Carlton Caves, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of New Mexico, is interview by David Zierler. Caves recounts his family’s history in Oklahoma, his own childhood there and his early interests in collecting insects. He describes the considerations that led him to enroll at Rice University, where Harold Rorschach and Neal Lane were formative influences leading to his interest in physics. He explains his decision to focus on relativity for graduate school at Caltech, where Kip Thorne because his advisor, and he describes his first project editing Thorne’s draft section on what would become Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler. Caves explains Thorne’s initial interest in detecting gravitational waves and how he worked through the problem in identifying the noise sources in gravitational interferometers. He describes how his work on squeezing light informed the LIGO and Virgo collaborations, and he conveys the difficulties in specializing in quantum optics before that was a recognized field in the physics job market. Caves discusses the opportunity that led to him joining the Electrophysics group at USC, and he connects his growing interest in information physics and quantum metrology to his decision to transfer to New Mexico. He discusses Marlan Scully’s pioneering research on lasers, his developing interest in importing Bayesianism into quantum mechanics, and how UNM became a leading center for quantum information theory. Caves surveys the applicability of quantum information, and at the end of the interview, he reflects on the importance of setting one’s sights high in retirement, because the stakes of scientific failure are low personally but can also yield great advances.