The most important interview
February 2025 2 min read
I realized something last week: I know more about some YouTubers' childhoods than I do about my own grandmother's life. This bothers me more than it probably should.
We all say we'll write our memoirs someday. We imagine sitting down in our later years, crafting the perfect narrative of our lives. But let's be honest - most of us won't. The task feels too enormous, too distant.
This hit me hard when my colleague Alexei lost his father unexpectedly. All those unasked questions, all those untold stories, gone forever. And that's when an unusual idea struck me.
What if we approached memoirs like we approach software development? Start with an MVP - a Minimum Viable Personal history. Not the comprehensive life story, just the essential threads that make us who we are.
The format would be simple: a trusted friend or family member interviews you for a few hours. No pressure to be profound or complete. Just natural conversation about the moments that shaped you, recorded and preserved.
I tested this concept with a friend. He's a quiet software engineer who never volunteers personal stories. But in just two hours, with some careful questions, I learned about the summer job that changed his career path, the teacher who believed in him when no one else did, and the hilarious disaster of his first attempt at entrepreneurship.
The recording isn't perfect. There are awkward pauses and tangents. Some stories remain half-told. But it captures something authentic that traditional memoirs often miss - the natural rhythm of human memory and conversation.
The technical implementation could be straightforward. A simple mobile app that provides question prompts, handles recording, and generates an organized transcript. Add some basic editing tools and the ability to attach relevant photos or documents.
But here's what makes this different from typical "save your memories" apps: it's fundamentally social. The interviewer isn't an AI or a form to fill out - it's someone who cares about your story, someone who can ask the follow-up questions that reveal the really interesting details.
The result won't win any literary awards. It won't capture every important moment or insight. But it will preserve something real - a snapshot of how you tell your own story, in your own voice, to someone who matters to you.
I keep thinking about what I would have given to have just two hours of recorded conversation with my grandmother. Not a polished autobiography, just her talking about her life with someone she trusted. The jokes she would have told, the inflections in her voice, the little asides that never made it into family lore.
Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the essential. Maybe we need to stop waiting for the ideal moment to tell our full stories, and start capturing the fragments we can, while we can.
The next time I visit my parents, I'm bringing a microphone. I have some questions I need to ask.