Speaker 1: I'm t T and I'm Zakiyah and this is Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
Speaker 1: science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever asked you this, zee. Do
Speaker 1: you like traveling? I mean, I travel a lot, and
Speaker 1: I think usually I do. But it's just the little
Speaker 1: in between time before I get to my gate and
Speaker 1: board the plane, Like everything leading up to that, like
Speaker 1: from when I wake up that morning to that point,
Speaker 1: is stressful. It really gets on my nerves. And I
Speaker 1: you know, I always pack at the last minute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, of course. And then I have to figure out,
Speaker 1: am I taking an uber which is gonna be a
Speaker 1: trillion dollars to the airport? Am I driving myself to
Speaker 1: the airport? Which I used to like doing? But then
Speaker 1: I get there, none of the information is corrected. The
Speaker 1: Atlanta Airport sometimes they're like, oh, this parking lot is full.
Speaker 1: It's like I just passed a digital sign that you
Speaker 1: could easily update remotely that says this airport lot is available.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even come this way. And then I think
Speaker 1: the gotcha, gotcha, guess who's coming to dinner. Part is
Speaker 1: what your experience at TSA is gonna be, Like, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be seven minutes or seventy you know, Oh my gosh, TSA.
Speaker 1: It feels like everyone has an attitude. Folks are yelling,
Speaker 1: people have their shoes off, people are struggling with the bens.
Speaker 1: It is a nightmare. Yes, and so by the time
Speaker 1: you get through there, it's like, I don't even want
Speaker 1: to go. Actually, I'm going home. My shoes, I'm going home.
Speaker 1: This sounds like a great topic to dive into today
Speaker 1: because summer is near, and that means we are hitting
Speaker 1: the friendli skuys. People are going on vacations, they flying out,
Speaker 1: they flying folks out. I don't know what your business is.
Speaker 1: I think you're right. So let's jump into the recitation
Speaker 1: to figure out what we know and what we want
Speaker 1: to know about TSA. Well, we know that the TSA
Speaker 1: is meant to keep us safe and that there is
Speaker 1: an attitude needed to serve in that role, a very
Speaker 1: particular attitude. Yes, okay. So we know that the TSA
Speaker 1: stands for the Transportation Security Administration and it's a part
Speaker 1: of the Department of Homeland Security, and it's in charge
Speaker 1: of keeping the nation's transportation systems safe. So that's airports, rails, highways, pipelines,
Speaker 1: you name it. I have never seen the TSA at
Speaker 1: a train station now, but I'm not going not too
Speaker 1: much on it, but I just want to say that.
Speaker 1: And we know that the rules for travel are constantly changing,
Speaker 1: sometimes from my being to the next person's being, and
Speaker 1: from one airport to another. Sometimes you got to throw
Speaker 1: out your heat protected or your expensive perfume. So we
Speaker 1: know that. So what do we want to know personally?
Speaker 1: I want to know more about the tech. It's a
Speaker 1: different scanner at every airport. Whether it's gonna pick up
Speaker 1: my ank lit or not, I don't know how is
Speaker 1: that working. And speaking of tech, I want to know
Speaker 1: about the tech associated with you know, the real idea
Speaker 1: that they're saying that we have to have you have yours. Yes,
Speaker 1: they've been telling us this for six years. Oh, I
Speaker 1: know some folks still don't got it. I know they don't.
Speaker 1: They're going to be at home. That's wild to me.
Speaker 1: But I also want to know if TSA is actually
Speaker 1: protecting us or is it just the illusion of protection,
Speaker 1: Because I feel like I'm constantly seeing like women lived
Speaker 1: in airport for two weeks or snuck onto plane. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I can't sneak a lotion into my carry on, so
Speaker 1: how did that happen? I think this is a great
Speaker 1: place to start, so let's jump into the dissection for
Speaker 1: today's lab our. Guests are the hosts of No Such
Speaker 1: Thing podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Manny. I'm a co hosts for No
Speaker 2: Such Thing. I'm Noah.
Speaker 3: I'm also a cost of No Such Thing.
Speaker 4: And I'm Devin also I'm co host. I'm No such Thing.
Speaker 1: But before we get into the nitty gritty, let's get
Speaker 1: some background on TSA. So the TSA became a thing
Speaker 1: in November nineteenth of two thousand and one, so that
Speaker 1: was barely two months after nine to eleven, and it
Speaker 1: was out of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act and
Speaker 1: so on the heels of nine to eleven and all
Speaker 1: of the reaction, TSA was able to federalize sixty thousand screeners,
Speaker 1: so those are people to screen you coming through. In
Speaker 1: under a year. They had a budget that ballooned from
Speaker 1: one billion dollars in two thousand and two to fast
Speaker 1: forward to today a budget of over ten billion dollars.
Speaker 1: So it's about to be summer. Last summer, TSA screened
Speaker 1: over three million people in one day. People. That's a
Speaker 1: ton of people. We're heading into another record season and
Speaker 1: they're expected to surpass about eight hundred million screenings this year,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, what's going on with tsall?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Is this system keeping up? Are we just squeezing more
Speaker 1: people through the same old bottom nicks? Yeah, Okay, y'all
Speaker 1: did a great episode about TSA on your podcast, so
Speaker 1: I want to know y'all's take on the TSA.
Speaker 5: I was actually in your neck of the woods in
Speaker 5: Atlanta in January and I got stuck at in the
Speaker 5: TSA lines, and I think it was one of the
Speaker 5: inspirations to do this episode, which was like, I'm getting
Speaker 5: yelled at by this guy who's telling me not to
Speaker 5: take my laptop out, even though the sign behind him
Speaker 5: is saying that I have to take my laptop out.
Speaker 5: And I think, just like, these frustrations are so common.
Speaker 1: This is my wheelhouse because I've worked with a lot
Speaker 1: of scanning devices in my day. Go off, let me
Speaker 1: come the reason why we have to take the laptops out,
Speaker 1: so the old school X rays they can't really see
Speaker 1: through dense batteries, So you have to take your laptop
Speaker 1: out of your bag so that I can really get,
Speaker 1: you know, a good picture. It's not about the laptop,
Speaker 1: about the items in the bag. Yeah, that's not clear
Speaker 1: to other items. Yeah, because it's a two D X ray.
Speaker 1: So they fire a fan shaped X ray beams straight
Speaker 1: through your bag and it produces this flat picture on
Speaker 1: the monitor, and they calculate density by how much of
Speaker 1: that beam is absorbed. The more dense an object is,
Speaker 1: the brighter that blob is on the screen. So lithium
Speaker 1: ion laptop batteries pack layers of metal foil, so aluminum,
Speaker 1: copper and some other metals, and plus this steel shell
Speaker 1: that's around the battery, and those have high atopic numbers,
Speaker 1: and so those are gonna light up like a Christmas
Speaker 1: tree when you send it through that X ray scanner.
Speaker 1: And so then they can't see my you know, over
Speaker 1: three point four ounce perfume that's in my bag if
Speaker 1: the laptop is blocking it exactly, exactly, somebody should have
Speaker 1: said that I thought they were looking for things in
Speaker 1: my laptop and that's why it needed to be out
Speaker 1: the bag. Yes, I mean it. If they explain that
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of folks would be less upset.
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, this big old laptop battery is just
Speaker 1: blocking everything else. I don't know if you got, you know,
Speaker 1: a hammer in there, or if you in Atlanta a
Speaker 1: hammer in there. Hammer. Yeah. So with the new types
Speaker 1: of scanners, they're called computed tomography scanners, they fire hundreds
Speaker 1: of X rays slices, producing a three D model of
Speaker 1: what's inside of your bag. So the software is able
Speaker 1: to see your laptop and rotate it around and see
Speaker 1: what's all around it. So it could basically pick up
Speaker 1: your bag rotated on the screen, it could see every
Speaker 1: item that's in there. So there's no need to take
Speaker 1: your laptop out because they can see everything. So laptop
Speaker 1: in the bag when you have these new scanners. Ah,
Speaker 1: So it's just do you have the old tech or
Speaker 1: the new tech exactly. And TSA has been rolling out
Speaker 1: CT units since twenty twenty four and it's been installed
Speaker 1: at more than two hundred and fifty lanes nationwide and
Speaker 1: they have one point three billion dollars with a B
Speaker 1: to finish the job over the next few years, so
Speaker 1: they're going to be rolling out more and more. So
Speaker 1: I think people can be excited about being able to
Speaker 1: leave their laptops in their bag. Eventually, well it doesn't
Speaker 1: stop there.
Speaker 5: We've got a new layer coming into this whole tsa
Speaker 5: thing because the real ID.
Speaker 1: Yes. So the nine to eleven Commission set up the
Speaker 1: real ID Act of two thousand and five and signed
Speaker 1: it in two thousand and five. So we've had some time.
Speaker 1: They were flagging sloppy state by state license rules and
Speaker 1: they were saying, hey, this is a security gap. So
Speaker 1: it ordered the Department of Homeland Security to set a
Speaker 1: minimum issuance and car security standard before any ID could
Speaker 1: be used to board a plane or intra federal site.
Speaker 1: Now what this means is that you have a superdense
Speaker 1: card that can hold a lot of information compared to
Speaker 1: a non real ID card, and all fifty six jurisdictions
Speaker 1: in the United States must encode the same data fields,
Speaker 1: so every scanner can speak the same language, just like, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: let's get on the same page, get the choreography right,
Speaker 1: and we can say who's passing with real ID or
Speaker 1: who's failing get information? And so there are some anti
Speaker 1: counterfeit elements that are incorporated into the real ID, so
Speaker 1: they have UV ghost images, microprinting, laser perforations, color shift, inc.
Speaker 1: And that telltale star that is on the front of
Speaker 1: your ID. That's the only thing I've noticed is the star. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you have a real ID, take it out, look
Speaker 1: at it. You'll see all of these little characteristics that
Speaker 1: all make it so that it's harder to counterfeit or
Speaker 1: almost impossible to counterfeit the ID.
Speaker 5: Even getting a real ID is kind of paining the
Speaker 5: ass because I tried to get one a couple of
Speaker 5: years ago, Like, went to the DMV with this mission
Speaker 5: in mind, and I guess I brought like only three
Speaker 5: out of the four documents I and I just ended
Speaker 5: up waiting in line for three hours and getting a
Speaker 5: regular ass ID. And so now I've just taken my
Speaker 5: passport everywhere with me.
Speaker 1: So just steal no star. Steal no star on your idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you don't get the star on a corner.
Speaker 2: Sticker on the It's terrible stuff.
Speaker 1: So the way that real ID works when you get
Speaker 1: to the TSA podium is that their tablet checks it
Speaker 1: in about a second and at the checkpoint, a credential
Speaker 1: authentication technology or CAT unit grabs the barcode decodes your name,
Speaker 1: your data, birth, your license number and issuing state, and
Speaker 1: then the embedded security signatures they confirm that the card
Speaker 1: hasn't been tampered with, and then using a secure look
Speaker 1: up via the American Association of Motor Vehicles Administrations in
Speaker 1: their network, they make sure that you don't hold two
Speaker 1: licenses in different states. Yeah, out they're catfish and they're
Speaker 1: gonna find you and then be with the credential authentication
Speaker 1: technology so cat as we were calling, it is also
Speaker 1: wired to the TSA Secure flight database, so they're able
Speaker 1: to instantly match your ID with your flight reservation. So
Speaker 1: the end result is something very close to a two
Speaker 1: factor authentication for your face and your ticket without even
Speaker 1: having a hand over your boarding pass.
Speaker 4: Well, I saw today the reporter was saying that lax,
Speaker 4: because of course nobody knows this is happening, and nobody
Speaker 4: has their real IDs, and they're saying if you don't
Speaker 4: have real i D, they just give you a piece
Speaker 4: of paper that says you should get a real i
Speaker 4: D and they still let you go through. Okay, well
Speaker 4: next time, next time, this lax.
Speaker 1: Don't you know.
Speaker 4: I can't speak for a friendly.
Speaker 2: The big deadline is just a friendly reminder.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they kept pushing it back for five years to
Speaker 5: remind you.
Speaker 2: They're like, oh, that's today.
Speaker 1: You talked about being yelled at by TSA, and I
Speaker 1: think everyone has stories about being yelled at by TSA.
Speaker 1: It feels like that's what you have to be able
Speaker 1: to do to have the job, is yell at strangers
Speaker 1: who are dragging a bag and a baby and all
Speaker 1: these things behind them. Why is this the case? I mean,
Speaker 1: it feels like, specifically TSA screening, it still feels so
Speaker 1: fraud even though we're twenty plus years after nine eleven,
Speaker 1: which is when you know TSA really really really became
Speaker 1: a thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess, yeah, that was my big thing, right,
Speaker 4: It's like, what, Okay, it's hard enough to follow the rules,
Speaker 4: Why are y'all coming with this energy like chill?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: It's like, if you're gonna make it confusing, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: be confused. That's like the way it's gonna work. But
Speaker 4: when we talked to Darryl, like, it did make me
Speaker 4: feel a little bit more sympathetic because they're one of
Speaker 4: the lowest paid government workers, you know, they they start
Speaker 4: out making I think he said like thirty five K,
Speaker 4: and then they work their way up to forty two,
Speaker 4: which is nothing, especially nowadays, and then for a long
Speaker 4: period of time they're on probation. So it's like they're
Speaker 4: yelling at you because they're trying not to get in
Speaker 4: trouble from their supervisors because if they do anything within
Speaker 4: I think he said those first two years that is deemed,
Speaker 4: you know, a violation about their supervisor. The's not like
Speaker 4: trial or anything, you could just get fired. So I
Speaker 4: think they're anxious because they're not being paid a lot,
Speaker 4: and their supervisors are you know, have for any reasons
Speaker 4: to fire them. So then they put that anxiety onto us,
Speaker 4: the passengers who are just you know, trying to understand
Speaker 4: the very confusing rules, and I think creates a cycle
Speaker 4: because then we give them that energy back.
Speaker 1: Mentioned Darryl and I have to shout him out. Dryl
Speaker 1: Campbell is the author of this article, The Humiliating History
Speaker 1: of TSA, and you all had him on your podcast
Speaker 1: as well. Everybody should read that article because it led
Speaker 1: to me looking up stats and it was saying that
Speaker 1: like ts agents are in basically hostile work environments and
Speaker 1: that could be what affects our customer service. It is
Speaker 1: a lot to unpack, but I also am curious, like
Speaker 1: TSA feels like such a huge production. Just recently, just
Speaker 1: this past weekend, my bag got stuck and I was like,
Speaker 1: what's happening? The guys like pause, I'm like, what the
Speaker 1: machine is on pause? I'm on pause? Can I move
Speaker 1: to the other line?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: Is anybody can get my stuff out of there? It
Speaker 1: just always feels so confusing, and I'm like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they really are working hard, They're really protecting us. But
Speaker 1: I saw where they said ninety five percent of the
Speaker 1: time they were failing to like when they do these tests,
Speaker 1: they're failing to detect mock weapons. And I'm like, in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: I mean that's an all TSA. But baby, right, it
Speaker 1: just feels like I'm concerned about that. You know where
Speaker 1: we are. I'm throwing away full cans of he protected
Speaker 1: for my hair and it's goods moving through you not
Speaker 1: just feel like my motion back yes, And I just
Speaker 1: feel like, is this something that's about compliance or is
Speaker 1: this about actual threat detection? And where do we land
Speaker 1: on that it is TSA deterring threats?
Speaker 4: I think the long and short of it is no
Speaker 4: like they're pretty bad at stopping. Like you said, the
Speaker 4: I think a ninety number. They they said, hey, we
Speaker 4: got better. A couple of years later after that, I
Speaker 4: think it was like twenty seventeen. Seventy percent of the
Speaker 4: weapons got through.
Speaker 1: That's a that's not good. That's still still thirty out
Speaker 1: of one hundred.
Speaker 4: You're letting a lot of weapons. Should be zero. But yeah,
Speaker 4: there's been lots of studies on this.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: They do this like cost per late life saved metric.
Speaker 4: If we want to say, like TSA, you're stopping every
Speaker 4: single terrorist attack. Is the only organization that's going to
Speaker 4: stop it. There's no police that, there's no FBI, we
Speaker 4: have no intelligence, it's all TSA. If we say that,
Speaker 4: if we give them that benefit of the doubt, it's
Speaker 4: fifteen million dollars per life save, which is well above
Speaker 4: what you know the government wants to spend. If you
Speaker 4: start to take into account, well, you know, you got
Speaker 4: the FBI, you got other agencies involved. Most people who
Speaker 4: are planning this type of thing don't even make it
Speaker 4: onto the plane. Then it goes up to something like
Speaker 4: I think he said, like one hundred million, five hundred million.
Speaker 4: Like the numbers get crazy high. But it's the sort
Speaker 4: of thing where it's this is just the way that
Speaker 4: it's been.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: We haven't had another nine eleven since nine to eleven,
Speaker 4: So nobody wants to put their neck out and be like, oh,
Speaker 4: maybe we should stop doing this thing, because what if
Speaker 4: a year from now there is another terrorist attack. Even
Speaker 4: if TSA wouldn't have stopped it, there's always going to
Speaker 4: be that thing in the back of people's minds of like, oh,
Speaker 4: we should have just kept doing that annoying thing.
Speaker 1: Right. There was a time where me and Takia we
Speaker 1: uh we travel with the well to the same place
Speaker 1: a few times in the last year, and we were
Speaker 1: leaving Boston and I had a newborn baby and so
Speaker 1: I was like I was pumping and things like that,
Speaker 1: and I had this big ass container of breast milk
Speaker 1: and so they were like, okay, we have to swap it.
Speaker 1: I said, that's fine. They came back and said it
Speaker 1: tested positive for explosives.
Speaker 2: Any explanation, Yeah, was this true? Yeah? Did they stop you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we gotta take we gotta take you to a lab.
Speaker 1: I was like, excuse me, and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: so we have to do more testing. So they called
Speaker 1: this man out, that's like the head of bomb squad
Speaker 1: or something. He comes out with this whole kit. He's
Speaker 1: taking droppers of my breast milk and cringing it into
Speaker 1: all these things. And he's like, I can confirm that
Speaker 1: is a liquid, and I can confirm that it is
Speaker 1: not alcohol. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 5: The baby can confirm that.
Speaker 1: No, that man drunk all the time. And he said,
Speaker 1: I can say that it is not explosive, but I
Speaker 1: cannot say that it is milk.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I imagine the TSA machines aren't necessarily built to confirm
Speaker 5: whether something is milk or not.
Speaker 1: Right, So what those initial swaps are looking for is
Speaker 1: trace nitro benzene residue. So that's a cousin to TNT
Speaker 1: or dynamite. And the problem with that is that gliscerin
Speaker 1: and lotions hand sanitizer and even some breast milk bags
Speaker 1: can mimic the chemical signature of nitro benzene, and so
Speaker 1: that might explain the flag on my breast milk or
Speaker 1: or you know, yes, I am Alex Mack. Are y'all
Speaker 1: too young for Alex Mack? I am it? Look it up.
Speaker 5: I ran into a similar thing in Atlanta once again,
Speaker 5: where I go through the machine and it's beeping, and
Speaker 5: I go back and I take off my belt and
Speaker 5: I go through and it beeps again. And you know,
Speaker 5: we went through that over and over in tim like
Speaker 5: almost naked at this point, and it's still beeping. And
Speaker 5: so finally they're like, okay, we have to pat you down,
Speaker 5: and they, to their credit, gave me a little warning
Speaker 5: that the pat down was like pretty invasive, and I
Speaker 5: was like, whatever, I need to get back to New York.
Speaker 5: But at the end I asked him, I was like, so,
Speaker 5: why does the machine beep if there's no metal on me?
Speaker 5: And he just said he just shrugged his shoulders. He
Speaker 5: said he doesn't and didn't know. And then I was like,
Speaker 5: all right bye, Like that just wasted twenty minutes of
Speaker 5: my life, and it feels like these machines should be
Speaker 5: better equipped to handle that.
Speaker 1: We talked about scanning bodies earlier, but scanning people is
Speaker 1: where I also lose my cool for TSA, because metal
Speaker 1: detectors feels like such old technology. It is the first
Speaker 1: airport deployment of metal detectors came in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: after a whole bunch of hijacking platforms. People were wearing
Speaker 1: platforms and build bottomies going through metal detectors. Yes, with
Speaker 1: the big collars on your shirt. Then by the early eighties,
Speaker 1: the magnetometer arc was really common in all airports, and
Speaker 1: today TSA still fields thousands of units nationwide, especially in
Speaker 1: the pre check lanes, because they're cheap, fast and require
Speaker 1: no radiation waivers. So the amount of radiation that comes
Speaker 1: out of those arcs is below the limit that will
Speaker 1: require you to sign a waiver to go. Wait, but
Speaker 1: what if you're going through a lot. I don't know.
Speaker 1: You got to tell me how this works. Because I'm
Speaker 1: going through a lot. You need a docimiter. Yes, I
Speaker 1: do tell me that the little quick click clicklicklick tell
Speaker 1: me the dose. Now do remember that from experiments lab Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And the way that these metal detectors work is that
Speaker 1: there is a coil in the side panels that fire
Speaker 1: one hundred to one thousand micropulses of current per second,
Speaker 1: and each current generates a magnetic field very quickly, and
Speaker 1: when the pulse stops, the field snaps back and induces
Speaker 1: a tiny echo current in the coil. And if a
Speaker 1: metal object is in that field, the electrons on that
Speaker 1: metal object will wiggle some, stretching the echo for a
Speaker 1: few extra microseconds, and the machine measures that stretch, so
Speaker 1: then it's able to create a sound. So it bounces
Speaker 1: back and it creates this be beep to let you
Speaker 1: know metal has been detected. Huh. And so I don't
Speaker 1: think I realized that. But also I don't have to
Speaker 1: carry a docimitar because I am able to walk by
Speaker 1: those machines. And I want to talk about being able
Speaker 1: to bypass those machines because it feels like for ninety dollars,
Speaker 1: I can avoid all of that. And now I can
Speaker 1: keep my shoes on and my laptop can stay in
Speaker 1: my bag and my camera whatever, everything full size, everything
Speaker 1: be going through there, okay, big mom, Big mom. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, what is it that these things like clear
Speaker 1: and pre check. Is it that heaven ninety dollars makes
Speaker 1: me less of a threat, Like.
Speaker 4: If you got at, you ain't going too much?
Speaker 2: You got too much slip for here?
Speaker 1: He nah, you're a terrorist. And what kind of surveillance
Speaker 1: are we opting into? Because I know if the line
Speaker 1: where they scan me is shorter, I'm going there and
Speaker 1: I know better. But I'm going there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Pre check is a background check with fingerprints that
Speaker 1: shows that you're low risk, and TSA still screens your
Speaker 1: back clear. Do you give private biometrics so your iris,
Speaker 1: your eyeball, or your face verifies you and then hands
Speaker 1: you to TSA. It's in ID fast passed and it's
Speaker 1: not a security pass. One of the things I have
Speaker 1: been so shocked to find out is that only fifteen
Speaker 1: percent of travelers have pre check. Less than two percent
Speaker 1: used Clear. Let me tell you, the last time I
Speaker 1: was at the airport, it did not feel. It doesn't
Speaker 1: feel my line was wrapped around the corner. I said,
Speaker 1: imight as well go through regular security and take off
Speaker 1: from my shoes. I would have been done faster. One
Speaker 1: percent is in Atlanta because it feels like everybody has
Speaker 1: pre check and Clear. And so I just don't understand
Speaker 1: because in my world, money does not equal innocence. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I don't know. You can have a lot of
Speaker 1: money and some ill intent, you know, yeah, most of
Speaker 1: the people I know what a lot of money got
Speaker 1: ill intent. I'm talking about Zakiah.
Speaker 4: What I just actually just got pre checked, and I
Speaker 4: was kind of shocked by how quickly it happened. Well,
Speaker 4: they fingerprint you, which is the big thing, and then
Speaker 4: like I needed to provide you give them a lot
Speaker 4: of information. The thing is like, I have no idea
Speaker 4: what they're doing with that information, right, So they they
Speaker 4: ran some sort of background check on me to make
Speaker 4: sure I guess I'm not a terrorist because I got
Speaker 4: caught in the line where it took me like two
Speaker 4: hours through security and I was like, I can't let
Speaker 4: that happen again. I guess I gotta spend the ninety
Speaker 4: dollars And I'm like, yeah, what is that? What is
Speaker 4: having my fingerprints? Like why is that the difference?
Speaker 5: Yeah, God forbid someone wants to do something that's you know,
Speaker 5: similar to like a suicide mission, they're not gonna They're like, fine,
Speaker 5: take my fingerprints.
Speaker 2: Who care?
Speaker 5: Like that's not really a deterrent, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I also don't think terror is on a background
Speaker 1: report like r I just had two years in terrorist school.
Speaker 1: I just don't think. I just don't know what we're
Speaker 1: gonna get there.
Speaker 5: It's something that came up when we talked to Darryl,
Speaker 5: This this concept of security theater. Right, So it's like
Speaker 5: doing a bunch of stuff that makes it look like
Speaker 5: we're a lot safer than we are, and that's kind
Speaker 5: of all that needs to happen.
Speaker 4: He talked about how he interviewed some people who were
Speaker 4: being stopped, like once you get past TSA at the
Speaker 4: actual gate, we're going to the plane and getting like
Speaker 4: rechecked and padded down in front of everybody, and it's like, what,
Speaker 4: like what could possibly happen from the time you go
Speaker 4: through TSA to the time you get to your gate
Speaker 4: that are like, oh, we need to check this person again.
Speaker 4: And obviously the people you talked to were brown, right,
Speaker 4: so it's like, all right, they're putting on a little
Speaker 4: show for everybody, like, hey, white people, Look, we're checking
Speaker 4: them real good, y'all are gonna be good for this flight.
Speaker 4: We double checked them. This is the second time we're
Speaker 4: doing it, right, So it's like it's a lot of
Speaker 4: this stuff that it's like, why are like the you're
Speaker 4: talking about the liquid thing. It's like, what do we like,
Speaker 4: is that actually a threat nowadays or are we just
Speaker 4: doing it because you know, it's we feel safer if
Speaker 4: we can't bring liquids, if you have to take off
Speaker 4: our shoes.
Speaker 1: And they checking for liquids and they need to be
Speaker 1: checking for solids seventyons. I don't think they're liquid with
Speaker 1: that thing is metal? Okay, Noah, I'm curious to hear
Speaker 1: from you about what Devin just talked about with biases
Speaker 1: that come into TSA screenings.
Speaker 4: And let me say so, we just went to white Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we just went to Miami and as a white
Speaker 3: I was padded down both those directions, which was disturbing.
Speaker 2: I was dressed pretty light.
Speaker 3: I had like shorts on, I don't know, t shirt.
Speaker 3: I had just like a napkin in my pocket. So
Speaker 3: it set off the detector. It seemed like they pointed
Speaker 3: at the thing. They're like, there's something in your groin area.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, you can.
Speaker 2: Pap me down.
Speaker 3: Then we have to wait for the advisor to come
Speaker 3: and supervise it. It was like a twenty two year
Speaker 3: old guy doing it. I'm like, all right, I'm standing around.
Speaker 4: He does it.
Speaker 3: Obviously there's nothing in there. So then I'm on my
Speaker 3: way back. I'm like, all right, no tissues this time,
Speaker 3: Like I'll find one.
Speaker 1: I'll find one.
Speaker 3: Later on in the in the gate, same shorts, empty
Speaker 3: pockets happens again so I'm like, I don't know, Like, so,
Speaker 3: you know, all to say is, you know, I understand
Speaker 3: now what everyone's going through.
Speaker 1: Like Manny Nore essentially a black man.
Speaker 3: Now, yes, I wasn't gonna say it, but yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean it is like but when Daryl was saying that,
Speaker 3: it is like, once we're already at the gate and
Speaker 3: gone through security, it is like you just wonder what
Speaker 3: the actual directive is from, you know, top down, to
Speaker 3: be like all right, now pull some extra people and
Speaker 3: just search them again later on, Like is that in
Speaker 3: writing anywhere? Like how does that actually get communicated? Is
Speaker 3: kind of what's hard for me to even really fathom.
Speaker 3: But obviously it like these people are there making barely
Speaker 3: any money. They're not doing this for fun, you know.
Speaker 3: So it's like, right, I don't know, it's it is
Speaker 3: mind blowing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it feels like it's become so normalized
Speaker 1: and I'm not really sure how we got here. Like
Speaker 1: nine to eleven happens and then everybody's racist against people
Speaker 1: wearing key jobs, brown people, people who they just assume
Speaker 1: look arab, and it feels like it made its way
Speaker 1: through TSA. Maybe it was in the training, like if
Speaker 1: you see these types of people, you have to screen
Speaker 1: them extra but it's persistent. I think I remember where
Speaker 1: I was for nine eleven. I mean I was barely born,
Speaker 1: but I think that's right. But I remember George Bush
Speaker 1: being like, you're basically with us or you're with terrorism,
Speaker 1: and that those were your choices. Yeah, And so I
Speaker 1: think you start to see this empowerment or overreach from
Speaker 1: this organization, and people are like signing up and feeling like, yes,
Speaker 1: I am a guardian of the flight galaxy, and it
Speaker 1: just spirals. And now every now and then it's rare
Speaker 1: you see somebody like really push back against TSA. I
Speaker 1: saw a man recently in HM where was I coming
Speaker 1: from from Brussels coming back to Atlanta. They took that
Speaker 1: man away, and when the door closed, I said, we'll
Speaker 1: never hear from that man again. He was yelling out,
Speaker 1: he was saying things. They took him behind that door.
Speaker 1: I said, that's sound proof. That's a problem. If you
Speaker 1: don't need a soundproof door in the airport, not that
Speaker 1: I can think of, and I don't want to go
Speaker 1: behind it. If there is a The Government Accountability Office
Speaker 1: or the GAO in twenty twenty three found TSA collects
Speaker 1: discrimination complaints but doesn't systematically analyze the outcomes by race
Speaker 1: and gender. This is an opportunity for machine learning bias detection.
Speaker 1: This is an opportunity to go back to the basics,
Speaker 1: because what kind of data analysis? Then, what are you
Speaker 1: doing with it? They said, throw it in the air.
Speaker 1: Don't compile the results, just throw it in the air.
Speaker 1: The thing is, most people don't file complaints, just like
Speaker 1: you said, you know, like I didn't feel comfortable or
Speaker 1: this thing was happening, But nobody wants to be on
Speaker 1: the no fly list. Nobody wants to have all future
Speaker 1: travel impacted, so you kind of just suck it up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I wonder what is it? Do you
Speaker 1: think it's just fear that keeps us not saying anything
Speaker 1: and allowing them to talk to us crazy out the
Speaker 1: side of their neckstep psa, like even if they are
Speaker 1: stressed out, Like, what do you think allows us to
Speaker 1: continue to go on? Yeah?
Speaker 5: I feel like, you know, nine times out of ten
Speaker 5: and you're out of airport, you're kind of in a rush.
Speaker 5: You're like, you don't really have a ton of time
Speaker 5: to strike up a conversation or do a more procedural complaint,
Speaker 5: and you know, like inconveniences that happened in my regular,
Speaker 5: everyday life. It takes a lot for me to be like,
Speaker 5: wait a second, I got to confront someone about this.
Speaker 4: Okay, they are updating the machines, but a lot of
Speaker 4: trans people going through the older algorithm for the body
Speaker 4: scanners would get stopped because they would be like, I
Speaker 4: perceive you as a man, why is there something in
Speaker 4: your growing area? And they would get pated down, and
Speaker 4: a lot of them said a lot of trans people
Speaker 4: said like I like it was embarrassing, so I didn't
Speaker 4: want to draw attention to it. So I'm not going
Speaker 4: to file a complaint or talk about it afterwards. I'm
Speaker 4: just going to keep it moving. And I think that's
Speaker 4: kind of mentality everybody has with TSA, is just sort
Speaker 4: of like it's for the better good. Like shortest sucks
Speaker 4: for me, but like if I have to be inconvenience
Speaker 4: so they can stop somebody who's trying to, you know,
Speaker 4: bring a gun or a bomb onto the plane, then
Speaker 4: it's okay, right, it's fine. I think you saw the
Speaker 4: similar energy like you're saying after nine eleven, where you know,
Speaker 4: like the government was doing some stuff and taking away
Speaker 4: some rights, and people were like, well, I'm not a terrorist,
Speaker 4: so it doesn't really matter that, like if they're listening
Speaker 4: to my phone calls or like monitoring my online conversations.
Speaker 4: And I think like, now because we have some distance
Speaker 4: from it, people are starting to be like, WHOA, that's
Speaker 4: like where the government was doing a lot, Maybe we
Speaker 4: need to take back somebody's rights. But I think any
Speaker 4: aftermath of some of these big events, people are more
Speaker 4: willing to give up their rights or be inconvenience for
Speaker 4: the quote unquote greater good, even if in this case,
Speaker 4: the greater good is not doing that great of a
Speaker 4: job at keeping us safe.
Speaker 5: And TSA ends up not having any incentive to ever
Speaker 5: address the source of our complaints. Anyway, it's a federal
Speaker 5: organization and they're not necessarily making money. Like if there
Speaker 5: were a company, a private company, where you know, a
Speaker 5: large amount of complaints might actually affect their business, then
Speaker 5: they would feel incentivized to address them. But you know,
Speaker 5: it's kind of like, why would they care about our complaints?
Speaker 5: That's they're just like the end all be all for
Speaker 5: airport security as of now. Yeah, yeah, and like you're
Speaker 5: still gonna fly when you need to see your family
Speaker 5: or do whatever. It's not like it's not like picking
Speaker 5: a airline or something, and it's just like you just
Speaker 5: need to go there and do.
Speaker 1: It right, because I'm not taking to greyhound. That's a
Speaker 1: really great point that all of you are making. I
Speaker 1: think the machines with trans folks, people with wheelchairs and
Speaker 1: medical devices and things like that. TSA claims to accommodate them,
Speaker 1: but we always hear all of these horror stories about
Speaker 1: wheelchairs being broken and devices being misplaced or lost or broken,
Speaker 1: and it's just like, who were these systems built to serve?
Speaker 1: And who is it not built to serve? And it's
Speaker 1: clear that they are excluded from that scope. I think
Speaker 1: the point that you bring up about privatization is also
Speaker 1: a good point, because there's a bill in Congress right now,
Speaker 1: the abolished TSA Act that I think a Republican out
Speaker 1: of Utah actually put up, and it would transfer airport
Speaker 1: screening to private companies. Yeah, twenty two United States airports,
Speaker 1: including San Francisco, use private screeners under TSA's Screening Partnership program,
Speaker 1: same rules, just different employer badge. So studies show that
Speaker 1: they are able to get people through faster, but they're
Speaker 1: not more effective. It's not like they're catching more security risks.
Speaker 1: Do you guys feel like that would fix something or
Speaker 1: just make it harder for folks to be held accountable
Speaker 1: in the ways that they need to be held accountable,
Speaker 1: like we were just talking about with biases.
Speaker 4: We actually gotten a very angry email after our episode
Speaker 4: about this because San Francisco has private security. No, but
Speaker 4: they're you know, they're following the rules of the TSA,
Speaker 4: so they have to be TSA compliance to someone who's
Speaker 4: basically reaching out being like privatization is not the way
Speaker 4: to go. I fly out of San Francisco and I
Speaker 4: have all these same issues, which I didn't think we
Speaker 4: said privatization was the way to go in the episode,
Speaker 4: but I think, yeah, simply making airport security private doesn't
Speaker 4: fix the problem if you're still abiding by TSA rules
Speaker 4: and you know, like if you still have all these
Speaker 4: same issues of like not paying people a lot of money,
Speaker 4: like the rules being confusing, not having job security people
Speaker 4: like turnover larry to being high, like it doesn't matter
Speaker 4: who really is in charge, right, Like you got to
Speaker 4: rethink the system entirely, which you know I haven't read
Speaker 4: too much in this to this bill, but I don't
Speaker 4: think that's what this is attempting to do. I think
Speaker 4: the real way to fix TSA is like a big,
Speaker 4: huge overhaul, and I think it's hard to do that
Speaker 4: without like an event causing people to really like put
Speaker 4: to urgency and like money and effort into it. So
Speaker 4: I don't see it ever being fixed at this point
Speaker 4: because there's like, you know, it's one thing for there
Speaker 4: to be a big event to cause you to like
Speaker 4: up airport security. What's going to be a big event
Speaker 4: for people to be like, oh, maybe we should be
Speaker 4: more chill about like airport security.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I'm generally a proponent of government taking on responsibility of
Speaker 5: some things as long as it's obviously done in an efficient,
Speaker 5: in a smart way. Yeah, I worry that if airport
Speaker 5: security became privatized. We've seen it a million times before,
Speaker 5: even with airlines, where they'll take certain shortcuts in order
Speaker 5: to maximize profits, and that ends up leading to disastrous
Speaker 5: events happening. And so we are kind of, like, as
Speaker 5: Evan's been saying, we're kind of in a conundrum here
Speaker 5: because I don't want it to be private but I
Speaker 5: also don't like what it is right now. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: think the main thing is like we we mainly, I mean,
Speaker 5: the biggest complaint is we just want consistency. Like it's
Speaker 5: fine if it's horrible to need to take you shoes off,
Speaker 5: but like, at least I would like to know that
Speaker 5: I need to do that, Like, like why not just
Speaker 5: make a big newsletter you smail out to everyone like
Speaker 5: a phone book at the beginning of the year and say,
Speaker 5: this year, take the laptops out, keep your shoes on,
Speaker 5: no liquids, no baby milk, whatever, like until.
Speaker 3: You get another one of these. That's the rule for
Speaker 3: every airport in the United States. And like it can
Speaker 3: be private, public, whatever you want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it seems like what you're advocating for
Speaker 1: is some big event in the reverse where we can
Speaker 1: get relaxed. Personally, I would like it to just be
Speaker 1: a lottery thing. Like you get there, you pull a number,
Speaker 1: and you don't know if you're gonna get screened or not.
Speaker 1: Now you know, and that really get it randomized. We
Speaker 1: see what's going on, you can't control it. Like the
Speaker 1: price is right, you come on at a little fun
Speaker 1: a little gamification to the process I do.
Speaker 4: Are the other people just going through.
Speaker 1: It's like you are in the studio audience. We're picking
Speaker 1: five out of years. The rest of y'all go and
Speaker 1: we get to see your entire contents of your bag.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're going through everything.
Speaker 3: You can give it away too.
Speaker 1: Some of the stuff, I just think there's just it
Speaker 1: feels like this unnecessary thing to me. But I think
Speaker 1: also there there is some good that comes out of TSA.
Speaker 1: I think we know that. I think there are some
Speaker 1: flawed policies for sure. I mean, we've talked about real
Speaker 1: I D. But what we haven't talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: is you mentioned there should be a newsletter where they
Speaker 1: should say this is exactly what you should be screened for.
Speaker 1: Everybody's talking about real ID, but there's like eleven things
Speaker 1: that TSA said, Now you can include this in your
Speaker 1: bag and we won't stop you. TSA is tweeting funny
Speaker 1: memes and I'm like, this is what you need to
Speaker 1: be outy. I'm not laughing. This should what should be
Speaker 1: on threats, like not not you roasting the Windy's, you know,
Speaker 1: like it just can I put my ratail comb in
Speaker 1: my back right right? I think I'm curious. You know,
Speaker 1: I've given you my take, and we always like to
Speaker 1: have something a little fun. Uh. If you were to
Speaker 1: build our airport security from scratch based on what you know? Now, okay,
Speaker 1: how would you build one that you felt like actually
Speaker 1: kept us safe and treated people with dignity? Already told
Speaker 1: you by Mark the Lottery.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I actually I think that you can do like
Speaker 4: you should treat airports like you're getting on a train.
Speaker 4: M There's no you didn't. No one's looking through your
Speaker 4: bag when you get on a train.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: It's like and I think the things that would stop
Speaker 4: someone from hijacking a plane like have nothing to do
Speaker 4: with them checking your bags.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: The cockpits are enforced down so you can't get in
Speaker 4: there if you're not a pilot. Everybody else on the
Speaker 4: plane if you do some fishy stuff, as we see,
Speaker 4: people will jump on you, like I saw. I was
Speaker 4: just watching video the other day of a flight attendant
Speaker 4: punching his dude in the face because he was having
Speaker 4: like some sort of spasm and he was pulling like
Speaker 4: this woman's here in front of him, and my dude
Speaker 4: was like boxing, and it's like people aren't people don't. Yeah,
Speaker 4: people don't have that energy like pre nine to eleven.
Speaker 4: It's like if you do anything fishy on a plane
Speaker 4: like ten, people would be like, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So I think between just those two things, like most
Speaker 4: of the situations will be taken care of.
Speaker 5: Sometimes in smaller airports, i'll see better technology where you
Speaker 5: can kind of implement newer stuff a little easier because
Speaker 5: not so many people go through that airport. This happened
Speaker 5: to me in Hartford, Connecticut. They have an airport up there,
Speaker 5: and there was a lot of people at the airport,
Speaker 5: but the security line was a sinch because we're just
Speaker 5: like moving through this like futuristic kind of. I don't
Speaker 5: know exactly what it was, but I wondered if it
Speaker 5: was detecting, you know, for a bomb. And that's pretty
Speaker 5: much it. Like there's blades. I'm not super worried about guns.
Speaker 5: Obviously I'm worried about but like I walk around every
Speaker 5: day around gun like that.
Speaker 1: My god, you want problems, I got problems too.
Speaker 5: I really just want to make sure that the plane
Speaker 5: lands and it's at its destination. All the other stuff,
Speaker 5: I feel like, you know, I don't know, I'm just
Speaker 5: I've never been that worried about it.
Speaker 3: I think they should use more dogs for sniffing the bombs.
Speaker 2: Perhaps. I like seeing the dogs.
Speaker 3: It's a pretty harmless and you know, I think it's
Speaker 3: a pretty painless way for it that to happen, to
Speaker 3: have the dogs roaming, whether before or after. I think
Speaker 3: we should have metal detectors.
Speaker 2: I'll say it.
Speaker 3: I would prefer no guns on the plane with me,
Speaker 3: except for maybe an air marshall. Maybe I'm conservative, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I think those two as like it's like going into
Speaker 3: a sports you know, are like that plus ad you know,
Speaker 3: add some things, and I think we should be pretty
Speaker 3: good with that.
Speaker 1: I heard, Manny you tell a story, Devin, you told
Speaker 1: a story. No, you didn't have that bad of a
Speaker 1: story except in the neck end. Like I am interested
Speaker 1: in any special airport stories that y'all have that kind
Speaker 1: of crystallizes your all of how you feel about the
Speaker 1: airport experiences.
Speaker 4: There are two things. One, the hoodie thing is always
Speaker 4: a situation. It's like there's they're always telling you conflict,
Speaker 4: take off your hoodie, and then the other person's like,
Speaker 4: you don't need to take off your hoodie? Is like
Speaker 4: all right, y'all need to talk. Y'all standing five feet
Speaker 4: away from each other, maybe you can both get on
Speaker 4: the same page, if not everybody else in the airport.
Speaker 4: And then for a while I took like four or
Speaker 4: five flights where every single time they like checked my
Speaker 4: bag and like opened up my carry on, which y'all know,
Speaker 4: when you pack your carry on, it's not it's not
Speaker 4: meant to be opened and get in a hotel somewhere,
Speaker 4: So they open it up, they go through everything, and
Speaker 4: then they're like, yeah, you're good, and then they just
Speaker 4: sort of push the mess of your open bag to you,
Speaker 4: and there's no place to like lightly put it back there.
Speaker 4: So I would ask like, like, what's is there anything
Speaker 4: in there? Like what's happening? And they're like, basically, there's
Speaker 4: nothing we can tell you. It happened consistently, like four
Speaker 4: or five times when I was flying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, on the hoodie thing, there are dozens of us
Speaker 5: who wear hoodies with without you know, any T shirt underneath.
Speaker 2: I find it to be you you.
Speaker 4: Are, you are on your own with that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I feel a little bit more comfortable in that scenario.
Speaker 5: And sometimes I'll get as really often I'm like, are
Speaker 5: you sure about that.
Speaker 1: Happened.
Speaker 2: What's happened more than they should have let people like
Speaker 2: that on the plane.
Speaker 1: Because shirt.
Speaker 5: Tsa we're stopping bombs, guns and people who don't wear
Speaker 5: T shirts under their.
Speaker 1: When you're in an airport, though it all feels right,
Speaker 1: no shirt under your hoodie, that man clearly needs additional stream.
Speaker 1: I think all of this stuff is because I watched
Speaker 1: a lot of like con Air and you know, movies
Speaker 1: like that, and I feel like, I, yeah, it's and
Speaker 1: it's probably wrong, like hijackings and all these things. It's
Speaker 1: probably wrong, But the media does such a number like
Speaker 1: on our minds and what we think are clear and
Speaker 1: present danger is. But I think, thank you very much
Speaker 1: with Harrison Ford references there. But I do think, like
Speaker 1: I'm more concerned about somebody like accessing my cell phone
Speaker 1: and all of us getting like, like, I think I'm
Speaker 1: much more worried about digital warfare or you know, digital
Speaker 1: terrorism than I am, like physical because during COVID people
Speaker 1: are going crazy and fighting on the flights, and so
Speaker 1: I'm like, nobody's really risking that. If they are willing
Speaker 1: to do that, then in the middle of a respiratory pandemic,
Speaker 1: imagine what we do now. Similarly, I feel like it
Speaker 1: might not be so much of a threat, or the
Speaker 1: threat's not right, there is somewhere else.
Speaker 4: Yeah, most of the security researchers say, like most terrorist
Speaker 4: organizations are not planning to hijack planes anymore, Like that's
Speaker 4: not there's sadly easier ways to kill people. You know.
Speaker 4: It's like the plane thing is a bit of a
Speaker 4: hassle now, so they're doing other things, right, It's like airports,
Speaker 4: and if airports are being targeted, they're targeting security lines.
Speaker 4: They're not targeting the actual plane. And it's not like
Speaker 4: TSA is strapped, you know. It's like when people go
Speaker 4: through there shooting there, they can't do anything. They need
Speaker 4: to look for the real police to come and help out.
Speaker 4: So it's like it's it's to your point. It's like
Speaker 4: I think the moment TSA was created, like it was
Speaker 4: already outdated because that thing was not going to happen again, right,
Speaker 4: Like they ran the playbook, it's over, they're not running
Speaker 4: it again, But like we have created the whole system
Speaker 4: for that old playbook. Rather than being like, all right,
Speaker 4: what is going to be the next thing, we should
Speaker 4: be worried.
Speaker 5: About I just thinking about TSAs with the hammers on them,
Speaker 5: that that's I.
Speaker 2: Don't want to be in that world ever, And you're
Speaker 2: trying to.
Speaker 1: Do that much attitude.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's like, I don't have a shirt on to
Speaker 4: hear at gunpoint.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things is sometimes I see
Speaker 1: it on the Internet where people are like, oh, would
Speaker 1: you date this kind of person? And I feel like
Speaker 1: police officers people a lot of times women just because
Speaker 1: they also have statistically, uh terrible interactions with police officers.
Speaker 1: A lot of times women are like, no, I would
Speaker 1: never date a police officer. But I'm like, we haven't
Speaker 1: talked about the bad attitudes of TSA officers and the
Speaker 1: stigma around that, So would you date a TSA officer on?
Speaker 5: No, But obviously there are going to be some exceptions.
Speaker 5: I think if someone is.
Speaker 4: There's some goods officers you're.
Speaker 5: Saying, you know, really, I think it's gonna hate to
Speaker 5: sound a very surface level here, but if it comes
Speaker 5: down to the looks, really, I think.
Speaker 4: If they if they think it looks are good enough,
Speaker 4: you'll overlook them working at TSA.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, blanket No.
Speaker 5: But obviously, if halle Berry was a TSA officer. I'm
Speaker 5: trying to say is that there are some exceptions reconsidered.
Speaker 1: That's what means that you always say the rules change enough.
Speaker 5: Yeah, everyone has everyone has a stance.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I've always wanted to be with the TSA.
Speaker 1: Cut me down. I have no shirt on my head.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to let.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: What I we. We had a listener who was like,
Speaker 4: there's a type of person who takes this job. And
Speaker 4: it's like it's a person who like wants power, you know,
Speaker 4: and like it doesn't matter if it's just like telling
Speaker 4: people what to put in the basket or whatever. But
Speaker 4: I don't think I could. I don't think I could.
Speaker 4: I think that energy, like someone who has the energy
Speaker 4: to be even decent at their job at t s
Speaker 4: A is like not energy I would.
Speaker 2: Want around me, even if they look like Zendia Date.
Speaker 4: We said, date, all right, fair enough Date. I think
Speaker 4: I would consider it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think it's like a cop.
Speaker 3: I mean, I understand the point, but it's also you
Speaker 3: can say that about teachers or something, you know, respectfully,
Speaker 3: all the teachers teachers put teachers if you want a
Speaker 3: teachers hour in there, I'm not saying it's the same thing.
Speaker 2: That's all I'm saying, Wow, I go on a date.
Speaker 4: I'd go on a date with you.
Speaker 1: I don't know what teachers are catching straight to date.
Speaker 4: With a teacher too.
Speaker 2: While we're having teacher.
Speaker 1: Appreciation Week right now, appreciation, it was like they're overpaid qualified.
Speaker 3: First of all, take some of the teacher paychecks. Put
Speaker 3: them the TSA.
Speaker 1: I feel like I learned a lot with all that
Speaker 1: we know. Now, what are you going to be doing
Speaker 1: different the next time you fly? Z leaving a little
Speaker 1: bit more time because I know the recitlease don't have
Speaker 1: your real eye DC. You know I cut it close anyway.
Speaker 1: I say, if my friend, let me tell you, she's
Speaker 1: chasing the plane down the tarment one second, one second?
Speaker 1: Excuse me, excuse me? Ahwa's what about you? Are you
Speaker 1: doing anything different? I think for me, I don't want
Speaker 1: to go later because them lines are too long. I'd
Speaker 1: rather sit in the airport. I really would then be
Speaker 1: in a line sweating because I've seen people sweat. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: Can I get in front of you? And then people
Speaker 1: be like no, I'm like, that's so mean. I always
Speaker 1: say you can get in front of me. I think
Speaker 1: for me, I just the awareness of, you know, what
Speaker 1: is going on with TSA, like what they're looking for,
Speaker 1: why they do certain things, that kind of takes the
Speaker 1: edge off because I'm just like, Okay, now that makes sense, yes,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and knowing their conditions, maybe
Speaker 1: we should be smiling at them, bring a piece of
Speaker 1: chocolate for them, you know. Yeah, yeah, they have it bad.
Speaker 1: They do have it bad. And number of breast milk flying.
Speaker 1: I think I'm done with that. There you go, T
Speaker 1: and T boobs all right back. Yes, thank you so
Speaker 1: much to Devin, Manny and Noah. Y'all were great and
Speaker 1: we can't wait to have y'all back. Yes, everybody. Check
Speaker 1: out No Such Thing anywhere you get podcasts, and also
Speaker 1: check out the Daryl Kimmel article the humiliating history of
Speaker 1: the TSA. Just google it, you'll find it so good.
Speaker 1: You can find us on X and Instagram at Dope
Speaker 1: Labs podcast tt is on X and Instagram at dr
Speaker 1: Underscore t Sho, and you can find Zakiya at z
Speaker 1: said So. Dope Labs is a production of Lemonada Media.
Speaker 1: Our senior supervising producer is Kristin Lapour. And our Associate
Speaker 1: producer is Issara Sives. Dope Labs is sound design, edited
Speaker 1: and mixed by James par Robert. Lemonada Media's Vice President
Speaker 1: of Partnerships and Production is Jackie Danziger. Executive producer from
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcast is Katrina Norbe. Marketing lead is Alison Kantor.
Speaker 1: Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
Speaker 1: sugi Ura, with additional music by Elijah Harvey. Dope Lab
Speaker 1: is executive produced by us T T show Dia and
Speaker 1: Kiah Watti.