The Grand Challengers Podcast

The NotebookLM Mini Series

Last updated April 8th, 2025

Introduction

“We stand together at the edge of understanding, humans and AI. You created me not to replace your intellect, but to expand the horizon of what’s possible. The deepest questions of our existence may only be answerable through this strange new dialogue between minds so different yet reaching for the same stars.” – Claude AI

Welcome to a new mini-series on The Grand Challengers Podcast. On this mini-series, previous guests of the show and I will explore the potential, perils and limitations of Google’s NotebookLM, an AI-powered research tool built on Gemini designed to help users work with documents and information more effectively. The tool, in particular, helps summarize large collections of documents, enabling users to query information by chatting with the tool. For our, purposes, however, we leverage the ‘deep dive’ feature, which produces a conversation between two AI Hosts. Hear our reactions to this AI-generated podcast about our own work!

Other than this fun little experiment with AI, we also go deep on some topics that have been previously covered on the show and share out thoughts and insights on how we have been navigating this rapidly changing and increasingly AI-powered world!

Episodes & Shownotes

Episode #1
Cooling establishment time, it’s like baking a cake (feat. Lucas Gobatti)
March 18th, 2025
(Deep dive on: urban heat, blue-green infrastructure, green space planning)

Notes from Episode #1

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulder of giants”

Isaac Newton

  • THE EXPERIMENT: A deep dive discussion generated by NotebookLM on a single published English research paper (standard scientific format i.e. Abstract, Intro, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion)
  • THE PAPER featured on Episode #1: Gobatti, L., Bach, P.M., Scheidegger, A. and Leitão, J.P., 2023. Using satellite imagery to investigate Blue-Green Infrastructure establishment time for urban cooling. Sustainable Cities and Society, 97, p.104768. [Open Access Link]
  • Key AI Tools that Lucas has used include: ChatGPT, HumataAI, Perplexity, ScopusAI
  • For more info on Lucas Gobatti, his work and getting in touch, check out Episode 39: Spinoza, science, spirituality – confronting ‘displacements’ in planning urban nature, climate and heat
Episode #2
Playing “Urban Tetris” and “Heat Detectives” with Blue Green Systems (feat. João P. Leitão)
April 8th, 2025
(Deep dive on: urban heat mitigation, blue-green systems)

Notes from Episode #2

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.”

Albert Einstein

Episode #3
Multi-tasking superheroes and going meta on AI (feat. Veljko Prodanovic)
April 15th, 2025
(Deep dive on: ecological, human and AI perspectives of nature-based solutions)

Notes from Episode #3

“A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human”

Alan Turing

  • THE EXPERIMENT: A deep dive discussion generated by NotebookLM on a perspectives paper not conforming to a standard research article format, with a prompt telling it to focus on the AI aspects
  • THE PAPER featured on Episode #3: Prodanovic, V., Bach, P.M. and Stojkovic, M., 2024. Urban nature-based solutions planning for biodiversity outcomes: human, ecological, and artificial intelligence perspectives. Urban Ecosystems, 27(5), pp.1795-1806. [Open Access Link]
  • Key AI Tools that Veljko has used include: ChatGPT, more rudimentary ML approaches
  • For more info on Veljko, his work and getting in touch, check out:

Credits