Susan Stamberg

And I just wanted to move that quotient of stress out of my life and do less, and I did.

Very few.

I told family, of course, and a handful of really close friends, and only a few people here at NPR who I felt needed to know.

No, I had a lumpectomy and radiation.

Yeah, I was working all through that, actually.

It was a salvation through that time.

I felt I needed to keep working.

Work has been important to me at a lot of rough times in my life, as it is for many of us, I think.

That's not me.

Long pause.

The most compelling thing you can do on the radio.

Keep quiet.

So you didn't – people did not need to know.

No, I didn't.

I wasn't ready to do that to people, and I wasn't ready to handle their reactions to it.

I'm a bucker-upper.

It's part of my nature.

I like to make people feel better.

I'm the one that, in the All Things Considered days, when the program was being put – marked up on a big map on the wall –

I'd come in, that would start at 2.30, the order of the pieces and who was going to be reporting what.