Stuff You Should Know - Selects: What Happens When the Government Thinks You're Dead?

Episode Date: July 16, 2022

It’s bad enough when the government knows you’re alive – there are taxes to pay, laws to be followed, all sorts of boring and unpleasant things. But each year, thousands of Americans find out life is far, far worse when the government thinks you are dead. Learn all about it in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Find the Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever

you listen to podcasts. Hello there friends, it's Josh and for this week's Select, I chose our episode that takes a frank and thrilling look at what happens when the government thinks you're dead. As you can imagine, nothing good is the answer to that. Hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there.

Jerry's not eating anything today, Chuck. The air is clear. And did you just do that as a coaster? Yes. I don't want to make a chinky sound every time, like chink, chink, chink. Oh, okay, I thought. Like this. I don't want that.

Like this. No, I get it. Did you hear that? You didn't hear anything. No, I said everyone. Josh just folded up his notes and put his can of cola down on that, and I've never seen you do that. And I thought you were trying to preserve this cheap iHeart desk.

This thing is tougher than leather. Okay, so it was a sound thing. Sure, it's a sound dampening technique. Man, look at us after all these years. Yeah, I just came up with that. Up in our game. So Chuck, do you remember we did a social security number episode? Did we?

I thought so. You don't remember that one? No, sure. It was one of those ones where you're like, my eyes are going to bleed because this is so boring, but it turned out to be pretty interesting. Sure. That was one of those. Yeah, I remember that.

But we should give a little bit of a refresher on social security numbers, okay? Yeah, here's mine. Oh, you're going to give your, yeah. 287-94. No, I don't even, because what if I just accidentally said someone else's? Like made one up. Oh, right. And people are like, let me go try that.

Yeah. And some dude's listening. It's like, dude, how'd you know? Yeah. Todd. That's always Todd. I don't know. So social security numbers, get this everybody, they first started being issued in November

of 1936. And the social security administration was created to administer a new deal program of federal benefits, things like welfare or retirement benefits, Medicare. The entire reason any of us originally were given a social security number was to track our lifetime earnings and to determine how much we'd put into social security so that when we retired, they could determine how much we should get out in retirement. That's why everyone has a social security number. And because there are nine digits, there's something like a billion different possible

combinations. And we're about halfway toward using up the social security numbers. Oh, interesting. But probably gaining fast. We are starting to gain much faster than we were before. Good point. But we still got plenty of time. But because of this, social security numbers get retired when you die, which we'll get

to. But originally, when you were given a social security number, that was it. It wasn't meant for anything else, but to track your earnings and to figure out your retirement, right? Yeah. Not like when you go to get a haircut. Basically. And they ask you for your social security number.

Yeah. In the 70s, the federal government said, okay, there's a couple of other things that you should really have your social security number for, a passport. If you go to open a bank account, that was a new one too. I'll buy that. But then like you said, as computers came along, now everybody asked for it. It's become an identifier and an authenticator. And that is really bad.

That is not what we should be doing with social security numbers. Yeah. It really, not only that, but the phone numbers and everything and addresses, it just annoys me. And I'm not like a conspiracy guy. It's not like, I think like, oh, what are they going to do with this? It just annoys me that I can't get a haircut without providing, I'm like, I have cash in my hand.

Yeah. You have scissors. Yeah. Can we just do this? Right. Can we do it like Floyd style? Yeah. You know.

Oh, it annoys me. But even if you take away the annoyance, companies have proven time and time and time again that they're not to be trusted protecting your social security number. Because to authenticate you saying who you are, who you say you are, they've got to have your social security number on file. And when somebody hacks into their databases, they get your social security number, all of your information is right there. And it's become a real problem.

But it's also become a real problem living a modern life without giving out your social security number. Right? Yeah. So we say all this to point out that if for some reason you didn't have a social security number any longer, it would be tough to navigate life. And that actually happens to some people. Yeah.

If you've seen the movie Brazil. Oh, is it like this? You never saw Brazil? No. It's sort of this in a future dystopian world. But basically it's bureaucracy at its best of someone who's dead or not dead and the government mixes it up. Is that what Brazil's about?

Yeah. I did not know that. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up then because we would have heard from people. Yeah. It's good, right? It is. And you should go listen to the movie crush episode on Brazil with Jonathan Colton.

Okay. Yeah. I didn't know that one. That one slipped past me. I wasn't talking to you, but sure. You're welcome to listen. Oh, thanks. I'm part of everybody.

I had to go to the social security office recently to get a card because of this job and our new company. Really? Yeah. I had to prove, you know, whatever that I'm alive. You didn't... And employable, I guess. You didn't just give them your passport?

I couldn't find my passport because I'm in between houses right now and it was buried somewhere. Well, you do have it because we're probably going to Toronto this year. I do have it. I did find it kind of after I went to the social security office, but all that was just to say that if you think the DMV is a pit of despair, just go to the social security office. I don't want to. It was not fun.

I really don't want to. No. So, okay. You can imagine how bad it is when everything's just hunky-dory and you just need a copy of your card. That's all you needed, right? Yeah. I mean, some people, some poor saps out there, they are thought by the government and listed

by the government as having died. That's right. And that is a big problem. If you're alive. Yes. Because, again, you need your social security number for everything to start with. And then secondly, because we have enough social security numbers to go around, like I said, when you die, your social security number gets retired with you.

Yeah. They hang it in the rafters of your local MBA franchise. That's exactly right. If you look really closely, they're all up there. But that is a problem for somebody who gets listed as dead on what's called the death master file. Do I need to say it? No.

Even somebody listening to the very first stuff you should know right now, they know what you're saying. There's a bunch of good band names in here, but death master files pretty good. So it's also called the social security death index, but death master files way better. I think you would agree. It depends on who you're talking to. I think genealogists typically call it the SSDI. Everybody else calls it the death master file is what I saw.

You know why? Because they don't know how to party. Or they've got their own little weird party going on. Oh. Yeah. Didn't think about that. Yeah. Yeah.

You got to look at people differently sometimes. I was trying to think of the bumper sticker. Genealogists do it blank. In the archives. Genealogists do it with their DNA. With their dead ancestors. God. That's two bumper stickers.

Yeah. Just having ellipses. It'd be kind of fun. So all right, where were we? The DMF. All right. It was established at the same time the social security numbers were back in 1936. And then it took all the way until 1980 before the public could even see this list.

Right. Right. There was a Freedom of Information Act that was filed back in 1980. And there was a lawsuit and the federal court said, you know what? Yeah. This is public information. You have to publish this. And there's actually like a master death master file that's called the numedent.

And that's like everything. And that's the one that the death master file is derived from. The public version of it is the death master file. Right. Which when you die, there are a bunch of ways that your name can get to the SSA, the Social Security Administration. Sometimes it's a funeral home. Sometimes it's from like a hospital.

Sometimes it's from your family. Yeah. Because it's the family's responsibility ultimately to report it. But most of the time the funeral home is the one that actually does it as like a service. I wouldn't have known that. But I also saw, well, now you know. There's probably some poor stuff you should know, listener, our condolences who's dealing with this right now.

It's your responsibility to go report this to the Social Security Administration. Yeah. Okay. That's sad. I also saw that your bank, the postal service, some other randos are legally allowed to report your death as well. So as a post-person to saying like, I haven't picked up their mail in like three weeks. They're dead to me.

I think I should just report this. I don't know. I could not find the procedure from that. Anything other than a couple of good sources mentioned the postal service as a legal place, the legal entity that can report your death to the feds. All right. So why do they want this death master file? Of course, if you have paid, well, the government needs to know if you're not around anymore.

It's kind of that simple. There's a couple of reasons why. Yes. They need to know because... You get a little dough. They can't have your social security number out there. They need to know that you're deceased because they don't want to be paying income tax refunds. If somebody starts filing them fraudulently, they don't want people opening bank accounts

in your name. They want to make sure that you're listed as dead. Yes. And so that's what the death master file does. It kind of serves as the storehouse for all the people in America who've been dead basically since the 60s, but it goes as far back as 1936 or 37. Yeah, which is surprisingly more than 100 million people. Yes, but they think that there's maybe up to 16 million dead people missing from this

list. Oh, really? It's not perfect. We'll spoil now. Well, I guess we should then follow that statement by saying there are tens of thousands of people on that list who should not be on that list. Right, exactly. But before we get to there, this death master file, originally, Social Security could track

who was dead and who wasn't so they could determine who to pay Social Security administration benefits out to the survivors. Get this. Did you know this? If you're in America and you're the recipient, you're the survivor of somebody who gets Social Security, you get a cool $255 to help bury them. Yeah, when I said you get a little dough, I meant little. A little dough, maybe one of the fancy handles on the casket would be covered by that.

I don't even think you can get cremated for $200. I don't know. I don't even think they'll leave you in a ditch out back for $200. A sky burial costs more than that. Maybe that tri-state crematorium would take your $250, but that's it. Yeah. Do you remember them? Oh, sure.

Yeah. Yeah. So, like you said, mistakes are made, and this is where it turns slightly Brazil. There was an investigation in 2011 that they actually named Grave Mistakes, which is hysterical, by Scripps Howard News Service, and what they did was they took this master death file from three different years, 98, 2008, 2011, they created a computer program to basically just compare them, to see what they came up with, and that they found almost 32,000 living people who were listed as deceased in 98 or 2008 that were then taken off that list after they realized

that they goofed up in 2011. So these people had spent months, years, maybe, listed as dead. And here's the problem. It's bad enough if you go to apply for Medicare because you've retired, or Social Security benefits, and the government says, denied, you're dead, you're listed as dead. Because as far as the government's concerned, if you are on this, you're dead to them. That's bad enough. But remember that Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that opened the thing up to being

published publicly? The reason why that suit was filed was because the business community said, hey, we can really use that thing. It's basically, it would be like a big, do not take checks from these people list for all dead Americans because if somebody comes to us and wants to open a bank account, wants to get an insurance policy, wants to get a car, wants to get a job, it doesn't matter. Wants to do something where they could take us for a ride if they're a fraud. Then if we had this list to check against, like Social Security numbers or names or whatever,

we could root out fraud and we could defend ourselves from identity theft and the fraud that's perpetrated by it. Banks, insurance companies, car dealerships, cable companies, employers, everybody, other government agencies, all barbers, don't forget them. They all use this death master file, which is available publicly, to check your applications against. If the government says that you're dead, it says it on this file, whether it's right or wrong, you're dead and that's a whole lot of problems for you.

We're going to get into those right after this. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help, this I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you.

And so my husband, Michael, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step, kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever

you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to the great American settlers. The millions of you have settled for unsatisfying jobs because they pay the bills and you just kind of fell into it. And you know, it's like totally fine. Just another few decades or so and then you can enjoy yourself. Of course, there is something else you could do if you got something to say.

You could, I don't know, start a podcast with Spreaker from iHeart and unleash your creative freedom and spend all day researching and talking about stuff you love and maybe even earn enough money to one day tell your irritating boss as you quit and walk off into the sunset. Hey, I'm no settler. I'm an explorer. Spreaker.com, that's a S-B-R-E-A-K-E-R. Hustle on over today. So before we broke, I was talking about that Scripps investigation.

And there was an Inspector General's report in 2008 that kind of pulled back the curtain on this stuff. And Social Security said, yeah, that's about right. There's a lot of people, tens of thousands that we think are dead and aren't dead. But their success rate's pretty good. Yeah, and they said, but we're at a 99.59 rate of accuracy, which is not too bad. For a government bureaucracy, that's really good. And they said that 90% of the time, you can fix it in just a year.

Just a hellish year. Yeah, not too bad. And so they basically admitted to being a government, I don't want to knock them too much, because it feels like everyone's always knocking government work. But they're basically saying like, yeah, man, these names are miskeeds, or these numbers are miskeeds sometimes, and it happens pretty much. So the thing is that 0.41% error rate, that's tens of thousands of people every year. There's like 2.7 million people added to this list every year who die in America, right?

So it adds up to a lot of errors. The thing is, the Social Security Administration, so they take their death master file, they hand it over to the National Technical Information Service, and they're the ones who distribute it to all the insurance companies, the genealogy websites, I think Ancestry.com publishes it, the credit bureaus. Yeah, insurance companies, everybody who wants to do a background check on you, they all get their versions of this from the National Technical Information Service. But part of the agreement to get this from them, you have to pay for it, is that you

have to keep your DMF up to date. Because if you just buy one every once in a while, and the Social Security Administration finds an error on it and updates their file, if you don't go get the new file, your old file is still going to have that error. And that's when it becomes problematic for the people who are listed as deceased when they try to go get credit. And it kind of has a tendency to spread once it's out there. Yeah, so like I said, sometimes it's being miskeied.

I think they said like one out of every 200 is just from clerical error. Sometimes it can be like a family member goes to report a death and they accidentally make a mistake where they might end up being on the death list. Yeah, I don't know how that happens, but it does happen. There are people like Don Pilger. Human error. Mary DuBord, who apparently Mary DuBord just gave up, she's like, my husband can get credit card still, I'm just going to live off of it.

Sometimes this one woman named Candace Atkins just accidentally clicked deceased on a tax return on an electronic filing and that was it. Can you imagine? No. I can't believe there's not an undo. Yeah, I was looking into that. She had submitted, I guess you could probably have undone it in the moment, but she didn't realize it and submitted it.

Right. But you should still be able to undo that. You would think so. And then there are some weird things, these anomalies that you dug up. More than 40% of false listings made in 2007 were from Illinois. Yep. It sounds like a hiccup in the system to me. A hiccup in the system or a super lazy data entry person?

What do you think? More than 2 million Americans were falsely listed as dying on the 15th and that was just an internal policy is to use the 15th as a default value when they didn't know. Right. And middle of the month sounds good to me. And I guess that was just a question of not going to the trouble of verifying the information. Right. And it can happen the other way too.

You can be, I think at least 6 million dead Americans are labeled as alive, which is a huge problem because your information is out there ready to be abused by the nefarious. Well, no, that's the opposite. If you're listed as deceased but you're still alive, your information is being published and can be used for identity fraud, if you're actually dead and not listed, if somebody knows that you're dead and not listed, they can use your stuff to perpetrate fraud against the government. Yeah.

That's what I was saying. Oh, okay. Yeah. 67,000 of those people, of those numbers were used to report $3 billion in income between 2006 and 2011. That's a lot of tax return refunds. So. Fraud.

Yeah. That's where either you're dead and you're not listed on there or you're not dead and they listed you anyway. That's right. And like I was saying earlier, once this information gets out there, because there's so many different entities getting this list, once it's out there, it stays out there. It's very tough to go around to everyone and get this information changed even once you get it changed with the Social Security Administration because while it's a requirement to keep

your list up to date, if you're a subscriber, there's no enforcement to it. There's nobody who comes along and says, let me see your list. Oh, it's not up to date. Give me $10 that you're fine. There's nobody enforcing it. So once it's out there, it's very tough to undo. It takes forever. Well less than a year on average, supposedly.

So there are a lot of horror stories for what this can do to someone's life. This one person, Rivers. What's the first name? Judy Rivers. Judy Rivers, Rivers Cuomo. Police actually detained Judy Rivers from using, because she used a debit card, her own debit card at a Walmart. At a Walmart.

Plus she also had a Mountain Dew bottle size meth lab in her pocket. But it seems like all of these cases, it ranges from stuff like your insurance gets all messed up, or your maybe disability checks, or your Medicaid payments, or you trying to get a home loan, or trying to get a credit card. Anything that you can think of where a Social Security number might help you, can't get a haircut. You should see how long the hair is on these people. Even if you have cash, they won't do it.

Rivers ended up living out of her car for six months. She had just a really bad time of it for five years. At first she didn't know what was going on, because she was frozen out of her bank accounts. This is something we said, you can't get future loans, you can't get future insurance policies, you can't get future credit. But also the stuff that you already have, your current bank accounts, all that stuff gets frozen, because you're listed as dead. That comes up on the computer, and your account gets frozen.

Even when you show up and say, hey, it's me, you know me, the teller can't do anything about it, the bank can't do anything about it, it's done, and now you've just been pitted against the system. Yes. It's like, there's no door you can go knock on, and say, hey, we can clear this up in just a few minutes. I'm clearly alive. You just click the few little things you need to click to get my life back, because

the CUS government, it's not nearly that easy. So I guess that, Chuck, that brings up what to do, because there actually are procedures in place. Like we said, the Social Security Administration says, this is not fully accurate, anybody who gets this list needs to keep updating it as we update it. I think they released an updated list weekly. They don't even tell you though, you find out the hard way almost always. That's a big one.

Yeah, it's not like they say, by the way, we found an error, because they don't know. They don't know you're alive. Right. They actually called the Social Security Administration. She did. I did, because I wanted answers. You didn't go to the office? No, I didn't.

I was a little lazy. Coward. It wasn't cowardless. It was laziness. So I was talking to like just the guy who answered, and he knew exactly what I was talking about, knew all the procedures, but I asked him, I was like, do you guys ever uncover this yourselves, or is it when people come to you that you know there's a mistake? He's like, yeah, when people come to us.

So supposedly there's all these reforms in place and all that, but I think still for the most part, when an error is uncovered, it's because you found it out. But even if they do find it out, yes, what you said is true. They don't inform the person, which is kind of a violation of the Privacy Act, right? I would think so. From what I understand it is like anytime your confidential information is breached and made public, you're supposed to be informed about that. So the SSA should be sending out letters as far as I know, they do not.

I love this quote in here under the section on what to do, like the Social Security Administration is trying to correct this. And there's a quote from someone who works there that said that sometimes they'll go out and see if old Americans are really still alive. And it says this, we go to Medicare and see if anyone hasn't been to Medicare for three years. And if they haven't been, we try to go out and make a phone call to call them and see if they're still here.

And the interviewer was like, are you drunk? That's what it sounds like. That was the follow up question. Oh man. So yeah, I mean supposedly because of things like that, Scripps Howard News Service investigation in 2011, 60 minutes did a big one and I think 2014 or 15. This is right up their alley. Yeah, for sure.

Yes, it is very 16 minutes kind of story. Like the truth of what you just have ran through me like a bolt. But the Social Security Administration has finally kind of started to be responsive and they are supposedly undertaking reforms, including having investigators try to route this out themselves, which ironically they're relying on other government databases like this guy said Medicare to check their records against. They've stopped taking reports from the state and now only accept direct reports from people. But that in itself opened up another problem because they went back and cleared out the

records of like 5 million Americans whose deaths have been reported from state databases. So that 6 million went to something like 11 million of dead people who aren't on there. Now are they actually recommending that you pull your credit report three times a year? Yes. Really? Yes. That seems like, I don't know, you're not like that affects your credit. I don't know if that one does.

Really? I know it's free for sure, but I don't know if it affects your credit or not. But yeah, so you get access to the credit reports from the three big bureaus, right? Are you going to do that? Have you set up calendar reminders? No, I'm going to now though. Once a quarter for the rest of your life to make sure you're not listed as dead? I haven't had time today yet.

It seems like if you're an active consumer in the world, you would find out very quickly without having to do that. Yeah, that script service though, when they found the like 34,000 people who had been listed as dead, they tried to contact as many of them as they could. They said about half of the people were well aware that they were listed as dead and had been through nightmare struggles. Strangely, like half had no idea what they were talking about, so it's like, what kind of life do you have to live to not be aware of that?

Because you or I would come up against it within a week or a month or something, it seems like. Yeah. Like there would be something that came up where it's like, wait a minute, like it says this information isn't is incomplete or it says you're dead or something like that. We find out pretty quick. Or just to go get money out of a cash machine, it might say, sorry, your pen doesn't work. But I think the recommendation is in addition to finding out that you're listed as dead.

There's also a lot of other stuff that you can kind of keep tabs on by looking at your credit report three times a year, once every four months. Yeah, and they say the real solution for all of us would be if every company on the planet doesn't require, well, here's the thing though, they can't legally require your social security number to open up a or start a telephone in your name at a home. But they'll ask for it. And if you refuse to give it, like you may not be able to get it all or you may just have a really, really hard time.

Yeah. They can refuse to do business with you. And that's the crux of the problem. Exactly. Because that de facto means that you need to play ball. Whether you want to give your social security number out or not, tough. If you want that internet service or that cable service or you want that haircut, you're going to have to play ball.

Yeah. I remember growing up, it was like, I remember I had a social security card and I remember my mom being like, you got to put that in your desk drawer and like, don't touch it ever. If somebody comes near your drawer, you shoot them with this gun. Yeah. It was crazy. And now it's just like, I probably give out my social like twice a month.

Right. And because of those breaches, because so many people have your social security number now and because hackers have gotten really good at getting into things like, I think it was Experian or TransUnion who were hacked in 2017. Oh yeah. That was huge. That was, it was not only, I read, not only did it basically just totally erode the public's trust and credit bureaus to keep our stuff private.

Like they were the ones who were supposed to be unhackable. Right. And I think 137 million social security numbers made it out into the wild from that hack that not only eroded trust in the credit bureaus, it was the beginning of the end for using social security numbers like we do to authenticate or as identifiers. Yeah. Companies some are moving away from that now, right? Yeah.

Because they're getting sued and they're getting fines and they just realized they can't keep this stuff protected. The problem is no one knows what's next. A lot of people have talked about like blockchain, but nobody understands blockchain, which by the way, we should totally do a blockchain episode. Yeah. But everybody's kind of like, it's probably going to be blockchain. But first I have to go figure out what blockchain is.

And then we'll figure out how to do social security numbers through blockchain. I'm sure in some offices they're like, you know, the old barcode on the back of the neck seems silly, but it sure would work. Have you seen Brazil? Should we take a break? Oh yeah, let's. All right, let's take another break and we're going to talk a little bit about the rest of the world right after this.

You ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God. Seriously. I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you.

Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment

I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Patrick Curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop.

But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Visit Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's to the great American settlers.

The millions of you have settled for unsatisfying jobs because they pay the bills and you just kind of fell into it. And you know, it's like totally fine. Just another few decades or so and then you can enjoy yourself. Of course, there is something else you could do. If you got something to say, you could start a podcast with Spreaker from iHeart and unleash your creative freedom and spend all day researching and talking about stuff you love and maybe even earn enough money to one day tell your irritating boss as you quit and walk off into

the sunset. Hey, I'm no settler. I'm an explorer. Spreaker.com, that's a S-B-R-E-A-K-E-R. Hustle on over today. So Chuck, we're going around the world in 80 days in our nice little balloon. Actually I said we're going to talk about the rest of the world. We're only going to talk about one more place in the world.

Hey, man, I got Canada, the UK, basically anywhere there's a country with a bureaucracy and a country where people die, there's going to be someone erroneously listed as dead. All right. So let's go to India. Okay. We'll do that. In India, it's not always an accident. Sometimes it's an error, but sometimes you can do what they call, quote, killing people

on paper in, quote, in order to say their property is mine, to lay claim to something legally. You can do so, especially, I mean, it's not legal, but it's something that happens. No, you can bribe an official who will say, oh, okay, yes, this person is dead. Thank you for reporting their death. Where is their land, uncle or cousin or whoever? Well, supposedly in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, it's become a real problem there.

And there was a man, there is a man. Yeah, he's still around. Name Lal Berhari, who in 1976 at the age of 22, found out he was listed as dead. And his uncle, did his uncle do this or did his uncle just get the land? His uncle's family. Huh? His uncle's family did. He was the one that purposefully listed him as dead, just so they could get the land.

He went to go get a business loan. He was a loomer, and he went to get a business loan. And to get a business loan, he needed documentation of his identity. When he went to go get that, the local records office is like, you're dead. And it took him 17 years to undead himself. Yeah, fortunately for the world, he had a great sense of absurdity, of humor. Yes, but also the humor in absurdity, he realized this is so preposterous, and he really used that as motivation to make huge moves.

Yeah, he would answer the phone as dead person, which is, Meritak, is that how you pronounce it? I think you just nailed it. He would answer the phone like that. He organized the Uttar Pradesh Meritak Singh, which is the Uttar Pradesh Dead Peoples Association. And it seems like really brought a lot of attention to this through almost like public, absurdist public demonstrations. Public shamings, too.

Yeah, like parades of dead people walking around on the steps of the government buildings and stuff like that. And finally, in 1994, he did have his death overturned legally. Did you see whether or not he got his land? I didn't see that, actually. I'm curious. It's a great question. I didn't even think about that.

Yeah, I did not, I don't know. But 221 people, because of his efforts in that area of India, had their deaths overturned. Yeah, I mean, that was just in one year, even, what I think is cool about him is he founded this organization and got his life back in 94, but still stayed on as the driving force behind the Uttar Pradesh Dead Persons Association. And won an Ig Nobel Prize for it. Not bad. We did an episode on that, too.

You remember the Ig Nobel's? Man, that was a long time ago. So one more thing, we never really actually said what to do if you end up listed incorrectly as dead on the death master file. Start answering the phone as dead, Chuck? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Shame the government.

Also, the other thing you're supposed to do first is go in person to your local social security administration. And by the way, this is information directly from the SSA to me, to you, because I called them. I know. The guy said, just bring a driver's license at Passport and we'll handle it from there. And I was like, wait, that's it? He's like, yeah, you know, the information matches, your picture matches, that's all

you need. And you said, by handle it, you'll mean nothing will happen here. That's right. Right. And I go, so do you give the person, so they give you a letter saying this person's alive. They were listed as deceased by mistake, give them their credit or whatever. We love you. So security administration.

Yeah. And I said, do you give the letter then once they prove it, or he's like, no, once the file is updated, then we typically send the letter out. And I was like, how long is that, you know, and it's weeks easily, if not months before you're going to get a letter. But if you find out the first thing you want to do, go to your local social security office with your passport and or your driver's license and say, surprise. Yeah.

I saw that one person even had to have a note from their doctor verifying that they were indeed alive. Yep. Weird, weird life. That must be weird. So if you want to know more about the death master file, you can go look it up. It's kind of interesting actually, as far as bureaucracy goes. And since I said bureaucracy, it's time for listener mail.

I'm going to call this, this is a follow up on the rape kids episode, which we got a lot of amazing and sad stories from that one. This is about the money, the monies, because remember on the show, we said that, you know, you don't get to pay for that stuff. For treatment. Yeah. Right. Apparently you can get money back, which we've meant to go back and rerecord a section and

did not. Oh yeah. So this is by means of following up on that. Hey guys, longtime listener, first time writer, finished the episode on rape kits and realized I could offer some information that will hopefully bring some peace of mind. I work as a medical biller for a hospital in the Midwest. Part of my job is processing the sexual assault claims that come in. At our hospital, we have a program for those who present to the hospital after a sexual

assault. We, in partner with the state, cover all the charges that result from the initial ER visit and the patient is given a voucher for any relevant follow up care that they may need over the next three months. That is awesome. It is and we realize that a lot of states do this after we had recorded and published the show. Yes.

I'm so glad this person wrote in though, so you could say. It is good to know. We also take steps to ensure that the patient will never see a bill or be contacted by our department in regards to their visit to reduce any re-traumatization. I'm the point person for this process here, handle all the claims personally. I'm not sure how many hospitals implement this program, but I hope this helps you all know that at least here, we do as much as we can to alleviate any unnecessary burden from our patients during this stressful and sensitive time.

That's really great. Thanks for all you guys do. You have transformed many days, years, spent in a cubicle into opportunities to learn. Keep doing the great work and that is from Maria. Thank you very much. That was amazing. Yeah, Maria, thanks for doing that job too. That's tough stuff.

That was the antithesis of another email we got who basically said, regarding your little soapbox about how society should take on that cost, keep your politics to yourself because I disagree. I don't know if I saw that one. It was a bad one and I just wanted to say that that person is a butt head. Oh no, wait, maybe I did see that. I couldn't even bring myself to respond. I think I did and I did respond.

Oh, what did you say? I don't remember. Did you tell them they were butt heads? Go jump in a lake. There you go. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, whether we think you're a butt head or a saint, it doesn't matter. We still want to hear from you.

Or a beavis. You can go on to stuffyshano.com, check out our social links. You can also send us a good old-fashioned email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, spray with perfume and send it off to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com. What you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want

to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me. And my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. Do you love movies? Well I have the podcast for you. Hey there, this is Mike D from Movie Mike's Movie Podcast, your go-to source for all things movies. Each episode explores a different movie topic, plus spoiler-free reviews on the latest streaming and movies in theaters. You'll also get interviews with actors and directors to take a look behind the scenes

of your favorite movies. Listen to new episodes of Movie Mike's Movie Podcasts every Monday on the Nashville Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.