The Concept

If there's one thing I like more than writing code, it's talking about code. My best memories about code usually involve a late night discussion with a drink in one hand and no keyboard in the other.

In 2024, I seriously started listening to podcasts. "Live conversation with eventual interventions from the audience" is the format I find to be the closest to the bar conversations I like so much, and I'd love to listen to (and chat with) my friends from the open source community, talking about random mostly technical topics.

So, I figured I should just try it! How hard can it be to setup a conference call, invite a few interesting people, pick a topic to start the conversation, hit "record", and stop after roughly one hour? And make the recording public afterwards, for others to enjoy.

(If you don't like the undertones of "bar", you can think of this as "campfire stories".)

The Podcast

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(Latest episodes)

Episode 9 - Olaf Kolkman (part 1)

Olaf Kolkman has had a long career in networking and Open Source that led him to be working on Internet Technology, Policy and Advocacy at the Internet Society. In September 2025, we had a long conversation with him.

In this first part, we discussed his involvement with Perl, DNSSEC and NLnet Labs.

Cast (in order of appearance): Philippe Bruhat, Olaf Alders, Salve J. Nilsen, Olaf Kolkman.

Recorded on Wednesday, September 10, 2025. Edited by Philippe Bruhat. Published on Saturday, February 28, 2026. Thanks to The Perl and Raku Foundation for letting us use their Zoom license to record the episode and produce the AI-generated transcript.

Episode 8 - A tangent about the Perl Toolchain Summit

As preparations are underway for the Perl Toolchain Summit 2026, this short episode is the last excerpt recorded during PTS 2025 (as a tangent during the CPAN Testers interview, published as episode 6). BooK starts by explaining the selection process for the Perl Toolchain Summit and some of the history, and then Doug, Ruth, Breno and Ferki reminisce about what makes the event so special.

Cast (in order of appearance): Philippe Bruhat, Doug Bell, Ruth Holloway, Breno G. de Oliveira, Ferenc Erki.

Recorded on Sunday, May 4, 2025. Edited by Philippe Bruhat. Published on Monday, December 29, 2025. Thanks to Salve J. Nilsen for lending his microphones and camera, and recording this episode during the Perl Toolchain Summit 2025 in Leipzig.

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