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
Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only is not intended to treat or diagnose Parkinson's Disease. Please ensure that you are following the treatment plan developed by your doctor. Please ensure before starting anything new you get approval from your doctor. The information being provided is based on my own personal experiences and does not guarantee that it will benefit everyone.
Disclosure: I discuss and promote products in this podcast that pay me a small commission at no cost to you. I use the commissions to help support this podcast and my website Liveparkinsons.com. I make you aware of any affiliate links by adding AFFLIATE Link right beside the link. Thank you for supporting this podcast.
To help support the podcast please visit me on my Ko-fi page and buy a cup of coffee if you feel that I am providing information that is relevant and actionable to help you live a better quality of life.
Please visit me at Liveparkinsons.com
Get my book - Spectacular Life - 4 Essential Strategies for Living with Parkinson's - My Journey to Happiness
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:11):
Today we're stepping into the world of digital
storytelling and memorypreservation with a remarkable
guest, Christian SabilasBernadez.
Christian is the founder and CEOof Autograph, a platform he
calls Human Historian, designedto capture and preserve the
stories that make us who we are.
With a background in symbolicsystems from Stanford and
experience as a softwareengineer at Google, Christian
(00:32):
brings a unique blend oftechnology, philosophy, and
human connection to his work.
While he doesn't have a directtie to Parkinson's, his mission,
ensuring that voices andexperiences are never lost,
resonates deeply with ourcommunity.
Together, we'll explore howstorytelling, memory, and
technology can help us liveexceptional lives, even in the
faces of challenges likeParkinson's.
(00:53):
Welcome.
So you're the CEO of a companycalled Autograph.
Can you tell us a little bitabout that and how you got
started in that?
Sure.
SPEAKER_01 (01:00):
Yeah.
So Autograph is uh is an AI wecreated a digital interviewer
called Walter.
Walter's not unlike a podcasthost, and he calls you or a
loved one whenever you want,usually around once a week, and
he interviews you about yourlife, you know, starting with
your childhood, teenage years,college years, or, you know,
wherever life takes you, Waltersort of follows you along in
(01:22):
this uh trip down memory lane.
And we store the recordings andwe do really cool stuff with the
recordings.
So we transcribe them and thenwe create these Wikipedia style
pages for every thing in yourlife.
So for every person, everyplace, every story, every event,
every theme.
And so our our idea is to letfamilies accrue this knowledge,
(01:45):
wisdom, and social capital sothat when the next generation is
going through life and maybethey're recording their own
journey and saying, you know,Walter, it's a big week for me.
I may have to move to New Yorkto go to college or to get a job
or something like that.
Walter can say, hey, thisreminds you of something your
grandpa went through.
And Walter would be able tosurface back the memories of
grandpa to that, to that childas they're making the decision.
(02:08):
And, you know, there's manydifferent ways of doing it, you
know, including one of thethings that we can do is we can
actually make a model of grandpathat sounds like him and has all
his memories so that you couldhave a conversation so that the
future can talk to the past,essentially.
And so it's been incrediblyrewarding to see like the
initial usage of Walter and howimportant his role is in making
(02:29):
people feel heard and seen andvalued.
A lot of people go through lifewithout realizing that they're
the protagonist in a story thatthey're writing.
And so Walter is really uniquelysuited to remind people of the
value and worth of their ownstory and how it can impact
those that come later.
How I got started into this wasI went to Stanford, I discovered
(02:51):
this really weird major calledSymbolic Systems that is kind of
it was my concentration was inartificial intelligence.
But what I like about symbolicsystems is that it's a mixture
of computer science, philosophy,psychology, and linguistics.
And so it doesn't give you justthe how, it also gives you the
why or tools to think about thewhy.
Um, I've always been verypassionate about, you know,
(03:11):
social change and like what kindof solution, technological
solutions can help society getbetter and self-heal as opposed
to a lot of the technologicalinnovations that we've seen that
have, you know, led topolarization or or other kinds
of less or anxiety, isolation, asense of disconnect from the
real world.
So I, you know, discovered that,fell in love with the discipline
(03:33):
and the style of thinking, andit's very interdisciplinary.
I spent some time as an engineerat Google where I did both ads
and education.
And it was very interesting tocompare and contrast both
perspectives.
I left Google and I joined myparents' company.
My parents are both techentrepreneurs 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
(03:56):
tech scene in Paraguay.
And so to have, you know, grownup seeing them try and try and
try the classic sort of SiliconValley style of grids, but in a
very different context, um, hasalways been a huge inspiration.
And so um they uh needed somehelp pivoting the company.
It used to do SMS infrastructureuh for you know the telcos of
(04:17):
the world, and now they itbecame kind of an investment
firm.
So I helped them out with thattransition for about two years.
But because my parents are likeultimate, like the founders as
founders come, I had accruedenough cognitive dissonance from
um saying you need to think likea founder and act like a founder
and build those founderinstincts.
(04:37):
And so I knew that I wanted tobuild something for my own.
But this was around the timethat OpenAI had just launched
Chat GPT.
So it was kind of a likeincredibly dynamic place, you
know, and it was OpenAI waskilling all these startups and
then trying to figure out butwhat do I do with AI that is is
good for the world, thatconnects me to my family and my
(05:00):
story.
It was a difficult thing tofigure out.
I couldn't find the idea then.
So anyway, I decided to write asci-fi novel, which was kind of
a side quest in my life, whereessentially what I basically I
this is where I started to lookfor a tool that would help me
write the next big chapter in mylife.
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'mhere on planet Earth for a very
(05:24):
short period of time.
I want to make it count.
I wish that I could use AI tohelp me live my best life.
And the next best thing I cameup with was like, well, at least
I should start by telling mystory so that when AI gets good,
it may be able to help me.
And then I got carried away andturned that into a sci-fi story.
And so it was a really funexperience telling my piece
through a fictional lens.
(05:46):
But I didn't expect to find thisexistential relief of, hey, I
told my story.
Like if you wanted to figure outwhat made me, then you would be
able to find it there.
Um and it that took around sixmonths.
And then by the time I wake upfrom that fever dream, I'm like,
okay, I have to promote the booknow.
And so I started a podcast totalk about uh our humanity in
(06:07):
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 toreinvent economics.
We have to reinvent our sense ofself-worth.
We have to reinvent well, whatdoes it mean to be?
And I would like our more moralrights and legal rights and like
IP.
And there's this massive thingthat's about to happen to the
(06:27):
world.
And I wanted to start havingconversations with thought
leaders around what happens.
And I love, I love podcasts.
I love sitting down withsomebody and figuring out what
made them who they are and likehow did they get here and how,
you know, what tickles themintellectually.
Um, and I also just love people.
I love like I remember thinkingwhen I was doing the podcast, I
(06:49):
remember thinking, I wish Icould interview everybody on
earth.
I really wish I could.
And in this process, I realizedthat one of the stories I really
should record was my grandma.
My grandma had a crazy lifestory.
Her dad was an MI6 agent.
They lived in Europe.
Great-grandpa shipped the familyoff to the ends of the earth.
Great-grandma and her two kidsended up in Paraguay of all
(07:12):
places, and they made it there,you know, in a single mom
situation, single mom of twodaughters.
And my grandma became anindustrialist.
She taught, she wrote books, sheand this is in the context of
the 1950s, very, you know, uhmachismo-based, you know,
Paraguayan society during amilitary dictatorship.
(07:33):
Um, and so I wanted to recordher 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 forthe last 18 months of her life.
And, you know, I found myself ina position where I had the
outline of questions that I knewI wasn't going to get an answer
to.
And that was the the catalystmoment for me.
I was like, well, okay, but likethe universe is forcing me to
(07:56):
look at something.
And what are the threads that Ican connect here?
Okay.
Identity as storytelling.
AI can now interview everybodyon Earth.
It's actually the mostaccessible it's ever been
because you could do it over thephone.
And not only is it good for thefuture generations to have an
account of what happened in theperspective of those who lived
it, but also it's a good thingfor the people living it.
(08:17):
You know, like telling yourstory is a good thing.
You know, it gets you reps onthis, you know, this idea of who
you are or this version of youthat you will leave behind.
And once I saw it, I couldn'tunsee it.
You know, like this is a solvedproblem now.
Like we we have a chance tonegotiate terms with our
impermanence in a way that wehaven't been able to before.
And once I saw it, from nowhereto be.
SPEAKER_00 (08:59):
And so with AI, I th I think it's fascinating, but
every life has a I'm I believewhat you do is every life has a
story.
I don't care who you are orwhere you come from.
We all have a story, and we canshare with others to help others
and you know, could be becausethat's one of the driving forces
and my mission behind thispodcast is to try to help as
(09:19):
many people living withParkinson's as as possible, but
uh just helping people ingeneral.
And and I think the platformthat you have can be one of
those where people can utilizethat to tell their Parkinson's
story, and other people canlearn from that.
It doesn't necessarily have tobe family members, it can be
someone else in the communitycan say, wow, I didn't know that
(09:40):
you you could do this and andthat can help you.
So that's why I really wanted totalk to you.
So that's the that'sfascinating.
SPEAKER_01 (09:49):
Yeah, no, that that's a great point.
We we're just launching thisfeature that we call shared
libraries.
So the the way it works today isyou tell your story and your
stuff gets aggregated into yourlibrary.
So there would be Christian'slibrary or Chris's library.
Um but and I can share any ofthese pages with whoever I want.
So if there's a page in therethat comes back that I like that
(10:10):
Chris would really benefit from,I could share it with you.
A lot of times we want to sharewith groups, like I want to
share this with the wholefamily, or I want to share this
with one side of the family, orI want to share this with my
high school friends.
And so we're building groupsexactly for this purpose, right?
And even before we startedmarketing the stuff, you know,
like it was pretty apparent thatthere were a lot of people with
(10:31):
that had overcome reallydifficult challenges that wanted
to tell their stories so thatother people could be inspired
by them.
Um, this is a very emotionalkind of harrowing thing because
you you have people expressingextremely, extremely difficult
things, but they came out on theother side and they identify as
the hero that slayed the dragonand they want to sort of let the
(10:53):
record show that I won thisbattle.
And if anybody needsencouragement, they can look
here.
So yeah, this is very muchaligned with what we want to do.
And like you can kind of thinkof all these support groups that
can emerge pretty easily whereeverybody can start sharing
their experiences with aparticular 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 groupsout there.
There's a Parkinson supportgroup, there's cancer support
groups, and and sharing successstories or what worked or how
you overcame a challenge is andI think that's it's very
powerful.
So I I I you know, I I'm glad tohear 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 isis like a big beast, right?
You know, like it you can imacteasily imagine if you take like,
I don't know, a hundred thousandpeople that are going through
something like this, you'regonna get a lot of different
responses.
Like, I tried this and itworked, I tried this and it
didn't work.
And so uh Walter not doesn'tjust help collect the
(11:50):
information, but he also helpsorganize it in a way that, you
know, someone who wants tocompare their experience to this
will actually be able to Walterwill be able to find the
resonance in the same way thathe says, You have to move to New
York.
This reminds me of somethingthat your grandpa went through.
He can say, Oh, you're goingthrough this problem.
This reminds me of somethingthat Chris went through in this
(12:13):
group that he shared with thisgroup.
Um, and and so it's also for theperson like coming into the the
group to have more accessibilityand it gives you the opportunity
to tell a story.
SPEAKER_00 (12:25):
Everybody loves listening to stories.
You sit around and you know, ityou get enthralled in the story,
whether it's sitting around acampfire and someone's telling a
story, but when somebody can youcan relate to is giving, you
know, telling their story andyou you can see some of the
challenges that they overcame.
It you it's not you don't feelso isolated because I know a lot
of times in life, I don't carewhat the what the condition is,
(12:46):
whether it's Parkinson's orcancer or whether it's
depression.
I mean, everybody has something,and if they can relate to
somebody else through stories oryou know, even just short bits,
it's really going to help themin their in their life.
And it may be another, you know,maybe another family member, but
that's the thing I'm reallyexcited about with what you're
doing is that it gives thepeople the opportunity to to
(13:08):
share a story, but it alsoallows you to connect with
somebody else because a lot oftimes people feel isolated and
alone.
And I think what you're doing isis really some great work.
SPEAKER_01 (13:17):
Ah, thank you, Chris.
I appreciate that.
Well, it's very motivating to usto have found like this unmet
emotional need, right?
Like there's we all deal withhow hard it is to be human, and
it's kind of table stakes thatit's just gonna, oh, you just
gotta have to do it, right?
Um, but um yeah, I I mean, Iwriting my story changed my
life.
(13:37):
It allowed me to take agency andownership over where the next
chapters are going.
It forced me in a position to benot just see myself as the main
character, but also as theauthor and also as the editor
and also as the publisher.
And there is an insane amount ofpower in feeling comfortable in
those worlds where you canreinterpret stuff about your
(13:58):
past in a way that serves you asit as opposed to a way that
holds you back.
And and I agree with like thatsame idea, right?
Like everybody has a story.
The story is it's almost like ahidden puzzle piece for a
problem in the future that wewill need to solve as humanity.
And everybody has a littlepuzzle piece that fits into
this, like this bigger puzzlethat is like, how do we make
(14:20):
sense of the universe?
Um, and it just so happens thatwhen you share your story, you
reveal a lot about how you seethe world.
Uh, because we reflected back atyou, you can now engage with it
in a way that feels a little bitmore external.
So it's like, that is how Isounded, but it's not how I
feel.
Like, actually, I'm like, and sothere's a there's a reflection
(14:42):
process that happens throughthis 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 youon the journey of rediscovering
yourself and reacquainting withyourself.
SPEAKER_00 (14:58):
Well, based on what you're saying, we all look back
on our lives and we we mighthave a different interpretation,
but we've all gone through somegreat times, we've all gone
through times where we failed,and a lot of times we use both
of those learning experiencesto, you know, move move on in
the future.
And and I see this as somethingmaybe that you can do as well
where you take what Walter'sgiving you and and you can look
(15:21):
at it and say, okay, how can Iuse this to if I want to change,
you know, because everybody iswith the new year coming up,
everybody's making New Year'sresolutions.
And the problem is when you lookat the data, a lot of times New
Year's only about, I think it's20% actually keep the
resolution.
But if you can look at whathappened in the past and you
want to change it, you can say,Oh, I didn't like the way I did
(15:41):
this, so how can I change itmoving 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 helpsomebody else and and you know,
and then it just grows and growsthat way.
SPEAKER_01 (15:54):
Yeah, no.
Uh the you you're preaching tothe choir.
This is exactly what we, youknow, like it's the reason I
stay up late at night and it'sthe reason I try to wake up as
early as I can, is because Andwell, the the other side of it
too that is also verychallenging to manage, but you
know, it's similar to some ofthe conversations that you have
all the time, is that time islimited, you know.
(16:15):
Like there, there you this isn'tsomething 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 questionsthat we won't be able to answer.
So there's there's this, it'sone of those things like it's
it's interesting because we knowit's something that is good to
do and worth doing, but it'sstill like easy to put off until
(16:36):
you are faced with one of thosebig life reminders of how
precious and short life is andmemory is something that you
take for granted as a kid.
But as you, as you age, then youstart realizing how some of your
core memories get fuzzier.
And being able to always reliveyour wedding with the same uh
raw emotion of the day after issomething that I I was too late
(17:00):
for that, but I really wish myown.
SPEAKER_00 (17:02):
My brother and I were just talking about this the
other day, but a lot of timespeople say, Well, I'll do that
someday.
And then they pass away, andthat someday never, never came.
And and so I, you know, I'vekind of stepped back and learned
from that, you know, living withParkinson'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 flyfish, and one of my biggest
(17:24):
dreams was I wanted to go out toMontana and go fly fishing.
And I said to my brother, wouldyou go with me?
And and we did two years ago, wewent and we had the we had a
great time, and it was just thebest experience.
And looking back now, I'm I sayto 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 andputting it off.
And and now that became part ofmy story, and and he still talks
(17:44):
about it.
And so it's something that thatgoes, you know, on.
SPEAKER_01 (17:51):
That's funny.
I was in Montana fly fishingearlier 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 thatpeople can take advantage?
SPEAKER_01 (18:02):
Well, I hope autograph becomes humanity's
journal.
I mean, like I hope that peoplethat we create the right brand,
space, digital, and legalinfrastructure so that we can
bring this emotional resonanceto everybody on earth.
I mean, really, it's just likebuilding that habit of, you
know, something big in your lifehappens, you talk to Walter, and
(18:24):
Walter reflects at you, youknow, the safety that that that
that lived experience is nowsafe forever.
I'm very excited about the kindsof 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 youget to write.
So there are many cool thingsthat we can do in terms of
(18:46):
different kinds of services thatwe can build on top.
So we could go through likediagnostics route and try and
sort of be at the v bleedingedge 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-poweredservices for that population.
Think of like, you know, settingup checkups or, you know,
(19:10):
there's a whole world in whichwe we go that direction.
There's there's other kinds ofreally fun stuff around
simulation too.
You know, if we have a reallygood representation of who you
are and your entire culturalcontext, um, then we can help
you practice uh things that youmay be interested in.
So, for example, we can help youpractice a job interview, a hard
(19:32):
conversation with a significantother, with a business partner,
with an employee, with um asibling, you know, a parent.
Uh, we can we can simulatedifferent life paths, you know,
like what happens if I take theleft side of the fork in the
road or the right side of thefork in the road and let my life
happen for 10 years and run thata hundred thousand times, in
(19:55):
which which path am I happier onaverage?
And as defining.
By me.
You know, like, you know, in thein my evolution, how do I
evolve?
Am I a self-described, happierperson uh 10 years down the
line?
I think that's incrediblyexciting.
And you could do also stuff forfun, right?
Like you and I could go on anadventure to a medieval Rome and
(20:16):
see how we, how we do, right?
Just for just for the giggles,right?
Um and then there's a lot oflike more just like practical
stuff.
If we, if we become this trustedrepository of your information,
then and we know your privacypreferences just the same way
that you do, then we can helpyou actually manage the context
of your identity as it relatesto other services.
(20:38):
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 animmigration attorney is pretty
tedious.
You have to search, you have toget referrals, you have to
figure out if it's the rightperson, you know, like there's a
whole bunch of things.
If we can help you sort that outfaster, and instead of having to
meet with 10 immigrationattorneys, and we just get you
(21:01):
to pick the final two, that's alot of time saved in aggregate
across all of the economy,right?
Um, but you could think abouthow that applies to anything,
you know, like Christmasshopping, you know, like I want
the perfect gift for my wife, orI want the perfect, like, I
don't even know what I want forChristmas, you know?
Um that kind of stuff I think issuper exciting, you know?
And and because we are on thephone with our users who are
(21:22):
sharing their most pressing lifesituation with us, we we are in
a unique position to help themmanage that challenge or those
like pressing things uh reallyeasily.
That's the five-year vision.
So really hoping that likethere's we get millions of
stories by then.
Uh like what happens at the10-year mark?
I agree.
That's where it gets verysci-fi.
SPEAKER_00 (21:42):
Just being linked to any type of ancestry where you
might have relatives that livein another country and you they
they tell their story and peoplefrom different parts, and then
next thing you know, they're,you know, second or third
generation.
Then you've you've kind of gotthis uh historical story of your
whole family, you know, based onancestors.
SPEAKER_01 (22:01):
Yeah.
100%.
Um this is something that I'vebeen thinking about very
recently, but you know, there'swe're we're being disciplined
with prioritizing the storiesthat would get lost fastest,
right?
So this is, you know, we'retrying to get the stories of the
silver generation.
And within the silvergeneration, there's also the
(22:23):
like what are the stories thatare most likely to be forgotten
fastest?
And so mentioning stories of,you know, the generations that
came before, you know, what wereyour grandparents like?
That's the stuff that's at risk,you know.
So asking my grandparents whathis grandparents were like, um,
uh, that's that's like very uhfor like stuff that would be
(22:47):
otherwise forgotten.
But yeah, back to this idea ofgroups, right?
Like you can start a familygroup and you can have a group
for the siblings, you can have agroup for the nuclear family,
you can have a group for thecousins on one side of the
family, the cousins on verysimilar to texts, text group
chats, right?
And you can have a giant groupthat is like all of the
descendants of Chris, uh ChrisKustenbauer, the first.
(23:10):
I don't know, I'm makingsomething up, right?
But you know, like your great,great, great-grandfather, and
and all of a sudden thedescendants could be all over
the world speaking differentlanguages.
That's another very cool thingthat we do is that uh, you know,
you can speak to Walter in anylanguage that you want, and you
can access the stories inwhatever language you want.
So we have a lot of interestfrom immigrant communities where
(23:31):
grandma may be speaking inMandarin, but a great grandchild
speaks in English.
And you want the culturaltransmission of values and uh
certainly like, you know, therecord of the sacrifices made to
be accessible to the youngergeneration 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, likefrom pictures when the person
was younger, when they were intheir teens, twenties, all all
throughout, so that it actuallyalmost becomes like a book where
you could read and look at pickin 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'spretty cool how we're doing it.
Where you just dump your filesand we organize them for you.
So we will find, you know, fromthe pictures that you upload
who's in them and what timelinethey fall into.
A lot of photos have metadata inthem.
So we know when they were takenand where they were taken.
(24:30):
And so we can actually organizethis stuff pretty easily.
Um, but think about like journalentries or or recipe cards or
all these other things that arelike it's kind of all over the
place what you can do.
Um and uh uh one uh a personwho's helping us with
partnerships described this aslike the ultimate um uh
(24:50):
scrapbook source material.
Um and so it's kind of uh kindof just inspires the next step
that is like, oh wow, is there aworld in which we help people
scrapbook?
You know, like given this set ofthis archive that we build for
you, can you build out pages ofa scrapbook that then you can
print and share with whoever youwant?
So it's it's very much the sameidea, right?
(25:12):
That how do you create thesealbums where you have a digital
version so that everybody thatyou want to share can have
access to it immediately, butyou 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 itinto reality.
And so we're excited to beginexploring that early next year,
too.
You know, like what are the thederivative products that we can
(25:34):
build with this data?
To me, like the the thing islike we need to make uh talking
to Walter as enjoyable aspossible because uh if it's not
enjoyable to talk to Walter,then you're not gonna get the
data.
And anything that you build ontop of that is kind of a pipe
dream.
So we're working on like reallymaking the conversational
aspect, you know, feeling likeyou have Walter Isaacson
(25:57):
interviewing you about your lifebecause 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 andhelping other people with the
technology that you have andwith Walter, you know, doing
stories, how do you envisionyourself being able to take what
you have and being able to helpsociety for the better?
SPEAKER_01 (26:17):
I think fortunately a lot of this is baked into the
the premise of the servicealready.
So when talking about yourstory, this whole idea of you
are the protagonist in yourstory and you are the author and
you are the editor and you arethe publisher comes up kind of
naturally.
You're sort of like writing downwhat will be left of you.
And that is very beneficialbecause it helps you get rid of
(26:39):
the stuff that isn't isn'tserving you or doesn't add up to
your identity, and it helps youactually amplify, I'm really
good at this, or like, yeah,I've overcame that, or it really
helps cement your sense ofidentity, which I think is very
important in a world that seemsto be hell-bent on destroying
our sense of identity.
It's always like you're neverenough.
You're never good enough, you'renever smart enough, you're never
(27:00):
rich enough, you're never famousenough, you're never enough.
And our whole thing is likeactually, there's infinite
wealth inside of you.
So that's one aspect of thebenefit.
The other thing that comes up isthat as I am the protagonist in
my story, I very quickly realizeeverybody's the protagonist in
theirs.
And I'm a side character at bestin a lot of those stories.
(27:21):
You know, if anything, I most ofthe time I'm just an extra.
And so it helps contextualize,you know, it unpacks this very
important thing that who wethink we are is a story, is a
story that we repeat toourselves kind of
ritualistically every morning.
We remember being who we are andwe kind of just boot back to who
we think we are.
And being able to create thatdetachment, I think allows us to
(27:44):
re-engage with a lot of thestories that are out there in
the world that are there tomanipulate us, to act reactively
to a certain piece of news or acertain legislation or a certain
whatever ha whatever happens inthe world, that detachment, I
think, can go a long way inunderstanding that there's the
(28:04):
dynamics of trauma, you know.
Oh, if I'm if I'm if I havetrauma inflicted on me, I'm
forced to have a reactivedisposition towards things that
are similar to that event.
And when I react, that creates areactive disposition in that
person.
And so it kind of keeps thecycle going forever.
If I can detach from that forone second and not react, then
all of a sudden I'm reallyputting pumping the brakes on
(28:27):
the spread of intergenerationaltrauma.
And because AI enables this kindof unparalleled connection
between people, truly deeplyunderstanding who you are, what
your experience is, where youwant to go.
Uh, I think we have a very goodshot of like reducing 90% of
intergenerational trauma by thenext two generations.
SPEAKER_00 (28:46):
So that my grandkids live in an entirely different
thing with what you just said ishow a lot of times we don't
think what we do really matters,but people are affected and we
don't realize sometimes how wemade a change in in somebody and
how that that went forward.
I was just thinking it's youknow Christmas time here and
with uh the wonderful life withJimmy Stewart when it you know
(29:07):
he gets to relive it's becauseyou didn't jump off the bridge,
you were able to affect allthese other people's lives.
And I I think that that's one ofthe things that what you're
offering can really help peoplewith is to to take a step back
and say, wow, as they're tellingtheir story, wow, I did I do
have these strengths that helpother people.
And these other people did I Iwas able to help these other
(29:30):
people, even though I didn'tthink it wasn't you know, it's
something you might do somethingat the time that doesn't seem
important, but then later on youfind out that wow, it they it
made a significant change insomebody else's life.
So I think that's one of thewhen you were talking about
that, that's one of the thingsthat really struck me.
SPEAKER_01 (29:45):
No, you're you're absolutely right.
I have a poster of It's aWonderful 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 connectedwith 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 asmuch as you want for free.
You can see what these librarypages look like, you can share
them with folks, you can invitefolks on and you can request
stories from them.
So if you have a friend or aloved one or or a parent or a
grandparent that you want to getthis for, you can also steer the
conversation that they have withWalter and say, like, actually,
(30:17):
I want my when I when Waltertalks to my mom, I want to hear
the story of the first house shebought and how she had to, you
know, essentially work so hardto get it.
And you can actually be the verygood steward of that library.
Try it two weeks for free, andthen if you like it, you can
stick around and keep going.
So is it more as it's a name inthe 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 tostop, or is it a yearly thing?
Or how can you explain how thatworks a little bit?
SPEAKER_01 (30:47):
Oh for sure.
It's uh it's we charge a monthlysubscription.
There's a yearly plan too.
Um and what we charge for istalking to Walter.
So Walter is your archivist, uhuh scribe, documentarian,
chronicler, biographer, like hehe, you know, that kind of
stuff.
I don't know that any of thoseparticularly works, but that
(31:08):
kind of is the idea.
He's your interviewer.
Um but we give you foreveraccess to the uh recordings and
transcripts and the librarypages that we create.
And you can always export themwhenever you want, and you can
sort of pause your account,reactivate it.
Uh, you know, if life is in kindof a boring state for a couple
of months, you can pause it andcome back.
(31:28):
We have a lot of cases of folkswho 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 monthlysubscription, it's uh 29 bucks a
month to have the world'sgreatest interviewer you
mentioned about your life.
SPEAKER_00 (31:45):
The older generation.
So people that aren'tnecessarily tech savvy, and when
you're talking about AI withWalter, a lot of times there's
you know, people start to panica little bit and say, I can't do
that.
Can you explain a little bit howabout how they would interact
with Walter to give them whatthe 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 getthis for their parents or
grandparents, you sign up, youcreate your account, and then
you can add other folks to youraccount.
And so, you know, I signed up, Iadded my mom to my account.
What happens with my mom is shegets a message from us saying,
hi, Vivian, Christian has giftedyou a subscription to Autograph,
(32:25):
a platform where you can recordyour life story through our it
digital interviewer Walter.
Feel free to call this numberanytime or schedule a call via
this text, and you're off to theraces.
So it's basically like a servicewhere we hired an on-call
biographer for my mom, and shehas his phone number and she can
call him whenever she wants.
And so this all happens over thephone.
(32:47):
So fortunately, there's not muchof a for the person talking to
Walter, there's really not muchto learn.
Like it's really just picking upthe phone and and and and
starting to chat.
What we found, you know, thiswas kind of counterintuitive,
but people are way more openwith an AI interviewer than with
a human interviewer.
Because, first of all, there's anovelty factor.
(33:09):
Oh my gosh, I'm talking to acomputer, this is cool.
But also because there's nohuman judgment on the other
side.
It's this thing that is just,you know, designed to be there
for you.
And when Walter gives youvalidation about something that
you did that you may have evenbeen sheepish about, I don't
know, like a minoraccomplishment, say.
When Walter actually says, thisis actually really great, like
(33:31):
you know, and like and and givesyou validation around like your
lived experience, it kind ofpacks this double whammy where
sure enough, there's no humanthat is that is empathizing with
me, but it's this other thingthat's kind of even more
impressive than a human in thesense that it knows all of the
things that have happened inhuman history and it says that
my life is meaningful.
(33:53):
And that like goes a really longway.
But the experience of talking toWalter is almost identical to
talking to a human.
Like you, you kind of forget.
Sorry, and now that I'm on aroll, you kind of forget the
stuff that you makes up youridentity all the time.
So Walter will ask you one ortwo questions and you'll find
yourself talking for 15 minutesabout the answer, and like, oh,
this other thread in thatanswer, and this other thread in
(34:14):
that answer, and this otherthread and that answer.
Well, and plus you don't have toworry about body language really
happens.
SPEAKER_00 (34:19):
With someone interviewing you like, oh,
they're judging me, or they'rerolling their eyes, or they're
so I mean that that's one of thebenefits.
And is there anything else thatyou would like to share with
with autograph that can that canuh 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 youcan actually speak into a
microphone and the entire worldcan change because of it.
And we all are doing theselittle things that are ripples
in this big pond, and some ofthose ripples turn into like
continent-reshaping tsunamis.
(34:57):
We have a really niceopportunity to give the future a
chance to understand itself in away that we never got.
Like we got, we inherited aworld that was very distorted
with self-importance and publicperception and you know,
geopolitical initiatives aroundhow textbooks are created and
what curriculums are taught andwhat like grades, we have a very
cool chance for a limitedwindow.
(35:19):
I don't know how long thischance will exist, uh, to really
change our story and and writethe next great chapter in human
history together.
Um so that's my that's myappeal, you know, um, uh, is if
if there's something in you umthat feels that you're here for
a reason and you don't want tobe tied up in this endless loop
(35:41):
of cynicism and nihilism andnothing matters.
And if if you want an antidoteto that, just tell Walter your
story at autograph.ai.
You'd be surprised at the heroyou 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 inthe world.
We're all we're all humans, weall want want similar things,
but we all want to be happy, weall want to live a great life
and you know, hopefully helpother people.
And that's uh you know, that'sone of the big learnings I
picked up, not picked up today,but that you're building on.
And I think what you're doing'suh great.
(36:12):
And so I I really want to thankyou for coming on today and
sharing your what uh autograph'scapabilities are, and I'm I'm
I'm really impressed with yourmission and your drive.
So I want to thank you so muchfor being on the program.
SPEAKER_01 (36:23):
Thank you, Chris.
Thanks for having me, and thanksfor 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 lovewatching people and what they
do, and and uh because we're allunique and and we all have
something to give, and and Ithink that's important.
So I want to thanks thank youagain.
My pleasure.
All right, well thank you.
Today we're stepping into the world of digital
storytelling and memorypreservation with a remarkable
guest, Christian SabilasBernadez.
Christian is the founder and CEOof Autograph, a platform he
calls Human Historian, designedto capture and preserve the
stories that make us who we are.
With a background in symbolicsystems from Stanford and
experience as a softwareengineer at Google, Christian
(00:32):
brings a unique blend oftechnology, philosophy, and
human connection to his work.
While he doesn't have a directtie to Parkinson's, his mission,
ensuring that voices andexperiences are never lost,
resonates deeply with ourcommunity.
Together, we'll explore howstorytelling, memory, and
technology can help us liveexceptional lives, even in the
faces of challenges likeParkinson's.
(00:53):
Welcome.
So you're the CEO of a companycalled Autograph.
Can you tell us a little bitabout that and how you got
started in that?
Sure.
SPEAKER_01 (01:00):
Yeah.
So Autograph is uh is an AI wecreated a digital interviewer
called Walter.
Walter's not unlike a podcasthost, and he calls you or a
loved one whenever you want,usually around once a week, and
he interviews you about yourlife, you know, starting with
your childhood, teenage years,college years, or, you know,
wherever life takes you, Waltersort of follows you along in
(01:22):
this uh trip down memory lane.
And we store the recordings andwe do really cool stuff with the
recordings.
So we transcribe them and thenwe create these Wikipedia style
pages for every thing in yourlife.
So for every person, everyplace, every story, every event,
every theme.
And so our our idea is to letfamilies accrue this knowledge,
(01:45):
wisdom, and social capital sothat when the next generation is
going through life and maybethey're recording their own
journey and saying, you know,Walter, it's a big week for me.
I may have to move to New Yorkto go to college or to get a job
or something like that.
Walter can say, hey, thisreminds you of something your
grandpa went through.
And Walter would be able tosurface back the memories of
grandpa to that, to that childas they're making the decision.
(02:08):
And, you know, there's manydifferent ways of doing it, you
know, including one of thethings that we can do is we can
actually make a model of grandpathat sounds like him and has all
his memories so that you couldhave a conversation so that the
future can talk to the past,essentially.
And so it's been incrediblyrewarding to see like the
initial usage of Walter and howimportant his role is in making
(02:29):
people feel heard and seen andvalued.
A lot of people go through lifewithout realizing that they're
the protagonist in a story thatthey're writing.
And so Walter is really uniquelysuited to remind people of the
value and worth of their ownstory and how it can impact
those that come later.
How I got started into this wasI went to Stanford, I discovered
(02:51):
this really weird major calledSymbolic Systems that is kind of
it was my concentration was inartificial intelligence.
But what I like about symbolicsystems is that it's a mixture
of computer science, philosophy,psychology, and linguistics.
And so it doesn't give you justthe how, it also gives you the
why or tools to think about thewhy.
Um, I've always been verypassionate about, you know,
(03:11):
social change and like what kindof solution, technological
solutions can help society getbetter and self-heal as opposed
to a lot of the technologicalinnovations that we've seen that
have, you know, led topolarization or or other kinds
of less or anxiety, isolation, asense of disconnect from the
real world.
So I, you know, discovered that,fell in love with the discipline
(03:33):
and the style of thinking, andit's very interdisciplinary.
I spent some time as an engineerat Google where I did both ads
and education.
And it was very interesting tocompare and contrast both
perspectives.
I left Google and I joined myparents' company.
My parents are both techentrepreneurs 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
(03:56):
tech scene in Paraguay.
And so to have, you know, grownup seeing them try and try and
try the classic sort of SiliconValley style of grids, but in a
very different context, um, hasalways been a huge inspiration.
And so um they uh needed somehelp pivoting the company.
It used to do SMS infrastructureuh for you know the telcos of
(04:17):
the world, and now they itbecame kind of an investment
firm.
So I helped them out with thattransition for about two years.
But because my parents are likeultimate, like the founders as
founders come, I had accruedenough cognitive dissonance from
um saying you need to think likea founder and act like a founder
and build those founderinstincts.
(04:37):
And so I knew that I wanted tobuild something for my own.
But this was around the timethat OpenAI had just launched
Chat GPT.
So it was kind of a likeincredibly dynamic place, you
know, and it was OpenAI waskilling all these startups and
then trying to figure out butwhat do I do with AI that is is
good for the world, thatconnects me to my family and my
(05:00):
story.
It was a difficult thing tofigure out.
I couldn't find the idea then.
So anyway, I decided to write asci-fi novel, which was kind of
a side quest in my life, whereessentially what I basically I
this is where I started to lookfor a tool that would help me
write the next big chapter in mylife.
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'mhere on planet Earth for a very
(05:24):
short period of time.
I want to make it count.
I wish that I could use AI tohelp me live my best life.
And the next best thing I cameup with was like, well, at least
I should start by telling mystory so that when AI gets good,
it may be able to help me.
And then I got carried away andturned that into a sci-fi story.
And so it was a really funexperience telling my piece
through a fictional lens.
(05:46):
But I didn't expect to find thisexistential relief of, hey, I
told my story.
Like if you wanted to figure outwhat made me, then you would be
able to find it there.
Um and it that took around sixmonths.
And then by the time I wake upfrom that fever dream, I'm like,
okay, I have to promote the booknow.
And so I started a podcast totalk about uh our humanity in
(06:07):
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 toreinvent economics.
We have to reinvent our sense ofself-worth.
We have to reinvent well, whatdoes it mean to be?
And I would like our more moralrights and legal rights and like
IP.
And there's this massive thingthat's about to happen to the
(06:27):
world.
And I wanted to start havingconversations with thought
leaders around what happens.
And I love, I love podcasts.
I love sitting down withsomebody and figuring out what
made them who they are and likehow did they get here and how,
you know, what tickles themintellectually.
Um, and I also just love people.
I love like I remember thinkingwhen I was doing the podcast, I
(06:49):
remember thinking, I wish Icould interview everybody on
earth.
I really wish I could.
And in this process, I realizedthat one of the stories I really
should record was my grandma.
My grandma had a crazy lifestory.
Her dad was an MI6 agent.
They lived in Europe.
Great-grandpa shipped the familyoff to the ends of the earth.
Great-grandma and her two kidsended up in Paraguay of all
(07:12):
places, and they made it there,you know, in a single mom
situation, single mom of twodaughters.
And my grandma became anindustrialist.
She taught, she wrote books, sheand this is in the context of
the 1950s, very, you know, uhmachismo-based, you know,
Paraguayan society during amilitary dictatorship.
(07:33):
Um, and so I wanted to recordher 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 forthe last 18 months of her life.
And, you know, I found myself ina position where I had the
outline of questions that I knewI wasn't going to get an answer
to.
And that was the the catalystmoment for me.
I was like, well, okay, but likethe universe is forcing me to
(07:56):
look at something.
And what are the threads that Ican connect here?
Okay.
Identity as storytelling.
AI can now interview everybodyon Earth.
It's actually the mostaccessible it's ever been
because you could do it over thephone.
And not only is it good for thefuture generations to have an
account of what happened in theperspective of those who lived
it, but also it's a good thingfor the people living it.
(08:17):
You know, like telling yourstory is a good thing.
You know, it gets you reps onthis, you know, this idea of who
you are or this version of youthat you will leave behind.
And once I saw it, I couldn'tunsee it.
You know, like this is a solvedproblem now.
Like we we have a chance tonegotiate terms with our
impermanence in a way that wehaven't been able to before.
And once I saw it, from nowhereto be.
SPEAKER_00 (08:59):
And so with AI, I th I think it's fascinating, but
every life has a I'm I believewhat you do is every life has a
story.
I don't care who you are orwhere you come from.
We all have a story, and we canshare with others to help others
and you know, could be becausethat's one of the driving forces
and my mission behind thispodcast is to try to help as
(09:19):
many people living withParkinson's as as possible, but
uh just helping people ingeneral.
And and I think the platformthat you have can be one of
those where people can utilizethat to tell their Parkinson's
story, and other people canlearn from that.
It doesn't necessarily have tobe family members, it can be
someone else in the communitycan say, wow, I didn't know that
(09:40):
you you could do this and andthat can help you.
So that's why I really wanted totalk to you.
So that's the that'sfascinating.
SPEAKER_01 (09:49):
Yeah, no, that that's a great point.
We we're just launching thisfeature that we call shared
libraries.
So the the way it works today isyou tell your story and your
stuff gets aggregated into yourlibrary.
So there would be Christian'slibrary or Chris's library.
Um but and I can share any ofthese pages with whoever I want.
So if there's a page in therethat comes back that I like that
(10:10):
Chris would really benefit from,I could share it with you.
A lot of times we want to sharewith groups, like I want to
share this with the wholefamily, or I want to share this
with one side of the family, orI want to share this with my
high school friends.
And so we're building groupsexactly for this purpose, right?
And even before we startedmarketing the stuff, you know,
like it was pretty apparent thatthere were a lot of people with
(10:31):
that had overcome reallydifficult challenges that wanted
to tell their stories so thatother people could be inspired
by them.
Um, this is a very emotionalkind of harrowing thing because
you you have people expressingextremely, extremely difficult
things, but they came out on theother side and they identify as
the hero that slayed the dragonand they want to sort of let the
(10:53):
record show that I won thisbattle.
And if anybody needsencouragement, they can look
here.
So yeah, this is very muchaligned with what we want to do.
And like you can kind of thinkof all these support groups that
can emerge pretty easily whereeverybody can start sharing
their experiences with aparticular 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 groupsout there.
There's a Parkinson supportgroup, there's cancer support
groups, and and sharing successstories or what worked or how
you overcame a challenge is andI think that's it's very
powerful.
So I I I you know, I I'm glad tohear 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 isis like a big beast, right?
You know, like it you can imacteasily imagine if you take like,
I don't know, a hundred thousandpeople that are going through
something like this, you'regonna get a lot of different
responses.
Like, I tried this and itworked, I tried this and it
didn't work.
And so uh Walter not doesn'tjust help collect the
(11:50):
information, but he also helpsorganize it in a way that, you
know, someone who wants tocompare their experience to this
will actually be able to Walterwill be able to find the
resonance in the same way thathe says, You have to move to New
York.
This reminds me of somethingthat your grandpa went through.
He can say, Oh, you're goingthrough this problem.
This reminds me of somethingthat Chris went through in this
(12:13):
group that he shared with thisgroup.
Um, and and so it's also for theperson like coming into the the
group to have more accessibilityand it gives you the opportunity
to tell a story.
SPEAKER_00 (12:25):
Everybody loves listening to stories.
You sit around and you know, ityou get enthralled in the story,
whether it's sitting around acampfire and someone's telling a
story, but when somebody can youcan relate to is giving, you
know, telling their story andyou you can see some of the
challenges that they overcame.
It you it's not you don't feelso isolated because I know a lot
of times in life, I don't carewhat the what the condition is,
(12:46):
whether it's Parkinson's orcancer or whether it's
depression.
I mean, everybody has something,and if they can relate to
somebody else through stories oryou know, even just short bits,
it's really going to help themin their in their life.
And it may be another, you know,maybe another family member, but
that's the thing I'm reallyexcited about with what you're
doing is that it gives thepeople the opportunity to to
(13:08):
share a story, but it alsoallows you to connect with
somebody else because a lot oftimes people feel isolated and
alone.
And I think what you're doing isis really some great work.
SPEAKER_01 (13:17):
Ah, thank you, Chris.
I appreciate that.
Well, it's very motivating to usto have found like this unmet
emotional need, right?
Like there's we all deal withhow hard it is to be human, and
it's kind of table stakes thatit's just gonna, oh, you just
gotta have to do it, right?
Um, but um yeah, I I mean, Iwriting my story changed my
life.
(13:37):
It allowed me to take agency andownership over where the next
chapters are going.
It forced me in a position to benot just see myself as the main
character, but also as theauthor and also as the editor
and also as the publisher.
And there is an insane amount ofpower in feeling comfortable in
those worlds where you canreinterpret stuff about your
(13:58):
past in a way that serves you asit as opposed to a way that
holds you back.
And and I agree with like thatsame idea, right?
Like everybody has a story.
The story is it's almost like ahidden puzzle piece for a
problem in the future that wewill need to solve as humanity.
And everybody has a littlepuzzle piece that fits into
this, like this bigger puzzlethat is like, how do we make
(14:20):
sense of the universe?
Um, and it just so happens thatwhen you share your story, you
reveal a lot about how you seethe world.
Uh, because we reflected back atyou, you can now engage with it
in a way that feels a little bitmore external.
So it's like, that is how Isounded, but it's not how I
feel.
Like, actually, I'm like, and sothere's a there's a reflection
(14:42):
process that happens throughthis 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 youon the journey of rediscovering
yourself and reacquainting withyourself.
SPEAKER_00 (14:58):
Well, based on what you're saying, we all look back
on our lives and we we mighthave a different interpretation,
but we've all gone through somegreat times, we've all gone
through times where we failed,and a lot of times we use both
of those learning experiencesto, you know, move move on in
the future.
And and I see this as somethingmaybe that you can do as well
where you take what Walter'sgiving you and and you can look
(15:21):
at it and say, okay, how can Iuse this to if I want to change,
you know, because everybody iswith the new year coming up,
everybody's making New Year'sresolutions.
And the problem is when you lookat the data, a lot of times New
Year's only about, I think it's20% actually keep the
resolution.
But if you can look at whathappened in the past and you
want to change it, you can say,Oh, I didn't like the way I did
(15:41):
this, so how can I change itmoving 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 helpsomebody else and and you know,
and then it just grows and growsthat way.
SPEAKER_01 (15:54):
Yeah, no.
Uh the you you're preaching tothe choir.
This is exactly what we, youknow, like it's the reason I
stay up late at night and it'sthe reason I try to wake up as
early as I can, is because Andwell, the the other side of it
too that is also verychallenging to manage, but you
know, it's similar to some ofthe conversations that you have
all the time, is that time islimited, you know.
(16:15):
Like there, there you this isn'tsomething 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 questionsthat we won't be able to answer.
So there's there's this, it'sone of those things like it's
it's interesting because we knowit's something that is good to
do and worth doing, but it'sstill like easy to put off until
(16:36):
you are faced with one of thosebig life reminders of how
precious and short life is andmemory is something that you
take for granted as a kid.
But as you, as you age, then youstart realizing how some of your
core memories get fuzzier.
And being able to always reliveyour wedding with the same uh
raw emotion of the day after issomething that I I was too late
(17:00):
for that, but I really wish myown.
SPEAKER_00 (17:02):
My brother and I were just talking about this the
other day, but a lot of timespeople say, Well, I'll do that
someday.
And then they pass away, andthat someday never, never came.
And and so I, you know, I'vekind of stepped back and learned
from that, you know, living withParkinson'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 flyfish, and one of my biggest
(17:24):
dreams was I wanted to go out toMontana and go fly fishing.
And I said to my brother, wouldyou go with me?
And and we did two years ago, wewent and we had the we had a
great time, and it was just thebest experience.
And looking back now, I'm I sayto 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 andputting it off.
And and now that became part ofmy story, and and he still talks
(17:44):
about it.
And so it's something that thatgoes, you know, on.
SPEAKER_01 (17:51):
That's funny.
I was in Montana fly fishingearlier 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 thatpeople can take advantage?
SPEAKER_01 (18:02):
Well, I hope autograph becomes humanity's
journal.
I mean, like I hope that peoplethat we create the right brand,
space, digital, and legalinfrastructure so that we can
bring this emotional resonanceto everybody on earth.
I mean, really, it's just likebuilding that habit of, you
know, something big in your lifehappens, you talk to Walter, and
(18:24):
Walter reflects at you, youknow, the safety that that that
that lived experience is nowsafe forever.
I'm very excited about the kindsof 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 youget to write.
So there are many cool thingsthat we can do in terms of
(18:46):
different kinds of services thatwe can build on top.
So we could go through likediagnostics route and try and
sort of be at the v bleedingedge 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-poweredservices for that population.
Think of like, you know, settingup checkups or, you know,
(19:10):
there's a whole world in whichwe we go that direction.
There's there's other kinds ofreally fun stuff around
simulation too.
You know, if we have a reallygood representation of who you
are and your entire culturalcontext, um, then we can help
you practice uh things that youmay be interested in.
So, for example, we can help youpractice a job interview, a hard
(19:32):
conversation with a significantother, with a business partner,
with an employee, with um asibling, you know, a parent.
Uh, we can we can simulatedifferent life paths, you know,
like what happens if I take theleft side of the fork in the
road or the right side of thefork in the road and let my life
happen for 10 years and run thata hundred thousand times, in
(19:55):
which which path am I happier onaverage?
And as defining.
By me.
You know, like, you know, in thein my evolution, how do I
evolve?
Am I a self-described, happierperson uh 10 years down the
line?
I think that's incrediblyexciting.
And you could do also stuff forfun, right?
Like you and I could go on anadventure to a medieval Rome and
(20:16):
see how we, how we do, right?
Just for just for the giggles,right?
Um and then there's a lot oflike more just like practical
stuff.
If we, if we become this trustedrepository of your information,
then and we know your privacypreferences just the same way
that you do, then we can helpyou actually manage the context
of your identity as it relatesto other services.
(20:38):
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 animmigration attorney is pretty
tedious.
You have to search, you have toget referrals, you have to
figure out if it's the rightperson, you know, like there's a
whole bunch of things.
If we can help you sort that outfaster, and instead of having to
meet with 10 immigrationattorneys, and we just get you
(21:01):
to pick the final two, that's alot of time saved in aggregate
across all of the economy,right?
Um, but you could think abouthow that applies to anything,
you know, like Christmasshopping, you know, like I want
the perfect gift for my wife, orI want the perfect, like, I
don't even know what I want forChristmas, you know?
Um that kind of stuff I think issuper exciting, you know?
And and because we are on thephone with our users who are
(21:22):
sharing their most pressing lifesituation with us, we we are in
a unique position to help themmanage that challenge or those
like pressing things uh reallyeasily.
That's the five-year vision.
So really hoping that likethere's we get millions of
stories by then.
Uh like what happens at the10-year mark?
I agree.
That's where it gets verysci-fi.
SPEAKER_00 (21:42):
Just being linked to any type of ancestry where you
might have relatives that livein another country and you they
they tell their story and peoplefrom different parts, and then
next thing you know, they're,you know, second or third
generation.
Then you've you've kind of gotthis uh historical story of your
whole family, you know, based onancestors.
SPEAKER_01 (22:01):
Yeah.
100%.
Um this is something that I'vebeen thinking about very
recently, but you know, there'swe're we're being disciplined
with prioritizing the storiesthat would get lost fastest,
right?
So this is, you know, we'retrying to get the stories of the
silver generation.
And within the silvergeneration, there's also the
(22:23):
like what are the stories thatare most likely to be forgotten
fastest?
And so mentioning stories of,you know, the generations that
came before, you know, what wereyour grandparents like?
That's the stuff that's at risk,you know.
So asking my grandparents whathis grandparents were like, um,
uh, that's that's like very uhfor like stuff that would be
(22:47):
otherwise forgotten.
But yeah, back to this idea ofgroups, right?
Like you can start a familygroup and you can have a group
for the siblings, you can have agroup for the nuclear family,
you can have a group for thecousins on one side of the
family, the cousins on verysimilar to texts, text group
chats, right?
And you can have a giant groupthat is like all of the
descendants of Chris, uh ChrisKustenbauer, the first.
(23:10):
I don't know, I'm makingsomething up, right?
But you know, like your great,great, great-grandfather, and
and all of a sudden thedescendants could be all over
the world speaking differentlanguages.
That's another very cool thingthat we do is that uh, you know,
you can speak to Walter in anylanguage that you want, and you
can access the stories inwhatever language you want.
So we have a lot of interestfrom immigrant communities where
(23:31):
grandma may be speaking inMandarin, but a great grandchild
speaks in English.
And you want the culturaltransmission of values and uh
certainly like, you know, therecord of the sacrifices made to
be accessible to the youngergeneration 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, likefrom pictures when the person
was younger, when they were intheir teens, twenties, all all
throughout, so that it actuallyalmost becomes like a book where
you could read and look at pickin 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'spretty cool how we're doing it.
Where you just dump your filesand we organize them for you.
So we will find, you know, fromthe pictures that you upload
who's in them and what timelinethey fall into.
A lot of photos have metadata inthem.
So we know when they were takenand where they were taken.
(24:30):
And so we can actually organizethis stuff pretty easily.
Um, but think about like journalentries or or recipe cards or
all these other things that arelike it's kind of all over the
place what you can do.
Um and uh uh one uh a personwho's helping us with
partnerships described this aslike the ultimate um uh
(24:50):
scrapbook source material.
Um and so it's kind of uh kindof just inspires the next step
that is like, oh wow, is there aworld in which we help people
scrapbook?
You know, like given this set ofthis archive that we build for
you, can you build out pages ofa scrapbook that then you can
print and share with whoever youwant?
So it's it's very much the sameidea, right?
(25:12):
That how do you create thesealbums where you have a digital
version so that everybody thatyou want to share can have
access to it immediately, butyou 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 itinto reality.
And so we're excited to beginexploring that early next year,
too.
You know, like what are the thederivative products that we can
(25:34):
build with this data?
To me, like the the thing islike we need to make uh talking
to Walter as enjoyable aspossible because uh if it's not
enjoyable to talk to Walter,then you're not gonna get the
data.
And anything that you build ontop of that is kind of a pipe
dream.
So we're working on like reallymaking the conversational
aspect, you know, feeling likeyou have Walter Isaacson
(25:57):
interviewing you about your lifebecause 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 andhelping other people with the
technology that you have andwith Walter, you know, doing
stories, how do you envisionyourself being able to take what
you have and being able to helpsociety for the better?
SPEAKER_01 (26:17):
I think fortunately a lot of this is baked into the
the premise of the servicealready.
So when talking about yourstory, this whole idea of you
are the protagonist in yourstory and you are the author and
you are the editor and you arethe publisher comes up kind of
naturally.
You're sort of like writing downwhat will be left of you.
And that is very beneficialbecause it helps you get rid of
(26:39):
the stuff that isn't isn'tserving you or doesn't add up to
your identity, and it helps youactually amplify, I'm really
good at this, or like, yeah,I've overcame that, or it really
helps cement your sense ofidentity, which I think is very
important in a world that seemsto be hell-bent on destroying
our sense of identity.
It's always like you're neverenough.
You're never good enough, you'renever smart enough, you're never
(27:00):
rich enough, you're never famousenough, you're never enough.
And our whole thing is likeactually, there's infinite
wealth inside of you.
So that's one aspect of thebenefit.
The other thing that comes up isthat as I am the protagonist in
my story, I very quickly realizeeverybody's the protagonist in
theirs.
And I'm a side character at bestin a lot of those stories.
(27:21):
You know, if anything, I most ofthe time I'm just an extra.
And so it helps contextualize,you know, it unpacks this very
important thing that who wethink we are is a story, is a
story that we repeat toourselves kind of
ritualistically every morning.
We remember being who we are andwe kind of just boot back to who
we think we are.
And being able to create thatdetachment, I think allows us to
(27:44):
re-engage with a lot of thestories that are out there in
the world that are there tomanipulate us, to act reactively
to a certain piece of news or acertain legislation or a certain
whatever ha whatever happens inthe world, that detachment, I
think, can go a long way inunderstanding that there's the
(28:04):
dynamics of trauma, you know.
Oh, if I'm if I'm if I havetrauma inflicted on me, I'm
forced to have a reactivedisposition towards things that
are similar to that event.
And when I react, that creates areactive disposition in that
person.
And so it kind of keeps thecycle going forever.
If I can detach from that forone second and not react, then
all of a sudden I'm reallyputting pumping the brakes on
(28:27):
the spread of intergenerationaltrauma.
And because AI enables this kindof unparalleled connection
between people, truly deeplyunderstanding who you are, what
your experience is, where youwant to go.
Uh, I think we have a very goodshot of like reducing 90% of
intergenerational trauma by thenext two generations.
SPEAKER_00 (28:46):
So that my grandkids live in an entirely different
thing with what you just said ishow a lot of times we don't
think what we do really matters,but people are affected and we
don't realize sometimes how wemade a change in in somebody and
how that that went forward.
I was just thinking it's youknow Christmas time here and
with uh the wonderful life withJimmy Stewart when it you know
(29:07):
he gets to relive it's becauseyou didn't jump off the bridge,
you were able to affect allthese other people's lives.
And I I think that that's one ofthe things that what you're
offering can really help peoplewith is to to take a step back
and say, wow, as they're tellingtheir story, wow, I did I do
have these strengths that helpother people.
And these other people did I Iwas able to help these other
(29:30):
people, even though I didn'tthink it wasn't you know, it's
something you might do somethingat the time that doesn't seem
important, but then later on youfind out that wow, it they it
made a significant change insomebody else's life.
So I think that's one of thewhen you were talking about
that, that's one of the thingsthat really struck me.
SPEAKER_01 (29:45):
No, you're you're absolutely right.
I have a poster of It's aWonderful 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 connectedwith 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 asmuch as you want for free.
You can see what these librarypages look like, you can share
them with folks, you can invitefolks on and you can request
stories from them.
So if you have a friend or aloved one or or a parent or a
grandparent that you want to getthis for, you can also steer the
conversation that they have withWalter and say, like, actually,
(30:17):
I want my when I when Waltertalks to my mom, I want to hear
the story of the first house shebought and how she had to, you
know, essentially work so hardto get it.
And you can actually be the verygood steward of that library.
Try it two weeks for free, andthen if you like it, you can
stick around and keep going.
So is it more as it's a name inthe 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 tostop, or is it a yearly thing?
Or how can you explain how thatworks a little bit?
SPEAKER_01 (30:47):
Oh for sure.
It's uh it's we charge a monthlysubscription.
There's a yearly plan too.
Um and what we charge for istalking to Walter.
So Walter is your archivist, uhuh scribe, documentarian,
chronicler, biographer, like hehe, you know, that kind of
stuff.
I don't know that any of thoseparticularly works, but that
(31:08):
kind of is the idea.
He's your interviewer.
Um but we give you foreveraccess to the uh recordings and
transcripts and the librarypages that we create.
And you can always export themwhenever you want, and you can
sort of pause your account,reactivate it.
Uh, you know, if life is in kindof a boring state for a couple
of months, you can pause it andcome back.
(31:28):
We have a lot of cases of folkswho 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 monthlysubscription, it's uh 29 bucks a
month to have the world'sgreatest interviewer you
mentioned about your life.
SPEAKER_00 (31:45):
The older generation.
So people that aren'tnecessarily tech savvy, and when
you're talking about AI withWalter, a lot of times there's
you know, people start to panica little bit and say, I can't do
that.
Can you explain a little bit howabout how they would interact
with Walter to give them whatthe 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 getthis for their parents or
grandparents, you sign up, youcreate your account, and then
you can add other folks to youraccount.
And so, you know, I signed up, Iadded my mom to my account.
What happens with my mom is shegets a message from us saying,
hi, Vivian, Christian has giftedyou a subscription to Autograph,
(32:25):
a platform where you can recordyour life story through our it
digital interviewer Walter.
Feel free to call this numberanytime or schedule a call via
this text, and you're off to theraces.
So it's basically like a servicewhere we hired an on-call
biographer for my mom, and shehas his phone number and she can
call him whenever she wants.
And so this all happens over thephone.
(32:47):
So fortunately, there's not muchof a for the person talking to
Walter, there's really not muchto learn.
Like it's really just picking upthe phone and and and and
starting to chat.
What we found, you know, thiswas kind of counterintuitive,
but people are way more openwith an AI interviewer than with
a human interviewer.
Because, first of all, there's anovelty factor.
(33:09):
Oh my gosh, I'm talking to acomputer, this is cool.
But also because there's nohuman judgment on the other
side.
It's this thing that is just,you know, designed to be there
for you.
And when Walter gives youvalidation about something that
you did that you may have evenbeen sheepish about, I don't
know, like a minoraccomplishment, say.
When Walter actually says, thisis actually really great, like
(33:31):
you know, and like and and givesyou validation around like your
lived experience, it kind ofpacks this double whammy where
sure enough, there's no humanthat is that is empathizing with
me, but it's this other thingthat's kind of even more
impressive than a human in thesense that it knows all of the
things that have happened inhuman history and it says that
my life is meaningful.
(33:53):
And that like goes a really longway.
But the experience of talking toWalter is almost identical to
talking to a human.
Like you, you kind of forget.
Sorry, and now that I'm on aroll, you kind of forget the
stuff that you makes up youridentity all the time.
So Walter will ask you one ortwo questions and you'll find
yourself talking for 15 minutesabout the answer, and like, oh,
this other thread in thatanswer, and this other thread in
(34:14):
that answer, and this otherthread and that answer.
Well, and plus you don't have toworry about body language really
happens.
SPEAKER_00 (34:19):
With someone interviewing you like, oh,
they're judging me, or they'rerolling their eyes, or they're
so I mean that that's one of thebenefits.
And is there anything else thatyou would like to share with
with autograph that can that canuh 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 youcan actually speak into a
microphone and the entire worldcan change because of it.
And we all are doing theselittle things that are ripples
in this big pond, and some ofthose ripples turn into like
continent-reshaping tsunamis.
(34:57):
We have a really niceopportunity to give the future a
chance to understand itself in away that we never got.
Like we got, we inherited aworld that was very distorted
with self-importance and publicperception and you know,
geopolitical initiatives aroundhow textbooks are created and
what curriculums are taught andwhat like grades, we have a very
cool chance for a limitedwindow.
(35:19):
I don't know how long thischance will exist, uh, to really
change our story and and writethe next great chapter in human
history together.
Um so that's my that's myappeal, you know, um, uh, is if
if there's something in you umthat feels that you're here for
a reason and you don't want tobe tied up in this endless loop
(35:41):
of cynicism and nihilism andnothing matters.
And if if you want an antidoteto that, just tell Walter your
story at autograph.ai.
You'd be surprised at the heroyou 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 inthe world.
We're all we're all humans, weall want want similar things,
but we all want to be happy, weall want to live a great life
and you know, hopefully helpother people.
And that's uh you know, that'sone of the big learnings I
picked up, not picked up today,but that you're building on.
And I think what you're doing'suh great.
(36:12):
And so I I really want to thankyou for coming on today and
sharing your what uh autograph'scapabilities are, and I'm I'm
I'm really impressed with yourmission and your drive.
So I want to thank you so muchfor being on the program.
SPEAKER_01 (36:23):
Thank you, Chris.
Thanks for having me, and thanksfor 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 lovewatching people and what they
do, and and uh because we're allunique and and we all have
something to give, and and Ithink that's important.
So I want to thanks thank youagain.
My pleasure.
All right, well thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics
Two Guys (Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers). Five Rings (you know, from the Olympics logo). One essential podcast for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Bowen Yang (SNL, Wicked) and Matt Rogers (Palm Royale, No Good Deed) of Las Culturistas are back for a second season of Two Guys, Five Rings, a collaboration with NBC Sports and iHeartRadio. In this 15-episode event, Bowen and Matt discuss the top storylines, obsess over Italian culture, and find out what really goes on in the Olympic Village.