Bricks, Clicks, and the Future of Shopping

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Commerce.

Stores on Main Street, the things we buy and sell, hanging out at the mall, these are central to the American idea.

But e-commerce is dramatically changing the world of retail and changing America as well.

When we're buying things on our phones, what will we do in our stores?

This is Radio Atlantic.

Hi, I'm Matt Thompson, executive editor of The Atlantic, and with me in the studio, is this the first time

both of my esteemed co-hosts all together here in DC?

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Greetings and salutations.

Greetings and salutations to you as well.

We are joined in studio today by an editor on the Atlantic's business team, Jillian White.

Hello, Jillian.

Hi, Jillian.

So it's January.

We have just finished the busiest retail season of the year.

And

we at the Atlantic, as you may know, talk a lot about this thing we call the American idea.

Intrinsic to the American idea, often implicit in it, is retail, is the notion, the American dream, the idea of a storefront, of Main Street USA, people walking into a store and buying buying things and walking out of them.

And last year, in 2017, The Atlantic wrote a ton about retail and it's at a, it turns out to be at something of an inflection point.

So for today's episode, we wanted to bring Jillian in to tell us what is happening in retail.

How is the retail sector in America changing?

And how are those changes changing us, America?

Welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

So how's the retail changing?

I know that was so much build-up.

Retail is changing in a lot of pretty big and crazy ways.

So, even the idea of the American dream and Main Street and all of these little mom-and-pop shops, that is kind of long gone in favor of these big, massive malls.

And now that is long gone.

And we're seeing a lot of these big malls and kind of these legacy retailers, JCPenney, Macy's, Nordstrom, stuff like that, shuttering down.

And what we're seeing in its stead is this big conversation around e-commerce and people buying things online.

The thing is, Americans aren't buying fewer things.

They're not buying less.

They're still buying a ton of stuff.

They're just buying it on Amazon or they're buying it online elsewhere.

And the most recent change that we're seeing more than that is all of these places that said, we're only going to sell stuff online.

That's the future, are now like, oh, but also we're going to open this small pop-up shop or we're going to open this one store in this fancy neighborhood.

So it's a lot of changes all at the same time.

Can I ask from a sort of sociological perspective, why, I mean, part of the American obsession with shopping was as much about, you know,

buying stuff as it was communing with other people.

I mean, the mall in some ways was the public square.

Why go from online back to brick and mortar?

Is it because these companies want to claim some part of that or reclaim some part of that public interaction?

Absolutely.

There's, you know, the whole idea, even behind malls when they first started, was this idea of like a town square where you would go and you would pick things up, but you would also see your neighbors.

And as people became increasingly siloed, it was more important to do those things.

And the internet does not allow you to see people.

It doesn't allow you to see what other people are buying and think, ooh, that might look good on me.

So I think that's- Well, it sort of does, doesn't it?

Like, you can go to Amazon and see how popular something is and read their ridiculous reviews and ridiculous and inaccurate and illiterate reviews.

Wow.

That's what you really think about the Amazon.

No, I'm just saying.

Well, and also Amazon is trying.

You don't see them in their corporeal presence.

Amazon is trying through products like the Echo Show, which is their little Alexa tablet thing where you can sort of see yourself.

It can show you a visual.

And part of the idea that

is that we could one day

show ourselves in augmented reality style with fashion from the interwebs projected onto our bodies.

Actually, that is smart because you could see, yeah, that makes sense.

Well, I think the key phrase, though, is one day.

Those things do not work in this moment.

So if I wanted to go buy a dress from a brand that I've never, ever tried on and it gets there, I ordered online, it gets to my house, it doesn't fit.

Now the onus is on me to put it back in the box, find the label, send it back, et cetera, et cetera.

So there are some times where people feel that it's worth it to go out, put something on, shop around.

You should just do like me and put it in the basement and then forget about it and then be quietly resentful that I've I've wasted money.

Jillian,

can I just follow up though?

I think it's very effective.

Because what I'm talking about is less the sort of like nuts and bolts of the retail sort of consumer experience.

Does a dress fit?

Does it look good on me?

And more about that sort of intangible communal feeling that you get when you're surround, you're at a place with other people.

doing the same thing, which is fundamentally what the mall was about, you know, like seeing other people, being seen, having an experience which you can't replicate online and which in theory, I mean, maybe I guess if we're all interacting as holograms one day, we will.

But that kind of thing, is that, are companies trying to claim part of that, do you think?

They're trying to definitely claim the experience factor.

And it's happening in a little bit more of a contrived way than it used to happen.

Before, the experience was just being there, seeing other people, maybe running into a friend, talking about what you're buying.

Now the experience is a very cultivated thing.

You know, there's lights and it's Instagram worthy and there are florals and there's a whole thing happening.

And it's so that it can both be an experience for the moment, but an experience that you can share on social media, something that if you see online, you think, oh man, I'm really missing out on that.

Or that looked like a great party.

Jillian, what is the role that retail has conventionally played in the American economy?

And how is that shifting?

I mean, I don't know that it's shifting all that much.

Retail has always been massive concerns over what consumers are doing, how much they're spending.

Has always been a huge portion of GDP.

It's always been a huge kind of indicator of an economy's health.

And it's something that Americans have been watching, you know, in the recovery and the aftermath.

So I think it hasn't necessarily changed in that place that much.

I think what's really changed is how people are working within retail.

That's kind of the big thing that we're seeing in the shift when we think about the economy.

And tell me a little bit more about that.

What's the distance between people working in the retail sector and the changing shape of the retail sector overall?

Yeah, so I think one of the interesting things that always happens when we talk about retail is if you ask somebody who they think the typical retail worker is, they often think that it is a younger woman who maybe works part-time, maybe works after school, something like that.

And that's not really who the typical retail worker is.

When you look at overall retail,

only about 54% of those people are women.

And yes, the age demographics use slightly younger, usually around like 38, 39, compared to around 42 to 45 in other sectors.

But it's really pretty evenly split.

So changing in that situation, changing in the retail sector really creates kind of some big shifts in the economy that I think people were unaware of.

What, practically speaking, how is

the work of retail changing?

So this is part of where automation plays a huge role, at least when we think about the future.

When we think about retail now, a ton of retail workers are cashiers.

They're just scanning those price tags, tags, checking people out, and that's something that we know could soon go away.

So when we look at retail now, before it used to be this space where a huge number of people who maybe only had a high school education or something like that could come and find work, could find work for a long period of time.

But now it just requires a different level of skills.

And as we think about some of these more experiential retail sectors,

You know, it's going to be people who know how to apply makeup or know a lot about like fashion and branding and things like that.

Those are going to be the the people who are working in these stores.

Or for stuffing boxes for Amazon, right?

I mean, I guess that begets the question.

One of the things about retail was that it had a very articulated ladder.

You could start out, you know, folding shirts at the gap and work your way up to a management position.

Does that ladder exist in the new retail landscape where you might be working in a factory stuffing boxes for Amazon?

I think it could still exist.

I don't think it's been hashed out yet.

So one of the things that economists are actually excited about is the idea.

So the idea that e-commerce and automation has completely taken away jobs is kind of nullified by the idea that it has also created jobs.

So there was just a ton of economic waste that goes into somebody getting into their car, driving to the mall, hanging out at the mall, looking for stuff, driving back.

And now a lot of jobs are being created by people just literally needing to work at fulfillment centers and package stuff up.

And then people need to deliver those things.

Is work at fulfillment centers fulfilling?

Literally, spiritually, spiritually.

I mean, are these crappier jobs than retail jobs, traditional jobs?

Cashier jobs.

I mean, it depends on how you determine a crappy job.

I think a lot of people.

One that sucks.

I mean, I think a lot of people would determine that based on how much they're making, whether or not they're working full-time, stuff like that.

And listen,

I was a Gap Inc cash wrap worker straight out of college.

Yeah, you were.

I enjoyed

my team at the cash wrap.

We had a good time together.

But that does, like, how do the jobs pay and are there benefits?

Yeah, so right now it's like the average retail worker makes $13 an hour, something like that.

Economists think that...

the changing retail sector, that some of those fulfillment jobs and kind of the logistic jobs that will come out of that will be better paid, will be full-time, will have benefits.

And then when we look at some of the fact, the fact that some of these box stores are closing down and in their stead, what you have are these brands that have already made a ton of money just by being online only, and now they're opening up limited-run stores or smaller stores in more expensive places.

They're really, really hyper-aware of kind of this stereotype of retail jobs being bad jobs.

So, instead of having hourly workers or instead of having people who are only working full-time, they're really concerned with giving people full-time jobs and giving them benefits and a lot of things that we don't think of retail workers as traditionally having.

Aaron Powell, are there studies about how low brick-and-mortar retail will go?

I mean, in other words,

when do we tip over into a mostly Internet-based retail economy?

Or do we not?

Is there some sort of stasis?

I think there's some sort of stasis.

There was a period of time, I mean, we've been talking about the retail apocalypse now for years.

And what is happening is instead of completely getting rid of brick-and-mortar stores, what you're seeing is all of these big legacy brick-and-mortar-only stores are dwindling, dwindling, dwindling as e-commerce stores are rising.

But then those e-commerce stores are saying, oh, wait, no, I also want to open a store.

So then cycle back and now you have more brick and mortar stores.

I think it's just the biggest thing.

So the big malls will disappear, but not the actual boutique kind of, this is where you can actually physically touch the product.

Yeah, I will quote from Richard Florida's story from December 2017, How to Rebuild After the Retail Apocalypse, in which he says, quote, first things first, brick-and-mortar retail is not going away.

Even as it sheds workers, the sector is still growing at a rate of 3% per year.

The IHL group estimates that retail sales are up by more than $100 billion this year, and 4,000 more chain stores will have opened than closed in the U.S.

Much of the retail apocalypse, Richard Florida says, is in fact a long overdue correction.

The United States devotes four times more of its real estate square footage to retail per capita than Japan and France, six times more than England, nine times more than Italy, and 11 times more than Germany.

That's because we're better than all those countries.

Can I say, though,

I recently did a retail story for CBS and we went to to Ohio to a mall that was shuttered.

There are dead malls all over the country prompting like, you know, sort of internet sensation websites that document these dead malls, like deadmalls.com, for example.

But what I noticed is everyone says the same thing.

The U.S.

overdeveloped, per Richard Florida's point.

At the same, and this is a correction, right?

The mall, the C-level and D-level malls are going the way of the dinosaur.

And these big box stores, anchor stores, if you will, that were in malls like Macy's and and Sears are also going to be dramatically

leaned out, if not go away entirely.

My question, though, is when we talk about the recycling of brick and mortar, that these online stores are coming back to brick and mortar, aren't they smaller brands that cater to a more affluent clientele?

I mean, I'm wondering if like, you know, Warby Parker may come back and have a brick and mortar store, but the people that are buying Warby Parker eyeglasses are not the same people who are shopping at Sears.

So So when we talk about the resurgence or, you know, brick and mortar coming back in some

legitimate way, is it for everyone or is it for a specific class of people?

It's definitely not for everyone.

The brick and mortar that we're going to see, at least in the near future, is definitely one that is kind of more divergent and perhaps creates more inequality than what retail brick and mortar did in the past.

Before, you know, you could go to the mall and it was a bunch of different stuff.

Maybe you had a Saks and an Eman Marcus, but maybe you also had, I don't know, a Hot Topic.

Maybe a TJ Maxx.

Right.

Or, you know, a Claire's or something where you...

There were a ton of people who could come to the mall and know that they could find something in their price point, hang out, and have a good time.

That is not what retail brick and mortar in the future is going to look like.

A lot of these brands that have been online and are now thinking, oh, it's time to open a store, they want to be in Soho.

They want to be in an affluent area in DC and city center or something like that.

They're not going to be everywhere and they definitely don't want to be in a bunch of suburban malls that are getting minimal traffic.

Because that's actually brand depleting.

Right.

Just to be known as that.

Why do they want physical stores at all?

Well, I mean, there's still things that you want to be able to see and touch and try on.

And I think the move to, we will never need to try on clothes or glasses or makeup again is, you know, it was a little overblown.

You know, if you're going out and you want to put on makeup, you still need to determine whether or not it matches your skin tone, for instance.

And people still want to have that tactile experience of going somewhere and being able to look at themselves in the mirror and sometimes having choices.

The issue is people don't want to be overwhelmed by choice.

And that was part of what massive department stores were doing to them.

So I went recently.

I'm not sure if this is an admission I should make, but I went to buy a pants.

That means definitely not.

When in doubt, well, I don't know.

I like these pants, but I don't know how to...

Bonobos or bonobos?

Bonobos?

I went to this store.

I'm a middle-aged guy.

I'm so excited for your experience.

It says this so pleadingly.

You're so pleading with this bonobos adventure.

No, I know.

I don't even know why I feel bad about it, but you know what?

Screw it.

I feel great about buying bonobos.

But you go in and you try the pants on and then you can't buy them.

Yep.

And I'm like, this is like, that's one of those moments when I was like, I'm just too old.

I just don't like this.

Is this the appropriate moment to shout out to John,

Jillian's partner, who I happen to run into at the bonobo store?

Did you go to bonobos?

John loves bonobos.

This podcast is not sponsored by bonobos.

I feel better.

But you know what?

It could be sponsored by bonobos.

Wait, you go to bonobos?

By the way, I didn't really know how to say that word until just now.

A bonobo is actually an animal.

I know, it's like an animal, right?

But I don't know how to say the animal either.

Why would I know that?

Yes.

You're doing great.

Thank you very much.

But I found that to be a very off-putting experience because then you have to give them all this data about yourself.

And now I can't get them to stop sending me emails with their ridiculous sales.

And it took three days for the pants to get there.

And I was just, I want...

That's a Seinfeld episode.

I want.

I want.

You wanted the pants right then.

I know.

I did it.

Their store is tiny.

They don't have it.

They have almost everywhere.

They don't have a storeroom.

I get it.

But of course, that goes to this direct question about

the real estate profile of all of these places.

I mean, there's just going to be, there's no reason to store things anymore.

They're just not going to store them.

And so I wonder what's going to happen in the middle-range downtowns and in the middle-range malls.

Like, they're going to disappear too.

And there's another, I mean, there's another piece of this that I wanted to tunnel into, another piece of your experience at the bonobo store, which is that it was an experience, right?

Like, by the way, we're setting a record in a podcast for saying bonobos.

But probably someone greeted you at the door and

at bonobos, yeah.

And you were maybe, I just looked down and surly, so you were maybe like sized, and you know, you

maybe were greeted,

shown to a fitting room where clothes were brought to you.

But you make this sound like a royal experience.

But it kind of

he's watching the crown.

I'm not Queen Elizabeth.

No, but that's kind of the point that a lot of these brands are trying to do.

They are trying to mimic some of that high-end, very luxe, personalized experience that you might have.

had if you were going to like only the most exclusive area of like Neiman Marcus or something.

So you go into a bonobos or someplace else, somebody greets you, you're doing all of this like very personalized stuff where you're getting fitted, there's a tailor, there's a whole situation happening, and the catch is at the end, you don't get to take your stuff home.

But guess what?

If you were ordering it online, you don't get to take it home that day anyway, either.

Let me call your attention really briefly to a story by Joe Pinsker from September 2017 called The Future of Retail is Stores That Aren't Stores, in which he writes, quote, retailers are very consciously promoting these in-store experiences, or at least they are doing so at the flagship stores in big cities that they like to draw attention to.

It's a reaction to the the fact that buying is now something that can be done anywhere.

Can I say that?

I don't want an experience.

I want a pair of goddamn pants.

You had an experience.

Just enjoy it, John.

I just wanted a pair of fucking pants.

Maybe if they had given you a small monkey.

As part of this retail piece that I did, we dove deep into the experience, the retail experience.

What did you find?

Like Eddie Bauer was doing something called the Eddie Bauer ice box, the EB ice box, wherein you could go into a sub-Arctic chamber and test out the Eddie Bauer

clothing to see how it was very cold in there.

Saks had something called the Wellery, which was a pop-up health and wellness floor where you could do, you know, 10 minutes in a pink salt room to get the ions cleared from your phone and you're being.

I'm not exactly sure what.

The future of retail is the pink salt room.

Well, but all of it, a little, I mean, I, and I understand the desperation because for especially these larger chain stores and big buck stores, you want to draw consumers in, but, and, and maybe some of these experiences were novel and fun.

But if you think about the sort of behavior patterns that led us to, we used to go to the mall every weekend

because that was a destination and an activity in and of itself.

I don't know how cold you guys like to be on an average week, but people aren't going to keep going back to the EB ice box.

That's a kind of one-off thing.

So in terms of longevity, I don't know how much the experience can really make up for

the economic cratering of big box retail, right?

Yeah.

And I mean, I think this is something that brands are still really figuring out.

So you have like an Eddie Bauer that's trying to say, hey, we have all of these brick and mortar stores that already exist.

Please, please, please continue coming to them.

So they do this experience, but I mean, something that's going to hit their bottom line eventually is if they have to keep changing that experience once a month or once a week.

Whereas if you have some place that was online only and they say, hey, we're going to do a pop-up and for three months we're going to be in this small space, just the novelty of being able to go to that space maybe that's enough or if they only have you know five stores in the entire country then that doesn't hit their bottom line as much and they're able to kind of change things up even if it's just changing the look of the store or something that may be enough to keep people coming back Jillian are you surprised that there are still brick-and-mortar stores no not at all I think the idea even Even a few years ago when people thought we're going to be doing absolutely everything online, there are just so many things that people don't enjoy doing online, that people are kind of hardwired to want to experience at least once.

So I think about friends of mine who refuse to use grocery shopping services.

They want to pick out their own produce.

They're just extra mad if they get their food delivered and there's a bruised peach or something there.

They feel like they wouldn't have done that.

So I just think there are still these experiences that people really want to have that are tangible and tangible.

Can internet commerce ever, you think, recreate that experience of serendipity?

In other words, people go to bookstores because they can leave through, go through shelves and be surprised.

You can't really have that experience on Amazon.

You could efficiently find the book you're looking for and buy it.

But do you think that we'll ever get to a technological point where somehow you create an immersive experience where the store comes into your house?

I think that would be really, really hard.

I also think that people overestimate how much American shoppers want that, as much as sometimes American shoppers want what they want and they want it now.

For instance, instance, a pair of pants.

Just an example.

Right.

So I think if you know what you want, sometimes what you would like to do is just be able to get it, get it quickly and get it efficiently.

I think when you think about the people who are kind of passive and aren't necessarily super into something, they're at a Barnes and Noble, but they don't want a very particular book.

They just want to kind of leaf around and hang out.

All these e-commerce stars are now going to have to try and find a way to get those people.

In a minute, we'll step back from how retail is changing to look at how those changes affect the country itself.

And we'll also hear a bit from senior editor Derek Thompson.

No relation.

Stick with us.

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How are these shifting trends in how retailers are thinking about the physical stores?

How are they changing the shape of the country and particularly the urban and rural landscapes?

Alana Samuels wrote a story for us in May 2017 called All the Ways Retail's Decline Could Hurt America's Towns, in which she points out, quote, nationwide, sales taxes comprise nearly one-third of the taxes that state governments collect and about 12% of what local governments collect, according to Lucy Dedion, a senior researcher at the Rockefeller Institute of Government.

The epic closures of the brick and mortar stores is troubling news for state and local government sales tax collections, she said.

So there are all sorts of incidental effects of where our brick and mortar stores are located like that.

But also, we're talking about these sort of lux, presumably urban experiences.

What happens outside America's cities?

Yeah, I mean, I think this is going to create a huge divide between where you have just tons of stores, where a lot of these brands that people see online online and are really excited about, where they actually open up.

So while you might see three Warby Parkers in D.C.

or another big city, you might have absolutely none of those somewhere else in West Virginia, for example.

And that's going to create a big, big gulf in how people are experiencing retail.

And also, as you said, how all of these different cities, states, towns are able to kind of loop in and be able to take advantage of the taxes and the other incentives that all of that stuff brings along with it.

So it really has the ability to kind of reshape inequality in terms of like the retail economy.

It turns out there's at least one chain retailer that's on the upswing.

Bonobos.

I want to call your attention to a story in the Wall Street Journal from late 2017 by Sarah Nassau called How Dollar General Became Rural America's Store of Choice, in which Nassau points out, Dollar General Corp.'s 14,000 stores yielded more than double the profit of Macy's Inc.

on less revenue during its most recent fiscal year.

While many large retailers are closing locations, Dollar General executives said they plan to build thousands of more stores, mostly in small communities that have otherwise shown few signs of the U.S.

economic recovery.

The more the rural U.S.

struggles, company officials said, the more places Dollar General has found to prosper.

That was a striking story, and I'll include a link to it in the show notes, in part because part of Dollar General's strategy for expansion in rural America was packaging items in smaller, more profitable units.

And so making a pretty sizable return on selling relatively more units.

While you might go to your local supermarket and buy a six-pack of Coke, the retailer might be able to make more money by selling individual Cokes.

And that, it turns out, can be a strategy for profit in the new America.

Well, and the interesting thing I thought about that was, one, Dollar General is specifically focusing on people who make, I think it was an average of $40,000 a year.

That's not who a lot of these big e-commerce only, you know, turning to brick and mortar retailers are focusing on.

But more than that, I think when you talk about the ability to sell a Coke instead of a six-pack, because a Coke might be affordable for someone this week, but a six-pack isn't.

When you think back to cities years ago, when you think back, for instance, to Bodegas in New York, there was an ability to do exactly that, to go in and buy a beer.

A cigarette back in the day.

Right, a Lucy.

Lucy.

Yeah.

Lucy.

RIP.

And that's something, one, bodegas are getting taken over by the 7-Elevens and the Wawas of the world, and that's becoming less likely in big, rich cities like New York.

But exactly, this model is now kind of growing and expanding in poor rural areas.

Now, close us out, Jillian, by telling us where do you expect retail to go next?

We've talked a little bit about what's happening in the sector, sector, the big trends, but what are some of the specific points that you expect we'll see in retail?

Yeah, so I think one of the big questions with retail is going to be how driverless cars factor in.

My colleague Derek Thompson has written about this quite a bit.

The fascinating thing about self-driving cars is that we mostly think of them as transportation devices.

But we don't think of self-driving cars as real estate.

And they are real estate.

They are moving real estate.

And so I think it's inevitable that retailers like Amazon, or even like the next generation 40 parkers, small-time retailers, could essentially say, wait a minute, rather than buy a brick-and-mortar store, let's just buy a self-driving van that sort of circulates in, let's say, you know, Soho or Culver City or the DuPont area and essentially carries our merchandise and self-drives it around so that people can actually order a viewing session of sorts by, you know, clicking a button on their phone and the self-driving car comes up to their house or to their place of work or to their apartment and they can walk right in and take a look at what's there but a company like target or amazon is going to want to buy up hundreds and thousands of these self-driving vans that will essentially be you know moving retail stores so that if you want to buy toilet paper or like adeville pm then you press the button on your phone or on your computer and that van pulls right up in front of wherever you happen to be and you can can just pick up the merchandise.

You don't even need to have it shipped to your house in a box.

It can just be traveling by van and flowing through streets.

And so this raises all sorts of interesting implications.

What happens to the future of retail when commercial real estate moves out of buildings and into cars, into streets?

What do we do with the empty commercial space?

Do we turn it into apartments?

Do we just let it hang out there empty?

I think it just raises a lot of fascinating questions about not only the future of retail, but frankly the future of cities and how cities look once our streets essentially become flowing rivers of retail.

The idea that stores and pop-up shops can now come to you, that is going to be really, really interesting.

And then also just taking a look at how e-commerce brands decide to expand into the retail space.

One of the things we're seeing is that even though all of these brands are deciding to pop up in cities, retail is really, really expensive.

And a lot of these brands either don't want to stay open for a really long time, and perhaps that's not what landlords want, or they may find that they can't justify the cost.

So I think we're still figuring out what the mix is of how these online-only brands are going to integrate themselves into the real world.

And I think while all of that happens, you're still going to see the decline of some of these big old stores, the Macy's, the Nordstroms, et cetera.

And malls are going to start.

Maybe not even going away, but being filled with different things.

A lot of malls around the country are now being filled with colleges, for instance, or healthcare facilities.

And they're taking up these kind of big sweeping areas for things that actually need a ton of space versus, you know, having 42 different types of pants.

Yeah, we actually asked Derek about some of the changes happening right now, and he pointed out that this isn't really the first dramatic shift in the world of retail.

He pointed to the example of Amazon, the great retail disruptor of the moment, to explain how these new developments might not be so new.

In many ways, I think that Amazon is following the exact same playbook that Sears followed at the beginning of the 20th century.

I mean, think about it this way.

Imagine you have a virtual retailer that allows people to order things from their house, and then those products are shipped to their doorstep without the necessary presence of a physical store.

Well, that is obviously what Amazon is for many people, but it's also what Sears was in the late 19th century.

Yes, 19th century, when they were a mail-order catalog business.

And Fears in the 1930s essentially realized the incredible importance of department stores.

And so they opened up 300 within one decade.

In many ways, Amazon is doing the exact same thing.

Amazon is having its 1930s moment, and it's spending billions of dollars not only to buy Whole Foods, but also to open up other warehouses and maybe even introduce brick-and-mortar bookstores, which is a fascinating sort of flip on its first business model.

So yeah, in many ways, it's really interesting the degree to which retail seems to be in this sort of constant seesaw between virtual retail and brick and mortar retail, trying to answer this question, are people looking for convenience so that they can shop staying at their homes?

Or are they looking for experience?

They can shop in.

beautiful showrooms and beautiful places.

And it turns out the answer is always somewhere in the middle, that you're trying to make the seesaw sort of balance on its middle fulcrum.

And you have a lot of companies that are trying to constantly get this balance right between convenience and experience.

And you could basically say that that is the theme, that's the tension that animates all of retail history in the U.S.

Well, let us turn to our closing segment, Keepers.

What is it that you have seen, heard, read, watched, experienced recently that you do not want to forget?

Jillian, let's start with you.

Yeah, so mine isn't a new one, but I finally got around to reading The Age of Ambition by Evan Asnos, all about how China has changed in the past few decades.

And I would say that I was kind of woefully ignorant of

all the changes that happened in that economy and it's really really fascinating really well written so say we all evanosnos is super annoying because he writes really well and exhaustively

man we shouted out so many of our peers jeffrey goberg what would you like to keep

i'm gonna rip open a hole in the time-space continuum and talk about something that hasn't come yet, but I'm so excited about it.

It's as if I've already experienced it.

It's a book called Future Face, and it's by Alex Wagner and it's coming out in April and I will talk about it.

I have a strange feeling.

We're going to talk about it on the podcast.

Oh my goodness.

It's a meditation and an argument about immigration and alienation and refugees and migration all through the prism of her own personal history, her unique personal history.

And I am, if she would just send me the galleys, I would read it today.

I would read it right now.

I'm already so happy that I haven't yet read it in the future.

So, the keeper, the keeper that I'm inferring here, which is the keeper that I share, is the sensation of being so excited about reading.

The sensation of getting my mitts on this book.

Because one day we will have read the book, and then we'll just be like, And you'll know, you'll have the knowledge.

I wish that I could read it again for the first time.

For anybody else who wants to read it, it is available for pre-order now on Random House.

Done, Future Face

on sale April 17th.

Pre-order feature face.

You get a pair of bonobos for free.

Same day.

This is true.

Same day, bonobos.

None of this is true.

Same day, bonobos.

Alex Wagner, what is your keeper?

Well, guys,

my keeper is a concept less than an actual product.

And you know, I'm want to do shameless product placement on this podcast.

But

I just spent a weekend away from our Manhattan home and out on

the cold and windy environs of Long Island, which, you know.

What are you, Jack?

What's the beginning of a Jack London story?

What are we doing?

With White Fang.

Keep your Jack London story going.

And it was all about home cooking for three straight days, which is exhausting, and it's so tedious to have to clean those dishes.

But especially in these winter months, it is such a beautiful and heartwarming thing to sit down to a home cooked meal.

Absolutely.

And I just think, you know, it's like we cook out of necessity, but rarely do we truly think of the benefits of sitting around the table and eating something that was made with our own hands.

And I think what better time to revisit that concept than in late January?

Absolutely.

Don't lose it.

Home-cooked meals.

I'll go last.

I have a little bit of a bummer, but hopefully not without some sunlight.

In the last few days.

Let me bring you back to 1863.

No, no.

In the last few days, we lost a treasured member of our family, which is our cat, Rico.

Oh, no.

So my keeper is in part Rico himself.

I can already feel the little details slipping away, and I want to make sure that I remember them.

The simple little fact of Rico, where he liked to sit, the noises that he would make, his weird quirks, the

places that he liked to hide away.

But

my real keeper is that I encountered a couple of different pieces that have helped to ease the grief a little bit.

And I want to offer them to our listeners.

One is an essay by Michael Zidorian called The Appropriate Weight of Grief, which is about many things, including cats and loss and writing and masculinity.

Here's a passage.

Quote, I have what many would consider an inappropriate amount of grief for a cat.

But I have to ask, what is the appropriate amount?

How much am I allowed?

No one really says it, but my guess is that it's not a huge allotment.

According to the rules that many men still live by, if I absolutely had to grieve over an an animal, a large dog would be much more appropriate.

Which would seem to indicate that grief is proportional to the size, weight, and genus of said deceased animal.

Which is a nice way of saying that a goodly part of the world believes that a 200-pound man should probably get over the death of a 10-pound tabby in a couple of days.

Shake it off, dude.

No, no.

It's a cat.

Yes, so Michael Zadorian goes on to challenge that idea in a way that I have found...

enlightening and fulfilling.

I'm sorry about Rico, Matt.

Well, the last part of my Keeper is a poem, a delightful little poem by Don Marquis called The Lesson of the Moth.

The whole poem is great, but there's just this little bit that I wanted to share.

It's

from the vantage point of a cockroach named Archie, who's asking this moth, dude, why do you keep on running into that freaking light bulb and killing yourself?

What is that about?

And the moth replies in part, we get bored with the routine and crave beauty and excitement.

Fire is beautiful, and we know that if we get too close, it will kill us.

But what does that matter?

It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while.

So we wad all our life up into one little roll and then we shoot the roll.

That's what life is for.

It is better to be a part of beauty for one instant and then cease to exist than to exist forever and never be a part of beauty.

Our attitude toward life is come easy, go easy.

We're like human beings used to be before they became too civilized to enjoy themselves.

The lesson of the moth.

Don Marquis.

Go home and pet your cat.

That's what I say.

Treasure your cat.

Treasure a cat.

I treasure my rooster.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Thank you.

Me too.

Luminous.

Thank you all.

And with that, thank you all for joining us.

I feel given solace and comfort by your presence here around this table today.

My co-hosts, together in person.

Beautiful.

So much energy.

Steve in this room.

Jillian.

This is the first first of what I hope will be many times you join us at the radio.

Me too.

Wait, this is your first time on this part.

This is my first time.

Nailed it.

Nailed it.

Nailed it indeed.

Thank you.

Battle Do It for this week's Radio Atlantic.

This episode was produced and edited by Kevin Townsend with production support from Kim Lau and Diana Douglas.

Our theme song, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, is by the one and only John Batiste.

Thanks, as always, to my co-hosts, Jeffrey Goldberg and Alex Wagner, to Derek Thompson for his insights, and to Jillian White for joining us.

Leave us a voicemail with your contact information and your thoughts on this episode at 202-266-7600.

Check us out at facebook.com/slash radioatlantic and theatlantic.com slash radio.

Catch our show notes in the episode description, and if you like what you're hearing, rate and review us in Apple Podcasts.

and subscribe in your preferred podcast app.

Most importantly, thank you for listening.

Hug your loved ones, especially the furry ones close.

We'll see you next week.