beyond-the-grave
Explanation
The Joke
A man visits what appears to be a life insurance office after a loss. The agent says, "Welcome, Mr. Davidson. I'm sorry to hear of your loss, but do you believe there is life beyond this world?" The man, clearly grieving, responds sincerely: "Yes sir, I do... that people can never truly be said to be deceased." The agent says "Yes, precisely." The man has been led into making a philosophical statement about the afterlife and the enduring nature of the human spirit.
Then the agent reveals the trap: "I should tell you that I've been recording this conversation." The caption at the bottom delivers the punchline: "We managed to get out of another life insurance payout." The insurance company has just tricked a bereaved man into saying on the record that he believes the deceased person is not truly dead, which they will use as grounds to deny the life insurance claim.
The Humor
The joke is a brilliantly dark satire of insurance companies and their reputation for finding any possible loophole to avoid paying claims. The humor comes from the absurdity of using a man's sincere spiritual beliefs as a legal technicality to deny a payout -- if the deceased is "never truly dead" in a philosophical sense, then technically the life insurance conditions (death of the insured) have not been met. It plays on the common frustration people have with insurance companies' bad-faith tactics, exaggerating them to a cartoonishly evil but somehow plausible extreme.