Normal Gossip podcast host Kelsey McKinney is building a gossip empire from Queen Village

In the summer of 2019, five young women boarded a ferry to attend an all-night party off the coast of Thailand. They drank and danced and delighted in the bacchanalia — until one of them vanished. That was just the beginning of a vacation gone disastrously awry.

When the women returned home to the U.S., fine but no longer speaking to one another, they began to tell the story of what happened. The tale passed from person to person to person, as such stories do, until eventually it made its way to Kelsey McKinney, who told hundreds of thousands of people.

McKinney, 31, is the Philly-based host of Normal Gossip, one of the most popular podcasts in the country. Both on the show and in real life, McKinney is a warm, extraordinarily reactive listener, her blue eyes widening and her mouth popping into an O when she hears an especially interesting detail.

“Hello, my little…