People of Agency

Everyone thinks 1918 was slow. Horse-and-buggy America, right? Wrong. The Post Office had built one of the most advanced communication networks on the planet, but it still took over a week to get mail coast-to-coast. So they looked at thousands of surplus WWI planes sitting idle and thought: what if we use flying death traps to move the mail?

In Episode 5, Aileen and Maia trace the audacious, deadly birth of American aviation. Whe...

What if the most revolutionary force in American history wasn't a politician or an army, but mail carriers bringing letters to farmhouse doors? At the turn of the 20th century, rural Americans lived in profound isolation, cut off from news, markets, and opportunities that city dwellers took for granted. Predatory merchants and railroad companies exploited this information gap, charging whatever they wanted because farmers had no wa...

July 2, 1881. President James Garfield walks through a Washington train station. Charles Guiteau steps forward, raises a revolver, and fires twice. As Garfield falls, Guiteau shouts: "I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts! Arthur is president now!" In his mind, this isn't murder, it's a job application. In Episode 4, Aileen and Maia trace how a broken system that rewarded political loyalty over competence created the conditions for pres...

October 6, 1866. Three men board a slow-moving train in Seymour, Indiana. They beat a messenger unconscious, steal $16,000, and throw a 300-pound safe off a moving train. It's the first peacetime train robbery in American history, and it accidentally invents federal law enforcement as we know it. In this action-packed episode, Aileen and Maia break from their usual format to deliver pure narrative chaos: train robberies, shootouts,...

Winter, 1895. Cascade, Montana. A nearly sixty-year-old Black woman who was born enslaved leans into a blizzard, driving a U.S. mail wagon through drifts that have turned men around. Her name is Mary Fields, and she will become a legend. But before we meet Stagecoach Mary, we need to understand the system she bent to her will. In Episode 2, Aileen and Maia trace how the Post Office expanded westward, not just following the frontier...

What if the real glue holding America together isn't laws or leaders, but the mail? In the premiere episode of People of Agency, Aileen and Maia kick off their deep dive into U.S. Postal Service history by exploring its revolutionary origins. Before independence, before the Constitution, the Continental Congress established the Post Office, making it older than America itself. From Benjamin Franklin's efficiency obsession and Willi...

The Post Office is older than the United States, and that's not a coincidence. From the American Revolution to Rural Free Delivery, the Post Office has been a silent, foundational institution that literally built the roads and airways of modern America. 

Join Aileen Day and Maia Warner-Langenbahn as they dig up the receipts and reveal the untold, radical history of this essential public good. This is a story about the unseen power ...