There are sounds we hold onto. The way someone says our name. A laugh we would know anywhere. For me, it's my grandmother. We called her Big Mama, and I don't have a single recording of her voice. Every now and then somebody says my name a certain way, "Christy!", and I hear her. I feel her. There are days I would give almost anything for her to tell me a story.
That's where this conversation begins. My guest is Barrie Farivar, the founder of Leaf, a simple app for recording and saving the voices we never want to lose. We talk about how Leaf came to be, why a voice reaches us so deeply, how to gather these moments when someone you love is seriously ill without turning it into one more chore, and how our relationship with a recording shifts as we move through grief.
How an old recording of her grandmother started Leaf
Barrie spent about fourteen years at Google. Her daughters were around three and one, and she wanted to work on something that was truly hers. Around then, her dad shared a recording of her grandmother, several years after she had died. Barrie told me hearing that voice brought back her grandmother's essence in a way she couldn't have imagined. The recording was sitting in a Google Drive folder with all that rich history, and nobody was engaging with it. That bothered her.
At the same time, her brother-in-law recorded his kids on their birthdays every year and sent the clips over WhatsApp, where they got lost. Barrie and her husband started recording their own girls. All of it got her thinking about a simple, safe home for audio memories. She worked on Leaf after bedtime for a while, then left Google to build it full time.
How the Leaf app works
Barrie described Leaf as a very simple voice recording app, designed so anybody of any age can press record. Recordings save automatically to the cloud. You can also upload audio from elsewhere, and one of the most common uploads is old voicemails people are scared to lose when they change phone carriers. The simple "just checking on you" messages. I have some of those too.
You can keep recordings private or share them with your spouse, your kids, whoever you choose. Barrie said they also tried to make it easy for the listener: you can share by text, email, or WhatsApp, and the person on the other end doesn't need an account or the app to listen.
Why a voice reaches us differently than video
Voice is a big part of my own work, so I asked Barrie what she thinks makes it so powerful. She said people react differently to hearing a voice than to watching a video, and her guess is that with audio, your attention isn't split between what someone looks like or what they're wearing and what they're actually saying.
What she loves most is that audio isn't performative. Nobody has a screen in their face. Nobody has to worry about how they look. You can capture it on a walk or at the bedside, and it fits into the day instead of making the person uncomfortable. No hair and makeup. Just go.
Recording a parent or partner who is seriously ill
A lot of you listening are caring for a parent or partner who is seriously ill, so I asked Barrie where to begin. Her first piece of advice: don't make it another task. You're probably overwhelmed already. Look for the natural conversations that are already happening, at the dinner table, on a walk, at the bedside, and record there. It doesn't need to be a formal interview. It can be two seconds of how they say your name, or their laugh.
I love that. A laugh is like a fingerprint. It's so personal, and losing it when you lose your person is its own loss. Having that little keepsake matters.
Barrie told me about a good friend whose mother had late stage dementia. Her friend was pregnant with her second child, and her one year old would not really get to know his grandmother. She was able to record her mom telling stories about how she and her husband immigrated to the United States. Now those kids can hear it from their grandmother directly, in her own voice and her own character, which is so different from hearing it secondhand.
How grief changes the way we listen
Grief changes what we take from a recording. Barrie has watched this with her own dad. The recording is of his mother, and she told me he is only now starting to feel comfortable listening to it. In the beginning, he wanted to have it, but it was too emotional and too overwhelming to sit down and hear her voice.
Barrie doesn't think it ever gets easy, because the person is gone. But your relationship with the recording changes over time. The thread through all of it, she said, is gratitude for having it and knowing it's there.
Simple questions that open up big stories
Barrie's advice on prompts goes back to keeping it small. The simplest questions lead to the richest stories: tell me about your first job, how you met mom or dad, your first date. People remember those, and one answer opens up ten more.
She asked her own dad about his first job recently over dinner. He told them that when he was new to the United States, he got off in the wrong place and walked along the freeway to his job interview. He showed up sweaty and messy, got the job anyway, and moved for it. That story hadn't come up in everyday conversation. My dad did the same thing to me. At 53, I heard for the first time about a job he had where he wore white pants. (I said, find me a photo.)
Barrie pointed out that people light up when you ask. It can feel like a last chance to capture something, and it is also a way of showing someone how much they and their stories matter to you.
Privacy, favorite recordings, and group albums
Barrie's background is in technology at Google and YouTube, so privacy was key for her. She said recordings on Leaf are private by default and encrypted, and it's your choice whether to share with one person or a few. She thinks of it as your inner circle, not a social network.
Her own favorite is twenty seconds of her youngest daughter, at about eighteen months, going around the table saying everyone's name in her funny little accent. The family has listened to it hundreds of times. It reminded me how much I'd love audio of my sister as a little girl. (When she was very young, she got scared in a hotel pool because she couldn't reach the side, and afterward she called it the time she almost "melted in the motel." She's going to kill me for telling that.)
Leaf also has a feature called albums. You invite friends and family to record something for a baby shower, a retirement, or a birthday, and it's compiled into a playlist delivered on the date you pick. Barrie sees it as a simpler alternative to video compilations, where nobody has to be on camera. People from all over the world recorded messages for my mom's 70th birthday this way, and I didn't even have to change out of my t-shirt.
About Barrie Farivar
Barrie Farivar is the founder of Leaf, a voice recording app built to preserve the voices and stories of the people we love most. Before Leaf, she spent fourteen years in technology at Google and YouTube. After hearing an old recording of her grandmother, she left to build Leaf, which you can find at sharewithleaf.com and on Instagram at @sharewithleaf.
In this episode
- 00:00 Welcome
- 00:24 Meet Barrie and Leaf
- 01:38 The origin story
- 04:06 How Leaf works
- 05:59 Why voice matters
- 07:27 Recording during illness
- 08:46 Family stories and legacy
- 10:12 Grief and listening later
- 11:15 Simple prompts to ask
- 13:56 Privacy and control
- 14:36 Favorite recordings
- 17:16 Albums and group gifts
- 18:49 Where to find Leaf
- 19:31 Closing reflections
Caring for someone near the end? You don't have to figure out the last days alone. Book a Guided Care Planning Call and we'll talk through what's ahead.
Feeling the pull to do this work? Pay attention to that. I teach it at Compass Doula Academy.
Listen: Spotify · Apple Podcasts · 21 minutes
If there's anything else you're dying to ask, let me know: christy@christybraun.com
