Everyone understands that you can keep asking "why?". Four year old kids understand this.
What the interviewer obviously wanted was an explanation of a particular physical phenomenon targeted at the level of someone without any background in physics. Everyone, Feynman included, has been in that position.
> What the interviewer obviously wanted was an explanation of a particular physical phenomenon targeted at the level of someone without any background in physics.
How do you know that? I would claim that it's what you expected and even if you received that (as quoted before!) you double down on showing the dissatisfaction in what preceded that explanation, namely, Feynman explaining that the "satisfaction" impression of every answer depends on the already existing knowledge of the person who asks.
But the answer was completely honest: there aren't any intuitions about electromagnetic fields present in someone "without any background in physics" which would allow the decent (non-cheating) answer.
What the interviewer obviously wanted was an explanation of a particular physical phenomenon targeted at the level of someone without any background in physics. Everyone, Feynman included, has been in that position.
It's quite wrong to suggest that physicists don't, or shouldn't, ask "why" questions. They do it all the time: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22w...