

(20:48):
says that if if language evolved as a means of gossiping,
the guy takes it further by saying, Um, the reason gossip,
of 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, we weren't as able to be able

(21:10):
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 going to leave my crops to
somebody while I go on a walk about or something,
I need to make sure that all my crops are
going to 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

(21:33):
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, 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

(21:54):
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 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

(22:17):
you better just be an upstanding, upright person. Yeah, there
was this uh, this what's his first name, Fineberg, let's
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 uh, basically they did these studies
where they were um, were you were allowed to exclude

(22:40):
non co operators in like a group work setting, and
they found that you you set them out for one game,
like 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, the staring, Like

(23:01):
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 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,

(23:22):
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. 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

(23:43):
telling and toss you in the lake. Yeah, and if
you if you drowned, you weren't a witch. All right,
well let's take another break and we'll talk a little
bit more about some studies and some other theories about
the origin of gossip. Uh so, Fineberg, we talked about

(24:19):
Dr Freinberg. Okay, I hope he or she is a doctor, um,
but if not, we just gave him an honorary honorary
doctorate 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, um, physiologically, Like if

(24:42):
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 Saudo shotgun as Charles Bronze I would dispense it right.
Uh yeah, good point. Man. Have you gone back and

(25:03):
seen Death Wish recently? That is a rough movie. Yeah,
of course, 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.

(25:24):
You see, Joles Brunson 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? I
gotta watch something good? Point it was on. That's why
I got you. 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

(25:45):
know what movie I love? What Chardles Brunson movie I love?
Is a mechanic? Well, that one's good too. Um, what's
it called ten past Midnight? Is that right? I think
that's on Netflix. Maybe there was. There was some creepy
serial killer, like psycho sexual killer that he was. He

(26:06):
was he's always hunting 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

(26:27):
I can specifically remember. It's like, oh, well, 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

(26:48):
think it was from the Guardian, I can't remember where.
One of the theories is that I was 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

(27:10):
the most efficient way to get things done, because how
is she going to 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

(27:31):
abilities for tuck tuck keeping tabs on poor tuktok uh.
And 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

(27:52):
to sleep and rest because it was dark and it's
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

(28:17):
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.

(28:38):
And I'm totally unsurprised by the idea that it started
out at the first campfire, of course, 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 night around the campfire. And they say, there's

(29:00):
really no reason to think this hasn't always been the case.
That's neat um. So you said that 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 seemed to be somewhat
related where it was um. Outside observers could watch people

(29:23):
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
what they called it. UM. They they would most people

(29:44):
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 UM, and they, like you said,
they went from being really upset and up in arms
to that release valve being undone and every it was
fine with the world again because that person had been
alerted to cheating through gossiping. So there is such thing

(30:05):
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 he
or she should be doing. So when new comes in

(30:26):
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 altruistic in the you're helping someone learn the
rules of your new group, but you're also kind of
talking smack and making yourself superior to Jane, right. And

(30:47):
then so Tracy adde of this one another 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

(31:11):
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.

(31:31):
It's not really serving any direct purpose. They all seem
to be indirect, like socializing people. I did, now I
need an honorary doctor from somewhere. You've got one. Um.
And then lastly, chuck um. One of the other things,
especially from malicious bond Um malicious Um gossip, is that

(31:52):
UM when somebody. It's a very dangerous game, right, when
you're gossiping with somebody, especially you 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

(32:13):
and put themselves in that situation. And one of the
things that 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.

(32:34):
Good point. Yeah, well it's not mine. I'm just relating facts.
You ever see you ever watched that Gossip Girl show? No,
but there's a Twitter handle gossip girl. I'd noticed in
my research, and it's like real right, No, it's like
real gossip. Really Yeah, I've never seen it either, But
that's not real gossip because it's all celebrity gossip, right.

(32:55):
I think that's a kid's not a kid show show
for younger people than me. It's for middle aged man.
Although I do like Blake Lively, so well that was
one other thing too, like when 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

(33:18):
basically across the board equally gossip. It's old white men. Yeah,
it's old white old white men under attack in America.
You got anything else? Uh? No, sir, being trolley? You
know that? Yeah? Uh. If you want to know more

(33:39):
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, 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 find the meaning? Uh? And I think I

(34:01):
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 Disney band. Hello, Chuck, Josh and Jerry
and Neil. He really wouldn't Neil the chair, No, Frank
was the chair. I think he means nol probably, So

(34:23):
it's just hilarious. I've been listening for a few months now,
binging episodes like uh, well, I can't see what she says. Um.
I just listened to your part one of Fairy Tales
in the last time on my way to work. The
reason I'm writing is about the original Little Mermaid story.
When I was growing up, my parents were hardcore Southern Baptist.
During my childhood, the Southern Baptist Convention did not like

(34:44):
that Disney was friendly towards homosexuals and supported evolution, so
they called on all the churches to boycott Disney. So
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 nine I

(35:05):
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 my mom
bought it. I watched this many times as a child,
honestly thinking this is the only vision. Didn't learn until
a few years later when I saw the original at
her friend's house. Um, boy, I bet she felt like

(35:26):
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 suicide at
the end, which was a great movie for a first grader,
the sea which started my nightmares. That's about the time
that I started smoking cigarette. So thanks for all the

(35:47):
great side tracking as well as the amazing content you provide.
And that is from Lindsay. Well, thanks a lot, Lindsay
appreciate that. I'm glad you finally got to see The
Little Mermaid. I like that she thanked us for side tracking.
Some people do. Sure, it's pretty infrequent people are like
to you on point, and when they do, I'm like, buddy,

(36:08):
you have a long archive to go through. If that
bothers you, We've got There's a lot of good sidetracks today.
And it was ten past midnight, by the way. Nice um.
If you want to get in touch with this, you
can tweet to us at s Y s K Podcasts.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you should know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and Chuck

(36:30):
as always join us at at home on the web
Stuck Chuck, Stuff you Should Know Chuck dot Com. Stuff
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