All Things Go Podcast

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Timestamps correspond to the published episode.

[00:05] Travis: This episode is sponsored by Baduk Pop and SmartGo One.
[00:30] Travis: Hey everybody, welcome back. Season six is underway on All Things Go, and it was an eventful summer break.
[00:44] Travis: If you are just joining the show for the first time, we had a couple-month hiatus just for summer things. It gave me a chance to focus on other things, do some travel, vacation, family things. But now we’re back, so maybe I can first catch up and give you a sense for what was going on during the break.
[01:05] Travis: First, on the personal side, I won’t get into much detail, but there were some more significant things that happened with family, a medical situation, a new diagnosis, which was definitely a big one and something that I think my whole family had to adjust to. So that was very intense, but it just makes you realize that you can’t take things for granted. You can’t obviously live every day like it’s your last. But yeah, it was something that was pretty heavy.
[01:39] Travis: It actually affected my ability to go to the U.S. Go Congress, which is the first congress I’ve ever gone to, of any congress, and really the first Go-related event I’ve gone to outside of going to an informal Go club meetup or going to play Go with somebody.
[02:00] Travis: So that was actually a really fun event. It got a little bit cut short because of the family matter, family medical matter. But it was a lot of fun with my dad and one of my sons, and I treated it very much as a chance to go and just meet up with some of the people that I’ve been able to meet through the podcast, who have been just many great people, and it was really wonderful.
[02:28] Travis: It makes such a big difference to put faces to names, even if I’ve seen that face on a recording for one of the episodes or an interview, because I do have the ability to see the guest as I’m interviewing them. But earlier on, some of the technology I was using was only audio, so it was good to go to the Congress and do that.
[02:48] Travis: I also got to do a little bit of camping, which was great. That was more earlier in the summer, in July. In August, that didn’t happen quite as much.

Why the Unscripted Episodes Are Continuing
[03:02] Travis: And one thing I just did a day or two ago is I wanted to ask anybody that was willing to answer in the Go community online whether these unscripted episodes were something that should continue. This was very much an experiment from the last season, which was technically season five, I guess.
[03:21] Travis: And to give you a quick recap, the concept up until season five, I had really just been telling myself, you know what, I’m just doing these things for the interest that I have in Go, right? And because I really wanted something to listen to about Go when I was going about my day in an audio format. And at the time there wasn’t anything.
[03:47] Travis: So I’ve done that, I think, for five seasons. First, for four seasons I had done that. And then I just touched base with a few people that had been listeners of the show, and I just asked them, I said, hey, would there be any interest in having something weekly? And they said, yeah, it would be nice.
[04:08] Travis: And one or two things that I remember were that the people who wanted to listen had, you know, a busy, normal life, and they just wanted to find a way to connect with their hobby of Go. And this would be a way to do that via a weekly show.
[04:22] Travis: But the only way to make it sustainable for me, in terms of not being able to have it as edited as my normal curated seasons and episodes where I interview guests and these things, was to really just record it live and have minimal editing, really just put it out there. So it’s a very different thing, and it’s not something that I feel I’m necessarily providing as much to as many people in the Go community. Again, just for the people that want to have something.
[04:55] Travis: I feel like the other episodes where I’m interviewing or looking into something add more value because that’s a voice that maybe hasn’t been heard in this format or to a certain level of depth.
[05:12] Travis: And so luckily the poll results came back pretty clear. It wasn’t the largest sample size, but it was big enough saying, yeah, let’s keep the unscripted episodes. So here is the first one, the first episode of season six.

Discord and the All Things Go Website
[05:32] Travis: At the end of the last season, I had started the All Things Go Discord server. And so it’s still relatively new, but that’s actually been a pleasant surprise. It’s been maybe 50 people that have joined the server. So it’s very small, very reasonable, and maybe there’s about, I’d say, five to 10 people active at any given time. So it’s pretty low-key, but it’s a nice place to just throw in thoughts that I have that are related to Go and the show.
[06:05] Travis: Obviously, if there’s something that’s more specific about Go that I want to ask the whole community, I would go elsewhere. But it’s been a good place to just voice some of those things, some of my ideas for the show. People have come back with great ideas for guests and other episodes, and then also show announcements of people I’m interviewing or have interviewed. So it’s working out really well. So if you haven’t seen that, please check it out. It’s in the episode notes.
[06:30] Travis: The other thing I did during the break is that I built out a very basic website for All Things Go, and I posted about this before I went on break. But the main reason for it, honestly, was really for my purposes when I would try to look into other podcasts or even my own podcast without a website.
[06:58] Travis: What I was finding when I would search through AI or just online is that the podcast is not very crawlable. It’s not something you can easily search through. There would be automated transcripts if you went into Apple Podcasts or Spotify or something like this, or another podcast website, but those things were generally not available without an account. So you would need an Apple account to get in, or a Spotify account to get in.
[07:29] Travis: And so I couldn’t easily, at my fingertips, say, hey, can you please tell me the episodes where I interviewed professional Go players throughout my show? I couldn’t get that unless, you know, an AI system could scrape that from the title of an episode or from the episode notes, which were not terribly in-depth. So I probably spent more time than I should have, and I built out a very basic website.
[08:00] Travis: The website is minimalist. The only purpose of that website, allthingsgogame.com, is to allow me, and potentially you, potentially others, to be able to search the episodes. So now there is a whole bunch of what I would call metadata on each episode.
[08:19] Travis: And if you go to the website, you’ll not only be able to play the episode audio, you’ll also see the names of the players and teachers involved and the names of tournaments, and you’ll see a full transcript and links to resources that are mentioned during the episode.
[08:38] Travis: And I’ll tell you what took the most time in that whole process was not even the making of the site. That was easy, right? I mean, you can make a very simple site quite quickly these days. It was actually the transcript.
[08:53] Travis: So, you know, at this point I have, I think, over 60 episodes, of which some are unscripted episodes, so maybe not interview-heavy, but 60 episodes. And when I would take my first tries at getting them transcribed appropriately, it was just trash. I mean, the automated transcription would do a horrible job.
[09:20] Travis: And so what I had to end up doing was really teaching an AI system to verify and check, use all Go terms, use correct Go terms, have those names and spellings be correct and consistent, and then get all the names of players across different languages correctly as well. Right? So if you spelled Shin Jin-seo a certain way, with a hyphen or without a hyphen, you have to keep it that way throughout. So it took quite a long time to get it correct.
[09:50] Travis: But once we did, now I can say that from scanning every single transcript, they’re about 99% where you want them to be, which is really great because now you can search it, right? So there’s a search box on the website, and that’s okay, right? Like, you can put in certain things. But honestly, if you use an AI system and just ask, now it’s nicely linked up and connected up into, you know, the sort of search system and SEO.
[10:27] Travis: And so that was mostly to be a resource for me, to be honest, just because I want to create, you know, interviews by theme. Right? If you want to hear about a Go professional player, I can now do that much easier. And I’m trying to think about the best way to do that, whether I put that in the Discord server or I put on the website maybe a couple different preferred lists or something like that.
[10:52] Travis: So if you have any preferences on that or any opinions, please let me know via email: AllThingsGoGame@gmail.com.

Sponsor Break
[10:58] 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. 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 dot com.
[11:23] Travis: This episode is also sponsored by SmartGo One, the all-in-one Go toolkit for Apple devices where you play professional games, solve problems, and keep your SGF collection organized all in one elegant app. Check it out at smartgo.com or wherever you go to get your apps.

Upcoming Interviews and International Go Perspectives
[11:36] Travis: So on top of the website project over the break, I also interviewed a dan-level Go player in Africa. So that was really cool, just to get another opinion of what playing Go is like in a completely different culture because most of the people I’ve interviewed have been more in places like the U.S., Western Europe, and Asia. So that was nice. I’m hoping I can put that into a usable format for the show.
[12:06] Travis: I also got to connect with a few people on teaching Go to youth and some really good do’s and don’ts. I got to speak with a sort of Go Teacher of the Year who’s a kid himself in the U.S., and the person that nominated him, who has decades of experience teaching kids locally. So that was a fun conversation that I’ve already recorded. So keep an eye out for that.
[12:40] Travis: And then I’ve been able to connect with a few people that came up in the r/baduk subreddit from Japan. So one person let us know that he’s a Go equipment refurbisher-builder. I don’t know if he makes things fresh. He works for a company that I’m trying to verify right now, but he seemed to have a lot of good thoughts on what to do and how to fix and refurbish Go equipment.
[13:03] Travis: So he doesn’t speak English, so we might do some sort of format that is more: he gives me emails back in English, he might give me some audio in Japanese, and then I can work that into an episode.
[13:22] Travis: Also, an owner of multiple Go salons who has been a Go organizer in Japan for many years is another conversation I’m looking forward to having. That one is scheduled as well.
[13:29] Travis: I was able to connect with somebody who did a multi-year Go project on games. He wanted to look at all sorts of games since the kind of beginning of recorded history to find commonalities between games, and there’s a great website for it and all these things. So I will fill you in on that. That will be an episode that I think will be really interesting because he already gave me the answers to that, and it was a whole kind of grant-based project over many years. So stay tuned for that.
[14:03] Travis: Very shortly, this coming week, I’m going to be interviewing Gunnar Dickfeld from the BOARD N’STONES publishing company in Germany, and he’s been nice enough to be willing to have a conversation. So questions are already sent his way, and that should be really fun.
[14:20] Travis: I mean, he’s met people like Ueno Asami, one of the top female Japanese Go players. He’s done some great books recently on Shin Jin-seo, and so I’m really looking forward to that. He’s done a lot of stuff in the German Go community too. I know he’s been teaching for years and then made the jump to publishing, so that will be fun.

Academia, Cognitive Science, and Go
[14:43] Travis: I’ve also wanted to stretch out for the coming seasons into academia more. I want to hear more about the history of ancient board games, where Go fits into that. I’ve reached out to a few academics. I haven’t had any very strong bites there yet.
[15:06] Travis: One professor based at Princeton University, which is very close to where I live, which is great, does a lot of work with Chinese and Asian literature and has had Go come up in that context. So stay tuned. That might be something that is interesting. I mean, again, I go by what is interesting, and sometimes these conversations end up bearing fruit. That’s what I’m gonna provide on the show.
[15:27] Travis: I would really love to hear from some cognitive scientists, talk to people that have expertise in pattern recognition and what exactly is happening in our brains when we are playing Go, and maybe some things that are not terribly obvious or intuitive about that process.
[15:43] Travis: That would be fascinating because when I started playing Go, and I had a very on-again, off-again experience playing Go or getting into Go, what I was finding was that I was in my mid-30s, so again, I was not a kid. And I would start trying to play it, I’d understand the basic rules, but then I would just fail immediately and I would get things wrong continuously. And I would be so shocked that I couldn’t get it.
[16:14] Travis: I was like, wow, these are simple situations, nothing crazy, and I couldn’t figure it out. And I’ve mentioned this before on the show: the fact that I was so bad at it was what made me keep coming back and trying to understand it better. So it would be great to get some answers there. Hopefully you would enjoy that too. So we’ll see.

A Beginner Series for New Go Players
[16:34] Travis: The final project I had for the show over the break that just kind of came up organically was creating a beginner series. So I’m already done recording four out of the five episodes. I’ve edited two of them.
[16:57] Travis: And I was just thinking more and more, I forget what the context was, but before the season break or before the show break, I was just thinking that, like, we need to have something where if somebody is interested in the show and they come across All Things Go, they could see, oh, great, here’s an episode or a little series about why Go is great, how it works, what are the basic rules, and, like, how do you stick with it? You know, how do you make sure you can hang in there with it?
[17:31] Travis: Because there are, of course, many better ways to learn the game truly and comprehensively through really great websites, through books, these sorts of things, through YouTube. But if any newcomer or someone that’s interested is like me, where they have limited time, but they’re fascinated by it and they can absorb it via audio, I want there to be at least something.
[17:55] Travis: And so these are gonna be very short episodes, no longer than, let’s say, eight to 10 minutes maximum. And they’re definitely not gonna be comprehensive, and they’re not gonna be perfect. I mean, they’re really just there to give a very clean outline of what I think are some of the major things to focus on, kind of from a meta level, right?
[18:18] Travis: I’m not going to get into any real techniques or anything like that because it’s really impossible on an audio format, but more about, like, what are the key things to keep in mind as you’re getting into the game? Why it’s great. How do you start thinking about playing a full 19 by 19 game? When do you switch to a 19 by 19 board from something smaller? Those kinds of things are what I delve into.
[18:49] Travis: So if you’re new and you’re coming across this and you listen to the beginner series, please give me your feedback.

What’s Ahead for Season Six
[18:56] Travis: So yeah, I think we’re already in a really good setup for the show in terms of what you will have coming to you in terms of content.
[19:06] Travis: I actually recorded one right before the break or right after the break around a woman named Bianca Singh, who has been writing these articles about historical Go boards that you may have seen online. And it was a fun conversation. So that will be coming up shortly.
[19:24] Travis: And there are already three or four interviews recorded that I just need to start editing and get into a curated episode. So there’s some good stuff coming. I’m confident that there’s gonna be a lot more good conversations and perspectives for you to hear.
[19:50] Travis: I have to say I’m pretty shocked that, you know, in season six, I remember in season one I was like, oh gosh, like, how am I gonna find enough to talk about in a season in terms of interviewing people, right? Finding people to talk to in English. And I think a lot of people I spoke to were also like, wow, really? You’re gonna try to do this for, you know, more than a handful of episodes? That seems pretty tough.
[20:16] Travis: So I’m not saying, ha ha, I told you so, or anything like that. I myself was surprised, right? And I just took it kind of season by season. I would reach out to people about interest in Go. A lot of them would be nice enough to respond, and then we would be able to have a conversation.
[20:36] Travis: And I think it’s really just some combination of doing that now. It’s like, okay, if there are more people that, when I reach out, they’re willing to chat, and it’s something really interesting and unique or different, then I want to keep doing that. If it gets to a point where I’m just not able to get in touch with people that I think, you know, there’s an interesting story there, then, you know, we’ll see. We’ll adjust. But that is a bit of a rundown.
[21:05] Travis: So there were definitely plenty of projects that happened over the summer. People seem to be okay with the unscripted episodes generally. Check out the Discord server. It’ll be in the episode notes.
[21:17] Travis: The other thing I’ve tried to do, somewhat thematically but maybe not, is get those Go perspectives from other corners of the world. So speaking to the dan-level player in Africa, who was completely self-taught, that was really interesting. I’d love to hear from folks in India and other parts of the world, and I have connected with somebody on that that I need to re-engage.
[21:39] Travis: So I think a lot of good stuff here, and I hope you enjoy it. And I think we’ll keep it at that for episode one of season six. Thanks so much for listening, and this is All Things Go.

Final Sponsor Thanks
[22:07] 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, 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.
[22:31] 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. 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.
[22:54] Travis: You can check it out at badukpop.com. That’s B-A-D-U-K-P-O-P dot com.