Kalina Silverman, Founder, Big Talk:
I feel that everything we do in life — we have a limited amount of time — should be meaningful. Every conversation we have, every relationship, there should be something to it that keeps you moving forward with a sense of human connection and purpose.
Every time I meet someone new and have a meaningful conversation with them, I get this sense of a high, euphoria. More than anything, any drug you could ever take, just having a meaningful interaction with a complete stranger makes me elated.
I love people. I have always loved people. I remember, when I was in kindergarten, I visited China for the first time, and my grandpa tried to convince me that he was friends with everyone in the whole wide world. And he walked with me and he said hi to every single person we encountered and started a conversation with them.
And I think little 5-year-old me actually took a lot of inspiration from that. One night, I was having a deep conversation with a friend and he said: “Screw small talk.” So the name big talk popped into my mind, and I didn’t know what to do with it at the time.
And that following summer I had the opportunity to go to Germany to work on a project about the Holocaust. We had to meet new people right away, build trust with them, be invited into their homes, into government offices, and have big talk, instead of small talk. And that was really inspiring to me.
And I remember, on my last day in Germany, I saw a question written on the Berlin Wall, and it said: “What do you want to do before you die?”
And I thought, that’s big talk. So I decided to try a social experiment where I walked up to strangers, skipped the small talk and made big talk to ask them: “What do you want to do before you die?”
This is the beginning of an experiment called Big Talk.
One day, I walked up to this man in Beverly Hills on Rodeo Drive. He was wearing a suit. He looked really busy. And I asked him: “What do you want to do before you die and what would you do if you found out you were going to die tomorrow?”
And this businessman, buttoned up, broke down into tears and told me he wished he spent more time with his kids, instead of working. And he told me his mom was asked that question right before she died too. So it was really personal to him. That was just an aha moment for me, because he challenged my own stereotypes and so many people who are watching.
The greatest impact I have been able to make with Big Talk has been through the recent interviews I have done with Los Angeles wildfire survivors.
What did you love and lose in the fire?
