In July 1945, J. Robert Oppen­heimer, a the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist from UC Berke­ley, saw his work on the Man­hat­tan Project cul­mi­nate with the test of the first nuclear bomb. The genie was let out of the bot­tle, and, ever since then, world lead­ers have been try­ing to put the genie back in … with great dif­fi­cul­ty. The new doc­u­men­tary Count­down to Zero, which pre­miered at Sun­dance ear­li­er this year, traces the his­to­ry of the atom­ic bomb and makes the case for world­wide nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment – a time­ly issue giv­en that the US Sen­ate has been debat­ing the New Strate­gic Arms Reduc­tion Treaty (aka New START). The “fea­turette” above, excerpt­ed from the film, gives you a quick and some­what haunt­ing intro­duc­tion to Oppen­heimer, the man behind the bomb.

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This week­end marked the 154th birth­day of Niko­la Tes­la, the Serbian/Croatian emi­gre whose work on elec­tro­mag­net­ism and electro­mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing con­tributed to the birth of com­mer­cial elec­tric­i­ty. Espe­cial­ly dur­ing the past year, his name has regained a fair amount of cur­ren­cy, not least because there’s a very sporty elec­tric road­ster now named after him. In hon­or of his birth­day, the clip above gives a very quick and artis­tic intro­duc­tion to Tes­la’s life and work …