99% Invisible - Power Broker #01: Robert Caro

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

Welcome to our first official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. Robert Caro happens to be our special guest for this episode and you do not get more special than that.On today’s show, Elliott Kalan and Roman Mars will cover the Introduction, Part 1, and Part 2 of the book (the intro through the end of Chapter 5), discussing the major story beats and themes, and then we will bring the great Robert Caro to the stage. Power Broker #1: Robert CaroJoin the discussion on Discord and our Subreddit

This is the 99% invisible breakdown of the power broker. I'm Roman Mars. And I'm Elite Kaelin. Welcome to our first official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Power Broker, by our hero, Robert Carroll. Robert Carroll have his be our special guest for this episode, and you do not get more special than that. I'm still pinching myself.

So, in today's show, Elliot and I are going to cover the introduction, plus parts one and two of the book discussing the major story beats and themes, and then we'll bring the great Robert Carrot to the stage. We had an absolute blast talking with him. It was perfect. But right now, let's dive in to the introduction. So Elliott, how does this big badass, beautiful biography of Master Builder Robert Moses began. This book starts the way any amazing mammoth classic work of municipal analysis starts with a quote from Sophocles, one of the greatest of the Greek tragedians. It opens for this quote, one must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been, which is in many ways caros thesis possibly for the entire book that you cannot

judge the events of the moment until you know the consequences later. You can't really know if something is right or wrong until you know the consequences. Uh, and the consequence of this quote is that I honestly cannot find the source of this quote, uh, in the original work of Sophocles. I've traced it back to a speech Richard Nixon gave in 1971 where he quotes Sophocles and I'm not sure what it came from. So I'm very curious if Robert Carrow, we know is a seasoned archival researcher. If he went back to Greece and was going through the Sophocles papers at Athens U, but it's something that I haven't been able to find. But what it also signals to me is that this book is

we're operating on a kind of a literary level, as well as a historical research level, which is very exciting to me. And we begin in a very almost Hollywood way, so might say after that quote, with two parallel experiences in Robert Mosis' life, Robert Carrot does the thing, where he starts with a scene, a telling scene from Moses' youth

that will then reflect on his life later on. Yes. And it's this scene that actually you will find later on in the story many, many times. And it's the scene of Robert Moses trying to get his way and getting upset and then resigning. And the first example of this is when he's a kid at Yale and he's on the swim team and he's trying to get more money for the swim team.

And he tells the captain of the swim team at Richards about this plan to approach the swim team donor, Ogden Mills Reed directly to the... Which is the perfect name for a Yale swim team donor, Ogden Mills Reed. Everything about that name says to me, this guy is donating money to the Yale swim team. Yeah. He tells Captain Richards that he wants to get more money for the Miner's Sports Association. And he's like, this would be great for the team.

And Captain Richards horrified by this. He does not like the idea of going to their top donor and essentially deliberately misleading him, even if he never finds out. Even if the money is still going to the team in some way, this scheme is not up to the standards of a Yale man, the honor of a Yale man, the dignity of a Yale man. And so he says no to the scheme and Roman,

what does Moses do in response? Well, Moses does what he's gonna do many, many times over the course of his life. He threatens to resign if he doesn't get his way. And what's fantastic about this moment, unlike almost every other moment, in Robert Moses' life, is Ed Richards goes, okay, sure, yeah, that's fine,

Hawks, up to resignation. So Yale swim team, all right, they could go for it. Like, what, yeah, there you go for it. Like, what, yeah, just get out of here. For most people, they would learn the lesson, I guess, threatening to resign from something did not get me what I want. I'm not going to do that again, but most of us, he has learned a different lesson from it because 45 years later, Mayor Robert F. Wagner is being sworn in and we're going to

spend a lot of time with Robert F. Wagner later in this book. He shows up a lot. He's being sworn in as Mayor New York and he has pledged to the good government activists, the civic reformers, that he will not reappoint Robert Moses with this point has been in government in New York City for decades. He won't reappoint him to the post of a seat on the city planning commission, which is one of many seats he holds. And he's been using that seat to approve his own parks projects. And the reformers are like, this is a conflict many seats he holds. That's right. And he's been using that seat to approve his own parks projects. And the reformers are like, this is a conflict.

You shouldn't let him do this. And Wagner says, you're right. I'm not going to do it. And instead of saying to Moses, I'm not giving you the seat, he just kind of doesn't swear him into that post on an auguration day. And Moses recognizes this and gets very mad and threatens to resign and Wagner has no choice but to reappoint him to that post on the city planning commission. So here's the thing as a young man He threatens to resign. His bluff gets called. He loses as a middle-aged man older man He threatens to resign. He gets everything he wants Roman

What's the difference between these two scenarios? The difference is because in one case He has no power and in the other case, the second case, he has all the power. He's the power broker. He's literally the broker of power. He makes or breaks power, I guess. It's, I've, I've, I've, the, I've, the, now so-so-s, he had to phrase power broker so much of this book that it becomes a phrase I don't even think about the meaning of anymore. Yeah.

And what it, what it means is he's someone who possesses power and can control who else gets power. He can control where power flows from one place to another. And the rest of the introduction after that is Robert Carro, I'm going to put it into wrestling terms. When you've got a new fighter and you want to make the audience like them, you've got to put them over. That's what they say. You've got to show the audience why they're worth supporting.

Sometimes that means letting them defeat a more seasoned fighter. Sometimes that means they've got some kind of new move that is really exciting. You've got to put them over. And the rest of this introduction is very much Robert Carroll putting over Robert Moses as, perhaps possibly, the most important person in the civilization of the last couple hundred years in a few ways. He talks a lot about Moses of his personal impact on New York and he has these lists of all of the things he's built, the expressways he built, the parkways he's built, all the mayors and governors he's served under,

the colossal amounts of money that he's spent. And I wonder if you feel like we should read any of these, one of these lists. I wish just about to to look that up here. Robert Moses built every one of those roads. He built the major Deegan Expressway, the Banwick Expressway, the Sheridan Expressway, and the Brookner Expressway. He built the Gwannis Expressway, the Prospect Expressway, the Whitestone Expressway,

the Clearview Expressway, and the Thrognec Expressway. He built the Cross Bronx Expressway, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, the Nassau Expressway, the Staten Island Expressway and the Throgs neck Expressway. He built the Cross Bronx Expressway, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, the Nassau Expressway, the Staten Island Expressway, and the Long Island Expressway. He built the Harlem River Drive and the West Side Highway. It seems like it would be kind of numbing in a way to just have these long lists of roads because then the Parkway road comes off a couple of pages later and it's even longer. But there's something, there's like this building rhythm on momentum to it that's very hypnotic.

And Robert Carrot has talked about how his inspiration for this was in the Iliad where they're listing where all the different places are that the different soldiers came from, the warriors came from, and he's like, well, if Homer can do it, why can't I do it? Which I think is amazing to me. That's the ambition that he's got there. That's right. He goes on from there to talk about the Tribro authority, the center of Moses' power,

this government public authority, and a public authority being something we'll talk about in great depth in several episodes from now. That is kind of not exactly a public government thing, not exactly a private corporation. How this was his personal fiefdom, that he ruled like a little king, like a little city within a city. And the often dirty means he used to control those outside his authority from bribery to blackmail, it's amazing. And it was also run on nickels because he makes a point of that, is that his coin is

nickels because those are the fees that people throw into the little basket to cross his various bridges. Especially that tri-bro bridge. It's this toll bridge that connects three different burrows, hence the name tri-bro. It's all there. The name doesn't lie to you. Those tolls add up so much and it becomes his own private source of wealth that the city cannot touch because this is an authority. This is a special kind of

organization. And Carr talks about how Robert Moses withheld the knowledge of how he wielded power and how much power he had from the public and especially how wasteful and corrupt the use of that power was. The public did not know for many, many years. Maybe that's Robert Carr giving himself a little tip of the hat that he's revealing all this stuff now. How Moses was able to do these things because to the public at large, he was just the man who built the parks. You can't not like parks, he's the park guy.

And finally, the introduction rounds out with Carroll talking about a subject that's going to become a very big part of what we talk about, which is the people that Moses dispossessed for his projects. That in New York has a big city that has a kind of relatively small amount of space that is the center of it, essentially Manhattan and the Bronx, other parts of Brooklyn and Queens, and it's so packed tight, even by the time Moses

is working, that in order to build something big, you have to make thousands of people move, you've got to remove them. And the way Moses did that was not by giving each of them a million dollars and being like, you're rich, you did it. You know, the way he did that was by forcing them out in increasingly underhanded and sometimes cruel way. Yes, exactly, exactly. And finally, not only was he dispossessing people

without the means to fight him from their homes, but the public structures that he was creating were better when they were in the rich neighborhoods than the poor neighborhoods. That's right. And Kara goes into this. And quoting Kara, he built parks and playgrounds with a lavish hand, but they were parks and playgrounds

for the rich and the comfortable. Recreational facilities for the poor, he doled out like a miser. And I love that. For a subject that Kara was saying has a lot of grade to it. That it's hard to judge the good or bad of it You can't judge how well the day has been to get to the evening and see us blended it was as Sophocles Maybe said I think that's how he said it

Carol really speaks in Almost de-kenzy in terms at times, which I really love and he ends by saying It's not possible to know if New York would have been a better city without rubber Moses. He ends the introduction saying, it is possible to say only that it would have been a different city. And I feel like this introduction is such a bold thesis statement for the book he that we're about to read, where it's like, this guy, he's a, he's a monster and a Messiah. And his, his impact is so big that there's no way of knowing how New York would have been different without him. We just know it would have been different.

And if you're me, then you're like, oh, I got to read this book. Yeah, yeah. And he's making the case for why this book is so very long. Yes. That's the point. It's a good stuff. A couple of things doesn't mention is that the end of the day, the end of the day is going to be at the end of 2024. When we read this whole thing.

When he really he should have said it by the end of the year. You don't know. One must wait until the end of the year to see how splendid the book has been. But he is he is not going to compromise to make sure it is quick for you to read or light enough for you to take to the beach. You just going to have to just have to meet him halfway on this one. That's right. That's right. That's right.

And so he sets the table for why this is so important. Because you know, like he is a real, Robert Carro is a real New Yorker. Like, Borne raised, has that great New York accent that we love. And he's the best. But he is writing this gigantic book. It is not just for New Yorkers.

It's meant for the world at large. Although I think it has special resonance and meaning for people who've spent time in New York. A lot of us who are reading this now, I mean this together, I've never lived in New York, I've been there a few times, I love it, but I get so much out of this book that I think applies to all kinds of cities and how things are built,

but he's making this broader case for why this particular character is almost mythical and worthy of this type of examination. Yes, and the case that New York is such an important city, such an influential city, that what Moses does in New York resonates with other cities around the world, becomes a key that other cities can look to, like something they can follow. And yeah, there's more to this than just interest for New Yorkers.

And Roman, I apologize that when you said you never lived in New York, my knee jerk reaction is to lose a certain amount of respect for you. So I apologize that that's my immediate thing because as someone someone I grew up in New Jersey, but I lived in New York for quite some time, there is a special resonance to, and reading this book and thinking to yourself, as you're reading it, oh, that's why I have to deal with this problem. That's why this thing is inconvenient. That's why I can't do this bit of traveling through the

city that would make it so much easier, is because this man stood in the way of it and it's exciting to a person with a rich New York history to read it. But I think you're right that you don't have to know New York well. You don't have to live here for it to be exciting. The same way you don't have to live in ancient Greece to read Sophocles and be like, this is really profound. I should start my book with a quote from this guy. This guy's really onto something.

Yeah, it's big. And he makes a bold case for it to be big and worthy of its bigness. And that I actually really love about the beginning of the story. Yes. And as a piece of rhetoric, these two back-to-back stories of him

resigning and getting different results is so great. Like it's just a genius move on Carol's part. And you will find this scene shows up a lot where he resigns and different mayors have different takes on this and how to work, how Robert Moses is working them versus how the mayors are working him and it's hilarious.

And this is one of those things. Like, when you see this and when you read the whole thing, it's kind of has this quality of like you're like witnessing this through the lens of modern history and you're just like, can't just one of these guys is except his resignation. Yeah, it's like painful to watch. The head of the Yale swimming team could do it. Why can't the governor or the mayor or president Roosevelt?

Like what and and that's the and that's it that so straights to the point that Robert Carr was making about power that power is not Rational in that way, you know, and it does not power is almost directly opposed to The ideal of how a democracy functions because these elected officials cannot control this guy. And yet they totally should be able to. And yeah, you're wondering, how is it possible? And spoiler alert, eventually he does fall out of power. He's not still running the New York City Parks as a 150-year-old man almost. But Carol ends up making this case for how difficult it was to remove him and how almost cosmically aligned things needed to be for him to eventually be removed from power.

There was basically one man who could do it and the only reason he could do it, and you will see eventually as Governor Rockefeller, is because Governor Rockefeller happens to be a member of the richest family in the world who runs the most powerful bank in the world. And like so, he doesn't really care that much about how much power the parks have.

You know, so it's, but it's, it But it's a real, the whole time you're reading it, you're like, especially wear a wagoner, you're like, Wagner, just like, go ahead and do it. Do right, though the heavens fall. Let's see what happens. You feel that same way when the second impeachment of Trump happens and you're like, yes, all the Republicans are really mad because, you know, like an insurrection happened and they were scared and they hated feeling that way and the impeachment, the second impeachment happens and you're like, and you're like, this is your time,

this is your time, take a stand, I know it's gonna hurt, I know it's gonna hurt, but just do it now, just take care of it. And you have this feeling over and over again in this book where you're just like, hey, Jimmy Walker, anybody, you're just like, why don Jimmy Walker, anybody, you're just like, why don't you just like accept and move on and no one will get to upset for longer than a couple of weeks

and it'll be okay. Or even if they do, maybe you don't win re-election and then, okay, they'll do something else. So often it comes down to, I can't fire Moses because he's the only one who can bring in the money for construction that will create the jobs that I need to get reelected. And so it's Carol's creating this case study of how democracy functions poorly. That's right.

And he does that by setting a scene about what the world was like, what politics was like, and what the city was like, starting all the way back to when Moses was born, even before Moses even arrives on these shores. Sounds like such a perfect segue to getting into part one, the ideas. Talk about chapter one, part one, the line of succession. Yes. So what's the Moses backstory?

Where does Moses come from? So Moses comes from a very, to me, is a very interesting backstory. He is the child of German Jews who immigrated in the 1830s, 1840s to escape anti-Semitism in Germany. These are not Jews who have the experience that say my ancestors had of fleeing from Russian pogroms and arriving here poor and having to work their way up through the Lower East Side and things like that.

That's very much a story of my family and Jews like me. His family came over earlier. The German Jews that would eventually become known as Hourcrowd. And there's a book about them called Hourcrowd. That's really great. While I was reading this book, I realized, wait a minute. Carol's using that book as a source.

And I've read that book. And I went to his notes. And I saw that he used that book. And I ran to my bookshelf to make sure I had read that book. And I was like, this is amazing. I felt it was very exciting to me to be like, I read a book that he used this as a source. But his family, they ended up as real estate millionaires in New York.

Robert Moses grows up with money. His grandmother, Rosalie Cohen, Carol focuses on a very much because she's this hot-y, brilliant iron-willed matriarch of the family. She has a daughter, Bella Cohen, who's very educated, also very hot-y and very iron-willed, who marries the department store owner in the manual Moses, and Carol keeps bringing up that really days at least, that Robert Moses is Bella Cohen's son and Rosalie Cohen's grandson, and he carries their traits.

The family originally starts in New Haven, Connecticut, and Bob is like a well-off suburban kid, grown up in a big house, and then his family relocates to New York City, and Robert Moses does not like that. He really misses Connecticut, the quiet, the greenery, and he will try to replicate that to the extent. It's right, that's right. In New York City. A lot of this, where he comes from,

is sort of shows his preference later on for like having what are parkways, which is essentially our roads with greenery and and either side of them and recreating this environment inside of the densest city in the world. Yeah. He is essentially a suburban kid from the late 19th century who is trying very hard to recapture that feeling like you're saying inside the densest built city in the entire United States in the 20th century. And Carol will get will bring us to this point where he's saying Moses has these ideas of what driving is.

That driving is something you do when you're rich for pleasure down a quiet tree line street. And by the time that Moses has highest power, that's not what driving is anymore. Driving is how you get to work and it sucks. Yeah, and we'll talk about this more later, but like Robert Moses never drove a car He always had a driver and so he makes the world for people like him like and knowing where he came from and knowing that he is

You know always came from wealth and even though You know later on he He doesn't have a lot of money because he's he dedicated himself to public service He has that background in that safety net that he could always get money if he needed to. He really didn't let go of his upbringing in any meaningful way. He's a person of privilege, even if he doesn't have a lot of cash on hand. Yes, he always has, and that is instilled in him from youth, as well as this kind of tradition of public service in the family.

That his mother is very involved in immigrant assimilation, the idea that the newer Jewish immigrants coming in, it's up to the older Jewish immigrants to help them assimilate to America. And they become, she becomes very involved with public service, but she wants to be in charge of the things that she's involved with. The Moses do not join committees and then go, oh, you need someone to organize the bake sale? I'll do that. The Moses get involved and they say, we're having a bake sale. Here's the date. You're going to get the stuff, you know. And so his mother makes a huge impression on him on young Bob Moses as they call him.

And he decides he's going to go into public service after college. But first he's going to go to college. That means it's time for chapter two with the title Robert Moses at Yale, which sounds the most like it's the next episode in the Robert Moses film series coming out in the 1930s. That's right. And his, you know, his Yale career, you know, it's worth writing about, but it isn't especially notable. He's a pretty well-liked guy. He likes a lot of things. He likes poetry. He likes, you know, hanging out with folks. He's still an idealist and and and keeps up with that. You know, he has this one incident where he's and keeps up with that. You know, he has this one incident where he's suggesting

to do something underhanded to get more money for the Yale swimming team and that that bites him in the ass. But otherwise, you know, like he seems like he's neither a hero nor a villain at Yale. In many ways, he is a non-entity at Yale. And that is partly because he's young when he gets there. He's 17 and partly because he's Jewish and so even though he's not a religious Jew, he never

really identifies as Jewish, he doesn't practice at all, he doesn't go to synagogue, I don't think he forgets bar mitzvahd. He is still an outsider there and so the one thing that's really pertinent from his time at Yale, otherwise we can skip over it, I was going to read some of his poetry, but I guess we don't, I guess we don't need to do that, that's fine. It's a long book is that he learns how to kind of create power centers for himself outside of the mainstream of power at the place. He's never going to play on the football team. So he gets involved with the minor sports at the school and it organizes this minor sports association. He finds ways to create these power platforms for himself out of things that other people did not think,

had any power in them at all, were worth cultivating at all. And that's something that he's gonna take with him for the rest of his life. Right, right, that's absolutely true. That's so astute. And then he takes this to Oxford, where he studies. And this is where he gets a lot of his nonsense white man's burden,

kind of sense of himself, as is when he arrives at Oxford. He is so enamored of the wealthy aristocratic way of life at Oxford. He goes in for two years to study and he just loves it. He loves being there. He loves that if you're rich, it means you wear kind of rady old clothes because who cares? You're rich. It doesn't matter what you dress like. And he travels all over the place. He makes rich friends. He goes to Egypt, which is an astounding distance for someone to be traveling at this time, which is the 19, early 1900s. And he's, he just really likes all this. And he loves the idea of elites being in charge of the government. He writes his entire

PhD about it. It's called the Civil Service of Great Britain and he examines how the British Civil Service works and how it's so class-based and only university men with college educations, which means that they're in the upper class because this is not a time of great scholarship applications in the British community that only they end up in the upper level of government positions. And he says it. He says, the only people end up in the upper level of government positions. And he says it, he says, the only people capable of using the government properly, the only people who will solve problems with government are people with university educations, which means that they are privileged people from a wealthy background.

Otherwise they are unfit for these positions. This is his entire PhD thesis is rich people should run the government, which is so funny to me because it's like, it's the exact opposite what you expect like a progressive college kid to be writing. We're gonna take a quick break and when we come back we'll dive into next part, the reformer. So the most generous interpretation of his elitism is that the normal day-to-day politics of working-class people in places like New York is extremely corrupt, you know, like, yes. And in a way, his kind of, you know, like, let's deal with political ideals and meritocracy and history and build political alliances and goals

for society based off of these things is a reaction to a very non-idealized, in a very literal sense, politics of New York in the 1900s. There is no Democrats necessarily believe this and Republicans necessarily believe that. It really is about what jobs can you give this little section of your award and what you can get out of it. And he's trying to sort of like graft, you know, purpose and meaning and higher ideals on on top of that. purpose and meaning and higher ideals on on top of that. Yes, there's a way that I like to describe government before the progressive era. And I would like to call it sloppy.

It was just super sloppy. And I think people think of progressivism now and they think of women's rights or civil rights or things that workers rights, things like that. But a big aspect of the progressive movement at this point was what they would call scientific management, you know, making government professional. Because before, it was just super sloppy, super unprofessional. This is a period when a lot of the president's job is still to have meetings all day with people who want jobs who are like, I supported you in the last election, give me a job. Make me the postmaster of Jawbone City, you know, Kansas territory. And the president's like, all right, here you go. Hey, my cousin needs a job. Get him a job. All right, I'll

do that. That's like 60 to 70 to 80% of the president's day. Things are so sloppy. And there's very little of a sense of civil service or professional bureaucracy. Yeah. There's a little bit of that in the federal government, thanks to the Pendleton Act, that Chester Arthur signed into law. But there's very of that in the federal government thanks to the Pendleton Act, that Chester Arthur signed into law. But there's very, especially in the city government, there's none of that. And there's that when we get to chapter five, the next chapter, I'd love to read an extract where Kara talks about this

slightly. But this period in history, you're right, it was all about who can control the jobs in the government. And by doing that, get money into the pockets of their own voters. Some of that money gets kicked back to the head of the party and that person will, because they have a job now, that they owe to you, will vote for you in the next election. And so, in like, the Democrats are like slightly more racist than the Republicans, but that's

the end of it. The Republicans are slightly more business and rich person focused than the Democrats, but otherwise that's about it. It's really these two parties that are just fighting for money and power, like you're saying, very little ideology. We're so used to the idea of an ideologically based party system that it can seem shocking to read about America in the late 19th or 20th century and be like, well, why are they even in parties?

If they didn't, they didn't stand for anything. Like, maybe they disagreed on the tariff, like how high the tariff should go on the imported goods, but why even bother to be in the, and it's, it's at a certain point, it's like the giants versus the jets or something like that, where it just matters what part of New Jersey were born in, like which, whether you're an Eagles fan or a giants fan, it's, it's just, well, everyone I know supports this. So I'm going to support it too. It's a, it's a funny way to look at it. So here, this idea of progressivism is just like, can we make this like a little professional?

Right. Like, can we have a reason for why we're doing things? So let's move into this part two, the reformer in chapter four, which is called burning. And Carol has a number of these chapter titles that are gerons. He has burning, driving, changing throughout the book, and I love the way he structures them. So New York, it's the early 1900s, it's this hotbed of this idea of, we're gonna reform the government to make it function, to make it a real thing that actually does stuff.

Like, we've been able to get by for about a, almost 150 years, like, winging it. Like, let's try to put a firm foundation on this. And Moses 25 now, and he gets a position through his mom's connections as a student at this place called the training school of the Bureau of Municipal Research. And it's basically a think tank in a lot of ways. And the idea is we're going to bring management techniques to government. Like, the, one thing they introduce is line item budgets. Like that literally the government would have a budget where they itemize how much things

are spent, how much money is spent on each thing, which you're like, did they not have that before? No, they did not. No, they did not. The department would just say, give us this amount of money and then they would dole it out as necessary. And the next day, give us more money. Like there was, and everyone said, okay, I guess they need it for things.

And because it's also a lot harder to hide corruption if you have to itemize what how much you're paying on this. But Moses, he's been a student for a while now. He went to Yale, he went to Oxford. He no longer wants to be a student at this at this municipal research school. He's impatient, he's ambitious, he hates doing the kind of legwork he has to do and he has these big dreams and this is where his vision starts coming in. His idea for what the city could be. He spends hours and hours walking through the city, kind of like imagining in his mind how you could build a road here, you could build a park here. There's train tracks that are just open right here that people get killed on. You could cover that up. You could put a park there.

He has this huge ambitions for reshaping the city. And one of the people he talks to a lot is this woman that he becomes friendly with who eventually becomes the labor secretary of the United States, Francis Perkins. And she talks about how he's just kind of burning up these ideas that are he's obsessed with them. These plans for changing the city that seem impossible for a 25 year old guy who's essentially like an intern, I guess, I guess, at a think tank. That's right. But what's funny is in this moment, he has this almost complete vision of the West Side Highway and parks all along it. Any, any, any, you know, expresses that to Francis Perkins. And I think he even expresses it to his future wife, Mary Louise Sims. Yes.

And let the time as a secretary at the Bureau, then they start dating. That's right. And, you know, it's funny to know, again, there's this who Robert Moses is in really fundamental ways. That kind of like, tries to be the biggest fish possible in any size pond that he can possibly dominate. He has this vision of what a suburban style parkway landscape that is perfect for someone like him. He has all these things that are already set into place and what he doesn't have is any

ability to get any of it done. But those visions are there and they're pretty fully formed. It's so complete. Yeah, it's astounding how how realize they are in his head and how detailed they are. The only thing I can really compare it to, and this is more limits of my frame of reference than anything else, is in the movie The Fable Mints, the way that the young Stephen Spielberg character, he knows how cinema works and he knows the stories he wants to tell.

He has a teenager and it's so formed in his idea the things that he could do if only he had the access to the resources. These are the things he could do with movies if he could work with real actors instead of his idiot friends and he had actual special effects and stuff like that instead of just firecrackers. Robert Moses is walking around, he's like,

I can see how it would work if I can just get the resources. But at this point, he's a nobody. And he's a nobody who also pisses people off. It's not like he's a nobody who's making friends and rising through the ranks. He's a nobody who's constantly burning bridges. But he has this first big chance because thanks to his time studying the civil service in England, he is the only person at the Bureau who has any understanding of how civil services work.

Like he's just the only one who's done the research. And so in 1914, he gets hired to work for this new municipal civil service commission. This is under the boy mayor, John Premichal, who wasn't really a boy. He was like 34. So, but in New York politics, that's a boy. John Premichal, the thing that's amazing to me is there's a memorial to him right on the wall of Central Park, I think it is, but he was so young that when he lost reelection,

he enlisted in World War I and died in a training accident in World War I at 38, he wasn't even 40 yet. It's like that's how he was young enough to be mayor that he could, that the army accepted him, you know, when he enlisted. Whereas can you imagine De Blasio's not easy, he's not, if he enlisted, they'd be like, forget it. You're too old. He, and he's going to work on that commission

under the President of the Commission, who's a man named Henry Mosquitz, who is a long time activist. He was a founder of the end of LACP, but more importantly for us, he is the husband of a woman named Bill Mosquitz, who will become a major figure of Robert Moses' life. But the point is, finally finally Moses has the chance to make real change. He is working for a government commission on how to reform the civil service and he is the only person seemingly in the United States who has a detailed enough understanding of the civil service that he can try to put anything real in action. And so this is his chance to make an impact. And what he does is goes after this kind of

timid machine of patronage where you are given jobs and opportunities based on who you know and who you voted for. And he really wants to professionalize this service and make it so that it's about passing tests and knowing what you're doing and having standard solidities that have to be justified. All that fun stuff. Like the rules and regulations. I'd love to read the section.

This is what Robert Carro, this is something that Roman and I talked a lot about before recording, is Robert Carro kind of takes it so for granted that the audience knows what Tammany Hall is. Yeah. That he doesn't really define it too thoroughly. And this is the closest he gets to defining it. Tamini, it's called that because they meet at a place called Tamini Hall. And that's the same way that we say Washington, but we mean the government.

You know, we don't mean the city of Washington or the person. But in this section, he talks about how difficult this can be for Moses. Since the closest he comes to really defining Tamini, I'm going to read it and then our producer can feel free to cut it afterwards. And then you'll never hear any of this, listener. The wheels of the Tamini war machine might be greased with money, but the machine was pulled by men. The men who voted Democratic themselves. The men who rounded up newly arrived immigrants and brought them in to be registered Democratic.

The men who during election campaigns rang doorbells and distributed literature to those immigrants and to their own friends and neighbors. And on election election day shepherded them to the polls to vote democratic. And the most succulent of the carrots that lured these men forward, that kept their shoulders braced against the ropes that pulled the Tammany machine, was the carrot of jobs. Jobs for themselves, jobs for their wives, jobs for their sons. The only source of jobs on the scale required was the city itself. So the jobs Tammy had to control in order to control the city, with the city's jobs.

Positions as policemen, firemen, sanitation workers, court clerks, process servers, building inspectors, secretaries, clerks. There were, in 1914, 50,000 city employees, and this meant 50,000 men and women who owed their paychecks, and whose families owed the food and shelter those paychecks bought, not to merit, but to the ward boss. patronage was the coinage of power in New York City, and reforms of the civil service, such as Moses, was to propose, were therefore daggers thrust at the heart of Tamini Hall. Tamini understood this well, and Tamini knew how to defend itself. It always had. I love a list. I love a caro list. He's got a list all those jobs and the only raw note in there for me that doesn't go to work is the idea of succulent carrots. But I know he needs his life. The carrot and the stick, you know,

the keeps him driving. I don't think I've ever seen a succulent carrot. No, no, but maybe they grow them different. Yeah. So the number west side. Yeah, the New York carrots were known for the different cycle and juice equality. That's why they called the big carrot. It's just famous for it. But so power is jobs. This is something that will be a theme throughout the book. Power comes to those who can hand out jobs,

because there's money in jobs and there's votes in jobs. It's something that I feel like is very easy to underestimate in today's politics because we've got so many other things that are distracting us. When people are like voters, they only vote for their pocketbook, they don't vote for their ideals. It's like, well, because in the system, we live in, unfortunately, you need money to pay your bills and to stay alive. Any jobs to do that. It's a very basic thing. And when you talk about him being a reformer and you talk about something, it might seem to modern ears pretty innocuous with like professionalizing the civil service is an extreme threat to the foundation of politics in the city.

And so he kind of does this, rather, I don't know, maybe this is just like his upbringing and him thinking he's better than everyone else and him being reinforced with that. 100,000%. But he really does, like take it upon himself to kind of standardize the types of jobs, the rules for getting them, all the different,

like breaking down into these 16 categories of jobs, it divides them into specific jobs and divides those into different functions, they're graded, and... Even has personality as one of the categories where you can grade someone on their job, like the idea he prints up these cards that you're supposed to use to grade someone on

every aspect of their job and give them a number so that you can then average it out and say, okay, this person scored this much, they deserve a raise. This person scored solo, we should fire them. In a weird way, it's like he's trying to do what algorithms do now in corporations, but you have to do it with pencil and paper on these cards that get specially printed for it. And it is, if you're a dog catcher, and you've been working for as a dog catcher for a long time, you're making a pretty good amount of money because you're connected politically.

And this guy comes in and he says, everyone who does the dog catching job, you're all going to get paid the same amount. And then every year we're going to judge you and see if you deserve to keep the job or get a raise. That's a threat to you because you didn't get the dog catching job because you were like super excited about catching dogs. You got it because it's like a safe job. You can make money in and all you have to do is kick back a little to your ward boss and

do the alderman and they can be like, yeah, okay, you keep being a dog catcher. See if you want to catch dogs, go for it. All that matters to me is that you vote. I don't really care if you do the job. And this is a huge threat to you, the corrupt dog catcher, listener. But even like they probably don't view themselves as corrupt this dog catcher. This is just the way things are done. Like you're part of the machine, you've done your part, you've done a decent enough job,

you've showed up enough that nobody complains too much. You're not throwing dogs at people. You're not hurting anybody. You know, it's a- You're not throwing dogs at people. You're not hurting anybody. You're not throwing dogs. You're not throwing dogs. You're catching them. Exactly. This is the way it's worked for 50 years, 60 years.

This is how your parents did things. This is maybe how your grandparents did things. It's very similar to, I feel like a lot of things are going on now, where things that should be uncontroversial, people get up and arms about them because it means a change and it means, wait, but those aren't the rules, I was taught things are going to operate by it. That's right. And now you're telling me there are new rules on going to have to learn.

It's a big change. And Tammy and Hall, they tried to fight him first, they released a newspaper article attacking Moses' PhD thesis, which Moses ignores, seems like most of the city ignores it. But it kind of plants a seed in Moses' mind that the press is something that you can use to get out information that might hurt your opponents, which is something that he's going to be very on top of. Later on. Very good at.

Yeah, very good at. This period of life really feels like he is becoming the punching bag for the techniques that he is later going to hone to knife edge perfection in his own rampage for power later on in life. Along the way, he also gets married to Mary, the secretary from the bureau, and she's pregnant and they do not have very much money

except for the fact that he has rich parents that kind of float them whenever necessary. It seems like at this point, most is riding high, but we've all seen VH1 behind the music, or E true Hollywood story. That doesn't mean someone's in for a fall. He is refusing to compromise on his system. Like I said, they already printed out

all those grading papers, and Carol uses those as a symbol of the hopes for this program, that there are boxes of these grading cards that have all been printed out. And Tammy Nehal mobilizes all the people who are going to be affected by this. And they are a potent political force. This is tens of thousands of New Yorkers. And the boy mayor wants to get reelected. He doesn't want to lose those votes. So he does not at the last minute give his backing to this civil service reform system. And it just

dies. And Moses spends the next three years trying to push for this until eventually Mitchell loses reelection. By 1918 there's a new mayor, he's a timony man, he fires Moses and those printed papers, they end up being used as scrap paper, I think, just for people to do work on. Yeah. Moses has gone big and he will also have to go home.

Yeah, but his first big attempt at reshaping the world in the way that he thinks it should be, is completely annihilated. Like he, he gets nowhere with it. And this is a moment where you're describing the things that he wants and the world that he's up against. And you kind of, you're pretty much on Robert Moses' side here. You know what?

Oh yeah, he feels very much like the guy who is not a nice guy, not someone you want to hang out with, although everyone who meets him is won over by him. He's very charismatic and he's very, he's very jovial and he can charm you in person if you're one-on-one, but he's someone who is uncompromising and he will not give and he won't bend to the reality of the tammany control of the city government. And the lesson he could take from this is in the future, you know what, I've got to get allies on my side, I've got to compromise, I've got to temper my ideals so that I can get some things done, even if

I can't get all things done. And instead, he takes the opposite lesson, which is like, I need power if I will crush my foes. And to just give an example, he starts college at 17. We followed him, some of his youth, and then Gail and then Oxford. And by the time he's failing here, he's almost 30 years old, which when you're talking about boy mayors

and lots of things people do, and 30 under 30 lists, you know, like he's really not feeling like he's going to be the power broker that he's about to become. Yeah, as he's about to turn 30, he is sure that he's like, he's a husband already, you know, he feels like a failure. And he's doing this kind of, he has a series of kind of crappy jobs that he feels are beneath him, a man of his intelligence, his ability, his knowledge, because everywhere he's gone, people have said, I may not like Bob Moses, but he's brilliant, and he works harder than anybody else. Like he just never stops working.

And it feels like the system, this corrupt system has defeated him unfairly. I'm sure he's got a huge chip on his shoulder. He's got a tri-broad bridge bridge size chip on his shoulder about this system. And it feels like there is no chance of him getting back to the government. And there's a new governor who's just gotten to the state house. Kero adds to the end of this chapter. Governor Al Smith, who is uneducated, did not go to college, was a former fishmonger, like he grew up working at the Fulton Fish Market, just a classic textbook machine politician, just a back slapping Irish kind of like boy from the fourth word.

And he seems like the antithesis of everything that Moses is calling for in his PhD thesis. This is government in the hands of the most populist sort of person you can get. It seems like that is the final nail in the coffin of Moses government hopes. But then we get to the last sentence of the chapter, Cara says, and then one day, Bob Moses got a call from Henry Mosquitz's wife, Bell. And that is where part two ends on a cliffhanger,

Bell Mosquitz, what's she gonna do? What's this about? Governor Al Smith, he got kind of an interesting build-up in the last few paragraphs for some we haven't met before. I wonder if he's gonna come back, spoiler alert. These are two major people in Bob Moses' life who will provide him with the letter that he will climb to get to this high power and will provide him with the practical education

and politics that he didn't get at college. It's time for the college boy to get his hands dirty and learn a thing or two about the real world. Like, if you were the terminator going back in time to try to eliminate... I like the synology already. Don't know how it... Don't know where it's coming from, but I like it. To try to eliminate Robert Moses from becoming Robert Moses, you could go after Belacoin,

his mother, but really the person you should go after is Bel Mosquits, because she is a person who makes it. So he transitions from this true failure into a political powerhouse. And so it's so cool that Robert Carrow ends the chapter here with Bel Mosquitz because she's extremely important. But we will learn all about Bel Mosquewitz and Al Smith.

There's a great digression, very lengthy digression about Al Smith, a nice biography of him, and who he was as a man. But all in the context of this is part three, the rise to power. This is where Robert Moses learns the skills that become his superpower because he becomes a person who can both read, write, and sort of push through legislation to get what he wants. He becomes extremely skilled at this. Robert Moses is no longer the guy who comes up with a plan and then watches it die. He's going to make the things that he dreams become a reality.

And that means that's right, Roman. We're going to Long Island. The longest and greatest island of all. So we'll get there on the next episode when we cover part three of the power broker. That's called the rise to power, which encompasses chapters six through ten. But don't go anywhere because for the remainder of this episode, we're going to talk with the man that met the legend, the reason we're all here, the one the only, Robert Carro. After this. We are back. I cannot tell you how excited Elie and I were to see Robert Carro in his

perfect office appear in that little zoom window. It was so great. I can't wait for you to hear the discussion. But first, I don't know how to talk about spoilers here because the introduction to the book is pretty much one big spoiler. But just know that we're going to talk about things in this conversation, a few aspects of the Power Broker that we haven't yet read together yet. So, given that, let's get into it. So the first question I have for you is that when you started writing the

Power Broker, what kind of book did you think you were writing when you started? Who were you writing it for? At change, as I started to do the book, my first idea about Robert Moses, it came in stages. When I was a reporter on Newsday, you know, you used to type Robert Moses, City Park commission. And it sort of goes through your mind. What does that have to do with the fact that he's building the Lord Island Expressway, 80 miles out onto Lord Island? It's not even in New York, it's not a park. Who is this guy? But it just didn't really think about it. Then I became what was known as a Neiman Fellow at Harvard University. For the first time really, because when you're a newspaper man, you don't have a lot of

time to think, they gave you a little office and I used to sit and think about it. I used to think, exactly who is this guy? I'm supposed to be writing about political power. This guy has never been elected to anything. And he's doing whatever he wants in New York, building roads, bridges, displacing tens of thousands of people. So I saw that was my first idea for the book. So I wrote a proposal. I only knew one editor in the world at the time, and I sent him the proposal, and he gave me an advance of $5,000, and I started the book.

As I was doing the book, I realized it had to be about different things than I had thought. I mean, you learn as you go along. It sounds like you know what you're doing But the fact is you just find out stuff as you're going. I mean did you Know that there be an audience for it and like what was your expectation of your audience's knowledge of Robert Moses? You know all I heard for all those years was nobody's gonna read a book on Robert Moses. You know, I had this very small advance. The editor I had at the time, not Bob Gottlieb,

an editor before him used to cheer me up by saying, you know, you have to be prepared for a very small printing. Nobody's going to read a book about Robert Moses. I really believe that it wasn't going to have a big audience. But what happened as I was going, I said, you know, I really, people ought to know this stuff. I got to try to write a book that has a bigger audience. And I was trying to figure out how to do that, how to make people understand what I thought

anyway was important about Robert Moses. And I kept thinking of devices that I could do that with. Oh, so describe those devices. You know, he was building all these highways. He built 627 miles of expressways and parkways. And he built a lot of it right through New York City, right across communities and neighborhoods. And when you started to think about that, and you started to see what his methods were. You know what his methods were, he'd take a community that was in the

path of a road, like the Tremont area in the Bronx, which was a mixed Jewish Irish community with some black people in the air too. And all of them in the path of this road, they had this very nice community, they all got the same letter. He had the letters dressed up to look like they were official notices from a court. They weren't. And they said, basically, you have 90 days to get out. And people ran out on the streets and said, did you get the letter this morning? Did you get the letter this morning? What are we going to do? It was the time of a great housing shortage in

New York. And these were rent control departments in the Bronx? It was the time of a great housing shortage in New York, and these were rent-control departments in the Bronx. It was the only place they could really afford to live. As long as they had that community, it didn't matter that they were not very well-oaf people, because they had neighbors. They had stores where everyone knew your name and your kids' name and you could send them out for milk and oil. You would, people, the old men would sit around benches on southern Parkway and play chess. And the women, you know, they had their baby carriages and they'd sit on southern boulevard and tour. So although they didn't have much money, they had a lot. And all of a sudden this thing came along and they had nothing. And they were going to be dispersed to the four wins. And I remember thinking, if I really want to write about political power,

I can't just write about the guy who did this. I have to write about what it was like for the people against on whom he did this. That changed my whole idea of the book. Do you think it helped that you came from a journalism background that you were used to looking at kind of ground level stories or used to talking to to regular people for lack of a better word that you weren't just coming at this as a, as a historian or a sociologist or something like that. The answer to that is really yes. And I had been an investigative reporter and you learn a lot of techniques, you know?

Like when they made me an investigative reporter, I had never done anything like that. And so the editor said, I will ask, I'll sit you next to Bob Green. Bob Green was this legendary investigative reporter. The thing about Bob Green was he weighed approximately, let me say 320 pounds, I don't really get it. Okay. And we all have these little tin desks, right? way to approximately, let me say 320 pounds, I don't really, okay. And we all have these little tin desks, right? So I was sitting at the desk next to Bob Green when he was at sitting at his desk, he was

actually sitting at about half of mine at the same time. But I could listen to him on the telephone and he could listen to me on the telephone. And I remember once we were trying to do a story about a state corrupt state senator who was taking payoffs to allow gas stations in a residential neighborhood. So when we were in the prove that we had to show the real estate transactions. Okay. So I couldn't find, I was on the phone, I was saying, I can't find any proof of this. And he said to me, listen kid, you don't look for this stuff under the name of the president of the corporation. You look for this

stuff under the name of his secretary. That's how they file it. So when I'm doing the power broker, Robert Moses wanted to build zones beach this legendary beach the last or county Republican organization says never never never said all of a sudden in one month they go from never never never Okay build it. So he's asking people what happened what made them change their minds and they explained to me that he had given the last or county Republican leaders advanced knowledge as to where the exits on the parkways to the breach would be. That's where you made all the money. They would buy this land cheap and be able to sell it for a lot of money. But I had approved that that. And I knew how to prove it because I learned how to look for the deeds. So they were like a dozen techniques or tricks or whatever you want

to call it, of investigative reporting that I used in the power program. So you know the book opens with this scene, well two different scenes of Robert Moses dramatically quitting when he doesn't get his way. When did you first notice that that was a theme in his life and was a good way to take a temperature of his level of power at a moment? Oh, so I knew he had used this technique in New York City to keep all these jobs because I had covered it as a reporter that the mayor had been determined to take one of these many jobs of his away from him.

And what Moses did was say, if you don't let me keep it, I resign, and the mayor had caved in. And then when I started the book, I tried to find his classmates at Yale who had interacted with him, and of course, he was the swimmer on the Yale swimming team, and I found the captain of the swimming team. And I said, do you remember anything about Robert Moses, basically?

And he said, oh, yeah, I remember him threatening to quit the team if we didn't let him do what we wanted. And I said to myself, oh, yeah, that's a thing that runs through his whole life. And that's how I decided to start the book that work. That's so good. It's really remarkable. And when it comes up every time, I just wonder how, when you're learning about all the different times that he, you know, sort of falsely or maybe,

I don't know, dramatically tendered his resignation. And you're thinking about all the stuff he did afterward. Just part of you go, well, why didn't anyone take him up on this? You know, why didn't anyone just bite the bullet and like, and then, and denude him of some of his power at different times? of some of his power at different times. Boy, I have to say, as I never say this, these are terrific questions. The, I didn't know the answer to your question. I asked myself the same question, and that led me really to say,

why couldn't they let him resign? Why didn't they let him resign? Why didn't they let him resign? Now it sounds like I knew all this stuff. I was thinking trying to figure it out as I went along. And I realized, okay, if you took one of his 12 jobs away, he would still have the other 11 jobs and the power to give out contracts, all the power that went with those jobs, so

he could use that against you. This was a part of his genius. He was chairman of the Tribal Bill of Justice Authority. He was chairman of the New York State Power Authority, chairman of the Jones Beach Authority. But he designed each of his terms so they would end at a different date. So he would always have control of most of them. And when you went up against them, you knew you would be facing the power that he still had. It sounds like the process of writing the book was this process of kind of discovering larger and larger scopes of the power involved in the dynamics of it. Did you ever feel like you're going down a stream and then it turns into a river and then

it turns into an ocean? Did you ever feel overwhelmed that you were not going to be able to get your hands around everything that needed to be said in the story. Yeah. I felt that way for basically seven years. First of all, you were learning all these new things. You know, when you started out, you know, I had been an investigative reporter. I had one a couple of, let me say, really minor awards, but I was young. When you were winning awards and you're was young. When you were in a ward and you're young, you think you know everything. And I just started in this book and I realized

I didn't know anything about how power really worked in New York. And then when I started talking to officials, I realized they didn't really know anything either. I mean, no one had figured out. All they knew was they were afraid to take on Robert Moses. They didn't really know how he had amassed all this power. They just knew he had it. It's amazing. So in the process of reporting the book over those seven years, you were in the physical presence of Robert Moses. You know, you talk about him giving long lectures on his life.

Could you, through a take us in that scene, and what did it feel like to be in his presence? Where did you sit? How did he sit? Like, did he stand up and pace? Was he, did he have that sort of charisma the way you talk about how he commanded a room? Yeah, he may, I'll tell you about, yes, he commanded a room and he made sure that he did.

I'll tell you, I interviewed him in a number of rooms, but one of them was in his country cottage on one island. So he had, it was a very modest cottage, but what he had done was he, it was very strategically located. It was the last house before the Robert Moses' Causeway, which went across to Robert Moses' State Park when there was the Robert Moses Tower. So he tore out two walls and he replaced them with picture windows and he would sit in this big leather

chair in the corner. As so he's sitting there and out the left window, you see the Robert Moses courseway. Out the right window, you see the Robert Moses State Park. And in the center, there's Robert Moses talking to you. So let me tell you, intimidation is two miles of words. You want to interview the Pharaoh and he's like, let's do it next to the spring. Let's do it between the springs and the pyramid.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And, um, but to tell you the truth, the most impressive thing, well, I tell you another physical thing. So in his other offices, in his more formal offices as City Park Commissioner at the Tribal Brigitte Authority, he had 12 offices. So in the other, I think every one of them, but in every other one or most of the other

ones, he had a huge map on the wall behind him. And it would be a map of New York City and its suburbs, Eastham, New Jersey, part of Connecticut, part of Westchester County. And he was so excited, see the thing, he was so excited when he would talk about things that he was going to build, he was like a kid. I can't, he'd jump up, he'd say, he had this gesture which I can't show you on a podcast. He'd, he'd, he'd, he'd, he'd always had one of his assistants sitting behind him and he'd sort of hold out his hand with this poem up and the assistant would slap a pencil into it, right?

And he'd take the pencil over to the map and it'd say, so if we put the highway here, we can put the housing project here. And if we do that, we can have the park over here. And he'd be talking and you suddenly realize he'd be gesturing with this pencil over this entire map from the western edge of New York to the east and most part of Long Island. And you said, you know, this is sort of a genius. We think of like a Picasso, Ali Klanvers, right? I said, there's a lot of writings about that kind of genius. But there has never been, he saw the whole huge metropolitan area. I think it had 23 million residents, as the Lord thought, since I wrote the book,

that's for you, maybe wrong. But he saw it all as one whole. And when he was young, he mapped out all these highways. You know, the southern state highway, the Lord's state highway, the Lord Ireland Expressway, the Westchester Expressway, the tribe broberts, the Throxnex bridge, the Wai-Swaite stone bridge, he conceived of all these things when he was young.

And he spent the next 44 years filling it in, actually building them. And you said, if I want to be honest about him, I have to find a way to write this. So I show people this kind of genius. It's a new kind of different kind of genius, but it's a genius of, he's like a city shaper, not a painter, but a city shaper. I wonder in that situation, did you feel caught up in his vision? Do you get reeled up and like, you know, like, and like, yeah, I'm excited about this, the way that he is. Does it, does it catch on you. Yes, even if you knew he was totally wrong. I'll give you an example.

So he had this courage that I told you about. So it's across a little inlet from Fire Island. Now at the time I'm writing the book, a project that he wanted to build was a highway the length of fire island, right? Now, fire island is a very narrow strip of land and there were places in which this highway would have been wider than fire island, right? He would have obliterated most of the communities the along there. So they were protesting and I knew this was one of the world's horrible idea. So one day he's sitting in his chair and I'm sitting opposite of taking notes with my head down over no pair and he starts talking about there should be this highway because he would link up two others of his highway, basically.

And he jumps up and he says, come on out here and we went out on the deck and he grabs my arm. And he was 78. He was strong. He grabs my arm. I can tell you the truth. For years I could just sort of feel his fingers on my arm, very strong, and he points to us and he says,

can't you see there wanna be a highway there? As to tell you the truth, you did. You know, driving away after the interview, you said, no, it won't be at least a left to fire up, but in the moment, in the moment he got you, yeah. Was he, when he's kind of speaking with this, this fervor in this integer, is he loud

or is he kind of like quiet, like dramatic? Like I'm very curious, because I've seen, I've watched a few videos of him being interviewed and it feels like when he was on camera, there's something kind of a little anxious or awkward about him and I wonder if in person, was he like big or was on camera, there's something kind of a little anxious or awkward about him. And I wonder if in person was he like big or was it like, come closer and you've got to lean in? That kind of thing.

Well, it wasn't a matter of being allowed or being soft, Elliot. It was a matter of first place, he remembered everything. of first place he remembered everything and sometimes he wanted you to understand it. Like I remember we were talking about, I think it was Joan's speech, but it was like an early Poloq project. And I was asking him something about the legislature because the Republicans controlled it and they didn't want the pox. They didn't want people from New York coming out

to their beautiful Lord Island, Iron Zone speech. And he said to me, something like, in the assembly, it was eight to seven against us in ways and means, but the swing boat was Stevens of Caloraga's County and Stevens had this form and the farm had a mortgage and the mortgage was held by the Rochester State Bank and the way to get to the Rochester State Bank was through Solanza and you

said he remembers everything you know and then of course as I said, he remembers everything, you know, and then of course, as I said before, he would try to explain to you and convince you of his vision, you know. But of course that didn't work because by that time you had been thinking about and talking to the people who were affected by this vision. I'll tell you what I mean by that. It's about the cross Bronx Expressway chapter, what I was saying before about all the people who were told they had 90 days to get out. So they of course had had to move. They were gone. This community was, the people were scattered because they weren't very well off.

Some of them have to go to live in city housing projects. Some went to live with their kids in Westchester County or Lord Ireland. Some moved to co-op city, which was a big development. But I'm interviewing them about what their life was like before and what their life was like now. And I remember it hitting me, when I interview people that night, I type up the interview. I take notes while I'm doing it. And I realized I was typing over and over the same word lonely. They were saying they had friends, they had family.

Now they didn't know anybody. Lonely. Lonely is a word, you know, in my opinion, you don't use the word lonely about yourself unless it's very, very overwhelming in your life. So I was really feeling bad. Sometimes you'd interview an elderly couple, you'd realize they were in some community, they don't know anybody. They used to have this wonderful life with friends around, sense of community.

Now they have nothing. And at the same time, I'm interviewing him. And they had formed an organization to try to fight him and stop the road. He could have built the road just too blocked to the south and displaced almost nobody. But he wasn't going until he was going to build it right through the airport, my house, because that's where he said it was going to go. And I remember sort of bringing up with him the community opposition. And I remember him saying, the exact quote in the book,

but his tone of voice, I can tell you, said, oh, that didn't mean anything. They just stirred up the animals up there. And I held Pat Pat and that was that. And I remember those moments you really felt the hardship, the unnecessary hardship in many cases that he had inflicted. You know, he evicted this figure sounds so large that I'm going to preface it by saying to the two of you, I don't know if you'll have room for it on your podcast. I was determined to get a figure that was so conservative, so low that he couldn't possibly

challenge it. And the figure I came up with that way, which for his highways, he displaced 250,000 people, a quarter of a million. For his urban renewal projects, he displaced another 250,000. So he threw out of their homes, hay for million people. It's like a huge force migration. And a lot of them wound up in places they didn't want to be because they couldn't afford anything. So you're talking about a human tragedy here. And did it feel like he was so focused on his vision, that vision that you said he had come up with as a young man, that nothing could stand in the way of that vision, no matter how many people. He would have evicted, there was no number of evictions where he would have said, well, that's too much.

I can on have to build this road. Do you think that was the case? Exactly. That's exactly what I thought. How far into the interview process did you realize how critical the book would be of his legacy? And do you think there was a moment when he caught and on to that as well? Well, can I answer the second part?

I can't. I know the answer to the second part. I have to think about it. I have to think about it the first one. It definitely was a moment when he caught and went on to it. I had seven interviews with him. So these interviews, I would just let him, first of all, you didn't have to let him talk. Once he got started, questions were immaterial. He was just talking, but while I was doing the research, I found out that when he was building the Northern State Parkway, he took a $10,000 contribution from actually a cousin of his, a great Philancy named Arnold Khan, because the Northern State

Parkway would have run through Idle Khan's private golf course, okay, on his estate. So he bent the road south, okay. Now that was a great secret at the time, no one had ever known this. I found out about it because I had gotten them to open the papers of the governor at the time, Al Smith and I found references to this and then the proof of it. So I knew I had to ask them about this and I was wording the question. I spent a lot of time thinking of a way of wording it, you know, but he was smarter than I was. And the

minute the words Anokhan came out of my mouth, I saw his face change. And not knowing after that, he said, well, that's all we can do for today. Thanks very politely. But I never saw him again. Wow. Wow. What was the other half of your question? Was there a moment that I realized how critical it was going to be? Yeah, for yourself, like when you were developing it and you're hearing these stories and you're hearing the word lonely over and over again, you know, does it change the the tenor of like, what you're creating, what questions you're going to ask and who you're going to follow up with and and how does that how does that all snowball? Yeah, it's well, it's slowball. You just used, you know, when I started, I knew I wanted to write one particular kind of book.

It turned into another, a different book. In part, because I really said, what I've come to believe, and I believe it with about my women in Johnson books too, that if you're going to write about political power, the power that affects people's lives, if you want the book to be honest, you can't just write about the guys who wield power. You have to write about the people on whom the power is wielded. Both for good, like with Lyndon Johnson, getting the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, or for ill,

that all you're doing is throwing them out of their homes, destroying communities. throwing them out of their homes, destroying communities. So when that happened, that was a big deal for my wife, I know, because we were really quite broke. And reporters who were listening to your program will understand what I'm saying. This is a really time consuming thing. Like the cross Bronx Expressway, I've been talking about how he threw out the people of East Streamon. And I remember saying to Einer, you know, I really want to tell the story of East Streamon.

Now, that sentence, you know, that means a lot of time. You have to learn about the community, you have to read, you know, whatever you can find on the community's history, you have to go to the community's newspapers and then you gotta find the people. And remember, these people are scattered all over the place. Now, it's time consuming. And time means money. And we didn't quite tell you at this point, we didn't have any. And we were, I mean, we didn't have any.

That's why we need people to buy this book. Anyone who's listening, if you haven't bought a copy of the power program yet. And I remember saying, I know, you know, I really want to do this. And of course, I know being iron, I said, do it. You know, she never told me how, you know, she had a change shopping centers because we'd run out of credit.

I remember when the New Yorker bought the power broker. I told her. And she said, now I can go back to the dry cleaners. But you touched on something that I've noticed in the book, there are these points where people in the book are doing research, where Al Smith is reading all the bills that are coming up in the state legislature and the civic reformers who are trying to assemble the facts against Robert Moses or interviewing people. And even when Moses is going through the laws and finding the places that he can put in the laws to help him.

And it feels like there are these moments where you're, maybe I'm imagining this because I'm aware a little bit of your methods, but it feels like your love of research and your appreciation for deep research comes through there. And it's almost like there's this there's Valentine to really getting to know facts. Thank you. And to really doing the digging that needs to be done to know facts, that kind of threads throughout the book. And I was wondering if that was something that felt conscious at all, or if it's just you just you recognize research as a as a as a vital thing. So you're like, I understand how hard it is to do research. I'm going to mention that these people are doing this. Is it something that you recognize research as a as a as a vital thing. So you're like I understand how hard it is to do research. I'm gonna I'm gonna mention these people are doing this or is it something that you thought of as a idea you had to illuminate? Yeah, yeah, no. I happen to love.

Just sitting in a library going through papers, you know, I mean, I just I just love it. You know, I mean, I just love it. There's something about rural files, you know, not press releases, but seeing the original letters, the original studies, I do love it. People keep saying, you know, oh yeah, to spend all these years at the Lyndon Johnson Library, you know, I remember thinking, I just wish I had more years. I'd like to spend a lot of

them there, you know. If anything, the book is getting in the way of you just getting to read through the files for as long as you want to. Yes, as a matter of fact, you know, you do have the feeling you're supposed to publish, at least every seven years or eight years or something. Yeah. I've been thinking about the book and its legacy and wondered how you place it in history and especially in the history of Robert Moses. Like, had you not written the power broker? How do you think people would remember Robert Moses today,

or do you think that he would remember him at all? Well, this will sound very boastful, but I think without the book, no one would even remember him. No one, and without remembering him, you would not understand the history of New York City, because he shaped it, you know. But I do believe that. I mean, he hated the book. He just hated it. But I believe no one would know who built these highways, no

one would know what communities were there before, you know. Anyway, that's what I said. I agree. I grew up in the New York area and I lived in New York for a number of years. Without the power broker, Robert Moses would just be a name on a park or a name on a plaque that I wouldn't think as much twice about. Do you ever feel like you've done yourself a disservice by, you know, immortalizing Robert Moses and keeping him in people's eyes when perhaps the true justice would have been if he had, if his name had, had vanished, you know, the immortality he saw it had been

taken from him. That's the dramatic way of putting it. But, you know, it's never a time when you're like, maybe I shouldn't have written that book. I don't think you should think that, but I'm wondering if you ever thought that. No, I remember there were times when I said, boy, I want people to know this. For one thing, you want people to, you know, the only thing you can say about a lot of injustices is the only thing you can do about it is to

make sure people know about it. And I did feel that New York doesn't have to be as segregated as it is. New York doesn't have to be dependent on cars like it is. It could have been different. Every time I drive, I mean, this sounds like a nothing thing, but I have been to think it's rather important. Let's say you're out in the east end of the lower island, we have a house out there, and you're driving back to New York. And you look down and you're coming out,

let's say it's in the late day of the noon, and you look down and as far as you can see, there's bumper to bumper traffic coming out. Now, that bumper to bumper traffic is out all the way basically. So the last time I checked to poor Jefferson, that's like a little over two hours driving each way.

Let's say your commute takes only an hour and a half each way. That's three hours a day of your life. That's fifteen hours and the entire hour. And then you say, if you know or you you know, that they didn't have to spend this time, that when he was building the Law and Ireland Expressway, everybody said to him, it's not a hindsight. You are building a six-lane road, and you're buying 200 feet of right of way for like 80 miles or whatever the right number of miles is. If you just put by 40 feet and this is Suffolk County

was just potato fields, just farms, land was really cheap and you said if you just build by 240 feet instead of 200 feet, they'll be roomed down the center for a light rail line. And every 10 miles or whatever, you can have a huge parking lot. So people who want to drive into New York can keep driving. But if you want to take a train into New York, you have that option. And he refused to do that. And the thing is, they said, well, if you won't build it, at least buy the right of way so that if someone wants to build it, in decades come, they'll be able to. And he didn't want that to happen. So what he did was he built the footings of the expressway of I forget the engineering term, but so light that it wouldn't hold a

Rail line. So you say he condemned Not just one generation, but generation after generation after to generation, you have to generation of people to spend these hours of what otherwise could have been a life driving. And sometimes even now, I get me thinking about it. Yeah. I remember when I first read the book years ago, and then I read it again, preparing for the podcast, that anger, no numerous times during it, about reading something and saying, but so it didn't have to be this way. When I was taking the subway,

I didn't have to be on a broken down subway. They could have taken that road money and rebuilt the transit lines. And this is a lot more of a compliment than a question, so I apologize. But I think something that you do so beautifully in the book is presenting these things as choices and not as inevitabilities. And perhaps that's a theme in it that I feel like I'm only recognizing now, which I should have done, I should have thought about ahead of time,

is more the idea that each of these decisions is very much a conscious decision and that things could have gone a different way. And for readers to take that with them into the future, that when they reach a decision point Uh, there's probably not as momentous as whether to to doom everyone along island to to driving in their cars But to think about what it could happen. It's something that um, yeah, it's such a rich book. That was just a compliment There was no question attached to it. I apologize That's a big I took up a lot of our time with the compliment No, keep going with a compliment. Keep going. I guess we're going to wrap up here and I just have one question

and to ask about before a lot of people are embarking on this journey with us to read the book in 2024 with us. How did you imagine, I mean, did you ever imagine how enduring this book would be that a bunch of us would be reading it 50 years later and just reveling in its detail and thinking about these choices about the world that Robert Moses made? I mean, did you ever imagine such a thing? And how does it strengthen you today? No, I'm so moved by what you guys are doing. I can't tell you. It means so much to me for one thing because you understand the book. You don't just talk about it.

I certainly yes, did I ever think anything like this would happen. As I said to an earlier question, all the time I was writing it, people were telling me basically nobody is going to read a book about Robert Moses. So I wrote it really thinking it's just got to be written. But I didn't really feel many people were going to read it. That's the truth. I remember my agent, Lynn Nezbert, who never tells me anything she's doing. Didn't tell me she submitted it to the New Yorker, you know? And she called and she said, told me she did not. The editor in New Yorker was named William Schorn.

And she said to me, Mr. Schoen, everyone called him Mr. Schoen. Mr. Schoen says he's never read anything like it. And he's going to publish more of it than he's ever published of any book. I couldn't believe that. And that's started all this time. things have happened to the book that I never would have believed that it still be going like it is 50 years later. I never thought that would happen. And I never thought to tell you the truth that there'd be a program, or if you call it a series of podcasts, like you two guys are doing, which are not only taking people through the book, but in a way to help them understand all the nuances in it. I don't want to thank you anymore, but thank you.

Well, it is our pleasure and it was a great pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It was been an honor for us. A pleasure. And that is a wrap on the first official episode of the 99% invisible breakdown of the Power Broker. I am so excited for this year. Thank you so much for joining us.

In episode 2, we're going to tackle part 3, The Rise to Power. That's pages 91 to 171 in my book. We'll also be releasing a handy little guide, so you know which chapters we'll talk about in each episode ahead of time. And even though this is a virtual book club, we still wanted to create a space where anyone reading along can gather together and nerd out on the book, so it's not just me and Elliot. So we created a Discord server. You can find the link on our website or by going to discord.gg-99pi. We'll also check in on the 99% of visible subreddit

that will be a post for each episode. So come hang out with us. [♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing edited by committee, music by Swan Rial, mixed by Dara Hirsch. 99% of visible's executive producer is Kathy too. Our senior editor is Delaney Hall, Kurt Colstad is the digital director. The rest of the team includes Sarah Baker, Chris Barube, Jason Dillion, Emmett Fitzgerald, Gabriella Gladney, Martin Gonzales, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Lashmodon, Jacob Maldonado Medina, Kelly Prime,

Joe Rosenberg, and me Roman Mars. The 9-Hempstown visible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence, the art for this series was created by Aaron Nester. We are part of the Stitcher & Series XM podcast family, now head towards 6 Blocks North in the Pandora building. And beautiful. Uptown, Oakland, California. Keep up with us and the power broker at our website.

It's 9-9-PI dot org. So what's your favorite thing in this in this section that we that we didn't mention and our in our summary? We didn't have time to get into Moses's record as a swimmer as a competitive swimmer at Yale. But Robert Carro, he has this, he's great couple lines that our producer Isabel made sure that we didn't forget about. Where it says, Moses joined the swimming team as a sophomore. If he ever want to race, the victory was not reported in the news, which is, and news in italic, it's the Yale Daily News, he's referring to, but it is, it is so funny to me one because it is such a slam on Robert Moses, such a, such a backhand at slam on the subject of this book. If you ever won, I don't

hear about it, but also this means that Robert Carrow, you know, he went back and read as many copies of the Yale Daily News from 1908, 1909 as he could just to see, just to make sure did, did Robert Moses win a race in swimming? Doesn't mention it. Let me read tomorrow's copy. Let me see what the next edition says It's such a flex. You know that Robert Kara was reading that and it's like I wonder if I could beat Robert Moses in a swimming race Maybe I could maybe I could