The radio was my pal. I was just crazy about it.

Public radio has always been so powerless.

That's the problem with news interviews, you work your tail off to get prominent figures in the news on the radio, but once they've been on, the event passes, the urgency, the issues you talked about evaporate.

He was more like a pal.

I wake about 1 a.m. I'm in the office by 2 a.m. We're on the air at 5.

But when you see personal artifacts relating to - by genealogy at least - a living human being, it was just more impressive to me than just about anything I've ever read about slavery before.