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 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.
Intellectually Curious
The El Farol Bar Paradox: How Crowds Self-Organize Around a Threshold
Why does trying not to crowd a bar on a busy night end up crowded anyway? W. Brian Arthur’s El Farol Bar problem shows how bounded rationality, evolving heuristics, and adaptive decision rules drive a decentralized crowd to self-organize around an optimal attendance. We unpack mixed strategies, complex adaptive systems, and why chaos can be a feature that yields stable, efficient outcomes in traffic, markets, and AI.
Note: This podcast was AI-generated, and sometimes AI can make mistakes. Please double-check any critical information.
Sponsored by Embersilk LLC