99% Invisible - 562- Breaking Down The Power Broker

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

The Power Brokerby Robert Caro is a biography of Robert Moses, who is said to have built more structures and moved more earth than anyone in human history. And he did it without ever holding elected office. Outside of New York City, Robert Moses wasn't exceptionally well known. Inside of New York, he was mostly accepted by the media as simply the man who built all those nice parks. But The Power Broker, which is subtitled Robert Moses and The Fall of New York, changed all that. It is a tour de force of journalism, history, and biography. Roman also argues it's really fun to read and is strongly in contention for the best book ever written.But there is something of a catch, which can hang readers up: the book is a daunting 1200 pages long. As influential and amazing as this bestseller is, many people own an unopened copy gathering dust on their bookshelf. But that is a crime because this book needs to be read or at least discussed at length on a podcast.Roman Mars and Elliott Kalan (Flop House, Daily Show) are starting The Power Broker book club that will run through all of 2024 as bonus episodes and in this introductory episode we talk to #1 Robert Caro superfan, Conan O'Brien.Breaking Down The Power Broker

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. In 1974, two very significant things happened if you are a fan of 99% Invisible. Number one is that I was born. And number two, the Power Broker by Robert Kerro was published. I learned about the Power Broker when I first started to cover cities and infrastructure on the radio. This massive book that's about 1200 pages long is the most important and complete explanation of how cities are formed, how neighborhoods are destroyed, bridges are erected, roads are laid down, parks are designed, fortunes are made, lives are ruined, and power is a mast. It is the biography of Robert Moses,

a man who has said to have built more structures and moved more earth than anyone in human history. And he did it all without ever holding elected office. Outside of New York City, Robert Moses wasn't exceptionally well known. Inside of New York, he was mostly uncriticized by the media and was simply the man who built all those nice parks. But Robert Carrot's book, The Power Broker, which is subtitled, Robert Moses, and the Fall of New York changed all that. It is a tour

de force of journalism, history, and biography. I also think it is really fun to read and is strongly in contention for the best book ever written. The problem is, as I mentioned, it is 1200 pages long. As best selling and as influential as it is, I wouldn't be surprised if you had an unopened copy sitting on your bookshelf right now. But that is a crime, because this book needs to be read, or at least discussed at length on a podcast. So we're going to spend 2024 reading it together. We're going to study it, we're going to break it down, we're going to exalt in the genius of the author Robert Carro, we're going to shick our fists in the sky at Robert Moses, it is going to be amazing. And as I was discussing this idea with my friend, Elliot Kaelin, who is the co-host of the

pioneering and very funny flop house podcast and former head writer of the Daily Show with John Stewart, his eyes lit up and he said, if there's any way for me to be involved, I would love to help. And later that day, he texted me a picture of the title page of his copy of the Powerbroker that was signed by Robert Carroll himself. He was a guest on the daily show when I was working there and he signed it and he said to Elliott, another member of the writing profession, Robert Carroll. And it was the greatest compliment I've ever received in my life.

It's like just thinking about it, I'm almost crying. Like this, when I remember the first time I read it, it was just that I could even pretend to be a writer, like Robert Carro, it was, this is amazing. It's like a dream come true, yeah. And so, from my point of view, there's two really big reasons to read this book, The Power Broker. And one is that it's about Robert Moses,

who is a person that probably, most people wouldn't know if it wasn't for Robert Carro, who shaped the 20th century in so many ways. And the other is Robert Carro himself, the writer. So let's start with Robert Carro. Why did getting that note from him make you cry? There's a, and you did make me cry. I said almost when you cry, but it was true. I was in a head and get the dip. Robert Carro represents to, and I think to a lot of the people who read him, this amazing synthesis of the greatest researcher who ever lived. He has his facts down and he will not stop until he has found out every single piece of

information that's possible to find out about a subject. He will talk to everybody, he will talk to them multiple times, he will read every page in the archives. But combined with that is, you read read his books and it's not just information, but the books are beautiful. They're beautifully written. He's a writer who manages to combine this intense factual regressness with a real sense of poetry and beauty and evocative writing. It's hard to find. So Elliott and I are gonna co-host this deep dive into the power broker.

And I just wanna say that we do not expect you to have read or know anything about the book at this point. We just wanna convince you to take this journey with us and we'll make it so that you can enjoy it and listen even if you don't read it, but it's really worth it if you do. And in addition to Elliot, we're going to have many fun guests in this book club

with us that you're going to meet along the way. But first, I want to talk about the origin of this book and how Robert Carroll first got the idea of writing about this man, Robert Moses. When Robert Carroll was first a reporter in the 1960s for News Day, Robert Moses was still this monumental towering figure in New York City politics. He was the man behind the parks. He's the man who builds parks. He builds bridges.

He builds roads. And he wants to build this enormous bridge across the Long Island Sound. It's going to call the Oyster Bay Rye Bridge. Because at this point, like someone who is constantly trying to challenge themselves, he just wants to build bigger and bigger bridges. Regardless of where they're going, who's going to take them, it's just for the purity of the bridge itself, which in a way is kind of beautiful, but which is terrible for the people who's gonna take them. It's just for the for the purity of the bridge itself

Which in a way is kind of beautiful, but which is terrible for the people who live in Long Island and Robert Carro is a journalist at Newsday and he's doing a series of stories about this bridge He talks to people about it and all of them tell him. This is a bad idea for bridge. It's too big It's doubt. It's not necessary. It's gonna disrupt what probably title patterns and things like that That's how big the pillars are and the peers that are gonna have to hold it up. And Robert Carroll starts writing articles about it and he goes, I think I'm really making a difference. I'm really making a change here.

And he goes to the meeting where the approval is gonna be voted on to move forward with this bridge. And he goes there and not a problem at all. The bridge sails through the approval process so fast. And Robert Carous starts to realize as he learns more about municipal governance. Oh, this bridge is not being built there because of it. Engineering needs, demographic needs, planning needs, it's being built there because Robert Moses wants it built there.

And he has enough power that he can say, I want this here, even if it flies in the face of all observable reality. And then it ends up there. And Robert Carros says, how did this guy get this power? Because the thing about Robert Rosas, he was never elected to public office. Democratically, according to our system, no one should have this power, but he certainly should not have it. He's never been the one time he ran for office when he runs for governor.

He loses in a landslide because he is such an unlikable person to so many people. But somehow Ramosus has this power. And so Robert Kauros says, on the right of book about this, he tells his wife, I, he will take me nine months, I'm going to write a book about Robert Moses. A year later, he's like, I'm just scratching the surface of the research process. And it takes him seven years to write this book during that time, his wife sells their house and they move to an apartment so that they can continue working on it. They're living really hand-to-mouth. And this is the shortest, I think he's ever spent on a book,

which was seven years. Then after this is a success, he goes on to write out Lyndon Johnson. He writes these huge books and that's the work of his life for the past 40-some odd years. And so the one shame thing about Robert Carro is that he is the greatest of these writers and the flip side of him being so great and so thorough with it is that he will end up writing about two people for his entire life. But that's how he gets into this thing.

He notices that Robert Moses has this power. How did he get it when he shouldn't have it? And that is the question that leads him has this power. How did he get it when he shouldn't have it? And that is the question that leads him to this book. And it takes him 1,100 pages to answer it. And to be honest, it's hard to be to think it would take less than that. There are 1,100 well-used pages. Yeah, it really is stunning as a work

because I came into this sort of interested in cities and how they're made, not necessarily like sort of like thinking too much about the character of Robert Moses, but it is a real Shakespearean Greek myth, kind of hero and tragedy and fall. Like it really has all these beats as a story that are beyond just me wanting to understand how cities are made.

Yep, Robert Carroll manages to take the act of construction and the act of road planning and the effect it has on people and how much of it stems from the personality of this one man and really blows it up into this epic proportion because these are epic things. The point he's making throughout the book is Robert Moses is literally reshaping the actual landscape of New York City and much

of New York State. He is physically building more and putting more earth into movement than any other human being has in the history of the world. And all behind the very innocuous title of Parks Commissioner, you know, and construction coordinator. And it's because, well, this epic story is mirrored by this very Machiavellian behind the scene story of the man who can work the law and knows how to write laws and how to fix them so that he can do things and acquire power without people knowing it. He can work behind the scenes. I should mention the bridge that Robert Carro saw get passed through the approval process was never actually built because the planning of that bridge managed to thankfully coincide with the Shakespearean fall of Robert Moses

from the heights that he had attained. So if you want to go drive across the Oyster Bay Rive Bridge, all six miles of this suspension bridge, you're not going to be able to do it. I'm sorry, it's not going to happen. So this book, The Power Broker, has been around for 50 years and it is a very fun book. It is actually really lovely to read. You understand and learn so much. The chapters are just, there's almost whiplash between the chapters sometimes. Like Robert Carroll will be talking about how this one road was built

and how much it took to raise all the money for it. And then the next chapter is about him and his dastardly relationship with his brother. And it's a whiplash, but it's also, Robert Carrows has this amazing sense of, oh, I've got a lot of facts about road building right now. I don't know if I'm ready for more facts about road building. Okay, here's a chapter about Robert Moses and his brother. Oh, you know what, this chapter,

oh boy, it was really dense with his relationship with the different mayors. Okay, let me give you a chapter about how lavishly he would entertain his guests at Jones Beach, as if he was an emperor. And then, and you read that chapter, and you're like, this is fun. This is fun to let, like,

this is like great Gatsby kind of like, you know, wealth porn and a certain, but then Rob Caros, like you enjoyed that chapter, didn't you? Here's a chapter about how an entire neighborhood was destroyed and they tried everything they could to stop it and they couldn't stop it and it's heartbreaking. And it's such a, there's such a masterful kind of flow to it. And there's funny parts to it.

And there's Robert Carrows, the master of ending a chapter with a one sentence paragraph that's like, but Robert Moses had an idea. And it's the end of the chapter. And you're like, now I need to read the next chapter. Like it's rare that you read a really weighty, really respectable tone about municipal governance that has so much suspense built into it, has so many cliffhangers. The thing about it is I read some of the book out loud

to my wife and it's really readable. Like it just, it kind of rolls off the tongue really well. It's not this relentlessly chronological slog of like, okay, we have to get to this bridge and get to this bridge and get to this bridge. It really is about how Robert Moses developed as this kind of political reformer, this progressive anti-politician sort of meritocracy focused.

This guy who went into public service for all the right reasons, because he saw a need that people had for better ways to get around and especially better ways to relax and enjoy their lives in a city setting. And you watch him amass the power he needs to make that dream possible. And Robert Carro calls it a dream many times to make that dream possible and then realize actually I kinda like the amassing power part, and I like the making the dream possible part and going too far. It's the real story. It's the, you want the moment, the only moment it doesn't have is the moment every rock and roll movie where someone goes, you've changed man, it used to be about the music, but

that's the kind of arc that Robert Moses is going on. There's just so much in it. There's a character in the novel, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, who carries around Robinson Crusoe with him everywhere. And he says, this is my Bible. Whenever I need advice or I need something, I turn to a page in Robinson Crusoe and there's something right there for me.

And that's how I feel about the power broker. That I could, if I had trouble with something in my life, I feel like I could open up the power broker to a random page and I'd find something on there that would be, or I'd be like, disupplies. This helps me get through what I'm getting through right now. I've read it once before and you've read it once before. We're reading it again for the project of this podcast.

Which thank you, Roman, for asking me to be part of this because for years I said, I'm going to reread the Power Broker someday, but when am I going to get around to it? And then this came along and I was like, yeah, yeah, now I'm justified in rereading, spending the limited amount of time God put me on this earth, rereading the longest book I think I've ever read. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. So this is our 99% of this will project for this next year.

And starting on January 19th and monthly, we're going to sort of cover about 100 pages per month and get through the whole book. And we're going to talk about, you know, what happened in the book, kind of recap it. We're going to do some deep dives into some of the things we find most interesting in those chapters, maybe not the most important thing, just something to pick apart that's fun for us. And we're going to interview some celebrities who are fans of Robert Carro, fans of Robert Moses, or, you know, whatever,

interested in Robert Moses, I guess, more than fans of Robert Moses. Fans in the same way that someone's like, like really likes the Joker, or Dr. Deer or something like that. And including our first guest for this inaugural episode, this introductory episode, a one Conan O'Brien, who is sort of like, it's sort of amazing how he's aligned himself

with Robert Carro, like there's a whole New York Times article from a few years ago about how much he was a fan of Robert Carro, which is, it was kind of an amazing thing to exist, you know, that there were just been an article about his own fandom. One of the first times I remember reading about Robert Carro was in an article about Conan O'Royan from 20-some odd years ago. You could tell he's supposed to be talking to somebody about being at the host of a late-night television show, that the article opens with him talking about Master of the Senate, which at the time I think was the most recent Lyndon Johnson book in the series.

And you can tell that he's just so genuinely excited about this, that it had, he must have brought it up probably 30 times, but they put it in, you know, once in the article, but that they're like, well, we gotta cover cover this because it's such a part of him. He's such a, he's been such a real caro head, just just a real caro die hard for years. Yeah. It's fun to watch him be such an enthusiastic fan. And so he was the only guest that we had in mind for our first episode. So after the break, Ellie and I are going to talk to Codidoprion.

We're going to spend the whole year digging into the power broker, but first let's talk about the guy who wrote it. In addition to the power broker, Robert Carro has written a memoir about his writing and four biographies of President Lyndon Johnson with a fifth and final book on the way, each volume taking on a different portion of LBJ's life. With significant digressions on the soil composition of the Texas Hill Country where Johnson grew up, and the entire history and function of the US Senate. As a biographer, there is no one like him, and as such, Robert Carro has a fervent and dedicated fan base, including Conan O'Brien.

So, you created Conan O'Brien, he's a friend. I am told basically is an elaborate front to get Robert Carro to talk to you. Why is he so special? Well, first of all, everything I've done in show business is an elaborate long con to achieve some of my life goals. Meeting Mr. T was one of them and I achieved that way back in the late 90s. But yeah, I always wanted to talk to Robert Carro. I'm a history buff. And so Robert Carro, clearly, the preeminent historian of our times. And I had a very good friend and college roommate named Eric Rife, shout out to Eric, who

I still see all the time. And he and I were in college together when the first carer book on Johnson came out and we started reading those books as they came out. And we sort of, if you can imagine, back 15 years ago, if you can imagine 12-year-old girls waiting in line for the next Harry Potter book, that's how we were about about caro and we would have long animated discussions about Lyndon Johnson and sometimes to the point where we would be in a restaurant. I mean, to this day we can be talking about Lyndon Johnson in a restaurant and my friend Eric is very loud.

And also he comes from the same part of Pennsylvania that Jimmy Stewart's from. So he actually sounds a bit like Jimmy Stewart. And so we'll be in a restaurant, like a nice restaurant. And we start talking about Johnson and Eric will get very animated and then I'll get animated, but Eric's louder than I am. And I'm the one on television and on radio. And he'll start shouting, you know what you do?

You know what he understood about? London, Johnson, you got it, you got it, you got it, you got it. And you know, people think what you understand about? London, Johnson, Yada, you got to understand. And you know, people think that it's a scene from, you know, it's a wonderful life. We're re-screaming at Clarence. So we both get very excited about the work of Robert Kerro. And I think it all boils down to my core religion, even though I was raised Catholic, my real core religion is that God is in the details.

I feel that way about comedy, I feel that way about work and craft in general. And Robert Carro is the patron saint of doing the work, taking the time, having the patience, and believing that God is in the details. And that's reflected so powerfully in his work that I think that's why he resonates for me. Yeah. Yeah. I find that really fascinating that people are obsessed with his process and you've expressed

being obsessed with this process. And I think that part of that is because in the void of the decade between books, we fill it our imaginations with him and a single light bulb and file folders and stuff like this and even his book that talks about writing is called working. It's about a work ethic. What about that? It's really fascinating to you. Well, I like to contrast Robert Carro with the times that we're in now.

You think about it. Everything's so quick. Everything feels so temporary. I mean, the internet didn't exist when Robert Carrows started clearly the power broker, but then on to his London Johnson books. And now we live in this world where everything's so ephemeral and fast. Series come and go, television comes and goes, entertainment, things almost like a magician that has flash powder. Things explode and there's a big spark and we all go, whoa, and almost like a magician that has flash powder, things

explode and there's a big spark and we'll go, whoa, and it puffs and then it's gone. And while this is all happening, you contrast it with this man who has dedicated his whole life essentially to writing about these two people and really most of his life writing about one man and doing it his way without compromise very quietly in a very small office. I haven't been there, but I imagine it's not huge and cranking away on a Smith-Corona typewriter that was built in 1969. typewriter that was built in 1969. And he has this dedication to what he's doing that almost feels like it's akin to Egyptians building a pyramid. You know, most people that were working on a pyramid never even lived to see it half-built. That alone completed. What this man's doing doesn't feel like it's part of the late 20th and early 21st century.

It's completely out of time. Robert Carro and his work makes me feel trivial the way looking at a mesa in a desert makes me feel trivial. I just look at it and I go, oh my god, this thing is so much bigger than me and it's made of granite. Robert Carro is the closest thing to like a geological formation. His work, his body of work feels like we're watching this eruption of lava that takes and moving of tectonic plates that's going to build something. And it's going to last as long as civilization lasts, which is at least in other 40 years. Yeah, I often think of Robert Caroless as a writer and more as

like a Merlin type character, someone who goes off into into the top of a tower or sits on a mountain somewhere and is so incredibly focused and concentrated on the universe around him that he's working with, that he gains a greater knowledge of it and occasionally comes down from the mountain and is like, here you go, here's my latest insights, and then he goes back up to the mountain and people go, Mr. Carrow, Mr. Carrow, when can we have more of this? And he's like, it takes time. It takes time and it takes concentration more than you're capable of. And then goes back up into the mists of his office on Central Park West, I guess.

Right. And, you know, he has such respect for the work he's doing that he wears a blazer and a tie. He's not working with anybody. He's by himself all day. He's by himself, you know. I would be probably just wearing board shorts, no one to wear, totally commando, shirtless, and I'd be yelling into an ancient dictiphon just for fun, and the TV would be on the background, and I'd be making popcorn. But this guy is dressed as if he's going into the Oval Office for a meeting and he has his process. He writes out in a long hand, then he writes on the typewriter and it's gotta be triple space and he does a lot of thinking before he writes.

When you think about this world we're in now where we pick up our phones and we blast out these screeds and thoughts and, you know, various musings with our thumbs while we're driving and balancing a coffee in our lap. And if you're me shouting at children in the back seat at the same time you're doing those things, yeah. Yeah, or if you're me shouting at children through the window, just children on the street.

Yeah. Why aren't you older? You seem too young to exist. Here's a 200-page book. Read this book. Yeah, grow up a little. Just hurling copies of it at the kids. Yeah, I've made a device that I load up this little catapult thing

in my car and it has about I have about 15 power brokers And when I see kids I want to say under 12 on the side of the street just loitering. I fire a power broker at them which if you've If you've weighed that book recently I kill half these kids. You have to do it then because there's still, you know, impressionable clay. Like you can still turn them into a good human being.

They can take a hit. They can't throw some fire. Yeah, usually, usually, yeah, they heal, they'll get over it and they'll never walk right again, but they'll know. Damn it. They'll read that book. But then I just admire, I have so much admiration for his process and I'm always trying to feel this,

get this sense of what, what is it about this guy that I like, I wanna try and emulate and obviously, there's so many ways I can't emulate him, but what I can emulate is it's important. The importance of your work, taking your work seriously, even if it's very silly work, taking it seriously and respecting the people who might see it or appreciate it enough to try and put a little detail into it or a little thought or feel how this is going to come across.

It's funny because when I finally did get to meet him and talk to him, there's a real sweetness about him. It's his enthusiasm. So many of us are pleased with so much less, but he's a little like Ahab, he has that same kind of nope. I'm gonna keep going and I'm gonna keep going and I'm gonna keep going until I literally cannot stop. And you see him in his books, I mean, the story about I still don't have it, I still don't have the full sense of Lyndon Johnson's

relationship with his dad as a young man. So, you know have the full sense of Lyndon Johnson's relationship with his dad as a young man. So, you know, he's talked to Lyndon Johnson's brother, Sam Houston many times and he's told all these stories and he's got it all. And he's like, nope, I gotta go back. I gotta go back, I gotta go back. And then finally he gets this brother to say, you know, yeah, those are all stories I told.

It wasn't really what happened. And then he gets him to go back into that room where they used to sit and have dinner. And he pushes him and pushes him and pushes him and finally gets the brother to relive that moment between Leningen Johnson and his father. And suddenly it's not this folksy bullshit tall Texas tail, it's real. And any of us, even if we consider ourselves perfectionists or people who care about our work, we would have signed off long ago. Absolutely.

You know, we've got a pretty good book here. I mean, this is a pretty good book. I think we're good, and I really do want to go to Aruba, and make that because I bought the tickets, so I think I can submit this. And no, he needs to keep going back, and keep going back, and keep going back. And I keep thinking about that old television classic, Colombo. Peter Falk is Colombo just kept coming back. He's talked to the bad guy

35 times. And then he's like, just one more thing. There's just one thing I want to ask you. It's kind of confusing me. And I think of that as Robert Carrows got a trench coat and he's already talked to, you know, Governor Connolly, 75 times or he's already talked to Sam Houston or he's already, you know, he's already talked to the Texas oil guy, 500 times. And then the guys getting dressed for the day and he wants to go out and he's got a tennis match. He's supposed to play and he opens the door and there's Robert Carrows in a trench coat. You know, there's one thing they kind of bothers me just a little bit. Well, what is it, caro? You know, I'm just curious. You said, but you know, I looked into it and they didn't have a Buick's dealership in

Fort Worth at the time. Okay, okay. It wasn't a Buick dealer ship. It was a Pontiac, ah! You know, and then he's got his chapter. But there will not be another like him. And he's on the planet right now. He's working right now, as for, I think about that sometimes. Well, I'm doing, we're doing whatever dumb, podcasting or whatever thing I'm doing.

I'm like, Robert Carro is sitting in his office right now. Well, thing I'm doing. I'm like Robert Caros sitting in this office right now. Wow, while I'm doing this, working so hard doing something so amazing. There's a story in the power broker where Robert Moses' mom reads a newspaper article that says he's been fined for breaking the law and she says, oh, he's never made a dollar in his life and now we're gonna have to pay for this too. And his editor is like, well, how do you know she said that? And he's like, oh, will I talk to the guy who delivered the newspaper to her at the camp, she was staying at the summer camp, she was staying at.

Well, how did you talk to him? Well, I talked to everybody I could find who worked at that summer camp. And as if that was just, well, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you talk to every single person who ever worked at the place Barbara Moses' parents used to spend their summers? Like, it's astounding.

It's astounding. You know, you gave me an idea, which is we should, we should all get together and try and convince him to do this, but there should be a Robert Carro cam in his office. And it's set up in the corner of his office. And it won't bother him because, you know, he's, but basically for people like us, we can at any time that he's in his office

from whenever, from eight o'clock in the morning till six o'clock at night, any of us at any time can see him sitting there looking at his Smith, Corona, or maybe typing and then looking through some papers and then, well, it's time for him to walk up through Central Park South, back to his apartment. I don't know what the subscription rate is for that. I pay monthly for it. My children have to yell at me to get off of it. As it is, my kids are always annoyed

that I'm talking about the power broker anyway, and carrying around with me like a totem. But that's such a fantastic idea. And we can point the camera so that you can't see his bulletin board with his notes on it because he's very private about those. Doesn't want to see those.

We would respect his privacy. We would angle it. He would sign off, believe me. This is a man that would sign off on the shot. Yeah, and then there'd just be a couple thousand nerds all across the world who'd be watching. Of course, in other parts of the world, you'd have to get up at three in the morning.

To watch an older gentleman think while looking at a typewriter. If you miss it, people put the set lists up what he did, what time he ate his sandwich at his desk. Right. I don't know if you've ever checked out like the book of Kells, if you go to Dublin, I think it's Trinity University and they have the book of Kells. And you think about the middle ages and you think about the dark ages

and monks that decided, okay, the world has gone insane. The world's gone absolutely mad So we're gonna retreat into these little monasteries and we can get some food We can get enough wood to and coal to keep ourselves warm and we're gonna wall it off because There's just madness out there. There's visigoths and Huns and Horriness and disease and we're going to slowly illuminate a Bible.

And we're going to put so much work and care and artistry and craftsmanship into making these beautiful books and transcribing some of the wisdom that maybe is currently being lost that maybe is currently being lost, you know, from Athens, from ancient Athens or from Rome. And no one's ever gonna know our names, and we're gonna do this, and we're all going to die anonymously, but we're gonna have faith that somehow this stuff is gonna live on, and that's the same feeling I get.

It's the belief that things are more important than you and that they can outlive you and that your work matters. And those are sort of, I think, essential, almost philosophical or religious ideas. It's faith-based, which is I'm going to devote my whole life to something. It doesn't seem that sexy to anybody else. I'll write about this, basically this civil servant, and then I'll write about, you know, Lyndon Johnson, when those books first started to come out, I remember thinking Lyndon Johnson.

Yeah, it's not the first, you know, it's not the first person to think of. It's not Lincoln, it's not Washington, it's not, you know, Lyndon Johnson, huh? Lyndon Johnson, and? Lyndon Johnson. And then you start to read and you understand. I, I think that's dead on it. I think that, you know, as you pinpoint his sort of

monastic egolessness is both what's appealing to the world. But also it truly affects the work. Like if I, uh, moved to the Texas Hill country to understand the early days of Lyndon Johnson, my book would be about me moving to the Hill country to learn more about Lyndon Johnson. But he really, that eagle-ishness really makes the journalism truly different. Like he is not part of the New Journalismism movement. He don't know until he's working that he talked to Robert Moses seven times. He kind of hints at it, like, as said to the author, and he'll just call himself the author in his books. There's something about that that I think that his sort of humility and his role in this as the person who

brings this stuff together, but it's not the center of the story, is one of the things that make it so magical. Yeah, as you say, it's very non-21st century to remove yourself completely from the story. It just doesn't happen anymore, and how many documentaries have we all seen where the documentarians sort of becomes part of the story.

And that's very much in vogue and authors are part of it. And our ourselves and our egos are included and that's we get high fives and praise for that. I think one of the most remarkable things about the power broker is you're about 400 or 500 pages into this and you're thinking, hey, this Robert Moses guy, it's pretty good. He gets a lot of stuff done.

He's like that. For the amazing, it's very talented, a visionary. And he just doesn't put his thumb on the scale in any certain ways, even though when, I've heard him talk to you and I've heard him speak Robert Carroll, he has opinions, you know, like. Oh yeah.

So it's just fascinating to me that he really puts you in there with the moment. There is some view from the future to show like what has happened or what will happen. That's why I think he's Sué Gennarois. I mean, he just has this ability just to sort of divorce himself from that and let the fact speak to herself.

Well, it's interesting too, because you think about in all entertainment, I mean, look at movies and one of the first notes that any studio would give, any screenwriter, or anyone making any kind of entertainment today is, you've got to let us know who the bad guy is right away. You know what I mean? We need to know five minutes into the first act of die hard. We need to know that Hans Gruber is a bad guy. And you need to tell us that, whereas Caro is willing to let the whole thing unfold. And he is writing about human beings.

So he understands that it's not his job to tell us whether someone's good or whether someone's bad, he's just going to let it all unfold. And as his big favorite thesis is, which he's talked about many times, there was the old saying that power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And he said, well, no power doesn't corrupt in his opinion, power reveals. And so Robert Moses begins his career and doesn't have the power, we can't see it yet. But as time goes on and he gets more and more and more power, that's when we start to see, really see things go further and further off the rails.

But he lets you figure that out. He has faith that you, the reader, will see what you need to see. Once you read it, then read Robert Carr's work in general, it feels like joining kind of like the Freemasons or some sort of a like cult or something like that, where suddenly if someone finds out that you read his work, they get very excited about it and they want to talk to you about it. I remember reading the power broker for the first time, you first time when I was a young man 20 years ago, and being on the subway in New York reading it, and having guys just kind of shuffle up to me

and go reading the power broker, huh? Yeah. Enjoy it, enjoy it, and then walking it away. Yeah, it's a little, it's basically our fight club. You know? Yes, yeah, yeah. Cause I don't fight club, yeah. Yeah, I don't wanna fight you, either of you guys,

you know, in a basement. I mean, I sort of do, but I think I do okay. I'm pretty tall. I work out. But yeah, there is a, you want to say fraternal order, but I don't think it's obviously gender based. We're part of, it's part of this, oh right, you get it now too. Yeah. It's like being in the matrix.

It's like being the matrix and morph is shows up and hands you the power broker and it's like, read this. You understand a lot more. And then it's a very different movie because then you're just watching Kiana Reeves read for hours. Yeah.

For nine months. And it's amazing. And Kasey's stopping and going, whoa. Yeah, instead of saying, I know Kung Fu, he goes, I know immunisable bylaws now. And it looks at his hands like, did I do that? Right. Did I roll his laws? All of his enemies have just drifted off.

They don't even, he doesn't even have to fight them. Just like, are you still reading that? When are we going to? No, it's really good. You got it. You got a mystery Anderson. Are you still reading that? When are we gonna... No, it's really good. You got it, you got a... Mr. Anderson. Are you still reading that?

Mr. Anderson. Yeah, yeah, and actually they're building the Teconic. Mr. Anderson. I'm going to be leaving now. I'm retiring. You're retiring, yes. I'm 65 now. No. That's the, yeah.

That's also the interesting thing about that book is that it's so comically big. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That you can't walk around with it in a non-shelon way. They should build a baby Bjorn that's just for the power broker, something it's made by a Swiss company that just holds a Robert Carroll book against your chest. We can hear your heart beating.

I know. You don't feel safe. Yeah. And it feels safe. And you know, it doesn't throw your back out because you can't hold it. You can't say, well, I'm going to hold it with my right hand because no, then you're right, you're right side of your body weighs 60 pounds more than you're left.

So there should be, I mean Robert Carrot could make a killing if he made a deal with a Swiss company. Uh, it makes a little, a carrier for his books, you know. Yeah. Man, I hope, is he gonna listen to this? He's gonna listen, no, he's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He gonna listen to this? No, he's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this.

He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this.

He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna listen to this. He's not gonna who know that he does it and are the same people who are like, I got to read that next book. I don't want anything to distract him. I don't want to distract him. Yeah. Yeah. I can't take him alone this time because what if as he's walking along, he's thinking of already written the last line of the last book, what are you thinking of the last, the word sentences that go up to that? And then I go up and say, Mr. Carroll, oh, I'd love to talk to you. And he, and he forgets what those last sentences were. And he says, well, you know what?

To make sure I had the right idea, I better read every page of the Lyndon Johnson Library again. And then you'll go, no, he was almost there. Maybe someday the three of us can meet up. And Shadow Carrow, as he walks through the park on his way to work. Oh, amazing, yeah. No, it would not be amazing.

It would be wrong. Three men were arrested in Central Park today for stalking. America's greatest biographer. More carostalkers have been caught today. Yeah. Another carostalker has been arrested. We got another couple of them. Get the patty wagon.

More carostalkers. There's one patty wagon for just that squad. If you had one sort of like, you know, There's one patty wagon for just that squad. If you had one sort of like, you know, speak to the audience kind of like sentence of like why they should read the power broker with us this year, what would you say? Well, I would say you should read the power broker because you will save so much money on your satellite or streaming service. You will be enveloped by this incredible story and by the time you're done reading it, really an amazing story about how power works and what one person can do to completely

change the face of an American city. And I'm telling you, it's riveting and it's powerful. And when you're done, you'll realize that you didn't watch the golden bachelor or any of these other shows that are robbing you of your life assets. And you'll have saved some money and some valuable time and you'll be a better person. Perfect. Thanks for helping us kick it off. It really means a lot to us. Oh yeah, no, I'm glad this was a labor of love for me. So happy to do it. Happy to chat with you guys and I'll be listening. This is a this is a cool idea. So I'm on board. Guys, I'm going to go scream at people who work for me, not because they did anything wrong, but because I can. Power broker really did rub off on you.

The rubber moses way. All right, guys, good luck with this. Oh, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. So there you have it. If you have a copy of the Power Broker, pull it off the shelf. If you don't, put it on your holiday wish list. We're going to spend 2024 reading it together and talking about it with some of our favorite

people. These will be extra monthly bonus episodes of 99% invisible and we'll cover about 100 pages at a time getting us all the way through December of 2024. The first proper episode drops on January 19th and we'll cover the introduction plus parts 1 and 2. It's up to you if you want to read it first, if you want to read it after, or just listen along. There is no wrong way to be a part of our little podcast book club.

The 99% Invisible Breakdown of The Power Broker is produced by Isabel Angel, fact-checking by Graham Haysha, music by Swan Real, mix by Dara Hirsch. 99% Invisible's Executive Producer is Kathy too, our Senior Editor is Delaney Hall, Kurt Colestady is the Digital Director. The rest of the team includes Chris Barube, Jason D'Leone, Emmett Fitzgerald, Martin Gonzales, Executive Producer is Kathy too, our Senior Editor is Delaney Hall, Kurt Colstead is the digital director. The rest of the team includes Chris Barube, Jason D'Leone, Emmett Fitzgerald, Martin Gonzales, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Lashmodon, Jacob Moltenaro Medina, Kelly Prime, Gabriella Gladney, Joe Rosenberg, Sarah Baker, and me Roman Mars.

We are part of the Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building. And beautiful. Uptown, Oakland, California. Home of the Oakland Roots soccer club, of which I'm a proud community owner, as other professional teams leave, the Oakland Roots are Oakland first, always. You can visit us on all the usual social media sites, but the best place on the internet is the place you can listen to every past episode of 99PI, and that is 99PI.org.

Crazy thick accent couldn't get over. That's one of the thickest New York accents I've ever heard. I've always found it very adorable that his wife is named Aina and he calls her Ina. This guy is brilliant. He's an amazing writer. He's such a penetrating thinker. He cannot pronounce his wife's name properly.