99% Invisible

and he's also the author of the book The Case for Open Borders. In his book, John writes about different borders around the world and how they work.

John Washington, author of the book The Case for Open Borders, writes that if history is any guide, national borders are always moving, often conveniently closing shut behind those who enforce them.

Special thanks this week to John Washington, author of The Case for Open Borders.

Helen's book One Crew is a history of the first ever nationwide lifeboat service, Britain's Royal National Lifeboat Institution. We ended up cutting a whole section of the story about the RNLI's incredible history so we strongly recommend you check out Helen's book.

This is Yorel Melndez Vadillo. He's an assistant professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the book Puerto Rico, A National History. Yorel says that despite the Spanish crown's original intent to demean, people on the island embraced the term Puerto Rican, using it to rally around a shared identity.

Coming up after the break, we'll talk with author Keith Houston about the origins of the poop emoji. That's after these ends. We're back with 99PI favorite author Keith Houston, who has a new book called Face with Tears of Joy, which comes out in July. The book explores the history of various emojis, including one of the most iconic, the poop emoji.

That was Keith Houston. His book, Face with Tears of Joy, A Natural History of Emoji, will be out in July. And all Keith Houston books are must-haves for 99PI fans.

Andy is the author of We Lose Every Week, a history of football chanting.

I knew that a lot of the discourse around soccer fandom focused on hooliganism. And he says that part of why he wanted to write the book in the first place is that singing soccer fans tend to get a pretty bad rap.

Andy says that that part of football culture is unfortunately very real. But he also knew from a lifetime of experience inside football grounds that it wasn't the full story.

Joel Slimrod is a professor of economics at the University of Michigan and the coauthor of the book, Rebellion, Rascals and Revenue, Tax Follies and Wisdom Through the Ages. If you're a 99PI fan, I highly suggest you check it out because it is right up your alley.

In Alexis's new book, The Pacific Circuit, he writes about how this neighborhood has been shaped by the global economic forces that connect Oakland to the rest of the world.

And we're talking about his new book, The Pacific Circuit. So Alexis, in the first part of our chat, we talked about how starting in the 1950s, West Oakland was segregated by this highway that ran down through the middle of the neighborhood, which, by the way, was adding to the pollution of the neighborhood in its own right.

I mean, you talk about this in your book, like people who have basically grown up in a literal shadow of a highway and they never heard birds because there was no nature around. And all of a sudden on day one, they see light. They see the sky. They hear birds.

There's a story in Alexis's book that really illustrates this dynamic, and it has to do with the battle over a decommissioned army base down by the port.

Alexis Madrigal's new book, The Pacific Circuit, is available everywhere right now. Go check it out.

Sandy Knapp is also a botanist and the author of In the Name of Plants, Remarkable Plants and the Extraordinary People Behind Their Names.

Mark is the architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News, editor of a book called Architecture and Film,

You can read Mark Lamster's architecture column in the Dallas Morning News. He also wrote an excellent biography of architect Philip Johnson. It's called The Man in the Glass House. Check it out.

This is a special bonus episode of the 99% Invisible Breakdown of The Power Broker.

And I think any time when Robert Caro's personal kind of like feelings and interests come through, you can feel his admiration for some of the characters in the book and his dislike for others.

It was very moving to me and very special to see that, like, this book is still a living kind of like experience to him.

The Proud Tower is exceptional.

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

I love The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton.

The Master of the Senate is basically a large book wrapped around a 350page history of the entire Senate body history.

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

If you want to read a book that is a different take on urban municipal infrastructure and its failings, then I think I would kind of recommend the first four volumes of Katsuhiro Otomo's manga Akira.

And also his horror story, Domu, which is about massive infrastructure failures for ordinary urban dwellers in Tokyo.

This is Edward Bloom. He's a historian who co-authored the book, The Color of Christ, The Son of God, and the Saga of Race in America.

I grew up in Tennessee, and everyone's kind of vaguely familiar with TVA. But I did not really know the full history of what TVA was until I started reporting and writing this book. Jared writes about the TVA in his new book, Valley So Low. One Lawyer's Fight for Justice in the Wake of America's Great Coal Catastrophe.

It's hard to remember those long subtitles. I had to...

Jared, thank you so much for the book. I loved reading it.

Special thanks this week to Jared Sullivan, author of Valley So Low, One Lawyer's Fight for Justice in the Wake of America's Great Cold Catastrophe. It is a really good, fun read. If you like those John Grissomstyle, like, legal thrillers, this is right up your alley.