The Microwave, Part 2

You probably use one everyday: to warm up your lunch, to explode pats of butter or simply to reheat your coffee. But how does a microwave oven work and where does this amazingly useful invention come from? Find out in this episode of Invention!

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our
exploration of the invention of microwaves. Now, in the last episode,
we got we got you through the nineteen seventies or so,
when the microwave, of course, had actually been invented. It

(00:23):
was invented by Percy Spencer working for Raytheon in the
nineteen forties, sort of invented by accident. He was working
on some radar microwave methods, but in in fact he
ended up accidentally creating the radar range which cooks food
with microwave radiation exactly. Yeah, he basically was working on
some radar equipment. It was like, oh, my candy bar
has melted. It is something has cooked it in my pocket,

(00:46):
and uh, you know, some tinkering, uh and some experimentation
led to the birth of the microwave oven. The technology.
At first, you know, people were a little hesitant. It
was expensive, it was bulky. There are some confusion over
what this radiation, uh you know, aspect of it might
consist of. But over time and especially through some of

(01:06):
some relentless marketing. They were able to win people over,
and and that's why today you will find a microwave
oven just about everywhere in your home, in your gas station,
in your dormitory, on ships, in cars. I believe you
were just looking at some microwaves before we came in,
and you saw a car model that you can plug

(01:28):
into your cigarette lighter right, well for kicks, I was
I was googling, uh, microwave cigarette lighter to see if
to see if Percy Spencer had ever tried to create one,
right that you can light a cigarette with microwaves. I
didn't find that, but I did find a microwave for
truckers that you plug into the the adapter in your truck. Uh. My,
my sisters once went to Disney World on the on

(01:51):
the cheap and brought a microwave oven with them so
they could cook hot dogs and I think you know
Kraft cheese uh, in their in their hotel room and
presumably in their vehicle. Um. So yeah, it's like that
kind of convenience of the microwave oven provides. But of
course we know that throughout the years, a lot of

(02:11):
microwave fears and microwave panic. Uh, it was there initially,
and in some ways it did persist even though the
microwave is an extremely popular appliance. Yeah. So well, we're
gonna be talking a lot in this episode about microwave
safety and just about it, just just you know, eradicating uh,
some of your perhaps still lingering fears or superstitions about

(02:34):
the technology. But but but before this happens, I do
want to touch on some of the misuses of microwaves
and TV and film that perhaps on some level contribute
to these ideas of the dangerous microwave. I think for
some reason, pop culture is obsessed with perversions of the
microwave oven. Yeah, in ways that don't always apply to

(02:54):
other household gadgets. Um. For instance, Uh, the big one,
of course is the movie Grimlins. Granted, we get to
see a gremlin destroyed in a blender as well, and
the blender is perhaps an invention where we look at
it and we know that there's a certain bit of
danger to it because it has rotating blades at the bottom,

(03:15):
but also a gremlin is thrown into the microwave and
destroyed in there. It explodes just like it's a pad
of butter that we've put in too long. I think
maybe this obsession comes from the fact that the microwave
energy is invisible and you can't see a fire or
a heating element or anything like that. It's just coming
out of this whirring object. Yeah, it's this magic box.

(03:36):
And I mean, if you don't understand the science involved.
The science, by the way, is explained in the previous
episode if you need to go back and refresh. But
other other places that I've enjoyed seeing the microwave used
um on Futurama, there's a scene where Leila breaks the
front of a microwave and then aims it at the
at Bender, the robot Bender biding Red Rodriguez, and just

(03:58):
completely destroys them with the the the raw cooking power
of the microwave. And then, of course you will find
any number of generally like less than top shelf horror
movies or sometimes like outright sleazy horror movies that will
utilize a microwave oven in a death. Okay, so, like,
was there ever a slasher movie or the slasher character

(04:21):
just used a microwave? Well, there is a nineteen seventy
nine film titled Microwave massacre, but it contains zero microwave murders,
just to prepare everybody. And it's um, it's it's quite
a stinker. Um. But you know, there are other films
I'm gonna mention some some other films you probably do
not want to see, um, such as the horror movie

(04:43):
Ghost in the Shell, no relation to the legendary anime franchise. Uh.
That one, I think involves a microwave being tampered with
by a like an ai ghost, you know, uh, some
sort of spirit in the you know, electrical equipment, and
it makes an entire room microwaved. Cool. Yeah, there's the
there's a two thousand seven horror movie title drive Through,

(05:05):
which is apparently about a killer clown and uh. And
then there are there are a couple of Oh wait,
I saw that one. He did. I could have didn't
remember it first, but yeah, I've seen it. I haven't
seen it, but I saw some stills and it looked
it looked terrible. Um, not worth your time. There's the
unnecessary two thousand and nine remake of the already unnecessary
nine two film The Last House on the Left. And

(05:27):
then there's there's also the Lucio Fulcy film Touch of Death,
which features a microwave death, which which I watched just
yesterday while researching this, And I think this one is
certainly on my lucio Fulcy skip list. As much as
I love many, love many of his films, um, and
there are many of them, he's often known for gory

(05:48):
ways of exploring violations of the human body and the microwave.
I'm sure it had to show up at some point. Yeah,
when you when you direct that many films, the microwave
is going to be used, especially when you're so upset
with melting people. Uh, there's a number of you may
be thinking of this. There's a microwave death scene in
the two thousand ten movie kick Ass, which is also

(06:10):
grizzly and unnecessary. Uh. It's a standard underling murdered by
a mobster scene. Uh, and I think it was probably
inspired by the grizzly death of Anthony zerbas character character's
death in the James Bond film License License to Kill
From I don't remember Anthony zerbe Got was in that. Yeah. Yeah,
he played an underling who's killed by the the the

(06:31):
evil drug boss um in that film. He's he's putting
like a pressurized change. Yes I remember. Now in kick Ass,
the underling is put into a walk in microwave and
the same thing happens. Um. Yeah, it's described as yeah, yeah,
that's the thing. It's described as being like an industrial

(06:53):
microwave oven. And yeah, these do not exist as far
as I can tell. If you if you know of
a mic walk in microwave oven, uh, please right in
and set the record straight. But I believe this is
a complete fictional creation. But it's not just like horror movies,
melt movies and the like where you see this obsession
with perversions of the microwave oven to to damage and

(07:15):
hurt people. Uh Like. There are lots of urban legends
about it too. Write the things about people putting hamsters
and microwaves and stuff. Yeah, hamsters, microwaves, dogs and microwaves,
and of course the big one, the baby in the microwave.
Ye by grotesque urban legend, uh generally revolving around uh
you know, a deranged hippie babysitter who's whacked out on trucks.

(07:36):
So you've got you got the double here. You have
the microwave panic, and you have uh, you know, a
panic about say l S d or you know, hippie
counter culture. The idea is that the parents leave, they
come back, they find the babysitter, again whacked out on drugs,
has changed a TV Dinners diaper and has has cooked
the baby in a microwave. Now, according to the Straight

(07:58):
Dope and an extensive of uh and and actually quite
disturbing City Lab article, Uh, there there certainly are unfortunate
tales of child abuse and or death via microwave. Uh
and they but they all seem to involve mental illness
rather than drugs. Still, the urban legend itself lives on.
You see it referenced even in things like the season

(08:19):
one of True Detective mentioned but not depicted in that show,
Folks were getting an urgent update from our producer Seth,
who tells us that, in fact, there is such a
thing as a walk in microwave. He looked it up,
he found out. He says that you can have a
walk in microwave to treat lumber. Okay, well, I I
stand corrected. Then, um, kick ass is redeemed. But still

(08:42):
the scene itself is unnecessary and grotesque. Well, I'd say,
don't put anything alive in the microwave, even if it's
a walk in microwave, right, right? What about what about
the lobster though, that we discussed in the episode, Well,
I guess, I guess I don't have an opinion on that.
Darcy Spencer himself, the inventor of the microwave oven, gives
you a method of cooking the lobster in the microwave,
and you do not trust his his instincts here, his

(09:04):
culinary instincts. Where did the marshmallow in the microwave thing
come from? Oh? Yeah, that is a That is another favorite,
the exploding of the torture of say a microwave. We're
especially a peep um peep marshmallow around Easter time. Oh yeah,
they do they like swell up real big or something.
Uh they yeah, they do strange things like that. Yeah, alright, Well,

(09:26):
one thing I think we should separate is the idea
of using a microwave in a way that it is
not intended to be used, and that that being you know,
whether in fiction or in real life. You know, sad
awful stories from real life that having bad consequences versus
microwaves representing a danger win in normal use. Yes, So

(09:49):
let's get into discussion of microwave safety. As we already mentioned,
the microwave was born into a world somewhat suspicious of
the word radiation. This was, after all, the during the
aftermath of the Second World War. Throughout its existence, though,
the microwave oven has continually been subjected to a fair
amount of urban legend and misinformation, based generally on an

(10:12):
incomplete understanding of how a microwave works and what indeed
microwave radiation actually is. So I want to turn to
a paper by a John M. O. Sup Chuck called
a History of Microwave Heating Applications that I found from
I Triple A Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques from
nineteen eighty four. Uh, And the author here, Chuck, talks

(10:33):
about how there were actually a number of high profile
attacks on microwave radiation and the safety of microwave ovens,
especially in their early consumer years. So I guess this
would be in the late nineteen sixties. I mean, I
guess they've been around to some degree for a couple
of decades at this point, but this is going to
be when they're first becoming really like affordable and widespread, right,

(10:57):
So in nineteen sixty eight, the US Congress passed the
Radiation Control for Health and Safety Act, and osip Check
argues that this law was enacted mainly in reaction to
fears that color televisions were emitting harmful X rays, but
the language in the bill was made much broader and
ended up raising safety implications for all kinds of radiation

(11:17):
from electronics, including microwaves, radio waves, and acoustic vibrations, and
osup Chuck writes that this was quote presumably as a
prudent step and not because of any practical health or
safety problem involving microwave or radio frequency energy. But during
this period, government bureaus and consumer safety organizations coordinated in

(11:39):
in the following years to test and establish safety standards
for microwaves, such as the maximum power density of leakage
from microwave ovens that would be allowed and considered safe. Now,
of course, it's not practical to make a microwave that
releases no microwave, that leaks no microwaves into the surrounding area.

(11:59):
But question is like at what distance is it enough
microwave energy to really heat you up and burn you
um And in most cases like modern microwaves are going
to be very safe in in these regards um but
due to the fact that some older microwave ovens exceeded
these established leakage limits, and also due to some popular

(12:22):
articles raising concerns about the potential dangers of microwaves. Osip
Chuck writes that the public's perception of risk from microwave
ovens actually grew somewhat in the early nineteen seventies. And
I want to do I want to be fair that well.
I do think microwave ovens are generally extremely safe today.
If you were living in the early seventies and you

(12:43):
didn't trust that electronics manufacturers of the time we're being
completely forthright with you about the safety of their products,
I probably wouldn't blame you, right. So, one example of
a microwave fear episode that took place in public, as
documented BIOSI Chuck, was that in seventy re there were
allegations by Consumers Union I think this was the magazine

(13:04):
that later became Consumer Reports, and the allegations were that
microwave ovens might be a serious radiation hazard. In the
same year, there were hearings before Congress in which a
figure named Dr Milton M. Zerret testified that quote there
is a clear, present and ever increasing danger to the
entire population of our country from exposure to the entire

(13:26):
non ionizing portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. And apparently among
the dangers discussed were things like development of cataracts and
temporary male sterility due to microwave exposure. And this actually,
when I was reading about it, this knock something loose
in my head because I remember now when I was
a kid, some adult I don't remember, who might have

(13:49):
been a friend's parent or something, warned me not to
stare through the window into the microwave because I would
get cataracts. And I remember thinking this for a long time,
like I'd stay away from the microwave while it was
cooking because I didn't want to get cataracts. U. I
remember being told not to stare through the front of
a microwave. I don't remember if cataracts were invoked or not. Yeah,

(14:11):
So I decided to look this up. Is there any
risk of getting cataracts from a microwave? I would say
The answer is technically yes, but effectively no. Uh. The
risk of cataracts from microwave exposure is actually, I think
best best understood simply as damage to the eyes from heat.
The lens of the eye is especially sensitive to heat

(14:33):
because there is little mechanism for it to dissipate heat.
It can't carry the heat absorbed away through blood flow
or something. Right now, what are cataracts? Cataracts form when
the lens of the eye is injured or deteriorates naturally
with age, causing a breakdown of proteins that leads to
clouding in this lens, the layer of the eye that

(14:54):
should ideally be crystal clear because it's supposed to work
like a lens, and that clouding, of course makes it
hard to see. Uh So, one cause of the clouding
and the lens is repeated exposure to intense heat, and
this is sometimes known as glassblowers cataracts. I don't know
if you've heard of this, Robert, but yeah, this is
something I read about before. But it's not just glassblowers.

(15:15):
It can happen to metal workers, any workers who chronically
expose their eyes to powerful sources of infrared heat near
the face, and this heat exposure can damage the lens
and the iris over time, of course, leading to clouding
of the lens and which is cataracts. So a modern
properly functioning microwave oven with standard safety features used in

(15:38):
a normal way should not leak enough microwave radiation to
cause this kind of heat damage to the eyes. I
suppose there could possibly be a risk from say like
a bootleg microwave you made yourself, or like an old damaged,
malfunctioning microwave model. I was trying to figure out, how
would you know if a microwave oven is damaged in

(16:00):
a way that could possibly cause a risk of microwaves
coming out and you know, burning your eyes or something.
The main problem I think you would look for would
be something in the door, if like the door the
hinges the seal are warped or damaged, or if it's
somehow able to operate with the door open. Again, it
shouldn't be able to do this. Their safety features that

(16:21):
should prevent any of this from happening. But if somehow
it operates with damage to the door, not ceiling, or
being open, you probably want to get rid of it
and get a new microwave. And I guess that brings
us back to also the fears about male sterility. Uh,
And it turns out I think these fears follow a
similar pattern. Actually, it's again a concern about heating. Right.

(16:42):
We discussed on stuff to blow your mind, concerns about
male fertility being related to say, heating of of the testicles, right,
like immersing yourself in a hot tub, that sort of thing. Yeah,
and so osup. Chuck writes that scientists engaged in direct
research at the time about the bio effects of radiation
fought back against Eric's testimony. In nineteen seventy three, he

(17:02):
quotes one pair of scientists named Bud Appleton and Tom
Eli who pointed out that quote jockey shorts promoted in
the Consumer Union, that magazine that was critical of microwaves
quote posed a far greater hazard to temporary sterility of
males than microwave leak is, which I think is a
decent point of comparison, assuming they're correct. I think they

(17:23):
probably are there that there's going to be more potentially
threatening heating of of of the testicles through underwear design
than there's going to be from microwaves escaping from a
microwave oven. Uh. And also a scientist named Im Brady
wrote about quote the humorous contrast between the warning signs
proposed by the Consumer Union as necessary near microwave ovens

(17:45):
and the absence of such signs when primitive man first
learned to utilize the heat of fire. But I mean again,
it's emphasizing that the main thing that you should actually
be concerned about when you if you're seriously concerned about microwaves,
is heat. That they have the ability to heat water,
and that can damage you. You can get burned by
the heat from a microwave, but the situations where that's

(18:07):
going to happen are usually going to be like you
heating up food in a dangerous way and then taking
it out and burning yourself with it, right, like heating
up a cup of noodles or something in the microwaven,
removing it and and that that's where the dangers. And
yet the movie is called microwave Massacre, not cup of
noodles massacre, right, it's not or or Another example I've
seen is like the stairway in your house is far

(18:29):
more dangerous statistically than the microwave oven, like seedingly, you know,
just when you look at the numbers, And yet the
stairway massacre is as far as I know, not a thing. Right.
And of course, on top of this, again modern microwave
ovens that are made by reputable companies, the kind you
could buy at a store. They're generally not going to
be leaking many microwaves anyway. They've got safety features, they

(18:52):
contain the radiation, and they're not supposed to work with
the door open anything like that, So generally they are safe.
All right, on that note, we're gonna take a break,
and when we come back, we're going to continue to
discuss microwave safety. Alright, we're back. So some of the other, um,

(19:13):
you know, potential threats of microwaves that are sometimes brought
up in you know, urban legends and you know, misinformation
and whispers online. That's the thing is, like some of
these are still continue to make their way around via
social media. Uh. We already mentioned not looking through the
screen at cooking food, but also the idea that microwaves

(19:34):
will destroy nutrients in your food when you nuke it,
that microwaves will radiate your house, that will alter your DNA,
and that they will ultimately give you cancer. And if
you want to get into the sort of conspiracy theory
part of the internet, you can find articles alleging this today. Uh,
there are plenty of great sources though that point us

(19:54):
in the opposite direction towards truth. For instance, electrical engineer,
neuroscientists and Chief Scientists of Australia Alan Finkel wrote a
great article on this for Cosmos magazine back in and
he stressed that, you know, again, one of the big
things to keep in mind is that X rays are
not microwaves. Microwaves are not X rays. Now. Certainly, as

(20:16):
we've discussed on the show before when we did an
episode on the X ray, X rays can be quite
deadly if misused. Of course, you don't want to be
exposed to any more X rays than you absolutely have
to write. And the early history of X ray research
is riddled with cases of radiation injury and death due
to close proximity and just uh, you know, the individuals

(20:38):
involved often being just unaware of what the true risks were.
But Finkel's you know, stresses that there's a key difference here. Quote.
X rays oscillate more than a billion times faster than microwaves,
and their wavelengths are more than a billion times shorter.
At these extremely short wavelengths, X rays act like tiny bullets,
and if they hit the DNA inside the nucleus of

(20:59):
a cell, they can do permanent harm. Microwave radiation is
at a much lower frequency and the wavelength is about
the length of a toothbrush, millions of times bigger than
the cell nucleus. These big radio waves pass around our
tiny DNA molecules without them noticing each other. So he's
saying that outside, uh the oven with the door closed,

(21:20):
nothing is going to get to you, and even if
it did, it would heat you, it would not irradiate you.
Uh So, Finkelle continues quote by analogy, if you were
in a rowboat far from land, X rays would be
like powerful waves that could potentially capsize your boat, while
microwaves would be like the rising and falling of the tide,

(21:41):
of which you would be blissfully unaware. And he points
out that we have more than twenty five thousand research
articles that have been published over the past thirty years
on electromagnetic radiation at the frequency of microwave ovens, and
they conclude that there is no evidence to confirm any
adverse health consequences from exposure to a microwave oven. Again,

(22:04):
normal exposure to a microwave oven, if you climb inside it,
all bets are off and in terms of just the
effects on the food itself. Microwaves have no non thermal
effects on food. So again, the microwave oven certainly has
a thermal effect on your food, and anything that heating
food can do to food, it can do. But anything

(22:25):
outside of that, uh is is probably gonna be the
domain of of misinformation and urban legend. Yeah, I'm trying
to understand the fear of lingering radiation effects on food
that That's another thing you'll see is that there's a
belief that the microwave makes food radioactive, like that if
you take the food out of the microwave, the food

(22:45):
will somehow retain some kind of radiation property, even though
it's non ionizing radiation to begin with. But like even
if it were ionizing radiation, that it makes the food radioactive.
I think this just comes from the idea dea of
radioactive contamination, where like after a nuclear meltdown, you know,
thing they're like radioactive particles that can get into the

(23:09):
environment and contaminate things you don't want to ingest them.
So that's one possibility I think. I guess it's also
possible that like UH, an object bombarded with ionizing radiation
or like with neutron radiation or something can itself become radioactive.
But yeah, that nothing like that happens with food inside
a microwave. To come back to another thing, you mentioned

(23:29):
the idea that you know, so you said it has
no non thermal effects on food. Nothing we can really
measure other than heating it up. Uh, there is a
thing I've seen alleged again, Um that microwaving food rob's
food of its nutritional value, right, that it makes food
unhealthy or robs it of its nutrients. Does anything like

(23:51):
that happen? I would say again, the answer to this
question is kind of like you could say, technically yes,
but effectively this is not shol or unique to a microwave.
So the question does the microwave make the food dangerous
or unhealthy? For another good succinct explainer, This one was
from Scientific American from nine. According to Honorada Prakash, Assistant

(24:15):
Professor of the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at
Chapman University, there is no evidence at all that microwave
food is unhealthy or detrimental to humans. But what about
making it? What about being you know, just non nutritious
or nutrients destroyed by the microwave. The true part is
that heating generally does have effects on the nutritional contents

(24:37):
of food, and to some degree, the method in which
you heat food can also have some effects. But the
fact that heating can destroy some nutrients and food is
equally true of food heated up by all other means,
including the stovetop in the oven and whatever. Vitamin C,
for example, can break down in the presence of high heat.

(24:59):
There is some evidence also that foods cooked in liquids,
such as boiling in water or frying in oil, can
sometimes lose a greater percent of some nutrients to the
fluid than if they're cooked to the same temperature via
some other method like steaming. Uh and I think the
idea here is that some nutrients can be leached out

(25:20):
into the liquid that the food is floating in if
you boil it. But the other side of this is
that in some cases microwaves actually preserve more nutrients than
other cooking methods because microwaving generally takes less time than
than usual then you would use than you would use
an oven or a stove top four to heat something
to the same temperature, and these nutrients can break down

(25:41):
as a function of time spent exposed to heat, so
it varies case to case and nutrient by nutrient, but
generally no food cooked in the microwave does not generally
retain any less nutritional value than food cooked in a
pot on the stove or by other methods, and in
some cases it actually probably retains more nutrients. All Right,
On that note, we're gonna take one more break, but

(26:02):
we'll be right back. All right, we're back, all right.
So we've been talking about microwave safety and microwave fears
and uh, and this persistent fear throughout the years that
somehow using a microwave oven could make food radioactive, which
there's no evidence that it does, and it doesn't really

(26:23):
make any sense that it could. On the point about
exposing food to ionizing radiation or making food radioactive, again,
microwaves are non ionizing radiation. Their effects are thermal. But
beyond that, I thought it would just be worth pointing
out for context that food manufacturers actually do sometimes intentionally

(26:43):
exposed food to real ionizing radiations such as X rays
or gamma rays. Uh. They will literally bombard food we
eat with X rays on purpose, and we eat it anyway.
So why would we do that well. There was actually
a really good article about this on the Salt by
Nancy shoot From I was reading. It quoted a number
of industry and radiation and health safety experts, and so

(27:06):
there are a couple of reasons that you might bombard
food with ionizing radiation like X rays. One is a
quality control process which is screening industrially produced food packages
for metal contaminants. So in some cases X rays in
the food industry are literally four imaging purposes, just like
medical X rays to see inside. So imagine a metal

(27:30):
screw somehow falls into a pecan pie. That could be
really bad, right, somebody could break a tooth on that.
So some food products are X ray screened to make
sure things like that don't get through to the customer.
In fact, I think it was just reading about there
was a big chicken recall I think, yes, involving a
certain fast food restaurant. Oh yeah, with with fear. I

(27:53):
don't know if anything was actually discovered, but I think
there were fears that there could be like hard metal
contamination of the chicken. So that's not good. Sometimes food
is X ray screened, uh, and the amount of radiation
the food is exposed to during this process is minuscule,
we should say, even though it is X rays. The
bombardment required to get the images is very short and weak.

(28:14):
It's equivalent, according to one researcher they quoted in the article,
to the amount of ionizing radiation a pie would receive
from the atmosphere just by sitting out in the air
for two and a half hours. So that's not too bad.
Of course, the greater risk is that a hobo will
steal the pie. Yeah, the bugs bunny will take it. Wait, no,

(28:36):
who takes pies? Is it Yogi Bear? If there's a
cartooned character who takes pies off window sills, Seth chimes
in with with Yogi sometimes takes pies, but is more
picnic basket focus. Well, perhaps there's some cartoon hobo that
we're just kind of half remembering. You know. Another version
of food exposure to ionizing radiation happens in order to

(28:59):
sterilize food products. This would be to kill any insects, germs,
or other parasites that might be living in or on
the food. So this is literally this is a heavy
bombardment of ionizing radiation in order to kill things on purpose. Uh, Now,
normally you could accomplish the same thing with heat, such
as in canning, but not all food products are good

(29:20):
candidates for that kind of ceiling and heating process. This
the products that this happens with the most by far,
apparently are spices, because often spices are left out in
the open too dry while they're being prepared for market
or your TB packaged and shipped, so anything can get
in them basically, and so they can get irradiated on

(29:41):
their way to you know, out of the factory or whatever.
That makes sense. But even when exposed to deadly ionizing
radiation like X rays, you wouldn't want these rays projected
on you. The food itself still does not become radioactive
through this process. This reminds me of some of the
proposals for sending humans on prolonged space flights to say Mars,

(30:08):
and how we could use the water and food for
the crew as a means of shielding the crew itself.
Oh yeah, surrounding them with all this uh this like
biomaterial and water. Yeah, so like cosmic rays coming in
from from the universe and from the Sun. I don't
remember which is the main concern there. Well, anyway, you'd

(30:30):
have radiation from space hitting the spacecraft. Instead of penetrating
the brains of the the crew, it would be mostly
hitting atoms within the food and the water out there,
and that you could still eat this stuff and drink
this water and you'd be okay. Again, if you're actually
concerned with radioactive contamination of food, I think primarily the

(30:50):
kinds of things you you should worry about would be
exposured radioactive particles, like tiny particles that are themselves highly
radioactive that could possibly get into food or other substances
in the event of something like a nuclear meltdown. But
again that's going to come from a nuclear meltdown like
it's Chernobyl style event, as opposed to your worries about

(31:12):
a microwave oven in your house. Right, bombarding cinnamon, even
with X rays, does not put radioactive caesium particles into
the cinnamon UH, and lots of major food safety organizations,
including the w h O and the American FDA and
all that have investigated this and ruled it safe, and
this has been for decades now. So like even the
irradiation of food with real ionizing radiation, the actual deadly

(31:35):
kind UH does not seem to make the food unsafe
to eat. Now, I want to briefly touch on just
some other avenues of microwave research that I think are
rather fascinating and it helps us to realize that the
microwave technology is not just about cooking our food. For instance, UM,
there's wireless power transmission UM, specifically microwave power transmission or

(31:57):
MPT UH. This entails using microwave emitter to send energy
through the air to a receiver. One avenue here is
to use it to power and aircraft UH. MPT was
first used to power a miniature helicopter in nineteen sixty
four for ten hours. Uh M I T grad and
raytheon electrical engineer William C. Brown as the principal individual here,

(32:20):
and he continued to work on MPT throughout his the
rest of his career, resulting in a number of experiments
that demonstrated the potential. For instance, in the nineteen seventies,
he beamed thirty kilowatts of power at eighty four percent
efficiency for one mile or one point six kilometers. Uh.
NASA has also explored the potential use of MPT UH

(32:41):
it's a sort of power beaming system for space. UH
and and some see it as a means of transmitting
power harvested by orbital solar arrays back down to Earth.
Was there a power plant of this kind in SimCity
two thousand where a misdirected beam caused one of the disasters?
And said, mode, Um, I don't I never played that game,

(33:02):
so I don't know. I seem to recall that. So
you've got like a beam receiver. Uh and uh, my
memory is if it gets misdirected and sets your city
on fire. Sorry not to be alarm us. Well we're not.
We're not quite there yet. So that's that's a future concern.
Another avenue of microwave uses potentially communication. Uh. Now, this

(33:22):
is a topic we we did an entire episode of
Stuff to Blow your Mind on back in the day. Well,
so you're talking about in addition to just the normal
telecommunications that uses wireless frequency and all the time. Oh, yeah,
there's that. But then the spicier selection here that we
did an episode on is the microwave auditory effect. We
did an episode titled V two K the microwave Auditory Effect,

(33:46):
And basically the idea here's that microwaves can actually induce
sounds in the human brain. Um and uh, and it
can essentially be used to create something that is described
as a whisper uh by target the human brain. Now,
I think part of what we talked about though, also
is that that true fact about the the perception of

(34:07):
sounds induced by targeted microwaves at a at a human head,
unfortunately has been taken by a lot of people as
evidence that say, the government is actually putting voices in
their head, in which case I think generally what these
people are dealing with is some some form of auditory hallucination. Right.
But then there, yeah, they're explaining it away by being
part of some sort of conspiracy and uh uh and

(34:29):
end up going down that rabbit hole. Um. However, um,
you know, there is the potential to use microwave technology
as a weapon. Uh. Not by just breaking the front
of a microwave oven open and pulling at a robot.
But you know, as we discussed in that episode, various
experiments concerning microwave based weapons uh targeting the brain have

(34:50):
been have been carried out not merely to induce sounds,
but to damage the brain of the target, perhaps via
the microwave pulse. Uh. Some commentators even argued that the
mysterious attacks on the U. S. Embassies in Cuba and
China might have been induced by such technology, though this
does not seem to be the current scientific consensus, with

(35:11):
experts favoring sonic or even chemical sources. Yeah, I've forgotten
about those mysterious cases for a while. If yeah, I
want to get deep in that someday. Yeah, I think
that can make for a really good episode of stuff
to blow your mind. Yeah, So I think it's interesting
to come back again to sort of military um potential
uses of microwave technology, because where the radar range, that's

(35:33):
where it began. But then suddenly this one particular investigated
as one particular engineer noticed that his candy bar had
melted in his pocket, and he decided to investigate further.
And now that technology is in you know, pretty much
every household in the United States. It has become just
a ubiquitous piece of household and kitchen technology. It's the

(35:56):
friend of the dorm room gourmand. Yes, it has many
many A bag of popcorn has been has been cooked
in one many a hot pocket and leave. Yeah, the
little sort of foil like a sleeve that you know,
adds the crisp so in my own house, like so
much Trader Joe's Indian food has been heated up at lunchtime.

(36:20):
I've got a specific request for you listeners out there
right in and let us know what is the worst
microwave food product you've ever come across? The worst or yeah,
I would love to hear there's some good ones out there?
Um or also just how how? What are some ingenious
ways that you use the microwave? And if you have
ever actually carried out one of these large scale um

(36:44):
gourmet from scratch style nineties seventies microwave recipes, I would
love to hear from you, especially if you have cooked
a Thanksgiving turkey in a microwave all the way, no
other ovens involved. I have to hear that story, and
I have to know what there is alted product was like?
Or lobster? Have you cooked a live lobster in your microwave?

(37:05):
Don't do it just because you heard about it in
this episode, but if you have done it before, I
would like to hear from you. In the meantime, if
you want to check out other episodes of Invention, you
can find us invention pot dot com. You can also
find a show. Wherever you get your podcasts and wherever
that is, make sure you have subscribed and make sure
you leave a nice comment in some stars. That really
helps the show out huge thanks as always to our

(37:26):
excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you'd like to
get in touch with us dance or any of our
queries from today, or to suggest a topic for the future,
you can email us at contact at invention pod dot com.
Invention is production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts
for my Heart Radio because the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

(37:47):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.