It's the Brian Lair show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Matt Katz, keeping the big seat warm for Brian today.

Now let's take a look at a recent trend in retail real estate. Following the

rise of e-commerce in the 2010s, mutters about the death of in-person stores began to accumulate.

Gloomy forecasting reached a fever pitch when pandemic shutdowns led to an abrupt drop in in-person

shopping in 2020.

But in fact, physical stores are now alive, even thriving.

They're just changed form.

A recent article from the Atlantic explores how brick-and-mortar stores have adapted to the age of e-commerce.

Physical stores have grown smaller as they transition into their new role as showrooms that complement the online shopping experience.

Joining us now to discuss the evolution of physical stores is Laura Kelly, associate editor at the Atlantic and an author of the Atlantic Daily newsletter.

Her latest piece has the pithy headline. Stores are small now.

Hi, Laura. Welcome to WNYC. Hi. Thanks so much for having me on. It's great to be here.

Excellent. So lay it out for us. How do the stores of today compare to shopping in the pre-Ecommerce era and how'd they be popular like this?

What's going on with these stores?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the bottom line is a lot of American stores are simply getting smaller.

So a generation ago, you may have walked into a big department store at a local mall or in your town and seen just an

enormous array of options, shelves and shelves full of every color and size of t-shirt and sweater.

And you may have gone shopping with the expectation that you would leave the store that day with,

you know, a bag full of merchandise. And a trend that we're seeing in retail now

is that a lot of stores, including some of the classic big American retailers, so places

like Macy's and Nordstrom, are opening much smaller outposts. So the idea here is that shoppers

...