Perhaps the sanest advice Peter Grier received in his illustrious 45-year journey as a Monitor writer came, appropriately enough, from his wife. “This is crazy,” she said as he pulled an all-nighter to write our signature post-9/11 story. “You need to go to bed.”

Peter ignored the advice. Repeatedly. Whether it was all-nighters or unreasonably tight deadlines, Peter had a habit of making the very difficult look effortless. Today, with Peter on the cusp of retirement, Gail Russell Chaddock chats and laughs with him about one of the most portentous Monitor careers of recent decades – his own.