A lot of people don’t think about it until it’s too late, but our parents have amazing stories and sometimes we wait too long to capture them. I’ve heard cautionary tales from friends who felt like they missed the opportunity. My dad has already lost a younger brother to Alzheimers, and while his memory is still just as good as when he was 20 years old I have had friends who find out suddenly that a parent just has a few months to live and then it’s all in on crisis mode.

Writing stories down is so much work, I don’t think most parents will want to take the time to do it. I’ve seen options where you can buy access to an app, your parent just answers questions by talking into the app and then they turn that into a book of stories.

The real problem is even the best questions are written by someone who doesn’t know your parents at all, the best way to get the stories out of them is to ask them the questions you know will trigger those stories.

The easiest way I can think to do it is to just set up some microphones and cameras and record video and audio to a laptop, then edit them into podcasts that I can watch or listen to later.

Once I do that, I can go right ahead and plug the audio into an ai for transcription, and then tell the AI to turn my dad’s account into a story format, I can then print the story into a book.

That would give me 3 options for consuming the content later. I could read it, listen to it, or watch it.

To accomplish this I’m just going to use a basic setup, I already have two cameras, a laptop, two microphones, it’s just a matter of going over to my dad’s house and getting to work.

I’m not going to make this podcast for profit or anything, it’s just to document my dad’s biggest stories and make sure that the podcast is a legacy that can be shared with the family.