WHO: Tom Ashbrook

WHAT: Ten years ago, days after 9/11, National Public Radio asked veteran journalist, and former Globe reporter, Tom Ashbrook to come in to the studio in Boston and take callers on the air to relieve an exhausted crew. A decade later, Ashbrook, 55, is still taking callers, on his acclaimed show ‘‘On Point.’’ We caught up to him for the show’s 10th anniversary to talk about favorite guests, annoying callers, politics, and the media.

Q. Promise me you won’t cut me off in the middle of my question to take another call?

A. I will not, I assure you.

Q. What do you remember most about your first show 10 years ago?

A. The sense of national emergency. The sense of duty, to just get up to that microphone and do what I could. I remember the callers’ pain and the shock. And how we were all groping.

Q. That was such a serious time. Do you enjoy those moments, or the lighter topics more?

A. We’re on 10 hours a week, that’s a lot of radio. I still feel the urgency to take on the big issues. But the artists, the poets, the great thinkers, that range keeps it alive.

Q. Do you have one favorite moment so far?

A. There are so many. Sitting with Annie Leibovitz, talking about her work, and Susan Sontag. Here’s Sontag, the philosopher, and here is her lover, one of the great photographers of our age. We connected so deeply about the language of photography, and it’s one of those moments in radio, it’s live, and so deep and real.

Q. Is there a guest you’ve been trying to get and can’t?

A. I always joke we haven’t had Beyoncé yet. Truth be told, it’s a pretty small number. Last week I was sitting with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, a sitting Supreme Court justice!

Q. How do you handle the caller who seems to be a little out of it?

A. My firm position is that every caller has something to offer. Sometimes it dribbles straight out, sometimes you have to work to get it.

Q. Would your show be different if it were based in New York or Washington?

A. Boston gives it a very particular sound. It’s not New York critics or celebrity obsession. It’s not DC Beltway talk. Boston helps make it serious and real and bold.

Q. Have you ever found yourself stumped by a topic?

A. I’ve got such great producers, they do the research. There are moments when I’m confounded. Art Buchwald did a book about coming back from the brink of death, there was a moment when he stopped talking. There was a long pause, (laughing) we thought we had lost him. I thought, this will be a first.

Q. Was there ever a call that embarrassed you?

A. Every once in a while people flare up with blue language. I’m surprised how rare that is, and grateful.

Q. Is anything more annoying than callers who keep the radio on in the background?

A. No. It’s such a nightmare. After all these years how can anybody forget that? But they do.

Q. You worked as a surveyor and dynamiter in Alaska’s oil fields. So, drill baby drill?

A. I needed a job, that was a good one. That part of Alaska is so beautiful. I’ve been there when herds of caribou go across the tundra. You just want to cry at the beauty of it.

Q. You also studied American history at Yale. Is there one president who fascinated you?

A. It’s everybody’s. Lincoln.

Q. Are you surprised at how Obama’s presidency has unfolded?

A. We’re a long way from those days when everybody had tears in their eyes. On the other hand, you have to be naive to be surprised. We were in tough spot when he got elected. I did think he might be a more natural forceful leader, but I’m very aware of what he’s been up against.

Q. Which is what?

A. Economic calamity. A deeply entrenched, playing-for-all-the-marbles opposition.

Q. Do you try and keep your personal politics from seeping into the show?

A. We have plenty of right wing media and left wing media. It’s rare in this country to have a vibrant discussion that pulls in people from the whole spectrum. My first goal is to hold that open.

Q. But certainly you’re aware that NPR has been charged with leaning left.

A. We’re committed to keeping a seat for everybody at the table. I will ask questions from the left perspective or the right perspective. I want the left to hear the right and right to hear the left.

Q. But do people today want that? It seems like they only want to hear those who agree with them.

A. A lot of people have self-selected who they listen to. That’s opened a huge opportunity for where we stand, a big middle that’s not bland. We set up our pop stand there.

Try BostonGlobe.com today and get two weeks FREE. Interview has been condensed and edited. Doug Most can be reached at dmost@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Globedougmost.