Legal scholars and economists estimate that the total amount of money tied to the wishes of the dead is around $4 trillion annually. In many legal jurisdictions, we simply will leave your body intact. James Stacey Taylor is a bioethicist who has spent his career arguing for more organ procurement. Tim Heidecker: What justification can humans possibly give for continuing to honor the wishes of dead people when the living have so much they want to do for themselves?
Our lives are controlled by the invisible hand from the grave. Trillions of dollars of the economy are devoted to executing the wishes of people who died long ago, rather than satisfying the desires of the living. We follow the story of the Hershey fortune to show how a 19th century industrialist constructed the oddest business structure to ensure that his wishes would be fulfilled hundreds of years after his death. The story raises questions about why we give the dead so much power over our lives, and what this says about how we find meaning in our own lives given foreknowledge of our mortality. Guest voices include Ray Madoff, Jim Mcmahon, Bob Fernandez, Joe Berning, Carole Hite, James Stacey Taylor, Barbara Baum Levenbook, Russ Shaffer-Landau, and Samuel Scheffler.
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