[jeffwass]

Yeah, I saw that Feynman video too when it was posted to HN a few days ago.

But despite the claims to the contrary, he did explain magnetism to a layman, at a high level. Feynman's issue, seemingly a pet peeve of his by his tone, was the answering of a physics question asked by a layman that starts with 'Why'.

His long response actually covered just fine all the major points you'd expect in the answer, namely electromagnetic fields, alignments of the electron spins in the materials, etc.

His problem is that 'why' questions by non-experts are hard to answer because he doesn't know how deep to go before knowing he's satisfactorily answered with sufficient clarity and minimal hand-waving. And he did well in starting high and going a few levels deeper. Clearly he stopped before getting to a level requiring deep knowledge of physics.