Hospice Biographers: Memorializing Lives

What's working on purpose anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want Working on Purpose. Now Here is your host, Doctor Elise Cortez. Welcome back to the Working on Purpose Program. Thanks for tuning in again this week. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortez, joining your live from Dallas, Texas, which is home based for me. If you've been tuning in for a while, you know this program as a thought leadership series that enlightens and inspires listeners with insights from distinguished business leaders and subject matter experts. Our conversations are designed to make you think, inspire you to reach ever higher for cultivating your best, and take an informed approach toward leadership and business. Today we're going off track. I'm gonna give you something very special and we're going to really showcase purpose and passion. Our guest today is Barbara Altunion, a BBC trained TV and radio interview with more than thirty years of experience. Today, among other ventures, she's the founder and trustee of the Hospice Biographers, a UK based charity that trains and mentors specialist volunteers to record the life stories of patients across all the UK's two hundred hospices. So far they have recorded over one hundred and eighty patient life stories and traine more than thirty hospices, with the aim of expanding across the globe. We'll be talked taking this unique approach and hearing about Barbara's own unique story. Barbara, welcome to Working on Purpose. Thank you very much. I'm delighted to have you, and I want to thank Paul Skinner for sending you to me and alerting me to the amazing work that you're doing. And as I said in the introduction, Barbara, what I'd really like to do is I'd like to sort of reverse roles a little bit here and give our listeners just a taste, mind you, I can't do it the same way that your biographers do, but give our listeners a taste of you sharing your story a bit like you might be doing inside hospice. So where do you want to start? I would say you should start at the beginning. I like it, let's do it. So I first thought about recording Sabody's life story when my own father was diagnosed with a terminal illness when I was about to become a BBC News trainee, and I was told that he was going to die, and so my first inclination was to think about how I could preserve his life story. He was sixty five and he had a thrilling life story, or that's what I thought anyway, being his daughter, and so I stole or borrowed permanently and a radio recorder from my local BBC radio station, and I set about recording his life story. And first of all, he well, my family. I've got a very large family. So I've got four brothers and sisters. My parents. My father is a Syrian English Anglo person and my mum was German, so they had very different cultures. And we were living in a place called Cheshire in the north of England, and we spent a lot of our time in the Lake district. And what we what I said to my brothers and sisters, was, look, Dad's dying. Shall I record his life story? And they all said, oh god, Barbara, stop being such a nosy old beef. You know, I don't think you should be doing that. I should think you should just leave him to his own, you know thoughts. And you know we I think it's too intrusive and he's dying and you should leave him alone and stop being so nosy. And I said to my mum, you know, well what do you think? And she said a nine, Barbara, nine. You know this is much too intrusive, you know, And so I did, Okay, well, let's solve the problem by asking Dad, brilliant see what he thinks. Because I was a bit crushed by that point. I was only quite young, you know, I was in my twenties. And he said, oh, Barbara, that's a brilliant idea. That's a brilliant idea. He had very poshing, diish acts and those Syrian and I said, well, well that's great Dad, Well fantastic. I'll go about and find an audio recorder. And so we got into a pattern of recording his life story in their lovely family home in Cheshire, place called Wilmslow, and we would go into the dining room and we would go on a big dining room table and I'd put my tape recorder there and he opened a bottle of wine. And in this recording you could hear all the family ambiance of our there. You could hear my little sister Heidi coming in going hey, bab bah, what are you doing? And you could hear the doorbell going in the way that it does, and the phone ringing, and my father coming in bamak do here handy conversion and all that kind of stuff, and she would you be interrupting, But it was really lovely because actually all this ambiance and family noises was absolutely what tells a person's story. And obviously it's capturing a time in history. And I was, although I didn't realize it at the time, I was capturing, you know, a part of his life and my life. And I just set about because I'd just studied philosophy and logic actually, and I just thought, well, the most logical thing to do is to start at the beginning. So I had a huge, great, big notebook. I had my tape recorder with putting on and off, thinking I'm never going to be able to record this, and this is all going to go wrong. So I kept on checking it because I was so nervous about it. And we started recording, and I would always say at the beginning, Oh, Barbara, there's not much to say, you know, I don't know what to say, you know. Oh, I say, oh, come my daddy, So where were you born? And he'd say, you know, well, I was born in Syria and a place called Aleppo, and we used to have a hospital there named after our family, called the Other Tunions as you and he would start telling the story, and it was just brimniant. It was just wonderful because it's told me so many things that I'd never have thought to ask, because if you lived with somebody, you're brought up with somebody, you don't suddenly stop and ask them, you know, what they felt about their parents or what it was that they did as a boy. And I found out all sorts of fascinating things about him. And I always say, Dad, are you telling you the truth? It's all true? Just making it up? And he would say, of course, Barbara, of course. And he got up to all sorts of naughty things as a child, and he's living, you know, in this this place called Leper, which is obviously destroyed now, but at the time it was a very beautiful place. And he would describe what the house look like and the hospital that they used to run. They used to run a hospital along Robin Hood lines, which probably won't mean anything to the American audience, but what it meant was that you would price the hell out of rich people for the sake of poor people. And so for poor people their services were entirely free, or they used to accept a ghost or something in exchange for for an operation. And my family ran it for four generations and they they they they they ran it very, very successfully. And he told us a great story about how he saw some beggars in the street, and these beggars in the street were this ideal area for him to find experiment on. Could he make this disabled child who'd been deliberately made a cripple for begging purposes because a large population in Syria were poor, was their only way of surviving. And he said to the family, he being my father, doctor Roger ll Tunian, look, would you like to let us, you know, operate on him and make your son a healthy boy? Again and they all said yes at the time, and he told me how they did exactly that. They gave him first class treatment and after quite a long time he made this this boy, this poor boy healthy and he had physio afterwards after the operations, and he was able to walk again and assume a normal life. Was only very very young, only about nine or ten years of age, and it was devastating for him as a young doctor. He's been educated at Cambridge in England, and he had full of hope and you know, he was very excited about life, that he would be fine, this this boy would be fine. But in fact, within a couple of months when he went to go and visit the family again, they'd made the boy disabled again. You are breaking, I know so. But you know, I would never have found that out that story. I would never have found that out had I not recorded his life story. And yeah, I was just going to say, you know what, I'm getting so present too, and I'm just delighted by this is exactly how want to share with you. I wanted to share you with the audience here, Barbara, because I really think the work you're doing is profoundly important and I do want to see it spread across the globe. I'm getting very present that those conversations that you and your father had in his last few days or weeks were probably some of the most profound of his existence and yours. And you'll learn things about him that you didn't know, and now you have. You've got something in that stands. There's a record that stands to share that with other people. It's incredible, it is. And what one should also remember is that my brothers and sisters, who were so against it, he died only two weeks after I finished recording, and they, each of them said to me in a very quiet and chastened way, but that's me. I can't have a copy of the record. Did they realize the value of what I was doing? You know, I was only a little clid, you know, I wasn't. I was sitting in my early twenties, and it was just the best and I'd made because I had to postpone my training in order to do this recording with my father. So it was a very hasty decision on my part, but it was the best decision you could ever made. It was just fantastic. And so that's the where where the idea came from right, So that was many years ago. Yes, inspiration, he was the inspiration. So there's another word for that, but I can't remember what it is. But anyway, that's that's not important. So now from here, where do you want to share your story? This is such a great way to start. Well, the other thing he my father was a character in a book called Swallows and Amazons, which was a very famous classical English storybook at the time of adventure storybook. And he told me lots of stories about what it was like to be characters in the famous English storybook when they were all living in Syria basically, and that was very fascinating. And then the other fascinating me about his life was that he then went on to become a doctor who became a self experimenter and advised a drug for asthmatics which I think lots of your listeners will probably be using. It's variously described. He discovered it in the nineteen sixties and it's called ventilin or intel, and it was the first drug treatment of its kind for asthmatics who had hitherto been described really as lazy, workshy individuals who were just kind of putting up on these chesty, horrible wheezes just to get out of work. And you know, he did that on his own after being in secret, working away as a self experimenter inhaling all sorts of asthmatic provoking attacks, and he discovered this drug and it was the reason why he was dying prematurely. So I got all that story in because because I was recording him, and I was asking him the right questions, which is okay, dad, and what did you do next? And why did you do that? And you know, just listening to him, really, and that's probably the most interesting thing you can learn out of the hospice biographer's stories, the value of listening to people, really listening, because the world moved so fast and everyone's attention span is so truncated and reduced these days that the ability to listen before jumping to the next is a salutary tale for us all, yes, and to do so with extreme curiosity. I want to know, I want to know who you are, and I want to understand a life that you've led. How often does someone get a chance to share that, Yeah, exactly. And also the other thing is, which we never realized at the time when we started was that if you start recording somebody in the beginning, each ten years that you record at them then informs them of their next ten years. The brain works in a certain way where they say, oh my god, Barbara, You've made me remember something I've completely forgotten. Aren't you clever? And I say to them all the time, No, I'm not clever at all. All I've done is I've done it in a sequence. I've done it chronologically. So it's the best way of recording anyone's life story because they will they will they will be able to remember all the details. Even if they're early dementia, they will remember all the details because the brain itself is belly is very logical. If you they won't remember. So that was a that was a great that's a great kind of thing that I discovered when I started doing it in earnest m And on that note, that's a beautiful thing. Let's grab our first break. I want to I want to be able to show you is the fact that you married philosophy and logic in this Barbara, that is beautiful. I'm your host, Alise Cortez. We've been on the air with Barbara Altunian founder and trustee of the Hospice Biographers, a UK based charity that trains and mentors specialist volunteers to record the life stories of patients across all of the UK's two hundred hospices. She joins us a day from London. We've been talking a bit about how what was her inspiration for starting the Hospice Biographers. After the rake will continue the conversation. Stay with us, We'll be right back. Doctor Release Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose and inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a Lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at a Lease Cortez dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortez. To reach our program today or open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise ali Se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for staying with us and welcome back to Working on Purpose if you're just joining us. My guest is Barbara altuni In, a BBC trained TV and radio interviewer with more than thirty years of experience. She's also the founder and the trustee of the Hospice Biographers, a UK based charity that trains and mentors specialist volunteers to record the life stories of patients across all of the UK's two hundred hospices, with plans to expand globally. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortez. So, Barbara, from there, you've laid the foundation of where this fantastic idea came from. And of course a story like that that's inspired from love and connection and respect is a beautiful thing to stand on to start an organization like the Hospital Biographers. Where should we take the story next? Well, I think what happened then was that I pursued My father sadly died two weeks after I'd finished recording him, and I pursued a career in television with the BBC, and I eventually started my own television production come and you know, many years passed, but all the way through my television career, I kept on meeting people who would say, oh, Barbara with the funny name, you you record audio recordings of people's lives, don't you. I'd say yes, and they'd say, oh, well, i've got a great mum, or I've got I know somebody who's lived around the corner who's got a great story to tell. So I would continue to do the life stories on audio of people who were rich and famous, downtrodden and the victims of injustice, ordinary people with fascinating story worries, just by the bye. You know. I didn't advertise obviously I had a full time job, but people would kind of just hear about me through the great line. And then I carried on working in television and working in television, and then finally we decided, my business partner and I to give up our production company and we sold it. And I decided to find and find some other way of kind of living in my life as it were, but not doing television full time. And so I volunteered to record life stories in a prison, in a local prison near where I lived. And they said, oh, great idea, Barbara, you can't do it because we don't have the staff to monitor what you're doing. And how many drugs that people put in your pocket, and you know what sort of messages they send to people outside, so it's party dodgy, so thank you, but no thank you. So then I've got oh, well, what about a local hospice. So I kind of dashed off an email to a local hospice and they said, oh great, come in, come in as soon as you can. And I was still working, so I had to war a few days and went to go along to see them, and they said, start tomorrow. We wanted to start tomorrow. Anyway, To catch a long story short, I got into the hospice, I had all my crime checks done and I started recording. And I went into a local hospice near I live called Princess Alice, which is an area called Issha in Surrey. And nobody would see me expensive equipment and all my experience, and everyone kind of took one look at me and say and said to me, now, Barbara with a funny name, no, no, no, we don't know who you are. And the answers no no. So I'd sit there going what on earth shall I do? This is not this not the way it should be at all. So I'd hang around and I'd make tea for everybody, and I'd work in this kind of odd arts class and you know, just kind of hung around and made it, made a nuisance of myself, and I used to approach more people, more patients and all the rest of it. They kept on saying, now you've got a very spain surname, and the answers still no, and I'd say, oh God, what shall I do? You know, I was so frustrated. Anyway, after the third time I went in and they could see I'm going to be there all day, bothering them for teas and cakes and didn't want and all the rest of it. And one of the patients said, Barbara, I feel sorry for you. You're trying so hard, and you've got your equipment there, use me. I will give you something and let's take it from there. So I very I was very nervous by this time. I've spent a lifetime recording people's life stories as a as a television correspondent in war zones and famines and god knows what, and running a production company, but that was nothing compared to beating this beautiful, beautiful lady who just felt sorry for me and wanted to tell me her story. She was facing end of life very bravely and just said, look, get on with it, you know, don't don't give me any of your charitable stuff, you know, just get on with it. And I was so so nervous, and my knees were knocking, and I shouldn't operate the machinery. I just completely forgot. It was like taking an exam. I just didn't know how to operate, operate any of it. And she was saying, you do know how to operate this this equipment, don't you Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Anyway, I started the recording and it went really well, and I remembered everything and it all came back, and she was my savior. She just got me going. And when she finished, after a good two or three hours, she had a long story to tell, and she went round the patient community in the in the hospite and said, you know, Barbara, it's okay. So people said, well, okay, I wouldn't mind having it go actually, and it was. It was incredible. I was so relieved. I felt I was kind of beginning to get a headache and feeling really kind of oh, but she just unveiled a kind of new world to me, and she made me feel kind of two inches high, but then you know, a giant afterwards, and I felt very relieved. And after that it went really really well. And then after after a year, yeah, another patient who I've become very very close to, because a lot of the patients become very attached to you, I understand, and they take the myth out of what you're wearing. And I used to cycle to the hospice and still doing fat and they used to say, oh, Bobby, your hair looks ridiculous. Why don't you go to the head, you know, to the hair this is one day, or you know, look at your socks they don't match, or you know, and they just used to take the knock out of me all the time. And this one lady who I became particularly attached and said, Barbara, you do realize that this isn't the only hospice in Britain, that don't you? And I said, oh, oh, wollen, how many are there? And she said, I don't, no idea, don't find out, but I can tell you it's not the only one. And so that gave me the idea who actually started charity because having had such a difficult time. I did actually get in and I'm now dare I say, it's very popular there and I still obviously record there and people I have a waiting list of patients who want to be recorded by me. And you know, it's a it's a it's a it's a well, it's it's quite a success story. But she gave me the idea of starting a charity and that's what I did in November two thousand and seventeen. And we've actually recorded two hundred and forty life stories now and we've got into forty five different hospices and we're training them all the time, and we've got another one hundred and sixty to go. And you know, it's it's a big old mountain to climb. But I think so long as we can stay focused, and you know we can, we can get the right kind of people who've got quite a lot of hutspur, as it were, to persevere with patients who've got You know, if you're facing end of life, you do feel sometimes I would imagine that they that you're kind of up against the world. So if you if you are approached by somebody in the wrong way, they will say they will book and they'll say no, I'm sorry, I don't want to be interrupted by you. Go away. You know. But if we approach them in the right way and we have the right infrastructure, I think we'll just carry on going well. As I told you in our first call, Barbara, I definitely want to help you evangelize this. And I don't know how much I told you, but I have been interested in life stories for at last the last twenty years, and I wanted to do something like this as well, although in a written format, and I wanted and interestingly enough, I went into a retirement community and wanted to wanted to collect their stories. I was told no because of privacy issues. So I understand fundamentally what you're doing and its import If somebody has spent their whole entire life and they get a chance to share what matters, they get to presence the points that are most pertinent to them and use those as their parting words. I can't think of a better gift to give of themselves. You know. I've been chased down corridors in my hospice by patients families who said, are you that Barbara woman? And then they kind of chased me down, and I've kind of ran a little bit, not knowing who they were, and they they said, you know, we just want to give you a hug. We just want to give you a hug because we hear your voice on our father, brothers, sisters, wife, whatever it is audio recordings, and they're clearly having a lovely time. And they do, and so do their families, and also so do the hospital biographers. It's hugely privileged position to be in to record somebody's light stories, because you are taking a little bit of their soul, because once you give everything during such a vulnerable time, you are giving something of yourself to a stranger. You know, I am a stranger to them, and I can quite understand their resistance, and so it's enormously it's enormously privileged position to be and to sit in a room with somebody to talk about such personal things and and yeah, I love it. And when I get to go home, I've usually done three or four. On occasions, i've done six, but that's been absolute maximum. Most of the time it's either three or four. And you know, I just feel exhausted, absolutely exhausted, and I just go straight to bed and I'm physically exhausted because I've sargled a long way, and I feel emotionally just completely fatigued, because in order to record somebody's life story, you really do have to concentrate. You can't look at your phone, you can't answer text messages, you can't afford your eyes to wander into other areas. You've got to concentrate on that patient because if that patient gets the slightest whip that you are bored you've got something better to do, they will just shut down and they will be crushed beyond your worst nightmare. So, you know, the biggest thing is to, as I've said in the first Break before the first Break, was you know, you've really got to learn how to listen to other people and to have that kind of empathy where you can understand what it's like for somebody end of life to give their life story to a complete and utter stranger, and to trust them enough to do that. Yes, and yet one that obviously is present and tears. And didn't you also say, Barbara, I think in one of our conversations that there's something about the voice of a person that endors Didn't you say something about that? It does it does. It's the voice that matters. One of the things that you miss so much is to hear the voice of your loved one and the quality of where you've recorded it. As I've told you with my father, you know, it's lovely to hear the family interruptions and the ambience of a room. It's great to hear the voice again because obviously it just fills you with all the memories that you have of that person. Yeah, it's you know, you can't I can't think of a great you know, you might have expensive jewelry or you know, real estate or whatever it is that you want to think of as being valuable. But actually I think an audio recording, I think audio rather than than video is just hugely, hugely precious. I obvious unique it is. It is beautiful. On that note, Barbra, let's grab our last break and then we'll start fresh afterwards. I'm your host, Elise Cortez. We've run the earth. Barbara Altunian, founder and trustee of the Hospice Biographers, a UK based charity that trains and mentors specialist volunteers to record the life stories of patients across all of the UK's two hundred plus hospices. She joins us to day from London. After the rake. We're going to hear more about how she got started in what she's learned along the way. Stay with us, We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose and inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at a lease Cortez dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees work on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortez. To reach our program today or open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise ali Se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on purpose. Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on purpose. If you're just tuning in, my guest is Barbara altuni In, a BBC trained TV and radio interviewer with more than thirty years of experience. She's also the founder and trustee of the Hospice Biographers, United Kingdom based charity that trains and mentor specialist volunteers to record the life stories of patients across all of the UK's hospices. She plans to expand globally. I'm your host, Elise Cortez, So Barbara. In this last segment here, we've got maybe fifteen or so minutes here, Where should we go next. One of the things that people say to me is, I've only got to record from my loved one as it was left on her telephone answering machine, the old fashioned telephone answering machine, or on her mobiles. And it's just so awful to think that that's the only recording that they've got. So my message to you is if I had a penny, an old fashioned English penny, for every single time somebody has said that to me, I would be a multi millionaires. Indeed, I know when people can can depart so quickly, but yet I know in my case, I would have loved to have had your interview my mother, Barbara. Both my parents died twenty eight days apart in January twenty nineteen. My mother's case, you could have come and done her interview because we had time, not my father's case because he had a stroke. But yes, I what I'm hanging onto is what I remember of a conversation in the hospital. I would have much rather had your recording. Well, I will definitely come along to the States and interview any relative who wishes me to do that in exchange for a donation, because we are a charity. But I would be very very uh privileged and and pleased to do that because that is my favorite favorite ever job in my life. I think that's why I came down to work to do and and I would be very very keen to do that because I love recording life stories. I think every single life is worth remembering, and everybody's got a story. And most of the stories that I find fascinating aren't stories of you know, braving world wars or you know, doing the kind of headline things that you think about. It's actually the little things in life that are so fascinating about recording people's life stories. It's about how they cope with adversity. There's little things like having an argument first argument they've ever had, when they were with their best friend and their best friend broke up with them, or how they felt jealous when their brother had his marriage to his wife and leaving the sibling behind and not paying as much attention as they used to. It is the kind of small parts of life and how they cope with it. But actually the most illuminating and insightful of recording life stories. There's actually an awful lot of learning that one can have from recording people's life stories. I know what you mean, Barbara, because as we as we spoken, we first met being a meaning in work and an identity researcher when I would go and do interviews, and I guess I've done now close to about one hundred and fifty of those recorded, et cetera for research purposes. Yes, you'll learn the way that people tell their story. There's a lesson in that in very li there's inspiration with and then when it's been fascinating because they got back and share the transcript with their loved ones, who often go on to say, I didn't know you had that experience. I've never heard you tell that before, but it landed in the transcript exactly is how people navigate their lives, which is the most illuminating part of people's life stories. And people always say to me, oh, Barbara, I've got nothing to say to you. I want you to record my life story. But I can tell you there's very little I can say. And I always say, oh, yes, okay, Well let's just start, shall we. Where were you born? Under a table or in a hospital, or tell me what it's all about? And they always laugh and they start from there. And then when they start telling you the story, can I just tell you they look through you, They don't see you anymore, Yes, giving you huge tiny detail of the man that came to see them in their house when they were five, with hair coming out of their nose and the blue eyes matching their blue shirt, all that kind of kind little detail they remember, a huge, huge, fascinating color kaleidoscope. It's it's a joy, a real job. And what else strikes me to Barbara as I'm thinking about who would be listening to this? So this is someone who's now they're on the departed end of the person who gave you that conversation, and they want to go back and remember. I would love to come back and hear my mother tell some stories about what it was like for her to grow up and when we were coming up as children, living on the farm and starting in the restaurant and all of that. I think about, why would you want to go back to that? I want to remember, I want to be with them. Yeah, And relatives often say to me, oh, Barbara, you know, how clever of you to have got all those stories from them. Why did they never tell us they must love you, they must respect you more than me? And I say, oh, absolutely, say no, of course not, It's not true. It's just that I've been chronological. I've been I'm a complete stranger. So if they say something that I don't understand, I say, oh really, why is that? Well, what happened next? I've prompt them along. They've got to explain things in greater detail because I am unknown to them, and click, you know, and that's what it is. And of course they go, oh, well that's all right then, you know. But but you also, like you said, del Barbara, you you come at it. I mean, who doesn't. Who can really resist having someone set across from them and genuinely with curiosity, really want to know who you are and the life that you've learned. Who can resist that? Yeah? No, I everybody loves it and once they get going and when and actually the other big thing I've got to tell you is that when they come in, a lot of patients you know, have complaints about you know, oh I've got pains here and this is happening, and this drug doesn't work and everything. And I say, you know, clear all that from your thoughts. Now, let's just start talking about your your life story. Let's start from the beginning and then and then what what they say is, let's say at the end of it, sure, I feel so good, I feel really really good, Barbara, thank you so much. And I say, it's the greatest pleasure in the world. You know, thank you very much for sharing it. And that's what it is, you know, it's it makes people feel better. It's a therapy. It's not called a therapy, but it is. That's how it works. It's cathartic, it's it's soothing, it it's it puts it puts your life into perspective. It gives you a legacy to leave behind for your loved one. Right, think about what you just said there. It's our listeners. If you I want you to pay attention to this. So the fact that Barbara experiences this work as the most precious thing. And I think what she said, what she was put on earth for, so I might call that purpose out and maybe she doesn't, but and then that she's giving the gift of the person telling the story, who feels elevated and feels celebrated, And what a gift out. So when you think about, wow, what can I do in this world to make a difference, to contribute my passions and make the world a better place. That's a win win, win win all the way around. Right there. That is just beautiful, Barbara. Yeah, well, I think it is. And it's enjoyable for everybody. You know, it is a win win situation because I'm enjoying it, they're enjoying it, and most of all their families enjoy it, and they just find out so much and also they begin to think, gosh, I'm a bit like that. And my relative, who I love very dearly, I had no idea about all this detail, and they're giving me detail which I think has been passed on to me. So I'm going to take I'm going to take a lesson out of that, and I'm going to do it that way. You know, I'm getting divorced at the moment. I'm going through bankruptcy at the moment. I'm going through adversity at the moment. So you know, I always say at the end of the interviews, now this is the favorite part. I'm going to go and make some tea for you. And while I'm there, I want you to think about the advice you want to give to your relatives. And I want, brilliant you should give them some advice. And they say, oh, I don't know before I can't possibly do that, mother, I think, well, I'm just going to make a cup of tea and come back to see what you think. And then by the time I got back, they've got They've written a long, long list, and they say the most extraordinary things. They say things like Jack even that when I'm dead, I'm going to be able to look down on you. And I'm just going to tell you right now, I know you're only five, but I will I will know when you're picking your nose, I will know, and I will be telling you off. It's delightful, Oh my gosh. And when Jack is forty five years old, he's gonna love hearing that. He's gonna love hearing that. And you know, they they talk about the insights that they made and the mistakes made. You know, they come clean on on everything that they've done. And and you know, if we do come across somebody whose life story doesn't include, you know, bits that have affected other people adversely, I mean seriously, like, ah, if the worst should happen, and it hasn't happened to us yet, but if we come across somebody who is a child sex abuser, or a robber or a thief or a criminal, you know, we had to stop the recording to say, I'm sorry that the recording ends here. This goes to social services within the hospice, and if necessary, the police will be informed. So you know, it's not always it's I've never had that situation, but we've got that provision laid out in our rules and regulations and thick by it. So so you know, in our in our life stories, they're always very inspiring. But there will come a time in my life when I will come across somebody who has had less than perfect past, and we will have problems rooms there, and we will have to our recordings, you know, because we don't want families to ever the upset after listening to it this is a heartwarming services. It's not one where people can can abuse it. So you know, we're not silly, we're not naive, you know what we're doing. Yeah, the numbers are there, right, Barbara, So tell me again you said, how many how many hospitals do have you been working in? How many? How many stories have you taken? Well, we've now done two hundred and fifty, two hundred fifty stories, two hundred and fifty stories, and we've and we've up to our number of hospices and how many again, I think it's about forty five. Now we've got you know, another one hundred and sixty to go because there are two hundred and twenty hospices. Our aim actually is to do two hundred because we think that they're going to be at least twenty that we can't do. And the other thing is that we're going to adapt our charities so that we can also do children's hospices, so we're probably going to be recording them one that they will want to be remembered, you know, there's lots of There are two things. One is that there are dying children who've got terminal disease, very very young teenagers, who've had children, but who themselves are dying. Those babies and very very young children are going to want to be able to see their mother or their father. So we in the future want to expand into that area where we can record them on film. Otherwise it's on all GIO, because most people prefer to be recorded on all GIO, right, especially if they're going through treatments and they're hooked up to machines and such. So, Barbara, I just got a keen insight when you just said all of this. I just really connected something important here between your work and mine. And so since my work is so much about meaning and purpose, and purpose really can't work, and it doesn't work without the fact that we have a limited number of days on the planet. If we had infinite time, purpose wouldn't work because you wouldn't have the urgency. So what I appreciate about our connection here is that I'm out to help people live their biggest, fullest, most passionate, inspired life of contribution as they possibly can, and you're there to catch their story when they finish exactly exactly, but we don't. Often some of our patients are they've got a year or so to live. We also do ward patients in hospices, which means they only have been a matter of weeks to live, so there huge variants there. And then now during COVIDE, we do interviews on the phone between grandchildren and grandparents and also we do audio interviews over the phone as an audio biography, so over COVID we're doing it remotely. How do you find that in relation to being in person. It's difficult really because I think I've done fifty interviews now with grandparents being interviewed by their grandchildren, and the interviews are not the same, but there's still a value. But you know, grandchildren ask the sweetest of questions, but they're not getting to the heart of the interview, right right. It's good and bad. You know, you wouldn't say one was inferior to another. But it's a totally different thing. You know, they say, Granny, you know, what's your favorite breakfast? And when was your first kiss? And you can hear the grandparent peeling with laughter, enjoy it so much, you know, it's really really enjoyable. So it's a very very different interview. But that's what we've been doing since COVID. Okay, we'll get you back to business, Barbara, because your work, the way you do it is precious, and I know you've trained your volunteers very specifically to be able to elicit the story that you really want to celebrate and to that. And here we are pretty much at the end of the show already, Barbara, so and say about a minute, what would you like little listeners with record your loved ones or get somebody like me to record them for you, but whatever you do, just get them on tape because you will be so pleased afterwards and after they've died, because the most biggest thing that you'll want to hear is is their voice and all their little foibles and the way they speak and the way they cough and the way they splutter or whatever it is. You know, everybody has their own way of talking and their turn of phrase, and even even the adjectives and adverbs and nouns that they use are very specific to them. And you know they're unique. Each person, each person's life story, each person's voice is unique. And that's what you want to remember because that's what you love them for. Barbara, you are a gift to the world. And I'm so grateful that Paul Skinner of what is this? What's pent? My Cars? Paul Skinner Pimp my Cars? That's how I met. He connected us. He knew that you were working on purpose and with passion. I thank you so much for sharing your heart, your soul, your story, and the hostess Biographer's mission with us. Thank you, it's great the listeners. If you want to learn more about Barbara al tune in and what she and the works she and Routine are doing at the Hospess Biographers, go to the Hospice biographers dot com. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always catch it be recorded podcast. We were on the air with Steve Brown, previously a futurist at Intel, this time talking about his book The Innovation Ultimatum, how six strategic technologies will reshape every business in the twenty twenties. Next week, we'll be on the air with doctor Herb Sennett talking about the importance of encouragement and leadership. See you there. Remember that work is at least a third our life, so let's work on purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortez. Each week on the Voice America Empowerment Channel. Together, we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, Leadership inspires impassioned performance, and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on purpose.