After exploring why agencies need power, Gwen and Marc turn to how we keep that power honest. This episode explains why Congress sometimes chooses to bind the president’s hands in advance — creating institutions that can resist political pressure, maintain stability, and preserve public trust.

The episode opens with the now-infamous PAC-12 “boat call,” where a conference executive phoned in from a boat to overturn a targeting review. The result? Even well-intentioned interference shattered confidence in the process. Gwen uses that collapse of trust to launch into the core question: Why does Congress build entire agencies designed so the president can’t make that call?

Listeners follow the origins of independent agencies from the late 19th century to the creation of the FTC in 1914, using legislative history that read ...