Known for hosting the CoRecursive podcast, which dives into the stories behind the code, Adam joins the show to chat about discovering that the great engineers he had looked up to are actually great communicators, his framework for building one of the best storytelling engineering podcasts, and the journey getting into DevRel.

“I don't know why I wanted to be the best engineer. There were all these people that I looked up to at that time, like Joel Spolsky, and I wanted to be that great. But if you think about it, the reason we know about them is because they're actually great communicators, right? They're explaining problems to us.”

“I thought this guy had a blog because he was the most amazing engineer. But no, I know about the things he's done because he talks about them. All these people I looked up to, what they're actually good at is communicating. The person who wrote the book that I wanted to ask questions about, on how to do functional programming, it's not clear they were the best functional programmer in the world (hopefully, they were decent at it), but no, they had written a book. They had spent a lot of time communicating.”

“It can be super impactful if you can take something and explain it in a way that lets it crystallize in people's minds. And I don't know if I'm the best at it, but it feels very valuable and important.”

Podcasting is a relatively new field with limited resources on how to produce high-quality episodes. Instead, Adam turned to radio journalism, which is a much more established field with a wealth of resources and a significant overlap in skills with podcasting. Specifically, Adam took classes offered by the Independent Association of Radio Journalists, and those paid huge dividends in elevating the quality of the podcast.

(00:00:00) Highlights

(00:04:23) The power of casual conversations

(00:07:08) Taking the leap into podcasting

(00:10:34) The hardest part of running a podcast

(00:14:03) Learning to follow up

(00:16:26) Storytelling in podcasting

(00:20:36) The evolution of CoRecursive

(00:21:19) What makes a good story?

(00:24:48) Finding the right guests

(00:30:26) Preparing for interviews

(00:32:07) Favorite part of making a podcast episode

(00:37:43) Learning from radio journalists

(00:39:47) Overcoming self-doubt

(00:44:27) Balancing passion projects with full-time work

(00:46:38) The power of vulnerability in storytelling

(00:53:29) Behind the scenes of developer relations

(01:00:38) the great engineers you know are actually great communicators

• Adam on Twitter: https://x.com/adamgordonbell

• CoRecursive Podcast: https://corecursive.com/

• Automating follow-up emails: https://www.followupthen.com/

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Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en