1169: TSA | Skeptical Sunday

Summary

The Jordan Harbinger Show – Episode 1169: TSA | Skeptical Sunday
Release Date: June 15, 2025

In this episode of Skeptical Sunday on The Jordan Harbinger Show, host Jordan Harbinger and co-host Nick Pell engage in a critical examination of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The discussion delves into the effectiveness, efficiency, and broader implications of TSA operations, juxtaposing them with international security models and highlighting significant concerns regarding personal freedoms and agency misconduct.

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1. Introduction to Skeptical Sunday and the TSA

Jordan Harbinger introduces the segment, outlining its mission to foster critical thinking and debunk misconceptions. The focus of this edition is the TSA—the agency responsible for airport security in the United States—and its role in safeguarding travelers.

Notable Quote:
"Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker." — Jordan Harbinger [01:51]

2. The TSA’s Effectiveness and Public Perception

Harbinger and Pell discuss the general perception of the TSA as the primary barrier against potential disasters in aviation. They question the actual effectiveness of the TSA in preventing significant threats, referencing the absence of major attacks since 9/11.

Notable Quotes:
"Ryan Reynolds,.. been told repeatedly that the TSA is the only thing standing between us and a total disaster." — Jordan Harbinger [03:36]
"If the TSA had ever prevented a major attack or hijacking, you would know about it." — Nick Pell [06:54]

3. Comparing U.S. TSA with Israeli Airport Security

A significant portion of the discussion contrasts the TSA’s methods with those employed by Israeli airport security. Pell highlights that Israeli security relies more on trained agents who make real-time judgments based on behavior rather than standardized body language cues.

Notable Quotes:
"The Israelis have bomb sniffing dogs and such in these airports. But the main thing is the Israelis political correctness didn't make it to Israel." — Nick Pell [14:35]
"They have men and women who just walk around and they just randomly stop people and ask them questions because they know what terrorists act like." — Nick Pell [26:40]

4. Financial and Safety Implications of TSA Operations

The conversation shifts to the financial burden of maintaining the TSA, estimated at $12 billion annually. Pell argues that this expense may not correlate with the actual safety benefits provided, especially given the agency's internal audit failures.

Notable Quotes:
"It's $12 billion a year to keep them going." — Nick Pell [37:28]
"The TSA enjoys some kind of sovereign immunity that includes sexually assaulting passengers." — Nick Pell [53:27]

5. Unintended Consequences: Increased Road Fatalities

Pell presents an argument on the unintended consequences of TSA’s stringent security measures. By deterring individuals from flying, more people opt to drive, which statistically increases the number of road fatalities.

Notable Quotes:
"We have some studies that suggest that the existence of the TSA kills people." — Nick Pell [35:51]
"An additional 129 road fatalities over a three month period... over 5,000 extra road fatalities since 2001." — Nick Pell [36:10]

6. Misconduct and Abuse within the TSA

A critical and disturbing segment of the discussion addresses the rampant misconduct within the TSA. The hosts highlight numerous instances of theft, sexual assault, and abuse by TSA agents, emphasizing that these issues undermine the agency’s credibility and effectiveness.

Notable Quotes:
"Multiple people complained about sexual violence with rough and unnecessary violent inspections of genital areas during the screenings." — Nick Pell [49:18]
"In 2012, ABC found that 400 TSA employees had been fired for theft." — Nick Pell [48:31]

7. Debating the Future of TSA

The duo explores potential paths forward, considering the abolishment of the TSA versus reforming its practices. Pell introduces the idea of adopting more efficient security models akin to Israel’s, despite the higher costs involved.

Notable Quotes:
"Mike Lee, the Republican senator from Utah, introduced a bill to get rid of the TSA in March of 2024. So you've gone after the tsa, which did not pass." — Nick Pell [57:19]
"If private security handled the airports, I don't think it's unreasonable to think there would be a contingency lawyer." — Nick Pell [55:37]

8. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Jordan Harbinger and Nick Pell conclude the episode by reiterating the necessity for a reevaluation of the TSA’s role and effectiveness. They acknowledge the complexities involved in balancing security, personal freedoms, and financial costs, while urging listeners to consider the substantial shortcomings of the current system.

Notable Quotes:
"This is their symbol of everything that went wrong on September 12, 2001." — Jordan Harbinger [59:17]
"Studies show that people don't change their minds about things even when confronted with evidence." — Nick Pell [60:33]

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Key Takeaways:

• Effectiveness Questioned: The TSA's ability to prevent major threats appears limited, raising doubts about its overall effectiveness.

• Comparative Analysis: Israeli airport security employs more dynamic and behavior-based methods, potentially offering greater security despite higher costs.

• Financial Burden: The high operational costs of the TSA may not justify the perceived security benefits, especially when considering internal inefficiencies.

• Unintended Consequences: Increased reliance on road travel due to TSA-induced flight deterrence may lead to higher road fatalities.

• Agency Misconduct: Significant issues of theft and sexual assault within the TSA severely damage its reputation and trustworthiness.

• Future Considerations: There is a compelling argument for rethinking the TSA’s structure and methods to enhance both security and compliance with personal freedoms.

Closing Remarks:

Jordan Harbinger and Nick Pell invite listeners to reflect on the balance between security and personal freedoms, urging a critical reassessment of the TSA’s current operations. They highlight the importance of transparency, accountability, and efficiency in ensuring the safety and rights of travelers.

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For more insights and discussions, visit jordanharbinger.com and explore their extensive collection of episodes.

Transcript

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Nick Pell]

So to help us we brought in.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Ryan Reynolds]

Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of 45 dollars for a three month.

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[Nick Pell]

Required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks.

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[Jordan Harbinger]

Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co host, writer and researcher Nick Pell on the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You can use to impact your own life and and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And during the week we have long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers and performers. On Sundays, we do Skeptical Sunday where a rotating guest co host and I.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Break down a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Topics such as why tipping makes no.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sense, circumcision, diet supplements, the lottery, GMOs.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Toothpaste, diet pills, energy drinks, and more. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion, negotiation, psychology, disinformation, crime and cults, and more that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com start or search for.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Us in your Spotify app to get started.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So, as y' all probably know, I fly a lot. And while I like to travel, there's one part of traveling that I definitely do not enjoy.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You can probably guess what I'm talking about.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's the tsa, the Transportation Security Administration, the guys who feel up your junk.

[Ryan Reynolds]

When you're trying to get onto a plane. Now, I know what you're thinking.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Hey, we need these guys and gals, right? They're the only thing standing between us.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And a 911 every other day of the week.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I was curious about what it is.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That the TSA is actually accomplishing, so.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I called my buddy, writer and researcher Nick Pell, to discuss what it is the TSA are actually doing. What would you say it is you do around here? Do they keep us safe, or. Or are they maybe making the world an even more dangerous place?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Nick, how's it going, man?

[Nick Pell]

I'm not flying today, so there's that.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, you're not really much of a travel guy.

[Nick Pell]

I used to travel a lot, but these days, if I can't get there by car, I'm just not going to go. And part of that, frankly, a big part of it, is that I just don't want to deal with the tsa.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You're not alone there.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'm mostly just a normal guy who's.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Been told repeatedly that the TSA is the only thing standing between us and a total disaster, falling from the skies on a regular basis. And I have to say, I do find them to be a bit of a pain, but I tolerate them for the same reasons everyone else has.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So I'd be pretty stoked to find.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Out that they're this totally unnecessary thing that we could potentially maybe even get rid of.

[Nick Pell]

Yeah. Remember when the. The world was a hellish nightmare of aviation attacks prior to 2001, when the TSA was formed? You remember that, right?

[Ryan Reynolds]

The world was not like that before 2001.

[Nick Pell]

Correct. And in general, this country lost a lot in terms of our personal freedoms on September 12th. And the TSA, to me, is a really good emblem of everything that we lost on September 12th. And so that's why I wanted to talk about it, because I just don't see the case for it. And I think that people will be surprised to hear some of the things that we're going to talk about with tsa.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, I'm old enough to be able to say that. It was definitely a huge change in terms of the overall flying experience.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You used to be able to roll.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Up to the airport maybe like 30.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Minutes before your flight, and you just.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Walk through the metal detectors or whatever it was back then, and you'd make it with a little luck.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Now you're planning to get there three hours in advance.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You're checking your watch the whole time. You're hoping all the security lanes are open, that it's not shoes off day, or whatever they do when they change the rules all the time.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's one thing I will say that.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I would never understand and that I know is definitely not a point in the TSA's favor. You'll go to the airport one day and they'll say, hey, we gotta have your laptop out. And you go, okay, even though I'm pre check. Yeah, you've always had to have it out. And I'm like, I know that's not true, but whatever. I'm not gonna argue with this dude.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So I take the laptop out, and then I'll fly through that same airport three days later, and then I'll take my laptop out and they'll go, what are you doing? You don't need to take that out. What do you mean, what am I doing? Or my favorite is when one person.

[Ryan Reynolds]

In the beginning of the line is, you need your laptop out. You need to make sure that this is off. Take your jacket off. So you take your jacket and your laptop out.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And then the person who's at the.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Scanner'S like, put your jacket on.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Put your laptop back in your bag. And you're like, you guys need to have a powwow. They're telling everybody opposite stuff in the.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Same line on the same day.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This happens all the time. It's not just week to week or.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Month to month or a different airport. It seems like these guys don't even know the rules.

[Nick Pell]

I love how polite you make them sound, too. Cause it's like this one guy saying to you, hey, man, put your laptop back in your bag. No, it's like just this one guy shouting, take your laptop out and put your bag. You know, like, it's just shouting instruction like you're on a cattle car. It's crazy how much flying has changed in this, like, dramatic, you know, people who don't Remember what it was like, just straight up will not believe you that it used to be so easy. Like, my girlfriend's 10 years younger than me and just cannot believe that it's like that. You used to just be able to, oh, here I am 10 minutes before my flight. Hop on.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's unbelievable.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I flew to Israel in 2000, and.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I remember they had crazy security screening, and that was the first time I ever had to do anything other than just wander through a metal detector or maybe open my bag so somebody could look in it. That's it.

[Nick Pell]

So I've got this kind of one silver bullet argument that I think very easily and simply explains that the TSA just isn't necessary.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Great. Another super short episode of Skeptical Sunday.

[Nick Pell]

So if the TSA had ever prevented a major attack or hijacking, you would know about it. And I don't mean you informed man of the world Jordan Harbinger. I mean, everybody listening to this, because we would never hear the end of it. They would never shut up about it, and it would be all that the news talked about for a solid month.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Okay, but what about the shoe bomber?

[Ryan Reynolds]

We all know that guy.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Didn't they get him?

[Ryan Reynolds]

And the guy trying to set off a bomb in his undies?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Those guys are real winners.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Whenever you look at the mug shots of these guys, you're just like, yeah. Oh, yeah, big surprise. It was this particular creepy looking dude.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But didn't they get those guys?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Those are high profile cases.

[Nick Pell]

They did not get those guys. Both those guys made it through security. Passengers got those guys.

[Ryan Reynolds]

They were on the plane.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's why it was big news.

[Ryan Reynolds]

They were already on the plane.

[Nick Pell]

Yeah, they're already on the plane. Passengers got them.

[Ryan Reynolds]

All right, I stand corrected on that.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I vaguely remember one of these was.

[Ryan Reynolds]

On a flight to Detroit trying to light his shoes, or it was underwear with matches.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And I was just like, man, you.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Didn'T break a Zippo or something?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Dude, they're not setting their best, are they?

[Nick Pell]

They are definitely not.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's pretty crazy, though. I bet if we asked 100 people on the street who stopped the shoe.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Bomber and the underwear bomber, they would say the tsa.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I guess I just.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Memory hold that. That's what I thought happened until literally just now.

[Nick Pell]

Yeah, it's a Mandela effect. Yes, that's the popular perception that those were the days when the TSA earned their keep. But no, it's like you see a guy sitting next to you on the plane trying to light his underwear on fire, you're gonna take notice of it and they made it through security. It wasn't that the passengers caught them hanging out in the lobby. They were on the plane.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. One thing I've noticed over the last few years are signs about guns that.

[Jordan Harbinger]

The TSA has intercepted from passengers. I'm talking about.

[Ryan Reynolds]

They're everywhere now. And I think, man, this many people.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Are trying to take guns on airplanes. Jesus. On the one hand, I'm glad they're.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Getting all these guns, I guess. On the other hand, it seems a little ridiculous that there are this many people trying to bring guns on planes in the first place.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What about those? I mean, I'm guessing they don't just.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Make this up so they can go through your bag and check out your underwear. So what's with all the guns that they're so proud of grabbing?

[Nick Pell]

Yeah. So this is the big success story that the TSA likes to tout on their website. And that and some kind of nebulous nonsense about cybersecurity training, which I have no idea how cybersecurity is going to keep us safe on a plane unless they're fighting Chinese hackers trying to take over the actual plane, which I very much doubt is the case.

[Ryan Reynolds]

God, that's a whole.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I hope that TSA is not on that. I hope there's a different department than.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The guy who's looking at women's feet.

[Jordan Harbinger]

In the security line.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I don't need that guy.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

On the cybersecurity front, my God.

[Nick Pell]

Ok, you see these signs at the airport, but there's zero news stories, precisely zero. About hardened Al Qaeda and ISIS agents were being stopped. The firearm getting onto a plane. I think that Al Qaeda and ISIS probably have the bare minimum intelligence to know that they're not going to get on a plane with a Blue Steel.44 Magnum. So what do you think is more likely? That the TSA is stopping hardened terrorists, or for that matter, even isolated nut jobs? Or that some boomer forgot to leave his gun in the car before he went through airport security?

[Jordan Harbinger]

You know what? That does sound a lot more likely. I see your point.

[Ryan Reynolds]

There are never news stories about the tsa. Stopping would be terrorists with guns. And I suppose that Grandpa Joe forgets to leave his gun in the truck, gets arrested.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Not great copy for the 6 o'.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Clock news because it's just some old dude with one of those canes with.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Multiple bottom touch points on it and.

[Ryan Reynolds]

He'S forgot he's strapped that morning.

[Nick Pell]

And somebody who carries every day is really easy enough to do.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, I would imagine it's like having.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Weed in your purse and then you.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Take a Boy Scout troop to a police station and the dog smells your.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Purse and you're like, oh, I've got weed in here. If that's something that really happened. Friend of mine and they arrested her.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's a different podcast. Embarrassing.

[Nick Pell]

I included a bunch of stories in the show notes from the news about this, and they're kind of all damning in the sense that there's never any mention of terrorism or threat to the airplane. It's just, oh, this guy had a gun in his carry on when he went through security. If the TSA thought that they could boast about stopping a potential skyjacking from these guys carrying guns, they would do it. Just speculating. Also, this is a total gun guy thing, which I know you're not. It's also anecdotal, but the gun guys out there will probably get this every single time. I see one of these signs at the airport security line about, look at this gun we stopped. It's some caliber of gun that nobody under the age of 70 carries. Like, terrorists are not carrying. 45 ACP and. 40 Smith and Wesson chambered guns. And neither is anyone else who can't remember the Truman administration. These are rounds that the elderly use. Yeah, this is Grandpa Joe forgot that he had a gun in his back.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's funny that there's like last season guns for like, oh, I would never. I wouldn't be caught dead carrying that lame O thing. And it's Grandpa's like, what are you talking about? This is blow a man's head clean off.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Like, I'm going to have to take.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Your word for it on that one.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So assuming this is true, and again.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I have zero reason to doubt you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Do you not want them stopping even these people from getting onto airplanes with guns? Even if it is just some old.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Dude who was, like I said, strapped on his way to Fort Lauderdale.

[Nick Pell]

I mean, I think I kind of want them especially stopping this guy.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sits down and it goes off in his pants.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's just as bad in many ways.

[Nick Pell]

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of really good reasons to keep guns off planes, but this is like the one place that I'm super fried with being a gun free zone. Assuming a flight gets hijacked with box cutters or guns or angry goblins or anything, the last thing on earth anyone in that cabin needs is some dude taking a shot with his personal carry. 45 ACP.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. In a pressurized cabin. That just seems like it's going to make a bad situation so much worse.

[Nick Pell]

Most guys who have guns barely trains. Yeah, it's insanely dangerous.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, that scares me as well. The sky marshals who actually carry on planes do, I assume, tons of training.

[Jordan Harbinger]

For close quarters combat. So if you're against there being guns on airplanes and the TSA is catching guns, isn't that kind of the end of your case, that the TSA is a bad thing?

[Nick Pell]

The sky marshals allegedly have to like, excel at close quarter combat with a gun. But you couldn't get a gun on a plane prior to 9 11. I mean, maybe in the 70s when you could smoke while you looked at a chest X ray with your doctor in the hospital.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I was watching Die Hard over Christmas. It is a Christmas movie. Prove me wrong. And one of the opening scenes is the guy next to him is like, oh, you nervous for the flight? And he's like, yeah, blah, blah, blah. And then he gets up and as he's taking his stuff out of the overhead bin, the guy sees the gun in the holster and he's, it's okay, relax. I'm a cop. As if, like some NYPD guy can just. Yeah, it's cool. I'm just gonna bring my gun on this airplane. Maybe you could back then, like, oh, I'm a cop.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Well, in that case, bring your revolver onto the plane.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Why not?

[Nick Pell]

The before times were crazy for anybody who doesn't remember them. That's right before 9 11, you had to go through a metal detector. Unless people are carrying completely plastic 3D printed guns with completely plastic 3D printed ammo.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Is that the thing that does or doesn't exist?

[Ryan Reynolds]

3D printed ammo?

[Nick Pell]

That's plastic 3D printed ammo exists. And honestly, I bet that, you know, they got those weird, like, explosive detection devices.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, the little swabby thing. Yeah.

[Nick Pell]

I genuinely have no idea. But it wouldn't triple metal detector anyway. So, yeah, 3D printed ammo is absolutely a thing.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's scary. Kind of.

[Nick Pell]

Unless someone has one of these kinds of weapons and that kind of ammunition, the metal detectors is going to stop them. The Israelis still lean super heavy on metal detectors to keep the plane safe. They have not had a single hijacking since before either you or I were born. And there's really little more than metal detectors securing the airports in Israel.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So when you say that the Israelis.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Are keeping airports safe with little more than metal detectors, I'm dying to know what the little more is, because I feel like that term's doing a lot of heavy lifting Like I said, I've flown to Israel several times and there's.

[Jordan Harbinger]

A crapload of undercover, not so undercover, security.

[Ryan Reynolds]

They interview you, they'll unpack your stuff and ask you about it. I mean, that's pretty thorough.

[Nick Pell]

I know a guy who was detained by Israeli airport security for having a Pat Buchanan book in his bag.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Vaguely know who that name is. I'm shocked an Israeli security officer knew who that was.

[Nick Pell]

They detained him for over an hour about the Pat Buchanan book. So, yeah, they stop people quite frequently in Israeli airports. I mean, they're not messing around in Israel. So you're right, it is little more than a metal detector. Okay, yeah, that's doing a fair bit of lifting. But I love telling people about how the Israelis handle airport security because I'm a big fan of how they do it. I'm kind of a big fan of how the Israelis do a lot of things. You can extrapolate from that what you will. But they have bomb sniffing dogs and such in these airports. But the main thing is the Israelis political correctness didn't make it to Israel. And among other things, if they see a guy who looks like he's in ISIS and they have no other evidence, they're going to stop him and talk to him.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Okay, but back to your point, presumably a guy who is in ISIS is not going to look, or try not to look like a superficial guy who looks like he's in isis. That kind of character when he shows up trying to fly to Tel Aviv with a bomb in his suitcase or whatever.

[Nick Pell]

You know what, you're correct. And the Israelis know this, which is why they're going to spend probably 20 seconds on this guy who looks like he's an ISIS before they let him go and let him go on about his day. Because, yeah, the ISIS agent is not showing up in an ISIS T shirt at the airport. They're going to stop this guy and go, where are you going? And he's going to say, I'm going to Dubai. And they're going to say, cool, on your way. What the Israelis have done though is basically turn a whole wing of the IDF into human bomb sniffing dogs. So humans obviously can't snip out bombs, but we can make other value judgments that dogs cannot.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So I get the point of having.

[Ryan Reynolds]

People on the ground who can make more educated or sophisticated judgments than a dog who's just smelling if there's explosive material or not. And even then the dogs, I think are just smelling bombs of the type they've been trained to find Humans can make judgments on the fly based on not only intelligence, of course, but on wisdom, experience. You're bringing this weird chemical, that's not a bomb itself. That's weird. Why are you doing that? And then some other person has another one. You can do the math on that.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Like their security must be. Obviously it's trained so well because they.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Have had a shocking level of success, I would imagine, in interdicting these. And because they haven't had that many hijackings since what, the 70s or something like that. I don't even.

[Nick Pell]

They haven't had any since the 70s. And they used to get hijackings all the time.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's right.

[Nick Pell]

And that's why they were like, no, we're just not going to have hijackings in Israel anymore. This is how we're going to do it. So there's a look that they're looking for. They're not just arresting Arab looking guys with big beards for the crime of being a Muslim at the airport. I did read some evidence that you're more likely to be detained if you're Arab. But it doesn't really serve their purposes to be interrogating every Arab guy who shows up at the Tel Aviv airport. You look at a guy and he fits a certain profile that's the current known profile of a terrorist. And you stop him and you talk to him. And so there's much more to it than just like, oh, this guy looks like a terrorist. What do you think a terrorist looks like when they show up at an airport to bomb a plane out of this guy?

[Ryan Reynolds]

I don't know. Gary Busey in a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts and a New York Yankees hat?

[Jordan Harbinger]

I have no idea.

[Nick Pell]

They might look like that'd be pretty decent cover. But one thing that they found, at least at some point, was that the guy's probably got a freshly shaved beard.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Ah, okay.

[Nick Pell]

He probably has a tan line where his beard used to be because he's been working on the same beard since he was 14 years old.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I don't. Man, I just don't know if I have good beard genetics. Tan liner? No, I want to look less isisy. So I got to shave this. But I've had this beard for 13 years already, so it's just a little bit lighter down there. And maybe I keep stroking my chin even though there's nothing there. Yeah, they're probably looking for all kinds of stuff like that.

[Nick Pell]

Yeah, they've got a bunch of profiles. Mossad is like the best intelligence service in the world, so they kind of know like, what these guys are using for cover. The Israelis are not stupid. And they've got much more skin in the game here than we do in the United States. They're not using the same kind of politically neutral playbook that the TSA does. That's the playbook that says you have to search a nun, which the TSA has done. And the Israelis, they don't play these games over there where they're like, oh, look, the woman in the nun outfit. You know, this 80 year old woman in a nun outfit, she could be an undercover ISIS agent. They're not doing that there.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Searching the nun sounds like a euphemism.

[Ryan Reynolds]

For something else that isn't appropriate for this podcast.

[Nick Pell]

I meant it literally. And the reference is going to be in the show notes, so you can check it. But that's exactly the point. Can ISIS dress up as 80 year old nuns? I guess it's possible, but there's no evidence that that's what they're doing. That's their deep cover. So in the United States, the TSA pretends like Grandma Moses standing in line at the security line is just as much of a threat as the guy with a beard to his navel wearing a shirt that says Death to America. Probably neither of them are a threat, but it's absurd to pretend that anyone could be a terrorist. I don't know. Like, these two pictures are the same. I can't tell the difference between these two and. Which may be more threatening. And I'm speaking in caricatures here, but I'm doing it for a reason.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, it seems like they're allowed to profile and we're sort of not supposed to do that. So we have to pretend that we're not doing that by searching people, even if it's inefficient and doesn't make any sense.

[Jordan Harbinger]

All right, so you're speaking in caricatures. What reason is that?

[Ryan Reynolds]

What point do you think that illustrates?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Assuming that you're trying to make a.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Point, you're not just being inflammatory for its own sake, which I don't think is the case here.

[Nick Pell]

Not today, anyway. I think that there's a truth that underlies the caricature. As you just said, the TSA's training prevents them from acknowledging in any substantive way the nun standing in the security line and the man dressed like a Taliban warlord, that these are different threat profiles. They can't acknowledge that. They can't profile in that way.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And now you can get your gropey.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Little hands on the Fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Fay. Nutrition. Let's talk nutrition. Not just dieting, but actually how you feel your body every day. Most of us know what we should be eating, but doing it is a whole different ball game. That's why I like what Fay is doing. They connect you one on one with a registered dietitian. Not a social media influencer, but an actual board certified expert trained in clinical nutrition. These dietitians specialize in everything from emotional eating to sports nutrition to pre diabetes and more. And the kicker is it's covered by insurance by over 700 plans. Most people pay nothing out of pocket. Working with a dietitian sounds like it'd be expensive, but through Faye, you get personalized help. It didn't cost me a dime.

[Ryan Reynolds]

They helped me figure out why I.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Crashed sometimes after lunch. Built a plan that fit my routine, gave me wins I could actually stick to. This isn't like, you know, eat more kale, guys. It's realistic, tailored and sustainable. And if you want real guidance from an expert who's in your corner, go to feynutrition.com jordan and check your coverage. You got nothing to lose and potentially a whole lot to gain.

[Unknown]

Having a personalized nutritionist used to cost big bucks. But not anymore with Faye. Listeners of the Jordan Harbinger show can qualify to see a registered dietitian for as little as $0 by visiting FayNutrition.com Jordan that's FayNutrition.com Jordan one last time. That's FayNutrition.com Jordan and make sure to use the URL so they know we sent you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This episode is also sponsored by Oura Ring. Here's an easy question. How you feeling today? Now a harder one. Why do you feel that way? Most of us just kind of guess. But with the Oura ring, you don't have to. It gives you personalized insights on your sleep, stress, heart, health recovery, all the stuff your body's dealing with behind the scenes. And it does it through a sleek ring that looks like regular jewelry, not some clunky gadget strapped to your wrist. I was an early adopter of the Oura ring. I've been wearing mine for years. Now I can see long term trends, like how certain habits mess with my sleep or help my recovery. It's helped me make better decisions around rest, not just workouts. Jen wears one too. And now we all compare scores in our circles, which is both fun and a little humbling, especially when your buddy's up all night. Somehow he still gets a better deep sleep score than you with the heck man. Battery life up to eight days. Comfortable. I forget I'm wearing it. And honestly, everywhere I go now I see more and more people rocking one give or the finger in a good way. Learn [e-mail] Jordan don't forget about our newsletter.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's a short bit from me to you every Wednesday. It's a two minute read.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Very practical. Some wisdom from our thousand plus episodes.

[Ryan Reynolds]

In the back catalog in written form from me to you. A lot of feedback from you guys. Really liking it. I really enjoy writing it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And you can sign up for free [e-mail] news.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's a great companion to the show.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Now back to Skeptical Sunday.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You also said that you don't think that the guy who, quote unquote looks like he's in the Taliban is an actual Taliban member or is a threat or whatever. So what good is it if we stop that guy?

[Nick Pell]

The guy who looks like an extra from Rambo3 probably is not actually in the Taliban, but what he might be is some self radicalized weirdo who found his calling on YouTube. So go talk to him, ask him some questions. It's going to become clear real fast that he's probably just some Saudi dad on vacation. The Israelis also know that the guy who looks like he just dropped out of central casting for a movie about the 911 hijackers last night in Saudi Arabia this is probably not a terrorist because yeah, they're gonna hide it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, it's funny you say that because a lot of those guys did look.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Just kind of like middle school shop.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Teachers or random Arab dads from Dearborn, Michigan. Just looked like my neighbors growing up, not the guys I would pick out of a lineup to be terrorists.

[Nick Pell]

They look like half the guys at my church. You look at pictures alike. The original Delta Force operator from the 70s and the 80s. They're not tatted up muscle freaks, they just look like somebody's nerdy dad. But the Israeli way of doing things comes in because they know that terrorists often don't look like caricatures of terrorists. But what they do know is how terrorists act no matter what they're dressed like. So there's whatever mannerisms, behaviors that either the guy who watched a couple of YouTube videos and decided to dress up like an ISIS warlord or the guy who's an actual ISIS warlord who's dressed like a German tourist. There's commonalities in how they would behave at an airport when they're going to do something very bad. So instead of these invasive ball groping stations and going through everybody's bag like an undeclared bottle of baby formula is. It could be a bomb. Israel has men and women who just walk around and they just randomly stop people and ask them questions because they know what terrorists act like when they get confronted by intelligence officers for a quick chat. It's not the way that as a normie dad who gets stopped at Tel Aviv Airport by an IDF agent grilling him about his travel plan is going to be nervous. Yes, 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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

By the way, is it the IDF that protects Israeli commercial flights? Did we look that up?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Did you check that out?

[Nick Pell]

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. They 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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Okay, so we have people at the.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Airport chatting up people and asking them questions and taking them aside for more questions. And 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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Ask me important stuff.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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 are 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? Then it's on to the next. You're dead to me. Typical Israeli women.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But what is it about how the TSA does this versus how The Israelis do it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That makes you so sure that they're going to catch terrorists before they get on a plane.

[Nick Pell]

So 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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Do you have any examples of that?

[Nick Pell]

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. Nothing 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. Once 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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, 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 train 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.

[Nick Pell]

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. The 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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I'm acting weird because I'm terrible with women.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But once you isolate that, he's just.

[Ryan Reynolds]

A normal dork, not a terrorist dork. Moving on.

[Nick Pell]

Yeah, exactly. Like, they know the difference between, oh, I'm nervous because I'm getting grilled by a 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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But the TSA also has a good track record.

[Ryan Reynolds]

There hasn't been an attack using airplanes since 9 11.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You think that's proof enough that they're keeping us safe?

[Ryan Reynolds]

I don't know.

[Nick Pell]

I mean, is that because the TSAA 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 911 attacks are probably smart enough to know, ah, they're not gonna be able to use an airplane again. There'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 at a moment of your choosing when you're on the plane. But there are airports that have a 95% failure rate, 9,55-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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And for people who doubt this, a.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Friend of mine, who definitely is, not me, used to do this, not as.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Part of his job.

[Ryan Reynolds]

He literally just wanted to see if the TSA was any good at their job.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And he brought knives, pepper spray, sharp.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Objects, dangerous chemicals, you name it, onto his flights, and then would take a photo and post it anonymously to Twitter.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And that's the stuff that was deliberately brought through.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I know other people, again, not me, that have brought in things that are supposedly not allowed.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And you find it like three years later when you're flying through Japan, like.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh, I did have three lighters at the bottom of my night kit that are full of lighter fluid.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Wow.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's where my knife went.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's at the bottom of this thing.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I brought it to the jungle and I ended up carrying it on for 27 flights since then. That happens all the time.

[Nick Pell]

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. And 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 a 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, like 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 are on it, 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 theory. 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 911 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. They didn't blunder their way into the World Trade Center Towers.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I think you're probably right about a.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Lot of the points that you're making.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But wouldn't the issue be the higher.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Ups in management and the policy, as opposed to the 24 year old who just wants a job with benefits?

[Nick Pell]

Oh, I believe you. This is them trying their best and that's the problem.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Fine, but what's then the problem with tsa? I mean, the appearance of security has.

[Jordan Harbinger]

To have some kind of impact that keeps travelers safer.

[Nick Pell]

We 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 death.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Wow. Okay, so how does that work? Like they're just.

[Jordan Harbinger]

If you have 4 ounces of liquid instead of 3, you got to come.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Back here and you get that no country for Old men treatment with the pneumatic plug in the back of your head.

[Nick Pell]

Captive bull.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, that's right.

[Nick Pell]

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. And those numbers add up.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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?

[Nick Pell]

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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, that's almost two 9 11s since 9 11. That's pretty crazy. And a pretty good example of unintended consequences.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But again, why get rid of the TSA? We could be having a 911 every.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Month or something with that.

[Nick Pell]

Their failure rated internal audits suggest otherwise. Just the thing that came to me in the middle of this is 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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

If they're touching your nuts and it feels funny, it's not gay if it's tsa. Just remember that. Don't worry.

[Nick Pell]

Thank you for joining us on Skeptical Sunday.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I've been saving that dad joke for a really long time with absolutely nowhere to put it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And here we are.

[Nick Pell]

There's also some pretty demonstrably bad, 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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Okay, I hear you on the dollars and cents side, that is a lot of money. I'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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But that sounds even more expensive, though.

[Nick Pell]

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. So just counts as security at the airport, whereas theirs is the budget for the entire agency. It 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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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.

[Nick Pell]

They have those just on like regular old El Al planes that I'm going to take from wherever to wherever.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack sponsor. IQ Bar is the better for you. Plant protein based snacks made with brain boosting nutrients to refuel, nourish and satisfy hunger. Without the sugar. Crash. Look, I try to eat clean, but when I'm running between interviews, calls, chasing the kids, I need something that's not gonna spike my blood sugar, leave me feeling like a zombie an hour later. That's why I like IQ Bars. And they sent me this massive sampler pack and the peanut butter chip flavor basically disappeared overnight. Jen helped a little. Obviously these things taste great, but the real benefit is how they make you feel. I got sustained energy. No crash. I'm not digging through the pantry an hour later. They're made with plant protein. There's no gluten, there's no dairy, there's no Soy, there's no GMOs, there's no artificial sweeteners. So you're not eating mystery ingredients with a side of guilt. Just clean brain Body boosting fuel. With over 20,000 5 star reviews, more and more people are starting their day with IQ Bars, hydration mixes, even their mushroom coffees. So if you want a smarter snack that actually delivers, check out IQ Bar. You'll feel it.

[Unknown]

And right now, IQ Bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20% off all IQ bar products. Plus get free shipping. To get your 20% off, text Jordan to 64,000. Text Jordan to 64,000. That's Jordan to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. See terms for details.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This episode is also sponsored by SimpliSafe. After we had a break in, it was kind of hard to sleep. Every sound at night was like, oh, what's that? Honestly, the only way we sleep now is because of SimpliSafe. What I love is it's not just a system that reacts after somebody breaks in. SimpliSafe's new Active Guard outdoor protection can actually help stop break ins before they happen. It's wild. AI powered cameras pick up on sketchy activity around your home. Real life agents can talk to the person through the system, turn on spotlights, even call the cops before anything goes down. It's basically a security guard that never takes a break. And with no contracts, no hidden fees, monitoring plans starting at around a buck a day, it's honestly a no brainer. Over 4 million Americans trust SimpliSafe. It was named best home security system of 2025 by CNET, ranked number one in customer service by Newsweek in USA Today.

[Unknown]

So if you're looking for peace of mind, especially at night, Simplisafe is the move. Get 50% off your new system with professional monitoring. Plus get your first month [e-mail] Jordan that's simplisafe.com Jordan there's no safe like Simplisafe.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This episode is also sponsored by BetterHelp. I actually just had my Better help session today and I swear every time I walk away feeling better, lighter, like my brain gets a little tune up. And let's be honest, life throws plenty of stuff at us that'll clog the pipes, the mental pipes. Jen and I have even done more than one session a week during tough stretches. And pro tip, you could totally do that. We go through stuff, you know, work stress, family stuff, existential dread at 2 o' clock in the morning, you name it. That's why I'm a big fan of BetterHelp. Over 35,000 therapists all online so you can actually find someone who fits you. It's super easy to schedule. You can switch therapists anytime if it's not clicking. No awkward breakup speech needed. It's convenient. It works. It's helped over 5 million people already. So if you've been carrying more than you're letting on, talk to somebody. Real strength is doing the work.

[Unknown]

As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with BetterHelp, our listeners get 10% off their first [e-mail] Jordan that's betterhelp.com Jordan thank you for listening.

[Ryan Reynolds]

To and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers does keep the lights on around here.

[Jordan Harbinger]

All of the deals, discount codes and.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Ways to support the show are all.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Searchable and Clickable over at jordanharbinger.com deals. You can also search for the sponsors.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Using the AI chatbot on the website as well.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Please consider supporting those who support the show now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. All Israeli commercial jets are fitted with.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But for Israel's government, it was a.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Wake up call to protect civilian aircraft against such wildly proliferated weapons. Essentially what was shot at them was man Portable Air Defense System manpads. 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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Oh, there's something else called Sea Music.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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. There's more to it, but essentially it points a super powerful beam at the missile's infrared seeker which is otherwise locked onto the plane's exhaust and the beam.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Dazzles it, gives it the razzle dazzle.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And then the missile erroneously readjusts its.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Trajectory and you land safely in Zurich.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Hopefully not knowing that there was a.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Surface to air missile following the plane at one point during the flight. While you were watching reruns of the Wire. Yeah, there's more onboard like bulletproof cockpit.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That adds to the price of your average commercial airliner, I'm sure.

[Nick Pell]

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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You can fly from one end of.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Israel to another, but it's probably like 12 minute flight.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's like flying from LA to San Diego. No, it's not quite that small. Can you fly from one end of.

[Jordan Harbinger]

New Jersey to the other?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Probably not on a jetliner like that. These are their international ones.

[Nick Pell]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, it's a couple hours.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Flowers, I'm sure.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But yeah, I'm sure if you fly.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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 manpad that they're going to use on a plane. Okay.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So it's not an apples to apples.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Comparison with the security in the US and 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 awash on this particular point because we'd have to speculate and guess too much.

[Nick Pell]

Yeah, there's too many, like, unknowns to really draw a comparison between the two, but. You ever been robbed by Israeli airport security?

[Ryan Reynolds]

So I haven't been robbed by Israeli airport security, but I've been robbed by the tsa, actually, more than once.

[Nick Pell]

And everyone listening is going, me, too.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, that's the 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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And I'm like, funny you had noticed.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That, because if you didn't take it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You would just be like, what?

[Ryan Reynolds]

I don't know.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What are you talking about?

[Ryan Reynolds]

You wouldn't say, there was no money in there. And then another time, I decided I was gonna 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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

On that guy, and someone else took the money. And then I had to go back.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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. And I was like, of course you saw money in it, which is why you took the money out and made.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Me put it in the dog bowl.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. No, I've been robbed by tsa, which is also why when people are like.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What'S Jordan's problem with the TSA? The problem is they owe me $165 plus interest, man.

[Nick Pell]

Dude, I thought you were walking around with a $10,000 roll the way that you tell this story.

[Jordan Harbinger]

No, but even if they stole $20.

[Nick Pell]

You'Re this salty over 160 bucks, I'm.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Salty that I got robbed by the.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Government in addition to paying taxes.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Look, I will Pay you this. Why are you also robbing me that I don't appreciate?

[Ryan Reynolds]

So, yes, I'm on one for the TSA for that specific reason.

[Nick Pell]

You being mad about 160 bucks and me not caring is why you're rich and I'm not.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's the only reason.

[Nick Pell]

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 at security. Again, it's one of these old studies, but in 2012, ABC found that 400 TSA employees had been fired for theft.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Wow. Okay. They caught these people. Presumably they were fired for stealing and potentially prosecuted.

[Nick Pell]

Yes. But everyone listening is thinking of the time that the TSA robbed them. They probably didn't catch all the people that were stealing in Miami.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, it's conjecture, but 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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I will also say in their defense.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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.

[Nick Pell]

Yeah, fair enough. There's also all the. There's just a litany of sexual assault allegations against the tsa.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh, yeah, I didn't think about that.

[Nick Pell]

I stopped looking because there were just so many that it was like, I can't talk about all of these. It's like 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 know, and they were using it to set up situations where they could grope dudes junk. And not in like the normal way that they grope your junk.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's a lot of work to grab.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Some dude's crotch when you could probably.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'm trying to think.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I also super vaguely remember that going On.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And I remember thinking it was weird then, too. Yeah.

[Nick Pell]

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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I'll do that for free. I don't care. You don't have to manipulate me.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Just ask nicely.

[Nick Pell]

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 complained about sexual violence with rough and unnecessary violent inspections of genital areas during the screenings. There was the LA Chargers defensive lineman who claimed about being sexually assaulted by. That was one of the more famous accusations because he was charged with Lyman.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Jeez. 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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Get all up in there and personal.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Guy, what's happening to women who deal with this kind of stuff at your local 7 11, let alone at the.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Airport where they're supposed to be given a pat down?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Because as a guy, I can shrug.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It off and be like, what an a hole. But as a woman, I feel like this must be so much worse.

[Nick Pell]

There'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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Wow. I don't doubt that this is true, but you gotta 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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Most people are thinking, how do you.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Get raped while you're putting your bag in a scanner?

[Nick Pell]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

No, that is.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I don't know anybody reasonable. That would be like, oh, come on. No, that's terrible.

[Nick Pell]

Yeah. They demanded a pat down in a secluded room. And 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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, yeah. That sounds really messed up. People are probably imagining, like, he's just searching her and boop. No, I don't think that's not how any of this works.

[Nick Pell]

That's not why you and I know about this.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Exactly.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You know, no, this is really messed up.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I do not blame her for not wanting to go through that again for work.

[Nick Pell]

Yeah. It's absolutely disgusting what happened with her.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'm not looking for some kind of.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Excuse about why this is okay. Of course. Just to be clear, I'm wondering what the whole story is. I only can assume it gets worse from here.

[Nick Pell]

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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Okay. All right.

[Nick Pell]

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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Without getting into, like, jurisdiction type stuff. If the TSA is a federal agency, then federal court should have a right to hear tortzing them.

[Jordan Harbinger]

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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh, my God.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This is just par for the course.

[Ryan Reynolds]

When dealing with the government, though, right? Like, they can get you for anything.

[Jordan Harbinger]

They want, by the way, you can sue the whole United States government. You can do that?

[Nick Pell]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Of course there is. This is crazy. The government, they can get you for anything they want.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But when they mess up.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Oops, sorry. Oh, and by the way, the court.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Doesn'T have a right to even hear this, so let's throw this whole thing out and pretend like it never happened.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's really disgusting.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, that's gross.

[Nick Pell]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You might be entitled to financial compensation.

[Ryan Reynolds]

If you, too, have had your, you know, what scanned in a way that was unfair. I mean, I've basically gotten karate chopped in the junk by these guys.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And I don't know if I'm entitled.

[Ryan Reynolds]

To compensation, but I do want my $165 back, you bastards.

[Nick Pell]

This would be big business for contingency lawyers.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, it'd be Better call Saul all.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Day against the tsa. That's right.

[Nick Pell]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It does.

[Nick Pell]

There's going to be some kind of penalty there.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, that's why McDonald's coffee isn't 3,000 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.

[Nick Pell]

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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That'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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What are the chances of this actually happening?

[Nick Pell]

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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I'm gonna go ahead and Guess it did not pass because I just went.

[Jordan Harbinger]

In for a grope the other day on my way to Istanbul from San Francisco.

[Nick Pell]

Correct. It did not pass.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So you've gone after the tsa, which.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I think is fair because you make a really solid case. I'm going to make you play devil's advocate though.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What do you think are some reasons.

[Ryan Reynolds]

For keeping the TSA as is? Obviously less sexual assault, but keeping the agency around?

[Nick Pell]

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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Okay, 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.

[Nick Pell]

Yes. I don't expect them to eat the cost of security.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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?

[Nick Pell]

You like the paper boy from better off dad? Like $2? 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 911 tax that you see on every ticket you buy. The 911 fee when you buy an airline ticket. I personally did 911 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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Ok, 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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So I know you're pretty hostile towards.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The government in general, but why the tsa? I mean, I've got my like pet gripe because of my wallet getting raided twice. But why is this your arch nemesis, agency of the federal government?

[Nick Pell]

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 100 years and whatever. The Federal Reserve. We'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 of everything that went wrong on September 12, 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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Even if I am not totally convinced. I got to admit, you make some solid points here.

[Nick Pell]

Studies show that people don't change their minds about things even when confronted with evidence.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So, eh, I don't believe that.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Anyway, thanks as always for taking us for a tour around the world of the tsa. I'm really looking forward to the barrels.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Full of hate mail that I'm gonna get from TSA agents who've never robbed or raped anyone in the line of duty.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I know y' all exist.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I want to hear why we might.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Thank you all for listening. Topic Suggestions Feedback for Skeptical Sunday can come right to me. Jordanharbinger.com show [e-mail] advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support the show [e-mail] deals I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You can also connect with me on.

[Jordan Harbinger]

LinkedIn and this show is created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jay Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, 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.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today.

[Jordan Harbinger]

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You can live what you learn and we'll see you next time.

[Jordan Harbinger]

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.

[Unknown]

Hormones affect the way that our brain does its daily business, and that includes things like attraction. You 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 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 try trivialize the types of side effects that we have from the pill because, 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 none, 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. I 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.

[Jordan Harbinger]

To HEAR More from Dr. Sarah Hill about the problems with taking birth control, check out episode 280 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.

[Nick Pell]

It.