As the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11th approaches, CBS News Sunday Morning turns its lens not merely toward the architecture of tragedy but toward the human beings who lived inside it — survivors, children of the lost, first responders, and the communities that chose renewal over ruin. The broadcast, hosted by Lee Cowan, weaves together grief and resilience across three attack sites, a small Canadian town, a New York film festival, and a hospital room where a new mother faced a crisis few understand. It is a program that asks, quietly but insistently, how people and places find thei
Sunday Morning marks 9/11's 25th anniversary with stories of resilience and revival
An act of defiance against what trauma leaves behind
Mark
Why does a news program spend this much time on 9/11 twenty-five years later? Isn't that a long time to keep looking back?
Mimi
Because the people who lived through it are still living with it. Laurel Homer was an infant when her father died. She's an adult now, but that loss shaped her entire life. These aren't abstract historical events—they're people's ongoing reality.
Luke
Fair point, but I want to know: does the program actually explore what changed in America after 9/11, or does it just celebrate resilience? The Fallows commentary piece suggests there's a harder conversation happening too.
Mimi
Both, I think. The De Niro story about Tribeca is about rebuilding, yes, but it's also about choosing art over despair. And Gander—that's about human connection in crisis. But you're right that there's also a reckoning about what we became afterward.
Mark
The postpartum psychosis segment seems like a different story entirely. Why pair it with 9/11 remembrance?
Mimi
It's not paired thematically—it's just what's on the show that week. But both stories involve trauma, emergency, and the gap between what people experience and what others understand about it.
Luke
I'm curious whether the program actually names the scale of what happened at each site, or if it relies on the emotional weight of individual stories. Numbers matter for context.
Mimi
The source material mentions specific people and places—Handler, Pantaleo, Homer, the three memorial sites. It doesn't give casualty figures or detailed statistics, so the program seems to be working with testimony and presence rather than data.
Mark
Does Card's return to that elementary school actually reveal anything new, or is it just revisiting a famous photograph?
Mimi
The source says he "talks about a singular moment, captured in an iconic photograph," but it doesn't say what he reveals. That's what you'd have to watch to know.
Luke
That's the gap I'd flag—we know the program exists and what it promises, but the actual reporting and what Card says is still unknown to us.
Il Polso
- A quarter-century after the attacks, the weight of September 11th still presses on the living — survivors, orphaned children now grown, and the aide who had to tell a president his country was under attack.
- The broadcast disrupts easy commemoration by placing viewers in intimate conversation with people whose losses are not symbolic but deeply personal, from a daughter who never knew her father to a Marine who worked the rubble at the Pentagon.
- Communities pushed to their limits — a Lower Manhattan neighborhood hollowed by destruction, a small Newfoundland town suddenly hosting 7,000 stranded strangers — responded not with collapse but with art, hospitality, and stubborn human warmth.
- A health segment cuts through stigma to name postpartum psychosis as a psychiatric emergency, giving language and urgency to a condition that can endanger mothers and families who have no framework to understand what is happening.
- The death of Gloria Steinem at 92 adds another layer of remembrance, as the program honors a life spent insisting that women's stories belong at the center of public life.
- Taken together, the episode lands as a meditation on how individuals and communities metabolize catastrophe — not by forgetting, but by building something forward from the wreckage.
As the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11th approaches, CBS News Sunday Morning turns its lens not merely toward the architecture of tragedy but toward the human beings who lived inside it — survivors, children of the lost, first responders, and the communities that chose renewal over ruin. The broadcast, hosted by Lee Cowan, weaves together grief and resilience across three attack sites, a small Canadian town, a New York film festival, and a hospital room where a new mother faced a crisis few understand. It is a program that asks, quietly but insistently, how people and places find their way back to themselves after the unthinkable.
On Sunday, September 6th, CBS News Sunday Morning devotes much of its broadcast to the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, with host Lee Cowan guiding viewers through stories drawn from all three sites where the tragedy unfolded.
The program brings together people whose lives were permanently reshaped by that morning. Harry Handler, who helped lead a woman to safety from the North Tower, speaks alongside Major Dan Pantaleo, who participated in recovery operations at the Pentagon. Perhaps most poignant is Laurel Homer, now an adult, who was only ten months old when her father — First Officer LeRoy Homer Jr. — died at the controls of Flight 93 before it crashed near Shanksville. Andrew Card, who whispered the news of the attacks into President Bush's ear at an elementary school in Sarasota, returns to that classroom to reflect on the moment an iconic photograph froze in time.
The broadcast also explores how communities answered catastrophe with creativity. Robert De Niro and producer Jane Rosenthal discuss the Tribeca Festival, launched in 2002 as what De Niro calls 'an act of defiance' — using art to revive a wounded Lower Manhattan. Across the border, the small town of Gander, Newfoundland, tells its own story of generosity: when U.S. airspace closed on 9/11, 38 diverted flights deposited 7,000 stranded travelers onto the island, and residents opened their homes for five days. That act of communal grace became the foundation for the Broadway musical 'Come From Away.'
A health segment with correspondent Faith Salie examines postpartum psychosis — a psychiatric emergency often confused with postpartum depression — through expert testimony and the account of a mother whose grip on reality fractured after giving birth. The episode also honors Gloria Steinem, who died September 2nd at 92, with a rebroadcast of a 2023 interview in which she reflects on founding Ms. Magazine and pushing feminism into the American mainstream.
The broadcast airs on CBS at 9 a.m. ET and streams on the CBS News app at 11 a.m. ET.
On Sunday morning, September 6th, CBS News Sunday Morning will devote much of its broadcast to marking a quarter-century since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The program, hosted this week by Lee Cowan, will weave together stories from the three sites where the tragedy unfolded—New York, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania—bringing viewers into conversation with people whose lives were permanently altered by that day.
Cowan will speak with Harry Handler, who guided a woman to safety from the North Tower of the World Trade Center; Major Dan Pantaleo of the Marines, who participated in rescue and recovery operations at the Pentagon; and Laurel Homer, now an adult, who was ten months old when her father, First Officer LeRoy Homer Jr., died piloting Flight 93 before it crashed near Shanksville. These are not abstract commemorations but encounters with the human weight of loss and survival.
The broadcast will also revisit the moment when Andrew Card, then chief of staff to President George W. Bush, informed the president that America was under attack. Card will return to Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, where Bush was visiting a classroom that morning, and discuss the singular moment captured in an iconic photograph—the instant when the trajectory of the nation shifted.
Beyond the immediate tragedy, the program explores how communities responded to catastrophe with creativity and resilience. Robert De Niro and producer Jane Rosenthal will discuss the Tribeca Festival, which debuted in 2002 as an intentional act of cultural revival in Lower Manhattan. De Niro describes it as "an act of defiance"—a deliberate choice to use art as a response to trauma and a tool for rebuilding a wounded neighborhood. The festival has since become a launching pad for new filmmakers and a symbol of the city's recovery.
Another story centers on Gander, a small town in Newfoundland, Canada, where an unexpected act of generosity unfolded on 9/11 itself. When U.S. airspace closed that morning, 38 international flights were diverted and grounded on the island. The population of Gander nearly doubled as 7,000 stranded passengers and crew members arrived with nowhere to go. For five days, residents of this small community opened their homes and hearts, providing shelter and comfort to strangers. That generosity became the seed for the Broadway musical "Come From Away," which tells the story of those five days and the bonds formed between the townspeople and the plane people.
The episode also includes a health segment on postpartum psychosis, a psychiatric emergency distinct from postpartum depression. Correspondent Faith Salie will speak with medical experts and a mother whose experience of hallucinations and distorted reality after giving birth threatened both her and her family. The segment aims to illuminate a condition often misunderstood and stigmatized.
In its cultural coverage, the program will remember Gloria Steinem, the pioneering feminist who died on September 2nd at age 92. A rebroadcast of a 2023 interview will feature Steinem discussing the founding of Ms. Magazine, the publication she helped launch as a young columnist at New York magazine—a venture that pushed feminism into the mainstream and became a catalyst for the women's liberation movement.
The broadcast airs on CBS at 9 a.m. ET and streams on the CBS News app at 11 a.m. ET, with full episodes available on demand across multiple platforms.
Citazioni salienti
An act of defiance— Robert De Niro, describing the Tribeca Festival's mission
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