Meet The Man Behind The World's Top Chess Podcast

Mick

Updated: Mar 21, 2024, 12:40 PM | 24 | Other

NM Ben Johnson is the mastermind behind Perpetual Chess, one of the world's most-loved chess podcasts. He has spoken to grandmasters, world champions, adult improvers, content creators, and other luminaries of the chess world every week since starting the podcast in 2016.

Recently, Ben collated the wisdom gained from his interviews into a physical book: Perpetual Chess Improvement: Practical Chess Advice from World-Class Players and Dedicated Amateurs, which is garnering rave reviews.

We asked Ben about some of his favorite stories, his proudest moments, and fateful, high-stakes blitz games against a young FM Mike Klein...

When's the last time that you were nervous to interview someone?

I think it was probably GM Vishwanathan Anand. I don't get too nervous anymore, and to the extent that I do get nervous, it's more about technical problems now, especially with older-generation guests. I don't want there to be some tech issue that I can't solve! But in terms of just being nervous to talk to them, Vishy was the one, and that also was kind of tied to the circumstances under which the interview was being arranged.

I’d been in touch, but I wasn't positive they were gonna be there. So I did all this preparation, probably dozens of hours; obviously, I know Vishy’s legacy, but you still want to know your facts cold going into an interview like that. So I did all this preparation for an interview that I thought was 75% gonna take place, but I wasn’t sure! Sometimes you're confirming an interview or appointment and you would feel more comfortable if you just had one last confirmation, and I hadn't gotten that, so that added to my nervousness along with his legendary status.

That was back when I was doing it on Skype. So I don't even think I saw him first, I just heard, "Hi, it’s Vishy." There was no way it was an impersonator. It was the unmistakable voice!

I don't even think I saw him first, I just heard, "Hi, it's Vishy." There was no way it was an impersonator. It was the unmistakable voice!

You recently said you’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of the stories in the chess world. What are some of the stories that you're still looking for?

It's hard to strike a balance. Obviously, I'm interested in how to get better at chess, and there are tons of people with lots of helpful insights about that. I'm definitely getting increasingly interested in the science of learning and how to tie that together with what we know about chess.

When I interviewed this doctor in the science of learning, they said chess has been called “the fruit fly of cognitive science” because it creates such a unique atmosphere to study how we learn things. So I'm interested in interviewing more people from outside of chess telling that story.

Chess has been called "the fruit fly of cognitive science..."

The other thing that I would like to do more of is tell unusual stories about how chess has impacted people’s lives. I recently did an adult improver interview with a guy named Julio Calcina, who had been in prison and had had a tough life.

He got into chess some years ago, but then increasingly so when he was in prison, and he just spoke very movingly about how chess gave him a framework to think before he acted in everything he did, and I love sharing stories like that which are not necessarily about “How do I get better at the game of chess?” but “How do I interact with this game? How do I fit it into my life?”

What have been some of your favorite stories over the years?

I'm a big fan of GM Jan Timman, the Dutch legend, and he told a story in one of his books, I believe it was Timman's Titans. Chess has this interesting history; it's still hard to make it as a traveling chess professional, but it was really kind of like a hippie existence for a while there in the '70s and '80s!

He tells his story about going to play a tournament in Sweden where it turned out that he and another player he was traveling with didn't have the money for the hotel that they were staying in, and so basically they needed to win in this tournament to pay the money that was due! Of course, he’s Jan Timman, so he did win some games and was able to pay it.

I love all these stories from sort of the bygone era. I'm a big fan of GM Genna Sosonko too. I'm hoping to interview him again because he's got so many epic stories about being friends with GMs Mikhail Tal and David Bronstein and all these Soviet legends.

What's been your proudest moment relating to Perpetual Chess? I imagine that recently publishing your book is up there.

It's definitely been very gratifying that people have liked my book for the most part, because it feels much more personal than my interviews. Primarily I try to interject a little more in the adult improver interviews, but when I'm interviewing these top players and authors and trainers, I mainly try to stay out of the way.

My book, even though it's sort of a "compiled wisdom" thing, I wrote it in a very personal style and tried to use my own voice. So I'm glad to mostly have gotten positive feedback on it, and I recently won the "Chess Educator of the Year" award from University of Texas at Dallas, which I found quite gratifying.

But, I mean, mainly even just people answering my emails! When I message someone like GM Michael Adams, whose games I’ve been playing through for decades, and they actually answer my email for an interview? That alone doesn't cease to shock me.

When I message someone like Michael Adams, whose games I’ve been playing through for decades, and they actually answer my email for an interview? That alone doesn't cease to shock me.

Have you received any life-changing answers from guests during the podcast, or answers that otherwise changed the way you see something?

I wrote about this in my book, but there's this guy Neal Bruce who's been on the pod a few times. He's built a pretty big following on Twitter in particular; he's an executive at a tech startup and he has a wife and kids and a busy job, but works very hard at chess.

He's incredibly disciplined in terms of how he manages to do chess every day and talks about how he doesn't necessarily think it needs to be fun every day, but again, he considers it part of his identity. It's important to him that he works on the game and tries to get better. So this idea of identifying as a chess player and incorporating that into your belief system as a way to motivate you is definitely something that changed me.

... This idea of identifying as a chess player and incorporating that into your belief system as a way to motivate you is definitely something that changed me.

Although I have to say I still don't have the chess work ethic that Neal does! I try to apply it to reading every day, but not necessarily about chess. I'm amazed at how hard some of the people I interview work. This idea of identifying with whatever behavioral change you're looking for is something I wrote about in the book, and is something Neal adopted from James Clear’s Atomic Habits; trying to intertwine it with how you view yourself as a person as deeply as possible, with the change being more likely to stick when you do that.

I’ve heard that, back in the day, you used to play some very important blitz games with your roommate while waiting for Thai food to be delivered...

Yes, so I was roommates with FM Mike Klein before he got his FunMaster title! Circa 2002-2003 we lived in Brooklyn, New York, in a fourth-floor walk-up. In New York vernacular that means there's no elevator. So a lot of stairs!

When you get a food delivery, you can buzz someone in but we still had to go down the four flights of stairs to pick it up, and we're lazy 20-somethings. When we would order food, neither of us would want to go get it, so we would play a blitz game to decide who was going to go downstairs to pay the delivery person and tip them. These games felt very important.

Unfortunately, Mike's always been a little stronger than me, so he probably won 75% of the games, but I got some exercise at least.

What else has the ability to capture your attention the way that chess does?

I'm a big sports fan. I love to nerd out over the statistics, listen to the podcasts, etc. I'm also an avid reader. I would say those are my two main hobbies, I mean, I follow the news and politics, and there was a time when I was trading stocks as a source of income. So I'm interested in finance as well, and there's also a game element to that that I find fascinating. They all have the ability to captivate me, but over-the-board chess has a singular ability to allow me to focus I haven't found anywhere else.

... Over-the-board chess has a singular ability to allow me to focus I haven't found anywhere else.

The 76ers win the NBA finals or the Phillies win the World Series. Which one do you pick?

Wow, that's a tough one. Those are the two sports I care the most about. It would have to be the Phillies because I have a 10-year-old son, and he's at that age where when you love a sport, it's just everything to you, and he's a bigger baseball fan than a basketball fan.

We were at the game last year when the Phillies lost the World Series in surprising fashion. It was just heartbreaking for me, and especially for him, so I would love for it to be a redemptive tale for my son!

The Perpetual Chess podcast can be followed in many ways: on the Perpetual Chess website, YouTube, Spotify, and more. You can also sign up for the Perpetual Chess Linkfest, a free weekly collection of some of the chess world's most interesting and entertaining stories.

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