For families who’d rather hear the story than read it
A gentle, audio-first way to capture the stories your parents and grandparents have never quite been asked the right question about — and turn them into a beautiful book in their own voice.
One large microphone button. No video. No typing. Works for the person who refuses to use computers.
How it works
Open the app, pick a question, talk for as long as feels natural. Three minutes or thirty. No prep, no script, no rehearsal.
Behind the scenes, the audio is turned into a clean transcript you can edit. The recording is yours too; you can listen back any time.
At the end of the year, a beautifully typeset hardcover lands at your door. Your parents’ stories. Their photos. Their voice on the audio companion.
For the storyteller
Sixty years of research on “life review” shows that the act of telling your own story — out loud, warmly, with someone listening — lifts mood, eases regret, and brings the whole of a life into focus. It’s one of the most well-evidenced interventions in geriatric psychology.
You don’t have to be a writer. You just have to talk into the microphone, the way you always have.
For the family
You already have the photos. The cards. The Christmas videos. What you don’t have is the answers to the questions you keep meaning to ask — about the first job, the school friend, the bit of advice your dad never quite said out loud.
A year from now you’ll still have their voice, not a folder of emails.
The prompts
Not “list your achievements.” Not “describe your career.” Real questions, written by people who care how they land — three lines apiece, designed to spark a story, not a CV.
What did your childhood home sound like at dinner?
Voices, cutlery, the radio or TV, who sat where, what got argued about.
Looking back, what does that scene tell you about your family?
Was there someone in your life who really saw you, when other people didn't?
A teacher, a relative, a neighbour, a friend's parent — anyone whose attention changed something in you.
What did they see that you couldn't yet see in yourself?
Is there something you grew up believing that you've come to question?
Faith, politics, family rules, what makes a good life — any of it.
How did your thinking change, and what made it change?
If you could leave one sentence behind that someone might read fifty years from now, what would it say?
No pressure to be profound. The truest one is enough.
Why this one, and not another?
Ten chapters · 279 prompts · grab a free Father’s Day sample.
Privacy
Every recording is encrypted at rest. Audio files live in private storage; no public URLs. Only people you explicitly share with can listen. Mark any answer private and even they can’t. We will never use your recordings to train anyone else’s voice models — the only voice clone we ever make is your own, for narrating your own book, and that clone is private to you.
You can export everything, or delete everything, with one tap.
Read & research
A short selection from the writing — the science, the tactics, and the gift ideas worth your time.
White paper
Forty years of research on life review — Butler, Erikson, McAdams, Chochinov — in plain English. Why a well-designed question changes a life.
Guide
Five tactics that actually work for the reticent dad who won’t sit for an interview — ask about objects, follow the tangent, record before you ask.
Gifts
Twelve meaningful gift ideas for the parents who don’t need any more stuff — including the two free ones that are probably the best on the list.
Comparison
An honest, side-by-side comparison of the three serious life-story apps — written by us, fair to all three.
The first month is free. After that, less than the price of a book a month. No subscription if you’d rather just buy the year as a gift.
The family
Early access
Your children’s voices, kept — ages nought to twelve.
Coming soon
Your first year as a parent, in your own voice.
Coming soon
A friendship, written by both of you.
Each app gets a paperback companion — see the books.