The Power Broker Breakdown Wrap-Up
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This is a special bonus episode of the 99% Invisible Breakdown of the Power Broker. I'm Roman Mars. So a few weeks back, Elliot and I held our final Power Broker event. It was an AMA on our Discord server where we shared our final thoughts about the book and our thoughts about this whole experience. And we took questions from listeners. It was a ton of fun. But we know a lot of you couldn't make it. So as promised, here is a recording of the event.

One of the questions that we want to start with was just about like our impressions of the book. We've each read it three times. And so, Elliot, now that you've read it three times, what is your favorite part of Power Broker?

Now that I've read it three times and now that I'm back on my mic after telling a six-year-old, no, he cannot play Xbox right now, which is why my mic was turned off briefly. I think my favorite part, I don't know. Like, I love that Al Smith biography section so much. Yeah. Just going through his life. It's so exciting. And it's a story that until I read The Car Broker, I was really, truly unaware of. Like, just what an amazing personality and amazing history that guy had. Yeah.

reading it this third time through, I feel like there were parts of it I was picking up on before that I hadn't before. And I think it's any time when Robert Caro's personal kind

kind of like feelings and interests come through, not just the part where he's writing in italics, you know, they could have done it better. You know, this was the wrong choice, but instead how clearly he feels an admiration for some of the characters in the book and how clearly he does not feel admiration for some of the other people. But like, I don't think I fully picked up on the dislike of John Lindsay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was very funny to me on the third time through, but what about you, Roman? Are there parts after, after this multiple readings, what are your favorite parts now? I think, I,

The end is more fun for me than previous. And I think mainly has to do with my state of mind when I was reading it. Because you're like, I've read this book three times now, finally at the end. No, actually, almost the opposite. Whereas when I read it the first time, I was really ready for it to be over. I just like making progress. And so I didn't sort of really...

take a lot of pleasure in, you know, the different young reporters who are taking him on, the Lindsay part, you know, like I was just looking for plot details of his fall and not sort of relishing the details of it. And so I think I've had more fun with that part in this read and in our discussion. Like, I don't know if I fully even put together all the details of

of the Rockefeller deal and stuff like that. I just kind of read it too quickly. And so that sort of phase of the fall, when you can see that the end is almost coming and you really, just from your sense of accomplishment, not because you're bored, but you just want to keep going, I think I breezed through that part and didn't have as much fun with it. But this time, that really stood out to me more.

I probably had a similar reaction, but that was so mixed in with my melancholy about us getting towards the end of the book. It was mixed with this feeling of like, oh, I can't believe we're Rockefellers almost accepted his resignation. Yeah, I did feel I had so much fun doing this in general, just like working with you, Elliot and Isabel and and everyone's reaction to the book and really taking it on. It was just

it was so much fun. I, when we had our final production meeting today, I was like sad. I was like, yeah, you know, we should just like get together, like hang out. So, I mean, um, I mean, we have talked about doing potential of doing other books and other projects. We haven't sort of solidified that stuff, but everyone is very, very busy with lots of other things. And so we want to be respectful of that and make sure that we're doing a good job and make sure that this is still fun. So, so we will see about that just to anticipate other questions coming up about that. Um,

You know, another highlight of the series is, you know, we didn't know when we started that we were going to talk to Robert Caro or that he would want us to do this. Exactly. I thought he was going to tell us no. I was really worried that we would have a Robert Moses relationship that he I was worried it would be like his relationship with Moses. It was like, do not wish to be a part. Do not authorize. Don't do this. Like, I was worried that that would be the reaction. And.

It's hard to describe how gratifying it's been to be able to speak to him multiple times and to have him engage with us about our thoughts about this book that he's been talking about.

talking to people about for 50 years now. It was, you know, I've talked about this before, about when we did our live event with him, which was an amazing dream come true. On the flight over to do it, I was writing scripts for this puzzle comedy podcast that I do for a competing network. I won't bring it up here. But I was like, I'm like, I can't believe I'm writing these ridiculous, dumb jokes. I'm going to go talk to Robert Caro. What a dream come true thing. But I know, Roman, you found yourself really underwhelmed by him and you found it really a bitter experience, right?

I'm just being sarcastic. I'm just facetious. Very similarly. I was so delighted that he wanted to do it. And then when he was so thoughtful and like forthright and sort of like emotional about it, that was when I was like, oh my goodness, this is so lovely. You know, it just made me so, yeah, it just, it made me so happy. And then, you know, the fun part was that

You're talking to him and his recall about, you know, just like the breakdown of different votes on the Long Island, you know, you know, like committee. Like, pardon me, it's been a long time. I don't quite remember. And then he'd know it. Exactly. And so, yeah, it was really, really something. I was a little worried that he would be like, I've written other books. Like, am I talking about this again? And I think it was to see the.

That the pride he feels in it and also the trials he went through, that he and Ina both went through to write it, that they're still so alive in him. It was very moving to me and very special to see that like, oh, this book is still alive.

a living kind of like experience, you know, that's so much to him as well. I feel like being a comic book and science fiction fan, I've had the experience of really investing a lot of myself into a work of art and then either meeting or reading or seeing an interview with the author and having them be like, yeah, I don't know, whatever. I tossed that off. Who cares? And being like, oh, it meant a lot to me. And so to see that this this still means so much to Kara was really, really touched me. You know, it was very meaningful.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. And we had a bunch of other guests on the show. And I was kind of amazed by that, like how many people wanted to be involved, like, you know, very notable people like AOC and Pete Buttigieg and stuff. Did you have a favorite moment from other guests? My I mean, this is this is self-serving. My favorite moment, I think, for all of them was when we had AOC on. I was so I was just so impressed with the way she was thinking and articulating her thoughts through it. And I was like, I'm going to make her laugh at

this interview. I'm going to try. And I told the joke about like, she was saying that like all these people have come together to try to undo Robert Moses' work. And I was like, so in a way, he's a hero. And that she laughed at that and that I didn't get a scowl from her. Like I was very, that was my victory moment I'll take with me. But also talking to Mike Schur and having him and being like, I love this book. And then talk to someone who like

He was another person who had just like insane recall for a book that he did not write. He just he just knew it from reading it. Yeah, I really I really loved talking with him and his sort of just his full embrace of the material is really great.

I, you know, for these interviews. What other highlights did you have? Yeah. Well, for these interviews, I do a lot of reading on our guests, actually. So I usually read whatever book they've written or other things that they've done. And with AOC, I had, you know, she has a kind of, there was a biography, like a sort of compilation biography written about her, of her early days and different stuff. And what I was, I had most fun with was like,

Reading that early stuff and being reminded of how she was exacting change in the beginning and her talking about the real politic of being in the position that she's in today and relating that to the power broker was just like, I was like, this is a generational talent. I was just kind of amazed at.

by her. That was just an incredible moment to sort of have that juxtaposition of where she started and where she is. She was always talented and engaging, but just seeing that and realizing, oh, we're just at the beginning of her and our lives, which is a very good thing, I think, for the world. I think it speaks volumes that you asked me and my thing that I was most memorable was something I said and your answer was something the guest was doing.

That just speaks a lot about us, the work we do, how we see the world. Yeah. Yeah. And then I don't know that it was just the range of it that I had so much fun. Like a lot of people are chiming in that they loved us talking to Brennan Lee Mulligan, which was my kid's favorite guest by far, you know, like, and, um, you know, he was really fun and Pete Buttigieg. I've like admired him for forever and he's so much fun, so much fun to listen to. Um, I, you know, I really, I just had, it was a great time, you know, like it was, it was

And everyone sort of came to the challenge of it and had a good time. And, you know, by the time we were getting to the end with like Clara Jeffrey, I think we were having a real discussion about the idea of, you know, what journalism means in the moment. And, you know, she kind of asked us questions for the first time in that way. And it was kind of fun. I don't know. It was just great. And Conan and

David Sims. I mean, I had, you know, Jamel was so fun. Like it was like we especially the early guests, we had brought them on for the for the breakdown portion. And it was a really tall order for like Jamel and David Sims to to do that. It's a lot of material to write.

digest relatively quickly and to not be as in it as we were because we were dedicated to going through the book the whole time. But they were troopers. It was great to have them. They pulled it off. Totally. Afterwards, I remember you were like, let's be a little easier on our guests. Let's not make them do all this reading. Well, the first, because the first one was AOC was the first one we didn't do that with. And it was because we didn't have three hours with her.

And then after that happened, we were like, this is a lot easier for them if they don't have to comment on every aspect of the book in this section. And I ran into David Sims in New York and he was like, OK, tell me the truth. Was it because I was so bad? And I was like, absolutely not, David. You were great. That's a very David way to think about it. We were just making it easier on the other folks. He was really great. I mean, if there was somebody...

Who would have wanted to come on to do that. I think we might have liked to adjust it on the fly, but it just was, it was, and we ended up having sort of more of a thesis about them and their take on it versus them commenting on, you know, like nickel Barron's from the 1920s, you know? So, um, let's see. Um,

I don't know. Any other thoughts before we get into some more questions from folks? We have, uh, something, something I do want to say before, before we get into, uh, to other people is that, uh, I've said it before. I'll say it again. I'll probably say it again at the end. I can't say enough. What a delight and an exciting thing it was for me. Roman, when you first asked me to be involved in this at all, you know, uh, I had been a listener of 99% as well for many years. Uh,

By that point. And now I'm done with it. I don't particularly listen to it. No, I still listen to it regularly. And there are some times when an opportunity kind of opens up to do something that you had not really considered doing. But once the invitation is there, you realize, oh, this is the thing I want to do more than anything else I can imagine. And then the experience...

lives up to your hopes about it and so working with you on this working with isabel with kathy and with and being able to to talk to the people we talk to and really take this time to engage and and think about and luxuriate in this book it's a top 10 creative experience for me maybe even top five but i've got a life a lot of light left so i want to i mean there's still there's a number of years left so i want to leave some some wiggle room for it in the rankings you know that's fair yeah

That's fair. I mean, likewise, I mean, initially I was talking to you about it because I have been a Flophouse listener for a long time. And the way I knew that there was something in the way that you were summarizing these things, but it was entertaining to me, even though I rarely watch the Flophouse movies. So I was like, what is the secret to making this work? Because it's

In my initial conception of the piece, I would do much more of the breaking down to a person new to the book. That was the first kind of – that's my first idea. And it wasn't that we both had –

you know, kind of equal grounding in the book. And you'd said something that's so smart. You were like, if I have 18 bullet points, then I've done enough summarizing or like enough adjusting to that. I know I've thought about it enough to move through the movie in this case and move through the summary. And I...

I love it when somebody can boil something down to a number that they've been doing. And like, it feels like, oh, I don't know. I know it when I feel it kind of thing, but I, but I love it when people go, no 18, you know, like, so, um, 20 is 20 is too much. Although I feel like I gave you a real bait and switch because I was, because then, then when I did these summers, I was like, I'm going to go long on these ones. And I did not do as good a job of boiling them down, but there's so much more to say about this than there is that I wanted to say about any movie we've ever watched ever. So,

Totally. But then when it shifted and I thought, oh, no, but this just makes sense. Maybe I should reconceive this.

I can't believe how well it turned out. And I also can't believe how I think it would have been bad had it worked out the other way if it wasn't the two of us and you really breaking it down and us sort of working on it together. I'm just so grateful that you said yes and you had time to do it. I mean, that's a little bit like you were like, do you want to eat nothing but fried chicken for the rest of your life? And then I say yes. And you're like, I can't believe you did it. There's no way. How could I say no to it?

But anyway, it was just, it's like so much fun. And then the other part of it that was fun was like,

the activation of the audience and, you know, like having people be excited about it. And they just got, everyone sort of got it right away. Like from the guests, Robert Caro, I don't know, just everyone sort of, you know, like when you're in a show, you know, I made 99% Invisible for close to 15 years. And, um, yeah, you're kind of a podcast newbie, but that's okay. You know, Plop House is approaching its 18th anniversary, but you know, it's a nine years since Racket up there. Yeah, sure. That's right.

But it's rare that, you know, Time magazine or something pulls you out after 15 years and says, you know what the best podcast of the year is? 99% of all is Power Broker. It's one we've gotten used to. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. They never do that. But because I think the whole idea, you know, the execution and how it was produced and then everyone's reaction to it, you know, knowing that this is a book that makes sense to go through like this.

I just, it just really captured people. Like it, it, it captured me as an idea. Like Chris Berube on our team was the first, the person who pitched it. And I was like, immediately, I was like, yep, we got to do that. You know? And then from there, it just like, I'm just so, so pleased with it. It, it, it turned out so well. We've got to take a break. When we come back, we get to some listener questions.

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So we have asked people on the Discord some questions. And so we're going to get through some of those as many as we can in the remaining bit of the show. This first question is from Jimmy Mango. Probably not his real name, but it is. Connecticut Mangos. Yeah. Great name.

The question is, you've posed the question whether there are Robert Moseses, Robert Mosai, waiting for biographies to be written about them. And Carol argues that there might be or there are, but without the same wide-ranging long-term impact. Have you looked into that at all and found other Moses-like figures?

I guess I can answer this. Well, so the funny thing is, is like on the regular show, we get pitches from a lot of reporters and there's been a flavor of them recently, which is, I want to tell you the story. I want to report the story of the Robert Moses of Toronto or the Robert Moses of Detroit or the Robert Moses of LA. And they're all good pitches. I'm not disparaging them at all, but, but there's a, I think if you know the history of a place, you will find something.

in that place, some kind of urban architecture villain that you can hang. Somebody can blame for that. That's right. So we had so many of them. I think some of them, you know, we'll, we'll green light on their own, but we've actually been talking about like, do we want to do like a, an urban villain, March madness style bracket for people like to feed into. And so, yeah,

And so we're thinking about how to execute that and maybe tell littler stories about lots of different men who ruined cities and acted undemocratically and all sorts of other things. You know, I don't know if anyone's quite like Moses. I think that he's

Robert Caro is right. But there are plenty of people who have done plenty of mischief in our cities, and it would be it would be fun to to look at more of them for sure. So I think you're right that none of them will will

will be direct competitor with Moses. But I think that's partly the luck of, when people talk about Abraham Lincoln and they're like, well, of course he was a great president. He got to be president during the civil war as if that was like, it's easier to be great when there's a big problem. But I think that the fact that he was, that he had the lucky break of being a New York based builder, a New York based power broker. And so there's just a bigger scale to operate on than almost any other city in the country. But you have your farm league

Mosai all over the place, you know, in their regional power centers. I'm excited about this. So this brings me to like we're trying to fill this bracket and try to figure this out, how we're going to navigate this on the show. So if you have any, you know, nominations of your Robert Moses of Portland or whatever, we would be delighted to start to collect them and figure out how we're going to put this together into something. I'm not quite sure how to do it, but we'll figure out something.

The reverence of Portland is like, we have to tear down your house to put this bike lane through. That's right. Now I'm being terrible to Portland. Any other city is. I just can't help but mistreat them. It's terrible. That is true. So next question from Specific Andrew says,

Not living in NYC, I found myself frequently wondering as I read the book, how is that piece of infrastructure doing these days, especially whenever Caro mused about how permanent Moses' shaping would be on the city? What are some of the Moses Project's updates that you found notable, either that have stayed relatively unchanged since the power broker was written or have been demolished or maybe reworked into something more functional?

Elliot, you have more familiarity. It's a good question. We talked a little bit about the, and I wish I had a more comprehensive answer. I've been away from New York for a number of years now as my primary residence. And the thing about New York is it's always changing fast. I think I mentioned the podcast. Remember the thing that I think it was Colson Whitehead once said, where he said, you're a New Yorker the first time you can point to something and say, oh, I know it used to be there before this. Like there used to be a shoe store, you know, but there are certain things that we mentioned on the podcast that like,

Shea Stadium, which he was a big part of putting there, not there anymore. The New York Coliseum, not there anymore. These things that the 64 World's Fair site, which was somewhat built to be temporary anyway, but not all of it, that is in large part not there. And someone...

had sent, was it over Twitter? I can't remember. Sent me a picture of these 64 world's fair mosaics that are just destroyed from years of people walking on them, these ground level mosaics. And there are other aspects that, that he built, like the roads are always falling apart a little bit. Like that's the nature of any infrastructure that's not maintained too properly. But there are certain parts of it where I think Carol's right. Like the bridges he built are,

They're not going anywhere. They'll have to be maintained, but no one is replacing those with other bridges. And certainly the way that he literally reshaped the geographic shape of the city in terms of filling in space between islands and things like that, that's not going anywhere for him.

thousands of years probably and so there's there are parts of infrastructure that they're sort of that that are still there and even when they're degrading they're so important to the infrastructure city that they will be maintained um but that's but i think that's the nature of building stuff is that like when you build as much as moses did not all of it's going to last uh not everything he built is gonna is going to stay forever because new york is this constantly changing city and

It shows you what a massive scale he had to build on in order to make things that are not likely to go away because there's so many buildings that were built in New York where the person who put their all into it said, this is my monument. And then eventually it disappeared and it went away. It's such a it's a constantly changing city. There's the old legend about City Hall, which is way downtown, that they like only put the marble facing on the downtown side because they're like, nobody's going uptown farther than City Hall.

And now that thing is so far downtown that like it's ridiculous, you know, like literally no one's going to see this on the other side of the building. And so there's always going to be stuff of his that is degrading. But again, it's so necessary that will be maintained. But then a few things that will disappear. And I wish I had a more for the amount of time I talked. I wish I had a more substantive answer than that. I mean, I mainly feel it in the things that he didn't do or he did or he neglected, which is like.

You know, the legacy of the subway, which does a remarkable job of moving people around that probably could have been better had it had the same kind of champion in office for those, you know, 45 years. That's something I sort of feel as a legacy of his. The other part is like, I mean, his infrastructure, how is it doing these days? I mean,

And the totality of his impact, even from this congestion pricing thing, which the stop and start planned for a decade, all that sort of stuff, is really something. He built that too. The opposition that is built into that is Robert Moses' fault, basically. It's a good point. It's not just the things he built, but the environment that he left behind politically.

as well and you know emotionally the world that people grew up in and now that's in new york and that's the world that they assume and they get mad at changes and it's like a multi-faceted impact and you can point to the fact that like it takes forever to get from queens over to the east side of the city and then over the west side like that's that's on the subway like that's like that's still a legacy that the subway system didn't get built out the way that it probably should have or maintained the way and it's a legacy of choices but then there's the ironic ironically i was thinking

The piece of it that he was so excited to do, which I think would actually would have been the first thing that would have been replaced, is that Midtown expressway that would go through buildings because he was so – it was so enamored of this idea. I have to imagine that if the moment he died, they would have been like, tear that down. Can't have it. No thank you. This is not working. Every now and then a car just accidentally flies off of this expressway into Midtown. Like we can't have this anymore. Yeah.

I mean, someone has mentioned in the chat that he might be jealous of collecting the tolls on all that congestion pricing. If he could have collected whatever, I don't even know how many dollars it is. Many, many dollars. Nine dollars. I wonder if he would have had this real battle of wills of like, I want the money, but I also want the cars to get in more easily. You know, relatively inexpensive, but it would have been hard. I think in the end, the money would have won out, though. Yeah, yeah.

So from Specific Andrew, he says, when I visited the power plant in Niagara, this is one of the things he built that remains. I said to my partner, I'm pretty sure that thing is named after Robert Moses, but the book hasn't gotten to it yet. But the book never did, which is an ongoing joke that we keep on making when it comes to this book. It's so funny how much more he actually did, which is hilarious. That there is a whole chapter about

Shakespeare in the park and the argument over that and this enormous power dam that I have to imagine the environmental impact is probably huge. I have to imagine the impact on people's lives in terms of bringing electricity to people was probably huge. And Kara was like, no, no, no. Was it in New York City? No, thanks. Not interested. Don't worry about it. Was it at least in the Long Island area? No. Okay. Never mind. Forget it. It's such a, there are times I love this book so much and it's so full of things and it's so big that you don't want more stuff stuffed into it. But there are times when it is like the

once in a generation historical literature version of the New Yorker cover where it's a New Yorker's view of the world. And the street you live on is huge. And a block away is a little bit smaller. And then somewhere in the distance is like the rest of the country. And then beyond that is the dot that says Asia, you know, there's times when the book is a little bit like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where everything, you know, like, uh,

And north of the Bronx is like upstate New York. It would bother people. I'd be like, oh, that person lives upstate now. They're like, no, they live like in Westchester. That's not that far upstate. Yeah, but it's north of the city. Yeah.

This question is from Kiss GZ. I'm interested in how the changes Moses has brought about relate to the city's fiscal crisis in the mid-70s. In the book Fear City, this is not directly explained, but I suspect that the two stories are very much connected. President Ford and his circle was convinced that the city had brought its problems on itself through heedless profligate spending. And I presume that spending was mostly Moses.

Yet, interestingly, he is only mentioned twice in that book, once as the legendary planner, as if he had nothing to do with what happened in 1975. Do you have any thoughts on this, Elliot? I do indeed have thoughts on this, Roman. I mean, the main thing is that I think it's not quite fair, I think, to say New York is out of money because Robert Moses spent all the money because so much of the money he was playing with

didn't come straight from the city's coffers you know a lot of federal money a lot of tribal money but i think that he is related to it in that the real issue with the city in the 70s much of it was not just that it was out of money but also but that it did not have the infrastructure to care for the people who lived there and to provide the services they needed and that is very much a robert moses legacy that that transit around the city was difficult that the

public recreation for the lesser served portions of the city continued to be lesser served. That really poured into the

social and cultural issues the city was dealing with, which are the things that led to so much of the like the middle class leaving the city and things like that and brought us to the period in New York history, which I was born just too late to be a part of, but which I grew up hearing stories about so much, the kind of like 70s into the very early 80s New York, where it seems like you were either going to see

the first show of the greatest bands that ever played, or you were getting mugged at knife point. And there was no, that was your day. There was the two things that you were doing and nothing else. You know, you spent your, your morning at the forefront of an artistic revolution.

And then at night, someone hit you in the back of the head and stole your rent money. That was it. That was New York. In New York, my parents would tell me about where they'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah, well, we couldn't walk by Port Authority because there was a guy who stood in the street corner and would just punch people in the stomach. And it's like, oh, this was like a local fixture. This was not just a thing that happened one day. So the city that he left behind is part of it, but I don't know if it's necessarily money-specific. You had a point that you made throughout the podcast, Roman, that I think bears on here about New York's relationship with money. Yeah.

Well, the common theme every chapter is New York was broke, like constantly. So I have a hard time believing that he maybe made it more broke, but it was constantly broke, which is part of his power. It was like he was able to secure this money from a lot of it federal and outside sources and from tolls and stuff like that and bonds and these perpetual, like forever existing public authorities. Yeah.

And so that can't be new. He just was, you know, it was a certain type of extractor of resources. And that's fine when you're in the good extracting stage where there's plenty. But then you hit a wall and all of a sudden that extraction has its most, you know, like painful cost. And I think he was running out his string in the 70s, even if he was an immortal who could survive.

live forever and keep going. He just couldn't extract anymore. He had squeezed the juice out of the city and was like, oh, but I still, I mean, the fact that his, it feels like his dreams went from

The visionary dreams of a young man who's seeing things on a scale no one else can see to the visionary dreams of a kind of a tyrant who is – he realizes he has the power to do things that he can't see to the dreams of a madman who is like, why does the city need people when it could have roads? He had one solution for everything, and it was roads, and he eventually went – he seems to have gone mad with it. And so I think you're right. By the 70s, he was less of a – he was still an entity to be feared but not as much of the creator that he once was.

But you can definitely feel the city of the 70s that the book Fear City and the question is evoking in the title, which is The Fall of New York, which you wouldn't write that as a subtitle today. And there's a certain – you can tell the moment it was written in because there's a lot of Robert Carragher going, you know, like –

Yeah.

Yeah, that the book is, I think that while he's writing it, he's very much thinking of it as a work of reporting of the now and the things that led to the now. There's a criticism of the book that's come up on the 50th anniversary, which is like, it's not as accurate about New York's state as it once was. It's like, well, yeah, I hope not. It's 50 years. Like the city can't rebound in a half a century, then nobody should live there. But he's very much writing it from the point of view of this is the world that Moses made and we're living in it and it stinks as opposed to now when it

So much more of that is in the rearview mirror because we're all driving on expressways because the subway is not working right now. This question is from Captain Ben. As someone who grew up in Cincinnati, every time I think of a massive highway that cuts through the center of downtown, I now think of Moses and his acolytes as they spread his gospel over the country. Has anyone found evidence or history on the direct impact Moses' infrastructure philosophy had on other U.S. cities during the mid-century?

Yeah, that's something we talked about with Robert Caro. And it's something that comes up a lot of like, how important is this Robert Moses really? Because this was happening in a lot of places. And Robert Caro's response was that Moses taught people that you could destroy neighborhoods with little or no repercussions.

In a modern democracy, you could do that as an imperial power. Yeah, it's a talent area. There's a real question, I think. This is something that comes up a lot when people talk about Abraham Lincoln. Something people talk about Abraham Lincoln is like, how much was he guiding events? How much was he guided by events? And with Moses, it's kind of similar that he is someone who was very much at the forefront of this switch to democracy.

a road-based lifestyle, especially in cities. And he was someone who was working on, again, the biggest showpiece in America, New York City. But at the same time, he was like,

in the mainstream. He was not pushing against the currents of the culture. This was something that everybody was interested in. I mean, he's working before the federal interstate highway system, but that feeling is in the air. And at the 39 World's Fair, there's the Futurama exhibit, which is kind of an exhibit of what life will be like in the future. And commuting between work and home over highways with cars is a big part of that. I mean, it's a general motors thing, which is why it was a big part of it. But the idea of living a highway-driving-based lifestyle

and being able to get in and out of cities easily is already in the zeitgeist, but he manages to capture that zeitgeist and work with it at a level that...

that nobody else is and uh and a comparison that uh that came up when we were kind of discussing this uh earlier today which i think is still relevant is uh that there's a lot of musicians who are kind of doing the same kind of thing as taylor swift but they're not doing it in the way that connects to people the same way nobody would say taylor swift is it like a like a revolutionary artist who's changing the rules of the game but she does what she's doing at this level that

resonates and impacts clearly at a higher level for people. And so in many ways, I think Romero's is similar. He's the Taylor Swift of mid-century highway building. He's doing what everybody else is doing, but he's just doing it so much better. He's doing it on a global scale. All I see now in the chat is several people are typing. Yeah. I'm not saying Taylor Swift is bad. This is a... Oh, I should never have said it. Sorry.

Oh, my goodness. OK. Look, we hear it. My kids are fans of hers. We hear a lot of it at the house. I love Taylor Swift. You're alone on this island. I didn't say she was bad. This is a compliment to Robert Moses. I see. I see.

The only thing I've seen like this is when we did a Flophouse show once where we did the movie Spice World and one of my co-hosts mentioned that the Spice Girls were kind of an artificially brought together band and the audience booed him so hard. I heard that episode. That's so good. Yeah. It's so funny. Yeah.

Okay, so from JML18, how do you think we find the balance between Moses's build first, ask questions later style of infrastructure projects and what many see today as overregulation, which can stymie attempts to undertake majority infrastructure improvements in modern cities? Yeah.

That's a great question. I feel like I'm not – that's above my pay grade. Roman, you've been hosting an urban design and so forth podcast for a while. I think you could talk more about it. Yeah. I mean you hear this a lot that –

there should be a Robert Moses for X, or there would be good to have Robert Moses pointed in the direction that you want things to go. And I understand that. I do think that the nature of politics is this push and pull of regulation and deregulation. And

See, I still kind of have a way of blaming Robert Moses for a lot of this, which is like, you know, he broke systems to make things dependent on him and his choices and roads and stuff. And so we had to fight back by, you know, creating things that were more fair and more democratic. And so...

He's kind of at fault for both aspects, you know, for both building things with sort of undemocratically acquired power. And also he's at fault for democratically acquired power for not being able to do things quickly because we were trying to stop future Robert Moses in a lot of these ways. I get it that maybe it is too far and you just have to go to

or listen in on a Berkeley City Council meeting of NIMBYs and go like, why can they stop things from happening that need to happen? And then you read a similar thing happening in the power broker and you wish that those voices had more power in that situation. So the hard part is, is like there is the right balance to be made. It would all work better if more people focused and voted on local elections instead.

And paid attention to these things. If they were the people you agreed with, Roman. Boom. Gotcha. No, but I mean, I think both like you just pay attention to it and try to make it responsive. But you do you need to push and pull. Like, I think all good design comes from.

top-down planning, and also a ground-up, a little bit more informal process of the citizens making their neighborhood as good as they can. But we do get out of balance pretty quickly and easily, and that's a shame. But a lot of the time when I'm reading this book, I'm kind of grateful that Robert Moses wasn't more evil, you know? Given all that stuff, what he could have done,

And that he was still pretty dedicated to parks and things like that is kind of amazing. You could totally imagine a worse person taking way more liberties and really truly destroying everything and also self-enriching to an extent that was absolutely...

Mind boggling. So I think it's it's it's the only thing I have to say about is that it's so hard to find that balance, I think, because you can't tell the future. So you don't know the consequences of a thing until it's done. Really? You can guess at them. You can estimate them. But it's so hard. And so it is easy for us to look back at the power broker and be like, this is a good thing. This is a bad thing. I wish you'd done this. I wish he I'm glad he did this. I wish he hadn't done this. But it's harder to know that when someone is bringing.

a new plan to you. I mean, sometimes it's very clear what things are not good and sometimes it seems really clear what things are good, but it's just hard. You never can know what, uh, what the real impact of a thing is going to be until, you know, years after the fact. And we don't have time travel yet, but when we do, our decisions are going to be a lot easier to make. So much easier. More of your power broker questions answered after the break.

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Jane asks, a mock-up of Lincoln Center is that the opening shot of the 2021 remake of West Side Story looking up the original 1961 film. I learned that the locations used were actual slum clearance sites from Moses projects. Is there any other media that since reading The Power Broker has you shouting Robert Moses at shaking your fist at the screen?

That's a good question. I feel like I now look at the shot in The Producers where Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel are standing at the fountain in Lincoln Center, and the fountain goes off when he goes, I want everything I've ever seen in the movies. And they decide they are going to steal money from all these old ladies to fund this bad play. Now I think of that more as a Robert Moses moment. Yeah.

But I have to admit, when I watch movies set in New York, I spend so much time trying to identify places I've been in person that I don't always have the historical view of things. Instead, I'm like, I know that street corner. There's a very bad low-budget movie from years ago called Robot and the Family that was shot almost entirely in one stretch of street

Of Broadway between like 14th Street and 12th Street, where it's just a bunch of antique stores. And I was like at the time and I was like, I used to walk that street multiple times a day when I was a college student and watch it. Now I love this movie, even though it's terrible because it brings me back to those days. You know, what about you? Is there anything as someone who didn't live in New York and so don't have that personal bias blinding you? Are the things that you've seen since then where you're like, that's a Robert Moses thing?

Well, one of my favorite movies is the Bill Murray movie Quick Change, where he robs a bank, dresses as a clown, and is trying to get out of the city. And it's all very confusing about how you get to the BQE and how you do this and how you do that. And I never knew until this reread that the villain of that movie is actually Robert Moses. Yeah.

That's the reason why they can't make it out of the city. And it makes me appreciate that movie even more. But that's one I can think of. Anytime I see a kind of, especially those movies from, you know, like I love those movies from the 70s and I just feel like that's the city he created. And it's sort of, I definitely feel them when I watch them.

Like taking 1, 2, 3 and stuff like that. Oh, well, the greatest movie of all time to take 1, 2, 3. I was going to make a mean joke about you. I'm like, well, I know Roman as someone who's not from New York. When you're watching movies in New York, you're mostly going, Garth, look at how big those bills are. That's right.

Look at them big buildings. Yeah. There's a little bit of talk in the chat about the taking of Pelham 123. I will say for anyone who wants a taste of that 70s New York, if you haven't seen the original taking Pelham 123, it's such a concentrated, like straight shot of adrenaline of being in New York in 1974. I really love it so much. It's such a window for me into that time. Anyway, so I recommend it. Oh, it's so, it's so, so good. I rewatched it again while we were doing this project and it's, it just totally, it's

It also makes you realize how much the subway has actually changed, you know, just like the amount of graffiti, the amount of like stuff that was happening, just like the subways, you know, definitely have, you know, horrible attacks happen still not to minimize them, but they've, it's not just in stasis and just gotten worse and worse and worse. They've actually like improved the subways and their function. Yeah.

I remember when I was a kid, we used to watch Coming to America a lot. And there's a scene where they get on a subway car and it's outside of it's covered in graffiti. And I remember so well the moment that I saw that movie when like I'd seen it many times. I've been to New York many times and seeing it and being like, oh, well, they're not dirty like that anymore.

Like, I remember when they were, but suddenly it was like, oh, yeah, the last time I was on the subway was much cleaner. This movie is not up to date. And coming to America is not up to date, you know, ripped from the headlines anymore. You know, the city is always changing. As we've said, it's not the same city that it was 50 years ago. And that's mostly a good thing. And in some ways, not a good thing. But everything's always changing.

Related to movies, Ken Stigner on the chat is asking, I'm curious about your thoughts on Ed Norton's Motherless Brooklyn, which RM is depicted as Moses Randolph in the book. Did you see Motherless Brooklyn?

Yes, I did. I was so – it's such a curious movie to me because I'm a huge fan of the original author of the – the original book, Jonathan Lethem. And that book is very much not about Robert Moses and is also not a period story. It's set in the 1990s when it was written. And Mother's Work then went through a long development process to become a movie, and it feels very –

clear that at some point Ed Norton read The Power Broker and was like, that's what the movie needs to be about. And so he's trying his best, and I think it's a not entirely successful movie, but I think it is a very good movie. He's trying his best to make

for New York, what Chinatown is to Los Angeles. It's kind of like secret history of why the city is the way it is and how it's built on the work of a, of a sinister force, you know, and it's a really well-made movie. It doesn't quite do everything it needs to do, but I'm curious what you think about it. Cause I think, I do think it is a good movie. Well, I just remember showing up to it and I read Jonathan Lethen's book and really loved it. And then you go to

see Motherless Brooklyn and the first scene is the first scene from the Power Broker and you're like what is going on like it's like almost exactly the same you wind up to the theater lobby and you're like someone switch the titles on the movies this is not the one I thought I was seeing and so I did not expect it at all it was very strange to me I didn't know like you know like copyright wise it's like I guess it's a thing that happened in history but it was like so it was just weird it was like an adaptation of a scene from the Power Broker and

And so I also just it was kind of a delight to see it on screen, especially as a surprise. We you know, we had talked to Ed Norton's people about getting him on the show because I know he really, really cares about this stuff. And obviously, like he kind of wedged it into this other movie for for no like a

apparent reason. It's not like you read that book and you're like, you know what? There's an opportunity here to do a period piece about Robert Moses. Like it really does feel like he smuggled one book into another. He literally took by those Brooklyn's dust jacket and put it over the power broker cover and brought that into class, you know? But like, but I thought it was fun. And I, you know, I think Ed Norton is really great. I mean, I don't know. I saw the Bob Dylan movie recently and he's so good as Pete Seeger. Like it's,

really something like he's usually so nervy and he has so much energy and sort of ferocity in him and he plays this like like this the peaceful calm of Pete Seeger in this way I've never seen his like he's just like his whole face is relaxed and his voice is relaxed and stuff and it's like I just I admire him greatly so I would have loved to talk to him about it I just I just remember being just kind of gobsmacked by it it's just like I'm like whoa this is weird and

but yeah, I was just kind of delighted by it and I think it's a good little window into it. And if it brings you to the power broker, then that's great. You know, I mean, if it brings you to the power broker, that's wonderful. It brings you to Jonathan Lethenworks, you know, if you go from that to reading Fortress of Solitude, you know, then that's fantastic. Also a really fantastic book, which brings me to kind of the final question that people have been asking us is, um, uh, from Benji. I feel immensely grateful for this project to bring the power broker into my life. But what now, what are some of your favorite books? Um,

I have lots of them. So I guess my favorite, I'm trying to have a hard time like note. They really are depend on my mood. But like my favorite other big long book that I think is worth reading probably multiple times is Lonesome Dove. I think it's just fun to read. I think it's really, really enjoyable. Yeah.

Um, the LBJ books are rip roaring good. Like, you know, I highly recommend just like going straight through and keep and read them. And I honestly think I don't, I know it's like,

I don't know if it's sacrilege on this final episode, but I think the LBJ books are collectively— Don't say it, Roman. Don't say it. No, but I—they were saying—you've made the point to me, Roman, which I think is true, that he is even more in control of his abilities because of the practice he had at the Power Broker. But those are great books. It's very intimidating because they're huge, but they're so readable, those Lyndon Johnson books. They're super readable. A lot of the stuff that I think—

Like there's some confusion that we talked through of the timeline jumping that happens to make the power broker work, which he just seems to have smoothed out a way to do that a little less jarring sometimes in the LBJ books where you always kind of know where you are. He has more of a window into LBJ's thoughts sometimes.

And it becomes a very emotional, very weird, like you spend a long time inside of LBJ's head, which does not feel fun exactly because he's so anxious and needy and greedy. And we never asked this, we never got to the point, but I kind of, I was kind of wanting to ask Robert Caro what it felt like to be inside of LBJ's head because it doesn't seem like a fun place to spend a lot of time.

So anyway, the LBJ books are great. If you like other New York books, I think Paul Auster is like one of the great chroniclers of Brooklyn. I think he's really, really fantastic. Other historians, Barbara Tuckman was my first sort of like love of a history writer. I think The Proud Tower is exceptional. I think Joe Lepore's, it's almost the opposite. Joe Lepore's These Truths is a real like survey of American history and is super fun, really, really fun.

My other favorite sort of like journalism book is Ted Conover's New Jack, where he he goes undercover as a corrections officer. That one's phenomenal. What about you?

I should have put more time into thinking about this because it's a question that is a good question to ask. But the nonfiction book that I think I probably have read the most times is The Journalist and the Murderer, which I love. I mean, it helps that it's a very short book, but I love that book. And it made me think so differently about the power difference between

People interviewing other people, but also just how people interact with each other and what the actions of someone who instinctively starts to want the approval of another person, how it changes them, you know, and how it changes the way they act. I love that book so much. That's a weird book.

That is weird. But the whole story of it is very, is very strange. Yeah. Yeah. But the fact that it's a book about another book about a true crime case and the author becomes part of the dynamic of these people, you know, is so weird. Like, I just read it recently for the first for the first time. And I was just like, this is freaky. Like, this is a real like it's just sort of like new journalism stuff.

you know, hitting at this moment. Like, it just feels like the apex of like, I'm the person in the story affecting the story, feeding back to the story. The subject is talking to me about their disappointment in me, you know, like all sorts of stuff. Like it's really twisty and strange. It's the exact, almost the exact opposite of the power broker where Robert Carrow was like, it was said to the author that da, da, da, like he refused to even name himself. And Jim was like, when I was talking to this guy, but, but,

When it comes to – I read a lot of fiction, and I mean my favorite books of all time are like – I love The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. I love Alice in Wonderland, and probably the book above all books for me is still maybe The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, which is – I just am – I'm now reading those aloud to my older son.

After rereading them all last year, I turned 42 last year. And so I was like, for my 42nd year, I got to read The Hitchhiker's Guide again. It's the 42 books. And that's a book that I find. It's a short book that I genuinely laugh out loud at, but I find so much meaning in it. There's so much in it that I find very interesting.

rich and meaningful to me. And that is, has helped me through times that I need, need help to get through. And so those are the ones that kind of come to the top of my mind, but I should have thought of more nonfiction books. I mean, favorite nonfiction book, other than that, it's Power Broker all the way, just PB, Power Broker. Yeah. I mean, it's still my favorite too. I just noticed

His developing craft as he gets through the other books is, and each of them is quite a bit different. You know, the first book kind of feels most like the power broker, a lot of, you know, deep dive and history to explain things. The second book is like basically a thriller about like,

Yeah.

I think another way, if you want to, short histories, I think sort of an undersung history author I like is Paul Collins. He wrote a book called Banvard's Folly, which I've always just kind of loved. And I just like his storytelling style. There's so many good books. If you want to read a book that is a different take on history,

urban municipal infrastructure and its failings, then I think I would kind of recommend the first four volumes of Katsuhiro Otomo's manga Akira, which is ostensibly about psychic children and biker gangs. But under the surface, and also his horror story Domo, they are both about massive infrastructure failures for ordinary people.

urban dwellers in Tokyo. Domo is about this huge housing complex that has, again, it has an old man who's a kind of psychic murderer. And Akira, again, is about psychic children and bike gangs. But so much of it is about...

people getting rebelling or being crushed by systems from urban infrastructure systems and what happens when those systems are either not functioning right or when they fail outright like when a psychic child unleashes a wave of tk force which which levels the city but if you look to look at those from a from a municipal infrastructure um point of view i think there's a lot to be found in there and also it's just like it's just top-notch action you know top-notch comics action to be sure

So we have one little bonus question that Isabella's put in the chat from Schultz saying, I know a few people who heard about this whole thing recently and are planning to read along with the podcast this year. How does the prospect of the breakdown living beyond 2024 make you feel? Makes me feel great. I don't know. Why would it be bad? I don't know. I mean, I like that it's there as a resource. I mean, I feel like if you...

had to read this for school and wanted some companionship for it. Like, I feel like it really could be this nice supplement that goes along with it. And it does have the implementor of Robert Caro, who has heard many of them, I think, at least he claims to have. And he thinks that our analysis is pretty good. Like, he's never, like, bickered too much with it, except for the one time that

that Elliot said, I think this is really funny. And he goes, that's not funny at all. It's really serious. I think it's powerful. Yeah. And I was like, Oh yeah, that was trouble for me. But yeah, I think it's, it's I love the idea that this, that this hopefully as a series will not disappear or evaporate that people like people have it in the future. And I, I always thought as a writer that my, my legacy would be in television or in books. And I'm coming more and more into the idea that I think my creative legacy, if I have one, it's probably going to be in podcasting. And the idea that,

when the 100th anniversary of the Power Broker comes along, in theory, someone could still pick up this podcast and listen to it long while reading it. That's very special to me. The metaphor in my head has always been that we are like remoras, the fish that stick their heads to sharks and ride on the shark and eat what falls out of the shark's mouths. If we can stick like remoras on the Power Broker and be an unofficial, semi-authorized compliment to it, then that's wonderful.

Yeah, I totally agree. And at some point, I think they exist in the feed there for 99% Invisible so we can monetize them and put ads on them. I do think at some point we will break them out on their own so that they can be sort of like found more easily and not to wade through as many 99% Invisible episodes to find them. And I do think that kids 10 years from now will find the show and hopefully find it, you know, like put it on there and teachers will put on their curriculums and

That'd be awesome. I would love that. I'm still delighted when I have six children under my care and they sometimes tell me when they get assigned a 99% Invisible episode. And I'm always really delighted when I hear about that. And so I would love to hear that. Nobody assigns Flophouse episodes. Nobody has yet done any...

Any, you know, Troll 2 studies where they need it, where they need to hear our take on it, you know? Well, that's their loss. There should be plenty of Troll 2 studies. Yeah. People specializing in Nicolas Cage. What's the word? When it's a temporary thing. Miscellany. No, that's not what I'm looking for.

Never mind. I couldn't think of the word I'm thinking about. So thanks, everyone, for joining us. It's been a real delight. We'll still be on the Discord. Like, if you want to ask questions about the Power Broker, we'll still figure out maybe how we're going to work together and do a similar project in the future. So we'll let you know when that happens. But in general, just catch up on the show in the feed. Listen again. Tell friends about it. That would be really helpful.

Really, really fantastic. And be sure to check out the rest of 9IPI's episodes because we talk about this stuff a lot that will interest you. So I hope that you also listen to the original recipe, 9IPI's, because they mean a lot to me and a lot of really, really smart people outside of myself put those together. And also...

You should listen to the Flophouse. Yeah, why not? If you want the opposite of the podcast, which is, and I don't mean by the opposite, I don't mean me not talking very much, which is, you're not going to get that. It's just going to get me talking too much. But, uh, the Flophouse podcast, the, I, I've been referring to it as America's first bad movie podcast, probably because I'm not sure, but we're, we're one of the first and we're still going strong. I realized last night as I was going to sleep late from my work that, uh,

In a couple of years, we'll be have been doing it for 20 years, which is crazy. We just plan to keep doing it as long as we can. If you check out the Flophouse podcast, please do. I realize I have another podcast I can mention on the Smart List Network, which is called Clueless, which is just a it's like a 10 to 12 minute puzzle podcast where I ask the questions and Sean Hayes answers the questions. It's really good. I like it a lot. Thank you. It's a fun one to do. We're recording more tomorrow, which means I have to write some more.

And I currently have a series coming out from DC Comics. It's the Harley Quinn book. That's right, Harley Quinn, America's favorite kind of anarchic lady clown. I'm writing her book for, I guess, the foreseeable future. And I've managed to make this the first kind of 12 issues that I'm working on of it.

mostly about gentrification and her trying to stop a developer from changing the last, from getting rid of the last block of her old neighborhood that reminds her of her own neighborhood. So I'm like, oh, I managed to get a little bit of kind of Power Broker adjacent into the Harley Quinn comic book. I'm very excited about this. You should lift a whole scene from the Power Broker. Yeah.

Put it in the middle of it. I should just start putting, I should just start putting like the words from Robert was in the mouth of the, the villain character. Uh, so that's, uh, on conflict store shelves once a month, uh, is Harley Quinn.

Awesome. Well, thank you again, everyone, for being part of this project with us. And thank you, Elliot, so much. It's just been just such a fun year. I've loved working with you. I've been an admirer of your work for a very long time. We've been friends that didn't really hang out for a very long time. We talked a lot about making plans to hang out and it never kind of came together. And so I'm so glad that we had this opportunity to get together at least once a month to talk about something we both really care about. So

So thank you, everybody. And thanks for listening. It's been really a blast. Thank you so much. This bonus episode of the 99% Invisible Breakdown of the Power Broker was produced by Isabel Angel, edited by committee, music by Swan Real, mixed by Martin Gonzalez.

Make sure you get your Power Broker Breakdown merch. There's the Robert Moses Band t-shirt with all the dates of the episodes and chapters on the back so you never forget how much you read in 2024. We've got a great sturdy tote bag that you can carry any of the books that we recommended today. At the time of this recording, the Power Broker Challenge coins are in stock. We also got some great merch that's just branded to 99% invisible. It's all really good stuff. It's all at 99pi.org slash store.

99% Invisible's executive producer is Kathy Tu. Our senior editor is Delaney Hall. Kurt Kolstad is the digital director. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jason DeLeon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Jacob Medina-Gleason, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Leigh, Kelly Prime, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stephan Lawrence. The art for this series was created by Aaron Nestor.

We are part of the SiriusXM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful Uptown, Oakland, California. You can find me on the show on Blue Sky and on our Discord server. We have a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI. And please download many, many episodes of 99PI. Please. It would mean a lot. You can find them at 99pi.org.

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