Lee Shulman, Ducommun Professor of Education, Emeritus at Stanford, reflects on his life and academic career, describing the chance-filled path he took from slicing pastrami in his parents’ deli to teaching at Michigan State and Stanford and then presiding over the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He talks about his Yeshiva high school in Chicago, undergraduate and PhD experiences at the University of Chicago, his research interests in the philosophy and psychology of education, integration of pedagogy with content, development of new forms of teaching assessment, and his work at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching which moved to the Stanford campus. He comments that just as pastrami is marbled, teaching and research should be equal parts of a well-marbled career.