I feel like this should be required watching for anyone who wants to better understand colliders and the politics around them. BobbyBroccoli made this series on the development of some of them.
Also that West Wing episode where a physicist is trying to get funding for our Collider and the staffer is like "what does it do? What practical applications does it have?" and the physicist says none. It's practical application is discovery. That we discovered penicillin on accident not when we were researching practical applications of injections.