The Market For Air

By Stacey Vanek Smith,

Darius Rafieyan

Published July 20, 2018 at 1:53 PM PDT

Jake Dell is the 5th generation owner of Katz's Delicatessen — America's oldest Jewish deli. A few years ago Jake had a problem. The neighborhood was changing, his overhead and his property taxes were skyrocketing, and he started to wonder, can a family-owned deli survive in one of the world's most expensive cities?

And then he realized he had something he could sell, something worth more than sandwiches and coleslaw, something that had been right under his nose the whole time... or rather right above his head.

Today on the show: how something completely invisible and completely intangible can shape the world around us in very real ways.

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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

Darius Rafieyan

Darius Rafieyan joined NPR in 2017 as the founding producer of The Indicator from Planet Money. He has produced stories about infectious disease outbreaks, the world's greatest air salesman, and the economics of Tinder.

See stories by Darius Rafieyan