Fascinating question, I'll have to look into this! I was considering writing a blog post about the movie physics already since there are so many fascinating things to be discovered, but I'll maybe check out Kip Thorne's book about the movie first ;)
For me pop sci documentaries were quite a motivation to study Physics though. But yeah, after having studied it I have zero interest in pop sci anymore. It's unfortunately not really explaining things but more show casing things. But what I also learned while reading text books, listening and reading lectures: often the most concise explanations are very close to every day language. (In the lines of https://www.motionmountain.net/9lines.html which was recently also posted on HN) Would be great if such things could be included more into pop sci. Maybe in a way that at least the common notations are put in. That doesn't enable you to do meaningful calculations but at least it would be way closer to relevant literature. Unfortunately there's also quite a barrier to university literature in terms of pricing and some stuff is just not published on the Internet. E.g. lecture notes are only sporadically available but tend to be more readable than most books. FWIW Feynman's lectures on Physics really stand out here
That book is amazing, speaking as a non-physicist. (Fine, I did study maths, so I suppose I'm almost qualified as a theoretical physicist, except I'm not good enough at maths ;)
Really recommend it to anybody who's interested in that part of history. Amazing writing, and an incredible story. (You know it's gripping when you read about some of the experiments and feverishly hope they don't blow themselves up, nevermind knowing the outcome)
A really excellent series if you like math and physics. It gets bad reviews because most readers aren’t looking for a physics text disguised as a novel. Personally, I love it.
The title is 'So you want to learn physics'. If you aren't trying anything challenging you aren't really learning physics, you are just getting a few of the highlights.
I'm not sure if best but certainly the most enjoyable and entertaining: For the love of physics. I absolutely envy people who have been in Walter Lewin's classes.
PBS SpaceTime is great. Another physics video series on Youtube that is also excellent (and maybe even a little better) are the videos by Don Lincoln of Fermilab. They don't break his videos out into his own channel, but he's a lot of the Fermilab content:
https://www.youtube.com/user/fermilab
It's _QED_ (Quantum Electrodynamics), which is both a book (compiled lecture notes) and a video series. It's on YouTube. It was a non-science-major informal lecture series. Very little math.
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