--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- [Discussion about Black Friday and Cyber Monday]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But wait, oh no. After Cyber Monday comes...
--:-- [Cut to a new segment]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hey man, get back here with my package. Taking Tuesday. In Washington state, some homeowners are fighting back. They're tired of people stealing their packages.
--:-- [Cut to a new segment]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The LAPD has busted a sophisticated package theft ring. Thefts of packages left in buildings and front porch doorsteps is surging nationwide. A whopping 1.7 million packages a day.
--:-- [Cut to a new segment]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The head on today explained the very annoying and hard to solve problem of porch pirates and your stolen packages. A great alternative you may have forgotten about, but thankfully, Gen Z remembers.
--:-- [Cut to a commercial break]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into, don't you know? That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform.
--:-- [Cut to a new segment]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I've never met an AI agent. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com. AI agents are getting pretty impressive. You might not even realize you're listening to one right now.
--:-- [Cut to a new segment]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We work 24-7 to resolve customer inquiries. No hold music, no canned answers, no frustration. Visit sierra.ai to learn more.
--:-- [Cut to a new segment]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're listening to Today Explained. Okay, hi, my name is Wizzy, and I am a senior reporter at Fox covering money, the economy, consumer issues and trends, just anything under the sun, really.
--:-- Wizzy: Just Wizzy, like Beyonce, her latest opus is all about package theft, which might be even worse than usual for Americans this week.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, some studies say Cyber Monday is the worst day for package theft because it's all about, like, the nice, shiny, expensive tech that you're getting delivered to your home, right?
--:-- Wizzy: So especially Cyber Monday, I think people need to watch out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We asked Wizzy if this problem of package theft is getting worse in America because anecdotally, it certainly feels that way.
--:-- Wizzy: I think the answer is maybe, probably. That's kind of like what I found through my reporting. It feels like everyone's talking about packages being stolen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In Pittsburgh, Houston and Los Angeles, these alleged porch pirates are quick and brazen. Watch as this man in broad daylight is caught on not one, but five security cameras ripping into this package.
--:-- Wizzy: She's a porch pirate disguised as an Amazon driver.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This homeowner says he was so exasperated with front porch thievery, he rigged a package that detonates when it's lifted.
--:-- Wizzy: If you only looked on Nextdoor and the Ring camera forums, you would think that this was the biggest issue that Americans are currently facing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I imagine that has some kind of effect on our psyche, too, if you're on these places where constantly you're being barraged with messaging about how bad it is.
--:-- Wizzy: And just even the growth of doorbell cameras around the country has led to this sort of vigilante culture, right, where people are constantly surveilling other people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So just hyper vigilant about the possibility of package theft.
--:-- Wizzy: So it definitely feels like the dial on talking about package theft has gone way, way up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the problem is we don't actually have really good recent hard numbers on it.
--:-- Wizzy: I think a lot of retailers don't want to reveal that information if they even track it themselves internally.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And a lot of researchers just haven't really studied it over time yet.
--:-- Wizzy: So it's really unclear how bad the epidemic is, in part because even law enforcement's like, well, we're not going to focus specifically on this thing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And only about 9% of people even bother reporting package theft to the police.
--:-- Wizzy: But, you know, there are a few studies out there. Consumer Reports did one, I think, in 2021, and it was supposed to be representative of the U.S. population and all of that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that one found that maybe around 11% of people have experienced package theft, which, you know, it's not some overwhelming thing that, you know, everyone is getting affected, but certainly people are dealing with it.
--:-- Wizzy: Why aren't companies telling us more about what's going on here? Why aren't they giving us the numbers?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think the MO of most companies is that they don't want their customers to worry about their services.
--:-- Wizzy: They just want us to think, hey, everything's going to be super easy and cheap and quick for you. Don't worry your little head about it. Just make another order.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Deliveries are free and unlimited. It's easy.
--:-- Wizzy: And I mean, e-commerce is still a very much growing sector.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, we talk about online shopping all the time and most of our shopping now starts online.
--:-- Wizzy: But only 15% of purchases are still made online.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there's still a lot of room to grow.
--:-- Wizzy: In that growth stage, of course, they want you to think, no, things are great. This is so easy and convenient for you to just have things delivered.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And when a package gets stolen, be it an Amazon package or something from Best Buy or Tiffany and Company or whatever, who bears the brunt of that cost? Who's really losing out there?
--:-- Wizzy: Often the cost of shipping is either priced into the cost of a good or more increasingly we pay for it sort of up front with a subscription like Amazon Prime or Walmart Plus.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's, at the end of the day, I would say consumers pay for it.
--:-- Wizzy: But when a package gets lost as of now if you say you know my package is stolen it just not where it supposed to be
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Most big retailers take a pretty generous view of it and they send you a refund or a replacement pretty easily and you good
--:-- Wizzy: So I guess this brings us to a very important question, which is, is anyone along the line doing anything to actually stop all of the theft? The millions upon millions of packages that are being stolen every year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I would say that Amazon is definitely doing something. They are sort of the leaders on this from start to finish.
--:-- Wizzy: Not only is our customer service pretty generous, but also I'm sure people have noticed by now, Amazon has so many of those lockers in apartments and businesses.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can choose to have your packages delivered there and just pick them up after work or whenever you have a free minute.
--:-- Wizzy: Okay, so that's Amazon. But what about, you know, the little guy and the mom and pop and what have you?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, that's where it gets tougher because like I said, shipping is so expensive.
--:-- Wizzy: If even a small percentage of people are saying, hey, my package, my order was stolen, that's going to cost them way too much to try to just replace and provide that Amazon-like customer service.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So a retailer like Etsy, they're rubbing up against this a little bit because even though Etsy is like this big famous company, they're made up of individual third party sellers, right?
--:-- Wizzy: And individual Etsy sellers might feel a little bit like, okay, I can't afford to do this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So where does that leave us? I mean, do you just have to do all your holiday shopping or whatever it might be with the expectation that you might get robbed?
--:-- Wizzy: I think some people will continue to just take their chances, especially if it hasn't really bothered you up until now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're still pretty much trusting of the service.
--:-- Wizzy: I think for people who have dealt with package theft before, definitely for time-sensitive or expensive things, gifts around the holiday season, they might see more and more of an incentive to maybe browse online for the best deal, but actually go to the store to pick up the item.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mm, going back to the store. That's always an option.
--:-- Wizzy: Yeah, yeah. It turns out we can't live our entire lives online.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are people taking that option, Wizzy?
--:-- Wizzy: They definitely are.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Something that's emerged out of the pandemic is actually that we thought that e-commerce has taken over and we're never going back.
--:-- Wizzy: Actually, that hasn't panned out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: E-commerce surged hugely during the pandemic, but it's actually gone down quite a bit since, you know, stores and businesses and everything reopened.
--:-- Wizzy: And there's been a huge rise, actually, in people choosing that mix of ordering online but picking up in-store or doing curbside pickup, things like that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People want to talk to other people? They like the customer service, yeah, of talking to actual humans instead of a chatbot.
--:-- Wizzy: And also just the security of knowing exactly when you can roll up to a store and have an item in your hands.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And stores don't mind that either because, like I said, shipping is expensive.
--:-- Wizzy: And also, if you have a brick-and-mortar location and you get a customer in the door, they're much more likely to spend more money while they're in the store browsing, seeing random things.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's sort of a win-win.
--:-- Wizzy: One of the biggest things that I felt reporting this story was the awareness of package theft and the obsession over it is more of like a symptom of this bigger thing where we're realizing unlimited growth of online shopping and home delivery maybe isn't sustainable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's already showing some kinds of issues, obstacles with package theft, but also just our streets are overrun with delivery vans and people just always ferrying things around.
--:-- Wizzy: So I think this is just one example of where online shopping and home delivery is not this perfect solution to all of our shopping needs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wizzy, she writes for Vox. Find her stuff at vox.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Turns out there's this place that has everything you need. No, not Amazon. We're going back to the everything store that doesn't deliver when we're back on Today Explained. We're going back to the mall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up, And within seconds, you will have your email and calendars synced.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You'll see all your relationships in a fully fledged platform, they say, all enriched with that actionable data.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they say you can build AI powered automations and use its research agent to tackle some of your most complex processes to seize so that you can focus on what matters, building your company.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile, Replicate, Modal and so much more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can go to attio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's attio.com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: on everything at Apple. Apply for Apple Card on your iPhone in minutes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Terms and more at applecard.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for the show today comes from LifeKit, the podcast from NPR.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's in your life kit?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm asking.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They didn't ask that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Every day you have to make choices that might shape the direction of your life, but you can't flip to the back of the book to find an answer key.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Instead, you can listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: LifeKit offers real stories about common issues like relationships, finances, parenting, and your career.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you're looking to move with more intention or just need thoughtful guidance on living better, LifeKit delivers strategies to help you make meaningful, sustainable change from fitness routines to mental resilience, navigating personal goals to tackling burnout.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Each episode is full of relevant insights and clear takeaways about things we all could use a little help with life kit wants to help you approach your own life with confidence and clarity and walk away with a game plan you can implement right away.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Enough from me go listen to the show Life Kit It a podcast from NPR
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sean Ramos from former mall rat, former mall employee, but that was like 20 years ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No one goes to the mall anymore, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wrong!
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Apparently Gen Z goes to the mall?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: According to the International Council of Shopping Centers, which I'm told is a real thing, Gen Z's more interested in the mall than millennials and even Gen X.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, no, there is something out there that can help ease our simultaneous double loss.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ritual suicide.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, you idiot, the fucking mall!
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know who else isn't giving up on the mall?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Alexandra Lang.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm the author of Meet Me by the Fountain and Inside History of the mall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what made you want to write a book about a mall?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, I am a child of the 80s.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I grew up going to shopping malls.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And actually, I really see it as an outgrowth of my previous book, which was called The Design of Childhood, which was all about the toys and spaces that shape early childhood.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I realized that the space that shapes adolescence historically has really been the mall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When you come to the mall with your friends, you don't go shopping or anything.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You just hang out, buy records, always running around.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, look at that cute guy over there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, look at this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You never get time for shopping, but it's pretty good.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a good time to waste time here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And for all the adolescents out there who maybe don't really have the mall experience at their disposal right now, can you just remind them what the mall glory of your youth maybe looked like?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, let's see.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My favorite mall growing up was South Square Mall in Durham, North Carolina.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I loved it because it had the gap.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It had B. Dalton.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It had a big food court with an Orange Julius.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It had a movie theater.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I could go there and meet friends or just wander around by myself, you know, looking at some books that maybe my mom didn't want me to read, trying to figure out what the joke gifts were at Spencer Gifts, buying a sweater.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was just a great place to spend a weekend afternoon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And how does that compare, that experience compares, say, to online shopping?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because that's what we were talking about in the first half of the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What are the virtues of mall shopping versus e-commerce?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, I think the thing about the mall is that it was really a multi-sensory experience, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You've got your food smells, you have your bath and bodywork smells, You can touch the sweaters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can try them on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, what I hear from people about online shopping is that it's become increasingly difficult to know what you're really going to get.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And especially for women, clothing sizing is really all over the map.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it can just be really frustrating.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And wouldn't it be more fun to get one thing that's exactly what you want and maybe also have that be a social event where you can meet people and do it with them?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: meet people and do it with friends.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But important to ask here, Alexandra, is how is the mall doing right now?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I presume badly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, it's really, it's kind of a bifurcated story because some malls are doing really great.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I went to Garden State Plaza in New Jersey a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday and it was packed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I saw a lot of families like multi-generational shopping.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, there were a lot of people carrying like huge bags from the sporting goods stores, huge bags from the Lego stores.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I was there to report a story about teenagers in the mall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I walked around the food court and kind of went up to groups of teenagers that I saw eating.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Chick-fil-A was very popular.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What did they have to say about the mall?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What did the teens think of the mall in 2023?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They love the mall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Huh.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's great to hear.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But many other malls are doing badly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After more than 50 years, Eastland Mall will shut its doors for good Saturday.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Once a crown jewel for retail shopping, tonight the Westfield San Francisco Center is pulling the plug on its famed downtown mall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was once one of the largest malls in the region and one of the most profitable in the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But that time has come and gone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's basically like post-2007 recession, malls ran into a real economic headwind for a variety of reasons.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And malls have been closing like every year since then.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The pandemic accelerated some of those patterns.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But basically, like, there has been a mass mall die-off, and there are a variety of different estimates about how many malls are going to die off over the next five to seven years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are the malls that are succeeding in 2023 doing anything different from the malls that we might remember from our childhoods?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, there's definitely an echelon of malls that is succeeding by doing the same thing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Somebody I talked to was talking about King of Prussia Mall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A Philadelphia queen from down the main line.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: King of Prussia Mall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It has, you know, Nordstrom and other high-end department stores.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It has Williams-Sonoma.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It has a really great food court.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's just like the shiniest, sparkliest, most deluxe version of the classic mall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: However, there are a lot of malls that have lost their department store anchors because a lot of department store companies have filed for bankruptcy, Sears, JCPenney, et cetera.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so malls that are still successful that have a failed anchor are the ones that have quickly found something else to go into that location.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think the things I'm seeing the most are either food businesses or entertainment outlets, and particularly kind of active family entertainment like trampoline parks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A new attraction will soon be opening up at the Holyoke Mall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The new Altitude Trampoline Park is waiting to open their doors to the public.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mini golf.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they have a glow golf here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we're gonna dive in, check it out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We were just walking around the mall and we found this place.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Fancy gyms with climbing walls.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This was an underutilized space at Mall of America.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it was nothing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a great location for climb zone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know things that you can have your kid birthday party at things that you can go to in the winter to blow off steam
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then the other thing is kind of a hyper version of the classic food court which people like to call a food call or a food marketplace where it more local vendors that have a small outlet there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There might be a market where they sell prepared foods.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's more gourmet because people's tastes have really gone upscale.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it makes food into part of the whole entertainment ethos.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so that's like the positive side of this story.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But what about the negative side?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're talking about, it sounds like hundreds, if not thousands of malls across the United States dying off.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What happens to all that retail space?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What happens to all those stores?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What happens to all those companies?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I mean, it's a really sad story.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if you live in a town where there's a dead mall, I feel like it's one of those things you don't realize quite how big the mall is until it becomes this void.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For now, the building will remain standing, a reminder of the memories many share.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, one of the messages I've been trying to get across with my book is that these dead malls can be tremendous opportunities.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're talking a lot about how a lot of cities and suburbs need new housing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, the parking lot of the mall is a perfect place to build new housing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A lot of people will say to me, can't we just turn malls into apartments?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I'm like, well, not really.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, the thing that's good about mall architecture is wide open spaces without barriers.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, nicer malls actually do have daylight because they will have a glass roof or an atrium, but they certainly don't have individual windows and they don't have the kind of plumbing hookups that you need for all the kitchens and bathrooms for apartments.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I really think the wave of the future is gonna be building new purpose-built housing on the parking lots and then hopefully making the mall into the main street for those new neighborhoods.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The malls would be more successful if they had more of a built-in audience and hundreds or thousands of people like living around your mall is the kind of built-in audience that you need for a supermarket and a liquor store and a dry cleaner and all these other services.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, so you're saying the mall could once again become a mall if you build housing around it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yep.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that actually brings me to a question I wanted to ask you, which is, is anyone out there bold enough to be building new malls?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is happening in Toronto, sort of in the city.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They have just built a new mall called The Well, and it's actually this really interesting hybrid of a mall and a galleria and a shopping street.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the project that's underway here is called The Well, and once it's complete, it's going to be over three million square feet in size.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And basically, it's going to be like a community with residential areas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's going to be offices and retail spaces.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So let's go have a look.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It has a glass roof over three stories of retail with a whole marketplace and food hall at the bottom.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the ends of that covered space are open, sort of open to the elements.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's not all sealed in like a traditional mall, but it does have a roof and it will kind of block the wind and be a warmer environment in winter.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the other important thing about it is it's built, let's say, in an urban environment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: and they have built six residential buildings and one office tower over it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's the kind of like built-in shopper that I was talking about being needed to revive some malls.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they have, you know, this huge audience living literally upstairs from the mall.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I wonder, you know, in 2023, the year of our Lord, where so many people don't want to leave the house anymore, They want to do everything online.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does it feel like the mall is actually at risk?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I really believe that, you know, whatever the technology is, like however we can shop now, you know, people are people and people need to be with people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that is the kind of activity that the design of the mall has always supported.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is a very sociable place.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's wonderful.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You meet good people here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you meet bad boys.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I understand that, you know, people are busier.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's more convenient to buy certain things online.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I don't think ultimately that, like, that's the thing that's going to save them all.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think the thing that is going to save them all is people's desire to have a place to go, to have a place to eat with other people, to meet up with friends, etc., etc.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I just don't really see that as changing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, there's all this reporting now about teenagers being depressed, people being lonelier than ever.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And one of the things I think we need to do as a society to combat that is make more places where people can get together and not have them all be hideously expensive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that is a niche that the mall has always filled and can continue to fill into the future.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Alexandra Lang loves them all.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Read all about it in her book, Meet Me by the Fountain, an inside history of them all.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Amna Alsadi edited our show today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Patrick Boyd mixed it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Laura Bullard fact-checked us.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And John Ahrens produced.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: John loves them all, even though there aren't any in Vermont where he lives.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: John's time with us at Today Explained has come to an end, but if history is any indication, he'll be back for now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We'll miss you, John.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Happy Giving Tuesday, everybody.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The End
