Roger Highfield is Director of External Affairs at the Science Museum Group. A physical chemist by training, he honed his journalistic skills while a postdoctoral researcher before becoming Science Editor of the Daily Telegraph for the next 20 years. After a spell as Editor of the New Scientist he joined the Science Museum, where he works at an intersection between scientists, historians, curators and multiple publics. In this extended conversation we explore tensions between depth and breadth, ask whether medicine is a science or a practice and talk about the craftsmanship that underpins the performance of laboratory science.