The new year began with an ominous forecast: 12,000 U.S. retail stores are expected to close in 2018, a 33-percent increase from 2017. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega examine what this means for jobs, shopping, and the proverbial Main Street full of mom-and-pop stores. They manage to agree that online advertising has never been more annoying and pervasive, and debate whether AI will improve things anytime soon. Listener questions include hyper-personalization and differences between Japanese and American entrepreneurs.

Show notes

12,000 retail stores predicted to close in 2018 (00:57)

A tsunami of store closings is about to hit the US — and it's expected to eclipse the retail carnage of 2017 (Business Insider)

Fellow pour-over kettle

(Image credit: Fellow)

Why Kurt Vonnegut used a typewriter (Descriptedlines)

Intrusive, online advertising (16:58)

The Attention Deficit (The Baffler), a review of The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu

How privacy will change internet advertising in 2018 (Boomtown)

Adblock Plus: "Surf the web without annoying ads!"

What is post-purchase marketing? (Iconic Digital)

Predictions for 2018 (25:03)

Panera Bread

(Image credit: Mike Mozart Flickr/Creative Commons)

Pantera, the band

(Image credit: Pantera/Facebook)

Pantera, an Italian sports car

(Image credit: Car Photography Tutorials)

Listener questions (33:02)

YouTube as an example of successful hyper-personalization as discussed in Episode 5 (33:25)

Testing Russian Military MRE (YouTube)

How are entrepreneurs in Japan different from entrepreneurs in the U.S.? (38:20)

We want to hear from you

Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and questions for future episodes:

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT

For more from All Turtles, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our newsletter on our website.

Thanks for listening