When I got David Zipper on the line, there was one question I needed to ask. Are you the kind of person who gets to the airport right on time or you do the right thing and get there a little bit earlier so you have time to relax and settle in? How does it go for you?

I do the right thing. I have I have taken God

knows how many hundreds of flights in my life and I am proud to say I have never

once missed one because I got to the airport too late.

I'm asking David this because the holiday travel season is closing in and security lines at the airport will be horrendous,

raising everyone's anxiety about

missing flights. And David thinks a lot about airport security lines. He's a

visiting fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Taubman Center for State and Local Government,

and he studies urban policy.

David's written a couple of times for Slate

about a supposed solution to airport security lines.

It's called Clear.

With Clear for a yearly fee you submit to biometric security

screening and then you get to cut the security line.

So when I'm traveling I don't wait in those dump long lines.

I use things like Clear right here.

Very nice.

Look at those lines.

No, no, no.

Just like that.

All those people still waiting back there. That literally took me 38 seconds.

You might imagine what fellow travelers already tense, typically unshooed, probably a little sweaty,

...