It's a very Oppenheimer holiday season 2025! Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus about the work of one of America’s most brilliant scientists, and his leadership in creating our first weapon of mass destruction, is a GD masterpiece, and we love it.

Enjoy the end of the year with this feel-good tale of that time we built and used nukes and it was never, ever a problem ever again. If those feels aren’t good enough, enjoy the throughline in which we watch Oppenheimer’s patriotism and service to America in one of its darkest hours get desecrated by a bitchy, self-centered former shoe salesman/"Admiral" who labors under the illusion that Oppenheimer talked shit about him to Einstein one time.

Also discussed: How do all of these scientists know each other? Would J. Edgar Hoover have a file on this podcast, were he still alive today? Are we ever going to sit in the chairs in a hotel room again? Are we going to spend every Christmas with Rami Malek?

This episode is a long one, however, it would have been longer if we kept in the parts where we re-litigate the foreign and domestic policy choices made by U.S. leadership in 1945, something we’re both deeply qualified to do and that we know our audience would just LOVE.

Oppenheimer was directed by Christopher Nolan and stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, Alden Ehrenreich as Senate Aide, Scott Grimes as Counsel, Jason Clarke as Roger Robb, Macon Blair as Lloyd Garrison, Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr, Tom Conti as Albert Einstein, David Krumholtz as Isidor Rabi, Matthias Schweighöfer as Werner Heisenberg, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, Alex Wolff as Luis Alvarez, Josh Zuckerman as Rossi Lomanitz, Michael Angarano as Robert Serber, Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer, Emma Dumont as Jackie Oppenheimer, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Jefferson Hall as Haakon Chevalier, Guy Burnet as George Eltenton, Tom Jenkins as Richard Tolman, Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush, Louise Lombard as Ruth Tolman, David Dastmalchian as William Borden, Matt Damon as Leslie Groves, Dane DeHaan as Kenneth Nichols, Olli Haaskivi as Edward Condon, Jack Quaid as Richard Feynman, Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, Gustaf Skarsgård as Hans Bethe, James Urbaniak as Kurt Gödel, Danny Deferrari as Enrico Fermi, Christopher Denham as Klaus Fuchs, Rami Malek as David Hill, Máté Haumann as Leo Szilard, Olivia Thirlby as Lilli Hornig, Casey Affleck as Boris Pash, Gary Oldman as Harry Truman, and Hap Lawrence as Lyndon Johnson.

Sources

Podcasts:

Star Talk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, episode on Oppenheimer.

Books:

American Prometheus, by Kai Bird.

Magazines

Vanity Fair

Jean Tatlock: The Tragic Story of Robert Oppenheimer’s “Truest Love”

by Katey Rich

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/07/oppenheimer-true-story-jean-tatlock

https://www.fourthwallcontent.com/blog/colour-as-a-storytelling-device-in-films

https://filmustage.com/blog/the-power-of-color-in-film-learn-from-10-cinematic-examples/

Episode 79: Oppenheimer, Starring Cillian Murphy as Robert Oppenheimer!