The psychology of why people like Steve Rannazzisi lie about having survived 9/11

By Sarah Kaplan September 17 at 5:01 AM, WashPost

Steve Rannazzisi didn’t sound like someone putting on a show.

“I was sort of the party starter of Merrill Lynch,” he said in an interview in 2009. “Until our building got hit with a plane.”

“Oh, Christ,” his interviewer, the podcast host Marc Maron, interjected.

“Yeah. And then the party ended right there.”

Without tears or theatrics, Rannazzisi went on to explain that he was working on the 54th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. He felt the impact of a plane ramming into the first tower and ran outside to see what was happening. When the building began to crumble, “I just started f—ing booking it,” he told Maron. He stopped just in time to turn around and see the second tower collapse.

When he and his fiancée — who was supposed to be working in the towers but was still on the subway when the planes hit — got home, they decided to leave the city for Los Angeles, a decision Rannazzisi often credited with jump-starting his career.

(More here.)