Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - The Power Broker: A Special Sneak Peek

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

If you're not already obsessed with Robert Caro, esteemed author and noted friend of Conan, you soon will be. Robert Caro's The Power Broker is the bible for people who think critically about cities and urban design: how cities are formed, neighborhoods are destroyed, bridges are erected, fortunes are made, lives are ruined, and power is amassed. The problem is it's over 1100 pages long. Undeterred, Roman Mars (99% Invisible) and Elliott Kalan (The Daily Show, The Flop House) are leading a monthly audio book club dedicated to examining this modern masterpiece, one section a month, all year long. As an intro to this series, Roman and Elliott invited fellow Caro-head Conan O'Brien to chat about what makes Robert Caro so special. You can find the full Conan O’Brien episode on 99% Invisible here, and subscribe to 99% Invisible to hear our first Power Broker episode, featuring extremely special guest…Robert Caro.

Hey, Conan here with a quick message. If you're a history buff or a fan of good podcasts, you should check out 99% invisible. I'm excited about it because they invited me to take part in a little mini series. They're doing about the power broker. Of course, the famous book by Robert Carro that depicts the life of Robert Moses. Anyway, I had an amazing conversation with them. I really enjoyed talking to the hosts and this whole series, they talk to Robert Carro. They're going to be talking to a lot of other guests. So check it out.

You should go to the 99% invisible feed. They cover I think 100 pages of the book in every episode. You can read along. It's a nerd fast all around and I think you'll enjoy it. In fact, here's a clip. 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 want to try and emulate, and obviously there's so, in 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 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 A-hab. He has that same kind of nope. I'm going to keep going and I'm going to keep going and I'm going to 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, he's talked to Lyndon Johnson's brother Sam. He used to know many times and he's saying he's just told all these stories and he's got it all. And he's like, no, I got to go back. I got to go back. I got to 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 tale. 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. But it's like, you know, we've got a pretty good book here. 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. And I think of that as Robert Carrows got a trench coat. 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 guy's getting dressed for the day and he wants to go out and he's got a tennis match.

He's supposed to play the opens the door and there's Robert Carrows and a trench coat. You know, there's one thing they kind of bothers me just a tennis match. He's supposed to play the opens the door. And there's Robert Carrot in a trench coat. You know this, there's one thing, they kind of bothers me just a little bit. Well, what is it, Carrot? 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 for worth at the time. Okay, okay. It wasn't a Buick dealership. It was a Pontiac.

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. Yeah. He's working right now as I think about that sometimes. Well, I'm doing around doing whatever dumb podcasting or whatever thing I'm doing. I'm like, Robert Carro is sitting in his office right now. While 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, well, I talked to the guy who delivered the newspaper to her at the camp. She was saying it, the summer camp she was saying it. 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 where most of his parents used to spend their summers? Like, it's astounding. It's astounding. It's astounding. You know, you gave me an idea, which is we should, uh, 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, 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. Right. 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. Does anyone 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 Really the world to to to 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.