our ancestors may have substituted verbal exchange for manual grooming, allowing them to quickly share information—who’s doing what to whom, who’s being deceitful, who’s engaged in subversive plotting, and so on—off-loading hours of picking nits in favor of minutes of dishing dirt. Recent studies have shown that as much as 60 percent of our conversation today is devoted to gossip, a staggering number (especially to those of us who’ve hardly mastered small talk) that some researchers argue reflects the primary purpose of language at its inception.20
