The Constitution Breakdown

Last year, Roman Mars, whose design-focused podcast 99% Invisible is one of my must-listens, took on The Power Broker for his inaugural book club.

It was a bold choice.

The Power Broker is about Robert Moses, a man most people born after 1980 are unaware of. His is a New York City-centric story, all about the wheeling and dealing needed to remold a metropolis to your own whims, which isn’t exactly a laugh riot. And while the story is expertly told by Robert Caro, the story also takes up 1200 pages, which is hardly a breezy read.

Without Roman Mars, the odds of my ever picking up Caro’s opus approached zero. I would have been a much poorer person for that choice because the book is a stunner.

So how could Mars possibly follow up one of the greatest works of the 20th century for 2025’s Breakdown? Take on one of the shorter written documents out there: the U.S. Constitution.

In the Constitution Breakdown, Mars and constitutional law professor Elizabeth Joh discuss a new section of our founding document every month. They look at the words themselves and current cases to understand where we are now.

Why now? As Joh says “we the people must act as the warm blanket to the Constitution, lending it support and affirming our belief in its importance. And in order to do that, we must understand it.”

But theirs aren’t the only voices we hear.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, joins Mars and Joh to discuss the Preamble, which definitely did not have Hannah-Jones in mind with its “We the People.”

U.S. House Representative Sharice Davids, one of two Native American women in Congress, walks Mars and Joh through Article One—and what it looks like to operate within it on a daily basis.

What this year’s Breakdown lacks in narrative and storytelling, it makes up for with immediately vital instructions about how this country should work—and how it has changed over time.