(Technical nit: It sounds to me like the reporter doesn’t know the difference between sound and electormagnetism.)
I was listening at 13:40 and thinking, “Gee, I don’t see where that comment’s coming from. They’ve kept it straight so far.” Then suddenly, “Ooooh”.
Now, they DID work with both sound and EM. Tuned radio waves could easily be what the doctor ordered, more so than ultrasound… but they’re very different things. It would, however, explain why the reporter got confused.
In an edit of Gabriel Rhodes’s story in last week’s show, I asked him to
insert erronenous information about sound waves and electromagnetic waves,
and then acted so completely confident about it—misremembering a science
show I worked on years ago—that nobody in the editing process bothered to
fact check it. This was very much my mistake and not Gabe’s, and I regret
telling him to insert a mistake into his otherwise carefully researched and
fact checked story. Thanks to the many listeners who wrote to point out the
error. We’ll go back and fix this, so the version of the show on the website
in a few days will have the correction. He was using electromagnetic waves,
not sound waves, for his experiment.
I was listening at 13:40 and thinking, “Gee, I don’t see where that comment’s coming from. They’ve kept it straight so far.” Then suddenly, “Ooooh”.
Now, they DID work with both sound and EM. Tuned radio waves could easily be what the doctor ordered, more so than ultrasound… but they’re very different things. It would, however, explain why the reporter got confused.
Ira Glass says:
Also, I fail typing. (“Electormagnetism”.)