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The Mystery of the Eliza Chatbot

It’s July now, and I have a new episode out here.

This episode is the story of Jeff Shrager, his connection with the famous chatbot Eliza, and his efforts to track down the original code.

Jeff is an enjoyable person to chat with, and I could tell when I first spoke to him that he’d be fun to interview but getting him on the show took a little convincing.

If you want to communicate the facts about a situation, it’s often best to not go directly at the facts but instead focus on the timeline – This happened, and then this happened, and you won’t believe what happened after that. If you do that right, then people get all the facts and the feelings, what it felt like to be part of things. At least, this is how I think about podcasting.

Trying to get that narrative version of a story out into audio has been something I’ve been slowly working on getting better at, and I think this episode about Eliza worked well. Of course, it doesn’t hurt either that it’s a wild story, and Jeff is a charismatic speaker. But let me know what you think of the episode! I’m sometimes wrong about these things.

80 Cols Feedback

The previous episode, “Why still 80 cols?” seems to be enjoyed by many. The main piece of feedback I got on it was from people who thought I should have come down stronger on the side of fixed-width code, and probably they had a point. Expect lots more Don and Krystal episodes in the future if only because it gives me an excuse to hang out with them.

Pateron Supporters

I also released a fun bonus episode for Patreon supporters about Developer Careers. I think this was the first solo, just Adam talking to a mic episode I’ve made, and I think it turned out pretty solid. You can find it here​

Adam

​@adamgordonbell​

​CoRecursive Podcast​