1169: TSA | Skeptical Sunday

25:53Yes, he's going to be nervous in a very, very different way than the actual terrorist is. And they know this. They know the difference. It's not a difficult thing to sniff out when you have the training in it. For example, like they know the terrorist is almost certainly not a guy traveling with his wife and kids. By the way, is it the IDF that protects Israeli commercial flights? Did we look that up? Did you check that out? So there's a thing called the Israel Airport Authority, and it's not part of the Israeli Defense Forces, but the border crossings in the airports, the security there is overseen by the IAA, the Israel Airport Authority.

26:31They cooperate closely with the IDF. I believe that there is some IDF presence, but I'm just calling it the IDF because it's simple, it's easy, and everybody knows what it is. And if I say IAA, people are going to Google it and find the Israeli Antiquities Authority and wonder why I'm talking about the people who protect underwater treasures in the Dead Sea. Israelis listening are probably going to say, actually, it's this or it's these three agencies. So, yeah, I appreciate you keeping it simple. OK, so we have people at the airport chatting up people and asking them questions and taking them aside for more questions.

27:06And I remember that when I flew to Israel, it was like almost exclusively really cute girls that were my age. I was 20 at the time, and they would come up and talk to you, and you'd be like, yeah, I'm ready. Ask me important stuff. And they were not, of course, having it at all. They were just all business because it's a really important job. And I just remember all the guys were like, dang, yeah, look at that. And they were just like, whatever, chump. Do you have a bomb in your briefcase? Why are you going? What's that? And then it's on to the next. You're dead to me. Typical Israeli women. But what is it about how the TSA does this versus how the Israelis do it that makes you so sure that they're going to catch terrorists before they get on a plane?

27:44So the TSA actually does something similar, but they're really bad at it because what they have instead of freshly shorn beard is this approved list of body language that they're allowed to consider suspicious that is designed to make sure that nobody is offended and they don't get sued for unlawfully detaining somebody for the wrong reasons, if nothing's going on. Do you have any examples of that? It's really dumb stuff like clearing your throat or looking at the floor. You're not allowed to just say, I just don't like the look of this guy, so I'm going to ask him a few questions because this is America.

28:27Nothing can ever be that simple. And God knows what percentage of the legal profession is currently dedicated to suing people for exercising common sense. but the government tried to hide what they're looking for the united states government they're always trying to hide their list of like this is a tell that he's a terrorist but they're really bad at doing this and so the lists come out with some degree of regularity if you know where to look what's the body language list comes out though the terrorists like they just need to learn how to not do that like cia agents learn not to lean on things because that's a thing americans do or So I've been told.

29:06Yeah, I actually checked on this because you're not the first person to mention it. It depends on what culture the operator is trained to go into. So if you're trained for a certain culture where people don't lean on things, they're trained you not to do it. But otherwise, they just leave it. Anyway, I had to even pry that information out of the former operator friend. So I guess I probably shouldn't say more than that. Regardless, the body language is literally the worst way you can spot a liar or somebody with bad intent. That's not hyperbole, which I'm prone to. It's just not a good way to tell if somebody is lying.

29:38The Israelis are not looking for people who are acting weird, quote unquote, based on a set of predetermined politically correct criteria. They're just looking for people who fit the profile. And then they see people who fit the profile. They start conversations with them. They make decisions on the fly. Those girls that you were talking about before, you know, they're part of the chain because you're acting weird and you're not acting weird in the way that a normal guy does. when I start asking him questions. You're acting weird in the way the terrorist does. I'm acting weird because I'm terrible with women.

30:11But once you isolate that, he's just a normal dork, not a terrorist dork. Moving on. Yeah, exactly. Like, they know the difference between, oh, I'm nervous because I'm getting grilled by an intelligence agent, and, like, I'm nervous because there's a bomb in my back. Yeah. It's a very different type of nervous going on. And I think that the proof is in the pudding here. They just don't have terrorist attacks at Israeli airports or hijackings of Israeli airplanes. And if that means somebody has to spend half an hour talking to a security guard, I'm fine with it. But the TSA also has a good track record.

30:45There hasn't been an attack using airplanes since 9-11. You think that's proof enough that they're keeping us safe? I don't know. I mean, is that because the TSA is just this crack operation that stops all the terrorists? Or is it because the terrorists know well enough to not use an airplane again? I think that the people who pulled off 9-11, which for the record, I think were Saudi terrorists and not Jewish space lasers or something weird. I think the people who spent a decade studying Delta Force in Afghanistan to pull off the 9-11 attacks are probably smart enough to know, ah, they're not able to use an airplane again.

31:23There's too many eyes on it. We also know the answer to this question about is it that the TSA is really good or what? Because the TSA has its own auditors who go into an airport with different stuff in their backpacks. It could be harmless hunks of metal. It could be weapons like guns and knives. Sometimes it's a bomb broken down into its parts that you could put together quickly and blow up in a moment of your choosing when you're on the plane. But they're airports that have a 95 percent failure rate, nine, five, five percent success rate on these audits, some of these airports. So that means like everything that they send through makes it to the other side of security.

32:04And for people who doubt this, a friend of mine who definitely is not me used to do this, not as part of his job. He literally just wanted to see if the TSA was any good at their job. And he brought knives, pepper spray, sharp objects, dangerous chemicals, you name it, onto his flights and then would take a photo and post it anonymously to Twitter. And that's the stuff that was deliberately brought through. I know other people, again, not me, that have brought in things that are supposedly not allowed. And you find it like three years later when you're flying through Japan. You're like, oh, I did have three lighters at the bottom of my night kit that are full of lighter fluid.

32:39Wow, that's where my knife went. It's at the bottom of this thing. I brought it to the jungle and I ended up carrying it on for 27 flights since then. That happens all the time. This is an anecdotal aside, but I'm a marketing copywriter for a company that sells tons of mall ninja but grown-up type stuff like tactical pens and tactical credit cards and stuff like this. TSA is going to get that because they have this like intense training about the wannabe mercenaries are carrying this type of tactical pen now or this type of tactical credit card and don't let them on with it. That I totally think they're going to spot because I feel like that's more where their eyes are focused.

33:22And I know tons of people who've had TSA throw their tactical pen or whatever out. but as far as sophisticated stuff that actual terrorists might use they're just not able to stop this stuff so i'm not really sure where all these crazy failed audits are happening but i suspect it's at smaller airports like second and third tier cities i don't really think that this is probably i'm just guessing i don't see this as being like a new york la problem i think this is of like Flagstaff Airport, Knoxville Airport, no shade on either of those cities, both of whom I think are great, but it's a resource issue.

34:02Like where the resources are lacking, they're going to get through more. So that's my olive branch to the TSA is that the bigger airports, I suspect their audit rates are higher, but I don't know. The bigger point is though, bomb parts are making it through security because the entire premise of how to secure an airplane is flawed. This is ultimately all security theater. And I think that one thing that's kind of worth pointing out is that maybe we're damn lucky that Al Qaeda or ISIS or whoever doesn't think that they can pull off another 9-11 because maybe they'd be able to do it because the guy's too busy throwing out your water or throwing out your tactical pan to catch these more sophisticated weapons that if there's a 95 % compliance failure somewhere, I'm guessing that Al-Qaeda or whoever could figure out which airport has it, where they could get it through, et cetera, et cetera.

34:57They didn't blunder their way into the World Trade Center towers. Look, I'm not totally sure I'm ready to join in on your beating up on the TSA because I think they're probably trying their best. I think you're probably right about a lot of the points that you're making. But wouldn't the issue be the higher ups in management and the policy as opposed to the 24-year-old who just wants a job with benefits? Oh, I believe you. This is them trying their best and that's the problem. Fine, but what's then the problem with TSA? I mean, the appearance of security has to have some kind of impact that keeps travelers safer.

35:26We have some studies that suggest that the existence of the TSA kills people. I don't mean to laugh, but it's such a counterintuitive thing, but it actually may mean that there's more deaths. Wow. Okay. So how does that work? Like they're just, if you have four ounces of liquid instead of three, you got to come back here and you get Like that no country for old men treatment with the pneumatic plug in the back of your head. Captive bull. Yeah. That's right. People don't fly because they don't want to deal with the TSA. I don't fly because I don't want to deal with the TSA. I drive, which is a more dangerous way of traveling than flying, which means more people die.

36:06And those numbers add up. I see. Okay. So they drive instead of fly. They end up dying in a car accident. Now I get it. So what do the numbers look like specifically for this? we sadly only have one study on this and it's old but it was an additional 129 road fatalities over a three-month period which is a fully loaded 737 every three months i don't know let's assume that the actual number today is half that if you do the math you're left with over 5 000 extra road fatalities since 2001 because people don't want to fly. We could measure it in 9-11s. Yeah, that's almost two 9-11s since 9-11. That's pretty crazy and a pretty good example of unintended consequences.

36:52But again, why get rid of the TSA? We could be having a 9-11 every month or something with that. Their failure rate in internal audits suggests otherwise. This is the thing that came to me in the middle of this. It's like real lucky that Al-Qaeda has given up on airplanes. But there's also why not keep them because it's a spooky scarecrow outside of the airport. It's$12 billion a year to keep them going. Billion with a B. It's a lot of rhinestones. And to have people stand around and yell at you about whether or not it's shoes on or shoes off day and let phony bomb parts go through security when they're not touching up my junk.

37:28If they're touching your nuts and it feels funny, it's not gay if it's TSA. Just remember that. Don't worry. Thank you for joining us on Skeptical Sunday. I've been saving that dad joke for a really long time with absolutely nowhere to put it. And here we are. There's also some pretty demonstrably bad things about the TSA that aren't just unintended consequences, that aren't theoretical deaths that we can extrapolate from one very limited old study. I think lighting$12 billion a year on fire is kind of a big deal, but there's other stuff. Okay. I hear you on the dollars and cents side. That is a lot of money.

38:03I'm a pretty practical guy. And if there's just not evidence that they're earning their keep, then yes, maybe we need to try something else. Maybe more of what the Israelis are doing. But that sounds even more expensive, though. that's actually something i thought of as well and you're not wrong it costs about 10 times as much per passenger apparently to do what they do in israel but it's not an apples to apples comparison because that's the budget for the entire security agency divided by the number of passengers our number for the same metric of how much does it cost to process a passenger through security just counts as security at the airport, whereas theirs is the budget for the entire agency.

38:46It also assumes the same rate of engagement. So it assumes that TSA cops are going to be stopping as many suspects as the Israelis. And I'm skeptical that's true, given that the Israelis live in a perpetual war zone. And if that's the budget for the whole agency, Israeli commercial airliners have laser systems that stop surface to air missiles. They have all kinds of essentially military grade protective stuff on the plane that your Turkish Airlines flight or your United Airlines flight from JFK to LAX is not equipping because they've got to fly over places that want to shoot those planes down.

39:30They have those just on like regular old LL planes that I'm going to take from wherever to wherever. They do. Yeah, they do. If the TSA hasn't stolen your wallet in hard-earned money, you can use it to support the amazing sponsors that support this show. We'll be right back. Thank you for listening to and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers does keep the lights on around here. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are all searchable and clickable over at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. You can also search for the sponsors using the AI chatbot on the website as well.

40:00please consider supporting those who support the show. Now, for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. All Israeli commercial jets are fitted with laser defense systems, which are known as directed infrared countermeasures, manufactured by the Tel Aviv contractor Elbit Systems. They were made standard following a 2002 attack on an Israeli passenger plane as it took off from Kenya's Mombasa airport. Luckily, the two shoulder-fired missiles Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants fired at the airline's Boeing 757 missed due to malfunctions, but for Israel's government. It was a wake-up call to protect civilian aircraft against such wildly proliferated weapons.

40:34Essentially, what was shot at them was man-portable air defense system, man-pads. So, you maybe have heard of those. They're known as something else now. But yeah, there's laser countermeasures on LL flights. And God knows what else is on there. This is just the publicly available stuff. There's other anti-missile tech. Oh, there's something else called C-Music, which includes an electro-optical missile warning system, a jamming turret, and a laser generator. The moment a missile is fired, the pod detects the weapon via its IR signature. An infrared laser swivels immediately toward the missile and its thermal cameras track the missile's flight.

41:09There's more to it, but essentially it points a super powerful beam at the missile's infrared seeker, which is otherwise locked down to the plane's exhaust. And the beam dazzles it, gives it the razzle-dazzle. And then the missile erroneously readjusts its trajectory and you land safely in Zurich. hopefully not knowing that there was a surface-to-air missile following the plane at one point during the flight while you were watching reruns of The Wire.

41:34Yeah, there's more on board, like, bulletproof cockpit doors and stuff like that. And there's the airport security we're talking about now as well. But, yeah, there's stuff on that plane that adds to the price of your average commercial airliner, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm dying to know what it costs to take a flight. Do you even fly from one end of Israel to another? It's such a small country. You can fly from one end of Israel to another, but it's probably like a 12-minute flight. It's like flying from L.A. to San Diego. No, it's not quite that small. Can you fly from one end of New Jersey to the other?

42:05Probably. Not on a jetliner like that. These are their international ones. This is when you've hopped a flight from Tel Aviv to Haifa, and I'm like, it's probably like you could drive there in 10 minutes. I have no idea. Yeah, it's a couple hours, I'm sure. But yeah, I'm sure if you fly there, it's one of those planes with 20 seats in it or something like that. I don't think that has a laser countermeasures system on it. I think they're just hoping that nobody in Israel has a man pad that they're going to use on a plane. OK, so it's not an apples to apples comparison with the security in the U.S.

42:33and in Israel. And I can see this being a lot more expensive, like you said, depending on the cost being a case of accepting the inconvenience of the TSA for the lower bottom line. So maybe we call the money a wash on this particular point because we'd have to speculate and guess too much. yeah there's too many like unknowns to really draw a comparison between the two but you ever been robbed by israeli airport security so i haven't been robbed by israeli airport security but i've been robbed by the tsa actually more than once and everyone listening is going me too yeah that's a thing i've had my money taken out of my money clip definitely because they handled it my money was just gone and i was like where's my money and they're like what are you talking about there was no money in there and i'm like funny you would notice that because if you didn't take it you would just be like, what?

43:18I don't know. What are you talking about? You wouldn't say there was no money in there. And then another time I decided I was going to hold my money because I didn't want to get robbed again. And they were like, you have to put it in the dog bowl. And I was like, no. And they're like, fine, then you can't fly. And I was like, screw it. So I put it in the dog bowl. And then I kept my eye on that guy. And someone else took the money. And then I had to go back and get my money clip after they inspected my stuff, which they gave me back empty. And then, of course, when I said, hey, this had money in it, they were like, you can file a complaint form, but nobody saw any money in it.

43:47And I was like, of course you saw money in it, which is why you took the money out and made me put it in the dog bowl. Yeah, no, I've been robbed by TSA, which is also why when people are like, what's Jordan's problem with the TSA? The problem is they owe me$165 plus interest. Man, dude, I thought you were walking around with a$10 ,000 roll the way that you tell this story. No, even if they stole$20. You're this salty over 160 bucks. I'm salty that I got robbed by the government in addition to paying taxes. Look, I will pay you this. Why are you also robbing me? That I don't appreciate. So yes, I'm on one for the TSA for that specific reason.

44:20You being mad about 160 bucks and me not caring is why you're rich and I'm not. That's the only reason. That is the only reason. Yeah. So people get robbed by the TSA all the time. Everybody has their story about the thing that TSA stole from them. In 2023, they shut down a whole theft ring in Miami that was just straight looting people's bags of security. Again, it's one of these old studies. But in 2012, ABC found that 400 TSA employees have been fired for theft. Okay, they caught these people. Presumably they were fired for stealing and potentially prosecuted. Yes, but everyone listening is thinking of the time that the TSA robbed them.

45:06they probably didn't catch all the people that were stealing in miami yeah it's conjecture i'm following your point i don't think it's unfair to say that this is kind of like cockroaches if you see one there's likely thousands somewhere else that you don't see i will also say in their defense tsa has called me to give me back stuff that i've left like lights and expensive items that they could have maybe taken and didn't so i know that they're not all thieves i know it's a few bad apples but the rest of that phrase is spoils the whole bunch yeah fair enough there's also all the there's just a litany of sexual assault allegations against the tsa oh yeah i didn't think about that i stopped looking because there were just so many that it was like i can't talk about all of these it's like this would be the whole show this is another thing that kind of got memory hole but there was this whole scandal at the denver airport where the screeners were using those full body things that take basically take a naked picture of you and they were using it to set up situations where they could grope dudes junk and not in like the normal way that they grow up your junk that's a lot of work to grab some dude's crotch when you could probably i'm trying to think there's probably a lot of easier ways that you could get away with grabbing some dude's crotch if that's what you were really into you didn't have to set up this whole thing at the airport i also super vaguely remember that going on and i remember thinking it was weird then too yeah so there was a former tsa agent wrote something for time magazine about it and called it business as usual and again i had to stop looking for like tsa assault somebody because there were just so many of them there was a whistleblower in front of a house investigation committee in 2018 who said they were almost all dirty agents have manipulated passengers into exposing themselves.

46:56I'll do that for free. I don't care. You don't have to manipulate me. Just ask nicely. I remember there was a story like ages ago, and I didn't document this, so maybe I'm just totally making it up, but there was like a whole thing about they basically like manipulated some woman into showing her nipple rings to the agents. Multiple people complain about sexual violence with rough and unnecessary violent inspections of genital areas during the screenings. There was the L.A. Chargers defensive lineman who claimed about being sexually assaulted by that was one of the more famous accusations because he was Chargers lineman.

47:34Jeez. So that's all pretty horrifying. And honestly, it's one of my worst nightmares. It's annoying every time I have to go through security. I've definitely felt, did you need to get all up in there and personal and then like make a snide comment while going through security? My major concern here, though, is that if I'm dealing with that as a guy, what's happening to women who deal with this kind of stuff at your local 7-Eleven, let alone at the airport where they're supposed to be given a pat down? Because as a guy, I can shrug it off and be like, what an a-hole. But as a woman, I feel like this must be so much worse.

48:07There's actually a thing that I really hate about the whole thing as a parent, and that's that I really don't like that it normalizes that a stranger can touch you to my kid. So there's that as well. That's really where I'm like ready to punch an agent is when they start getting all up in my kid. But the kind of commonality here is that it's just outrageous that this is a thing that we have to put up with for exercising a basic human right like traveling. and this rabbit hole gets grosser because the TSA has argued in court that their agents should not be prosecuted criminally for rape of travelers.

48:56Wow. I don't doubt that this is true, but you got to have more details on this. Can you kind of unpack this a bit and give everyone listening the full story? Because I don't understand. Most people are thinking, how do you get raped while you're putting your bag in a scanner? Yeah, and that's fair. So we'll do the details on that. It was in 2019, and a woman claimed that a TSA agent inserted his finger into her vagina. That is rape in all 50 states. No, that is, I don't know anybody reasonable that would be like, oh, come on. No, that's terrible. Yeah. They demanded a pat down in a secluded room.

49:26And these are actually like really common complaints from women with the TSA. but this particular one got taken further because she lost her job because she refused to ever fly again because she had ptsd from this well yeah that sounds really messed up people are probably imagining like he's just searching her then they go boop no i don't think that's not how any of this works that's not why you and i know about this exactly you know no this is really messed up. I do not blame her for not wanting to go through that again for work. Yeah, it's absolutely disgusting. What happened with her? I'm not looking for some kind of excuse about why this is okay.

50:05Of course, just to be clear, I'm wondering what the whole story is. I only can assume it gets worse from here. So she goes through the full body scanner. She gets taken out of line. She gets sexually assaulted by the TSA agent and big shock. She doesn't want to go back to an airport ever again. But the federal government does not dispute that any of this happened. All right. Nothing about what I told you do they dispute. What they argued in federal court is that federal courts do not have a right to hear torts against the TSA, that the TSA enjoys some kind of sovereign immunity that includes sexually assaulting passengers.

50:47Without getting into like jurisdiction type stuff, if the TSA is a federal agency, then federal courts should have a right to hear tortsing him. You can sue the FBI. And you're telling me you can't sue the TSA? I don't want to be insulting. They're not FBI agents. Oh, my God. This is just par for the course when dealing with the government, though, right? Like they can get you for anything they want. By the way, you can sue the whole United States government. You can do that. Yes. So I'm sure there's a guy like a half a mile from me who's perpetually filing suit against the federal government.

51:19Of course there is. This is crazy. The government, they can get you for anything they want. But when they mess up, oops, sorry. Oh, and by the way, the court doesn't have a right to even hear this. So let's throw this whole thing out and pretend like it never happened. That's really disgusting. Yeah, that's gross. Yeah. If private security handled the airports, I don't think it's unreasonable to think there would be a contingency lawyer. There'd be ads on TV. You might be entitled to financial compensation if you, too, have had your you-know-what scanned in a way that was unfurl. I mean, I've basically gotten karate chopped in the junk by these guys.

51:51And I don't know if I'm entitled to compensation, but I do want my$165 back, you bastards. This would be big business for contingency lawyers. Yeah, it'd be better call Saul all day against the TSA. That's right. If it was a private company and you could actually get money out of them and they didn't have the weight of the federal government bearing down on you, if you dare to speak up about getting assaulted and given PTSD because of a sexual assault at the airport. And the thing, too, is maybe I'm naive here, but I think that massive cash settlements and the prospect of a thousand more of them actually does change behavior on the part of large, mostly unaccountable corporations.

52:37It does. There's going to be some kind of penalty there. Well, that's why McDonald's coffee isn't 3000 degrees Fahrenheit anymore, because the infamous coffee case. All right. So how common is this kind of thing, this kind of extreme violation, sexual assault of a passenger by the TSA? Because ball touching jokes aside, this is way beyond the normal amount of up close and personal examination that people more or less expect when they go to an airport. So it's common enough that this woman's lawyer's career is basically this kind of case. He stated in court before a judge that such occurrences were common and that when reported, police usually didn't even bother to take a report.

53:19That's terrible. So fine, let's say I agree with you. I'm not completely convinced, but I'm open to the idea that there's a better way, and that better way might be private companies rather than the government for this particular type of security. What are the chances of this actually happening? Oh, am I ever so glad that you asked. Mike Lee, the Republican senator from Utah, introduced a bill to get rid of the TSA in March of 2024. for. I'm going to go ahead and guess it did not pass because I just went in for a grope the other day on my way to Istanbul from San Francisco. Correct. It did not pass.

53:51So you've gone after the TSA, which I think is fair because you make a really solid case. I'm going to make you play devil's advocate, though. What do you think are some reasons for keeping the TSA as is? Obviously, less sexual assault, but keeping the agency around. This does get debated more than people are kind of aware. I'm just hyper aware of it because I have this private personal grudge against the TSA. But the argument that usually gets trotted out that I think is the best one because all the safety ones are just nonsense, that it's going to make flight more expensive because the security costs are going to get passed along.

54:29Okay. Maybe they've got you there. The airlines are not going to eat the cost of doing private security if they don't absolutely have to. They're just going to raise prices. yes i don't expect them to eat the cost of security so what passengers just have to pay more because you have a chip on your shoulder about getting searched at the airport and i want my 165 back is that what's happening here you're like the paper boy from better off dead like two dollars the logical fallacy with this argument though is you're already paying for it in the form of taxes i suspect there's hidden costs baked into your ticket because of it there's that 9 11 tax that you see on every ticket you buy, the 9-11 fee when you buy an airline ticket.

55:10I personally did 9-11 and I'm paying them back for it. Government services aren't free. They're funded by extracting wealth from productive citizens. They're not free. Okay. Well, look, I think you make a good case. Honestly, I'm not sure that you're ever going to see a day when we don't have a TSA because the next attack would just be blamed on the person who cuts the agency. But I appreciate you educating me and our listeners on why exactly they can reasonably be considered a waste of money. But I have to know something. So I know you're pretty hostile towards the government in general, but why the TSA?

55:43I mean, I've got my pet gripe because of my wallet getting raided twice, but why is this your arch nemesis agency of the federal government? Yeah, it's not the CIA. It's not the IRS. It's the TSA. Honestly, I think it impedes a very fundamental right to travel without getting groped or worse or robbed or whatever. More than that, it's such a new agency. It's like not even 25 years old. There's tons of people who are alive, who remember what flying was like before the TSA. So it's not, we're going to get rid of, I don't even know, insert here. And like, it's been around for a hundred years and whatever, the Federal Reserve.

56:26We're going to get rid of the Federal Reserve. There's not a single living human being who remembers life before the Federal Reserve. There's two people talking right now who remember what life was like before the TSA. And I don't know, it's this symbol, it's this emblem for me. Everything that went wrong on September 12th, 2001. All the freedom we lost. And it's just staring at me in the face, grinning at me, screaming at me to take my shoes off every time I have to get on an airplane. Even if I am not totally convinced, I got to admit, you make some solid points here. Studies show that people don't change their minds about things even when confronted with evidence.

57:06So I don't believe that. Anyway, thanks, as always, for taking us for a tour around the world of the TSA. I'm really looking forward to the barrels full of hate mail that I'm going to get from TSA agents who've never robbed or raped anyone in the line of duty. I know y 'all exist. I wish I ran into you more often. And frankly, thank you for trying to keep us safer. I know you have the best intentions. And please don't take this episode of the show personally. it never ever is. And I welcome feedback. I want to hear why we might be wrong about some of this. And if you know more about the cool tech that's on Israeli commercial airliners, I want to hear more about that too, because that stuff is wild.

57:40Thank you all for listening. Topic suggestions, feedback for Skeptical Sunday can come right to me, Jordan at jordanharbinger.com. Show notes at jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support the show all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own. And I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show.

58:12Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time. You're about to hear a preview of The Jordan Harbinger Show about how hormonal birth control can affect a woman's personality and even influence who they pick as a partner. Hormones affect the way that our brain does its daily business. And that includes things like attraction.

58:42You know, there's a lot of research that shows that for both men and women, It's like the cues that we tend to find as sexy and beautiful in women are cues that are related to estrogen presence and fertility. Our sex hormones are part of what creates the experience of being who we are. And all of it is helping to guide our behavior in ways that are actually really adaptive and functional. Estrogen loves testosterone. And that's, you know, just kind of the way that it is. How does taking the pill change women's sexual psychology? And how does that change their sexual behavior? And I also think that there is a tendency to trivialize the types of side effects that we have from the pill.

59:20Because, you know, when you look at some of the most frequently occurring side effects, it's things like depression, like a complete absence of sex drive. I mean, it can really change behavior in ways that can not always be necessarily what we want. They're not one size fits all and everybody's going to respond a little bit differently. And so it's just important that you know that these things are possible so you know what to look out for them. There is nothing that will derail a person's life more than an unplanned pregnancy. And this is particularly true in our current environment where women aren't able to get safe legal abortions in many states.

59:53I am for you having all the information that you need to be able to make the decision that's right for you. Because what is the right decision for you might not be the same decision that's right for me. To hear more from Dr. Sarah Hill about the problems with taking birth control, check out episode 280 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. Thank you.