I tried something different on the show this week. My producer (and my daughter), Dominique, sat down with me, and we talked about a charged topic almost everyone has an opinion about: gossip.

Is it a character flaw? Is it built into how we stay connected? Can it be both?

Talking about other people is not automatically toxic, of course. Venting to someone you trust so you can work something out, or sharing information to protect someone, is important. We are relational by design. Belonging and information-sharing are legitimate needs.

What actually determines whether a conversation about someone else is healthy or harmful is not just the act of talking. It is the intent. Ask yourself: Is this thought rooted in judgment, control, fear, or self-elevation? Or is it rooted in concern, a warning, or a connection? This distinction makes all the difference for your mental well-being and the well-being of your relationships.

When judgment and comparison become the default, the same networks activate every time: stress hormones spike, the amygdala's threat response gets more reactive, and the prefrontal cortex (where reasoning and empathy live) can get suppressed. Do this enough times, and it stops being a one-off slip. It becomes the pattern the brain reaches for automatically.

We also talk about Yuval Noah Harari's argument from his amazing book Sapiens: that language itself may have evolved primarily so we could gossip because tracking who is trustworthy mattered more for staying alive in early human history. Harari ties this to Dunbar's number: gossip can hold a group of roughly 150 people together, and beyond that, something else has to take over.

Dominique and I agree that gossip can actually matter, and that it is not automatically trivial or harmful. Where we diverge is the measuring stick. Harari asks whether it helps the group function. This is important, but I also add another perspective: what a repeated thought pattern can do to the mind and brain, and how this impacts our relationships, because something can serve the group and still cost the individual.

We also get into triangulation, or what happens when tension between two people gets displaced onto a third, and my own take on when gossip stays protective versus when it turns corrosive.

This is one of the more personal, unscripted conversations I have had on the show. If you have ever felt guilty after a conversation about someone else, or felt closer to a friend because of one, this episode may help you understand why.