Richard Haglund was educated at Wesleyan University and completed a Ph.D. in experimental nuclear physics in 1975. He was a staff member at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1976 until joining the faculty of Vanderbilt University in 1984. His research focuses on the interactions of light with quantum materials at ultrashort (a millionth of a billionth of a second) time scales. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in light-matter interactions as well as courses on the impact of science on politics and economic growth. Haglund is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and received the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Senior Scientist Prize for contributions to materials physics. In the conversation we discuss the nature of physics, why it's so hard to understand, and J.R. Oppenheimer.