One day you will want to hear her voice again.

Tell Me Forever asks someone you love about their life — one question at a time — and turns their answers into a book you can hold, with their voice inside it. You choose the questions. They answer from their phone, one question at a time, with nothing to install.

Start free

Thirty minutes of recording, free. No card.

First

Choose the questions

Start from a set we wrote — childhood, work, love, the war years — and change any of them. Twelve is a good number. You can add more later.

Then

She answers

She gets a link and taps one button, with nothing to install, no account to make and no password to remember.

Finally

You get the book

Every answer is written out and typeset into a hardback, with a code beside each story that plays her telling it. Order as many as there are people in the family.

The hard part is not the recording. It is asking.

Most people mean to do this. They mean to sit down with a parent and a recorder and ask about the years before they were born, and then a Christmas goes by, and another, and then one year it is not possible any more.

What stops it is rarely the equipment. It is that sitting somebody down and interviewing them is a strange thing to do to your own mother, and nobody knows what to ask. So the questions come from us, the asking is done by a quiet link, and all you have to do is choose who and press send.

She has almost nothing to do.

No account. No password. No application to install. She gets one message, opens it on whatever she already reads her email on, and sees one question and one large button. She presses it and talks for as long as she likes.

If an answer goes badly she can do it again, and you are not charged for the ones you throw away.

What it costs

You buy recording time, and it never expires. An hour is $12.00, less per hour if you buy more. Most answers run five to ten minutes, so an hour covers something like eight or nine stories. The book is priced separately, when you decide you want one — and you can read every word of it before you pay for it.

Nothing is a subscription. Nothing renews.

Start with thirty free minutes

Questions people ask

My mother is eighty-six and does not use apps.: She does not need one. The link opens in whatever she already reads her email on, and there is one large button to press. Nothing to install, no account, no password.
Who can hear the recordings?: You and her. Nothing is public, nothing is shared, and there is no feed anybody browses. The codes printed in the book play the audio for whoever holds the book.
What if an answer goes badly?: Record it again. You only pay for the answers you accept — anything you delete before then costs nothing. You can also trim silences and false starts before it goes in the book.
Do I have to make a book?: No. The recordings and the transcripts are yours either way, and you can download all of it whenever you like.
What happens to her voice if I stop paying?: Nothing renews, so there is nothing to stop. What you have bought stays yours.