In the city of Oakland, California, you'll find one of America's most scenic cemeteries.

Perched in the hills, it has unobstructed views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco

Bay. These 226 acres of prime real estate are occupied by the remains of titans of industry,

like the founders of Folgers Coffee and Girideli Chocolate.

And if you want to join them, six feet under, it'll cost you dearly.

You might pay as much as $50,000 for a premium plot.

Jeff Lindemann is the CEO of Mountain View Cemetery.

You might not think of cemeteries as having CEOs,

but they're a $3 billion industry in the U.S.

And there's a lot riding on them making money

because they've made an eternal promise

to the people buried there.

When we sell a plot crypto niche,

the idea is that you put enough money away in the trust fund

so that over time you can care for the cemetery forever.

When you're selling a finite resource, though, the word forever can be a bit tricky.

It's really kind of greedy, you know, from a land use perspective to say a person who died is going to occupy this couple square feet of real estate forever, forever, and we're never, ever, ever going to change it.

For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the economics of everyday things.

I'm Zachary Crockett.

Today, cemeteries.

For most of human history, we didn't bury our deceased in the ground.

When our oldest ancestors died, they were often left in caves, burned, or pushed out to sea. The modern practice of

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