June 2021 Bonus Review: Missing On 9/11
Does Dr. Sneha Anne Philip's story resist an ending?
the true crime that's worth your time
The crime
It’s unclear whether one occurred, aside from the terrorist attacks themselves, but IHeartRadio’s landing page for the podcast summarizes its mission thusly:
Sept. 10, 2001. One block from the World Trade Center. Security cameras capture the last known images of Dr. Sneha Anne Philip, shopping. The next day, chaos. What happened to Sneha? Brought to you by the team behind “Missing in Alaska.”
The story
I say this with gentleness, and host Jon Walczak and his team try to report out the story as responsibly as they can, but if you’ve read the New York piece I linked to earlier this month, you will have little use for Missing On 9/11. I understand the appeal of the story; as I said, it’s stuck with me ever since, and I do have some experience with trying to solve insoluble 9/11-related puzzles, so I don’t think the podcast is a pointless errand per se. And it does do some things well — Walczak does get the first-ever interview with the detective assigned to Sneha Anne Philip’s case; he does speak to former colleagues, and eventually induces one of Sneha’s brothers to go on the record with him, albeit not on mic; the careful geographic orientation and the scene-setting of the morning of 9/11 are effective (although the latter will prove difficult listening for some; if you have trauma around that event, heed the content warning on the first episode).