Ridiculous history is a production of I Heart Radio. The Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as always so much for

tuning in. Please pardon my slightly Batman voice,

little bit of weather on top of me,

but we wanted to bring this episode

to you guys very excited about about this and also if being honest

thoroughly confused like most of America we were talking off air when we did a

history of credit cards I believe it was and our super producer Mr Max Williams sound

Q and you Mr Noel Brown and I've been Bolen. We started saying, hey, you know what's more confusing

than the idea of credit cards?

It's the idea of credit scores.

Yeah, it does kind of have a language all its own. idea of

like, like, the idea of like hard versus soft credit inquiries and like the two different

reporting agencies, Equifax versus TransUnion and the

Experian, exactly, and the idea that like if you check your credit score

it gives your credit score a negative impact unless you use credit karma which I guess is a soft inquiry

Yeah, we're gonna find out about it. It depends on how you check the score

It comes up every time you need a big purchase, a house, a car, a new credit card, a line of a loan, right, taking out a loan.

If you've ever interacted with the financial system in the United States, folks,

you have run into credit scores, an arcane agglomeration of numbers that are at times purposely obtuse but still wield tremendous

influence on the day-to-day lives of average Americans. Like do you not have

enough credit? That's a ding on your score.

Do you have too much debt? That's a ding on your score. Did you get a new credit card that has a

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