Sep 7, 2026 · 2 hr 19 min · 10 segments
**The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 resulted in the deaths of 2,977 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Twenty five years on, thousands are suffering…
Lila NordstromGuest
Katie MeadHost
Luke BoydHost
hello and welcome back we are about to embark on something that surprisingly we haven't done before which is to really go into the story of the september 11th attacks in 2001 which the reason why i say surprisingly is because as you all know me and luke have quite the 911 history between our personal experiences and then working at the Memorial and Museum.
People were sort of DMing us being like, are you guys doing a 9-11 thing? And we're like, we actually are.
That's the genesis of the Morbid Museum is that we met in this site of dark tourism and traumatic memory and history.
And so this anniversary seemed like an opportune time for us to create some special programming for you all as part of the Morbid Museum's public program team.
And so
Our slate of programs is we're going to have two episodes and these are episodes that will also lean into our special guests and friends from the wider museum world.
And I'm really, I'm really proud of what we've put forth here, Katie, for our listeners in terms of these interviews.
Um, you know, we're going to talk about our own testimony, but the interviews are fantastic.
I'm so happy that we went ahead with this, and kudos to you, Luke, because you had this idea of really making it very primary source-centric.
And why not, when we so rarely live in this podcast in the 19th century when no one's alive from that time? So how could we possibly have real testimony? This is such a rare opportunity for us to have genuine oral histories recorded on our show, which is so invaluable.
And, you know, regardless of whatever happens to the Morbid Museum in the future, I'm ecstatic that this is something that will just live now in our little Morbid Museum archive that people can go to whenever they wish, because the stories that we'll be telling over the next couple of episodes are incredibly important to to us um luke and i as as museum people and then to us as people with new york ties and then also as you know with people that we really admire and care a lot about
And so we're going to try to treat this story as if we would any old morbid museum topic, as Katie said.
So we're going to actually talk about what is 9-11 and what happened, which may seem very reductive for many of our listeners who know it very well.
And I think often in this memory landscape that we're in, We can sort of miss this to find points of what actually happened.
And those and those points are often, you know, discussed to great debated to great length and detail.
We are here to dispense with truth and facts in the in response to a lot of buffoonery that's in the pod space.
Um, so our first episode, we will deal with our own connections to September 11th, where we were that day and how we approach the story personally, what we did at the memorial museum, which, you know, a little bit about from our episodes, but we'll, we'll go deeper.
Um, we'll talk about the events of the day and the, the, the memorial itself and what it represents.
So do you want to give us a little bit about where we'll be going in that interview, Katie?
And she was at a school that was only a few blocks away from the World Trade Center.
And so she tells her very harrowing story of how she got out of Stuyvesant and made her way away from Ground Zero, but then how Because of politics and school policies, she was forced to come back to school far sooner than she should have and has unfortunately had to deal with the health consequences since that time.
So her story is one of survival and also advocacy for those individuals who continue to suffer from the 9-11 health effects.
And I think you're all going to really get a lot out of her interview because I don't I don't think most people really fully understand the scope of that story in particular.
This is the enduring legacy of 9-11 that people want to talk about and mostly agree on.
Whereas the stories of the war on terror, security versus individual liberties, those are big political footballs.
And so, listeners, in our second episode of the series, we'll touch on the building and the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site and the creation of the Memorial Museum and some of those enduring impacts and legacies of 9-11.
And that episode will be featuring an interview with Rinaldo Vega, who was an architect during the rescue, recovery, and cleanup period, and was our colleague at the 9-11 Museum working with the buildings and grounds team.
He is a delightful man and just has carried so much on his shoulders for many years.
And it feels like a real privilege to hear him give his testimony to us after years of just, you know, you work with people and you kind of know their story, but when they're giving it directly to you, It feels really like a huge honor, actually.
Like, I have nothing but the utmost respect for him more than ever after having our conversation.
And we know a lot about asking permission and consent about disclosing personal details and about coaching people or being the people in your case, I would say, if I may, who have to kind of modulate and decide in interactions, how much am I going to disclose? What is that going to cost me? Um, and knowing when to say yes and to say no.
And we should also say that there will be full length episodes on our Patreon that will feature unedited versions of both of these oral histories, which are, you know, full and complete and provide an even fuller in-depth understanding of what these folks have been through.
And I think while we tell them, probably some of the facts of the day will sort of weave in to it as well.
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