How to Interview Someone About Their Whole Life

To interview someone about their whole life, don't try to do it in one sitting. Plan three or four relaxed sessions of about an hour each, roughly following the shape of their life — childhood, young adulthood, work and family, later years. Ask one open question at a time, then stay quiet and let them fill the silence.

That's the whole method. The rest of this is how to make it feel less like an interview and more like a long, unhurried talk.

Why should I break it into several sessions?

Because a life doesn't fit in one afternoon, and neither does the energy for telling it.

Professionals plan for this. The Science History Institute, which records life-history interviews, notes that these usually run four to six hours in total and are spread across multiple sessions, with individual sittings rarely going past three hours. Most guides put a single comfortable session at somewhere between one hour and ninety minutes.

For a family member, aim shorter than that. An hour is plenty. Someone in their eighties tires before they'll admit it, and the best material often comes near the end of a session, once they've warmed up. Stop while they still want to keep going. It gives them something to look forward to, and it gives you time to listen back and think of what to ask next.

A loose plan for four sessions:

• Session one — beginnings. Where they were born, the house, their parents, brothers and sisters, the street.
• Session two — growing up. School, friends, first jobs, the world outside the front door.
• Session three — the middle years. Falling in love, work, raising a family, the big moves and decisions.
• Session four — looking back. What they're proud of, what they'd do differently, what they hope people remember.

You won't keep to it exactly. That's fine. The plan is a map, not a script.

How do I start the first session?

Begin easy. Never open with the heaviest question you've got.

Ask them to describe the house they grew up in. Where was your bedroom? Who else was in the house? What could you smell when your mother was cooking? Concrete things are easy to answer and they pull memory along behind them. Once someone is describing the lino in the kitchen, the rest tends to follow.

A small, useful habit borrowed from oral historians: at the start of each recording, say the date, who's talking, and where you are. The Oral History Association recommends this kind of short lead-in on every session. It takes ten seconds and it saves a future grandchild from wondering who that voice belongs to.

What questions actually keep someone talking?

Open ones. A question they can answer with yes or no will get you yes or no.

Compare these:

• "Did you like school?" → probably "Not really."
• "What do you remember about your first day of school?" → a story.

Reach for what, how, why, tell me about, what was it like. Then let them run.

The follow-up matters more than the first question. When someone mentions a detail in passing, catch it and turn it into the next question. They say, "We didn't have much money back then." You say, "What did that look like day to day?" That's where the real story lives — not in the fact, but in what surrounded it.

A few follow-ups that work almost anywhere:

• "What happened next?"
• "How did you feel about that at the time?"
• "Who else was there?"
• "What did that place look like?"
• "Do you remember what was said?"

What if they keep giving short answers?

Wait longer than feels comfortable. Silence is your best tool, and almost nobody uses it.

Most of us rush to fill a pause. Don't. Ask your question, then close your mouth and let three or four seconds pass. People will often keep talking just to end the quiet, and what comes out then is usually the part they weren't sure they'd say. Studs Terkel, who spent decades recording ordinary Americans for oral histories like his 1974 book Working, was known for putting people at ease and then simply drawing them out rather than steering them.

Other things that help:

• Nod. Say "mm" and "and then?" instead of jumping to a new topic.
• Don't correct their memory, even if you think a date is wrong. You want their version.
• Bring a photograph or an old object. Handing someone a picture of themselves at twenty often unlocks more than any question.
• Never stack three questions into one. Ask a single thing and let it breathe.

Should I record it, and how?

Yes. Record the audio so you're free to listen instead of scribbling.

Your phone's voice recorder, placed a foot away on a cushion so it doesn't pick up table knocks, is more than enough. Test it for thirty seconds first and play it back. Then back up the file the same day — one copy on your phone will not survive the decade.

Recording also means you catch how they say things: the phrases only they use, the pauses, the laugh. Those are the parts that make a written account sound like a real person and not a résumé.

What do I do with it all afterwards?

Turn it into something people can hold.

A recording is precious, but it tends to sit unplayed on a hard drive. When you write the stories down — lightly edited, kept in their own voice — they become something a family actually returns to. You can transcribe the sessions yourself, or use a tool like MemoryCrafter that helps shape the answers into chapters and prints them as a keepsake book.

Whatever you do with the tape, do the interviews now. The questions you don't ask this year are the ones nobody can answer later. Sit down, press record, and ask them about the house they grew up in.