How the World Trade Center Memorial Works

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 stomachs ye. Man. It's not even like a bug. It's like a staff of actual or a bowl of the stomach or something horrible

like that. It just gross. So I 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 eleventh anniversary. Yeah, the tenth anniversary of the September eleventh attacks, UM on the World Trade Center. Uh, the attack Uh, well the plane that went down Flight ninety three in Pennsylvania. Have you seen that movie? Um? And then uh, the attack on the Pentagon. UM. The tenth Anniversity is going to

be a big sad, soul in occasion. You know, it seems like the last couple of years it's been you know it September eleventh and this this is a time to stop and reflect for a moment. But I think it's all gonna come barreling back on the tenth anniversary. Yeah, I think people have been anticipating that. And the opening of the of the memorial, which we're gonna talk about, has a lot to do with that, obviously it does. It's gonna officially dedicated and opened on September eleventh, two

thousand eleven. Yeah, and then um, the museum, which we'll also talk about, will be open the following year, I think on September eleven, two twelve. And that thing sounds pretty amazing. Yeah, I'm very excited about going to these. Um, maybe excited it's not the right word. No, I'm excited if 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. That's okay, Okay, thanks. I get

excited every time I go to those things. It's a good place for remembrance, Josh, Yes, that's Memorials make an excellent spot for remembrance. Let's talk about the spot where the memorial, the World Trade Center Memorial, which what which is what we're talking about, is going to be situated the original spot where the World Trade Center complex was situated. Beginning work started in the sixties and was completed in

I think ninety three on the towers. I think work for the whole World Trade Center complex wasn't completed until yeah, fourteen years, fourteen years after the towers that were completed, So it was like nineteen yeah something. Yeah, right, Um, But tell me about the tell me about the spot, the World Trade Center spot. It's a very um ambitious project. It was Josh, seven buildings total um spanning sixteen acres. It's a lot of room and each tower itself, I

think had a footprint of an acre. Yeah right, yeah. Uh. They had office space to the tune of about uh fifty thousand total workers in about thirty five thousand, and those were split among four hundred and thirty companies in the buildings. It was ten million square feet of office space. It's incredible, it was. It was originally UM. Speaking of ambition, I read an article called The Height of Ambition. It was a two thousand to New York Times article and

it's required reading for anybody. It's really good. It's all about the construction, it's about the attacks. It's a really comprehensive, great article. But they were saying like that there was no way they were going to go UM any less than ten million square feet when they decided to there, like that's it, We're doing ten million, 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. That's so much, it's gonna flood this place all at once. Yeah. I remember at the time, uh, you know, in September eleven, thinking that the death Hole was gonna be like ten people because I knew how many people work there, and it would have been had it had the buildings not stayed up for um an hour or so, or had it been an hour or so later, right once people were all

in there. Yeah, because you said there's about fifty thousand people that worked at the World Trade Centers UM, and then there's another maybe UM seventy thousand, forty thousand to seventy thousand people who could muted through because there was a subway station underneath in the path train station and the mall, and people coming to have lunch with like their husband or wife or whatever. So seventy thousand additional

people passed through that that complex every day. Indeed, Josh, if we're talking size, we've got a couple of stats. The North tower UM, the original World Trade Center one, although there's a new one which we're gonna talk about, uh, hundred sixty eight feet uh and then seventeen thirty feet with its large antenna. And then the South tower was about six ft shorter than the North tower, which I thought found interesting. I wonder if that was a I

wonder why they did that. Maybe the bedrock was six ft six ft lower, has to be something like that. I don't think it was I'm sure they got to the final measurement and we're like, you have to be kindding right, because they were both a hundred ten stories. It's not like w C t C two was short changed the floor or a half floor. Two hundred eight thousand one metric tons. Yeah, and one of them. It's tough to find comparisons for this, but um, it's an

Afford Explorer. These each one weighed about equivalent to a hundred and seventy two thousand Ford Explorers. That's heavy. That's yeah, that's a heavy building. And that's a lot of weight. And we'll we'll get to that weight. And what happened to a lot of that weight coming up shortly to right? Uh 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 like this towers swaying back and forth in the wind, what kind of that would do to people? Yeah, no one had ever These were 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 it um. They didn't know, well, maybe somebody could take

six ft of sway on either side. 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 Jack's and like test people. He had him come in for I exams, but was really testing them to see how much sway they could put up with him found not much, like a couple of inches either way. 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 is going to 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 this way. So I think most people know by now just from breakdown of the what happened with the collapse, that it was an exoskeleton design 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 are on the outside, and there's a steel court in the center like you said, and it was connected by a hat trust. They just fit over the top and connected everything to the center. So it just stabilized the whole thing and

it made it light but very strong. Right. I think it was about open air inside the building itself, which has a lot to do with why it collapsed. Um, there was a police station port authority in New Jersey. Uh, New York and New Jersey had a police desk, they had its own uh, 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, one O four eight. Yeah,

I looked that up. Actually, I think they held onto 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 like they worked within. You know, I guess it's sixteen acres, but it's probably not as big as your usual beat in New York. I would I wouldn't think so. No, I think they call it beats.

That's just cops. I wouldn't it no copy, um chuck. Also these um, just to give another idea of scale, Um, there were each of the towers themselves. Just the towers had elevators, each each one had um almost uh well, almost twenty two thousand windows. And apparently you could have built a sidewalk standard sidewalk I take it from New York to Washington, d C. With just the concrete used in just the towers. So these were massive, colossal structures,

just the towers. The whole complex itself was colossal, but the tower, it's just the towers are enough to like get the point across, you know. Well, and all you ever really hear about still is usually the WTC one and two. But all of the buildings were eventually raised the whole complex, right, and um, 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 whose named Lawrence Ween, who

was an Empire State building co owner. Right, And he took out a full page and 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, And it actually almost came true in one when an Air Alina's flight just narrowly missed the North tower but made off. Okay, it was safe, that's right. Yeah. Uh, however,

that was the first attack on the World Trade Center. Uh. And Islamic Islamistic streamist group detonated about a thousand pounds of explosives and 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 Trades and a memorial years later. I never really considered that, but I thought it was pretty nice thing to do that That 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. It was just in the wrong place. But they were trying to take the building down, you know, yeah, from below, so that UM. Within a few days or weeks after UM, the February attach,

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 eleven, two thousand one came on day a can having four blocks north of the World Spathe Center. The second building that was hill by the plane has just completely collapsed. The entire building has

just collapsed, as if the tunolition team set off. When you see the old nilition to the Gold buildings down on itself and it is not there anymore, it should be. It collapsed, collapse. The whole building has collapsed. So that pretty much speaks for itself. I think, where were you that morning? I had just gotten back from New York.

Actually I was there for vacation and a Radiohead concert and in New Jersey or actually it was Liberty State Park and flew home on September like the seventh or something, so I was in it. Actually I was living in l A. But I flew back to Atlanta and then got stuck in Atlanta because everything was grounded. So I was in my friend Big John's where house and Big country Boy, and he woke me up up here. Yeah.

Remember it was like one of the towers has been hit, and you just when I started watching CNN and figuring out what was going on, like this is not an accident. Yeah, I think both of us kind of came to the conclusion pretty quick too. So I hung out in his warehouse all day, only watched it on TV basically, and you know, yeah, and I have to say, like it didn't sink in as hard um then as it did

when we were researching this for this podcast. Man, I was watching just find finding that clip we just played. I watched about like an hour of it does it Happened? Coverage and it was just it really drew me in and just depressed me like crazy. But like it got through to me finally after ten years, like it's really

hit me how how huge this is. Yeah. I'd plowed through a bunch of videos this week too and last week, and it was you know, because I hadn't researched it for a long time, after probably since like two thousand three, than 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 an older you know, ten years older, and it's gotten through to me a

lot more like, yeah, God, how are you you were in your early twenties, mid twenties. I was like, God, that's crazy, Yeah something just a little kid, so chuck. We mentioned, um, 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 um. Number one, why did they fall They didn't have to fall um? And number two, why didn't they just fall

over immediately? And the answer to the second question is that does nine that exoskeleton connected to a central steel core by a hat trust could have kept that thing up indefinitely. Well, the reason they fell was a fatal flaw. Right. Those steel columns that make up the exoskeleton tapered um 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, so they just severed them. Yeah, the problem is with the true fatal flow is the

heat from the fire though. Yeah, I read a big article yesterday on this about this physicist Um 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 melting, 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. So it's one of the first hits. For our purposes, we're gonna take it on face value that the heat from the raging fires Um created uh enough high enough temperature that the steel within a steel melted and the weight distribution throughout the exoskeleton was even further compromised until these things started going from what the connection to the hat trust was snapped, 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 nineteen seventy three, 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, it 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, we're traveling about a hundred and twenty miles, and that could have been even faster, according to that physicist, and he said the fact that they fell straight down was uh sensible and fortunate because they could have swayed and toppled over, which you know stories falling to the left or to the right is going to take out 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 size square of debris that went from street level seventy underground to the bedrock and just filled its own footprint almost completely. Um the the other towers UM three and seven were completely trashed. UM Tower six was still intact, but it had a huge chunk of the North tower against it. UM, and that the one they had to take out for those reasons, Like otherwise it

might have been okay. That one they actually did demolish. So the Yeah, the whole site kind of just became a loss. UM there I guess an estimated three hundred thousand tons of scrap metal were generated, most of it sold the Indian China. UM, and there was a big hubbub. I didn't know this, did you? Did you hear about this when it happened. Um, the mafia diverted like two fifty five tons of scrap metal to its own junkyards for profit UM and got caught pretty quickly because the

FBI was on that case. But UM they after that, there were I think a hundred thousand truckloads of debris trucked out to UM uh the landfill in New Jersey. I believe it's called Fresh Kill Landfill UM and UH those all got police escorts after the FBI found out the mafia was diverting scrap metal, right obviously, Yeah, that's a good move. Uh. 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. They were like, this is gonna take a year, maybe two, maybe three exactly. It took eight year or nine months. Yes, it also came in under budget. Uh. They thought it was gonna cost a couple of billion dollars and that was clearly overinflated because it only costs six and fifty million UH to clean up, which is a lot of money,

but nothing compared to to bill a lot less. UM. They did get a little criticism because they thought they kind of hurried the clean up a little too much. Considering the potential toxic materials found at the site. A lot of people thought, you know, maybe we should take our time here, study this a little more, or 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. It's a good question. It could be Nation, New York World, I don't know. There was a lot of toxic stuff um. For example, two hundred thousand pounds of lead plus cadmium from the fifty thousand pecs in the World Trade Center offices right, UM, mercury from the fluorescent lights. There apparently about half a million fluorescent tube lights that all had mercury in them to work. UM. Have you heard of polycystic aromatic hydrocarbons?

They're apparently, um they caused laryngeal cancer, UM and a couple of other cancers. And they come from partially burned UM fossil fuels. What else chuck asbestos, lots of asbestos, benzene um die ox in from oil and fuel. So not the kind of stuff you want to be breathing in. And people found you know, years afterward, we're getting sick, a lot of the first responders getting sick and dying.

Even Yeah, the bass player from um TV on the radio was the first responder, and he came down with cancer and like in his late thirties or something and died, that's right. And within the last year. I didn't did I know that he was a first responder as as what what was his uh what kind of responder was? You do know? I don't remember, but he was. He

was the first responder to the ground zero. So they've there was a uh combined payout of six d and twenty five million dollars to some of the first responders and cleanup workers after a lawsuit was filed, and that was just that was. They came to that settlement within the last year or two. Right, Yeah, they've been hammering that out forever. Yeah. And then there was the Zadroga Bill, which is massive. Seven point were billion dollars 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. Um. I mean this is one of those where I say, throw it in there, like cover everything. Apparently that's not the case. Well no, but it's left open so that it can be amended to include cancer later, like if somebody's like, here's your definitive right study on it that shows the link. But apparently the link is enough for

people who are engaged in like personal litigation. Uh, they've been generally successful and just doing New York. Okay, just not a class action kind of thing. Well just not there's a Droga bill, got you, yeah, Okay, Well, uh, 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 uh you know, big gaps

and holes that you could easily fall into. Yeah, like you know those tiger traps. Yeah, where it's just kind of covered with a little bit of twigs or leaves. There were like seventy ft 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's like, oh my god. Yeah, I'm really surprised no one died during that clean up. Yeah, sixty men died building the thing. Wow, that was the seventies. Uh.

So that brings us Josh to ten years later. Yea, the nine eleven 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 birden exactly with Donald Trump on top looking the bird. But Trump was one of the ones actually who hates the new uh w TC one and it is uh well, originally it was called the Freedom Tower. Could not smack of the Bush

era more. Yeah, they changed that that or um world War two when we started calling French fries freedom fries. Was that World War two? And that came about again after this. Yeah. And then also um sauerkraut was called liberty cabbage. That's just crazy jingoistic, you know. Yeah. Uh So, like I said, Trump is is not a big fan of the design. He or the architect who designed w TC one, the new one. What's his name, Daniel um Oh,

Daniel Lipskin? Is that him? He's been much battered. Yeah, I kind of feel bad for the guy, you know, he's trying to trying to do a good job. I'm sure it is going to be the tallest building in the US after it's completed, at a symbolic height of seven hundred and seventy six ft sev Seventeen seventy six, obviously for the you know, USA all the way, seventeen seventy six, very important day in our history and all the buildings are going to be done between six and

uh w TC. One is right now at the eight floor, which is they're they're close to done. How many floors is it going to be? 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. It may be pretty close then if they're the eightieth floor now, and I think they've concrete it up to this of any second floor, glassed it

up to the fifty three and then seven. World Trade Center was UM opened in two thousand six. That's already there. 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's 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 was found in the rubble. It basically dusted off and put in Battery Park with an eternal flight, and then there was tribute and lights which are the two beams and anybody who's ever seen Spike Lee's twenty 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 forty four. Each tower is made up of forty four UM xenon searchlights focused into a single column that just shoots right up into space.

Know if they're gonna do that still, Yeah, I wondered 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 design competition was held in two thousand three by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Right, and uh, it was international, so people from all over the world submitted design. It's like a ton of them, Yes, sixty three countries in total,

five thousand, two hundred one submissions. And the guy who won for the memorial went to Tech Georgia. Tech's Yeah, and he was working as a New York City Housing Authority architect until he won. And then I imagine he's making a little bit more money now at Handel Architects as a partner. Yeah. His name is Michael Aharin. That's how to get a job a partnership pretty quick in as an architect. I think that's how to make your career look at like Maa Lynn, Yeah, who did the

Vietnam Memaria was the first thing she ever did? Is a yeah, well, I think, yeah, yeah, have you ever seen the documentary her very neat how'd she come up with the idea? She talks all about it, like the first third of the documentaries about that and like what she went through, Um, like there's a big problem that she was Asian, you know, um that kind of thing. Um, but I don't remember. I don't remember if it just came to her what, But she talks about it. I mean,

that was perfect and its simplicity totally is perfect. 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 Air has been criticized, but I don't think anybody's like this is a smack in the face to the people who died, And 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 intact as fountains waterfalls, Yeah, the world's largest waterfalls. Two thousand gallons of water I think per minute flow through these things. And they're these huge, massive, almost acre sized squares, like you said, that just fill in the footprints of the of the World Trade Centers

UM and they're just amazing the thing 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. And they're The memorial um that Air designed is called reflecting absence UM, and the whole point is to just kind of show we're missing something here 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 living, you know, breathing life into the city. And the trees or like sweet gums and oaks. White oaks, yes, swamp white oaks are there's gonna be like four hundred of them on

the plaza. And the plaza was designed by UM Peter Walker and partners from Berkeley UM in conjunction with Michael Ahard. 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, I need some help, yeah, or vice versa, you know. Um, but Peter Walker came up with this idea to you suspended paving systems to support the white oaks, because um, an urban an urban tree or a tree in urban forest like this, they

don't live that long. Um. But and the reason why is because the soil becomes too compact and you have to have paving for people to walk around on. 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 routes to go through. So these trees, these swamp white oaks should thrive and live like many many decades longer than ones that you know, were just planted

wherever along the street. That's right, and they could potentially get up to about sixty ft 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 and the noises of the city and the swamp white oaks also, Chuck are gonna be brought in UM from all over the area of New York, but also from places around UM where Flight ninety three went down in Pennsylvania and in the DC area that you're gonna have trees from

other nine eleven impacted areas brought I thought that was cool. Yeah, I read an article on the family who's UM supplied the trees basically for the project. Yeah, it was pretty cool. And then also around the reflect thing Absence memorial, they're going to have UM basically a bronze wall with the names of all nearly three thousand victims of the and two thousand one attacks on the World Trade Center. UM cut into them Yeah, so you can do the little

uh charcoal rubbings on paper if you want. They shine light through them at night. Uh. They're grouped together by either where they died or where they worked, or if there was a special request a group people like with friends of theirs that worked in the building that they've done that too, that's cool. So that's kind of cool. 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. Uh. 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 exterior that the exo skeleton UM. The the apparently went up and then at this at the seventy ft 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 these 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 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 nine I think ninety because they branched at the seventy ftmark and they go up to like the ninety footmark. So um. And then also check the museum

itself is largely underground. Um, and they're in the footprints of the World Trade Center towers and parts around them. But basically the whole thing is set up to give you an underground down view of how incredibly massive these buildings were by leaving like the concrete footings any steel supports that they can um intact and then just all and I guess playing off the vastness of the space. Yeah, that had to do with the museum and the design

up top. Two was I think you can in the museum down below you can stand in between the two footprints still 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 Princess maybe like some I think there's an aluminum clad volumes whether it's called to basically give this kind of ghost outline of the buildings, so to give you an even better

idea of their scale. UM. And all this is underground, Like we said, the plaza actually above serves as a green roof to the museum UM, and you go through the hrium 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. 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 history of this site. Those two things. Yeah, there's a couple of other notable aspects to the museum that they're going to have. The Survivor stairs, which if you google that, I mean, they're pretty famous. They were 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, it was along World trade center six. I think so in two thousand and eight it was lowered down into the side again for it's you know, final resting place there in the museum. 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 and was where it was one of the last 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 gonna 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. And after the attacks, after the class 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 sixty two by sixty four 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, because I mean, beyond all these huge elements. They have all the void open space, so 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 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 a that's surrounded by sweet gums, which should be autumn red on September eleven, is what they say. They play it that way, at least the museum itself.

Like the exhibits that they're going to have, they're gonna have permanent exhibits of artifacts from you know, the clean up from the rescue from the attacks, um, personal story pre attacked too. I think they're gonna have obviously some I'm sure they're going to have some information on there, 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 gonna have some stuff on the d C in Pittsburgh Losses or not Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Losses. But there's um a very controversial 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 can find any press. I found something more recently, I think it is.

It's gonna they're going forward with it. Well, um, there there were there were a lot of human remains found, uh, and a lot of them were put together and said, you know, this is this person, this belonged to this person. Um. But after a while, like the matches ran out. Um and the Medical Examiner still has over nine thousand pieces of human remains, and the last match was made in two thousand nine, So they're kind of losing hope that they're ever going able to identify who they belong to.

And a lot of people are unidentified at this point. Well, a lot of the families of the fort of the victims who haven't been identified, or saying keep trying, don't stop. Medical Examiner and the people who are running the museum are saying, no, we have a better place for him. Why don't we put them in the museum, And they have it planned to put them behind a quote from virgil Um that says, no day shell erase you from the memory of time. And the letters themselves are going

to be made of World Trade Center steel. Um. But they're you know, a lot of people find the schoolish 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 are 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 memorial on the side of an atrocity, like Ashwitz has lots of human remains, Um, the Cahmer 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 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. But there would be tour I mean, I guess there would be tourist up top as well, But I mean I see their difference though. Yeah, no, there's a big difference for sure. But I think just about everybody agrees they 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 cobble stone. I was a little disappointed to see that the cobble stones weren't engraved, because that's usually what you do. Yeah, there's a website that links your cobble stone to your name, so it's not an actual engrave cobblestone. But you can still donate a hundred bucks, I will get you a cobble stone on the path

of the plaza itself. Five dollars will get you a cobble stone on the memorial glade that we told you about in A thousand bucks will get you one a granite paper that will be a walkway to the memorial itself, and that is a nine one on memorial dot org slash donations, and I imagine you can just donate period if you want. 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 gonna be in New York this September eleven, um, the September eleven Memorial will officially open that day. And if you're going to be in New York September eleven, two thousand twelve, the Memorial Museum is expected to be open, then yeah, they're they're people like our shooting video of the the waterfalls being tested and stuff out of their office window and it's um pretty amazing. So UM. We've got a couple of

articles on site. We have how the World Trade Center worked, 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 a World Trade Center and that should also bring up how the World Trade Center Memorial works, which coming soon, right it. It It will 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 nine one one Memorial dot org

um and you can donate there too. And uh is that it? I think this is our nine eleven podcast. We've been asked by a bunch of people to do one, and and unless we're inspired to actual yeah, I actually go over the grizzly details. I would say this will serve you concur Yeah, I don't know if I want to do that one. That's all right. Do you want to send us an email? We'd love to hear from you. Send it to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff

from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore them as promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand and twelve Camry. It's ready, Are you