Marty 00:37 of video it says he received a gift an the object in his hand is black not aluminum an you see it again at 2:25 ?
The piece of the airplane is shown at 17 seconds into the video. The voice over is, "This shard of metal was donated to the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Its owner claims ..."
It appears several more times in the video.
The black thing he's playing with at his desk looks to me like a throttle-lever assembly, but it could be for a lawn mower or an outboard motor. It is definitely unrelated to the aircraft part that is shown in far greater detail all throughout the rest of the video and that matches the part Ric looked at for "History Detectives."
The Museum of Flight in Seattle has a
recent article about the donation of the piece by Jon Ott to the Museum. You will notice that the still photos bear a very close resemblance to the images shown in both video links up above.
I conclude where I began: Ric knows pretty much all there is to know about this piece. (There are discrepancies about who gave him the piece, but that's life with the media, I guess.)