Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuckers Bryant, and that makes this a very
Speaker 1: um congested episode of Stuff you Should Know, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were just reminiscing about the uh, what was it
Speaker 1: eight or nine? I don't remember, probably oh nine when
Speaker 1: Josh was sick for a like I said, he was
Speaker 1: sick for a season, and that's really not too far off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you mean recently pointed out that I wasn't sick
Speaker 1: at all last year, and I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: not been sick for a year. So it has to
Speaker 1: do probably with taking better care of myself, not smoking.
Speaker 1: Probably I get the stomach thing. I don't usually get
Speaker 1: regular sick. Yeah, you do get stomachs ye. Man. It's
Speaker 1: not even like a bug. It's like a staff of
Speaker 1: actual or a bowl of the stomach or something horrible
Speaker 1: like that. It just gross. So I are you willing
Speaker 1: to muddle through this one with me sounding like this?
Speaker 1: I think people can forgive that we needed to get
Speaker 1: this one out in time for the September eleventh anniversary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the tenth anniversary of the September eleventh attacks, UM on
Speaker 1: the World Trade Center. Uh, the attack Uh, well the
Speaker 1: plane that went down Flight ninety three in Pennsylvania. Have
Speaker 1: you seen that movie? Um? And then uh, the attack
Speaker 1: on the Pentagon. UM. The tenth Anniversity is going to
Speaker 1: be a big sad, soul in occasion. You know, it
Speaker 1: seems like the last couple of years it's been you
Speaker 1: know it September eleventh and this this is a time
Speaker 1: to stop and reflect for a moment. But I think
Speaker 1: it's all gonna come barreling back on the tenth anniversary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think people have been anticipating that. And the opening
Speaker 1: of the of the memorial, which we're gonna talk about,
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with that, obviously it does.
Speaker 1: It's gonna officially dedicated and opened on September eleventh, two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven. Yeah, and then um, the museum, which we'll
Speaker 1: also talk about, will be open the following year, I
Speaker 1: think on September eleven, two twelve. And that thing sounds
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Yeah, I'm very excited about going to these. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe excited it's not the right word. No, I'm excited
Speaker 1: if I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, there's nothing. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you're flippant about it. No, I'm excited to
Speaker 1: see them as well. That's okay, Okay, thanks. I get
Speaker 1: excited every time I go to those things. It's a
Speaker 1: good place for remembrance, Josh, Yes, that's Memorials make an
Speaker 1: excellent spot for remembrance. Let's talk about the spot where
Speaker 1: the memorial, the World Trade Center Memorial, which what which
Speaker 1: is what we're talking about, is going to be situated
Speaker 1: the original spot where the World Trade Center complex was situated.
Speaker 1: Beginning work started in the sixties and was completed in
Speaker 1: I think ninety three on the towers. I think work
Speaker 1: for the whole World Trade Center complex wasn't completed until yeah,
Speaker 1: fourteen years, fourteen years after the towers that were completed,
Speaker 1: So it was like nineteen yeah something. Yeah, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But tell me about the tell me about the spot,
Speaker 1: the World Trade Center spot. It's a very um ambitious project.
Speaker 1: It was Josh, seven buildings total um spanning sixteen acres.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of room and each tower itself, I
Speaker 1: think had a footprint of an acre. Yeah right, yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: They had office space to the tune of about uh
Speaker 1: fifty thousand total workers in about thirty five thousand, and
Speaker 1: those were split among four hundred and thirty companies in
Speaker 1: the buildings. It was ten million square feet of office space.
Speaker 1: It's incredible, it was. It was originally UM. Speaking of ambition,
Speaker 1: I read an article called The Height of Ambition. It
Speaker 1: was a two thousand to New York Times article and
Speaker 1: it's required reading for anybody. It's really good. It's all
Speaker 1: about the construction, it's about the attacks. It's a really comprehensive,
Speaker 1: great article. But they were saying like that there was
Speaker 1: no way they were going to go UM any less
Speaker 1: than ten million square feet when they decided to there,
Speaker 1: like that's it, We're doing ten million, and that's so
Speaker 1: that's such an enormous amount of office space that other
Speaker 1: real estate developers in the city were like, that's going
Speaker 1: to like imbalance the market. That's so much, it's gonna
Speaker 1: flood this place all at once. Yeah. I remember at
Speaker 1: the time, uh, you know, in September eleven, thinking that
Speaker 1: the death Hole was gonna be like ten people because
Speaker 1: I knew how many people work there, and it would
Speaker 1: have been had it had the buildings not stayed up
Speaker 1: for um an hour or so, or had it been
Speaker 1: an hour or so later, right once people were all
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah, because you said there's about fifty thousand
Speaker 1: people that worked at the World Trade Centers UM, and
Speaker 1: then there's another maybe UM seventy thousand, forty thousand to
Speaker 1: seventy thousand people who could muted through because there was
Speaker 1: a subway station underneath in the path train station and
Speaker 1: the mall, and people coming to have lunch with like
Speaker 1: their husband or wife or whatever. So seventy thousand additional
Speaker 1: people passed through that that complex every day. Indeed, Josh,
Speaker 1: if we're talking size, we've got a couple of stats.
Speaker 1: The North tower UM, the original World Trade Center one,
Speaker 1: although there's a new one which we're gonna talk about, uh,
Speaker 1: hundred sixty eight feet uh and then seventeen thirty feet
Speaker 1: with its large antenna. And then the South tower was
Speaker 1: about six ft shorter than the North tower, which I
Speaker 1: thought found interesting. I wonder if that was a I
Speaker 1: wonder why they did that. Maybe the bedrock was six
Speaker 1: ft six ft lower, has to be something like that.
Speaker 1: I don't think it was I'm sure they got to
Speaker 1: the final measurement and we're like, you have to be
Speaker 1: kindding right, because they were both a hundred ten stories.
Speaker 1: It's not like w C t C two was short
Speaker 1: changed the floor or a half floor. Two hundred eight
Speaker 1: thousand one metric tons. Yeah, and one of them. It's
Speaker 1: tough to find comparisons for this, but um, it's an
Speaker 1: Afford Explorer. These each one weighed about equivalent to a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy two thousand Ford Explorers. That's heavy. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a heavy building. And that's a lot of weight.
Speaker 1: And we'll we'll get to that weight. And what happened
Speaker 1: to a lot of that weight coming up shortly to right?
Speaker 1: Uh So. One of the cool things that you found
Speaker 1: was originally when they planned the towers, they didn't know
Speaker 1: what kind of sway that a person could take. Let's say,
Speaker 1: if you're working on story like this towers swaying back
Speaker 1: and forth in the wind, what kind of that would
Speaker 1: do to people? Yeah, no one had ever These were
Speaker 1: when they were built, the tallest structures in the world.
Speaker 1: You can't just have office space up there that people
Speaker 1: are getting sick on because they're dizzy, right, because no
Speaker 1: one would rent it out. But they didn't know that
Speaker 1: it um. They didn't know, well, maybe somebody could take
Speaker 1: six ft of sway on either side. They had no idea,
Speaker 1: maybe people can take like almost no sway. So they
Speaker 1: had a guy in Eugene, Oregon who was a psychologist,
Speaker 1: basically purchased an office building, put parts of it up
Speaker 1: on Jack's and like test people. He had him come
Speaker 1: in for I exams, but was really testing them to
Speaker 1: see how much sway they could put up with him
Speaker 1: found not much, like a couple of inches either way.
Speaker 1: After a couple of minutes of that, the people start
Speaker 1: freaking out, get dizzy, get nauseated. So they were like,
Speaker 1: you have to do something because your building is going
Speaker 1: to sway a lot more than this, that's right, and
Speaker 1: you can't have your tenants getting sick. So they built
Speaker 1: in shock absorbers that prevented this way. So I think
Speaker 1: most people know by now just from breakdown of the
Speaker 1: what happened with the collapse, that it was an exoskeleton
Speaker 1: design and it was connected with a core steel core
Speaker 1: connected it with a hat trust at the top. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you had columns going out on the outside where
Speaker 1: they normally would have been put inside, so that opened
Speaker 1: up much more office space. So the columns are on
Speaker 1: the outside, and there's a steel court in the center
Speaker 1: like you said, and it was connected by a hat trust.
Speaker 1: They just fit over the top and connected everything to
Speaker 1: the center. So it just stabilized the whole thing and
Speaker 1: it made it light but very strong. Right. I think
Speaker 1: it was about open air inside the building itself, which
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with why it collapsed. Um,
Speaker 1: there was a police station port authority in New Jersey. Uh,
Speaker 1: New York and New Jersey had a police desk, they
Speaker 1: had its own uh, they had their own zip code
Speaker 1: and eight dedicated mail carriers. Yeah, I couldn't. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's still there. It has to be. The zip it
Speaker 1: still has its own zip code, right, one O four eight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I looked that up. Actually, I think they held onto
Speaker 1: that zip code and to assign you know, the New
Speaker 1: World traits in our complex that same zip code. If
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, I would hope. So this is a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago. Yeah, but yeah, eight postal carriers
Speaker 1: just for the WTC complex like they worked within. You know,
Speaker 1: I guess it's sixteen acres, but it's probably not as
Speaker 1: big as your usual beat in New York. I would
Speaker 1: I wouldn't think so. No, I think they call it beats.
Speaker 1: That's just cops. I wouldn't it no copy, um chuck.
Speaker 1: Also these um, just to give another idea of scale, Um,
Speaker 1: there were each of the towers themselves. Just the towers
Speaker 1: had elevators, each each one had um almost uh well,
Speaker 1: almost twenty two thousand windows. And apparently you could have
Speaker 1: built a sidewalk standard sidewalk I take it from New
Speaker 1: York to Washington, d C. With just the concrete used
Speaker 1: in just the towers. So these were massive, colossal structures,
Speaker 1: just the towers. The whole complex itself was colossal, but
Speaker 1: the tower, it's just the towers are enough to like
Speaker 1: get the point across, you know. Well, and all you
Speaker 1: ever really hear about still is usually the WTC one
Speaker 1: and two. But all of the buildings were eventually raised
Speaker 1: the whole complex, right, and um, we should also say that,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody kind of came on board. But in
Speaker 1: the beginning there were very big detractors to the World
Speaker 1: Trade Center projects, including those real estate developers who were like,
Speaker 1: this is going to be a drain on the market.
Speaker 1: And one of the guys whose named Lawrence Ween, who
Speaker 1: was an Empire State building co owner. Right, And he
Speaker 1: took out a full page and the New York Times
Speaker 1: that had a picture of one of the World Trade
Speaker 1: Center towers with a plane flying into it to basically
Speaker 1: suggest that this was a hazard to air traffic, right,
Speaker 1: And it actually almost came true in one when an
Speaker 1: Air Alina's flight just narrowly missed the North tower but
Speaker 1: made off. Okay, it was safe, that's right. Yeah. Uh, however,
Speaker 1: that was the first attack on the World Trade Center. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Islamic Islamistic streamist group detonated about a thousand pounds
Speaker 1: of explosives and a rented truck underneath the World Trade
Speaker 1: Center and killed six people, injured thousands and they are included,
Speaker 1: which I thought was a classy move in the World
Speaker 1: Trades and a memorial years later. I never really considered that,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was pretty nice thing to do
Speaker 1: that That truck left half a football sized football field
Speaker 1: sized crater and it apparently rocked the whole building. Like
Speaker 1: you think, Well, six people died, It couldn't have been
Speaker 1: that big. It was a huge blast. It was just
Speaker 1: in the wrong place. But they were trying to take
Speaker 1: the building down, you know, yeah, from below, so that UM.
Speaker 1: Within a few days or weeks after UM, the February attach,
Speaker 1: things were back to business as usual. Governor Andrew Cuomo
Speaker 1: was the first to move back into the office building right,
Speaker 1: and things were just like I said, business as usual
Speaker 1: until the morning of September eleven, two thousand one came
Speaker 1: on day a can having four blocks north of the
Speaker 1: World Spathe Center. The second building that was hill by
Speaker 1: the plane has just completely collapsed. The entire building has
Speaker 1: just collapsed, as if the tunolition team set off. When
Speaker 1: you see the old nilition to the Gold buildings down
Speaker 1: on itself and it is not there anymore, it should be.
Speaker 1: It collapsed, collapse. The whole building has collapsed. So that
Speaker 1: pretty much speaks for itself. I think, where were you
Speaker 1: that morning? I had just gotten back from New York.
Speaker 1: Actually I was there for vacation and a Radiohead concert
Speaker 1: and in New Jersey or actually it was Liberty State
Speaker 1: Park and flew home on September like the seventh or something,
Speaker 1: so I was in it. Actually I was living in
Speaker 1: l A. But I flew back to Atlanta and then
Speaker 1: got stuck in Atlanta because everything was grounded. So I
Speaker 1: was in my friend Big John's where house and Big
Speaker 1: country Boy, and he woke me up up here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Remember it was like one of the towers has been hit,
Speaker 1: and you just when I started watching CNN and figuring
Speaker 1: out what was going on, like this is not an accident. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think both of us kind of came to the
Speaker 1: conclusion pretty quick too. So I hung out in his
Speaker 1: warehouse all day, only watched it on TV basically, and
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, and I have to say, like it
Speaker 1: didn't sink in as hard um then as it did
Speaker 1: when we were researching this for this podcast. Man, I
Speaker 1: was watching just find finding that clip we just played.
Speaker 1: I watched about like an hour of it does it Happened?
Speaker 1: Coverage and it was just it really drew me in
Speaker 1: and just depressed me like crazy. But like it got
Speaker 1: through to me finally after ten years, like it's really
Speaker 1: hit me how how huge this is. Yeah. I'd plowed
Speaker 1: through a bunch of videos this week too and last week,
Speaker 1: and it was you know, because I hadn't researched it
Speaker 1: for a long time, after probably since like two thousand three,
Speaker 1: than many years of not even really considering it much
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden it's all back on
Speaker 1: and coming up this September, and I think this being
Speaker 1: older too, especially for me being an older you know,
Speaker 1: ten years older, and it's gotten through to me a
Speaker 1: lot more like, yeah, God, how are you you were
Speaker 1: in your early twenties, mid twenties. I was like, God,
Speaker 1: that's crazy, Yeah something just a little kid, so chuck.
Speaker 1: We mentioned, um, how there could have been tens of
Speaker 1: thousands more people who could have died had the buildings
Speaker 1: not stayed up. And there were a couple of big
Speaker 1: questions after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers um.
Speaker 1: Number one, why did they fall They didn't have to
Speaker 1: fall um? And number two, why didn't they just fall
Speaker 1: over immediately? And the answer to the second question is
Speaker 1: that does nine that exoskeleton connected to a central steel
Speaker 1: core by a hat trust could have kept that thing
Speaker 1: up indefinitely. Well, the reason they fell was a fatal flaw. Right.
Speaker 1: Those steel columns that make up the exoskeleton tapered um
Speaker 1: at the top because they had to support less weight,
Speaker 1: making the whole structure lighter, requiring less steel. Right, So
Speaker 1: the planes when they flew into the higher floors. They
Speaker 1: were flying into steel columns that were only as thin
Speaker 1: as like a quarter inch across, so they just severed them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the problem is with the true fatal flow is the
Speaker 1: heat from the fire though. Yeah, I read a big
Speaker 1: article yesterday on this about this physicist Um basically explained
Speaker 1: how they came down to sort of rebut the idiots
Speaker 1: who say that it was a controlled demolition by the
Speaker 1: US government and like steel can't get that hot and melting,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, And he explained the difference between heat
Speaker 1: and temperature. And I wish I was smart enough to
Speaker 1: relay that now, but I would just advise, just google,
Speaker 1: like why did they collapse? And there's a really good
Speaker 1: article on that. So it's one of the first hits.
Speaker 1: For our purposes, we're gonna take it on face value
Speaker 1: that the heat from the raging fires Um created uh
Speaker 1: enough high enough temperature that the steel within a steel
Speaker 1: melted and the weight distribution throughout the exoskeleton was even
Speaker 1: further compromised until these things started going from what the
Speaker 1: connection to the hat trust was snapped, and then that
Speaker 1: was that there was no support any longer. So these
Speaker 1: floors obviously could support the weight of the floors on
Speaker 1: top of them. Because they had been up since nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, they can support the static weight. When the
Speaker 1: floors start collapsing on one another, it becomes moving heavier
Speaker 1: weight and it's created a domino effect essentially. Right, it
Speaker 1: just plowed right into the floors beneath and picked up
Speaker 1: more and more steam as it went. Apparently the material
Speaker 1: from the highest floors. By the time they reached the ground,
Speaker 1: we're traveling about a hundred and twenty miles, and that
Speaker 1: could have been even faster, according to that physicist, and
Speaker 1: he said the fact that they fell straight down was
Speaker 1: uh sensible and fortunate because they could have swayed and
Speaker 1: toppled over, which you know stories falling to the left
Speaker 1: or to the right is going to take out do
Speaker 1: a lot more damage. Obviously. Well, the South tower did
Speaker 1: do some damage. The North Tower came down almost completely
Speaker 1: in its footprint, and it just compacted itself into this
Speaker 1: dense acre size square of debris that went from street
Speaker 1: level seventy underground to the bedrock and just filled its
Speaker 1: own footprint almost completely. Um the the other towers UM
Speaker 1: three and seven were completely trashed. UM Tower six was
Speaker 1: still intact, but it had a huge chunk of the
Speaker 1: North tower against it. UM, and that the one they
Speaker 1: had to take out for those reasons, Like otherwise it
Speaker 1: might have been okay. That one they actually did demolish.
Speaker 1: So the Yeah, the whole site kind of just became
Speaker 1: a loss. UM there I guess an estimated three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand tons of scrap metal were generated, most of it
Speaker 1: sold the Indian China. UM, and there was a big hubbub.
Speaker 1: I didn't know this, did you? Did you hear about
Speaker 1: this when it happened. Um, the mafia diverted like two
Speaker 1: fifty five tons of scrap metal to its own junkyards
Speaker 1: for profit UM and got caught pretty quickly because the
Speaker 1: FBI was on that case. But UM they after that,
Speaker 1: there were I think a hundred thousand truckloads of debris
Speaker 1: trucked out to UM uh the landfill in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: I believe it's called Fresh Kill Landfill UM and UH
Speaker 1: those all got police escorts after the FBI found out
Speaker 1: the mafia was diverting scrap metal, right obviously, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good move. Uh. The cleanup was very quick. I
Speaker 1: remember at the time thinking that it happened way quicker
Speaker 1: than I thought it would. Well, yeah, they were. They
Speaker 1: were like, this is gonna take a year, maybe two,
Speaker 1: maybe three exactly. It took eight year or nine months. Yes,
Speaker 1: it also came in under budget. Uh. They thought it
Speaker 1: was gonna cost a couple of billion dollars and that
Speaker 1: was clearly overinflated because it only costs six and fifty
Speaker 1: million UH to clean up, which is a lot of money,
Speaker 1: but nothing compared to to bill a lot less. UM.
Speaker 1: They did get a little criticism because they thought they
Speaker 1: kind of hurried the clean up a little too much.
Speaker 1: Considering the potential toxic materials found at the site. A
Speaker 1: lot of people thought, you know, maybe we should take
Speaker 1: our time here, study this a little more, or see
Speaker 1: what's what we have to deal with before we start
Speaker 1: sending people down there. Well, one group called it the
Speaker 1: most the worst toxic site in our history. Did he
Speaker 1: mean Nation's history? I don't know. It's a good question.
Speaker 1: It could be Nation, New York World, I don't know.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of toxic stuff um. For example,
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand pounds of lead plus cadmium from the
Speaker 1: fifty thousand pecs in the World Trade Center offices right, UM,
Speaker 1: mercury from the fluorescent lights. There apparently about half a
Speaker 1: million fluorescent tube lights that all had mercury in them
Speaker 1: to work. UM. Have you heard of polycystic aromatic hydrocarbons?
Speaker 1: They're apparently, um they caused laryngeal cancer, UM and a
Speaker 1: couple of other cancers. And they come from partially burned
Speaker 1: UM fossil fuels. What else chuck asbestos, lots of asbestos,
Speaker 1: benzene um die ox in from oil and fuel. So
Speaker 1: not the kind of stuff you want to be breathing in.
Speaker 1: And people found you know, years afterward, we're getting sick,
Speaker 1: a lot of the first responders getting sick and dying.
Speaker 1: Even Yeah, the bass player from um TV on the
Speaker 1: radio was the first responder, and he came down with
Speaker 1: cancer and like in his late thirties or something and died,
Speaker 1: that's right. And within the last year. I didn't did
Speaker 1: I know that he was a first responder as as
Speaker 1: what what was his uh what kind of responder was?
Speaker 1: You do know? I don't remember, but he was. He
Speaker 1: was the first responder to the ground zero. So they've
Speaker 1: there was a uh combined payout of six d and
Speaker 1: twenty five million dollars to some of the first responders
Speaker 1: and cleanup workers after a lawsuit was filed, and that
Speaker 1: was just that was. They came to that settlement within
Speaker 1: the last year or two. Right, Yeah, they've been hammering
Speaker 1: that out forever. Yeah. And then there was the Zadroga Bill,
Speaker 1: which is massive. Seven point were billion dollars in compensation
Speaker 1: for everything from like economic impact to health. But there's
Speaker 1: a big well there's a big outcry because they didn't
Speaker 1: include cancer. Yeah, they couldn't find a definite link. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean this is one of those where I say,
Speaker 1: throw it in there, like cover everything. Apparently that's not
Speaker 1: the case. Well no, but it's left open so that
Speaker 1: it can be amended to include cancer later, like if
Speaker 1: somebody's like, here's your definitive right study on it that
Speaker 1: shows the link. But apparently the link is enough for
Speaker 1: people who are engaged in like personal litigation. Uh, they've
Speaker 1: been generally successful and just doing New York. Okay, just
Speaker 1: not a class action kind of thing. Well just not
Speaker 1: there's a Droga bill, got you, yeah, Okay, Well, uh,
Speaker 1: No one died during the cleanup of the Ground zero,
Speaker 1: which is pretty amazing considering what a dangerous place. It was.
Speaker 1: You know, there were like huge voids that were covered up,
Speaker 1: you know by things that uh you know, big gaps
Speaker 1: and holes that you could easily fall into. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you know those tiger traps. Yeah, where it's just kind
Speaker 1: of covered with a little bit of twigs or leaves.
Speaker 1: There were like seventy ft drops that looked like they
Speaker 1: were stable, solid rubble or whatever. But yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: picture of a huge earth mover like sliding down with
Speaker 1: a guy and it's like, oh my god. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: really surprised no one died during that clean up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sixty men died building the thing. Wow, that was the seventies. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that brings us Josh to ten years later. Yea,
Speaker 1: the nine eleven Memorial and Museum, which we both said
Speaker 1: we're excited to go see because it's a pretty amazing design.
Speaker 1: To me, they hit all the right notes, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people have complained about the actual building, The
Speaker 1: New World Trade Center one has been beaten up pretty
Speaker 1: badly in the press. A lot of people think they
Speaker 1: should have just mimicked the original twin towers, except maybe
Speaker 1: a little higher, as like a show of our strength
Speaker 1: as Americans, right, with the giant birden exactly with Donald
Speaker 1: Trump on top looking the bird. But Trump was one
Speaker 1: of the ones actually who hates the new uh w
Speaker 1: TC one and it is uh well, originally it was
Speaker 1: called the Freedom Tower. Could not smack of the Bush
Speaker 1: era more. Yeah, they changed that that or um world
Speaker 1: War two when we started calling French fries freedom fries.
Speaker 1: Was that World War two? And that came about again
Speaker 1: after this. Yeah. And then also um sauerkraut was called
Speaker 1: liberty cabbage. That's just crazy jingoistic, you know. Yeah. Uh So,
Speaker 1: like I said, Trump is is not a big fan
Speaker 1: of the design. He or the architect who designed w
Speaker 1: TC one, the new one. What's his name, Daniel um Oh,
Speaker 1: Daniel Lipskin? Is that him? He's been much battered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of feel bad for the guy, you know,
Speaker 1: he's trying to trying to do a good job. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it is going to be the tallest building in
Speaker 1: the US after it's completed, at a symbolic height of
Speaker 1: seven hundred and seventy six ft sev Seventeen seventy six,
Speaker 1: obviously for the you know, USA all the way, seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy six, very important day in our history and all
Speaker 1: the buildings are going to be done between six and
Speaker 1: uh w TC. One is right now at the eight floor,
Speaker 1: which is they're they're close to done. How many floors
Speaker 1: is it going to be? UM? I think well, part
Speaker 1: of what people are complaining about is the top third
Speaker 1: of this building is just hollow space, so a lot
Speaker 1: of people complained about that. So I don't know how
Speaker 1: many actual floors. It may be pretty close then if
Speaker 1: they're the eightieth floor now, and I think they've concrete
Speaker 1: it up to this of any second floor, glassed it
Speaker 1: up to the fifty three and then seven. World Trade
Speaker 1: Center was UM opened in two thousand six. That's already there.
Speaker 1: But the one that's that's being dedicated UM well in
Speaker 1: a few days by the time this thing comes out
Speaker 1: is the World Trade Center Memorial. Right, There's been a
Speaker 1: couple of other memorials, like the Sphere, which is Fritz
Speaker 1: Koenig Um sculpture that was just iconically associated with UM.
Speaker 1: The World Trade Center was found in the rubble. It
Speaker 1: basically dusted off and put in Battery Park with an
Speaker 1: eternal flight, and then there was tribute and lights which
Speaker 1: are the two beams and anybody who's ever seen Spike
Speaker 1: Lee's twenty is familiar with those UM and those are
Speaker 1: brought out every year. That's really cool looking. It is
Speaker 1: very cool. It's like UM forty four. Each tower is
Speaker 1: made up of forty four UM xenon searchlights focused into
Speaker 1: a single column that just shoots right up into space.
Speaker 1: Know if they're gonna do that still, Yeah, I wondered too,
Speaker 1: they should do that every year. I agree, just for
Speaker 1: that one day, you know, Yeah, I think it'd be cool,
Speaker 1: but they, you know, to get a more permanent exhibit.
Speaker 1: UM design competition was held in two thousand three by
Speaker 1: the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Right, and uh, it was international,
Speaker 1: so people from all over the world submitted design. It's
Speaker 1: like a ton of them, Yes, sixty three countries in total,
Speaker 1: five thousand, two hundred one submissions. And the guy who
Speaker 1: won for the memorial went to Tech Georgia. Tech's Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was working as a New York City Housing
Speaker 1: Authority architect until he won. And then I imagine he's
Speaker 1: making a little bit more money now at Handel Architects
Speaker 1: as a partner. Yeah. His name is Michael Aharin. That's
Speaker 1: how to get a job a partnership pretty quick in
Speaker 1: as an architect. I think that's how to make your
Speaker 1: career look at like Maa Lynn, Yeah, who did the
Speaker 1: Vietnam Memaria was the first thing she ever did? Is
Speaker 1: a yeah, well, I think, yeah, yeah, have you ever
Speaker 1: seen the documentary her very neat how'd she come up
Speaker 1: with the idea? She talks all about it, like the
Speaker 1: first third of the documentaries about that and like what
Speaker 1: she went through, Um, like there's a big problem that
Speaker 1: she was Asian, you know, um that kind of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember. I don't remember if it just
Speaker 1: came to her what, But she talks about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that was perfect and its simplicity totally is perfect. But
Speaker 1: it was very much taken the wrong way, as I
Speaker 1: think there's always a group of people who take a
Speaker 1: memorial the wrong way. Although and I think Michael Air
Speaker 1: has been criticized, but I don't think anybody's like this
Speaker 1: is a smack in the face to the people who died,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think it sounds pretty amazing. Tell them
Speaker 1: about it. Well, the centerpiece, it's gonna um the memorial itself.
Speaker 1: There's a museum underneath underground, which we'll get to but
Speaker 1: the Memorial Plaza is about eight acres of what will
Speaker 1: be forest land UM with the two original footprints of
Speaker 1: the World Trade Center towers are now intact as fountains waterfalls, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the world's largest waterfalls. Two thousand gallons of water I
Speaker 1: think per minute flow through these things. And they're these huge, massive,
Speaker 1: almost acre sized squares, like you said, that just fill
Speaker 1: in the footprints of the of the World Trade Centers
Speaker 1: UM and they're just amazing the thing there. We can't
Speaker 1: really describe them any better than that because they're that simple.
Speaker 1: But unless you see a rendering of them or there's
Speaker 1: some really cool architectural animations of them too, um, they're
Speaker 1: just they just take your breath away. And they're The
Speaker 1: memorial um that Air designed is called reflecting absence UM,
Speaker 1: and the whole point is to just kind of show
Speaker 1: we're missing something here and we're always going to be
Speaker 1: missing something here. Yeah, that's why I thought it was
Speaker 1: such a brilliant design. It was not some I don't know,
Speaker 1: it just made sense. You know, why build something up
Speaker 1: when you can say so much more by creating these
Speaker 1: two big voids and then the water flowing. It's all
Speaker 1: very symbolic, you know, the recirculating water and living, you know,
Speaker 1: breathing life into the city. And the trees or like
Speaker 1: sweet gums and oaks. White oaks, yes, swamp white oaks
Speaker 1: are there's gonna be like four hundred of them on
Speaker 1: the plaza. And the plaza was designed by UM Peter
Speaker 1: Walker and partners from Berkeley UM in conjunction with Michael Ahard.
Speaker 1: I think that was the submission where these two people
Speaker 1: jointly coming up with this plan and he was like,
Speaker 1: I am the landscape architect, I need some help, yeah,
Speaker 1: or vice versa, you know. Um, but Peter Walker came
Speaker 1: up with this idea to you suspended paving systems to
Speaker 1: support the white oaks, because um, an urban an urban
Speaker 1: tree or a tree in urban forest like this, they
Speaker 1: don't live that long. Um. But and the reason why
Speaker 1: is because the soil becomes too compact and you have
Speaker 1: to have paving for people to walk around on. So
Speaker 1: what they came up with was a suspended paving system
Speaker 1: which uses like columns and beams like a grid to
Speaker 1: create this hollow space that will support pavement but will
Speaker 1: also allow routes to go through. So these trees, these
Speaker 1: swamp white oaks should thrive and live like many many
Speaker 1: decades longer than ones that you know, were just planted
Speaker 1: wherever along the street. That's right, and they could potentially
Speaker 1: get up to about sixty ft tall, kind of creating
Speaker 1: a canopy park. So that was one of the things
Speaker 1: they wanted, was was a quiet place, sort of a
Speaker 1: retreat from the city where you feel like you're sort
Speaker 1: of insulated from from the rest of the city and
Speaker 1: the noises of the city and the swamp white oaks also,
Speaker 1: Chuck are gonna be brought in UM from all over
Speaker 1: the area of New York, but also from places around
Speaker 1: UM where Flight ninety three went down in Pennsylvania and
Speaker 1: in the DC area that you're gonna have trees from
Speaker 1: other nine eleven impacted areas brought I thought that was cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I read an article on the family who's UM supplied
Speaker 1: the trees basically for the project. Yeah, it was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And then also around the reflect thing Absence memorial, they're
Speaker 1: going to have UM basically a bronze wall with the
Speaker 1: names of all nearly three thousand victims of the and
Speaker 1: two thousand one attacks on the World Trade Center. UM
Speaker 1: cut into them Yeah, so you can do the little
Speaker 1: uh charcoal rubbings on paper if you want. They shine
Speaker 1: light through them at night. Uh. They're grouped together by
Speaker 1: either where they died or where they worked, or if
Speaker 1: there was a special request a group people like with
Speaker 1: friends of theirs that worked in the building that they've
Speaker 1: done that too, that's cool. So that's kind of cool. Um.
Speaker 1: And then probably the most noticeable feature within this little
Speaker 1: urban forest, UM is going to be a glass building
Speaker 1: that's that forms the atrium or the entryway to the
Speaker 1: Memorial museum, that's right. Uh. And the most noticeable feature
Speaker 1: of that are going to be these two steel tridents
Speaker 1: which um made up the Yeah, they made up the
Speaker 1: the exterior that the exo skeleton UM. The the apparently
Speaker 1: went up and then at this at the seventy ft mark,
Speaker 1: the seventh story, Uh, they split into three and then
Speaker 1: they supported steel beams that went all the way up
Speaker 1: to the top of the building. Right. So these things
Speaker 1: were left standing I think on the north tower. UM.
Speaker 1: So they took those off to Kennedy with a bunch
Speaker 1: of other artifacts and kept them in a hangar. And
Speaker 1: now they've been returned to the site and they built
Speaker 1: the atrium around these two things. Yeah, they used a
Speaker 1: lot of pieces of the World Trade Center in the
Speaker 1: museum itself to partially just you know, remind people and
Speaker 1: then also to show again show scale of you know,
Speaker 1: I think the tridents themselves are close to a hundred
Speaker 1: feet tall nine I think ninety because they branched at
Speaker 1: the seventy ftmark and they go up to like the
Speaker 1: ninety footmark. So um. And then also check the museum
Speaker 1: itself is largely underground. Um, and they're in the footprints
Speaker 1: of the World Trade Center towers and parts around them.
Speaker 1: But basically the whole thing is set up to give
Speaker 1: you an underground down view of how incredibly massive these
Speaker 1: buildings were by leaving like the concrete footings any steel
Speaker 1: supports that they can um intact and then just all
Speaker 1: and I guess playing off the vastness of the space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that had to do with the museum and the design
Speaker 1: up top. Two was I think you can in the
Speaker 1: museum down below you can stand in between the two
Speaker 1: footprints still and uh, they've created a lot of just
Speaker 1: open space, it seems like, right. But then there's also
Speaker 1: like at the at the corners of the Princess maybe
Speaker 1: like some I think there's an aluminum clad volumes whether
Speaker 1: it's called to basically give this kind of ghost outline
Speaker 1: of the buildings, so to give you an even better
Speaker 1: idea of their scale. UM. And all this is underground,
Speaker 1: Like we said, the plaza actually above serves as a
Speaker 1: green roof to the museum UM, and you go through
Speaker 1: the hrium and then you to to get to the
Speaker 1: museum itself underground. You go through UM, you go down
Speaker 1: a ramp UM and that's very symbolic of the ramp
Speaker 1: that was used to clean out the ground zero site.
Speaker 1: It was used during construction of the original towers UM.
Speaker 1: So it's it's kind of like throwing you back in
Speaker 1: time and during the construction and the cleanup UM, which
Speaker 1: you know, really marks the history of this site. Those
Speaker 1: two things. Yeah, there's a couple of other notable aspects
Speaker 1: to the museum that they're going to have. The Survivor stairs,
Speaker 1: which if you google that, I mean, they're pretty famous.
Speaker 1: They were one of the sets of stairs that you know,
Speaker 1: it said hundreds, but I would imagine maybe even thousands
Speaker 1: of people used to escape. It was like one of
Speaker 1: the only ways out. Yeah, it was along World trade
Speaker 1: center six. I think so in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: it was lowered down into the side again for it's
Speaker 1: you know, final resting place there in the museum. And
Speaker 1: the other big thing is the last column in the
Speaker 1: west chamber of the museum. It's going to house this
Speaker 1: and it was returned to the site. You might remember
Speaker 1: the last column and was where it was one of
Speaker 1: the last standing obviously, and that's where people uh decorated uh,
Speaker 1: this column with with memories of their loved ones and
Speaker 1: and have you seen this person that kind of thing. Right.
Speaker 1: They're also gonna have the slurry wall in there, which
Speaker 1: was surprisingly intact. They it was. It was an original
Speaker 1: huge wall that they built to keep the Hudson from
Speaker 1: flooding it. And after the attacks, after the class of
Speaker 1: the building, this wall was just standing there. It didn't
Speaker 1: have any support, but it was still keeping the Hudson out.
Speaker 1: So they reinforced it and rebuilt it. But they took
Speaker 1: a sixty two by sixty four foot section of the
Speaker 1: slurry wall and it's going to make up a significant
Speaker 1: part of the museum itself. This huge man, this must
Speaker 1: be enormous under there, because I mean, beyond all these
Speaker 1: huge elements. They have all the void open space, so
Speaker 1: I'm very much looking forward to going to that. Um
Speaker 1: we I think we skipped over the Memorial Glade. UM
Speaker 1: in the park above the museum, there is a section
Speaker 1: called the Memorial Glade, which is going to be an
Speaker 1: open area where they'll have like ceremonies and and things
Speaker 1: like that, and a that's surrounded by sweet gums, which
Speaker 1: should be autumn red on September eleven, is what they say.
Speaker 1: They play it that way, at least the museum itself.
Speaker 1: Like the exhibits that they're going to have, they're gonna
Speaker 1: have permanent exhibits of artifacts from you know, the clean
Speaker 1: up from the rescue from the attacks, um, personal story
Speaker 1: pre attacked too. I think they're gonna have obviously some
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're going to have some information on there,
Speaker 1: like the construction and all that. Yeah, and then probably
Speaker 1: the people who did it. Imagine there'll be some information
Speaker 1: there yeah. Um. And also they're gonna have some stuff
Speaker 1: on the d C in Pittsburgh Losses or not Pittsburgh,
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania Losses. But there's um a very controversial exhibit that's
Speaker 1: going to be added. It looks like it's going to
Speaker 1: be added as far back as um or as recently
Speaker 1: as April. That's as far back as I can find
Speaker 1: any press. I found something more recently, I think it is.
Speaker 1: It's gonna they're going forward with it. Well, um, there
Speaker 1: there were there were a lot of human remains found, uh,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them were put together and said,
Speaker 1: you know, this is this person, this belonged to this person. Um.
Speaker 1: But after a while, like the matches ran out. Um
Speaker 1: and the Medical Examiner still has over nine thousand pieces
Speaker 1: of human remains, and the last match was made in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, So they're kind of losing hope that
Speaker 1: they're ever going able to identify who they belong to.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people are unidentified at this point. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of the families of the fort of the
Speaker 1: victims who haven't been identified, or saying keep trying, don't stop.
Speaker 1: Medical Examiner and the people who are running the museum
Speaker 1: are saying, no, we have a better place for him.
Speaker 1: Why don't we put them in the museum, And they
Speaker 1: have it planned to put them behind a quote from
Speaker 1: virgil Um that says, no day shell erase you from
Speaker 1: the memory of time. And the letters themselves are going
Speaker 1: to be made of World Trade Center steel. Um. But
Speaker 1: they're you know, a lot of people find the schoolish
Speaker 1: and ghastly, like you can't put human remains on display.
Speaker 1: And in this article in the New York Times, they
Speaker 1: interviewed a lot of curators who are like, it depends,
Speaker 1: you know, like you can't just put human remains in
Speaker 1: a museum. You're not supposed to do that. But if
Speaker 1: it's a memorial on the side of an atrocity, like
Speaker 1: Ashwitz has lots of human remains, Um, the Cahmer Rouge
Speaker 1: Museum has all sorts of human remains. So this is
Speaker 1: museum wise speaking appropriate. But really, I mean, it's up
Speaker 1: to your you know, what you think is morally acceptable
Speaker 1: or not. Yeah, I think what I read most of
Speaker 1: the upset comes from the fact that they were underground
Speaker 1: in the museum, and they were supposedly told that they
Speaker 1: were going to be kept in a in a tomb
Speaker 1: right in the park, above ground, right and away from tourists.
Speaker 1: Like this, this plan is to put them right in
Speaker 1: the exhibit, like here's some of the remains of the victims.
Speaker 1: But there would be tour I mean, I guess there
Speaker 1: would be tourist up top as well, But I mean
Speaker 1: I see their difference though. Yeah, no, there's a big
Speaker 1: difference for sure. But I think just about everybody agrees
Speaker 1: they should be kept on the site somewhere. It's just
Speaker 1: in what capacity, right, Chuck. Let's say I have a
Speaker 1: hundred bucks sitting around and I'm like, I want to
Speaker 1: contribute to this memorial. What can I do? You can
Speaker 1: buy a cobble stone. I was a little disappointed to
Speaker 1: see that the cobble stones weren't engraved, because that's usually
Speaker 1: what you do. Yeah, there's a website that links your
Speaker 1: cobble stone to your name, so it's not an actual
Speaker 1: engrave cobblestone. But you can still donate a hundred bucks,
Speaker 1: I will get you a cobble stone on the path
Speaker 1: of the plaza itself. Five dollars will get you a
Speaker 1: cobble stone on the memorial glade that we told you
Speaker 1: about in A thousand bucks will get you one a
Speaker 1: granite paper that will be a walkway to the memorial itself,
Speaker 1: and that is a nine one on memorial dot org
Speaker 1: slash donations, and I imagine you can just donate period
Speaker 1: if you want. You'll get your cobblestones but if that's
Speaker 1: not important to you, then it's probably good good cause,
Speaker 1: I would say. And if you're gonna be in New
Speaker 1: York this September eleven, um, the September eleven Memorial will
Speaker 1: officially open that day. And if you're going to be
Speaker 1: in New York September eleven, two thousand twelve, the Memorial
Speaker 1: Museum is expected to be open, then yeah, they're they're
Speaker 1: people like our shooting video of the the waterfalls being
Speaker 1: tested and stuff out of their office window and it's
Speaker 1: um pretty amazing. So UM. We've got a couple of
Speaker 1: articles on site. We have how the World Trade Center worked,
Speaker 1: or I guess the World Trade Center is what it's called, um,
Speaker 1: and it's very comprehensive. I think Tom Harris wrote it,
Speaker 1: so you can type a World Trade Center and that
Speaker 1: should also bring up how the World Trade Center Memorial works,
Speaker 1: which coming soon, right it. It It will be up by
Speaker 1: the time this comes out, So yeah, I hope so um.
Speaker 1: And again, if you want to learn more about the memorial,
Speaker 1: you can go to nine one one Memorial dot org
Speaker 1: um and you can donate there too. And uh is
Speaker 1: that it? I think this is our nine eleven podcast.
Speaker 1: We've been asked by a bunch of people to do one,
Speaker 1: and and unless we're inspired to actual yeah, I actually
Speaker 1: go over the grizzly details. I would say this will
Speaker 1: serve you concur Yeah, I don't know if I want
Speaker 1: to do that one. That's all right. Do you want
Speaker 1: to send us an email? We'd love to hear from you.
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