Intellectually Curious
Intellectually Curious is a podcast by Mike Breault featuring over 1,200 AI-powered explorations across science, mathematics, philosophy, and personal growth. Each short-form episode is generated, refined, and published with the help of large language models—turning curiosity into an ongoing audio encyclopedia. Designed for anyone who loves learning, it offers quick dives into everything from combinatorics and cryptography to systems thinking and psychology.
Inspiration for this podcast:
“Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune
Note: These podcasts were made with NotebookLM. AI can make mistakes. Please double-check any critical information.
- Update frequency
- every day
- Average duration
- 12 minutes
- Episodes
- 1379
- Years Active
- 2024 - 2025
OEIS A000313: Three consecutive ascending pairs in permutations
In this Deep Dive, we explore A000313 from the OEIS—the count of permutations of length n with exactly three consecutive ascending adjacent pairs. We discuss why the sequence starts with zeros and fi…
00:05:20 |
Thu 21 Aug 2025
OEIS A00312: Self-Exponentiating Secrets
We unpack A00312, the self-exponentiating sequence n^n. Discover what it counts—endofunctions on an n-element set—along with its appearances as n-by-n 0-1 matrices with one 1 per row and as the count…
00:05:47 |
Thu 21 Aug 2025
Motzkin Numbers: Circles, Grids, and the Unity of Counting
From a simple circle puzzle with non-crossing chords to Motzkin paths on a grid, the Motzkin numbers weave geometry, combinatorics, and number theory into one elegant sequence. We trace their origins…
00:04:34 |
Thu 21 Aug 2025
Fishbone Thinking: Mastering Root Cause Analysis with the Ishikawa Diagram
Explore the Ishikawa (fishbone) diagram, the visual tool that helps teams uncover root causes, not just symptoms. From Kaoru Ishikawa’s 1960s origins to practical, cross‑industry applications—from ma…
00:06:38 |
Wed 20 Aug 2025
Find the Weakest Link: A Practical Guide to the Theory of Constraints
Feeling overwhelmed by complexity? This episode dives into the Theory of Constraints (TOC) and explains how every system is limited by a single bottleneck. We unpack the core ideas—throughput, invent…
00:08:09 |
Wed 20 Aug 2025
OEIS A000311: Schroeder’s Fourth Problem and the Web of Combinatorics
In this episode we explore OEIS A000311—Schroeder’s fourth problem—counting labeled series-reduced rooted trees with N leaves. We unpack what ‘series-reduced’ means, see how the same numbers pop up i…
00:05:51 |
Wed 20 Aug 2025
Stars, Magnets, and Tiny Navigators: The Bogong Moth's Incredible Journey
We explore groundbreaking research showing bogong moths use star patterns to navigate long-distance migrations, with magnetic cues acting as backup. Through clever experiments and neural recordings, …
00:12:06 |
Wed 20 Aug 2025
Zero-Knowledge Proofs: Proving Truth Without Revealing Secrets
A clear, accessible deep-dive into zero-knowledge proofs: how you can prove you know something without disclosing it, illustrated with classic thought experiments and real-world applications. We'll c…
00:08:11 |
Sun 17 Aug 2025
Deterministic Chaos: The Secret Life of LFSRs
In this episode we demystify linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs): tiny digital circuits that generate long, pseudo-random sequences. We’ll unpack how Fibonacci and Galois LFSRs work, where they s…
00:08:08 |
Sun 17 Aug 2025
Smith Reimagined: Godjoy, Spectators, and the Spirit of Smithian Laws
A deep dive into Daniel Klein's The Spirit of Smithian Laws, reframing Adam Smith as a subtle moral philosopher rather than a mere economist. We trace the impartial spectator (Godjoy), the organon of…
00:04:43 |
Sun 17 Aug 2025
OEIS A000310: Iterated exponential coefficients
A quick dive into A000310, the iterated exponential coefficients. We explore how the numbers grow rapidly (1, 4, 26, 234, 2696, …) and how their exponential generating function—a nested-log expressio…
00:04:09 |
Sun 17 Aug 2025
OEIS A000308: Recursive Product Growth
We dive into A000308, defined by a(n) = a(n-1) · a(n-2) · a(n-3) with starting values 1, 2, 3. The growth is astonishingly fast: 1, 2, 3, 6, 36, 648, 139,968, …, a true example of hyper-exponential b…
00:04:59 |
Sat 16 Aug 2025
Stoicism Unpacked: Logic, Virtue, and Living Well
A clear, practical tour of ancient Stoicism—from its logical foundations and cosmic view to the four cardinal virtues and the idea of indifferents. We'll see how reason guides emotion and daily choic…
00:05:58 |
Sat 16 Aug 2025
The Solopreneur Gauntlet: One Founder, Dozens of Hats
Welcome to The Solopreneur Gauntlet, a deep-dive into what it really takes to launch and run a product solo. We break down the spectrum of tasks—from core engineering and QA to UX design, branding, a…
00:12:59 |
Sat 16 Aug 2025
Normal Form Games: Mapping the Strategy Grid
We unpack normal form games—the grid-based tool for modeling strategic choices. Learn to read payoff matrices, spot dominated strategies, and identify Nash equilibria, with classics like the Prisoner…
00:05:30 |
Sat 16 Aug 2025
OEIS A000309: Rooted Planar Bridgeless Cubic Maps with Two Gen Nodes
In this episode we unpack A000309, the sequence 1, 1, 4, 24, 176, 1456 that counts rooted planar bridgeless cubic maps with two gen nodes. We’ll also see how the same numbers count rooted planar, non…
00:05:43 |
Sat 16 Aug 2025
Gridlock to Flow: The Ingenious Science of Congestion Control
From the early internet’s near-collapse to modern TCP’s smart back-off, this episode unpacks how networks avoid congestion. We explain the difference between congestion control and flow control, how …
00:20:25 |
Fri 15 Aug 2025
Soulformer: A Transparent Leap in Tourism Forecasting
In this Deep Dive, we explore Soulformer, a new time-series transformer that targets both accuracy and interpretability in forecasting tourism demand. We unpack how its encoder–decoder structure, att…
00:06:54 |
Fri 15 Aug 2025
OEIS A000307: Four-level labeled rooted trees
We explore A000307, the count of four-level labeled rooted trees with n leaves. Despite the OEIS tag 'easy', the numbers explode quickly, and the mystery is why this structure is considered easy in t…
00:06:15 |
Fri 15 Aug 2025
Shift Gears: The Transportation Revolution from Supersonic to Self-Driving
A deep-dive into how transport is transitioning from digital buzz to real-world infrastructure. We dissect supersonic and hypersonic flights, eVTOLs, and autonomous robo-taxis, unpack the policy shif…
00:06:23 |
Fri 15 Aug 2025
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