> whenever I ask them to explain anything they don't consider my question and don't display any understanding

You are absolutely doing it wrong.

My experience is completely different. It doesn’t take a frontier model to give a good explanation (likely plagiarized from a textbook or a “blank for dummies” article).

Try a bit harder to tell it your background and the kind of analogies you want and don’t want.

Possibly this is topic-dependent. Most of my queries are about science and math.