Would you mind just recounting some of your greatest

Muhammad Ali moments? Well, the first time I met Muhammad Ali actually was in 1967.

I was a student at Columbia, and I had a weekly radio show for the student radio station called Personalities in Sports, and each week I'd take this bulky old reel-to-reel tape recorder out into the field, and I went down to Madison Square Garden to tape an interview with Ali before he fought Zora Foley, which was his last fight before he was forced into exile.

And people used to say one of the charming things about Ali was he would spend as much time with some kid from a local student newspaper as he would with a boxing writer from the New York Times.

And I know that's true because I was one of those kids.

And then years and years later, I was approached by Muhammad and Lani Ali, who asked if I wanted to be his official biographer.

And I will never have a professional project that brings me as much joy as that did.

Was Ali being embraced as something that could save