You bet your life insurance

你绝对是千真万确的!

Planet Money

2026-08-15

38 分钟
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Some of the biggest firms on Wall Street are, at this very moment, waiting for thousands of strangers to die to reap their returns. Because there’s a market for life insurance policies. And it’s legal. You don’t have to actually die to get some of your life insurance money. Thanks to a secondary market for life insurance policies, you might be able to claw back money from beyond the grave. You just sell your policy to an investor. So when you die, the payout goes to them, instead of your family or beneficiary.  On today’s show, how the wheels of finance transformed a desperate deal made during the AIDS crisis into a multi-billion dollar industry.  Support:Planet Money+Read: Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your LifeOur weekly longform Planet Money newsletterOur weekly Indicator round-up newsletterFollow: InstagramTikTokYouTubeFacebookThis episode was produced by Emma Peaslee and Willa Rubin. It was edited by Marianne McCune and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. It was engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy
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  • This is Planet Money from NPR.

  • For a lot of people, the very mention of the word insurance can evoke a mixture of both terror and boredom.

  • It's something lots of us might buy when we have to and then hope to never have to think about again.

  • But that is not how Frank Sirowski thinks about it.

  • Frank learned about the wonders of insurance early on.

  • My first foray into insurance as a concept was when I was in fourth grade and I accidentally burned down my bedroom.

  • What?

  • I had a little candle that was in a plastic container, and I woke up to the wall on fire.

  • Smoke everywhere.

  • And I was like, oh, what do I do?

  • Frank runs down the hall to the bathroom to grab the first vessel he can find,

  • which turns out to be a tiny toy bucket.

  • So I'm filling this bucket, and I'm running back and forth to my bedroom, but the smoke detector goes off.

  • Now the whole family's awake.

  • What's going on?