On spaces with $\sigma$-closed-discrete dense sets

The main purpose of this paper is to study \emph{$e$-separable spaces}, originally introduced by Kurepa as $K_0'$ spaces; we call a space $X$ $e$-separable iff $X$ has a dense set which is the union of countably many closed discrete sets. We primarily focus on the behaviour of $e$-separable spaces under products and the cardinal invariants that are naturally related to $e$-separable spaces. Our main results show that the statement "there is a product of at most $\mathfrak c$ many $e$-separable spaces that fails to be $e$-separable'" is equiconsistent with the existence of a weakly compact cardinal.