We start off the month of May by interviewing Chicago's very own NM Gopal Menon. Gopal is a jack-of-all-trades in the chess world, serving as a second for a grandmaster, coaching students, and will soon be a published chess author! Gopal is currently writing a chess book, and we discuss the process of compiling chess positions and composing chess literature. We talk about the differences between studying chess with books and with online tools. Gopal discusses ICC nostalgia as a former 3100+ player on that server, and I discuss the future of chess servers (Kasparovchess?). We recap the Candidates Tournament -- how excited are we for Ian Nepomniachtchi to face Magnus in Dubai this November? Lastly, we talk about competitive chess online. Gopal has a YouTube channel where he provides instructive content, so don't forget to subscribe to him there!