NPR StoryCorps Producer Responds to 'Exploding Bra' Skeptics

Answering criticisms of the "exploding brassiere" story told by 94-year-old Betty Jenkins on NPR last week, senior producer Michael Garofalo said in an email to the science blog Terra Sigillata that the content had been thoroughly fact-checked in advance and that he and his fellow producers "felt confident running the piece."

In addition to verifying the physics of the thing ("We confirmed with a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT that an inflatable bra would expand during flight in an unpressurized cabin... and could explode"), Garofalo said producers had heard Jenkins repeat the story several times in great detail and "without variation." Her description of the crucial undergarment was, he noted, "fully consistent with inflatable bras of the time."

So, how to account for the fact that the identical tale has been so often told by so many different people in so many different places since the 1950s? "It may be," said Garofalo, "that some urban legends grow from the seeds of the truth."

Having said the same thing myself on more than one occasion, I'd be a fool to disagree.

Read more about it:
• StoryCorps Producer Responds to NPR Exploding Bra Doubts - Terra Sigillata
• The Exploding Bra - Urban Legends