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

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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.