In this interview Pierce recalls his undergraduate education at Caltech in the late twenties and early thirties, the early years at Bell, radar work during the war, and the beginnings of America's satellite program, including Echo and Telstar. Pierce was also a prolific author of science fiction, sometimes under the pen name J. J. Coupling. In the mid-1960s, he served on the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). He retired from Bell Labs in 1971 and returned to Caltech as a professor in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, and he comments on the changes (and the similarities) he found in undergraduate education at Caltech. In the latter part of the interview, he discusses his work with Max Mathews on music synthesis.