The Comma That Killed Coal
How a single punctuation mark in the Clean Air Act became the legal foundation for the EPA's war on coal plants—and why industry lawyers spent decades missing the weapon hiding in plain sight. The sto...
6 Touko 14min
The Trillion Dollar Typo
How a seemingly minor drafting error in the Affordable Care Act created a multi-billion dollar legal battleground and nearly brought down the entire law. We trace the behind-the-scenes scramble as law...
5 Touko 19min
The Captured Regulator
How Boeing went from being regulated by the FAA to essentially regulating itself—a decades-long power transfer that culminated in two crashed planes and 346 dead passengers. We trace the bureaucratic ...
4 Touko 18min
The Accidental Surveillance State
How a 1978 law designed to protect Americans from government spying became the legal foundation for the largest surveillance apparatus in history. We trace the evolution of the Foreign Intelligence Su...
3 Touko 20min
The Forty-Year Filibuster
In 1975, a little-known Senate rule change was supposed to make filibusters easier to break. Instead, it accidentally created the legislative gridlock machine that defines Washington today. How a proc...
2 Touko 14min
The God Committee's Last Stand
In 1962, a secret hospital committee in Seattle had the power to decide who lived and who died—literally choosing which patients would receive the world's scarce kidney dialysis machines. Their decisi...
1 Touko 12min
The Revolving Door's Broken Hinge
When a small regulatory agency suddenly reversed a billion-dollar industry decision, it exposed how former government officials cash in on their inside knowledge—and the one obscure ethics rule that a...
30 Huhti 14min
The Nuclear Football's Backup Plan
When Hurricane Katrina hit, FEMA's failure made headlines. But what happens when the systems designed to work during a genuine constitutional crisis—like presidential succession or nuclear command aut...
29 Huhti 14min
