A printed book
Edited, typeset, with photographs. The thing you can hand over, put on a shelf, and that survives whatever happens to technology.
Life-story archive for families
“What did your street look like on a Sunday?”
One question arrives each week. Your parent or grandparent answers it out loud, in three or four minutes. The family listens that evening. At the end, the whole story exists — in a book, in audio, in their own voice.
- “What was your first wage, and what did you spend it on?”
- “What did you cook at Christmas, and who made it?”
- “How did you and Mum meet?”
- “What did you queue longest for?”
The question set is written for each country, never translated. That difference is the product.
How it works
Not an interview. A conversation, one question a week.
Nothing to learn, and not a word to write down. The phone rings, or a message arrives — and then it is just talking.
One question a week
A call or a message, always at the same time. If it isn't a good moment, the question waits.
Answered out loud
Three or four minutes, however it comes out. There is no right answer. If they stall, we ask one more question that opens it up.
The family listens
That same evening, on their phone. The stories accumulate, and become a book, an audiobook and a searchable archive.
The voice is the artefact
A transcript loses exactly what matters most
The pause while they search for a word. The laugh in the middle of a sentence. The way their voice changes when they say a name.
- Every answer is kept as the original recording — cleaned up, never re-recorded.
- The transcript is a searchable index, not the product: any name, year or place can be found.
- The book holds the edited text. The voice sits beside it, not instead of it.
0:003:41
Illustration of the interface direction; the mock-up contains no real audio.
Before you decide
This product stays abstract until you hear it
So there is a full sample chapter: one question, one recording, and the book page edited from it — exactly what you would receive.
See and hear the sampleWhat you get
Three forms, because it is needed for three things
An audiobook
In their own voice, split into chapters. This is what gets listened to most — in the car, in the evening, years later.
A searchable archive
Every recording and transcript in one place. Search a name, a year, a village — and find where they talked about it.
The questions
Written for each country, never translated
You cannot draw out a life with translated prompts. What is 1956 in Hungary is the Wall in Germany and Solidarity in Poland. So we rewrite the question set for every market — the platform stays the same.
Hungary„Hol volt Ön 1956 októberében?”
Germany„Wo waren Sie, als die Mauer fiel?”
United Kingdom“What did your street look like on a Sunday?”
Packages
A one-off price, not a subscription
The weekly question is how it is delivered, not a running service: the conversations you bought arrive weekly until they run out.
Basic
€150
5 conversations
- 5 questions, 5 recordings
- E-book and full audio archive
- Searchable transcript
Family
€250
10 conversations
- 10 questions, 10 recordings
- Printed book, three copies
- Audiobook and searchable archive
- Family photographs typeset in
Legacy
€380
unlimited, for one year
- Unlimited questions for a year
- Cloth-bound edition and family tree
- Video summary
- More than one storyteller
Prices shown for illustration. The Hungarian service is billed in forint: 59 000 / 99 000 / 149 000 Ft, archive storage 4 900 Ft a year after the first.
Common questions
What people ask us most
What if they don't like talking about themselves?
Almost everyone says that at the start, and by the third question it is hard to stop. It helps that the task is not “tell me about your life” but one small, concrete question: what you cooked at Christmas, what you queued for.
Do they need a smartphone or internet?
No. The conversation works over an ordinary phone call. If there is a smartphone, the question can arrive as a message too, but that is not required.
Who owns the recordings?
The storyteller and the family. They are stored encrypted, can be downloaded at any time, and permanently deleted on request. We never pass them to third parties and never use them for training.
What if someone dies part-way through?
We make the book and the audiobook from the recordings that exist, and refund the remaining conversations. It is rare — but we don't want a family to have to arrange anything at that moment.
One question you never asked
Listen to the sample chapter and decide afterwards. Five minutes.