Hey, you're listening to the On the Media Midweek podcast, I'm Michael Lohinger.

22 years ago, two planes crashed into the Twin Towers.

Another plane hit the Pentagon, and another crashed in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000

people in total.

The attacks became the pretense for a sprawling, ongoing war on terror that has directly

and indirectly claimed some 4.5 million lives in post-911 war zones, including Afghanistan,

Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, according to a 2023 estimate from Brown University.

I was in 3rd grade when the towers crumbled, and in 7th or 8th grade when a friend sent

me the link to loose change.

One of the internet's first viral documentaries, a conspiracy theory film that alleged that

9-11 was an inside job.

In 2021, we ran the piece you're about to hear, which I originally pitched as a sort

of deep dive into an early example of how the internet broke our brains.

What I learned while reporting it is that loose change was a symptom and a cause of so

much more.

Here's my piece.

It's so funny because loose change, and like 9-11 Truthers and all that stuff, for me,

it was always just a colossal joke.

Pakistan Tabersky, the host of a bunch of podcasts like Missing Richard Simmons, The Line,

and most recently 9-12, a show about what changed in America the day after the twin towers

fell.

But in going back, I think I was more open-minded and more interested in how many people

...