This episode is a little different. It's an interview with an A.I. of Sir John A. Macdonald.

So what does that mean? Well, it means that I gathered up the transcripts for all the House of Commons Debates for every year that Macdonald was Prime Minister, and threw in a few other historical resources as well. I processed those and made them available to a large language model, similar to the one that powers ChatGPT. Then I instructed that large language model to answer all of my questions as though it were Sir John A. Macdonald, using those historical resources I provided for reference.

The result is this interview you're about to hear. 

If you want to ask John A. Macdonald some questions of your own, you can do so here: sirjohnai.longformnorth.com

All the historical resources I used are listed there as well.

(Note: The idea for this episode was partly inspired by Tyler Cowen who used ChatGPT to record an interview with Jonathan Swift. You can check out that interview here.)

For more about the podcast, check out the website: longformnorth.com

Music by Aaron Barth

Hosted and produced by Ian Van Harten