Preserving Memory, Identity, and Legacy with AI: How Autograph Is Becoming Humanity’s Journal | Cristian Cibils Bernardes

What if technology could help preserve your life story, your memories, and your identity—so they’re never lost to time or illness?

In this powerful and thought-provoking episode of Live Parkinson’s – Live an Exceptional Life, host Chris Kustanbauter sits down with Cristian Cibils Bernardes, Founder and CEO of Autograph AI, a groundbreaking platform designed to help people capture, preserve, and share their personal stories for generations to come.

Cristian shares his journey from studying symbolic systems at Stanford to building Autograph—an AI-powered storytelling platform that uses a digital interviewer named Walter to guide users through meaningful life reflections. Together, they explore how storytelling helps people feel seen, valued, and heard, and why preserving personal narratives is especially important for individuals living with Parkinson’s and other life-changing conditions.

This conversation dives into memory, identity,  and hope—showing how technology, when designed with humanity at its core, can become a powerful tool for connection, healing, and legacy. Cristian also shares his vision for Autograph to become “humanity’s journal”, connecting generations through shared stories and lived wisdom.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How Autograph AI helps people document and preserve their life stories
• How Walter, the digital interviewer, helps users reconnect with their past
• Why storytelling is essential for dignity, identity, and emotional well-being
• How families can create shared libraries of memories across generations
• Why capturing memories is urgent—especially when facing neurological challenges

This episode is especially meaningful for people living with Parkinson’s, caregivers, families, and anyone thinking about legacy, memory, and living a life of purpose.

🔗 Calls to Action

👉 Explore Autograph AI and start preserving your story today:
Visit Autograph.ai to experience how AI can help capture your memories, values, and life experiences for future generations.

👉 Join the Live Parkinson’s community:
Visit LiveParkinsons.com and subscribe to the free monthly newsletter for evidence-based insights on exercise, nutrition, optimism, mindfulness, and social connection to help you

Chapters

• 0:11 Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 1:00 Meet Walter, The AI Interviewer
• 2:46 From Stanford To Purpose-Driven Tech
• 6:54 The Missed Interview That Sparked Autograph
• 9:56 Identity, Agency, And Telling Your Story
• 12:24 Shared Libraries And Support Groups
• 17:30 Reflection, Resilience, And Belonging
• 18:55 Time, Memory, And Doing It Now
• 21:54 The Five-Year Vision For Autograph
• 26:24 Families, Languages, And Photos
• 29:05 Making Walter Delightful To Use
• 30:01 Social Change And Reducing Trauma
• 33:15 Getting Started And Pricing
• 35:53 Simple For Seniors And Why AI Helps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:11

Today we're stepping into the world of digital storytelling and memory preservation with a remarkable guest, Christian Sabilas Bernadez. Christian is the founder and CEO of Autograph, a platform he calls Human Historian, designed to capture and preserve the stories that make us who we are. With a background in symbolic systems from Stanford and experience as a software engineer at Google, Christian brings a unique blend of technology, philosophy, and human connection to his work. While he doesn't have a direct tie to Parkinson's, his mission, ensuring that voices and experiences are never lost, resonates deeply with our community. Together, we'll explore how storytelling, memory, and technology can help us live exceptional lives, even in the faces of challenges like Parkinson's. Welcome. So you're the CEO of a company called Autograph. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how you got started in that? Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00

Yeah. So Autograph is uh is an AI we created a digital interviewer called Walter. Walter's not unlike a podcast host, and he calls you or a loved one whenever you want, usually around once a week, and he interviews you about your life, you know, starting with your childhood, teenage years, college years, or, you know, wherever life takes you, Walter sort of follows you along in this uh trip down memory lane. And we store the recordings and we do really cool stuff with the recordings. So we transcribe them and then we create these Wikipedia style pages for every thing in your life. So for every person, every place, every story, every event, every theme. And so our our idea is to let families accrue this knowledge, wisdom, and social capital so that when the next generation is going through life and maybe they're recording their own journey and saying, you know, Walter, it's a big week for me. I may have to move to New York to go to college or to get a job or something like that. Walter can say, hey, this reminds you of something your grandpa went through. And Walter would be able to surface back the memories of grandpa to that, to that child as they're making the decision. And, you know, there's many different ways of doing it, you know, including one of the things that we can do is we can actually make a model of grandpa that sounds like him and has all his memories so that you could have a conversation so that the future can talk to the past, essentially. And so it's been incredibly rewarding to see like the initial usage of Walter and how important his role is in making people feel heard and seen and valued. A lot of people go through life without realizing that they're the protagonist in a story that they're writing. And so Walter is really uniquely suited to remind people of the value and worth of their own story and how it can impact those that come later. How I got started into this was I went to Stanford, I discovered this really weird major called Symbolic Systems that is kind of it was my concentration was in artificial intelligence. But what I like about symbolic systems is that it's a mixture of computer science, philosophy, psychology, and linguistics. And so it doesn't give you just the how, it also gives you the why or tools to think about the why. Um, I've always been very passionate about, you know, social change and like what kind of solution, technological solutions can help society get better and self-heal as opposed to a lot of the technological innovations that we've seen that have, you know, led to polarization or or other kinds of less or anxiety, isolation, a sense of disconnect from the real world. So I, you know, discovered that, fell in love with the discipline and the style of thinking, and it's very interdisciplinary. I spent some time as an engineer at Google where I did both ads and education. And it was very interesting to compare and contrast both perspectives. I left Google and I joined my parents' company. My parents are both tech entrepreneurs from Paraguay. So they're in Paraguay. I grew up in Paraguay. It is very rare to have there, there are there is basically no tech scene in Paraguay. And so to have, you know, grown up seeing them try and try and try the classic sort of Silicon Valley style of grids, but in a very different context, um, has always been a huge inspiration. And so um they uh needed some help pivoting the company. It used to do SMS infrastructure uh for you know the telcos of the world, and now they it became kind of an investment firm. So I helped them out with that transition for about two years. But because my parents are like ultimate, like the founders as founders come, I had accrued enough cognitive dissonance from um saying you need to think like a founder and act like a founder and build those founder instincts. And so I knew that I wanted to build something for my own. But this was around the time that OpenAI had just launched Chat GPT. So it was kind of a like incredibly dynamic place, you know, and it was OpenAI was killing all these startups and then trying to figure out but what do I do with AI that is is good for the world, that connects me to my family and my story. It was a difficult thing to figure out. I couldn't find the idea then. So anyway, I decided to write a sci-fi novel, which was kind of a side quest in my life, where essentially what I basically I this is where I started to look for a tool that would help me write the next big chapter in my life. You know, I had just turned 30, Chat GPT had just come out, I just got engaged. And so I was like, you know, I'm here on planet Earth for a very short period of time. I want to make it count. I wish that I could use AI to help me live my best life. And the next best thing I came up with was like, well, at least I should start by telling my story so that when AI gets good, it may be able to help me. And then I got carried away and turned that into a sci-fi story. And so it was a really fun experience telling my piece through a fictional lens. But I didn't expect to find this existential relief of, hey, I told my story. Like if you wanted to figure out what made me, then you would be able to find it there. Um and it that took around six months. And then by the time I wake up from that fever dream, I'm like, okay, I have to promote the book now. And so I started a podcast to talk about uh our humanity in the age of AI, basically. What is left of us if, you know, if machines are going to do all the jobs? And, you know, we have to reinvent economics. We have to reinvent our sense of self-worth. We have to reinvent well, what does it mean to be? And I would like our more moral rights and legal rights and like IP. And there's this massive thing that's about to happen to the world. And I wanted to start having conversations with thought leaders around what happens. And I love, I love podcasts. I love sitting down with somebody and figuring out what made them who they are and like how did they get here and how, you know, what tickles them intellectually. Um, and I also just love people. I love like I remember thinking when I was doing the podcast, I remember thinking, I wish I could interview everybody on earth. I really wish I could. And in this process, I realized that one of the stories I really should record was my grandma. My grandma had a crazy life story. Her dad was an MI6 agent. They lived in Europe. Great-grandpa shipped the family off to the ends of the earth. Great-grandma and her two kids ended up in Paraguay of all places, and they made it there, you know, in a single mom situation, single mom of two daughters. And my grandma became an industrialist. She taught, she wrote books, she and this is in the context of the 1950s, very, you know, uh machismo-based, you know, Paraguayan society during a military dictatorship. Um, and so I wanted to record her story, and we set a time for an interview. And a few days before our time, she had a stroke. And that left her paralyzed for the last 18 months of her life. And, you know, I found myself in a position where I had the outline of questions that I knew I wasn't going to get an answer to. And that was the the catalyst moment for me. I was like, well, okay, but like the universe is forcing me to look at something. And what are the threads that I can connect here? Okay. Identity as storytelling. AI can now interview everybody on Earth. It's actually the most accessible it's ever been because you could do it over the phone. And not only is it good for the future generations to have an account of what happened in the perspective of those who lived it, but also it's a good thing for the people living it. You know, like telling your story is a good thing. You know, it gets you reps on this, you know, this idea of who you are or this version of you that you will leave behind. And once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. You know, like this is a solved problem now. Like we we have a chance to negotiate terms with our impermanence in a way that we haven't been able to before. And once I saw it, from nowhere to be.

SPEAKER_00: 8:59

And so with AI, I th I think it's fascinating, but every life has a I'm I believe what you do is every life has a story. I don't care who you are or where you come from. We all have a story, and we can share with others to help others and you know, could be because that's one of the driving forces and my mission behind this podcast is to try to help as many people living with Parkinson's as as possible, but uh just helping people in general. And and I think the platform that you have can be one of those where people can utilize that to tell their Parkinson's story, and other people can learn from that. It doesn't necessarily have to be family members, it can be someone else in the community can say, wow, I didn't know that you you could do this and and that can help you. So that's why I really wanted to talk to you. So that's the that's fascinating.

SPEAKER_01: 9:49

Yeah, no, that that's a great point. We we're just launching this feature that we call shared libraries. So the the way it works today is you tell your story and your stuff gets aggregated into your library. So there would be Christian's library or Chris's library. Um but and I can share any of these pages with whoever I want. So if there's a page in there that comes back that I like that Chris would really benefit from, I could share it with you. A lot of times we want to share with groups, like I want to share this with the whole family, or I want to share this with one side of the family, or I want to share this with my high school friends. And so we're building groups exactly for this purpose, right? And even before we started marketing the stuff, you know, like it was pretty apparent that there were a lot of people with that had overcome really difficult challenges that wanted to tell their stories so that other people could be inspired by them. Um, this is a very emotional kind of harrowing thing because you you have people expressing extremely, extremely difficult things, but they came out on the other side and they identify as the hero that slayed the dragon and they want to sort of let the record show that I won this battle. And if anybody needs encouragement, they can look here. So yeah, this is very much aligned with what we want to do. And like you can kind of think of all these support groups that can emerge pretty easily where everybody can start sharing their experiences with a particular kind of struggle and how they went about it.

SPEAKER_00: 11:12

I'm sorry, that's what I was gonna ask you because there's a lot of support groups out there. There's a Parkinson support group, there's cancer support groups, and and sharing success stories or what worked or how you overcame a challenge is and I think that's it's very powerful. So I I I you know, I I'm glad to hear that you taught you talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01: 11:28

So and sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but yeah, and and each of these is is like a big beast, right? You know, like it you can imact easily imagine if you take like, I don't know, a hundred thousand people that are going through something like this, you're gonna get a lot of different responses. Like, I tried this and it worked, I tried this and it didn't work. And so uh Walter not doesn't just help collect the information, but he also helps organize it in a way that, you know, someone who wants to compare their experience to this will actually be able to Walter will be able to find the resonance in the same way that he says, You have to move to New York. This reminds me of something that your grandpa went through. He can say, Oh, you're going through this problem. This reminds me of something that Chris went through in this group that he shared with this group. Um, and and so it's also for the person like coming into the the group to have more accessibility and it gives you the opportunity to tell a story.

SPEAKER_00: 12:25

Everybody loves listening to stories. You sit around and you know, it you get enthralled in the story, whether it's sitting around a campfire and someone's telling a story, but when somebody can you can relate to is giving, you know, telling their story and you you can see some of the challenges that they overcame. It you it's not you don't feel so isolated because I know a lot of times in life, I don't care what the what the condition is, whether it's Parkinson's or cancer or whether it's depression. I mean, everybody has something, and if they can relate to somebody else through stories or you know, even just short bits, it's really going to help them in their in their life. And it may be another, you know, maybe another family member, but that's the thing I'm really excited about with what you're doing is that it gives the people the opportunity to to share a story, but it also allows you to connect with somebody else because a lot of times people feel isolated and alone. And I think what you're doing is is really some great work.

SPEAKER_01: 13:17

Ah, thank you, Chris. I appreciate that. Well, it's very motivating to us to have found like this unmet emotional need, right? Like there's we all deal with how hard it is to be human, and it's kind of table stakes that it's just gonna, oh, you just gotta have to do it, right? Um, but um yeah, I I mean, I writing my story changed my life. It allowed me to take agency and ownership over where the next chapters are going. It forced me in a position to be not just see myself as the main character, but also as the author and also as the editor and also as the publisher. And there is an insane amount of power in feeling comfortable in those worlds where you can reinterpret stuff about your past in a way that serves you as it as opposed to a way that holds you back. And and I agree with like that same idea, right? Like everybody has a story. The story is it's almost like a hidden puzzle piece for a problem in the future that we will need to solve as humanity. And everybody has a little puzzle piece that fits into this, like this bigger puzzle that is like, how do we make sense of the universe? Um, and it just so happens that when you share your story, you reveal a lot about how you see the world. Uh, because we reflected back at you, you can now engage with it in a way that feels a little bit more external. So it's like, that is how I sounded, but it's not how I feel. Like, actually, I'm like, and so there's a there's a reflection process that happens through this that is extremely um, I think very beneficial. You know, like it's um you know, Walter's in the journey of discovering you, and we take you on the journey of rediscovering yourself and reacquainting with yourself.

SPEAKER_00: 14:58

Well, based on what you're saying, we all look back on our lives and we we might have a different interpretation, but we've all gone through some great times, we've all gone through times where we failed, and a lot of times we use both of those learning experiences to, you know, move move on in the future. And and I see this as something maybe that you can do as well where you take what Walter's giving you and and you can look at it and say, okay, how can I use this to if I want to change, you know, because everybody is with the new year coming up, everybody's making New Year's resolutions. And the problem is when you look at the data, a lot of times New Year's only about, I think it's 20% actually keep the resolution. But if you can look at what happened in the past and you want to change it, you can say, Oh, I didn't like the way I did this, so how can I change it moving forward? Or maybe I was isolating myself, but now I see there's others that have the same thing. So I want to go out and help somebody else and and you know, and then it just grows and grows that way.

SPEAKER_01: 15:54

Yeah, no. Uh the you you're preaching to the choir. This is exactly what we, you know, like it's the reason I stay up late at night and it's the reason I try to wake up as early as I can, is because And well, the the other side of it too that is also very challenging to manage, but you know, it's similar to some of the conversations that you have all the time, is that time is limited, you know. Like there, there you this isn't something that you can put off indefinitely. If you put it off indefinitely, you it won't get done. And that meaning will be lost. There there will be questions that we won't be able to answer. So there's there's this, it's one of those things like it's it's interesting because we know it's something that is good to do and worth doing, but it's still like easy to put off until you are faced with one of those big life reminders of how precious and short life is and memory is something that you take for granted as a kid. But as you, as you age, then you start realizing how some of your core memories get fuzzier. And being able to always relive your wedding with the same uh raw emotion of the day after is something that I I was too late for that, but I really wish my own.

SPEAKER_00: 17:02

My brother and I were just talking about this the other day, but a lot of times people say, Well, I'll do that someday. And then they pass away, and that someday never, never came. And and so I, you know, I've kind of stepped back and learned from that, you know, living with Parkinson's for a long time, and that if I'm gonna do something, I want to, you know, you do it. And for instance, I love to fly fish, and one of my biggest dreams was I wanted to go out to Montana and go fly fishing. And I said to my brother, would you go with me? And and we did two years ago, we went and we had the we had a great time, and it was just the best experience. And looking back now, I'm I say to myself, Well, I'm glad I did that, where I could have said, Well, I'll do that someday, and just kept putting it off and putting it off. And and now that became part of my story, and and he still talks about it. And so it's something that that goes, you know, on.

SPEAKER_01: 17:51

That's funny. I was in Montana fly fishing earlier in the year.

SPEAKER_00: 17:54

So where do you see autograph going in the next five years? How can you expand it so that people can take advantage?

SPEAKER_01: 18:02

Well, I hope autograph becomes humanity's journal. I mean, like I hope that people that we create the right brand, space, digital, and legal infrastructure so that we can bring this emotional resonance to everybody on earth. I mean, really, it's just like building that habit of, you know, something big in your life happens, you talk to Walter, and Walter reflects at you, you know, the safety that that that that lived experience is now safe forever. I'm very excited about the kinds of stuff that we can do with this information, right? Uh so from the beginning, autograph is is a future-facing company. It's not really about the past. The past is the prologue. The future is the story that you get to write. So there are many cool things that we can do in terms of different kinds of services that we can build on top. So we could go through like diagnostics route and try and sort of be at the v bleeding edge of detecting cognitive decline or that kind of stuff, which is a whole universe and supporting people, you know, like as they venture later into age with sort of AI-powered services for that population. Think of like, you know, setting up checkups or, you know, there's a whole world in which we we go that direction. There's there's other kinds of really fun stuff around simulation too. You know, if we have a really good representation of who you are and your entire cultural context, um, then we can help you practice uh things that you may be interested in. So, for example, we can help you practice a job interview, a hard conversation with a significant other, with a business partner, with an employee, with um a sibling, you know, a parent. Uh, we can we can simulate different life paths, you know, like what happens if I take the left side of the fork in the road or the right side of the fork in the road and let my life happen for 10 years and run that a hundred thousand times, in which which path am I happier on average? And as defining. By me. You know, like, you know, in the in my evolution, how do I evolve? Am I a self-described, happier person uh 10 years down the line? I think that's incredibly exciting. And you could do also stuff for fun, right? Like you and I could go on an adventure to a medieval Rome and see how we, how we do, right? Just for just for the giggles, right? Um and then there's a lot of like more just like practical stuff. If we, if we become this trusted repository of your information, then and we know your privacy preferences just the same way that you do, then we can help you actually manage the context of your identity as it relates to other services. I need an immigration lawyer, for instance, and you know your budget, you know your timeline, you know what your needs are. But the process of getting an immigration attorney is pretty tedious. You have to search, you have to get referrals, you have to figure out if it's the right person, you know, like there's a whole bunch of things. If we can help you sort that out faster, and instead of having to meet with 10 immigration attorneys, and we just get you to pick the final two, that's a lot of time saved in aggregate across all of the economy, right? Um, but you could think about how that applies to anything, you know, like Christmas shopping, you know, like I want the perfect gift for my wife, or I want the perfect, like, I don't even know what I want for Christmas, you know? Um that kind of stuff I think is super exciting, you know? And and because we are on the phone with our users who are sharing their most pressing life situation with us, we we are in a unique position to help them manage that challenge or those like pressing things uh really easily. That's the five-year vision. So really hoping that like there's we get millions of stories by then. Uh like what happens at the 10-year mark? I agree. That's where it gets very sci-fi.

SPEAKER_00: 21:42

Just being linked to any type of ancestry where you might have relatives that live in another country and you they they tell their story and people from different parts, and then next thing you know, they're, you know, second or third generation. Then you've you've kind of got this uh historical story of your whole family, you know, based on ancestors.

SPEAKER_01: 22:01

Yeah. 100%. Um this is something that I've been thinking about very recently, but you know, there's we're we're being disciplined with prioritizing the stories that would get lost fastest, right? So this is, you know, we're trying to get the stories of the silver generation. And within the silver generation, there's also the like what are the stories that are most likely to be forgotten fastest? And so mentioning stories of, you know, the generations that came before, you know, what were your grandparents like? That's the stuff that's at risk, you know. So asking my grandparents what his grandparents were like, um, uh, that's that's like very uh for like stuff that would be otherwise forgotten. But yeah, back to this idea of groups, right? Like you can start a family group and you can have a group for the siblings, you can have a group for the nuclear family, you can have a group for the cousins on one side of the family, the cousins on very similar to texts, text group chats, right? And you can have a giant group that is like all of the descendants of Chris, uh Chris Kustenbauer, the first. I don't know, I'm making something up, right? But you know, like your great, great, great-grandfather, and and all of a sudden the descendants could be all over the world speaking different languages. That's another very cool thing that we do is that uh, you know, you can speak to Walter in any language that you want, and you can access the stories in whatever language you want. So we have a lot of interest from immigrant communities where grandma may be speaking in Mandarin, but a great grandchild speaks in English. And you want the cultural transmission of values and uh certainly like, you know, the record of the sacrifices made to be accessible to the younger generation who grows up in an entirely different unit.

SPEAKER_00: 23:52

Is there ways that they could take you can take pictures? You know, I know with AI, like from pictures when the person was younger, when they were in their teens, twenties, all all throughout, so that it actually almost becomes like a book where you could read and look at pick in the pictures at the same time. Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 24:09

So we're we building out file uploads. Um, so this is kind of it's pretty cool how we're doing it. Where you just dump your files and we organize them for you. So we will find, you know, from the pictures that you upload who's in them and what timeline they fall into. A lot of photos have metadata in them. So we know when they were taken and where they were taken. And so we can actually organize this stuff pretty easily. Um, but think about like journal entries or or recipe cards or all these other things that are like it's kind of all over the place what you can do. Um and uh uh one uh a person who's helping us with partnerships described this as like the ultimate um uh scrapbook source material. Um and so it's kind of uh kind of just inspires the next step that is like, oh wow, is there a world in which we help people scrapbook? You know, like given this set of this archive that we build for you, can you build out pages of a scrapbook that then you can print and share with whoever you want? So it's it's very much the same idea, right? That how do you create these albums where you have a digital version so that everybody that you want to share can have access to it immediately, but you could also create a physical version that uh serves as like, you know, like even like the stuff in the back, you know, like we like physical stuff because it's like turning it into reality. And so we're excited to begin exploring that early next year, too. You know, like what are the the derivative products that we can build with this data? To me, like the the thing is like we need to make uh talking to Walter as enjoyable as possible because uh if it's not enjoyable to talk to Walter, then you're not gonna get the data. And anything that you build on top of that is kind of a pipe dream. So we're working on like really making the conversational aspect, you know, feeling like you have Walter Isaacson interviewing you about your life because you are the center of the world.

SPEAKER_00: 26:00

You mentioned social change and wanting to, you know, make an impact on the world and helping other people with the technology that you have and with Walter, you know, doing stories, how do you envision yourself being able to take what you have and being able to help society for the better?

SPEAKER_01: 26:17

I think fortunately a lot of this is baked into the the premise of the service already. So when talking about your story, this whole idea of you are the protagonist in your story and you are the author and you are the editor and you are the publisher comes up kind of naturally. You're sort of like writing down what will be left of you. And that is very beneficial because it helps you get rid of the stuff that isn't isn't serving you or doesn't add up to your identity, and it helps you actually amplify, I'm really good at this, or like, yeah, I've overcame that, or it really helps cement your sense of identity, which I think is very important in a world that seems to be hell-bent on destroying our sense of identity. It's always like you're never enough. You're never good enough, you're never smart enough, you're never rich enough, you're never famous enough, you're never enough. And our whole thing is like actually, there's infinite wealth inside of you. So that's one aspect of the benefit. The other thing that comes up is that as I am the protagonist in my story, I very quickly realize everybody's the protagonist in theirs. And I'm a side character at best in a lot of those stories. You know, if anything, I most of the time I'm just an extra. And so it helps contextualize, you know, it unpacks this very important thing that who we think we are is a story, is a story that we repeat to ourselves kind of ritualistically every morning. We remember being who we are and we kind of just boot back to who we think we are. And being able to create that detachment, I think allows us to re-engage with a lot of the stories that are out there in the world that are there to manipulate us, to act reactively to a certain piece of news or a certain legislation or a certain whatever ha whatever happens in the world, that detachment, I think, can go a long way in understanding that there's the dynamics of trauma, you know. Oh, if I'm if I'm if I have trauma inflicted on me, I'm forced to have a reactive disposition towards things that are similar to that event. And when I react, that creates a reactive disposition in that person. And so it kind of keeps the cycle going forever. If I can detach from that for one second and not react, then all of a sudden I'm really putting pumping the brakes on the spread of intergenerational trauma. And because AI enables this kind of unparalleled connection between people, truly deeply understanding who you are, what your experience is, where you want to go. Uh, I think we have a very good shot of like reducing 90% of intergenerational trauma by the next two generations.

SPEAKER_00: 28:46

So that my grandkids live in an entirely different thing with what you just said is how a lot of times we don't think what we do really matters, but people are affected and we don't realize sometimes how we made a change in in somebody and how that that went forward. I was just thinking it's you know Christmas time here and with uh the wonderful life with Jimmy Stewart when it you know he gets to relive it's because you didn't jump off the bridge, you were able to affect all these other people's lives. And I I think that that's one of the things that what you're offering can really help people with is to to take a step back and say, wow, as they're telling their story, wow, I did I do have these strengths that help other people. And these other people did I I was able to help these other people, even though I didn't think it wasn't you know, it's something you might do something at the time that doesn't seem important, but then later on you find out that wow, it they it made a significant change in somebody else's life. So I think that's one of the when you were talking about that, that's one of the things that really struck me.

SPEAKER_01: 29:45

No, you're you're absolutely right. I have a poster of It's a Wonderful Life at home. So I look at it every day.

SPEAKER_00: 29:50

If they want to get involved in telling their story, how how do they get connected with Autograph? For sure.

SPEAKER_01: 29:55

Autograph.ai. We're we're there. We have a two-week free trial. So you can talk to Walter as much as you want for free. You can see what these library pages look like, you can share them with folks, you can invite folks on and you can request stories from them. So if you have a friend or a loved one or or a parent or a grandparent that you want to get this for, you can also steer the conversation that they have with Walter and say, like, actually, I want my when I when Walter talks to my mom, I want to hear the story of the first house she bought and how she had to, you know, essentially work so hard to get it. And you can actually be the very good steward of that library. Try it two weeks for free, and then if you like it, you can stick around and keep going. So is it more as it's a name in the pages of the sort of thing?

SPEAKER_00: 30:38

A subscription-based thing where they can do it for a while and then say, I want to stop, or is it a yearly thing? Or how can you explain how that works a little bit?

SPEAKER_01: 30:47

Oh for sure. It's uh it's we charge a monthly subscription. There's a yearly plan too. Um and what we charge for is talking to Walter. So Walter is your archivist, uh uh scribe, documentarian, chronicler, biographer, like he he, you know, that kind of stuff. I don't know that any of those particularly works, but that kind of is the idea. He's your interviewer. Um but we give you forever access to the uh recordings and transcripts and the library pages that we create. And you can always export them whenever you want, and you can sort of pause your account, reactivate it. Uh, you know, if life is in kind of a boring state for a couple of months, you can pause it and come back. We have a lot of cases of folks who think that they've they're done telling their life story, and then a month later they come back, it's like, oh my gosh, this whole thing happened again. So we charge it's a monthly subscription, it's uh 29 bucks a month to have the world's greatest interviewer you mentioned about your life.

SPEAKER_00: 31:45

The older generation. So people that aren't necessarily tech savvy, and when you're talking about AI with Walter, a lot of times there's you know, people start to panic a little bit and say, I can't do that. Can you explain a little bit how about how they would interact with Walter to give them what the process looks like? For sure.

SPEAKER_01: 32:03

This would be so assuming someone who is a bit more tech savvy signs up to get this for their parents or grandparents, you sign up, you create your account, and then you can add other folks to your account. And so, you know, I signed up, I added my mom to my account. What happens with my mom is she gets a message from us saying, hi, Vivian, Christian has gifted you a subscription to Autograph, a platform where you can record your life story through our it digital interviewer Walter. Feel free to call this number anytime or schedule a call via this text, and you're off to the races. So it's basically like a service where we hired an on-call biographer for my mom, and she has his phone number and she can call him whenever she wants. And so this all happens over the phone. So fortunately, there's not much of a for the person talking to Walter, there's really not much to learn. Like it's really just picking up the phone and and and and starting to chat. What we found, you know, this was kind of counterintuitive, but people are way more open with an AI interviewer than with a human interviewer. Because, first of all, there's a novelty factor. Oh my gosh, I'm talking to a computer, this is cool. But also because there's no human judgment on the other side. It's this thing that is just, you know, designed to be there for you. And when Walter gives you validation about something that you did that you may have even been sheepish about, I don't know, like a minor accomplishment, say. When Walter actually says, this is actually really great, like you know, and like and and gives you validation around like your lived experience, it kind of packs this double whammy where sure enough, there's no human that is that is empathizing with me, but it's this other thing that's kind of even more impressive than a human in the sense that it knows all of the things that have happened in human history and it says that my life is meaningful. And that like goes a really long way. But the experience of talking to Walter is almost identical to talking to a human. Like you, you kind of forget. Sorry, and now that I'm on a roll, you kind of forget the stuff that you makes up your identity all the time. So Walter will ask you one or two questions and you'll find yourself talking for 15 minutes about the answer, and like, oh, this other thread in that answer, and this other thread in that answer, and this other thread and that answer. Well, and plus you don't have to worry about body language really happens.

SPEAKER_00: 34:19

With someone interviewing you like, oh, they're judging me, or they're rolling their eyes, or they're so I mean that that's one of the benefits. And is there anything else that you would like to share with with autograph that can that can uh really help somebody and then drive them towards, you know, recording their life story?

SPEAKER_01: 34:35

I mean, I I think our our logo or like our slogan is is pretty powerful, you know, your voice matters, record it. We're in a unique time where you can actually speak into a microphone and the entire world can change because of it. And we all are doing these little things that are ripples in this big pond, and some of those ripples turn into like continent-reshaping tsunamis. We have a really nice opportunity to give the future a chance to understand itself in a way that we never got. Like we got, we inherited a world that was very distorted with self-importance and public perception and you know, geopolitical initiatives around how textbooks are created and what curriculums are taught and what like grades, we have a very cool chance for a limited window. I don't know how long this chance will exist, uh, to really change our story and and write the next great chapter in human history together. Um so that's my that's my appeal, you know, um, uh, is if if there's something in you um that feels that you're here for a reason and you don't want to be tied up in this endless loop of cynicism and nihilism and nothing matters. And if if you want an antidote to that, just tell Walter your story at autograph.ai. You'd be surprised at the hero you discovered.

SPEAKER_00: 35:51

I think we've learned here today, too, is we're all interconnected. I don't care where you live in the world. We're all we're all humans, we all want want similar things, but we all want to be happy, we all want to live a great life and you know, hopefully help other people. And that's uh you know, that's one of the big learnings I picked up, not picked up today, but that you're building on. And I think what you're doing's uh great. And so I I really want to thank you for coming on today and sharing your what uh autograph's capabilities are, and I'm I'm I'm really impressed with your mission and your drive. So I want to thank you so much for being on the program.

SPEAKER_01: 36:23

Thank you, Chris. Thanks for having me, and thanks for giving me a chance to talk about it. I don't get tired of this. This is my favorite.

SPEAKER_00: 36:28

I like talking to people and I love listening to people's stories and I love watching people and what they do, and and uh because we're all unique and and we all have something to give, and and I think that's important. So I want to thanks thank you again. My pleasure. All right, well thank you.