x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Intellectually Curious

Intellectually Curious is a podcast by Mike Breault featuring over 1,600 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

science mathematics

All Episodes

5:22

Fisher Information: The Sharp Curve Behind What Data...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/22

In this deep-dive, we explore how Fisher Information measures how much your data can tell you about an unknown parameter. Visualize it through the curvature of the log-likelihood—sharp curves mean high information and precise estimates, flat curves mean ambiguity. We’ll cover additivity across independent observations, the Cramér–Rao bound as the ultimate precision limit, and how FI guides experimental design. From machine learning and marketing data to neuroscience and color perception, FI t...

en-us

4:33

Petra and the Desert Empire: How the Nabataeans Built...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/21

In this episode we explore how the Nabataeans turned Petra, a rose-red rock city, into the heart of a powerful trading kingdom. Learn how ingenious water engineering, control of the incense route from Yemen to Gaza, and fierce defense allowed them to dominate ancient trade, withstand big rivals, and endure as a commercial force even after Rome claimed their land. Note: This podcast was AI-generated, and sometimes AI can make mistakes. Please double-check any critical information. Sponsored ...

en-us

5:31

Geometry in Chaos: Vorticity, Vortex Stretching, and...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/21

From a creek’s tiny whirl to the robust math of fluids, we explore how vorticity and vortex stretching power turbulent flows. We trace Berger’s vortex as a stable exact solution, then reveal high‑resolution simulations showing that, in the inviscid 3D Euler equations, the anticipated blow‑up is tamed by dynamic depletion: vortex tubes flattening into thin sheets that slow stretching. We then reframe the turbulent energy cascade, arguing that while stretching drives fluctuations, the average e...

en-us

4:52

Gabriel's Horn: Finite Volume, Infinite Surface

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/21

A deep dive into Torricelli's trumpet, the shape formed by revolving y = 1/x about the x-axis from x = 1 to infinity. We explore why its volume is finite (π) even as its surface area diverges to infinity, unravel the painter's paradox, and see how calculus resolves the mystery. We'll also discuss why the paradox disappears in the real world due to physical thickness and limits, and touch on the related fact that finite surface area for surfaces of revolution implies finite volume. Note: This...

en-us

4:41

The Seahorse Emoji Signal: How AI's Self-Correction...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/21

We unpack a provocative claim: a tiny, non-existent seahorse emoji as a tripwire revealing a new phase in AI training—the use of thinking-trace data that exposes the model's internal problem-solving process. We trace how labs feed rough drafts into models to produce more stable, better-aligned AI, and what this means for reliability across closed and open systems. Note: This podcast was AI-generated, and sometimes AI can make mistakes. Please double-check any critical information. Sponsored...

en-us

4:48

The Dead Fish Pitch: Debunking Baseball's Slow-Motion...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/21

A data-driven dive into the Eephus pitch—the infamous 'dead fish'—exploring its history, the physics behind a slow, high-spin arc, and what the data really says about contact quality, exit velocity, and on-base percentage. We separate myth from method, examine why this oddball pitch persists, and discuss how teams might use it as a legitimate tool in modern baseball. Note: This podcast was AI-generated, and sometimes AI can make mistakes. Please double-check any critical information. Sponso...

en-us

4:37

The Siberian Snowman: A 14-Mile Line of Arctic Lakes...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/20

NASA’s Earth Observatory spotlights a surreal 22-kilometer chain of five pale-blue thermokarst lakes near Billings on Russia’s Chukchi Peninsula. The pattern isn’t surface snow but underground ice wedges melting in summer, causing the ground to slump into a line that winds and waves slowly align end-to-end. From orbit you can see this dramatic natural sculpture and its scale—about 14 miles long, far longer than any real snowman. We unpack how permafrost and wind shape landscapes, the history ...

en-us

5:02

Shendi Take One: Asia's Deepest Onshore Well Reaches...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/20

We distill CNPC's Shendi Take One Well in the Taklamakan Desert—a 10,910-meter onshore drilling milestone that makes Asia’s deepest vertical well and ranks second globally behind the Kola borehole. Drilled from May 2023 to February 2025, it set a world record for the fastest onshore depth to that level and yielded the first ultra-deep onshore oil-and-gas discovery. The project confronted extreme conditions (temperatures over 210°C and pressures above 145 MPa) and relied on a domestically deve...

en-us

5:13

Shining a Light on the AI Black Box: Chain of Thought...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/20

We explore how monitoring AI reasoning can reveal safety signals in critical decisions. Learn what monitorability means, why a perfect transcript isn’t required, and how robust metrics and three evaluation modes—intervention, process, and outcome—help catch red flags. The episode covers why bigger models aren’t necessarily less transparent, the surprising role of compute and RL, and practical tips like the monitorability tax and targeted follow-ups. Note: This podcast was AI-generated,...

en-us

5:41

RLVR, Ghosts, and Vibe Coding: Karpathy’s 2025 LLM...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/20

A deep dive into the foundational shifts Karpathy highlights for 2025: reinforcement learning from verifiable rewards (RLVR) driving massive cheap optimization, the rise of ‘thinking time’ traces and jagged, task-optimized intelligence, and the birth of vibe coding—guiding powerful AI with plain language. We explore the new LLM app layer that turns lab models into deployed professionals, on-device agents like Claude Code, and the multimodal LLM GUI that blends text, visuals, and code. Finally...

en-us

5:21

Emil Grosswald: From Refugee Odyssey to a Pillar of...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/20

An intimate journey through the life of Emil Grosswald, a towering figure in number theory who thrived under upheaval. From dual degrees in mathematics and electrical engineering in Bucharest, through wartime flight across Europe to Cuba, and finally to a transformative U.S. career under Hans Rademacher, Grosswald bridged pure theory and practical insight. We unpack milestones like his work on Dedekind sums, the Grosswald–Schnitzer theorem linking zeta zeros, his multilingual early papers und...

en-us

5:07

Spherical Voronoi Unveiled: Real-Time Photorealism...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/19

We dive into Spherical Voronoi (SV), a new framework that partitions viewing directions on the sphere with adaptive Voronoi cells to capture sharp reflections and high-frequency lighting in real-time rendering. See how SV uses a single softmax temperature to smoothly span diffuse to mirror-like highlights, outperforming traditional approaches like spherical harmonics and even neural baselines such as ZipNerf, all with an explicit, stable model. We'll discuss Voronoi light probes, benchmark re...

en-us

4:24

DisCIPL: MIT CSAIL’s Two-Role AI for Collaborative...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/19

We dive into DisCIPL (Decentralized Collaborative Intelligent Planning Language model), a two-part framework that splits reasoning into a planner LM that writes a task-specific program and a swarm of cheap follower LMs that execute in parallel. The planner acts as a blueprint-writer and gatekeeper, guiding thousands of quick, inexpensive attempts and filtering them against constraints. This setup lets small, affordable models match or beat a single giant model on hard tasks—from precise rhymi...

en-us

5:04

Chain of Responsibility: Decoupling Handlers for...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/19

From button taps on your iPhone to complex event flows, this episode breaks down the Chain of Responsibility design pattern. Learn how a chain of handlers can decide who processes a request at runtime, keeping senders agnostic of receivers and enabling dynamic, extensible systems. We’ll look at Cocoa’s responder chain as a concrete example, discuss how multiple handlers can engage, and explore implications for future AI-driven, decentralized software architectures. Plus practical tips for arc...

en-us

4:38

Letterlock: From Spiral Seals to Virtual Unfolding

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/18

Dive into the ancient art of letterlocking—the craft of folding a letter into its own secure envelope. We trace spiral locks, self-destruct mechanisms, and the long arc from Mesopotamian seals to modern physical information security. Then see how X-ray microtomography lets researchers virtually unfold 300-year-old letters from the Brienne Collection without breaking seals, including Mary, Queen of Scots' last letter. It’s a fusion of old-world craft and cutting-edge science. Note: This...

en-us

4:57

Aerographite: The Ultra-Light, Ultra-Conductive...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/18

We dive into aerogels and the extreme aerographite—a nanoscale, three‑dimensional carbon network so light it weighs less than 0.2 mg per cubic centimeter, yet conducts electricity even at cryogenic temperatures. Learn how a sacrificial zinc oxide template and chemical vapor deposition create this porous, conductive marvel, why its vast internal surface boosts energy storage and fast charging, and what it could mean for cryogenic electronics, next‑gen supercapacitors, and future materials. No...

en-us

4:36

Black Hole's Cosmic Storm

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/17

A dramatic soft X-ray flare from the active galactic nucleus in NGC 3783 triggers an ultra-fast outflow racing at 0.19c, launched from about 50 gravitational radii. Radiation pressure falls short; magnetic reconnection—the same physics that powers solar flares—appears to drive the wind. This suggests a universal mechanism for extreme outflows and a key role in galaxy evolution through AGN feedback, revealed by coordinated XMM-Newton and XRISM observations over 10 days. Note: This podcast was...

en-us

4:38

Pulsar Planets: Diamonds from the Ashes of Stars

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/17

Discover how the first confirmed exoplanets didn’t orbit a sunlike star but a pulsar, the ultra-dense remnant of a supernova. We unpack pulsar timing—the cosmic clockwork that reveals planets by tiny shifts in pulse arrival times—and explain how these worlds can form from the star's shredded debris, sometimes as carbon-rich, 'diamond' planets. We'll also reflect on what pulsar planets tell us about planet formation in extreme environments and how many might lie hidden in the Milky Way. Note:...

en-us

4:58

Faster Cloning: AI-Driven Wet Lab

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/17

We unpack the OpenAI–Red Queen Bio study that had an AI design RAPF HiFi—RECA-assisted assembly paired with GP32, a novel temperature cycle, and a surprising downstream boost from pelleting cells at 4°C—that together delivered a 79x jump in cloning efficiency, validated by a robotic automation system. We break down the mechanism, the validation, and the implications for speeding biology from months to days, with a look at the future of AI-assisted wet labs. Note: This podcast was AI-generate...

en-us

5:00

Advhena magnifica: The Glass Sponge with a Nervous...

Intellectually Curious ·

2025/12/16

Meet Advhena magnifica, the deep-sea 'E.T.' sponge discovered by NOAA's Okeanos Explorer. This glass sponge's syncytial tissue forms a single, many-nucleus network that conducts electrical signals across its body, enabling rapid internal communication and a nervous-system-like coordination in a delicate, glass architecture. As an ecosystem engineer, it filters nutrients and could host novel compounds with future medical potential, while its remarkable longevity hints at secrets of resilience ...

en-us

593 results

Similar Podcasts

Classic Radio Science Fiction

solgoodmedia.com

Mission to Mars

Inception Point Ai

The 365 Days of Astronomy

365DaysOfAstronomy.org

Creek Devil

william Jevning

UFO Chronicles Podcast

Nik Hunter