Intellectually Curious cover art

Intellectually Curious

Intellectually Curious

By: Mike Breault
Listen for free

About this listen

Intellectually Curious is a podcast by Mike Breault featuring over 1,400 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.

© 2025 Intellectually Curious Mathematics Science
Episodes
  • Local Flatness, Global Curves: The Manifold Idea

    Local Flatness, Global Curves: The Manifold Idea
    Nov 4 2025
    A friendly tour of manifolds: how zooming in reveals flat space, how charts and transition maps stitch patches on curved spaces like the Earth, and how tangent spaces and metrics let us do calculus and physics on curved spacetime. From circles to spheres to general relativity, this episode unpacks one of math’s most powerful ideas. Brought to you by Embersilk (embersilk.com).


    Note: This podcast was AI-generated, and sometimes AI can make mistakes. Please double-check any critical information.

    Sponsored by Embersilk LLC
    Show More Show Less
    6 mins
  • Effort.jl: Fast, Differentiable Cosmology on a Laptop

    Effort.jl: Fast, Differentiable Cosmology on a Laptop
    Nov 4 2025
    We explore how effort.jl turns petabytes of cosmology data into fast, trustworthy inferences. A fast neural-network surrogate and physics-informed preprocessing deliver ~15 microseconds per spectrum on a single CPU, enabling gradient-based samplers like HMC/NUTS via Turing.jl to converge in minutes on a laptop. Validated against PT Challenge and BOSS data, the approach preserves accuracy and opens doors for cross-disciplinary applications in weather, climate, and materials.


    Note: This podcast was AI-generated, and sometimes AI can make mistakes. Please double-check any critical information.

    Sponsored by Embersilk LLC
    Show More Show Less
    7 mins
  • APM 08279+5255: The Lensed Quasar, a Monster Black Hole, and the Universe’s Water Reservoir

    APM 08279+5255: The Lensed Quasar, a Monster Black Hole, and the Universe’s Water Reservoir
    Nov 4 2025
    We dive into APM 08279+5255, a gravitationally lensed quasar from the universe’s youth. Learn how a foreground galaxy magnifies its light by about four times (not the initial 40–90x) thanks to Hubble imaging that revealed three distinct images. Meet a supermassive black hole of roughly 10–23 billion solar masses tucked in a massive, infrared-luminous galaxy, seen almost face-on. And hear about the universe’s largest single mass of water detected so far—about 100 trillion times Earth’s oceans—existing when the cosmos was just 1.6 billion years old. What these details tell us about early chemistry, cosmic dust, and the potential for complex molecules long before our time.


    Note: This podcast was AI-generated, and sometimes AI can make mistakes. Please double-check any critical information.

    Sponsored by Embersilk LLC
    Show More Show Less
    7 mins
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.