2:00

dumb dumb who sucked on the wrong part of the bong. No,

2:02

no, no, no. It was like... Wendy's a

2:04

cool druggy. Yeah, Wendy's a cool druggy

2:06

who smokes bongs on the weekend with

2:08

the vibe. Yeah. Yeah.

2:11

Oh

2:11

my god. Do I know how to smoke a bong

2:13

now? That's the question. Rip

2:16

a bong? That's a man. That's a man,

2:18

Zach! You know, I'm right there with you. They're intimidating. They're

2:20

so big. You don't

2:22

need something that big. They're so... You're doing

2:24

that! When was the last time you knew you were the

2:26

target of Gossip? Okay,

2:34

so the time that sticks out the most for my entire

2:37

life is in high school. I

2:39

was at a music festival with a bunch

2:41

of people who I was friends

2:43

with sort of going in and then realized

2:47

along the trip that maybe we actually weren't friends

2:49

at all. Oh no! There

2:51

was one person who was there who

2:53

we had never been friends. It was like a friend of a friend situation.

2:57

And I got a text from him partway through

2:59

that said, do you like tech?

3:02

But sent to me and I just

3:04

said, LOL no. And

3:08

he said me either. And

3:10

I was like, totally. And then that was

3:12

just kind of that. What? Wait,

3:16

he never was like, oh, sorry, Tuck.

3:19

I think you're overestimating the emotional intelligence

3:21

of high school students. No, it was never the best

3:23

ever again. Right. Oh

3:26

man, that's so...

3:28

That's heartbreaking. Sorry, I

3:30

got the last laugh. We're

3:34

talking about it on this podcast right now. Exactly.

3:38

Exactly.

3:42

Okay, so Gossip

3:45

feels like this trivial

3:47

thing. Maybe it feels even

3:49

silly to some of our audience. But

3:52

the thing is, we have been doing this for thousands

3:55

of years, probably more. And

3:58

in fact, there have been these... horrific

4:00

punishments

4:02

throughout history for gossiping, particularly

4:04

given to women.

4:05

So I'm just gonna send you

4:08

a picture, and

4:10

I want you to describe it. Oh my

4:12

gosh, Wendy, what am I looking at? It's

4:15

like a metal mask that

4:21

partially covers the face,

4:23

that covers the nose, and then there's

4:25

like a jagged sort of jack-o'-lantern

4:28

Halloween-style mouth, and

4:31

then coming up from the top

4:33

is this little extension up

4:36

that has a bell hanging off

4:38

it. So this very

4:41

creepy mask is called a Skuld bridal. It

4:44

came from 1500s Britain. It's

4:47

spread throughout Europe. It sometimes includes

4:50

a spiked metal tongue that

4:53

makes it impossible to speak, and

4:55

women would be paraded around in this

4:57

mask

4:58

to be publicly shamed, and that is exactly

5:00

what the bell is there for, to draw attention

5:02

to this horrific gossiper.

5:06

It also looks

5:07

very cool and kind of kinky,

5:10

so I think we should bring them back, but like

5:12

in a fun hot way, you know what I mean?

5:14

I do, I

5:16

hear that as well. I hear that as well. It's

5:18

both terrifying and like, hello. Now

5:21

despite these horrific punishments, and

5:25

the fact that even today, being known

5:28

as a gossip can mess with your reputation, many

5:30

of us still love to

5:31

do it, and that is what we are

5:33

exploring on today's episode. Like

5:36

we are digging into the science of

5:38

gossip to find out, one,

5:40

who gossips, so are

5:42

women really more likely to do it than men? Two,

5:46

what is happening inside our brains as

5:49

we gossip?

5:50

And three, finally, we're

5:52

gonna look into why we are

5:54

doing this at all. Like why do

5:56

we love hearing and talking

5:59

about...

5:59

other people's business. It's weird.

6:02

It's weird,

6:03

yet we keep doing it. So

6:05

all that and more is coming up just after

6:07

the break.

6:07

I'm so excited.

6:15

Duck, Duck, Ghost.

6:18

This game doesn't work with two people, Jeff.

6:20

Also, we're 40. Fine.

6:21

I'll play this Ohio Lottery holiday

6:23

gold scratch-off. Yeah, it could be worth a million dollars.

6:26

I'll play that. Or maybe I'll play Mary

6:28

and Bry. It's the first ever $30 holiday

6:30

game and I could win $2 million. I'll play

6:32

that too. And all non-winning holiday

6:35

scratch-offs come with a second chance now through January

6:37

7th.

6:37

Okay, let's play. These

6:40

are mine. Get your own. Lottery players

6:42

are subject to Ohio laws and Commission regulations.

6:44

Play responsibly.

6:46

Unexplainable is a science show

6:48

about everything we don't know.

6:50

Like, we don't know how bikes

6:52

work. Get out! Come on! We

6:55

don't know where the moon came from. Holy cow.

6:58

You've touched the moon. This is incredible.

7:00

We don't even know what life is.

7:03

No one has been able to define life and some

7:05

people will tell you it's not possible to.

7:08

Unexplainable takes you right up to the edge of what

7:10

we know and keeps going. Follow

7:13

Unexplainable on Spotify for new episodes

7:15

every Wednesday.

7:21

Welcome back. Today on the show, we are talking

7:24

about the science of gossip and we're here

7:26

with Tucker Woodstock, gossip enthusiast?

7:28

Gossip... ambassador?

7:31

Yeah, Gossip Connoisseur maybe? I'm still

7:34

workshopping

7:34

titles. Right. I

7:36

love Gossip Connoisseur. Thank

7:38

you. So,

7:40

one of the first things that we wanted to

7:42

interrogate was who gossips.

7:44

Because there is this idea that women,

7:47

nosy women,

7:48

are the ones that gossip away. But

7:50

is that true? And so

7:53

our gossip girl, to tell us all about this,

7:55

is Dr. Stacy Torres.

7:57

She's at the University of California at San Francisco.

7:59

And she studies people

8:02

and different cultures.

8:03

I'm an ethnographer or a

8:05

professional stalker. We spend

8:07

a lot of time with people. I have

8:10

paid professional stalker now before I

8:12

was just a poor grad student just begging, like,

8:14

can I sit next to you and write

8:16

everything that you're doing?

8:18

So safety is not just an

8:20

ethnographer. I'm a lifelong

8:22

nosy gossiper.

8:25

I love to like overhear

8:28

conversations and listen

8:30

to people.

8:31

And science tells us that it's not just Stacey

8:34

who is a lifelong gossiper. There are

8:36

actually studies showing that kids start

8:38

gossiping

8:38

from a really young age,

8:40

like as young as five years

8:42

old. But Stacey's

8:44

research on gossip wasn't happening in a kid's

8:47

playground.

8:47

Her journey into the world of gossip started

8:50

in one of her favorite New York bakeries. It's

8:52

a spot where Stacey used to hang out in when

8:55

she was a broke grad student.

8:57

This was,

8:58

I would say, a nondescript

9:00

bakery that almost had this frozen

9:02

in time aspect, like this place that's

9:05

preserved in amber. Customers

9:07

used to complain about the shabby furniture

9:10

and distressed

9:11

tablecloth. And for all the

9:14

complaining, people were

9:15

very diehard, frequent, loyal

9:18

customers.

9:20

And so Stacey

9:22

being nosy Stacey, she starts

9:24

watching the people who are hanging out at this bakery.

9:27

And lots of them were in their sixties or

9:29

even older. And she starts

9:32

realizing that she's seeing the same people

9:34

there over and over again. Wow,

9:36

it's like me in my twenties and

9:38

a lot of older people, you know, what

9:41

are these relationships and are these people

9:43

friends or are they acquaintances?

9:46

Are they neighbors? So she basically

9:48

starts seeing these regulars who don't

9:50

look like great friends. Like some of them don't

9:52

even know each other's names, but they're chatting

9:54

and laughing. And it just seems

9:57

so

9:57

lovely, this sort of little pastry

9:59

dish.

9:59

that she was looking at and she actually

10:02

ends up

10:03

doing an entire PhD

10:05

studying these people, eavesdropping

10:08

on what they're saying and she does this for

10:10

five

10:10

years.

10:13

So she's taking all these field notes like

10:15

this person did this, said that, she's

10:18

analyzing this, interviewing them, looking

10:20

for patterns and it doesn't

10:22

take long for one pattern to start

10:24

showing up again and again and again. Stacey

10:29

realizes that

10:30

all these

10:31

older folks are just talking s***. They're

10:34

just gossiping about each other all the

10:36

time

10:37

and this realization kind of flips

10:40

how Stacey starts thinking about

10:42

this sort of beautiful bakery because remember

10:45

at first she was like, this is so beautiful,

10:47

look at this community and like everything is

10:49

just like sunshine and lollipops

10:52

all day long. And then I

10:55

saw them talking about each other and thought, wow,

10:57

I mean, do these people even like each other? Like

10:59

they're talking about each other, like they're calling

11:01

this other person turkey neck and they're

11:03

talking about like how enormous and awful

11:05

this person is or another woman would

11:08

gossip about the women that she

11:10

didn't want to see at McDonald's and call them the dementia

11:12

club. If I found out that

11:15

one of my friends was calling me turkey neck,

11:17

I don't even know what I would

11:19

do. That would be hard

11:21

to come back from. No, that's

11:24

incredible. I really, this is one of the best PhDs

11:26

of all time. I'm so happy for the person. Yeah.

11:30

So it really just turns out that by accident,

11:33

Stacey starts studying gossip,

11:35

which I've got to say isn't unique to Stacey.

11:38

So another researcher that we talked to

11:40

also stumbled upon this field of

11:43

researching gossip after realizing

11:45

that when you get a bunch of people together and

11:47

let them talk, they just start gossiping.

11:51

And so this takes us back

11:53

to our first question. So who was gossiping

11:55

the most? Was it the women? Well,

11:59

pretty quickly.

12:00

Stacey noticed something. The men

12:02

also gossiped. It wasn't just women sort

12:04

of being chatty and gossipy. The men were very

12:07

involved in gossip as well. So like,

12:09

there was this one dude. Well, I would say one of

12:11

the most vivid and

12:15

colorful research participants

12:16

named Eugene. He

12:18

was so funny. So

12:20

that's why

12:21

I'm chuckling a little bit. Eugene

12:23

was like a World War II veteran, a working

12:26

writer, had this Southern gentleman

12:29

kind of ambiance around him. But

12:31

he gossiped about people a lot. And he also

12:33

was gossiped about. So Eugene

12:36

would gossip about this woman called Jeanette.

12:38

She was another regular at the bakery who

12:40

would try to get people to buy her coffee. And

12:43

behind her back, Eugene would call her a scam

12:45

artist. So Stacey

12:49

was saying that both men and

12:51

women were gossiping away. But she

12:53

wasn't specifically looking at

12:55

who was gossiping more. But

12:58

lucky for us, other scientists

13:00

have looked into this. Like, there's

13:03

this one really cool study we

13:05

found where researchers actually

13:08

had people wear recorders

13:10

all day.

13:12

And these recorders would automatically

13:14

turn on and off at various points

13:16

throughout the day. So they'd capture like little snippets

13:19

of whatever people were talking about. And

13:21

in this study, they had a definition

13:24

of gossip, which was, any time

13:26

you were talking about someone who wasn't there,

13:28

that was gossip, which is a pretty common

13:30

definition in science. OK,

13:33

so Tuck, who do you think was

13:35

gossiping

13:36

more in this study? And they just looked

13:38

at the gender binary. So they were just looking at men

13:40

and women. Who do you reckon gossiped

13:42

more? I don't know. I

13:45

mean, everything I've ever been told is

13:47

that women gossip more. But I would love if there was a surprise

13:49

reveal and it was actually men who were gossiping the most.

13:52

It was actually pretty even.

13:55

These researchers also wanted to estimate how

13:58

much time people spent on average. throughout

14:00

the day talking about other

14:02

people. Do you want to have a guess? I

14:06

mean it depends how much you talk in general

14:08

during the day. I'm gonna say an hour a day

14:10

spent just talking about other people behind

14:12

their back.

14:14

It was 52 minutes on average. Wow,

14:16

crushed it. Yeah,

14:18

you absolutely. And research

14:21

has found that even if you think you

14:23

don't gossip, you probably do. Studies show

14:25

that we severely underestimate how

14:27

much we gossip. Well, if the

14:29

definition

14:30

is just talking about someone who's not there, it's like it

14:32

would be so limiting to only talk about the people

14:34

who are in front of you. You never get to talk about anything.

14:37

So of course.

14:37

Yes, and people did

14:40

have a lot of what the researchers

14:42

called neutral gossip.

14:44

So in this study, they captured thousands

14:47

of samples of gossip. And

14:50

they found that people were roughly five

14:52

times more likely to be saying neutral

14:54

stuff rather than like mean

14:57

negative gossip.

14:57

Five times more.

15:00

But of course,

15:01

people did say mean stuff too. Like,

15:05

you know, the kinds of things that

15:07

Stacy was hearing over at the bakery in New

15:09

York. One

15:10

woman in particular received a lot of castigation

15:13

and commentary for her weight. Or

15:16

there was a man who had diabetes and also

15:18

would

15:18

eat sweets. And so there was always this talk

15:20

about, oh, you know, like, like watching what

15:22

they're eating. Look at what I mean, like, you know,

15:24

an itemized list. Like he had a Toblerone

15:27

chocolate. He's always eating like these

15:29

sweets at the bakery where there was

15:31

one man who is a smoker for, you know,

15:33

like until the end of his life. And

15:35

he would always go for a smoke break. And then they would

15:37

say, oh, like, you know, he stinks his

15:40

like his clothes smell. It's disgusting

15:42

habit. And meanwhile, the people

15:45

that are gossiping about the person smoking are also

15:47

being gossiped about. Tucky was shaking

15:50

your head. And if you were ready

15:52

to put them in

15:53

this scold's bridle. I

15:55

just feel like

15:56

those are mean things to gossip about.

15:58

I

15:59

think gossiping about the

15:59

people's health feels more mean-spirited

16:02

than gossiping about a goofy

16:04

life choice that they made. You know what

16:07

I mean? Yeah, yeah, 100%. And studies

16:09

show that it isn't just trivial fun, you know, that

16:12

being the target of gossip can affect your mental

16:14

health. Studies have been done on

16:16

kids and adults, and they show

16:18

that people are more likely to be

16:20

anxious, have lower self-esteem if they're the targets

16:23

of gossip. Totally. Mm-hmm.

16:25

A bunch of studies have looked in the workplace

16:27

where gossip can be rampant. And

16:29

this can also have negative consequences. It can affect

16:32

your motivation and your performance.

16:34

Even just being in a gossipy workplace, even

16:36

if you're not the target of it, can have negative

16:39

consequences. And so I asked

16:41

Stacey if we ever grow

16:43

out of this anxiety

16:44

about gossip, you know, like stop

16:46

caring about what people think.

16:48

I guess

16:50

you know as an individual that

16:52

if you are gossiping about someone else,

16:55

there is gossip going on about you. Like

16:57

you

16:57

know it, but you just don't want

16:59

to be aware of it. You don't want to think about it. At

17:02

that age in their lives,

17:04

were they aware, like everyone's going to be

17:06

gossiping and I don't give a

17:08

s***? Or did they still have that sense?

17:12

Yeah, no, they still had that sense. And

17:14

so some people would, yeah,

17:16

they knew. Some of them were careful. I would

17:19

say just like, you know, the high school cafeteria

17:22

or, you know, the dorm room, but

17:25

there was definitely an awareness. People would say

17:27

like they didn't want people talking

17:29

about them.

17:30

Yeah. Okay, so here's where we're at.

17:33

A lot of us gossip. We spend a lot of our

17:35

time gossiping. And no

17:38

matter how old we are, we don't like

17:40

being the targets of gossip. So

17:42

our next question is, why do we like

17:46

spilling the tea so much? Like

17:48

if it causes pain to those

17:50

who are the targets, and we don't want to

17:52

be the targets, why do we keep doing it?

17:56

After the break, we're going to take a peek

17:58

into our brains. on gossip.

18:15

Welcome back. Today on the show, I'm here

18:17

with Tuck Woodstock, Gossip Connoisseur.

18:20

Thank you. And host of the podcast Gender

18:22

Reveal. So now we are

18:24

going to find out why we love gossip. And

18:27

for this, we need to talk to Professor

18:29

Joseph Marco Payares. He

18:31

studies human cognition and the brain at the University

18:34

of Barcelona. And Tuck, from

18:36

speaking to Joseph, I learned that there is

18:38

some

18:39

pretty saucy

18:41

gossip in Spain.

18:43

Here there were a lot of

18:45

gossips about the former king and

18:48

all his

18:50

lovers. Anywhere you went,

18:53

people sometimes told you, yeah,

18:55

he had a lover here, whatever.

18:58

Wow, even I'm intrigued. I don't

19:00

even know this kid. It's nice to talk

19:03

about

19:03

it. It's juicy. It's

19:04

juicy.

19:07

Okay.

19:08

So Joseph normally studies how the brain

19:10

processes nice, rewarding information.

19:13

He studies stuff like how our brains respond

19:15

to music and even like getting

19:18

money. And that got

19:20

him thinking about juicy

19:22

gossip. It's really like

19:24

surprising the power that they

19:26

have to attract people's attention,

19:29

this power of engaging people.

19:31

And so to find out why gossip is so

19:33

engaging, he wanted to see

19:35

what's happening in our brains as we're hearing

19:38

some juicy gossip. Totally. So

19:40

here's what he did. If you imagine

19:42

that you are in the study, you'd

19:44

come into the lab, you'd get some electrodes

19:47

put on your scalp, an EEG,

19:50

and then Joseph's team would show you

19:52

these sentences on a screen with a little bit

19:54

of gossip, but with the

19:55

key detail missing.

19:58

And then they'd ask, How much do you want to know

20:01

about that missing detail? So

20:03

for example, one of the bits

20:05

of gossip was about

20:06

Obama. Barak Obama had

20:08

an affair with.

20:10

How interested are you in that information?

20:13

The way that I just leaned about two

20:15

feet more forward in my seat in preparation

20:18

to learn what this clip was

20:20

going to be, I'm incredibly interested. In

20:23

this case, it was Beyonce. The rumor was

20:25

Beyonce. The Barack Obama

20:28

was having an affair with Beyonce. I feel betrayed.

20:30

I wanted slightly realistic gossip.

20:35

This is why when I was chatting to Joseph, I was like, what

20:37

is going on in Spain? This

20:40

is nonsense. But this actually was

20:42

a rumor circulating in the European

20:44

press in 2014. And Beyonce

20:47

even came out to deny it. But

20:49

it was

20:50

so persistent.

20:52

Wow. I had no idea. Spain

20:54

hit us up with a gossip

20:55

next time.

20:56

Right? So people in this study

20:59

are getting these sentences about gossip.

21:01

And then they'd also be mixed in with

21:03

trivia questions. So the researchers could

21:05

compare your brain on gossip and

21:07

your brain on trivia.

21:09

So they'd also ask questions like,

21:11

where in the world is there a volcano

21:13

called Terra? So how

21:16

much

21:17

do you want to know the answer to that question, Tuck?

21:19

I guess like a little bit, because sometimes I

21:21

go to trivia. But really, it has

21:24

no interest to me. Right. Yes. So

21:26

give an Antarctica for your next trivia session.

21:28

Thanks so much. I will forget by then. OK,

21:32

so the people in the study, given trivia,

21:34

given gossip. Right. And then the

21:37

researchers analyzed the data. And they started

21:39

by looking at what people said

21:41

they were more interested in. And of course, as

21:44

you said, Joseph and his team were expecting

21:46

that people would say,

21:48

I am more interested in

21:50

hearing about the gossip. Yeah.

21:52

But they actually found the complete

21:55

opposite.

21:56

In fact, they said they care more

21:58

about the information normal things.

22:00

So what is the highest mountain?

22:02

They said that they were more curious

22:04

about this information than about

22:07

the Gothic ones.

22:08

Wendy, they're lying.

22:16

So

22:17

the people in the study said they preferred

22:19

trivia over Goss. And Joseph's team,

22:22

who included his grad student, Elena

22:24

Alakart, they actually were

22:26

like, oh no, this whole experiment

22:29

is a bust. I

22:31

remember Elena coming and saying

22:34

that the experiment is not working

22:36

because people don't care about Gossips. I

22:38

mean... Okay,

22:39

so, but they

22:42

were like, well, let's keep analyzing the data that we have,

22:44

see what happens. And

22:46

so despite what people said,

22:50

the team then analyzed the EEG

22:52

data to see what was happening in their brains

22:54

and to see specifically if their brains

22:57

were paying more attention to the

23:00

gossip versus the trivia. And also if their

23:02

brains found the gossip more

23:05

rewarding, they were looking into the reward

23:07

network in the brain.

23:10

And what they saw is that

23:12

when you looked at people's brains, what

23:15

we're putting it is like their brains

23:16

were more excited by the gossip. So

23:19

here's how Joseph put it.

23:20

This gossiping information is

23:22

rewarding even when you are somehow

23:25

saying that you are not really

23:27

into this or you are not interesting.

23:29

So it's like their brains were like

23:32

a tattling on them. Yeah. They

23:34

couldn't, they couldn't lie.

23:36

Their brains gave it away.

23:38

Totally.

23:39

You suspected this from day one, Tuck. Well

23:42

first of all, I love that the brain

23:44

is in its own way gossiping about its host.

23:47

Or it's like, this

23:49

guy is telling you he doesn't care about

23:51

Babe Anna, but he was telling me

23:53

that he actually cares a lot. And that's beautiful.

23:56

We love that. I guess we've been socialized

23:59

to pretend that we don't care, but obviously

24:01

we care. Yeah. Yeah.

24:04

One final little thing that he did, a

24:06

week after people got their brains

24:08

scanned and heard about the gossip, Joseph and

24:10

the team reached back out to everyone in the

24:12

study and gave them a little pop quiz.

24:15

We asked them by surprise

24:18

about what they remember,

24:22

and they mainly remembered

24:24

the gossip. They were most likely to remember

24:26

the gossip. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe

24:29

they don't care, but they are the ones

24:31

that they remember the most. So

24:35

the difference wasn't massive. Like after a week,

24:37

Joseph found that the participants remember 30 percent

24:40

of the gossip compared to 23 percent of the trivia,

24:43

but still the gossip was sticky up.

24:46

So I asked Joseph, after studying

24:49

gossip in the lab, has this changed

24:51

how you think about gossip personally?

24:54

No, I'm not drilling into gossip.

24:57

No, of course not.

25:00

No, I think

25:02

that gossiping is pretty universal.

25:05

Sharing information with

25:07

others like, do you know

25:09

what I have? I know about this.

25:12

Information is rewarding.

25:15

This takes us to our big and

25:17

final question for today, Tack, which

25:20

is why? Why

25:23

are our brains paying so much attention

25:25

to gossip? Yeah. Well,

25:29

like Joseph said, at the end of the day, gossip

25:32

is information

25:33

and we as human beings,

25:35

we crave information, even

25:38

useless information. So

25:41

we are on Twitter, we are on Facebook.

25:44

Most of the information that we have is not

25:46

really useful.

25:47

Oh, right. Because we're really living in an

25:49

age of gossip. Yeah. And then when it comes

25:52

to

25:52

celebrity gossip, which

25:55

kind of feels like really useless

25:58

gossip, like, I

25:59

don't know.

25:59

the King of Spain from a bar of soap. Totally.

26:02

Why do I care about his former affairs?

26:05

But Joseph said that even that

26:08

kind of gossip can be useful because it's a

26:10

way of assessing values and

26:12

talking to your friends about where do we draw the line.

26:15

Is it okay to have an affair? You're

26:17

testing out social norms within

26:19

the Petri dish of celebrities. That totally

26:21

makes sense. Research

26:24

has found that a completely

26:26

different reason that we gossip about

26:29

both celebrities and people that we

26:31

know is

26:33

because gossiping helps us to

26:35

bond. Yeah. Like who hasn't been in this

26:38

situation where you might

26:40

just

26:40

have met some new friends and you don't really have much

26:42

to say to them and all of a sudden you start spilling

26:45

the tea and then everyone's having fun. And

26:48

one study actually found that when people heard

26:50

gossip they got a boost of

26:53

this chemical

26:54

called oxytocin which is known as the

26:56

so-called cuddle chemical which

26:58

can help people bond.

27:00

I was just thinking about,

27:04

can you give me any name? Marissa.

27:06

Great, Marissa, great. So

27:09

I joined this sports team recently and several

27:12

weeks ago I was told by members

27:14

of my team that there was someone on the

27:16

other team who they all called Hot

27:19

Marissa because she was like

27:21

older and spicy and

27:26

they were like, she's mean and too serious

27:28

but like in a hot way basically. What's

27:32

the sport

27:32

by the way? Well,

27:36

if I tell you Hot Marissa is gonna

27:38

find out. Oh, it's

27:40

not like softball or something. No,

27:43

it's softball. So flash

27:46

forward a few weeks. We're playing

27:48

our final games of

27:50

the season and I get

27:53

put on a team with this older person

27:55

who is way too intense and really wild

27:58

and also very hot and I was. like that

28:00

has to be Hot Marissa. And so after

28:02

that game, I like ran up to my

28:04

teammates and I was like,

28:07

I have to tell you. And

28:10

they were like, Oh my gosh, tell us everything

28:12

what's going on. And it's like, yum,

28:14

yum, yum. And like, in that moment,

28:16

I was like, wow, I can like really feel

28:19

that this is an incredibly important

28:22

moment of bonding of me just

28:24

talking about Hot Marissa. Right,

28:27

right.

28:29

And there are other ways that gossip

28:31

can be an incredibly powerful

28:34

and

28:34

useful tool. Totally. So I am

28:37

a trans journalist. And

28:39

there are a lot of people

28:44

with a lot of structural power who frankly

28:46

deserve to be gossips about more. If

28:48

there is someone who is known for

28:51

treating certain people or certain communities

28:53

unfairly, it is in our best interest

28:55

to all share that information so that we're prepared.

28:58

I mean, I think that at its

29:00

best, gossip is almost a form

29:02

of unionizing, where it's like, we

29:05

all don't have power individually, but

29:07

there's power in the collective and sharing

29:09

this information among and between each other.

29:11

And of course, people in power want

29:14

to keep their power and they don't want us to be talking

29:16

about how maybe they don't deserve that power. They're not using

29:18

that power in the best possible way. And so

29:21

they want to put us all in the little masks with the little

29:23

bells. But this is one of the

29:25

best tools that we have is our ability to communicate

29:27

and to share information. Yeah,

29:31

yeah.

29:32

And, you know, so I think what

29:35

we're learning here is that even though

29:37

gossip is mostly associated with

29:39

being

29:40

mean and nasty and spreading

29:43

malicious things about other people,

29:45

gossip

29:46

is actually so much more.

29:48

Right. And can be so

29:50

much more and can be this powerful tool

29:53

to help us bond and spread important,

29:55

important information. Yeah.

29:59

And so.

30:00

Taff, as we are winding down our

30:03

gossipy science sesh,

30:06

I want to take us back to Stacey's

30:07

Bakery in New York,

30:09

because she told us this story that

30:12

showed that, you know, even

30:14

sometimes

30:14

nasty

30:17

gossip isn't

30:18

quite what it seems. So

30:21

do you remember Eugene, who was that World

30:23

War II veteran, you know, the Southern gentleman

30:26

who loved to gossip? Absolutely. Okay,

30:29

so Eugene, like a lot of folks

30:31

in the Bakery, was dealing with his

30:33

own health issues. And at one point,

30:35

he had major hip surgery. And

30:37

at the same time, he was dealing with problems with his apartment,

30:40

like the plumbing wasn't working.

30:42

So here's Stacey.

30:44

So this is a person in his mid 80s

30:46

and had no working shower

30:49

or bathtub and had to give himself sponge

30:51

baths because only the water

30:53

was working in the kitchen. And this was going

30:56

on for weeks and weeks. So people

30:57

were always talking about

31:00

him.

31:00

And some people would give him suggestions about

31:02

what he should do, like you should call a lawyer, you know.

31:06

But then

31:06

as soon as Eugene left, they

31:09

would start bitching and gossiping about him,

31:12

like why isn't he doing enough to fix the situation?

31:15

And to a stranger, what was

31:17

going on might look really mean and

31:19

really bitchy.

31:21

But Stacey was no stranger.

31:24

By now, she'd been observing

31:26

this group for like five years. She'd done

31:29

these one-on-one interviews, attended

31:31

wakes, made hospital visits.

31:34

And what she saw wasn't that

31:36

they were just trash-talking Eugene,

31:39

but she saw it as them venting

31:42

about everything that was happening because,

31:45

bottom line, they really cared about him.

31:48

People really also rallied to try to help

31:50

him as best as they could. They visited

31:52

him in the hospital. They called the building department

31:55

on his behalf to try to get him help. They gave

31:57

him numbers of like therapists.

31:59

Pro bono lawyers. So everybody was also

32:02

involved. It really like mobilized

32:04

the bakery crowd on his behalf

32:06

so

32:08

Where does this lay mass? Gossip

32:10

is information it can be a little reward

32:12

a little release those brain juices And

32:15

we use gossip for so many things it can be mean

32:18

and cruel but it's also a way to learn

32:20

about others as a way to bond and

32:23

Some researchers in a paper put

32:25

it like this contained in gossip

32:27

are the issues of the human condition human

32:30

community issues of secrecy self-esteem

32:34

pride voyeurism intimacy

32:36

and search for security and

32:37

quite

32:39

Beautiful I took to Stacy

32:42

about this idea big picture from

32:44

your research How important is

32:46

gossip to us as

32:48

as humans?

32:49

That's hard. It's hard to say. I mean in

32:52

terms of you know, like we have to

32:54

work

32:55

right I

32:57

mean I would

32:58

say it's one On

33:00

the one hand, you know, you could say again food shelter.

33:03

All these things are really much more important

33:05

But I would say gossip is one

33:07

strand of social connection

33:10

and social connection is crucial Obviously,

33:13

we should look to

33:14

treat other people with respect

33:17

and kindness and care But as I

33:19

learned in my study gossiping does

33:21

not preclude that and in fact It actually served

33:24

as a conduit to express

33:26

kindness community and care

33:29

a justic episode

33:30

Where gossip isn't a

33:32

conduit for kindness community

33:34

and care and

33:35

if someone is just being cruel talk There

33:38

is actually something that we can do. We

33:41

have the power to stop it To

33:43

cue the planet is soundtrack No,

33:47

we actually we don't have the budget for that Okay

33:51

so

33:53

years ago Scientists did

33:56

this curious study where they plopped themselves

33:58

into a middle school

33:59

cafeteria, many people's worst

34:02

nightmare. Totally. And they wanted

34:04

to see how

34:05

kids gossiped when

34:07

they were in

34:07

a group.

34:08

And they found that once the gossip

34:10

got rolling, a lot of the time it just got worse

34:13

and worse, like nastier and

34:15

nastier. That was

34:18

except.

34:20

It's the first person to hear the gossip

34:23

push back and said, nah,

34:25

I don't think that's true or I don't think that's interesting.

34:28

It totally changed the game and

34:30

the gossip fizzles out just like some

34:32

middle school romance.

34:34

And so I was thinking, you know,

34:37

with this knowledge, perhaps we

34:39

can deploy gossip for good,

34:41

for bonding purposes, for breaking

34:43

down power structures. And

34:45

then we can also just cut it off at the

34:48

pass if people are just

34:50

being

34:50

mean. Sounds like a great plan to me. The

34:52

other option is, of course, if you don't want to be the savior,

34:55

you could just shove your friend's head in the skull's

34:58

bridle as well. And

35:01

so if you could drop the affiliate link

35:03

to buying the skull's bridle, I would

35:05

smash one up right away. Absolutely,

35:10

absolutely.

35:11

Thanks so

35:13

much. Thank you.

35:14

Such a pleasure. Honestly, what a joy.

35:20

Hi, Nick Delrose,

35:22

producer at Science Festus. Hey,

35:24

Wendy. How many citations are in this week's

35:26

episode? What's the

35:27

goss? There

35:29

are 80 citations.

35:31

80 citations. And if people want to see

35:33

these citations, learn more about the science

35:36

of gossip, where should they go?

35:37

They can go to our show notes. They'll

35:39

find a link to our transcript. Yes.

35:41

And in the show notes, we're going to have a link to

35:43

our Instagram account.

35:46

If you want to see a picture of the skull's

35:48

bridle, go have a look. It's

35:51

pretty horrific. Also in our show notes,

35:53

we're going to have a link to Tuck's amazing

35:56

podcast, Gender Reveal. You should definitely

35:58

listen to it. Check it out. Yes, absolutely.

36:01

It's really fabulous. And this is as

36:03

in Stacy's study, she changed

36:06

the name of the people in

36:08

her study. So if you are hunting around New

36:11

York for someone called

36:13

Eugene,

36:13

you will

36:15

not find the gossipy

36:18

gentleman. Yeah, just like hot Marissa. Exactly.

36:21

All names have been changed except Tuck and

36:23

mine and Nick's.

36:24

Here we are.

36:25

Here we are. Thanks Nick.

36:27

Thanks Wendy.

36:32

This episode was produced

36:34

by Nick Del Rose with help from me, Wendy

36:36

Zuckerman, Joel Werner, Rose Rimler and Michelle

36:39

Dang. We're edited by Brad Terrell. Fact

36:41

checking by Diane Kelly, Nix and Sanderson

36:44

by Boomi Hidaka. Music written by Bobby

36:46

Lord, Emma Munger, So Wylie, Peter

36:48

Leonard and Boomi Hidaka. Thanks to all

36:50

of the researchers that we spoke to, including

36:52

Dr. Megan Robbins, Dr. Yann Engelman,

36:55

Dr. Conrad Rudniskin, Dr. Alex

36:58

Karan, and Dr. Julie

37:00

Wagga-Akins. Recording assistance

37:02

from Jazz Williams. Special thanks to the

37:04

Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Science

37:07

Versus is a Spotify Studios original.

37:09

Listen for free on Spotify or wherever

37:11

you get your podcasts. Science Versus

37:14

is everywhere. So just

37:16

find us and share us with your friends.

37:18

If you are listening on Spotify though,

37:20

then follow us and tap the bell icon

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to receive notifications whenever we put

37:25

out a new episode. I'm Wendy

37:27

Zuckerman. Back to you next time.

37:36

Were you ever gossiped about or you don't

37:39

know? I don't know. I'm sure. I

37:41

think sometimes people talked

37:43

about me in some form.

37:45

I know that I was like, again, the student

37:46

or like that young person. Like

37:49

I somehow got wind that

37:50

I had a nickname as well. People

37:53

didn't know my name. But I

37:55

guess I should hope that I was. That

37:58

they were looking out for me.

37:59

you know, they cared enough about me to

38:02

gossip. So I will hope that I

38:04

was the subject of a few conversations.

38:07

Aww, that's very sweet. Yeah.

38:10

Does it make you less anxious? Does it make

38:12

you less anxious about being the gossipy? No.

38:19

Happy for them, though.