B (4:16)

Um, actually, I'm sorry, would it be possible for me to maybe go by a pseudonym or not have a name?

A (4:24)

Nothing would delight me more than to offer you a pseudonym. Do you have one in mind?

B (4:29)

Um, how about Travis?

A (4:31)

Travis. Okay, we can go with Travis. Travis had a question about something pretty personal that was happening to him at the airport, something he'd mainly discussed with his partner.

B (4:42)

So I fly pretty frequently because I live in both Honolulu, Hawaii and New York City.

A (4:49)

Oh, wow.

B (4:50)

So I fly back and forth, you know, kind of a lot. So you can imagine that I'm going through security pretty frequently.

A (4:56)

Wait, and you. New York and Honolulu.

B (4:59)

That's right.

A (5:00)

Two very far apart places.

B (5:03)

Almost as far apart as you can get in the US it's very inconvenient.

A (5:09)

Okay. And so the question you have is about something that happens when you fly. Tell me what happens.

B (5:15)

Okay. So do you know the full body TSA scanner?

A (5:19)

The one where you it's. It replaced the pure metal detector and you walk in and you kind of put your hands like the cartoon over your head and. And it scans you more thoroughly, is my understanding.

B (5:30)

Yeah, exactly. So if you have a TSA PreCheck, you generally just go through the X ray like old school. But for everybody else, you go into this kind of like cylindrical space and then you plant your feet shoulder width apart, hold your hands in the air. Above your head. And then it kind of like whooshes around you.

A (5:47)

Yeah.

B (5:47)

And then there's like a little screen. And generally after like a one second delay, it just turns green and says something like, go. And then you just walk on and get your baggage.

A (5:58)

That's what happens if everything goes right. If something goes wrong, meaning the machine detects some kind of anomaly. You get stopped. You see on the little screen a sort of gingerbread outline version of you with a box over the part of your body that the machine is flagging.

B (6:14)

So if it's like. If you're wearing like a big watch or something, it might be like, over your wrist. But for me, most times there is a box on the front and a box on the back. And the box on the front is directly over my dick. And then to make matters worse, on the back Avatar view, there's like another little box that's like, directly on my anus. So it's like.

A (6:40)

And when you say your anus, like, you don't mean the general area of your buttocks. You mean like, where your anus is?

B (6:47)

Yeah, I use the term advisedly. Like, it is not just like, oh, it's the whole backside. Or like, oh, it could be his lower back. No, it's like the tiniest little box. And it happens so frequently.

A (6:59)

Oh, my God.

B (7:00)

I sort of thought like, oh, this is the thing that happens to everybody. But then I would be telling this story or just like alluding to my experience, insecurity, and it was just. I would be met with blank stares. Cause this is, I guess, not a universal or even a common experience.

A (7:14)

Do you remember the first time it happened?

B (7:16)

So I looked through my old text messages, and the first account that I gave to someone of this happening was in 2017. It sort of like, crept up on me for a while. It would just sort of happen. I wouldn't think about it. I might text someone like, oh, yeah, I got hung up in security. Or like, my mom was asking, like, why were you late to meet me at the gate? And I was like, oh, I got a special pat down. And then only in the past couple of years did it dawn on me that, like, this happens to me all the time.

A (7:44)

It happens often enough that by now Travis knows what to expect on his otherwise breezy commute from Honolulu to Manhattan. He'll set off the scanner, he'll get stopped, and then it'll be time for the pat down. The agent, they'll offer a private screening. Travis will decline. Instead, they're in front of everybody every Time, he'll go through the brief, somewhat embarrassing ritual.

B (8:08)

So they say, like, I'm going to rub the. The backs of my hands across your crotch. And then they say, like, I'm going to rub it across your buttocks. That's what they. They do it with the backs of the hands. And then they're like, okay, good to go.

A (8:19)

Got it. So it's like they're trying to establish. It sounds like, I'm guessing, that they're not groping you. So it's the back of their hand, not the front of their hand. And they. They're checking to make sure that there's not, like, a piece of metal or something there.

B (8:32)

That's my assumption. I think it's like the machine thinks that I could be smuggling something there or, like, have contraband in my underwear. And so just the back of the hand rub kind of ascertains that there's nothing to see here.

A (8:47)

And my curiosity and my discomfort are, like, battling each other right now.

B (8:53)

Same. My desire to share my story is in tension with my discomfort with sharing my story.

A (9:01)

The whole time we'd been talking, been trying and not quite succeeding in drafting this sentence in my head, like, the optimally polite, optimally HR friendly version of the question I had about why Travis's private parts might register as out of the ordinary to the machine intelligence that powered the airport scanner. Finally, I stammered it out. Is there any. Is there anything unusual about your body?

B (9:30)

I anticipated this question. The answer is, I really think, no. I have asked my partner, you know, you know my gentiles very intimately, is there anything to see here? And he says the answer is no. I also believe the answer is no. So I really don't think that it's, like, a body issue.

A (9:50)

Okay? Like, I. I don't even know, by the way, when I ask that question, whether I'm asking a question about size, material, shape, but just, like, as far as you can tell, like, you just look like if we were walking together through a naked spa or sauna, no one would look twice at you. You're just a guy.

B (10:08)

Well. Well, thanks a lot. Nobody would be like, oh, my God, let's pat that guy down. It would just be like, nothing to see here. Everything normal.

A (10:21)

Travis did not have theories about what was going on here. He said when he'd asked the TSA agents, they didn't have much to offer him. Some arbitrary suggestions. He could make sure to not hitch up his pants. He could try looser or tighter clothing, none of which worked. All roads led to pat Down. When I hung up with Travis, I was uncertain about what to do next. I knew the TSA wasn't going to answer my questions about this. They're tight lipped. Honestly, for good reason. They were not going to troubleshoot this one user's extremely particular anomaly. The problem just seemed, I don't want to say too small, but certainly too niche. It seemed too niche. Except A week later, July 12, a new email arrived on my phone. And this email stopped me in my tracks. Can you just read me the email that you sent?

C (11:17)

Sure, sure. So the email that I sent says, what do the TSA agents see when I go through the body scanner? For some reason, I always get pulled aside because of an abnormality around my crotch. I then have to get a pat down. Is this common? Why does a stranger have to molest me in order for me to go on a plane?

A (11:35)

This is a man named Silas. And the anomaly has been happening to him since at least 2019. He says, same as Travis. It happens pretty much every time. Silas, of course, didn't know about Travis. But I explained that there was another person just like him. A North American male whose genitals also somehow scrambled the TSA machine. Like a kind of Bermuda Triangle in his nether regions. Silas was not alone.

C (12:00)

That's crazy. I just, I mean, like, I'm almost happy to hear that it's happening to somebody else. And it's not just me. I'm not some kind of freak of nature where I trip up the machine.

A (12:13)

No, this. So this guy Travis, he really went out of his way to say that. He was like, I have a totally normal body. He's like, I've average sized genitals.

D (12:23)

Yes.

A (12:23)

I've never had like a surgery. Same thing.

C (12:26)

Yeah, I mean, you know, yeah, like I'm. I'm gay. And so I've seen plenty of other people's genitals and, you know, perfectly average, nothing out of the ordinary, normal size. You know, I don't have a piercing or anything. I have absolutely nothing special about my genitals.

A (12:42)

It's funny. Yeah. He's gay and he talked about how his partner was like, you have a normal.

C (12:50)

I have no clue.

A (12:52)

It's.

C (12:53)

Yeah. I'm just thinking about, you know, how strange of a coincidence it is that like two gay guys are getting pulled aside for crotchet normality. It's just like it seems like a lot of, you know, it seems like the probability of it are pretty low that the two people for whom it's happening somehow can confirm that they have Normal sized genitals because they have seen other people's genitals and it's definitely a very normal size. I do not have a dying dong. I have a very average dong.

A (13:22)

What if it's just like an average dong detector?

C (13:26)

Perfectly average.

A (13:33)

Had the US Government, the second Trump administration, developed a working form of gaydar that targeted average donged men? It seemed unlikely. No stereotype that I knew held that average donged gay men specifically posed a national security threat. The ever expanding list of domestic enemies our country accumulated did not yet seem to include them. Specifically these two men. I was convinced they were connected, but I believed they were connected in some way I couldn't yet say. And then, a few weeks after my conversation with Silas on August 31st, I received a third email.

E (14:12)

Hi, PJ and team. Huge fan of the pod. Been here since day one. For the past three or four years, every time I go into the airport security body scan machine where you stand on the yellow feet and put your arms up, no matter what I'm wearing, my groin area always lights up red on the TSA screen and an agent has to pat me down. I haven't had any procedures like an implant, pacemaker, et cetera. I have everything out of my pockets. Nothing is abnormal, but I always get flagged. What's going on? Is this normal?

A (14:42)

Our third listener in just two months. His name was Keller. So I will tell you something strange, which is that you are not the first listener to write him with this question.

E (14:55)

Are you serious?

A (14:56)

I am serious. And you're also not the second listener to write in with this question. Stop. Yeah, you're the third.

E (15:03)

Are you serious? Yeah, I'm the third person to write about a light up groin in the airport.

A (15:10)

You're the third North American man I've talked to who has said, I don't know what's going on. When I go through that specific machine at the airport, most times it lights up. It. It lights up specifically on my groin.

E (15:23)

You're fucking kidding me.

A (15:24)

I'm not. And the other two men I've spoken to have had the unenviable journalistic responsibility of asking them about the size of their genitals. Yeah, everyone has said the same thing to me. Which is normal. Normal. Average.

E (15:40)

Yeah. I've got a normal penis.

A (15:42)

And is there anything unusual about your body?

E (15:47)

I wouldn't say so, no.

A (15:49)

Okay.

E (15:50)

I would say I have a pretty normal human body.

A (15:57)

What a strange question to ask and have to answer. Yeah, but it's not like, oh, there was that surgery where they put like a titanium rod in me or like a bunch of tiny guns or anything like that?

E (16:08)

No, no tiny guns in my body.

A (16:10)

And then the other thing that the other two men had in common is that they were both gay.

E (16:16)

Okay. Interesting.

A (16:17)

May I ask you about your sexuality?

E (16:19)

Yeah, I'm. I'm straight. Um, that is so curious though.

A (16:25)

But you're saying I don't know which way the Kinsey scale goes, but, like, you're like, straight. Straight.

E (16:32)

Yeah. I think I have a very healthy view of what a beautiful man looks like. But, yeah, I'm straight.

A (16:38)

You mean you can. I. You're not so straight that, like, you can't tell the difference between. I'm trying to think the most beautiful man I can think of, like George.

E (16:46)

Clooney and like, you can tell the.

A (16:48)

Difference between George Clooney and Danny DeVito, but you would go on a date with neither of them.

E (16:52)

Yeah.

A (16:57)

So here's what we know. We know George Clooney is more conventionally handsome than Danny DeVito. We know that these three average donged men are repeatedly triggering false alarms on one of the most important detectors in modern society. And we know that whatever's going on here, it probably has nothing to do with their sexuality. But what was going on here? I promised the three I would get them answers. And after the break, we do. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Rosetta Stone. Planning a trip soon? I've been brushing up on my Spanish with Rosetta Stone and honestly, it makes traveling so much more fun. Greeting people in their own language, even just a little, completely changes the experience. Rosetta Stone has been trusted for over 30 years and helps you learn naturally, starting with words, moving to phrases, and then full sentences. I love how flexible the lessons are. You can do a quick five minute session while waiting in line or a longer one when you have the time. Plus, this is a perfect non clutter gift. No shipping, no wrapping. Just a thoughtful experience that really lasts. Don't wait. Unlock your language learning potential. Now. Search engine listeners can grab Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. That's unlimited access to 25 language courses for life. Visit rosettastone.com search engine to get started and claim your 50% off today. Give a gift that keeps giving. Go to rosettastone.com searchengine and and start learning today. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Bombas. This time of year, it is sensory overload everywhere. But one feeling we're all still chasing is cozy and Bombas has the socks, slippers, tees, basically everything you need to get there. Honestly, there's something therapeutic about putting on a fresh pair of socks and Bombas has figured out how to bottle that feeling therapy. Their slippers have sink in cushioning, their tees have the perfect weight to them and that comfort keeps going after the first wear. And when it comes to gifting, Bombas has answers for everyone on your list. Running socks for the marathoner, baby socks that actually stay on tiny feet. They've got something for everybody and this season they're really stepping up their slipper and slide game with new styles and materials. What I really like about their mission is that every time you purchase, Bombas donates one pair to someone facing home. So when you're cozy, someone else gets to be too. Head over to bombus.com engine and use code engine for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S.com Enjin code Enjin @ checkout. Welcome back to the show the Puzzle Three men having the same peculiar experience while going through the TSA scanner, leaving them with this question. What was the machine seeing in their anatomy that it found so anomalous? My first step was, as always, the Internet. A simple Google search TSA Scanner penis immediately dumped me into a lane of inquiry, a theory that each of our listeners had dismissed, but which I would ultimately be glad I pursued as there were clues to be found in it. Theory number one Large Dongs There is an extensive body of Internet literature, not hard science, but what was at least until recently called lived experience online of men with supposedly large packages offering testimony about the inconveniences they've regularly suffered under the cold unyielding gaze of the TSA's body scanner. You can find an article about this phenomenon on the website bigdickguide.com, an online magazine for well endowed men that contains sections like how to Measure and Underwear Buying Guide. There are also several news stories from 2012 when an American Internet micro celebrity made the rounds to talk about his bad experience with the tsa. Here he is on British Morning News. Fiona Falcon is the owner of what is thought to be the world's largest penis and when the bulge in his trousers caused a security alert at an international airport recently, he inevitably made headlines around the.

D (21:50)

World. Jonah joins us.

A (21:51)

Now. And so let's go. Welcome by the.

D (21:52)

Way. Thank you for coming in.

A (21:54)

Today. You see these two wide eyed British newscasters on their couch. Jonah, a surprisingly round cheeked baby faced man on the opposite couch there to Speak his.

D (22:04)

Truth. So this was one of the airports that had the body scanner, you know, the one that actually shows an.

A (22:10)

Outline.

D (22:10)

Yes. So that's what caught their eye. First things first. They said, are you sure you took everything out of your pocket? I said yes. So I went through the metal detector and I went through the body scanner and then they were, do you have some sort of growth? And I think this was very close to when one of the terrorists attempted to wrap a bomb around his penis. Sure. And maybe they were, they were saying, well, this is something we're looking out for, you know, so it could have been a conflux of, you know, a perfect storm there, you know, so.

A (22:40)

When they discovered what it is and when you said to them, actually it's me. Yeah. What was the.

D (22:45)

Reaction? They wanted to hustle me through there.

A (22:48)

Immediately. It's funny, this constituted a news story, a weird news story, but a News story in 2012. These days you see something like this pretty much every two weeks. If you visit the subreddit r.bigdick problems on this subreddit, the TSA body scanner issue comes up constantly. One post goes, body scanners know. It's been asked a lot, but need tucking techniques. Another every fucking time with the tsa, a third TSA agent said he would find what's in my pocket. After my second trip to the body scan, I feel like I need to point out that on Big dick problems there's much more discussion of the joys of having a large package than of the.

B (23:31)

Sorrows.

A (23:32)

But. But the TSA problem is an exception. The men here do find it embarrassing. They're often offering each other tips about how one might get around it, theories as to why it might be happening. Over on R. Tsa, the TSA subreddit, an anonymous Redditor, explains confidently what's going on here, why America's Transportation Security Administration is targeting these men. Quote, so the body scanner scans you compared to what's expected, they reports any anomaly. So if you have a larger than average body part, it'll come back as deviation from expected, which is essentially the average of population. So you'll get further examined. And yes, a large flaccid penis will come back as deviation. Other body parts will do too. But like other body parts have wider range of expected spectrum, penises do not. End quote. As a longtime appreciator of language on the Internet, I find this comment to be a pitch perfect distillation of Internet expert voice. The person has no evidence, cites no sources, and yet they are confident and they Speak in the approximate language of expertise. For all the bullshitting AIs do I think they learned it from us? I found other theories on these forums. Someone wrote, my armpits always set off the TSA machine. It's gotta be the aluminum deodorant. The problem with this theory being that most people put deodorant on their armpits, not on their crotches, so it was no help to us. Similarly, a third theory held that this was all being caused by scar tissue. Somehow scar tissue supposedly tripped up the scanner. Maybe. But if that was true, it wasn't explanatory here. None of our three listeners had had vasectomies, inguinal hernia repairs, or any other kind of groin based surgery online. The predominant theory remained the big dong theory. As much material as there was, as endlessly fun as it was to talk about and frankly read about, I also knew it had to be wrong or at best incomplete. I had three real life men swearing on the averageness of their dongs, and I believed them. All the Internet was really telling me was that this problem was widespread. I thought maybe I'd have better luck if I just turned my attention to the body scanner itself, a device called the millimeter wave scanner. I reached out to the TSA for an interview. They did not respond. So I turned to the next best.

F (25:59)

Option. Hey.

A (26:02)

Pj. Hi, Doug. How are you.

F (26:04)

Doing? I'm doing great. Yeah, I told my one of my nieces and nephews that I was going to have a podcast with you, and they were. They're big fans of you, so.

A (26:13)

That'S so nice to.

F (26:14)

Hear.

A (26:15)

Yeah. So, yeah, this is Doug McMaken, storied engineer, first time podcast guest, possibly a little unsure of what he'd gotten himself into here. Doug's mostly retired now, but in his busier years he was a research engineer who led the team that developed millimeter wave technology. And so how do you get pulled into.

F (26:37)

This? That's a good story. So I got hired at the Pacific Northwest National Lab in the late 1980s to work in a group that was developing radar imaging techniques. And we were looking at using it for national security.

A (26:53)

Applications. Are you allowed to say what national security.

F (26:57)

Applications? I can't really talk about some of the things we were doing at that time, but what happened is our national security personnel, they brought the FAA to us saying, hey, you need to look at this technology because we believe it could be used for what you're looking.

A (27:11)

For. Hmm. Doug was joining a multi decade cat and mouse game. A fight between the engineers who try to keep airplanes safe versus criminal engineers who work on the side of mayhem. The battle really takes off in the early 1960s when hijackers begin to target airplanes for the first time. They're mostly using guns. And so in the early 1970s, airports finally start adding metal detectors. After the passengers place their carry.

F (27:37)

On bags into our X ray device here for.

A (27:39)

Screening. Why the passenger himself walks through.

F (27:41)

This metal detection device that's immediately adjacent to.

A (27:43)

It. And that in effect, the engineers of the 60s and 70s were trying to stop hijackers. The typical hijacker threatened violence, but usually just wanted money or a flight to political asylum. Give me what I want and I'll release the hostages. In the 1980s, terrorists started to target airplanes. Terrorists wanted to kill people. Many were okay dying themselves, which made them a harder opponent to stop. And technology seemed to be changing in a way that benefited terrorism. The rising threat of plastic weapons. Both new guns like the Glock, that contain more plastic and less detectable metal than its predecessors. But also plastic explosives. Last Week's bombing of TWA Flight 840 has focused attention on a hole in the protective security net at a great many airports. The bomb used on that flight is believed to have been made of plastic explosives. Plastic or plastique as explosives, people know it. And so the government funded research, research into body scanners, machines that could see under your clothes in case a metal detector one day wasn't good enough. Fully plastic guns never became a real threat. But what terrorists really did increasingly develop were bombs that used less and less detectable metal. December 1994. Islamic radicals detonate a jail type explosive aboard a Philippine Airlines flight over the Pacific in 1994. Russia. Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade center bombing, hides liquid nitroglycerin in a bottle of contact lens solution. It blew a hole in the aircraft, but failed to bring the plane down. 292 passengers survived. Only one was killed. The bomb blows up, killing one person aboard a flight. And the methods that terrorists use to smuggle these explosives onto flights keep advancing. Now to the story of that mysterious man. Man accused of attempting to blow up an American Airlines jumbo jet with high powered explosives planted in his shoes. In 2001, the shoe bomber, Richard Reed, smuggles 10 ounces of non metal explosive material in his shoes, which nearly works, except he is stopped while struggling to light his shoes. These putzes after that, for decades, we have to take our shoes off so they can be X ray scanned for hidden plastic or hidden liquid by Planning to use liquid explosives, which would pass undetected through the X ray machines and raise no alarms, the plotters seem to have found a way to circumvent the kind of airline security we've all become used to Since 911 in 2006, terrorists in England try smuggling lots of explosive liquid in multiple plastic bottles. They're caught, but that gets us our no liquids over 3 ounces rule. Finally, in 2009, we see the terrorist who, in my opinion, has most successfully contributed to making our airport experiences more annoying. The so called underwear bomber. Abdulmutallab boarded a US Airliner last Christmas, no questions asked, and nearly blew it up. The underwear bomber, Umar Farooq Abdulmutallab. When Abdulmutallab boarded his Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, the bomb he was carrying was a packet of powder sewn into the crotch of his underwear, undetectable by metal detectors and unlikely to be detected by a TSA agent. Since searching passengers crotches by hand was not a part of security, Abdulmutallab got on board with his bomb. But now he had to light it, which is where things went wrong for him. Somehow, instead of detonating his crotch, he ended up setting his legs on fire. A fellow passenger noticed. Abdulmutallab was restrained. Tragedy was averted. But now this new hole in the fence had to be patched. The TSA needed a way to look into people's underwear in as unobtrusive a manner as possible. A very hard engineering problem to solve. Which brings us Back to Doug McMaken and the Machine. He helped develop millimeter wave technology. Essentially a real life version of the X ray specs that used to exist only in science fiction. Can you explain to me what millimeter wave is? As if I'm a reasonably bright high school.

F (31:51)

Student? Sure, it's basically radio frequencies, but at real high frequencies. So if you think of like dropping a rock into a water, you get ripples on the water.

A (32:02)

Right?

F (32:02)

Yeah. Each one of those peaks is a wavelength. Right. And so you get that in electromagnetics as well. So it's a wave in space. You can't see it, obviously, but at lower frequencies, the wavelengths are longer. And as you go up in frequency, the wavelengths get a lot.

A (32:19)

Shorter. Doug explained that these kinds of short wavelength waves pass through fabric but bounce off skin. Which means you can actually use millimeter waves to see through clothing. The same way a bat maps a cave by bouncing sound waves off its walls. Doug and his team in the early 90s were designing this machine that would bounce millimeter waves Off a human body, which would then create a kind of crude image of that.

F (32:45)

Person. There were some limitations to it, but it would show the person the full body of the person. There was any threats on the person. You would see that, you would see the shape of the person. It wasn't high resolution. He didn't see hair. He didn't see the color of the skin or anything like that, or the color of the.

A (33:05)

Eyes. In this bald, black and white nude image Doug's scanner generated, One thing you could see was objects. Millimeter waves don't just bounce off skin. The waves also bounce off other material. Metal, water. So if someone's hiding a gun or a liquid explosive under their clothes, the image created by the millimeter waves Will reveal an anomaly, A place where the waves can't easily pass through the body. Scanner worked as a prototype, But Doug and his team had to refine the technology. So they started testing their prototype on real life human.

F (33:38)

Subjects. The modeling agency sent me all these 18 year old, beautiful young ladies, and I said, no, no, we want somebody that's over 18. And they just wanted, like, all kinds of people that had different body types. So we would bring them in and strap on threats, and we would hand them a gun and say, okay, go in the bathroom here and put this gun in a certain area. Come out. So it was pretty.

A (34:02)

Wild. Doug said the machine was testing well, Was able to find those hidden guns, but the FAA needed a version that would work at an actual airport, Meaning it had to be more reliable and it had to be quick. Metal detectors were instantaneous, and you didn't want some new scanner to slow down the airport security.

F (34:20)

Line. It was a process. And we finally, we kind of settled on this cylindrical approach in the late 90s because it gave us more coverage on the person. You can scan a person at different angles to get angular.

A (34:34)

Diversity. The cylindrical approach led to the machine Most airports have today. You step into the cylinder, Two wands sweep around you. Each of those wands holds a panel containing hundreds of tiny antennae. Each of the antennae is rapidly firing extremely high frequency radio waves at your body. Because the wands sweep around you, the image of your body is a 3D holograph, not a flat 2D picture. Doug's team had this technology up and running by the late 90s. The technology worked that early? It worked, but we, American society, didn't yet want it or need it. It was a little too invasive. All that would change, though, after the underwear.

G (35:15)

Bomber. All right, Meredith, thanks very much. If you're traveling by Air this holiday weekend. You just may run into this new high tech device at the security checkpoint of a local airport. It's called the millimeter wave, and it allows.

A (35:28)

Security. This is a clip from the Today show back in 2008. Matt Lauer, still the host. The millimeter wave body scanner has been plopped confusingly on the streets of Manhattan. Just outside of NBC's studios. The surveillance machine is having its primetime moment. As cameras roll, an adoring crowd cheers wildly because they're on tv, not because they're excited about millimeter waves. But it is confusing for a second. Matt Lauer is interviewing a TSA.

G (35:55)

Spokesperson. Talk to me about the technology real quickly. How does it.

A (35:58)

Work? A passenger steps into the machine and it bounces radio waves off your.

G (36:02)

Body. Harmless.

A (36:03)

Waves. Harmless radio waves. Less than even a cell phone call. So those radio waves are then transmitted to a remote location where another security officer will view a 3D image of the person and be able to see if they have anything.

G (36:17)

Hidden. How graphic an image is that person viewing of the person beneath the.

A (36:21)

Clothing? It looks like a fuzzy photo negative. Okay, there's actually a lot going on here. The TSA is trying to calmly sell Americans on some invasive new technology. Matt Lauer is acting both as a stand in asking the public's obvious skeptical questions, but also trying to help the government with this project of making it all seem not so scary. They even have out there in the broad summer daylight two citizens who are going to walk through the machine for the first.

G (36:49)

Time. All right, we've got Eric and Kathy here who have volunteered to go through this device for us. So Eric and Kathy, one at a time. And again, this is screened by someone in another location. Why don't you head in?

A (37:00)

Okay. It's like they're volunteering for a magic trick. It's funny watching this satisfaction 17 years later, because on the one hand, we now walk through these machines all the time. On the other, the version of the machines we walk through has been modified in a crucial way. In 2008, a human TSA agent would have reviewed the black and white nude images generated by the body scanner. That's what the TSA was asking us to be comfortable with. But Americans never got comfortable. Instead, public outcry drove Congress to intervene. And in 2012, Congress passed a law demanding the TSA change how these devices work. In 2013, the TSA complies. They don't delete the machine, but they do delete the human being in a room looking at images of passengers. That person is Replaced by an algorithm, which is how we get to where we are today. Today, the millimeter wave machine collects an image of your body, but the only thing a TSA agent ever sees is is that gingerbread man cartoon outline where anomalous areas have been flagged with boxes. We've gotten back some of our privacy in exchange. Occasionally we get mysterious computer errors. Boxes around body parts with no good explanation as to why they are there. I told Doug McMaken exactly what it was that had led me to his door today. I got an email from a listener who was saying that routinely when he went through the scanner, he was getting flagged and he was getting a false positive on his groin. And then we got two more listeners in a very short period of time having the exact same thing happen to them. It wasn't like they were leaving things in their pockets. Because now, for privacy, there will be like, as you know, like a sort of stick figure avatar of a.

F (38:51)

Person.

A (38:51)

Right? And there'll be a box where it looks like something is going on, but the box is always over their crotch and they don't understand what's going.

F (38:58)

On.

A (38:59)

Right. Doug had a few.

F (39:01)

Theories. Could be a number of issues. There could be the software not taking into consideration the geometry or what we call corner traps on the body that create anomalies or artifacts that are not being compensated.

A (39:16)

For. What's a corner.

F (39:17)

Trap? Corner trap in radar terminology means that under your armpit would be kind of a corner trap where it hits, like your arm and then it bounces off your arm, then it bounces off the side of your body and then back to the.

A (39:31)

Sensor. The corner trap theory. This is the whole reason that when you walk into one of those body scanners, you raise your hands over your head. It's to minimize corner traps. To stop the millimeter waves from ricocheting wildly between your arm and armpit. You spread your feet apart for the same reason. You don't want to create a corner trap by pushing your thighs together. Which could actually be an explanation for all those well endowed men on Reddit complaining about the body scanner. It's possible that their dongs themselves are creating corner traps. Doug said this was a possibility. Or alternatively, Doug thought those men could be being flagged by the machine's algorithm, which was used to more average bodies and perhaps confused by theirs. But for our listeners, all of whom reported average dongs, I didn't know what to make of this. They didn't seem like they should be any more likely than anyone else to have a corner trap. And besides, the machine in Travis's case was also lighting up his anus. Was I supposed to believe that his butthole contained a second corner? Corner trap? We moved on. Next up, the clothing.

F (40:44)

Theory. Like, you know, you get a sock line, the bra lines. You know, if you really look at how the underwear works, it pinches against the skin and it deforms the body.

A (40:52)

Somewhat. The thing about the clothing theory, though, was I'd spoken to our listeners about this. They'd all tried different clothing. Loose sweats, tight running gear. Nothing seemed to make a difference. They kept getting flagged. Fortunately, Doug had one more idea. The sweat.

F (41:09)

Theory. I don't know if there's moisture or anything like that.

A (41:13)

There. What do you mean.

F (41:14)

Moisture? Well, you know, radars reflect off of moisture as well, so there may be issues with moisture. I can't tell about their situation, but I don't know if that's a big a deal or not. So I don't have any data that says it's super big.

A (41:29)

Problem. But it could be like, if there's sweaty guys, like, the sweat could be the problem, Possibly could be sweat. There were other good reasons to suspect it. There'd been the Redditors who'd complained about getting stopped over their armpits. Maybe it wasn't the antiperspirant tripping the machine, but instead the moisture the antiperspirant was supposed to address. And this summer, the same summer that I'd gotten those emails from our listeners, what I'd missed was a slew of articles, one in the New York Post, another in Vice, about a woman who was afflicted with what both outlets referred to as swamp crotch, a sweaty crotch, which was causing her, she thought, to get flagged by the TSA's body scanner. So now we had what felt like a narrow, answerable question. Does millimeter wave technology, the body scanner used at almost all American airports, just not work on people with very sweaty private parts? I thought that was a narrow, answerable question. Except it wasn't. There just isn't good public data about TSA stops. You can read anecdotes and Reddit posts, but there's nowhere where the government publicly discloses information about false alarms. This is considered sensitive information by the tsa to some degree. All the this secrecy makes sense, but the specific not knowing really frustrated me. These sophisticated machines could handle sweat, or they couldn't. Wasn't this something ultimately you could just test? And I guess if the theory is that this might be sweat, is there, I guess I could just like the Next time I know someone who's flying, I could ask them to, like, do laps around the airport right before they go through the millimeter wave.

F (43:15)

Machine. Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

A (43:21)

Yeah. It was the very first time I made Doug chuckle. Although unfortunately, I was not joking after the break. Bro. What? Is this.

H (43:41)

It? So you want to start a business? You might think you need a team of people and fancy tech skills, but you don't. You just need GoDaddy arrow. I'm Walton Goggins, and as an actor, I'm an expert in looking like I know what I'm doing. GoDaddy Arrow uses AI to create everything you need to grow a business. It'll make you a unique logo, it'll create a custom website, it'll write social posts for you, and even set you up with a social media calendar. Get started@godaddy.com Aero that's godaddy.com Airo.

A (44:43)

This episode is brought to you in part by Mint Mobile. Do you ever stare at your phone bill and wonder, why are you paying so much for so little this holiday season? Maybe it's time to stop letting big wireless steal your joy and instead switch to Mint Mobile. Right now, all their unlimited plans are 50% off 3, 6 or 12 months for just $15 a month. It's their best deal of the year, and it's making it super easy for you to finally dump your old overpriced plan. Now is the perfect time to switch. Turn your expensive wireless present into a huge wireless savings future by switching to Mint Shop. Mint unlimited plans@mintmobile.com searchengine that's mintmobile.com Searchengine Limited time offer upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for $6 or 1180 for 12 months. Plan required $15 a month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only over 35 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required availability, speed and coverage varies. Siemen mobile.com. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Zapier. We cover a lot of trends on the show. Over the last few months, everybody's been talking about AI, but let's face it, talking about trends doesn't help you be more efficient at work. For that, you need the right tools. You need Zapier. Zapier is how you break the hype cycle and put AI to work for real. Zapier is easy to incorporate into your workflow, and teams use Zapier to streamline things like rev ops, marketing, sales it, HR and more. Zapier is how you actually deliver on your AI strategy, not just talk about it. With Zapier's AI orchestration platform, you can bring the power of AI to any workflow so you can do more of what matters. Zapier is for everyone, tech expert or not. Teams have already automated over 300 million AI tasks using Zapier. Join the millions of businesses transforming how they work with Zapier and AI. Get started for free by visiting zapier.comsearch that's Z A P I E R.com search. The Bermuda Triangle the actual one, not the metaphor for our listeners, Crotches in real life is a patch of ocean in between the coasts of Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda. It's an unofficial place with no defined boundaries. People draw and redraw its lines all the time. The Bermuda Triangle is not quite real. It's true ish story true. The way a lot of things are these days. The facts tell us that planes and ships really do disappear in that area. Famously, the USS Cyclops and its 306 crew and passengers vanished without a trace there in March 1918. And people tell the story of Flight 19, a group of five Navy bombers who disappeared off the coast of Florida in 1945. The idea that there's something deeply mysterious causing disappearances like these comes from a 1960s magazine article from a writer named Vincent Gaddis. Gaddis, a lousy reporter and a great storyteller, exaggerated almost everything about this place he named the Bermuda Triangle. He left out anything inconvenient to the legend. For example, while yes, the disappearances there are mostly real, they make more sense once you include their obvious explanation, which Gaddis left out. The area he calls the Bermuda Triangle is a very busy corridor, a high traffic shipping lane with lots of islands and shallow water. The higher traffic alone explains the higher incidence of accidents. Once you adjust for just that fact, the Bermuda Triangle as a statistical phenomenon, disappears. Except as a story. The Bermina Triangle never goes away. It's in our imagination as a useful metaphor for something else. The idea that there are parts of life that are beyond our understanding and that things that are incomprehensible can be dangerous, even fatal. That's a true idea embedded in a fake one. Radar really does glitch. Machines do malfunction. Some men's dongs reliably cause false positives with no clear explanation as to why. Okay, who are you and where are we right now? I mean, I think you're supposed to answer that question. You're supposed to say what your plan is. This is my editor, Shruti Pinmaneni. We decided we were just going to test this swamp crotch theory. We'd had to take a flat late last month anyway, and we decided to commit an act of journalism. So here we were, standing on a crowded concourse where I was, as instructed by Shruti, identifying myself for tape. Well, I'm E.J. vogt, and you and I are at the airport. And one of the theories that actually I find pretty credible for what might be going on with people who try to go through the detector and get flagged is that their groins might be sweaty. And I don't want to, like, exercise in the airport. But what I'm going to do is go to the bathroom and drench myself in disgusting airport sink water in my private parts and then see if that triggers a situation. Situation at the tsa. As I say it out loud, it sounds like a terrible idea, but that's what I'm gonna do. Bathroom sink. I let myself into the family bathroom, the one, crucially, with a lock on its door. Someone has been using the sink for something similar because there's lots of hairs on it. That's gross. Okay, It. That's water. Just so you know, I'm using my hands to dump airport sink water all over my underwear and my accent, my thighs. This is so gross. I feel like I'm going to be able rested. Okay, definitely mission accomplished. I wandered back out onto the concourse, dignity gone, and headed towards Shruthi, who is standing by. Security. I'm in JFK airport with very wet crotch, going through security. I look like a pervert. Oh, I hope they have the right. Yeah, they have the right machine. There's the machine. The security line was surprisingly short. We were quickly moving towards the conveyor belt for carry on luggage. It's very empty at JFK today. Maybe because it's a shutdown. It's great. Trump. His FAA is. Yeah, until they flag. Doing away with flying. I'm, like, worried my crouch is going to dry, but I put a lot of water in. Suddenly, there I was over here, belt off, laptop out, shoes on. New rule change. Okay, go. I shoved my tray towards the agent overseeing the conveyor belt and stepped into the body scanner. Hands over my head. I heard the swoosh as the antenna rotated around me, imagined all the invisible millimeter waves bouncing and returning back to a machine that searched me now for anomalies. All of this in just a couple seconds. I stepped through. I looked at the agent who Motioned for me to stop. I whipped my head around to the screen and saw it there. My gingerbread figure with not one, but two boxes. A cautious yellow one, an angrier red one, Both of them exactly around my crotch. I felt the joy of discovery until I saw the agent's face, which looked somewhat mad. I was not immediately sure why. Moments later, on the other side of security, in a very tense conversation, I caught up with Shruthi. I saw you getting legs and patted down. Yeah, yeah, it totally works. I think we actually just have an answer. Did you ask the guy? No, because here's what happened. I went through the thing. There's both a yellow and a red square on my crotch. It was like, super, like, high, whatever. And then, as I said, I made myself very wet, but also, like, in the bathroom, using the sink. Also, like, I've accidentally left my fly unzipped. So the guy just looks at me and he goes, bro, what is.

B (53:20)

This.

A (53:22)

Like? And I was like, oh, sorry, I. I got water on me in the bathroom. And he just, like, went like, ugh. And then he's like, I gotta pat you down. And then he did, like, the back of the hands, like, crotch pat down. But definitely wetness sets it off. So, like. But he was so angry and disgusted with me that I was not asking him fun follow up questions about whether, like, I think had I said, had I been like, do other people set off the thing with their crotches? I literally think I would have been arrested. But I feel pretty confident that all these men have sweaty.

C (53:54)

Crotches. Wow, that poor.

A (53:57)

Man. I, too, felt bad for the TSA agent, a government worker only here to protect our skies. But I guess not bad enough, because a week later, when another search engine colleague offered to rerun the experiment to confirm our results, I said yes, with little.

E (54:14)

Compunction. Okay, just gonna go through security now. Stand.

A (54:21)

By. This is Search Engine senior producer Garrett Graham. A very precise and methodical thinker. Garrett did not entirely trust me to have distributed a reasonable amount of water on my own crotch. So he wanted to try a more scientific level of moisture, closer to actual sweat. These were his.

E (54:39)

Results. Well, I got a pat down. I. I got flagged. So I stepped through and got a. A cursory pat down. More cursory than the one described by our three listeners. But I think that we found.

B (54:56)

Our goal for the.

E (54:57)

Air. I think it's swamp crotch. I mean, I had moist underwear, not soaking wet like pj, but sweat level, hot summer day level underwear. And I got.

A (55:10)

Flagged. Now that we had data from our soggy experiments. We emailed Doug McMaken, the engineer. He wrote back to explain what we may have found. He explained that millimeter waves bounce off of water sewed clothing that at a high enough moisture level, water creates a barrier. Which meant Garrett and I really had created two synthetic Bermuda triangles. Places on our bodies where millimeter waves could no longer pass through. So we emailed our listeners. We told them it was time for the final round of testing. Lucky for us, two of our listeners, Travis and Silas, were set to fly this week. And they were game to be deputized into our experiment. The instructions get their bodies as dry as possible as they pass through the scanner. Not swamp crotch. Desert crotch. Here are the.

C (55:56)

Results. So it worked. It totally worked. Didn't have to get it pad down. I went totally smooth. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's.

B (56:07)

Great. Oh, my God. Okay, so that was very nerve wracking. I stepped into the scanner. I planted my feet shoulder width apart. I put my hands over my head. It whooshed and the screen turned green. I made it through. I did not get a box over my dick. I didn't get a box over my ass. I just walked out like a normal person. And all it took was a stop at the bathroom to dry off my genitals and then change into shorts and a short sleeve shirt and fresh underwear. I'm a free.

A (56:35)

Man. That last voice, of course, was Travis, our first listener. He too had passed. So this was our answer. The Bermuda Triangle, at least for these two listeners, was sweat. In a world full of so many unsolved mysteries. The drones haunting the skies of New Jersey, the silver monoliths in the desert of Nevada, our little anomaly had finally actually been resolved. Which felt like a huge relief, because, to be honest with you, I'd not been entirely confident we'd get to the bottom of this one. And I've known many otherwise great journalists who have given into temptation and in stories like that, just budged their facts a little bit. Not for a political agenda, just to make a neater story. On Wednesday, when we'd been waiting for our listeners results, I had felt the call of that siren just faintly. I was just so worried about ending this week having to tell you that the real Bermuda Triangle was the friends we made along the way. Or something like that. But instead, we had real proof. I turned my thoughts to vacation planning. Mexico City. And then we got another message. Travis again. He was still at the airport. What could he possibly want? To thank.

B (57:52)

Us? Okay, so just to make sure that we don't have a crisis of replication on our hands here. I have exited the gate area and now I'm going through a second security.

A (58:03)

Checkpoint. Oh.

B (58:04)

No. And I feel that if I get through two distinct checkpoints, two trips through the scanner using this method, I will be.

A (58:18)

Convinced. Oh, Travis, please don't do.

B (58:20)

This. Well, on my second trip through security, I got flagged in the usual spots. A box right on my dick and right on my ass and the usual pat downs, the whole thing. So now I'm kind of tempted to exit again and go through security a third time just to see, because then, you know, two out of three maybe, that would be the evidence that we need. Well, on my third and final trip through security, I got the usual. A box right on my dick and right on my ass. And I think what I've really learned is I should just leave well enough alone and stop while I'm.

A (59:01)

Ahead. Leave well enough alone. Stop while you're ahead. That's what storytellers do. Unfortunately, we're pretty much journalists and life had once again resisted tidy narrative closure. Just before publish, we got a message from our third listener, Keller. He too had attempted the desert crotch method. He too had been flagged. So as of December 2025, the TSA average dong anomaly remains unsolved. For now, the real Bermuda Triangle will have to be the friends we made along the. If you are an average donked man listening to this, who has the same predicament and wants to try to help us solve this, please write in. If you work for the tsa, particularly on the automatic threat recognition algorithm and are willing to anonymously help us, please, please write me him. As I speak these words average dongd North American men are still suffering. Limu.

H (60:40)

Emu. And Doug, here we have the Limu emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty.

A (60:50)

Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Uh, limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty. Liberty. Liberty Savings Ferry under by Liberty.

B (61:07)

Mutual Insurance Company and.

A (61:08)

Affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. Oh, before we go this week, one last thing. People write me pretty often who are trying to figure out how to do work like what we do at Search Engine. Just asking for career advice, looking for a door into this industry. I just want to say publicly, Search Engine's brilliant producers, Garrett Graham and Emily Maltaire. Neither of them had any real audio or journalism experience before going to graduate School at NYU. NYU's journalism school is a great place to learn. A shockingly high number of the people who we work with all came to this work through that specific door. I think the professors, they were doing something right. So if you want to learn how to make shows like Search Engine do the kind of work we do, you could consider applying to the NYU Podcasting and Audio Reportage program. I think it's pronounced reportage, but I've been told not to say that because it sounds really pretentious. Applications for the cohort starting in the fall of 2026 are due in just a couple weeks, January 6th. You can email audiojournalismyu edu for more information. Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ Vogt and Shruti Pinamaneni. Garrett Graham is our Senior producer. Emily Maltaire is our Associate Producer. Theme, Original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian. This episode was fact checked by Natsumi Hajisaka. Special thanks this week to Shawna Malvini Redden. Our Executive producer is Leah Rees Dennis. Thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey. Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Moore Curran, Josephina Francis, Kirk Courtney and Hilary Shaf. If you'd like to support our show, get ad free episodes, zero reruns and bonus episodes. Please consider consider signing up for Incognito mode at Search Engine. Joe this is our very last episode of the year. Next week we are going to share a story from one of our favorite storytellers and then we will see you in January. A brand new year with brand new episodes. Thanks for listening.