S1.1 - Why Play the Game of Go/Baduk/Weiqi? A Conversation with Game Designer Frank Lantz on Games, AI & Go | Go / Baduk / Weiqi

This episode is from All Things Go, a podcast about the board game Go, also known as Baduk in Korea and Weiqi in China.

In the first episode of All Things Go, Travis explains how he discovered Go and why he created an audio-first podcast about the game. He then speaks with game designer and author Frank Lantz about Go as an art form, the elegance of its rules, the balance between intuition and calculation, and what AlphaGo reveals about artificial intelligence. The conversation also explores why Go remains less visible than chess in the West and why Frank remains optimistic about its future.

Read the full transcript, browse related episodes, and find additional resources:

https://allthingsgogame.com/2026/07/27/frank-lantz-why-play-go-game-design-ai/

Join the All Things Go Discord community:

https://discord.gg/uf3jgEAA4J

Theme music by UNIVERSFIELD & background music by PodcastAC

• The AlphaGo documentary
• Frank Lantz's book The Beauty of Games and his article The Afterlife of Go
• Kageyama's Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go
• An excellent podcast episode about AI post-AlphaGo with Ezra Klein

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Contact: AllThingsGoGame@gmail.com