Episode 801: The Death Show

By Sonari Glinton,

Bryant Urstadt, Sally Helm, Stacey Vanek Smith

Published October 20, 2017 at 7:46 PM EDT

The dead don't have to do any work. For the rest of us, though, death is expensive and complex. There's real estate to be hunted, and coffins to be purchased, and insurance to be procured.

Sonari Glinton takes us to visit some of the most expensive real estate in the world, where supply is limited. The Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park is one of the most exclusive pieces of property in Los Angeles, the cemetery is nearly full, but customers keep coming to buried alongside stars like Marilyn Monroe and Natalie Wood.

Meanwhile, in Japan, the death industry is changing. The population there is aging rapidly, so there are more customers on the way. But those people are spending less on funerals. Elise Hu visits Endex, a convention selling customers on the benefits of a glamorous funeral with personalized perks. She even tries being prepared for burial.

Plus, Planet Money editor Bryant Urstadt makes a case for tontines, a morbid mix of retirement plan and lottery. The winner gets a big payout when the other investors are dead. It used to be quite popular.

Music: "Sigh," "Welcome to California" and "Dangerous Treasures." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.

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Sonari Glinton

Sonari Glinton is a NPR Business Desk Correspondent based at our NPR West bureau. He covers the auto industry, consumer goods, and consumer behavior, as well as marketing and advertising for NPR and Planet Money.

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Bryant Urstadt

Bryant Urstadt is the editor of Planet Money, NPR's podcast about economics. Planet Money specializes in taking complicated subjects, finding the people at the center of them, and turning their stories into entertaining narratives. He is part of the team which won a Peabody for reporting on the fake bank accounts scandal at Wells Fargo.

See stories by Bryant Urstadt

Sally Helm

Sally Helm reports and produces for Planet Money. She has covered wildfire investigation in California, Islamic Finance in Michigan, the mystery of declining productivity growth, and holograms. Helm is a graduate of the Transom Story Workshop and of Yale University. Before coming to work at NPR, she helped start an after-school creative writing program in Sitka, Alaska. She is originally from Los Angeles, California.

See stories by Sally Helm

Stacey Vanek Smith

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.

See stories by Stacey Vanek Smith