Episode Details

What happens when decades of cancer research get buried because your name is Donald Trump? This episode traces the strange and often brutal consequences of sharing a name with someone famous or infamous — from a stay-at-home mom named Taylor Swift who couldn't get a Facebook account, to men named Osama bin Laden facing airport detention, to a New Jersey man named Adolf Hitler needing a court order to renew his driver's license. We explore the algorithmic, social, and identity mechanisms that produce these collisions, and what you can actually do if you're living in someone else's shadow.