Stuff You Should Know - How the World Trade Center Memorial Works

Episode Date: September 8, 2011

The World Trade Center was once a global symbol of progress. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, the area has undergone a massive rebuilding process. Chuck and Josh take a look at the World Trade Center, its memorial and its symbolism in this special episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuckers Bryant, and that makes this a very congested episode of Stuff You Should Know, right? Yeah, we were just reminiscing about the, what was it, ought eight or nine?

I don't remember. Probably oh nine, when Josh was sick for like, I said he was sick for a season and that's really not too far off. Yeah, but you mean recently pointed out that I wasn't sick at all last year, and I don't think I've ever not been sick for a year. So it has to do probably with taking better care of myself, not smoking. Probably. I get the stomach thing. I don't usually get regular sick. Yeah, you do get stomach pain. Once a year, man. It's not even like a bug. It's like a staff of infection or Ebola of the stomach or something horrible like that. Yes, it is gross. So are you willing to muddle through this one with me

sounding like this? I think people can forgive that. We needed to get this one out in time for the September 11th anniversary. Yeah, the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. The attack, well, the plane that went down Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. Have you seen that movie? Yeah. And then the attack on the Pentagon. The 10th anniversary is going to be a big, sad, solo occasion. It seems like the last couple of years, it's been September 11th and this is a time to stop and reflect for a moment, but I think it's all going to come barreling back on the 10th anniversary. Yeah, I think people have been anticipating that. And the opening of the memorial, which we're going to talk about, has a lot to do with that,

obviously. It does. It's going to officially be dedicated and opened on September 11th, 2011. Pretty good timing. Yeah. And then the museum, which we'll also talk about, will be open the following year, I think on September 11th, 2012. And that thing sounds pretty amazing. Yeah, I'm very excited about going to these. Me too. Maybe excited is not there. No, I'm excited about going. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, there's nothing. It doesn't mean you're flippant about it. No, I'm excited to see them as well. Yeah. That's okay. Okay. Thanks. I get excited every time I go to those things. Yeah. It's a good place for remembrance, Josh. Yes, that memorials make an excellent spot for remembrance. Yes. Let's talk about the spot

where the memorial, the World Trade Center Memorial, which is what we're talking about, is going to be situated. The original spot where the World Trade Center complex was situated. Yes. Beginning work started in the 60s and was completed in, I think, 1973 on the towers. I think work for the whole World Trade Center complex wasn't completed until 1990. Yeah, 14 years. 14 years after the towers were completed. So it was like 1987. Yeah, something, yeah. Yeah. But tell me about the spot, the World Trade Center spot. It was a very ambitious project. It was, Josh. Seven buildings total, spanning 16 acres. It's a lot of room. And each tower itself, I think, had a footprint of an acre. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

They had office space to the tune of about 50,000 total workers and about 35,000 of those were split among 430 companies in the buildings. It was 10 million square feet of office space. That's incredible. It was. It was originally, speaking of ambition, I read an article called The Height of Ambition. It was a 2002 New York Times article. And it's a required reading for anybody. It's really good. It's all about the construction. Cool. It's about the attacks. It's a really comprehensive, great article. Have to check that out. But they were saying, there was no way they were going to go any less than 10 million square feet. When they decided to, they're like, that's it. We're doing 10 million. Wow. And that's so,

that's such an enormous amount of office space that other real estate developers in the city were like, that's going to like imbalance the market. Yeah. That's so much. It's going to flood this place all at once. Yeah. I remember at the time, you know, in September 11, thinking that the death hole was going to be like 10, 20, 30,000 people because I knew how many people work there. Right. And it would have been had the buildings not stayed up for an hour or so. Right. Or had it been an hour or so later. Right. Once people were all in there. Yeah. Because you said there's about 50,000 people that worked at the World Trade Centers. And then there's another maybe 70,000, 40,000 to 70,000 people who commuted through because

there was a subway station underneath. Yeah. And the PATH train station. Yeah. And a mall and people coming to have lunch with like their husband or wife or whatever. So 70,000 additional people pass through that, that complex every day. Indeed, Josh. If we're talking size, we've got a couple of stats. The North Tower, the original World Trade Center one, although there's a new one, which we're going to talk about. Yeah. 1368 feet and then 1730 feet with its large antenna. Yeah. And then the South Tower was about six feet shorter than the North Tower, which I thought found interesting. Yeah. I wonder if that was a wonder why they did that.

Maybe the bedrock was six feet, six feet lower or something. It has to be something like that. I don't think it was. I'm sure they got to the final measurement and were like, you have to be kidding me. Right. Because they were both 110 stories. It's not like WCTC2 was shortchanged a floor or a half floor. Yeah. 288,100 metric tons. Yeah. And it's each one of them. It's tough to find comparisons for this, but it's a Ford Explorer. Each one weighed about equivalent to 172,000 Ford Explorers. That's heavy. That's a heavy building. And that's a lot of weight and we'll get to that weight and what happened to a lot of that weight coming up shortly too. Right. Oh yeah. So one of the cool things that you found was originally

when they planned the towers, they didn't know what kind of sway that a person could take. Let's say if you're working on story 90, like this tower swaying back and forth in the wind, what kind, what that would do to people. Yeah. No one had ever, these are when they were built the tallest structures in the world. You can't just have office space up there that people are getting sick on because they're dizzy. Right. Because no one would rent it out. But they didn't know that, they didn't know, well maybe somebody could take six feet of sway on either side. Right. They had no idea. Maybe people can take like almost no sway. So they had a guy in Eugene, Oregon who was a psychologist, basically purchased an office building, put parts of it up

on jacks and like test people. He had them come in for eye exams. Right. But was really testing them to see how much sway they could put up with and found not much, like a couple of inches either way. Yeah. After a couple of minutes of that, the people start freaking out, get dizzy, get nauseated. So they were like, you have to do something because your building's gonna sway a lot more than this. That's right. And you can't have your tenants getting sick. So they built in shock absorbers that prevented the sway. So I think most people know by now just from breakdown of the, what happened with the collapse that it was an exoskeleton design. Yeah. And it was connected with a core, steel core connected it with a hat trust at the top. Yeah. So you had columns going

out on the outside where they normally would have been put inside. So that opened up much more office space. So the columns were on the outside and there's a steel core in the center, like you said, and it was connected by a hat trust that just fit over the top and connected everything to the center. So it just stabilized the whole thing. That's right. And it made it light, but very strong. Right. I think it was about 95% open air inside the building itself. Yeah. Which has a lot to do with why it collapsed. Yep. There was a police station, Port Authority in New Jersey, New York and New Jersey had a police desk. Yep. They had their own zip code and eight dedicated mail carriers. Yeah. I couldn't, I'm sure it's still there. It has to be the zip. It still has its own zip code,

right? 10048. Yeah. I looked that up actually. I think they held on to that zip code and to assign, you know, the new world traits in our complex, that same zip code, if I'm not mistaken. I would hope so. This is a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. But yeah, eight postal carriers just for the WTC complex. Wow. Like they worked within, you know, I guess it was 16 acres, but it's probably not as big as your usual beat in New York, I would say. No, I wouldn't think so. Or route. No, I think they call it beats. That's just cops though, isn't it? No. Cops and mail carriers. The mail carrier here is okay. Chuck, also these, just to give another idea of scale, there were each of the towers themselves. Just the towers had 99 elevators each. Each one had

almost, well, almost 22,000 windows. And apparently you could have built a sidewalk, a standard sidewalk, I take it, from New York to Washington DC with just the concrete used in just the towers. Wow. So these were massive colossal structures, just the towers. The whole complex itself was colossal. Yeah. But just the towers are enough to get the point across, you know? Well, and all you ever really hear about still is usually the WTC one and two. Yeah. But all of the buildings were eventually raised, the whole complex. Right. Right. And we should also say that, you know, everybody kind of came on board. But in the beginning, there were very big detractors to the World Trade Center projects, including those real estate developers who were

like, this is going to be a drain on the market. And one of the guys was named Lawrence Ween, who was an Empire State Building co-owner, right? And he took out a full page ad in the New York Times that had a picture of one of the World Trade Center towers with a plane flying into it to basically suggest that this was a hazard to air traffic, right? Right. And it actually almost came true in 1981 when an Aralina's flight just narrowly missed the North Tower, but made off, okay, it was safe. That's right. Yeah. In 1993, however, there was the first attack on the World Trade Center. An Islamic, Islamist extremist group detonated about a thousand pounds of explosives in a rented truck underneath the World Trade Center and killed six people,

injured thousands, and they are included, which I thought was a classy move in the World Trade Center Memorial years later. Yeah. I never really considered that, but I thought it was pretty nice thing to do. The truck left half a football-sized football field-sized crater, and it apparently rocked the whole building. Like you think, well, six people died. It couldn't have been that big. It was a huge blast. Oh, yeah. It was just in the wrong place. Right. But they were trying to take the building down, you know? Yeah, from below. So that within a few days or weeks after the February 1993 attack, things were back to business as usual. Governor Andrew Cuomo was the first to move back into the office building, right? And things were just, like I said, business as usual,

until the morning of September 11th, 2001 came. Yes, Peter. It's gondola down four blocks north of the World Trade Center. The second building that was hit by the plane has just completely collapsed. The entire building has just collapsed, as if a demolition team set off when you see the old demolition to the old buildings. It's folded down on itself, and it is not there anymore. That should be it. It has completely collapsed. The whole side has collapsed. The whole building has collapsed. So that pretty much speaks for itself, I think. Yeah. Where were you that morning? I had just gotten back from New York, actually. I was there for a vacation and a Radiohead concert and in New Jersey, or actually it was Liberty State Park, and flew home on September,

like the 7th or something. So I was living in LA, but I flew back to Atlanta and then got stuck in Atlanta for a little while because everything was grounded. So I was in my friend, Big John's warehouse, and Big Country Boy, and he woke me up. Dude, get up here. Yeah. Yeah, remember that, too. It was like one of the towers has been hit, and you just right when I started watching CNN and figuring out what was going on, it's like this is not an accident. Yeah, I think both of us kind of came to that conclusion pretty quick, too. Yeah. So I hung out in his warehouse all day, and we watched it on TV, basically, and mourned. Yeah, and I have to say, it didn't sink in as hard than as it did when we were researching this for this podcast, man. I was watching, just finding

that clip we just played. I watched about an hour of, as it happened, coverage, and it really drew me in and just depressed me like crazy, but it got through to me finally after 10 years. It really hit me how huge this is. Yeah, I'd plowed through a bunch of video this week, too, and last week, and it was because I hadn't researched it for a long time after probably since like 2003, so then many years of not even really considering it much, and then all of a sudden it's all back on and coming up this September. And I think this being older, too, especially for me, being 10 years older, it's gotten through to me a lot more. Yeah, God, how old were you? You were in your early 20s, mid 20s? I was like 25. God, that's crazy. Yeah,

24, 25, something like that. Yeah, this is a little kid. So Chuck, we mentioned how there could have been tens of thousands more people who could have died had the buildings not stayed up, and there were a couple of big questions after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Number one, why did they fall? They didn't have to fall. And number two, why didn't they just fall over immediately? And the answer to the second question is the design. Yeah. That exoskeleton connected to a central steel core by a hat trust could have kept that thing up indefinitely. The reason they fell was a fatal flaw, right? Those steel columns that make up the exoskeleton tapered at the top because they had to support less weight, making the whole structure lighter

requiring less steel, right? So the planes, when they flew into the higher floors, they were flying into steel columns that were only as thin as like a quarter inch across. Right. So they just severed them. Yeah. The problem is the true fatal flaw was the heat from the fire, though. Yeah, I read a big article yesterday on this about this physicist basically explained how they came down to sort of rebut the idiots who say that it was a controlled demolition by the US government. And like steel can't get that hot and melt and blah, blah, blah. And he explained the difference between heat and temperature. And I wish I was smart enough to relay that now. But I would just advise, just Google, like, why did they collapse? And there's a really good article

on that. Right. So one of the first hits for our purposes, we're going to take it on face value that the heat from the raging fires created a high enough temperature that the steel, the thinnest steel, melted and the weight distribution throughout the exoskeleton was even further compromised. Yeah. Until these things started going from the connection to the hat trust was snapped. Yeah. And then that was that. There was no support any longer. So these floors obviously could support the weight of the floors on top of them because they had been up since 1973. Right. They can support the static weight when the floors start collapsing on one another. It becomes moving heavier weight. And it's created a domino effect essentially. Right. Just plowed

right into the floors beneath and picked up more and more steam as it went. Apparently, the material from the highest floors by the time they reached the ground were traveling about 120 miles an hour. Yeah. And that could have been even faster according to that physicist. And he said the fact that they fell straight down was sensible and fortunate because they could have swayed and toppled over, which 110 stories falling to the left or to the right is going to take out and do a lot more damage. Obviously. Well, the South Tower did do some damage. The North Tower came down almost completely in its footprint and it just compacted itself into this dense acre sized square of debris that went from street level 70 feet underground to the bedrock

and just filled its own footprint almost completely. The other towers three and seven were completely trashed. Tower six was still intact, but it had a huge chunk of the North Tower against it. Right. And that the one they had to take out for those reasons. Yeah. Like otherwise, it might have been okay. That one they actually did demolish. Right. Yeah. Right. So the whole site kind of just became a loss. I guess an estimated 300,000 tons of scrap metal were generated. Most of it sold to India and China. Yeah. And there was a big hubbub. I didn't know this. Did you hear about this when it happened? Yeah. The mafia diverted like 255 tons of scrap metal to its own junkyards for profit and got caught pretty quickly because the FBI

was on that case. But after that, there were I think 100,000 truckloads of debris trucked out to the landfill in New Jersey, I believe. It's called Fresh Kill Landfill. And those all got police escorts after the FBI found out the mafia was diverting scrap metal. Right. Obviously. Yeah. That's a good move. The cleanup was very quick. I remember at the time thinking that it happened way quicker than I thought it would. Well, yeah. They were like, this is going to take a year, maybe two, maybe three. Exactly. It took like eight or nine months. Yes. It also came in under budget. They thought it was going to cost a couple of billion dollars. And that was clearly over inflated because it only cost 650 million to clean up, which is a lot of money, but nothing

compared to two bill. No. A lot less. Yeah. They did get a little criticism because they thought they kind of hurried the cleanup a little too much considering the potential toxic materials found at the site. Yeah. A lot of people thought, you know, maybe we should take our time here, study this a little more, see what's what we have to deal with before we start sending people down there. Well, one group called it the most the worst toxic site in our history. Did he mean nation's history? I don't know. That's a good question. Yeah. It could be nation New York world. I don't know. There is a lot of toxic stuff. For example, 200,000 pounds of lead plus cadmium from the 50,000 PCs in the World Trade Center offices, right? Mercury from the fluorescent

lights. They're apparently about half a million fluorescent tube lights that all have mercury in them to work. Have you heard of polycystic aromatic hydrocarbons? I have not. They're apparently, they cause laryngeal cancer and a couple of other cancers and they come from partially burned fossil fuels. Wow. What else, Chuck? Asbestos, lots of asbestos, benzene, dioxin from oil and fuel. So, not the kind of stuff you want to be breathing in and people found years afterward were getting sick. A lot of the first responders getting sick and dying even. Yeah. The base player from TV on the radio was a first responder and he came down with cancer and in his late 30s or something and died. That's right. Within the last year. Did I know that he was a first responder?

As what? What was his, what kind of responder was he? I don't remember, but he was, he was a first responder to ground zero. Wow. Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as

guilty. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset work. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw, oh, wow, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao, the tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen or tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight. I mean, you saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this

vortex. It sucks you win. Like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories. So I followed them deep into the jungle. And it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things that, you know, somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think, oh, all this for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions, wild chocolate on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. So there was a combined payout of $625 million to some of the first responders and cleanup

workers after a lawsuit was filed. And that was just, they came to that settlement within the last year or two, right? They've been hammering that out forever. And then there was the Zidroga bill, which is massive $7.4 billion in compensation for everything from like economic impact to health. But there's a big, well, there's a big outcry because they didn't include cancer. Yeah, they couldn't find a definite link. I mean, this is one of those where I say throw it in there. Yeah. Like cover everything. Right. Apparently that's not the case. Well, no, but it's left open so that it can be amended to include cancer later. Oh, really? Like if somebody's like, here's your definitive study on it that shows the link.

But apparently the link is enough for people who are engaged in like personal litigation. They've been generally successful in just doing New York. Okay. Just not a class action kind of thing. Well, just not the Zidroga bill. Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. Well, no one died during the cleanup of the ground zero, which is pretty amazing considering what a dangerous place it was. You know, there were like huge voids that were covered up, you know, by things that, you know, big gaps and holes that you could easily fall into. Yeah. Like, you know, those tiger traps where it's just kind of covered with a little bit of

twigs or leaves. Yeah. There were like 70 foot drops that looked like they were stable, solid rubble or whatever. But yeah, there's a picture of a huge earth mover like sliding down with a guy and it like, oh my God. Yeah. I'm really surprised no one died during that cleanup. Yeah. 60 men died building the thing. Well, that was the 70s. Yeah. So that brings us Josh to 10 years later. Yeah. The 9 11 Memorial and Museum, which we both said we're excited to go see because it's a pretty amazing design. To me, they hit all the right notes and a lot of people have complained about the actual building, the new World Trade Center one has been beaten up pretty badly in the press.

A lot of people think they should have just mimicked the original Twin Towers, except maybe a little higher as like a show of our strength as Americans, right? With the giant bird. Exactly. With Donald Trump on top, looking the bird. But Trump was one of the ones actually who, who hates the new WTC one. And it is. Well, originally it was called the Freedom Tower, which could not smack of the Bush era more. Yeah, they changed that. That or World War II when we started calling French fries freedom fries. Right. Was that World War II? Yeah. And that came about again after this. Yeah. Yeah. And then also Sour Crout was called Liberty Cabbage. That's just crazy, jingoistic, you know? Yeah. So like I said, Trump is not a big fan of the

design or the architect who designed WTC one, the new one. What's the name Daniel? Oh, Daniel Lipskind. Is that him? He's been much battered. Yeah. Kind of feel bad for the guy. You know, he's trying to, trying to do a good job, I'm sure. Yeah. It is going to be the tallest building in the U.S. after it's completed at a symbolic height of 776 feet. 1700. 1700. 1776, obviously. Right. For the, you know, USA all the way. How do you mean? 1776. It's a very important date in our history. And all the buildings are going to be done between 2012 and 2016. And WTC one is right now at the 80th floor, which is, they're, they're close to done. How many floors is it going to be? Did you say? Um, I think, well, part of what people are complaining about is the top third of this building

is just hollow space. So a lot of people complained about that. So I don't know how many actual floors. They may be pretty close then if they're at the 80th floor now. Yeah. And I think they've concreted up to the 72nd floor, glassed it up to the 53rd. So it's coming along. And then 7 World Trade Center was, um, opened in 2006. So that's already there. Oh, really? Yeah. But the one that's, that's being dedicated, um, well, in a few days by the time this thing comes out is the World Trade Center Memorial, right? There've been a couple of other memorials like the Sphere, which is Fritz Koenig, um, sculpture that was just iconically associated with, um, the World Trade Center. It was found in the rubble. Yeah. It basically dusted off and put in Battery Park with an eternal

flame. Yes. And then there was Tribute and Lights, which are the two beams anybody who's ever seen Spike Lee's 25th Hour. Yeah. Is familiar with those. Um, and those are brought out every year. That's really cool looking. It is very cool. It's like, um, 44, each tower is made up of 44, um, xenon searchlights focused into a single column that just shoots right up into space. I wonder if they're going to do that still. Yeah, I wonder too. They should do that every year. I agree. Just for that one day, you know? Yeah. I think it'd be cool. But they, you know, to get a more permanent exhibit, um, a design competition was held in 2003 by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, right? Yes. And, uh, it was international. So people from all over the world

submitted designs, like a ton of them. Yeah. 63 countries in total, 5,201 submissions. And the guy who won for the memorial went to tech. That's right. George Tech. That's right. Yeah. And he was working as a, uh, New York City Housing Authority architect until he won. And then I imagine he's making a little bit more money now at, uh, Handel Architects as a partner. Yeah. Same to Michael Arrod. That's how to get a job, a partnership pretty quick and as an architect, I think. That's how to make your career. Look at like Maya Lin, who did the Vietnam Memorial was the first thing she ever did as a student at Yale, I think. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever seen the documentary on her? Uh-uh. Very neat. How'd she come up with the idea?

She talks all about it. Like the first third of the documentary is about that and like what she went through. Right. Um, like there's a big problem that she was Asian, you know, um, sure, that kind of thing. Um, but I don't remember. I don't remember if it just came to her or what, but she talks about it. I mean, that was perfect in its simplicity. Totally. Is perfect. Yeah. But it was very much taken the wrong way as I think there's always a group of people who take a memorial the wrong way. Although, and I think Michael Arrod's been criticized, but I don't think anybody's like, this is a smack in the face to the people who died and didn't. Yeah. I think it sounds pretty amazing. Tell them about it. Well, the centerpiece, it's

gonna, um, the memorial itself, there's a museum underneath underground, which we'll get to, but the memorial plaza is about eight acres of what will be forest land. Um, with the two original footprints of the World Trade Center towers are now, uh, intact as fountains, waterfalls. Yeah. The world's largest waterfalls. 52,000 gallons of water, I think per minute flow through these things. And they're these huge massive, almost acre size squares. Like you said, that just fill in the footprints of the, of the World Trade Centers. Um, and they're just amazing looking there. We can't really describe them any better than that because they're that simple, but unless you see a rendering of them or there's some really cool architectural animations of them

too, um, they're just, they just take your breath away. Yeah. And they're the, the memorial, um, the air designed is called reflecting absence. Um, and the whole point is to just kind of show we're missing something here. Yeah. And we're always going to be missing something here. Yeah. That's why I thought it was such a brilliant design. It was not some, I don't know, it just made sense. You know, why build something up when you can say so much more by creating these two big voids. And then the water flowing, it's all very symbolic, you know, the recirculating water and, uh, living, you know, breathing life into the city and the trees or like sweet gums and, uh, oaks, white oaks. Yeah. Swamp white oaks are, there's going to be

like 400 of them on the Plaza. Yeah. And the Plaza was designed by, um, Peter Walker and partners from Berkeley, um, in conjunction with Michael Arrod. I think that was the submission where these two people jointly coming up with this plan and he was like, I am the landscape architect. Right. I need some help. Yeah. Uh, or vice versa. You know, maybe so. Um, but Peter Walker came up with this idea to use suspended paving systems to support the white oaks because, um, an urban, an urban tree or a tree in an urban forest like this, they don't live that long. Right. Um, but and the reason why is because the soil becomes too compacted. You have to have paving for people to walk around on. Right. So what they came up with was a suspended paving system, which uses

like columns and beams, like a grid to create this hollow space that will support pavement, but will also allow roots to go through. Yeah. So these trees, these swamp white oaks should thrive and live like many, many decades longer than ones that, you know, are just planted wherever along the street. That's right. And they could potentially get up to about 60 feet tall, kind of creating a canopy park. So that was one of the things they wanted was, was a quiet place, sort of a retreat from the city where you feel like you're sort of insulated from, from the rest of the city. Yeah. And the noises of the city and the swamp white oaks also check are going to be brought in, um, from all over the, the area of New York, but also from places around, um,

where 90 flight 93 went down in Pennsylvania and, uh, in the DC area, you're going to have trees from other 9-11 impacted areas brought. Yeah. I thought that was cool. Yeah. I read an article on the, um, the family who's, um, supplied the trees basically for the project. Really? Yeah. It was pretty cool. Uh, and then also around the reflecting absence memorial, they're going to have, um, basically a bronze wall with the names of all nearly 3,000 victims of the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, um, cut into them. Yeah. So you can do the little, uh, uh, charcoal rubbings on paper if you want. They shine light through them at night. They're grouped together by, uh, either where they died or where they worked, or if there was a

special request to group people like, uh, with friends of theirs that worked in the building that they've done that too. That's cool. So that's kind of cool. Yeah. Um, and then probably the most noticeable feature within this little urban forest, um, is going to be a glass building that's, that forms the atrium or the entryway to the memorial museum. That's right. And the most noticeable feature of that are going to be these two steel tridents, which, um, made up the, yeah, they made up the, the, uh, the exterior, that, that exoskeleton. Um, the, the apparently went up and then at this, at the 70 feet mark, the seventh story, uh, they split into three and then they supported steel beams that went all the way up to the top of the building.

Right. So those things were left standing, I think on the north tower. Um, so they took those off to Kennedy with a bunch of other artifacts and kept them in a hangar. And now they've been returned to the site and they built the atrium around these two things. Yeah. They used a lot of, uh, of pieces of the World Trade Center in the museum itself to partially just, you know, remind people. And then also to show, again, show scale of, you know, I think the tridents themselves are close to a hundred feet tall. Yeah. I think 90. Yeah. Because they, they branch at the 70 foot mark and they go up to like the 90 feet foot mark. So, um, and then also check the museum itself is largely underground. Yeah. Um, and they're in the footprints of the

World Trade Center towers and parts around them. But basically the whole thing set up to give you an underground view of how incredibly massive these buildings were. Yeah. By leaving like the concrete footings, any steel supports that they can, um, intact. Yeah. And then just all, and I guess playing off the vastness of the space. Yeah. That had to do with the museum and the, the design up top too was, I think you can, in the museum down below, you can stand in between the two footprints still. Yeah. And, uh, they've created a lot of just open space, it seems like. Right. But then there's also like at the, at the corners of the footprints, there's maybe like some, I think there's an aluminum clad volumes. Right. Basically give this kind of ghost

outline of the building. So to, to give you an even better idea of their scale. Um, and all this is underground. Like we said, the, the plaza actually above serves as a green roof to the museum. Yeah. Um, and you go through the atrium and then you, to, to get to the museum itself underground, you go through, um, you go down a ramp. Um, and that's very symbolic of the ramp that was used to clean out the ground zero site. Right. It was used during construction of the original towers. Um, so it's, it's kind of like throwing you back in time and during the construction and the cleanup, um, which, you know, really marks the, the history of this site, those two things. Yeah. There's a couple of other notable, uh, aspects to the museum

that they're going to have are the survivor stairs, uh, which, uh, if you Google that, I mean, they're pretty famous. They were, uh, one of the sets of stairs that, you know, it said hundreds, but I would imagine maybe even thousands of people used to escape. It was like one of the only ways out. Yeah. Uh, it was a long, uh, World Trade Center six, I think. So in 2008, it was, uh, lowered down into the site again for its, you know, final resting place there in the museum. Right. And the other big thing is the last column in the west chamber of the museum. It's going to house this and it was returned to the site. You might remember the last column when it was where it was one of the last things standing, obviously, and that's where people,

uh, decorated, uh, this column with, with memories of their loved ones and, and have you seen this person that kind of thing? Right. They're also going to have the slurry wall in there, which was surprisingly intact. They, it was, it was an original huge wall that they built to keep the Hudson from flooding it. Yeah. And after the attacks, after the collapse of the building, this wall was just standing there. It didn't have any support, but it was still keeping the Hudson out. So they reinforced it and rebuilt it, but they took a 62 by 64 foot section of the slurry wall and it's going to make up a significant part of the museum itself. This huge man. This must be enormous under there. Yeah. Cause I mean, beyond all these huge elements, they have all the,

the void open space. Yep. So, uh, I'm very much looking forward to going to that. Um, we, I think we skipped over the Memorial Glade, um, in the park above, uh, the museum. There is a section called the Memorial Glade, which is going to be an open area where they'll have like ceremonies and, and things like that. And I think that's surrounded by sweet gums, which should be autumn red on September 11th. Yeah. Is what they say. They plan it that way at least. Uh, the museum itself, like the exhibits that they're going to have, they're going to have permanent exhibits of artifacts from, you know, the cleanup from the rescue, from the attacks. Yeah. Um, personal stories, pre attack too. I think they're going to have obviously some, I'm sure they're going to

have some information on the, like the construction and all that. Yeah. And then probably the people who did it, imagine there'll be some information there. Yeah. Um, and also they're going to have some stuff on the DC and Pittsburgh losses or not Pittsburgh, but Pennsylvania losses. But there's, um, a very controversial, uh, exhibit that's going to be added. It looks like it's going to be added as far back as, um, or as recently as April. That's as far back as I could find any press. I found something more recently. I think it is. It's going to, they're going forward with it. Yeah. Well, um, there, there were, there were a lot of, um, human remains found. Right. And a lot of them were put together and said, you know, this is this person, this belong to this

person. Um, but very after a while, like the matches ran out. Um, and the medical examiner still has, uh, over 9,000 pieces of human remains. And the last match was made in 2009. So they're kind of losing hope that they're ever going to be able to identify who they belong to. Yeah. And a lot of people are unidentified at this point. Well, a lot of the families of the 41% of the victims who haven't been identified are saying, keep trying. Don't stop. Right. Medical examiner and the, um, people who, uh, are running the museum are saying, no, we have a better place for them. Why don't we put them in the museum? Right. And they have it planned to put them behind a quote from Virgil, um, that says, no day shall erase you from the memory of time and the letters

themselves are going to be made of World Trade Center steel. Yeah. Um, but there, uh, you know, a lot of people find this ghoulish and ghastly. Like you can't put human remains on display. And in this article in the New York times, they interviewed a lot of curators who were like, it depends, you know, like, you can't just put human remains in a museum. You're not supposed to do that. But if it's a, a memorial on the site of an atrocity, like Auschwitz has lots of human remains, um, the, uh, the Khmer Rouge museum has all sorts of human remains. So this is museum wise speaking appropriate, but really, I mean, it's up to your, you know, what you think is morally acceptable or not. Yeah. I think what I read, most of the upset comes from the fact that they

were underground in the museum and they were supposedly told that they were going to be uh, kept in a, in a tomb right in the park above ground. Right. And away from tourists, like this, this plan is to put them right in the exhibit. Like here's some of the remains of the victims. Right. But there would be tour. I mean, I guess there would be tourists up top as well, but right. I mean, I see their difference though. Yeah. No, there's a big difference for sure. Yeah. But I think just about everybody agrees, I should be kept on the site somewhere. It's just in what capacity. Right. Chuck, let's say I have a hundred bucks sitting around and I'm like, I want to contribute to this memorial. What can I do? You can buy a cobblestone. I can. Uh,

I was a little disappointed to see that the cobblestones weren't engraved because that's usually what you do. Yeah. There's a website that links your cobblestone to your name. So it's not an actual engraved cobblestone, but you can still donate a hundred bucks. That'll get you a cobblestone on the path of the, the, the plaza itself. Uh, five hundred dollars will get you a cobblestone on the memorial glade that we told you about. And that thousand bucks will get you one, a granite paver that will be a walkway to the memorial itself. And that is it. Uh, 911 memorial.org slash donations. And I imagine you can just donate period if you want. Sure. Yeah. Or, you know, you'll get your cobblestones,

but if that's not important to you, then it's probably good, good cause, I would say. And if you're going to be in New York this September 11th, um, the September 11th memorial will officially open that day. And if you're going to be in New York, September 11th, 2012, the memorial museum is expected to be open then. Yeah. There are people like our shooting video of the, the waterfalls being tested and stuff out of their office window. And it's, um, pretty amazing. Yeah. So, um, we've got a couple of articles on site. We have how the World Trade Center worked just, or I guess the World Trade Center is what it's called. Um, and it's very comprehensive. I think Tom Harris wrote it. So you can type in World Trade Center. And that should also bring up

how the World Trade Center Memorial works. Yes. Which is coming soon, right? It'll be up by the time this comes out. So yeah, I hope so. Um, and again, if you want to learn more about the memorial, you can go to 911 memorial.org. Um, and you can donate there too. And, uh, is that it? I think this is our 9-11 podcast. We've been asked by a bunch of people to do one and, uh, and unless we're inspired to actual, you know, actually go over the, the grizzly details, I would say this will serve better purpose. You concur? Yeah. I don't know if I want to do that one. Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war

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what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Where were you in 92? Bouncing your butt to Sir Mixolot? Wondering if you, like Billy Ray Cyrus, could pull off a moment? Now iHeart has a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Lanfie and on my new show, Where Were You in 92, we take a ride through the major hits, one hit wonders and shocking scandals that shaped the wildest 12 months in music history. You know, the president came after me. Everybody time Warner was madness. Music was magic and I had completely burned that to the ground. I realized I'm the forbidden fruit.

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