Welcome to season EIGHT of Normal Gossip! We're kicking off the season with Scaachi Koul and a story about the lengths you would go for a coveted couch. Order Scaachi’s book, Sucker Punch, here and follow her on Instagram here.Subscribe to our newsletter for writing from Rachelle, Se'era, Jae, Alex, and Kelsey, plus blog recommendations and secrets!You can support Normal Gossip directly by buying merch or becoming a Friend or a Friend-of-Friend at supportnormalgossip.com.Our merch shop is run by Dan McQuade. You can also find all kinds of info about us and how to submit gossip on our Komi page: https://normalgossip.komi.io/Episode transcript here.Order Kelsey's book, You Didn’t Hear This From Me, here!Follow the show on Instagram @normalgossip, and if you have gossip, email us at [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 26-79-GOSSIP.Normal Gossip is hosted by Rachelle Hampton (@heyydnae) and produced by Se'era Spragley Ricks (@seera_sharae) and Jae Towle Vieira (@jaetowlevieira). Alex Sujong Laughlin (@alexlaughs) is our Supervising Producer. Justin Ellis is Defector's projects editor. Show art by Tara Jacoby.Normal Gossip is a proud member of Radiotopia. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Chapter 1: What is the premise of Normal Gossip?
Surprising stories every week, This American Life. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello and welcome to Normal Gossip. I'm your host, Rachel Hampton, and in each episode of this podcast, we're going to bring you an anonymous morsel of gossip from the real world. Y'all, we're back. You're listening to the very first episode of season eight, and I might be biased, but I feeling this season is shaping up to be pretty damn good.
If you haven't tuned in in a while, you might be thinking, this bitch doesn't sound like Kelsey. And you would be right. I am very much not Kelsey. At the end of season seven, normal gossip underwent a peaceful transition of power. And well, I'm the captain now. If you'd like more details on the transition and our feelings around them, go listen to the finale of season seven.
Chapter 2: Who is the new host of Normal Gossip?
I'm going to be so briefly vulnerable here since I know a lot of you skipped this part. And I'm going to say that stepping into the host chair of Normal Gossip is literally a dream come true for me. I'm not going to lie. I'm a little bit nervous. I've been a fan of this show since it launched, which means I know I have got some big and very cute shoes to fill.
I am eternally grateful, not just to Kelsey and Alex and the whole Normal Gossip team for being giving me this opportunity. I'm also so, so grateful to y'all, the audience, for giving me a chance. I have a feeling we're going to have a good time together. If you want to have an even better time together, we have a newsletter and subscriber episodes.
If you upgrade your subscription to friend or friend of a friend, in the subscriber episodes, you get exclusive bits of gossip. They're all pretty good. Now, if you've been tuning in and are now thinking, I know all of this already, give me the gossip. Well, you're in luck because I'm done with my little spiel and I'm now ready to introduce the very first guest of season eight of Normal Gossip.
I am so thrilled to be joined by none other than Saatchi Cole. Saatchi is a senior writer at Slate and the author of two books. Her most recent book, Sucker Punch, just came out in March and it is a beautiful collection of essays. Sachi also produced the documentary Girls Gone Wild, The Untold Story, and she is a co-host of the Scamfluencers podcast. Sachi, welcome.
My first question is, do you consider yourself a gossip?
Yeah, I think anybody who says they're not is a liar. Actually, those people are lying the most. People who are like, I really don't like gossip, liar. Those are the people who say gossip under the sheen of faux concern, and that's worse.
It is.
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Chapter 3: What is Scaachi Koul's relationship to gossip?
Like, I don't want like dramatic bad gossip. I don't like it when it's like people are gossiping about like an awful breakup or a terrible, like terrible stuff like that sucks. But like, ooh, mild work conflict at a place that I don't work. Yum, yum, delicious. snacky for snacky, I must eat. So yeah, I love hearing about things that don't really involve me. I don't believe all of it.
I don't believe all of it. And that's what makes you a good journalist. Thank you. But it is interesting, even when it's false, it is interesting to think about what falsities we invent about each other or about ourselves and why we do it. So I even think then it's still interesting.
It's very revealing. This is the same way I feel about reality television, where people say because it's produced that it doesn't say anything real. And I'm like, no, the invisible hand of the production and what they think we want to see is actually very, very instructive.
And the people on those shows often know that and what they choose to feed into and what they choose not to feed into. They're pretty savvy. So that's, I mean, no decision is a decision.
I mean, I have to ask now that we're here, Sachi, what is your relationship to gossip?
You know, I was thinking this the other day that when I started like my divorce process and when I was starting the separation, I was really mad and offended that people weren't telling me that I was the subject of more gossip. Like I would call my friends and be like, hey. Has anybody asked what's going on? Yeah. I deleted a lot of photos on Instagram. I'm posting a mentally ill person.
What the fuck?
And I'm still a little offended about that, frankly. So I love gossip. I think there's lots of gradations of it and layers of it. I think it's all good and I like it and I want gossip. And... I also, I want this on the record that for this show, you guys do a pre-interview and you asked me to bring a piece of gossip, which I did. And it was deemed too hot to air. And I would like to discuss that.
I just want to be told that I have some credit for somehow bringing a morsel too hot to air by the gossip show. I have to talk to God.
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Chapter 4: How did Morgan become attached to Grant's couch?
Yeah, you have the rare honor of giving us a piece of gossip that we could not air, but a little birdie told me that you have some airable gossip for me.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a story about my own flagellation, certainly. Yeah. Okay. So when you write a book, they give you an advanced version of it. I have one. It's just like a little loose paperback that they give you so that you can give it to people, whatever else. So-
I received one from my publisher and I went to my office to go pick it up because that's where I had it sent for safekeeping. And I was like walking through Brooklyn and having like a really nice day and looking at it and being like, wow, I did it. How exciting. And then I got on the train and I'm still looking at the book. I'm by myself. I'm living in peace, right? And I have it open.
I'm like looking at a random page and I have it open and I just hear, Sachi? And I like slowly lower the book with my name on it as if like I can't read like a billboard. The book could have been a mask of my own face holding it up. And it's you. Yeah. And I haven't seen you in months. Yeah. And you're like, hey, are you reading your own book on the subway?
And I had to be like, yeah, but not like that. I was just checking that it was my book. I was just checking that it's real. What if they put, like, the different book in the same cover? Sometimes that happens, you know? Like, I don't know when that would happen. Like, it was... Like a bottom two experience. And then I had to, and then we had to go to different places.
So I talked to you for a few seconds and then you got off the train to go to, you were going to the gym, I think. I was, yeah. And I had to sit on the fucking train. And there were people, there were other people who watched this interaction and then like looked at me and they were like, oh, you wrote a book, huh? And I'm like, yeah, it's this one that I was reading on the subway.
It's out in March that I'm holding right now.
Can I tell you my experience of this moment? Yeah. Yeah. So I get on the train. It's very early for me. I know this is a morning workout based on how out of it I was. I look up and I'm pretty sure I'd already seen your cover on Instagram. And so I saw the book first and I was just like, oh my God, someone has a galley of Sachi's book already. The street team is really out here. That's incredible.
And then I look up further and I'm like, oh, my God, it's Sachi. I haven't seen her in months. And then I thought this is going to be hilarious.
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges of being a journalism student?
These are parties where the boys have all made Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character in 500 Days of Summer their entire personality without realizing that he is the villain in that movie. Think like American Apparel, Chunky Bangs, Shutter Shades, Warren unironically. Are you with me? Yeah. It looks like you're having some flashbacks. Where were you during this era?
Oh God, this was a terrifying heady time of me like just turning 18 and being in like early university. I had just moved to Toronto. I thought I knew everything. I had cut all my hair off into this fuck ass bob. It looked so bad. I loved it. And I was having a time in my life.
That is a very important element. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The early aughts.
Yeah, yeah.
So our friend of a friend, Morgan, is in college during this era at a liberal arts university in the Pacific Northwest. It's the sort of school where there is no football team. But on any given night, you could find between five and ten shady little bands doing Mumford and Sons cosplay in the basement of a coffee shop. Luckily for our girl Morgan, she loves Mumford & Sons. She loves ModCloth.
She loves wearing huge headbands over her hair. She's the kind of girl who might start an aesthetic Tumblr dedicated to the color blue that low-key becomes a little famous in the aesthetic Tumblr blog community.
Is that a thing?
It is.
Oh, yeah.
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Chapter 6: How does Kobe impact the social dynamics at parties?
Wow. I still don't have a nightstand. I'm using a windowsill.
Satya, get a nightstand.
I don't want to. Then I got to move things. I'm busy.
That's true. You're very busy. Nothing impressed Morgan more in Grant's apartment, though, than the couch. Satya, tell me about your first couch.
I was in like residency when I was in university. And then I had like a little shitty student apartment. I had a really bad futon that my parents gave me. And then I lived with a friend and she had a couch. And then I moved in with my ex and we had this awful blue sectional. I hated it.
When did you realize how expensive couches were?
When I got divorced, I was like, oh, I get to pick all this furniture. And so I got a custom pink velvet couch that pulls out into a queen bed, which is pretty comfortable. And it's like a crushed, it's like a light pink, it's crushed velvet. And my cat really likes it.
That sounds so comfortable. Custom furniture is so chic. It's fun. Oh, my God.
You can do it. It's actually about the same price as a regular couch now because couches are so expensive. Listen. You can get a shitty couch for $220. It will fall apart. It will hold you in a stress position if you try to sleep on it. It's the worst night of your life. But if you want one that is kind of comfortable, and I needed a second bed in case I had visitors-
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