Brian Ler on WNYC.

With us now, Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart,

who some of you know is also a PBS NewsHour commentator and MSNBC host.

What many of you may not know is the story of why Jonathan quit the Washington Post editorial board,

how he grew up in two very different cultures in New Jersey and North Carolina,

how he's experienced being too black for some people, but not black enough for others, as he'll

describe it, that he helped Michael Bloomberg get elected, mayor of New York, did you know that?

And even how he began his professional media career right here at WNYC, after being a college intern

at the Today Show, it's all in his new book called Yet Here I Am and Here

He is. Hi, Jonathan. Always Good to talk. Welcome back to WNYC. Thank you, Brian. This is very surreal for me.

Because we've known each other a long time. Right. The subtitle of your book is Lessons from a Black Man Search for Home. So what was this

dual home you had as a kid in New Jersey and North Carolina? Where in Jersey, first of all?

So I was born in Newark and we lived there until I was 10 and then we moved to North Plainfield.

And then we moved to Haslett, New Jersey and Monmouth County when I was 10 and then we moved to North Plainfield and then we moved to Haslett, New Jersey

and Monmouth County when I was 12 and I, we were there until I was 16 and my mom remarried

and we moved back to Newark to the Wequake section where I went to St. Benedict's, St. Benedict's prep until I went to Carlton in Minnesota.

And then in the summers until I was about 12,

I would spend those summers in North Carolina,

in a small town called Severn, North Carolina,

in North Hampton County, North Carolina, at my mother's

parents' homes, so my maternal grandparents. And it was a very formative time for me, because my

while I went to Catholic school in Newark, I would then go down and spend the summers with my grandparents

...