GRUNTHAL — Last Sunday, David Balzer parked his vintage 1978 Triple E Surfside camper trailer on a church lot in town and, like an itinerant priest with a mobile confessional, prepared to hear people’s stories. 

It was a crisp sunny morning. Inside the trailer were a pair of yellow mugs that matched the trailer’s egg yolk trim. On a table were two microphones. 

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Outside the trailer stood a sandwich board with an invitation: “Step in.” 

Balzer doesn’t actually hear confessions, but he does perform what some might consider a priestly duty: helping people share their stories. 

“I help people find the thing inside of them which they wouldn’t naturally find,” he says. 

Balzer teaches communications and media at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg. He’s produced podcasts and radio shows; for 12 years he hosted a call-in radio show called GodTalk. A few years ago, he had an idea. He wanted to buy a camper trailer, outfit it with recording equipment, take it to festivals and community events, and invite people to step inside and tell a story about someone who’d changed their life. Then he would edit the stories and give them to the people they were about. 

He found a trailer for sale and drove out to Saskatchewan to pick it up. His wife, Kathryn Balzer, helped paint the interior and reupholster the cushions, preserving the 1970s vibe. Balzer then installed a pair of microphones and a soundboard. He called it the Chatterbox. 

Balzer thinks a lot about social media and artificial intelligence and the ways these technologies can contribute to social atomization — loneliness and isolation created by the breakdown of interpersonal bonds. He wanted to use the Chatterbox to explore how technology could be used to build human connection. 

“Does the use of this technology enhance embodied........

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