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SYSK Selects: How the U.S. Postal Service Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, friends and family, it's me Josh, your pal, your buddy,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: avenging angel, all that jazz. For this week's s Y
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: s K Selects. I've chosen How the US Postal Service
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Works because, as you may know, the postal services under
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: threat of being closed and going under yet again, and
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: we don't want that. For some reason, we can't quite
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: put our finger on. So I hope you'll enjoy this
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: episode and it rouses you to do something like save
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the post Office. Welcome to Stuff. You should know, a
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. Uh, there's Charles w Chuck Bryant.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I'm Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now, the Warrant Peace Report,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: warr in peace dot Org, etcetera. I'm Stevenski. How you
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: doing good. Jerry just said let's do this old school
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: right before she recorded, and I have no idea what
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: she meant. Speck in like, yeah, you know she's back.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I thought she meant, let's make it crappy in five
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: minutes long, and we need like little empty tin cans
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: to speak and dude, make it sound right. How you doing, Jerry?
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: That's great. Jerry gave us the thumbs up, I know
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: in our new murder room. Um, Jerry is within our
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: eyesight again after a long layoff where she was not
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: within our range of viewing. It's kind of weird because
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: now I'm looking at you, but I can clearly see
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: my peripheral vision that she says on Facebook. She's waving,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: she's brusting her teeth, she's reranging the severed human heads
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: that are in jars all around the place. That's creepy. Um.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: You want to talk post office man, you want to
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: give the disclaimer that we're only talking about the post
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: office in the US of A. Think he just did. Okay, Um,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: we don't know how it works in your country. No,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: And actually it's probably not nearly as interesting as what's
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: going on with the US Postal Service, the USPS. Yeah,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: because I don't know if you know this or not chucked,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: but the U s PS is in a lot of
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: trouble there. Yeah, there's solvency that the amount of money
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: that they have to keep the lights on and keep
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: everything going is expected to run out in October of
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen if they don't do something. Yeah, that's
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: this year. Yeah, I think they lost sixteen billion dollars
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: last year, yes, and five billion the year before. So
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: that's a three times as much money in a year.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: That's bad news. Here's the caveat to that sixteen billion
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: dollar loss, though, eleven billion of that was in payments
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: to uh, the future benefits of postal workers that have
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: not yet retired. But well, and the posts serve. The
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Postal Service is the only federal agency of any sort
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: that is required to prepay its employees benefits for the future.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, a lamed accession of Congress said,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: you know what, you guys need to make sure that
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: your workers are taken care of. So you guys have
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: to start pre paying um and over the next ten years.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: And they have been, and they've been bleeding money. I mean,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: like a sixteen billion dollar loss, but eleven billion of
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: it was to these future payments. I guess that would
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: make sense. Then then if you took out that eleven
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: they would just be about the same loss as before,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: a mere five billion a year, right, But and that's
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of money to lose, it is, but um
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: they're figuring out ways to make up for that extra loss,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: and one of the big ones it's on the table
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: now is cutting out Saturday delivery. They figured they can
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: recoup two billion dollars a year by doing that, so
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: then they're down to three. The thing is is the
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: post the post office. It's a part of the executive branch. Man,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: it's all over the place. It's a part of the
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: executive branch. It's a part of the federal government. But
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: it gets zero dollars in tax revenue. And it's also
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: a thrill kill cult, right exactly. That's the horrible secret
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: of the US. Right. Um. So they get no money
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: besides what they can make off of their own revenue corporation. Right. Um,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So they get no but they get but they're also
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: under the purview of the federal the federal government. It's
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: a weird, weird thing, and they can't act without asking Congress.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: And Congress hasn't exactly been forthcoming lately. They haven't approved
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: the Saturday thinget have they Congress. Here's the thing they've
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: been trying to get Congress throughpprove that forever. The Senate
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: passed a bill that said, after two years, we'll let
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: you cut out Saturday service, will give you eleven billion
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: dollars in over payments. That you guys made towards the
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: retirement stuff, all this stuff back that went to the House,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: and the House didn't do anything with it. Right, So
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: you know the fiscal cliff, Well, the the US Congress
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: passed the stop gap measure, basically a federal budget that says,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: within this period, we're still able to operate, right, And
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: the USPS says, ha ha, you didn't include our mandate
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: from nineteen one that we have to carry out Saturday
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: service in that stop gap. So technically, under current federal law,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: we don't have to carry out Saturday service. And they're
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: arguing it legally, so they're just saying that's the loophold
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: are going to use to shut down Saturday service. Sack medicines,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: just packages. They're going to deliver packages on Saturday. And
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: here's a really good reason. Express mail. They're revenues from
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: packages of increased over the last ten years, whereas first
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: class mail, you know, letters have gone down, I believe.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: So they're making all almost all of their money because
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: it's only forty cents to mail a letter from Florida
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: to Hawaii. Um. But they make, however much shipping in
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: the shipping game, which is where they make all their money,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: which is ironically the one place they don't have a
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: monopoly as far as the mail goes. I'm glad to
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: see medicine mail order medicine on that list to express
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: mail packages in medicine, because at first I was like,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: who cares, I don't need you don't yet. I don't
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: need my mail on a Saturday, right, but you need
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: your medicine on a Saturday, or else you go blind.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: That's why they included that as a you know something,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: they would still deliver, right and post offices that are
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: already open on Saturdays will still be open on Saturdays.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: So if you want to go to your PO box,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: maybe there'll be some mail, maybe there won't be who knows,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: I bet you've had a PO box. I've been thinking
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: about this, haven't you have? You know, you just struck
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: me as a kind of person that would have had
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: a PO box at one point. You know, that's where
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: I get all my guns in the mail. So, UM,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty worked up about this, as you can see. Um,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting. And who would have thought that
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: the postal service would ever be interesting? Uh? Sure, I
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: think parts of this are very interesting. Um, and we
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: would just want to go ahead and say hello to
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: all of our postal carriers out there that um listen
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: to our show who who wont us over during the
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Bush Era? Because we've got an emails from you guys
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: and gals. Yeah, including one of our favorite people out
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: there is a postal worker, very nostrim. Oh yeah, this
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: one should really be a tribute to Van Nostris. I
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: didn't he's a carrier. I'm he's always been kind of
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: cryptic about what he does. But I'm under the distinct
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: impression that he's employed by the Postal Service. A right,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Bangalore's Van Nostrian. Yeah, this is for you. Um, But okay,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: so let's talk about this. Let's talk about the Postal
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: service man. I'm all jazzed about the USPS. Dude, glad
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: you are. Um. So, for a little while, even after
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the advent of electronic mail, the postal services, the amount
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: of mail they were delivering was still increasing. As of
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: two thousand seven, it was on an upward trajectory. Sorry,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: two thousand six, right, two hundred and thirteen billion, one
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty seven million pieces of mail that year. Yeah,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: it's down to one sixty seven now and then Uh,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: their when was this written? Do you know? I think
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: two thousand seven eight. Okay, so then they had seven
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand employees. Now they have about five hundred and
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: eighty thousand. So they've been in and trim the budget
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: mode I think for the past few years. Well, and
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: the reason why. In two thousand and six they also
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: made seventy two point eight billion dollars. I mean those
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: stamps they add up, you know. Um, in two thousand
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: and eleven they made sixty six billion. Wow. Not bad. Yeah,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: but they're still losing a lot of money. I mean
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: that's what seven billion dollars in difference in just five years. Yeah,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: it's not good. It's not good. Um So, where the
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: where'd all this come from? Chuck? It came from back
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: yonder day. You know. People have always need to communicate,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: obviously from long distances. And uh in sixteen thirty nine, Um,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: they you know, colonists here in the in the New
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: I guess they weren't United States yet, but in the
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: New World needed to get word back to England occasionally
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: and say things like hey, quit bugging us, or hey,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: sind it's more t and crumpets and um. So the
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: first official postal service was established in sixteen thirty nine. UM.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Richard Fairbank's tavern in Boston was the official mail drop
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: for overseas there in Massachusetts, and that was the place
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: to go if you wanted to mail something. Yeah, and
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I couldn't find what happened or where it went on
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: the other side of the Atlantic. Probably I would imagine
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: then you just went to that pub and said, hey,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: is there any mail? And they said no, and you
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: turn around and traveled the five miles back to your village.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: So that was step one. Step two was about uh forty.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: So nine years later three William penn established very famous
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: person obviously um, the first official post office in penn Sylvania.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: He give his name after him. That's right, and uh,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: I love this side note. Here in the South, private
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: messages were just sent between plantations, so they would probably
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: just give it to a slave and say carry this
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: over to that guy. Uh. And then flash forward a
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: little bit more. Um, the British Crown gave to a
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: man named Thomas Neil a twenty one year grant for
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: the postal service in the United States, and he paid
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: UM like seven seven shillings a year. So that's nothing, right,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: he still died in debt with the monopoly. So the
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: postal service has always been kind of tricky to call
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: money from. Interesting. So that continued until seventeen seventy four,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: and a lot of big stuff was happening around that time, like, Hey,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: we don't like you anymore in England controlling us over
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: here and taxing us. So we're gonna start and establish
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: our own constitutional post office for for any kind of
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: mail going from anywhere, basically intercolonial mail. Yeah. Yeah, it
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: was just was very cutting edge at that time, I'm sure.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: And actually, um, you know that when the British were
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: carrying out the postal service on behalf of the colonies.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: In the colonies, um, there was a guy named Benjamin
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Franklin who was appointed the postmaster of Philadelphia and he
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: actually killed it as postmaster, of course he did. He
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: like totally improved the road. He said, like, we're gonna
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: start working like twenty four hours a day. We're gonna
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: have like lots of shifts, we're going to put up
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: milestones like the The postal service helped improve the connectedness
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: of the colonies thanks to him. So when the Continental
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Congress said, hey, we want our own Postal Service. Ben
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Franklin became the first Postmaster General, and of course he
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: ran it like a tight ship. And he's one of
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: those dudes. I get a feeling if we could like
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: resurrect him and bring him out today, he could fix
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: what's going on in this country. Yeah, and he'd say
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: something pithy and ask for a glass of sherry exactly. Um.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: So this is to me when it gets super interesting. Uh,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: was in the nineteenth century when westward expansion happened California
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: gold Rush. All of a sudden, we needed to get
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: stuff from the East coast to San Francisco, let's say,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: so as quick as possible, right, what's crazy? As quick
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: as possible was to go down New York around Florida, yes,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: like a steamship, uh, through the Caribbean and then across
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: like Panama and then up on the Pacific side to California.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: That was the fastest way to get mail for a while. Yeah.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: And how long three to four weeks to send a
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: letter from the East coast to the West coast. And
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: that's you know, the best case scenario, right, And that's
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: how that's what that's how the US the East coast
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: um communicated with the West Coast for a while. Yeah,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: until some stagecoach routes. Routes were um, we're established. There
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: was a southern route and there was a central route,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: and the Southern route you could supposedly use a year
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: round because it's lovely down here. But then the Central
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: route it was faster, but they said you can't use
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: that year round their storms. Yeah, and it also killed me. Man.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: The way they used to name companies back then was
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: so like it made perfect sense. You basically just said
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: what you did. Like one the Pacific Mail Steamship Company
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: said we're going to carry your mail to the Pacific
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: by steamship, and then the Overland Mail Company like, well,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: we're gonna do it over land, so that's what we're
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: gonna call our company. So they got the contract the
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Overland Mail Company. Um, along the Southern route. Took about
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: twenty five days, and then my favorite, one of my
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: favorite parts of American history was born, the Pony Express. Yeah,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: and it's just so amazing, like the the idea that
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: they had to do this. It was a different company
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: that was competing. They wanted to get that contract away
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: from the Overlink Company, right the CEOC and p P.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: And they said, you know what, we know the central
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: route shorter. We're gonna prove that we can use a
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: year round and we're gonna set up something that it's
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: just gonna blow this twenty five day thing out of
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: the water. And they set up the Pony Express and
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: they had stations what every ten twenty miles, and a
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: rider would ride from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento or
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: be part of a line of rides. Well, yeah, that's
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: the key. They go about a hundred miles and then
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: they change horses every like ten or fifteen miles. Yes,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: so the same rider would change horses because they rode.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: They average ten miles an hour, which doesn't sound fast,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: but you got a factor in like the Sierra Nevadas
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: where they're just crawling up these mountains. So these dudes
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: were riding hard and on flat ground. If they're averaging
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: ten miles an hour, right, and they're going twenty four
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: hours a day, uh, they're going two thousand miles ten
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: miles an hour, that's what twenty hours? Yeah, that's no,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: that's two hundred hours. So what is that That's less
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: than ten days. So that's that cuts that over link
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: company's rate by Yeah, there was always one set of
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: writers going east, one set going west. Yeah. I think
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: when you when you were relieved by another rider, you'd
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: hang out at that station and wait for the other
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: for somebody to come the other way and then relieve them. Yeah.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: They were paid really well at the time five bucks
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: a week, which at the time unskilled labors made about
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: a dollar a week. So um, and did you read
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the first ad they ever put in? Wanted young, skinny,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: wiry fellows not over eighteen, must be expert writers willing
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: to risk death daily. Orphans preferred, And that's maybe legend,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: but supposedly that's what it says. But apparently they were young, little,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: light lithe, skinny kids because you know, you didn't want
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: some big dude like me up on a horse. The
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: horse would be like, I don't want to ride anymore.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: So they were like these young boys, like I think
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: the youngest one is like fourteen. And supposedly Buffalo Bill
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Cody was a rider, although people have disputed that. Now.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, well he's he's the stuff of a legend. Well,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: he's by far and away the most famous famous Pony
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Express rider, if in fact he did. But anyway, so
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: so think about the amount of infrastructure built up along
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: this central route to have a station every ten or
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: twenty miles. You've got all these employees going. And they
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: proved it. They proved that the central route could be
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: used year round, and so they got the contract. Then
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: right now, the Overland Company got the contract to use it,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: to use that same route that was already established. And
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: the Pony Express was like, you have to be kidding me.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: And so the the U. S. Government said no, no,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: you guys do half and then let the let the
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Overland Company do the other half. Yeah, And they were
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: mad for about a year and a half and really angry.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: And then the telegraph line was completed. Now everyone's like, oh, well,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: I guess I guess we're all out of business now. Yeah.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: That was it. Pony Express the soul the Wells Fargo
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: and basically shut down. Yeah. I think American Express ended
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: up branching out of Wells Fargo to like these are
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: old old companies, like these modern banks and credit card companies.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Is interesting how far they go back. But think about
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: that man. Even as far back as the mid nineteenth century,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: new technology was putting mail delivery out to pasture, and
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: then mail delivery would evolve and like figure out how
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: to come back. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Foreshadowing. So this
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: is a big jump forward to the mid nineteen sixties. Yeah,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: a lot happened in between. Then it didn't. Actually, we
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: started to go move further and further out into the suburbs.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: There was a huge population boom in the in the
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: post war era, and businesses started to realize the value
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: of direct mailing. And all these factors put together meant
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: that the postal Service was totally overwhelmed. Yeah, completely, because
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: it became such a big deal. Everyone was writing letters
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: and they were using the same old hand um, I
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: guess hand delivery methods, sorting methods, that's what it was.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: They weren't automated at all, and they needed to be.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: And so there was a postal reform that that was undertaken. Yeah,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: and this was in nineteen seventy one the Post Office Department.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: And I didn't even know this. It was shortly after
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: I was born. We weren't the United States Postal Service
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: until nine that was when we officially became the USPS. UH,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: it became an independent establishment. Um was no longer a
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: part of the cabinet of the federal government, but was
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: part of the executive branch and got the monopoly basically
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: to deliver mail, even though it was supposedly just a company,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: and they and they re up the mandate from I
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: think Sevo that said you the postal Service is one
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: of the most essential services of the federal government. No
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: person has cut off in this country. None shall not
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: get delivered exactly. Everyone's going to have a mailbox, and
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: everyone's going to get mail to that mailbox every day
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: because we need to help keep intellectual freedom um going
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: and and and ideas in business and commerce going all
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the time. And the Postal Services, this federal agency that
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: carries that out, and that I'm sure that put a
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: financial burden on them when people started building in these
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: especially rich people, when they started building in these remote areas,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: because then all of a sudden, you had to add
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: that to your route. Well, there's if it's sixty miles
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: up a mountain and it's the only house there's there's
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: a guy who services the Grand Canyon. There's a group
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: of Indians that live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: and he has a donkey train that goes down there
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: every day with the mail. Really yeah, I mean it's
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: part of it's a federal mandate. You have to be
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: able to get mail. Everyone has a mailbox. He's like,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: don't you guys you smoke signals? Come on, they do.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: In fact, that actually wrote an article on spoke singles. Yeah. Yeah,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say we should podcasts on it, but
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: it's it's like super basic, is it really? It would
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: be like a five minute podcast. Well, we'll have to
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: figure out some other way to use it. Agreed, because
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: that's interesting. Um, so do we cover going postal now?
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: It was sort of just thrown in the middle of
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: this army. Yeah, it really was. It was talking about
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: how packages are delivered, and all of a sudden, it says,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: and then people started killing each other in nine six yeah,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: which is actually, Um, the post Office has the dubious
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: distinction of kicking off the workplace shooting trend in the
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: United States. Was that the first one as far as
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: I could tell, Alright, So Edmund Oklahoma, Patrick Henry A.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Cheryl killed fourteen co workers. Um. And another one happened,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: including a uh supervisor getting killed with a samurai sword. UM.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: November nineteen Thomas H. McIlvaine shot and killed four co workers,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: wounded five others, then shot himself and then nine and
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: then in two thousand three two more incidences of postal
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: workers killing fellow postal workers. It was like just between
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: eighties six and nineties seven, forty people died at postal
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: post offices from postal rampage and gave birth to the
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: term going postal, which is used as a vernacular for
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: like just losing it basically, um. And if you're interested
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: in that at all, there's a really good documentary I
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: think it's on Netflix streaming right now called um Murdered
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: by Proxy, and it's all about the postal shootings, like
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: where they came from. There's a lot of scrutiny at
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: like the of the management techniques of people at post offices,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: and there's got to be something to it. I mean,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, if you watch that's like it was like
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: how many other industries had that many office shootings? You know, retail, actually,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: you're the homicide rate is three times higher in retail
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: than it is at the post office. You don't say
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: go in retail, that just means you're going shopping. Well,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: it's like drinking the kool aid. They really drank flavor
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: aid and it's right kool aids some one with that distinction.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, alright, so that was going. Yeah, I mean
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: we had to mention it, but I don't want to
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: dwell on it. But it was weird in this article
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: the way it went right in the middle of this
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: came up out of nowhere. Um zip codes, this is
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: kind of cool. Um zip codes were introduced in nineteen
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: sixty three and then officially put in place in mandatory
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: in seven because just so much mail going on you
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: had to categorize it more specifically, right, that was part
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: of that, the post office being swamped. This was the
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: first step toward automation. Was like a standardized code. Well
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: they did have other ones, but it was like one
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: was New York City or something like that. You know.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: So ZIP this is just a nice little cocktail party
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: factoid stands for zone improvement plan. I never knew that
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: until I read this. Did you know that I had before?
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: But I had forgotten. Okay, so it's his own improvement
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: plan and it's uh here in the United States at least,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: it's a five digit number represents you know, a location
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: obviously where you're trying to send something and it now
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: they have the ZIP code plus four in some areas
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: of like I guess major urban areas have a little
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: more specificity, right, they like deliver it to your like
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: they put it on your stomach if you plus four.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: I think certain buildings even will have their own plus
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: four if it's a big enough building, or if you
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: get a lot of mail as a person, is that
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: what you're after is a plus four for your well,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: it says that some high volume mail receivers get it.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, if it was cool mail, I'd
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: love to get the mail. UM. So the first digit
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: there represents the state here in Georgia, that's a three. UM.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: It increases as you move west, and there are some
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: states that share each digit. Yeah, like two. Yeah, it's
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: taken up by a lot of states. There's the District
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: of Columbia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Man all two's. I would be mad if I lived
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: in one of those states. So then you got the
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: second third digits. Those are regions within the state. UM.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: The first three of those create what's called the SCF code,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the sectional center, facility, and UM. Then the fourth and
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: fifth digits are even more specific. Basically, it just hones
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: down as you go left or right until you've got
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Josh Clark's house right, like this state, this section facility,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: this UM post office, yeah, this neighborhood yeah, and then
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: this maybe this building, this high volume mail receiver named
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Josh Clark. That's right. Um, So you've got the zip
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: code that allowed automation. And a little known fact is
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: the US Postal Service doesn't just handle a ton of
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: the US as mail. It handles of all of the
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: mail in the world. Really yeah wow, So before the
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: zip code, this was really difficult. It also went from
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: if you're mailing something from New York to San Francisco,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: it went through every distribution facility in the country in
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: between New York and San Francisco. Um before it got there.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Really yes, Now zip codes, Well, let's talk about how
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: what a letter does, and this is all thanks to
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: zip codes. So I write a little love letter, I'm
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: gonna mail it to Emily, which is weird because we
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: live together. Just be a romantic. That's actually a great
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: example though, because you can mail something from your mailbox
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: to be delivered back to you. I reckon, I've never
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: done it. That's a that's a the poor man's trademark
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: I've heard about that is to mail something to yourself
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: into this. I think it depends on the judge. Yeah. Probably. Okay,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: So you put it in your mailbox. Postal carriers gonna
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: pick it up. They're gonna take it to the post office. Um,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: they're gonna put it on a truck and then take
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: that from the post office to a processing plant where
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: we have our long awaited machines doing some sorting, shape
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: and size. Yeah. Well, first they sort everything out and
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: make sure everything's facing the right way up right. Um.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: And then the the they packages, well, packages are put
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: on one one belt and then letters are put in another.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: And there the letters say, let's just stick with the
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: letter that you wrote. Okay. Uh it's it goes into
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a slot so it's facing upwards and upright. Yeah if
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: if front words and upright. And then they put a
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: little barcode on the back of the letter and uh
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I think ultra violet ink. Yeah. Well, first thing it
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: does is it gets a postmark and cancelation line saying basically,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: you can't use the stamp again. Yeah. Don't even try it.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Don't be cheap. We've seen the wide out tricks. We've
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: seen doctoring up a stamp, which is probably a federal offense.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: It probably is UM. And then so after that the
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: barcodes in it on the back of the piece of mail.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: And then there's an optical scanner that reads the address,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. And if you if they're really
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: really really accurate to UM, but if your handwriting is terrible,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: they have a new system now where the this UM
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: conveyor belt takes a picture of it, send emails a
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: picture to a human being at a computer who reads
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: it what I think it is, types it in and
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: then it's so it stays on the line. It doesn't
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: have to come out any longer. It's pretty much technology. Yeah. UM.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: And then so based on this UM this address, including
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: the ZIP code, it prints a barcode at the bottom.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: If you look at a letter, any letter you get
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: has a little barcode on it. And so that's what's red.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: That's right that the thing on the back is invisible.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I think right, it's fluorescent. That's just showing off. We
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: have invisible link. Other processing machines then read those barcodes
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: and then sort them in their little bins according to
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: zip code. And it's just basically placing everything and what
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: will eventually be a trade that will be delivered back
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: to a post office or a sorting facility or does
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: it go straight to a post office? UM, it goes
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: to another processing plant, right, So imagine each processing plant
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: regional I guess, has a bunch of mail coming in
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: on trucks. Then it sorts and then sends out and
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: then based on its zip code that it serves UM,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: it gets a bunch of flats from other UM distribution
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: facilities that's right with that are already according to the
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: zip code. So let's say it's getting a flat of
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: mail by zip code. It then also sorts through those
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: that's right, and it actually sorts them into an individual
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: carriers route in order, and that's what's delivered to the
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: post office. So it arrives at the post office ready
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: to go on the truck. Yes, okay, And that doesn't
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: mean that the postal worker doesn't have much to do.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: They also still have like circulars, magazines, bulk mail. They
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: have to go through and put it for every address,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: all that crapped it and where all that my recycling
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: ben basically yeah, although the coupons. I'll remember our junk
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: mail episode from years and years back, and we've got
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: so much from people who are like, no, no, no,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: you can't get rid of junk mail, right, that's the
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: only thing keeping us in business. So if you're going
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: to address a letter, there are a few guidelines. You know.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: You gotta put your address legibly on the front. You
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: gotta put your little return address in the upper left corner. Yeah,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: on the front, don't put it on the back, upper
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: left corner there. And don't use periods in commas, like
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: if you write p O box it's not p period
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: oh period, Although that doesn't matter. Apparently it allows for
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: greater efficiency in reading your letter, maybe because I always
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: put like Atlanta comma g A period. I do too,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: and they still get there. But don't you wonder if
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: they get there like earlier? I don't know. Maybe, so
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: uh it is um, Supposedly you need to be able
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: to read the address at arms length, so don't write tiny,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: and uh, don't write so big that they can't do
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: other things to the envelope like scan and stamp and
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: things like that. Um. And then you know, you gotta
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: put your return address because if something happens, you want
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: it to come back to you. Although I don't do
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: that much anymore, A lot of times I'll just put
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: like Atlanta, Georgia. Really, you don't put your return address
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: on there. No, but I rarely mail things, and a
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: lot of times when I do, it's for work, So
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: I'll just put, you know, Atlanta, Georgia, houstaff works or something.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: And it's not the kind of thing that if it
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: doesn't come back to me, I would care. I got
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: I've had some precious thing. I would put a Richard address.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: I have a feeling that you're going to get some
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: email from postal carriers that are like I hate people
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: like you, because whether you care if it comes back
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: to you or not, I'm sure they have to get
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: it back to you. Uh. There's a lot of type
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: of delivery surfaces we surfaces services. We won't go over here,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: but I did want to say that media mail is
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: a great little ah trick, not a trick, but a
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: great tool if you're mailing things like books and or
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: DVDs because it's super cheap, but it takes a while.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: But that's part of that mandate from that. They want
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: to keep the intellectual juice of America flowing through the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Postal Service, so things like that creative stuff for books
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: or correspondence, like and I think that's how if you've
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: ever ordered a book on Amazon for like two cents,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: you're like, oh, how can they sell a book for
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: two cents, It's because they charge you like four for shipping,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: and they probably pay like eight cents to mail it
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: with media mail. That's the greatest scam of the century.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Well not really, I mean they're making their money via
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: shipping instead of the book itself. But publishers don't like it,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: of course, because they want to sell their books new
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: and not for two cents on Amazon. So. Um, I
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: think we said that the Postal Service has a monopoly
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: on delivering mail but not on delivering packages, right, Um,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: so because they're kind of in competitive business against like
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: UPS and FedEx and d h L and all those guys. Um,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: those guys have gone ahead and in and invested in
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: infrastructure of say like air delivery, air transportation of mail,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: and the U. The Postal Service has tried that before,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: like they tried a guided missile in ninety three, which
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: they shot full of mail from a submarine to a
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: naval station in Florida, but it was just too expensive.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: So the Postal Service said, hey, Ups, Hey FedEx, you
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: guys have a bunch of planes. Can we start putting
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: our mail on it? And they said sure for a
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: few billion dollars a year. And the Postal Service said great.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: But at the same time they kind of, um, they
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: stepped forward into the twenty first century by doing so.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: And the Postal Service, having access to everyone's mailbox, is
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: often tapped by UPS and FedEx deliver what's called in
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: the business the last mile. Yeah. So a lot of times,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: especially if you're a rural person, if you get something
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: from Amazon, it's it was shipped by UPS, but eventually
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: it made its way into your postal carriers route and
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: being delivered by the Postal Service. Yeah, there's way more
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: mixing of package mailing than you would think. Um, it's
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: like a swinger party or something pretty much. Uh. And
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: part of that deal in two thousand one with FedEx was, Hey,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: FedEx said, can we put our boxes at your post offices?
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: And they said sure for six million dollars And they said,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: you know, can we hit your ride on your plane.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: They said, sure, for six point three billions over seven years.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: But it's you know, seems like a good agreement. And
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: they did the same with ups and uh we scratch
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: our back, you scratch yours, we scratch your back, we'll
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: scratch yours. That works. Yeah, why didn't everybody scratch them back?
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Okay, um, because it's hard to reach.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Uh So, if you realize that the postal service needs
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: a few billion extra dollars, you say, why are you
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: just up the postal rates? Yeah, well, the federal government
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: keeps its thumb on that they want to make sure
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: that anybody who needs to mail a letter can do
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: so without great expense. Yeah, it's a big deal to
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: change the postal rate. Like it is, much more than
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: you would think, because a layman like me would just
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: be like, yeah, I just add a few cents. Who cares. Yeah,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: it's the problem just printing those forever stance genius idea.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: You don't have to go back and reprint a bunch
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: with the amount great idea or the one cent. Remember
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: in Fargo, Yeah, when the Wade got the one center
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: with the ducks. Yeah, and she was like everyone needs
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: the once sent whenever they raise the rates. Yeah, he's like, cool, Gee,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: I didn't think about that. Um so, but yes, there's
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: a very long, protracted, difficult process of raising the postal rates.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: It's not a very easy thing and it involves a
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: ton of bureaucracy. Should we get into that or just
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: leave it at that? It's up to you, man, I
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: think we should just leave it at that. Okay. So
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: if you are going to mail something from your house,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: you need your little mailbox, and I just installed mine
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: in what seemed like a sensible manner. I didn't realize
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: that there were actual rules. Um. In fact, you were
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: supposed to contact the post office before installing your mailbox,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: which I had no idea. UM, to make sure it's
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: like the correct placement and height and so like the
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: post office person or the mail career, I don't have
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: to get out of the truck. Oh well they'll they'll
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: burn it down if it's not the specification. So you
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: want to contact the post office? I didn't, but I
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: guess I just lucked out because, um they say generally
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: in from the road surface to the inside floor of
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: the mailbox or point of entry, and then set back
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: six to eight inches from the front face of the
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: curb or road edge to the mailbox door. I guess
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: I just got lucky then, because I get my mail,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: you know, without any burning down over here now or
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: without a post office spots box, which we talked about.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: They've been around for a couple of hundred years. And
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: that's if you want to have a little key to
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: your little loan box in a post office and get
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: your mail there, you can certainly do that. It's handy
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: if you're starting out of business and you want to
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: make people think that you're not working out of your house. Um,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: you can get a post office and say, look, I
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: have a PO box, which means I'm working out of
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: my bedroom. It's like code, I think, are you getting
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: guns in the mail? Is that what people do? I'm
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: sure there's a lot of people who try to get
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: guns in the mail in the p O boxes. Yeah sure, okay.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Or if you um tend to move around a lot
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: in the same town and you don't want to worry
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: about changing your mail and forwarding mail, you could always
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: just get a PO box. Yeah. So those are some reasons. Um,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: you want to talk the future of the post office
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: if it's around after October two. What is the future
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: of the post Office. Well, there's a lot of stuff
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: coming down the pike. Um, there's the cancelation of Saturday
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: mail this August. They're really going hard after package delivery services.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Now what trying to oh with like the flat rates
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Just really like courting businesses to say, hey,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: consider us instead of ups or FedEx um and uh,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: especially with prescription medicines because we have an aging population
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: is going to do nothing but increase in size, so
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: you're gonna need more prescriptions through the mail. So hey,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: let's get into that. Yeah, and you can get stuff
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: like that certified and insured and uh, signature delivery approved
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. It's helpful. Part of the post
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: office is pledged that your letter carrier won't take your
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: medication before delivering it might hit you up for something, right. Um.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: But there's also a line of clothing coming out postal service.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Line of clothing coming out, I'm not kidding, called rain,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: heat or snow. And as we almost didn't mention this,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: so the Postal Services creed right, neither rain nor snow,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: nor sleep, sleep nor holland rain or sleep nor snow,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: nor neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: night stays these carriers from the swift completion of their
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: appointed rounds. And that's actually not the post Office's official model.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: They don't have one, but it's been linked to them.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: And it's actually an adaptation of something from Herodotus, the
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Greek historian, who was making a comment about how the Persians,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: even during their war and like five b c. They
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: were one of the first ones to establish a real
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: postal service, and even during war, the postal service didn't stop.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: They were still documents being delivered, and Herodotus was commenting
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: on that, and that's where that came from. It should
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: include like or loss of limb. It did originally, Like
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: that's an adaptation. It wasn't loss of limb, but it
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: was something like some sort of sicknesses befalling you. They
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: were putting the mail before themselves. The show must go on, right. Um.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: So there's a line of clothing called the rain or
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: heat or snow um and then um. They're also talking
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: about creating federal email addresses that you get at birth.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Just like you have a physical address, you would also
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: have an email address, but your email address is attached
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: to you rather than the physical location you live at.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: And if you say need to correspond with the I
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: R S Or Social Security Administration something like that, you
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: would send like this very secure email through this Postal
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Services portal. Everything else you could just use like you know,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Gmail or Yahoo or whatever for everyday stuff. But this
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: is like the big stuff, the really important stuff. And
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: then the postal service would also offer like a digital
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: lock box for um, the like like a will or
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: your medical records or something like that. Yeah, and listen,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: is every conspiracy uh person in the country now says
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: in a way, I want a federal email attached to
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: my name that I have to send things through. Yeah,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: well that's the number of the Beast. Obviously, I don't
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: know that I would want that either. And I'm not
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: a big conspiracy guy. Oh, it's not that you have
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: to send it through that. It's that if you send
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: it through that, if somebody hijacks that er reads it,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: you're going to be in a lot more trouble federally
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: speaking than they would be if like they read your Gmail.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Because didn't it illegal to to open like a federal
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: offense to get someone's exactly? And that's what this there's
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: this guy who runs a think tank for the Postal
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: Service who's who's like, it's not just about mailing documents,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: it's about protecting the connectedness of the United States and Americans,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: So how do we do that in a digital world?
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: He's thinking about this. So if you're even the least
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: bit interested by this episode that we just recorded, Um,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: there's an Esquire article called too I did, there's ae do.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: It's called do We Really Want to Live Without the
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Post Office? And it's by Jesse Lichtenstein, And um, it
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: is really good, man. It's a really good overview of
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: what does Jesse think, Uh, we need he or she
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: I think kind of leans toward we need it. And
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: the more you start to read about it, the more
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: this weird kind of civic affection for the post office developed.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: And you know where I'm like, yeah, we don't want
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: to get rid of the post office. You want the
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: post office? Who doesn't want the post office? It's kind
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: of it kind of develops. Yeah, I used to like,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe it was a simpler day, or maybe
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: the people stuck with their routes longer, But I remember
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: my postman growing up. It was the same guy for years,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: and we lived on We didn't live in a neighborhood.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: We lived on a street in the woods with like
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: six houses, and so you know, I would run out
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: and check the mail and wave at them, and we
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: would give him like gifts at Christmas and that's awesome.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: And now I have no idea who my postal curious?
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Which is my fault? I need to just go out there,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: I think you do. Yeah. And also the postal services
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: responsible for the largest food drive in the United States
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: every year. Yeah, you know that food drive where you
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: like you just put like canned food in your in
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: your mailbox, in your postal you can do that. Yeah,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: I've never heard of. It hasn't been very well publicized,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: but it's like at least around here, I guess. But um,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: it's a huge food drive or at the very least,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: postal carriers are taking and eating cans of viol for
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: dinner like this is delicious. I love this food drive. Yes,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: I don't just put cans of food in your mailbox.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Check in too when that is supposed to That's got
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: to be the worst day of the year for letter carrier,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: my gosh. Yeah, can you imagine it's a lot of weight. Yeah, Um,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: you got anything else? No respect your post postal carrier?
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: You want everybody go out and meet their postal carry? Yeah,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: why not give him a hug? Actually, don't do that,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: they might make you or something. Yeah, but give him
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: a wave. Um. If you want to learn more about
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: the post office, you can type that word those words
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: into the search bar house to works dot com and
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: uh be sure to check out the Esquire article too.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: It's very cool. Um and uh, I guess before we
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: get into that, chuck, you want a message from our sponsor,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: let's do that. Yeah, Uh okay, now it's listener mel Josh,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this uh um fan who thought we
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: were wrong and did a little research and we may
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: not be wrong after call. Oh, yeah, that's a nice.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: We had a bunch of filmmakers right in when we
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: talked about the um subliminal messages being inserted into movies
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties by James Vickery, because we said
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: it's one three thousand of a second or something, and
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: a bunch of filmmakers went, there's only twenty four frames
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: per second, so if you switched out one frame, it
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: would only be there's no way, there's no way. And
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: where'd you get this number? Where'd you get this number?
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: I went back and looked, and I was like, I mean,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: I see this number in various places. But um so,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: we got this email from Brian Henry that disputed this,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: and then he wrote back with this, Hey, guys, looks
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: like a may I have've spoken too soon. I was
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: assuming that Vickery was just changing the film itself, which
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: were dissolved in the messages showing much slower in at
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: the maximum the second. But I did some research and
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: apparently he used something called a uh I've never heard
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: this before, a tachi stato scope tacha stop to to
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: just the scope. I think you got it to just
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: the scope okay, to project the messages on the screen,
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: not the movie projector. He said, so this way he
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: would have had a lot more control over the speed
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: of the messages. And um So, to all the filmmakers
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: out there who wrote in and challenged us boom, I
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: wrote back to a few that was like, jeez, I
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: don't know, man, I'm like, I'm looking for it. Then
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: they you know someone we're even kind of snotty about,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: like the should research the more so, apparently put that
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: in your tits, gope and smoke it. That's what I say.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: And that is from Brian Henry. Yeah. Thanks for the
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: research you know, and being a good guy saying hey,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: I was wrong because you were wrong. He was. He
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: was one of the nicer ones about it. Well, thank you. Yeah. Um,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: if you want to let us know that you were wrong,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: even though you had told us that we were wrong
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: at first, we love those um you can tweet that
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: to us at s y s K podcast. You can
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: or you can send us an email to stuff podcast
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
• 45:03
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