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I remember such a thing happening in a podcast (or maybe radio program? its been a while) where they had a group of physicists on a "popular science" format to speak about some new thing that was breaking in their field. The only one I remember was Lawrence Krauss (b/c he was actually a professor of mine in college). There was the back and forth like you describe, and eventually the host was able to get a fairly detailed answer to his question, after which he asked the guest if they could possibly simplify the explanation for "the folks listening at home". After a brief pause Dr. Krauss simply replied: "no".
Nice example. I think it's a decent stance. Compressing models/theories is always lossy and it takes a special skill to map them onto simpler models/metaphors, while keeping predictive power intact. If you are unsure how to do this, don't do this.
Sounds cool. What was the experience like?
I was a 100s level physics class for non-physics majors, mostly comp sci people with a scattering of others who took it for fun or it counted as a required elective. Apparently it was a special pet class of his that he'd been working on for a while. It was pretty low stress with the grade being mostly based on attendance and participation. He did miss a lot of the classes himself though. In fact, by his own attendance policy he would have failed the class by missing about 30% of them. I do remember he had a 80s era red Corvette that really stuck out in the staff lot and was a good indicator he was actually there that day.
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