Cringe

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Stories that make us cringe. And an investigation into just what, exactly, makes some stories capable of forcing this physical reaction out of us when other stories don't. Ira reports on a week he spent on the set of the TV show M*A*S*H in 1979, supposedly to do a story about the program for National Public Radio. He was 20 years old. He didn't know what he was doing. He listened to the tapes for the first time in over two decades, and found much to cringe at. In this show, Bruce Jay Friedman reads his story 'Humiliation,' from The Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman, about someone who gets obsessed with a decades-old cringe moment ... and decides to do something about it.

Stories that make us cringe. And an investigation into just what, exactly, makes some stories capable of forcing this physical reaction out of us when other stories don't. Ira reports on a week he spent on the set of the TV show M*A*S*H in 1979, supposedly to do a story about the program for National Public Radio. He was 20 years old. He didn't know what he was doing. He listened to the tapes for the first time in over two decades, and found much to cringe at. In this show, Bruce Jay Friedman reads his story 'Humiliation,' from The Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman, about someone who gets obsessed with a decades-old cringe moment ... and decides to do something about it.

Learn more or listen again to this week's episode.

Photo: Aaron Gustafson

Credits

Host:

Ira Glass