Hello and welcome back to the deep dive. Today
we are tackling a subject that is well it's essentially
the guilty pleasure of the human race. That's
a good way to put it. I say guilty because almost
every single one of us does it. And I mean let's
be honest almost every single one of us feels
a little bit slimy immediately after. It's the
universal social lubricant. Yeah. And maybe the
universal social irritant too. It is. We are
talking about gossip. And look, before you check
out, because you think this is going to be an
hour of us discussing celebrity breakups or,
you know, who said what in the break room. Let
me just stop you. Please do. Because the stack
of research we have today is, and I don't use
this word lightly, it's mind bending. We're looking
at this comprehensive overview that pulls from
evolutionary psychology, medieval history, complex
sociology, and some extremely heavy religious
ethics. It really runs the gamut. And I think
the goal here, our mission, is to completely
reframe how we see this behavior. Because we
usually just dismiss gossip as idle trash talk.
Right. It's what you do when you're bored. Exactly.
It's what you do when you have nothing better
to do. But the research suggests it is actually
a highly sophisticated mechanism. It's a tool
for survival. A weapon for power. And in a very,
very literal sense, the glue that holds human
society together. Which is a massive claim. A
massive claim for something that my mother explicitly
told me was rude and low class. Well, your mother
wasn't wrong about the rude part, socially speaking.
But she was, let's say, missing the biological
and anthropological utility of it. I mean, the
argument is if we didn't gossip, we might not
even be here as a species. OK, now that is the
headline I want to explore. Gossip, the reason
we aren't extinct. So the mission for this deep
dive is to move past the guilt, past the shame
and really look at the mechanics. Why are we
wired to do it? How did the word evolve from
something holy? And that's a spoiler alert to
something petty. And can we actually function
without it? It's a heavy question. And honestly,
it challenges a lot of our basic moral assumptions.
It really does. But I have to be honest with
you before we even start. I love a little tea.
Spilling the tea. Exactly. I try to be high minded.
I really, really do. But if someone leans in
and lowers their voice and says, you will not
believe what happened to Dave. My pulse spikes.
I lean in. It's purely instinctual. And that
pulse spike, that little jolt of excitement,
that's pure biology. That isn't a character flaw.
That's an evolutionary trigger firing in your
brain. We're going to find out that your brain
is actually hardwired to enjoy that moment. In
fact, it prioritizes it. OK, I'm not a bad person.
I'm just a successful primate. I will take that.
I can live with that. You are a very successful
primate. But let's start at the beginning or
actually way, way back in the dictionary, because
I was reading through the source material on
the etymology of the word gossip. And I genuinely
thought there was a typo in our notes. I thought
someone had made a mistake. It's one of the most
surprising origin stories in the entire English
language. It's a total head turner. The word
God is in there. It is. It's right there at the
start. If you go back to old English, the root
word is God Sib. God -sib. Okay, break that down
for me. Right. So let's break that down philologically.
You have God, obviously the deity, and then you
have sib. Sib is an old English word meaning
kin or relative or relationship. It's actually
where we get our modern word sibling. No way.
So if I'm translating this literally, gossip
means God -sibling or like a God -relative. Precisely.
That's exactly what I meant. Originally, a godsend
had absolutely nothing to do with spreading rumors
or idle talk. It was a noun, not a verb. It referred
to a specific person. And what person was that?
A sponsor at a baptism. A godparent. A godparent.
So this was a title of incredible honor. Of the
highest honor. It designated a spiritual kinship.
If you are my God, Seb, you are my spiritual
family. You are the person I trusted with my
child's soul. And by extension, the word came
to mean a very, very close friend, someone you
trusted with your soul, essentially. So how on
earth do we get from person I trust with my soul
to person who talks trash behind my back? I mean,
that is a tragic fall from grace for a word.
It's a huge slide. And it's a slide that takes
a few hundred years. And it takes a very fascinating
detour through a very specific room in the house.
Let me guess. The bedroom. The birthing room,
specifically. You have to contextualize this
historically. For a massive chunk of human history,
before modern medicine, before sterile hospitals,
childbirth was an event that was exclusively
attended by women. Right. Men were not allowed.
Absolutely not. Fathers were pacing outside,
wringing their hands. But inside that room, it
was a totally female domain. Okay. So a woman
goes into labor. Who does she call? She doesn't
call a doctor. She calls her godsibs. Her female
relatives, her neighbors, her closest friends,
these were the women who had gathered to help
her deliver the baby. It's her support network.
Her literal support network. But as anyone who
has been through labor or been close to it knows,
it is not a quick process. It can be days, long,
agonizing, terrifying hours. Exactly. So you
have a room full of close female friends locked
away from the men for hours or even days on end.
What do they do while they wait for nature to
take its course? They talk. They talk. They share
news. They talk about their husbands, their children,
the community. They advise. They comfort. They
bond. This environment, this gathering of the
gossips, was a support system. In the Middle
Ages, calling a woman a gossip was actually a
term of endearment. It was what you called your
close female friend. It meant warmth, support,
solidarity. That actually sounds beautiful. It
sounds like a sisterhood. Here come the gossips
to help me through the hardest, most dangerous
thing I'll ever do. It was a sisterhood, a powerful
one. But this is where the sociology and the
power dynamics come in. Because whenever you
have a marginalized group, in this case women
in a patriarchal society gathering in private,
sharing information that the dominant group men
cannot hear. It makes the dominant group nervous.
It creates intense anxiety in the dominant group.
So the men casing outside aren't just worried
about the baby. They're worried about what is
being said about them inside that locked room.
Exactly. They're thinking, what are they plotting
in there? What secrets are they sharing? Language
evolves to reflect social power dynamics. And
around the 16th century, we see the meaning of
gossip start to shift. So the 1500s, the Tudor
era. Yes. The word shifts from describing the
person, the supportive friend, the godparent,
to describing a type of person. And the connotation
just curdles. It starts to mean someone who delights
in idle talk, a newsmonger, a tattler, a woman
who talks too much. And it becomes gender coded.
It becomes a female trait. Heavily. almost exclusively.
By the 16th century, gossip is almost always
applied to women. It becomes a caricature. You
have the scold, the fish wife, the gossip. It
was a way of demonizing female solidarity by
framing their private supportive conversations
as something trivial or worse. malicious. That
is such a crucial reframe. It didn't start negative.
It went from spiritual kin to annoying blabbermouth
almost entirely because men were nervous about
what women were saying when they weren't around.
That is the prevailing linguistic and sociological
theory. Yes. And then as we get into the 19th
century, the term extends even further. It stops
being just about the person and starts referring
to the conversation itself. the act of gossiping.
And didn't Shakespeare have a hand in this? I
feel like he's always involved when words change
meaning in English. He's always in the mix. The
verb to gossip first appears in Shakespeare's
work. He helps cement that transition from a
noun, a person, to an action. But the key insight
here, the thing to really hold on to, is that
the history of the word gossip is in many ways
the history of female friendship being rebranded
as a social vice. That puts a whole different
spin on it. It really does. But, okay, even if
the word itself was weaponized against women,
the actual behavior of talking about people who
aren't there, that's something everyone does.
Men, women, everyone. Absolutely. Men gossip
just as much, if not more, than women. The studies
are very clear on that. The style might be different,
but the frequency is there. So that brings us
to the why. Why do we all do it? Because if it
was just idle talk, if it had no real purpose,
we would have stopped doing it a long, long time
ago. Evolution is ruthlessly efficient. It doesn't
keep behaviors that waste energy unless they
serve a vital purpose. And that purpose is survival,
which leads us directly to Robin Dunbar. Yes,
the Dunbar number. And I love this theory because
it involves monkeys and hygiene, which is always
a great combination. It's the grooming theory
of language. Robin Dunbar is a British anthropologist
and evolutionary psychologist, and he was looking
at our primate relatives. If you look at chimps
or bonobos or baboons, how do they form and maintain
social bonds? They pick lice off each other.
That's the image we all have. Right. Social grooming.
They will sit there for hours, painstakingly
picking through each other's fur, removing dirt,
pulling out parasites. Now, it's hygienic, sure,
but its primary function is social. How so? It
releases endorphins. It lowers the heart rate.
It builds trust. It's a profound act of intimacy.
It says, I am making myself vulnerable to you,
and I am caring for you. We are allies. So it's
the primate equivalent of a hug and a long, deep
talk. Exactly. But here's the problem. Grooming
is a one -on -one activity. You can only pick
lice off one monkey at a time. Maybe two if you're
very skilled. And it takes forever. I've seen
them at the zoo. It's an all -day affair. It
is. So Dunbar calculated that for primates, the
size of their social group is physically limited
by how much time they have in the day to groom.
If the group gets too big, you physically cannot
groom everyone enough to maintain the bonds.
The group fractures and falls apart. Okay, so
enter humans. We started forming much, much bigger
groups. Much bigger. Dunbar proposed that the
natural human group size, the number of people
we can maintain stable social relationships with,
is about 150 people. This is the famous Dunbar's
number. I've heard of this. It's like the size
of a small village or a military company. Exactly.
But then he did the math. To maintain social
bonds with 150 people through physical grooming,
the way our primate ancestors did, you would
have to spend over 40 % of your waking hours
picking lice off people. Okay, let's just pause
on that number. 40%. If I'm awake for 16 hours,
that's over six and a half hours a day. Every
single day. Just grooming. I don't even have
time to go to the gym for 45 minutes. It's insane.
It is metabolically and temporally impossible.
We would starve to death because we'd be too
busy grooming to hunt or gather food. So nature
had a bottleneck. We needed to maintain larger
groups to survive, but our primary bonding tool
was too slow. Nature had to invent a shortcut,
a patch update, if you will, for the social brain.
And that update was language. Specifically, language
used for gossip. Gossip is, in Dunbar's framing,
vocal grooming. It allows you to service your
social network exponentially faster and more
efficiently. How is it more efficient? Well,
think about it. I can talk to three or four people
at once. I can't bring three or four people at
once. You can talk while you're doing other things.
You can talk while you're hunting, while you're
gathering food, while you're making tools. You
can even talk in the dark around a campfire.
It's an incredibly efficient bonding mechanism.
Instead of spending an hour picking lice to say,
we are friends, I tell you a secret to say, We
are friends. So when I lean in and tell you something
juicy about someone else, biologically, I am
metaphorically picking a bug off your shoulder.
Precisely. You are signaling trust, you're signaling
shared interest, and you are strengthening the
social bond between the two of you at the expense
of a third party. And it goes even further than
that. It's not just about bonding. It's about
data gathering. The reputation database. Yes.
If we could only learn about people through direct
personal interaction, it would be incredibly
inefficient and dangerous. If I have to wait
until Bob the caveman steals my food to know
that Bob is a thief, well, I've already lost
my food. Right. Lesson learned the hard way.
But if you gossip to me around the fire and say,
hey, watch out for Bob, he steals food, I now
have crucial survival data without taking any
personal risk. I can navigate the complex social
world of our 150 -person tribe much more safely.
So gossip is basically a distributed cloud server
for reputation management, a way for the tribe
to keep a shared spreadsheet on who's a good
person and who's a jerk. That is a perfect modern
analogy. And Dunbar's research backs this up.
He and his teams analyzed conversations in public
places, and they found that even today, about
65 % of all human conversation is devoted to
social topics. Two -thirds. Two -thirds of everything
we say is about who is doing what with whom,
who is trustworthy, who is not. That makes me
feel like we haven't evolved as much as we think
we have. We're just monkeys with iPhones talking
about the other monkeys. We absolutely are. But
there's a specific nuance to this wiring that
I found really, really disturbing in the research
notes. Anderson study oh this one really freaked
me out this is the study that was published in
the journal science regarding something called
binocular rivalry yes This moves us from sociology
and anthropology into hard neuroscience. This
is about how your brain is physically built.
So help me understand the setup here, because
binocular rivalry sounds like a war between my
eyes. That is essentially what it is. It's a
very clever lab technique. Usually your two eyes
work together perfectly to create one seamless
3D image of the world. But in a lab, you can
rig it so that your left eye sees one image,
say a picture of a house, and your right eye...
at the exact same time, sees a totally different
image, say, a picture of a human face. And the
brain just can't handle seeing both at once.
It can't merge them. No, it confuses the visual
cortex. So the brain does something amazing.
It toddles, it suppresses one image and shows
you the other. You'll see the house for a few
seconds, then pop, it disappears and you see
the face, then back to the house. It's a rivalry
for your conscious attention. Okay, so your brain
is flipping a coin. Where does the gossip come
into this? This is the genius of the experiment.
The researchers showed participants a series
of faces. But before the experiment, they told
the participants little bits of gossip about
the people in the photos. Some of the gossip
was neutral. This guy walked to the store. Some
of it was positive. This guy helped an elderly
woman carry her groceries. And some of it was
negative. This guy threw a chair at his neighbor
in a fit of rage. Okay. So I have these positive,
negative, and neutral biases loaded into my brain.
Then they put me in the machine. They put you
in the machine. They show one of those faces
to one eye and the picture of the house to the
other eye. And they measured very precisely how
long the brain chose to focus on each face when
it was fighting with the house image for dominance.
And let me guess. The bad faces won. The chair
throwers. By a landslide. The faces that had
been associated with negative gossip dominated
the subject's visual consciousness for a significantly
longer period of time than the faces associated
with positive or neutral gossip. Wait, I want
to really make sure I get the implication of
this. This isn't just I paid more attention to
the bad guy. You're saying my eyes, my brain's
actual visual processing physically held the
image of the bad guy longer. It refused to let
it go. Yes. Your brain prioritized the processing
of the negative social threat. It literally forced
you to see the bad guy more than the good guy
or the neutral guy. Yeah. It deemed that information
more important for your survival. That is absolutely
wild. It explains so much about modern media.
It explains why I can't look away from a Twitter
feud or a political scandal. My brain isn't being
petty. It thinks it's keeping me alive. Exactly.
In the ancestral environment, knowing who the
aggressor is in the tribe keeps you safe. Knowing
who the nice guy is. Well, that's pleasant, but
it's optional information. Knowing who the chair
thrower is is mandatory for survival. We are
biologically fundamentally prioritized to seek
out and focus on negative gossip. So we're hardwired
for negativity. That is deeply depressing, but
also very validating for my media habits. And
it creates a powerful mechanism for social regulation.
And this leads to this concept of the invisible
fence. Right. Because if we are all hyper aware
of who the bad guys are, that changes how everyone
behaves. Gossip enforces group morality by talking
about bad behavior. The group collaboratively
defines what good behavior is. If you know that
everyone in the tribe is going to whisper about
you for weeks, if you cheat on your taxes or
cheat on your spouse, you are less likely to
do it. It's a deterrent. So gossip is, it's the
police, the social police. It is a low -cost,
decentralized police force. Think about it. Direct
confrontation is metabolically and physically
expensive. Yeah. If I see you stealing and I
confront you directly, you might punch me in
the face. That's a high risk. I could get hurt.
But if I gossip about you to the rest of the
group, I can damage your reputation, get you
ostracized, and correct your behavior, or at
least warn everyone else, without ever risking
a physical fight. It's a much safer way to enforce
the rules. That makes it sound almost noble.
It sounds pro -social. I'm not being mean. I'm
just protecting the tribe. In a purely evolutionary
context, it is pro -social. It serves the group.
But, and here's the giant crucial pivot. When
you take that Stone Age mechanism that was designed
for a small, tight -knit tribe and you drop it
into a modern, fluorescent -lit, open -plan office,
it stops being noble and it starts being incredibly
toxic. Let's talk about the workplace battlefield
because this is where I think most of us actually
encounter gossip in its most potent form. It's
not about survival anymore. It's about power
and politics. The modern workplace is a unique
petri dish because it's a forced social group.
You don't choose your coworkers. But your livelihood,
your ability to pay your rent, depends entirely
on navigating them successfully. And the source
material here uses some very, very strong language.
One of the experts, Peter Vajda, calls workplace
gossip a form of violence. Workplace violence.
Now, I have to push back on that a little bit.
Violence, I mean, real violence involves fists
or weapons. Calling a whisper by the water cooler
violence feels like we're diluting the word,
doesn't it? I thought so, too, initially. It
sounds like hyperbole. It sounds like something
from an HR seminar. But let's look at his argument
more closely. He argues that violence is any
act that violates the integrity or safety of
a person. OK, that's a broad definition, but
I'll go with it. If I punch you, I damage your
physical safety. We all agree that's violence.
But if I run a subtle six month smear campaign
against you that destroys your professional reputation,
gets you passed over for a promotion, gets you
fired and makes you essentially unemployable
in your industry. Have I not damaged your safety?
Have I not, in a very real way, taken food out
of your mouth and your family's mouth? Wouldn't
you put it that way? Yeah. If you destroy my
ability to pay my mortgage, that is an attack
on my fundamental security, my survival. Exactly.
It is a psychological and economic assault. It
empowers the gossiper while completely disempowering
the target. It's an asymmetric attack, and that's
what makes it so insidious. And it's insidious
because often the target doesn't even know it's
happening until it's too late. That is the behind
-the -back attacker concept from Turner and Weed's
research. They argue it's the most dangerous
type of workplace conflict. If you scream at
me in a meeting, at least I know where we stand,
I can see the threat. I can defend myself. Right.
I can scream back. Or I can go to HR. It's out
in the open. But if you systematically undermine
me to our boss over the course of six months,
smiling to my face the whole time, and I only
find out when I get the pink slip. I never had
a chance to defend myself. I was shot in the
back. That is why it feels like a profound violation.
So let's break down the why in the office. Because
people aren't just doing this because they're
evil. They're getting something out of it. The
research we looked at lists the four powers of
the gossiper. I found this matrix really, really
helpful to spot what's actually happening in
a meeting or on a Slack channel. It helps you
decode the political game being played. The first
one is the most obvious. Coercive power. This
is the mean girls dynamic, right? Fear -based
power. Essentially. The listener hears the gossiper
tearing Susan from accounting apart and thinks,
if they're tearing Susan apart to me, they will
tear me apart to someone else if I cross them.
The gossiper holds a threat over you. You have
to stay on their good side to avoid becoming
the next target. It's a kind of social hostage
situation. Laugh at my jokes about Susan or you're
next on the chopping block. Correct. Then on
the flip side, you have reward power. This is
the carrot. not the stick. The listener thinks,
if I'm in this person's inner circle, they can
help me. They can speak well of me to the right
people. Being your friend has benefits. I'll
scratch your back if you scratch mine. It's about
alliance building. Yes. Then there is expert
power. And this is a really interesting one.
This is purely about information. In so many
companies, the official communication channels
are slow. or their sanitized corporate speak.
Oh, totally. The official company email says,
we're undergoing a strategic restructuring, but
the gossip on the grapevine says, layoffs are
starting on the third floor on Tuesday. Exactly.
The person who knows the real story, who has
the inside scoop, has expert power. They become
the go -to source for what's actually happening.
They hold the keys to the truth, and that gives
them immense influence. And the last one. This
one felt the most complex. Referent power? It's
the trickiest one. Because it's about status
and identity. Being in the loop makes you feel
special. If the CEO's executive assistant pulls
you aside and whispers a secret about an upcoming
merger, you feel elevated. You feel like an insider.
That gives the gossiper power over your self
-esteem. But there's a trap here, right? Because
while I might feel special in that moment hearing
the secret, do I actually trust the person telling
me more or do I trust them less? That is the
great paradox of the gospel, and we'll get to
that later. But in the moment, yes, it feels
like power. It feels like inclusion. For managers,
though, this whole dynamic is a complete nightmare.
And yet I was surprised to see that some middle
managers actually seem to prefer the grapevine
to official channels. It's the managerial dilemma.
A study by Harcourt, Richardson, and Wattier
found that many middle managers secretly believe
the grapevine is faster, more detailed, and more
honest than official reports from upstairs. If
you want to know if team morale is actually low,
don't read the sanitized HR survey. Listen to
what people are saying in the lunchroom. It's
a fine line they have to walk. If you, as a manager,
participate too much in the gossip, you lose
respect and authority. But if you ignore it completely...
You lose touch with the reality of your own team.
You become the last to know. So we've covered
the deep biological wiring and the modern office
politics. But I want to go deeper still. I want
to talk about the morality of this. Because it
feels like every major religion and ethical system
on the planet has a very, very strong opinion
on gossip. They do. And this is Section 4, The
Ethics of the Tongue. And what I was struck by
is how visceral and powerful the imagery is.
We aren't just talking about bad manners here.
We're talking about a kind of spiritual rot.
Let's start with Judaism. I was reading about
the concept of Lashon Hara. Yes, Lashon Hara,
which translates to the evil tongue. Now, I always
assumed that the sin of gossip was fundamentally
about lying. You know, thou shalt not bear false
witness, slander, spreading things that aren't
true. That's the common misconception, and it's
a really important distinction. Slander, which
is lying, is forbidden. But Lashon Hara is distinct.
It refers to speech that is derogatory or damaging
to another person, even if it is 100 % true.
Wait, hold on. Say that again. Even if it's true.
Yes. In this ethical framework, truth is not
a defense. But that goes against everything in
our modern Western sense of justice. I'm just
telling the truth is our go -to defense for everything.
Judaism argues that the truth of the statement
doesn't justify the damage it does to human dignity.
If I tell everyone in our community that you
struggled with a gambling debt 10 years ago and
it's completely true, what good purpose does
that serve now? It only serves to humble you,
to shame you, to damage your current standing.
The fact that it's true. in a way, makes it more
damaging, not less, because you can't deny it.
That is a really, really high bar. It demands
that we ask not just, is this true, but is this
necessary? Is this helpful? Precisely. The proverb
quoted in the source text is just perfect. The
words of a gossip are like choice morsels. They
go down to a man's innermost parts. Choice morsels.
That is such a perfect description of what it
feels like. It feels like a delicious forbidden
piece of candy. It satisfies a hunger. But the
question is, what kind of hunger is it? And the
text suggests it's a dirty hunger. And then we
move to Islam and the imagery gets even more
intense, even more graphic. It gets horrific,
honestly. In the Quran, the act of backbiting.
which is known as giba, is equated to, and this
is a direct quote, eating the flesh of one's
dead brother. Okay, that just stops you in your
tracks. Eating the flesh of one's dead brother.
What? Dead brother. What's the significance of
that detail? It's a brilliant and chilling metaphor
for cowardice and violation. Why a dead brother?
Because a dead person cannot defend themselves.
They are absent. They are helpless. When you
gossip about someone who isn't in the room, they
are functionally dead to that conversation. They
cannot explain the context. They cannot apologize.
They cannot offer their side of the story. You
are tearing apart their honor, their flesh, while
they lie there, absent and helpless. That really
strips away any of the fun of it, doesn't it?
It frames the gossiper not as a witty in -the
-know observer, but as a coward who attacks a
corpse, a cannibal. It frames it as a profound
violation of the sanctity of the human being.
And then Christianity has similar prohibitions.
The Apostle Paul in Romans lists whisperers and
backbiters in the same list as murderers and
haters of God. That's pretty serious company
to be in. It is. And the Baha 'ian faith takes
it even further, if that's possible. What did
they say? They call it the worst human quality
and the most great sin. And the quote that stuck
with me is, backbiting quencheth the light of
the heart. It suggests that when you speak ill
of others, you aren't just hurting them. You
are dimming your own spiritual light. You are
actively damaging your own soul. So we have this
near universal condemnation from the world's
great ethical traditions. It's bad, it's cowardly,
it's spiritual poison. But then, just as I was
getting comfortable with that idea, the research
notes threw a massive curveball at me. The blackmail
paradox. Ah, yes. Walter Block. This is the philosophical
hand grenade. It really is. I had to read the
section twice because my brain just rejected
it at first. So Block, who is a libertarian economist
and philosopher, argues that the blackmailer,
a criminal, is ethically superior to the gossip.
Correct. Not just not as badass, but actually.
objectively superior. That makes absolutely no
sense on the surface. Blackmail is illegal. I
can go to jail for it. Gosping is just annoying.
It's a bad habit. How can the actual criminal
be the better person? It all comes down to one
crucial word, agency. Oh, hey, walk me through
the logic. Okay. Let's set up a scenario. Imagine
I know a terrible reputation -destroying secret
about you. I am the blackmailer. I come to you
privately and I say, I know what you did. Pay
me $5 ,000 or I will tell everyone. Okay. I hate
you. You're extorting me, but I'm listening.
In that transaction, as vile as it is, I am giving
you a choice. I am giving you the option to buy
my silence. You can perform a cost -benefit analysis.
Is keeping this secret worth $5 ,000 to you?
You have agency. You have a chance to control
the outcome and stop the information from getting
out. Okay. I see that. I have a choice, however
terrible. Now let's reset. Imagine I am the gossip.
I know the exact same secret. I don't ask you
for anything. I just go to the office party on
Friday night and over drinks I tell everyone.
For free. Just for the thrill of it. And my life
and career blow up? Your life blows up. You had
no warning. You had no chance to stop it. You
were given zero agency in the destruction of
your own reputation. The gossip unilaterally
decided to ruin your life without giving you
a vote. So Block is saying the gossip is an ambush,
a unilateral attack, while the blackmailer is
a negotiation. Yes. He argues that the blackmailer
is at least engaging in a perverse form of voluntary
transaction, whereas the gossip is engaging in
pure, unadulterated destruction. That is, it's
logically sound, but it feels morally repulsive.
I still feel like the blackmailer is worse because
he's trying to profit from my pain. And that's
a valid counterargument. But Bloch's point isn't
necessarily to defend the blackmailer. His point
is to force us to ask, why do we treat the gossip
so lightly? Why is this person, who destroys
lives without warning and for no reason other
than their own entertainment, just dismissed
with light contempt as having a bad habit? It's
a challenge to our entire categorization of harmless
sins versus actual crimes. Precisely. It shakes
things up. Okay, let's pivot again. Because we've
thoroughly bashed gossip as a spiritual sin and
a workplace weapon. But there is another lens
here. A lens where gossip isn't a vice at all.
It's actually a tool of resistance. This is section
five. The feminist perspective. And this is so
crucial because as we discussed right at the
start, gossip has been historically branded as
a woman's vice. Feminist scholars like Deborah
Jones come along and say, OK, let's lean into
that. Let's look at why it became a female domain.
If you are locked out of all the official channels
of power, what do you do? Where does your power
come from? Exactly. For centuries, for millennia,
women were excluded from the public sphere. They
couldn't be politicians. They couldn't be judges.
They couldn't be priests. They had no formal
institutional power. So where did they exercise
influence? In the private sphere. Through talk.
Through their networks. So gossip was their political
channel, their news network, their judicial system.
It was. Jones calls it a female cultural event.
It was a way to create and enforce social norms
in a world where they couldn't write the laws.
It was a way to validate their own experiences.
If a husband was abusive, but the law wouldn't
do anything about it, the women would talk. They
would warn each other, stay away from him, make
sure you're never alone with him, let's all support
his wife. It was a survival network. And sometimes
it was more than just talk, right? The source
material mentions rough music, which sounds like
a punk band from the 80s, but I gather it was
something else entirely in early modern England.
Rough music, or the Skimmington Ride. This is
a fascinating piece of social history. This is
when gossip wasn't just whispering. It could
mobilize into a full -blown public ritual. A
riot, basically. A riot based on gossip? Yes.
If a member of the community was seen to be violating
important social norms, say, a husband was known
to be beating his wife, or a couple was engaged
in open adultery, the community would take matters
into their own hands. often led by the gossips,
the women of the village. They would gather outside
the offender's house at night. They'd bang pots
and pans. They'd blow horns. They would sing
lewd, insulting songs detailing the person's
transgressions. They would parade an effigy of
the person through the street. So it was weaponized
public shaming orchestrated by the community.
It was extrajudicial justice. The official male
-dominated legal system might not punish the
abuser, but the gossips would. They would use
noise and shame and social pressure to make his
life absolutely miserable until he changed his
behavior. There's this incredible story in the
notes that illustrates this perfectly. The Tale
of the Walking Mort. The Tale of the Walking
Mort. This is from a 1566 book by a man named
Thomas Harmon. It's an amazing little snapshot.
So set the scene for us. What is a walking mort?
Okay. A walking mort. was 16th century slang
for a female wanderer. A vagrant, a beggar woman.
So this woman, let's just call her the mort,
is propositioned by a local farmer. He asks her
to meet him in his barn later that night. For
an illicit date. A very illicit date. The farmer
thinks he's getting lucky. He sneaks out of his
house, away from his wife, and heads to the barn,
probably feeling very pleased with himself. But
the mort has a conscience. Or maybe a better
plan. She has a much better plan. She doesn't
go to the barn. She goes straight to the farmer's
wife. She tells her everything. Your husband
asked me to meet him in the barn at this time?
She gossips. So the wife decides to rally the
troops. She rallies the gossips. The text says
she gathers five furious, sturdy, muffled gossips.
I just love the word sturdy. These aren't fragile
flowers. These are strong, capable women. And
muffled, so they're in disguise. Or just being
quiet. Likely. They're on a covert mission. So
the farmer walks into the dark barn. He sees
a figure he thinks is the mort. He drops his
trousers. The text says his hosen. Oh, no. This
is not going to end well for him. And suddenly,
the trap is sprung. He is jumped by six angry
women, his wife and her five sturdy gossips.
And they proceed to give him a severe beating
while his pants are literally down around his
ankles. Justice is served. Cold, hard justice.
But look at the function of the story. The gossips
here are the heroes. They aren't malicious troublemakers.
They are the upholders of the sanctity of marriage.
They are the community's police force, correcting
the bad behavior of the errant husband when no
one else would. It completely flips the script.
We usually think of gossip as something that
breaks up homes, but here, the network of women's
gossip actually protected the home from an internal
threat. It shows that gossip can be a powerful
check on power, especially on patriarchal power.
It keeps people honest when they think no one
is watching. It reminds me so much of the whisper
networks we heard about during the height of
the hashtag MeToo movement. Women in Hollywood
or in tech or in publishing quietly warning other
women about dangerous, powerful men in their
industry because HR and the legal system wouldn't
do anything. That is the exact modern equivalent
of the God -civ network. When the formal system
fails you, you turn to the informal whisper network
for safety and for justice. So we've arrived
at the end of this journey. We've seen gossip
as a biological necessity, as a workplace weapon,
as a profound spiritual sin, and as a tool of
feminist resistance. But I want to talk about
the personal cost. Because despite all this utility,
nobody actually likes a gossip. This is the likability
paradox. It is the final cruel trap of gossip.
There was a study by Turner and his colleagues
in 2003 regarding trust that really stood out.
Yes. This is so counterintuitive. We all want
to hear the gossip. If I lean in and say I have
a secret about the boss, you want to know it,
your brain lights up. But the study found that
after you hear me tell the gossip, your trust
in me goes down. Even if we are close friends.
Even if we are close friends. The prior relationship
does not protect the gossiper's reputation. Because
logically, your brain makes a very simple calculation.
If he is talking this way about Dave to me, how
does he talk about me when I'm not here? So the
very act of trying to bond with you by sharing
a secret actually erodes the bond in the long
run. It's a classic double -edged sword. You
gain short -term attention and maybe some of
that referent power, but you lose long -term
respect and trust. The research is clear. People
who are perceived as gossiping frequently are
also perceived as having less social power and
are less liked by their peers. So we are evolutionarily
hardwired to do it. But we are socially punished
if we do it too much. We're trapped in the middle.
We have to do it to maintain our social world.
But if we do it badly or too often, we get ejected
from that same social world. So let's try to
wrap this up. What is the grand takeaway here?
Because I feel like I can't just stop gossiping.
My brain literally won't let me. But I also feel
like I need to be much more careful about how
I do it. I think the takeaway is awareness. It's
about intention. Gossip isn't just one thing.
It's a spectrum of behaviors. On one end of that
spectrum, you have vocal grooming, you have bonding,
sharing information for group cohesion, saying,
I care about you, so I'm telling you this. And
on the other, far darker end, you have eating
dead flesh. You have cowardly, selfish destruction
for entertainment. And somewhere in the middle,
you have the invisible fence. You have the necessary,
if sometimes unpleasant, act of regulating society
and keeping people in line. The goal, I think,
is to become a conscious consumer and producer
of gossip. To ask yourself before you speak,
which one am I doing right now? Am I warning
a friend about a real danger? Am I strengthening
a bond? Or am I just getting a cheap thrill by
destroying someone for sport? Here is a final
thought to chew on, a provocative question for
you, the listener, to take with you. Go for it.
If we actually succeeded in our moral quest to
eliminate gossip, if we could wave a magic wand
and make it impossible to talk about people who
aren't present, would society even work? It is
a fascinating and slightly terrifying dystopian
thought experiment. If I couldn't warn you about
the thief, about the predator, about the corrupt
politician. If we couldn't check the power of
the abusive boss through the whisper network.
We might lose our primary tool for protecting
each other. We might lose the social glue that
allows for trust and cooperation on a large scale.
We might be cleaner spiritually, but we might
be much more atomized and much more vulnerable.
Or is the attempt to eradicate gossip actually
an attempt to eradicate a fundamental part of
human connection? Maybe the messiness, the choice
morsels are the whole point. Maybe we just need
to learn how to be better gossips. Better gossips.
I like that. Sturdy gossips, like those women
in the barn. Defending the good, not just spreading
the bad. Exactly. Thank you so much for joining
us on this deep dive. My brain feels slightly
rewired. It was a genuine pleasure. It's a fascinating
topic. And to you, the listener. Here is your
challenge for the week. Observe your own conversations.
Don't judge them. Don't try to change them. Just
watch them. Are you grooming? Are you warning?
Or are you eating choice morsels? Pay attention.
You might be surprised by who you are when you
think no one else is listening. Until next time.
See you then.