Sony C800, anyone? With parts for manufacture being hard to source for Sony, I’ve seen these for nearly 20k, list price (not sure if they actually get that much), second-hand.

But then, professional equipment never had economies of scale.

Almost nobody uses mics like C800gs for podcasting and radio, though. The Sony c800g is one of the best vocal mics in the world, generally it will be found in high end studios. A U87 is very expensive for the purpose of radio/podcasting. The RE20 and the Sure SM7B are very popular for podcasting/radio and are around $400. NPR certainly aren't the only people that use U87s for radio/podcasting but they are in the minority. U87s are probably the most popular studio mic in the world for professional studios recording vocals but for this application it is accurate to call a U87 expensive.

For podcasting yes, but it seems like an insignificant cost relative to the rent, talent, and transmission equipment in an analog radio station. Are $3000 mics actually rare in radio studios?

From my experience yes they are rare. So rare, I've never heard of a radio station that uses U87s. I've only ever worked on one radio show and we had an SM7b. You can watch a lot of radio stations live video streams these days and you will probably not find a single U87. It will be all RE20s and SM7Bs. It isn't as if a radio station has a single mic. So the calculation is ($3000-$400) x number of mics purchases per year. Radio stations use their mics for hours and hours everyday, they get a lot of wear and tear. Additionally, the SM7B is a dynamic mic and is probably more forgiving in noisy environments than a U87. I know Joe Rogan is a podcast not radio but he makes millions of dollars off of his show and he uses SM7Bs.

I will also say, the NPR person interviewed seems to have a negative view of the RE20 and SM7b compared to the U87. Despite the low cost, SM7Bs are actually popular studio vocal mics. One was famously used to record Michael Jackson's vocals on Thriller (actually it was an SM7 but I believe the SM7B reissue is almost identical). When recording voice, there normally isn't a "silver bullet" mic that is the best for all voices.

The C800G is exactly what I was thinking of, but it's been $11k for years. Although yes, it's rarely in stock.

From Sony, but check Reverb... Sony has been out of stock for over a year now. The diaphragms are hard to produce/source, so second hand just keeps going up without Sony putting new units out.

C800G is no longer for sale by Sony.

Famously used by Mariah Carey.

That's not really correct. They don't have any stock by they have promised new stock to retailers.

In fact, it's coming back with a new SKU (again): https://www.frontendaudio.com/blog/sony-announces-the-c800gp...

The Telefunken ELA M 251, and the C12 and U47 tube mics come to mind. As does the Brauner VM1S.

And then there are the used vintage mics which can go for $15k+.

At the cheap but well-regarded end of things is the Stellar X2 from TZ TechZone.