All Things Go Podcast

[00:00] Travis: This episode is sponsored by Baduk Pop and SmartGo One.

[00:06] Travis: Well, it happened.

[00:08] Travis: I was able to connect with my friend Adam, and we were able to play a game of Go on my birthday, which is really cool.

[00:17] Travis: I took the day off from work, got to hang out with my wife. We had a lot of fun.

[00:21] Travis: And I ended up going to the coffee shop that Adam and I have met at before, and we played a nice game. And I think it was about three hours between playing the game and then doing a little bit of a review.

[00:37] Travis: The game itself, I think we spent about two, two and a half hours. So it’s just nice to get that time. I never get to do in person or I never get to do live games.

[00:47] Travis: We started out as we always do. I think we’re chatting more about life in the beginning of the game. And then we quickly got into a fight on the board and a new situation that probably neither of us had ever been in.

[00:59] Travis: And I kind of dug myself into a hole early in the game with some fighting, and I had to really claw my way out with some weak groups.

[01:10] Travis: Adam played nicely, and then in the end game, I actually worked my way back. I was able to slowly chip away at the lead.

[01:21] Travis: And then in the end game, with about probably 10 or 20 moves to go,

[01:27] Travis: I completely enclosed an area incorrectly where there was a shortage of liberties and one group was gonna get captured. And Adam saw it beautifully and took advantage. So it was a lot of fun.

[01:40] Travis: I oftentimes, I don’t care whether I’m winning or losing.

[01:43] Travis: It’s also really nice to play some of that at my level.

[01:47] Travis: So, yeah, we had a really good time and it was a decent part of my 40th birthday. So with that, we will get started. This is all Things Go.

Interview with Manja Marz: Go and the Brain

[02:15] Travis: Our first conversation today is going to be with Manja Marz, who is a 4 dan in the European Go Federation. And she just recently took up a very interesting study about Go and the Brain.

[02:27] Travis: So I wanted to talk with her, understand what the study was about,

[02:30] Travis: what preliminary findings they have so far,

[02:33] Travis: and what some implications might be.

[02:36] Travis: So let’s go ahead and take a listen.

[02:42] Travis: Manja, thank you so much for joining and I’m excited to connect with you.

[02:47] Travis: First of all, again,

[02:48] Travis: congratulations on your new role as the EGF President. That’s really exciting.

[02:52] Manja Marz: Thank you very much.

[02:53] Travis: Maybe we could really focus on some of your work around Go and the Brain.

[03:00] Travis: So tell us a little bit about this study that you’ve been conducting that focuses on European professionals and the brain.

[03:10] Manja Marz: Yeah, actually, it all Started when I was sitting together with a very good friend of mine in a pub, drinking some alcohol.

[03:17] Manja Marz: We were thinking we should actually do something together. And she’s a psychologist and. Yeah, I’m a bioinformatician and a Go player. And so we were talking quite a lot and then maybe also drank too much.

[03:29] Manja Marz: I’m not sure.

[03:31] Manja Marz: Yeah. And then we have decided to try to understand what actually happens in the brain while you play Go. And then we came up with quite a lot of research questions.

[03:42] Manja Marz: And. Yeah, so this is something. Why we went into it.

[03:45] Manja Marz: Yeah, this is how it started.

[03:48] Travis: And I saw that you had published an article or an article was written back in December that was just starting to talk about what has been found so far. When you look at brain activity for playing chess, for playing Go, there were some studies, I think, in Minnesota and China,

[04:04] Travis: and it wasn’t really finding a whole lot. So my understanding is that you’ve actually undertaken the study at this point. Right. It happened, I think, was it like a week ago?

[04:16] Travis: Tell us a little bit of the setup. Like, how did you design this study?

[04:21] Manja Marz: Yeah, sure.

[04:23] Manja Marz: So we wanted to run here a pilot study.

[04:26] Manja Marz: And in order to make also really the strongest player participating,

[04:31] Manja Marz: we also needed money. So we first started to write a grant proposal, which was just a tiny one, so not too much, but still.

[04:39] Manja Marz: Yeah,

[04:40] Manja Marz: was something like 7,500 euro altogether to get it reduced a little bit to go for that. And so it got approved, which is nice.

[04:48] Manja Marz: The main topic for getting this kind of funding was actually to understand the difference. Differences between males and females. And that’s why in our pilot study, we had four males playing each other and four females playing each other.

[05:00] Manja Marz: And then also we wanted to compare the two groups with each other.

[05:04] Manja Marz: And then when we went into what actually has been done in chess and go likewise in the past,

[05:11] Manja Marz: we discovered that our pilot study is probably the biggest which ever happened in that direction. So.

[05:17] Travis: Wow.

[05:19] Manja Marz: I’m not sure. Maybe I like some studies. So if you have ideas, send them to me. I’m happy to cite that work also.

[05:26] Manja Marz: Yeah. And then we went into the setup and everybody got different things.

[05:33] Manja Marz: I mean, everybody the same, but different things which happen to you. So you really got a lot of cables because you get a hat on that hat. We had optodes.

[05:43] Manja Marz: And these optodes, they are measuring,

[05:45] Manja Marz: or actually you have 16 ingoing and 16 outgoing optodes. So some of them send light and the other ones receive light. And what is actually measured is how much oxygen is actually consumed in that area of the brain.

[05:59] Manja Marz: So the optodes go something like 1 1/2 centimeters into the brain. So we measure mainly the upper part or the outer outside part of the brain, the cortex and other centers, like what you feel and so on.

[06:13] Manja Marz: They are more inside the brain. So this we couldn’t measure. Right.

[06:17] Manja Marz: And so that’s why you have like 32 optodes on your head. So it was a lot of cables.

[06:23] Manja Marz: And additionally, we were measuring the pulse,

[06:27] Manja Marz: which happened already in Korea. Maybe you have seen some of these Go professionals which played each other. And it got way more exciting and was transferred in TV because you could see poker face.

[06:39] Manja Marz: Nobody is moving, but the pulse is really going up, like more than 180 even. Yeah. So this was really amazing. And people liked it a lot. And we wanted to measure that as well.

[06:48] Manja Marz: And then we also measured the muscle tone because maybe you know that at least for me, it’s like this. If I have really a very difficult game or afterwards my shoulders are hurting so much because we are.

[06:59] Manja Marz: We are actually contracting our muscles a lot and we should be more relaxed. And this is also showing how much tension you have inside yourself. And this is something we wanted to measure as well.

[07:11] Manja Marz: And so these were the parts which are from the psychological side, measured at the same time. We had this IZIS AI Board, so where you automatically on time,

[07:20] Manja Marz: know which move has been taken.

[07:22] Manja Marz: And also we have the very newest clocks, like the DGT clock. So it was played on a real board,

[07:29] Manja Marz: connected and synchronized with all the other data so that we really can see what actually happens on the board. We have the AI analysis telling us where are the mistakes.

[07:39] Manja Marz: And what we do miss in this setup is now players may recognize a mistake way later than it actually happened or recognized by the AI. And that’s why afterwards, the players had to also say how they felt and at which positions they realized that as a mistake or the opponent made a mistake.

[07:57] Manja Marz: So that we can bridge what we see in the brain, what they felt towards what actually happened on the Go board.

[08:04] Manja Marz: Yeah.

[08:05] Travis: Does this tie back to any of the little pieces of. I don’t know if they’re actually true or just the thoughts of, like, oh, when you play these games, they just talk about the amount of energy that is consumed right when you are literally thinking through these positions.

[08:22] Travis: Because it is such a complex level of cognitive load.

[08:26] Travis: This would try to effectively bridge the gap between what players are thinking,

[08:31] Travis: what is actually happening in terms of use of oxygen in their brain and sort

[08:36] Manja Marz: of all of that.

[08:36] Travis: Is that fair?

[08:38] Manja Marz: Yeah, that is absolutely Correct. So maybe you can also check out our Twitch channel, each of the European Go Federation, because all of them are recorded there. And maybe you can also see a little bit more there.

[08:51] Manja Marz: Indeed. So just before the players started playing, so all the preparation took like one hour. They started their games at 10 and at 9am they had to be there then get all the cables and then they were measuring the ground level before the games actually started.

[09:06] Manja Marz: And then when they were playing,

[09:08] Manja Marz: you would see the brain as an image. And what is yellow is. Yeah, roundabout. The same as what you measured as a baseline in the beginning. And when it turns more into the direction of red, then that would mean here, in these areas of the brain, more oxygen is actually consumed.

[09:25] Manja Marz: That usually shows that this area of the brain is activated at that time.

[09:31] Manja Marz: And it can also turn from yellow into the direction of greenish,

[09:34] Manja Marz: meaning that it is actually less than the baseline, which very often happens after a certain area of the brain has been really used quite a lot. There is also a relaxed stage afterwards, so the brain turns green.

[09:47] Manja Marz: What you could see is that at some points certain areas of the brain were used and sometimes the entire brain was used.

[09:54] Manja Marz: And that was also a very interesting observation. And especially we could observe that.

[10:00] Manja Marz: I mean, you are thinking when it’s your turn and you are thinking when it’s your opponent turn. Obviously, however, in the moment your opponent presses the clock, you get super activated.

[10:09] Manja Marz: The entire brain is doing something. And this is interesting. So it’s something like, okay, it’s my turn, I should do something. Yeah. So. And I didn’t expect that because, I mean, I would have just thought it’s.

[10:20] Manja Marz: Yeah. And then another thing where consistently every brain was working way more is when you get into time pressure. So when you’re byo-yomi, we use the Fischer time. Or when you really run towards the zero minutes your brain got so much activated.

[10:35] Manja Marz: And another thing is when you really made a huge mistake, then all your brain really got crazy. Yeah. So all areas really explode. It looked like, wow, what’s going on.

[10:46] Manja Marz: Yeah. So these are the three things which in common,

[10:49] Manja Marz: independent of which gender and what player, individual player, was actually playing. We could observe. Yeah.

[10:55] Travis: Going into it, was the hypothesis pretty simple, which is that you figured that there were these moments like you just articulated that there will be more brain activity.

[11:04] Travis: What’s your sense for how it might be different if it was a new player, a beginner versus a professional? Because you did recruit very high level, either amateur or professional players.

[11:18] Travis: Correct.

[11:19] Manja Marz: Yeah. So in this pilot study, we didn’t look for that we had only very strong male players and very strong female players.

[11:25] Manja Marz: However,

[11:26] Manja Marz: we saw in the comments of the Twitch that people were way more interested in how does a weaker player looking compared to a stronger player. However, I cannot judge on that or say something on it.

[11:37] Manja Marz: But since a lot of people were interested, we want to reconsider this for the next study.

Sponsor Break

[11:45] Travis: This episode is sponsored by Baduk Pop, the app that makes learning Go fun and accessible with interactive puzzles, bite sized lessons and an AI tutor to guide you step by step.

[11:56] Travis: It’s perfect for players on the move. You can download it or learn more at BadukPop.com that’s B A D U K P O P. com this episode is also sponsored by SmartGo One the All in One Go Toolkit for Apple devices.

[12:12] Travis: Replay professional games, solve problems and keep your SGF collection organized all in one elegant app.

[12:18] Travis: Check it out at SmartGo.com or wherever you go to get your apps.

[12:26] Travis: What are sort of the next steps? At this point you’ve only had sort of preliminary results,

[12:32] Travis: right?

[12:33] Manja Marz: So what we actually saw is that we have a lot of data now. So from each game we have something like I think it was only like 20 gigabytes of data.

[12:43] Manja Marz: So now we have 12 games in total. So we are already at almost half a petabyte of data which needs to be analyzed now.

[12:52] Manja Marz: And that is exactly what I also do in my normal daily business. I’m really dealing with a lot of data, heterogeneous data, and trying to bring it together. And I make advertisement because it’s so much data.

[13:03] Manja Marz: We are very happy if you are a programmer and you are happy to analyze the data with us together. You are invited to join the team, so please do so and just contact me.

[13:11] Manja Marz: So we expect now for the next probably six to nine months to analyze the data. And it starts with something very simple like normalizing the data, which is already a little difficult because if a player, and that is normal, just moves the head to the side or something, right then the optos are measuring a more intense sight on that side and less on that side.

[13:32] Manja Marz: And that needs to be normalized, which is possible because we also had some stabilizations in the head so we can actually correct the data in that way.

[13:41] Manja Marz: And also you need to distinguish what is the baseline and background compared to the real peaks, the events which actually happen in the brain to look for that.

[13:50] Manja Marz: So this will take a while. And then of course we need to connect this data,

[13:53] Manja Marz: which also means that we have to go into the videos which have been taken off the players what they verbally said and felt during the game and connect these things.

[14:01] Manja Marz: And that will take quite a while.

[14:03] Manja Marz: But already without having the data normalized, we saw some very specific and interesting features. So one of my favorites is actually that there’s indeed and I didn’t expect that a huge difference between the individual players.

[14:19] Manja Marz: So some of them are probably more emotional than others,

[14:23] Manja Marz: some are more working pattern based, some are more working with their visual center. So this was very nice to observe. And some of them have more like the entire brain being activated.

[14:34] Manja Marz: But the biggest difference was actually indeed between females and males. And I didn’t expect that, to be honest. I mean, there was a long discussion why in chess and in Go, females play different.

[14:45] Manja Marz: And there’s always the statistical reason.

[14:48] Manja Marz: But as I said, we didn’t normalize the data yet and analyze them in detail. But the signal was so clear that I’m pretty certain that what comes out will be that females brain work different when they play it than males.

[15:01] Manja Marz: For males, for example, very often the occipital part of the brain was activated so they are looking more the board. Females don’t do that much.

[15:09] Manja Marz: It was very interesting. Also pattern based is a lot what happens for males.

[15:15] Manja Marz: Like deep thinking, it’s more in the prefrontal cortex.

[15:18] Manja Marz: I’m not a neurologist, so I’m sorry if I speak wrong. So I just wrote it last week. Yeah, so yeah.

[15:25] Manja Marz: And. And then for females it’s very interesting because the temporal parts of the brain are actually highly activated and way more than anything else.

[15:34] Manja Marz: And that part as I learned now is associated to social behavior and interactions. And that is very interesting.

[15:42] Manja Marz: There is the theory for a long time already in chess that one of the differences between male and females is an evolutionary one that females are more trying to emphasize with the pieces which happen on the board, whereas males are more looking on territorial aspects of the game.

[16:00] Manja Marz: And it could be exactly what we see in the brain. Of course we don’t know how, how that works, but this is exactly what actually was also highlighted a lot.

[16:09] Manja Marz: And you can really differ what is female and male. And also one very interesting part is that we had one candidate which turned from male to female and that one was very clearly female brain working.

[16:24] Manja Marz: It was very interesting.

[16:26] Travis: How much do you think your work and your level as a, as a Go player because you are a 4 dan in the EGF system.

[16:34] Travis: How much do you think that was important in terms of framing the study asking these important questions?

[16:41] Manja Marz: I’m not sure I would Say that also everybody else could ask for it, but I just like to explore new things. And for me it was very exciting to do the study and I’m very much looking forward now for the next months analyzing the data.

[16:53] Manja Marz: And of course it should end with a publication which we would like to present to the world. And yeah, maybe we can have another interview then in a couple of months when we finished analyzing the data.

[17:04] Manja Marz: Yeah. But for me at least it is super exciting and looking very much forward for the results.

[17:11] Manja Marz: Maybe I can comment a little bit on all the nice comments we received from our viewers because this went a little bit into the same direction. So people were asking how does a brain of kids work?

[17:22] Manja Marz: Yeah. So do we see actually similarities or are they different or whatever? My hypothesis is we didn’t study it,

[17:29] Manja Marz: that kids brain works similar to female brain. I would say so.

[17:33] Manja Marz: I’m not sure. It’s just my personal experience, I don’t know.

[17:37] Manja Marz: So this is something people were very interested in to have to study also on kids.

[17:42] Manja Marz: We didn’t talk too much about elderly people. But I think this is a very important thing to do.

[17:48] Manja Marz: And also something which I try to establish at the moment here in Vienna is to have blind Go also people who are visually disabled to work with them and see what that actually does with the brain.

[18:01] Manja Marz: But I’m just in the stage of establishing the group and maybe they can be integrated. So like that I think we have also a better picture what happens combined maybe with weaker players versus stronger players as we discussed.

[18:14] Manja Marz: And also something which came up several times during our experiment were that people were super interested in nutrition. So what effect actually nutrition has on our Go games. And of course I cannot comment on it.

[18:26] Manja Marz: I personally work together with a nutrition to make myself more stable during the game because I observed that I’m very big fighter, I can think deep, but this has a limit.

[18:38] Manja Marz: So like a time limit of one and a half hours. And so I was like 100% for one and a half hours and then I was 22 suddenly.

[18:46] Travis: Oh my goodness.

[18:47] Manja Marz: And I didn’t understand why this happened and it was terrible. So I worked with nutrition together and probably I really ran out of energy at some point of the game and so I learned how to eat better, what to eat which is more stable,

[19:00] Manja Marz: not to get fat at the same time. So.

[19:03] Manja Marz: And I think this is also something interesting to study which I really would like to go into. But this is a different study maybe for the future.

[19:11] Manja Marz: So to understand better what influence food or yeah, nutrition has on our Games.

[19:17] Manja Marz: And also I would be interested to understand how much influence does it take to be stressed or have different lifestyles? Because we do know that Asian people,

[19:27] Manja Marz: I think I don’t know any Asian person who would drink alcohol the night before tournament.

[19:32] Manja Marz: I’ve never heard about that. In Europe it’s different. So in Europe, I know most of the strong players, they really like to party the night before and then they sometimes didn’t even sleep, go to the game, had a good night and played perfect.

[19:47] Manja Marz: How’s it possible?

[19:48] Manja Marz: This is something interesting and I really would like to understand.

[19:52] Manja Marz: Maybe it’s just different cultural aspects and you just need to feel happy and that’s it. I don’t know what it is. And I also would like to study that. But this is also some future work, not really related to the study now, but it was discussed in our Twitch channel as well.

[20:07] Manja Marz: People really wanted to know what influence that has. And these are great ideas. I think we should understand a bit better what we are doing.

[20:14] Travis: It’s good.

[20:15] Travis: These are great future ideas. So I appreciate this. Actually, I wanted to ask you, what is your take on the level of interest? Because like you said, I mean, in academia you need to get grants, right?

[20:27] Travis: You need to get funding to do these things. What do you think the level of interest is at a high level for getting more of this research? I mean, obviously the interest from the Go community is there.

[20:37] Travis: How do you think it is navigating it from a funding perspective?

[20:41] Manja Marz: I really have no idea. This is completely new land and this is exactly what I like to explore. So I like to Go areas nobody did before. I have no answer to that.

[20:52] Manja Marz: I think in general it should be something a normal person who is evaluating such grant proposals has a connection to and is interested in.

[21:02] Manja Marz: And here in this study, I think we also label this like this because this is what we try to understand. I mean, what we do in Go is really on the top level trying to understand how much can we focus, what influences our focus.

[21:15] Manja Marz: And that is also important for a lot of jobs. Like just think about the pilot. It is very important that the pilot can focus over a long time and is able to make really decisions in the moment.

[21:25] Manja Marz: Yeah. And this is something people are directly connected with.

[21:28] Manja Marz: Right. So and it is important to put it also under an umbrella where people can take home something and maybe that might be a bridge. I’m not sure. Sometimes there are also funding calls which going into a certain direction.

[21:42] Manja Marz: And then if you have an idea how to connect it, like in this case, it was the gender thing. So there was really. We want to understand the difference between genders,

[21:49] Manja Marz: and that was actually very welcome because this is anyway, something we wanted to study. So this was great.

[21:54] Travis: Right.

[21:54] Manja Marz: So that can. That can work. And yeah, so as I said, this is a pilot study for further studies, and we would like to repeat it with a larger cohort with more Go players.

[22:04] Manja Marz: However, it also has technical limitations because the thing which you get on your head, it costs actually something like 150,000 euro,

[22:11] Manja Marz: and it’s not like you have just something like 100 laying around or something. Yeah, so this is pretty, pretty difficult. So I would love to do the study with the entire European Go Congress where you have 800 people.

[22:25] Manja Marz: Wow, that would be so cool. Yeah, but I think that won’t be possible.

[22:29] Manja Marz: Yeah. So we have then also some limitations, but, yeah,

[22:34] Manja Marz: got it.

[22:34] Travis: So there are all sorts of other future studies you could imagine. It could be looking at age differences, level of skill differences, looking at nutrition and sort of metabolism.

[22:45] Travis: It sounds like there’s a lot of different directions it could be taken into.

[22:49] Travis: This is great. Well, Manja, thank you so much for getting into this and letting us know about it. It’s obviously a huge area that people are interested in, the Go community.

[22:58] Travis: And I look forward to hopefully talking to you after the data has been kind of reviewed and analyzed.

[23:05] Manja Marz: Yeah, same for me. I would be happy to tell you about the results.

[23:09] Manja Marz: Maybe six to nine months would be a good option. Yeah,

[23:13] Manja Marz: perfect. And everybody who’s interested in this study, let us know. We really would like to also get your critique, your comments. All that makes it stronger. And I think if you have a strong study,

[23:23] Manja Marz: then you have also the chance to do more in similar directions. So every kind of comment is really highly welcome and also your help if you would like to analyze the data with us.

[23:33] Travis: Perfect. Thank you for that. Shout out to the community.

[23:36] Manja Marz: Yeah, thank you very much.

A Surprise Birthday Interview with Carolina

[23:59] Travis: Next up, we’re going to transition to an unlikely interview I actually had with my wife.

[24:05] Travis: I was not expecting her to do this, but for my 40th birthday,

[24:10] Travis: she had the great idea for us to do a sort of time capsule where I could just talk about what was happening at this stage in my life,

[24:17] Travis: and I could talk about, you know, how I was doing, how our kids were doing, how life is going, all those sorts of things.

[24:23] Travis: And then she did a really nice,

[24:26] Travis: slightly prepared and impromptu interview where she just asked me questions about the podcast. And so that’s what you’re gonna hear next. Just some thoughts about behind the scenes,

[24:37] Travis: what I thought about different parts of the show.

[24:41] Travis: And so that’s what you’re gonna listen to now is just a short conversation between her and me,

[24:45] Travis: and hopefully it yields some fun and interesting insights, at least around my thoughts about the podcast and how I think about it. So let’s go to that now.

[24:59] Carolina: Let’s talk about all things. Go a little bit more.

[25:02] Travis: Oh, my gosh.

[25:03] Carolina: Okay, so origin story, what made you start this podcast?

[25:09] Travis: Well,

[25:10] Travis: as people know,

[25:12] Travis: I think I’ve mentioned it in multiple little spots over the seasons.

[25:16] Travis: At the time, there was simply no other podcast. I think there was the pro Go podcast and I was listening to that a little bit. It was on YouTube and it was great.

[25:25] Travis: I loved it.

[25:27] Travis: Gazza and Xiaodai, who run that podcast, were nice enough and have come on to the show many times, which is really nice. They’re such nice people.

[25:36] Travis: But that was all on YouTube and you had to watch it. You had to look at it. And I was usually driving in the car or I was coming up from work or doing grocery.

[25:44] Travis: I was like, I want to just listen to something like slightly mindlessly about Go. And there’s just literally nothing.

[25:49] Travis: So that was why. So for a long time, I think you heard me hem and haw. I was like, oh, like,

[25:56] Travis: just wish

[25:56] Carolina: there was more out there.

[25:57] Travis: Yeah, I just wish there was more.

[26:00] Travis: Kind of like when you think about mainstream sports here,

[26:04] Travis: like, you think about here, like American football is so popular,

[26:08] Travis: especially among adults of adult men. I’d say,

[26:11] Travis: you know, there’s shows about. Shows about what’s happening in football and.

[26:16] Travis: And it’s just fun to talk about it. It doesn’t need to be necessarily useful, but that was the impetus.

[26:23] Carolina: What does your typical recording or prep process look like?

[26:27] Travis: Wow. Excellent question. Sorry, guys. Just very proud of my wife for. Good question.

[26:36] Carolina: Prep for being able to use her brain when it’s mostly offline.

[26:40] Travis: Yes,

[26:42] Travis: it hasn’t really changed over time, but what I do is I reach out to the person I’m trying to contact. And again,

[26:48] Travis: people in the community have been incredible with suggesting people with also just offering their time when they didn’t know what the heck the podcast was. But I would email, I’d say, hi, this is, you know, the show.

[26:59] Travis: I interview people in the Go community and I would love to have some time for an interview. And then what I do is I. We obviously find a time to schedule and then about,

[27:10] Travis: I don’t know, three or four days before, I will try to just prepare a bunch of research questions. So most of the people I talk to do have some sort of online footprint, and so I can actually research it.

[27:22] Travis: And so, yeah, I’ll kind of go through, you know, any interviews.

[27:26] Travis: The European Go Journal has been great, actually.

[27:29] Travis: I’ll buy the issue of the Journal because I want to read an interview from a couple years ago of that person, and then I can build on that interview with other questions or other sites.

[27:41] Travis: So I do that. I send it to the person a few days before.

[27:45] Travis: I think I’ve almost never gotten anybody saying, like, oh, change this. Or like, I don’t want to talk about that, but I always offer it.

[27:52] Travis: There’s been one person recently who is like, huh, you’re not even asking me about this other thing I did. And again, it wasn’t. They weren’t saying it in a snarky way.

[28:01] Travis: Yeah, they were just, like, surprised, like, oh. And I said, oh, thank you for that. Like, I didn’t realize that I missed that part.

[28:08] Carolina: Yeah.

[28:08] Travis: So that was. That was actually helpful.

[28:10] Carolina: Oh, nice.

[28:11] Travis: So I don’t know if that indicated that maybe I’d gotten a little bit sloppy just because again, I’m usually doing these prep. You know, when I’m doing these prep questions, it’s like, maybe right when the boys have gone down for bed, right

[28:22] Carolina: after a full day of work, I’m a little punchy. Full evening of wrangling boys.

[28:27] Travis: Yes.

[28:28] Travis: But the best ones are. The best ones are when I. I’ve looked at them two or three times because every time it’s like the questions get too vague. I want get them more concise or they sound great when you say them in your head.

[28:39] Travis: When you say them out loud, you’re like, this sounds strange. So I do that and then I send them the web link for the recording studio. Use a group called Alitu A L I T U.

[28:49] Travis: It’s awesome. One stop shop for. Just like, if you want to do a podcast, it’s incredible. Like, I could not do this without that.

[28:57] Carolina: And not a sponsor.

[28:58] Travis: Just not a sponsor.

[29:00] Travis: No. But I’ve mentioned it to some other folks and then.

[29:04] Travis: And then I send over the link for it. It’s just a web link and people can hop on. Generally, it’s been smooth most of the time,

[29:11] Travis: but.

[29:11] Carolina: Yeah.

[29:12] Carolina: What’s the part you enjoy the most? The planning, the recording, the editing or the sharing?

[29:19] Travis: I absolutely abhor the editing. It is like putting a knife in my eye or something. It’s like, so painful.

[29:28] Travis: And I think you’ve told me a bunch of times, like, Travis, like, why edit it? So Much.

[29:32] Carolina: Yeah.

[29:32] Carolina: And to give people context or just to remember, whenever I look at your screen, it’s like every few seconds there’s like a red,

[29:40] Carolina: you know,

[29:41] Carolina: line taken as, like, so many edits.

[29:44] Travis: Yeah. I think at one point I took a picture of that, of the whole episode, of an hour episode, and it showed, I think, like, thousands of cuts.

[29:51] Travis: And I’ve also connected.

[29:52] Carolina: What are you cutting out?

[29:53] Travis: What am I cutting out?

[29:54] Travis: So the season episodes, and then not for the unscripted generally, but if you’ve been listening to the show, you’ll notice that I’m still doing interviews.

[30:03] Carolina: Right.

[30:03] Travis: So those might be unscripted and unedited, and they might be scripted and edited, but for the edited ones,

[30:09] Travis: I’m cutting out filler words where possible and appropriate the editing technology. Sometimes, as we will notice, sometimes it can be a little bit abrupt to hear, like, a cut. So I try to really make that thoughtful.

[30:23] Travis: And then I’m also trying to make it concise.

[30:27] Travis: I want to give, like, some spaces because we only absorb information at a certain speed. So I’ll put in silence also, too.

[30:34] Travis: But sometimes I’m also just trying to cut away stuff that just is not really.

[30:38] Travis: Sometimes my questions are too unfocused, and so I will make it shorter.

[30:42] Travis: Yeah. Like, if there’s just a piece of the conversation that really isn’t about anything, I’ll. I’ll cut that out. But generally speaking, what they tell me is staying in.

[30:50] Carolina: Okay, wait.

[30:51] Carolina: And so what part do you enjoy the most?

[30:54] Travis: I love the. The actual interviews. I’d say. I think you’ve heard me say, what do you think I love the most?

[30:59] Carolina: Yeah, the interviews.

[31:00] Travis: Yeah, doing the interviews and the reaching

[31:03] Carolina: out, the excitement of I want to talk to this person and then crafting the email and then getting responses.

[31:09] Travis: Well, it’s the thrill of them being like, yep, I’ll do it.

[31:11] Travis: I’m like, yes.

[31:13] Travis: Yeah, it’s really exciting because oftentimes, not always. And I like that it’s not always somebody that’s more known in the Go community, but oftentimes it is somebody that’s bigger and as they’ve been doing something for a long time.

[31:24] Travis: So, yeah, I’ll be honest, I love it.

[31:27] Travis: The interviews I can love. Sometimes I think I will love an interview, and I come out of it, I’m like, oh, wow. Like, it was fine, but I wasn’t as obsessed with it as I thought I would be.

[31:38] Travis: And usually it goes the other way, too. Sometimes I go into one and I’m like, I have no Idea if this will be anything.

[31:45] Travis: And that’s hard too, because what do you tell that person if you’re like, hey,

[31:48] Travis: didn’t go great. I did do that with one person and I talked with you about it. It was tricky.

[31:55] Travis: We had one where there was no technical issue. Everything came through well. But the person with whom I was speaking,

[32:03] Travis: it needed a lot of visual and it was just really hard.

[32:07] Travis: Even the most articulate person, it was just hard to get across.

[32:11] Travis: You helped me with that, but I just had to say, hey, like, I’m so sorry. Like, unfortunately, it just.

[32:16] Travis: Yeah, it’s gonna get lost.

[32:18] Travis: And they were very understanding. And maybe we can do something further different next time. And then there was. Oh, the other thing. I might be getting to your questions.

[32:27] Travis: One was like. What was like the most frustrating one?

[32:29] Carolina: Yep.

[32:30] Travis: Oh, I had this one with.

[32:33] Travis: Her name is Silvia Lozeva, who is just in the season four.

[32:38] Travis: She is known for doing a TED Talk on go.

[32:41] Travis: I think it’s the only TED Talk I’ve seen at all on go. And. And that actually really probably among the most downloaded things online. I’d say outside of the Go Magic website, there are some really popular videos there.

[32:54] Travis: She did this years ago at this point.

[32:57] Travis: Really, really nice person. I got to interview her. And she is a traveler. She’s an academic, but she travels a lot. And she is based in Australia,

[33:05] Travis: but she went to travel. I forget where. I think it was like Tasmania or something.

[33:11] Travis: And she was really nice to do an interview with me while she was in her car or in a rental in Tasmania or somewhere. I might be getting the place wrong, so I apologize if I am.

[33:22] Travis: But she was on her phone and we did it and I really enjoyed the interview. She was so natural with it, so authentic with like what the questions were and all these things.

[33:31] Travis: It just. The conversation organically went to places I was like, oh, this is what you want.

[33:37] Travis: And there were sound issues throughout. But I was like, you know what? I’m gonna ignore it because in the past when I’ve had sound issues afterwards,

[33:44] Travis: sometimes it sounds bad on the live feed, but when I listen to it afterward, it’s totally fine.

[33:51] Travis: Well,

[33:52] Travis: this time afterwards, I listened to it and it was completely garbled. I was so crushed.

[33:59] Travis: She was really nice and she was willing to re record it and it was a great conversation still.

[34:04] Travis: But you can’t help but remember that.

[34:07] Carolina: Yeah, yeah.

[34:08] Carolina: And so. Okay, so most frustrating. What was one of the best experiences for an episode?

[34:17] Travis: It may not have come across in the actual recording itself. But the lead up and the work and the help I got for talking to Naoki Kumasu. He’s the Go board maker in Japan of, like, the traditional way of making these Go boards.

[34:34] Travis: For hundreds and hundreds of years.

[34:36] Travis: That whole process and then doing the interview for me was probably one of my the best experiences. It was so much fun.

[34:44] Travis: Even though the information that was provided might not have been the most mind blowing, some of the things he said were really interesting. I think it was just the aura around it.

[34:53] Travis: And like, that is exactly, in a nutshell, what I love about Go. It’s like the mystique and the artisan kind of history,

[35:01] Travis: all these things around Go, like the classic Go boards, the wood that gets me into it.

[35:08] Travis: So, again, we had a really nice person, Raichiro, to do that and set that up,

[35:14] Travis: as well as somebody else in Japan. So, like, I was completely reliant on other people.

[35:19] Travis: But it was a long process. I mean, so it felt like I had to write the questions,

[35:24] Travis: communicate with these people. I couldn’t speak Japanese, so I had to do AI translate with Naoki on Instagram to get him to talk. So it was all very much worth it.

[35:35] Travis: I did just have a Go friend of mine say that they skipped that episode.

[35:40] Travis: Like, that just didn’t speak to them as something they wanted to listen to.

[35:45] Travis: And of course, I. I wasn’t crushed, but I was also, like, I put so much work.

[35:48] Travis: Like, there was so much work that went into that.

[35:51] Travis: I wish they would listen to it.

[35:53] Travis: Um, but I. I totally get it. So that was my. The best one. And then the most fun one was with chess grandmaster Tiger Hillarp Persson,

[36:03] Travis: he’s a really fun, interesting guy. He kind of says what’s on his mind, and he can really play around with words and with how he thinks about it. So it was really fun to talk with him.

[36:14] Travis: He had some really funny quips.

[36:19] Carolina: Okay, let’s see. Looking ahead, where would you love to see the podcast Go in the future?

[36:27] Travis: The biggest shift that I told you about, and I guess I’ll say it here, is that seasons one through four were mostly driven by my personal interests, almost completely.

[36:38] Travis: So it was like, I’m gonna go around by the crossover between who I can get to talk to me and what I’m interested in.

[36:47] Travis: It had been much less driven by the outside world. It was mostly driven by me.

[36:53] Travis: Then what happened was there was this kind of cycle of pseudo burnout that I think you would see regularly and honestly, like I’ve talked about on the show, and Intros and things like this.

[37:07] Travis: It’s a balance, right? I mean, you’re balancing work, family, personal, all those things are really important,

[37:13] Travis: and making sure that there’s time for those things and it’s sustainable. And so the seasons were great because I loved that I didn’t have the time pressure. I could do it when I needed to.

[37:22] Travis: And I think some people along the way were a little bit surprised. Not too many, but some were surprised at how slow. Like, for example, this guy, Peter Doggers, who is at Chess.com, you know, they produce content all the time, constantly.

[37:36] Travis: They have teams. I mean, it’s a huge company.

[37:38] Travis: And so when I told him that his episode had released for season four,

[37:43] Travis: he was like, wow.

[37:45] Travis: It’s been literally,

[37:47] Travis: I think it was like six months since we had done the recording. He’s like, this is ancient.

[37:53] Travis: So that’s a long winded way to say, like, things had gotten very intense, but I was able to do it on my own schedule.

[37:59] Travis: And so you kept on hearing me, I think, say, hey, like,

[38:03] Travis: there were points I loved in this, in the process and all that,

[38:06] Travis: but then I’d always want to come back and do more, but it would just get to that point of intensity. So then I had this moment after season four released back in February of this year where I said, okay, I want to do more.

[38:22] Travis: But after four seasons of that, it’s really intense.

[38:26] Travis: I was adjusting how many episodes and all that.

[38:30] Travis: And to be honest, I was just really curious. I wanted to get some sense from anybody in the community, like, do you want other content? Like, do you want,

[38:39] Travis: you know, if it’s not an interview, but you just want to hear me talk about other things? Like, is that even of interest?

[38:46] Travis: Again, it’s not a sample size, it’s not representative, but I just randomly reached out to a few people, had made comments over the years on the online posts,

[38:55] Travis: and a few people were just like, you know what? Like, it wouldn’t hurt. It would be great. Like,

[38:59] Travis: in that I related to them because I saw other people that were going through the same thing I was. They wanted a hobby. They have so much other stuff going on in their lives,

[39:08] Travis: and it’s just a nice way to break away mentally for a minute, just to mix it up. And that, to me, was a big shift recently. So now I’m doing these unscripted episodes.

[39:19] Travis: It feels way more sustainable. Like, I don’t feel nearly the level of stress yet of having to build out a whole season.

[39:27] Travis: There was a nice arc that could happen with the season I could really shape that where I’m not doing that as much now,

[39:33] Travis: but I’m peppering in more edited curated episodes every once in a while as I can get people I want. I don’t feel the pressure as much and then I can do the unscripted episodes.

[39:45] Travis: So it’s been quite honestly uncomfortable for me to do the unscripted ones.

[39:50] Carolina: Tell me more about that.

[39:51] Travis: Just because I I hate that I can’t edit out a lot of things.

[39:55] Travis: I’ll just edit out silence. So if I have a lot of silence cause I’m thinking about something or looking at something to talk about.

[40:01] Travis: But yeah, it’s just uncomfortable.

[40:03] Travis: But I’m getting more used to it.

[40:06] Travis: The interviews I feel very comfortable with. It’s also kind of tied to my work right? Like what I do as a financial planner. I talk to people.

[40:13] Travis: But yeah, so now it’s gone to like unscripted episodes weekly with interviews, more curated episodes like the previous seasons.

[40:24] Travis: I’ve already had at least one episode, one interview curated episode since the unscripted one started and there should be more to come.

[40:33] Carolina: Awesome.

Closing

[40:39] Travis: Thanks so much for listening. That is all we have for this episode of All Things Go, but I really appreciate you taking the time and I’ll catch you next time.

Sponsor Messages

[41:00] Travis: On a final note, I just want to thank again our sponsors for the episode. SmartGo One is your all in one Go toolkit for iPhone, iPad and Mac. Whether you’re replaying games, solving problems or managing your SGF files,

[41:13] Travis: it includes a massive professional game library, a strong KataGo engine and polished recording tools so you can study master games, play the AI and cleanly record your own over the board games all in one place.

[41:27] Travis: Our other sponsor is Baduk Pop, which is an app that makes Go simple and fun to learn with interactive puzzles, short lessons and an AI tutor that helps you improve wherever you are.

[41:37] Travis: It also gives you daily ranked problems that adjust to your level themed sets like Life and Death and tesuji plus AI and online play so you can practice and then test what you’ve learned.

[41:47] Travis: You can check it out at BadukPop.com that’s b a d u k pop com.