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Before we get going today, I wanted to tell you about another Radiotopia podcast you should be listening to, Song Exploder. Song Exploder is an award-winning show about the creative process behind music. Artists break down one of their songs, letting you hear all the different layers in the recording, from instruments to beats to vocals. And most importantly, they talk about why they made the creative choices they did. Song Exploder is not just for music nerds. It's for anybody who cares about creativity or wants to feel inspired to create something.
It's hosted by Rishi Keshe Hiraway, who you might know from the podcast Home Cooking or the West Wing Weekly. The episodes are short, about 20 minutes each, and my recommendation is to start with an episode featuring an artist you love. And then listen to one with an artist you don't know at all. There are over 250 episodes with guests like Fleetwood Mac, Madonna, Solange, Beats,
Billy Eilish, Phoebe Bridgers, FK Twigs, The Killers, Dua Lipa, and John Batiste, and more. Each episode is really a miniature portrait of an artist and how their creative mind works, with the song as the lens we see them through. It's also a great way to discover new music. It's a different kind of experience to get introduced to a song this way, learning how and why each piece and idea came together before you hear the whole song at the end.
Find your favorite episode of Song Exploder and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts or at songexploder.net. Hello, and welcome back to Normal Gossip. I'm Kelsey McKinney, and in each episode of this show, we usually bring you a gossip story from the real world, but today we are here with a very fun announcement. Alex, say hello. Hi, I'm here. Hi.
Alex, are you excited about our announcement? Oh, I am so excited. Do you want to tell our friends what our secret is, what our big announcement is? Oh my gosh. I've been dying to share because people have been asking. Many have been asking. They are asking. Are you going on tour again? Are you doing more live shows? The answer is yes. Yes.
We are. We are going on a little mini tour. Baby tour. Baby tour. Because we had such a great time on our tour last summer. And there are so many cities in the U.S. So many. Big country, let me tell you. So many more than the eight that we visited last summer. So we picked four more cities. Four more cities. Four more cities to visit. And I'm so excited.
I think that, you know, we, we love telling this story. It's the exact same story, exact same show that we did this summer. So if you saw it this summer, you are welcome to come back again. Um, but it will be the same story because we love it so much.
We're going to go on tour in March because Alex and I thought, you know, March is a terrible month. What if we did something fun instead of just sitting in our apartment and crying? So we will be in Dallas on March 6th at the Majestic Theater, in Atlanta, Georgia on March 8th at Symphony Hall, in Durham, North Carolina on March 11th at the Carolina Theater, and in Washington, D.C. on March 13th at the Warner Theater. The normal gossip tour of the Southeast. Hell,
Hell yeah. It's time for us to visit the South. It's time for us to go to Waffle House. It's time for us to get Pub Subs. It's time for us to go to Zaxby's. I'm so excited. She's losing it. She hasn't even said go dogs yet, but I can feel it inside her blood. Oh no.
Alex, can you tell the people what they can expect from our live show? Yes. So it's fun, I think. And I went to all of them, so I would know. Wow. Go off.
Stop bragging. We have wonderful guests. We have some great fan favorites and new friends lined up for these shows. And let's see, we have glow sticks. Everyone loves glow sticks. Very exciting. Everybody gets to make noises at certain controlled times. Alex, you wear a squirrel hat, which is very exciting. It's really fun.
My biggest endorsement for the show is that it is like one of my favorite stories that we've ever told. Like it is so fun. It is so ridiculous. I like last night was, you know, freaking out as one does and was like, oh shit, do I even remember this story at all? But then turns out I remember all of it because it's great. I love it so much. I have never thought of camping the same way again or horses. Or Oakleys. Yeah. Oakleys. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, man. So come to the Normal Gossip Live show. You too can have all of your associations with horses, Oakley, and camping changed. Yes. Tickets are on sale now at normalgossiplive.com. Normalgossiplive.com. Woo. See you there. Yeah. See you there. Can't wait. Oh, my God, Alex. Remember the week that you moved to a completely different state and then also at the same time we had a company retreat that was in New York City? Yeah.
That was not my strongest planning moment in my entire life. Well, it's a hard moment to plan for because you're like living in four different places, basically. One thing that I did plan really well, though, was that I ordered a factor box for the day after I came back from New York. What's a factor box?
So Factor does no prep, no mess meals. And they can come in different options like Calorie Smart, Protein Plus, and Keto. We love protein. We sure do. We're swole girls. Gains, baby. The meals are fresh and never frozen. And there's also like no prep time. What? You just put it straight into the microwave. It's great. So it's like no chopping. Yeah, two minutes. Oh.
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That's code normalgossip50 at factormeals.com slash normalgossip50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month while your subscription is active.
You know, we do ads for Rocket Money pretty consistently every month. You would think by now I would have canceled every subscription that I don't use. But guess what? I haven't. Rocket Money reminded me recently that I was subscribed to something I didn't even know I was subscribed to. But it's because it was like an annual subscription. I unsubscribed. And by I, I mean Rocket Money unsubscribed for me. Alex, is this relatable to you?
It is so relatable to me. I would like never check my bank account unless I really, really have to because it gives me so much anxiety. And is there a reason that you check your bank account now? Yeah, I get these awesome emails from Rocket Money that are like, hey, FYI, this is how much you spent last week. And it feels like a gentle person holding my hand as I go to my bank account. Oh, yeah.
Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. They also send you beautiful emails that tell you what your bank balance is, which we love. Thanks, Rocket Money. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's features.
Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash gossip. That's rocketmoney.com slash gossip. rocketmoney.com slash gossip.
For the second portion of this episode, we're just going to answer a few questions that are commonly asked. I know we have a lot of new friends here. Hello, everybody. So these are questions that we get a lot, and we just thought it'd be great to do a little refresher. Kelsey, what is our first question that we are answering? Why aren't you coming to my city? Please, please, sir. Can I have some gossip? Gossip?
Oy, mister, are you my dad? Like, please help me. Oy, come to my city. Oy.
We have fish and chips. Yeah. Alex, why aren't we going to every city in the world? Because I'm just a sleepy girl. She's so sleepy. We're so sleepy. The thing is, we wish we could go to every city, but going on tour is very logistically difficult. We love our friends at Mills Entertainment who do most of our logistics for us. We love Mills. But it's still logistically difficult, and we do still have a podcast that we want to produce for you. So we're just doing a few cities.
Maybe we'll do a few more cities in the future. Who's to say? If you want us to come to your city, there's a form that you can fill out that is in our Instagram links. And we'll also put that link in the show notes if you are desperate for us to come to one of your cities. I'm sorry to the Midwest. We do love you. We do. It's a very scientific process, which is it's a Google form where we ask you to give us your zip code.
Yeah. And we do fancy data analysis to figure out
where the most normal gossip listeners live. Yeah. So if you really want us to come to your city, simply get all of your friends who live in Detroit to fill out our form. And then we'll be like, well, we have to go. All these people want us to come to Detroit. So consider that. Okay. Next question. How do I get my story on the show? How many details should I include? How long should it be? Oh, great question. Okay. So you can email that to us at normalgossipatdefector.com. It's
If you don't want to type, you could record a voice memo and email the voice memo to normalgossipatthefactor.com. Or we have a really beautiful phone number that you can call at any time. I get alerts from it to my cell phone. So that's exciting. You can do that at 2679-GOSSIP. And we will listen to them. In terms of how many details you should include, you don't have to write. Some people do write out the whole story. And we love that because we get to hear like every little bit and piece of it.
We do email the people whose stories we choose. So we will ask you follow-up questions if we are intrigued by the premise. We will ask you about the anonymization that we're planning to do. So what I would do is I would tell the story the way that you would tell it to your friend at a bar. And then we will ask questions if we need more.
Yes, exactly. And just a little tip. We love a wacky object or a funny nickname. We love a wacky object or a funny nickname. Everybody loves that. Really catches our attention. There's another question that we get a lot of that people have been asking me in person every time that I've read it to them, which is, when do you come back? When new episodes? Please help me win more gossip. When new podcasts?
Well, we will have new episodes in April. A new season coming up. April Fool's. April. Not April Fool's. Just kidding. Not April Fool's.
Mid-April probably. In the meantime, you have this bonus episode. We may be releasing another exciting episode in between now and then that we've been working on. And also, you can always become a friend or friend of a friend level subscriber and get monthly bonus episodes on our secret podcast feed. How do they do that? Oh.
How do you do that? You go to supportnormalgossip.com and sign up for a membership. And by the way, we are also working on a super secret new project that involves written words, email, and
The link to that is in the show notes for this episode and also on our Instagram. Yeah. So we will see some of you in March at the live shows. I can't wait to see your big happy faces. Just a reminder, you can get those tickets at normalgossiplive.com. And we'll see the rest of you in April on the feed. Can't wait to see you. Bye. Bye. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Normal Gossip. If you have a gossip story to share with us, email us at normalgossip at defector.com or you can leave us a voicemail at 2679-GOSSIP. If you love this podcast and want us to keep making it, become a friend or a friend of a friend at supportnormalgossip.com.
You can follow the show on Instagram and TikTok at normal gossip, and you can follow Kelsey on all social media at McKinney Kelsey. This podcast was produced by me, Alex to John Laughlin.
Justin Ellis is Defectors project editor. Jasper Wang and Sean Kuhn are Defectors business guys. Tom Ley is our editor-in-chief. J. Tolviera is our associate producer. Abigail Siegel is our intern. Dan McQuaid runs our merch store, which you can find at normalgossip.store. Tara Jacoby designed our show art. Thanks to the rest of the Defectors staff.
Defector Media is a collectively owned subscriber-based media company. And Normal Gossip is a proud member of Radiotopia. I'm Alex Sujong-Loughlin, and remember, you did not hear this from me. Hi, it's Kelsey B. Kinney. And Alex Sujong-Loughlin from Normal Gossip. From the Normal Gossip podcast. That's not your line, babe. Ah, yes. There we go. There we go. Oh my god.
Hey, it's Alexie John Loughlin and Kelsey McKinney from the Normal Gossip Podcast. No. No. That's my line. Got it. Okay. Dumbass. I'm not okay. Radiotopia from PRX.
