i feel like nowadays you never get physicists writing interesting non-science stuff, unless they are tenured old farts. why is that? i would happily read a book by any notable young scientist or even mid-career science on their thoughts about the world. compare with prior generations: Feynman wrote a bunch of fun books about his life and his random thoughts on stuff; einstein wrote a book called “the world as i see it” and books on politics, hawking wrote about religion, leon lederman wrote books mostly about the culture of the scientific community, and there are lots of other examples. but that doesn’t really happen any more as far as i can tell

i hope it’s not because physicists feel some shadow of political correctness that threatens their career if they were to express anything. i mean, i feel like i could write a fun book about my take on the history of physics but i am not a star enough in my field to be confident that it wouldn’t harm my career. but even stars in physics don’t write books on anything except maybe popsci about their research, if that. do they also feel a shadow of “i shouldn’t say anything because maybe i will accidentally get cancelled”?