What if the most important conversation you’ll ever have is one you’ve been putting off your whole life?

In this episode, Kyle Thiermann — Santa Cruz local, surfer, filmmaker, podcaster — drops in with a story that hits close to home. After hundreds of interviews with fascinating people, he realized he’d never really interviewed the two people who shaped him the most: his parents. That realization came after a podcast he recorded with his dad, who told him afterward, “If this wasn’t a podcast, you never would have asked me those questions.” Then his mom suffered a serious accident, and suddenly the urgency of those conversations became real.

What started as a one-off recording turned into a three-year journey of sitting down with his parents, asking the questions he’d never asked, and ultimately, writing a book about it. Along the way, Kyle explored the neuroscience of memory — how every time we retell a story, we’re not remembering the original moment but the last time we told it. As memory expert David Schenck told him, “Memories endure because they speak to our identity.” By helping our parents share their stories, we’re not only preserving their lives but also reinforcing the very pathways that make them who they are.

Kyle also breaks down how the simple act of putting a microphone on the table changes everything. It shifts us out of the old parent–child roles we tend to fall back into and creates space for a real adult-to-adult conversation. As he points out, we spend 90% of our lifetime with our parents before we’re 18. After that, every moment matters more than we realize.

This one will make you think about your own family differently. Grab a mic, hit record, and ask the questions you’ve been avoiding. Because, as Kyle bluntly reminds us, “The point of that relationship should be to have as good a relationship as you can before they die.”