I'm Brooke Gladstone with this week's podcast Extra.

The story you're about to hear takes place at the dangerous intersection between journalism and art,

a place easier to reach when the journey is fueled by obsession.

In this case, two, the journalist's obsession with his choice to take a particular photo

and a playwright's obsession with that journalist.

The combined result, a memoir in opera, a book of poems, and a play.

Also, a rather strange, enduring friendship.

It's hard to pinpoint the roots of those obsessions, but we do know when they

took wing. For the journalist, Paul Watson of the Toronto Star, it was 1993 in Mogadishu, Somalia,

the day he found a mob dragging the body of an American soldier through the streets and took

three pictures, one of which earned

him a Pulitzer Prize.

For the playwright, Dan O'Brien, it was 2007, when he heard Paul Watson recount that

day on public radio.

Let's start with Paul.

Would you tell us about that photo?

Yes, it's the image of Staff Sergeant William David Cleveland.

After a roughly 16-hour battle, more than one Black Hawk helicopter had been shot down.

He was the crew chief on one of them, which is the serviceman who sits at the door with a large-caliber machine gun.

You know, I was informed that Americans had been taken. And it became obvious that there was a dead American being paraded,

pulled by ropes through the streets. Describe the picture. It is of a nearly naked man.

He has green army underwear on, that's all.

...