Season 2: Tales of…My Dead Heroes

Unreleased interviews with the writers, songwriters and characters Josh Alan Friedman knew, admired, and outlived.

Over four decades of journalism, Friedman recorded conversations that never fully made it into print. This season releases them, with his own short stories and recollections woven around the tape.

Voices in Season 2 include Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather; Doc Pomus, the blues singer turned songwriter behind "Save the Last Dance for Me," in a two-part episode on his return to writing after a dormant decade; Jerry Leiber of Leiber and Stoller; Broadway composer Cy Coleman; Texas blues bassist Keith Ferguson; record producer Joel Dorn; Tiny Tim; and Al Goldstein, the Screw publisher and First Amendment litigant whose fall from Upper East Side family man to homelessness Friedman documents across two episodes.

Friedman worked for Goldstein at Screw in the late 1970s, and later co-wrote his memoir, I, Goldstein: My Screwed Life.