Playgrounds with no swings. Doctors who over-test instead of diagnose. Cities that won't fix sidewalks until someone falls. This episode traces how a decades-long explosion in litigation risk quietly rewired American institutions — public and private — to prioritize legal defensibility over actually working. It's not a story about greedy lawyers or frivolous lawsuits. It's a story about how fear of liability became its own kind of governance, one nobody voted for.