Family Biographer is a patient interviewer that lives in a phone. It asks about a life the way a good biographer would — one question at a time, following what matters — and it keeps every word.
1. Someone gives it to someone
Most people buy it for a parent or grandparent. You get a link and a six-letter code. They open the link, install the app, type the code, and they're in. No account, no password, nothing to configure. If they can answer a phone call, they can do this.
2. They talk — usually in the car
They mount the phone, and the questions come through the speakers. There is nothing to read and nothing to tap. When they finish an answer they just stop talking; after about four seconds of quiet, the next question arrives. If they'd rather move on, they say "end of chapter."
Sessions can be five minutes or an hour. Errands become chapters. The app remembers everything between drives, so nobody has to keep track of where they left off.
Why the car
Because the best conversations happen side by side rather than face to face. Eyes on the road, hands busy, no one watching you — people say things in a passenger seat they'd never say across a table. Any quiet room works, but the car is where the stories come loose.
3. It digs, instead of surveying
This is the part that makes the difference between a questionnaire and a biography. When an answer contains something charged — a person, a turning point, a regret, a decision that changed everything — it goes further in. When a thread is genuinely mundane, it lets go and moves somewhere better.
It also remembers. Something mentioned in passing in March can come back as a question in May: "You mentioned your brother Tommy once — tell me about him."
4. Every word is preserved
The recording never stops mid-answer. Pauses, laughter, the crack in a voice, the long silence before the hard part — all of it stays. The audio is yours forever, and it's copied off-site the moment it arrives.
5. You receive a book
Those conversations become a full-length written biography — their life, in their voice, organised into chapters — delivered as a printed hardcover, with a digital copy. More about the book →
How long it takes
A complete biography needs about ten hours of conversation. That's half an hour a week for five months, or a few long drives. What matters more than the total is the spread: ten hours across a whole life makes a book, and ten hours of childhood doesn't. The app shows the family how far along they are, and there's no deadline — some finish in a month, others take a year.