Control F – Details, episodes & analysis

Your credit score is your economic destiny. It determines where you can live, what you can buy, and sometimes even what job you can get. But how do credit bureaus come up with these all-encompassing numbers? Teo tells Clare about the data that credit scores feed on, and how little we really know about how they're calculated.

Have a question about how our world works? Want to know more about credit scores? Email the Control F team at controlf@kuow.org

Support the show by supporting our home, KUOW Public Radio in Seattle.

Sources in this episode:

• Creditworthy: A history of consumer surveillance and financial identity in America, Josh Lauer, 2024
• Credit Access in the U.S., U.S. Census Bureau, 2025
• Affordable credit poised to save consumers billions, Alex Horowitz, Pew Charitable Trusts, 2023 
• WA’s new ban on medical debt in credit reports at risk of federal override, Jake Goldstein-Street, Washington State Standard, 2025
• Interview with Josh Lauer, Author of Creditworthy 
• Interview with Alex Horowitz, Project Director at Pew Charitable Trusts
• Interview with Maya Lau, Host of Other People’s Pockets 
• Interview with Jazmin, founder of Budget with Jazmin

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Control F is a podcast about data — hard, fuzzy, surprising, and sometimes unreliable data — and all the ways it influences our daily lives. In each episode, we dig deep on a topic and search through research, algorithms, and assumptions to bring you insights on how stuff works. In a world ruled by numbers, Control F reads between the (spreadsheet) lines to find the bigger story.

Control F launches on January 14, with new episodes every other week. 

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In 1964, then-President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty. Johnson wanted to lift the nation’s poor into a better life, via programs like food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid. But more than 60 years later, our country is still grappling with how to alleviate the challenges of poverty – including how we measure it.

In this episode, Teo explains how the Federal Poverty Line is calculated and what it has to do with Jello. 

We want to answer your questions about how our world works! Click here to submit a question using our online form, or email the team at ControlF@kuow.org

Support the show by supporting our home, KUOW Public Radio in Seattle.

Sources in this episode:

• U.S. Census Bureau Timeline of Poverty Measure, 2014
• How the U.S. Census Bureau Measures Poverty, 2022
• What does living at the poverty line look like?, USA Facts, 2023
• Poverty Guidelines vs Poverty Thresholds, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Poverty Line Matrix, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2026
• Remembering Mollie Orshansky — The Developer of the Poverty Thresholds, Society Security Administration, 2008
• Relatively Deprived, New Yorker, 2006
• Mollie Orshansky, Statistician, Dies at 91, The New York Times, 2007
• Mollie Orshansky: Inventor of the Poverty Line, NPR, 2007
• Thrifty Food Plan, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2021
• Thrifty Food Plan: Better planning and accountability could help ensure quality of future reevaluations, U.S. Government Accountability Office Report to Congressional Requesters, 2022
• Family Food Plans and Food Costs, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1962
• The Indians in the Lobby, Season 3, Episode 8, The West Wing, 2001
• NPR audience call out on SNAP benefits, 2025
• Legacies of the War on Poverty, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political & Social Science, 2024

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The United States spends more on health care than any other country on earth. Most health care products in the U.S. cost at least twice what other countries pay, sometimes up to ten times as much. And everyday Americans are often left footing the bill, grappling with sky-high premiums and medical debt. Clare tells Teo how the forces in our health care system keep costs high, and what you can do about the (possibly giant) number at the bottom of your next medical bill. 

We want to answer your questions about how our world works! Click here to submit a question using our online form, or email the team at ControlF@kuow.org

Support the show by supporting our home, KUOW Public Radio in Seattle.

Sources in this episode:

• The Insane Things Hospitals Can Charge You for When you Give Birth, Vice, 2018
• Health Care Costs and Affordability, Kaiser Family Foundation, 2025
• Health costs associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and infant care, Peterson-KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) Health System Tracker, 2025
• Utah Dad Posts Hospital Bill With Nearly $40 Fee for Skin-to-Skin Contact After Son's Birth, ABC News, 2016
• As Americans Struggled, Health Insurers Made a Record-Breaking $71.3 Billion in Profits, Wendell Potter on Substack, 2025
• Health Care Debt In The U.S.: The Broad Consequences Of Medical And Dental Bills, Kaiser Family Foundation, 2022
• The Marshall Allen Project
• Cost Data from the British Columbia Ministry of Health
• Interview with Gerard Anderson, Johns Hopkins Professor of Health Policy and Management
• Trump struck deals with 16 drug companies. But they're still raising prices this year, NPR, 2026

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When a storm rolls through your area, odds are you’ll have days of warning and hour-by-hour information about what to expect. That accuracy is thanks to a global data network that turns real-time measurements into forecasts that can stretch weeks. But it wasn’t always this way. 

Clare tells Teo how weather went from a guessing game to a precise science, saving lives in the process. 

Have a question about how our world works? Want to know more about weather forecasting? Email the Control F team at controlf@kuow.org 

Support the show by supporting our home, KUOW Public Radio in Seattle.

Sources in this episode:

• Archival copies of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on October 12 and October 13, 1962
• Why an ‘exact date’ weather forecast headline isn’t what it seems, Met Office of the United Kingdom, 2023
• How Reliable Are Weather Forecasts?, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Operational Weather Forecasting, Peter Michael Inness and Steve Dorling, 2013
• A Deadly Wind: The 1962 Columbus Day Storm, John Dodge, 2018
• Interview with Reid Wolcott, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service, Seattle
• Interview with Ted Buehner (a.k.a. Tornado Ted), meteorologist at the National Weather Service (retired)
• Interview with Cliff Mass, meteorologist and forecasting researcher at the University of Washington

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Every year, millions of Americans choose to hop on e-bikes because of their affordability, convenience and speed. Motorcycles can take you farther, faster, and have been around longer; so has their dangerous reputation. When you look at the numbers, which is actually more dangerous? Teo explains to Clare what the data says about the unique and shared risks of the two rides.

We want to answer your questions about how our world works! Click here to submit a question using our online form, or email the team at ControlF@kuow.org

Support the show by supporting our home, KUOW Public Radio in Seattle.

Sources in this episode:

• Safety and Injury Prevention Statement, American College of Surgeons, 2025 
• Bike helmet protects a young boy’s brain, UW Medicine, 2025
• Electric Bicycle Injuries and Hospitalizations, JAMA Surgery, 2024
• National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, 2024
• Bicycle Injury at UW Medicine, Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center, 2024 
• Exploring Electric Bicycle Safety Performance Data and Policy Options for California, San Jose State University, 2025
• E-Bikes are vehicles, not toys: What parents need to know, Utah Department of Public Safety, 2026
• Select Risk Factors Associated with Causes of Motorcycle Crashs, National Transportation Safety Board, 2018
• Micromobility: Data Challenges Associated with Assessing the Prevalence and Risk of Electric Scooter and Electric Bicycle Fatalities and Injuries, National Transportation Safety Board, 2022 
• Traffic Safety Facts: Motorcycles, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2025 
• Traffic Safety Facts: Pedalcycles, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2025 
• Fatality Analysis Reporting System, 2024
• Injury patterns and safety implications for electric bikes compared to mopeds in the United States, Traffic Injury Prevention, 2025
• Interview: Stephen J. Mooney, Ph.D., University of Washington Department of Epidemiology, 2026

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Plastic is extremely useful: lightweight, cheap, and flexible enough to make almost anything. That’s why global plastic production has been climbing for decades. All that plastic is making its way into our bodies via tiny particles, and that can’t be good for us…right?

Clare tells Teo what we know so far about microplastics in our bodies, and why the science is more complicated than you might think.

We want to answer your questions about how our world works! Click here to submit a question using our online form, or email the team at ControlF@kuow.org

Support the show by supporting our home, KUOW Public Radio in Seattle.

Sources in this episode:

• The Human Brain May Contain as Much as a Spoon’s Worth of Microplastics, New Research Suggests, Smithsonian Magazine, 2025
• Bioaccumulation of microplastics in decedent human brains, Nature Medicine, 2025
• Challenges in studying microplastics in human brain, Nature Medicine, 2025
• Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Atheromas and Cardiovascular Events, The New England Journal of Medicine, 2024
• The Real Truth About the U.S. Plastics Recycling Rate, Beyond Plastics / The Last Beach Cleanup, 2022
• How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled, NPR, 2020
• ‘A bombshell’: doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body, The Guardian, 2026
• Interview with Marcus Garcia and Dr. Elaine Bearer, University of New Mexico
• Interview with Fazel Monikh, University of Padua
• Interview with Tracey Woodruff, Stanford University

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Taxes on the wealthy are increasingly popular across the political spectrum in the United States. Democrats in particular have pursued taxes on the country’s highest income earners, including a tax on millionaires passed in Washington State earlier this year. But do high earners simply move to avoid paying those taxes?

Booming host and KUOW economy reporter Monica Nickelsburg wanted to find out. So, she interviewed Cristobal Young: A professor of sociology at Cornell University who researches how wealthy people move, and how much of it is due to taxes. 

Listen to more episodes of Booming in the KUOW app, or wherever you get podcasts.

We want to answer your questions about how our world works! Click here to submit a question using our online form, or email the team at ControlF@kuow.org

Support the show by supporting our home, KUOW Public Radio in Seattle.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Many Americans will take on debt this summer for a family trip to a Disney theme park. So why is the happiest place on earth breaking their bank accounts? Teo takes Clare on a fantasy trip to Disneyworld to find out, and see if Clare can have a truly magical experience on a budget. 

We want to answer your questions about how our world works! Click here to submit a question using our online form, or email the team at ControlF@kuow.org

Support the show by supporting our home, KUOW Public Radio in Seattle.

Sources in this episode:

• Disney’s Magic Kingdom Raises Prices, CNN News Room, 2014
• Disney and the Decline of America’s Middle Class, New York Times, 2025
• Can America Afford Disney?, Disney Tourist Blog, 2025
• How Much Disney Can America’s Middle Class Afford in 2025?, Touring Plans Blog, 2025
• The U.S. Economy Depends More Than Ever on Rich People, Wall Street Journal, 2025
• Even Disney Is Worried About the High Cost of a Disney Vacation, Wall Street Journal, 2025
• Why do people keep coming back?, USA Today, 2026
• Consumer Expenditure Surveys, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023
• How Do People Afford Disney?, Reddit, 2026 
• Earnings Report, Walt Disney Report, 2024
• Summer Travel Survey, Bankrate, 2025
• Disney Survey, LendingTree, 2024
• Global Attractions Attendance Report, AECOM, 2023
• The Walt Disney Company, 2026
• What’s The Current Disney Commission Rate For Travel Agents?, Mainstreet Agency Travel, 2026

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Costco is a beloved brand, famous for its bulk deals and $1.50 hot dog lunch meal. But can shopping there really save you money? Clare tells Teo about her quest to find out, and the surprising ways that some people work the system of wholesale retailers. 

We want to answer your questions about how our world works! Click here to submit a question using our online form, or email the team at ControlF@kuow.org

You help make Control F a reality by supporting the show. Donate to KUOW at this link to keep us in your feed and free for everyone.

Sources in this episode:

• Consumer Price Index data, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Most and Least Expensive Supermarkets, Consumer Reports
• Cost of Living Index (COLI) data, The Council for Community Economic research
• Interview with David and Susan Schwartz, authors of The Joy of Costco 
• Interview with Jordan Page
• Interview with Tan Vinh and Chris Solomon

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