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