A Perfectly Average Anomaly
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, quick note before we start the show, we're having a sale. Because we've gone crazy over here at Search Engine HQ, we've decided just this once for the holidays to offer a discount on Incognito Mode. That is the version of the show that has no ads, where we occasionally run bonus episodes, weird experiments. We have our live board meeting for Incognito Mode members. It is 20% off for six months. You can give it as a gift for the holiday season. you give it as a gift to yourself. 20% off for your first six months. Incognito mode, on sale. We've lost our minds. Check it out at searchengine.show. That's where you can sign up. Okay, our final episode of the year, after some ads.
Welcome to Search Engine. I'm PJ Vogt. No question too big, no question too small, no question too average. This year, Search Engine received 4,589 questions. I read them all on my phone, often when I shouldn't have been. My favorite one arrived almost exactly mid-year, July 6th at 2.30 in the morning. As much as I loved it, I also knew as I read it, there was probably no world in which we'd actually end up on the air. It was too niche. It was also, frankly, inappropriate. Definitely a question to entertain my friends at the bar with, but which bringing to an office felt a little close to an HR violation. Can you introduce yourself? Um, actually, I'm sorry, would it be possible for me to maybe go by a pseudonym or not have a name?
Nothing would delight me more than to offer you a pseudonym. Do you have one in mind? Um, how about Travis? 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. So I fly pretty frequently because I live in both Honolulu, Hawaii, and New York City. Oh, wow. So I fly back and forth, you know, kind of a lot. So you can imagine that I'm going through security pretty frequently. Wait, and you, New York and Honolulu? That's right. Two very far apart places. Almost as far apart as you can get in the U.S. It's very inconvenient. Okay, and so the question you have is about something that happens when you fly.
Tell me what happens. Okay, so do you know the full-body TSA scanner? The one where you, it replaced the pure metal detector and you walk in and you kind of put your hands like the cartoon over your head and it scans you more thoroughly is my understanding. Yeah, exactly. So if you have a TSA pre-check, 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. And then there's like a little screen. And generally after like a one second delay, it just turns green into something like go, and then you just walk on and get your baggage.
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. So if you're wearing a big watch or something, it might be 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 another little box that's directly on my anus. So it's like... And when you say your anus, you don't mean the general area of your buttocks. You mean where your anus is.
Yeah, I use the term advisedly. 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. Oh, my God. I sort of thought like, oh, this is the thing that happens to everybody. But then I would be telling the story or just like alluding to my experience in security. And it was just I would be met with blank stares because this is, I guess, not a universal or even a common experience.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–4:59
2
What unusual experience does the guest have with TSA body scanners?
4:59–11:02
3
How does the TSA body scanner work and what happens when it flags an anomaly?
11:02–36:33
4
What theories exist about why some men trigger false alarms at airport security?
36:33–55:29