© 2026 Milwaukee Public Media is a service of UW-Milwaukee's College of Letters & Science
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

The Market For Air

Echo Wang
/
NPR

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.

Music by. Find us:Twitter/Facebook.

Subscribe to our show onApple Podcasts,PocketCastsand.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money, and is a correspondent for Planet Money.
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.