Gillian Sandstrom
speaker
124 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 15 Apr
Gillian Sandstrom’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Oh, gosh, that was the worst. And I felt like every time I did it, I would get off the phone as quickly as possible. And then my mom would say, well, did you ask this? Did you say that? And of course, I never did any of those things. And so it just felt really stressful and anxious about talking to someone on the phone.
Yeah, actually, I feel like my whole family was the opposite of me, but especially my dad. So my dad is just, I think he's sort of a king of talking to people. He had this knack for approaching people and figuring out how to connect with them and start a conversation. And so anywhere we went would take a really long time.
You know, going to the grocery store would take three hours because he would stop and talk to everybody, especially kids. He loves talking to kids. He'd always tease them and get them talking. But he would ask a kid who looked like they were about five or six years old, he'd say, how old are you, 12, 13?
You know, just something ridiculous that would make them feel like they had to sort of disagree with what he'd said. Or he'd ask them, you know, if they had any pets at home and, you know, ask if they had a pet alligator or a pet hippopotamus. You know, just ridiculous things that would make them respond.
I definitely would say, Dad, I couldn't understand the compulsion that he had. Why are you doing this, Dad? They don't want to talk to you. They're doing their grocery shopping. Why would someone want to stop and talk to a complete stranger?
He would just ignore me and enjoy his conversation because he was having such a good time. He likes to say, you know, everybody has a story. So he just loves meeting people and having a chat.
So I was, I think, about 25, and I was on the plane on my own on this business trip, which seemed quite exciting. And I'd just recently gotten married, and I'd taken on my husband's surname. And they were making an announcement about a bunch of different people's names being called out, something to do with baggage. I didn't know what was going on, but...
At some point, they said, you know, would passenger Sandstrom please identify themselves? And I thought, well, they couldn't mean me because, you know, that's not my name anymore. And I knew I should have checked, but I was too anxious and embarrassed to push that button and call over the flight attendant, so I didn't say anything.
And so, of course, what happened is I got to the other end, got off the plane, went to the belt to collect my luggage, and, of course, it wasn't there. And so I had to go and buy a tourist T-shirt, which is what I wore to the first day on this business trip.
But on top of all that, I had the feeling I'd given up this other career that had been going really well. Did I make the right decision? Should I be here? All these people are so much younger than me. So it's just this feeling, kind of imposter syndrome feeling of, did I make the right decision? Should I be here?
I would go to the research lab to do my studies, but then my supervisor had an office in a different building. And so when I walked between those two buildings, I would pass on the street corner, there was a hot dog stand because I was at a university right downtown Toronto.
And I started to develop sort of accidentally develop a relationship with a lady who worked at the hot dog stand that I would pass by and seeing her there and knowing that she recognized me, you know, we'd smile, we'd wave. I don't even know if we talked to each other, but we just had this relationship built on these little minimal. Signs.
So, on a day when I didn't see the hot dog lady, I would feel disappointed and kind of... not lonely, but sort of unmoored, you know, because I think I came to think that the hot dog lady and people like her, like the kind of we have lots of relationships like that, these little tiny relationships that maybe don't seem particularly important.
But I feel like they kind of you're kind of woven into the social fabric, you know, and so I felt a bit unmoored and uncentered when she was missing.
Yes. So a sociologist in the 70s named Mark Granovetter coined these kind of relationships weak ties and as opposed to strong ties, which are the ones with close friends and family. And it's tricky to come up with a definition because, you know, one of the original thoughts was there are people that we see less often.
But I don't think that's necessarily true because people like the hot dog lady I would see here on a very regular basis or, you know, You know, you might run into someone at the school drop-off every day.
So I don't think frequency is necessarily a factor here, but definitely close friends and family are the people that you feel the most comfortable with and you'd be most willing to sort of share your deepest, darkest secrets with.
But, you know, weak ties are, you know, you can feel fondly towards them positively, but you're probably less likely to feel like you'd want to confide in them and share something that feels very personal.
I said I wanted to study the hot dog lady. She said, what makes you happy? You know, her lab is the happy lab. What makes you happy? And I said, well, the hot dog lady makes me happy. You know, having these little interactions throughout my day with people that I'm not really close to and would never, you know, invite over for a drink or anything.
But, you know, having this familiarity and feeling of connection with those kind of people just really feels good to me. And I wanted to know, you know, is it just me or is this a more general thing? Do people generally feel good from having these kind of relationships?
Showing 21–40 of 124 · page 2 of 7
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