NPR.

NPR.

To start a business, you need money.

You need skills.

You need to know suppliers and where to find customers.

And what can also be very helpful is a third space.

Yeah, a third space is a place that isn't the home and it's not the work site. It's somewhere

where the main activity is conversation. So that could be a bar, a park, or a coffee shop.

There's been a lot of research showing how these spaces have brought communities

together or even catalyzed revolutions. New research is showing that coffee shops could be key

to sparking new businesses too. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong.

And I'm Dary Woods. Today on the show, fueling entrepreneurship one coffee at a time.

We're going to go back a few decades for the story of how Magic Johnson partnered to build Starbucks cafes in black and Latino neighborhoods.

And how new research has shed light on how Magic's plan changed entrepreneurship in those communities.

In 1991, basketball star Magic Johnson announced his retirement from the LA Lakers.

He had tested positive for HIV.

Months later, Los Angeles was engulfed in riots. An amateur videographer had captured the brutal beating by police of African-American man Rodney King. It was one of the first

videos of this kind to go viral. And when police officers involved were acquitted in a much

publicized trial, Los Angelesjali's erupted.

We tore down our own community. Latinos, African Americans, they tore down and burnt down

our own businesses. This is from an interview Magic Johnson gave to NPR in 2022. In today's

dollars, the riots cost these communities more than $2 billion.

...