Preserving Legacies: Capturing Life Stories Through Video with Jim Cosco

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast.

Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani.

Well, hello to all of our listeners joining us today on our podcast. You're listening to one of our Successful Aging episodes this month on the Living to 100 Club program, and I'm your host, Joe Casciani. On each program, our conversations educate and inspire, helping you get the best out of all the years we're given, regardless of what obstacles come our way. You can learn more about my club at my website. Be sure to take a look at my new training and activities manual, Better, Longer, and Happier: A Guide to Aging with Purpose and Positivity. It's a series of 12 modules in a card deck format developed for senior living communities. Take a look at the website livingto100.club. /blh for a closer look at the modules. Now on to our program. In today's episode, we talk with Jim Costco, owner of Tipping Point Labs, about his inspiring work in creating legacy videos. Jim shares his passion for preserving personal stories through video production, motivated by his own experience of missing the opportunity to capture his father's life story before he passed away. Together, we explore the power of video to document memories and how these personal narratives can provide lasting comfort and connection for loved ones. First, a little background. With almost 3 decades of experience in the media industry, Jim is the founder and executive producer of Tipping Point Labs, a video strategy and production company that specializes in telling brand stories. Corporate clients have included Five Star Senior Living, Philips Lifeline, Harvard University, Keurig, and John Hancock. Over the years, he's also filmed content for MTV, Fox News, Nightline, and the Today Show, and as well as work with notables like Lisa Gibbons, Geraldo Rivera, Tim Russert, Aerosmith, and celebrity chef Curtis Stone. Jim is also the founder of Legacy Video Stories, a company he was inspired to create after his father passed away so he could help preserve— help families preserve their stories for future generations. Jim, welcome to our program today.

Thank you so much, Joe. Thank you for that introduction. It was wonderful. I'm Uh, so happy to be here.

Yeah, well, you're welcome. Thank you for joining us. You've covered a lot of territory, Jim, over the years, and I always like to ask our guests to maybe share the highlights or what were the, the key moments that brought you to where you are today.

Well, you know, I started my career early on in local news and journalism, and I, um, worked in production. I've worked in almost every aspect of television production and journalism you can think of. And I, as you said, I started a company about 20 years ago called Tipping Point Labs, which tells brand stories. So I've gone from telling public interest stories early in my career to brand stories. You know, what makes Keurig's coffee so special? Why is Harvard so unique as a place to go study? Things like that. And now I'm, I'm shifted my focus to this, what I call legacy videos. And, and I have a company called Legacy Video Stories, and now I'm telling personal stories. So, Joe, I went to, um, making videos for brands, which I still do. And the goal of making a video for a brand is to get, you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of views for a video. The goal to making a, a personal documentary or personal, um, legacy video you know, the audience is much smaller. It's instead of broadcasting, it's narrowcasting. You know, I might do an interview with a senior and, you know, their immediate family is going to watch it anywhere from, you know, 2 to 12 people maybe. And, you know, that's okay because it's important and it's the right 2 to 12 people that need to watch it.

So, yeah, I know when we spoke earlier, you shared the story of your father and how you had really wanted the opportunity to record that and you kind of, you missed the opportunity. Yeah.

Let me, let, I mean, I think it's, I think I learned a valuable lesson and then let me, if you don't mind, I'll tell your audience a little bit about it.

Please.

Because I think it's a lesson they should know too. So as you know, I've been doing this for 30 years. Um, I have a, a company where I own all sorts of TV production equipment, you know, high-end equipment, and I do interviews and videos for a living. When my dad turned 75 years old, I said, "Hey, Dad, you know, I do this for a living, but how about I bring my cameras to your house someday and I sit down with you and do an interview on video to talk about your life story, to talk about where we came from as a family? And you can tell me about, you know, your grandparents and parents and how you met mom and, you know, what it was like to be a dad. I would love to know this stuff. And I, you know, we haven't really talked about that." And Joe, if you knew my dad, he was so excited to do it. He's a salesman for most of his life. He was a talker. He was a great storyteller. And he said, yeah, let's do that. That'd be great. You know, I left that day with, you know, planning to do it, but, you know, we're going to do it next weekend, next month. You know, years went by and, you know, life gets in the way like everybody, you know, things get busy and things get in the way. And, you know, unfortunately, He passed away last year at the age of 83, and I never actually did this with him. And so when he passed away, I thought, you know, that was such a missed opportunity. But it didn't really click right away when he passed away. What, what really, when I really thought about it again was around last holidays, around December, had been about 3 months or so since he passed away.

Mm-hmm.

And I sent around a Zoom call that I recorded with, um, my family because during COVID my mom turned 80 and like everyone during COVID you know, we found different ways to connect with each other. We were, you know, Zooming or doing whatever.

Sure.

And I put together this 80th birthday Zoom call for my mom where, you know, it was like a This Is Your Life Zoom call. And during the call, um, at different stages, different groups of friends and relatives in her life came in. So at one point, you know, her grandkids were on, then they hopped off and her high school friends came on, then they hopped off. And then her brothers and sisters came on. It was about 2 hours of this, and it was like really nice and special. It's a great way to celebrate her birthday. She loved it. So I sent this video around, you know, to remind my brothers and sisters about, uh, the Zoom call. Hey, like, watch the Zoom call. Remember, it was really fun. I've just found it on my computer. I think you'll get a kick out of watching it. They watched it and they got back to me, and they— the reaction was surprised me a little bit. They said, you know, it was great to see Jim, it was great to relive the call with mom, but what really got us was seeing dad again on video. You know, it'd been a few months since he had passed away.

Mm-hmm.

And in the beginning of the call, he's like setting the computer up. He's happy, he's jovial, he's joking around trying to get my mom on board cuz it was a prize and, you know, like making jokes and, and just having fun. And my sister was like, it was really good to see dad again on video and to see, you know, his expressions and. That's when it really clicked, Joe. I was like, you know, I thought back to that day when I wanted to, we agreed that we would, I'd interview him. And that's when I said, oh man, I really missed that opportunity. You know, people really would've liked to have seen that interview now that he's gone. And so I said, I'm not gonna make that mistake. I sat my mom down within 2 weeks and did an interview with her. I launched the website legacyvideostories.com, you know, within a couple of weeks and started to talk about it., and there, there's nothing like seeing somebody on video with their expressions and their mannerisms that really will, will bring back that connection. So I know there's a lot of— we, we talked about, you know, you talked about, um, why video is important. There's a lot of ways to preserve your memory and preserve your legacy and to tell your stories to your kids and your grandkids and to future generations. I happen to think, because I'm a video producer, that video is probably the best way to do it. But there are other ways to do it too, and I'm not discounting any of the other ways.

Sure.

I'm just a big advocate since I made that mistake. I'm a big advocate that everybody should think about some way to do it and to do it today, not put it off until tomorrow, not put it off until next week because you never know when next week's gonna be, if you'll have next week. Yeah. So I think they should do it and they'll never regret it.

Not put it off. That's a, that's a valuable message, Jim. So, It's really the heart-to-heart, one-on-one conversation that you have with maybe a parent or a loved one, and, and you can now share it. You can now share this with other people who also care about this person. So that's— I think I can see the rationale there. Before we jump into some of the themes, but maybe you could tell us, what are the packages that you offer with Legacy Video Stories? Sure. Kind of umbrella. Sure.

So I offer, I offer a baseline package, which is called a legacy interview. And I call that it's the interview of a lifetime because it really is. You sit down with me and we talk about your life, your whole life. And that's about a 60 to 90 minute interview, you know, done on location at the person's house, 60 Minutes style cameras and lighting. It looks great. And I call that a legacy interview. It's the baseline package. And it goes all the way up to, you know, a custom documentary that is way more in-depth and way longer, right? That's edited and has pictures and movies and, and might have other people commenting in their life too. And that's like a custom kind of thing. And I do that as well. And I'm working with a client now to put his life story together in a longer format, a 45-minute kind of mini movie, I would say, so to speak. But, you know, I always do steer people towards that legacy interview, that baseline product, because I'll tell you why. We talk for 90 minutes, and for most seniors, that's about all they can really manage. That's a long time. We talk for 90 minutes about everything from, you know, their early childhood, their— where their family came from, what their grandparents did, what they can remember growing up, which are important things, because we don't tell those stories about, you know, where you came from, your grandkids, you might never know that, you know, they might never find that out, you know. And also we talk about things like, um, what's the hardest thing you ever had to do? How would you want to be remembered? Um, um, how did you propose to your wife? You know, just, just kind of, kind of easy questions, but then complex questions like what's the meaning of life, what's the one that most valuable lesson, who, who Who really taught you things or shaped your ethos in life? Things you might have to really think about to answer. But I steer people towards this package, this legacy video, legacy interview package, because, you know, I could take that 90-minute interview and edit it down to the 10 best minutes of it, right? And hand that over to you and say, here's your interview, Joe. It's 10 minutes, you know, you'll get through it, you'll love it, you'll love hearing these stories. But you're gonna watch that and you're gonna say, that was great. Where's the other 60 minutes? Like, what else did my dad or my mom say?

Yeah.

And, you know, I would show that to you too. But like, you, you really want to know. I think part of the beauty of it is seeing your loved one pause, think about it, laugh, make a mistake, you know, you know, start again, really try to get the right words. Like, you're going to want to see the whole thing, especially, you know, especially, God forbid, when they pass away. It's going to be what you have to— and you know what, Joe, when they pass away, everybody grieves differently, as you know, right? Everybody has a different way to handle it. Some people might watch this video once, or some people might watch it every day for the next 2 or 3 months as they try to cope with the loss of their loved one. And that's okay either way. Completely okay.

Sure. Yeah. So you can get the polished, edited version down to 10 minutes or so. And you also have the raw, unedited version. And people, as you say, prefer that unedited version because you see the humanity, you see the, the reality, you see who they really are in the halls. And yeah, um, maybe the hesitation or the snickers, as you say. So I can see that. But also people want the kind of consumer version, right? They want the nice short polished version. So you have both, I can see.

Yeah, I have both. So I talk to them about what, what, what their objective is, what, why they want it, you know, and steer them one way or the other. But yes, we can go all the way up to a full-scale Ken Burns-style documentary with pictures and, and, you know, home movies and things like that. So either way we can do it.

Sure. So you cover a broad range. So can you share some of the, maybe some challenges that you've encountered with some of the folks you've interviewed and, you know, some of the barriers that maybe you hadn't anticipated?

Well, I'll tell you a challenge that I have anticipated, and it's not a challenge of pulling this off, right? That's not a challenge of the production, but it's a challenge of the sales cycle. And the biggest challenge is convincing somebody that they need to do this and they need to do it quickly. And, you know, I'll get a lot of people saying, you know, I see why I should do this, but I have an iPhone, I have a recorder, I can do this on my own. And my answer to that is all 100% of the time, my answer to that is that's fantastic. You should do it. If you're not gonna do it on your own, if you're not gonna do it with me, and I don't take any offense to it, right? I totally understand. You should do it somehow. Do it with your iPhone, do it via scrapbooking or journaling, maybe do it just by having, you know, weekly dinners with your loved one and record them and, and make sure this time when you're talking to them, you talk about, you know, things you wouldn't normally talk about. So when they say, I can do this on my own, I tell them, you're right, you can do this on your own and you should do this on your own. So that is a challenge of a sales cycle challenge more so than a personal challenge. As far as a personal challenge of, you know, you know, maybe a secondary challenge might be, you know, sometimes a senior might not think they're interesting. You know, you might have a senior who just doesn't think he led an extraordinary life. And, you know, we, you know, we're all not, you know, Bill Clinton. We're all not Steven Tyler from Aerosmith. We all haven't led these rockstar awesome lives. But every single person has led a life that is interesting in some way. They all have stories and value to pass down to other generations. And I guarantee that every single person that has kids or grandkids, those kids and grandkids, that family wants to hear these stories, whether you think it's boring or not, you know, convincing them that, you know, you should get on camera, you should talk about yourself. Um, because your kids want to hear this, your family wants to hear this. It's important for you to do it because if you don't do it, you know, your family history is going to disappear eventually. It will only take one or two generations for, for people to forget about you and to forget about your dad and your mom and your grandparents, where you came from, all the important things that you take for granted as a senior. It'll take one or two generations and that's gone if you don't talk about it. And you need— and this is a good way to sit down and make sure that it's talked about and told and recorded for future generations and posterity.

That's so important. Thanks for sharing that, Jim. You know, when you describe the whole process of encouraging someone to record this regardless of how they do it, maybe with their iPhone or whatever, or your system, Uh, I think what you're talking about is process over content, because to me it's the process of getting something done. It's more important than how it gets done or what gets done or the, the, what it looks like. It's just the process of going through. So what you're advocating is this, the, the real importance to preserve these memories and, um, kind of acknowledge, like you said, everybody has a story. It may not be a famous story, it may not be book-worthy, but Everybody has a story to tell. So that's the advantage there. Yeah.

You know, you're absolutely right about process, by the way, because no matter how you do it, whether you do it through a video, whether you do it through scrapbooking, journaling, however you want to do it, telling, sitting down and telling your story can be overwhelming and can be, it can be discouraging. You might not, you might not get started because it's just an overwhelming thing, right? A lot of people, you know, I've met seniors that say, oh, I tried to write a, I tried to write my autobiography and, you know, people retire, they have time to do things like this. And so they say, you know, I tried to write my autobiography or I did write my autobiography. It's all about process and it's all about how you do it. I have a quote from Mark Twain that I really like. He says, the secret to getting ahead is getting started. And the secret to getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks and starting on the first one.

Yeah.

And so that's what I advocate. I advocate that just you have to get started. You know, don't let, don't let it seem like it's so overwhelming that you don't get started. Get started and start, and start with the first task. Just start. And I, I tell people to start simple and get complex. Start with the easy things to answer, which is documenting where I lived as a kid, what my grandparents' names were, what their occupations were, what my, where I grew up, what street I grew up on, what my house was like. Simple things that are factual, which are interesting to people still, and then get more complex with these questions that are, you know, the meaning of life kind of questions that we talk about. And so it's a process.

Yeah, sorry. Yeah, starting with the simple, and I think it's taking small steps, turtle steps, right? One tiny step is better than a big, you know, ambitious goal 6 months from now.

Absolutely. There's a, you know, I tried to write a book in my 20s and 30s, and I'm— it's still on my shelf trying— I'm still trying to write it. But, uh, during that time I wrote a bunch— I read a bunch of books from authors who also had written books. Like Stephen King wrote this great book called On Writing, and another person is this— is an author called Anne Lamott. She wrote a book called Bird by Bird, and basically it's about how to get started writing a book, whether it's a novel or whatever kind of book. And her, her, like, lesson why it's called Bird by Bird is that She recounts a story about herself as a young kid, probably in the 6th grade, 10 years old, and she was at the dining room table trying to write a paper that was due the very next day and she was in tears. And her dad said to her, "Anne, what's the matter?" And she said, "Well, Dad, I have to write this report tomorrow. It's due and I can't. I don't know where to start." And he said, "Well, what's the report on?" She said, "Well, I have to write this report about birds." And he's like, okay, well, what— she's like, he's like, she's like, all these birds we studied. He's like, okay, well, don't panic, Anne. Like, start with the first bird, write about that one, and move on to the next bird until you're done. Go bird by bird. And she's like, calm down. She was probably up for many hours afterwards writing it, but like, it had a system. It was simple. She just had to start it and go bird by bird. And if you want to go— and if you want to, you know, apply that to your life start, you know, with your childhood and just go, just go month by month, year by year, however you want to do it. But just start and go a little at a time because you'll get it. You'll get through it. You'll just go bird by bird and you get through it.

Sure. Yeah. Well, I use the analogy of, you know, weight loss. People have these big goals. I want to lose 10 pounds in 6 months. And, you know, I say, look, let's start with what am I going to do tomorrow? That I'm not doing today. That's where the behavior change starts. Not absolutely, here's, here are all the things I have to do over the next 6 months. So that's exactly right. I love that analogy, bird by bird. And it is, it's, um, otherwise it seems so daunting. So have you encountered, um, interviewees who are reluctant to talk about themselves or maybe have memory problems and can't recall a lot of their history?

So yes, and that's okay. You know, we have, we sit down, have a bunch of questions. Some, especially people with memory loss, right? Some spark things more than others. If they get flustered, you just move on. You know, you don't have to, you don't have to keep asking the same question. You don't want to get frustrated yourself. As you know, with someone with memory loss, right? If they say they don't know something or they're saying something that you don't, you don't, you don't, um, tell them they're wrong, right? You don't, you don't, um, you just go with it and you, and you go on to the next thing. And I haven't done a lot of interviews where it's a, it's a memory issue, but, you know, one or two. And as you know, if somebody has, you know, early onset dementia or Alzheimer's, they remember things that, you know, they don't remember things from like last week, but they remember some deep things from their life. And you can get them to talk about things that you wouldn't expect, things that happened a while ago. And as long as you're open-ended and as long as you kind of go with how they, how they want to talk about the interview, you know, it's not like it's not structured, shouldn't be structured. In that case, you'll, you'll find parts, you'll, you'll hear parts of that interview and that conversation where, you know, your mom or your dad, they're like kind of back because they're talking about something they remember and just Even if it's just a little bit of that interview, like, that's worth, that's worth, that's worth, you know, everything. That's worth everything. Yeah.

So preserving our legacy, um, Legacy Video Stories, the name of your company. How, how do you define legacy? What is that? What is, how do we, how do we describe that?

That's a good question. There's, if you know, if you look up legacy in the dictionary, there's a, there's like a few different definitions, right? One is a gift by will, especially money or property, right? Somebody might define their legacy as, hey, here's my house I'm handing down to my kids, or my business that I've handed down. And it's like something big and valuable to them. And that's like their legacy, right? The other definition is something transmitted or received from an ancestor from the past, just something, you know, and that's how I define it. And that's how I think about it in this case, rather. So that something could be a story, you know, that something could be an object that's not of great value. And I'll tell you a quick story if you'll indulge me about, about that kind of thing. You know, my dad and mom moved, um, from Chelsea, an apartment in Chelsea, Massachusetts, right outside of Boston, when I was about 3. I was the 4th kid to come along. They were living in a 2-bedroom or 3-bedroom apartment. I was the, I was the one that made the apartment too big, you know. They had to find a place to go, so they bought a fixer-upper, a total fixer-upper in a suburb, moved there, fixed the house up. We lived there for 30 years. Eventually the day came when my dad had to sell, sell the property and downsize. And he jammed all of his possessions into this moving truck, um, and, um, you know, moved their new house. But, you know, when they jammed all the stuff into the moving truck, one of the things my mom asked was, does anybody want these, um, what were they, does anybody want these bronze— they were brass— these, this brass cook set. It's all sorts of brass pans and things she had hanging up in the kitchen on nails, right? And, you know, they were moving to a more modern place that didn't fit. Nobody wanted the brass cook set. Nobody wanted it. And she's like, oh, can somebody please take it? This was my grandmother's. So my great-grandmother's brass cook set. Still nobody wanted it. I mean, I made it a little more enticing, but still nobody wanted it. The one thing I took from the house when we moved out that day was a plastic free keychain that said Melrose Savings Bank on it, and it had a key and That keychain was hanging in the garage on a nail every day for third, every day for 20 years while the kids were growing up. Either me or one of my brothers and sisters came home, went to the garage, took that keychain off the hook and opened the back door, let ourselves in. We played until the parents came home. Mm-hmm. Because they were both working.

Mm-hmm.

And so every day for, for, I don't know, 20, 15, 20 years, either me or my brothers and sisters handled that keychain. And so I took that because it had meaning and connection and value. My mom's brass cooking set had no meaning, connection, or value because she didn't tell us, you know, as we were growing up that that cook set was something her grandmother cooked with or used. And if she had told us that, it might have been a different story. So I encourage people to tell stories not only about themselves, but about things that might be important to them, because if you don't tell us why it's important to you, like this brass cook set, it won't be important to us.

Yeah.

So that brass cook set is still in my mom's basement in a box. Um, but that, um, keychain is hanging up next to my dog leashes and my car keys at my house.

Yeah.

And when my brothers and sisters came over for dinner and saw that, they were jealous of that plastic-free keychain.

Mm-hmm.

And so talk about things, tell stories about things, let us know why they're important. Because that's also part of your legacy. Sure. Absolutely.

Yeah, that's a great, great story, Jim. Uh, it, it has that symbolic, very personal meaning. And I, I know, um, what also happens is when folks have, have their collection of books, you know, their favorite book, those small books that had a really big impact on them and their career or their future or whatever, And the children don't want the books because they don't have that same, same meaning.

Yeah, they don't have a connection to— I mean, this generation may be not even having a connection to books anymore, right? But I mean, um, that's it. I mean, that's interesting. I would love to know what my dad and mom's favorite book were. My mom read— my mom's, she's still alive, but she reads books. Used to blow my mind, like it would seem like she read a book every day. She was so fast at reading it. Um, my dad, not so much, but I would Love to know what their favorite book was and if they had it, and then, you know, I'd add that to my collection. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's what you're trying to do is what you are doing is taking the life story and bringing meaning to that story because we might hear snippets, but you're capturing it all in one, one file, one folder, one file cabinet.

I try, right? That interview is really to capture as much as we can in that 90 minutes. And it's not a complete picture though, you know. Um, I like to think that, you know, your, your loved one's stories matched up with maybe your, your, your aunt's or your uncle's stories matched up with these objects and the stories around these objects I'm talking about. They all come together to paint this like, like family mosaic. I like refer to it as this family mythology. Now they all come together and they all work together. Now, the 90-minute interview or the, the movie we're going to record is a big, big part of that, but it doesn't stop there and it doesn't end there. You should, you should be talking about everything. And, and, you know, it's all part of life and it's all a part of what makes your family your family. And it's important. It's all important.

Yeah. So when we spoke earlier, we touched on artificial intelligence and—

yeah.

How this is really transformative for our contemporary world and culture. What do you think? How will AI have an impact on preserving legacy? Do you think there is a role for it?

You know, there's definitely a role for it. I don't know if it's a good role or a bad role. You know, AI— just think of how far AI has come since this time last year we were talking about ChatGPT for the first time. Like a year ago, and it has come so far in a year that it's scary. Now we're talking about, you know, taking a picture and making a video out of it and putting somebody's face on somebody other— somebody else's face. I saw a video recently of a woman in Japan who had these virtual glasses, goggles on, and you could see the video— in the video you could see what she was seeing, but she was seeing her daughter, her deceased little daughter who was 8 or 9 years old, and obviously having a very emotional reaction to that, obviously having, you know, a tough time with it. But, you know, maybe it helped her, maybe it didn't, I don't know. But that's the direction that we could go if we wanted to go there, right?

You—

AI can clone somebody's voice. AI can clone somebody's voice and then also use artificial intelligence to have a conversation with somebody.

Yes.

So imagine having a conversation on the phone with somebody who's passed away. You know, I call up, you know, having a conversation with my dad who's passed away for a year, but he's still saying, giving me advice. I don't know if I like that or not, but that is some— that is something that could very well happen. And maybe it's beneficial for somebody, and maybe it's not. But I think within a very short amount of time will have that option. And, you know, obviously the moral for me would be, you know, make sure you record while you can, make sure you get the real deal while you can, because who knows, you know, 10 years from now you could be having a Zoom call with this AI version of your dad and Sure. I don't know if it's good or bad. What do you think?

Well, I, I don't think I'd want my dad on a podcast, but you never know. I mean, um, it's a double-edged sword, right? I mean, it's got tremendous potential. I, I love ChatGPT. I use it all the time for so many different things. It's helping me figure out some of the technology with the new modem router in my house that I couldn't connect all my devices. It, it's just It's just mind-boggling, the potential. But it does, it has a lot of risks inherent in it. I wonder, you also touched on the use of these legacy videos in memory care. Do you see some benefit there?

Well, you know, I try to partner with doctors and neurologists who are first diagnosing somebody that has early onset dementia or Alzheimer's. And I think, I think if you're diagnosed with something like that, once you get your medical plan in place, once you figure out how you're going to deal with it, you know, emotionally, I think it's a no-brainer at that point to sit down with somebody like myself or your kids with the— or your grandkids with their iPhones or whatever.

Yeah.

And get as much of your story down as you possibly can, because sometimes it takes years. My aunt My aunt just passed away from Alzheimer's and she was suffering from it for 10 years. Sometimes it takes a long time, but sometimes it's quicker. And so you need to like, once you are diagnosed, if you're able to, I just think it's a no-brainer to just start the process of leaving your legacy, telling your story, recording yourself, go through your pictures, you know, go through your albums. Um, I think one of my favorite ways to do it, Joe, um, you know, if you're not doing video, is like every, everyone in my mom's generation seems to have shoeboxes full of pictures, right? Loose pictures. And if you flip over a picture, it'll say like, you know, they were pretty good about recording like a caption, you know, this is Christmas 1966. And it's like, okay, that was Christmas. That's great. But I would go through your, your boxes of pictures and and the caption is great, but I would also just fill that picture with notes. You know, it's easy. Not just Christmas 1966, but like, tell me what Christmas was like growing up. Tell me who was there. Tell me, you know, your favorite memories of it until you fill up that card all about Christmas and, you know, and just keep going and just keep going and go through that entire box. It's one of my favorite ways to do it, and I encourage people to do that. But yes, I think to get back to your question, there's a, there's a role for it. And I think, um, especially when you're first diagnosed, it's something that's important to do.

Yeah. Yeah. It really adds another incentive to make the decision to start recording. I mean, we had a whole big shoebox, several shoeboxes of photographs after my parents passed away and you know, a lot of the photographs we didn't know who the people were because they were very old photographs, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

We, we were trying to understand and we didn't, didn't know. So having that background and that connection, not just the description of who it is but maybe how that person fit into the family or the holidays or whatever, so that's, that's invaluable.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So, um, what advice would you give to someone who's considering a legacy video for themselves or for a loved one, where do they start?

So, um, I would start by going to my website, going to my blog legacyvideostories.com, and going to a couple of blog posts that have example questions. You know, I have 30 to 40 questions on there that are pretty generic but pretty valuable, and I would print those out. I'd go over those with your loved one. I would add questions that seem to be more custom to them. I would get everybody else in the family on board with what you're doing. Solicit questions from grandparents, from— I mean, you can make a fun— you can make a really fun project out of it. Solicit questions from other people in the family, come up with, you know, what you're going to ask. Then I would, I would you know, sit down with them and I would go through it and I wouldn't make— I wouldn't make it difficult. Don't make it difficult for yourself because it doesn't have to be perfect. I know people might put it off because, um, oh, this isn't good enough yet, or I didn't like that answer. And it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be— it just has to be there. So, um, don't get hung up on that. Don't get hung up on the process. Don't get hung up on Oh, this isn't good enough, or this isn't perfect, or, you know, we don't have the right lighting or whatever. I think you can do it, you know, by just having dinner and sitting around the table and talking about these kinds of questions and life questions. You know, I came from a generation where me, you know, might be kind of on the tail end of the generation, but we had dinner together. Every day, every, every day we had dinner together and as a family. And that was, you know, my friends didn't all do that, but, but we did. But that's not good enough because, you know, what we talked about during dinner was what our day was like that day, you know, what problems I was having in math class, you know, um, what my soccer schedule was like, or my sister is telling us about, you know, her play rehearsal. We weren't talking about important questions. We weren't talking— never asked my mom who her best friend was growing up. I never asked my dad how he proposed to my mom around the kitchen table. You talk about everyday stuff. Um, so you can make up— you can do this by making a point of talking about this. And you know, there's, um, I wish I had— I wish I had it. There's, there's some things on Amazon you can buy, um, called— I think, I think one's called Life, Life Interview Questions or Life Story Questions. And they're basically just a bunch of cards that you go through like Trivial Pursuit kind of cards, but they just have questions about your life where you can pick from early life to midlife to late life, and they're all different and unique. But there's 300 questions. Go through those as a family one day, you know, and make a game out of it and talk about them. And also when you're doing that, record the answers if you can, you know, just so you have it.. But those are the kinds of things that you want, you'll want to ask and you'll want to know about, you know, even families that did it right, even families that, um, eat together on the dinner table. And, you know, you don't ask these kinds of questions in those, in those situations. You just don't.

Yeah. So you recommend either coming up with our own questions And they're really prompts for conversation. Or you can go online, Amazon or probably other sources, and find some prepared questions in advance, and you can use those. You know, you prefer to— obviously you, you like to do this locally. You don't travel to other states to record these videos. So can people do it online with you, or—

they can, they can do it like, you know, we're, we're doing a Zoom call right now. We can see each other face to face.

Yeah.

People can do it online. We can do it via Zoom. There's, you know, I'm trained to do interviews. I've been doing them for a long time. I'm trained to ask the follow-up questions. I'm trained to kind of poke around a little bit. So that's, that's one reason why you might hire me to do it, you know, via a Zoom call. And it's if I'm not there in person. But again, you don't, you know, you don't, you don't have to use me to do it. I don't like— you don't have to use a professional. Some of my, some of my videos that I go on location and shoot, the interview is conducted by a grandchild or a child. And that's actually a nice thing to do too, as well. I, um, you know, because the grandkid has a connection with the grandparent, you know, it might not get the same results, it might not get the same exact answers, but It's a nice moment. It's a nice memory. You know, it's a nice way to spend 90 minutes. And, you know, they might open up with their, with their grandkid a little bit more. They might not open up with their kid. You know, there's no right or wrong way to do it. There's just, there's no right or wrong way to do it. You just got to do it. You just got to do it somehow, some way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just the process more important than what it looks like.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. Well, that's great, Jim. Thanks very much. It looks like we're out of time for today, but before we wrap up, I just want to remind my listeners to visit my website, livingto100.club, sign up for my email list, and download a free copy of my 9 Tips to Make Living Longer Enjoyable. And if you're affiliated with a senior living setting, be sure to look for my new training manual, better, longer, and happier. Jim Costco, thanks so much for being a guest on our program. Your website again is legacyvideostories.com.

That's right. Thank you so much for having me, Joe. It was a pleasure.

Well, you're very welcome, Jim, and thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. Hope to see you next time.