Duration: 1:10:36 | Recorded on September 11, 2026
S3E33 — Recorded on the 25th anniversary of September 11, hosts Kent and Kyle reflect on their personal memories of the 2001 terrorist attacks, George W. Bush’s crisis leadership, and the emotional challenge of parenting through historic trauma. Comparing the cultural responses of Toby Keith and Bruce Springsteen, they explore how shared sadness can foster genuine human compassion while political anger drives division.
Featured Spirits
Elmer T. Lee Single Barrel
Bacardi Black Rum
Show Notes
/Personal Memories and the Parent Perspective: Marking the 25th anniversary of September 11, Kent and Kyle recount where they were when the attacks occurred. Kyle describes interning in a FedEx Express sourcing cubicle farm when the news broke, while Kent recalls returning from a morning jog in rural Indiana to flip on the Today Show just as the second plane struck live. Kent describes the eerie silence of empty skies the next night and the difficulty of explaining an unexplainable world to his young children, “part of my job as a parent was to help make sense of the world, and I had no sense to make.” Kyle reflects on George W. Bush reading to students at Booker Elementary School and holding his composure under extraordinary pressure.
/Cultural Responses: Toby Keith vs. Bruce Springsteen: Examining how the nation processed the trauma, Kent contrasts Toby Keith’s defiant revenge anthem with Bruce Springsteen’s mournful “My City of Ruins,” using the two as bookends for a single truth, that nearly every American felt both the rage and the grief at once. The hosts consider how political messaging and leadership tend to reach for militant anger over quiet sadness, because anger is easier to rally a crowd around.
/Shanksville, Flight 93, and Asymmetric Warfare: Kent shares his experience visiting the Shanksville, Pennsylvania crash site of Flight 93 less than a year after the attack, a makeshift fence covered in ribbons, photos, and mementos across the field from where the plane went down. Kyle recounts a B-1 bomber pilot friend’s mission dropping roughly 100,000 pounds of laser-guided JDAM munitions on Afghan mountain camps, and the two weigh the mismatch between that kind of firepower and an enemy of only a few dozen people, the central frustration of asymmetric warfare. The thread carries into the roots of anti-American sentiment and present-day foreign policy, including U.S. support for Israel and the Abraham Accords.
/Shared Sadness and Being There for Each Other: Using Pixar’s Inside Out as a framework, Kyle argues that shared sadness is the emotion that draws people together in grace and compassion, while political anger tends to drive the longer-term polarization. The hosts close on what the day still asks of them: giving themselves enough pause to choose a considered response over a reflexive one, and staying at the table with each other across real disagreement, which, as Kyle points out, is exactly what the show is trying to model.
References
George W. Bush gets told about 9/11 attacks at school reading to kids, archive footage shows (Youtube USA Today)
Flight 93 National Memorial (www.nps.gov)
Toby Keith – Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American) (Official Music Video) (YouTube)
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – My City of Ruins (Live In Barcelona) (YouTube)
Inside Out (www.pixar.com/inside-out)