An Army of Normal Folks - 23 Years After 9/11: Sonia Agron (Pt 1)

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

For the 23rd anniversary of 9/11, we re-run our episode with Sonia Agron. When the World Trade Center was struck, Sonia promised her husband, an NYPD officer who responded to the attack, that she wouldn’t go to the site to help. But she couldn’t keep that promise and volunteered as a recovery worker at Ground Zero on overnight shifts. In addition to grieving their losses, the Agrons soon began to deal with various illnesses brought on by exposure to Ground Zero’s toxic environment. In spite of this, Sonia has continued volunteering by leading tours at the 9/11 Tribute Museum and 9/11 Memorial. Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joe came home and he sees me dressed and goes, it's 10. And I go, yeah, I gotta go to Brooklyn, sign in, get my paperwork done. Four? Been assigned to ground zero. No, you haven't. Yes, I haven't. Don't we usually discuss things?

I says, yeah, but you've been too busy. And he looked at me and he goes, I don't want you to go. And I said, well, where would you be? We got into the car and he would not speak to me. We got to Brooklyn and he opened the door and he said, you sure I can't convince you? I said, will you stop going? And he got back in the car and said, I'll see you tomorrow. I said, good. I said, we're not winning any fight here. It's just something I need to do.

Welcome to an Army of Normal Folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, a father, an entrepreneur, and I'm a football coach in inner city Memphis. And the last part unintentionally led to an Oscar for the film about our team. It's called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits using big words that nobody understands on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks, us,

just you and me saying, hey, I can help. That's what Sonia A. Grande, the voice we just heard, has done. After the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Sonia volunteered at the toxic rubble of Ground Zero to help support the recovery and cleanup effort. And this duty she felt that her husband Joe could not stop tragically resulted in a steep personal price that you'll soon hear about.

And yet, despite that, Sonja would do it all over again. And she's still volunteering through a world of pain. I can't wait for you to meet Sonja right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. But the murder of Carmichael Lonti

marked the beginning of the end, sparking a chain of events that would ultimately dismantle the most powerful crime organization in American history. It sent the message to them that we can prosecute these people. Discover how a group of young prosecutors took on the mafia and with the help of law enforcement, brought down its most powerful figures.

These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government. From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts, this is Law and Order, Criminal Justice System. Listen to Law & Order Criminal Justice System on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this.

Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance, it's tradition, it's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12 episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of

lucha libre. And I'm your host Santos Escobar, the emperor of lucha libre and a WWE superstar. Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre, Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre, Behind the Mask as part of my Cultura podcast network

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packer star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. Hey, GB, explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a

Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey but this was only the beginning in a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns in church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible.

Listen to Spiral on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition? Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories?

I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more, because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We think of Franklin as the doddering dude flying a kite in the rain, but those experiments are the most important scientific discoveries of the time. I'm Evan Ratliff.

Last season, we tackled the ingenuity of Elon Musk with biographer Walter Isaacson. This time, we're diving into the story of Benjamin Franklin, another genius who's desperate to be dusted off from history. His media empire makes him the most successful self-made business person in America. I mean, he was never early to bed and early to rise type person. He's enormously famous. Women start wearing their hair in what was called a coiffure a la Franklin. And who's more relevant now than ever. The only other person who could have possibly been the first president would have been Benjamin

Franklin. But he's too old and wants Washington to do it. Listen to On Benjamin Franklin with Walter Isaacson on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sonya, how are you? I am doing just fine. It is wonderful to meet you. I've been looking forward to talking with you.

I've got so many questions for you. But this is an Army of Normal folks and I'm just looking at this bubbly lady sitting across from me and to be thinking that I'm speaking to you in the shadow of Freedom Tower right now is even more surreal for me and we'll get into why that's important in a minute. But first, where'd you come from? Where'd you grow up? Who is Sonia the little girl? Sonia was born and raised in the South Bronx. In South Bronx? Yep, South Bronx.

Is there a difference in North? I'm from Memphis. Yeah, so there you- Is there a difference in North and South Bronx? Yeah. Okay. Of course, North Bronx is on the other side and South Bronx is on the, I would say in the beginning, when you get off the highway, there you are in the South Bronx.

Well, back when you grew up there, is there a difference in the nationalities of people? Oh, no, no, no. When I grew up, dear Lord, we had Italians, Irish, blacks, Latinos. It was a smorgasbord of people. And for us, it was like, let's learn how to do this, let's learn how to do that. It was amazing. So it was a microcosm of New York, really. Absolutely.

It was just so beautiful. And it's gone. Is it? It is gone. It's lost that identity now? Absolutely. A lot of places, I would say, except maybe little Italy, has lost that cultureism that we all were a part of. We didn't see racism. We didn't have people talk down to us. It was just one big... It was a village. It was a village. And so that's where you grew up. And did you go to

school? Yes, all my life I went to St. Pius Elementary School. St. Pius? The fifth, let's not forget the fifth. And St. Pius the fifth high school. Got it. And when you graduated high school, what did Sonia want to do? Well, experience at that time told me I didn't want to be in a Catholic school anymore. And so I turned down college applications and decided to just go work. I wanted to be free from all of that guilt that they were putting in you.

I can't take four more years of this, which is a regret. It is a regret. So you went to work? I went to work for an insurance company and then my mom didn't like that, so she pulled me out and put me in a multi-service company that services the entire area for services that the city or the government won't provide. So you grow up in the Bronx, do you have siblings? Oh, well, I'm the baby, so there's four more for me. Four more before you, so five. Yep.

Yep. Just a good old Catholic family having kids. Absolutely. What was your mother and father, what they did? Well, my father was a shoe cobbler. He made shoes. This was right after he got out of the Korean War. And he stayed doing that for several years. My mother worked with him. And then sadly, my dad got sick and mom had to stay home and take care of him and us at the same time.

Oh my goodness. All called in. But you know, it was just... But you didn't know any difference. It was normal for us. Yeah. You just any difference it was it was normal. Yeah Big type Catholic family. Yeah Imagine dinner was pretty good. Oh hot diggity-dog. Yeah Okay, what was your mom's best dish

Her chicken and rice, okay, but she okay rice doesn't sound Italian to me. You're starting to it's not Italian It's Puerto Rican because we would go to the live Chicken store and they would you know turn the neck of the chicken and holding in the Bronx you'd get a lot It's called the chicken snack. No, we didn't know the butcher did And then they would defather him and then we would have homemade chicken soup with the leftover of whatever we put in the rice and the beans. Well, because you said Italian and Irish and everything else. Oh no, I'm the Latin part.

Well, no, I was thinking Italian foods, so your heritage, Puerto Rican. Yes, yes. I got it, so it wasn't just Italian and Irish, it was Puerto Rican, so. Yeah, I always say Latinos, because it covers everybody. Yeah, yeah, wow. What a way to grow up.

I loved it. So you ended up getting married to this guy. Yeah. Which was odd. Um, I have known him. He was a family friend and I knew him and he had been married. Um, and he would always talk to me. He just thought he was Joe, Joe Aigron. And he always. Was also from. He just thought he was Joe, Joe Aigron. And he always… Joe was also from the Bronx? Yes. Isn't everybody from the Bronx named Joe?

No, there are some places elsewhere there in the Italian neighborhoods. You have a lot of Giuseppi's there. All right. So how did you meet Joe? He was a family friend. And there were times when I would… I was a party girl. I would come home at 6.

You were a party girl? Yes, I was! Oh, but you're a Catholic schoolgirl? This was way after, you know, I found my wings. And my only thing was that I loved to dance and I loved to go out to different restaurants. That's just what the girls wanted to do. And we hated doing that with guys because they would just bother us. Yeah, it's such a drag.

My husband at midnight would see me leave and then he'd see me come back and he would start lecturing me like a dad and I used to tell him, my dad's gone, you don't have to be placing. And then one day actually he told my sister that he was interested in me but I kept turning him away because I didn't want any baggage. You know, marrying, well, divorce and a child. And I'm like, you know. You didn't need all that. No, and plus he was a cop.

Yeah, a cop. I mean, who wants to date a cop? No, and he was so serious. All the time. And he's a Vietnam vet, I read. No, he served during the Vietnam War. His brother was a vet and then his mother pulled the Sullivan Act. Called the congressman and said, I don't want my boy to go.

Who wants to date that guy? Oh, well, I did. Apparently it happened. I didn't because I just felt too much luggage. You know, I don't want that. And then one day my sister said, he has something to tell you. And he came to the apartment and I said, said well and he's a friend by now he says well there's somebody I like that you know and I want to know how should I go about asking her and I said this was his approach to you yes so I said I know this person now I'm feeling really mad

because I really really did like him and now he likes somebody that I like and I'm like oh and then I said just tell her you like her And you want to take her out you want to see how far this goes and he repeated and I said yeah great You got it. Yeah, I want to I like you and I want to take you out I want to see how far this goes. Yeah, great second times. Great. You don't have to do it again Yes, I do. I like you and I want to take you out and see where it goes And I just started to mumble like, me? Really me? And he had a call.

He went back. I went up to him. It's his sister. And she said, he does really like you, but you just keep turning him away. And I go, well, what do I do now? He's a family friend who dates their friends. And now, well, here we are. Thirty eight years later. What, how old were you? I was 22, to his 29.

Got it. Oh, he robbed a cradle. He sure, he did and I always remind him of that. He robbed a cradle and a party girl. Yeah, well that stopped. I got it all out of my system, you know. Yeah, we all did, right? He was just a great addition to a life that I wanted to have because I was getting tired

of the partying. You know what? That story, the whole thing is awesome because this is an army of normal folks and I'm not spending time interviewing fancy, smart politicians that use big words that I... Look, if it's more than three syllables, I have a problem with it anyway. You are a Bronx girl, one of five, grew up going to Catholic school and didn't go to college, went to work and ended up marrying a cop. Divorce with a child. Divorce with a child.

But you're just a normal gal trying to forge a life in our country. Absolutely. Is who you are. So, half of your marriage is a cop and the other half ends up getting into emergency medical services? I was always working in McGraw-Hill, different companies, and one day there on my lunchtime a woman just collapsed on the street. Remember, we didn't have cell phones, any of that. And people just walked by her.

And I stayed with her. Are you serious? Oh yeah, that's it. Hold it, hold it, I've heard those stories. But when you say walked by, you mean acted like they didn't even see the person? Absolutely. I can't see that, that makes me crazy.

That was to me disgraceful. Because that could have been my mother. Right. Or your daughter. It could have been anybody mother. Right. Or your daughter. It could have been anybody. I knew even someone I didn't know. She must have had a spanking spell, but she was confused. She was sitting on the sidewalk.

There was a steak shop and I screamed out and I said, can you call 911 please? I asked her questions. So did you go meal by her? I stood by her and I asked her to give me numbers to see if there was anyone I could call and all she did was hold my hand. She was trembling and she said, I just got a little faint. I said, are you sick? I asked her all these questions. And of course you have no training. You're just being a this is what you're supposed to do. Just being a kind person. I was just sad for her that,

I didn't know if she had family or not, but what if she didn't, how would she get home? How would anyone help her? And so they called the ambulance and I stayed with her and I just jotted down on a napkin everything she had told me and this was the number in case she passed this out. And I wasn't allowed to go on the bus at the time.

But that was kindness, but did that spark something for you? Immediately, I started looking up medical jobs. And at that time, you had to take a training for EKG. Then you had to take a training for being a phlebotomist, then you had to take a training for this, and I had all my certificates, and I still wasn't happy. And so my husband, he would become my husband then, he would say, well, why don't you try EMS, or the police department? And I tried the police department, went through everything, and I guess my husband didn't think I would manage,

and he said, no, there's only room in this family for one. You make me nervous. I would always worry about who are you going to go after? And I said, so I'm going to go EMT school. It's what I want. He may not have wanted his wife to have a gun in the house. He didn't. Yeah.

No, he didn't. I mean, when he, well, the decision was made by me when he took me to the range and I had to shoot and I said, yeah, no, there's no way I'm ever going to do that. I'm not comfortable with that. No, you know, I can't run fast enough. But it led to... It led to me going to EMS. And when I graduated, it was one of the most proudest days of my life because now I'm accomplishing

something, not just working for money and put a roof over my head. And it was, if I was able to go back, I would go back in a heartbeat. I loved that job. And now a few messages from our generous sponsors, but first, we're now offering premium memberships for the Army of Normal Folks. For ten bucks a month, you'll receive special benefits such as being invited to a private yearly call with other Premium Members and me, access to monthly Ask Me Anything episodes, and occasional bonus audio. If you're interested in this, I hope you go to NormalFolks.us and click on Premium, but guys, that's really not what it's about

you get all that cool stuff and we're going to provide all that stuff but the truth is we're trying to to grow the army of normal folks and have a greater impact on the country and with the premium memberships we can fuel our marketing efforts to grow it. This podcast peaked at number 10 on Apple's podcast chart in all of the US, which is absolutely crazy and it's not about me. It's about the guests and it's about you. So we've decided to set an exciting new goal of trying to be on Apple's top shows chart for our entire first year, which will mean more tension, more listeners, more Army members, and most importantly, more impact. But we need you, as always. So go to normalfolks.us and click

on premium if you're down to help. If not, just keep listening. We'll be right back. For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. But the murder of Carmichael Lonti marked the beginning of the end, sparking a chain of events that would ultimately dismantle the most powerful crime organization in American history.

It sent the message to them that we can prosecute these people. Discover how a group of young prosecutors took on the mafia, and with the help of law enforcement, brought down its most powerful figures. These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government.

From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts, this is Law and Order, Criminal Justice System. Listen to Law and Order, Criminal Justice System on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packer star Kabir Vajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. Hey, GB, explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected

to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning in a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron, and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns and church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked. Voila!

You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiral'd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads.

We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition? Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging

into unexpected questions. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's more than just entertainment. Lucha Libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. Its tradition is culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12 episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of lucha libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of lucha libre and a WWE superstar.

Santos! Santos! Santos Escobar. Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask.

Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of my Kultura podcast network on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. We think of Franklin as the doddering dude flying a kite in the rain, but those experiments are the most important scientific discoveries of the time. I'm Evan Ratliff. Last season, we tackled the ingenuity of Elon Musk with biographer Walter Isaacson. This time, we're diving into the story of Benjamin Franklin, another genius who's desperate to be dusted off from history. His media empire makes him the most successful self-made business person in America.

I mean, he was never early to bed and early to rise type person. He's enormously famous. Women start wearing their hair in what was called the coiffure a la Franklin. And who's more relevant now than ever. The only other person who could have possibly been the first president would have been Benjamin Franklin, but he's too old and wants Washington to do it. Listen to On Benjamin Franklin with Walter Isaacson on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So here we go. And then at some point, you guys have a daughter, I think.

We had a daughter in, gee, you make me go too far back, in 1985. So she's in her thirties now. Okay. So what we have is we've got Joe and Sonja married with a daughter, one's a cop, one's an EMS person, and you guys are just doing the life, right? For us, that was it. That's a great life. Everything's normal and you're cruising down normal Americana Street. Absolutely. Living the dream.

Absolutely. And 9-11 comes. Well, I was retired by then because of an accident. And I just became a perpetual volunteer. I knew where they needed help. That's where I was. So 9-11 was my husband's 51st birthday. And that morning, his only job, I assigned him jobs, was to take our daughter to school,

come home, turn on the TV and relax until I got back. I was in Manhattan. We were going to celebrate his day. And I was in the NBC building. And we were told to evacuate. Nobody was telling us why. I'm thinking gas leak. I'm a New Yorker. I know how this works. And then wall to wall people, fighter jets, and I knew something was wrong.

Oh, you saw the fighter jet in the sky. Yes. This was in midtown. And suddenly my cell phone rang up. And the only odd thing about that in our family, we didn't want everyone to have a cell phone. So whoever went out that day got the cell phone. Got it? So I got it. And he called me and he said, listen to me carefully, we're at war. We're under attack. You need to take the next bus out and stay away from the trains. But we got cut off.

Was he worried that the trains were going to be involved? Yes, he said that. Because this is fresh, it's just happening. Well, he had done a lot of training for disorder control and that included biohazard things and he was... Sonny, was he on the job on the first failed attempt back in... Yes, 1993. ...when was it?

1993? Yes, When was it? 93? Yes, he was. So when he came home that day, the day after, and I don't think I'll ever forget the look on his face, he said, they're not done. They'll be back and we better be prepared because they're going to do more damage than they did then. So when it really happened, his call to you was, he knew. And I guess you had to have known. I know at first I thought Gas League but when I saw I couldn't even turn around there were so many people and I saw the fighter jets and I

thought we were in deep trouble but I never thought it was the World Trade Center because they hit it once so I said there's so when he when he called you and said, don't take the trains, we're at war, listen to me carefully. And it got cut off. Did you did you know then it was the World Trade Center? You still didn't know? All you knew was all hell was breaking loose somewhere and your husband, who had a direct line being a cop to what was going on was telling you to go home. And that was all you knew then. And yeah. And then I went to which says to me, I mean, how many not the exact number but how many people on a given day or run around Manhattan? Oh, thousands. Millions. More than that. Yeah.

Okay, so I'm thinking of you standing there with a group of people with sirens going off. There are literally millions of people who at this point, unless you're at the World Trade Center on this island, you really don't know what's going on. It's a lot of confusion. We thought of bombs. We thought... What kind of bombs? Like somebody dropped a bomb or somebody bombed something?

We're thinking of 1993. Somebody put a bomb in a building, there are going to be several buildings, that's why they evacuate us because we're one of the tallest buildings. I'm imagining this, if you're standing in this group of people all pushed out, there's fighter planes up there, people are probably all getting calls from someone who's closer to it. So you probably are all talking to each other about, you know, what is this? What is that hearing?

I'm hearing it but my goal was now I don't do everything my husband tells me to do When he tells me get out or duck That's what I do and I ran to the bus stop and it was like a ghost town buses kept driving There was nobody in there. They were not allowed to pick up anybody because the city had shut down. So the buses weren't... Nothing was... Which leads me to the images of all the people I remember. Look, I'm from Memphis, okay?

And I believe rarely, but sometimes there are things that happen that affect our national consciousness. And a guy from Memphis and a gal from the Bronx are rarely brought together and become kindred spirits as Americans. But that day did. And I remember where I was on that day. But my reality is from images that the news, like most Americans, we weren't here. But I do remember the picture of all these people walking across the bridge. And I always thought, why are they walking? And of course, they can't catch a cab or maybe they can't get to the car. But now, I just now understand, one, you're afraid to go on

the subways and the trains Because I guess as New Yorkers your train that's a pitch we didn't have a choice The mayor had shut down the entire shut down the trains to everything so you couldn't even get on a bus So the only way to get the hell out of here was walk walk or jump into the Hudson River Which which is probably ill-advised Tom Hadvised. Tom Hanks has a beautiful story that he does on YouTube where it's called the unsung heroes, where many people bought their pleasure boats even across and people were jumping in. They didn't realize when they got out of the buildings that if they went upwards, that was the end of Manhattan. People were able to get through all the bridges and tunnels,

but if you got out and ran to your left, you were stuck. That's the end of Manhattan. So many friends of mine actually tell me the story of how they jumped in the water. They just kept seeing all these images and they needed to get out. They didn't care how. And that's desperation, that's fear.

They didn't care how and that's desperation. That's fear. So Joe calls and says, listen to me where or don't get in the trains and find a way to get home, basically. And you do. I, but you don't hear from, I don't find a way to get home until May before. I'm stuck. And I guess my training kicked in. Where would I find accurate information?

Because too many people were saying too many things. And that wasn't accurate. And I've decided I'm going to go to a hotel. They have to have TVs. And I'm going to be able to hear clearly. And when I sat down, at that point, I don't even remember the time, but I'm going to assume it was the South Tower that went down. And then I'm just sitting there in shock. Is it a replay or what? And it must have been a replay because now we're hearing about the Pentagon. Then the South Tower does, so then it was the North Tower.

You see how hard that is for me to figure out. That's one thing that bothers me. Sometimes my memory is, I write things down. When I saw all this happen, automatically it clicks when he says we're at war. Because I didn't understand when he said it to me. And I said, well, where is he calling me from that he knew so much information? And at that moment, I thought he's gone.

And I realized he was down there. I didn't think anything about my daughter. I was just trying to absorb the fact that my husband was gone on his birthday. And I continued to watch and watch, no phone calls, nothing. And at the bottom of the TV, the mayor put out a message that he was opening up the city for about an hour or two. And I ran, got a cab, got home, and now I'm thinking, I don't have my car. How do I get to my daughter?

Where is my daughter's phone? Phones aren't working. Now what? But when I got home she was there and I realized at that moment he must have picked her up when he heard the very first account hadn't been, it was alleged that a plane had hit the building we didn't have any other news. He picked up his keys because he knew this is it, this is what we've been waiting for for eight and a half years. And he picked our daughter up, dropped her off, and she was sitting there and she watched everything. And when mom didn't come home, she thought... She's wondering if she's lost her family.

Yeah. She thought I went to respond because even though I was retired, once a first responder, always a first responder. We don't give that up. So when you walk in... She thought I was a ghost. Yeah. She was like, wow. She was in shock. But what's interesting then, now you and your daughter are there. Now the two of you are wondering about Joe.

And that actually didn't last until maybe five, because he did call. But his voice was different. I've answered jobs with my husband. And I know his voice. And he's saying, baby, it's bad. It's dark. And I'm looking out my window.

Where are you that it's so dark? And he says, it's a war zone. I can't see my hand. And his voice is so different than anything I've ever heard. And I can hear the background radio. And he says, listen, it's really bad. Sometimes I don't even know where I am he said I'm getting a break at 10 and I will call you then I am Near tower 7 setting up for the National Guard Got and me hold it the tower 7 collapsed. Yes, but it collapsed by the last

Okay, so he calls you Tower 7 still standing and he's setting up for the National Guard Right and all you know is it's still standing. And he's setting up for the National Guard. And all you know is it's bad. And you know you're a strong cop husband. But I'm good because daddy's okay. But you hear in his voice the seriousness. And I'm thinking of the site.

I know Tower 7's across the street. And at one point after that, the phone rings again. There's no service. But he got through because of Nextel held a walkie talkie phones sure and the next thing I get another call And I'm like okay He needs to talk again, which we were so happy to hear and it was a friend from out of town and now she's talking I realized wait a minute she got through and I'm giving her everybody's number at home call them I can't get through you can watch TV. Everything is now

live. He's near tower seven and that's when I was informed tower seven went down. And I I don't remember how we hung up. I just remember grabbing my daughter because she was saying how horrible is this that we were allowed to say I love you and happy birthday and he's gone. And it was that moment that I needed her to realize, I couldn't be anybody but a mom at that time. And I needed her to understand that there were thousands of people that were never gonna get that last goodbye. And we did.

And I said, we're gonna hold on to that. Because if he called and he said he's calling at 10, he's gonna call 10, he's going to call. So we sit, we pray and we do whatever we can so spiritually we can bring people back home. And we did that. And he never called. And so we thought he was, you know, you've lost your husband and your daughter knows she's lost her father. I didn't tell her. I was, she knew she, she, what I kept telling't tell her. I, um... Well, she knew. She...

What I kept telling her was, come on, you know, he's busy. This tower just went down. He's running around. You're trying to reassure her, which is a bunch of BS because inside your heart and head... But I had to be a mom. I get it. I couldn't see her.

What good was it that both of us were freaking out? And then, um, I just remembered thinking I didn't want the daylight to come because that meant I was a widow and I would be a single mom. But there's a twist to the story, which is he came home. He came home miraculously. I didn't recognize him. He was covered in that gray suit. He just managed to watch his face. And my husband came home, but his heart and soul was back there. He couldn't talk. He was just totally, he was not the man I kissed goodbye the day before. And he wouldn't speak much except to say that he was injured and I had to fix him up.

What was his injury? He had fallen down about four flights. The floor was actually very weak. He had fallen down about four flights of stairs and it looked like... Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me get this. And let me just say this now and to our listeners and to you, and I think now's a good time for me to get on my soapbox for a minute. For people probably 35 years and older, we remember where we were.

And it's kind of like my grandparents always talked about, they remembered where they were at Pearl Harbor. And then the next generations come along and certainly they know historically what happened at Pearl Harbor, but they didn't feel it. Not like my grandparents did. And I still, before we sat down for our chat today, I walked around the corner and I looked up at the building and I just, I don't want to sensationalize the story for the purposes of trying to make a podcast that is interesting.

And so that's not what my next questions and thoughts are going to be about. But in the same respect, I feel like everybody in their young 30s, mid 30s to my children, they see every year on the anniversary of 9-11, the images on TV, and they know two buildings were hit by planes and they burned down. But they don't feel what I felt. And they sure as hell don't feel what you felt being here. And I feel like if we lose that collective consciousness as a nation, we risk a lot. And so I'm going to ask you some questions, but again, it's not to sensationalize it. It's because I want our listeners to try to feel this. And feel this. And he came home with soot all over him. And you say he fell down four flights of stairs, but how do you fall down four flights of stairs?

The floors were very weak. I still don't know the building he was in or if it was just some place. It had to have been near seven. Yeah. Well, I don't even know when he fell. I don't know where he fell because my husband hasn't spoken to me about that. Well, something had to have collapsed for him before. So he was in a collapsing building. Somewhere. But he can never get there to tell me. But I saw the injury. He still to this day can't speak about it. No, it's a lot he won't talk about. Understand. But I did find a way.

PTSD, right? We didn't even know we had it. I understand. We didn't know we had it. But, so he fell and he came, when he came home, it was not a joyful reunion and he's blank from what he's witnessed but he wants you to fix him up. Why didn't he just go to the hospital? Well he couldn't because they would have reported it back to NYPD and then NYPD would not have allowed him to go back to the site. So he came to his wife who has this emergency medical training. Fix him up so he can go back. It says fix me so I can go back because if I go to the hospital they wouldn, I can't go back and serve. His whole goal was to save somebody and he didn't and that's always what he did. What was wrong with him? What was his injury?

When I cut his pants off, he had a very deep gash on the side of his knee and it looked like his knee had moved. And it looked horrible and I told him that's above my pay grade and he says well you don't have to fix it but I'm going back and I just took out my kit and did butterfly stitches and taped him up and I said you have to go to the doctor. Did you have novocaine or anything? Nothing. Nothing. You stitched him up wrong. Butterfly stitches they're not actually needle and thread they're just butterfly stitches I held the skin together and crossed them over. I put a ton of bacitracin and I covered him as best as I could. And I said, you need to go because this is going to get infected.

You're going to get infected in that site. And so did he get, did he, what did he do? Shower, get a bite to eat and then leave? He took a shower, didn't eat, sat on the sofa and he goes, okay, this is my schedule, I'm going. We were speechless, like, why are you going back? Didn't you fulfill your... This is how we're thinking. And he's saying, oh, this is not gonna happen.

We're not gonna fix this up in 24 hours, honey. I don't even know if we're gonna come back from this. We'll be right back. For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. But the murder of Carmichael Lonti marked the beginning of the end, sparking a chain

of events that would ultimately dismantle the most powerful crime organization in American history. It sent the message to them that we can prosecute these people. Discover how a group of young prosecutors took on the mafia, and with the help of law enforcement, brought down its most powerful figures. These bosses on the commission had no idea what was coming their way from the federal government.

From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts, this is Law and Order, Criminal Justice System. Listen to Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packer star Kabir Vajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation.

Hey, GB, explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning in a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron, and the consequences for everyone involved.

You mix homesteading with guns in church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked, voila, you got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiral on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine,

and of course, lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha Libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha Libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. Its tradition is culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish

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Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of my Kultura podcast network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your

intuition? Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We think of Franklin as the doddering dude flying a kite in the rain, but those experiments are the most important scientific discoveries of the time. I'm Evan Ratliff. Last season, we tackled the ingenuity of Elon Musk with biographer Walter Isaacson. This time, we're diving into the story of Benjamin Franklin, another genius who's desperate to be dusted off from history. His media empire makes him the most successful self-made business person in America. I mean, he was never early to bed and early to rise type person.

He's enormously famous. Women start wearing their hair in what was called the coiffure a la Franklin. And who's more relevant now than ever. The only other person who could have possibly been the first president would have been Benjamin Franklin. But he's too old and wants Washington to do it. Listen to On Benjamin Franklin with Walter Isaacson on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Alex, our steam producer, does really good work on prepping stuff.

In that prep, I read that he did say very briefly, it's bad, the stench is horrible, soot is everywhere, and body parts. Is that, am I paraphrasing? No, no, I mean not. He, I should have bought it, I'm sorry. There's a picture of him standing in front of Brooks Brothers with his sergeant and that's a clothing store. And he had to bring his team in through several areas that the police department had cleared. And he was kicking a couple of things that he thought were mannequins, and they weren't. And his heart breaks because he said, I didn't get to bring anyone home. That one thing I kicked could have been closure for a family member. And it was all over the place.

And he just, to this day, he even wonders about his partners. Were they in pieces? And it's hard not to think about that because that's something people don't know. No, and see, this is just gut-wrenching, but I feel like it's something I've heard so many interviews and read so much about, but we don't talk about this enough in my opinion, because as hard as this to think about and hear, if you don't understand this, you don't understand the depth of this attack. No, they don't.

Why were there body parts on the ground? When the buildings went down, they went down hurricane wind forces. So we have 110 floors. We were losing 10 floors per second. So those towers went down in 12 seconds. And so if you were in the way, you were pulverized. And this was mostly from the top, maybe as the towers kept going down, it just took people with them. Some whole bodies were found, but not until months later.

And you were, I hate to say you were lucky, but if you were in the higher floors, there was a chance they would find a good portion of your body. If you were on the lower floors, there was no chance. What if you were just outside the buildings, if it was her case for the sheer power and energy created by the falling building, even if you were a hundred feet or 200 feet away from the actual rubble of the building, the wind would rip you apart. People were onto cars. At one point when my husband called, earlier that day I kept hearing him do a spitting sound which, you know, like, what are you doing? And he says, I'm just pulling concrete

stuff that came in my mouth when the second tower went. So now I know he was there for the second tower going down and he won't talk about it anymore. I know that I heard him tell one of his friends, which I had made a point to bring a lot of his friends back into his life, where he says, you know, what could I do but run? This cloud was chasing us and that's what he was talking about, the darkness. And he kept saying, I've never seen anything like this before. And do they feel some kind of weird guilt because they had to run? Yeah, my husband does. What else are they going to do?

Stand there and die? That's what I told him. And he said, it was coming after us and as I'm running, I'm trying to get people to run with me. But he would feel guilty. He would start feeling guilt about two or three weeks later when the mayor finally said it was no longer rescue and recovery, it was just recovery. And that's when he had to accept his friend was gone, his partner. He trained with him, did a lot of things with him and he goes, I can't accept that he's gone and I'm not. And as a wife, I want to tell him, that's kind of a blessing. You live to talk about it. And he goes,

I'm not talking about this. No one would ever believe it because we're cops. This is our job. So the firefighters, the police, the port authority, all the first responders there that day, again, not to sensationalize it, but I mean, before the buildings fell, there were people on the top of these towers that had a choice to make, which is die by my flesh melting or jump. And they did. And I remember reading something that said that one of the most horrific sounds of the day was the thud of bodies hitting the ground constantly. And there are videos where you hear that.

What's that? There are videos where you hear that. What's that? There are videos where you hear that. The firefighters are looking up and you can hear the thud. We had one of those videos at the 9-11 Tribune Museum and we turned the sound off because family members would come to visit the museum and we didn't want them to think, was that my son, my mother, my daughter? That thud. Yeah, we didn't want them to think was that my son, my mother, my daughter. So we had to... That thud.

Yeah, we didn't want to do that. And then we also had an airplane window and we didn't identify what plane it was because we didn't want any family member to come in and wonder if their loved one was sitting next to that window. And so these first responders, the ones that survived the day... They're not surviving. They survived that day, just that day. I will tell you, they started dying on 9-11. So we didn't know.

And you know, first the PTSD gets you, then you have the, what we call the World Trade Center bark. It's a cough we all have. When we wake up in the morning or soon after that, we were pulling things out of our nose that were dark and slimy. We just didn't understand. And then we had our own government tell us the air quality was safe. And that's because Wall Street had to open. So, you know, they needed the money, but money was more important in lives. We're going to get to that in a second because that's part of the beauty of what you've done with this. But again, not to overdo it, but the bottom line is if you survive the day in your

first responder, now what you're doing is you're literally stepping over, not just, you're not just cleaning up debris and rubble, you're cleaning up pieces of human beings. You're cleaning up horrific things that we are, that caring, loving human beings just can't ever unsee or unfeel. Can unring a bell. Right. just can't ever unsee or unfeel. Can't unring a bell. Right. Just can't. Okay.

So, for those of you who are listening and think 9-11 was just about two planes flying into two buildings because some terrorists decided to attack us. That's true. But the other truth is that more people have died as a result of the cleanup. And since the day of 9-11, they actually died on the day of 9-11. This is true. So the truth is the attack has not quit killing even these 20 something years later. 9-11 didn't end for us. 9-11 later. 9-11 didn't end for us. 9-11 didn't end for us.

It still continues. It's continuing to this day. And we're told, especially some wives, I have two stories. My husband is sick and I was a recovery worker. I'm sick. But when people don't know that and they know that Joe was there, they go, what are you crying about? he came home and then they make you feel guilty. Because he's probably reliving it every single day. Well they don't know that they just feel I'm ungrateful

that he came home look at all the other women that don't have husbands and I'm like. Does he have survivor scope? Not just for his um his police officer friends, but for people. Do you have survivor scope? No. I don't know. I just feel that I could have done more. I should have gone before. I was so close.

I could have just walked over and helped. My thought process was get home to your daughter. You know, that's always been his job. You know, but after that, what went wrong with me, I was in a respite center with the Red Cross. Well, hang on. Now, let me explain that. So, as a normal person from the Bronx who grows up marries this guy and has this love affair and starts off this normal American life, and just a normal person living a life. You know, this 9-11 interrupts and changes the rest of your lives forever. So Joe keeps coming home night after night with this filthy and blank stare on his face and you have this EMS training and you decide you're going to volunteer with the Red Cross and work in these centers. What was Joe's response to that?

Well, he was very angry. He was angry? Super angry. Was he angry because he was trying to protect you? He just didn't want you to be part of it? No, that was it. That was it. It wasn't that I was going because he has never told me I couldn't go anywhere. Okay.

But he asked me why. And I said, because I lied to our daughter. For days after 9-11, I would take her to school and she didn't want to go to school. And I gave her this big patriotic talk about terrorism and how we can't let them win. And if she didn't go to school, they would- You were being a tough mom. Tough, loving mom. I was, but I didn't believe one word I said.

I just needed her to go to school and be 16. So I would, after she went to school, I would drive underneath some trees and sit there until it was time for her to get out. And every day I lied. I had a great day and I did this and I did that until one day she came out of school and said, Mom, we're going to be okay, but you know I can see you out the window. She saw you parked on the car. Oh, her friends.

I thought it was so cool. Were you in the car crying? I was crying. I was listening to music. So your daughter is in school looking out at your mom sitting in the car. After I'm telling her she shouldn't do this. Yeah. And so I felt I sent her the wrong message and I just called a few people and before I know it, you're going to Brooklyn.

I mean, back then that's not a funny story. No, no. Right now. I laugh about it all the time. That's actually very funny. And then one day Joe came home and he sees me dressed and goes, it's 10. And I go, yeah, I am. A clock, a p.m.

10 p.m. and you're dressed up pretty good. Did he think maybe you're reverting back to your party girl times? No, okay. You sure? I wouldn't want to do that. I was kidding. But he just came in and goes, are we going somewhere?

And I said, no, you're not. But I got to go to Brooklyn, sign in, get my paperwork done. And for? Been assigned to ground zero. No, you haven't. Yes, I have. And don't we usually discuss things? I says, yeah, but you've been too busy.

I always try to get out of these things. And I said, well, I'm going. And he looked at me and goes, I don't want you to go. And I said, well, where would you be? And he, he drove me. He didn't want you to go. He was afraid. Because he's afraid of everything you're going to be exposed to. He even asked me, well, what I do with her, my daughter, and I go, she's 16. She knows how to put herself to sleep. But what if you're not here in the morning, she knows how to get herself to school.

And he goes, but, but, and I go, no more buts, honey. I'm going because you were there. I want to be there too. I want to help. We got into the car and he would not speak to me. We got to Brooklyn and he opened the door and he said, you sure I can't convince you? I said, will you stop going? And he got back in the car and said, I'll see you you?" I said, will you stop going? And he got back in the car and said,

I'll see you tomorrow. I said, good. I said, we're not winning any fight here. It's just something I need to do. And once you understand that, you won't have a problem with me going down. And he didn't after that. That concludes part one of our conversation with Sonia Aigron, and I really hope you'll

listen to part two that's now available. As for heroism, it's just getting started. But if you don't, make sure you join the Army of Normal Folks at normalfolks.us and sign up to become a member of the movement. It only takes committing to doing one new thing this year to help others, and there will be a ton of awesome ideas on this podcast from the folks we're featuring. Some of them may resonate with you deeply and others may not at all and that's okay, because we're called to do different things. By signing up, you'll also receive a weekly email with short episode summaries in case you happen to miss an episode

or you prefer reading about our incredible guests. Together, we can change the country, but it starts with you. I'll see you in part two. For decades, the mafia had New York City in a stranglehold, with law enforcement seemingly powerless to intervene. It uses terror to extort people. But the murder of Carmichael Lonti marked the beginning of the end.

It sent the message that we can prosecute these people. Listen to Law & Order Criminal Justice System on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's so much beauty in Mexican culture, like mariachis, delicious cuisine, and even lucha libre. Join us for the new podcast, Lucha Libre, Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish

about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Santos Escobar. Listen to Lucha Libre, Behind the Mask on the iHeartReyo app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you stream podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast, Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one

science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford and I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life because the more we know about what's running under the hood better we can steer our lives Listen to inner cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Ever get the feeling someone's watching you Well in 1971 a group of anti-war activists had that feeling I was in the heart of the dragon

And it was my job to stop the fire. So they decided to do something insane, break in to the FBI and expose J. Edgar Hoover's dirty secrets. We had some idea that this was pretty explosive. I'm Ed Helms. Binge the full second season of Snafu now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil.

They're just some weird guy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the Weird Little Guys Trying to Destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.