chain react

A long documentary-style film on the 1961 SL-1 reactor accident, where a control rod was withdrawn too far and the reactor went prompt-critical. The resulting steam explosion ejected control rods and shield plugs.

A short BBC Earth clip from David Attenborough's Life of Birds showing a lyrebird imitating sounds, including a chainsaw and camera shutter, so accurately it is hard to tell from the real thing.

A BBC Four documentary following Alan Bond and Reaction Engines as they pursue the Skylon spaceplane and its SABRE engine. It covers the history from HOTOL and the heat-exchanger breakthrough.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day tries to manufacture a grill scrubber entirely in the United States. Along the way he runs into missing supply chains, tooling and institutional manufacturing knowledge.

A Ukrainian documentary about the liquidators who cleaned radioactive debris off the Chernobyl reactor roof in two-minute shifts. It presents their firsthand accounts and footage of the work.

Veritasium tells the story of the XZ backdoor, how a patient attacker became maintainer and nearly compromised SSH on Linux systems. It also covers free software history and how encryption in SSH works.

A long Gamers Nexus investigation into how volatile US tariffs affect the computer hardware industry. It interviews manufacturers and sellers about costs, margins and why moving production to the US is hard.

A man spends six months and $1500 making a chicken sandwich entirely from scratch: growing vegetables, making salt from seawater, milking a cow for cheese, grinding wheat, collecting honey and killing a chicken.

The first episode of James Burke's 1978 BBC series Connections traces modern dependence on complex technological networks, starting with the 1965 New York blackout, and moves through ancient agriculture to Kuwait's oil-driven leap.

Feature-length documentary following DeepMind's AlphaGo program as it prepares for and plays the 2016 match against Go champion Lee Sedol. It covers the team, the games, and the emotional reaction of the Go world to an AI beating a top human.

A clip from Attenborough's Life of Mammals following a San tribesman in the Kalahari on an eight-hour persistence hunt, running down a kudu through harsh heat. It shows tracking, endurance running and the hunter's reaction after the kill.

A short BBC clip in which David Attenborough shows a lyrebird imitating sounds, including camera shutters, car alarms and chainsaws. It comes from the BBC natural history series Life on Earth.