The NotebookLM Mini Series #4: Jalapeños as part of the urban form and a lesson in Dutch (feat. Martijn Kuller)

The Grand Challengers Podcast

Welcome to this Mini-Series on The Grand Challengers Podcast! The topic of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has been in all our minds over the past few years and is gaining even more momentum with rapid advancements in text, audio and video. Google recently released NotebookLM, a powerful research-support AI that can generate not only summaries of sources that we feed it, but also entire podcast episodes. This Mini-Series will explore the power of NotebookLM, our live reactions to its outputs... and a deep dive into some of the topics that we have covered on the show. We feature previous guests, who are here to join in on the fun!

Episode #4 delves into "Water sensitive urban design as part of the urban form" - Martijn Kuller (ep3) first reacts to how NotebookLM produces a heavily prompted deep dive discussion (my work of art) of an older review we co-authored, highlighting the ease with which prompting can get dangerous and misleading if not in the right hands. We then both react to an Audio Overview of the same review produced by Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, the LLM upon which NotebookLM is based - shorter and more concise.

Full Reference to the Paper: Kuller, M., Bach, P.M., Ramirez-Lovering, D. and Deletic, A., 2017. Framing water sensitive urban design as part of the urban form: A critical review of tools for best planning practice. Environmental modelling & software, 96, pp.265-282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2017.07.003

Podcast Intro/Outro Song: Funky Fortune by Danny Shields (Check out more of his tunes over on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7vRFEGMyTTfeCtc8qiUB82?si=dygdqu9IQLSFYNvVzPNu5w)
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:26 Guest Intro and what's happened since Episode 3
4:39 How this experiment works
5:44 Guest's prior experience with AI
9:59 Martijn's critique of current thoughts so far
12:25 The Experiment Structure
13:07 The human summary
16:43 Live Reaction - Prompted NotebookLM
31:52 Post-Discussion - Prompted NotebookLM
36:57 Live Reaction - Gemini Audio Overview
52:01 Post-Discussion - Gemini Audio Overview
55:16 Thoughts on the future of AI
57:50 Wrap-up
59:10 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
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Chapters

1. Intro (00:00:00)

2. Guest Intro and what's happened since Episode 3 (00:01:26)

3. How this experiment works (00:04:39)

4. Guest's prior experience with AI (00:05:44)

5. Is AI creative or not? A short discussion (00:09:59)

6. The Experiment Structure (00:12:25)

7. The human summary (00:13:07)

8. Live Reaction - Prompted NotebookLM (00:16:43)

9. Post-Discussion - Prompted NotebookLM (00:31:52)

10. Live Reaction - Gemini Audio Overview (00:36:57)

11. Post-Discussion - Gemini Audio Overview (00:52:01)

12. Thoughts on the future of AI (00:55:16)

13. Wrap-up (00:57:50)

14. Outro (00:59:10)