April 25, 2020 • 45 mins
Back when this episode aired, the USPS was teetering on the edge of going under and there were a lot of plans on the table to save it. With the USPS again at risk now for different reasons, join Chuck and Josh as they explore the history and future of the postal service in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, friends and family, it's me Josh, your pal, your buddy,
avenging angel, all that jazz. For this week's s Y
s K Selects. I've chosen How the US Postal Service
Works because, as you may know, the postal services under
threat of being closed and going under yet again, and
we don't want that. For some reason, we can't quite
(00:22):
put our finger on. So I hope you'll enjoy this
episode and it rouses you to do something like save
the post Office. Welcome to Stuff. You should know, a
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
welcome to the podcast. Uh, there's Charles w Chuck Bryant.
(00:46):
I'm Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now, the Warrant Peace Report,
warr in peace dot Org, etcetera. I'm Stevenski. How you
doing good. Jerry just said let's do this old school
right before she recorded, and I have no idea what
she meant. Speck in like, yeah, you know she's back.
I thought she meant, let's make it crappy in five
minutes long, and we need like little empty tin cans
(01:08):
to speak and dude, make it sound right. How you doing, Jerry?
That's great. Jerry gave us the thumbs up, I know
in our new murder room. Um, Jerry is within our
eyesight again after a long layoff where she was not
within our range of viewing. It's kind of weird because
now I'm looking at you, but I can clearly see
(01:28):
my peripheral vision that she says on Facebook. She's waving,
she's brusting her teeth, she's reranging the severed human heads
that are in jars all around the place. That's creepy. Um.
You want to talk post office man, you want to
give the disclaimer that we're only talking about the post
office in the US of A. Think he just did. Okay, Um,
(01:50):
we don't know how it works in your country. No,
And actually it's probably not nearly as interesting as what's
going on with the US Postal Service, the USPS. Yeah,
because I don't know if you know this or not chucked,
but the U s PS is in a lot of
trouble there. Yeah, there's solvency that the amount of money
that they have to keep the lights on and keep
everything going is expected to run out in October of
(02:10):
two thousand thirteen if they don't do something. Yeah, that's
this year. Yeah, I think they lost sixteen billion dollars
last year, yes, and five billion the year before. So
that's a three times as much money in a year.
That's bad news. Here's the caveat to that sixteen billion
dollar loss, though, eleven billion of that was in payments
(02:31):
to uh, the future benefits of postal workers that have
not yet retired. But well, and the posts serve. The
Postal Service is the only federal agency of any sort
that is required to prepay its employees benefits for the future.
In two thousand and six, a lamed accession of Congress said,
(02:51):
you know what, you guys need to make sure that
your workers are taken care of. So you guys have
to start pre paying um and over the next ten years.
And they have been, and they've been bleeding money. I mean,
like a sixteen billion dollar loss, but eleven billion of
it was to these future payments. I guess that would
make sense. Then then if you took out that eleven
they would just be about the same loss as before,
(03:12):
a mere five billion a year, right, But and that's
a lot of money to lose, it is, but um
they're figuring out ways to make up for that extra loss,
and one of the big ones it's on the table
now is cutting out Saturday delivery. They figured they can
recoup two billion dollars a year by doing that, so
then they're down to three. The thing is is the
(03:34):
post the post office. It's a part of the executive branch. Man,
it's all over the place. It's a part of the
executive branch. It's a part of the federal government. But
it gets zero dollars in tax revenue. And it's also
a thrill kill cult, right exactly. That's the horrible secret
of the US. Right. Um. So they get no money
(03:57):
besides what they can make off of their own revenue corporation. Right. Um,
So they get no but they get but they're also
under the purview of the federal the federal government. It's
a weird, weird thing, and they can't act without asking Congress.
And Congress hasn't exactly been forthcoming lately. They haven't approved
the Saturday thinget have they Congress. Here's the thing they've
(04:19):
been trying to get Congress throughpprove that forever. The Senate
passed a bill that said, after two years, we'll let
you cut out Saturday service, will give you eleven billion
dollars in over payments. That you guys made towards the
retirement stuff, all this stuff back that went to the House,
and the House didn't do anything with it. Right, So
you know the fiscal cliff, Well, the the US Congress
passed the stop gap measure, basically a federal budget that says,
(04:42):
within this period, we're still able to operate, right, And
the USPS says, ha ha, you didn't include our mandate
from nineteen one that we have to carry out Saturday
service in that stop gap. So technically, under current federal law,
we don't have to carry out Saturday service. And they're
arguing it legally, so they're just saying that's the loophold
(05:03):
are going to use to shut down Saturday service. Sack medicines,
just packages. They're going to deliver packages on Saturday. And
here's a really good reason. Express mail. They're revenues from
packages of increased over the last ten years, whereas first
class mail, you know, letters have gone down, I believe.
(05:26):
So they're making all almost all of their money because
it's only forty cents to mail a letter from Florida
to Hawaii. Um. But they make, however much shipping in
the shipping game, which is where they make all their money,
which is ironically the one place they don't have a
monopoly as far as the mail goes. I'm glad to
see medicine mail order medicine on that list to express
(05:48):
mail packages in medicine, because at first I was like,
who cares, I don't need you don't yet. I don't
need my mail on a Saturday, right, but you need
your medicine on a Saturday, or else you go blind.
That's why they included that as a you know something,
they would still deliver, right and post offices that are
already open on Saturdays will still be open on Saturdays.
(06:08):
So if you want to go to your PO box,
maybe there'll be some mail, maybe there won't be who knows,
I bet you've had a PO box. I've been thinking
about this, haven't you have? You know, you just struck
me as a kind of person that would have had
a PO box at one point. You know, that's where
I get all my guns in the mail. So, UM,
I'm pretty worked up about this, as you can see. Um,
(06:30):
it's kind of interesting. And who would have thought that
the postal service would ever be interesting? Uh? Sure, I
think parts of this are very interesting. Um, and we
would just want to go ahead and say hello to
all of our postal carriers out there that um listen
to our show who who wont us over during the
Bush Era? Because we've got an emails from you guys
and gals. Yeah, including one of our favorite people out
(06:54):
there is a postal worker, very nostrim. Oh yeah, this
one should really be a tribute to Van Nostris. I
didn't he's a carrier. I'm he's always been kind of
cryptic about what he does. But I'm under the distinct
impression that he's employed by the Postal Service. A right,
Bangalore's Van Nostrian. Yeah, this is for you. Um, But okay,
(07:16):
so let's talk about this. Let's talk about the Postal
service man. I'm all jazzed about the USPS. Dude, glad
you are. Um. So, for a little while, even after
the advent of electronic mail, the postal services, the amount
of mail they were delivering was still increasing. As of
two thousand seven, it was on an upward trajectory. Sorry,
(07:39):
two thousand six, right, two hundred and thirteen billion, one
hundred and thirty seven million pieces of mail that year. Yeah,
it's down to one sixty seven now and then Uh,
their when was this written? Do you know? I think
two thousand seven eight. Okay, so then they had seven
hundred thousand employees. Now they have about five hundred and
eighty thousand. So they've been in and trim the budget
(08:02):
mode I think for the past few years. Well, and
the reason why. In two thousand and six they also
made seventy two point eight billion dollars. I mean those
stamps they add up, you know. Um, in two thousand
and eleven they made sixty six billion. Wow. Not bad. Yeah,
but they're still losing a lot of money. I mean
that's what seven billion dollars in difference in just five years. Yeah,
(08:25):
it's not good. It's not good. Um So, where the
where'd all this come from? Chuck? It came from back
yonder day. You know. People have always need to communicate,
obviously from long distances. And uh in sixteen thirty nine, Um,
they you know, colonists here in the in the New
I guess they weren't United States yet, but in the
New World needed to get word back to England occasionally
(08:49):
and say things like hey, quit bugging us, or hey,
sind it's more t and crumpets and um. So the
first official postal service was established in sixteen thirty nine. UM.
Richard Fairbank's tavern in Boston was the official mail drop
for overseas there in Massachusetts, and that was the place
to go if you wanted to mail something. Yeah, and
(09:09):
I couldn't find what happened or where it went on
the other side of the Atlantic. Probably I would imagine
then you just went to that pub and said, hey,
is there any mail? And they said no, and you
turn around and traveled the five miles back to your village.
So that was step one. Step two was about uh forty.
So nine years later three William penn established very famous
(09:31):
person obviously um, the first official post office in penn Sylvania.
He give his name after him. That's right, and uh,
I love this side note. Here in the South, private
messages were just sent between plantations, so they would probably
just give it to a slave and say carry this
over to that guy. Uh. And then flash forward a
(09:51):
little bit more. Um, the British Crown gave to a
man named Thomas Neil a twenty one year grant for
the postal service in the United States, and he paid
UM like seven seven shillings a year. So that's nothing, right,
he still died in debt with the monopoly. So the
(10:12):
postal service has always been kind of tricky to call
money from. Interesting. So that continued until seventeen seventy four,
and a lot of big stuff was happening around that time, like, Hey,
we don't like you anymore in England controlling us over
here and taxing us. So we're gonna start and establish
our own constitutional post office for for any kind of
(10:35):
mail going from anywhere, basically intercolonial mail. Yeah. Yeah, it
was just was very cutting edge at that time, I'm sure.
And actually, um, you know that when the British were
carrying out the postal service on behalf of the colonies.
In the colonies, um, there was a guy named Benjamin
Franklin who was appointed the postmaster of Philadelphia and he
actually killed it as postmaster, of course he did. He
(10:58):
like totally improved the road. He said, like, we're gonna
start working like twenty four hours a day. We're gonna
have like lots of shifts, we're going to put up
milestones like the The postal service helped improve the connectedness
of the colonies thanks to him. So when the Continental
Congress said, hey, we want our own Postal Service. Ben
Franklin became the first Postmaster General, and of course he
(11:20):
ran it like a tight ship. And he's one of
those dudes. I get a feeling if we could like
resurrect him and bring him out today, he could fix
what's going on in this country. Yeah, and he'd say
something pithy and ask for a glass of sherry exactly. Um.
So this is to me when it gets super interesting. Uh,
was in the nineteenth century when westward expansion happened California
(11:41):
gold Rush. All of a sudden, we needed to get
stuff from the East coast to San Francisco, let's say,
so as quick as possible, right, what's crazy? As quick
as possible was to go down New York around Florida, yes,
like a steamship, uh, through the Caribbean and then across
like Panama and then up on the Pacific side to California.
(12:05):
That was the fastest way to get mail for a while. Yeah.
And how long three to four weeks to send a
letter from the East coast to the West coast. And
that's you know, the best case scenario, right, And that's
how that's what that's how the US the East coast
um communicated with the West Coast for a while. Yeah,
until some stagecoach routes. Routes were um, we're established. There
(12:27):
was a southern route and there was a central route,
and the Southern route you could supposedly use a year
round because it's lovely down here. But then the Central
route it was faster, but they said you can't use
that year round their storms. Yeah, and it also killed me. Man.
The way they used to name companies back then was
so like it made perfect sense. You basically just said
what you did. Like one the Pacific Mail Steamship Company
(12:51):
said we're going to carry your mail to the Pacific
by steamship, and then the Overland Mail Company like, well,
we're gonna do it over land, so that's what we're
gonna call our company. So they got the contract the
Overland Mail Company. Um, along the Southern route. Took about
twenty five days, and then my favorite, one of my
favorite parts of American history was born, the Pony Express. Yeah,
(13:14):
and it's just so amazing, like the the idea that
they had to do this. It was a different company
that was competing. They wanted to get that contract away
from the Overlink Company, right the CEOC and p P.
And they said, you know what, we know the central
route shorter. We're gonna prove that we can use a
year round and we're gonna set up something that it's
just gonna blow this twenty five day thing out of
the water. And they set up the Pony Express and
(13:36):
they had stations what every ten twenty miles, and a
rider would ride from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento or
be part of a line of rides. Well, yeah, that's
the key. They go about a hundred miles and then
they change horses every like ten or fifteen miles. Yes,
so the same rider would change horses because they rode.
They average ten miles an hour, which doesn't sound fast,
(13:56):
but you got a factor in like the Sierra Nevadas
where they're just crawling up these mountains. So these dudes
were riding hard and on flat ground. If they're averaging
ten miles an hour, right, and they're going twenty four
hours a day, uh, they're going two thousand miles ten
miles an hour, that's what twenty hours? Yeah, that's no,
(14:18):
that's two hundred hours. So what is that That's less
than ten days. So that's that cuts that over link
company's rate by Yeah, there was always one set of
writers going east, one set going west. Yeah. I think
when you when you were relieved by another rider, you'd
hang out at that station and wait for the other
(14:39):
for somebody to come the other way and then relieve them. Yeah.
They were paid really well at the time five bucks
a week, which at the time unskilled labors made about
a dollar a week. So um, and did you read
the first ad they ever put in? Wanted young, skinny,
wiry fellows not over eighteen, must be expert writers willing
(15:00):
to risk death daily. Orphans preferred, And that's maybe legend,
but supposedly that's what it says. But apparently they were young, little,
light lithe, skinny kids because you know, you didn't want
some big dude like me up on a horse. The
horse would be like, I don't want to ride anymore.
So they were like these young boys, like I think
(15:21):
the youngest one is like fourteen. And supposedly Buffalo Bill
Cody was a rider, although people have disputed that. Now.
Oh yeah, yeah, well he's he's the stuff of a legend. Well,
he's by far and away the most famous famous Pony
Express rider, if in fact he did. But anyway, so
so think about the amount of infrastructure built up along
(15:43):
this central route to have a station every ten or
twenty miles. You've got all these employees going. And they
proved it. They proved that the central route could be
used year round, and so they got the contract. Then
right now, the Overland Company got the contract to use it,
to use that same route that was already established. And
the Pony Express was like, you have to be kidding me.
(16:04):
And so the the U. S. Government said no, no,
you guys do half and then let the let the
Overland Company do the other half. Yeah, And they were
mad for about a year and a half and really angry.
And then the telegraph line was completed. Now everyone's like, oh, well,
I guess I guess we're all out of business now. Yeah.
That was it. Pony Express the soul the Wells Fargo
(16:24):
and basically shut down. Yeah. I think American Express ended
up branching out of Wells Fargo to like these are
old old companies, like these modern banks and credit card companies.
Is interesting how far they go back. But think about
that man. Even as far back as the mid nineteenth century,
new technology was putting mail delivery out to pasture, and
(16:45):
then mail delivery would evolve and like figure out how
to come back. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Foreshadowing. So this
is a big jump forward to the mid nineteen sixties. Yeah,
a lot happened in between. Then it didn't. Actually, we
started to go move further and further out into the suburbs.
There was a huge population boom in the in the
(17:06):
post war era, and businesses started to realize the value
of direct mailing. And all these factors put together meant
that the postal Service was totally overwhelmed. Yeah, completely, because
it became such a big deal. Everyone was writing letters
and they were using the same old hand um, I
(17:28):
guess hand delivery methods, sorting methods, that's what it was.
They weren't automated at all, and they needed to be.
And so there was a postal reform that that was undertaken. Yeah,
and this was in nineteen seventy one the Post Office Department.
And I didn't even know this. It was shortly after
I was born. We weren't the United States Postal Service
(17:49):
until nine that was when we officially became the USPS. UH,
it became an independent establishment. Um was no longer a
part of the cabinet of the federal government, but was
part of the executive branch and got the monopoly basically
to deliver mail, even though it was supposedly just a company,
and they and they re up the mandate from I
(18:10):
think Sevo that said you the postal Service is one
of the most essential services of the federal government. No
person has cut off in this country. None shall not
get delivered exactly. Everyone's going to have a mailbox, and
everyone's going to get mail to that mailbox every day
because we need to help keep intellectual freedom um going
(18:32):
and and and ideas in business and commerce going all
the time. And the Postal Services, this federal agency that
carries that out, and that I'm sure that put a
financial burden on them when people started building in these
especially rich people, when they started building in these remote areas,
because then all of a sudden, you had to add
that to your route. Well, there's if it's sixty miles
up a mountain and it's the only house there's there's
(18:53):
a guy who services the Grand Canyon. There's a group
of Indians that live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon,
and he has a donkey train that goes down there
every day with the mail. Really yeah, I mean it's
part of it's a federal mandate. You have to be
able to get mail. Everyone has a mailbox. He's like,
don't you guys you smoke signals? Come on, they do.
In fact, that actually wrote an article on spoke singles. Yeah. Yeah,
(19:16):
I was gonna say we should podcasts on it, but
it's it's like super basic, is it really? It would
be like a five minute podcast. Well, we'll have to
figure out some other way to use it. Agreed, because
that's interesting. Um, so do we cover going postal now?
It was sort of just thrown in the middle of
this army. Yeah, it really was. It was talking about
how packages are delivered, and all of a sudden, it says,
and then people started killing each other in nine six yeah,
(19:40):
which is actually, Um, the post Office has the dubious
distinction of kicking off the workplace shooting trend in the
United States. Was that the first one as far as
I could tell, Alright, So Edmund Oklahoma, Patrick Henry A.
Cheryl killed fourteen co workers. Um. And another one happened,
(20:01):
including a uh supervisor getting killed with a samurai sword. UM.
November nineteen Thomas H. McIlvaine shot and killed four co workers,
wounded five others, then shot himself and then nine and
then in two thousand three two more incidences of postal
workers killing fellow postal workers. It was like just between
(20:25):
eighties six and nineties seven, forty people died at postal
post offices from postal rampage and gave birth to the
term going postal, which is used as a vernacular for
like just losing it basically, um. And if you're interested
in that at all, there's a really good documentary I
think it's on Netflix streaming right now called um Murdered
(20:45):
by Proxy, and it's all about the postal shootings, like
where they came from. There's a lot of scrutiny at
like the of the management techniques of people at post offices,
and there's got to be something to it. I mean,
oh yeah, if you watch that's like it was like
how many other industries had that many office shootings? You know, retail, actually,
(21:05):
you're the homicide rate is three times higher in retail
than it is at the post office. You don't say
go in retail, that just means you're going shopping. Well,
it's like drinking the kool aid. They really drank flavor
aid and it's right kool aids some one with that distinction.
Oh yeah, alright, so that was going. Yeah, I mean
we had to mention it, but I don't want to
dwell on it. But it was weird in this article
the way it went right in the middle of this
(21:27):
came up out of nowhere. Um zip codes, this is
kind of cool. Um zip codes were introduced in nineteen
sixty three and then officially put in place in mandatory
in seven because just so much mail going on you
had to categorize it more specifically, right, that was part
of that, the post office being swamped. This was the
(21:48):
first step toward automation. Was like a standardized code. Well
they did have other ones, but it was like one
was New York City or something like that. You know.
So ZIP this is just a nice little cocktail party
factoid stands for zone improvement plan. I never knew that
until I read this. Did you know that I had before?
(22:09):
But I had forgotten. Okay, so it's his own improvement
plan and it's uh here in the United States at least,
it's a five digit number represents you know, a location
obviously where you're trying to send something and it now
they have the ZIP code plus four in some areas
of like I guess major urban areas have a little
more specificity, right, they like deliver it to your like
(22:30):
they put it on your stomach if you plus four.
I think certain buildings even will have their own plus
four if it's a big enough building, or if you
get a lot of mail as a person, is that
what you're after is a plus four for your well,
it says that some high volume mail receivers get it.
I'm like, you know, if it was cool mail, I'd
love to get the mail. UM. So the first digit
there represents the state here in Georgia, that's a three. UM.
(22:54):
It increases as you move west, and there are some
states that share each digit. Yeah, like two. Yeah, it's
taken up by a lot of states. There's the District
of Columbia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia.
Man all two's. I would be mad if I lived
in one of those states. So then you got the
second third digits. Those are regions within the state. UM.
(23:17):
The first three of those create what's called the SCF code,
the sectional center, facility, and UM. Then the fourth and
fifth digits are even more specific. Basically, it just hones
down as you go left or right until you've got
Josh Clark's house right, like this state, this section facility,
(23:37):
this UM post office, yeah, this neighborhood yeah, and then
this maybe this building, this high volume mail receiver named
Josh Clark. That's right. Um, So you've got the zip
code that allowed automation. And a little known fact is
the US Postal Service doesn't just handle a ton of
the US as mail. It handles of all of the
(23:58):
mail in the world. Really yeah wow, So before the
zip code, this was really difficult. It also went from
if you're mailing something from New York to San Francisco,
it went through every distribution facility in the country in
between New York and San Francisco. Um before it got there.
Really yes, Now zip codes, Well, let's talk about how
(24:20):
what a letter does, and this is all thanks to
zip codes. So I write a little love letter, I'm
gonna mail it to Emily, which is weird because we
live together. Just be a romantic. That's actually a great
example though, because you can mail something from your mailbox
to be delivered back to you. I reckon, I've never
done it. That's a that's a the poor man's trademark
(24:45):
I've heard about that is to mail something to yourself
into this. I think it depends on the judge. Yeah. Probably. Okay,
So you put it in your mailbox. Postal carriers gonna
pick it up. They're gonna take it to the post office. Um,
they're gonna put it on a truck and then take
that from the post office to a processing plant where
we have our long awaited machines doing some sorting, shape
(25:09):
and size. Yeah. Well, first they sort everything out and
make sure everything's facing the right way up right. Um.
And then the the they packages, well, packages are put
on one one belt and then letters are put in another.
And there the letters say, let's just stick with the
letter that you wrote. Okay. Uh it's it goes into
(25:30):
a slot so it's facing upwards and upright. Yeah if
if front words and upright. And then they put a
little barcode on the back of the letter and uh
I think ultra violet ink. Yeah. Well, first thing it
does is it gets a postmark and cancelation line saying basically,
you can't use the stamp again. Yeah. Don't even try it.
(25:50):
Don't be cheap. We've seen the wide out tricks. We've
seen doctoring up a stamp, which is probably a federal offense.
It probably is UM. And then so after that the
barcodes in it on the back of the piece of mail.
And then there's an optical scanner that reads the address,
which is pretty cool. And if you if they're really
really really accurate to UM, but if your handwriting is terrible,
(26:13):
they have a new system now where the this UM
conveyor belt takes a picture of it, send emails a
picture to a human being at a computer who reads
it what I think it is, types it in and
then it's so it stays on the line. It doesn't
have to come out any longer. It's pretty much technology. Yeah. UM.
And then so based on this UM this address, including
(26:36):
the ZIP code, it prints a barcode at the bottom.
If you look at a letter, any letter you get
has a little barcode on it. And so that's what's red.
That's right that the thing on the back is invisible.
I think right, it's fluorescent. That's just showing off. We
have invisible link. Other processing machines then read those barcodes
and then sort them in their little bins according to
(26:58):
zip code. And it's just basically placing everything and what
will eventually be a trade that will be delivered back
to a post office or a sorting facility or does
it go straight to a post office? UM, it goes
to another processing plant, right, So imagine each processing plant
(27:18):
regional I guess, has a bunch of mail coming in
on trucks. Then it sorts and then sends out and
then based on its zip code that it serves UM,
it gets a bunch of flats from other UM distribution
facilities that's right with that are already according to the
zip code. So let's say it's getting a flat of
mail by zip code. It then also sorts through those
(27:42):
that's right, and it actually sorts them into an individual
carriers route in order, and that's what's delivered to the
post office. So it arrives at the post office ready
to go on the truck. Yes, okay, And that doesn't
mean that the postal worker doesn't have much to do.
They also still have like circulars, magazines, bulk mail. They
(28:05):
have to go through and put it for every address,
all that crapped it and where all that my recycling
ben basically yeah, although the coupons. I'll remember our junk
mail episode from years and years back, and we've got
so much from people who are like, no, no, no,
you can't get rid of junk mail, right, that's the
only thing keeping us in business. So if you're going
(28:51):
to address a letter, there are a few guidelines. You know.
You gotta put your address legibly on the front. You
gotta put your little return address in the upper left corner. Yeah,
on the front, don't put it on the back, upper
left corner there. And don't use periods in commas, like
if you write p O box it's not p period
oh period, Although that doesn't matter. Apparently it allows for
(29:12):
greater efficiency in reading your letter, maybe because I always
put like Atlanta comma g A period. I do too,
and they still get there. But don't you wonder if
they get there like earlier? I don't know. Maybe, so
uh it is um, Supposedly you need to be able
to read the address at arms length, so don't write tiny,
and uh, don't write so big that they can't do
(29:34):
other things to the envelope like scan and stamp and
things like that. Um. And then you know, you gotta
put your return address because if something happens, you want
it to come back to you. Although I don't do
that much anymore, A lot of times I'll just put
like Atlanta, Georgia. Really, you don't put your return address
on there. No, but I rarely mail things, and a
lot of times when I do, it's for work, So
I'll just put, you know, Atlanta, Georgia, houstaff works or something.
(29:57):
And it's not the kind of thing that if it
doesn't come back to me, I would care. I got
I've had some precious thing. I would put a Richard address.
I have a feeling that you're going to get some
email from postal carriers that are like I hate people
like you, because whether you care if it comes back
to you or not, I'm sure they have to get
it back to you. Uh. There's a lot of type
of delivery surfaces we surfaces services. We won't go over here,
(30:20):
but I did want to say that media mail is
a great little ah trick, not a trick, but a
great tool if you're mailing things like books and or
DVDs because it's super cheap, but it takes a while.
But that's part of that mandate from that. They want
to keep the intellectual juice of America flowing through the
(30:41):
Postal Service, so things like that creative stuff for books
or correspondence, like and I think that's how if you've
ever ordered a book on Amazon for like two cents,
you're like, oh, how can they sell a book for
two cents, It's because they charge you like four for shipping,
and they probably pay like eight cents to mail it
(31:01):
with media mail. That's the greatest scam of the century.
Well not really, I mean they're making their money via
shipping instead of the book itself. But publishers don't like it,
of course, because they want to sell their books new
and not for two cents on Amazon. So. Um, I
think we said that the Postal Service has a monopoly
on delivering mail but not on delivering packages, right, Um,
(31:25):
so because they're kind of in competitive business against like
UPS and FedEx and d h L and all those guys. Um,
those guys have gone ahead and in and invested in
infrastructure of say like air delivery, air transportation of mail,
and the U. The Postal Service has tried that before,
like they tried a guided missile in ninety three, which
(31:46):
they shot full of mail from a submarine to a
naval station in Florida, but it was just too expensive.
So the Postal Service said, hey, Ups, Hey FedEx, you
guys have a bunch of planes. Can we start putting
our mail on it? And they said sure for a
few billion dollars a year. And the Postal Service said great.
But at the same time they kind of, um, they
(32:09):
stepped forward into the twenty first century by doing so.
And the Postal Service, having access to everyone's mailbox, is
often tapped by UPS and FedEx deliver what's called in
the business the last mile. Yeah. So a lot of times,
especially if you're a rural person, if you get something
from Amazon, it's it was shipped by UPS, but eventually
(32:31):
it made its way into your postal carriers route and
being delivered by the Postal Service. Yeah, there's way more
mixing of package mailing than you would think. Um, it's
like a swinger party or something pretty much. Uh. And
part of that deal in two thousand one with FedEx was, Hey,
FedEx said, can we put our boxes at your post offices?
(32:53):
And they said sure for six million dollars And they said,
you know, can we hit your ride on your plane.
They said, sure, for six point three billions over seven years.
But it's you know, seems like a good agreement. And
they did the same with ups and uh we scratch
our back, you scratch yours, we scratch your back, we'll
scratch yours. That works. Yeah, why didn't everybody scratch them back?
(33:17):
I don't know. Okay, um, because it's hard to reach.
Uh So, if you realize that the postal service needs
a few billion extra dollars, you say, why are you
just up the postal rates? Yeah, well, the federal government
keeps its thumb on that they want to make sure
that anybody who needs to mail a letter can do
(33:37):
so without great expense. Yeah, it's a big deal to
change the postal rate. Like it is, much more than
you would think, because a layman like me would just
be like, yeah, I just add a few cents. Who cares. Yeah,
it's the problem just printing those forever stance genius idea.
You don't have to go back and reprint a bunch
with the amount great idea or the one cent. Remember
in Fargo, Yeah, when the Wade got the one center
(33:57):
with the ducks. Yeah, and she was like everyone needs
the once sent whenever they raise the rates. Yeah, he's like, cool, Gee,
I didn't think about that. Um so, but yes, there's
a very long, protracted, difficult process of raising the postal rates.
It's not a very easy thing and it involves a
ton of bureaucracy. Should we get into that or just
leave it at that? It's up to you, man, I
(34:18):
think we should just leave it at that. Okay. So
if you are going to mail something from your house,
you need your little mailbox, and I just installed mine
in what seemed like a sensible manner. I didn't realize
that there were actual rules. Um. In fact, you were
supposed to contact the post office before installing your mailbox,
which I had no idea. UM, to make sure it's
(34:39):
like the correct placement and height and so like the
post office person or the mail career, I don't have
to get out of the truck. Oh well they'll they'll
burn it down if it's not the specification. So you
want to contact the post office? I didn't, but I
guess I just lucked out because, um they say generally
in from the road surface to the inside floor of
(35:01):
the mailbox or point of entry, and then set back
six to eight inches from the front face of the
curb or road edge to the mailbox door. I guess
I just got lucky then, because I get my mail,
you know, without any burning down over here now or
without a post office spots box, which we talked about.
They've been around for a couple of hundred years. And
(35:21):
that's if you want to have a little key to
your little loan box in a post office and get
your mail there, you can certainly do that. It's handy
if you're starting out of business and you want to
make people think that you're not working out of your house. Um,
you can get a post office and say, look, I
have a PO box, which means I'm working out of
my bedroom. It's like code, I think, are you getting
(35:44):
guns in the mail? Is that what people do? I'm
sure there's a lot of people who try to get
guns in the mail in the p O boxes. Yeah sure, okay.
Or if you um tend to move around a lot
in the same town and you don't want to worry
about changing your mail and forwarding mail, you could always
just get a PO box. Yeah. So those are some reasons. Um,
you want to talk the future of the post office
(36:06):
if it's around after October two. What is the future
of the post Office. Well, there's a lot of stuff
coming down the pike. Um, there's the cancelation of Saturday
mail this August. They're really going hard after package delivery services.
Now what trying to oh with like the flat rates
and stuff like that. Just really like courting businesses to say, hey,
consider us instead of ups or FedEx um and uh,
(36:30):
especially with prescription medicines because we have an aging population
is going to do nothing but increase in size, so
you're gonna need more prescriptions through the mail. So hey,
let's get into that. Yeah, and you can get stuff
like that certified and insured and uh, signature delivery approved
and stuff like that. It's helpful. Part of the post
office is pledged that your letter carrier won't take your
(36:52):
medication before delivering it might hit you up for something, right. Um.
But there's also a line of clothing coming out postal service.
Line of clothing coming out, I'm not kidding, called rain,
heat or snow. And as we almost didn't mention this,
so the Postal Services creed right, neither rain nor snow,
(37:13):
nor sleep, sleep nor holland rain or sleep nor snow,
nor neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of
night stays these carriers from the swift completion of their
appointed rounds. And that's actually not the post Office's official model.
They don't have one, but it's been linked to them.
And it's actually an adaptation of something from Herodotus, the
(37:34):
Greek historian, who was making a comment about how the Persians,
even during their war and like five b c. They
were one of the first ones to establish a real
postal service, and even during war, the postal service didn't stop.
They were still documents being delivered, and Herodotus was commenting
(37:55):
on that, and that's where that came from. It should
include like or loss of limb. It did originally, Like
that's an adaptation. It wasn't loss of limb, but it
was something like some sort of sicknesses befalling you. They
were putting the mail before themselves. The show must go on, right. Um.
So there's a line of clothing called the rain or
heat or snow um and then um. They're also talking
(38:15):
about creating federal email addresses that you get at birth.
Just like you have a physical address, you would also
have an email address, but your email address is attached
to you rather than the physical location you live at.
And if you say need to correspond with the I
R S Or Social Security Administration something like that, you
would send like this very secure email through this Postal
(38:39):
Services portal. Everything else you could just use like you know,
Gmail or Yahoo or whatever for everyday stuff. But this
is like the big stuff, the really important stuff. And
then the postal service would also offer like a digital
lock box for um, the like like a will or
your medical records or something like that. Yeah, and listen,
(39:00):
is every conspiracy uh person in the country now says
in a way, I want a federal email attached to
my name that I have to send things through. Yeah,
well that's the number of the Beast. Obviously, I don't
know that I would want that either. And I'm not
a big conspiracy guy. Oh, it's not that you have
to send it through that. It's that if you send
it through that, if somebody hijacks that er reads it,
(39:22):
you're going to be in a lot more trouble federally
speaking than they would be if like they read your Gmail.
Because didn't it illegal to to open like a federal
offense to get someone's exactly? And that's what this there's
this guy who runs a think tank for the Postal
Service who's who's like, it's not just about mailing documents,
it's about protecting the connectedness of the United States and Americans,
(39:44):
So how do we do that in a digital world?
He's thinking about this. So if you're even the least
bit interested by this episode that we just recorded, Um,
there's an Esquire article called too I did, there's ae do.
It's called do We Really Want to Live Without the
Post Office? And it's by Jesse Lichtenstein, And um, it
(40:08):
is really good, man. It's a really good overview of
what does Jesse think, Uh, we need he or she
I think kind of leans toward we need it. And
the more you start to read about it, the more
this weird kind of civic affection for the post office developed.
And you know where I'm like, yeah, we don't want
to get rid of the post office. You want the
(40:28):
post office? Who doesn't want the post office? It's kind
of it kind of develops. Yeah, I used to like,
you know, maybe it was a simpler day, or maybe
the people stuck with their routes longer, But I remember
my postman growing up. It was the same guy for years,
and we lived on We didn't live in a neighborhood.
We lived on a street in the woods with like
six houses, and so you know, I would run out
(40:49):
and check the mail and wave at them, and we
would give him like gifts at Christmas and that's awesome.
And now I have no idea who my postal curious?
Which is my fault? I need to just go out there,
I think you do. Yeah. And also the postal services
responsible for the largest food drive in the United States
every year. Yeah, you know that food drive where you
like you just put like canned food in your in
(41:10):
your mailbox, in your postal you can do that. Yeah,
I've never heard of. It hasn't been very well publicized,
but it's like at least around here, I guess. But um,
it's a huge food drive or at the very least,
postal carriers are taking and eating cans of viol for
dinner like this is delicious. I love this food drive. Yes,
I don't just put cans of food in your mailbox.
(41:31):
Check in too when that is supposed to That's got
to be the worst day of the year for letter carrier,
my gosh. Yeah, can you imagine it's a lot of weight. Yeah, Um,
you got anything else? No respect your post postal carrier?
You want everybody go out and meet their postal carry? Yeah,
why not give him a hug? Actually, don't do that,
they might make you or something. Yeah, but give him
(41:52):
a wave. Um. If you want to learn more about
the post office, you can type that word those words
into the search bar house to works dot com and
uh be sure to check out the Esquire article too.
It's very cool. Um and uh, I guess before we
get into that, chuck, you want a message from our sponsor,
let's do that. Yeah, Uh okay, now it's listener mel Josh,
(42:41):
I'm gonna call this uh um fan who thought we
were wrong and did a little research and we may
not be wrong after call. Oh, yeah, that's a nice.
We had a bunch of filmmakers right in when we
talked about the um subliminal messages being inserted into movies
(43:01):
in the nineteen fifties by James Vickery, because we said
it's one three thousand of a second or something, and
a bunch of filmmakers went, there's only twenty four frames
per second, so if you switched out one frame, it
would only be there's no way, there's no way. And
where'd you get this number? Where'd you get this number?
I went back and looked, and I was like, I mean,
I see this number in various places. But um so,
(43:25):
we got this email from Brian Henry that disputed this,
and then he wrote back with this, Hey, guys, looks
like a may I have've spoken too soon. I was
assuming that Vickery was just changing the film itself, which
were dissolved in the messages showing much slower in at
the maximum the second. But I did some research and
apparently he used something called a uh I've never heard
(43:48):
this before, a tachi stato scope tacha stop to to
just the scope. I think you got it to just
the scope okay, to project the messages on the screen,
not the movie projector. He said, so this way he
would have had a lot more control over the speed
of the messages. And um So, to all the filmmakers
(44:10):
out there who wrote in and challenged us boom, I
wrote back to a few that was like, jeez, I
don't know, man, I'm like, I'm looking for it. Then
they you know someone we're even kind of snotty about,
like the should research the more so, apparently put that
in your tits, gope and smoke it. That's what I say.
And that is from Brian Henry. Yeah. Thanks for the
research you know, and being a good guy saying hey,
(44:31):
I was wrong because you were wrong. He was. He
was one of the nicer ones about it. Well, thank you. Yeah. Um,
if you want to let us know that you were wrong,
even though you had told us that we were wrong
at first, we love those um you can tweet that
to us at s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know,
(44:53):
or you can send us an email to stuff podcast
at how stuff Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M
Hey, friends and family, it's me Josh, your pal, your buddy,
avenging angel, all that jazz. For this week's s Y
s K Selects. I've chosen How the US Postal Service
Works because, as you may know, the postal services under
threat of being closed and going under yet again, and
we don't want that. For some reason, we can't quite
(00:22):
put our finger on. So I hope you'll enjoy this
episode and it rouses you to do something like save
the post Office. Welcome to Stuff. You should know, a
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
welcome to the podcast. Uh, there's Charles w Chuck Bryant.
(00:46):
I'm Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now, the Warrant Peace Report,
warr in peace dot Org, etcetera. I'm Stevenski. How you
doing good. Jerry just said let's do this old school
right before she recorded, and I have no idea what
she meant. Speck in like, yeah, you know she's back.
I thought she meant, let's make it crappy in five
minutes long, and we need like little empty tin cans
(01:08):
to speak and dude, make it sound right. How you doing, Jerry?
That's great. Jerry gave us the thumbs up, I know
in our new murder room. Um, Jerry is within our
eyesight again after a long layoff where she was not
within our range of viewing. It's kind of weird because
now I'm looking at you, but I can clearly see
(01:28):
my peripheral vision that she says on Facebook. She's waving,
she's brusting her teeth, she's reranging the severed human heads
that are in jars all around the place. That's creepy. Um.
You want to talk post office man, you want to
give the disclaimer that we're only talking about the post
office in the US of A. Think he just did. Okay, Um,
(01:50):
we don't know how it works in your country. No,
And actually it's probably not nearly as interesting as what's
going on with the US Postal Service, the USPS. Yeah,
because I don't know if you know this or not chucked,
but the U s PS is in a lot of
trouble there. Yeah, there's solvency that the amount of money
that they have to keep the lights on and keep
everything going is expected to run out in October of
(02:10):
two thousand thirteen if they don't do something. Yeah, that's
this year. Yeah, I think they lost sixteen billion dollars
last year, yes, and five billion the year before. So
that's a three times as much money in a year.
That's bad news. Here's the caveat to that sixteen billion
dollar loss, though, eleven billion of that was in payments
(02:31):
to uh, the future benefits of postal workers that have
not yet retired. But well, and the posts serve. The
Postal Service is the only federal agency of any sort
that is required to prepay its employees benefits for the future.
In two thousand and six, a lamed accession of Congress said,
(02:51):
you know what, you guys need to make sure that
your workers are taken care of. So you guys have
to start pre paying um and over the next ten years.
And they have been, and they've been bleeding money. I mean,
like a sixteen billion dollar loss, but eleven billion of
it was to these future payments. I guess that would
make sense. Then then if you took out that eleven
they would just be about the same loss as before,
(03:12):
a mere five billion a year, right, But and that's
a lot of money to lose, it is, but um
they're figuring out ways to make up for that extra loss,
and one of the big ones it's on the table
now is cutting out Saturday delivery. They figured they can
recoup two billion dollars a year by doing that, so
then they're down to three. The thing is is the
(03:34):
post the post office. It's a part of the executive branch. Man,
it's all over the place. It's a part of the
executive branch. It's a part of the federal government. But
it gets zero dollars in tax revenue. And it's also
a thrill kill cult, right exactly. That's the horrible secret
of the US. Right. Um. So they get no money
(03:57):
besides what they can make off of their own revenue corporation. Right. Um,
So they get no but they get but they're also
under the purview of the federal the federal government. It's
a weird, weird thing, and they can't act without asking Congress.
And Congress hasn't exactly been forthcoming lately. They haven't approved
the Saturday thinget have they Congress. Here's the thing they've
(04:19):
been trying to get Congress throughpprove that forever. The Senate
passed a bill that said, after two years, we'll let
you cut out Saturday service, will give you eleven billion
dollars in over payments. That you guys made towards the
retirement stuff, all this stuff back that went to the House,
and the House didn't do anything with it. Right, So
you know the fiscal cliff, Well, the the US Congress
passed the stop gap measure, basically a federal budget that says,
(04:42):
within this period, we're still able to operate, right, And
the USPS says, ha ha, you didn't include our mandate
from nineteen one that we have to carry out Saturday
service in that stop gap. So technically, under current federal law,
we don't have to carry out Saturday service. And they're
arguing it legally, so they're just saying that's the loophold
(05:03):
are going to use to shut down Saturday service. Sack medicines,
just packages. They're going to deliver packages on Saturday. And
here's a really good reason. Express mail. They're revenues from
packages of increased over the last ten years, whereas first
class mail, you know, letters have gone down, I believe.
(05:26):
So they're making all almost all of their money because
it's only forty cents to mail a letter from Florida
to Hawaii. Um. But they make, however much shipping in
the shipping game, which is where they make all their money,
which is ironically the one place they don't have a
monopoly as far as the mail goes. I'm glad to
see medicine mail order medicine on that list to express
(05:48):
mail packages in medicine, because at first I was like,
who cares, I don't need you don't yet. I don't
need my mail on a Saturday, right, but you need
your medicine on a Saturday, or else you go blind.
That's why they included that as a you know something,
they would still deliver, right and post offices that are
already open on Saturdays will still be open on Saturdays.
(06:08):
So if you want to go to your PO box,
maybe there'll be some mail, maybe there won't be who knows,
I bet you've had a PO box. I've been thinking
about this, haven't you have? You know, you just struck
me as a kind of person that would have had
a PO box at one point. You know, that's where
I get all my guns in the mail. So, UM,
I'm pretty worked up about this, as you can see. Um,
(06:30):
it's kind of interesting. And who would have thought that
the postal service would ever be interesting? Uh? Sure, I
think parts of this are very interesting. Um, and we
would just want to go ahead and say hello to
all of our postal carriers out there that um listen
to our show who who wont us over during the
Bush Era? Because we've got an emails from you guys
and gals. Yeah, including one of our favorite people out
(06:54):
there is a postal worker, very nostrim. Oh yeah, this
one should really be a tribute to Van Nostris. I
didn't he's a carrier. I'm he's always been kind of
cryptic about what he does. But I'm under the distinct
impression that he's employed by the Postal Service. A right,
Bangalore's Van Nostrian. Yeah, this is for you. Um, But okay,
(07:16):
so let's talk about this. Let's talk about the Postal
service man. I'm all jazzed about the USPS. Dude, glad
you are. Um. So, for a little while, even after
the advent of electronic mail, the postal services, the amount
of mail they were delivering was still increasing. As of
two thousand seven, it was on an upward trajectory. Sorry,
(07:39):
two thousand six, right, two hundred and thirteen billion, one
hundred and thirty seven million pieces of mail that year. Yeah,
it's down to one sixty seven now and then Uh,
their when was this written? Do you know? I think
two thousand seven eight. Okay, so then they had seven
hundred thousand employees. Now they have about five hundred and
eighty thousand. So they've been in and trim the budget
(08:02):
mode I think for the past few years. Well, and
the reason why. In two thousand and six they also
made seventy two point eight billion dollars. I mean those
stamps they add up, you know. Um, in two thousand
and eleven they made sixty six billion. Wow. Not bad. Yeah,
but they're still losing a lot of money. I mean
that's what seven billion dollars in difference in just five years. Yeah,
(08:25):
it's not good. It's not good. Um So, where the
where'd all this come from? Chuck? It came from back
yonder day. You know. People have always need to communicate,
obviously from long distances. And uh in sixteen thirty nine, Um,
they you know, colonists here in the in the New
I guess they weren't United States yet, but in the
New World needed to get word back to England occasionally
(08:49):
and say things like hey, quit bugging us, or hey,
sind it's more t and crumpets and um. So the
first official postal service was established in sixteen thirty nine. UM.
Richard Fairbank's tavern in Boston was the official mail drop
for overseas there in Massachusetts, and that was the place
to go if you wanted to mail something. Yeah, and
(09:09):
I couldn't find what happened or where it went on
the other side of the Atlantic. Probably I would imagine
then you just went to that pub and said, hey,
is there any mail? And they said no, and you
turn around and traveled the five miles back to your village.
So that was step one. Step two was about uh forty.
So nine years later three William penn established very famous
(09:31):
person obviously um, the first official post office in penn Sylvania.
He give his name after him. That's right, and uh,
I love this side note. Here in the South, private
messages were just sent between plantations, so they would probably
just give it to a slave and say carry this
over to that guy. Uh. And then flash forward a
(09:51):
little bit more. Um, the British Crown gave to a
man named Thomas Neil a twenty one year grant for
the postal service in the United States, and he paid
UM like seven seven shillings a year. So that's nothing, right,
he still died in debt with the monopoly. So the
(10:12):
postal service has always been kind of tricky to call
money from. Interesting. So that continued until seventeen seventy four,
and a lot of big stuff was happening around that time, like, Hey,
we don't like you anymore in England controlling us over
here and taxing us. So we're gonna start and establish
our own constitutional post office for for any kind of
(10:35):
mail going from anywhere, basically intercolonial mail. Yeah. Yeah, it
was just was very cutting edge at that time, I'm sure.
And actually, um, you know that when the British were
carrying out the postal service on behalf of the colonies.
In the colonies, um, there was a guy named Benjamin
Franklin who was appointed the postmaster of Philadelphia and he
actually killed it as postmaster, of course he did. He
(10:58):
like totally improved the road. He said, like, we're gonna
start working like twenty four hours a day. We're gonna
have like lots of shifts, we're going to put up
milestones like the The postal service helped improve the connectedness
of the colonies thanks to him. So when the Continental
Congress said, hey, we want our own Postal Service. Ben
Franklin became the first Postmaster General, and of course he
(11:20):
ran it like a tight ship. And he's one of
those dudes. I get a feeling if we could like
resurrect him and bring him out today, he could fix
what's going on in this country. Yeah, and he'd say
something pithy and ask for a glass of sherry exactly. Um.
So this is to me when it gets super interesting. Uh,
was in the nineteenth century when westward expansion happened California
(11:41):
gold Rush. All of a sudden, we needed to get
stuff from the East coast to San Francisco, let's say,
so as quick as possible, right, what's crazy? As quick
as possible was to go down New York around Florida, yes,
like a steamship, uh, through the Caribbean and then across
like Panama and then up on the Pacific side to California.
(12:05):
That was the fastest way to get mail for a while. Yeah.
And how long three to four weeks to send a
letter from the East coast to the West coast. And
that's you know, the best case scenario, right, And that's
how that's what that's how the US the East coast
um communicated with the West Coast for a while. Yeah,
until some stagecoach routes. Routes were um, we're established. There
(12:27):
was a southern route and there was a central route,
and the Southern route you could supposedly use a year
round because it's lovely down here. But then the Central
route it was faster, but they said you can't use
that year round their storms. Yeah, and it also killed me. Man.
The way they used to name companies back then was
so like it made perfect sense. You basically just said
what you did. Like one the Pacific Mail Steamship Company
(12:51):
said we're going to carry your mail to the Pacific
by steamship, and then the Overland Mail Company like, well,
we're gonna do it over land, so that's what we're
gonna call our company. So they got the contract the
Overland Mail Company. Um, along the Southern route. Took about
twenty five days, and then my favorite, one of my
favorite parts of American history was born, the Pony Express. Yeah,
(13:14):
and it's just so amazing, like the the idea that
they had to do this. It was a different company
that was competing. They wanted to get that contract away
from the Overlink Company, right the CEOC and p P.
And they said, you know what, we know the central
route shorter. We're gonna prove that we can use a
year round and we're gonna set up something that it's
just gonna blow this twenty five day thing out of
the water. And they set up the Pony Express and
(13:36):
they had stations what every ten twenty miles, and a
rider would ride from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento or
be part of a line of rides. Well, yeah, that's
the key. They go about a hundred miles and then
they change horses every like ten or fifteen miles. Yes,
so the same rider would change horses because they rode.
They average ten miles an hour, which doesn't sound fast,
(13:56):
but you got a factor in like the Sierra Nevadas
where they're just crawling up these mountains. So these dudes
were riding hard and on flat ground. If they're averaging
ten miles an hour, right, and they're going twenty four
hours a day, uh, they're going two thousand miles ten
miles an hour, that's what twenty hours? Yeah, that's no,
(14:18):
that's two hundred hours. So what is that That's less
than ten days. So that's that cuts that over link
company's rate by Yeah, there was always one set of
writers going east, one set going west. Yeah. I think
when you when you were relieved by another rider, you'd
hang out at that station and wait for the other
(14:39):
for somebody to come the other way and then relieve them. Yeah.
They were paid really well at the time five bucks
a week, which at the time unskilled labors made about
a dollar a week. So um, and did you read
the first ad they ever put in? Wanted young, skinny,
wiry fellows not over eighteen, must be expert writers willing
(15:00):
to risk death daily. Orphans preferred, And that's maybe legend,
but supposedly that's what it says. But apparently they were young, little,
light lithe, skinny kids because you know, you didn't want
some big dude like me up on a horse. The
horse would be like, I don't want to ride anymore.
So they were like these young boys, like I think
(15:21):
the youngest one is like fourteen. And supposedly Buffalo Bill
Cody was a rider, although people have disputed that. Now.
Oh yeah, yeah, well he's he's the stuff of a legend. Well,
he's by far and away the most famous famous Pony
Express rider, if in fact he did. But anyway, so
so think about the amount of infrastructure built up along
(15:43):
this central route to have a station every ten or
twenty miles. You've got all these employees going. And they
proved it. They proved that the central route could be
used year round, and so they got the contract. Then
right now, the Overland Company got the contract to use it,
to use that same route that was already established. And
the Pony Express was like, you have to be kidding me.
(16:04):
And so the the U. S. Government said no, no,
you guys do half and then let the let the
Overland Company do the other half. Yeah, And they were
mad for about a year and a half and really angry.
And then the telegraph line was completed. Now everyone's like, oh, well,
I guess I guess we're all out of business now. Yeah.
That was it. Pony Express the soul the Wells Fargo
(16:24):
and basically shut down. Yeah. I think American Express ended
up branching out of Wells Fargo to like these are
old old companies, like these modern banks and credit card companies.
Is interesting how far they go back. But think about
that man. Even as far back as the mid nineteenth century,
new technology was putting mail delivery out to pasture, and
(16:45):
then mail delivery would evolve and like figure out how
to come back. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Foreshadowing. So this
is a big jump forward to the mid nineteen sixties. Yeah,
a lot happened in between. Then it didn't. Actually, we
started to go move further and further out into the suburbs.
There was a huge population boom in the in the
(17:06):
post war era, and businesses started to realize the value
of direct mailing. And all these factors put together meant
that the postal Service was totally overwhelmed. Yeah, completely, because
it became such a big deal. Everyone was writing letters
and they were using the same old hand um, I
(17:28):
guess hand delivery methods, sorting methods, that's what it was.
They weren't automated at all, and they needed to be.
And so there was a postal reform that that was undertaken. Yeah,
and this was in nineteen seventy one the Post Office Department.
And I didn't even know this. It was shortly after
I was born. We weren't the United States Postal Service
(17:49):
until nine that was when we officially became the USPS. UH,
it became an independent establishment. Um was no longer a
part of the cabinet of the federal government, but was
part of the executive branch and got the monopoly basically
to deliver mail, even though it was supposedly just a company,
and they and they re up the mandate from I
(18:10):
think Sevo that said you the postal Service is one
of the most essential services of the federal government. No
person has cut off in this country. None shall not
get delivered exactly. Everyone's going to have a mailbox, and
everyone's going to get mail to that mailbox every day
because we need to help keep intellectual freedom um going
(18:32):
and and and ideas in business and commerce going all
the time. And the Postal Services, this federal agency that
carries that out, and that I'm sure that put a
financial burden on them when people started building in these
especially rich people, when they started building in these remote areas,
because then all of a sudden, you had to add
that to your route. Well, there's if it's sixty miles
up a mountain and it's the only house there's there's
(18:53):
a guy who services the Grand Canyon. There's a group
of Indians that live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon,
and he has a donkey train that goes down there
every day with the mail. Really yeah, I mean it's
part of it's a federal mandate. You have to be
able to get mail. Everyone has a mailbox. He's like,
don't you guys you smoke signals? Come on, they do.
In fact, that actually wrote an article on spoke singles. Yeah. Yeah,
(19:16):
I was gonna say we should podcasts on it, but
it's it's like super basic, is it really? It would
be like a five minute podcast. Well, we'll have to
figure out some other way to use it. Agreed, because
that's interesting. Um, so do we cover going postal now?
It was sort of just thrown in the middle of
this army. Yeah, it really was. It was talking about
how packages are delivered, and all of a sudden, it says,
and then people started killing each other in nine six yeah,
(19:40):
which is actually, Um, the post Office has the dubious
distinction of kicking off the workplace shooting trend in the
United States. Was that the first one as far as
I could tell, Alright, So Edmund Oklahoma, Patrick Henry A.
Cheryl killed fourteen co workers. Um. And another one happened,
(20:01):
including a uh supervisor getting killed with a samurai sword. UM.
November nineteen Thomas H. McIlvaine shot and killed four co workers,
wounded five others, then shot himself and then nine and
then in two thousand three two more incidences of postal
workers killing fellow postal workers. It was like just between
(20:25):
eighties six and nineties seven, forty people died at postal
post offices from postal rampage and gave birth to the
term going postal, which is used as a vernacular for
like just losing it basically, um. And if you're interested
in that at all, there's a really good documentary I
think it's on Netflix streaming right now called um Murdered
(20:45):
by Proxy, and it's all about the postal shootings, like
where they came from. There's a lot of scrutiny at
like the of the management techniques of people at post offices,
and there's got to be something to it. I mean,
oh yeah, if you watch that's like it was like
how many other industries had that many office shootings? You know, retail, actually,
(21:05):
you're the homicide rate is three times higher in retail
than it is at the post office. You don't say
go in retail, that just means you're going shopping. Well,
it's like drinking the kool aid. They really drank flavor
aid and it's right kool aids some one with that distinction.
Oh yeah, alright, so that was going. Yeah, I mean
we had to mention it, but I don't want to
dwell on it. But it was weird in this article
the way it went right in the middle of this
(21:27):
came up out of nowhere. Um zip codes, this is
kind of cool. Um zip codes were introduced in nineteen
sixty three and then officially put in place in mandatory
in seven because just so much mail going on you
had to categorize it more specifically, right, that was part
of that, the post office being swamped. This was the
(21:48):
first step toward automation. Was like a standardized code. Well
they did have other ones, but it was like one
was New York City or something like that. You know.
So ZIP this is just a nice little cocktail party
factoid stands for zone improvement plan. I never knew that
until I read this. Did you know that I had before?
(22:09):
But I had forgotten. Okay, so it's his own improvement
plan and it's uh here in the United States at least,
it's a five digit number represents you know, a location
obviously where you're trying to send something and it now
they have the ZIP code plus four in some areas
of like I guess major urban areas have a little
more specificity, right, they like deliver it to your like
(22:30):
they put it on your stomach if you plus four.
I think certain buildings even will have their own plus
four if it's a big enough building, or if you
get a lot of mail as a person, is that
what you're after is a plus four for your well,
it says that some high volume mail receivers get it.
I'm like, you know, if it was cool mail, I'd
love to get the mail. UM. So the first digit
there represents the state here in Georgia, that's a three. UM.
(22:54):
It increases as you move west, and there are some
states that share each digit. Yeah, like two. Yeah, it's
taken up by a lot of states. There's the District
of Columbia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia.
Man all two's. I would be mad if I lived
in one of those states. So then you got the
second third digits. Those are regions within the state. UM.
(23:17):
The first three of those create what's called the SCF code,
the sectional center, facility, and UM. Then the fourth and
fifth digits are even more specific. Basically, it just hones
down as you go left or right until you've got
Josh Clark's house right, like this state, this section facility,
(23:37):
this UM post office, yeah, this neighborhood yeah, and then
this maybe this building, this high volume mail receiver named
Josh Clark. That's right. Um, So you've got the zip
code that allowed automation. And a little known fact is
the US Postal Service doesn't just handle a ton of
the US as mail. It handles of all of the
(23:58):
mail in the world. Really yeah wow, So before the
zip code, this was really difficult. It also went from
if you're mailing something from New York to San Francisco,
it went through every distribution facility in the country in
between New York and San Francisco. Um before it got there.
Really yes, Now zip codes, Well, let's talk about how
(24:20):
what a letter does, and this is all thanks to
zip codes. So I write a little love letter, I'm
gonna mail it to Emily, which is weird because we
live together. Just be a romantic. That's actually a great
example though, because you can mail something from your mailbox
to be delivered back to you. I reckon, I've never
done it. That's a that's a the poor man's trademark
(24:45):
I've heard about that is to mail something to yourself
into this. I think it depends on the judge. Yeah. Probably. Okay,
So you put it in your mailbox. Postal carriers gonna
pick it up. They're gonna take it to the post office. Um,
they're gonna put it on a truck and then take
that from the post office to a processing plant where
we have our long awaited machines doing some sorting, shape
(25:09):
and size. Yeah. Well, first they sort everything out and
make sure everything's facing the right way up right. Um.
And then the the they packages, well, packages are put
on one one belt and then letters are put in another.
And there the letters say, let's just stick with the
letter that you wrote. Okay. Uh it's it goes into
(25:30):
a slot so it's facing upwards and upright. Yeah if
if front words and upright. And then they put a
little barcode on the back of the letter and uh
I think ultra violet ink. Yeah. Well, first thing it
does is it gets a postmark and cancelation line saying basically,
you can't use the stamp again. Yeah. Don't even try it.
(25:50):
Don't be cheap. We've seen the wide out tricks. We've
seen doctoring up a stamp, which is probably a federal offense.
It probably is UM. And then so after that the
barcodes in it on the back of the piece of mail.
And then there's an optical scanner that reads the address,
which is pretty cool. And if you if they're really
really really accurate to UM, but if your handwriting is terrible,
(26:13):
they have a new system now where the this UM
conveyor belt takes a picture of it, send emails a
picture to a human being at a computer who reads
it what I think it is, types it in and
then it's so it stays on the line. It doesn't
have to come out any longer. It's pretty much technology. Yeah. UM.
And then so based on this UM this address, including
(26:36):
the ZIP code, it prints a barcode at the bottom.
If you look at a letter, any letter you get
has a little barcode on it. And so that's what's red.
That's right that the thing on the back is invisible.
I think right, it's fluorescent. That's just showing off. We
have invisible link. Other processing machines then read those barcodes
and then sort them in their little bins according to
(26:58):
zip code. And it's just basically placing everything and what
will eventually be a trade that will be delivered back
to a post office or a sorting facility or does
it go straight to a post office? UM, it goes
to another processing plant, right, So imagine each processing plant
(27:18):
regional I guess, has a bunch of mail coming in
on trucks. Then it sorts and then sends out and
then based on its zip code that it serves UM,
it gets a bunch of flats from other UM distribution
facilities that's right with that are already according to the
zip code. So let's say it's getting a flat of
mail by zip code. It then also sorts through those
(27:42):
that's right, and it actually sorts them into an individual
carriers route in order, and that's what's delivered to the
post office. So it arrives at the post office ready
to go on the truck. Yes, okay, And that doesn't
mean that the postal worker doesn't have much to do.
They also still have like circulars, magazines, bulk mail. They
(28:05):
have to go through and put it for every address,
all that crapped it and where all that my recycling
ben basically yeah, although the coupons. I'll remember our junk
mail episode from years and years back, and we've got
so much from people who are like, no, no, no,
you can't get rid of junk mail, right, that's the
only thing keeping us in business. So if you're going
(28:51):
to address a letter, there are a few guidelines. You know.
You gotta put your address legibly on the front. You
gotta put your little return address in the upper left corner. Yeah,
on the front, don't put it on the back, upper
left corner there. And don't use periods in commas, like
if you write p O box it's not p period
oh period, Although that doesn't matter. Apparently it allows for
(29:12):
greater efficiency in reading your letter, maybe because I always
put like Atlanta comma g A period. I do too,
and they still get there. But don't you wonder if
they get there like earlier? I don't know. Maybe, so
uh it is um, Supposedly you need to be able
to read the address at arms length, so don't write tiny,
and uh, don't write so big that they can't do
(29:34):
other things to the envelope like scan and stamp and
things like that. Um. And then you know, you gotta
put your return address because if something happens, you want
it to come back to you. Although I don't do
that much anymore, A lot of times I'll just put
like Atlanta, Georgia. Really, you don't put your return address
on there. No, but I rarely mail things, and a
lot of times when I do, it's for work, So
I'll just put, you know, Atlanta, Georgia, houstaff works or something.
(29:57):
And it's not the kind of thing that if it
doesn't come back to me, I would care. I got
I've had some precious thing. I would put a Richard address.
I have a feeling that you're going to get some
email from postal carriers that are like I hate people
like you, because whether you care if it comes back
to you or not, I'm sure they have to get
it back to you. Uh. There's a lot of type
of delivery surfaces we surfaces services. We won't go over here,
(30:20):
but I did want to say that media mail is
a great little ah trick, not a trick, but a
great tool if you're mailing things like books and or
DVDs because it's super cheap, but it takes a while.
But that's part of that mandate from that. They want
to keep the intellectual juice of America flowing through the
(30:41):
Postal Service, so things like that creative stuff for books
or correspondence, like and I think that's how if you've
ever ordered a book on Amazon for like two cents,
you're like, oh, how can they sell a book for
two cents, It's because they charge you like four for shipping,
and they probably pay like eight cents to mail it
(31:01):
with media mail. That's the greatest scam of the century.
Well not really, I mean they're making their money via
shipping instead of the book itself. But publishers don't like it,
of course, because they want to sell their books new
and not for two cents on Amazon. So. Um, I
think we said that the Postal Service has a monopoly
on delivering mail but not on delivering packages, right, Um,
(31:25):
so because they're kind of in competitive business against like
UPS and FedEx and d h L and all those guys. Um,
those guys have gone ahead and in and invested in
infrastructure of say like air delivery, air transportation of mail,
and the U. The Postal Service has tried that before,
like they tried a guided missile in ninety three, which
(31:46):
they shot full of mail from a submarine to a
naval station in Florida, but it was just too expensive.
So the Postal Service said, hey, Ups, Hey FedEx, you
guys have a bunch of planes. Can we start putting
our mail on it? And they said sure for a
few billion dollars a year. And the Postal Service said great.
But at the same time they kind of, um, they
(32:09):
stepped forward into the twenty first century by doing so.
And the Postal Service, having access to everyone's mailbox, is
often tapped by UPS and FedEx deliver what's called in
the business the last mile. Yeah. So a lot of times,
especially if you're a rural person, if you get something
from Amazon, it's it was shipped by UPS, but eventually
(32:31):
it made its way into your postal carriers route and
being delivered by the Postal Service. Yeah, there's way more
mixing of package mailing than you would think. Um, it's
like a swinger party or something pretty much. Uh. And
part of that deal in two thousand one with FedEx was, Hey,
FedEx said, can we put our boxes at your post offices?
(32:53):
And they said sure for six million dollars And they said,
you know, can we hit your ride on your plane.
They said, sure, for six point three billions over seven years.
But it's you know, seems like a good agreement. And
they did the same with ups and uh we scratch
our back, you scratch yours, we scratch your back, we'll
scratch yours. That works. Yeah, why didn't everybody scratch them back?
(33:17):
I don't know. Okay, um, because it's hard to reach.
Uh So, if you realize that the postal service needs
a few billion extra dollars, you say, why are you
just up the postal rates? Yeah, well, the federal government
keeps its thumb on that they want to make sure
that anybody who needs to mail a letter can do
(33:37):
so without great expense. Yeah, it's a big deal to
change the postal rate. Like it is, much more than
you would think, because a layman like me would just
be like, yeah, I just add a few cents. Who cares. Yeah,
it's the problem just printing those forever stance genius idea.
You don't have to go back and reprint a bunch
with the amount great idea or the one cent. Remember
in Fargo, Yeah, when the Wade got the one center
(33:57):
with the ducks. Yeah, and she was like everyone needs
the once sent whenever they raise the rates. Yeah, he's like, cool, Gee,
I didn't think about that. Um so, but yes, there's
a very long, protracted, difficult process of raising the postal rates.
It's not a very easy thing and it involves a
ton of bureaucracy. Should we get into that or just
leave it at that? It's up to you, man, I
(34:18):
think we should just leave it at that. Okay. So
if you are going to mail something from your house,
you need your little mailbox, and I just installed mine
in what seemed like a sensible manner. I didn't realize
that there were actual rules. Um. In fact, you were
supposed to contact the post office before installing your mailbox,
which I had no idea. UM, to make sure it's
(34:39):
like the correct placement and height and so like the
post office person or the mail career, I don't have
to get out of the truck. Oh well they'll they'll
burn it down if it's not the specification. So you
want to contact the post office? I didn't, but I
guess I just lucked out because, um they say generally
in from the road surface to the inside floor of
(35:01):
the mailbox or point of entry, and then set back
six to eight inches from the front face of the
curb or road edge to the mailbox door. I guess
I just got lucky then, because I get my mail,
you know, without any burning down over here now or
without a post office spots box, which we talked about.
They've been around for a couple of hundred years. And
(35:21):
that's if you want to have a little key to
your little loan box in a post office and get
your mail there, you can certainly do that. It's handy
if you're starting out of business and you want to
make people think that you're not working out of your house. Um,
you can get a post office and say, look, I
have a PO box, which means I'm working out of
my bedroom. It's like code, I think, are you getting
(35:44):
guns in the mail? Is that what people do? I'm
sure there's a lot of people who try to get
guns in the mail in the p O boxes. Yeah sure, okay.
Or if you um tend to move around a lot
in the same town and you don't want to worry
about changing your mail and forwarding mail, you could always
just get a PO box. Yeah. So those are some reasons. Um,
you want to talk the future of the post office
(36:06):
if it's around after October two. What is the future
of the post Office. Well, there's a lot of stuff
coming down the pike. Um, there's the cancelation of Saturday
mail this August. They're really going hard after package delivery services.
Now what trying to oh with like the flat rates
and stuff like that. Just really like courting businesses to say, hey,
consider us instead of ups or FedEx um and uh,
(36:30):
especially with prescription medicines because we have an aging population
is going to do nothing but increase in size, so
you're gonna need more prescriptions through the mail. So hey,
let's get into that. Yeah, and you can get stuff
like that certified and insured and uh, signature delivery approved
and stuff like that. It's helpful. Part of the post
office is pledged that your letter carrier won't take your
(36:52):
medication before delivering it might hit you up for something, right. Um.
But there's also a line of clothing coming out postal service.
Line of clothing coming out, I'm not kidding, called rain,
heat or snow. And as we almost didn't mention this,
so the Postal Services creed right, neither rain nor snow,
(37:13):
nor sleep, sleep nor holland rain or sleep nor snow,
nor neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of
night stays these carriers from the swift completion of their
appointed rounds. And that's actually not the post Office's official model.
They don't have one, but it's been linked to them.
And it's actually an adaptation of something from Herodotus, the
(37:34):
Greek historian, who was making a comment about how the Persians,
even during their war and like five b c. They
were one of the first ones to establish a real
postal service, and even during war, the postal service didn't stop.
They were still documents being delivered, and Herodotus was commenting
(37:55):
on that, and that's where that came from. It should
include like or loss of limb. It did originally, Like
that's an adaptation. It wasn't loss of limb, but it
was something like some sort of sicknesses befalling you. They
were putting the mail before themselves. The show must go on, right. Um.
So there's a line of clothing called the rain or
heat or snow um and then um. They're also talking
(38:15):
about creating federal email addresses that you get at birth.
Just like you have a physical address, you would also
have an email address, but your email address is attached
to you rather than the physical location you live at.
And if you say need to correspond with the I
R S Or Social Security Administration something like that, you
would send like this very secure email through this Postal
(38:39):
Services portal. Everything else you could just use like you know,
Gmail or Yahoo or whatever for everyday stuff. But this
is like the big stuff, the really important stuff. And
then the postal service would also offer like a digital
lock box for um, the like like a will or
your medical records or something like that. Yeah, and listen,
(39:00):
is every conspiracy uh person in the country now says
in a way, I want a federal email attached to
my name that I have to send things through. Yeah,
well that's the number of the Beast. Obviously, I don't
know that I would want that either. And I'm not
a big conspiracy guy. Oh, it's not that you have
to send it through that. It's that if you send
it through that, if somebody hijacks that er reads it,
(39:22):
you're going to be in a lot more trouble federally
speaking than they would be if like they read your Gmail.
Because didn't it illegal to to open like a federal
offense to get someone's exactly? And that's what this there's
this guy who runs a think tank for the Postal
Service who's who's like, it's not just about mailing documents,
it's about protecting the connectedness of the United States and Americans,
(39:44):
So how do we do that in a digital world?
He's thinking about this. So if you're even the least
bit interested by this episode that we just recorded, Um,
there's an Esquire article called too I did, there's ae do.
It's called do We Really Want to Live Without the
Post Office? And it's by Jesse Lichtenstein, And um, it
(40:08):
is really good, man. It's a really good overview of
what does Jesse think, Uh, we need he or she
I think kind of leans toward we need it. And
the more you start to read about it, the more
this weird kind of civic affection for the post office developed.
And you know where I'm like, yeah, we don't want
to get rid of the post office. You want the
(40:28):
post office? Who doesn't want the post office? It's kind
of it kind of develops. Yeah, I used to like,
you know, maybe it was a simpler day, or maybe
the people stuck with their routes longer, But I remember
my postman growing up. It was the same guy for years,
and we lived on We didn't live in a neighborhood.
We lived on a street in the woods with like
six houses, and so you know, I would run out
(40:49):
and check the mail and wave at them, and we
would give him like gifts at Christmas and that's awesome.
And now I have no idea who my postal curious?
Which is my fault? I need to just go out there,
I think you do. Yeah. And also the postal services
responsible for the largest food drive in the United States
every year. Yeah, you know that food drive where you
like you just put like canned food in your in
(41:10):
your mailbox, in your postal you can do that. Yeah,
I've never heard of. It hasn't been very well publicized,
but it's like at least around here, I guess. But um,
it's a huge food drive or at the very least,
postal carriers are taking and eating cans of viol for
dinner like this is delicious. I love this food drive. Yes,
I don't just put cans of food in your mailbox.
(41:31):
Check in too when that is supposed to That's got
to be the worst day of the year for letter carrier,
my gosh. Yeah, can you imagine it's a lot of weight. Yeah, Um,
you got anything else? No respect your post postal carrier?
You want everybody go out and meet their postal carry? Yeah,
why not give him a hug? Actually, don't do that,
they might make you or something. Yeah, but give him
(41:52):
a wave. Um. If you want to learn more about
the post office, you can type that word those words
into the search bar house to works dot com and
uh be sure to check out the Esquire article too.
It's very cool. Um and uh, I guess before we
get into that, chuck, you want a message from our sponsor,
let's do that. Yeah, Uh okay, now it's listener mel Josh,
(42:41):
I'm gonna call this uh um fan who thought we
were wrong and did a little research and we may
not be wrong after call. Oh, yeah, that's a nice.
We had a bunch of filmmakers right in when we
talked about the um subliminal messages being inserted into movies
(43:01):
in the nineteen fifties by James Vickery, because we said
it's one three thousand of a second or something, and
a bunch of filmmakers went, there's only twenty four frames
per second, so if you switched out one frame, it
would only be there's no way, there's no way. And
where'd you get this number? Where'd you get this number?
I went back and looked, and I was like, I mean,
I see this number in various places. But um so,
(43:25):
we got this email from Brian Henry that disputed this,
and then he wrote back with this, Hey, guys, looks
like a may I have've spoken too soon. I was
assuming that Vickery was just changing the film itself, which
were dissolved in the messages showing much slower in at
the maximum the second. But I did some research and
apparently he used something called a uh I've never heard
(43:48):
this before, a tachi stato scope tacha stop to to
just the scope. I think you got it to just
the scope okay, to project the messages on the screen,
not the movie projector. He said, so this way he
would have had a lot more control over the speed
of the messages. And um So, to all the filmmakers
(44:10):
out there who wrote in and challenged us boom, I
wrote back to a few that was like, jeez, I
don't know, man, I'm like, I'm looking for it. Then
they you know someone we're even kind of snotty about,
like the should research the more so, apparently put that
in your tits, gope and smoke it. That's what I say.
And that is from Brian Henry. Yeah. Thanks for the
research you know, and being a good guy saying hey,
(44:31):
I was wrong because you were wrong. He was. He
was one of the nicer ones about it. Well, thank you. Yeah. Um,
if you want to let us know that you were wrong,
even though you had told us that we were wrong
at first, we love those um you can tweet that
to us at s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know,
(44:53):
or you can send us an email to stuff podcast
at how stuff Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
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