While a physicist should be commended for defending philosophy, I'm still not convinced that "asking deep questions about what it all means" isn't a complete waste of time.

Regardless of whether anything "means" anything, I really don't get why it should.

Uncovering actionable (and often very surprising) laws of nature sound much more exciting to me than pondering about "meaning", especially when done by people who don't have a deep understanding of physics.

The only people who should be philosophizing are the physicists, but they'd rather do physics instead, and I think that's a good thing.