If you're weighing whether this is the right thing for your family, the answers below are written to help you decide. Anything we haven't covered, write to us.
Most families have a quiet plan to record their loved ones' stories one day. Most never do.
The day-one plan loses to the calendar. A grandparent's health turns. A father is "still healthy, plenty of time." A grandmother's birthday arrives and the recording was meant to be ready but isn't. By the time the urgency is real, the chance is often already gone.
The most treasured audio in many families is a few seconds of voicemail from someone who has died. That's not because voicemails are great recordings. It's because, against the alternative of having nothing, anything is everything.
Enduring Stories exists to make the recording happen at all, while it still can. That is the entire idea. The interview is the product. The deliverables exist to honour what was captured. Capturing it, while it is still possible, is what we do.
Storyworth and similar services send weekly written prompts and bind the answers into a book at the end of a year. They're lovely, and they work for some families. They are also slow, written, and dependent on the storyteller finding time, motivation, and writing energy across fifty-two weeks.
We do something categorically different. We capture an unhurried voice conversation in one or a few sittings, in days or weeks rather than a year, with no writing required. The interviewer is on the call; your loved one simply speaks.
For an 88-year-old grandmother, this is not a feature comparison. It is the difference between something that has a good chance of happening, and something more likely to drift, stall, and never finish.
StoryCorps is wonderful and free, designed for short conversations between two family members in a public setting. We are private, premium, and structured around long-form heirloom capture. Different product, different purpose.
Because audio is what survives, and video is what kills the project.
The voice is what grandchildren in thirty years will actually want to hear. Eyes meet a camera differently than they meet a conversation. A microphone is something you forget about; a camera is something you perform for. Voice captures the cadence, the laugh, the long thoughtful pause, the way someone says their husband's name. That is the inheritance.
Video adds friction that kills projects. It needs lighting, a camera angle, hair brushed, a shirt chosen, the room tidied behind. It compounds the small reasons not to do this today, and we have spent enough time studying why these projects fail to know that adding friction is the worst thing we could do.
If you ever want video later, for a milestone, an interview snippet, or a tribute, the audio we capture can be paired with photographs at any time to create something visual. That part is up to you. We will never make video the gate that this conversation has to pass through to happen at all.
What we cost reflects what is actually at stake when a family puts off this conversation. Most "I should record my loved one's stories" intentions never get acted on. Then a parent's health turns, or a grandparent passes, and the chance is gone, permanently, with nothing to replace it. The most treasured audio in many families is a thirty-second voicemail from someone who has died. A flawed recording that exists beats a perfect book that doesn't.
What you are paying for is not paper, and not pages. You are paying for:
It is a premium that reflects real production, technical, and editorial work, all compressed into a one-time, irreversible window. This is not the cheapest way to record your loved ones' stories. It is the most reliable way to actually have them recorded, before you can't.
The opportunity cost of not doing this is total. Once a voice is gone, no money brings it back.
And if hesitation is the only thing standing between you and starting, our 30-day money-back guarantee is here to dissolve it. The biggest risk with this kind of project is never starting at all.
Yes. The conversation is led by a purpose-built AI interviewer we designed ourselves. It is modelled off Mike Boyd's interview craft, honed over hundreds of hours of family interviews on The Business of Family podcast, often helping reveal and capture sentimental stories that have never been told, let alone recorded. The AI is how we make Mike's craft available at the moment a family needs it, without waiting months for a calendar to clear, and without the stories slipping past while you wait.
Why AI rather than a person? Because for most families, the alternative is that the interview never happens at all. People put it off. Then a parent's health turns, or a grandparent passes, and the chance is gone. The AI lets your family member sit down on a Tuesday afternoon and start. That's the point.
Still hesitant? We back this with a 30-day money-back guarantee. We're confident you'll love it, but if for any reason it isn't right, we'll refund you in full. The biggest risk is never starting. The guarantee is here to remove that.
Yes. We offer six voices across three accents: Australian, American, and British, each available in a male and female option. You can listen to samples and choose your preferred interviewer on our voices page.
Your choice is saved automatically. If the person being interviewed would prefer a different voice, they can change it right before the interview begins. If no one picks, we match a voice to your region.
Practically, very little. The questions will be asked of you in the moment, and the best stories almost always come from things you weren't expecting to remember. You don't need notes, a script, or a plan.
What does help is the setting:
Allow at least an hour. There's no rush, and nothing to memorise. Just speak as you would to a curious grandchild who has all the time in the world to listen.
For Essential, plan on a single sitting of around 90 minutes to two hours. That's typically enough for a full sweep through a life, with room to slow down on the parts that matter most. Heirloom is paced as a series of three to five sittings totalling around five hours, with breaks of days or weeks between them so memories have time to surface and the storyteller doesn't feel hurried.
You can pause and resume anytime. The interviewer remembers what's already been covered and picks up where you left off. There's no penalty for taking a week off and coming back. The point is the recording, not the schedule.
That isn't a problem; it's a sign the conversation is reaching what matters. The interviewer is built to recognise these moments, slow down, give the silence its weight, and offer to pause or move on. Your loved one can stop at any time, for five minutes, for the day, or for a week.
For longer sessions, plan a real break around the hour mark. A glass of water, a walk to the window, a short rest. Coming back fresh almost always produces better material than pushing through fatigue.
If a story is too painful to tell in the moment, the interviewer will gently note that you can return to it later, or skip it entirely. Some of the most powerful moments come from a storyteller deciding, on the second sitting, that they're now ready to talk about something they couldn't the first time. There's no script anyone has to finish.
Yes, and many families prefer it. A son, daughter, or grandchild quietly present in the room often helps the storyteller relax, and sometimes nudges a memory the interviewer wouldn't have known to ask about. They're welcome to stay silent, or to chime in.
What we ask is that whoever sits in lets the storyteller hold the floor. The recording is your loved one's voice telling their story, not a back-and-forth conversation. A gentle prompt now and again is fine; long stretches of dialogue from a second person change the texture of the recording.
If your loved one isn't comfortable using a computer themselves, this assisted setup is the most common way Enduring Stories is done. You handle the click; they do the talking.
The interview can happen by phone. With Heirloom, we schedule a time and our system calls your loved one's landline or mobile at the appointed moment. They pick up and start talking. No app, no login, no internet needed. A landline with a comfortable handset works beautifully.
Essential is built around a web-based interview, which works for anyone able to click a link on a tablet or computer. If you're not sure which fits, choose Heirloom: the phone option is included, and assisted setups (you set it up, they speak) work just as well on web.
We have deliberately built this so that a 92-year-old who has never owned a smartphone can complete a full interview, with no technology in their hands beyond the phone they already use every day.
Every family receives:
Heirloom additionally includes a longer-form written companion drawn from the conversation: narratives, quotable moments, values, wisdom, and a timeline, presented as a PDF. The hosted page expands to surface those sections alongside the audio.
The audio is the point. The written pieces honour what was captured, but no pages, however beautifully made, replace the sound of a loved one's voice telling their own story.
Yes. Once your heirloom is ready, we send you a private link to listen and read through everything. If something needs fixing, a name spelled wrong, a word misheard in the transcript, or a moment your loved one would rather have cut, write to us and we'll make reasonable corrections and update your page.
What we won't do is rewrite the storyteller. The voice on the recording is whose it is, and the transcript reflects what was said. Light editorial work, like typos, mishearings, or a section your loved one asks to remove, is part of the production. Heavy rewrites that change the meaning are not.
Your audio, transcript, and hosted page live on private, encrypted servers in the United States, with our infrastructure partner Supabase (SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified). Three years of hosting is included in the price; the page stays online for the family the whole time, accessible via a private link.
You can download the audio and transcript from day one and keep them on your own devices forever. We strongly encourage every family to do this. Phones break, accounts lapse, services close. The version you keep is the version that's truly yours.
At the three-year mark, we'll write to you with options. You can extend hosting for another period at a modest annual rate, or close the hosted page and rely on your downloaded copies. There is nothing to lose either way: the original recording is already in your possession from week one.
Your heirloom lives at a private web link that we send you. It's not listed in any public directory, it can't be found through search, and there's no way for a stranger to stumble onto it. You decide who receives the link and can share it with the family members you'd like to be able to listen.
Keep your own copy too: you can download the audio and transcript from day one to hold on your own devices forever. For an interviewee or family member who isn't comfortable online, the buyer-assisted option simply means you open the link and play it back together.
On our side, access is restricted to a small number of people directly involved in producing your heirloom. From time to time a team member may listen back to a recording for craft reasons: to notice where the interviewer could have done better, and refine it for future interviews. That work happens under confidentiality. Your family's content is never shared, sold, or used as marketing material without your explicit permission.
We take privacy seriously, and our practices are guided by the principles set out in GDPR and the Australian Privacy Principles. You can ask us at any time to access, correct, or delete the personal data we hold about you and your family. Our Privacy Policy sets out the full detail of what we collect, why, and how long we keep it.
To exercise a privacy request, write to us. Right-to-erasure requests are handled manually for now: we'll confirm receipt promptly, complete the deletion as soon as we reasonably can, and send written confirmation when it's done.
If you have specific compliance questions for your jurisdiction, write to us before purchase. We'd rather give you a straight answer up front than overstate where we are.
Yes. We offer a 30-day money-back guarantee from the date of purchase. We're confident you'll love what we create together, but if for any reason it isn't right for you, write to us within 30 days and we'll refund you in full. Whether the interview has happened or not. Whether the deliverable is finished or in progress. We'd rather you try it and know than wonder.
This is the hardest question, and the reason the product exists. If your loved one passes away before any recording has been made, the heirloom we build cannot become what it was meant to be. There is no other person whose voice we can substitute.
In those circumstances we will offer a full refund, no conditions beyond confirming the situation. If part of an interview was completed before they passed, we will produce the heirloom from what was captured, with all the same care as a finished recording. A partial heirloom is still an heirloom. The voice that was captured was captured. That part can never be lost.
We say this not to dwell on the worst outcome but because we have built this company around the truth that the recording happens while it can, or it doesn't happen. If you are reading this question because the situation is current, write to us directly. We'll respond as quickly as we can.
