Interview with Donald C. Shapero, Senior Scholar at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Shapero discusses his childhood in Detroit and then Northern California, and he describes his early interests in electronics. He recounts his undergraduate experience at MIT and he explains his decision to remain at MIT for his graduate research in quantum field theory under the direction of Kenneth Johnson. Shapero discusses his postgraduate work at IBM before taking a teaching job at American University and then at Catholic University. He describes the opportunities to become an exchange scientist to Russia through the National Academy of Sciences and how he started to think about nuclear war. Shapero discusses his subsequent work creating the Energy Research Advisory Board for the Department of Energy and why his increasing work on federal physics policy for the National Academy and committee work it supports convinced him that he was becoming a cultural anthropologist of physicists. He explains the origins and framework of the Academys decadal survey program and he provides perspective on where the Academy fits within the broader matrix of federal science policy and funding. Shapero explains why, from his vantage point, the most exciting work in the field currently is happening at the interface of physics and astronomy and what the Academy can offer in the broader effort to make STEM more diverse and inclusive.