Akron Life March 2022

FOREVER YOUNG

by Alexandra Sobczak, illustration by Bingjie Cui and photo provided by PodPopuli

Record Player Posterity Podcasts helps preserve family stories.

Brian Howie treasures a

voicemail from a beloved friend. It is the only way he can still hear his late friend’s voice. For Christina Forward, a recording of her parents reading a Charlie Brown book serves as a way for her and her children to hear the late couple’s voices.

These experiences of loss and its aftermath left Howie and Forward wishing they had more audio recordings of their loved ones, so they decided to facilitate that for others. They created the Posterity Podcasts program in response, which is run through PodPopuli, a pod cast recording studio with a location in Hudson, which Howie founded. Forward owns Posterity Podcasts, in

which she records, edits and produces oral histories for families. The program initially intended to focus on older adults and their stories, but Forward encourages anyone looking to preserve their expe riences to participate. “We help people from all walks of life — whoever has a voice and wants to get it out there,” she says. The podcast, which Forward calls an audio album, can be

made private for the family, and it serves as a way to pre serve memories that can then get passed down the family. “We all have pictures of our loved ones, but there’s so many stories behind those pic tures,” Forward says. “To hear their voice telling those stories, and hear their laugh, their tone and everything — it just brings a whole other element.”

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