The host, “Boss”, should know. Released just weeks ago, Boss served 41 years for murder, most of them as a “shot caller” presiding over a faction of the convict-run shadow government that effectively runs the prisons. The show’s pulse is Boss’s own stories, told in a raw, no-holds-barred, tell-it-like it is style, from his initiation as a 20-year-old kid, through his rise to prison royalty, and al
l the stops along the way. Providing depth and color, and their own perspectives, are guests who touched Boss and the penal system through which he navigated, including current and former inmates, corrections officers, and parole officers. Boss served time in all of New York’s toughest prisons and rubbed shoulders with many of its most notorious criminals, including David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”), “Ronnie” DeFeo (of “Amityville Horror” fame), “Bobby” Chambers (“the Preppy Killer”), “Mad Dog Sully”, and Jack Henry Abbott (Normal Mailer’s pen pal who wrote “In the Belly of the Beast”). Episodes focus on fascinating (and little known) corners of prison life, and each episode opens with a riveting true story, and ends with realtime update on Boss’s status as he works to reintegrate into a world that is barely recognizable to him. Through it all, the listener experiences life as it really was for Boss and his fellow convicts: the daily dehumanization and the brotherhood formed among inmates, and the grinding monotony punctuated both by gut-wrenching and brutal horrors and antics designed to maintain sanity and pass the TIME.