[Music]
just yet the small talk I'm going to
start off by asking you guys three
questions so the first question is are
any of you going through any sort of
personal struggle right now yeah okay
second question is do you feel that you
have someone in your life with whom to
share in that struggle yes No alright
and the third question is do any of you
guys watch Mad Men so I know I'm Way
behind on my seasons I just started
getting into Netflix and the other night
while watching season number two episode
12 of Mad Men I heard Ana Draper say
this - a very lost Donald Draper she
said the only thing keeping you from
being happy is the belief that you are
alone and this quote really resonated
with me because that's exactly how I
felt when I left sunny Southern
California three years ago to start my
freshman year of college and
Northwestern University so this is a
picture of me my freshman year of
college first week of school that's me
in the top left corner and another
question for you guys have you ever been
out at like a party or event or out with
your friends and someone's like let's
take a picture and even though you
weren't totally in the mood to take a
picture
you weren't really feeling that great
you still like smiled in the picture and
ended up making it to Facebook and
everyone saw it you're like that was me
at that event and so that's kind of what
happened at this picture and also this
picture when I was out at a party that
same week and so these pictures they
made it to Facebook I was smiling in
them all my friends saw them be like it
looks like you're having a great time in
college and that's not really how I felt
on the inside and this is a picture of
my diary that they started writing in
that same first week of college and I
actually have it right here with me and
I'm going to read you at my very first
diary entry September 27 2012 I wish I
could start out my first entry with an
ecstatic quote about life or how I love
college so much but since this is a
personal journal I can be honest and say
I've never remembered feeling more lost
in my entire life
I only three-quarters know that
everything will work out and I'll be
okay I miss home and being surrounded by
people who know me so well and love me
for all that I am and so that the whole
first year of college I was plagued by
this one question Who am I
I really had felt that I had lost my
identity and leaving my home in
California leaving my friends behind to
start college for the first time and it
wasn't till at the end of my freshman
year when things were a lot better that
I had to learn what Donald Draper did in
season two episode 12 of Mad Men that
the only thing that had been keeping me
from being happy was the belief that I
was alone and feeling that way my first
week of college and I actually put out
this query over Facebook one of the last
few weeks of freshman year I said hi
everyone I'm doing my final journalism
project on people struggling to adjust
to college the first year if anyone is
willing to talk to me about it like
please let me know and message me and I
was shocked when within just a couple
hours I got messages from people all
over campus
a lot of them expressing their pain
their first year of college and I
thought well if only I was able to talk
to these people at that first week of
school when I was also feeling lost and
alone and actually one of those people
she she was someone I had met at one of
those parties in the beginning and we
had kind of just met into the
service-level friends and that last week
of school I interviewed her and we ended
up sitting in the Student Lounge
together and sharing each other's
experiences and talking about how lonely
we had felt that entire year and we were
both like wow if only we had said this
to each other when we first met
we wouldn't have felt so lonely and so
she ended up becoming one of my best
friends in college and so that was the
end of freshman year and then sophomore
year things got so much better
I ended up joining a sorority I got
super involved with that I was really
involved with my projects I started a
club or co-founded a club called mix
which was the mixer a student coalition
and the whole idea was it didn't matter
where you came from
what your background was we all could
share in our mixed experiences and so I
would be going out to all these parties
I had a lot of friends at that point but
there would still be nights where I'd
come home from an evening out with my
friends and I'd still feel terribly
empty inside I couldn't understand it I
had just been with all these people I
still felt pretty lonely and you know
one of those nights I was skyping with
one of my friends from far away and we
were having this very deep philosophical
conversation about life and I said wow I
wish all conversations could be like
this this is awesome and he was like yes
through his small talk and I was like
wait yeah screw small talk why don't
even make small talk and I thought you
know what if when talking to our friends
co-workers or even complete strangers we
could always just skip the small talk
and instead talk about the things that
really mattered in life or things that
obviously both actually really cared
about and wanted to talk about and so I
was like wait screw small talk skipping
the small talk we should make big talk
and I thought that name was kind of cute
and I didn't really know what to do with
it at the time but I kind of just like
stuck in my back pocket and just thought
about it for a bit and so that was the
end of my sophomore year college and
then the following summer I was getting
very involved in my journalism program
and I had the opportunity to do some
documentary projects abroad and I spent
three weeks in Ecuador filming a
documentary about education reform and
those three weeks were the best three
weeks of my life
we were traveling throughout the entire
country
interviewing strangers everyone we
encountered about education in the
country and it didn't matter if we were
like gliding down the Amazon River or
climbing the Andes Mountains or it's
salsa dancing through the colonial
streets of cuenca everywhere we went we
were being open to new people new
experience and every day was a new
adventure and the picture on the top
left right was actually taken when one
day we had run into these professors at
this university and they invited us into
their villa overlooking the Andes
Mountains and we ended up drinking wine
with them all evening and salsa dancing
and I was like wow why doesn't this ever
happen with my college professors back
home there's something different in the
way I'm approaching life when I'm
traveling the way I'm more open to
people and it invites these kind of
magical experiences and towards the end
of my trip I actually started getting
really scared to go back home to my
everyday life I didn't want to lose the
this magic this magic of being abroad
and I thought you know how could I make
everyday life feel this meaningful and
look this beautiful and you know I had
one offer one more opportunity to travel
that summer I went to Germany to do a
documentary about the Holocaust and on
one of my last days in Germany I visited
the Berlin Wall and I came upon this
question written on the Berlin Wall it
said what do you want to do before you
die and this question really hit me
because you know I just finished
sophomore year I was going through my
mid college life crisis questioning
what's my purpose why am i studying
journalism what do I really want to do
with my life you know everyone else is
asking you that question to constantly
when you come home for summer break and
so I thought about it I was like what do
I really want to do I knew in part it
was about building empathy between
strangers as I kind of done through
mixing through my traveling documentary
projects and I also knew I'd always want
to start a YouTube channel so that
summer I came home I'd five weeks before
starting my junior year of college and I
took this question what do you want to
do before you die and I took that name
that inspired me months earlier big talk
and I took the magic I felt from
traveling and approaching strangers and
hearing their life stories and I made
this video and I'm gonna play the first
half of it for you for the sake of time
hi i'm cholena and this is the beginning
of an experiment called Big Top I want
it to be able to go out meet new people
and instead of just make small talk
actually have deeper meaningful
conversations with them
kalenna get your hand off maybe
[Music]
what I want to do before I die
oh man geez Oh or what do I want to do
when I grow up
that's a hard one
well that's a tough there's just one
thing well
[Music]
I wanna learn how to scuba dive travel
on Appalachian Trail but the police
didn't make a confession I'd like to
give her pathologist somebody who
studies reptiles and amphibian see my
kids graduate even without any alcohol
and drugs and probably because that
garden she's be happy day by day being
able to reconcile my father and say I
love you too I wanna have a wife and
kids I wrote like an essay on it when I
was in fifth grade and I remember all my
friends made fun of me because everyone
was like I wanted to be I want to be a
sports star a movie star just happy
happy though I really live before I did
very bad I was homeless for 13 years
maybe call a lot of my friends I'd
probably text all my friends I would
take I would take a road trip to go see
someone today I can't say I would tell
them I love them
I think so what would I want to do today
yeah dart tomorrow I knew I was going
back tomorrow
be with my family
if I knew I wasn't in dynamo I'd get on
the airplane
to go pick up my son you know it
literally I'll say the most significant
relationship that I have the 18th and
having a baby if I were dying and let's
have Charlie on my bed Ray was dying he
had [ __ ] dog denial thinking I can't
die my mom said that the day before she
died that if she were to die tomorrow
she would have lived the fullest life
ever and then she died unexpectedly to
the next day so this is a period
personal
question so clearly has always been
about most importance to me just through
those two questions I was able to learn
so much more about those strangers life
stories and in making that video I had
kind of refound the magic that I was
scared of losing from travelling and
from my experiences interviewing people
and just going out of my way to talk to
people and so I posted that video to my
facebook and I was shocked when a girl
who is an alum of my University who
worked for The Huffington Post said I
saw your video and I want to write an
article about it and I got so excited
and that's what she did and after that
it sort of went viral and it got
featured on other sites like USA Today
and elite daily and a few other
different blogs and because the video
went viral
I started getting people from all across
the world reaching out to me about this
video I made it didn't matter who they
were where they came from
I had a rabbi and a Christian the Sunday
school teacher both saying you know I
want to use this kind of big talk
strategy
with my students I had a soldier in
Israel and a soldier in South Korea both
reach out to me over Facebook message
and say we don't have enough big talk in
the army I wish I could make big talk
with my fellow soldiers I had one woman
reach out to me over Facebook message
and I actually started crying in the
student lounge and I was reading this
and she said kalenna I think you saved
my life watching this video made me
realize that I need to quit smoking
before it's too late
and I had a lot of college students too
who said that the story of you know my
lonliness freshman year really resonated
with them also and it students from the
East Coast the Midwest the West Coast a
lot of international students to
Singapore South Africa and I was shocked
that people all over the world were
saying the same things and one message
could hit them
all the same and I even had
entrepreneurs in San Francisco we're
really intrigued by the idea like the
name Big Talk it's like kind of a to
worded like startup fee name maybe and
then I had international models from
Germany Thailand saying you know in the
modeling industry there's a lot of
shallowness and we need more big talk
there and this all just came from a
YouTube video and a lot of people
expressed a similar sentiment and some
people even said I want to join your
movement and make big talk and I was
like wow I never thought of this as a
movement and after that I got so
inspired to turn it into a movement and
I kind of came up with these new
research questions they were you know
how do i scale big talk beyond just my
own YouTube videos how can we enable
strangers to engage in deeper
conversations right away like how do we
make it not weird to just skip the small
talk and jump into a big talk and then
how do we take these universal life
questions like what do you want to do
before you die which you could ask any
human being that question right and how
do we use them as a tool for building
empathy across boundaries of space and
our external perceived differences so I
became really enthralled by these
questions and I started giving talks and
workshops to make big talk workshops and
I created this deck of tiny cards 90
mini Big Talk question cards and every
question had to be universal like you
could ask anybody meaningful
thought-provoking
skips a small talk and open-ended that I
would have listed a story that you could
sit down with another human and listen
and hear their life story and there were
questions like you know what do you
spend too much time doing what does a
new habit you want to form what is your
biggest fear and I became more and more
to be honest obsessed with the idea of
growing big talk and I was like I want
to you know like I started reading
entrepreneurship logs like how do you
build like a big
a movement or kind of Enterprise around
it and I was like I'm gonna take this
idea to Silicon Valley and that's what I
did I went to San Francisco and I let a
big talk seminar at the T L summit and I
started hosting like these dinners with
strangers like Big Talk southerners or
strangers and I would have people write
their own Big Talk style questions to to
ask each other and then I started
spending a lot of time behind my
computer figure out how can I grow big
talk I put up this website where I was
putting up all the events and the cars
and everything and then something weird
started to happen and trying to grow
this movement that was all about it
originally was created out of my own
loneliness freshman year and desire to
meaningfully connect with people I
suddenly found myself feeling very alone
and disconnected to the world I forgot
to mention that I also decided to take
leave of absence from University last
year halfway through my junior year of
college to work on Big Talk and so a
wise professor once told me know before
you go out and try to feed the world
that you need to learn how to feed
yourself so that's what I did I started
asking myself you know how can I scale
these meaningful connections using new
technologies without losing my own
humanity in the process and I was asking
myself these big talk questions then you
know like Who am I and what's the most
important in life like why am I so
passionate about big talk and I started
making big talk with myself I took the
deck of 90 mini Vic talk questions
and started using them as journal
entries and used big talk to reconnect
with myself and so now they feel more
comfortable with kind of re
understanding why started in the first
place my original vision holds strong
and I'm ready to kind of embark on it
again and understand that you know it
takes time to figure out the big stuff
we're not gonna figure it out right away
and the ultimate vision is to use Big
Talk to build a global empathy
through the power of connection over
sharing stories about our universal
human experiences but also and just as
important to use Big Talk as a tool for
understanding and connecting with
yourself and in light of the theme of
today's TEDx thou mayest I want to leave
you with one more Big Talk question to
ask yourself how can I take what I
learned today to make my life different
tomorrow thank you
[Music]
you
[Music]