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
Or I've pointed out the spring flowers that are popping up. But that's also linked to sort of the last sort of main technique I use, which is just to tap into your curiosity. So I can't tell you how many conversations I've started just by going up to someone and saying... what you doing? Like I did with the fish hero. You know, I saw him scooping up fish in a net and I thought, what is he doing?
And so I've gone up to lots of different people. I think you have to be a little careful because you don't want it to come across as accusatory. It has to come across as curious. So you have to do it with this sort of, you know, lightness in your voice that it's, you know, just out of curiosity and fun rather than being an accusation.
Yeah, I really am still trying to work that out. I mean, most of the time that I talk to strangers, I'm out walking around the park or something, and it's really easy to just sort of walk away when you're finished, as opposed to being on a bus or sitting next to someone on the plane.
People don't talk until it's 15 minutes before the landing because otherwise they're stuck there for the whole flight, right? But I've definitely gotten stuck in conversations, and I feel like I'm still not very good at figuring out how to get out of them. And, you know, I've run these how to talk to strangers workshops.
And like I said earlier, people can come up with a hundred ways to start a conversation. Nobody really knows how to end them. Most of the time when people are brainstorming, it's just a list of lies. It's just, you know, I need to go to the bathroom. I need to make a phone call.
Yes, we've all seen those episodes on TV, haven't we? If you haven't heard from me, call me in seven minutes and help me get out of this. It depends on the situation.
Like if it's a mixer or a networking event where it's sort of intended for people to have, you know, talk to multiple partners, then there are some sort of clever things you can do like introduce the person to someone else and then move on.
But when I've taught these workshops, there's always one person, and I think it's literally one person, who says that they just thank the person for the conversation and sort of signal that it's over and it's time to move on, and maybe even explicitly say that. It's been nice talking to you, but I think it's time for us to go now.
And everyone looks at this person and kind of says, you can do that? So, you know, that tells me how uncommon it is, but, you know, why not? So I've definitely been trying to do that more often is to just, you know, thank the person, acknowledge, you know, I think that's what we want, right?
We don't, it's very unpleasant when you're talking to someone and instead of saying that, they just start looking around and you can see them kind of fidget. Like that's the worst, right? It would be much better if someone just said, thank you. And, you know, I'm going to move on now.
So at the How to Talk to Strangers workshops that I've run, I've heard those kind of comments from both genders, actually. So women are nervous about talking to a man because they don't want to send the wrong signals. And men are worried about talking to women because... They don't want to have their behavior interpreted in the wrong way.
So, yeah, I think everybody's sort of nervous about talking to each other. And it's really a shame, isn't it? Because we don't want to not talk to half of the human population. But I don't think we have to get stuck there. Like, I think there's probably things we can do in our body language to signal that, you know, by keeping some distance, maybe, you know, less intense eye contact.
I think there's some probably some things we can do to signal that we're just being friendly and not, you know, or we could, you know, explicitly say it like, look, I'm not hitting on you. I'm just, you know, being friendly. Yeah.
Yeah. And there's a few reasons for that. One is completely selfish because, you know, I'm very much an introvert. And so that's still an environment that I don't feel comfortable in when there's a lot of people, especially when there's lots of people I don't know, or it's a really kind of noisy environment. That's when I feel the most uncomfortable.
And I know that the way to fix that to make myself feel better is to get into a one-to-one conversation with someone. But then in addition to that, I'd like to think that there's a pro-social motive as well. You look around the room and you see someone else who doesn't have anyone to talk to. I know now that so many of us feel anxious, socially anxious or socially awkward.
So there's guaranteed to be somebody else who doesn't really know anybody and doesn't have someone to talk to. And so I'll look around for that person and go and start a conversation with them. And so I'd like to think that it's helping both of us.
Just recently, actually, a couple of weeks ago, I had a moment where where it really struck me how far I've come. So I was at the opera, and I had come back from the intermission, and I started chatting with the people who were sitting next to me, sort of farther in from the aisle than I was. And I said, how are you doing? And they said, fine-ish. And I thought, ooh.
Something is really wrong if a complete stranger admits that they're not just fine, right? And I said, you know, what's going on? And it turned out that the woman had Parkinson's and she was feeling very uncomfortable sitting where she was and she was worried that she might need to leave partway through the second act, but she was so far in from the aisle that it would mean disrupting everybody.
She had thought that she would be sitting on the aisle and so she was very upset to find out that she wasn't. And So I said, would you like me to ask if people would be willing to move over so you could sit on the aisle? And I offered this thinking, probably she's going to say no because it will feel like a big deal. But surprisingly, she said, yes, that would be wonderful.
I would feel so much more comfortable. And so I said, no problem. And so I talked to two couples and I asked them if they'd be willing to move over. And of course, they were happy to do it. You know, most people are kind. And if you ask them, you know, they'll do something like that. I'm sure they felt good to be able to do that.
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