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
Automated Backpack Microscope Diagnoses Malaria
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Octopi 2.0 is a Stanford-led, open-source backpack-sized automated microscope aimed at democratizing diagnostics. It costs under $2,000, scans about 1 million red blood cells per minute—roughly 100x faster than a human—and uses a novel DAPI-RNA fluorescence shift to distinguish malaria parasites from noise with high specificity. The hardware is modular and envisioned as an app store for diagnostics: you can retrain the AI to improve sensitivity and drop new disease profiles like sickle cell, bacterial vaginosis, and TB into the same platform. This could shrink diagnostic gaps in low-resource settings and speed up outbreak responses.
Note: This podcast was AI-generated, and sometimes AI can make mistakes. Please double-check any critical information.
Sponsored by Embersilk LLC