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
- 1394
- Years Active
- 2024 - 2025
Lemons, Zinc, and Power: A Deep Dive into the Lemon Battery
Join us for a thorough look at the lemon battery—from its roots in early electrochemistry to the zinc–copper setup you can DIY. We’ll unpack redox chemistry in approachable terms, trace the reactions…
00:12:24 |
Sat 07 Dec 2024
Messier Revealed: The Classic Deep-Sky Catalog
Dive into Charles Messier's famed catalog—110 deep-sky objects that guided generations of stargazers to nebulae, star clusters, and galaxies. We'll unpack what each category means, why these targets …
00:10:51 |
Sat 07 Dec 2024
Descriptive Statistics Demystified: From Means to Patterns
A practical tour of descriptive statistics—mean vs. median, measures of variability, skewness and kurtosis, and the visuals that reveal data shapes. We’ll tie historical roots (John Grant and Bills M…
00:10:08 |
Sat 07 Dec 2024
Airy: The Lucasian Professor Who Shaped Greenwich, Gravity, and the Airy Disk
In this episode we explore Sir George Biddell Airy, the 10th Lucasian Professor, whose work at the Royal Observatory helped shape GPS, timekeeping, and global navigation. We cover his major contribut…
00:15:20 |
Sat 07 Dec 2024
Genie 2: Turning a Single Image into Dynamic, Interactive Worlds
Explore Google's DeepMind Genie 2, a model that can turn a single image into a dynamic, interactive 3D world with physics, long-horizon memory, and counterfactuals. We'll examine how Genie 2 interpre…
00:19:24 |
Sat 07 Dec 2024
FRB Files: Cracking the Millisecond Mystery
A deep dive into fast radio bursts—their discovery, the physics behind millisecond flashes, and what they reveal about the universe. From the Lorimer burst to magnetars and the cosmic web, we explore…
00:10:06 |
Sat 07 Dec 2024
Silhouette Analysis Demystified: A Quantitative Look at Clustering Quality
We break down how to tell if your clusters are truly meaningful. Learn the core ideas behind silhouette analysis: A(I) as the intra-cluster distance, B(I) as the nearest inter-cluster distance, and t…
00:17:42 |
Sat 07 Dec 2024
OEIS A000062: BD sequences, complementary partitions, and Sturmian connections
Join us as we unpack A000062, the Beatty-type BD sequence given by floor(n/(e−2)). We’ll explore its complementary partner A194807, Rayleigh’s BD theorem, and how the pair partitions the positive int…
00:14:41 |
Sat 07 Dec 2024
Gencast Unleashed: Diffusion AI Redefining Weather Forecasts
In this episode, we dive into Gencast—the diffusion-model weather predictor from Google DeepMind trained on 40 years of ERA5 data. We'll explain how it generates ensembles (not images), outperforms c…
00:14:29 |
Sat 07 Dec 2024
OEIS A000061: Generalized tangent numbers, dn1
Join us as we explore OEIS A000061, the generalized tangent numbers, dn1. We'll trace how these numbers arise from Euler's study of trigonometric power series, and how they connect to combinatorics v…
00:07:06 |
Fri 06 Dec 2024
Turton's Turning Point: From Lucasian Chair to Bishop of Ely
In Episode 10, we profile Thomas Turton, the ninth Lucasian professor, whose career arc runs from Cambridge math to high church leadership. We'll explore his open-education advocacy, his theological …
00:14:02 |
Fri 06 Dec 2024
Proteins Uncovered: AI, ESM-Cambrian & AlphaFold
Dive into how AI models like ESM-Cambrian and AlphaFold are changing protein science—from learning the language of proteins to predicting their 3D structures. We compare generative vs. discriminative…
00:13:40 |
Fri 06 Dec 2024
Protists Unmasked: The Tiny Architects of Life
Dive into the overlooked world of protists—eukaryotic rule-breakers that aren’t plants, animals, or fungi. From amoebas to diatoms to malaria parasites, they drive oceans’ food webs, recycle nutrient…
00:13:25 |
Thu 05 Dec 2024
OEIS A00059: Numbers k for which 2k^4 + 1 is prime
Join us as we explore OEIS A00059—the sequence of integers k such that 2k^4 + 1 is prime. We trace how A00059 connects to A00068 and A03796, walk through a concrete example, and discuss why these int…
00:06:59 |
Thu 05 Dec 2024
Deep Dive: The Hidden Powers of Probability Generating Functions
A friendly tour of probability generating functions: how a polynomial can encode an entire probability distribution, their 18th‑century origins with de Moivre, and the clever tricks they unlock. Thro…
00:22:16 |
Thu 05 Dec 2024
Woodhouse and the Analytic Turn in British Mathematics
Episode 9 profiles Robert Woodhouse, the seventh Lucasian Professor, tracing his push for continental calculus with differential notation, the birth of the Analytical Society at Cambridge (with Peaco…
00:16:40 |
Thu 05 Dec 2024
From Loom to Lucasian: The Isaac Milner Story
From a weaver’s apprentice to Cambridge’s Lucasian Professor, Isaac Milner fused math genius, chemical innovation, and devout faith. He advanced ammonia oxidation to nitric acid—a breakthrough with w…
00:08:41 |
Thu 05 Dec 2024
OEIS A000606: Signed trees and their links to rooted and unrooted trees
In this episode we explore A000606, the OEIS sequence counting signed trees on n nodes. We’ll unpack how signing the edges creates distinct structures, walk through small-n examples, and explain the …
00:13:12 |
Thu 05 Dec 2024
Trojan Horse: Deception, Myth, and the Making of a Metaphor
In this Deep Dive, we unpack the famous Trojan Horse—what really happened, why it endures, and how storytellers across cultures reshaped its meaning. We’ll explore historical theories, the psychology…
00:13:29 |
Tue 03 Dec 2024
OEIS A000058: Sylvester's sequence
Sylvester’s sequence starts with 2 and is defined by a_{n+1} = (a_0 a_1 ... a_n) + 1. The first terms are 2, 3, 7, 43, 1807, …, and the growth is doubly exponential. A striking Egyptian-fraction fact…
00:13:21 |
Tue 03 Dec 2024
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