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
- 1399
- Years Active
- 2024 - 2025
Molten Salt Reactors Unpacked: Breeding, Thorium, and a Safer Nuclear Future
A beginner-friendly deep dive into molten salt reactors (MSRs): how they work, why fast and thorium-based designs matter, the safety and materials challenges, and what it would take to deploy MSRs fo…
00:13:18 |
Tue 31 Dec 2024
OEIS A000088: Number of nonisomorphic simple graphs on n nodes
Explore A000088, the OEIS entry counting unlabeled simple graphs on n nodes. We’ll trace the first terms (1, 1, 2, 4, 11, 34) and explain why the count grows so rapidly, roughly like 2^{n(n-1)/2} div…
00:07:35 |
Tue 31 Dec 2024
Ticking Through Time: The Evolution of Watches
A journey from 16th‑century German clock watches to today’s smartwatches, tracing how timepieces evolved from luxury status symbols to precise engineering. Drawing on highlights from Wikipedia and th…
00:13:30 |
Mon 30 Dec 2024
Algorithmic Layouts Unpacked: Semantics, Accessibility, and the Future of CSS
A STEM-minded deep dive into Hayden Pickering's take on algorithmic layout. We unpack incomplete grids, CSS nth-child tricks, and the push for semantic HTML and ARIA labeling, while weighing accessib…
00:13:30 |
Mon 30 Dec 2024
AlphaProof at the IMO: AI, Lean, and the Future of Mathematical Reasoning
Join us as we unpack Google DeepMind's AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2, the first AI system to win a silver medal at the 2024 International Mathematical Olympiad. We explore how reinforcement learning…
00:15:58 |
Mon 30 Dec 2024
Polyominoes: From Tetris to Tiling Theory
Join us as we explore polyominoes—edge-connected squares that spark rich combinatorics and computation. We’ll trace the journey from counting free, one‑sided, and fixed polyominoes with clever algori…
00:21:56 |
Mon 30 Dec 2024
OEIS A000087: Non-separable planar maps and beta-1 tree bijection
An exploration of A000087, counting unrooted, non-separable planar maps with a distinguished face. We trace the bijection with beta-1 trees, explain primitive and multi-edge-free maps, and show how i…
00:17:23 |
Mon 30 Dec 2024
OEIS A000086: Number of solutions to x^2+x+1 ≡ 0 (mod n)
We explore A000086, the function counting residues x that satisfy x^2+x+1 ≡ 0 (mod n). We’ll unpack how this congruence behaves, including its equivalence (via a shift) to x^2+1 ≡ 0, its multiplicati…
00:15:28 |
Sun 29 Dec 2024
Logic in Plain Language: A Deep Dive into Logic Programming
Join us for a high-level tour of logic programming, where facts and rules become a dialogue with the computer. We'll unpack head/body clauses, non-monotonic reasoning with negation as failure, and th…
00:17:57 |
Sun 29 Dec 2024
OEIS A000085: Involutions and the many faces of self-inverse permutations
We explore A000085, the involution numbers that count self-inverse permutations on n elements. From the classic recursive rule a(n) = a(n-1) + (n-1)a(n-2) to a direct closed form, we’ll see how these…
00:12:03 |
Sat 28 Dec 2024
Contextual Distances: The Mahalanobis Metric Explained
A deep-dive into how Mahalanobis distance measures distance not just by coordinates but within the data's own landscape, using the covariance structure to account for correlations. We trace its origi…
00:10:53 |
Sat 28 Dec 2024
Naive Bayes Demystified: Simple Rules, Big Impact
A friendly dive into Naive Bayes classifiers: what Bayes' theorem does, why the 'naive' independence assumption often works surprisingly well, and how Gaussian, Multinomial, and Bernoulli variants fi…
00:18:53 |
Fri 27 Dec 2024
S-Shaped Signals: The Sigmoid Function from History to AI
Join us on a journey from ancient ideas to modern neural networks as we dissect the sigmoid function—the unmistakable S-curve. We’ll unpack its key mathematical properties (bounded outputs, different…
00:09:08 |
Fri 27 Dec 2024
Cosine Similarity: Angles, Vectors, and Real-World Patterns
A practical dive into cosine similarity: its math (dot product over magnitudes), why normalization matters, and how the angle between high-dimensional vectors reveals patterns. We explore application…
00:11:51 |
Fri 27 Dec 2024
Correlation in Number Theory, Part II: From Pearson to Prime Gaps
Welcome back to Part II of our exploration of correlation in number theory. We survey how linear and rank correlations — from Pearson’s product-moment coefficient to Spearman and Kendall — reveal hid…
00:15:57 |
Fri 27 Dec 2024
Anthocyanins
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Note: These podcasts are AI-generated, and sometimes AI can make mistakes. Please double-check any critical information.
Sponsored by Embersilk LLC
00:26:39 |
Fri 27 Dec 2024
Gradient Descent Unpacked: From Valleys to Neural Networks
A concise, STEM-minded tour of gradient descent. We start with the valley-floor intuition, trace its 19th–20th century roots (Cauchy and Hadamard), and show how the method recasts equations as minimi…
00:13:18 |
Fri 27 Dec 2024
Z Scores Unlocked: Placing a Data Point in the Distribution
A deep dive from first principles to real-world impact: what a Z score really measures, how standard deviation standardizes comparisons, and the jump from population to sample (Z vs. T). We'll connec…
00:09:56 |
Fri 27 Dec 2024
The Normal Distribution Unpacked: Bell Curves, CLT, and Real-World Power
A deep dive into the normal (Gaussian) distribution—its defining bell curve, key properties, and the central limit theorem. We'll cover the math (PDF, CDF, Z-scores) and explore real-world applicatio…
00:15:07 |
Fri 27 Dec 2024
OEIS A000084: Series-parallel networks with n edges
Exploring A000084: the number of unlabeled series-parallel networks with n edges. We’ll see how this simple counting problem ties into circuit topology, co-graphs, P4-free graphs, and equivalent resi…
00:18:48 |
Fri 27 Dec 2024
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