Robert Krulwich building off something that [Jason Kottke calls ‘Human Wormholes’](http://kottke.org/12/01/human-wormholes-and-the-great-span):
>There are people who live long enough to create a link — a one-generation link — to figures from what feels like a distant past, and their presence among us shrinks history. When “Long Ago” suddenly becomes “So I said to him …,” long ago jumps closer.
There are some fantastic stories in here, a must read.