Hey, Konan here with a quick message. If you're a history buff or a fan of good podcast, 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 talked 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 fest 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 get this sense of what is it about this guy that I want to try and emulate? Obviously, 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 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 When we finally did get to meet him and talk to him, there's a real sweetness about him. It's his enthusiasm. So many of us are pleased with so much less, but he's a little like Ahab. He has that same, 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. You see him in his books, 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. He's talked to Lyndon Johnson's brother, Sam Houston, many times.

Sam Houston has told all these stories, and he's got it all. He's like, No, I got to go back. I got to go back. I got to go back. Then finally, he gets this brother to say, Yeah, those are all stories I told. It wasn't really what happened. Then he gets 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 Lynn and Johnson and his father. Suddenly, it's not this folksy, bullshit, tall Texas tale. It's real. Any of us, even if we consider ourselves perfectionists or people who care about our work, we would have signed off long ago.

Absolutely. I would have said, We've got a pretty good book here. This is a pretty good book. I think we're good, and I really do want to go to Aruba and make that because I bought the tickets, so I think I can submit this.

No, he needs to keep going back and keep going back and keep going back. I keep thinking about that old television classic, Columbo. Peter Fawkes Columbo just kept coming back. He's talked to the bad guy 35 times. Then it's like, Just one more thing.

There's one ding I want to ask you. It's confusing me.

I think of that as, Robert Carroll has got a trench coat and he's already talked to Governor Connolly 75 times, or he's already talked to Sam Houston, or he's already talked to the Texas oil guy 500 times. 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, and he opens the door, and there's Robert Carro in a trench coat. You know this?

There's one thing that bothers me just a little bit.

Well, what is it, Carro?

I'm just curious. You said, but I looked into it and they didn't have a Buick dealership in Fort Worth at the time.

Okay, okay. It wasn't a Buick dealership. It was a Pontiac. Then he's got his chapter.

But But there will not be another like him, and he's on the planet right now.

He's working right now. I think about that sometimes. While I'm doing whatever dumb podcasting or whatever thing I'm doing, I'm like, Robert Carroll is sitting in his office right now 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 He's never made a dollar in his life, and now we're going to 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 staying at, the summer camp she was staying at. Well, how did you talk to him? Well, I talked to everybody I could find who worked at that summer camp. 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 Robert Moses' parents used to spend their summers? It's astounding. It's astounding.

You gave me an idea, which is we should all get together and try and convince him to do this, but there should be a Robert Carro cam that's in his office, and it's set up in the corner of his office. It won't bother him because he's...

But basically, for people like us, We can, at any time that he's in his office, from whenever, from 8:00 in the morning till 6:00 at night, any of us at any time can see him sitting there looking at his Smith Corona or maybe typing and then looking through some papers.

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 would have to yell at me to get off of it. As it is, my kids are always annoyed that I'm talking about the power broker anyway, and carrying it around with me like a totem. But that's such a fantastic idea. We can point the camera so that you can't see his bulletin board with his notes because he's very private about those. He doesn't want to see those.

We would respect his privacy. We would angle it.

He would sign off, believe me, this is a man that would sign off on the shot.

Yeah, and then there'd just be a couple of 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 3:00 in the morning.

To watch an older gentleman think while looking at a typewriter.

If you miss it, people put the setlist up, what he did, what time he ate a sandwich at his desk. Right.