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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.