Interview discusses Robert Wagoner's family background; early interest in mathematics; early hobbies; early reading; influence of grandmother; education at Cornell; influence of Paul Olum; interest in philosophy at Cornell; influence of Fred Hoyle's Messenger lectures at Cornell; education at Stanford; engineering versus physics; influence of fellow graduate students at Stanford; thesis work with Leonard Schiff on the gravitational collapse of rotating massive objects; first Texas Symposium in Dallas in 1963 and announcement of Kerr solution; interest in cosmology in graduate school; interest in Mach's principle; discouraging encounter with John Bahcall at California Institute of Technology (Caltech); switch to nuclear astrophysics at Caltech; motivating influence of William Fowler; history of big bang nucleosynthesis calculations and the work of Alpher, Herman, Gamow, Fermi, Turkevich, Follin; reasons why big bang nucleosynthesis work wasn't done earlier and the initial motivation to make all the elements in the big bang; role of Fred Hoyle in big bang nucleosynthesis calculations; scientific philosophy of George Gamow; motivation of Fowler by Hoyle; interest of Hoyle in making all the elements in massive stars within the context of the steady state theory; Hoyle's suggestion of population III stars; Hoyle's explanation for the origin of the cosmic background radiation; early work of Taylor and Hoyle in 1964 on big bang nucleosynthesis and the cosmological restriction of the number of neutrino types; work of James Peebles on big bang nucleosynthesis; first announcement of results of Wagoner, Fowler, and Hoyle calculations and reception by the community; supporting evidence for the big bang model from the interstellar deuterium abundance and the calculations of Reeves, Audoze and others on production of lithium, beryllium, and boron; Wagoner's continuing worry about whether the big bang model is correct; introduction to and attitude toward the horizon problem; initial reception of the inflationary universe model; attitude toward the inflationary universe model; desire of Wagoner to probe the universe with physics that we know, and his concern over the uncertainties with the inflationary universe model; attitude toward the flatness problem; Wagoner's interest in letting observation, not theory, tell us the value of omega; prevalence of personal prejudice as a motivator amount scientists and the danger of this prejudice; reaction to de Lapparent, Geller, and Huchra's work on large-scale inhomogeneities; worry over reconciliation of observed inhomogeneities of galaxies with the homogeneity of the cosmic background radiation; worry over validity of the cosmological principle; more discussion of Wagoner's preference for doing cosmology with well understood physical probes; outstanding problems in cosmology; dark matter, value of omega, nature of central engine of quasars, evolution of structure; ideal design of the universe and importance of extraterrestrial life; question of whether the universe has a point.