The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations by Elizabeth Keating Ph.D.

Episode Date: October 28, 2023

The Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations by Elizabeth Keating Ph.D. https://amzn.to/3FBpVs0 Just as the oral histories of people around the world are disappearing amid rapid change, there is a risk that your family’s personal stories, too, will be lost forever. In The Essential Questions, anthropologist Elizabeth Keating helps you to uncover the unique memories of your parents and grandparents and to create lasting connection with them in the process. As you seek to learn more about your family history, how do you get beyond familiar anecdotes and avoid the frustration of oppositional generational attitudes? By asking questions that make the familiar strange, anthropologists are able to see entirely different perspectives and understand new cultures. Drawing on her lifelong work in this field, Keating has developed a set of questions that treat your parents and grandparents not just as the people who raised you, but as individuals of a certain society and time, and as the children, teenagers, and young adults they once were. The Essential Questions helps you to learn about the history of your elders, to see the world through their eyes, and to honor the language they choose to describe their experiences. Here are some summary notes from the podcast interview: Elizabeth Keating is an anthropology professor and author of the new book "The Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations." The book provides a framework of questions to deeply interview older family members about their life experiences and get intergenerational perspectives. Keating was inspired to write the book after losing her mother and realizing how little she knew about her life outside being a parent. The 13 essential questions focus on topics like childhood homes, interactions, coming-of-age rituals, fears, and more. They elicit rich details and stories. Interviewing family creates empathy, brings unknown histories to light, builds closer bonds, and preserves ordinary details of past eras before they are lost. Tips covered include withholding judgment, letting subjects guide the narrative, listening without interrupting, allowing silences for more memories to emerge. Recording interviews is highly recommended to accurately capture details, language, and stories for family archives. Video may make some uncomfortable. Starting interviews sooner rather than later is best, even if dementia is present, as older memories persist. Conversations can unfold over time. Understanding parents as full individuals, not just in their parental role, brings gratitude and a richer sense of personal history and influences.

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Interview your family to uncover stories and bridge generations. Elizabeth Keating, Dr. Elizabeth Keating, I believe, PhD, is on the show with us today, and she's going to be talking to us about her amazing book and all the great stuff that goes inside of it. And we welcome her now. Welcome to the show, Dr. Keating. How are you? I'm great. Thank you. It's such a pleasure to be here and to be one of your guests and to talk to your audience. Awesome. It's wonderful to have you as well.

You are a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas in Austin and the author of books and articles about language and culture. And so you've written lots of stuff. What made you want to write a book about this subject? Well, that's an interesting story. It's actually a story initially about loss, which everyone has experienced, unfortunately. I lost my mother, and I realized after she died that I didn't know a lot about her besides in her role as a mother. Even though I'd interviewed her a few years before she died, I just at that time was interested in family tree connections. And so after she died, and I was going through her things, and you know, that's such an emotional time. There were so many questions that came up. What was it like to grow up in her time? And what were the things that

happened to her that influenced who she was and then made me who I was? And I heard the same thing from other people that, you know, I wish I'd asked my mother this, or I wish I'd asked my grandmother this, my grandfather this. I don't really know what they did and what some of their experiences were. So I started interviewing older people who were grandparent age and to try to develop a set of questions. I'm an anthropologist. That's what anthropologists do is try to find out about other people and their ways of life. So I had a marvelous time interviewing people and came up with 13 questions. And I was having such a good time that I thought, I want my students to get in on this. And so I gave them as one of their semester projects to interview one of their grandparents.

And they loved it. They loved the project. And they brought back so many interesting stories. You said about stories how important they are. Well, it turns out older people don't tell very many stories. They think nobody's interested. They think people aren't going to listen to them and they're focused on their grandkids.

Yeah. So that was, and then I thought I've got to write this book because it's so incredible to find out these things. You think, you know, your family, but,

but you don't. Is one of the 13 questions am i adopted or or or why am i adopted it certainly could be but actually the questions are more the kind of questions anthropologists go to the field as we call, to find out about other people's everyday life, ordinary life, which it sounds interesting, but if it's ordinary life, 50 or 60 years ago, it isn't ordinary to us anymore. So I've heard stories of people who they remembered when they moved off the farm and got the first flush toilet and they were four years old. And what did they do? They kept flushing it over and over again.

I do that now. But it might be because I was, you know, a Taco Bell the night before. You know, and I love this concept and this idea. It really struck me when I saw the thing on your book. With my father, in his later years, I got the whole family together with some elbow twisting and got them together for a picture in front of the house they all grew up in, or my father grew up in.

And it was the last family photo that we ever took. And I knew he was having all sorts of small heart attacks and strokes, and his health was declining, and he was starting to have some dementia kicked in. And so I started spending time with him. And my main objective was kind of what you talked about in your books. When people are gone, there's, you know, you can't ask them stuff. I mean, I suppose you can hire a seance or something, you know, a reaching board or something.

But I don't know. Usually I just conjure the devil and that happens. So that's Fridays around here. But I don't know what you want. conjure the devil and that happens. So that's Fridays around here. But I don't know what you want. Anyway, that's my devil voice. So I sat down with this application. You know, I kind of heard some people doing what you were doing. Some people were doing video interviews or tape interviews with their loved ones.

And I'm like, you know, I'm going to clear all the decks. So I sat down with them and I said, dad, let's talk about whatever resolved unresolved business you think you have with me. Um, I talked about a few things with him and we cleared the decks. We forgave each other and we kind of, it was kind of interesting too, cause he kind of, you know, Oh, i didn't realize that bothered you and um um we got the decks cleared and and uh that way that there wasn't i i hope there was anything i wanted to ask him after he left but uh and i think i had gotten everything out of him that i could get out of him the the sad part was i waited too long this is probably a great lesson that you probably

teach in your book i'd waited too long and And this is probably a great lesson that you probably teach in your book. I'd waited too long and the dementia was starting to kick in. And he was starting to tell me the same thing every day. Yeah. And so, but we got in the decks cleared. And fortunately, there wasn't much to clear, you know. But it was so important because, you know, once they're gone and sometimes people walk out of your life, they don't have to be old. You know, they can have a car accident.

They can have whatever happened. But finding out their history and kind of what they went through, you know, a lot of people don't talk about it. You're right. Yes. positions that they hold today when you understand what kind of era they grew up in and what they were expected what was expected of them as children is sometimes phenomenal going to work at age 12 to help the family finances and having to drop out of school because there were a lot of kids in the family and they couldn't afford to have one of them not be working and helping out and just tremendous hardship that previous generations endured that they are very happy that their grandchildren and children don't have that hardship and yet at the same time it also

gives them a certain point of view on life that once you understand their stories you can you can have a lot more empathy for perhaps their uh it's how much more difficult it is for them to embrace a certain idea that is very, very popular among the younger generation. So, I've had people tell me that when they sat down and asked their parent or grandparent about the ordinary life back then, that they really had no idea of what daily life was like. We have a tendency, obviously, to imagine that a lot of people's experiences are similar to our own. In fact, the psychologists have told us that people tend to overestimate how much they have in common and underestimate how different they are. And it's amazing, too, when you approach a project like this with an anthropology point of view, because what we try to do in anthropology is we try to get into the other

person's point of view. We try to understand what it's like to stand in their shoes, as they say. And that's a really interesting process because you have to set aside your own beliefs and your own attitudes and try to imagine what it would be like to experience the kinds of things that you're hearing about. And it's tough, but it's really worth it to try to do that and to try to imagine what it would be like to have a different type of life. One of the students said at one point, I wish I could have gone back and lived in that time. So it's a fun endeavor. What are some of the benefits that you find people do with it and some of the results that you've seen from people having these discussions? Do they get some more dimension of their parents?

You know, cause sometimes we think of our parents a little 2D, you know, two dimensional, you know, they're just mom, dad that was been there. You know, you think, you know, their history because your history is their history basically. But you know, they had a whole history outside of you. I remember my father, after he divorced, we'd moved all out, but my father after he divorced we'd moved all out but my father divorced and married uh my stepmother and she had six kids uh we were four kids but you know we were all out of the house um and he married a woman who had six kids and we were kind of all doing our own thing we were you know we were we were out of the house so we weren't it wasn't like one of those dad

situations where dad's got two franchises running and all the kids are playing together um and so we really didn't know her family um and it was it was kind of interesting her kids were younger so he kind of starting over a little bit um poor bastard he got like he got four kids out and he went to six to start over i remember going to his house one time. There's a kid in diapers running around. I'm like, you're a little too old for this. Um, so am I. So what's going on?

Um, but, uh, uh, and I remember when I went to his funeral, it was so weird and uncanny because I saw all the pictures of him river rafting with the other family and doing all the stuff. And I'm like, it really struck me. I'm like, holy crap. My dad has a life outside of the life he had with me, which is, you know, it's kind of weird to think about, but it's true. You're just like, well, duh. Yes. Yes. It is. It is true that true that you, I mean, all kids are focused on their own issues and problems. Of course, as a child, you have a lot to figure out and a lot to adjust to all the time. And you're right. That's what we do.

We tend to take them for granted and think, well, their role of mother or grandfather stands out above all other roles that they have. But once you start to find out about the life that they had, someone told me about a similar experience to the one you had where his father remarried and he got a stepbrother who was almost the same age that he was. And he said, and now we were competing for jobs and girlfriends and the rest of it. And that was an interesting perspective too on what these kinds of blended families can involve for the people who experience that. Yeah. And, you know,

let me ask you this though. What if you have somebody like one of the problems I had with my father was my father was a big revisionist history guy. And it was a bit, my father was a narcissist like clinically. Um, and, uh,

so he would give you revised versions of history and and so you couldn't trust him a lot of times in fact at one point he rewrote his he he wrote out his history and i'd hear about something i'm like that's not that's some you're just making stuff up right now and he's's like, well, you know, yeah, I'll flare to it. And so I could never really trust him. At the end, I could trust him because he was scared. And he knew that it was coming. And he was just trying to hold on with whatever he could. And kind of all the narcissism fell away.

But there was stuff, you know, he just, I don't know if he didn't think it was interesting or we didn't talk about it. And I remember, and he was kind of that way where he would shut down over, over certain things. I remember when we took the family photo in front of the house that they built. I mean, they built the house. They came to Salt Lake City and like, Hey, you know, we should get a house. So, you know, most people like us, we just, okay, let's go see a realtor and buy one. They're like, no, build one. You know?

And so they built this house. And so we took the picture in front of it. And these wonderful Mexican couple was in there. And they go, hey, what are you guys doing? I go, hey, you know, my dad's house he grew up in, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, oh, that's really cool. And, you know, you mind if we take this picture in front of your house? And they're like, yeah, go ahead.

And then we got done and they go, do you want to come tour the house? And, uh, and I, and I had told them, I said, you know, cause you know, weird world. I said, I said, you know, do you know how on the driveway there's, there's the Voss name scratched into the cement. It's still there. And they go, yeah, that's us. Um,

proof, proof that we were there. Uh, there's your anthropology. Um, and so we, we got a chance to go in the house. And as soon as we walked in,

my dad sat down and I, I was worried he was going to have a heart attack or something, but he just looked like shell shocked and he didn't know what to say or what to do. But, uh, so I couldn't ever get a straight story at him and I ended up getting it out of my uncle. Um, and my uncle was on his deathbed and getting there. Um, he'd been sent home to, to, to, you know, spend his last, uh, few years or months or weeks. Uh, he lost the bottom half of his heart. And I had left a message that I was like, hey, can you tell me just about what it was like with you growing up so I can get your experience with my dad's?

Because I don't really, my dad won't give me a straight answer. You know, my dad already passed on. And he called me up one night at like 2 a.m. And for four hours, he ran my ear off and told me the whole history of my family. It was just extraordinary. And I'm like, you're running out of half a heart. And so I sat and listened to him and asked questions. He answered all my questions.

And I was like, wow. And it was so vast and so rich. And I was just like, no one's ever told me this in 50 years. So I can see the beauty of this and what you write about in the book you're talking about do you want to tease out any of the questions i guess one of them isn't am i adopted then well the questions are actually quite descriptive they're meant to elicit descriptions so in one case to to link to your topic about the house they ask what was the house you grew up in like or what was the home you grew up in like and it's meant to elicit a description how many bedrooms did it have what were the bedrooms like, the kitchen, and the other rooms. And what happens when people start describing the house they grew up in or the apartment they grew up in, all these stories come

out that have to do with the different rooms or who was in which bedroom with whom and you get some really wonderful impressions of what it was like to grow up in that house and it seems like a very simple question all of the questions are very simple questions because they're very broad questions meant to give the person talking the most flexibility in how they want to answer it. It's their story. Let them control the narrative. And I've had people as they're answering the first question about the house or the home is to say, oh, I'm way off track.

And I say, well, that's fine because you want them to associate and to bring up the things that they remember. Because memory is, that's a long time ago that they're remembering things and it takes some time. So that's an example of how the, if they wanted to talk about difficult things in the house, that would be up to them. But they could just talk about things like one person told me that she and her brother slept in the same room with her parents. And that was common in certain areas in those days. And she remembers going to sleep to the sound of her mother using the knitting machine. And she recreated that sound. And that was an interesting memory that just came up because of describing the different aspects of what home was like. other questions another question is about what were what were everyday interactions

like so how are how did people speak together who interacted with whom and this brought up some interesting answers in the south and in texas because certain people because of their racial heritage, couldn't, had to get their food from the restaurant out the back window. And there were many instances like that that came up during the conversation about what everyday interactions were like. Or people would say children were to be seen and not heard and that's still true today too very much so if you've ever been on a plane or restaurant so you get a sense of what a child's life was like and so there are other questions too about what were the common rights of passage and it's interesting we don't have so rites of passage? And it's interesting, we don't have so many rites of passage nowadays.

Maybe getting a driver's license would be an example. But a lot of people have moved away from those age rites that are really common in a lot of societies. But that gives you a sense, too, of what was expected at certain ages. And then question about what were the fears that they had as a child. So, I don't know if you know that the biggest fear of all is snakes. Yeah, for some people, huh? And another big fear is public speaking. So interesting about the fears. But cross-culturally, of course, they're really different, what people are afraid of.

But as a child, you know, the different things that you, the way you created your own thoughts and your own universe, you get that revealed a bit in that question. Sometimes if you were tumbled in the waves and as a kid and uh then you told the aspect of you you were just told to get up and get back on that horse and brush it off and go yes so you know i remember i remember there was one epiphany i had with my mother where, I don't remember what it was. I think I found a picture of her and,

or maybe she was talking about one time what her life was like growing up in Buffalo, New York. And, and somewhere I just said this epiphany where I'm like, my mom was a young woman at one point, you know? I mean,

I've always thought of her as married to my dad, you know, cause that's all I've ever known. So, um, and, and, you know, cause that's all I've ever known. So, um, and, and, you know, it kind of occurred to me at one point she was a young woman and she could have made better choices than marrying my father, but that's another story. Um, but no, it, it gave me some depth to her and her life. And I'm like, I'm like, wow, okay. You know, it adds the third dimension, I think, to people.

I do think we see our parents as two-dimensional, maybe. I don't know. Yes, yes. And sometimes you get a glimpse of what the expectations, the moral and character expectations of their time. And that becomes really clear that in retrospect, they can sometimes see themselves. And they often do say that they're really happy that young people today in the U.S. have so many more choices. They are very, very happy to see that kind of creativity now that's possible.

Is one of the 13 questions, am I in your will and what am I getting? You know, it might come out. But well, the thing is about getting these interviews going is the relationship that you can create with someone is much deeper than the one that you had. And this came up over and over in the characterizations by the students. They said, you know, I've lived down the street from my grandfather my whole life, and I had no idea of the kinds of experiences he's had. And it made us closer and able to talk about

a wider range of topics and opinions. Because another thing about the anthropological approach, and I talk about this in the essential questions, is that you want to be sure to understand their point of view, and you want to be sure to get a sense of and be open-minded and show them that you're not going to judge them. Because the older generation often is afraid to tell about their past because they think we're going to judge them based on today's standards. And if you show them that you're withholding judgment, which is really important, as you can imagine, being an anthropologist,

you're exposed to so many different ideas. And if you want people to share ideas with you. He actually had a trust bond with you, and you were able to find out things that are very dear to you that helped to shape your sense of your family. Yeah, I learned stuff about my family, my great-grandfather. You know, I'm named after my great-grandfather and how we came to America in the 1800s from Germany. And I learned how a lot of my aunts and uncles lived, stories that I'd never heard before.

My father never told. I mean, I don't know if my father just didn't care, he was interested, or maybe he just didn't care. But I think this is great. Do you recommend that people do this now before, or is this an end-of-life thing? What is the best recommendation for this? Oh, people should do it now, definitely. I have had some students who reported that their grandparents were on the beginnings of dementia. But I think as a lot of people know, when people are experiencing dementia, they can still often remember their childhoods very well. And the focus is on

childhood and adolescence in the questions, you know, really finding out what the times were like, because culture has changed so much. So you should start right away. and it will just open up the possibility of many conversations, and conversations that are more meaningful and interesting between people. Yeah. It's something that's really important, because once the people are gone, like, they're gone. I mean, I've had some of my religious friends or family say, well, we're working out in the afterlife. And I'm like, what if you're wrong, though? What if you're wrong?

What if, you know, it's the big gamble of whether or not, you know, for all you know, you die in Buddhism was the secret word that the Marx Brothers knew. And it said, so, you know, I love this concept sitting down. I've seen people do a thing where they do video recordings of their family members talking about this stuff but yeah there really is a limitation i think in most of our minds as children um where we see our parents as two-dimensional and then we think that their experience is our experience like they just they didn't have a life before us or something yes their life began when we began and they're just like well well we're parents now here's this idiot we got to deal with um and uh yeah i mean just thinking about you know how my parents were young

one time and they were single and they were happy and then they got married of course then they weren't happy anymore um which i think is a law, actually. But that's another story. But no, I love this thing. And so sitting down and getting to know your parents, I imagine, can build better relationships, too, where you can get to know them as human beings. And one of the questions asked them about what dating was like back then what what was it like you know what were the kinds of courtship uh practices and you know courtship is a very that's a time when we're all really vulnerable we're trying to make a huge decision without a lot of experience and information, but also society's putting a lot of

ideas into our head about what we should expect and how we should behave. And those change, of course, over generations. And it's interesting to hear what it was like in that particular time you know when especially women were were counseled that if they didn't hurry up and get married the field of choice was going to be slim or they were going to be called an old maid and uh that marriage was the most important part of their future decisions. Yeah. Plus she didn't live very long back then. So you had to move quick.

Yeah. You know, I think the average age was like 40 or something. I remember one of my early girlfriends and I think we were like 17 or something when we were in high school and her dad was fairly older. And I think she'd, I think they'd had about five kids, and she was like at the end of the row there.

So they'd kind of had, they'd been married for a long time and had kids for a long time. So they were kind of an older couple, and I remember looking at them going, you guys are a little too old to have teenagers, you know what I mean? And so he told us a story one time we were sitting around about how, you know, things are so different now. And the way that they would get to be able to check out their summer dresses, you know, and the way they dressed back then, was their ankles. And so that was the attraction of guys back then. Oh, look at her.

Oh, she's got a great gam. She's got great ankles there. Oh, wow. Because that was the only part they could really see that was exposed. That's the hell up. Because that was the only part they could really see that was exposed. And the story stuck with me all these years because I'm just like, are you freaking kidding me? That was your playboy? Like, what the hell? They're really different.

Yeah. And across cultures, very different. You know, Texas has a very diverse student body like a lot of universities nowadays where students' parents grew up in a different part of the world. And in some parts of the world, women and men couldn't be seen together in public unless they were related. And nevertheless, they did devise ways to send notes to each other or to get these furtive conversations here and there and

they fell in love and and got married and that's interesting to hear about that because they were terrified about their reputations being ruined yeah all they had to do was buy tinder uh an iphone and get some tinder on and they would have been fine but i guess i don't know why they didn't have that back then i guess that's something else but uh yeah and it to me it just builds a better relationship with your parents um and some of us need a better relationship with our parents some of us need to maybe have some more gratitude toward our parents it can build some gratitude where you're like wow, my parents had the dimension before me and they're actually human beings. Yes, that was hard for me too. It's so easy to feel beleaguered by their rules and regulations or their supposed lack of understanding of my generation. But yes, it's a tough job to have been raised in

one set of practices and experiences and have to, you know, mentor your kids through a whole different set of challenges. And this is especially true with immigrant families where the parents grew up in a place where the standards were completely different. And their kids, of course, want to adjust and fit in in the new standards. That's really tough for those kids. Yeah. Plus, you think about, you know, like with my father, he never talked about where he grew up in Green River. And Green River is like this little town. I think it's still a little.

I've never been there. But my uncle told me all about it and told me all this stuff. He told me about how one of them almost died of something when they were children and some of the little things that they used to do and they get in trouble. And so this stuff, they basically told me about my dad's childhood that my dad never talked about. And, uh,

it was just amazing. And they told me about how, so my aunts and uncles lived and, you know, back then they didn't have rest homes. And so when one of them got dementia, they had to, they just had to take care of them.

You know, you just had to take care of in your house and, you know, try and get on bed and help them out. And, um, you know, they had the same sort of issues that we had now a little bit where,

uh, when older folks got older, somebody had to take care of them and it was family. So you did what you had to do. Um, and it was, it was really great stories. i and i think i think a lot of times we take our parents for granted kind of an encompass of everything we're saying here and i think that gratitude is so important because you know they

are human beings you know they're there and they they have their own life and they probably spend half their life looking at us going what the hell did i do i had a life man before this idiot came along like what a geez i could have i could have i could have been somebody i could have been a contender it's like that whole scene from one movie um uh what are some things on your book you want to tease out we haven't touched on? Well, I would like to mention that there's a chapter about interviewing and what kind of strategies will result in a good interview. To put them in the police station thing and put the light on their face and say, where were you on April 9, 1942?

Sorry, I had to do that. That's right. Yeah, well, that's a good illustration of how different interviews can take place. I think one of the most important things that I talk about in that chapter is one of the things that was really hard for me to learn was to shut up and not talk too much during the interview because the first interviews i did as an anthropologist i could hear as i played them back and transcribed them i could hear all those places where i'd interrupted where the flow was going not realizing it at the time and then then later I wished I could have let them continue

on that interesting thread. So what I learned was to try to hold a seven-second silence, which for Americans is a huge silence, not necessarily for other cultures, but we always take a silence, meaning something's awkward, something's wrong. We should fill that silence in order to make things more friendly. Of course, on air, you don't want any silences at all. But interviewing, when you give a person that much time to answer, if they stop talking, then they'll think of additional memories.

And it takes a bit of time to think back and to fill in those gorgeous details that bring a life and a time right vividly into the present. And so being able to hold a silence was hard for me to learn. And then also not to interrupt and not to put my own opinions, because in a regular conversation, of course, it's an exchange of ideas and an exchange of points of view. But in this case, you really want to create an environment where, as you described with your uncle, where they do all the talking and you are the grateful listener and encouraging them by questions that are relevant to what they might have left out and you have questions about. But there are many other aspects of interviewing too, of course, that you want to think about before you get started. Because getting someone to sit down and spend time, you want to respect

that by being well prepared and uh and thoughtful you just don't want to start winging questions at them and then i don't know yeah and you're right how like we that was what i learned when i did started doing job interviews for people and we started trying to get better at it so that we didn't hire bad people and so one of the things i would learn is is to ask questions and then shut the hell up and let them talk and sometimes i you'd you'd let them talk and i'd still just be quiet and you just go and then then they go look for something else to say and sometimes they name themselves because they didn't give you too much information

but that was what you're after because you're trying to find out if they're psychos or not. You don't want them in your company. And so I kind of learned that when we do the show. And let's say I got to pound a good joke in somewhere, squeeze it in. You know, for the most part, we want our guests to talk and listen. You know, I can't stand listening to other people's show if they're always interrupting the guest because you want to hear what they want to say. And sometimes there's something that will come out that was great.

So I love that interviewing style that you're talking about where you try and get people to jog their memory. And I'm the same way too. If I try and remember something, I'll be like, oh yeah, oh yeah, that's that one thing too. There, that other thing. And it just can make for such a richer time. What do you think about recording it in any way, shape, or form?

Is that too much? Does that put people off like, oh, I'm on TV now, or maybe I need to watch what I say about whatever? It's absolutely essential to record people have their own unique precious ways of using language and expressing ideas and descriptions and so you want to capture that it's really impossible to be thinking to be a good interviewer and thinking ahead to what you should be doing next or asking next, as well as writing down every word they say, which is also impossible to keep up with the speed of human conversation. So I advise audio recording for sure. And if they're comfortable with it,

video recording, but a lot of people aren't going to be comfortable with a video recording. And the audio recording is okay. I mean, it's essential and it's wonderful because you can listen to the words afterwards. And actually, you can take in a lot more on subsequent listenings. And also you can write it down. If you transcribe it, it's a great gift for the rest of your family because it's more accessible than when it's on the page than it is in a digital audio form. And it's so easy to record. Most phones have the ability and make excellent recordings.

So, yes, it's really essential to record. And as you were talking about the conversation you had with your uncle, I was wondering if you were able to record it. I wasn't. It happened in the middle of the night, and I'd been playing phone tag with him, and I was checking on how he was. He'd basically lost the – he had an MS for most of his life, and then he had – MS had complicated a lot of different things with him.

He got to the point where only the upper half of his heart was working and it reached the point where the doctors just said to him they said look just go home do your garden enjoy your life don't overstress yourself and and you're buying time um that's just it um you know you've ran you've ran the you ran the gauntlet and so he was just kind of pittering about at home and didn't have a lot of energy. And so, you know, when he would call me, we'd talk, you know, a little bit, and he'd have to go because he'd be tired. And for some reason, he called me at 2 a.m. in the morning, returned my call one time, and he just went on for four hours.

And I kept saying to him, I said, are you okay? Do you need to go to bed? Oh, no. hours and i i kept saying to him i said are you okay you need to go to bed oh no he was so turned he was so lit up from talking about this stuff i think he just brought him a lot of joy and so i just sat there and listened to him and and uh i wish i would have recorded it because i'm not sure how much of what i really remembered um but i i was i had such a good time listening to and i think he told me things that maybe no one in his family even knew um or that anybody did but it was all about him and his childhood and my father's you know some of the things that shaped my father

i was like why my father you know such an asshole or whatever and he's like well you know he is how it kind of was when he was a kid and uh and i was like huh that's interesting and and i think you know what i've got sick and i think that shaped them um one of my one of my uncles uh had some issues with uh how do you put this but anyway he early early on lost a boy that he really liked in school. And it really hurt him. And the boy was killed in a train accident or fishing or something. And it really scarred him and messed him up. And that may have led to some of the other issues he had throughout his life. But, you know, hearing stories like that and just what my family

was like it was just it was extraordinary but he was so turned on he was so lit up i mean he just for four hours he just kind of went and i just kind of sat there going wow this is really freaking cool and you laid the ground for that by asking him those other times where he only told you a few things and it created in him the obvious goal of helping you to fill in some of that information. So that's a really good example of how sometimes nudging people to share things might take a little bit of time. And sometimes it's because people aren't sure what it is that you want, or they only know ordinary life and they think, how can ordinary life possibly be interesting to anyone? And of course, that's exactly what we miss when it's gone, is ordinary life. Yeah. And once they're gone, you can't take it back. I mean,

I know some people believe in the afterlife, but you could be wrong. So just work on the basis that what if you're wrong? Talk to people now and and enjoy them now you know people can you can get up in the morning walk right out of your life because uh um because you know a car accident or some sort of thing happens or some sort of tragedy or war you know there's all sorts of craziness that goes on in the world nowadays and and getting to know people i think it creates a like by having a more in-depth perception of them and, you know, what they perceive in their life and what they perceive growing up and how that shaped them. I think it made me understand my dad a little bit better when I talked to my uncle. I think it made me understand some of the things that shaped him and motivations he had and what did it.

It gave me a more complete picture. But I love this concept and idea uh elizabeth uh share out with us uh whatever final pitch you want to do for people to pick up the book and your dot com it's so important to know about your parents and grandparents because then you know how in essential information about what shaped you and how you became the person you are. And it gives you a sense of your place in your family's history. So it's essential. And it's a lot of fun.

It's a lot of fun to have these conversations with people and to hear their stories so i would say get started as soon as possible and understand how important it is to ask questions that just ask for a description of a time or just ask about ordinary life and that that is a very very rich account of a culture that's gone and that we have very little idea from history books there you go and so thank you very much for coming on the show we really appreciate it elizabeth i highly recommend people pick up your book and learn all the questions and don't make one of the questions. Am I in your will? And what do I get from it?

Um, don't be like that people. Uh, and, uh, all that good stuff. Do we get your.coms, uh,

before we go out? Yes. Um, my webpage is, uh, Elizabeth hyphen Keating.com. There you go. Uh,

so thank you very much for coming on Elizabeth. Thanks for tuning in or have the book, wherever fine books are sold, go to Goodreads or Amazon or wherever the essential questions, interview your family to uncover stories and bridge connections, connections. Let me recut that. The essential questions,

interview your family to uncover stories and bridge generations. There you go. Let me recut that. The Essential Questions, Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations. There you go. I'm still learning to read at 55. Everyone knows I flunked second grade. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Goodreads.com, Fortress Christmas, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Christmas, YouTube.com, Fortress Christmas, and Christmas One. Thanks for tuning in. Be good, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.