Jim McMahon, Director of School History for Milton Hershey School. The school today is very much in sync with what Milton Hershey wanted the school to be when it started in 1909. In the 1920s, they built what's called cottages. They're living with four women in the home who take care of them and there might be 20 or 30 boys in these homes. And it's been that way ever since. We're still all about taking care of the neediest kids in society.
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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