Episode 208: Saving Mainstreet with Gary Rivlin

In this episode, Gary Rivlin joins Bradley to discuss small business ownership; a scrappy, can-do attitude; how little reserves small business owners actually have; and the differences between different areas of the US in policy, economics, and social norms. They agreed that to operate a small business is to always feel the future is precarious. This was true long before the pandemic, but the COVID-19 lockdown brought it home like never before as the crisis shuttered countless restaurants, mom-and-pop storefronts, and local enterprises. 

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Gary Rivlin spent nearly two years in the heart of America, closely tracking a small group of business owners and their employees, documenting their struggles and strategies to survive. His incisive new book, SAVING MAIN STREET: Small Business in the Time of COVID-19 (Harper Business; October 18), is a probing, empathetic portrait of a beleaguered, once-fundamental segment of American life and how its loss reflects and reshapes timeworn notions of identity and community. 

SAVING MAIN STREET takes readers beyond the headlines and soundbites of daily business reports to supply an unfiltered portrait of a cherished, if vanishing, way of American life.

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