Can anyone find the NPR story where the young guy did a terrible interview of the M*A*S*H cast?

I remember a number of years ago I heard a report on NPR. It was a journalist who looked back on one of his first jobs for a major news job. He was lucky enough to get a chance to travel to the MASH set and interview the cast of the TV show. However, he was so young and inexperienced, he did a really bad job.

He played some clips back and commented on how embarrassed he is now by them. Even worse, he had told his family about the story and they bragged about him visiting the show. This ended up badly because the story never aired.

I believe he interviewed Alan Alda, Harry Morgan, and Jamie Farr, but there may have been more.

He asked Harry Morgan why Morgan never ended up a leading man. This kind of made Morgan sad/contemplative, but he managed to answer nicely enough. He asked Alda about the show being anti-Vietnam, but Alda ended up turning his questions around and saying the show is anti-war in general.

You can hear the whole cast that was interviewed trying to give this young guy a good interview even though his questions are terrible. Really, it ended up being a story about how nice everyone on MASH was because they tried to help him out even though he was asking ludicrous questions.

I loved the story then and would like to hear it again.

I’m guess the story aired about 11-12 years ago. Anyone know who this was and where I can find an audio stream of it?

Thanks

The young man in question was Ira Glass, himself.

Aaand the audio Cringe - This American Life

Thanks!

I just listened to it again for the first time since 2001 and it was great. I feel so bad for him doing such a bad set of interviews with the cast. What a lovely group of people to be so nice and gracious to him. It’s clear they are just trying to help out a young guy and be nice.

Thank you again for finding that.