High Fination is a podcast about philosophy that turns stories into ideas. The show today, The Wishes of the Dead, looks at how much money we spend satisfying the desires of people who died long ago. We also answer listener questions and play a very silly game called Hypotheticals. Just Between Us was nominated for Best Ensemble for 2023 by iHeart Radio.
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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