I'm still excited at being at a microphone and talking to listeners. I love that. It's the most basic element of what I do and I still enjoy it very much.

In college, I got interested in news because the world was coming apart. The civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's right movement. That focused my radio ambitions toward news.

In my case, the listener is often in an automobile driving to work. You can concentrate on the road while still getting an audio message that can be riveting.

Some are pre-taped interviews because maybe we can't get that person live or maybe we're not sure it's going to work out right so we tape it an hour in advance.

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.

The pictures are created by the listener, with a little help from the broadcaster. The pictures are perfect. If you're showing pictures, different things in that picture can distract from the spoken word.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.

Good things just keep happening.

Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen.

Between 2 and 5 I'm reading in to find out what's been going on while I've been asleep.

I go home by noon, and I'm in bed by 6 p.m. I get up at 1 and do it again.

I got to know every format of every station and who was on and what time.

I used to listen to the soap operas with my grandmother.

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

I wanted to be one of the voices in the box.

I was encouraged to read aloud in class and vocalize.

I'm a very straight-laced, conservative news kind of guy.

I've never been able to predict the future of anything.

If you want anything done well, do it yourself. This is why most people laugh at their own jokes.

It's also a more personal medium. It seems to go directly to one's brain. There are no pictures to distract.