(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.
Also, I fail typing. ("Electormagnetism".)
This American Life episode 450: "So Crazy It Just Might Work". The whole episode is good, but act one (6:48-42:27) is relevant to LW, about a trained scientist teaming up with an amateur on a cancer cure.
It's downloadable until 19 Nov 2011 or so, and streamable thereafter.
(Technical nit: It sounds to me like the reporter doesn't know the difference between sound and electromagnetism.)
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