Stuff You Should Know - How Gossip Works

Episode Date: December 22, 2015

You know what I heard? That Josh and Chuck hate each other and they're just faking being friends for the show. That's called gossip, folks and it can do serious damage. Learn all about it in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and it's just two of us again.

Man. Not getting any easier. This is just getting old. This, man, we need Jerry back. Where are you, Jerry? Where'd you go? I don't know. 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 one of those dipping birds, just to hit record? Yeah. We were just kidding. That's happening. It's true. 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. Yep. We cannot stop griping about this time. I know, it's just weird, you know. When a threesome becomes a twosome, things get awkward. Yeah. A triad becomes a dyad. Or when a twosome becomes a threesome,

that gets super awkward. Or, I mean, really, anytime you're moving people in and out of some sort of dynamic, sure it can be weird. That's right. The transition be rough, I think is the, that's what you put on the t-shirt ultimately. Yeah.

All right. The transition is rough. Anytime you're moving people in and out of a dynamic. Ready? Yes. Didn't we 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. Yeah, good. But you know who does? Jerry. A lot. And she's really vicious. I know she's not here right now.

Yeah. But just between the two of us, I don't gossip. Jerry does. And you should really watch out for her. I heard that she gossips. I'm not saying that, but I just heard that. I gotcha.

Well, I've seen her do it. She's gossiped to me because she finds me very important and likes to confide in 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 I don't gossip.

Yeah. 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 right. 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. Liars. Technically, not necessarily even liars. I think it also, as far as like linguists and psychologists are concerned, it comes from a misunderstanding of what gossip, what constitutes gossip. 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 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 a lousy parent 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. You could also say, actually, that guy is a great dude. He spends all of his money on nothing but baby shoes.

That's gossip. It is gossip, and it's not necessarily harmful. In this case, you're helping someone else's social status in the other people's eyes that's still gossip. Yeah, I think this Tracy of stuff you missed in history class wrote this one. That is true. She's always thorough.

And she included in here something I thought was pretty pertinent, a gossip v. rumor. Yeah. And there are differences in, well, I say there's differences, but if you ask professionals who study this, there are weirdos who do that. They will say sometimes, now it's the same thing,

or a rumor is just a type of gossip. Right. Here's some other distinguishing factors. Gossip is based in fact. Rumors are based in hypotheses. Yeah. 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. Sure. Rumor is a tool for explaining things that people do not understand. I'm not sure I get that one.

Like there's garbage raining from the sky. It's the government. That's a rumor. Oh, okay. Whereas if you're like, Charles is up on the roof again, dumping his garbage out on the street. That's gossip. Technically so, yeah.

Or that's just laying it out there, you know? Yeah, true. And then finally, gossip relates 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.

Rumor is uncurated gossip. Rumors, any dude walking down the street, you can be like, there's garbage falling from the sky and it's the government. There's no bond that's formed there. There's no requirement of a bond. Whereas gossip requires some sort of connection or you're forming a connection from the gossip.

You know what I'm saying? Rumor 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 doesn't qualify as gossip because it's a third party that doesn't know the others in general. Sure.

Unless it's Jennifer Aniston is talking smack about Brandon Angelina. No, she would never do that. Oh, really? No, she loves Courtney Cox. They're still friends, huh? Sure. Why doesn't she ever have her on Cougar Town then?

I think she was on Cougar Town. No, well, I stay corrected. Although I have no idea, because I've never seen Cougar Town. Did you hear about what happened when she was on Cougar Town? I heard she watched her hair in Evian Water. That's Shannon Daugherty. Yeah, that's right.

Is that a rumor or gossip? I don't know. I guess that would be rumor, because we don't know Shannon Daugherty. True. And then there are some other stipulations that researchers point out for gossip that I also take issue with some of these.

The conversation takes place in private. Usually the case. Yeah, if not actual private. Depends on what private means. Everybody's got their shoulders turned. There's a creation of a private situation. Yeah, I got you. 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 the case. I take issue with that one. It's kind of like you were saying, like, I heard. It's all true. But I haven't checked it out. So take it with a grain of salt, but get this.

Yeah, oh man. I even ended up as a vocal fry. People, yeah, we already talked about that, knowing each other, and then the body language and tone suggests a moral judgment. That's a big one, you know? Like when people use this tone. But again, that's malicious gossip, typically.

There's such a thing. So it should be said, and Tracy doesn't really say it in this. I think she was drinking while she was writing this one. That's what I heard. 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 word gossip.

But the other type, the far more apparently, far more prevalent type, is regular gossip. Yeah, wasn't there some weird unsubstantiated stat here that only, that 5% was malicious? Yeah, among most gossip. Yeah. How in the world did they pull that out of their keister? That's a great question.

And who is they? So they are linguists, historians, anthropologists, psychologists, people who started studying gossip. For a very long time, everyone's aware of gossip, but they're like, it's just noise. It's not to be studied. It's not worth our time. 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 was viewed. And specifically, there was this thing in 16th and 17th century England. They didn't like it. Called the Scolds Bridal. And if you want to see what a Scolds Bridal is,

you should check that out online because there are actual such things. They're basically iron masks with like points sticking into the woman who 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 Scolds, what they used to call them, could be paraded around town, right? Yeah, and also get the feeling that a lot of women were probably made to wear those who just talked too much. Yeah, I have the same impression as well. Because of the time period of course. So that's how people typically viewed gossip.

It was something to be stamped out. It was something that was very undesirable and academia treated it the same way. Then World War II came around. And I think the government saw that there was some 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 over time, organizations got in on the act because there came this idea that if the rumor mill or the gossip mill in your office was really going over time, you needed to stamp 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, either by scaring them in line or what it seems like a lot of gossip does in that kind of environment is it establishes the norms and the cultures expected out of the bosses. That's like low level background gossip. If it's peaking and really working over time, then 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. Right. So it doesn't mean that you have a lot of gossips at your place. That's a normal human situation as we'll see. It means that your managers and the people who are running the show aren't being open enough

for the Hoy-Polloy's tastes. Right. See what I mean? Yeah, good point. That was a big thing that came out of studying it. But to answer your question, I'm about to finish. Yeah. They study it by eavesdropping on people

who are talking in cafeterias. That's about the only way you can. Yeah, because it's so spontaneous and it's largely unconscious. Yeah, unless it's just some dumb poll where you're asking people about gossip and self-reporting polls like that. I don't put a lot of stock in.

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 the broadest sense of the definition. Right. Right.

Not necessarily malicious. Yeah. Because about 5% of that supposedly is malicious. But people self-report gossiping about, they spend about 30% of their time. So rather than 75%, people are like, oh, I only gossip like 30%. Yeah.

And all that comes from eavesdropping on people and then asking them afterwards whether they gossip. Tracy points out, rightfully so, that most world religions have always said gossip is a bad thing, including the Christian Bible. And Leviticus, thou shalt not go up and down as a tail bearer among thy people. Ooh, that was good.

By the way, I want to echo the kudos that have wronged throughout social media, applauding your scary spider growing redneck man in the Halloween episode. It was Cleetus's like Jod Yockels sort of. And my friend, Big John. Well, it was good. It was a mashup. I appreciate that.

Was Big John in New York? No, he's in Atlanta. Oh, OK. I actually thought your vomit take was the funniest part of the whole thing. The gag? Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. Jewish Torah always also says so in Buddhism. We've talked about Buddhism before, the Eightfold 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 I said earlier, too, it's not just the religious types that are against it. People in, remember, the business world kind of started looking in on this, and they're like, don't gossip. If you want to be a good person, don't gossip. So helpful. Unless you're spreading a gossip rumor

that we want you to spread. Right, that's the official company line. And then there's this dude, Robin Dunbar, who wrote a book called Grooming Gossip and the Evolution of Language. And I looked into this guy. 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 would vocal groom, is what he called it. So this is kind of a big deal. Let's take a break for a second, because we're

pretty deep into this. Then we'll talk about Dunbar and his mad ideas after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Ah.

Ah. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, All right, done bar. Done bar. 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 essence. Yeah, the tide of grooming is where he loses me a bit. And vocal grooming, I'm just, he says basically, it was a more efficient way to service your allies rather than grooming one another. Right, so I think what he's saying is that when you, when a primate grooms another primate, it's an act of kindness.

Yeah. It's saying like, I'm doing something nice for you. It gives the other primate who's being groomed an opportunity to reciprocate, and form an even stronger bond, right? Scratch my back. 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, 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 nits out of fur. I think what he's saying is it developed out of that. Okay. 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 nits out of somebody, or you're just gonna sit there silently, not chat. Sure. Start chatting. How easy is it gonna be to lead to Tuck Tuck and what he did after he ate that fermented apple?

Sure. It's like the barber shop or the beauty shop. Right, kinda. There are some different roles, though, that it does play in social interactions where I guess the grooming thing comes into play. Entertaining one another, like you said, influence on one another.

That's a big one. Exchanging information that's important. And one of the biggest ones is learning from mistakes that linguists point out is a really big part of gossip, or a part of positive gossip, in that there's oftentimes a moral lesson attached to it. Yeah, like you don't want this to happen to you. Right, no, exactly.

And it kind of, 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 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. Yeah. And bad things befell him. Like you said, don't let this happen to you. Don't transgress the group's boundaries. Right, and that's important if you're like a new hire. They say a lot of gossip lies.

Like I remember the movie Big. Remember when Tom Hanks gets hired? Like the very first thing that happens is John Lovitz comes over and starts talking about all the gossip of everyone in the office. I don't remember that part. Oh yeah, he talks about like this lady's 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 indoctrination. Oh, that is not what I thought you were gonna say. No, like I think they're trying to be like,

well, here's a new ally I can get. Right, yeah. So let me, let me, you know. I mean, 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 like a wise, older, sager advisor. Like I know this place. You come to me if you want some information. What you'll find though over the years is that usually the first person who comes up and starts gossiping to you about how the office works is usually also the most disliked.

Yeah. You know? Sure. That's why they cast John Lovett. Yeah, he's great for that. That or the dude with the forehead, the size of a dinner plate, who was in all the 80s movies as that same character.

Was he the jerk and big? I don't know. Is it the dad from Home Alone? No, no, no. This is the coked up sidekick from the 80s with the huge forehead. He was mad about you. He was the sidekick and mad about you.

Oh, that guy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same function. Yeah, he's in that show now with Joey Tribbiani. It's called? Joey?

No. Melissa and Joey. No, he's on the different. Oh, episodes. Yeah, yeah, he's on episodes too. Okay. Great show. Does he play himself?

No, he plays a jerk TV executive. Perfect. He's like, yeah, exactly. I love that guy. 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. A lot of times the feeling of superiority is another big part of gossip. Like I would never do this. All right. And Tracy also points out the old Schadenfreude, which is one of my favorite words.

It's a good word. And one of my least favorite things. That's, you must be very ambivalent about that word. What do you mean? Well, if you love it, but you also hate what it means. Well. It'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. Well, oh yeah, he's a big game hunter. I would probably think that was kind of a, Sure. You know, just deserves.

I think that's acceptable Schadenfreude. Okay. Especially if it was just a relatively minor injury, you know. You go Schaden. Yeah, you say Schaden. Schadenfreude, that's how I say it. So Chuck, kind of what a couple of,

like we've, we're kind of dancing back and 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? Yes.

But putting someone else down or talking about how, how much superior you are by not, you would never do what they did. That's definitely the malicious variety. And there's an idea that if gossip evolved like Robin, Leech? Yeah, like Robin Leech says, in his post rich and famous career,

he became an anthropologist, you know. Robin Leech says that if language evolved as a means of gossiping, the guy takes it further by saying, the reason gossip evolved, the reason we needed that in the first place was because we grew out of these little hunter-gatherer bands of like 15 people.

And as our societies grew larger and larger, we weren't as able to be able to keep tabs personally on others in this group that's getting bigger and bigger. So you don't know who to trust. You know, I'm going to leave my crops to somebody while I go on a walkabout 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 like a stand-in for being able to keep tabs on everybody else in the society, because when you gossip with somebody, you're sharing a trust, a bond, that they're not going to use that information against you that you shared with them.

That's right. And so there's a definite element of trust to it. And when people gossip in a larger society, they're trusting that the person is either vouching for the person or they're being warned against trusting that third party, right? Right. So it works in that same way,

that it's like a means of keeping tabs on everybody at the same time. On the other hand, or at the same time, it's also a means of social control. Because if you know people are gossiping about everybody else, then surely they're going to gossip about you too, which means you better just be an upstanding,

upright person. Yeah, there was this, what's this first name? Feinberg? Let's just say Dr. Feinberg. Dr. Feinberg. At Toronto, in Toronto, University of Toronto, he's done some studies and he did find, in fact, that basically they did these studies

where you were allowed to exclude non-cooperators in a group work setting. And they found that 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 if they knew that their behavior was gossiped about,

people, sort of like what you're talking about with the staring. Like if you knew someone was watching you, you would return the grocery cart. If you know someone's gossiping about you, you're going to tow that line and get your act together. Exactly. Again, it's a means of social control.

You know who were really, really, really good at gossiping? The Puritans in Colonial America. Oh, I bet. They were huge. Like their whole society operated on gossip and the encouragement of gossip. As a matter of fact, I think women were called gossips. 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 scold bridle on you, and maybe them too, for telling. And toss you in the lake.

Yeah. And if you drowned, you weren't a witch. Right. 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 origins of gossip. On the podcast, Pay Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor.

Stars of the coal classic show, Hay Dude, bring you back to the days of slipped dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use hey dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, hey dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself,

what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh man.

And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Uh, so Feinberg, we talked about the doctor. Dr. Feinberg? Uh-huh.

Yeah, okay. I hope he or she is a doctor. Um, but if not, we just gave him an honorary doctorate. Honorary doctorate from Stuff You Should Know You. People are going to request those now, which is great. Oh, we can sell them. So one thing that he found is that gossip can also relieve you, um, physiologically. Like if you know that you're allowed to gossip, you won't get as upset about unfair things

than if you had to hold it all in. It's like a way of setting injustice right. Yeah. You know? I like it. It's street justice. Right, cubical justice. Without like a sort of shotgun, as Charles Bronson would dispense it, right?

Yeah, good point. Man, have you gone back and seen Deathwish recently? That is a rough movie. Yeah, of course. Same with Deathwish, 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 it growing up, you're like, this was nothing.

That was something. Those movies were very violent and very disturbing. Yes, see, Charles Bronson did not ask questions. No, he just shot everybody. He did. Man, that was crazy. Well, why'd you go back and rewatch Deathwish? Gotta watch something.

Good point. It was on. That's why. Gotcha. I was like, I haven't seen Deathwish in forever. When's the last time you saw it? Oh, it's been a while. It's disturbing.

Yeah. Especially as an adult. You know what movie I love? What Charles Bronson movie I love is... The mechanic. Well, that one's good, too. Yeah. Um, what's it called?

10 Pass Midnight? Is that right? I think that's on Netflix, too, maybe. There was some creepy serial killer. Yeah. Like psychosexual killer that he was, he was... He's always hunting somebody. He was the Liam Neeson of his day.

That was supposedly a very, very underrated horror thriller. Yeah. Like horror slasher thriller. With you all the way. I haven't seen it. It's good, though. It's good. I'll check it out.

Very creepy. And I learned, well, it's not for kids. Because I learned some things in that movie. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's one of those that I can specifically remember. It's like, oh, well, that's how I know what this is. Right.

Charles Bronson will teach you all about life, whether you want to learn it or not. I think it was 10 Pass Midnight. All right. Sorry about that sidetrack. Where were we? We were talking about the origins of gossip. Oh, yeah.

There's... Did you read the other article I sent? I think it was from The Guardian. I can't remember. Where one of the theories is that... That was BBC. That 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, was not very good at the hunting. But he's quite the gatherer. So it helps them organize in the most efficient way to get things done. Right.

Because how else are you going to know unless you tell somebody what's going on? Right. So that makes sense. No, it is. And again, if this person, if the band is large enough or the civilization is large enough that the person can't keep an eye on Tuk Tuk all the time,

that's how that person will gain understanding of Tuk Tuk's abilities. Poor Tuk Tuk. Keeping tabs on poor Tuk Tuk. And then the other cool thing I thought was the... When we finally learned to harness fire, 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. Yeah. And at night, when we finally got fire, well, before fire, you just go 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. Right. And kind of gossiping about what happened. Right. And 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 few and far between.

For the most part, people are talking about their day. They're talking about people they work with. Right. They're talking about some dude that cut them off in traffic. They're talking about their immediate experience. So, of course, you're going to gossip. It's this, if the definition of gossip is talking about people who aren't there,

you're right. Everyone gossips. You're going to. It's a completely natural thing. And I'm totally unsurprised by the idea that it started out at the first campfire. Sure it did, of course. And it still happens today, apparently.

There are researchers who studied Bushman 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 really no reason to think this hasn't always been the case.

That's neat. Yeah. So, you said it still goes on today. And we were talking about modern studies of gossiping, right? Yes. One of the, there was like a series of studies. I don't know if they were all from the U of Toronto or not. But they seem to be somewhat related

where it was outside observers could watch people playing games. And they noticed cheaters. So they had this information about cheaters that the people playing the games didn't have about the cheaters. Right. And when they were given the chance

to let the players know about a cheater, to send them, I think, like a gossip note is what they called it. They would, most people would take them up on the offer and would send a note of warning to the person that they were playing somebody who was cheating. Yeah. And they, like you said,

they went from being really upset and up in arms to that release valve being undone and everything was fine with the world again because that person had been alerted to cheating through gossiping. So there is such thing as altruistic gossiping as well. Yeah. With altruism, Tracy had another example of,

let's say there's like a choral group and the self-appointed leader is really kind of lazy. And if someone, then other people are kind of making up the slack doing the duties that he or she should be doing. So when new comes in the group and they say, hey, listen, this girl, Jane, is the head of the choral group, but you should know, don't count on Jane

to bring the sheet music for you because she never does it. Right. So that's sort of altruistic in that 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 then so, Tracy added this one other thing

that some people would say that the person who's doing that is really, like you said, just talking smack and isn't really working toward a solution to the actual problem, which is Jane being slack at her job. Right. And I wonder, that's a really good descriptor of what gossip is. Gossip would be talk that's not directed

toward any kind of solution. It's just talking. Yeah. You know, like if you take that same conversation to somebody who can fire Jane or make her do her job. Right. You wouldn't know one would consider that gossip. Yeah, good point.

Because it's directed toward a goal, toward the solution. So I guess, and that's probably one thing that people don't like about gossip. It's really, in a lot of ways, it's just blowing off steam. It's not really serving any direct purpose. They all seem to be indirect. Yeah. Like socializing people.

I did. Now, I need an honorary doctor from somewhere. Oh, you've got one. And then lastly, Chuck, one of the other things, especially from malicious gossip, is that when somebody, it's a very dangerous game, right? When you're gossiping with somebody, especially with somebody that you're not super tight with,

you run the risk of scaring that person. Right. Because if there's one thing that people do when they hear gossip, they take themselves and put themselves in that situation. Right. And one of the things that you will immediately think when you're being gossiped, too, is, well, this person gossips.

So they could very easily be gossiping about me. Right. How much should I trust this person? Yeah. And that's especially pertinent when it's not already like a tight pair and when the gossip is malicious. Yeah. Good point.

Yeah. Well, it's not mine. I'm just relating facts. You ever see, you ever watch that gossip girl show? No. But there's a Twitter handle, Gossip Girl, I'd notice in my research. I'm sure that's what they show, right?

No, it's like real gossip. Oh, really? Yeah. I never seen it either. But it's not real gossip because it's all celebrity gossip. Right. I think that's a kid's, not a kid's show. Show for younger people than me.

Sure. It's not for middle-aged men. Although I do like it Blake Lively. So, well, that was one other thing, too. Like, we haven't come out and said this. There's a definite perception that gossip is much more prevalent among women. Sure. But that's not true.

No. No. Research shows that men and women basically cross the board equally gossip. It's old white men. Yeah. It's old white men. Old white men under attack in America. News at 11.

You guys did it again. You got anything else? No, sir. You're being trolly. You know that? Yeah, I know. If you want to know more about gossip, you can type that word in the search bar at howstuffworks.com,

and it will bring up this article, complete with totally superfluous illustrations that will baffle the mind. True. I mean, did you see them? Yeah. It's just weird. I kept looking, like, did I miss a story or something that relates to that? It became a game.

I find the meaning here. And I think I said search bar and I think I said how stuff works. But either way, it's time for listening now. I'm going to call this Disney. Disney Band. Hello, Chuck, Josh, and Jerry, and Neil. Really? Wouldn't Neil the chair?

No, Frank was the chair. I think he means Noel. Probably so. Which is hilarious. Hey, Neil. I've been listening for a few months now, binging episodes, like, well, I can't say what she says. I just listened to your part one of Fairy Tales in the last night of 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 Baptists. During my childhood, the Southern Baptist Convention did not like that Disney was friendly toward homosexuals and supported evolution. So they called on all the churches to boycott Disney. So my parents, the good Southern Baptists 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 1991, I was in first grade. All my friends watched it and 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 was the only version. Didn't learn until a few years later when I saw the original at a friend's house. Boy, I bet she felt like watching The Little Mermaid.

It's in color? This version I saw followed the original story by Hans Christian Andersen, complete with a terrifying sea witch and the suicide at the end, which was a great movie for a first grader. The sea witch starred in my nightmares. That's about the time that I started smoking cigarettes. So thanks for all the great side tracking, as well as the amazing content you provide. And that is from Lindsay.

Well, thanks a lot. Lindsay, appreciate that. Glad you finally got to see The Little Mermaid. I like that she thanked us for side tracking. Some people do. Sure. It's pretty infrequent when people are like, just stay on point. And when they do, I'm like, buddy, you have a long archive to go through.

If that bothers you. We've got a lot of good side tracks today. And it was 10 past midnight, by the way. Nice. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSKpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and Chuck, as always.

Join us at our home on the web. Stuff Chuck. Yes. Stuff you should know, Chuck. Dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. We are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it.

And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.