Hello, and welcome to Slate Money Travel, the bonus mini series for Slate Money.

I'm Felix Salmon of Axios.

We normally talk about the business and finance news of the week, but on this series, we're going deep into the business of travel. And specifically,

today, we have the amazing Jay Sorensen at IdeoWorks. Jay, how are you? I'm delighted to be on your show.

And you are basically the person who knows everything there is to know about airline miles and the

economics thereof. And so what we are going to do is we are going to do this deep dive into

what are airline miles. why do they exist,

where did they come from, and who is making money from these things.

And the answers might well surprise you.

They certainly surprised me.

So all of that is a very special midweek treat right here coming up on Slate Money.

And the capital of Moldova is, you get bonus points if you get this one right.

I have absolutely no idea what the capital of Moldova is.

So I think we can start off this amazing episode of Slate Money Travel by learning the capital of Moldova.

What is?

Mr. J. Sonson, what is the capital of Moldova?

It is Kishinau.

Okay.

And is it a place I should visit?

Is it a good place to go? Does it have good food?

Well, have we actually begun the interview?

This is, this is all on the record. Basically, it's like, you thought you were coming on Slate money to talk about, like, won't walk out about the economics of airline miles.

...