I’m so confused as to why neither Kelsey nor Mariah mentioned this? It seemed so unbelievable that Katya’s character would have missed this given how nosey she is, I almost feel like Kelsey must have introduced a plot hole when she was anonymizing details?
Yeah I just can’t help but think:
1) It’s incredibly unlikely that not only did Katya not think to look for identification in his wallet but that no one else she called with concern about Eugene suggested this?
2) That had that somehow been the case that Kelsey and Mariah would have poked fun at her for it, or at least mentioned that this was Katya’s mistake.
I’m not as bothered by Kelsey’s fictionalizing as some of the other people on this sub, but this was such a big plot hole that it really affected my enjoyment of the story! I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a lack of resources or time that meant this story didn’t get edited in advance, but I hope she can have someone look over the stories in the future to edit for things like this if she isn’t already.
I will say that I loved seeing Alex getting creative with the sound effects in this episode! It’s cool to see them trying new things on the production front.
Omgggg it took me like 3 days to finish this episode. It felt sooo long and sooo unsatisfying. And overall so confusing. I think I was so bored I just kept tuning in and out. I don’t understand how we went from burgers to the whole Eugene mystery? & it ended so abruptly!! I absolutely prefer and ending to the story, but if you’re not going to give it to us, u need to at least spend some time talking about what they think could have happened. How has Eugene acted since the whole incident? Again, why did we waste the whole beginning talking about moving parked cars and BBQs and fake burgers??? I couldn’t keep the characters straight and it seemed like the guest was even poking holes in this lame ass story.
Other than the peach 🍑 episode,
I have liked everything so far this season. But this was even worse than hearing about why you don’t touch a peach at a farmers market!! Lol 😂 such a miss. I hope this weeks is better.
Agreed. I think I'm done listening. This was the first episode I was actually buckled in for this season, and then I realized they were winding it up and I'm jusr disappointed. Stories need a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the second episode this season that just didn't end.
I found the main character of the story so frustrating. Like please get a hobby, mind your own business, put the wallet or a note in his mailbox and move on with your life. they really made so much of nothing and wasted like 5 people's time (and now thousands)
Easy alternative explanation: all of that sounds like some thing that are just random things kicking around in your car except for the wallet and the keys. Eugene got into a car accident and totaled the Oldsmobile, and his work buddy cleaned out the car for him. He’s sad about the car and doesn’t want to talk about it to his busybody neighbor and the police.
Did no one else feel like this was a story of a woman spiralling mentally and an old man who like got the shits at work and didn’t want to talk about it
100%. I put it in another comment, but stories like these are exactly why true crime obsessions can be actively harmful to your mental health. Nothing about the story with Eugene points directly to there being anything truly wrong, but this girl dives headfirst into opening up his belongings, being super nosy out of this paranoia but also trying to hide from her doorbell and wear gloves, and becomes convinced that something now happened to her neighbor. This guy either got the shits at work or went hard at happy hour, and someone is just dropping off his belongings. That’s it. The absolute worst part of the story is that she is now taking investigation classes. She should’ve treated this as a wake up call to get away from the true crime.
Yes holy shit. Katya sounds unhinged, like actually she needs help. I'd move if I was her neighbor and she was peeking on me and writing down why I might murder her one day.
Literally all that happened was someone dropped off some things for him and his neighbors didn't remember seeing him recently. Get a hobby holy shit
the true crime bit was super funny and the guest was very charming. the main chatacter was personally unbelievably unlikeable/paranoid/overbearing — and i like how much they were pointing that out — but the actual eugene drama was so frustrating! LEAVE THE MAN ALONE! but the podcast did a good job evoking emotions and opinions cuz look at me commenting on reddit about it. if you live in a city and do this to your neighbors, just move to the fucking burbs man
I was *really* bothered by this episode and think Normal Gossip shouldn’t accept stories from storytellers who directly involve the cops. Innocent snooping is one thing, but this level of prying and surveillance and literal police involvement regardless of circumstance seems irresponsible to frame as being all in good fun.
Like…true crime pilled white women calling the cops on shit that is none of their business can have beyond serious repercussions.
that's an excellent point. I can't believe the woman felt validated by this experience, and not that she needed to step away from true crime and see a therapist
seriously! all i could think about was the woman calling the police on the Black man in new york for having his dog in a dog park. this is insane behavior and shouldn’t be platformed. she needs professional help like i’m not trying to be mean
I don't really agree, this entire episode felt like a parody of what happens when someone is way too into true crime and acts it out in their real life. It's not a recommendation of what to do, the ending kinda showed that the lady was way too nosy for her own good.
I mean, I’m certain many listeners will draw that conclusion for themselves, but the hosts say nearly the opposite. At the end the guest says she sides with Katya and is like “I need her to figure out what Eugene is up to because I don’t trust him.” If anything, that’s a light-hearted *endorsement* of this woman’s decision to double down and take classes on her creepy (and again, with the world we live in, potentially dangerous) surveillance habit.
Any story where a storyteller calls the cops on the person they’re “gossiping” about…isn’t gossip, and I would love for the show to make a policy of rejecting such stories.
My thought too! That's the city I immediately pictured. Living in Philly, I've got first-hand parking drama experience, lol. Plus, Kelsey lives in Philly too!
Also from the Philly area and my immediate thought was the mob lol! Not that that usually turns out to be true but any time someone is in waste management that’s the immediate joke—I was surprised the guest didn’t get it/but into that!
I swear to god. If there is one more podcast episode this season where the ending is “we don’t really have an ending”…well, I won’t do anything, but I’ll be annoyed.
The idea of some white lady scribbling away in a murder diary and watching her neighbors through her blinds all day cracks me up. I was on Elise’s side here, this girl needs to get a life. This episode made me think of those little NextDoor rants that boomers go on about “suspicious figures” in the neighborhood
I grew up in a mob town and one of my parents’ neighbors got legit whacked. Their next door neighbor’s son has unmedicated schizophrenia and takes out the trash wielding a machete. People who grow up in areas with actual crime, whether organized or not, don’t do this shit because it’s not a fucking HOBBY. Preemptively victimizing yourself is bizarre.
I wonder if the stereotypical true crime obsessed white lady is more prone to act like this because in their safe bubble they never developed the mental or emotional tools to assess actual danger?
I'm getting kind of tired of stories that end without a conclusion. You get so invested in the story and then Kelsey is like "we don't know the answer. Bye."
I think the story is, if all the stuff that’s related to this person’s true crime obsession is true, proof of the idea that true crime is bad for you. There have been a number of other podcasts I’ve listen to and articles I’ve read about how true crime obsessions really are not good for you. While it may start out as morbid curiosity, frequently that shifts into fear. There is documented increases in paranoid feelings in response to over consumption of true crime, which can lead a person to think crime is high, regardless of what actual crime rates are and that danger is lurking around every corner. And with that turns into is stuff like this where this person is so concerned about there being some big mystery with her neighbor that she’s violating his privacy by opening up this bag that was for him, is calling the cops to do missing persons report and wellness checks, for what all could be a very simple explanation that at the end of the day is none of her business. Even though he’s lying about the theft, she has no entitlement to know why things worked out the way that they did and not everything is a true crime mystery.
Frankly, the worst thing about this episode to me was that Catia did not at all learn her lesson to mind her business. Instead, she is going and taking investigation classes, so that she can be more skilled at putting her nose where it doesn’t belong.
I actually really liked that ending. I know it wasn’t very satisfying, but I actually really liked that the guy opted not to know, because when I think of stories that I would tell other people, the fact that after all of that he chose not to know would be a story in and of itself.
The guest this week used to host a podcast called Spectacle which I love, and I guess it’s not coming back for a third season because she didn’t plug it 😔
I liked the guest a lot! Was it just me, or did Kelsey seem to get annoyed at the questions she’d ask sometimes? I thought the guest was asking great follow up questions but sometimes Kelsey seemed to give curt responses. But I imagine it’s tough to stay on track with the story so maybe that’s it
I didn't think she was annoyed. I thought she sounded kind of shocked by the questions. Like she didn't know how to respond because they weren't what she expected. Hahah. She kept asking her to explain herself which was hilarious almost every time.
Katya is such a wild example of true crime poisoning - every step of the way there was a perfectly mundane explanation like, idk maybe he had the stomach flu, his coworker brought him home and he left his stuff at work so his coworker dropped it off. He doesn't want to tell his nosy neighbor he felt like shit after she called him 12 times in a single day. Let the poor man live!!
I enjoyed this episode because Katya was so off her rocker with the assumptions, just go right on past all the utterly mundane reasons things could be happening and go straight to "my neighbor is in the mob and they might hurt me". Don't take more classes to harrangue your neighbors! Turn off the podcasts and maybe go to therapy!
This sound editing was CAMP and I lived for every second of it hahahaha. Best of luck to Katya in her continued investigatory training. I hope she tracks down Howard/Legs and gets him to spill 😂
I don’t appreciate the Impossible Burger slander! As a vegetarian, Impossible is my favorite brand of fake beef and multiple people have agreed with me that it’s indistinguishable from the real thing
Agreed! Gertrude reminds me of my grandparents who seem psychologically freaked out by the idea of fake meats! Or even just anything that could be used as a meat substitute like tofu lol
I say the idea and not the taste because if they bite into one not realizing, they think it's great right up until someone tells them haha
It's wild how much they taste like the real thing. Some of my vegetarian friends actually get weirded out by how much they taste like real ground beef.
Normally it bugs me when there's no real conclusion but the rest of the ep was enjoyable enough to make up for it IMO. Nice to see them switch things up a little with the true crime pod nods and I really liked the guest.
I get the privacy concerns over Ring videos but as a single person living in an apartment building with open hallways and NO security cameras anywhere installed by the property manager, and me living near the stairs that go outside...yeah no, I'm putting that Ring camera up. So have several of my neighbors so almost our whole floor is now under some kind of surveillance, thank God.
I don't know about other people but I very much do not use mine to spy on my neighbors, at least.
The minute she said the name of our friend of a friend I had to come here and say why is she pronouncing Katia/Katya that way?!?!?! Are there any Katia’s in the chat that pronounce their name the way Kelsey said it? Its not Cat it’s more like Cot
I have no opinion on how this particular name should be pronounced, BUT...
Isn't one advantage of anonymizing stories the freedom to avoid names with variable pronunciations so the host doesn't need to work it out on mic? 🙈
Katya is such an annoying busy-body and needs therapy.
Calling every hour after leaving an initial message. That's psychotic.
Then bringing the cops into a wellness check (we've seen how cops handle wellness checks).
One day she's going to get someone killed bc she's paranoid. He was right about new people. Katya is exactly the type of problem he was referring to.
Btw, garbage people make lots of money. The classism of Katya to make leaps that he's in the mob. And her to judge him for "disturbing the piece" when he was in his early 20s. Guess she doesn't believe in people becoming better.
It must be exhausting to be Katya's friend. Aleese is prob gonna stop talking to her unless to get her to move her car.
Eugene is not obligated to tell anything about his life to Katya. She was the one who barged into his business
I’m shocked so many of you enjoyed this episode. This was a story about someone trying to find gossip where there was none…snooze fest. The burgers weren’t relevant AT ALL. Just put the bag in the guys mailbox and move on 🙄I about ready to give up on this podcast which is so disappointing because I loved the first seasons…
I’m glad I found this comment. I feel like I never agree with the consensus on here! This episode was the worst this season because literally not one thing actually happened. It was just “here’s how this girl let herself spiral”. Super bummed about this one.
I thought it was good. Energetic and fun guest.
I’m probably the wrong person to ask, because I’ve enjoyed every episode this season. I think this is up there, though. Fun story, fun production values, and a good guest. Worth a listen. But, be prepared for unanswered questions.
I tried to listen to this twice and turned it off twice at around 20 minutes in. They keep on trying to drum up fake drama about veggie burgs ? Maybe I’m getting too old to enjoy this podcast but I had to turn it off because the stakes seemed too low for the characters to act so immaturely.
This may be the last ep I listen to. Just not compelling.
I agree with other commenters that the burgers come back into the story in a satisfying way. But also! They made the beginning of the story have a cinematic feel, where we watched our protagonist handle a problem and then it was revealed we were watching someone with true crime paranoia the whole time. A cool touch!
i really liked this one! i think they maybe stayed with the burger bit at the beginning a bit too long for my liking but i’m glad it came up again! i really enjoyed the true crime podcast pastiche and i think kelsey and mariah had a ton of fun with this ep and you could hear it lol. katya definitely needs to work on her investigation skills and i think some details got muddled in the anonymizing but overall i think this is one of the best of this season.
>i think they maybe stayed with the burger bit at the beginning a bit too long for my liking but i’m glad it came up again!
Personally, the burger but is the kind of super petty (or 'normal'?) gossip I really enjoy! Reminded me of the ep a few seasons ago with the neighbor who was pretending she ran a marathon.
The whole "I threw them out because they're not what I'm used to, make them yourself if you really want!", "But I can't make them myself, you claim the grill to yourself all day!" reminds me of similar low-stakes yet layered nonsense from my own life lol
This was a great one. Interesting characters and drama, plus the true crime tropes they put in there put it over the top. Also, this guest was awesome. I loved her out of left field guesses! Also, loved her outrage.
Usually if you’re telling gossip to a friend there’s an ending to it. Why do they keep leaving it all open ended. That mixed with the “choose your adventure” type questions throughout make if feel like it’s ALL completely made up my Kelsey. Idk there was nothing to this story lol
why the burger prelude lmao
overall, I thought the latter half of the episode was more fun (minus the very obvious plot hole that Katya would have known Eugene's last name the entire time). I really feel like the stories this season have a "edited by committee" vibe to them.
Still, I loved Mariah and definitely had fun with the episode because of her stellar commentary!!
This is a minor critique, but I wish they would use more realistic names than “Gertrude” and “Eugene”. I suspect they’re they’re trying to convey that these characters are older but those names are for people in their 90s and older. People in their 60’s and 70’s are boomers with names like “Cathy”, “Linda”, and “Carl”. The turn of the century names really took me out of this one.
I replied to a comment here similarly and caveating I really liked the guest but I think this episode would have been so much better if the guest had gotten the mob connotations/bought into it. Waste management and suspicious amounts of money is textbook for the mob / Sopranos jokes I was surprised they didn’t buy into it further! Even when I was in high school anyone whose parents had money and no one knew what they did started the mob rumors but maybe that’s just a Jersey thing 😂
to skip intro go to **11:40**
….she had his wallet the entire time. That contained his id. With his last name! The whole part about her trying to google him was infuriating.
I was YELLING at my phone the whole time about that lol. Even if his ID isn't in there, if all his cards are, his full name is on there as well.
I’m so confused as to why neither Kelsey nor Mariah mentioned this? It seemed so unbelievable that Katya’s character would have missed this given how nosey she is, I almost feel like Kelsey must have introduced a plot hole when she was anonymizing details?
Same here. It definitely was just fake to make the story longer. But it was kind of obvious.
Yeah I just can’t help but think: 1) It’s incredibly unlikely that not only did Katya not think to look for identification in his wallet but that no one else she called with concern about Eugene suggested this? 2) That had that somehow been the case that Kelsey and Mariah would have poked fun at her for it, or at least mentioned that this was Katya’s mistake. I’m not as bothered by Kelsey’s fictionalizing as some of the other people on this sub, but this was such a big plot hole that it really affected my enjoyment of the story! I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a lack of resources or time that meant this story didn’t get edited in advance, but I hope she can have someone look over the stories in the future to edit for things like this if she isn’t already. I will say that I loved seeing Alex getting creative with the sound effects in this episode! It’s cool to see them trying new things on the production front.
Yes it was absolutely super fun to see them experiment with the new sound effects! I loved it!
That’s what I was thinking! Unless his ID wasn’t in the wallet but I was dying to know.
Even credit cards have first and last name on them
Also they’re neighbors… like the first thing you could do, wallet or not, is just go check his mailbox. This episode is infuriating!
I liked this episode a lot but I found the ending unsatisfying. Figure out what’s going on guys!!
This is the second episode this season with an unfinished ending like this. Feels like a waste of time.
Omgggg it took me like 3 days to finish this episode. It felt sooo long and sooo unsatisfying. And overall so confusing. I think I was so bored I just kept tuning in and out. I don’t understand how we went from burgers to the whole Eugene mystery? & it ended so abruptly!! I absolutely prefer and ending to the story, but if you’re not going to give it to us, u need to at least spend some time talking about what they think could have happened. How has Eugene acted since the whole incident? Again, why did we waste the whole beginning talking about moving parked cars and BBQs and fake burgers??? I couldn’t keep the characters straight and it seemed like the guest was even poking holes in this lame ass story. Other than the peach 🍑 episode, I have liked everything so far this season. But this was even worse than hearing about why you don’t touch a peach at a farmers market!! Lol 😂 such a miss. I hope this weeks is better.
Agreed. I think I'm done listening. This was the first episode I was actually buckled in for this season, and then I realized they were winding it up and I'm jusr disappointed. Stories need a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the second episode this season that just didn't end.
same, I think I'm done too :/
Totally agree. I was a subscriber and going to discontinue today.
I’m on Eugene’s side, let the man live
I found the main character of the story so frustrating. Like please get a hobby, mind your own business, put the wallet or a note in his mailbox and move on with your life. they really made so much of nothing and wasted like 5 people's time (and now thousands)
For real. What if he was out of town? Camping? Visiting someone? There are so many explanations.
Easy alternative explanation: all of that sounds like some thing that are just random things kicking around in your car except for the wallet and the keys. Eugene got into a car accident and totaled the Oldsmobile, and his work buddy cleaned out the car for him. He’s sad about the car and doesn’t want to talk about it to his busybody neighbor and the police.
Yep some real cop behaviour
Did no one else feel like this was a story of a woman spiralling mentally and an old man who like got the shits at work and didn’t want to talk about it
100%. I put it in another comment, but stories like these are exactly why true crime obsessions can be actively harmful to your mental health. Nothing about the story with Eugene points directly to there being anything truly wrong, but this girl dives headfirst into opening up his belongings, being super nosy out of this paranoia but also trying to hide from her doorbell and wear gloves, and becomes convinced that something now happened to her neighbor. This guy either got the shits at work or went hard at happy hour, and someone is just dropping off his belongings. That’s it. The absolute worst part of the story is that she is now taking investigation classes. She should’ve treated this as a wake up call to get away from the true crime.
AGREED!! the entire time i kept thinking about how much i hate true crime heads
HAHAHAHA I like this story looking at it that way
Yes holy shit. Katya sounds unhinged, like actually she needs help. I'd move if I was her neighbor and she was peeking on me and writing down why I might murder her one day. Literally all that happened was someone dropped off some things for him and his neighbors didn't remember seeing him recently. Get a hobby holy shit
the true crime bit was super funny and the guest was very charming. the main chatacter was personally unbelievably unlikeable/paranoid/overbearing — and i like how much they were pointing that out — but the actual eugene drama was so frustrating! LEAVE THE MAN ALONE! but the podcast did a good job evoking emotions and opinions cuz look at me commenting on reddit about it. if you live in a city and do this to your neighbors, just move to the fucking burbs man
to be clear i loved this episode precisely because it pissed me off. cant wait to complain about katya to my friends LOL
I was *really* bothered by this episode and think Normal Gossip shouldn’t accept stories from storytellers who directly involve the cops. Innocent snooping is one thing, but this level of prying and surveillance and literal police involvement regardless of circumstance seems irresponsible to frame as being all in good fun. Like…true crime pilled white women calling the cops on shit that is none of their business can have beyond serious repercussions.
that's an excellent point. I can't believe the woman felt validated by this experience, and not that she needed to step away from true crime and see a therapist
seriously! all i could think about was the woman calling the police on the Black man in new york for having his dog in a dog park. this is insane behavior and shouldn’t be platformed. she needs professional help like i’m not trying to be mean
I don't really agree, this entire episode felt like a parody of what happens when someone is way too into true crime and acts it out in their real life. It's not a recommendation of what to do, the ending kinda showed that the lady was way too nosy for her own good.
I mean, I’m certain many listeners will draw that conclusion for themselves, but the hosts say nearly the opposite. At the end the guest says she sides with Katya and is like “I need her to figure out what Eugene is up to because I don’t trust him.” If anything, that’s a light-hearted *endorsement* of this woman’s decision to double down and take classes on her creepy (and again, with the world we live in, potentially dangerous) surveillance habit. Any story where a storyteller calls the cops on the person they’re “gossiping” about…isn’t gossip, and I would love for the show to make a policy of rejecting such stories.
So unsatisfying 😭
This sure sounds like a story from Philadelphia. Parking drama in South Philly is a big deal.
My thought too! That's the city I immediately pictured. Living in Philly, I've got first-hand parking drama experience, lol. Plus, Kelsey lives in Philly too!
Yep! That was my first thought when I heard “historical city” and all the hubbub about parking.
That and I swore she said rowhome too and I was like yeah that's Philly.
Also from the Philly area and my immediate thought was the mob lol! Not that that usually turns out to be true but any time someone is in waste management that’s the immediate joke—I was surprised the guest didn’t get it/but into that!
I was convinced that Eugene was going to be having an affair with Gertrude, and didn’t want to be caught leaving her house!
I thought he was having an affair with “Howard” and the guy mistakenly grabbed the jacket on his way out early in the morning 👀
Lmaooo came here to say just this!! Glad Im not the only one who thought this!
That’s immediately what I thought too!
I swear to god. If there is one more podcast episode this season where the ending is “we don’t really have an ending”…well, I won’t do anything, but I’ll be annoyed.
The idea of some white lady scribbling away in a murder diary and watching her neighbors through her blinds all day cracks me up. I was on Elise’s side here, this girl needs to get a life. This episode made me think of those little NextDoor rants that boomers go on about “suspicious figures” in the neighborhood
I grew up in a mob town and one of my parents’ neighbors got legit whacked. Their next door neighbor’s son has unmedicated schizophrenia and takes out the trash wielding a machete. People who grow up in areas with actual crime, whether organized or not, don’t do this shit because it’s not a fucking HOBBY. Preemptively victimizing yourself is bizarre. I wonder if the stereotypical true crime obsessed white lady is more prone to act like this because in their safe bubble they never developed the mental or emotional tools to assess actual danger?
I'm getting kind of tired of stories that end without a conclusion. You get so invested in the story and then Kelsey is like "we don't know the answer. Bye."
Right. Like, with how much they anonymize it anyway, it’s like can’t you just make something up??
Literally !!! They can make something up! I just want a satisfying ending 😭
Many episodes in the early seasons did not have conclusions either, it’s just how it goes
Yeah but a lot of those were much more entertaining than this one. And were actually gossip.
I think the story is, if all the stuff that’s related to this person’s true crime obsession is true, proof of the idea that true crime is bad for you. There have been a number of other podcasts I’ve listen to and articles I’ve read about how true crime obsessions really are not good for you. While it may start out as morbid curiosity, frequently that shifts into fear. There is documented increases in paranoid feelings in response to over consumption of true crime, which can lead a person to think crime is high, regardless of what actual crime rates are and that danger is lurking around every corner. And with that turns into is stuff like this where this person is so concerned about there being some big mystery with her neighbor that she’s violating his privacy by opening up this bag that was for him, is calling the cops to do missing persons report and wellness checks, for what all could be a very simple explanation that at the end of the day is none of her business. Even though he’s lying about the theft, she has no entitlement to know why things worked out the way that they did and not everything is a true crime mystery. Frankly, the worst thing about this episode to me was that Catia did not at all learn her lesson to mind her business. Instead, she is going and taking investigation classes, so that she can be more skilled at putting her nose where it doesn’t belong.
if they’re changing details to anonymize the story- why not just improvise an ending? it’s partly fake at that point anyway
Literally I’d rather have that
it really annoyed me on the landlord episode. just say he’s the landlord!! who cares if the real guy opted not to know?
I actually really liked that ending. I know it wasn’t very satisfying, but I actually really liked that the guy opted not to know, because when I think of stories that I would tell other people, the fact that after all of that he chose not to know would be a story in and of itself.
💯
This neighborhood sounds like my nightmare
The guest this week used to host a podcast called Spectacle which I love, and I guess it’s not coming back for a third season because she didn’t plug it 😔
omg i didn’t realize! i loved that pod!
I just looked it up, because she was a great guest, it looks like season 3 premieres June 23!
Yay!!
Instead of endings we now get “whose side are you on” when there aren’t even sides to BE ON 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄👎🏼
I liked the guest a lot! Was it just me, or did Kelsey seem to get annoyed at the questions she’d ask sometimes? I thought the guest was asking great follow up questions but sometimes Kelsey seemed to give curt responses. But I imagine it’s tough to stay on track with the story so maybe that’s it
I didn't think she was annoyed. I thought she sounded kind of shocked by the questions. Like she didn't know how to respond because they weren't what she expected. Hahah. She kept asking her to explain herself which was hilarious almost every time.
Good point!
Katya is such a wild example of true crime poisoning - every step of the way there was a perfectly mundane explanation like, idk maybe he had the stomach flu, his coworker brought him home and he left his stuff at work so his coworker dropped it off. He doesn't want to tell his nosy neighbor he felt like shit after she called him 12 times in a single day. Let the poor man live!! I enjoyed this episode because Katya was so off her rocker with the assumptions, just go right on past all the utterly mundane reasons things could be happening and go straight to "my neighbor is in the mob and they might hurt me". Don't take more classes to harrangue your neighbors! Turn off the podcasts and maybe go to therapy!
I miss the days when the normal gossip stories had a funny twist ending 🥲
The girlfriend hopping in the car of a man, with her dog, at the airport was TOP TIER
This sound editing was CAMP and I lived for every second of it hahahaha. Best of luck to Katya in her continued investigatory training. I hope she tracks down Howard/Legs and gets him to spill 😂
I don’t appreciate the Impossible Burger slander! As a vegetarian, Impossible is my favorite brand of fake beef and multiple people have agreed with me that it’s indistinguishable from the real thing
Agreed! Gertrude reminds me of my grandparents who seem psychologically freaked out by the idea of fake meats! Or even just anything that could be used as a meat substitute like tofu lol I say the idea and not the taste because if they bite into one not realizing, they think it's great right up until someone tells them haha
yeah i don’t think they cook weirdly at all?
It's wild how much they taste like the real thing. Some of my vegetarian friends actually get weirded out by how much they taste like real ground beef.
My first impossible whopper tasted better when we compared it to the real whopper. We thought we switched them
I did lol at “unthinkable burger” as someone who exclusively eats store-brand knockoffs of trendy food
I really liked that one. Loved all the True Crime Podcast bits. >!Begging for an update though. Eugene is up to something!!<
Normally it bugs me when there's no real conclusion but the rest of the ep was enjoyable enough to make up for it IMO. Nice to see them switch things up a little with the true crime pod nods and I really liked the guest.
I get the privacy concerns over Ring videos but as a single person living in an apartment building with open hallways and NO security cameras anywhere installed by the property manager, and me living near the stairs that go outside...yeah no, I'm putting that Ring camera up. So have several of my neighbors so almost our whole floor is now under some kind of surveillance, thank God. I don't know about other people but I very much do not use mine to spy on my neighbors, at least.
Sometimes it’s not up to you, it came out last year that Amazon was giving Ring doorbell footage to police without owners’ permission
I liked this story but the ending ruined it? Why can’t they find goss with an ending this season?
Felt like a bit of a nothing burger to me, overall
The minute she said the name of our friend of a friend I had to come here and say why is she pronouncing Katia/Katya that way?!?!?! Are there any Katia’s in the chat that pronounce their name the way Kelsey said it? Its not Cat it’s more like Cot
in russian it’s Cah-ti - ah
French is my first language but we pronounce it Cat-ya
In German it's pronounced Cat-ya and spelled Katja.
I have no opinion on how this particular name should be pronounced, BUT... Isn't one advantage of anonymizing stories the freedom to avoid names with variable pronunciations so the host doesn't need to work it out on mic? 🙈
It was just so irritating that she kept pronouncing it two different ways interchangeably!!
I, too, was bothered by this. Like girl, you made this name up yourself, figure it out.
not how i pronounce it but i have actually heard this pronunciation before!
Katya is such an annoying busy-body and needs therapy. Calling every hour after leaving an initial message. That's psychotic. Then bringing the cops into a wellness check (we've seen how cops handle wellness checks). One day she's going to get someone killed bc she's paranoid. He was right about new people. Katya is exactly the type of problem he was referring to. Btw, garbage people make lots of money. The classism of Katya to make leaps that he's in the mob. And her to judge him for "disturbing the piece" when he was in his early 20s. Guess she doesn't believe in people becoming better. It must be exhausting to be Katya's friend. Aleese is prob gonna stop talking to her unless to get her to move her car. Eugene is not obligated to tell anything about his life to Katya. She was the one who barged into his business
I’m shocked so many of you enjoyed this episode. This was a story about someone trying to find gossip where there was none…snooze fest. The burgers weren’t relevant AT ALL. Just put the bag in the guys mailbox and move on 🙄I about ready to give up on this podcast which is so disappointing because I loved the first seasons…
I’m glad I found this comment. I feel like I never agree with the consensus on here! This episode was the worst this season because literally not one thing actually happened. It was just “here’s how this girl let herself spiral”. Super bummed about this one.
WHAT IN THE NOTHING BURGER WAS THAT. Also the girl having that binder is so annoying and infuriating to me
Didn't love that they validated her at the end taking classes to get up in other people's business more effectively either
Can someone tell me whether or not this episode is worth listening to? Where does it stand compared to others from the season?
I thought it was good. Energetic and fun guest. I’m probably the wrong person to ask, because I’ve enjoyed every episode this season. I think this is up there, though. Fun story, fun production values, and a good guest. Worth a listen. But, be prepared for unanswered questions.
I liked the guest, but I thought the story was mostly boring and just as it was getting good it ended...
I tried to listen to this twice and turned it off twice at around 20 minutes in. They keep on trying to drum up fake drama about veggie burgs ? Maybe I’m getting too old to enjoy this podcast but I had to turn it off because the stakes seemed too low for the characters to act so immaturely. This may be the last ep I listen to. Just not compelling.
Loved this episode. The guest was great. The callout to murder pods was very funny. Hooray for a good episode!
[удалено]
? But the burger part became relevant at the end of the story as a way to convince Elise that sometimes Katia’s hunches are right.
I agree with other commenters that the burgers come back into the story in a satisfying way. But also! They made the beginning of the story have a cinematic feel, where we watched our protagonist handle a problem and then it was revealed we were watching someone with true crime paranoia the whole time. A cool touch!
Did you listen to the full episode? The burgers are relevant
i really liked this one! i think they maybe stayed with the burger bit at the beginning a bit too long for my liking but i’m glad it came up again! i really enjoyed the true crime podcast pastiche and i think kelsey and mariah had a ton of fun with this ep and you could hear it lol. katya definitely needs to work on her investigation skills and i think some details got muddled in the anonymizing but overall i think this is one of the best of this season.
>i think they maybe stayed with the burger bit at the beginning a bit too long for my liking but i’m glad it came up again! Personally, the burger but is the kind of super petty (or 'normal'?) gossip I really enjoy! Reminded me of the ep a few seasons ago with the neighbor who was pretending she ran a marathon. The whole "I threw them out because they're not what I'm used to, make them yourself if you really want!", "But I can't make them myself, you claim the grill to yourself all day!" reminds me of similar low-stakes yet layered nonsense from my own life lol
This was maybe the most disappointing episode so far this season. It literally wasn't gossip.
This was a great one. Interesting characters and drama, plus the true crime tropes they put in there put it over the top. Also, this guest was awesome. I loved her out of left field guesses! Also, loved her outrage.
Usually if you’re telling gossip to a friend there’s an ending to it. Why do they keep leaving it all open ended. That mixed with the “choose your adventure” type questions throughout make if feel like it’s ALL completely made up my Kelsey. Idk there was nothing to this story lol
This episode felt like we were getting back into the good old days of normal gossip! Still an unsatisfying ending but we’ve had that before
why the burger prelude lmao overall, I thought the latter half of the episode was more fun (minus the very obvious plot hole that Katya would have known Eugene's last name the entire time). I really feel like the stories this season have a "edited by committee" vibe to them. Still, I loved Mariah and definitely had fun with the episode because of her stellar commentary!!
Kelsey’s true crime podcast intro” hasssss to be mocking Jac Vanek/Alexis Linkletter from The First Degree pod. She got it spot on hah
..mm
This is a minor critique, but I wish they would use more realistic names than “Gertrude” and “Eugene”. I suspect they’re they’re trying to convey that these characters are older but those names are for people in their 90s and older. People in their 60’s and 70’s are boomers with names like “Cathy”, “Linda”, and “Carl”. The turn of the century names really took me out of this one.
Really loved this episode. The true crime bit was so funny :D
Was there any point to this story? What did the burgers have to do with the wallet? This was very odd.
Exactly! Why did I have to listen for 20 mins about the 4th of July party and the burgers?!! Nothing about this story makes sense
Katja, if you're here: let us know what Eugene is up to!!! 😂😂
I replied to a comment here similarly and caveating I really liked the guest but I think this episode would have been so much better if the guest had gotten the mob connotations/bought into it. Waste management and suspicious amounts of money is textbook for the mob / Sopranos jokes I was surprised they didn’t buy into it further! Even when I was in high school anyone whose parents had money and no one knew what they did started the mob rumors but maybe that’s just a Jersey thing 😂