The following is a transcript of Part 2 of our podcast with Matt Frei, anchor of BBC World News America. Please check back soon for Part 3.

BBCA: What will Katty Kay bring to the newscast?

Matt Frei: Well, Katty is a very old friend. In fact, we went to Oxford University together. We've known each other for longer than I care to mention here. And she is an extremely clever, articulate journalist who has reported on the U.S. for certainly a lot longer than I have, has fantastic contacts, is very well-known in the U.S., has traveled to just about every part of this country, and will bring to the program a real flair and intelligence, especially during the election campaign. I mean, Katty has an ability to talk to politicians and to voters that is both very disarming, because she's utterly charming, but, at the same time, very enlightening if you're listening. She has the ability to get stuff out of politicians without annoying them, but at the end of the interview, they're probably standing there going, "Did I really say all that to Katty?"

BBCA: Legend has it that you and Katty sailed down a river together in Africa. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Matt Frei: We did, not just once, but twice, with her husband and some dear friends of mine. We basically got together when Katty was based in Zimbabwe in Harare, and we sailed down the Zambeze River for ten days on some canoes. There were, I think five canoes, and there were ten of us all together. And I remember, distinctly, getting into the canoe, and I'd never canoed before. This is in the middle of the African bush. Unbelievably hot, it was like 110 or something. And just before I started paddling the canoe, the guy who ran this particular expedition said, "You've got to sign the insurance indemnity form in case you get eaten by a crocodile." And literally two minutes later - I think Katty was in a different boat - the person I was canoeing with screamed, and we looked out, and there was a hippopotamus charging our boat. And the danger was the hippo/croc double act. The hippo doesn't eat you; it just bites your boat in half. You then swim in the river and then the croc gets to eat you for lunch. And you would have thought after a few hours we'd have turned around and gone back to the mainland - actually get back to the capital - but in fact, it was incredibly enjoyable. And Katty and I never fell once during those entire ten days. In fact, we enjoyed it so much we did it again the following year.

BBCA: So you were an opera and theater critic when you started out at the BBC. Can you tell a little bit about that?

Matt Frei: This sounds awfully grand. It was slightly less grand, but let me explain what happened. I left university in 1986 I think it was and was desperate to get into journalism. The only place that would have me at the time was the German service of the BBC because I'm a German national. And this service was created at the height of the Cold War in order to broadcast - actually it was created at the end of the Second World War - but then came into its own at the height of the Cold War in order to broadcast to the other side of the Iron Curtain, which is odd because half of my family came from East Germany and were still living in East Germany. And these were people I had never been allowed to meet before because they were on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. But here I was, on a very short-term contract, broadcasting opera and theater and cinema reviews from stuff that I'd seen and listened to in London to people on the other side of the Berlin Wall who would never be allowed to see those things, and if they wanted to try and see them, they have to get shot trying to cross the Berlin Wall. So there was a sort of curious perversion about this sort of cultural journalism. But it was my first job in the BBC. It was extremely enjoyable because you got to see movies on Monday and Tuesday mornings and then you got to go to the opera in the evenings. And I didn't know an awful lot about opera at the time, but I learned quite a bit. I knew a little more about films. And I then would come back and, once or twice a week, I would write my reports, write my reviews, and they would go out, in German, to the other side of the Berlin Wall. And I can just imagine what people would have thought. They'd be sitting there, in Leipzig or Dresden - where actually the theater and the music were pretty amazing, probably better than anything in London, anyway - listening to these reports from London, thinking, "What are we gonna do with this? Should we go out and see the play? I mean, what are you telling us here?" It was a sort of very tantalizing form of journalism for them.